I love ugly things. The blobfish, the Nissan cube - they all hold a special place in my interest. Just peering into the tank as a sea cucumber oscillates and squirms - the globular mass wiggles its way into my heart. It’s fascinating, really, how humans can label one thing ‘ugly’ and another ‘beautiful.’  Is the collective human aesthetic really that defined?  How can evolutionary sociology explain why I don’t like to look at, say, Russian tracksuits?  But I didn’t always appreciate the hideous; my idea of ugliness was shaped by my sister.
   

After hearing about the 1997 Quincy Quarry deaths, my apprehension about climbing in it grew to a...mountainous level.  My sister, Riley, was more optimistic. “There used to be old rusty mining equipment under the water, and people cliff-climbing would slip up, fall into the water, and BAM! Rebar clean through the abdomen!  But it’s cool, they drained it and cleaned up all the bodies,” she noted.  Obviously, her comments on the secret spot supremely abated my already blooming anxieties of climbing, falling, and falling onto sharp things. Along with her (boy?)friend Eric, our improvised nerd clan was rearing to experiment with - gasp! - physical activity. The epic quest stretched across three bus connections, one frozen yogurt stop, and an extensive, misguided trek. Trudging across the highway and heading through a shrouded enclave, the dry summer grasses licked at bags of rope and golden granola. As if barging into a holodeck, the techy concrete atmosphere of Boston opened into a new-age Serengeti. Great barriers in our climbing Colosseum, the magnificent arrowheads of granite jutted from dry urban dirt. Rock curtains drowned out the incessant hum of activity, wearing their vibrant graffiti proudly. This is...incredible, I thought. This could totally be in a grungy yet inspirational music video. 
   

What was not incredible was my harness, with its obtuse beige curves digging into my groin.  Awkwardly waddling around, I felt disabled by the device...it lacked the elegance of my sister’s model and the grim solidity of Eric’s. While I could have been in awe of the urbanesque wonderland, the epitome of gauche was biting at my step, nipping at my style. After setting up an anchor and a top rope, my accompanying dynamic duo brushed through some cursory safety info before telling me to just “climb the dang rock.” Years of layered spray paint disabled the natural granite grip, and thus my bare feet were pinched and curled around vague rock deformities. Offering less psychological security than I imagined, the rope retained tension as if to impatiently mumble “keep going...stupid kid.” While I could describe the crippling vertigo, the issue of overcoming fear is fodder for another schmuck’s essay.  No, in this text, I get to describe my heroic ascent- aching arms hauling me to the towering peak.
   

You can't blame me for falling, really.  It's a slippery slope, climbing – one second you're at your peak, reaching and straining for tiny holds.  The next, you're dangling gracelessly, assessing grazed skin whilst your climbing aficionado friends holler “Get on the rock, idiot!”   My lack of panache aside, hanging above a hard, hard ground gave me a new appreciation for gravity...or, perhaps, a disdain for its reality.  Unfortunately, I didn't have time to revel in my failure...the jagged Kevlar straps were biting my fragile mayonnaise skin.  It didn't take long for me to recover – I do get to write about my ascent, after all.  But the profound scare of nearly plummeting to my death (hey, maybe the geniuses holding my ropes got distracted) wasn't in itself a cathartic moment.  After dusting myself off and riding out the adrenaline, it became clear that the usefulness of the harness far outweighed its style.  No longer was I driven by market-endorsed aesthetics.  No longer did I envy the chromium curves of a fresh new carabineer...the worn and rugged disfigurement of my own offered a battle-tested quality – a strength of will and experience that no new object could hold.  For so much of my life I'd been told that new is good.  New, naturally, is the best!  Who can resist the appeal of tabula rasa, the Lockean pull of a brand new smartphone!  After all, isn't a child’s first birthday more exciting than Uncle Jim's sixtieth?  Perhaps we should appreciate moreso the rugged, the used, the loved.  After all, it saved my life.
   

Over-bleached bell bottoms are still gauche, and I still don’t enjoy looking at maroon PT-Cruisers. But that’s not the point of being ugly, is it?  Without choice, fighting social, even evolutionary standards, embracing utilitarianism- that is the point of being ugly.  Whether or not it fits into the accepted aesthetic or petrifies amateur climbers, the unattractive and unappealing sprout seeds of doubt.  For me, it was doubt in whether something could, at its most basic level, save my life. Ultimately, I came away from a foray into climbing with a new flock of questions, anxieties, confidences and philosophies. English romantics knew of this revelation, and understood and appreciated the grotesque. It’s not hard to picture Goya or Flannery O’Connor basking in the glow of my contorted cordage. While calling something or someone grotesque violates the most fundamental levels of political correctness, it is undoubtedly and indisputably a part of our psyche. Challenge the notion of “ugly”- not because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, but because it’s time to fight the oppression and marginalization of perfectly functional safety equipment.