The Thirty Something Snap

Chapter One - The Rude Awakening

Two-thirty in the morning is never a good time to get a phone call. I keep my phone on the nightstand by my bed mostly to serve as a clock. I never could stand the sound of an alarm clock and trained myself back in college to wake up without one. The problem with using the phone as a clock is that phone calls that turn out to be wrong numbers will often startle me out of my deep sleep. Not a great feeling.

This time was different. This sudden awakening at 2:30 a.m. was from my old friend Peter Braun. I hear from Peter now and then. He’ll send me jokes by email and sometimes will tag me on Facebook.

It’s funny how I’ll receive an email that says ‘Peter Braun has tagged you in a photo’ and then when I click on the link to see the photo I’m not anywhere in it. Then I try to make the connection.

I try to figure out why Peter would tag me in a photo I’m not in. Usually it makes sense. Sometimes he’ll send a photo taken at the boardwalk at Atlantic City. He still visits there occasionally. Lots of great memories at that boardwalk for the two of us from the summer of 1997. We were both in our early twenties and had the time of our life.

Peter will take photos of things like seagulls or benches and tag me in them. I think he sees the photos as artsy. I guess they are. He’s always had a knack for capturing images that are aesthetically pleasing. He was the camera buff with every lens and filter imaginable. Then someone had the brilliant idea to combine cameras with phones and now Peter rarely uses his trusty Nikon anymore.

The only problem with the camera-phone combo is that it makes it so much easier to send those photos to social sites. Peter loves those sites and he loves uploading photos to them and tagging people. Especially me.

Lately the tagged photos have been different. They’ve been risqué. Nothing lewd, at least not to me, but definitely not office friendly. And I’m definitely not in them. Still, hover the cursor over the image of the bare breasted woman and my name appears: Howard Perkins.

The photos of naked or nearly naked women are not the type you would see in pornographic magazines. In fact they’re rather artsy, like the seagull photos Peter used to send. Maybe it’s the lighting Peter uses or maybe it’s the setting or the distant look in his model’s eyes. The question as to how Peter was able to create such brilliant photography with a camera phone has always been answered by the simple notion that the man has talent.

The question I never knew the answer to was ‘who ARE these women?’ My two-thirty wake-up call was the beginning to the answer to that question.

As I roll over to grab my phone and fumble for my eyeglasses I can squint just enough to make out Peter’s name on the well lit screen.

“Peter? Are you okay?” I asked.

“Howie, I need you to come get me,” Peter replied, almost in a whisper.

“Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?” I sat on the edge of my bed suddenly catapulted into the awake state at the thought that my old friend was in some kind of trouble.

“I’m at St. Clare’s Hospital in Jersey,” Peter responded.

“A hospital? In Jersey? Peter what happened?” I imagined the worst. I envisioned that Peter had taken an impulsive road trip to Atlantic City and had been in an accident on the Garden State Parkway.

“I burned my balls,” he said.

“What?” I couldn’t believe Peter would call me at 2:30 in the morning with a silly prank like that. He knows I work out of my home now so getting up early to get to the office is a thing of the past. Plus this was Saturday and it really was of no consequence. Still, I couldn’t believe what Peter was saying.