black and white

Today I saw a picture on a friend of a friend's facebook.It was taken in the CK's coffee shop back sometime in the early 1990's.It reminded me of something that I had completely forgotten.It's just a black and white of a guy reading a book and talking to a girl who looks like she's had one of those days.I recognized the guy.His name was Chris.I met him when I was eleven years old.I was stuck in Memphis for the summer and a couple of my friends had convinced me to go to this summer camp with them.He was a camp counselor,about 18.I was rather advanced amorously at that age, and I wanted to get it on with him.I remember one day I was on the trail alone,and he caught up with me.The sun was about to go down,maybe he didn't want me walking out in the woods alone. It took us ages to get back to the cabins,we were just walking really slow.I remember stepping over an earthworm and daring him to eat it,thinking if he doesn't take my dare,I will tell that he has to kiss me.He picked it up and ate it on the spot.I was disgusted and still somehow turned on.I was a strange little girl.

Flash forward about ten Years.I am about 20 or 21,and He comes into the coffee shop that I wasted my youth in.When he came in I ask if he was meeting someone.He said no, so I ask him to sit in the booth with me.I told him that I wanted to read and didn't want to have one of my friends come and sit there and a stranger might discourage them.He fell for it. we read in companionable silence for a little while,peaking at each other over the tops of our books.We ended up talking before long, and I realized who he was.He ask if I wanted to do some blow and I told him my apartment was on the corner.So we go back to my place and spend the rest of the night blitzed out of our minds, and swaying, and having some really gritty sex.It felt grainy like an old photograph.I was fulfilling some kind of pact that I had made with myself when I was still a little girl.The years had brought out a lot the edges on a man that I had only known when he was in the blaze of youth.Afterward,I just lay there appreciating all the marks that a hard life had left on him....and at the same time I hoped that I would never have to see him again.To leave that whole incident as a photo in my memory.Eventually it became one photo in the many that live in my mind,and it was practically forgotten.

Then today I run across a black and white of him.Unmistakable.It brought it all back.I can still remember swaying with him and hoping that he wouldn't remember who I was.