What My Dream Guy Would Write About Me

We met at the park.

It was the end of another New England summer and there was the intoxicating energy of the season’s change in the air. It was in that small envelope of time just before the leaves start changing color. There’s freshness in the air and the breeze feels a little crisper as it blows through the long sleeve shirts you’ve just begun wearing again.

Maybe I just feel tied to September because it’s the month I was born. But no…I think there’s more to it. It’s the month of harvest, the time of plenty, and the entire northern hemisphere seems to be letting go of its final exhilarated breath before it launches itself headlong into the abyss of winter.

She was standing along the fence that bordered the bay, looking out over the inlet towards the naval yard across the waterway. The sun was setting and the sky was exploding in these beautiful extravagant tones of blue, and red, and purple that she said reminded her of the dresses Marie Antoinette must have worn – she didn’t see the Kirsten Dunst movie, incidentally. Standing there, all alone, I can’t fathom the glorious, scattered images that must have plowed through her mind as the ocean breeze seemed to glue that light cotton skirt to her legs.



I’m ashamed - or at least I’m supposed to be - to say that I was first intrigued by the soft, fleshy silhouette that seemed to glow against the backdrop of that symphony of color. The legs, shapely. The thighs, firm. The buttocks, round. The hips, elegantly curved.

I wasn’t quite sure how to approach her, as I had already built her up so much in my mind. I walked circles there, twenty feet behind her, for what must have been thirty minutes, wondering if I would be hopelessly disappointed when I said hello. I would approach, she would recoil, and I would fail. Or worse, she’d be listening to an I-pod. I finally summoned the courage to walk over to her. By the time I made up my mind the sun had disappeared behind the horizon leaving only the soft orange afterglow as proof that it once lit the earth.

“Hello,” I said. I was shooting pictures all day for a local newspaper and offered my camera as an icebreaker. “Would you mind if I took your picture?”

She turned and looked at me, unable to hide the surprise on her face. I couldn’t place the accent right away but there was something intoxicating in the way she pronounced every vowel in a liquid, swirling dialect. “Heylloh,” she said. She smiled, her teeth perfect in spite of, or perhaps because of one crooked incisor.

I held up my camera in the universal photographer’s request for approval. She nodded. I pressed the button. The photo was awful. I timed the exposures wrong on every single shot I took.