Photograph

[ARCHIVE: Even though this is more a personal entry, I put it in because the last sentence makes it humorous in nature rather than simply emotionally masturbatory.]

I had the sudden urge to clean my room, which hasn't changed basically since high school. Under a pile of old Transformer instructions and photographs kept for way too long, I found an old silver frame. The corners had a hatch work of gold trim and a flawless if dusty glass cover. It was a picture of my first love.

I hadn't even thought of her in months, a feat that felt entirely foreign in that single instance. She had never returned my feelings, yet I had held a torch for her for a greater part of my teenage years. She was standing there with her head cocked slightly and a slightly embarrassed grin on her face, as if unable to understand why anybody would want a picture of her. She was wearing nothing special, just a white t-shirt and baggy pants. The legs were longer than her own, so her bare feet constantly stepped on the extra material.

Like I best remembered her, she was clutching a Frisbee to her chest. She was a big Ultimate booster; got me into the sport in the first place. Needless to say, I did it to be closer to her. I did come away with a pretty decent forehand, so it wasn't a complete waste. She was standing in a college quad; our closest bond was that we both felt at home at CTY, the premiere nerd camp of the 12-16 crowd.

She had consumed so many hours of my life, spent dreaming, daydreaming, writing letters never sent. She had been my muse; my unrequited love was the food of my developing artist's voice. But I was an in idiot. I was just discovering how to express myself, which made things very problematic. We played phone tag for a while, and then e-mail tag when the technology became viable. And one day she simply cut off contact. It was like she was dead to me. I never understood why.

In the interim years, there were some half-hearted attempts at reconnecting. I tried the (discontinued) e-mail a couple times. Friends of mine that crossed her path sent her wished to reconnect. I spent a few weeks anonymously reading her blog. Strangely (or appropriately) enough, we never managed to get past the "Hey, is this...?" stage in any of the messages.

All this came back to me as I squatted on my bedroom floor, the dust clouds wafting around in protest of being disturbed. I had thought so many times of throwing out the picture, of forgetting the past and getting on with my life. Be every time I contented myself with just burying it under more junk. I scrutinized the photograph, framed in the very present I had never gotten up the nerve to give her. I didn't need it anymore, and I certainly had no space for it. But my will to throw it out never built up. Despite how much failure and disappointment was etched into this physical memory, I couldn't bring myself to toss it. In a flash of inspiration, I flipped the frame over and popped the back screws. Lifting up the back, I found four hundred dollars I had stashed when I was younger.


Least the bitch was good for sumthin'.