pool hopping

beauty, we never forget it. the real-time imprint on the heart of object, music, person is a Vasco de Gama love fountain. no photograph or recording is as true or as affecting as the real thing. it was all over Paris, the astonishing beauty of Pere Lachaise, the Eiffel Tower at night, Notre Dame under construction. it was before me when i heard Nina Simone throw back her cowl at Woolsey Hall and open That Mouth to declare young, beautiful and black. it cracked my chest open when we Whiffenpoofed for Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico when i was drunk off my tits, his one diminuendo finger to his lips. and i felt it watching Jack Kennedy deliver his inaugural address on a black and white Motorola in the driving snow. and again when i saw the boy lift his head to smile in the TV light in a warm living room in Moosup. the sight of an shining face, the shade of unfairly long lashes, the hair on a wrist catching sunlight, a friend's eyes startled by loss - all are are gifts from the human guru. i think in the promised slow-motion reel we un-spool in that split second before death, we catch these rare remembrances across the soul's silver screen. we were in love. we were drunk, sloppy and happy on the high cumulous of romance. 'ever go pool hopping?' he asked. 'nope.' 'we're going.' it's past midnight, stars diamond the sky. 'here's the deal. we find a mansion. we park. we look for a swimming pool. we crawl in on elbows and knees. we take off our clothes and slip into the water like alligators. we swim, we get out, we drag back on our gear and run barefoot across the sprinkling lawn.' the thought of seeing him naked in moonlight, mercury silver wet, smiling that smile of his, pumped blood a thousand-miles-per-second through my heart. 'sure.' so we did it. we found a house. we parked. we crept. dogs barked. we stripped (hadn't the time to worry about shriveled dick syndrome in the cold air). we slithered across the flagstone and into the shimmering electric blue. the water was ice cold but the exhilaration of what we were doing, the fact that we were doing it together, the air, the light, the hush of whispers and the ecstasy in our eyes was mad mad beauty. he looked like a boy i'd met in a dream, or the boy kissing his lover in marble at the louvre, or all the boys i'd ever loved in one face. his eyelashes were heavy, splayed wet, a suppressed laugh moving his belly, his sex just above the water line. this is the first time i'd see him nude. things got complicated down the road, but this moment survives like a stolen portrait in the love attic. Keats got it right: beauty IS truth.