Originally Posted Sunday, February 10, 2013
My mother came over early with two bouquets, a piece of cake, and a card. I was still in my pajamas and so we sat and drank coffee and chatted awhile. The morning was beautiful, crisp and wonderfully clear and promising much, the kind of day that fills you with an incredibly peaceful hollowness that makes you buoyant and somehow less rather than more than you were. I told her I was just going to enjoy the new decade and that we'd have dinner tomorrow night. Nothing special.
After that, I had a late start rather than the early one I'd planned, wondered if I should still go out to print, and not being able to think of anything else, really, that is what I did. For three hours on a third floor in an empty room lined with windows on two sides, I looked out over a bucolic day listening to the hum of the big Epson printer. "The day is wasting away," I thought to myself (for to whom else was I to think it), and so in the early afternoon, I packed everything up and came back to town.
I had a couple phone and text messages about the evening, and at the eleventh hour, I decided I'd put them all into one pocket. Sure, come by the studio and we can drink some champagne and then we'll go to dinner on the Boulevard to the fun Italian place that is so good. Then I got to work, making a series of image transfers discovering a new technique I'd never seen anyone else use that made each one better as I went.
One phone call came back, a longtime friend, the fellow with whom I went to the Sundance Festival last year. It was looking like a Bro date at this point. I asked the Real Artist if he could watch the studio for about fifteen minutes. I didn't want to take time to lock up and I needed to run home to get the promised champagne that I had not brought because I was afraid I'd open it and drink it alone.
Eventually the three of us were drinking the nice bottle and chatting on the loading dock as a fiery sun went down. Then, champagne gone, my buddy and I went out to celebrate.
I like the bar at the restaurant, and I like the bartenders, too. It is a non-pretentious place where the bartenders where hipster flannel shirts and jeans (both boys and girls) to serve a more pretentious crowd. But it is a better crowd than most on this Boulevard and getting a bit younger and hipper (I was certainly the oldest person there), and within ten minutes we had a seat at the bar where we would eat dinner and drink martinis and look around to take in the scene.
In a little while, three middle-aged women were standing behind us, two of them tall and not unattractive, the third short and heavy. One of them tapped me on the shoulder and held up her phone.
"Would you take a picture of us," she asked?
"Sure," I said. "It's what I do."
"Are you a photographer?"
"He's a great photographer," my buddy piped in. "No kidding, show them some of your work."
I took a couple of pictures of them with her phone and then I took a couple with mine.
"Come to my studio and model for me," I said.
"Do you have a website?"
Uh-oh.
I showed them a couple of my last posts, the boy, the Rembrandt looking girl.
"Oh, those are nice." They all nodded.
And then I went to far. I showed them another.
"Oh. . . no, I wouldn't do that," said the prettiest one who began to drift back into the crowd. The other tall one, though, was Swedish, and she told me she used to be a model.
"Really!"
"Yes. Do you know David Bailey?"
"Sure. The movie 'Blow Up' was about him."
"I used to model for him. I'm in a scene in Johnny Depp's new movie, 'The Lone Ranger.' I play a brothel worker in the whorehouse scene."
"Well. . . you're the one for me. Do you really want to come to the studio?"
"Yes."
"How's Thursday."
She said yes, so I handed her my phone and said to send herself a text. But by now her friends were moving toward the door, so we said our Hollywood goodbyes and she was gone.
"I guess I scared them."
But my buddy was already enamored of another girl across the bar.
Drunk now, I texted a couple women who had not recognized the day, and of course drunk texting is what it is and I am what I am. I probably culled my circle of friends a bit.
After one too many drinks, my buddy insisted on paying for everything, and soon we headed out for a stroll. The night was nice and I'd had a good time, a good day. It was as low-key as I could have wanted without being morose. I could get that behind me now.
And then, having walked about three blocks, I heard my friend yell out, "Hey. . . there's the big one," and I watched him as he leaned into a sidewalk table. It was the three women from the restaurant sitting out, drinking wine. I stayed back about ten feet. I didn't want to get close to this. What the hell was he doing? Why did he say that? He had obviously been referring to one of them as "the big one"in his drunken internal conversation and now with a tongue fueled by liquor. . . . It sounded as if he was making a comment on the heavy one, though I knew he wasn't.
They barely smiled. The look in their eyes was dead, their bodies rigid. But I guess for him, there was only one direction to go--forward--and in that same loud voice, he began to chat. I had to look away. It was awful. Finally to my relief, I heard him saying, "Well, I guess I'll let you girls get back to your wine," as he turned and headed my way.
"Let's cross the street," he said, and when we were about a block away, he began to laugh. "I guess that didn't go so well."
"Really? I almost shit my pants when I heard you yell out, 'Ho! There's The Bigun!' What the hell were you thinking?"
He doubled over and I was snorting, too. "Holy shit, did you see the look on their faces?"
I had.
I'm betting I won't be shooting the Swede on Thursday.
It was early but we were drunk and there was nothing to be gained by going on with it, so under a perfect sky we said our goodnights and headed our separate ways. It had been a good night, really, for all of it. I had gone out of my way to avoid people telling them I would be out of town. This was about all that I wanted.
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