Eliot K. Wilson

Eliot Khalil Wilson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. The third son of Jack and Gloria Wilson who had, in all fairness, no unreasonably high hopes for young Eliot. Bookish, retiring, he always seemed much older than the other kids—not in a wisdom sort of way either—just plain older. Think of all the negative connotations of the word older; that’s the sense I’m talking about here. His fifth grade report card actually contained the word crotchety.

In junior high it was said that Eliot bore a striking resemblance to Scott Baio, who was a popular young movie star at the time, especially among the junior high girls. Maybe around the eyes, Eliot thought. Yes, I can see it now, very similar.” Eliot tried to parlay his new found confidence into a mostly innocent boy-girl relationship with Anne Harris, the preacher’s daughter. Anne had scoliosis and wore an imposing back brace under her clothes. She had braces too—the massive kind that made it seem that her entire mouth was steel. The one time he actually kissed her, sweat fairly raining down off of his hands and forehead, pouring down his pimply back in a horrific and disturbing flash flood, it was like kissing a chained door inside a shark cage.

Those people over there are saying I look like Scott Baio, he’d say to her offhandedly.

No, she’d say while looking at him quizzically, I don’t see it.

He didn’t see it anymore either. He was gaining weight—lots of it. His neck was disappearing. For a while he thought that under the sweat and acne and fat, there was a Scott Baio waiting to emerge as if from a chrysalis with shining hair and defined muscles, but that Scott Baio never emerged. In all likelihood, that Scott Baio was drowned under Eliot’s sweat and fat.

Knowing girls like musicians, Eliot joined the pep band in high school. He played third chair trumpet. Ann Harris played first-chair flute. All of her braces off, she now looked like a teenaged Jane Russell. Eliot still looked like a man who was slowly smothering a smaller, better-looking man under his sweaty skin. Eliot would stare at Ann Harris’s lips while she played the flute so frequently that he could not be relied upon to play the two or three whole notes required of him, and he was kicked out of the band.

One day in English class, Eliot was asked to write a poem and promptly forgot about the assignment. On the way to school, he hastily copied down a Rod Mckuen poem about rainbows from The Reader’s Digest and passed it off as his own. The poem was widely praised and posted outside of the classroom on the “Class Highlights” bulletin board. The poem went on to win a cash award and garner a certificate of achievement. He was asked to read the poem at graduation. From this point on, Eliot began to think of himself as a poet—a major figure in the course of American letters.