Talk Talk Talk

Yesterday, I presented myself as a hideous(ly) talented man, a listener, a Svengali, a freaking Dolly Llama, a girl whisperer and a trader of dreams for tales.

And then. . . I don't know what happened.  The antibiotics are finally beginning to have a visible effect.  My face is less hideous, the pain finally subsiding.  Still, I take terrible amounts of anti-everything drugs so that I do not feel myself.  And I've gone back to the factory during the day and to the studio at night.  I am exhausted when I finally get home.

Last night, I picked up a woman I would shoot with.  I don't normally, but she doesn't have a car and was going to take the bus.  She lives only five miles from the studio, so I offered.  She lives in the funky part, or what passes for it here, of the big city downtown.  It is young and hip and partially snotty (as opposed to my little hamlet six miles away which is older, upscale, and snotty).  I walked into her place, an old '20s stucco house with two great palms in front so that it could double as an L.A. address in some local hipster's independent film.  It was spartan.  Bare.  Beautiful, really.  And there she was, a tall, slender, pale young woman with long dark hair, a skirt that fell to the floor, a simple strapped top--a throwback, a neo-hippie.  She had no internet, no car, a free phone from her cell company, and a melancholy demeanor.  She was from Seattle, had been here less than a year. Followed her boyfriend here.  They'd met working on a cruise ship in Mexico.  He was older.  At first it was good, but soon alcohol and drugs turned things wrong.  Now he was gone.  She kicked him out a month ago, she said.  I could tell she had doubts.  Trying to work through it, she worked, slept, did yoga, had few friends.  She was thinking.

We went to the studio and shot.  She was translucent, her skin unmarred, a perfect pale membrane.  She did not move like a model but somewhat awkwardly so used to yoga poses, but then--boom--it worked out.  She was delighted with the Polaroids as they developed.  I was feeling better and so was drinking wine with her though I shouldn't have been.  I was becoming giddy with returning health.  My face was less a lump.  We finished shooting.  I invited her for sushi.

Maybe you can finish this tale.  Perhaps you can predict the ending.  Wrapped in the glow of alcohol and dinner and believing myself no longer disfigured and deformed, I held forth.  No shit--after all I told you yesterday, I began to talk.  Talking is a mistake.  It truly is.  I thought myself fascinating, perhaps, ready to hold forth with "The Wisdom."  I don't know how it happened, but once it did, once I began to realize what I had done, there was nothing to do.  Except to try to talk my way out of it.  I felt the weight pushing down on my head as I became smaller and smaller, the Incredible Shrinking Man.  But I could not get small enough to disappear.  Just small.

I can blame it on many things, on being ill, being exhausted, on chemicals. . . it doesn't matter.  Mr. Marvelous, alright.  Then, dinner over, there was the long ride back to her place, six or seven time longer than before.

I hope she is not a writer.  I wouldn't want those things told by someone who could bring the image alive.  Still, she liked the pictures and agreed after all to shoot again this weekend.

But I must not allow myself to forget that drifting, bored look in her eye and hearing my voice coming at me from all sides like talking in an empty room or seashell.

I was better when I was more hideous, I think.