blind

I often try to convince myself that it couldn’t have been those few hours I spent in Baltimore that sent my life spinning in inordinate directions. That it isn’t possible for a rational person to be so changed in a mere seventy-two hours by strangers in a strange land.

My colleague and I flew first class on a business trip there and connected during that short time over late night drinks, too many cigarettes, and correlations about failed relationships, abortion, and abuse. It was the first time I felt like I had told anyone the truth about anything. It was the first time that anyone else looked me in the eyes and called me a survivor, and I didn’t know what to do with it all. So I kept ordering gin and tonics until I didn’t have to think about the words I’d already let spill from the recesses of my throat to someone I’d only moments before considered my friend.

Late in the trip we frequented a local bar. Some kids that we met at a baseball game had propositioned us to come. Said they would be bartending and the lure of free drinks pulled us both into the heart of a city we didn’t know very well. We sat there drinking for hours. Gin. Tonic. Lime. Boys. We lost sight of the morning meeting. Of the afternoon flight that would return us to the fabricated lives we had constructed.

I never saw the man who eventually approached and tapped me on the shoulder. He introduced himself as Pablo and instantly sent a line of questions at me like rapid gunfire. I was hesitant to reveal any personal information, but was ultimately persuaded by his artist’s looks and his persistent charm.

What he really wanted to know was where I had lived during the summer of 1991. When I told, him he exclaimed, “I knew it. I knew instantly that it was you!” I stammered something, then, about never having met the man before. He cut me off. Rambling about how he had taken pictures of me in the park with a man. Described the scene as if he had been there – holding my hand instead of my boyfriend. He said he couldn’t believe this was really happening.

Through our subsequent conversations, I began to discover that he had been a photographer in the area that I was living and had somehow stumbled upon my boyfriend, Simeone, and me on a date at a local park. Simeone was leaving soon – a foreign exchange student from Italy with no more extensions left. We had come to the park as some kind of diversion from the impending departure, and he had given me the silver ring he always wore on his left hand. Had placed it on my left ring finger and asked me quite seriously to marry him. To move to Greece (where he intended to go next and live with his mother and stepfather). But we were only in high school and hadn’t even said the words I love you – even though I had felt them on the tip of my tongue.

Pablo revealed that he had taken several pictures of us that day. One of us kissing – with my hand in Simeone’s thick black hair (he called him “the boy”) and the silver ring shining in contrast. One of us afterward – looking in opposite directions – me covering my mouth with my hand – only the back of his head exposed to the camera lens. Pablo said that after he developed the pictures – they haunted him in many ways for years to come. That in a few brief glimpses he had seen what it might feel like to experience great joy and great sorrow in the same moment. That from those photographs – he thought he might know what true love really felt like.

I didn’t know what to say. Still don’t. He kissed me on the cheek and held my hand across the table.

He promised to send me copies of the shots, and we exchanged contact information. A manila envelope arrived a week or so later at my office containing the two or three stills we had discussed and a letter about love and losing it and the way that makes us feel. I read the words and thought I might love Pablo, right then, for seeing something incredible and for finding me years later to tell me he hadn’t missed it. And that possibly, even though it may feel like it in the present, I hadn’t missed it either.

I contacted a friend. Got the forwarding information for Simeone – who had recently moved to Paris – and sent him the pictures. I enclosed a note explaining the 72 hours in Baltimore that lead to the chance discovery and included the original letter from Pablo.

I wonder now what lead to me to send those captured moments from my past away. Without a trace of evidence that that kind of joy existed to begin with. All I know, in answer, is that when I had possession of those shots – I had an overwhelming urge to run at full pace. To scream at the top of my lungs until someone strapped me into a chair and locked me away. Mostly, I just knew I couldn’t hold them against myself for a moment longer. I had them for less than 24 hours. Had them less than the time I took to cry in the bathroom after I forwarded them in a fresh crisp envelope to Paris.