Photo by Jake

Memory is quite the fragile faculty, subject to time, lies, alcohol abuse and a hundred different errors that could erase the presumably unforgettable in a flash.

 
Your favorite childhood friend won’t survive your teens, your first love will melt away in half a bottle of whiskey and those guys you befriended last night over said whiskey have already disappeared. And that’s why we’re so attached to cameras.

About a decade and a half ago I blew an entire summer’s salary on a camera, the cherry on top of a long-awaited vacation package to Cyprus. My friends and I had a spectacular time there, no doubt filled with wine, women and partying galore. I remember nothing, except that my camera was stolen.

‘No you idiot you gave it to me,’ explained a friend. ‘Or did I pack it by accident then just keep it?’

Good stuff.

More curious now than anything, we raided the attic for the relic and once I managed to power it up I struck gold; decade-old film. In half an hour we were at a shawarma stand waiting for the nearby store to work their magic on my negatives.

‘It probably has 36 – how many shots could you take those days? – 36 shots of bikini-clad women. That’ll be fun.’ What a waste; bikini pictures were worth many homework assignments in high school.

‘It might be those shots we took when we were smashed on the beach,’ offered another friend. That would be embarrassing; no one wants photographic evidence of stupidity.

The theories kept rolling in. A shot of the abandoned shirt the not-a-thief had lifted off a chair, or a shot of that drunken Brit who tried to warm up to one of the girls? Could it be one of the many rolls of film we expended when we fake-IDed our way into that exotic club, or that one roll we used underwater, while testing a cheap waterproof camera case?

But in all likelihood it was a series of boring, uneventful shots we took of scenic routes, archaeological spots and random people and vegetables.

‘Or it could be those shots we took of Karl, remember?’ Everyone was still; a thief and an idiot.

We’d already ordered, and I was busy with the bill, but I couldn’t have run half as fast either way. By the time I got to the store the film, along with any excuse for bruising a friendship, was destroyed.

I look forward to a weekend of drinking; that remaining half a bottle ought to loosen some tongues.