Darkeology

In which our Hero remembers remembering the past past

Much earlier in our acquaintance, before she and I were an us together, a conversation Nocturne and I were having crossed the topic of my photo album. Specifically that I had taken nude photos of my ex and still had them. Ex Post Fuckoff, as the latin phrase really ought to go.

It was one of those moments where I think I outright baffled her. She couldn’t understand why I’d keep them past the end of a relationship. She called it out as a red flag in someone if she was dating them. (It wasn’t ironic at the time.)

I think I had reasons that held up under cold scrutiny. For one, it’s art. Forget any emotional significance, and it’s pictures of a female form, and the ladies may not always feel it, but that’s a pretty thing regardless. And the fact that I could take pretty pictures of a nude model is an achievement and also something that felt deserved archiving. I wasn’t looking at them wistfully. (Okay, honestly, I wasn’t looking at them at all out of general antipathy towards the subject because sexy and bitch don’t mix when both are sincere. But eventually, they’d be artistic nudes of a model I once knew.)

For another, I’m big on archival integrity. I don’t like deleting photos because they are points that were significant enough at the time that someone took a picture. This is the history of my life and these are the pictures I chose at the time to document them. And I may not give enough of a crap about her to look at them, but maybe they can still serve as a cautionary tale for future generations. (No, I don’t actually think that my specific pictures are that important, I just mean in general)

Plus if I start deleting willy-nilly, where do I draw the line? If I delete the picture of me making a horrendous face at Willow, I’ll look more dignified. And if I erase the ex, at some point, I can remove her from my past entirely. And that makes me just a little bit uncomfortable, that I can rewrite history.

So I had testable reasons that let me feel that I was being reasonable by leaving those albums to lie. Go me. Except Nocturne had raised a point that resonated. If I was dating someone who was keeping naked pictures of someone they’d been attached to, the best reaction I think I’m capable of would be profound discomfort. I don’t know if I’d aske them to erase their pictures, but I’d be unhappy. So yeah, like her, it’d be a red flag about the relationship.

Which does not seem like a good thing for me at the point that I eventually stopped being a sad sack and started seeing other people. So maybe I’d better plant the seeds of someone else’s seduction and do some housekeeping.

And it was difficult. Some of the pictures went back to the beginning of the relationship, and were tied up in happy emotion, and were genuinely great photographs, however much the success was accidental. It made me sad to be reminded of that time. It made me sad to see her and think about how badly she’d treated me. It made me sad to essentially destroy one of the few good things that had come out of that. But did it actually add anything to my life? No. And I’ve come a long way from the early days when I was discovering I liked photography, so it’s not like I couldn’t do better if I felt like trying for it. And if I were the person dating me, it’d bother me that I’d kept them. So… Delete. Yes, I’m sure. And…

It was about as anticlimactic as could be. I guess no nudes is good news. And here I was in the midst of a bunch of other photos and as long as I was deleting, maybe I could clear a few more. I briefly considered that in her shoes, I’d have wanted the chance to get a copy before they were destroyed, a number of them were occasions like her graduation and such. But she wasn’t exactly treating me with any respect. And if she wanted pictures she could have asked. So Delete. Yes, I’m sure.

What I didn’t expect was that it felt kind of therapeutic. In some cases, there were sets of pictures where I couldn’t make up my mind which of four was the one worth keeping. Now it was easy, and Delete. Yes, I’m sure.

I suppose this is why people burn letters. It was a great big cleansing purge. Not of everything, but I didn’t need hundreds of pictures to remember the ex. I didn’t need 30 pictures to remember that event. Delete. Yes, I’m sure. Heck, come to think of it, I didn’t really need to remember that event. Delete. Yes, I’m sure. And not this one either. Delete. Yes, I’m sure. And.. Delete. Yes, I’m sure.

I kept the pictures of the cats. I don’t have any desire to get a new pet, but they took breaks from their studious indifference to be affectionate when I was most desolate and frankly they were better friends than the ex proved to be. I kept a few pictures of the Ex. For the historical record, because she is a fact of my history, and I still feel it’s not right to erase that entirely, despite my utter lack of interest.

And that’s that. Except since then, when circumstances make me search my pictures and I run across pictures of the Ex, I delete without any of the hesitation or doubt that I used to feel. Having discarded the principle of archival completeness, it’s suddenly easy to delete her. No emotion, no upset, just indifference. “I’ve already got pictures of her, don’t need that one too.”

Now I feel a little worried by the lack of hesitation. Shouldn’t I feel at least a little nostalgia for the past? And so I’m suddenly back to not trusting the delete key. How much do I erase? And which ones? I don’t need a lot of her, but I should keep a couple, just to remember what she looked like. And I don’t care about the relationship but we were a couple. Shouldn’t I keep a record of the two of us standing together? Shouldn’t I want to?

I’m going to give it some time. I don’t look back except for searches and there’s no urgency. If I still feel like wiping away the past in a year, then sayonara, sister. A small part of me wants to ask Nocturne for advice or her preference, but then I think this is my problem, my mess to clean up.

I’d erase her completely, except that there’s an old black and white picture in an old yellowed album, where the face is scratched out. And I’m sure there was a reason at the time, but I can’t help but feel sad that someone defaced the picture. There’s something tragic in that, in whatever upset or outrage that’s indelibly burned into the album amidst the happy memories.

Removing the picture is more subtle. Easier to forget about. I just can’t convince myself that it isn’t also a tragedy.