First

The only thing I really remember is that it was sunny, not unusual for a summer late morning. I was young enough for my mother to have bathed and dressed me, and she was now drying my hair in the balcony. The scratchy sound of and sensation of the towel on my scalp was making me sleepy, but the ferocity with which my head was being thrust back and forth was making me nauseous, and I tried to focus on the street four floors below. What caught my eye wasn’t that the boy had no shirt on, but that his golden-brown skin seemed to make up for it. I pictured my own pale body in the mirror. I looked naked, like something was missing. This boy would have been overdressed in a t-shirt. His worn denim shorts hung precariously on his hips, reaching his kneecaps, and below that he was bare again, calves glistening in the sharp light, his bare feet kicking up tiny stones from the pavement. He looked about ten, but everyone looks older than they are when you’re a child. His lanky arms and the muscles in his athletic torso stretching with every stride were careless. I remember feeling queasy, as if my stomach was being pulled into my chest. I remember having to squirm where I stood because there was something pushing out against the front of my undies, making me uncomfortable in a way I since came to be obsessed with. I wonder if that’s how he felt; the lining of his denim shorts brushing against his skin.