never knowing we were going nowhere
POSTED ON Apr 17, 2024 12:41:49 GMT -5
Nathaniel Collins likes this
Post by Luck Harris on Apr 17, 2024 12:41:49 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[break]
(No need to do anything with this, I'm just on my dumb-girl shit)[break][break]
Left in front of Nate's apartment door. A medium-sized and sturdy (but otherwise rather plain) box. Shows a bit of wear. Inside are a bunch of pictures, various items, and a note (jotted on the back of a junk mail envelope) laid on top of everything else. If the handwriting looks hasty and unplanned, it's cuz he scrounged the envelope from the floorboard of his truck and wrote the note out on his dashboard. [break][break]
Note:[break]
Knocked but you weren't home. Should have texted first (haha). [break][break]
Sorry, I sort of took this without mentioning it at all last year. And that it's taken me a while to get it back to you. I didn't think it'd be very fair to divide these sorts of things up. Or I guess I just didn't want to. So I made duplicates of what I could. No worries if you want to pick through or downsize, these are all yours to do with what you wish. [break][break]
-Luck [break][break]
[break]
(No need to do anything with this, I'm just on my dumb-girl shit)[break][break]
Left in front of Nate's apartment door. A medium-sized and sturdy (but otherwise rather plain) box. Shows a bit of wear. Inside are a bunch of pictures, various items, and a note (jotted on the back of a junk mail envelope) laid on top of everything else. If the handwriting looks hasty and unplanned, it's cuz he scrounged the envelope from the floorboard of his truck and wrote the note out on his dashboard. [break][break]
Note:[break]
Knocked but you weren't home. Should have texted first (haha). [break][break]
Sorry, I sort of took this without mentioning it at all last year. And that it's taken me a while to get it back to you. I didn't think it'd be very fair to divide these sorts of things up. Or I guess I just didn't want to. So I made duplicates of what I could. No worries if you want to pick through or downsize, these are all yours to do with what you wish. [break][break]
-Luck [break][break]
[break]
Since nearly the beginning of his and Nate's relationship, Luck had been obsessive about collecting everything. Blank postcards from places they'd traveled. Ticket stubs to concerts and shows. Admission bracelets to museums and parks. Airline and cruise tickets. Mementos and knick-knacks, all squirreled away into a "keepsake box" that had to be upgraded to something a little bit larger every few years (mostly for the vast amount of pictures he took wherever they went). [break][break]
Back in December, when he'd been packing a bit of the apartment up while Nate was at work, he'd pulled the box from its place in the closet and lost most of the morning to it. It'd started with just a quick sift-through while standing motionless in the center of the closet. Then he'd settled himself more comfortably on the floor. Eventually, he'd ended up cross-legged on their bed with most of the box's contents fanned across the duvet. [break][break]
A bit selfishly... he didn't want to give any of it up. [break][break]
If his mother had kept a box like this, how cherished and amazing would that have been for him? To be able to pull it down and sift through the bits and pieces of her life she found worth remembering? See her smile immortalized? Gather how she had lived before him? Wonder about her pictured friends (because, surely, she'd had them) and groan at the photographs of him as a baby and child? [break][break]
He didn't have anything like that. [break][break]
And it was probably why he took so many pictures in the first place. Unlike his mother, he didn't want to leave an absence of evidence that he'd lived. Even if there was no one to keep it all when he was gone, presumably someone would... at least once... go through it. Even if it was before they tossed the whole thing as they emptied his apartment. [break][break]
They'd get a glimpse of who he was. What and who had been important to him. Maybe — perhaps while looking at a picture of him beaming wide in a kayak, holding up a fish — they'd pause to study his face and consider how happy and full his life had seemed. How much he'd loved the people in it. Been loved. Maybe they'd consider him lucky.[break][break]
In the same vein, just as much as he wanted to keep everything, he didn't want to know what Nate might not want to keep. Might deem "unmemorable" and trash. If they divvied things up... perhaps sent the box back and forth to give one another the chance to choose favorites... each image and souvenir left behind for him to consider would prickle with ache. [break][break]
You don't want this? You don't want to remember this?[break][break]
And then, if he didn't take some things... because he thought maybe Nate would want them more... couldn't he think the same thing? Photographs such as Kat, heavily pregnant with Ella, standing stomach to stomach with Nate (who'd shoved a pillow beneath his shirt to mimic her hugeness) — surely Nate had more of a right to those. But Luck wanted them, too.[break][break]
So, after a whole lot of agonizing, he'd simply.... taken the whole box. Replaced everything and walked it to his truck. And he hadn't said a word about it. He'd waited for Nate to say something. To bring it up or protest. But... whether it was because he simply hadn't thought of it, assumed Luck had more of a right, or maybe because he didn't want to risk arguing over it... he hadn't.[break][break]
And since then, Luck had kept the box under his coffee table. Every once in a while, he'd pulled it out and gone through a bit of it. Some days he could do so only briefly before he had to stop. Some nights, with a little more beer in him, he managed to sift for a while. Other nights, with a lot more beer in him, he only just barely resisted the urge to snap pics on his phone and send Nate some amused 'remember when's.[break][break]
Sometime in January, he'd started the enormous task of duplicating what he could. Bought a new box and went to work.[break][break]
Fortunately, when it came to ticket stubs and the like, he'd always been annoying enough to covet away both of their slips (thinking it always told the story better in pairs). So it was a simple thing to put one of each in both boxes. But, shit happened, and sometimes one or the other was lost to the washing machine, left too long in a wallet, or just didn't make it home. Those lonely items, he divvied up reluctantly — trying to keep things as even as he could. [break][break]
The pictures, though a long-winded chore, were simpler.[break][break]
It was helpful that he'd always been "selective" when choosing what photographs initially went in the keepsake box. There weren't hundreds of pictures of trees, mountains, and beach sunsets to sift through. No blurry outtakes (unless they were particularly hilarious) or heaps of almost (but not quite) identical pictures of Charlie as an adorable puppy. [break][break]
Not that he hadn't taken thousands of them. [break][break]
But he'd realized very early on that if he kept every picture he snapped, he could very easily fill a garage by the time he turned thirty. So he'd made choices. Picked out the best of the best. Rather than two dozen pictures of the same group of friends huddled around a campfire, there were just one or two. Enough to spark a memory. Not so much to suggest that it should be remembered solely through photographs.[break][break]
He was thankful, too, that he'd always been meticulously neat about it. [break][break]
Even though the pictures themselves varied a lot in size and quality — he'd experimented with all types of cameras through the years (disposable, vintage, Polaroid, digital, mini, etc.) — they weren't simply scattered in the box to be jumbled up and mixed among one another. They'd been kept orderly. Always packed tight (the container updated to something larger only when necessary). Both to ensure the photographs were well taken care of and to also provide a sense of "continuity" were someone to take a lazy sift through them. [break][break]
Homemade dividers — nothing fancy, just extra-large index cards enforced by tape — separated the years by twos. And, though it was mostly loose photographs in each section, there were also groups of images banded together with a sticky note at the front of them, documenting a specific occasion — 'Telluride, 2014', 'July 4th, 2016', 'Quentin's Birthday, 2018', 'Greece 2019', 'Christmas 2021', etc.[break][break]
As selective and neat as he'd been though, the fact remained — Luck had saved a lot of pictures. And not only was ten years a long time, but they'd been to so many places he'd wanted to remember. Spent so many memorable nights or holidays with friends and family. There was a lot to go through. [break][break]
And it'd taken months.[break][break]
At first, he'd taken chunks at a time to a store to get duplicates developed. Then — when it became clear that that was a pricey endeavor (and the different-sized photographs became a complex issue) — he'd bought a scanner, picture paper, and started doing it himself at home. Mostly on Sundays — sitting cross-legged on his living room floor with a few beers on the coffeetable while he watched the NASCAR race. [break][break]
He'd taken his time. Transcribed every note to the duplicate that had been on the original, no matter how cringy, unfunny, or absolutely ridiculous they'd been (the first two years were particularly bad — it seemed two-thirds of the photographs had some country-music lyric or cheesy line scribbled in the margin or on the back, making it clear to anyone and everyone how enamored he'd been).[break][break]
"Had a good time gettin' there, though, didn't we, baby?" on the back of a picture of Nate, exhausted and "dead" at the top of a mountain summit. "As good as married" beneath a picture of Luck beaming in a parking lot, eyes screwed against the sun, as he held out the living will he'd had made only a couple of years ago. All of the lovesick "blue-eyed" lyrics, scribbled on what seemed to be every picture of Nate snapped before an ocean. [break][break]
Luck's favorite — and perhaps what had made him suddenly stop sifting through the box altogether (firmly deciding that they couldn't choose who got what): three images taken on a 4th of July spent in a park among friends, watching the annual firework display. The first showed them sitting on their blanket, Nate lounging back into Luck's chest, between his legs, while Luck leaned his own weight back on straight arms. Both their faces were upturned, watching the sky; expressions slacked and appreciative. [break][break]
The second was a little blurred — one might assume the person taking the picture had called out to them to grab their attention. Luck looked in the middle of forming a protest and Nate's lips were pulled wide, mouth parted in the start of a laugh. [break][break]
The third, Luck had shoved forward to wrap his arms tight around him; legs drawn up to trap him between his knees and face buried across his opposite shoulder, away from the camera. Despite the entrapment and the hammy crowding, Nate's pinched-shut eyes and distinctly curled mouth were blatantly delighted.[break][break]
Luck's favorite, because... though the lights playing across their faces made it obvious that the firework display was in full-swing... and the people around them were all looking up, completely distracted by the show — their friend had nabbed his camera to take a picture of them instead. As if they knew the pair of them simply sitting there with one another the way they were was what they'd want to remember most.[break][break]
He'd tried his best to make the words scribbled on the duplicates' backs look written with as fluid and easy a hand as it'd been on the originals. "Couldn't want for more." But, fingers made stiff and clumsy with determination, the end result didn't quite look right. [break][break]
And it was then that he'd decided it was the box of originals that he'd be giving back to Nate and the box of duplicates he kept for himself.
[break][break]
Since nearly the beginning of his and Nate's relationship, Luck had been obsessive about collecting everything. Blank postcards from places they'd traveled. Ticket stubs to concerts and shows. Admission bracelets to museums and parks. Airline and cruise tickets. Mementos and knick-knacks, all squirreled away into a "keepsake box" that had to be upgraded to something a little bit larger every few years (mostly for the vast amount of pictures he took wherever they went). [break][break]
Back in December, when he'd been packing a bit of the apartment up while Nate was at work, he'd pulled the box from its place in the closet and lost most of the morning to it. It'd started with just a quick sift-through while standing motionless in the center of the closet. Then he'd settled himself more comfortably on the floor. Eventually, he'd ended up cross-legged on their bed with most of the box's contents fanned across the duvet. [break][break]
A bit selfishly... he didn't want to give any of it up. [break][break]
If his mother had kept a box like this, how cherished and amazing would that have been for him? To be able to pull it down and sift through the bits and pieces of her life she found worth remembering? See her smile immortalized? Gather how she had lived before him? Wonder about her pictured friends (because, surely, she'd had them) and groan at the photographs of him as a baby and child? [break][break]
He didn't have anything like that. [break][break]
And it was probably why he took so many pictures in the first place. Unlike his mother, he didn't want to leave an absence of evidence that he'd lived. Even if there was no one to keep it all when he was gone, presumably someone would... at least once... go through it. Even if it was before they tossed the whole thing as they emptied his apartment. [break][break]
They'd get a glimpse of who he was. What and who had been important to him. Maybe — perhaps while looking at a picture of him beaming wide in a kayak, holding up a fish — they'd pause to study his face and consider how happy and full his life had seemed. How much he'd loved the people in it. Been loved. Maybe they'd consider him lucky.[break][break]
In the same vein, just as much as he wanted to keep everything, he didn't want to know what Nate might not want to keep. Might deem "unmemorable" and trash. If they divvied things up... perhaps sent the box back and forth to give one another the chance to choose favorites... each image and souvenir left behind for him to consider would prickle with ache. [break][break]
You don't want this? You don't want to remember this?[break][break]
And then, if he didn't take some things... because he thought maybe Nate would want them more... couldn't he think the same thing? Photographs such as Kat, heavily pregnant with Ella, standing stomach to stomach with Nate (who'd shoved a pillow beneath his shirt to mimic her hugeness) — surely Nate had more of a right to those. But Luck wanted them, too.[break][break]
So, after a whole lot of agonizing, he'd simply.... taken the whole box. Replaced everything and walked it to his truck. And he hadn't said a word about it. He'd waited for Nate to say something. To bring it up or protest. But... whether it was because he simply hadn't thought of it, assumed Luck had more of a right, or maybe because he didn't want to risk arguing over it... he hadn't.[break][break]
And since then, Luck had kept the box under his coffee table. Every once in a while, he'd pulled it out and gone through a bit of it. Some days he could do so only briefly before he had to stop. Some nights, with a little more beer in him, he managed to sift for a while. Other nights, with a lot more beer in him, he only just barely resisted the urge to snap pics on his phone and send Nate some amused 'remember when's.[break][break]
Sometime in January, he'd started the enormous task of duplicating what he could. Bought a new box and went to work.[break][break]
Fortunately, when it came to ticket stubs and the like, he'd always been annoying enough to covet away both of their slips (thinking it always told the story better in pairs). So it was a simple thing to put one of each in both boxes. But, shit happened, and sometimes one or the other was lost to the washing machine, left too long in a wallet, or just didn't make it home. Those lonely items, he divvied up reluctantly — trying to keep things as even as he could. [break][break]
The pictures, though a long-winded chore, were simpler.[break][break]
It was helpful that he'd always been "selective" when choosing what photographs initially went in the keepsake box. There weren't hundreds of pictures of trees, mountains, and beach sunsets to sift through. No blurry outtakes (unless they were particularly hilarious) or heaps of almost (but not quite) identical pictures of Charlie as an adorable puppy. [break][break]
Not that he hadn't taken thousands of them. [break][break]
But he'd realized very early on that if he kept every picture he snapped, he could very easily fill a garage by the time he turned thirty. So he'd made choices. Picked out the best of the best. Rather than two dozen pictures of the same group of friends huddled around a campfire, there were just one or two. Enough to spark a memory. Not so much to suggest that it should be remembered solely through photographs.[break][break]
He was thankful, too, that he'd always been meticulously neat about it. [break][break]
Even though the pictures themselves varied a lot in size and quality — he'd experimented with all types of cameras through the years (disposable, vintage, Polaroid, digital, mini, etc.) — they weren't simply scattered in the box to be jumbled up and mixed among one another. They'd been kept orderly. Always packed tight (the container updated to something larger only when necessary). Both to ensure the photographs were well taken care of and to also provide a sense of "continuity" were someone to take a lazy sift through them. [break][break]
Homemade dividers — nothing fancy, just extra-large index cards enforced by tape — separated the years by twos. And, though it was mostly loose photographs in each section, there were also groups of images banded together with a sticky note at the front of them, documenting a specific occasion — 'Telluride, 2014', 'July 4th, 2016', 'Quentin's Birthday, 2018', 'Greece 2019', 'Christmas 2021', etc.[break][break]
As selective and neat as he'd been though, the fact remained — Luck had saved a lot of pictures. And not only was ten years a long time, but they'd been to so many places he'd wanted to remember. Spent so many memorable nights or holidays with friends and family. There was a lot to go through. [break][break]
And it'd taken months.[break][break]
At first, he'd taken chunks at a time to a store to get duplicates developed. Then — when it became clear that that was a pricey endeavor (and the different-sized photographs became a complex issue) — he'd bought a scanner, picture paper, and started doing it himself at home. Mostly on Sundays — sitting cross-legged on his living room floor with a few beers on the coffeetable while he watched the NASCAR race. [break][break]
He'd taken his time. Transcribed every note to the duplicate that had been on the original, no matter how cringy, unfunny, or absolutely ridiculous they'd been (the first two years were particularly bad — it seemed two-thirds of the photographs had some country-music lyric or cheesy line scribbled in the margin or on the back, making it clear to anyone and everyone how enamored he'd been).[break][break]
"Had a good time gettin' there, though, didn't we, baby?" on the back of a picture of Nate, exhausted and "dead" at the top of a mountain summit. "As good as married" beneath a picture of Luck beaming in a parking lot, eyes screwed against the sun, as he held out the living will he'd had made only a couple of years ago. All of the lovesick "blue-eyed" lyrics, scribbled on what seemed to be every picture of Nate snapped before an ocean. [break][break]
Luck's favorite — and perhaps what had made him suddenly stop sifting through the box altogether (firmly deciding that they couldn't choose who got what): three images taken on a 4th of July spent in a park among friends, watching the annual firework display. The first showed them sitting on their blanket, Nate lounging back into Luck's chest, between his legs, while Luck leaned his own weight back on straight arms. Both their faces were upturned, watching the sky; expressions slacked and appreciative. [break][break]
The second was a little blurred — one might assume the person taking the picture had called out to them to grab their attention. Luck looked in the middle of forming a protest and Nate's lips were pulled wide, mouth parted in the start of a laugh. [break][break]
The third, Luck had shoved forward to wrap his arms tight around him; legs drawn up to trap him between his knees and face buried across his opposite shoulder, away from the camera. Despite the entrapment and the hammy crowding, Nate's pinched-shut eyes and distinctly curled mouth were blatantly delighted.[break][break]
Luck's favorite, because... though the lights playing across their faces made it obvious that the firework display was in full-swing... and the people around them were all looking up, completely distracted by the show — their friend had nabbed his camera to take a picture of them instead. As if they knew the pair of them simply sitting there with one another the way they were was what they'd want to remember most.[break][break]
He'd tried his best to make the words scribbled on the duplicates' backs look written with as fluid and easy a hand as it'd been on the originals. "Couldn't want for more." But, fingers made stiff and clumsy with determination, the end result didn't quite look right. [break][break]
And it was then that he'd decided it was the box of originals that he'd be giving back to Nate and the box of duplicates he kept for himself.
[break][break]
