Passport

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.—“La Habanera,” Carmen

It’s said that some people have a memory for names, others a memory for faces. If you’ve met a lot people, it stands to reason, I guess, that probably you can’t remember the Babel of names they constitute, but, as it’s said, I remember faces. But what if you’ve met a lot of people (or more abject and/or undefiled, you haven’t) and you recall neither their faces nor their names? I have this problem; it’s embarrassing. I go out, to functions, and I see a lot of people, and some of them start talking to me, and I’m terrified: These people obviously know me, other names places dates are mentioned, they know me, we’ve met… and I am thinking, Who the fuck are you? Usually I beam a moronic demented desperate smile and yelp, Hi! Nice to see you… You look great… and at the first possible juncture skeddadle. (Nota bene: Always say Nice to see you, never Nice to meet you. Play-act Brooke Astor, like you’ve already met everyone, especially those whom you don’t know from Adam. Be grandiose; be preposterous. Live it up; dream.)

The facial expression wavers between smile and grimace, between incomprehension and recognition. Once at a cocktail party I was reintroduced to someone I used to be in love with. This person greeted me with what I regarded as unseemly intimacy, considering that he never gave me the time of day when it would’ve mattered to me. I scarcely could discern the face that in halcyon days set my foolish heart aflutter. He’s really gone to seed. Jesus, how mean-spirited I’ve become. Melancholia and sentimentality interrupt pre-programmed cynicism. Fantasize about the love you never really felt for whomever enduring still. Think back to poetry class for the appropriate lines from Keats (“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever…”) and Shelley (“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”). Decorate your disappointment with the tatters of your education. Have another drink: You know what, fuckface is still kinda cute—cute enough.

The two photographs that mean the most to me are black-and-white passport photos of my mother and my grandmother. We traveled a lot together, three generations in Bermuda, Acapulco, maybe even Venice, I don’t know. These zero-aesthetic pictures unfailingly make me cry. (My eyes are always “shrink-wrapped in tears,” as the Ed Norton character says of the Meatloaf character in the movie Fight Club.) I don’t have any photos of that kind showing me, a snotty spoiled brat.

In lieu of a kiddie passport photo to complete the trinity, I wish I could carry one of fuckface in my wallet, in livid color. His decisive words to me, after a couple of years of beer-drinking camaraderie and horny pining, were: You’re cute but you’re weird. I was nonplussed. I didn’t buy him another round like I said I would. I went home and swallowed a whole lot of valium, but (as I knew) not enough to do any serious damage. These were commentary benzodiazepenes. I think I really loved that twit, and he worked as a waiter in a burrito restaurant. Jesus Christ.

David Rimanelli