Imperfections by Bradley Somer Read Free Book Online

rewrap me in a tuxedo from the top down.
    â€œSuch a handsome little guy,” she said, kneeling and tugging at my bow tie. “Stop it,” she said to my scratching and pulling of undies away from my ass.
    There was hay in my underwear. I was embarrassed, changing behind that curtain with all of those people bustling around on the other side. Every time someone walked too close to the screen it billowed out, offering me a brief glance at the kids and adults tromping back and forth through the hay, around the corral fences and sidestepping errant cow-pies.  
    If I could see them, they could see me.

    We had driven for four hours to get there. We passed nothing but fields and farms for the last three and a half of them.  
    It had all been Mother’s idea.
    In two years, when I turned ten, we would still be making this trip except I would be competing in the Mister Pre-Teen Beef Cattle competition and two years after that it would all be over. After the age of twelve there were no more Misters, only Misses. Miss Teen and Miss Beef Cattle. I guess little boys are no longer cute by then. I guess, behind the veneer of a beauty pageant, little girls grow into something to be leered at by handsome young farmhands mulling over their chewing tobacco cuds, scratching their sun-reddened skins and stretching kinks out of their wiry muscles.
    â€œYou said a little competition was healthy,” Mother had said to Father when we loaded into the Pacer.
    â€œI meant sport. Real competition. Not parading around a barn in front of an audience. I meant football. I meant baseball.” Father’s voice strained, almost to the point of whining.
    They often talked in front of me as if I wasn’t there.
    Father ran a yellow light and we were outside of the city.
    â€œBeauty is nothing to scoff at,” Mother said. “It is the workings of good genes and good morals. This is a real competition, a competition of morals. This is the most important kind of competition.”
    Father blinked.
    Fields rolled by outside. Little wooden buildings drifted by. Tractors and broken down old cars in fields floated by.
    â€œUgly people, fat people, pimply people don’t take care of themselves. They are slothful, they are unhealthy, they are dirty. They live poorly,” Mother continued. “How you live your life is a choice. If you choose to take care of yourself, invest a little in your looks, be healthy… well, that’s a moral choice. Those who drink, smoke, slut around, they choose to live immorally and wind up ugly because of it. All of these things leave a mark on your appearance. Inner beauty is mirrored by outer beauty.”
    Father sighed and lit a cigarette.  
    Mother rolled down her window a little bit.
    â€œFootball makes you healthy,” Father said quietly through a mouthful of smoke.
    â€œWe should all aim for this,” Mother continued, ignoring Father. “I mean healthy, beautiful people are happy. The mind and the body are so tightly linked that what happens on the inside shows up on the outside. It also works the other way around. Beautiful people are happier, they get more out of life, they have more friends, get better jobs, get paid more. Dr. Sloane says that unhappiness is a sickness, a disorder. Sickness can be cured.”
    Mother had read a lot lately.
    â€œMost sickness can be cured,” Father muttered.
    â€œDr. Sloane has studies that show ugly people are less happy than beautiful people. Dr. Sloane says a beautiful mind creates a beautiful body. Richard is a beautiful boy. We should be proud to share that. We made a happy, moral-minded boy.”
    We passed a ranch. Cattle slid by, dotting the land to the horizon, grazing on dry grass as we sped along. Fence posts ticked by, the barbed wire between them invisible.

    Mother and I stood backstage at Clearwater County Fair in the beef cattle wing of the Livestock Complex. I sweltered in my tuxedo and surveyed the