COLUMN: In the shadow of perfection

From Nathan Smith's, "White Lightning," Fall '97 From Nathan Smith's, "White Lightning," Fall '97 He was perfect. Not just suave, graceful, striking -- though he was all three -- but absolutely perfect. I had never met anyone like him and never would again. Not that he was such a rare breed; flawlessness isn't so uncommon as all that. However, perfection dies young. It has a short half life. Only very rarely can one maintain it past age 20. Though my vision may have dulled with age, from countless books and rays of sunshine, the critical vision of my mind's eye has sharpened inestimably. Now, even looking at the youngest of children who approximate perfection much more often than the old and corrupt ever can, I fail to escape my critical perception. I can only see a bunch of pretentious monkeys -- awkward upright apes who think far too highly of themselves at any age. Needless to say, this does not leave me in awe of any human being's talents or appearance. But things were different then. Looking out from my awkward little frame, I could only admire or spite beings like him, possessors of such ephemeral graces. I shadowed him all through elementary, middle and high school. I wet the bed; he was born potty-trained. When I struggled with cursive, he mastered calligraphy. He skipped grades like jump rope. He sang the solos, played Romeo, captained the soccer team. His SAT scores hung on a special plaque; it gleamed golden in my eye every day I entered the building. He once dragged a baby from a burning building and shook the mayor's hand for it. It was amazing. The man could have eaten an ice cream cone in hell without getting his fingers sticky. He glowed of soft light, like Marlene Dietrich, even in the dark. He grabbed and held the public gaze as long as he wanted. He was easy to watch but totally oblivious, entirely unconscious of the gaze others set upon him. In fact, he seemed not even to see anyone beneath him in the pecking order of teenage society. Sitting in the corner of the room, stroking my whiskerless chin, contemplating Thoreau even during math class, I was to him like peeling paint. He might, in a moment of wandering attention, focus on me across the room, see me there flaking away and soon turn his gaze to the equally fascinating collection of petrified gum on the back of someone's desk. Even when our eyes did meet, he pierced straight through to the back of my head. In retrospect, I wonder if he saw through me or around me. I hated him, of course, in the same way a rejected, love-stricken suitor might hate the subject of his passion. I had lusted after his perfection, coveted his achievement and cursed his name and fame. I often passed idle time plotting his demise, trying to figure out how I might, through some artful disguise, kidnap him and take his place. But I knew it couldn't happen like that. No makeup or costume could obscure my brutish, stuttering conversation, my self-conscious awkward gate, my just-too-intellectual humor. So I contented myself in vacillation between loving him and wanting him dead. Only after the last time I ever saw him did I begin to understand the nature of our relationship. The vivacious sociofile and the gaunt pariah. What were we without comparison to one another? Rather than waiting for the 10-year reunion to grasp the true insignificance of the interpersonal ladder climbing of high school, he opened my eyes before we ever graduated. On the night of the prom, he took home the prom queen and presumably made love all night long. I, of all people, sat up consoling the prom king. We sat in the bathroom stall together, smoking cigarettes and shooting Yukon Jack sans chaser. A depressed lightweight, he later puked on my lapel as I carried him into his house and layed him, in full formal, on his bed. Sitting outside the king's house, fondling the queen's corsage, I never felt so bitter and happy at once. Like strong hops, the bitterness lingered in my throat from having gone dateless to a dance I detested, and yet I could not help but smile to see this ridiculous ritual turned on its head. How utterly satisfying to see the great dream of prom night torn in half by one man. As in most ventures in our lives, he attained what I dreamt, to the satisfaction of entirely different motives. I wanted to see all the regalia of the night burned in effigy. He merely wanted to go down in history. The likeness of our vision, for whatever motivation, shows so clearly how we created one another. A funny thing, the strangest thing, the absolute oddest thing happened. Two days later, before we returned to school to wallow in the gossip, he swung by a rope in his grandmother's attic. No one had a clue what to do. The prom queen maintained a respectful silence, far more ironclad than I would ever have granted her. Not a word of explanation to the clamoring public. Perhaps she simply didn't know. What was it? A small penis? Impotence? A horrible hidden scar we had never seen? Did he, in a moment of vulnerability, come out of the closet to her horror? No matter; a matter we can never know. A rift opened up and swallowed his perfect social self, and the quite cancerous imperfections that had no doubt dwelt within him. They were as tumors in the body, silently gnawing away the inside until one day the shell would have to collapse. In anticipation of decay, he chose to die perfect. Every heart skipped a beat. The disruption to the tiny world struck every student in the school. But none felt the pain as I did. I had unknowingly enjoyed the comfortable identity he had provided for me. Suddenly, I felt as though I had frayed at the edges. Though certain core strengths would never unravel, though my solidity of character had already been forged in the smithy of ostracism, I could not escape the realization that I had been displaced. I had spent my years outshined. I lived a lifetime in which my gray visions were invisible through the trail of glitter that followed him everywhere, catching the eyes of the adoring public. After years of looming in the halls, a cautionary tale to all high school socialites, I found myself denied the role. His spotlight turned off, leaving no shadows to walk in. Ultimately then, part of me was torn off at his departure. Without him, I was without myself.