Seniors

Originally Posted Sunday, May 25, 2014

I shot with a "senior" last night.  Should I leave it to you to figure?  I mean, graduation is just around the corner.  High school?  College?  Nope.  She wasn't exactly AARP-ready, but she was a beautiful matron with three grandchildren.  She had a wonderful portfolio and at that age, I figured she had been around photographers and photography a long time.  I was nervous.  Things, though, are rarely what you imagine, and she came in as nervous as a I.  We sat and talked for a very long time.  I love talking.  Querying, rather.  Listening.  Learning. 

She had a flap of skin on the inside of the top lip on her left side that hung down just a bit.  I dated a girl long ago that had just such a lip.  I always found it distinct and attractive.  I asked the model about hers.  She had Bell's Palsy in 1994, she said.  I was startled and hoped I hadn't offended or embarrassed her.  I had known people who had the disease before.  One day they wake up and one side of their face is paralyzed.  It goes away, sometimes completely, sometimes partially.  My new friend told me she still suffered from it and went through the details.  She was such a beautiful woman.  That such a thing could happen was an indictment of the cosmos. 

She'd had a child at nineteen, she said.  Raised him alone.  She worked at McDonalds, mostly, but did some retail jobs, too.  Later she began working for an energy company as a meter reader.  She spent seventeen years there.  But times change and everything goes digital and the company no longer needed meter readers.  They were good enough to give her a year's pay as severance, but she is worried about the future, she said. 

"I have no skills." 

That is what she said.  She was trying to become a real estate agent.  She paid $375 to take a real estate course, she said, but she didn't pay enough attention.  She was distracted.  She had a boyfriend and skipped class some nights.  The instructor said it was important to take the test right after finishing the course, but she didn't.  Months later, when she did take the test, she missed the mark by three points. 

"The test is really tricky," she said.  "It's harder than you'd think.  There is lots of business law and ethics questions.  I don't know why they feel they have to trick you, though."  She was studying on her own again and planned to retake the test. 

"I'm sure you will pass it," I said.  "I really am." 

She talked about her boyfriend.  Ex, rather.  Why do women fall for these sort of guys, I wondered?  He sounded like a real douche, but of course I was only hearing one side.  I know guys, though, and what she said rang true.  I would offer you a percentage on how many guys are real douches, but you would think it simply jealousy.  It is not jealousy, though, but a real confounding.  They are everywhere and they have women and they do bad things while sweet boys like me pine away alone at home getting their goodnights on occasion from their iPads. 

We talked much, even while we shot.  I asked her if she dated younger men which would have seemed totally natural to me for she was just the sort of woman young boys fantasize about.  She said no, but then she told me that recently a twenty-one year old boy at a department store wrote his telephone number on the receipt he handed her. 

"Are you going to call him?"

"That's a little young," she said.  She sounded like a mom, and I was almost ashamed of myself.  But not quite. 

"Tonight, we'll shoot for that young boy.  You are full of isolated longing you can not satisfy.  You live in a house on a Nebraska prairie.  When you look out your window, all you see is land rolling away mile after mile after mile.  There is nothing.  I want you to think of him." 

O.K.  I've revealed too much, I know, but she did the most wonderful things.  I love to listen, but I am told that sometimes I am a good story teller, too.  I love to tell them.  Last night's oral tale became visual. What a wonder!

I have left out much here in the way of telling about a very real person for whom I now worry about the future.  You can tell about a person straight off, and she was alright.  More than that.  In a decent country that was this rich, I wouldn't need to worry about her.  She has worked her whole life, paid her taxes disproportionate to what those who are better off have paid, and if you met her, you'd know she did it without complaint.  She is bedrock.  Heartland.  And if the Koch Brothers have their way. . . . 

I have a shoot this morning with another "senior" though I don't think this one is a grandmother or a mother, even, but I am not sure.  And tonight I see G.G., the voice of the iPad that told me goodnight.  She was the first person I shot with in my studio.  I expect nothing but tremendous tales.  And lots of them. 

All the things left out will come back in some other telling, of course.  I will use it all when it is not so literally tied to the teller.  And I'm just the boy to do it.