I don't have any famous original photo hanging in my hall. I worry someone who does, gets accused of being an online pedo.

No, I have a copy of the standing barefoot girl that I bought years ago. She looks exactly like a girl who was a few years younger than me when I was growing up, who quickly realized I had a thing for younger ladies. She would trade the innocent sweetness and little girl eyelash batting she knew I longed for, in exchange for being her security blanket at teenage social gatherings. She was a girl of contradictions, able to keep me on a short tether with ease, yet incredibly awkward at parties in spite of her beauty.

Oddly enough, this relationship carried on through two actual slightly younger-than-me girlfriends, who both naturally despised her. For her part, she definitely took a bit of devilish pleasure in this fact, as she could occasionally reassert that she understood me on a level which they did not, and she would be correct.

Was she manipulating me? For a long time after the fact, I thought so. These days I marvel more instead. What were her early experiences in life?

I've never believed reincarnation was real, but every now and then when I look at that photo and her striking likeness to B, for a brief moment I'll wonder.