See this one time was sort of interesting. I’m still not sure who was there or why, but this was a place near where we’d get together with these groups. It was called Stone Shelter because it was just that. A large stone shelter in South Park. A place my parents suggested in the past to have gone “parking” even. A place now just a memory and razed long ago. I can’t tell you much about that specific day at that place other than there were three of us there. She was there and my brother, too. It was during one of his larger part of life. I wore my hair long, my cut off jeans low, and the Les Mis shirt I owned hung off my frame, mostly from the rain of that afternoon showers. We had a Frisbee that we flung about the grassed hillside

That evening I drove her home. Went inside to meet this supposed 4’ iguana that really was. Spike. What a name for a female iguana. I visited the lizard in her bedroom. The door closed. Her father wasn’t happy, so I was obliged to meet him. I went down into this 70s shag basement to do so. Me, the man boy, the college boy with the tattoos, baggy cut off jeans, moist, not quite dry or wet tshirt, longish hair in my face, and pager on my belt that kept vibrating. Him in his Dockers, his button down, and neutral colors socks. Hair combed back, moustache and engineering glasses. Not quite a meeting I’d imagined. I cared then what she thought. What he thought. I remember his eyes burning as I walked up the stairs later unable to hide my tattoos creeping out between my combat boots and the torn shorts. A permanent iguana, like hers, upstairs.