Checkout Chameleon

Posted by kabouter on December 22, 1998 at 11:02:56:

n my local Vomar where I stood transfixed last friday night staring at a soft chocolatelicking boy who reminded me of butter i
came again to the same checkout tonight wearing hope and hunger and fell again.

the boy danced as he helped to swirl the groceries down the long rubber band to his mother's open hands. His feet were poised
in the dance one booted foot diagonally over the other as if he needed to go to the toilet or enjoyed squeezing his privates in the
warm pink flesh of his boyhood. He was a sqaure boy a boy made up of angles a square jacket hanging well off his straight
broad shoulders and covering him to the crest of his thighs which were strong and bejeaned. I fell in love with the intermission
of blue jeans and brown suede boot. I wanted to roll there like a puppy and chew the tops of those boots there where the
leather was a different colour over from the inside and stitched down with neat strong canvas stitches. Roll there like a puppy
chewing and making pink puppy noises of happpiness and satisfaction.

He danced without moving rolling his sensuality out toward me like a carpet, like a rubber band endlessly turning round and
pulling me towards him my thoughts, feelings, brain, hands stretching through space to the checkout chameleon. His face was
pale like the faces of all dutch boys on midwinter's day. There were blue shadows around his eyes that came from being in too
much winter darkness - shadows that shimmered across the surface of his white skin snowclouds winter fogs december mists.
He hopped from foot to foot and then pirouetted with joy. He solstice-senses summer is coming back on this day that pivots
the year spins it back towards the sun. He is allknowing allwise in touch with basic and primeaval things that belong to the earth.
He is Puck and Pan the air rushes around him like a storm like silent applause like a swarm of translucent bubbles. He looks at
me. Senses my poetry and acknowledges it gravely. Recognises my hunger and feeds it carelessly wantonly charmingly. Teases
me with his charm his youth mocks my old age my febrility my lust.

He is a spider of a boy and he spins invisible threads that he uses cruelly to capture me. He steals my dreams and weaves them
into hope and despair. He magics my senses so that i see him from very close up and also from far away. I slide down the
space between the checkout and the IR sensor and touch the beaten aluminium side of the counter where he performed his
motionless dance. I soak up I absorb the residual molecules of his being left there for me. My hands stroke the grey metal
feverishly searching for his warmth.

He dances away from me there on the checkout pier scene of so many departures. His hands flutter in the air like wings
propelling him away. He twists and falls over and over out into the cold night air he flies like a summer seeking swallow
gracefully delicately powerfully. he flies away. I fumble for loose change in an old purse that yawns with despair as old as me.
Taking the coins the checkout girl touches my hand and her touch feels like ice.

kabouter
Midwinter's Day 1998