A double-edged thing, beauty.

I like to decorate and make things beautiful.  If need be, redecorate.  I always have.  Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can do with the flat currently–which is nothing, really, it’s not my flat.  So I’ve taken to decorating and redecorating my blog. 

Above the entry, you’ll find a lovely glimpse of John William Waterhouse’ Hylas and the Nymphs.  There are actually two versions of this painting I’ve seen.  In each, the nymphs are more or less the same.  Naked, pale, wet, nymphy.  {Nymphish?  Nymphesque?  Nifty?}  The difference is seen in the chap kneeling down and gawking at them.  In the version above, he’s bearded.  In the version more frequently seen, he’s not.  Now, a proper art history student could probably tell me what significant differences there are between the two.  That one was a draft, say; or one was a fanciful recreation by someone else; or better yet that the two paintings might be sequential partners.  In painting one, the chap kneels down as a young fellow reaching out to the ladies in the water.  They reject him at once because he hath no beard, and is less than a man.  In part two, he returns quite manly and bearded.  However, none of this matters much to me.  I don’t need to know the significant historical difference between them, I admire both paintings.  I admire both paintings because I think they’re beautiful examples of what paintings can be:  beautiful.  I think they’re soft–even if a bit erotic–poetic, beautiful, and inviting. 

Yes, that’s a good summary:  Beauty = inviting.

When I was a lad, {some people–who’ve not been lads for quite some time–would say I still am, but that’s irrelevant.} When I would say I was a lad, I had a fascination with the city.  I liked going into the city and coming out of the city.  As a teenager it made me feel less teenish.  I didn’t even particularly have to do anything in the city, and often times I didn’t.  It just made me feel slightly less sheltered to ride the train to and from the city as many times as I could during the week.  In those days, the city was beautiful, the train was beautiful, the pathetic little ride on the train–crossing over the freeway, past Lloyd Center, over the Willamette–was pulling, alluring, beautiful. 

Today, the j.w.w. painting above is beautiful.  The train is not.  Today, the train, the train tracks, the people who ride the train, and the people who compulsively hang out by the train tracks are anything but beautiful.  There are only two reasonable explanations for this. . .

The first is the notion that things have changed.  That when I was train-taken lad, it was all such stuff as postcards are made of.  Silvery train tracks, perfume in the air; a city that looked like Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night street scene.  The second theory is that nothing has changed–except perhaps for my eyes now seeing what they failed to see then. . .   Littered train tracks, body odor and pot-stink in the wind; faces scarred from substance abuse making angry expressions at children connected to leashes. 

I don’t remember seeing those things ten or thirteen years ago.  Honestly I don’t, and I’m inclined to say they didn’t exist.  P’raps I was just a teenage idiot, as most teenage anythings are also idiotic by natural law. 

Two nights ago, my beloved one and I were walking out of the not-exactly-beautiful liquor store, by the 102nd train-stop where we can catch the bus home.  (I’ve never typically gone to liquor stores, I typically go went to pubs.  Now that bars are smokeless rooms for asthmatic freedom crunchers with over sensitive gag reflexes, I go to liquor stores.)  We walked out of the hardly-beautiful-liquor-store door with our Vodka snuggled in a brown-paper sleeping bag between a bottle of Sprite {for me}, and Grape Fruit juice {for her}.  Shuffling over to the bus stop, we saw a beautiful example of what I see now, and never saw then… 

It is here we must remember that there are two sides to every coin.  Just as we might say the grass is greener on the other side, we eventually come to learn that beauty is a double-edged thing with two faces.  The people who scare us are also likely scared of us.

There we were, 102nd and Burnside, 7:45 in the evening, I think.  No later than eight o’clock to be certain!  Fairly dark, I suppose.  Darkish.  But not by any stretch that deeply intense, get away with anything under cover of night sort of darkness.   

The bus stop’s booth was inhabited by a group of friends who couldn’t have been older than fifteen.  Fifteen year olds, when in groups, have a loud quality about them.  I think it’s because they try to act older, by talking as loudly as possible about things they assume non-minors are interested in.  Alcohol.  Cigarettes.  Pornography.  A number of things that are “sick”.  Bench taken by obnoxious loudmouths, we sat on some nearby steps.  We set down our bags, lit a cigarette, and started to wait for the bus. 

A not-exactly-beautiful chap on his bicycle rode up to wait for the bus as well. 

“What are you doing here?” he asksed.
“Smoking.” I said.
“You two don’t look like the type who wait for busses.”
“Oh?”
“No.  What’s up?  Leave the caddilac at home?”
“We don’t have a caddilac” Victoria said.
“Range rover?”
“We don’t have a car.”
“Fooled me.  Don’t normally see that CEO-just-done-with-dinner-or-whatever-you-call-it crowd here.”  I honestly can’t remember which metaphor he tried to use, but it was something overflattering like that…
“We’re just waiting for the bus…” Victoria said.

The number 15 came.  Not our bus.  He hooked his little bicycle onto the nifty Trimet provided bike-rack, hopped on the bus, and away they went.

“He said we didn’t look like we belonged here.” Victoria said.
“I know.  Odd.” 
“Do you know what that means?”
“What does it mean?”
“It means we look good!  Yay!” 

Amid this after-chatter, I looked over my shoulder toward Burnside.  I don’t know why, it had something to do with wanting the bus to come.  Perhaps I thought my neck had developed super powers?  That in the miraculous gesture of turning my head, I could make the bus we were actually waiting for appear?  I don’t know, but talking to strangers who make no sense to me is not my forte.  My cigarette was already smoked and flicked away.  Cold night.  102nd avenue.  I was well beyond starting to hope the bus would come along before my first proctology exam. 

Looking over my shoulder, I caught glimpse of something.  First that the group of fifteen year olds from the booth were talking and laughing louder than they were already, and walking off into 7:45pm night.  That was when I noticed Eskimo girl.  

Eskimo girl was an xteen year old not-very-beautiful girl trying far too hard to look sexy.  She was wearing some kind of Brittney Spears in Snow-Country costume, and rubbing up against a rather stupid looking gangbanger.  He was not beautiful either, and trying far too hard to look gangbangerish.  They caught my attention because of the way she was rubbing up against him.  Like she wanted something other than the pleasure of rubbing.  It gave a distinct ‘we don’t actually know each other, we just do this so people don’t watch‘ impression.  Sometimes reverse psychology fails. 

“Odd.  Something not quite right about that.” I said to Vicky.

I looked back at eskimo girl and noticed her accept a wrinkled plastic bag of something from her gangbanger friend.  She had by this point stopped rubbing up against him completely, and now stood a good two paces from him smiling that hiddeous, naughty-teen smile. 

“You already missed a bunch!”  said Victoria.

The gangbanger left, and another fellow came on and stood next to Eskimo girl.  This was someone she knew very well.  He had a profound air of anything-but-beautiful about him.  A greasy, sharp front teeth sort of air. 

“It’s super fresh,” Eskimo girl said, handing him the wrinkly bag she accepted from her gangbanger friend.  “No, really, super fresh.  I just bought it today.” 

I lit a cigarette while Victoria describe how he’d distributed a number of other wrinkled bags to the loud-mouthed friends who’d just departed. 

He looked over at me, or more precisely, he looked over at my eyes looking back at his.  I flicked my cigarette in a very dramatic sort of way while looking at him and twitching an eyebrow.  This produced the result I was hoping for: he stopped looking at me.  He moved closer to Eskimo girl.  Eskimo girl seemed oblivious. 

“Who the fuck is he?” he whispered to Eskimo girl.
“Who?”
“That mafia-looking motherfucker.  Who the fuck is he!”

Another drag off the cigarette.  He looked back at me and blinked in an exasperated, greasy, chin-twitching way. 

The bus came.  We boarded, and as we sat I heard him again, louder, greasier, waving his arms:  “Who the fuck was that guy!!!” 

I never had these encounters then.  I never saw these things then.  I see them frequently now. 

I could say, “Things used to be beautiful”.  It seems I could also say, I disturb the disturbing.

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009.