Wilt Street
The first photograph I made of Maureen was sometime in May of 2014. Later, on November 5, 2014, I ask her to see the Paul Strand exhibit at the museum. After we view the exhibit we wander the grounds sharing our favorite rooms. We joke about sticking chewing gum on ancient Medieval art. She informs me various popes had removed the penises from Greek and Roman statues and somewhere in the Vatican there is a Dewey Decimal System of Dicks. We quietly watch visitors try to make sense of Étant donnés then talk about ourselves in the middle of Twombly’s Iliad. We would move in together nearly a year later.
The small Kensington factory home we shared was just enough space for two kids with intentions beyond ‘playing house.’ Through the years the house watched us outgrow it’s century old walls. The two of us were building something unique that truly felt like ours. We were defying the name of the street the house rested on. The house continued to succumb to age as our love and life flourished. I often thought about this with a laugh, as if the house could no longer contain our exponential growth. It stopped being funny when the house simply got too drafty.
As of this writing, Maureen and I have been married for six weeks. We are currently looking to buy a house.