The Photo Box -- Chapter 49

Twenty-nine Days (How You Know You're in Love)

Late in June 1982

“How do you know when you’re in love?” was not the question I was asking myself one early evening a month after my mother had died, but here I was during cocktail hour at a Halsted Street preppie dive called The Bushes. I’d displayed myself on a stool, ragged Levis pulled tight against my spread legs, elbows propping myself up on the bar, leaning back, sucking on a bottle of beer or holding it against my crotch, subtlety not my strong suit, in a display of abject wantonness, still on this course of self-immolation, the fuse lit, doused in alcohol, ready to go up in flames without a thought of self-preservation; the future inconsequential, non-existent, illusory, a mirage.

But there you were, all business suit, vest, tie, beard, drink in hand, standing across from me and then standing between my legs, touching each other (was there a kiss?) and I thought I'd hooked you, but you slipped away, a card pushed in my pocket, “call me,” and out the door, gone. If I'd lost in the past 22 days, I don't recall but losing you that night propelled me out of the bar, walking home in the late spring warmth, west on Diversey to my apartment where I may have seen it for the first time with my eyes open and my head clear. I did call you; we made a date for dinner a week later (29 days) and met cute, it does happen, at my friend’s restaurant, the Halsted Street Fishmarket.

We’ve told this story often enough, but it still charms me…my friend, Joyce, the owner’s wife, sits down with us and acts as if we’ve known each other forever, including you in our stories as if you knew them already, acting as if our past had been completely reconciled with our future. Did she know even before we did?  Or was it already apparent and only the participants were blind/deaf/dumb to the fact that we had fallen in love, always the last to know?

You just know.

Late in October 1982

Here I am now, at the middle again, although this time I've slipped quietly into the future side of the middle of the story even though I am still looking backward. I’m holding my breath, sleekly gliding under the surface of memory, the imperceptible movement beginning at the hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, arch, heel, toe, propelling me forward, a shudder, a spasm, the noise of the outside world muffled by the time above and the depths below. I’d dived in from the river bank unnoticed as you passed by on your raft, a hand dangling, your rudder; my eyes closed at first, but now open, the distortion of viewing life filtered through the cleansing waters of time causing not the slightest disturbance on the surface. If you're looking down into this story, all you’ll see is the slick shadow of my passing, the light glinting off my skin, hair, bone, a trout among the river rock and shadow.

I close my eyes again, the water streaming through the hair on my head, flattening my eyelashes, rippling through my mustache and over the stubble on my chin, across in a caress of the hair on my chest, slowing down and tugging gently at my swim trunks, their soft pink color in contrast to the tan of my legs and the golden hair glimmering in the palm-diffused sunlight. I don’t even think I’m holding my breath any longer, the pool too shallow to drown in, the first time in months that I’ve not been afraid to breath and surely not ready to surface yet, I flip around and push off from the stucco, a torpedo with my arms at my sides, as aerodynamic (if you’re in the water, shouldn’t it be aquadynamic?), the parentheses a breath at the surface, and sleek as an otter, a seal, Sade murmuring from the poolside speakers, the throb of music like the blood in your temple, chest, groin.

How do you know when you’re in love?  It’s the question you ask your mother, father, whichever is available when you’re a teenager. You look closely at them as they answer, divining the truth from the arch of their brow, the tremor in their voice as they search for a long ago feeling that they can communicate to you, the smile on their lips as they remember their first love, “you’ll just know,” they say. But what if you never asked that question? What if you never fell in love as a teenager because you were afraid to expose yourself, your secret loves locked away, buried treasure. You the Count of Monte Cristo, Blackbeard, the call of the wild thrumming inside your head, your love life a fiction, but as valid as the truth.

As it turns out, “you’ll just know” is as perfect an answer as there ever was.

The End. (Or is it the beginning? Or somewhere in the middle? Yes to all.)