Long, Long Ago

Have been writing a fairly autobiographical novel and took one scene straight from my current life. Here's an excerpt:

Underneath that is a potpourri of loose photos from many times and places. He ignores the temptation to browse through them and plunks them in a box on another shelf that already has a cache of photos inside. Turning around, he spots an old identification badge on the floor.

What in the world is this? he wonders. I am so young here. A photo from what feels like another lifetime looks back at him through plastic laminate.

It can't be from General Dynamics in Fort Worth, where he'd lied about his education and intentions and barely managed to get a job driving a fork lift in the heart of the military-industrial complex -- the largest freakin building he was ever inside of, working as a cog in the production of F-111 fighter planes for Vietnam -- for a few months until he saved enough money to fly back to Portland for Christmas, which somehow (miraculously) enabled him to avoid being drafted and sent to that same Vietnam (although he would have slipped across the border into British Colombia; he already had the how-to pamphlet with detailed instructions) as he navigated Peace Corps trainings post-graduate school. No, I was consciously trying to stay beneath the radar then since management was already so suspicious of me and my likely politics.

It has to be after Peace Corps and Brazil because he never wore his hair that long until he was back in the States. Finally he decides: long-term temp job, Bank of America, graveyard shift, when I added 20 pounds from vending machine pastries at 2 AM. Once he's pegged the time, he looks more deeply at the face captured here, a face that stirs a cauldron buried deep within.

Oh my god, was I really the most innocent 33 year old in all of San Francisco at that time?