Resetting the Boundaries

I've had trouble reading the news recently.  It just hops around from thing to thing.  I keep trying to look for unity.  I want it themed.  Take the New York Times, for instance.  Somehow, the front page stories should be related to add up to something greater than the parts.  I'm nuts, I know, but this hodgepodge of facts. . . .  I need more than that.

She came to my studio on Saturday afternoon.  I wasn't there yet.  She texted me to let me know.  I'd been dreading going.  Saturday was beautiful, but I spent the entire morning working on pictures, scanning, processing.  Then most of the afternoon.  I hadn't planned on that.  I had other plans, too many, perhaps, so many that they overwhelmed me.  I get overwhelmed too much lately.  I was still sitting in my pajamas at three.  "You must go outside," I told myself.  "What are you doing?"

So I took a walk, a long one, just shy of five miles.  But when I got home, it was late.  I didn't want to go to the studio.  I wanted to stay home and work on more images.  I wanted it to get dark so that I could sit on the couch and watch the BBC's "Sherlock Holmes" that C.C. has been urging me to look at.  But I'd made plans with a model who didn't shoot nudes, who was a Tomboy.

"I don't shoot nudes, either," I told her, "but sometimes people are naked in my pictures.  Come over and we'll see what happens."

When I pulled up to the studio, there was no car around.  A girl with a bag was sitting on the curb.  She looked kind of. . . not like a model.  Tank top, boat shorts and boat shoes.  Black fuck you glasses.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

"Did somebody drop you off?"

"No.  I took the bus."

"Took the bus?  Really?"

It is not easy to take the bus in this town.  They don't run often enough and have few that take you directly where you want to go.

"Where do you live?"

"Downtown."

"Well, after the shoot, I'll take you home.  You don't need to ride the bus."

"No, it's O.K.  I'm used to it.  I take it everywhere."

Hmm.  I wondered if I'd already made a bad impression.  This was going to be useless, maybe.  I was not uplifted by anything so far.  We went inside, and I began to show her what I do.  There are big prints and transfers and encaustics everywhere now, and I have gotten used to the "oohs" and "aahs" when people first see them.  After she told me how much she liked them and said that was why she wanted to shoot with me, I liked her better.  It is easy to win people over, I think.  Just tell them nice things.  It always works on me, at least.  I can see the hidden genius in people that way.

She had two jobs and was a college student at the University at the other end of the county.

"How do you get to work," I asked her.

"A coworker picks me up."

Good, I thought.  There is that.

"How do you get to school?"

"I take the bus."

"How long does that take?"

"An hour.  I just fall asleep.  It is the last stop on the line."

Jesus, I thought.  So many people have it so rough.  I've really forgotten much and take more than that for granted.  Nobody under twenty-five ever sleeps.  Not much.  Big sleep days are like vacations for them, but those hardly ever come.

"Let's see what's in your bag," I said, and she began pulling out wardrobe things.  None of it was going to work I saw right away, but I didn't say that.  I had been preparing all day for a lackluster shoot with someone who thinks she's going to Glam Shots to get some pretty pictures.  She'd been telling me about her sorority and her sorority sisters for God's sake in that voice they learn in movies and on t.v., the one that I both love and hate, so certain and uncertain at the same time.  I've tried to imitate it, but I can't get the intonation.  It is a barrier between me and that.  I am on the outside of all it represents.

"Put on the black slip, I think.  We'll start with that."

"Good," she said.  "I'm a black girl."

"No you're not.  You are no black girl yo.  You are a very white girl."

"You know what I mean," she giggled.  Yes I did.

She walked up onto the platform and faced me.  It was all wrong.  She looked like a boy wearing a slip.  She stood like she was ready to pick up the pails and go milk some cows.  O.K., I thought.  I will have to work with this.  She's not going to like any of these pictures.  I'm going to play with the awkward hideousness before me.

"Turn profile.  Now slowly turn your head toward me.  Twist at the torso.  Put your right hand on your hip.  Put your left hand to your head.  Open up the spacing a little bit more.  Don't move your hips but rotate your shoulders to me.  Good."

It wasn't good, I thought.  It looked like something for a Sears catalog.

"O.K.  Turn around and face the back wall."  If I was going to take any pictures that I wanted, I'd have to change things now.

"I know. . . " I said, apology and defeat and perhaps a little misery, too, lacing my voice.  "But. . . I'd like you to drop your slip. . . ."

"All the way?!?"

Uh-oh.

"Yup."

"Holy Moses," I whispered.  "Look at you."



"You can't believe how much I dreaded coming to shoot with you," I said later at the little Spanish tapas bar.

"Really?!  But it's why I came.  I wanted to shoot with you.  I just reset the boundaries.  Drew new ones.  That's all."

"You sure you don't want a ride home?"

"No.  I like being independent.  I'll be fine."