Long Day

My Wednesday calendar was full, but I was not feeling well.  I had intestinal cancer, I was certain, and I felt shitty all over.  As I must keep telling myself, though, we all have to die.  I've just been hoping it would be something quick.  My mother's continuing agony is a curse of some great sort.  I had a feeling, though, that intestinal cancer was not quick, and I have yet to score the demerol and the fentanyl patches.  I could only hope they would give me lots of morphine.  

"You're not feeling well, are you?" my mother asked me in the morning.  I didn't think it showed.  

"You've given me cancer.  No, not given it to me, but the stress has activated it.  I've already told you I'd be in the grave before you."

I didn't say that, though.  I just thought it.  

I made her breakfast and sat with her while I drank a cup of kefir.  She stares at me through her thick lenses that make her look bug-eyed.  It is unnerving.  It was then that she reminded me that the maid was coming.  Shit.  I had to hurry.  Put the bedsheets in the washer.  Start picking up the house.  

At eleven, I picked up my travel bag and reminded her of my day.  

"You still don't feel well, do you?"

At home, I put on my walking clothes and headed out the door.  The weather was uninspiring, an overcast, humid day.  I turned back.  There was nothing to photograph, but I needed to get back in the habit of carrying a camera.  You never know.  

Three and a half miles later, having crossed an empty Country Club College campus and come back down the Boulevard, I had snapped about ten pictures.  Maybe twelve.  I dumped them into the computer.  Eh.  Not bad. Nothing great, of course, but. . . .

I still wasn't feeling well, and I lay down on the bed and fell asleep.  When I woke, it was two.  I had an hour before I needed to be at the studio.  I still needed to shower, wash my hair, etc.  

My mother's house was on the way to the studio.  I stopped in to see how she was doing.  The maid was there working in the kitchen where my mother sat miserably.  I stayed for five minutes.  

I was the first one to the studio.  T called.  

"J.P. called and said he'd be about twenty five minutes late."  

I wasn't feeling well and thought about bolting.  They didn't need me for this shoot.  But T. kept me on the phone.  

"Man, I am not feeling well," I said.  "My gut has been bad all day."

"What?  Me, too!  I haven't eaten anything all day.  I keep cramping.  What the fuck have you given me?"

My spirits lifted a bit.  Maybe it wasn't cancer after all.  Maybe it was a stomach bug.  Good.  O.K.  I'd stay for the shoot.  

"I've brought a couple bottles of tequila and whiskey," he said.  

He pulled into the lot and I grabbed my camera bags.  I thought I'd run him through some things before J.P. got there.  We tried some poses, me telling him what I thought he shouldn't do.  Then J.P. came through the door.  

Let me tell you about J.P.  He came from Haiti, but you wouldn't know it by hearing him.  He has no accent at all.  He started out working in a high end men's clothing shop on the Boulevard.  From there, he did some modelling and started repping some clothing lines.  Now he owns five photo studios and is getting ready to open another in Nashville.  He was late because he had gone down to his studio in Miami for a photo shoot, then he decided to drive over to downtown Tampa to look over another studio that he is building there.  I can't stand driving across town anymore, so it was a marvel to me that he showed up at all.  He apologized for being late.  

"It's o.k.  We just got done shooting the nudes," I said, then I said something more lurid.

His eyes popped a little.  

He'd brought some clothes and T had brought some clothes and they began to go through them.  When I shot those first images of T, I noticed he was a little heavy under the eyes.  I asked J.P. if he had a makeup kit here.  

"I have makeup and hair people," he grinned, "but not here today." 

I told him T was showing some bags under his eyes.

"It's O.K.  I'll fix it in Photoshop."

J.P. and T are both model size, meaning everything fits them off the rack.  These are the bodies clothing companies make clothing for.  They went through the wardrobe and picked out a few looks.  J.P. styles a lot of men's fashion shoots, T has told me.  He knows clothes.  Still, I was stunned.  I know the size of the crews Sky works with on a catalog shoot.  I asked J.P. about that.  

"When you've done catalog modeling, how big was the crew?"

It was the same.  Hair, makeup, clothing, set design, photographer and assistants.  

We were ready.  J.P. had a very casual style.  No big setup.  No instructions.  Just "stand here."  We were shooting with window light.  The room seemed very dark, but I checked my camera and everything was fine.  J.P.  began.  

clickclickclickclickclikclikclik

He shot in burst mode on his Sony camera.  It surprised me that he used Sony, but as I watched him, I was impressed.  He had that little camera dialed in.  He never looked through the viewfinder.  Those Sony's have the quickest autofocus of any camera, and I thought that must be the reason for his choice.  

clickclickclickclickclikclikclik

I was working in my old ways, more slowly and deliberately.  We looked at one another's camera images.  They were different.  I was mostly staying out of the way, shooting full body head to toe with a lot of space around T.  He had two cameras, one with a wide angle lens and the other with a portrait length.  He shot close up getting a lot of torso and head shots.  I was watching the light.  At one point, T was wearing a hat.  The brim was putting his eyes in the shadows, so I said.  J.P. said, "yea," and started to adjust some things.  

"If we had a bounce card. . . " I said.  He went in back and got a white reflector.  We adjusted some things.  O.K.  Good.  I wasn't just a hack.  I pointed out some shadows, chose some minimal props.  T changed outfits.  Dark blue jeans, a tan t-shirt, and a jacket.  He put on brown shoes.  They were wrong, I thought.  

"What do you think," J.P. asked me.  

"I think it would look better if he were barefoot with the bottom of his pants rolled."

That's what I thought, but this was not my thing.  J.P. was a stylist, but. . . . 

"Yea. . . you're right."

He was a very cordial and relaxed fellow.  He knew what he was doing and confidence will do that for some.  Others might be cocky assholes, but J.P. was gracious.  I was glad to be there.  I was learning something valuable.  The lesson was that this shit doesn't have to be difficult.  I worry far too much.  He started off in this in his twenties.  Now, at thirty-five, working constantly, he had no trepidations or fears.  Creatively, I am driven by fear.  That hasn't worked out so well, though, other than to protect my ego. 

We were half a bottle of whiskey in now, and T was loosening up.  At forty-seven, he is a "mature model" which is what these clothing companies were selling right now.  I think he was doing fine.  He has the build.  He had the look.  

After a couple hours, we were done.  I had come in feeling bad, and as always after a two hour shoot, I was exhausted.  Old and sick and tired.  But the day wasn't over.  We still had gymroid happy hour.  I still needed to get back to my mother's house.  I had to put her eight o'clock meds together and feed her.  

As I was packing up, J.P. said he wanted to come over to my house and sit and talk.  I told him I had a shit ton of strobe lighting that was just sitting and not being used.  He wants to see that and my thousands of cameras and just talk.  He said he wanted to "work something out."  I'm not sure what all that meant.  I think it meant my being able to use his studios, but there is something else.  

In truth, I don't believe any of this will happen.  

I was sitting with my mother having dinner when T called.  

"How do you think it went?" he asked.  

"I think it was fine.  J.P. knew what he was doing."

"He said he guaranteed me that they would use some of the images in the catalog.  He is sending me a bunch of their clothing line."

"Cool.  Yea."

"I can't wait to see your pictures," he said.  

"Yea, well. . . his are going to be more of what clothing companies are looking for."

"No, man. . . I want to use yours to send to Buck Mason."

"Yea. . . we'll see."

Surprising to both of us, we said our bellies felt better.  I'm not a bourbon drinker, but the Buffalo Trace had gone down well.  

He was on his way to meet the boys.  I said I'd try to catch up.  Mother and I finished dinner and I cleaned up the kitchen.  

"O.K.  I don't want to, but I gotta go."

My mother looked glum.  She only has two looks now, glum and glummer.

"Are you coming back?"

"Jesus Christ.  Yes. . . I'll be back."

A fifteen minute three mile drive in traffic.  I got two calls asking where I was.  When I finally got there, the idiots were sitting at the outside bar so that the judge was at one end, five seats from where I sat on the other.  

"I kinda thought you'd have sense enough to get a table."

"Oh."

The beautiful bartender who hates me was working.  

"She was real sweet to me when I came up," T said.  

"She won't be now.  I'll never get a drink."

"I'll get her," he said.  

When she finally came over, she sneered at me.  "Do you want something to drink?"

"Sure. I'll have a vodka martini."

When it came, it had no olives.  And there was no smile.

"Why does she hate you," T asked in wonder.

"Beats me.  Must be chemical."

We watched her smiling and laughing with the other customers.  It took me five minutes to get two olives on a stick.  The boys ordered food.  I settled back on my end of the line.  The conversation was all going the other way.  It was o.k.  I looked around, watched the crowd.  

"Do you want some pizza?"

T had ordered a "carnivore's" pizza or some such thing.  I took a piece.  It was really good.  

These were money boys, and they were talking money shit, who was who and who had invested in what. . . .  They were cocksure boys now, and I was a hippie sitting at the end of an abandoned line.  It didn't matter.  At least I didn't have an opinion.  Sitting with my academic Woke friends, I would have, and it would have landed me in a bruha of trouble.  But I was getting tired now.  This was not a night of adventure and daring, so after the judge, a man of my exact age, had snuck around to the bar and picked up the tab, I said I, too, had to go.  

"Gotta get mom her meds and put her to bed."

And with that I left them and limped off in the dark of night to find my mother's car.  

I got back to her house just before Trump gave his speech.  Oh, boy. . . it was a good one.  I hadn't realized how well things were going.  I guess I'd been listening to that mainstream press.  

It doesn't matter what he says or how he says it.  It doesn't matter that he is obviously deranged.  His poll numbers don't matter.  He can tell nothing but a lie, but it doesn't matter.  I watched the CNN analysis after his speech. . . but it didn't matter.  Somewhere, people were celebrating.  They were having fun.  Even those who voted for him say he is despicable, but that doesn't matter.  People hate the left and their transgender/DEI/finger pointing ways.  

"We were here first, and we want our culture back!"

I went to bed exhausted knowing I had little to do the next day and was grateful for it.  But I'll get a look at the pictures I shot yesterday knowing they won't match J.P.s.  I just hope I got something.