Old Photos

A weekend, mid-spring, many years ago. My wife and I were reorganizing the garage. Cleaning it out. We were pulling everything out from where we'd stuffed it over the years and were sorting through it all methodically, making piles - stuff to keep, stuff to donate, stuff to throw-out, stuff to sell, stuff to destroy, etc.

It was early in the afternoon and unusually warm. We were both sweaty, dirty and more than a little grumpy. My wife was particularly fussy - pulling out all our dusty old stuff tends to stress her out.

She was wearing Birkenstock's, ragged cut-off jean shorts pushed low on her hips, and a threadbare tank top with no bra. She was up on a six foot step ladder struggling with a faded cardboard box high on a shelf. The tape holding the box together had turned yellow and brittle with age, so that when she hauled it down the bottom fell out, dumping the contents.

"Goddammit!" She exclaimed, throwing the empty box down from the ladder, "Fucking Hell."

"You okay?" I asked.

She climbed down from the ladder, grumbling sourly. She got down on her hands and knees and started raking the contents, a bunch of old photos and albums, into a pile.

I dropped what I was doing and moved over to help her.

It was all her stuff. High School yearbooks, fat scrapbooks, faded photos from college, etc. There were lots and lots of loose photos. Hundreds. Woulda been a small fortune in film and development costs back in the day. Her with frizzy 80s hair, her with friends I didn't recognize, sporting events, her during the college Grunge years - wearing combat boots and a baggy flannel, etc.

But one random photo out of this immense pile caught my eye. "Hello... what's this?" I picked it up and showed it to my wife.

"Oh shit! Gimme that!" And she made a lunge for it.

I yanked it out of her reach and stood-up looking at it, mildly amazed. "This is you."

Of course it was her... but in the photo she was naked. Twenty-five years we've been married she's never once let me take a photo of her naked. Not once. It was a candid shot. She was much younger, in her 20s probably, and she was kinda bent over sticking her ass out towards the camera, looking back over her shoulder at the photographer, a raunchy mouth-open "Yeah!" grin on her face that I knew well. And her fingers were digging into her quim.

"Who took this?" I asked, sorta breathless. The photo had been taken from inside a van. It was nighttime and the flash had washed out much of the detail, but it was still clear enough. Recognizable.

My wife stood-up and sighed, "My boyfriend."

I looked at her.

"He had a van. We'd drive down to the coast, park on the bluff above the beach, get in the back and fuck."

"You've never let me take pictures of you... like this."

"No, I know. It's..." She hesitated, sighed again, and said, "Sorta traumatic. He talked about the stuff we did... sexually... to his friends. He showed them the photos. I couldn't figure out why they'd all got so creepy - leering at me, making lewd comments and stuff. Someone told me eventually. I forget who. I confronted him - my boyfriend. We fought, broke-up... it was ugly. It was only the one time he took pictures, but he took a whole roll. I got some of the photos, but not all... and I'm sure there were copies. I wanted the negatives, but couldn't find them. I even broke into his dorm room. He kept them, I'm sure... the fucker."

I looked at the photo again, feeling conflicted - excited, aroused, angry and amused, envious but guilty, etc. I didn't know the guy, had never met him, didn't know his name, hadn't even known he even existed until a few moments ago; but I wished violent, prolonged and serious injury upon him. I wanted to put my hands on him, to hurt him.

"I thought I destroyed all those pictures. I guess I missed some."

"There more?" I asked, huskily.

She kicked the pile of photos, "If there are they're in there." She turned and went inside.

It took me almost three hours to go through all the loose photos. I found four more, all from that night. They were all of my wife, none of the boyfriend... well, none of his face. There was my wife sucking his dick with her eyes closed, my wife on top of him with big tits thrust forward and a rapturous expression on her face, my wife's torso with a streak of jizz across her belly, the original butt picture I'd first found, and lastly an incongruously tender picture of my wife's face - she was asleep, her hand folded daintily over one eye. She looked young and vulnerable, and it made me feel old, lecherous and fiercely protective. It upset me so my hands shook.

I went inside.

My wife was out on the back deck looking at her phone. She didn't look up. She'd showered, her hair was damp and hung loose. She'd put on clean clothes - khaki shorts and a t-shirt. She was drinking a gin and tonic. I set the five pictures down beside her glass, turned and went back out to the garage to finish what we'd started.

A week later she texted me. I was at work, but my day was winding down. It was a picture - a selfie... the first of what would become many. She was in her car, heading home from work. She had her boob out and a raunchy mouth-open "Yeah!" grin on her face that I knew well... and loved.