Puppy Love Graffitti
In the early 80s, when I was about ten, I once found a plastic vial of liquid lip gloss at the roadside when I was pushing my bike up the last slope before home. It was pale pink and looked like it was mixed with fine silver sand. Attached to the stopper was a little cylindrical brush inside the vial. After inspecting the lip gloss, I used it to write something on a nearby lamppost.
The lamppost is still there, but a house and a lawn have replaced the little oak tree I used to climb with my friend and the patch of woodland where we'd have pissing contests. I passed the post today on my way from the battlefield investigations and took a picture of my old graffitti.
It's placed strangely low on the post. I appear to have grown a bit. And the two lower characters are tilted to the right. I think it's because I was holding my bike upright on the asphalt with the other hand and had to lean toward to post to reach it.
It's supposed to read M <heart> S. S as in Sophia, the daughter of friends of my parents, a freckled blonde cheerful girl. I was four or five the first time we met. With Sophia I made out for the first time at a disturbingly early age. We didn't meet often, but we corresponded intermittently through the school years. Then she got into the Conservative and Christian Youth Associations and I lost track of her. But the lamppost remembers.
[More blog entries about love, children, graffitti; barn, kärlek, klotter.]
The lamppost is still there, but a house and a lawn have replaced the little oak tree I used to climb with my friend and the patch of woodland where we'd have pissing contests. I passed the post today on my way from the battlefield investigations and took a picture of my old graffitti.
It's placed strangely low on the post. I appear to have grown a bit. And the two lower characters are tilted to the right. I think it's because I was holding my bike upright on the asphalt with the other hand and had to lean toward to post to reach it.
It's supposed to read M <heart> S. S as in Sophia, the daughter of friends of my parents, a freckled blonde cheerful girl. I was four or five the first time we met. With Sophia I made out for the first time at a disturbingly early age. We didn't meet often, but we corresponded intermittently through the school years. Then she got into the Conservative and Christian Youth Associations and I lost track of her. But the lamppost remembers.
[More blog entries about love, children, graffitti; barn, kärlek, klotter.]
posted by Martin at 19:04
5 Comments:
Martin:
Don't write that on any walls here in the states!
Those initials signify an ultra-violent El Salvadoran street gang...
:)
Well, you know, I'm a charter member of several ultra-violent El Salvadorean street gangs and the Audubon Society. That's how hard I am.
lol!
How could lip gloss have possibly taken the paint off a pole like that?!? It gives me pause to think that I used to slather my lips with all manner of gloss and lipstick. Does this mean they will just fall off at some point? Or will they stay seared on in the shape of my mouth from twenty years ago?
Martha: The lamppost isn't painted, it's zink-plated steel. The white flecks you're seeing are remains of the lip gloss. I think the lesson here is that lip gloss looks pretty ratty if you leave it on for 25 years.
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