Genna

Genna painted next to her brother Dakota, all after­noon. I took pic­tures, they painted. At the end of it she had a cool tie dyed paper towel of paint brush smudges and two or three cards – one to me and Rose which she mailed right back to the house, which was cool. It was warm, sum­mer out­side and in, prayer flags flut­ter­ing and entic­ing lit­tle squares of paint fram­ing a guile­less Mona Lisa smile on my good friend Genna.

Noth­ing moves faster than a pho­ton, but pho­tog­ra­phy plays the trick of freez­ing light. Some­times, like on this sum­mer day, it is worth more than any­thing in a burn­ing house. Pho­tographs are the visual scents that instantly (at the speed of light) take me back. Like a scent does. Like this…

If I were to stroll pass the per­fume counter at Rite-Aid and smell White Shoul­ders I would be back at the dance in the eighth grade at Tom Browne Jr. High slow danc­ing with Beth Williams, simul­ta­ne­ously dying and being born, a burn­ing star of newly made hor­mones. I would be at Padre Sta­ples mall at the kiosk out­side of Chess King buy­ing her a Steve Miller Band Book of Dreams replica album cover mir­ror (!). The replica album cover art mir­ror kiosk was next to the spin art kiosk where you could buy a square of card­board that got attached to a spin­ning axle and you could take a mus­tard squeeze bot­tle of paint and drip paint on to the spin­ning card­board and make cool designs. I am there in the mall, walk­ing care­fully past Orange Julius with my dry­ing paint card­board, past the fun shop with the Far­rah Faw­cett poster – per­fect chick­lets smile, one piece bathing suit way bet­ter than any bikini and the hair – hang­ing in the win­dow like a siren dri­ving all teenage boys into the rocks of for­get­ting their new, first girl­friends, past the JC Penny’s entrance (mall anchor stores were Penny’s and Dil­lards) and out to the bak­ing hot asphalt, five min­utes late for my dad, wait­ing in the col­or­less green Ford Cus­tom 500, and home. Walk­ing to Beth’s house, mir­ror and now birth­day card-made-from-spin-art square, wrapped in the Sun­day comics. Beth lov­ing it and me and Steve Miller (we shared Jun­gle Love and Jet Air­liner as favorite songs). Beth, my first girl­friend, my 7^th grade love, smil­ing at me as we shuf­fle on to the dance floor, drap­ing her arms around my shoul­ders like a high school cardi­gan, my hands, pow­er­less vice grips on her hips and us, rock­ing back and forth while Heat­wave crooned ”Always and For­ever” over the PA sys­tem in the cafe­te­ria, and that scent of White Shoul­ders weav­ing itself into the fab­ric of my mem­ory forever.