Anthony Enns
Explorers
Paul is showing me photographs of his parents naked. They are Polaroids, small and glossy. He found a shoe box full of them in his parents' closet, looking for Christmas presents. He has a stack in his hand which he goes through one by one.

I am spinning Paul's globe. I close my eyes and plant my finger on a country. Turkey.

Paul keeps showing me photographs. They are blurry, indistinct. I still imagined Mr. Roberts as Columbus from last Halloween, Mrs. Roberts as Snow White.

I tell him to put the photographs away. He doesn't hear me, or doesn't care. He wants to read me his mother's diary.

We usually travel. We usually pretend we are discovering new places. I want to go to Madagascar, Tibet.

Paul is reciting his mother's poetry.

When I leave, he follows me to the door, Polaroids in hand, and waves.

My mother is cooking dinner. I watch her set the table, place the knives, forks. I watch her remove her apron, her slippers. In the bathroom I see her putting on makeup, mascara, lipstick.

When my father arrives, they kiss.

I decide to ask them for a camera.

Anthony Enns' stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Kinesis, 100 words, Impossible Object, Postmodern Culture, Popular Culture Review, Studies in Popular Culture, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and in the anthology Sexual Rhetoric: Media Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender, and Identity (Greenwood Press, 1999). He writes and teaches in Iowa City.
All contents copyright The New Journal, 2001.