Streetfighting Years

Part of Operation Don’t Injure the 8-Month-Old involves clearing the bottom two shelves of our bookcase. The bottom two shelves are stuffed with photos in albums, shoeboxes and a couple of Ikea shoebox-shaped shiny tins that I won at a staff Christmas party 5 years ago.

(No detail too small! That’s my motto!)

Anyway, as you will when your baby is finally sleeping past 5 am, I got up this morning to enjoy a couple of hours to myself and suddenly, as though sucked by centrifugal forces, found myself on the carpet, browsing through completely unsorted photographs. I opened one of the shiny tins and found myself at the beginning of our 1999 roadtrip; we were in Washington, Oregon, California on Highway 1-Ohmygodwe’regoingtodriveoffthiscliff-1, then just as quickly it was my cousin’s 1994 wedding and I was in a big floral bridesmaid’s dress, then some shots of cats through the years, then a party to celebrate Scotland, I am assuming, as I am wearing flannel plaid boxers on my head and have my hair tied under my chin in a beard-like design and am sandwiched between a guy wearing a tartan sash and a guy wearing red John Lennon glasses and a tartan dress (belted) that I’m pretty sure belonged to Sarah at the time. All of us are wearing buttons that I’m dead certain say, “Kiss me I’m Scottish.”

Whiplash, nothing! Blink and I’m in Cuba in January 1996, perched on a lounge chair and gesturing to the brilliant blue ocean behind me. Blink again and it’s me and my first boyfriend in 1993.

(Ouch. The grim smile of the 19-year-old who just realized she’s not in love after all.)

So many cats. Litters of them. So many parties; so many pictures of kitchens and chips and people with unruly hair throwing things at one another. So many terrible, beautiful pictures. We were all too skinny then; all teeth and hair and eyes, like anime characters. We look desperate, ecstatic, there is no record of any peaceful moments but I know there were a few.

I was enjoying the disorganized meander down memory lane when suddenly, there it was.

There were these parties, you see, where people wore just their underwear. Underwear Parties. I went to a few. They were incredibly fun. There was a sort of equality to be had. I say sort of – the girls still tended to wear “sexy” underwear and plan their outfits in advance and the guys tended to just strip off their clothes and be, well, wearing underwear, but everyone could have his or her own issue resolved at an underwear party and that was nice.

There was this guy who frequented the same parties as us. He was not my favourite person. He would show up places uninvited; he always stayed too long; he liked to talk but rarely listened; he excelled at cornering people and telling them long, unfunny stories. At the last underwear party I learned that he had thought I was someone else for YEARS and that’s why the conversations I was having with him (about how my screenplay was coming along, about how the comedy troupe was doing?) never made a lick of sense.

ANYWAY.

Someone happened along with a camera while this guy was baring his butt cheek at an underwear party and snapped a truly horrific photo.

Someone else got a print of the photo and brought it to the house Sarah and I were sharing. We found it the morning after a party, stuck to the fridge, I think. It curdled our cereal.

We took it with us to parties and tried to leave it at other peoples’ houses but somehow it always ended up back at our place; on the windowsill under a plant pot, underneath the TV, tacked to the wall behind a pizza menu. It was like a slow game of hot potato if by potato you mean icky guy’s bare butt.

I have it. The photo, I have it. It’s been in my shoebox of photos for – 6 years? Right there between Cuba and kittens. If this were a Stephen King story I could destroy the photo and my luck would change. Instead, I am going to share this video with you because I found it at Pandagon and it made my day.