when I was Robert Redford
How to tell you this story of when I was Robert Redford, crouching on the edge of a cliff, my best friend Butch Paul Newman by my side, laughing his guts out when I told him I couldn’t swim. You have to understand how important this memory is because the last time you saw me, I looked like an eleven-year-old girl standing alone at the top of the diving platform Box Hill pool and you saw I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t jump. Had to climb back down, wet bathers shucking blue skin the other kids laughing as I struggled on the slippery rungs. I don’t want that to be your lasting picture of me, small soft girl body drip concrete body, scared body, look at and laugh body, wrap it in a towel and pad crying to the change room body, which is why I need to tell you about when I was the Sundance Kid. My break-out role, blonde hair and stubbled jawline to die for, wide lapels and chest hair curling just so. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t swim because I had my best friend Butch by my side and we had that guy friend thing and he grabbed my hand and we shouted into the yawning blue glory time thing. Of course, it wasn’t me in that scene it was stunt man Micky Gilbert, my body so precious it had a whole other body to take the fall. We went to the same school, isn’t that something did you know that, old school pals, both of us learning back then what we needed to become the best version of me. He did it for years good old Micky, have you ever heard of him, of course you haven’t. I hadn’t either all square eyes little girl body on the beanbag floor watching that scene over and over knowing I could do that I could become the sexiest man alive I could have a cheekbone smile that every woman adored and every man admired. All I had to was want it. All I had to do was grow into it. All I had to do was groom my perfect sculpted body and infect every room I entered with my effortless charm. All I had to do was get a stunt double. All I had to do was leap into that ever-blue Hollywood sky. I would never even have to hit the water. And nobody would laugh when I backed down because their eyes would be blinded by Micky and his forever leap into the abyss. That’s how I want you to remember me, my glory body that could become anything, my celluloid body that would shine in your eyes in darkened rooms and make you electric.
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