He cannot be talking to me, this adolescent rube, Vesuvius on his forehead and bloody spots on his chin, more eruptions he carelessly or witlessly razed, he cannot want this rack, this ass, which themselves are old enough to be his mother—even if I shaved his age off my own I would still be twice as old, too old to have babysat him even, to have put him to bed early so that I could make out with my guy. Maybe by some trick of time or mind that’s what he sees: my teen self, stripped bare of wrinkles and wear, undaunted, unjaded, eager and willing, my face before it caved in to boys like him who assumed what they wanted was all I had to give.