Charmer

Originally Posted Monday, April 22, 2013

She came from Curacao, half Dutch, half Native American.  The clothes she wore into the studio were casual but fabulous.  She was imperially thin.  Her family once had a lot of money, she said, but she was a bit of a wild child.  She hadn't adopted her grandmother's old world manners.  At home on the island, she liked to sleep in an old mango tree.  Most of her friends were gay men.  Her first boyfriend had been.  She was a college student but hadn't any idea, really, of what she wanted to do.  She wanted to travel, of course.  Like everyone her age, she longed for adventures.  We talked forever before the shoot, on and on.  She looked at my prints.  "Can I buy some of these," she asked me?  "I just have to have some."  She didn't like to talk about herself, she suggested, but she did.  "I feel comfortable here," she said as she gestured around the studio. 

Later, after the shoot, we went to brunch, or what I thought would be brunch, but the hours had flown. We were too late.  "It's alright, give us two big mimosas anyway."  She ordered brie and fruit.  A fellow I've known for a long time, someone not on my cell phone call list but someone whom I always enjoy seeing out, a trust fund boy who fell from grace first slowly then quickly, came over to say hello. His eyes brightened at the girl.  He had been drinking for awhile and was a little bit in the weeds.  It was going O.K. at first, but the conversation took a weird turn somewhere along the line.  My companion commented on my friend's pink shorts.  "Coral," he said.  I laughed and clapped my hands. "You have such a boy's color vocabulary," I said thinking of her gay friends.  I turned to my friend.  "And look at you saying 'coral.'"  "I can't help it," he laughed, "I'm a preppy." 

Then he told a story about a man who had once insulted his shorts calling him a faggot.  "The funny thing was, I was fucking his wife," he said loudly.  "I wanted to tell him his wife was sucking my dick," he screamed, "you know what I mean!  He was calling me a faggot and his wife was sucking my dick! Ha!" 

I looked at my companion.  She looked at him and said, "Are you?" 

"Right," I said.  "You should just own it." 

She didn't seem ruffled by my friend at all.  In fact, I think there was a gleam in her eye.  She was having fun. 

We went back to the studio and sat down.  I showed her some photo books that I wanted her to see.  She sat with a big book in her lap and turned the pages very slowly, looking at each picture for awhile. We talked.  There was no motion in her body that she wanted to leave.  But I was getting nervous.  It was after five and I still needed to go to the grocery store.  I was cooking for my mother.  It was Sunday night. 

I hated to do it, truly, as I was enjoying her company immensely.  I'd rather have gotten some champagne and continued to drink with her.  But my mother. . . .

"I have to kick you out," I said hesitantly.  "I am cooking dinner for my mother and she will be at my house soon."

"Of course," she said.  No, no, I wanted to say, I didn't mean it.  But we had spent the day together, close to six hours.  She was a charmer. 

The picture I've posted here is the very first one we took, the one where I am testing the lighting and camera settings to see if everything is O.K.  The first of many.  There will be more.