Sunday, June 1, 2014 

I remember a man standing next to our swimming pool that night. From my angle, I must have been in the pool because I was looking up at him. Not too close – I think I was standing in the middle of the pool, at the edge of the shallow end before it got too deep for me to stand. I was facing kitty-corner to the diving board, which was out of my field of vision on my right. His back was to the diving board. I had a good profile view. I think he was talking to someone on my left, but my memory was narrowing only on him. I could see him smile, laugh, shake his long, brown hair out of his face and turn toward me to take a draw off the cigarette in his left hand before turning back to whomever he was talking to.

Odd, but in my mind’s eye I could only see him waist-up or knee-down. I have no idea what his swim suit looked like. He had hairy legs, and hairy toes in dark flip-flops. His skin was very tanned, but I could tell it was naturally a little dark, like he was Mexican. I know there are many Hispanic nationalities, but for some reason when I look at him in my memory, the word “Mexican” keeps popping into my ten-year-old head. Makes sense, we were in southern California, but my present-day mind doesn’t think he was Hispanic at all. He didn’t have the square features that hint at the Native American blood found in many Mexicans. He was thinner, almost European, perhaps Greek? Maybe his name sounded a little like the word Mexican? Not that I remember a name. It’s hard to separate my ten-year-old memory from my 49-year-old experience, making me doubt that any of my memories are real.

The arm I could see was muscular. There was a tattoo on his shoulder. The ink looked like a dark green-blue. I don’t remember the pattern, but it wasn’t colored in. It was about the size of a side-ways playing card. I don’t remember any hair on his shoulder, but his forearm and back of his hand had dark hair, just like his legs. He was holding a lit cigarette.

He was good-looking. I don’t remember him looking at me, but he glanced around the pool area while he was talking. He had dark eyes with long eyelashes and crinkles at the edges. An aquiline nose. High cheek bones. Shoulder-length dark brown hair with bangs that parted in the middle and fell past his ears. A dark-brown full mustache, and an unshaven look. I don’t remember what color his eyes were. It was night, and the backyard lights were on (there was a pair of small flood lights attached to the back of the house behind me, near the roof), but his eyes just looked dark. I keep thinking they were dark blue instead of brown, but I can tell that it’s my 2014 mind thinking that, not a memory, and I’m trying to keep this limited to just what I remember. Looking back, I’d guess he was about 30-35 years old.

The thought came to me that his eyes were always smiling, and although I am sitting at the edge of my bed in 2014, my breath just caught and something tightened in my chest. My whole body is tense. I don’t want to remember any more right now. Time to do something else.