What It Feels Like to Be Aaron Smith
Though you would never admit it, you’re still shocked by pubic hair
in Diesel ads on Broadway and Houston, and you wonder what
conversations lead up to a guy posing with his pants unzipped to the
forest. Maybe the stylist does it, but somebody had to think, let’s show
pubic hair, and was that person nervous about saying, hey, I have a great
idea: pubic hair. You think about David Leddick’s book Naked Men
Too, and the model with the cigarette whose mother photographed
him with his jeans falling off and his pubic hair showing and how that’s
weird and you can’t even begin to process how someone would let his
own mother photograph him nearly naked and why a mother would
want to. Everyone pretends pubic hair in pictures is artistic, but we all
know it’s really about sex, which you quickly remind yourself is okay,
too, because you’re liberal, which you sometimes think means you
don’t believe in anything because you want people to like you. Then
you think how you hate the phrase shock of pubic hair in novels and
spend the next several minutes trying to think of a better phrase, shrub
of . . . patch of . . . spread of . . . taste of . . . wad of . . . then you think
how Joyce Carol Oates describes fat men’s chests as melting chicken fat
in her story ____________ and get paranoid because you used to be
fat and can never get your chest as tight as you want no matter how
much you bench press. You make a mental note to send poems to
Ontario Review, Joyce Carol Oates is one of the editors and might like
your work. They published Judith Vollmer’s poem about the reporter
covering a murder scene, and you love her and her poems (maybe you
should send her an e-mail and see how she’s doing). Then you think
about pubic hair again, how embarrassing it can be at Dr. Engel’s when
he examines you and stares at it (do you have too much, how much
can you trim and still look natural) both of you trying to pretend it’s
professional when he asks you to move into the light, holds your penis
like a pencil, squeezes your balls, this guy’s fine, this guy’s fine, and you
don’t know how to be when he shakes your hand before you leave.
Then you feel perverted because you’re still thinking about pubic
hair, maybe everyone has pubic hair issues and nobody talks about it?
You know for a fact Laura does because she told you after she read a
Sharon Olds poem out loud and the two of you giggled. You think of
Tara, with thick eyeliner, who said well-groomed underarms are really
sexy and you adopted that phrase when you say you think underarms
are sexy, well-groomed underarms you say and friends agree, especially
Tom who also loves underarms and sex clubs. You pass a hot guy
(not as hot as the bag check guy at The Strand whose shirt comes up
when he puts your backpack on the top shelf) and you want to sleep
with him and stare, hoping he raises his arm so you can see his hair.
from The Best American Poetry 2013 edited by Denise Duhamel
A big ass poem!
Posted by: Ursula Levin | April 20, 2023 at 10:42 AM