Sample Chapter
Be fair, Brian, it was your daughter’s idea. I didn’t even pursue it — in fact, I’d forgotten all about it until she phoned me, at least a month after she first proposed it. I didn’t even recognize her voice. She was asking if Saturday would be okay.
“Okay for what?”
“You remember!” she pleaded. “You said you would take my picture.”
I did remember.
I remember a petite figure in white, somewhere between child and woman, picked out of the vacant black of a suburban night, turning, one hand held up against the glare of my single working headlight. The other, thumb extended. Your tiny perfect Dresden-doll child. Fourteen-year old Virginia, hitching a ride.
You didn’t know she was doing that, of course. You thought she was riding a bus with her friends. I remember that, too. We were sitting in your living room, you were expounding your end-time scenarios, your born-again fundamentalist Christian eschatology, when Virginia wandered in. She wanted to go see a movie. Little rose-bud lips pouted when you said you’d think about it.
“But it’s on tonight. All my friends are going.”
“Oh. Who are these friends, little girl?” You reached out and took her hand as she stood before you, one foot tracing the pattern of a stain on the carpet.
“Oh, you know. From school.” She pulled her hand free, pushed the hair out of her eyes, tossed it back. “The guys.”
“Oh, guys, is it!” you said, grinning, teasing, grabbing her hand again.
She shrugged. “Not guy guys. You know — Liz — Gina — ” She rolled her eyes. “The gals.”
More questions. What’s the movie? Where’s the theatre?
“Geez, dad, what is this! It’s just a movie!”
“Just a movie? Just a movie? Little girl, do you have any idea what filth and immorality and vice and perversion is funneled into the receptive, impressionable minds of youth by the movies today?” and you grinned and winked at me.
“You know we can’t get in to see those.”
“No? Too bad, eh!”
She stuck out her tongue.
“What are the ones kids go see — what was it called? Friday the Thirteenth Part Fourteen — that’s no different. It’s just disguised a bit more. It’s all about how sex is sinful and you get your just desserts, get slashed! and sliced! and julienned! for fooling around.”
“What are you talking about,” she whined impatiently.
“You know! That’s what it’s all about! Boy and girl in heavy clinch, boy says, c’mon, it’s okay, girl says, I don’t know, oh maybe, and the next thing you know Jason’s slashing his way through the door with a chainsaw. Am I right?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it.”
“Hmm. Now that I think about it, it may be morally edifying. It does represent, in a crude and simplified way, the true moral order of the universe.” You said this, grinning at me. “I think we should all go. We can have a study session afterwards.”
“Like I said, we’re not seeing one of those.” I could hear her rolling her eyes.
“Right. Well, have fun.”
But she didn’t leave. “Uh Dad”
“Yes, Virginia.”
“Movies cost money.”
“So they do, my dear child. So young to be wise in the ways of the world,” you tossed my way.
“So I need some money.”
“Money!” You threw up your hands in mock exasperation. “Is there no end to your demands?”
“Just ten dollars!”
“Ten dollars!”
“You know ticket bus”
“Popcorn booze drugs”
“Daddy! Stop it!” She stamped her tiny foot.
You pulled out your wallet and made a great show of cracking it open and counting the contents while preventing her from seeing. “Mmm oh dear no mon, no fun” You looked at her mischievously.
“Let me see that.” She made a grab for the wallet, you snatched it away, she overbalanced, you reached out, and she was in your lap. With your wallet. She made a great show of counting the money in it. And frowned. “Geez, that’s not enough.”
“What did I tell you? No mon, no fun.”
Virginia pulled out your bank card. “I’ll just use this.”
“You don’t know the number.”
“So tell me.”
“Oh, sure. Let me think now. Um Six Gee.” You wrinkled up your face. “I can’t remember. Six”
Virginia was now lying on you, her head on your shoulder. She glanced up. “C’mon, dad, you can too.”
“I can’t, honest. That’s why I’m broke, I couldn’t get any out. I just don’t have a head for numbers, you see,” you said, addressing me. “I need to have it tattooed on my wrist. Or forehead. It’s such a simple number, too six” You slapped your forehead with the hand that wasn’t draped around your daughter’s waist. “Of course! Six six six. Easy enough.”
“Sure, Dad.”
Anyhow, you dug a ten dollar bill out of your back pocket and gave it to her, she said thanks and jumped up, you said where’s my kiss, she said where it always is and dashed out. You shrugged your shoulders. Kids these days.
We’d scarcely regathered the thread of our conversation when Lisa moved in, quiet yet ominous like a bank of thunderclouds.
“Did you tell Virginia she could go see that vile movie!”
You, innocent and surprised. “Vile movie?”
“I already told her she couldn’t go. You can’t do that, Brian, what on earth has gotten into you.”
“I made it absolutely clear that she wasn’t to go see any vile movies.”
“Do you know what she was going to see! Do you? — Grease!”
“Grease- what’s the matter with Grease?”
“Oh! Brian! Really! And where did she get the money!”
“Money?”
She whirled to me. “Did he give her the money?”
I held up my hands. I did not want to get involved. I offered hasty good-byes which were ignored.
“You did give her the money, didn’t you!”
“Sorry, dear, but how was I supposed to know” You tried to edge away from the blast, to see me out, use me as a shield, but I lit out of there. I do not enjoy being privy to such domestic scenes. Certainly not when I’m expected to choose sides.
Escaping your neighbourhood wasn’t as easy. The whole district is a maze of winding roads and cul-de-sacs sectioned off into districts where all the street names start with the same letter. You live in the J section: 27 Jasmine Court, off of Jennifer Street, turn left from Jericho Crescent which curves around from Jesus Way (a one-way street) I suppose the developers are to be commended for attempting to alleviate the monotony of their boxy little townhouses, unless it was meant to entrap prospective buyers. I suppose would have found my way out eventually, but as it happened, I found a guide.
I never refuse a hitch-hiker.
“Where’re the guys?” I said.
She almost didn’t get in. She made to shut the door again. “Hey! It’s okay. Your parents didn’t send me after you, I’m just trying to get out of here.”
She hesitated.
“Where’re you going?”
“Downtown.”
“Which town? — Get in!” She shrugged and got in. “Down which town,” I repeated. “Yonge Street? Queen Street?”
“Oh, sure,” she said sarcastically, folding her arms, looking straight ahead.”
“Just tell me which way to go and I’ll take you.”
“Downtown Brampton. You know. Main Street.”
“Well, now, Ah don’t rightly know, Ah’m a stranger in these here parts.”
She looked at me sidelong. “You just turned the wrong way.”
“Ah’s afraid Ah turned the wrong way a long long tahm ago, little missy, afore you wuz a gleam in your daddy’s eye. Ah’m on a wun-way road to internal darnation.”
She shook her head. “Turn around.”
I turned the car around.
“Turn left,” she said, and I found myself rolling up to a set of lights. The main highway, no less. We rode in silence along the strip, malls, chicken and burger joints, car dealerships. I didn’t know what to say to a fourteen-year-old. I thought she would maintain the impassive Dresden china doll bit until we arrived wherever it was we were going. But to my surprise, she broke the silence.
“Are you a real photographer?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you make a living at it? Do you do real jobs?”
“Of course.”
“Like what?”
“Oh. You know. This and that. Editorial. Journalism. Have Camera, Will Travel.”
“Like, famous people?”
“I make people famous.” For example. The Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange. The subject had slipped back into the oblivion of the anonymous masses; the witness to her suffering remains famous to this day. Not that I’d ever done anything to compare.
“No, I’m serious.”
“What do you mean, like Karsh?”
“Is he like Scavullo?”
I snorted. Karsh merely memorializes the already famous; Scavullo transforms the anonymous into icons of beauty on the cover of Cosmo. “You mean, as in fashion photography.”
“Yeah!”
“Well, yeah. I’ve done a bit here and there.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“What do you mean, who? Designers?”
“No! Models.”
That’s when I began to catch her drift. This prim child of the spirit was eager to be seduced by the world and its vanities. “Oh, nobody you’d know.”
Damn if she didn’t rattle off a list, god knows they must be genuine, I wouldn’t know. I mentioned Anne Fallows. I did almost shoot her, once, before my ex wimped out on me.
She shrugged. “She’s local.”
“Yeah, well, so am I. Location wasn’t, though.”
“What was that?”
“Barbados.” Anne Fallows went, presumably; I didn’t.
She tossed her head. “How was it?”
“Hot.”
“What’s she like to work with?”
“Oh, Anne? Yeah she’s a real pro.”
“Like what?”
“Like what, you want to be a model too?”
She tossed her head.
“I hate to break it to you, kid, but you’ll need to grow another foot and a half at least if you want to be a model.”
“I’ll grow!” — as if it were a matter of choice.
“Not if you’re your mother’s daughter.” Even though she was a couple of inches taller than her mother, she was still tiny.
“Brette Hammond’s short.”
“Yeah, but she’s a special case.” Not that I knew who she was.
“I’d model cosmetics any day. I have the skin for it.”
“I suppose you do at that.”
We rode in silence for a bit.
“Um I wonder.” She was looking at me earnestly. “I’ve heard that photographers will do portfolios of beginning models for free — as a favour. Is that right?”
“Oh, sure. It’s done. ‘You scratch my back type’ of thing.”
Another silence. We pulled up alongside a jacked-up Camaro at a red light. It was bouncing on its oversized tires, either from the revving of its oversized engine or the percussion of its oversized sound system. When the light changed, it trimmed the size of those tires by a measurable amount as it squealed down the strip towards the next set of red lights. Going nowhere, but determined to get there as quickly as possible.
“So what about it?” she said.
“What about what?”
“Could you take some pictures of me sometime?” she asked, impatient with my obtuseness.
“Is that what the ten dollars is for?”
She folded her arms and frowned. “Of course I can’t pay you.”
More silence while the idea grew within me.
“I’m not against doing favours for aspiring models,” I said. “That’s the way the business works. If you succeed, then I succeed.” Keep it professional.
“Oh, great!“ She smiled at last.
“Is this going to be okay with your mother?”
End of smile. “She thinks I’m a kid.” You think you’re not?
“She doesn’t need to know, as far as I’m concerned,“ I said.
“Good.”
“When do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to take off for the day.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“I’ll have to call you.”
“Sure.” I gave her my card.
We continued in silence.
“Drop me off here.” We pulled into the parking lot of a donut shop. “See you.” She jumped out. “Thanks.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I wondered briefly who she was meeting, but I didn’t care to stick around to find out.
So that’s your sweet virginal Virginia for you, Brian. The world is indeed too much with us. I guess the Amish have the right idea, keep ’em down on the farm, a thousand acres of mooing cows between them and Strip City.
I promptly forgot all about it. I know you wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true. In spite of my being the lonely guy that I am, and not particularly respectful of the bourgeois norms, I did not make your daughter the subject of erotic fantasies and desires. Although her tiny perfect porcelain-smooth body may have had a certain power to raise the flesh, as soon as one tried to imagine the circumstances, the train of events let me put it to you this way. As you know (or do you?), pornographic films generally do not feature exclusively the act itself; a scenario, however improbable, must be played out to bring the various parties together, to effect the transition from public separation to private conjugation. A sop to appease some critic of the mind, allowing the suspension of disbelief, permitting prurient participation. I found this impossible in the case of your daughter — whether because of reservations about statutory rape or the impossibility of that impassive china doll face being fractured by the rictus of pleasure, I can’t say. And so when she eventually did call, not only had the project entirely slipped my mind, I found I had no enthusiasm for it. I tried to put her off.
But she was begging me! and suddenly I could imagine that face no longer mask-like, and how could I say no to a little girl’s pleading? I didn’t have a good reason not to anyhow, only that I’m jealous of my solitude.
And so she came — of her own free will, Brian, propelled by her own lust for the world and all its vanities. On a stinking hot day, too, as only Parkdale can be. I had all the windows open to let in the heat and the sounds of the street — muscle cars burning rubber, drunks heaving bottles or their stomachs, bad-tempered mothers with too many children and not enough husband.
She came in, hesitant, looking about, a timorous creature taking the measure of an unfamiliar, potentially hostile environment. Sandals. Bare legs. A thin cotton print skirt. A sleeveless top, white. Hair tied in a pony tail. Not sweating a drop.
“How do you keep so cool?”
She smiled nervously, almost a frown. “Thanks.”
She wandered around a bit, not getting too close to anything, craning her neck to peer about. I thought she’d dash for the door if I made a false move. I thought of shutting it, but that might have foxed her too.
I’d cleared a space to do the shooting. It was nothing like the studio you’d remember — I had shared that with Lenka — and wouldn’t you know? She left it herself, two months after locking me out, but not before turning it over to another photographer. The bitch. Still, this place was adequate, if only because I had so little furniture to move out of the way. I had a roll of seamless paper set up as a backdrop and a couple of quartz floods. My venerable Hasselblad on a tripod.
“This is it?” She didn’t sound contemptuous, just disappointed.
“You get what you pay for,” I said. “I rent studios according to the job, and I’m certainly not renting a studio for this.” She just stared at me, wide-open eyes, mouth hanging open, like holes waiting to be filled. So I filled. “Some photographers, sure, they run studios — factories. But me, I do journalism, location, I can’t be tied down to a studio that I have to keep running full-time to pay for itself. So if I’m shooting a bottle of perfume one day, a car the next, a fashion shoot on the Niagara Escarpment the next I rent just the space I need, just the equipment I need, or not.” I paused. “Versatility flexibility” I found it hard to go on, this little speech was probably more than I’d said in a week.
She nodded. “So? What do we do?”
Her open face unnerved me. I was not used to women looking at me with anything that resembled respect,. Women look at me — when they look at me at all — with skepticism, scorn, suspicion, disdain. So this deference was flattering. Seductive.
I just stared at her, this little girl.
“What?”
“No-one could accuse you of being a clothes horse.” She looked puzzled. “Didn’t you bring any clothes?”
She made a face. “I couldn’t pack a suitcase. Besides, I don’t have anything nice.”
“Yeah, right, but, what’s the point?”
“I thought I was hoping”
I wanted her to leave. What was I doing with her? “Hoping what? I’m not that twisted.” I could tell by her expression that I had to spell it out. “I don’t have any women’s clothing, and if I did, it wouldn’t fit you anyway.”
She looked totally confused by this. She shook her head, dismissing her perplexity. “A model is supposed to make anything look great.” Lecturing me, now.
“You set yourself quite a challenge.”
“And the photographer,” she said tauntingly. Echo of the schoolyard. “I brought my make-up.”
“Fine.” I indicated the bathroom.
While she was closeted I pulled out some nude studies I’d done of Lenka.
Now, she was a difficult subject. Willing enough, but the camera didn’t adore her body. Marmoreal it was not. She was well, fat is not the word, to be fair, but it was not formed. There was no sense of the long line, the gracious curve; nothing to please the eye. Her breasts were big enough, but large, formless lumps of flesh with nipples as afterthoughts. Broad through the ass, heavy in the thighs.
Cradled between those thighs cradling those prodigious breasts
Forget it. The camera is impartial. It is not influenced by remembered pleasures.
With artful lighting, careful framing and composition to single out the local felicities, some interesting results had been achieved. Not your Playboy soft-core porn, of course; studies in black and white, governed by a rigorous aesthetic of abstraction — so abstract in some cases, that a casual observer would not recognize their origin. These I did not bring out, nor those that were too ruthlessly explicit, such as a worm’s eye view of her mound split as if by the plough.
I spread out my selection on the worktable as if waiting to be mounted. And framed.
When I heard the door open behind my back my nerve almost failed. I wanted to sweep them up, put them away, but that would draw her attention, she might ask what they were. I walked away as I turned around.
She had taken up position in front of the camera. What a number she’d done on her face! No, not clumsy, but, with all those frustrated urges to paint and adorn finally unleashed, she’d not known when to stop. It called to mind the mask-like make-up of traditional Japanese theatre, or of a certain notorious TV evangelist. I didn’t know what to say. I must have smirked or something because she suddenly looked defensive.
“What!”
“You trying to look like Tammy Faye Bakker?”
She crumpled. Slouched on the stool, staring at her feet.
“Look, what I’m saying is, it’s too, uh, theatrical. Photography, the camera, is much more intimate. What’s appropriate to project to an audience or through the small screen of a TV is overblown, exaggerated when examined close up by the lens.”
She was still downcast. I dared to touch her. I just was going to lift her chin, but she shied away. So I grabbed her chin and turned her face towards me. “Let me see!” I examined her face. Avoiding her eyes. “Like you said yourself, you’ve got perfect skin. The camera will love it, so why cover it up? All you need to do is some very subtle pointing up. Your eyes are a bit small, you need to bring them out. Other than that, maybe just a hint of blush, some lip gloss. That will do it. Trust me.” She tried to pull her face away. “Trust me. Okay?” She stopped struggling so I let her go. She pulled away and looked at me sidelong with anything but trust.
“Do you want me to make you up?” She shook her head and went off to the bathroom to try again.
I wasn’t used to taking charge of the situation. Totally counter to my working methods (not to mention my personality), which is to fade into the woodwork, be as unobtrusive as possible, allow the human drama to unfold, uninhibited by my presence. This, this it was strangely exhilarating.
I tuned the radio to some middle-of-the-road rock. I consulted the beverage situation. I had half a bottle of white wine, a couple of bottles of beer, some rum, a supply of scotch. And milk and orange juice. I went over to the bathroom door. “What do you drink?”
Muffled reply. I repeated, louder.
“Coke!”
“Rum and Coke?”
The door opened. She was still scraping the gunk off. “No!” Like, duh! “Just Coke. Do you have any cold cream?”
“Uh, gee, I’m fresh out. Didn’t you bring any?
“No!”, as if it were the stupidest question in the world.
“Fine. I’ll get some.”
I went up the street to the drugstore on the corner and bought some cold cream and a bottle of Coke. She was sitting on a chair near the worktable when I returned, her face still smeary with make-up.
“Emergency cold cream,” I said, handing her the bag.
“Who are those pictures of?” she asked. I knew, of course, which ones she meant.
“Some figure studies I’m preparing for an exhibition.”
“They’re disgusting.” She went back to the bathroom. Disgusting? The righteousness of youth!
She was vastly improved when she emerged some minutes later. I think she followed my suggestions to the T. “You must be ready for that Coke,” I said. She shook her head. She certainly was cool, not a drop of sweat yet. “Afraid of zits?”
She grimaced. “I broke out right after you gave me that ride.”
So she was flesh and blood. “That why I didn’t hear from you?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Did you have any thoughts, or will you leave it to me?” She shrugged. “Right. Okay. Why don’t you just stand here, and, uh, relax, while I set the lights.”
“Relax?” she said incredulously.
She had a point, though of course pros have to know how to relax anywhere, and I said as much. “There are techniques,” I added. “Yoga, meditation”
“That stuff is all of the devil,” she said flatly. Little prig.
I fussed with the lights in silence, took readings.
“Geez, those are hot!” she complained. “Don’t you have flash?”
“I don’t like flash. You can’t see what you’re getting.” As if I could afford studio flashes.
“Can I have that coke now?”
I got it for her and began adjusting the tripod. “Flash inhibits spontaneity. You have to wait for it to recycle. And it’s distracting.”
She made no comment.
“Okay. Let’s just burn a roll to loosen up.” I peered into the focusing hood of the camera. She was staring at the lens with the small-brained intensity of a cornered animal. C’mon, kid, show some signs of life! I raised my head. Startled, she looked at me, then at the lens, then back at me.
“Uh Where do I look?”
This was going to be harder than I thought, which isn’t to say I’d given it much. “Surely you have studied the fashion pages.”
She looked puzzled, as if I’d asked her something irrelevant, like how to decline a Greek verb. “Look. I do not put you in positions like a mannequin. You pose. I shoot. That’s how it works.”
She nodded glumly. What did she take me for? Pygmalion? “Listen, kid, don’t worry about it. Like I said, we’re just warming up. Just do anything that comes to mind.” I bent down to the camera. “Okay, babe, show me your stuff.”
I hadn’t loaded any film, and a good thing, too. Her first efforts were comical: stiff self-conscious poses out of a mail-order catalogue. I found it hard to keep a straight face. In fact, when she flung out one arm skywards, draped the other across her forehead, and arched her back, one foot trailing (aiming for the cover of a Harlequin Romance, I suppose), and all with the same impassive expression, I couldn’t take any more.
“How about this,” I said, adopting a male mannequin pose, one hand clasping the lapel of an imaginary jacket. Then abandoning that to form a new posture, modeling casual wear with a nautical theme: one hand on hip, the other shading the eyes, the face frozen in an inane grin.
I don’t know what possessed me to make fun of her. She hugged herself, hunched over, sitting on the stool. I thought I could see her lower lip tremble. “Someday, when you’re rich and famous, I’ll be able to blackmail you with these,” I said.
She mumbled something.
“Pardon?”
“I want to go home now.”
“You can’t go now, we’re just getting started.” I popped the magazine off the back of the camera and pulled out the film holder, and showed it to her. “Look. No film!”
This startled her out of her funk. “Huh?”
“Like I said, this was just to warm up. A trade secret.”
“You do this to all the models?” Oh, this was so lovely, Brian, this image she carried in her mind of me holding court with an endless procession of glamorous and beautiful women. And could you expect me to destroy the innocent illusions of youth?
“Mmm not usually — normally you can bill the film expenses. But you rarely get anything useable on the first roll, no matter how professional she is. Look, I was just trying to get you to loosen up.”
“I’m just wasting your time.”
“Let’s try to think of it as an investment. In the future.”
I pondered her, rubbing my chin thoughtfully, slowly walking around her. She darted nervous glances at me. “Props. That’s what we need. Toughest thing is knowing what to do with your hands.” I toyed briefly with the idea of giving her a banana. “Let’s start with the chair.”
I got her to bring a chair onto the “set”; she set it four square facing the camera and sat down in it, very straight with her hands folded in her lap.
I locked my Hasselblad onto the tripod and unfolded the viewing hood. Some people don’t like this about the ’Blad: the image is formed in a ground glass set into the top of the camera; there’s a little collapsible hood that slips on top, equipped with a magnifying glass. With a 35mm camera you feel that you are looking through the camera at your subject, but this arrangement gives you the sense of looking into the box itself to view the image formed therein, at one remove from the subject. Such that, with the 35mm you feel that you are catching “reality” on the wing, but with the ’Blad, that reality is the image you form within the magic box. Very aesthetic.
And the image forming within my camera obscura? I leaned down, put my eye to the magnifying lens, and turned the focusing ring to bring it into focus: cold, maintained, reserved — a neo-Victorian ice maiden. And why not? Photography was an invention of the Victorian era. Look at Lewis Carroll and his dodgy pictures of naked little girls, capturing them in gelatin and silver before they were “spoiled” by the onslaught of puberty. Once upon a time I refused to accept that he was a pedophile, on esthetic grounds. Now, of course, I know better.
But there’s that picture he made (“took” hardly describes it) of Alice Liddell — the original, of course, of Wonderland Alice. And this wasn’t even one of the naked ones, she is dressed as a gypsy girl, barefoot, in rags draped to expose her thin shoulders: this little girl staring at the camera with a challenging stare, are you lonely tonight? Lolita ahead of her time.
You probably don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, Brian. But maybe this you can understand. The picture would have been a lot less provocative had she been naked. To be naked is to at least pretend to innocence, while to be clothed is to admit to our fallen state. Isn’t that how it works?
I stared through my looking-glass at the image of our Alice; it stared up at me. I thought: it won’t do for both of us to be locked down, so I released the tripod mount and started moving in on her, occasionally snapping a picture. Times like this, I wished I could afford a motor drive; it’s one of the annoying drawbacks of the ’Blad, the viewfinder blacks out at the moment of taking the picture as the mirror flips out of the way; and it doesn’t flip down again until you advance the film. I’m used to that, I can crank that film forward without pulling away from the camera or otherwise breaking concentration, it becomes part of your working rhythm, even your view of the world; you work to a climax, taking the picture, then — you black out. There is such a finality about pressing the shutter and losing the world, it invests the act of image-taking with a certain poignancy. And so you wind the film, and you find the world again, subtly changed — it has moved on.
Except in the case before us know. I would recover the ice maiden in my viewfinder, to find her as before, staring ahead, or staring at — nothing. Not self-absorbed, perhaps — you didn’t sense that she was contemplating some inner vision — but withdrawn somewhere, an awful vacancy. I started moving in close, coming at her from below, swooping over her, but apart from occasional involuntary glances at me as I came in close, she kept staring ahead, as if determined to shut me out.
I thought: what the hell is this? Remember, Brian, she was the one who wanted to do this. She came onto me. She was the one who had expressed the desire to slip the surly bonds of Bramalea and break into the stratosphere of modeling, to become — what. An object of beauty. Of desire.
But whatever it was that had drawn her here, I could not find it. The scrutiny of my glass eye had snuffed out the faint little flame of her sexuality. Maybe I was going at it all wrong. I was coming to her, while what I really wanted, what she really needed to do, was to come to me/my camera. How was I going to find the gypsy in this demure maiden?
I reloaded the film magazine and locked the camera onto the tripod. “Listen, sweetheart, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong track here. Making fashion pictures — modeling — is not something the photographer does. It’s something the model does. The photographer just captures it.” She stared at me blankly. “What I’m saying is, you can’t just sit there and expect me to do all the work.”
I got her to sit on the chair backwards, straddling it, her arms folded on top of the back. No one can look demure sitting like that. Or so I thought. Her icy reserve refused to melt under the hot lights. Some may find this ice queen bit sexy, but as for me, it just pisses me off. I mean, Brian, where does this fourteen year old kid get off, thinking I’m not good enough for her?
With a couple thousand watts of quartz halogen lamps pumping away, it got very hot indeed — as efficient as these lights may be, most of those watts come off as heat. Such air as ventured in through the open windows was only seeking refuge from the asphalt-baked heat outside. I was running with sweat. I used a rag tied to the tripod to keep my hands dry enough to wind the knob on my camera. Make of that what you will, Brian.
And at last damp patches appeared in her top beneath her smooth-shaven armpits, and little beads of moisture formed on her forehead. “Powder!” I yelled, and she stopped to powder her face. She asked me for another Coke. I cracked open a beer for myself.
She sat in the chair fanning herself, sipping her Coke demurely. “Maybe that’s enough,” she said. “I can’t take these lights.”
“Oh, hell,” I said. “We’re just getting started!” Whatever it was I thought was going to happen certainly hadn’t happened yet.
“I’m sweating like a pig.” She pulled at the front of her top.
“It’s time you took that off anyway,” but the dry catch in my throat belied my casual tone.
She looked at me, eyes small with suspicion. “Why?”
Now that I think of it, Brian, that was an odd reply. Not “Forget it”, not “Fuck off” (or whatever bowdlerized version she might permit herself), but “Why”.
Years spent in the study of philosophy paid off. “Why not?”
She clutched herself and shook her head, as if to rid herself of a bad thought. “I’m not that kind of person.” Wring what meaning you can out of that, Brian. Not “girl”, not “woman”, but “person”. Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything, it’s not important, it’s beside the point. Which is.
“What kind of ‘person’ would that be?”
“Geez, you know!”
“No, I don’t know. I thought you wanted to be a model.”
“Yeah — a model, not a Playboy Bunny.”
I had to laugh at this: the idea of her as a Bunny, with the whole kit, ears and little puff tail. With her, she really would look like a bunny. A cute little bunny rabbit.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry.” I shouldn’t laugh. I’m sure Charles Dodgson didn’t, when he dressed Alice up as a wanton gypsy slut. No, he wasn’t laughing. Alice stares at him knowingly. I know what you are and what this is about, you sad pathetic old man. Just because you think you can make me do this, you think you have power. But you don’t — I do.
“This isn’t for me, you silly girl, This is for you.” She looked at me, bewildered. “If you’re going to be a model, you can’t have any false modesty about your body. Good god! the number of boobs I’ve seen It’s no big deal.”
“I don’t want to be some disgusting centrefold.”
I realized at that moment that there were whole strata of society for whom the 60s had never happened. “What do you mean, disgusting?” She didn’t respond to that, except to hug herself and shiver. “Man oh man, I don’t understand why you want to be a model if you think the naked body is disgusting.”
“But models don’t do nudes, they show off clothes.”
“Listen, honey pot, there isn’t a model in this town who doesn’t have a portfolio of nudes tucked away. The body is your tool. Your instrument. It’s all you have. You can’t hide behind clothes.”
I could see her stiffening. “Look.” I pulled up a chair and straddled it, looking earnestly into her face. I became all the art directors and editors who patiently took the time to explain to me why they couldn’t give me work. And they were the decent ones. “The reason we use models instead of mannequins, the reason we use Jaquie instead of Jill is that a model — a good model — brings the fashions to life. Right? We don’t just need a body to drape the clothes over. After all, it’s not the clothing itself we’re selling, it’s something intangible, the style, the élan, the No. No, I’m making this sound too spiritual. Listen, sweety pie, I know this may be a dirty word for you, but yes. It’s all about sex.“ Alice understood that. She let slip the rags to bare her shoulder, she played his little game.
She looked at me, now. “I know that.”
“Oh good. Good, ah” Well, of course she knew it, that was her problem. “Look, I hate to break it to you, but there’s no alternate parallel universe where modeling has nothing to do with sex. This is what it is.”
She looked annoyed. “But there’s a difference between sex appeal and pornography, isn’t there?”
Well, that was a debatable point, I suppose, but I didn’t pursue it. “Alright, maybe, but the problem is, I haven’t seen any sex appeal from you yet. I haven’t seen that spark, that flame of sexual energy. You don’t even seem to, um, inhabit your body. If you understand what you mean.”
“What do you mean, inhabit”
“I mean you seem to hide inside your body, hoping no-one will notice you. And by god, if there’s one thing a model has to do, it’s to make you notice her. You’ve got to take charge of your body, you’ve got to reach out through it, reach out through the lens, entice the viewer, seduce her”
“Yeah, that’s right. You don’t model for men, you model for women,” she snapped.
I rolled my eyes at this, but at least she was showing some spirit. “Okay, yes, but we’re not talking about a goddam sewing circle here, it’s about women wanting to look attractive and desirable, it’s about selling fashions as instruments of sexual power.”
She muttered something.
“Pardon?”
“It’s not power. It’s a curse.”
Wow. Brian, how have you been bringing up this girl? She’s almost as fucked up about sex as I am!
“Menstruation may be a curse, but sex isn’t, it’s what makes the world go round. Look, I’m not a therapist, I can’t help you with your hang-ups, all I can tell you is, you’ve got something people want, and if you can learn how to harness it, to be in charge of it, you have power. Power to make people do what you want, to give you piles of cash, to get what you want out of life. I mean — Jesus, isn’t that why you want to be a model?”
“Yes, but”
“Yes but what? You think it’s a spiritual calling? I don’t get it. You say you want to be a model, but you show up here without any clothes, you pose like you think I’m going to rape you — what do you want? What did you think is going to happen here? Do you think I have some magic power to make you into a model? It has to come from you, babe, I can’t make it happen. I can only capture it.”
Brian, this is probably more than I’ve spoken in the last six months. I sat back and drank my beer. I figured she’d just get up and leave, and that would be that.
“Well”
I looked up at her.
“The thing is, I couldn’t bring any clothes with me, Mom would have asked too many questions I couldn’t. But I’ll find a way to bring some the next time”
“Next time? There isn’t going to be a next time, at least not with me. I really don’t have time for this, you know, I was willing to do it once as a favour, but You know, you’re just not listening to me, to what I’m saying. Clothes are not the issue. You need to work with your body, and I just don’t see that happening.”
She started shaking her head.
“Sheesh.” I stood up. “I thought you were serious. I didn’t go to all this trouble so you could take some little ego trip.”
She sat there, hands knotted in her lap. “I don’t it’s not like I thought”
“What did you think?”
“I read this article’
“Article?”
“About a high school student who was chosen she went to this studio, where they they do all the covers for Cosmopolitan”
“Oh, right, yeah. You’re talking about Scavullo.”
“Yeah Yeah, you know who I mean they just did everything, make-up, dress”
“So, like, what, you thought I’m Scavullo?”
“Obviously not!” she snapped.
“I see. I see. Fine, so Scavullo transforms this little nobody and puts her on the cover of Cosmo. Big fucking deal. Where is she today? Huh?” She shrugged. “You even remember her name?” She started to say something but I kept on. “I’ll tell you where she is — back in high school. She’s probably lost all her girlfriends, they’re jealous of her, and all the boys think she’s too stuck up to approach, so she’s totally alone. And the joke is, the cruel joke that this fucker Scavullo played on her is, she’ll never be a model. Like I said. The photographers — and more important, much as I hate to admit it, the art directors — are looking for models who can bring their products to life — not some dumb mannequin they can make over.” And then.
And then — oh beauty of life! inspiration struck. “And besides,” I said, voice lowered, conspiratorial, I slid my chair up close to her. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Scavullo’s dirty little secret.”
She still looked suspicious, but did I detect a perking up of the ears nevertheless? “Scavullo does nudes of all those cover girls.”
“He does not!” she protested
“It’s the absolute truth.” (And why not? it was more likely to be true than any story of virgin births) “One of my assistants worked with him. It’s part of the exercise. I mean, they might as well be nude anyway, but, I’m not bullshitting you, first he does some warm-up stuff, then he does the nudes, and when she’s good and hot, only then, they drape the clothes on her and let her sizzle for the final shots.”
“The article didn’t say anything about that.”
“Oh pouf!” I waved dismissively. “First of all, they’re not going to talk about that in Seventeen, or whatever it was, and second, this teen queen was a special case. She probably had her mother there to chaperone.”
“It was one of her teachers.”
“Whatever. So there you go. Now you know the inside scoop.”
She got quiet then. I mean, really quiet. She went all taut and twisted, and staring at nothing. The abyss, I guess. Well, you gotta face it sooner or later, eh, Brian? This was her moment of truth, and I was privileged to introduce it to her. There is no God, there is only the spider lurking at the black heart of the universe, and the sooner you face that, the better. There is power in that knowledge, the power of a black sun that sucks in everything, even light itself, the black sun that overwhelms everything. We have Nothing to fear. I think it was at this moment that your sweet Virginia lost her innocence. Her virginity.
“Well — how about it?”
She turned away, mumbling something. “Huh?”
“I can’t. I can’t do that. Just let me go home.”
And what was I supposed to do with that, Brian? Let her go home? As though she needed my permission? I see now why I never get anywhere with women — I’m just not a take-charge kind of guy. But clearly, for all her apparent streak of rebellion, she was looking for someone to take charge of her. Is that the problem, Brian? You’re such an easy-going guy — maybe you didn’t take charge of her the way a father should. I’ll tell you this much, Brian, based on my brief observations of your family life. Your wife, the sweet little Beatrix Potter mouse, is the take-charge person in your household. And if virginal little Virginia’s escapade was an exercise in rebellion, it was against her, not you. That’s what I think, for what little it’s worth.
“Listen, sweetheart, it’s no big deal. It’s perfectly normal. You’re a very pretty young lady, and I think you have the potential to become a very beautiful woman.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
“I think you are. That’s what I want to do with my camera. To discover your beauty and show it to you.”
“I don’t want anyone to see them.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll be our little secret.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Trust? Look. Here’s how it works. You know about release forms?”
“Yeah”
“Well, there you go. That’s all there is to it. I can’t do anything with your pictures without your permission. You are in control.”
“Did your girlfriend sign release forms?”
She’s sharp, Brian. Watch out. “Yes, she did, actually. That was her decision.”
“I don’t want pictures like those.” She gestured towards the work table.
“Oh? Why not?”
“They’re ugly.”
“I’ll tell Lenka you said so.”
She glanced up at me. Lenka?
“That’s her name. As a point of fact, I don’t think she’s as pretty as you are, but ugly”
“It’s those pictures that are ugly. They don’t even look human.”
“They’re figure studies. Abstractions of form, texture. Like still lifes.”
“You mean, like art.” Such venomous scorn!
“Um, yes. They’re art. Not pornography.”
“Whatever.”
“C’mon, time to get a move on,” I said, slapping home the film carrier.
She looked at me now. It was a strange look. I wasn’t expecting it, though I see know it was a look from the place I had been working to get her (without really believing she would ever go there). You rub the lamp, because of the tales, but as a lark — and out comes the genie.
And she popped out of whatever bottle she’d been in. “What do you want me to do.”
I want you to go home, little girl. I want to pretend like nothing ever happened, which it hasn’t yet — has it? Like I said, Brian, it was like she’d lost her virginity. But the way she looked at me, it was a defiance, she was calling my bluff. Like she was daring me to deliver. No. That wasn’t quite it. I mean, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d called it off, backed out. But on the other hand, I still didn’t know if she’d actually go through with it. So there were two doors, Brian, and I asked myself, which door would I regret not opening the more?
Weeks or months or years from now, which one would cause me sleepless nights?
I knew this much, Brian. I regret so many opportunities, missed because of my reticence, my timidity, my lack of aggression.
So here goes.
“Okay. You need to loosen up a bit — yeah, I know, I know. It’s the toughest command, ‘act natural’. Umm I think you should have a little rum in that coke.” And I didn’t wait for her concurrence, I just got up, got the bottle of rum and poured a little into her glass. Just a little
And damned if she didn’t slug it back. I poured some more coke and added some rum.
“Can’t you put some decent music on at least?”
“Uh, yeah, sure — you don’t like this?” I’d picked a middle-of-the-road station. Eagles, Kenny Rogers.
“Do you?”
“I didn’t pick it for me.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“So what do you like?”
“Rock. You know. Rush. Ozzy Osbourne. Van Halen.”
“All right.” I went to the radio and spun the knob until something suitably metallic erupted from the speakers. “How’s that?”
She shrugged.
She got up and walked around, sipping her rum and coke, probing for the beat. I fussed with my gear. She drained off the rest of the glass, went to the sink and poured some water, drank that off.
She stood there, over the sink.
“All right, I’m set.” She looked at me, but didn’t move. What do I do now? Just say, “Strip”? I went to the closet and got out a dressing gown — a silk one, I never wore it, it was the sort of thing a Noel Coward character would play, which was not a role I could see myself in. “Here. Change into this.”
She took it, almost gratefully, and went into the bathroom.
I turned up the radio and poured myself some rum.
She was taking long enough. Like a swimmer poised to jump into cold water, unwilling to take the plunge. I finally knocked on the door. “You alive in there?” She opened the door even as I was knocking.
Silently she proceeded towards the backdrop. Heavy metal shriekers, Do you wanna be my lover! howling across the room. I switched on the lights. She turned and faced the camera. I leaned into the view-finder hood and adjusted the framing and focus.
“Okay, babe,” I croaked.
For just one night or for — evah!
She slipped off the robe to a cataclysm of power chords.
C’mon baby it’s now or nevah!
I snapped her, posed with hands folded over her mound.
The view-finder blanked, I advanced the film and the mirror dropped back down, restoring the image. She was still there, one hand over her face.
“Loosen up, babe,” I said soothingly. “You’re beautiful.”
C’mon and kick it out, uh! uh! kick it out!
I released the shutter again. Advanced.
Hand still over her face. Beads of moisture forming on her cheeks.
“Powder!”
But it was not sweat.