Frank As Kate and So Forth

I rendered this drawing a long time ago. And, like Dorian Grey, I furtively pull it out from time to time and look it over. Who [unless I'm stupid enough to tell them] will realise this is the authentic inner me...an elding, ruddy skinned old farmer in overalls. The Inner Hillbilly, maybe - if I were writing for some trendy magazine. Sure, on the surface I'm middle aged and rather garden- variety in my female-ness, but wait. There's a Skillsaw under the bed. My still new cordless drill sits nicely in it's charger, humming. There's a new derringer with my name on it, waiting for the next trip to the shooting range out by the lake. Due to size and range I will have to politely ask any intruder to 'please stand a little closer so I can hurt you', but one has to start someplace. And then there's the gutted, former gas grill in my sideyard. I build my own fires from scratch and I don't use lighter fluid, because something which smells that vile can't be good for your insides. Nothing beats the taste of slow smoked Beast o fany kind - sans chemicals and other intrusive, frilly extras.
But just like Dickens, I'm wandering away, here. I really mean to talk about Frank...my mascot, my rustic alter ego. He's clenching that rose pretty tightly because sometimes that's all there is of my alleged girly side.
I remember Frank's slow creation, years ago, over a period of weeks, as I prepared to enter a contest. ...how I imagined he was a farmer, coming into town every Saturday night since the Armistice - right after he got home from France. The raw danger of war and dizzy night time amusements of Paris had unwittingly opened up a black hole in his humble emotions that till then, he didn't know existed. Instead of rising at four every morning to feed the hens and do the milking, he was wakened by a shrieking lieutenant, acrid smoke in his lungs and the boom of mortar fire. The occasional night in town was also smoke filled but with the sweet fumes of sandalwood cigarettes and opium pipes. Red lipped girls dancing onstage by gaslight- frantic, gay music. Nebraska hadn't been like this. Here,in this raw place where charming people spoke with pouts and frowns -you were forced to either really live or really die, on a daily, sometimes moment to moment basis.
And now these years later, after his senses had been pried open, his heart and mind made alive to possibility...the war long ago ended, the local menfolk had slapped him on the back and bought him beers...then ...nothing. Years and years of mending chicken coops, paying his tab at the local corner grocery...growing grey. A headful of wistfulness and half lived promises with no place to let them take shape. And yet he is wise enough to know that the fibres of his particular makeup are fragile, for all their solid, wearable strength. He is better off here, living in his head -cowardly and shortsighted though that might seem.
At least that's what he's always told me.
Behind him are all the women who have passed in and out of his life since around 1918. The one with pointed ears is a waitress...the fact that she and the woman in braids are in black and white indicates they are only figments of Frank's lively imagination - fairies, probably. The little red haired girl is Frank's first love...the woman with black eyes nearest the rose is his departed wife. Ever hopeful, Frank clenches a rose in his ragged teeth, determined to live until he dies.

Perhaps I am trying to make peace early with my dimming eyesight and occasional grey hair, so that when the real thing comes someday , I will already be settled in - possibly reading a good book as everybody else my age staggers in the door, struggling to make sense of it all - the sudden shock of growing older still visible in their eyes. The real truth is... I am Frank....in all his hopefulness, all his raw wonder at seeing the world, alternately wobbly and confident of his place in it, depending on the day . No matter how ill equipped and shabby we might appear on the outside, Frank and I are both still here, fighting for space in the same, rather unremarkable human frame.