The Picture

I always thought she looked old in this picture. Old for her age. She was thorough and laid-back, a good listener, she asked me questions. Her mouth was soft and her tongue was wet, she had a woman inside of her. She was a woman. She made me feel like I was a man. We were sixteen. I guess that's men and women for some.

She's on my rug, some thing I bought at a record store. She has red lipstick on, not much else, I fancied myself a photographer. They were cheap, disposable cameras, I would buy them and never use them. Then some day would roll around and we'd do stuff like this. It was finding things out, learning what we could and couldn't do. We could do this. We liked it. She's arched, biting her lip, looking just enough at the lens. At me.

That day we went out for pizza. She walked along the water and held hands, we fooled around on a picnic table after park hours. I had the flask my brother gave me in secret, half-filled with scotch I took from the liquor cabinet, and we finished it. I stumbled her back to her place where we kept making out, and I stumbled home to mine.

I look at the picture and blood rushes. I don't feel like this much anymore. My heart races, my teeth clench and loosen, my hands wander. I realize now how young we were, and I look at this and feel young again. I'm with her on that stupid rug, pulling her clothes off, she's pulling off mine, passing the camera back and forth. I put on an English accent, I tell her what to do. She looks at me the way kids look at each other. We don't know of the billions, the billions of other people. She knows me and I know her.

But I'm not young. And it's not right. And it worries me, that maybe that's why I feel these things. I worry about what the picture really is. But I keep it. It lives in an envelope in a book in the bottom of a box in the back of my closet. And from time to time I take it out, and the blood rushes, and I feel wonderful and horrible at the same time.