THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Nudes, pornography, First Foot, Billy Idol, Self and Other
I matched with a photographer on the sex app, but not for sex. He was making a smut zine and asked me if I would like to be photographed for it. He shoots his subjects (individuals, couples, groups, etc.) on film, makes an edit for his subjects to review, and prints the final selection in a zine. The zine’s distribution is very limited: only those photographed receive copies and no one is permitted to copy or distribute the images to others. The subjects are free to determine the scenario under which they’d like to be photographed: having sex, dressed in a certain fetishistic style, or doing something that otherwise turns them on.
I thought against it, at first: my objective as a user on the sex app is, above all, to have sex, which was not on the table. And crucially, I felt I’d had nothing to offer in the way of content: first, I am single and couldn’t think of anyone who would want to be photographed fucking me. And second, I do not have a particular style to showcase—I’m not, say, a latex, rope, or lingerie enthusiast, and wouldn’t have any of these props anyway, save for one or two pieces of lingerie I hardly wear—nor do I have any physical assets I really want to show off. There would be nothing for him to photograph.
Curiosity and boredom prevailed, however, as always. Smut, as a genre, interests me: I like its gonzo quality—the DIY ingenuity of it all—and I like that smut inspires in its creators a sort of imaginative perversity.1 Smut makers will find a way to make anything erotic, make do with the limitations of their living spaces, physical appearances—they have the gift (or the curse) of seeing, and drawing out, the erotic potential in anything. And, of course, I just wanted to see if I could do it, see what it was like to be photographed this way.
I wrote back to say that I was interested and we exchanged numbers.
*****
The photographer and I met at a bar in Brooklyn. He was seated alone at the far end of the bar, writing in a notebook, a 35mm camera resting beside it on the countertop. He wore dark-rimmed, “big stupid glasses,” as he described in his text to me so that I might identify him, a chunky knitted sweater, corduroys. He was dressed neatly—his clothing looked well-maintained, practical, properly fitted. His hair is shaggy and his beard is mostly gray—a look that makes him look older, but he is younger than I am. I felt assured by his self-possession, his refinement; he did not strike me as creepy.
The photographer had the demeanor of an anthropologist in the field, or a therapist: he was friendly and warm, but subdued, a practiced observer of people. I think photographers are like writers due to their tendency to observe others voraciously, to vampirize—at worst—their interactions for their work.2 I felt apprehensive around him the way I might around another writer—I believed he was capable of clocking aspects of my body language, manner of speaking, dress, that betrayed my True Nature, whatever’s beneath the social performance. He could perceive, I thought, the micro-expressions over which I have little control, which escape my attention—exactly the sort of thing that the camera captures. But I’d entered this meeting willing to risk being seen by someone else—impossible, anyway, to control all aspects of one’s self-presentation—and decided to relinquish control, resist the temptation to Meryl Streep my way through a non-date by affecting as much pleasantness as possible, lobbing chit chat at a person.
The photographer steered the conversation toward practical matters, interview-like: what drew me to the project and why was I interested in participating?
I told him that I’d never been photographed before, not in this context, and wanted to try it, see what would happen, see if I could do it at all. I told him that it would be a challenge as I’m not particularly comfortable, not natural, in front of a camera.
“Do you ever take photos of yourself?” he asked.
I take nudes, I said, but I adhere to convention: they look like any nude you’ve seen on the internet. I take them for practical reasons: to get some man to fuck me or for money. But I send them gratis if I think an in-person meet-up is imminent, or as a gesture of good will for out-of-town, Migratory Birds who see me when they are in NYC for work. There’s little pleasure in it for me: I find it tedious to take off my clothing, trim or remove body hair that might be visible in the photo, find a good angle, adjust the lighting, make it all look very effortless, natural.
“Do you include your face?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” I said, “if I do, it’s obscured by my phone, which I hold in front of my face.”
“It’s not because I’m concerned about privacy or anonymity,” I continued, “I have tons of nudes in the ether, and I’m easily identifiable through my tattoos. I just don’t like to show my face because I’m not good at controlling my expression. I worry that my face will show that I’m bored or annoyed at having to take a nude at all.”
I find my face stubborn to work with; it cannot hold a conventionally attractive expression and I have never learned how to affect one, how to pose. When I take a photo, it almost always captures my face in an instance of consummate plainness or outright ugliness: something is always off about my gaze, the shape of my mouth, my chin multiplies into two.3 A string of contiguous unattractive moments, my life. However these instances, when taken together like a film, amount to a coherent presentation of self—there is a kind of beauty in this, in the animated gesture. But the photographic fragment, for me, is almost never beautiful, never ideal. Always a minor miracle when I look nice in a photo.4
“Have you ever had someone take photos of you?” he asked.
Yes, I said. I’ve allowed men to take photos of me: they’ll ask me to pose a certain way or ask if they can take a photo while they’re fucking me. But these photos are different from the photographer’s project, too: these men are not trying to make an interesting picture, to capture some ineffable fact about me or our sexual encounter—they’re (solely) taking a photograph that they can use to jerk off later.
These men offer to send me the photos they take but I always refuse: I don’t want them on my phone and I hate to look at myself. It’s embarrassing to see what I look like when I’m having sex; it’s like looking at a photo of yourself running or working out—you’re not in control of your face or your body language. A photograph of sex, when taken by an unskilled photographer, never looks like how it felt. It always looks banal, clumsy, and I cannot help examining my body with an ungenerous, critical eye.
“Seeing myself in a photograph is like hearing a recording of my voice: it never sounds the way it did in my head,” I said, “and I never look the way I think I do.”
“How do you think your friends would describe you?” the Photographer asked, therapist-like.
“I think they would say I’m friendly, kind, have a sense of humor. That I’m chill, even though I never feel very chill to myself.”
“I’ve been described by a friend as both ‘Number One Party Guest’ and ‘shameless,’” I added.
“How would your partners describe you?” asked the Photographer.
I hesitated. I don’t really know what my partners think of me, it turns out. No one has ever told me what they think and I’ve never asked.
“Well, I think they’d say I’m demanding, that I have high expectations, that I’m a poor communicator, hard to read. Selfish, perhaps. I tend to come off very easy-going and fun in the beginning, but can become very serious. Probably a little dictatorial, but the type of dictator who gives you the silent treatment, expects you to read their mind.”
“I’ve been told,” I continued, “that I am ‘Not Boring,’ and ‘impatient.’ And I know that I was, at some point, saved in this man’s phone as ‘Throat GOAT’ with the clapping hands emoji.”
The Photographer, my makeshift Therapist, took this in.
I felt affected by these questions, somewhat sad, because I felt estranged from myself: I’d never tried to describe, or tried to understand holistically, how I think my closest relations view me.5
“It sounds like you’re interested in perception, given the way you’ve talked about your friends and partners. And the way you compared being seen or photographed to hearing a recording of your voice. There’s a gap between the way you perceive yourself and the way others see you, the way you regard yourself in a photograph.”
“So I think,” he continued, “it might be interesting to photograph you in your apartment, an environment that’s yours, in which you feel safe. But only if you are OK with that. I’m not trying to invite myself over.”
I was impressed—he’d been listening very closely, this therapist / photographer. And, importantly, his idea took the pressure of doing something off of me. I’d let my surroundings, my apartment, do the heavy lifting. I wanted to avoid Performing as much as possible.
“I think that’s a great idea, I love it,” I said, “the only thing is that I have to clean my apartment now. It’s a fucking disaster.”
“Don’t tidy up too much,” he said, “it should look like you.”
*****
The photographer and I met, as planned, at a bar near my apartment, where we would get a drink before going to my place.
I didn’t feel nervous—my heart wasn’t racing, I didn’t feel self-conscious—but I was concerned that I wouldn’t know what to do in front of the camera. I decided: I’m going to let him direct me. And left it at that. Ideal, really, in that I like to be told what to do during sex.
This time, at the bar, there were no interview questions. I learned more about his life: he’d lived in NYC for many years before returning to New England, where he grew up. He makes furniture and does renovations to pay the bills. We discussed shitty new build interiors, the Greige Aesthetic and its ubiquity in renovations. How it pains him to replace original hardwood with tile, or composite wood flooring in a different color, so as to give his clients the algorithm-driven, pinterest aesthetic they’ve paid him to execute. We discussed photography, his non-smut work, which I admire. I like the way he looks at people on the street. He has an eye for graceful arrangements of trash, the way Built Environments frame pedestrians, the body language of people loitering or waiting, his particular attention to textures like hair, fur coats, wool, mylar.
*****
When we got to my apartment, I offered the photographer some Japanese gin that my friend had just given me and did what I always do when I am stalling: I started chatting ceaselessly. Incredible when I find myself doing this; it turns out I have an endless well of shit to say when I’m keen on avoiding something. I asked him about his cameras, told him how I got my rent-stabilized apartment, discussed the books on my shelf, I made him listen to a seven-minute extended remix of Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face.”6
“Are you nervous?” the Photographer asked. He clocked me.
I was. My heart was not racing—physically, I felt calm, perhaps because I was in my own space—but I felt anxious, like I was underprepared for a test.
“I have to admit,” I said, “that I don’t know what to do.”
“Would you like me to tell you what to do?” he asked.
“Please.”
Thank god. I felt the pressure lift. But I also felt that the boundary between me and the Photographer had shifted because I love being told what to do. (But only during sex.)
“Take off your clothes, but do it very slowly,” he said, raising his camera.
Oh, no. I thought. Now I want to fuck him.
I am bad at taking off my clothing slowly. Bad at slowness in general. This is a thing: while some men are amused by the alacrity with which I take off my clothes, some have asked me to put my clothes back on because I took them off too quickly. They want to take it off themselves or watch me remove my clothing again, but slower. Or they want me to take it off and put it back on again, over and over, until I achieve a satisfactory degree of slowness.
I peeled off my shirt, my jeans, as glacially as I could; it was still too fast. I tried to remove my bra, one strap—slow—then the next, but already the only thing left to do was to undo the clasp. I tried to slip out of my underwear carefully, letting it slide down my thigh. A professional, or someone with more imagination for slowness, probably could have dragged this out for ten minutes.7 But I was out of my clothing in like two minutes flat.
The Photographer asked me to lie down in bed, so I did. I lay there, hesitating.
He paused. “What would make you feel more at ease right now?”
I’d wondered, throughout the evening, if he would make a pass at me. But he was strictly business, focused on taking pictures. In that moment, however, I wanted him to fuck me very badly. It would be a script for me to follow and I felt that it would, in truth, help me relax.
“Without you touching me?” I allowed myself to ask.
“Yes, without touching you,” the Photographer replied.
God damn it.
I closed my eyes—shut myself out of the moment—tried to reorganize my thoughts, re-strategize.
“Why don’t you touch yourself?” the photographer suggested.
I’d had a feeling that would be what I’d end up doing—masturbating. Because what else is there to do? And after all we’d decided that the frame, the organizing principle for this shoot, would be me.
I kept my eyes closed while I touched myself, tried to stay focused, forget about the presence of the photographer, the camera. I regretted, fleetingly, the fact that I’d had no sex toys, no gear, no lube—I’d bagged it all up and given them to my ex, months ago, to remove from my apartment so I wouldn’t be reminded of him.
“I like the way your body is moving,” the photographer murmured, camera shutter clicking.
Now there is something to photograph, I thought.
It doesn’t take long for me to make myself cum—I know how to do it, having been alone much of my adult life. Like removing my clothing, I am very expedient at finishing myself off.
I opened my eyes and turned to him, hand on my chest, feeling my heart beat: “I’m going to write about this, you know.”8
“I know,” he said.
*****
As the Photographer packed up, I told him about how I wished, half-seriously, that I’d gotten into pornography when I was in my twenties, back when pornography was still being produced in California. And now it’s too late: everything has a social media model, is subscription based, oversaturated. I’m also no longer young. He told me about this European company that pays “normal couples” a flat fee for sex videos. All you have to do, he said, is “light the scene properly.” Intriguing. As I am too old, now, to sell my eggs for cash, it was reassuring to know one could, in theory, still make some money with a Sex Tape on the internet.
The photographer told me he’d be in touch with an edit sometime down the line, that it would be a while since he needed to remain in the city for at least another month to finish a renovation project.
I am not particularly worried about the way the photographs will turn out, or how long it will be until I see them if at all. Though the photographs themselves might be great—skillfully framed and selected—I accept that my appearance may not be pleasing to me. However, I am hopeful that they will help show me something unrecognizable, help me see myself with greater clarity.
*****
POSTSCRIPT: There is a Scottish folk belief that the first person to enter your home in the new year / on new year’s day, the “First Foot,” will either a. bring good fortune or b. portend the theme or your fate for the new year.9 My First Foot is the photographer. What does this portend? Perhaps this year, already a quarter over, will be about enforcing and or respecting boundaries, Not Having Sex, Pleasing Myself, and trying to understand myself better, through the Other.
**********
STRAY TOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS:
Here is a good, French cover of Chris and Cosey’s “October Love Song.” It sounds especially onanistic en Français.
I’m deep in SAD GIRL WINTER / SPRING. So here is a literary song by Electronic, a Manchester supergroup (with Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner), featuring Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys <3.
I have a small collection of beefcake magazines, old bondage ephemera. When tumblr was still a thing, I was obsessed with scans of illustrations from Japanese S&M magazines.
I, at least, am guilty of this, as is evident by the existence of this blog. I even made a bootleg shirt—based on a meme—about this: “careful or you’ll end up in my novel.” Men who have found out that I write this blog have mixed responses: some are enthusiastic, curious about my sexual history/preferences and thoughts on other men, want to talk to me about it. Many others are apprehensive, worried that I will write about them in an uncomplimentary, biased fashion, expose them to scrutiny. One man terminated our relationship because he’d discovered this blog and couldn’t believe I’d “put all this personal stuff out there.” “Why,” he asked rhetorically, “are all the men the Bad Guys?” “You’re probably going to write about me,” he said, genuinely upset. “Probably,” I said. I may still write about him, but for now, he shall be relegated to a footnote in a post about nudes.
I have never particularly liked my face, have been through periods of my life where I actively despised it. But I accept it now. Growing up, I hated how round it was, how lacking in angular, Western contours. Makeup did very little to alter the broad, round fact of my face, the narrowness of my eyes. I hated the flatness of my nose. I hated my resting bitch face, wished my cheeks didn’t weigh down the corners of my mouth so much. When I looked at relatives and saw in their appearance aspects of my face that I disliked, I realized that my hatred for my face was rooted in hatred of myself, my family, the things that make me who I am. My face, as I age, has become slightly narrower thanks to its waning collagen levels: my flesh now hangs looser on my skull, creating, for once, the tiniest contour in my cheekbones. Increasing proximity to death? Giving me the Smaller Face I’ve always wanted. I’ll never see The Substance, but I assume the titular treatment will be unnecessary for me: aging is helping me like my physical form more. I like that I am ugly and beautiful at the same time, like a duck/bunny.
I have roughly five Nice Photos, and they’re all in my dating app profile.
There is a taped interview of Krzysztof Kieślowski in which he considers the questions “Who are you,” and “what do you want.” This makes him somber, grave. He says: “I realized that I didn’t have any answers. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know what I want. If anything, I’d like some peace and quiet, but I’ve never achieved it, and I probably never will. So I will never have what I really want.”
The “Eyes Without a Face” remix by Psychemagik (stupid name) riffs on the dreamlike quality of its source material, the endless return of its melody, and draws out the song’s instrumental motifs for several minutes before the vocals only come in, almost three minutes into the song. I honestly think it’s great.
I’d had a chat once with this girl who used to dance at one of the strip clubs on the West Side Highway. I asked her about her technique, how she danced: she said that she didn’t really know how to do acrobatics on the pole. “All I do,” she said, “is move to the music very, very slowly.”
The Photographer is aware of this blog’s existence, but refrained from reading it. He wanted to go in with fresh eyes, he said, didn’t want to be influenced by my writing here.
Perhaps an alternative to First Foot (through the threshold): First Foot in the pussy, a kind of threshold. This is a much more expedient fortune-telling option: I have more visitors there than I do to my apartment. First Foot ITP was a drummer about ten years older than me who plays in a rock band, loves Ween, and (incredibly, against all odds) makes a living performing in random jazz gigs. What does this portend? Perhaps it means the year is going to be Very Casual, random, have weirdo energy, (incredibly, against all odds) be booked up. Ali Wong has a bit in Baby Cobra about how her body is very much not a “secret garden” but a “public park that has hosted many reggae fests.” If Ali Wong’s body is a reggae fest, then mine is a jazz fest: all January it has been Jazz musicians. (I don’t even particularly like Jazz; it just turned out this way.) I’ve hosted a jazz drummer, a jazz guitarist, and a jazz pianist. All I need is a double bass player. My friend E: “you should get them together to form a band.”
I loved this. You have such a great tempo and voice in your writing.