In
1989 I learned the rule:
men
are obliged to move heavy objects for women;
until
then, when one insisted, I would let them
but
the imposition weighed.
My
brother Jim told me last year,
"Heck,
every guy knows it, it's a rule,
you
gotta move heavy stuff for women,
just
like you gotta change their flats."
At
age forty I
am
finally clued in,
well
well well.
Summer
of 1970,
Ron
the cute blond
with
john lennon glasses
worked
at the graduate studies office with me:
Bill
my husband of 2 years
was
gone for the summer,
him
on the coast me hinterland.
"This
too will pass," my mother wrote,
to
the teary letters I wrote home,
for
married life did not go well.
The
summer being hot, I bought an air conditioner, used,
Bill
not being around to object to the falseness of cool air.
"What
a pain in the ass to haul
a
heavy ac unit from car to apartment",
I
bitched at work the day I bought it;
&
how was I a mechie spaz to properly install it?
Up
spoke Ron the blond, "I'll help you Rae",
(those
cute john lennon glasses,
though
I was not then nor now a lennon fan)
"How
nice of him to offer", this I thought,
and
come that saturday came Ron, lugging
the
modest, low numbered btu cool air machine,
fitting
it snug in my window, "what a good fit,"
I
thought, "how do guys know how to fit it in just so?"
Soon
the unit spanned the window,
and
Ron stepped his presence,
tall
as my brother Jim,
into
the space of closeness 'round me
occupied
hitherto by absent Bill, stepped Ron.
This
in the year that steven stills sang
if
you can't be with the one you love,
love
the one you're with.
Before
I could take in the strangeness of the move,
he
kissed me on lips unkissed by any but Bill
for
all the time of my neonate adulthood;
in
the blast of AC his lips pressed warm, and very full;
a
kiss of some assurance.
Ron
moved closer, but I broke away,
fluster
muttered something foolish, stepping back.
I'm
married, I'm not into this
(in
those loose steven stills days being married
does
not half suffice for no)
he
backs off quick & soon departs
maintaining
friendly tones.
On
monday next at work
he
ambled amiable as usual, cute blond Ron with
(oh)
those bolshevik wire-rim glasses,
asking
how was it working out, conditioned air that is.
He
never treated me differently than my brother Jim,
who
(who can know?) might once have kissed a married girl.
This
morning, after years, I thought of Ron,
hippie
boy he sauntered hair & glasses
out
of the pleasant cells of my recent non-remembering,
standing
inside my space again like some tall apparition.
Shall
I teach my sons? - hit on girls at your leisure,
but
don't press on past no, & don't take it personal;
Sweet
justice is a boy who acts on "No,"
then
treats you like the question was never raised.
Respect
is sudden warmth posed in air-conditioned cool,
posed
& answered, accepted & posed no more.