Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Short Stories

I remember the Nosferatu viewing at an all night camp outing. I recall watching it and then going outside in the dark-dew’d three a.m. grass. There was that air of unreality about the world, created in part by the art I’d just seen. The air was crisp and dangerous and seemed capable of any sort of nasty surprise. Back when I was a kid it was poor form not to stay up all night when you could stay up all night. It was like refusing to thank your sweet aunt for the Christmas fruit cake. So we stayed up all night in the face of cowardly fatigue and dawn’s slow begetfulness.
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It was pre-Christmas, that time of year of darkness allievated by so many colored lights, when Maria gave me a gift pack of Life-Savers that formed a kind of book. I was so astonished by it, by her unprecendented generousity, and astonished by her wanting me to be her boyfriend. I was twelve or thirteen and predictably behind the curve. Still even at that age of incoahticies I understood that I liked the lighter skinned and the fuller-bodied. She was thin and dark-haired and I thought her too much like my thin, dark-haired sister. I wonder how many romances are failed by someone looking too much like family, although I’ve since discovered that breasts are pretty much a universal attractant.