Dear Diary — this is where I keep the story, not just the evidence. The receipts live in their rooms; the meaning lives here. New entries when the archive grows, which, knowing him, it will. Settle in. — Priya
Entry One: Exhibit Zero
Every collection starts somewhere, and mine starts with a photograph from 1965: a little boy in a World Series hat and a varsity jacket, smiling like the world is a friendly place.
He grew up. He married, he divorced, he grew the beard — and one summer in his fifties he flew a thousand miles to stand on a bar in Brooklyn and be measured by the woman who invented the Smallest Penis pageant. In his sixties, he handed the whole archive to me.
People ask why I keep all of it — the tapes, the frames, the fruit. Because somewhere in 1965 there’s a version of him who doesn’t know yet, and I find that adorable. The evidence is in My Receipts. The story starts here.
Next entry: how a nice man from Minnesota ends up on a bar in Brooklyn, holding a microphone, under a banner that says SMALLEST. — Priya Yang