Class Up The Ass

I was never one for heroes

Putting up posters, collecting autographs. I didn’t like relating to an image, idolizing a mass-market abstraction of a man. A man with fears, disappointments, flaws, and secrets. I suppose I found it all naive. And yes, cliche.

But then we all have heroes. I myself cannot act, properly hit a baseball nor can I stand to write more than four lines of verse. Yet I can admire the unapologetic masculinity of Clint Eastwood, the dignified unspoken pride of Joe DiMaggio, and the luscious iambic of Paul Laurence Dunbar. These are figures whom, in my own humble way, I strive to emulate.

We humans like to synthesize, and so we turn our heroes into ideals. They become embodiments of youth, compassion, rebellion, loss.

A (barely) younger, (significantly) more cynical version of myself found that naive. But perhaps there’s more to it. Perhaps there’s something brilliant to it, and all a hero is is the sum of what makes us all human. And what reminds us.

Happy birthday, Freddie.

Freshman year’s not even like a chronological stream of memories to me anymore

Just a feeling, the ghost of which I can occasionally turn to. And cradle with a sad smile.