Someone All Together Different

So there is a new student literary magazine on campus. The one-word theme of which is: Sex. Its cover has a girl holding a pencil with the school's logo seductively in her swollen, red lips. The contents are a filled with self-indulgent, naïve views of coitus – all in the form of poems, essays and short stories. Most of which were written in a way that says very little, but sounds pretty and like the author is experienced. Oh, and there are boobs. Nudity for the sake of shock with co-eds posing with same look in their eyes: "I am doing this because it is art."

It wasn't that long ago that I would have contributed to such a vehicle with the same adolescent clamor. I would have written about orgasms, body heat and passion – all topics I actually knew very little about. You'd never know that, though. For I would have researched and asked questions of my more worldly friends then put my words together in such away that sounded pleasant and alluring. But if you listened real hard would have meant absolutely nothing. Oh, but it would have sounded good. So good.

And would I have taken my top off and bared my breasts for the sake of art? Probably. As long as it didn't make me look as fat as I really was. And as long as it didn't show my face. Then, while I pose naked, sucking my gut in, I'd tell myself that when I was older I'd flip through that publication as read my words and see my bosom and think: "Look, there I am young, and so smart and uncompromised."

Now that I am a decade older than when I went to college and wrote my poetry, I know much, much more about sex, love and passion. Only it’s the realistic version without bellies sucked in and with legs that haven't been shaved in a week. And if I were to really look back at those poems and pictures I'd say: "Thank God, my mother never saw this. Huh, I don't remember being that thin? I felt so large and cumbersome then. I wish I'd known how pretty I was. Wow. My boobs looked great back then!"

Perhaps if I knew then what I do now my mental self-portrait would have been a little kinder.

“It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.” -- Jane Austen