Louis

I run into Louis just about everywhere I go. He takes polaroid shots for $20 each and does a good business. I ran into him near the Strand Bookstore when I was roaming around with Matt and he took a shot of us – maybe I’ll scan it later.

He’s a pleasant guy with a good sense of humor. I asked him what those flashes were for and he said: just for show (which wasn’t true). Only they were not attached properly when he took our shot and didn’t go off. He was shooting at some very high speed ASA so didn’t really need them anyway.

He asked me how old I was (I told him almost 61) and then he asked me to guess how old he was. He told me he was about ten years older than me and I told him I didn’t believe it. But later I saw in one shot I did of him that he was missing his front teeth – I had never noticed that before. Same as me except I’ve been wearing a temporary bridge for the last 15 years or so since I never had the money to get implants.

As I get older – the loss of teeth becomes less and less important and my neighbors have all seen me without the bridge and it’s no big deal to them. But I can remember when I first got them I’d often forget to put them in and go down on the train and my tongue would feel for them and I’d realize they were back in the little bowl of water on the sink. I’d go through the whole day trying to talk so that nobody could see that they were missing. Now I don’t care anymore.