Babies are so curious and they get so surprised when they discover something. You can see it in their eyes, they widen in such a wide way. They discover their feet. And you try to figure in your mind: what the hell is this baby thinking. Maybe they are asking themselves: what is this pinky thing? (if the baby is white of course, they look pink, if the baby is black he will ask "what is this milk-chocolaty thing"). And so they start to pull on their toes, and to feel that it hurts when they pull them, but they pull them nontheless, because the toes are so many and so small and so different from each other, and at the same time they are just... toes, and they are so funny and so... new.
The baby pulls on the toes and the toes slip from his fingers, and then the fingers slap on his face. At first he is indignant, and he contorts his face in mild pain, and that is when he discovers his hand. And that his hands has many elongated extensions, just like his feet, and his hand is much easier to get into the mouth. And he shoves his fingers into his mouth. Oh, they feel so good on the gums. But, what is that? Another foot? And the baby lifts up his feet, and they look the same, and he cannot believe it. It is so radically awesome! Two of the same! Then he pulls on both feet with both hands. The foot with the drooled hand slips off, the other foot reaches the mouth. Oh, it tickles. And the baby smiles, leaving and briefly forgetting his foot. Then he discovers the hand that brought the foot to his mouth. And he lifts his other hand. They are equal, they are the same: pink (or milk-chocolaty), plump, small. The baby straigthens both his index fingers and puts their tips together. Whoa! whoa! wow.
Today I discovered my forearms. I looked at them as if I was a baby, naive, curious, wonder-struck. I don't know why, there is no reason really, because I have seen my forearms before, but maybe it was just the light that I was under, or the way that I had them... I was sitting on the floor at some bookstore, holding an open book, and I saw them. And I let the book fall from my hand, and started flexing my forearms, opening and closing my fists. The way that they are colored (or their tan) is ligther, a LOT lighter that the upper part of it. It was a whiteness where I could see my veins, where I could see my life flowing down into my wrist. I flexed my forearm, and I saw how it changed in size and shape while I moved my fist. How the muscle feels when it is strained like that.
There is a tendon right in the middle of my wrist; it bothers me whenever I touch it, because I imagine the pain I would have to endure if that little tendon is ever bronken. I can see the two parts snapped apart under my skin, hurting, drilling a pain of a humoungous needle... On my left wrist you can see a thin, single vein that rides over that tender tendon, and then it branches out into smaller veins, which get lost at the start of my palm. On my right wrist there are three veins that ride over this tendon, one of them is twice the size of the one on my left wrist. It makes my skin bulge up a bit. And if you follow it, you can see it run into the side of my thumb, very nicely disguised.
I can feel the vein: so soft; my life runs through there. I have seen other boys/men (I've only known one girl) with bulging veins on their forearms, and I can't help to touch (given that I have confidence with this person, of course). The touch is so... indescribable. They are so tender under sleek skin, under tight muscles. I, on the other hand, don't have these veins bulging all the way down my forearms... I've been told that my skin is thick, I have proof that it IS thick: when blood samples are needed from me, 1. a very acurate and expert nurse is needed, or else I endure pain beyond comparison, and/or I end up with a big, black bruise on my arm; 2. or they have to get the blood from the top of my hand, or on the bottom of my wrists... (the thought alone makes me shiver). So, I don't have veins on my forearms, but I can touch them on my wrists, and on the top of my hands, and when I touch them, and when I touch someone else's, is as if I could feel their lives in the tips of my fingers. It makes me realize how beautiful, complex and equal we all are deep down; and how exposed, and how fragile we, human beings, really are.
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