February 2004

A random snapshot. Red eyes, flushed cheeks, a wane smile.

The picture above was taken at a formal cocktail party last February. It was a party I looked forward to with great relish, as I always enjoyed a little bit of sophisticated socialization.

The party had barely gotten underway when Lucas (the host himself) pulled me aside, telling me my close friend Michelle had called, saying it was an emergency. I tried to tell myself she was dramatizing some trivial event in her life, but even as I picked up the phone in his den, I knew that there was no way in hell she'd go to the trouble to pull me out of the middle of a party if it wasn't a real emergency.

It was.

Her dad had died. It was sudden, and it was a car crash. I had to keep myself from reeling, for her sake. I knew him and respected him, and it wounded me greatly. After consoling her for a while (she lived about two hours away from Toronto, so I wouldn't see her in person until the next weekend), I went back to the party and tried not to let it show. Eventually I gave up and cried into one of the couch cushions for a while. Not long before we left, they took this picture.

Every picture has a story.