Blue Velveteen

An Introduction — The Boy in the Mirror

I often wonder about the word Masculinity. Even on the tip of my tongue it feels like an illusion. Sometimes I will utter the word out loud, the vibration of each letter passing my vocal cords with audible friction, and yet the sound seems to disappear into thin air.

"M...a...s...c...u...l...i...n...i...t...y." How does such a simple sound hold so much weight? We tend to trust that it's definition is the same, that it progresses in a linear fashion, forever the same shape until eternity. We focus on it's precariousness rather than it's toxicity. But dare to step outside its border and you may be slated mercilessly for being your authentic, delicate, self.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My outline is clouded as the room steams up with condensation. Through the haze the boy stares back at me. The mirage of his image is blurred and warped, perhaps just as intimately as the word. I know the word is flawed. Dangerously so. But it took a chilling experience to let that truly sink in.

The Beginning— A River as Blue as Velvet

Tick, Tock...rewind the clock. Back to when I was a little boy, only ten years of age. I can recall that day's events with perfect clarity. It was during the thicket of Winter.

My classmates and I where on a fathers and sons camping trip up to the great deep-cut valleys of North Dakolta. Our tents were situated in a bit of open land surrounded by valley gulfs and woodland trees. The hills were high and crowned with green mounds. The mornings were beautiful and would creep upon us with rolling fog—thick, cold and white.

The morning mist was melded with the rolling smoke of campfire and chatter as we sat about on logs, eating a hearty breakfast of toast and eggs. The same mist strayed up along a neighbouring riverbank. Owl Creek it was famously called, an apparent hot spot for the tawny backed Barn Owl.

We begun the day by eagerly dragging our kayaks to the edge of the water. I was towards the end of the line so I found myself one of the last to push my kayak out into the river flow with the edge of my paddle. That day the river was fast flowing, and the branches of trees swayed and groped in a gnawing wind. The current was far stronger that day.

The majority of my piers and their fathers had been swept up swiftly and quickly by the current. I could barely make out the dots of their helmets as they descended far ahead down the rocky rapids. I had fallen behind.

I remember the water pushing my little canoe out towards the left of the river. I had steered my kayak, straining against the water flow as it pushed and churned, cutting sideways through the river as I tried to get back to the middle. It happened without warning.

The kayak got lodged against a rock and flipped. I was in the water: cold, strong and angry. The river took me in its arms and dragged me forwards. A feeling of wild terror suddenly grew. I recall peering up, and seeing the sunlight shine through the leaves above like liquid gold. Overshadowed dark boughs leaned into the river, as if they were hands trying to save me.

By the river edge stood tree trunks of manifold shapes and sizes; smooth or gnarled, straight or bent, twisted, leaning, squat or slender and branched, and all the roots were green with moss and shaggy growths. One tree had collapsed, leaving it's dark stems to grope out into the waters edge. The current steered me doggedly towards it.

What happened next was only witnessed by a white barn owl perched above a neighbouring branch. The pale face, with its heart shape and black eyes, peered into my own frightened ones. Its oversized, oblique black eye slits, and the ridge of feathers above the bill resembling a nose reminded me of a flat mask.

I flowed towards the tree root and got sucked under the gnarled stems. Those deep, black eyes were the last thing I saw.

Instead of saving me the roots tried to drown me. I struggled to come up but my head had gotten stuck in a v shaped branch beneath the water. My mouth was under, my nose was under, and only my hands managed to flail helplessly above the surface.

The few kayaks behind me began to pass one by one. Terror seized me. It dawned on me that no one had seen me go under. I had veered too far left, too out of sight for them to notice. As the last of the kayaks passed, I knew no one would come to my aid. I was all alone.

I panicked. I floundered. I inhaled. Unable to move up nor down, with water filling my lungs. My head throbbed for breath, as the endless river swelled and flowed, then drenched and drowned me. I had taken my last breath. I was certain of it. My energy was void, drained, going. My consciousness faded and ebbed away.

They say that before you die you see a filmography of your life. Flashes of memory before your periphery. Instead I saw blue.

The water was the colour of blue velvet. Bluer then the night. Softer then satin. The light above bright like stars in the night. Colours of blue velveteen, prussian blue, daubed in indigo cloaked me.

I drowned in blue that day. I drowned in feelings I could not voice.

The world underwater felt dreamlike. I had stopped fighting. Swiftly I sank under it's shiny weight into a chasmic realm of sleep. My head slowly untangled from gnarled roots.

I must have dislodged. Somehow I escaped and was brought to the surface. I breathed. And air filled my lungs. I don't remember how I got to the shore bank. I remember dragging my body up the bit of earth and screaming!

I was young and trembling and confused. I had been approached by death and had managed to slip away from his grasp.

Crying.

From relief? From fear? From overwhelming emotions? The water that had surrounded me now bottled from my eyes.

That is how they found me. I remember my dad approaching me surrounded by friends. His face was stoic and yet his ears were tinged pink in embarrassment. One of the dad's tousled my hair, patted my back and laughed jovially "Looks like someone had a bit of a tumble in the water." The rest seemed awkward, as if they were uncertain how to react. I remember looking back towards my father. I could not forget the look in my fathers eye in that moment. Shame. Humiliation. And Disgrace.

For some reason I felt shame too. That they had seen me like that. Delicate.

The event of that day was not broached again. It felt like it had never happened. I did not understand why but I felt a pit of loneliness at that.

The End — Secrets between the Owl, the River and Me.

That night I sat by the dying campfire unable to sleep. There was a brooding threat to the breathless night air. My fear had become so great that it seemed to be part of the very darkness around me. I felt imprisoned in my body, caught hopelessly in a demand to be eternally strong when I felt nothing of the sort. In that moment I felt limp like helpless-prey. But I couldn’t let it show.

I sighed. The night deepened. There came the soft sound of wings fluttering and undulating. I peered up at a tall pine tree. There was a sort of deeper shade in the shadows of its leaves. Two startling eyes peered out at me. Then my heart rose, for it seemed I was among familiar company. The same owl as before gazed at me from a remote distance. Its great figure fell like a shadow against the evening stars.

It may have been the smoke of the fire soaring my eyes but I thought I saw a touch of pathos in its expression. I studied it for a moment. Fine black-and-white speckles decked its feathers except on the remiges and rectrices and the heart-shaped face was a pure, bright white. I found myself sighing, my body calming and no longer taught with nerves. The owls presence soothed me. It had seen my plight that day and didn’t seem to think less of me for it. A feeling of understanding steadily grew. The low humming of two shree screams were spoken. At close range the sound was ear-shattering, an eerie, long-drawn-out shriek.

Looking back, that sound was as if the feelings I had drowned in that day were given a voice. All the emotions I had bottled up, the vulnerability and the delicacy were uttered, screamed, screeched into the night, disappearing into the eve. With that the owl flapped its wings and soared into the night.

The pit of loneliness seemed to leave with it. I felt no longer solitary in my experience. What had happened that day would remain a secret between the owl, the river and me.