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Beauty
by Jacklyn Attaway. 2008. All rights reserved.
Tonight I am watching the 2008 Olympics Men’s Diving
Competition and you are 200 miles away reading Walt Whitman.
Despatie. He Chong. Dumais. The body electric.
Diving. A sport
almost entirely dedicated to the beauty of the body. A diver has a fraction of second to propel his body into the
air and contort himself into the most beautiful and precise series of movements
possible. 9.98 meters per second
squared. A dance in the air. A dance while falling.
He Chong. 21
with the face of a little boy. His
lines are clean and exact. Height,
speed, difficulty. He cuts, a
jackknife in the sky. A jackknife
into the water. A pebble splash
and ripple to invisibility.
Dumais. This
man from Ventura. He comes from a
family of divers. That is what they
say. Mother, father, brothers,
sisters. A family of swans.
Despatie. The
dark-haired French Canadian with beauty marks speckling his shoulder blades
like long-forgotten summers. He
carries and unseen weight in those shoulders, in his deepening brow. I hear the announcers say he has
recently recovered from a broken foot, that he admits he’s a little rusty. And while he lacks the height, speed,
and difficulty of He Chong, there is something in his long arched back and
pointed toes. His slow climb to
the platform. His slow exit of the
pool. I hold my breath for
him. I hold my breath at the
beauty of his body. The words of
his body.
I can’t watch diving without thinking of the 1988 Olympics
in Seoul. I was young. I didn’t see the big deal. How can this be a sport, I asked,
they’re just jumping off a diving board.
But my answer came to hear my mother gasp and see her stop to fall to
her knees when Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board. I felt the tears hot on my face and a
sensation similar to the time I’d seen a bird shot in mid-air, falling from his
climb heavenward to the crude earth.
Beauty’s like that. You
don’t see beauty until you realize that it walks on treacherous ground. If beauty didn’t dare, it wouldn’t be
beautiful.
Beauty. The
body. The beauty of the body. I watch Bettie Page dress and
undress. I watch her being tied up
and I watch her tie up other women.
The stiff corsets and cone bras, garter belts and 5-inch black patent
heels. The ropes and handcuffs and
ball gags. I think, it hurts to be
beautiful. I think, there is
beauty in pain and pain in beauty.
I think, if there’s anything Bettie Page has in common with the Olympic
divers it’s discipline.
Training. Bras. Training bras.
Tonight I am walking around my living room in black lace
lingerie and candy apple red high heels, garter belt and back seam stockings,
push-up bra and satin panties. And
you are 200 miles away doing the prescribed physical therapy exercises for your
long-wounded shoulder.
If my body was created for anything, it was created for
love. I am all circles and spheres
and curves, soft and doughy bread.
You are all angles sinewy and taut belly, smooth hip bones and squared
shoulders. I watch you arched in a
straight back chair. I watch you
reclined on my bed naked saying, Don’t I look like I own it? I say
you own what you are tied to. I
say you can only truly know what you are blindfolded for. Let us bind our
wrists together and I will close my eyes until you find me.
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