Photographic Half-Life
March 15, 2009
Two beers seemed like the right amount. I don't drink much these days, so it was hard to know. I needed enough to make me carefree about what I was doing, but not so much that I'd get sentimental or, worse, careless.
With Deborah away, I took the opportunity to throw away more old photos and mementos that had tenaciously survived all previous attempts at clearing house. The kinds of things that are always tricky to get rid of — photos of naked ex-girlfriends in various compromising situations, and such. It's a problem. I don't mean that it's a problem for Deborah. She no longer feels threatened by such things. But it's a problem for me. Too many heavy reminders of things I don't want to be reminded of. And by heavy, I mean literally, heavy.
It would be one thing if it were just a handful of snapshots, but after a couple of hours of sorting, I had a full-size lawn bag full of blackmail material. What to do with it? I couldn't just throw it in the dumpster. I've thrown away things far less sensitive only to find them the next day in the gutter a half block away.
When Brian lived in the East Village, he faced the same problem — having his trash scavenged and finding it blown all over the neighborhood — and he had a suggestion: "Cut them up and mix them with your kitchen garbage, a few here, a few there," he said. "That was my solution. Spread it out over time and it's not so bad."
It was an interesting idea, like a block of radioactive waste, spitting atoms here and there until it's ultimately safe enough to be landfilled in a children’s playground, but I'm afraid he didn't quite understand the half-life of a bag that size.
"That'll take forever," I said. "What I really need is a fireplace."
"I burned stuff in my apartment once. After a particularly sour phone call with an ex-girlfriend, I said, That's it! and ransacked my apartment for every photo of her I could find then torched them in the kitchen sink. Took the battery out of the smoke alarm and let 'er rip. The entire apartment filled with smoke, it smelled awful, but it was awesome."
"I've got way too much stuff for anything like that," I said.
"Can you make a fire on your roof?"
"Uh—no—I don't think that's a good idea."
"I burned a bunch of stuff at my mother's house in Connecticut once. A big bonfire in her backyard. Truly cathartic."
"I'm sure. But my parents live in a gated retirement community. I highly doubt the HOA allows bonfires. And their fireplace is the kind with a remote control. I have a small paper shredder, but it can only handle one or two photos at a time. The thought of sitting like some White House staffer in front of a paper shredder all night isn't very appealing. Besides, going through the photos one by one like that would give me too much time to think, reminisce, get sad, angry. I just want it to disappear."
That's where the beer idea came in: a couple of beers and a paper shredder. It took forever, but it worked. What was formerly a big, toxic bag of pictures is now an enormous bag of compost.
And on we go.
