The Girl on Film is me, on my birthday, at Silk City in Philly when I was young enough to not even dare go out before 10pm at the earliest. I was maybe 23 years old.

I met this cute nerdy photog that night and he snapped this instant of me, the flash blowing out my face in the dark bar. I immediately loved that it was me, but it wasn’t. Without a face I had no identity. At the height of my creative lifestyle, this was pure poetry in my mind. It made the gent even cuter.

I went to take a sip of my Yuengling lager and got bumped simultaneously by an anonymous passerby in the crowd, which so easily occured due to the tight shotgun shape of the retro diner redesigned into a nightclub. That little elbow bump thrust my arm and the bottle too quickly to my mouth, chipping my front tooth. Luckily it was so tiny it was unnoticeable, but I could feel it with my tongue, and proceeded to do so obsessively all night.

Years later I put the photo in a frame with this found metal honeycomb scrap to add an extra level of creativity. I never kissed the boy.