A Picture’s Worth
I found this photograph
Underneath broken picture glass
Tender face of black and white
Beautiful, a haunting sight“Photograph,” R.E.M. with Natalie Merchantbut if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.“This Is a Photograph of Me,” Margaret AtwoodI’m afraid of everyone“Afraid of Everyone,” The National
There’s a joke I repeat quite often: When I was in high school, I had scoliosis, owned 7000 comic books—and no girlfriend.
People usually laugh, and then I add: That isn’t funny; it’s true.
This is me circa mid- to late 1970s, silk shirt and barely visible brace for scoliosis:
The hair, glasses, and 70s fashion weren’t exactly working for me then. But many years before the four years in a full-body brace, I had already begun practicing all the survival skills needed for my anxiety, introversion, and crippling low self-esteem (terrified I was not and never would be the sort of masculine man that my father had imprinted on me).
It has been a couple years now since my parents died. My nephews, who my parents raised, and I cleaned out my parents’ house, and my oldest nephew, Stephen (who we call Tommy) gathered all the photographs, himself a photographer, to have them scanned. He sent the first almost-900 files CONTINUE READING: A Picture’s Worth | radical eyes for equity
