Still Looking for My Shoe

[Guest guest]

The Dear Dance of Eros by Mary Mackey

 

 

 

do you say

it's progesterone, progesterone makes it soft?

when he says

you have big brown eyes

do you say

of course

I'm near-sighted?

 

my body grew in rings

like a tree trunk

at the center I'm always 10

at the center I'm always wearing

pink plastic glasses

braces

wire wrapped around my head

a mouth full of rubber bands

I have buck teeth I can spit through

corrective shoes

pimples

no legs

no butt

no breasts

one day my mother buys me falsies

overnight I grow from 28AA to 36D

I look down and notice I can't see me feet

I feel like a fork-lift

I imagine they are realies

 

in gym the girls steal my bra

and throw it in the pool

my rubber breasts float away

like humpback whales

I dive for them

over and over

I dive for my breasts

and come up flat

 

what do you say when a man tells you

you're beautiful?

do you tell him

"I'm still fishing

I'm still fishing for my body."

 

~Mary Mackey, "The Dear Dance of Eros" 1987

 

 

In 1965-66, during the oh so vulnerable years of myself fledglingly

trying to tap into the romance and love I'd read and seen so much, to

break away from childhood and youth, and wanting badly, desperately to

be seen as a woman, a danceable, kissable and embraceable female

person, I found myself at a much-hullaballooed and hoped-for to be

the blow-out of my life's little blow-outs .... the eighth-grade

party that my best friend Jodi Sarver was having.

 

I had really started at last began viewing the opposite sex as, well,

something, some group that somehow did have something to do with this

sexuality thing everyone was so interested in and femininity and all

those flushed faces and stuffed bras and boys with odd "liftings" in

their trousers that attracted me.... and yet, I could not really say

I knew, that I truly understood why I was so attracted to this. But

boy, was Iever.

 

At this wonderfully-conceived eighth-grade party where I would at last

meet my sexuality in some form, some form I might be able to recognize

and work with to my greatest benefit (getting a boyfriend) and enjoy,

recognize and realize that I was special, loveable, beautiful,

desirable and female, (and not just some weird girl with arthritis

who somehow, someway, couldn't get a boyfriend like all the other

girls were doing.)

 

A game was proposed by the hostess and introduced as this:

 

All the girls, (myself included) were required to remove one shoe and

put it in a pile along with the shoes of all the other girls. All the

boys (including the one I was mad crazy in love with) were to choose

the shoe of the girl they wished to dance with by picking her shoe up

and bringing it to her. Cool, cool I thought, I had a little bit of

trouble in that I was already sort of shy and embarrassed because my

sneakers were not new, were not party-like and were another thing in

my limited little thinking that made me appear less than desirable

and certainly less than all the girls with the fancy new part patent

leathers.

 

So the game begins.

 

Everyone was pairing up, shoes were being handed to their

lucky-blessed owners and everyone was having a gay old happy time...

dancing and laughing and being giddily beyond even happy because they

were chosen to be dancing....but myself, me, where was I? Someone,

maybe it was God, had taken my shoe, my poor old ratty sneaker and

thrown it as far as they could into the field next the the

party-giver's house.

 

Mortification?

Rejection?

Feelings of inadequacy and ugliness?

 

I understand Mary Mackey saying to anyone who would imply she might be beautiful...

"Say what??"

"Heeeyyy, Baby, wrong person, listen fellow, take note buddy."

 

"I'm still out looking for my shoe."

 

~ Wedding Rock at Patrick's Point, Trinidad, CA

 

Love,

 

Mazie

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