Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (29 page)

So I was a wee bit bitter. Okay, a lot bitter. But, don’t get me wrong—I love a good bargain. I’m all about the savings card. It’s like found money, but I’m no coupon girl. They get you, first, by leading you to their store for your shopping expedition. Now you’re not just their customer, you’re their bitch, buying things you wouldn’t ordinarily purchase because who can say no to two dollars off? You go home with products you’ll never use, stashing the Flex shampoo under the sink, and maneuvering the twenty-pound bags of long-grain rice behind the boxes of lasagna noodles. Now you have assorted meat varieties of soup and a Sara Lee ham with no home. When your apartment lease is up, you’ll move and feel good about all the clutter you’ve just banished from under and behind things. Coupons lead to Under, Between, and Behind. You shouldn’t need coupons to get under and between things during sex, and don’t get me started with behind. That’s a whole ’nother chapter.

“I’M GOING TO JUST ASSUME YOU’LL READ THE TEXTBOOK
chapters on your own because we’re not going to cover them in class. And I trust you’ve all read the first three chapters for today as the syllabus instructed.” I had nerd-up’d her and completed the first five.

Class met on Wednesday nights at 6
P.M.
in a square glass cube of a building, the kind I’d always imagined when I heard the word
modern
. I felt important being there, sliding my ID card past security with a smile and a nod that looked routine. I clutched my strap and drew the body of my camera closer to my core as I pressed through the halls of framed photos toward my classroom.

The halls were my favorite part of arriving each week. I’d read the small off-white rectangles beside each student’s work to see what they’d named their prints. Grainy black-and-white silver gelatin prints of people sleeping:
REM
. The sheen of an empty unmade bed:
Insomnia
. A foot peeking out from a lip of sheet:
Sunday
. Each photograph told a story. I wondered what mine would be and if I’d need more than one word to tell it.

I felt invigorated in the contemporary building where creative minds and hands met, a more organized, clean, and inspired version of myself. “I’m going to be good at this,” I thought as I took my seat.

My professor’s name was Kimberlee, despite being a Canadian woman in her midforties who pronounced
batteries
as “batt-rees.” I was mesmerized by her voice. It was smooth and oozy, like a smear of Camembert on a round paddle knife.

“Yes, I have a question about something I read in the textbook,” a balding man with a long ponytail who looked like an employee at Hogs & Heifers said hesitantly. Her eyebrows lifted and chin pointed toward him, signaling he should continue with his question. “Is it really possible to set the camera to manual focus while it’s in the automatic program mode?”

“Yes, of course,” she responded. Her eyes looked like broad butter beans. “The two have nothing to do with each other. The program mode of a single lens reflex camera, or SLR, is like asking your camera to behave as if it were a point and shoot. There’s no thinking involved. There’s no customization or accommodation for aperture or shutter speed in that mode. You’d have to turn the dial to aperture priority, shutter speed priority, or manual for that type of control. Now, the focus setting, on the other hand, has nothing to do with exposure. You can switch focus to either manual or automatic. Can anyone think of a situation where you’d want to turn your focus to manual?” She was standing behind me now. She smelled like what I imagined cardamom smelled like.

We all looked cautiously at one another across the table. I raised my hand half-staff, unsure of what I’d say, my answer still forming. “Because sometimes you aren’t sure what your focus should be until you really look around.”

“Very good. Another reason to use manual focus is sometimes our cameras hunt for a subject when the lighting isn’t good. It’s hard for the camera to focus in the dark.” I felt as if she were talking about my life. “Any more questions before I begin with the slides?”

She took our silence as a “no,” flipped off the lights, and switched on a slide projector packed with her travel photography. She clicked through tribal images, gray ash on skin, paint, feathers, and fire, without a word on where we ought to focus. She just clicked through images, slowly at first, with a metered rhythm. Then at frenetic speeds, where my eyes weren’t sure of the story it ought to construct. A boy in underwear, his legs propped up on a sofa. Etchings on a cave wall. A ski cap revealing an eye stitched closed. A goldfish dangling from the pinch of two fingers. My mind filled in blanks. Vietnam rice hats, a modern crop on a woman’s hand holding a rooster, pink light on weathered skin. This is what I wanted to do, to explore, to be where she’d been. To capture gestures and evoke emotion.

“Rites of passage,” she said on a blank dark slide. “Every culture has them, whether it’s swallowing a live goldfish in college or being forced to drink the creamy blood of your father.” Ew, man, she just said creamy blood, and I was still listening? “We all remember our own passages with some element of clarity.” I remembered when my best friend from high school was slapped in the face by her mother when she’d first gotten her period. It was their tradition. My house didn’t have any. My rite of passage happened, and I cried. Then my mother handed me a maxi pad and promised she wouldn’t tell my father after I’d pleaded with her in a red-faced tantrum. Not exactly the behavior of a woman.

“Circumcision,” she continued. “Knocking out teeth. They’re rites, painful transformations reminding us we cannot go back. It’s time to stow our childish delights away to accommodate new responsibilities.” When she said
new
, a black-and-white studio shot of an engagement ring appeared on screen.

I’d undergone the ceremonial ritual of marriage before fully coming into my own as a whole woman.

“In Joseph Campbell’s conversation with Bill Moyers, he discusses the aborigines in Australia and their celebrated rite of passage,” she continued, now on a slide of a naked man’s torso covered in white down. “Campbell spoke of naked men using blood as glue to decorate their bodies in thin strips of white feathers. The men would surround a young boy, cowering in his mother’s embrace, and cleave him from her arms. They’d then force him to drink the blood of men to polarize the effects of the breast milk he’d fed on for years. He’s no longer his mother’s son. Now he’s his father’s son.”

Gabe needed to feed on blood to grow up. If I’d only known! “In Catholicism, it’s confirmation.” An image of Jesus on the crucifix appeared. “The Jews have bar mitzvahs.” The Hamesh Hand dangled from a gold chain, sandwiched in cleavage. “These puberty rights served to prepare adolescents for their new role in life.” She flipped on the lights. “Now is your chance, each of you, to explore the rites you’ve been given, the freedoms you enjoy, and to find your voice through photography while you’re still adolescents on the subject. What will your creative expression be?”

I was suddenly struck by an intense desire to kiss her. Her passion excited me. I couldn’t stop staring. I clung to her words. It was a girl crush. I was in awe of her dedication and passion, the way the words formed as they left her mouth. I wanted everything she saw, to capture things the way she had. I was mesmerized by her fervor and lust for life. Her images were rich and saturated with pigment. I couldn’t imagine ever being depressed around a woman like this. My God, this was what I wanted to become, to find in myself.

Yes, I wanted a man to share all my “new” with, but I had a strong sense I wouldn’t be ready for a relationship until I became a professional at handling the manual controls of my life. Later that night, though, once I arrived home, I received another nerve.com e-mail from AperturePriority. It seemed he wouldn’t take “rain check” for an answer. He countered with a poem by David Miller, “The Quiet Ways of Water,” and attached a black-and-white photograph of a window pane enhanced by beads of rain.

No, Stephanie. Don’t even think about it. I was tempted because what if he were as passionate as my photography instructor? I thanked him again for his offer but decided, for the time being, I’d sit back and do my thing, enjoying my moments, camera in hand. It didn’t stop us from e-mailing and instant messaging daily as friends, but it did allow me to spend more time rounding new corners, exploring the city through my lens, like a kid peeking beneath a heavy rock.

In the two-plus months that passed since I ended things with Oliver and embraced the dreaded “alone,” I enjoyed exploring the city by myself without having to apologize for wanting to stay late or leave early. I circled live music events in the About Town sections of magazines with the fervor of a college graduate in pursuit of a job. I’d go alone to prove I could, that it would be okay. Once I realized alone was a choice, not something about which to be embarrassed, I embraced it in more intimate settings. I’d try a new restaurant, something with linen and a notable wine list. I tumbled into random plays. Cooking classes!
Look, Mom, no hands!

In the past, when I was involved in relationships, I didn’t realize I could get that need for “new” satiated without involving myself with a man. I adored learning about people, following their gestures, and lingering on their observations, but as soon as I entered a relationship, that learning process was stymied. I associated “new” with flirting and mischief and wasn’t aware it could exist outside a romantic relationship. Now I’ve learned new can come from friendships. From volunteering. From reading and a host of classes. From sitting at a bar, observing, listening, overhearing other dramas. From meeting other women—imagine? Out alone!—at a bar and hearing their stories and what they’d been through. It didn’t just come in the body of a classy gentleman. It came from creating a rich life for myself, filling my time with activities that satisfied my needs.

Wandering the city, with camera in tow, was my first stab at a journey with an unknown destination—well, if you don’t count life itself.

Photography fit. It was storytelling and let me leave my own crowded head and enjoy the moment. Instead of crafting a story through information architecture and advertising web design alone, I could express my stories with photographs, in stops of light. In those quiet orange evenings of observation, I became more aware of mannerisms, behavior, the way we flirt with napkins and eyes. Drinking through straws. It became about capturing a moment with a snap and click of a shutter curtain. In that small stop of time, I could explain what I’d seen and felt without having to articulate a word.

YES
WAS THE WORD I FINALLY USED MID-MARCH TO RESPOND
to AperturePriority’s e-mail.

Screw it. He was right. In our weeks of e-mails, phone calls, and daily instant messages, I’d grown to refer to Stephen as my
friendboy
, not to be confused with boyfriend. I might as well meet the guy.

“Well, as long as our meeting isn’t a date, then fine.”

“Give it whatever name you’d like. I’d just like to see this unbalanced redhead I’ve gotten to almost know these past few…”

“Yes.” And that was that.

After my class, I met him at ’Cesca on the Upper West Side. He was broader than his photo had hinted. His eyes bluer. His smile affectionately boyish. His hair decidedly more salt than pepper. He smelled like warm laundry. We folded into comfortable conversation with ease, sharing an order of polenta with wild mushrooms, taking turns swiping crusty hunks of sourdough through our bowl. I was still hungry.

“You’re still hungry, aren’t you?” I liked him, right there, in that moment. “God, me too!” He touched my leg. “Want to order the paella?” No. I loved him, right there, in that moment. I touched his arm. His skin was soft. I wanted to nap with him.

A lobster head sat between us, beads of yellow rice clinging to mussel shells. More wine. He walked me home. I texted him when I was finally upstairs and he was in a cab on his way home. “I really can’t wait to see you again.”

This was
bad
.

I WASN’T READY TO DATE! WHAT, YOU TAKE A FEW CLASSES
and now you’re this whole woman, full of esteem? Just like that? No! I knew I wasn’t ready to date because I was still so desperate to do so.
Need
. So in the weeks that followed, when Stephen reached out, I spun away. We’d still meet for lunch or drinks, and sometimes we’d hit a movie on a Sunday afternoon, but I withdrew, serving up a litany of excuses. “I have to wake up early.” “Linus is waiting for me.” “My apartment’s a mess.” We were nondating, and he knew it.

I didn’t have to make any excuses when Smelly invited me to the Scope Art Fair after-party, where emerging artists, curators, and dealers would be celebrating the close of the exhibition. “Come,” she urged, “and bring your camera. There’ll be a bunch of freaks there.” I didn’t need convincing. The party was on the roof of the not-yet-open Hotel Gansevoort. They’d converted the rooms of the hotel into galleries, showcasing the Scope art. I wondered how the interior decorator of the hotel determined the type of creative work used to adorn the suite room walls once the fair was over. I wondered aloud, actually, to one of the owners of the hotel. He was a friend of Smelly.

“Well, our interior designer is the wife of the hotel’s architect, and I’m pretty sure she’s still making decisions where the room art is concerned,” he said after posing for a photograph with one of his partners. I’d learned never to travel without my camera, in fear of
needing
to photograph a moment and later kicking myself for not having it on me. “Just submit your portfolio, and I’m sure she’ll get back to you one way or another.” I thanked him, and two days later, I did just that.

How much of success comes down to what you know, whom you know, or how and when you do it? Would the wife of the architect be the hotel’s interior designer if she weren’t his wife? Did he simply open the door for her, and the follow-through was up to her? I’d found simply by pursuing my passions, unexpected opportunities were revealed. It wasn’t a cocktail of two-thirds timing and a dash of whom you know. All of it played a part, and it seemed that mine was taking a risk, assembling a portfolio, and submitting it for review. I’d exhausted weekend hours dodging and burning in the photography lab. During the week, I worked past dawn, noodling with Photoshop filters and adjusting hues. It never felt like work. So the very last thing I thought about while attending the Scope party was “working the room.” Opportunities presented themselves like a fanned-out deck of cards.

The evening of the Scope party, Patrick McMullen had approached me. I didn’t know who he was, only that he liked my hair and wanted me to attend a Saint Patrick’s Day party he’d be hosting. He flipped me his card and urged me to come. “With that red hair,” he’d said while inspecting one of my locks, “you must come.” When I showed his card to Smelly later that night, she gasped.

“Steph, that’s the famous fashion photographer! I mean, he does fashion week, Bryant Park, the whole deal. Are you going to go?”

Of course I’d go.
The
Patrick McMullen was personally inviting me to his party. He was doing exactly what I hoped to be doing one day: making a living by pursuing his passion.

Gay Max and I attended Patrick’s shindig days later. I hoped I’d have a chance to speak with him again. Perhaps he had an opening for a photographer to join his staff. It couldn’t hurt to ask. Once I arrived at the party, though, I realized any “asking” would have to be done in a shout. His party was hardly jazz and candlelight. Green stout, paper shamrocks, grunge rocker musicians, and oodles of photographers, cameras in tow, flooded the “no cameras permitted” venue.

“How did you snag an invite to this?” Gay Max asked, eyeing me with a look of amusement.

“Heh. I knew you’d love it, even if it is fancy shmancy,” I mocked. “The host invited me because of my red hair,” I said with a toss of it. “Oh, don’t ask. It’s not like I know him.”

“What, he thought you were Irish or sumtin’?”

I rolled my eyes and raised my apple martini. “Here’s to green adult beverages and to being a Quarterican Jew who looks Irish.”

“And to models!” Max added as his head turned to follow the direction of a sultry brunette.

We clinked glasses and pecked at our drinks, watching beautiful people not eat. “I’ll be back,” Max said while balancing his martini. “I’ve got to go tinkle.” In his absence, I surveyed the scene through my telephoto lens. Spike-haired men in funky T-shirts and canvas shoes looked just past everyone they passed. Waifs applied waitress-red lipstick and pouted, afraid to smudge any on their teeth with a smile. The “under twenty-one” boy-candy himbos must’ve known someone working the door. They feigned older with the aid of some gum, chewing hard to compensate for their undeveloped jaw lines. Then there were the older gentlemen whose only chance of meeting women was to attend to the forty-five-year-old urban cougars, too botoxed to give ’em the eye. Still, one of the ascot-clad gents wasn’t exactly shy about approaching me.

“So, how are ya dare?” A silver-haired, tangerine-faced man asked thickly as he licked milky beer foam from his upper lip.

“I’m good, and you?”

“Fine. Fine.” He raised his voice over the din of the band. “I was just wondrin’ if you’ve got a red carpet,” the Oompa-Loompa slurred.

“What?” Maybe I’d heard wrong. “Do I shoot the red carpet?”

“No. No, dearie.” He waved his hand in the air then leaned in closer, articulating into my face with forty-proof breath. “I asked if yer curtains match yer carpet.” Before he could read a response in my withdrawn smile, he bowed into my hair, inhaling audibly. It wasn’t just gross, it was alarming.

That’s the best way I know how to put it: alarming. There is something shocking about being a redhead. Mostly, it’s the people you meet being one. The old lad wasn’t the first to have whiffed my head, imagining strawberry blonde must smell of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Usually after complimenting me on my curly locks, a man plucked a tendril from the mass and cradled in his hand, lifting it to his nose. He’d eye me tentatively while inhaling deeply. Then his eyes would close as if he were trying to discern peach from pear notes in his head. He’d open his eyes again, unsure of what he smelled but certain it was foreign and rare. Alarming. I told you.

There’s no explanation for this desire for the rare and unknown. It’s akin to the surprise experienced upon hearing I get my red hair from both my parents. No one expects my father to have red hair. We never think of men and their hair. Think of a famous redhead, and you don’t think of Woody Allen or Vincent van Gogh. You think of Lucille, Julianne, and Nicole.

In cartoons, the redhead is the bully or the brain. In mythology, we’re likened to venom, the underground, and Hades. Up here on Earth, we’re likened to vixens. When I was born, it wasn’t, “Oh what a cute angel.” I was “quite the little devil.” I’ve been associated with mischief and underhanded behavior. So, what the hell? Bring it. Pigeonhole me as you will. I could live up to the stereotype, and why not? I’d throw in the Irish temper for good measure.

The old-timer alluded to the fire crotch, shifting things beyond alarming and moving them into abusive. This brought out my abrasive. Before I had the opportunity to unleash it, we were interrupted. A young party promoter with a face that reminded me of a cherub touched me on the arm. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but did I hear right? You shoot red carpet events?” I felt myself staring at his cheeks, wondering if he wore rouge.

“Well, I…”

“So who do you work for?” he asked, eyeing my camera. Apparently, I was still staring, as he had to repeat himself. “Hello? Who do you work for?” he enunciated.

I shook my head, as if the act of doing so would stop me from wanting to pinch his face. “Oh, you know. I’m freelance mostly.”

“Cool. Who invited you tonight?”

“Patrick,” I replied, as if Patrick would actually remember my name at all.

“Listen,” he took me by the arm, steering me away from Doom-Pa-Dee-Do Man. “I have an event coming up. Would you be interested in covering it?” Gee, let me think. Come hang out, drink, and photograph people having fun? Nah. Not for me.

“Sure.” And that’s exactly what I did. My red carpet and I covered our first red carpet event. Others followed. Events and opportunities began to unfold for the redheaded stepchild, including a call from the Gansevoort’s interior designer.

“After seeing your portfolio, we really think your style complements the vocabulary of the neighborhood. We’d like to hire you to photograph the surrounding area, but there’s not much time. When can you start?”

I began that day and became responsible for photographing and choosing every piece of art in the hotel rooms and corridors, the combinations, representations of fashion, nightlife, restaurants, graffiti, and architectural elements. Environmental portraits of transvestites. I was actually paid money to tell a story, to explain what I’d seen, through a lens, in exposures and stops of light. People wanted to see what I did. I felt extraordinarily blessed. And busy.

By the time the hotel opened in April, I was putting the final touches on the web site I’d designed for them, examining the last of the prints (aka Quality Control), and trying in vain to secure myself a guest pass for the rooftop pool. I was also working a full-time job in advertising by day and photographing red carpet events by night. I needed to relax. Alcohol and a rooftop party would certainly suffice.

My friend Matt, a glorified chore whore at his PR firm, invited me to meet him at the Abercrombie & Fitch
Vanity Fair
party, where redheads seemed to be the new blonde. Three percent of the world is naturally redheaded, yet on the Gansevoort rooftop it seemed to be the trend. It was strange, like seeing a black person at a Dido concert. If redheads had a theme song, it would be by AC/DC, and pole dancing would be involved. Of course, everyone was beautiful, the kind of beauty that makes you want to touch things and hold in your stomach. I talked to everyone, and surprisingly all the gorgeous faces had genuine smiles. I was sure they’d spent enough time to roast a twenty-pound bird, making themselves look like they hadn’t spent any time at all, using products with “Plump” and “Bed” in their names. Yet, I couldn’t see or hear the vanity. It seemed everyone there had grown into their own.

I grew tired come
A.M.
and decided I needed bed more than Bacardi. I yawned good-bye to Matt and headed curbside to hail a cab home. A swatch of male models approached me. Of
course
they were models, and okay, I don’t know if “approached” is the right word. They watched me extend my arm for a cab, then asked where I was going. “Home to sleep,” I replied.

“But you haven’t taken our photograph yet,” a trendy-bald man said.

“So get your act together, boys.” I turned on the camera and adjusted my strap. “Put on your pissed off I’m-going-to-devour-the-camera faces, and let me do my job.” It wasn’t a job—it was my pleasure. I felt like a vixen. After snapping a few photos, Luke, Cole, and Rain (oh yes, Rain) invited me to join them at the nightclub PM. Four-letter-named men were inviting
me
to hang out with them!

Big. Fucking. Deal.

In the past, that would have done it for me. I would have squealed to my friends the next morning. Models. Gorgeous. Oh my God! But I’ve grown into myself, and there’s more to life than pretty faces. I’ve learned that P.M. means bedtime and Linus, not beautiful boys and a nightclub. Call me crazy. Call me a redhead.

AT HOME I SLIPPED INTO MY SWEATSHORTS, SOCKS, AND
’beater, then drunk-dialed Stephen. No answer. I signed onto my instant messenger client to see if he was on. I happened to be a drunken dialer in the worst way. Worst way meaning, it extended beyond drunk dialing and became drunk IMing coupled with the dialing, like layering a scented lotion beneath perfume. I really shouldn’t have been permitted near the Internet when sloppy. I needed a parental lock on my communication equipment that prohibited me from communicating with the opposite sex. A digital chastity belt.