I hoped I would misplace it
But then I take such good care of it
I wish it would disappear
I say I wish
But then I relish
It being here
What good is a photograph of you?
Every time I look at it
It makes me feel blue
Depeche Mode, “Photograph of You”
I got the hell out of Dodge as quickly as I could after high school and I told myself that I would never, ever look back. (Dodge, in this case, was the soporific, depressed town of Caldwell, Idaho). I was in the same rural school district with the same classmates for thirteen years and I couldn’t wait to move on and experience new locations and adventures and meet people with a more culturally engaged purview.
There were only a handful of friends I stayed in contact with after I graduated, but this dwindled down to only two friends I would hang out with when I would come back to visit during the holidays.
High School wasn’t a particularly painful time for me. I managed to get past the difficult pariah years of grade school, and learned to navigate social spheres with a little less awkwardness. The uncouth cowboys and a few malicious jocks in the upper classes were the only ones who continued to bother me. They were threatened by my ostentatious swagger, wardrobe inspired by the New Romanticism styles of London and New York, and a creative array of hairstyles maintained by a substantial application of hair spray. I didn’t look or act like anyone else in my high school, and I was happy to wear that as a badge of honor.
As soon as I got my driver’s license, I started spending more time in the “big” city of Boise, about a half an hour from Caldwell. I discovered my flamboyantly coiffed compatriots on weekends assembled in the back corner of Xenon, Boise’s premier dance club.
It was here at Xenon where I met my high school sweetheart and launched into a couple of outrageous years nocturnally tearing up the city of Boise, and returning home to listen to Depeche Mode for hours on end. We weren’t as fabulous as we thought we were (it was still Podunk Idaho after all), but we wore our attitudes on our geometrical sleeves, kept the hairspray steadily flowing, and danced our dance with wild abandon.
We broke up and went our separate ways. We went to college, she got married and changed her name, I moved to Europe and then New York, and we lost touch…but I never stopped thinking about her. Our prom picture, taken when we were 16 years old, was the only memento I held on to and one of the only images from my teen years that survived relocation. It was an unforgettable one because to make the event special I went to the rental to book a limo which gave the grand entry that she always expected when we were in the relationship.
With the advent of the internet, I tried searching for her on sites like Classmates and Facebook, to no avail. She seemed lost forever and all I had was the prom photo.
But that fate changed one auspicious holiday visit from New York. We ran into each other ironically at a clothing store that’s the best place to buy prom dresses in downtown Boise. She was divorced with three kids and a new boyfriend and had moved back to Boise. And she still looked as amazing as ever, albeit with much less hairspray.
We went out dancing the next night at Boise’s sole gay dance club, and picked up where we left off on the dance floor at Xenon all those years back. We went there every night for the remainder of that visit and every subsequent holiday visit, each encounter becoming more intimate and every return to my life in New York more difficult to make.
Last year she came to stay with me in New York. She had separated from her boyfriend and we were free to reclaim our relationship.
When I left Idaho, I said I would never look back. Obviously I was nostalgically looking back all those years I held onto that prom photo.
Living for years in New York, I was steadfast in my resolve to never leave. But I did. I came back to Idaho last fall to reclaim the love of that beautiful woman in the photograph.