Like Kissing Cousins

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This is a vintage photo I picked up after my uncle's memorial service last weekend. I'm about 12 or 13, as is my first cousin Annie on the left. Rebecca says I look 8 but I think she's using Canadian Celsius years.

What this picture doesn't capture is the hearts shooting from my eyes, like Pepe Le Pew looking at a painted cat. See, Annie was a hip New Yorker (don't let the thick glasses and Les Mis sweatshirt fool you) and I was a scrubby little country boy from Western Mass. Yet she treated me like I was hip to the score; she laughed at my jokes, listened to my pathetic stories, hung out with me (and my mom) in public.

I was kind of in love with her, but I was also basking in her acceptance of me. It's like how I dated a girl named Jessie for years, just so I could say things like "Jessie, you are the coolest, sexiest, funnest person on the planet." I was secretly in love with myself!

Today Annie is a tough-minded political agitator, still living in New York, still cooler than I am, still a good friend. After the memorial service, some of my family started talking about inbreeding amongst cousins (could they see my guilty soul?) and I feared that wine would make me confess my teenage crush. Luckily I kept my secret inside. Annie will never know! Neither will Rebecca!

Bonus: Please to notice the skulking character in the background on the right. What a pleasant-looking stranger. I'd get in his conversion van anytime!