Memories of Ruth

Up in his springtime room Ruth comes to visit him. A brunette girl about five two, roundish face, soft skin, eyes violet. An old childhood friend, last seen years before. She stands ambiguous and relaxed, sturdy legs in her skirt, unsmiling as yet. Above, the yellow electric bulb, bare in its socket, has been switched on.

He feels excited and embarrassed to see her there in the disorder of his room, his hair shaggy and unbrushed, his mouth eagerly, sharply smiling, eyes peering from behind his tinted glasses. By the wall is set his brownwood cabinet of shelves, on which sits his TV, stereo, and ranks of shelves, wide and deep, strewn with accumulated junk; piles of magazines, scrawled-upon pieces of A4 paper, books, photographs, ID cards, all of it haphazardly and loosely arranged.

Ruth and he sit before the TV in that intimate darkness which is like the darkness of winter. Colour TV, the only bulwark of reality. The news is so precision-sharp, the cathode rays so clear. Comforting and maternal, the box.

But sitting there he is seized by a compulsion to find "memories of Ruth"... Something that will relate to their childhood together, some document or physical thing, something scribbled down, best of all a distant photograph of her, looking sweet and trusting, proof of their one-time affection. Ruth stands non-commital, is making ready to go perhaps. He passes his hands among the shelves and rummages in the assorted debris. A panic is on him.

"What're you doing?", a bored half-smile. "Looking for memories!". Under pages of A4 paper, blue-scrawled, almost revealing to Ruth the edges of glossy porn mags, or their backs festooned with glossy phonesex ads. Is this all there is? Nothing pertaining to their past, their great closeness, no photo of her, no documentation or evidence even of his brother, who she also knew well back in the day, to flourish, to show her, to revive something of the link between them, to rekindle within her some fellow-feeling, some warmth?

Apparently not. Instead he can only find pictures of himself which must do... "Well, pictures of me!" Some ID cards, like laminated credit cards, each one glossy, hard, shiny-efficient, bearing the digital image of his foolish face. A bunch of photobooth pictures taken at various stages, done in black n white in groups of four, some ludicrous or unrepresentative, some snipped-off to be attached to interview forms. In one he is wearing an ersatz crown from the college's drama department, his face inclined upward in three-quarter profile, mock-regal. Uncovered suddenly, it looks incongruous, like a dunce's cap.

These unexpected images of himself, tumbling forward, seem like a hidden substrata, a suddenly gushing wellspring of his own folly.