Fuck, I Was Cute

Alyssa Milano was maybe twelve in Who’s the Boss?—same age as me, roughly, which made her not a crush exactly but something adjacent to one. A signal of some kind. I’d watch her on whatever rerun cable carried and understand, even then, that this was a particular late-eighties sweetness with an expiration date, and that this was fine and also somehow not fine.

We all had it for a while. The clothes alone were extraordinary—colors that had no business existing on fabric, combinations that would be a controversy today but back then just looked correct. Afternoons in the neighborhood with the kids from down the block, playing doctor in someone’s garage with that particular mix of medical authority and complete ignorance of actual anatomy. Hands everywhere, blank faces, nobody knowing what they were doing. First of many times I’d find myself in that general situation, as it turned out.

I’ve been going through old photos—actual prints, the kind that yellow at the edges and curl up inside shoeboxes. I look terrible in all of them, in the best possible way. Everything is the wrong size or the wrong decade, my hair is making choices, and there’s an expression on my face I can’t quite locate in myself anymore. Not performed happiness. Actual, unguarded, this-is-just-my-face happiness. That kid has no idea what’s coming. I envy him that specific not-knowing, and nothing else about him.