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Location: Home.
Listening: "Law & Order" (again).

Every once in a while, I'll do something utterly futile and, for me, anyway, dangerous: I will think back on all of the opportunities I've missed. Futile because there's certainly nothing that, here in the present, I can do now to change the past. Dangerous because such contemplation can lead to bouts of irrational restlessness. Nevertheless, memory is a blessing and a biological imperative. So I remember.

In the spring of my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to pose for a photographer named Greg Friedler. He was in town shooting subjects for his coffeetable book Naked L.A.. My former S.O. and another close friend had spotted the casting call in the L.A. Weekly and she invited me to go with them for the shoot. I was hesitant, having read Naked New York, knowing that the book would be a series of pages with two shots on each--one of the subject fully clothed and the next a nude. I finally decided, however, that the adventure would be well worth the momentary embarrassment. I was thwarted when a Neuroscience exam was scheduled for the afternoon of the shoot. They went; I spent the afternoon bubbling in answers to questions about epilepsy and psychosurgical procedures. A few months ago, I was in Borders and, on a whim, found the Photography section and located Naked L.A.. There they were--within a page of each other--looking exactly as I remembered. It was a pleasant bit of nostalgia, but edged with regret. While I don't regret that my parents will never stumble across a coffeetable book with nude photos of their daughter inside, I do regret having missed the chance to work with a relatively famous photographer and to have a record of myself from that time caught forever in a book. Before the shoot, one of the friends had asked me to pose for her for the ubiquitous assignment for Fine Arts class. We cracked two bottles of wine and locked everyone in our communal house out of the downstairs study room. She took three rolls of me crouched on a table, stretched across a threadbare couch, pressed against a cinderblock wall and looking over my shoulder. She then promptly lost all three rolls somewhere in the house, before they could be developed. She was distressed, mainly because of the loss of her material for class. I was distressed, until I reflected that no one in that house would care enough to pay to develop three rolls of black and white. It was my first attempt at actual modelling that didn't involve Polaroids and some form of ulterior motive (remembering events that followed, though, I'm not entirely certain of that). The photos were taken before my tattoo--I can barely remember the small of my back without the black flower. I still regret never having gotten to see the proofs.

In the fall of my senior year, I was editing a manuscript in the computer lab of the Architecture School, where my S.O. was working on CAD diagrams for his final. A man in his mid-twenties, wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and jeans, sat down at the terminal next to me. After fiddling with the keys for a while, he turned to me. "Can you help me with this?".

"With...what?" I had been awake for the better part of 48 hours and wasn't entirely sober.

"With this Microsoft Word shit. It's fucked up my format."

I realized that he wasn't a student and wondered how he had gotten into the lab to begin with, but leaned over and touched a few keys. "There."

He grinned. "Thanks." After a few more minutes, he turned to me again. "So what's your name, chica?".

I glanced over to where my S.O. was bent over his keyboard. I smirked and gave him the name I give everyone I don't entirely trust. "Catherine."

"So, Catherine, you go to school here?" He gave me his name, which I wrote down later in a notebook. I replied with something cursory and we somehow struck up a conversation. He invited me into the open hallway for a smoke and, as we talked in the chilly air, his slightly predatory vibe gave way to honest curiosity. Soon, he was asking me about growing up in the South, about my impressions of LA, about how I felt about the Mexican population in the city. I told him about living in a Victorian house in a neighborhood north of campus where I had to speak Spanish to get by. I told him about the carniceria where I bought mangoes and salt and my favorite botanica down the street. I told him about talking to the neighborhood guys who used our front curb as the local stoop and the apartment next door that served as the headquarters for the Harpy's, the Mexican gang in the University area. I told him about the bangers who had befriended the college kids next door, sharing carne asada at barbecues and protecting our cars and dog from their colleagues and enemies in the neighborhood. I told him about taking baths in the attic room of the house, in the claw-footed tub with the skylight open on warm nights, smelling jasmine and listening to conversations in Spanish from next door and Santana. When I realized I was rambling, he was staring.

"I'm sorry." I stubbed out my cigarette.

"No." He rummaged in his pocket and scribbled something on a piece of paper. "You're a writer, right? That's what you do here?".

"Yeah."

He held the scrap out to me. "You heard of Rage Against the Machine?" He said the band's name quietly, doubtfully, as if they were somehow obscure.

"Fucking Rage. I love them. Went to their concert in Irvine last spring. They're an important band."

He grinned. "Yeah. I think so. You ever seen the CD cover with the graffitti silhouette...?"

"The one with the raised fist."

"Yeah. That's mine."

"Yours?"

He launched into his own story. He was an artist. He had gotten his start in tagging, drawing the defiant figure on local buildings and overpasses. Someone from the band had spotted his work and asked if they could use it for the cover. He became a minor celebrity on the "hip, edgy, urban art" circuit overnight. He was on campus for the opening of his show at the Fisher Gallery, which was attached to the School of Fine Arts.

I must have looked doubtful, because he shrugged. "Look, you don't believe me, you walk over there tomorrow and check out the work and check out the write-up. I'm not lying to you. It's kind of fucked up, but it gets the message out."

I nodded, still doubtful. He grinned yet again. "Look, I want you to write for us--PR, press blurbs, activism. Share your story about coming out of the South and into LA and finding Mexico, right there, in your neighborhood. You love it, I can tell, and for a white girl from Tennessee to love it--that's something, you know? And you sympathize with it--you can write for us. You can work to help us get ahead. I've got to go, but my number is on that paper. I'm on the West Side now. Call me if you're interested."

I looked at the piece of paper in my hand and nodded, barely comprehending the surreality of it all.

He shook my hand. "It was really good meetng you. Unexpected, you know? If you want to work with us, call me."

He turned, and rattled down the stairwell.

I returned to the computer lab, where my S.O. was waiting for me. He was concerned about the time I had spent away, with the stranger. I explained and he snorted. "He was hitting on you."

The next day, I diverted from my class in Mudd to the Fisher. In the main gallery were huge canvases and pictures of his figures on brick walls around the city. His picture was also there, with a brief bio. He wasn't lying.

I never called him, mainly because my S.O. was extremely disturbed at the notion of my working for Rage. I also did a little background work on the guy and found him mentioned in several legal cases against his landlady, who insisted that he was practicing santeria and hanging out with a dangerous crowd. But the latter wouldn't have stopped me. I didn't call him because I was scared--afraid that I couldn't cut it writing for the band, afraid that he really was just trying to pick up on me, afraid that I would be the odd girl out in their group of Mexican activists. Looking back, I know that, had I called, I would be in a very different place now--and, while I think that I would have remained friends with Williams, who is part of my family, and therefore eventually still met Peter...I don't know who I would have been when I met him. I might have been marginally famous. I might have contributed more than I have. I know I would have been fluent in Spanish, but that's about all I know.

There are others--the time I was admitted to Wellesley and could have transferred, the several times I could have married money and spent my life giving to charities, the times I could have gotten relatively well-off transferring goods across borders, etc....the opportunites I've not chosen are numerous.

When I was a child, I was told that your choices would determine who you were at your death. From the vantage point of who I am now, I can look back and re-consider the choices I made, but also know that these choices have led me to the path I follow now. Considering that I'm fairly satisfied with the girl I am now, regret doesn't appear all that often.

But it's still there.