Less Travelled

Shocking, isn't it?  Free the nipple!  She was an absolute lesbian.  I was, she said, the only man she would let photograph her.  She came to the studio twice before she moved to California, once with a girlfriend and once alone.  She wrote me when she got there.  Moved with her girlfriend.  I never heard from her again after that.  I was going through old photo files and saw this.  I'd never worked it up.  Shot on a different camera than I usually used in the studio, there were only a few pictures, but hey now--I thought they were something, especially after watching the Sije and the Soft White Underbelly interviews.  It was the tats, I think.  I'm always amazed when people do that.  I don't understand it.  But I don't understand a lot of things.  

You think I'm making that up, maybe.  I'm not.  If I were making something up, I would tell you I met her in a bad part of Mexicali.  I've been there. . . oh-so long ago.  I've been to lots of bad places in Mexico.  And you know what Lonesomeville was about.  The women who shot with me all did.  Disliking the thing you do. . . the inevitable ability to be both alluring and so distant.  This woman understood it better than many.  She couldn't imagine it.  

Or maybe she could. 

"The streets were dark, the building old and wooden.  Inside it was smokey.  Men sat around at tables and on couches smoking cigarettes and drinking Jack and Coke.  The room smelled ancient, perhaps like an abandoned bear den or a house that had caught fire."

People have such stories to tell if you are willing to listen.  It is a mistake not to.  Human history is contained in those stories.  They are the ones left out of the textbooks.

It is startling to me, when I think back, how many who came to the studio were lesbians.  Why should I be startled?  I don't know.  But they most often came back and shot again.  Were they attracted to the idea of the project?  It certainly wasn't for money.  There was none.  There were only the photographs.  

I don't think it would happen again.  Maybe. I don't know.  

Trump insults Black people.  Harris has a rally that features rappers.  They are both trying to lose, I think.  But the world is weird, so who knows what might or might not happen again.  These are not normal times.  A whoremonger supported by the Moral Majority and the religious right.  An ineffectual left.  Trump might as well be screaming "Nigger" while Harris booty dances with Meagan Thee Stallion.  

It's not my world.  I'm just living in it.  

I am going out with "the boys" tonight.  I'd much rather be going out with "the girls."  I much prefer their humor and the way they laugh.  But I don't have that and I've read social isolation will result in mental deterioration, illness and madness.  And you know. . . I haven't far to go.  So bar food and beer for me tonight and a good dose of ribbing.  

How has it come to this?  

It was the road less travelled, I guess.  

Perhaps I'm just too curious for my own good.  I couldn't resist the dusty track, the crooked path, or consorting with maniacs, killers, and thieves.  Let this be a cautionary tale, my friends.  Teach your kids the straight and narrow.  Eyes forward.  There is a pot of gold at the end of the trail.