Selfish Paranoia

I'm done editing T's studio pics.  I am disappointed.  Maybe he is, too.  I don't know.  The people I have let see them are enthusiastic, but they may just be generous.  I should stick with images like the one above about which I am certain.  I like this image, see?  I can't tell you how many variations I have of this very thing.  There is something that speaks to me in a photo like this that I can't verbalize.  

Still, I like photographing people, but for my own purpose and not someone else's.  I'm a selfish paranoid, I guess.  

"Why don't you let other people see your pictures?"

Maybe it is because I was an only child.  I never broke my toys, but when the kids from the neighborhood came and played with them, they were often damaged.  I developed a sense of guardedness about my things.  Other people are too careless. . .  with my things. . . and my feelings. 

After I wrote yesterday's post, I went back to bed.  I was falling asleep in the chair as I wrote.  The pills were still working on me, and I didn't get up again until the afternoon.  I had slept away a good part of a perfect day outside.  

Selavy.  That's what you get when you try to play drug addict.  

"Buy the ticket, take the ride."

I didn't like the ride any more than I did those rides at the fair when I was kid that spun you around upside down as the rocket made giant loops until my equilibrium was thrown all out of whack and I puked.  I get seasick and carsick, too, so. . . there you go.  

When I got back to my home, I looked at the roofing job.  My heart fell.  I didn't think they had solved my problem.  When I got inside, though, and turned on my computer, the roofing guy had sent about thirty photos of what they were doing throughout the re-roofing and what they did.  Hmm.  I decided to send them to T.  

"These will make more sense to you than they do to me," I said.  

Then I put on my walking clothes and went out into the late afternoon air.  I never take my phone when I walk unless I want to know how far I have gone, but since I walk the same routes over and over, I don't need it.  When I got back, I had phone and text messages.  My mother.  My mother's across the street neighbor.  My tenant.  WTF?  None of this was going to be positive, I knew.  I called the tenant first.  She has gone into the great white north for Christmas.  

"Can you bring in my garbage cans, and will you check to make sure my door is locked."

Uh-huh.  

As we were talking, two women walked by, one young and shapely beautiful.  I was sitting outside and saw them looking at the house and then at me, smiling.  As they rounded the corner, the older one stopped and asked, "Is your name C.S.?"  

"Yes," I grinned hoping for something good.  

"Is it C.S.?" she asked once more, and once more I answered, "Yes," but with less confidence.  

It was a woman who used to live in a big, two story house as old as mine.  She was a professor at Country Club College, divorced from the CEO of a big plastics company.  She had custody of her two young sons.  She was smart and friendly and really, really beautiful then.  She is the one who coerced me into doing a presentation to the Opera Guild (if you remember the tale) and gave me much advice and her own research for my dissertation.  Long story short, she moved, I got divorced, and I saw her rarely after that.  

"I thought you sold your house."

"Nope."

"I love this neighborhood.  It is the best neighborhood in town.  You were smart not to sell it."

It was the '90s when I last saw her.  We had both aged, but she still looked OK.  

"This is my daughter," she said.  

"When did you sneak her in?  You had two sons when you lived here."

Her daughter was brilliant, beautiful, and shining.  Her smile was huge and she had locked her eyes upon me as her mother talked.  I tried not to imagine things that were impossible. . . but that was fairly impossible.  She lived and worked in Berlin, she said.  

"Oh, my. . . that is dangerous," I said acting like I knew.  Having never been, I knew it was a stupid thing to say.  

"I lived in Munich for awhile.  That is much tamer," she said.  

The conversation was coming to a natural ending, so hurriedly I said, "Listen, you know, I'm a photographer and I just got access to a great studio, so you know where I live. . . why don't you come around sometime and we can plan out a shoot.  I'd love to. . . ."

No I didn't.  I was just imagining the impossible.  What I did say was, "It was nice to see you again. . . and it was nice to meet you."

Very gentlemanly.  I'm only goofy in my own head and here on the Blogger.  Otherwise I'm as cool as somebody else's cucumber.  

I called my mother.  It had been a butt dial, she said.  

"What do you want for dinner?" I asked.  

"Oh, honey. . . I just ate.  They brought me a big bowl of chili. . . . "

I knew who "they" were, so I asked again, "So what do you want for dinner?"

"Nothing."

"O.K.  So I should plan dinner for just me?"

"Yes."

Yay!!!  There was no way I was going to cook. I felt lighter.  Then I called her across the street neighbor but got no answer.  

It was time to shower, but first I sat down with the studio pictures.  I edited two more and realized to go any further would be to go too far.  I was done with it. 

So I showered, dressed, and set out for some good bbq.  I went to the place that has had some good national press, the place Ili and I started going to when it was first opened.  It was owned by a giant of a fellow, big and thick but not quite showing acromegaly, but somehow he seemed to have a suggestion of it.  He was running the place with his father then, and they would always come over and say hello and chat a bit when we went in.  I assumed it was to talk to Ili.  

I don't go there very often now, and when I do, he is never around, but last night he was sitting at the bar.  I made a go order and went to the bar to wait.  The big guy turned and smiled and asked me how I was doing.  I figured he was just chatting up the customers, but we talked for a long time.  I said I didn't see him here anymore, and he said he had been opening up his two other locations.  He was getting ready to open a fourth.  

"You're going well," I proffered, but he told me it was a bad time to own a restaurant.  His place was pretty empty for a Saturday night.  I told him I had gone to sushi the night before, and usually on a Friday night you would have to wait to be seated, but last night it was barely half full.  I told him about a fellow I know who bought a very established French restaurant to open his own.  The big fellow knew about it.  The guy has been asking for backing, I knew, since he had queried several of the money gymroids about investing.  

"He'll need at least twelve million," said the big guy, "probably a lot more." You know (name redacted)?  He got a Michelin star.  Now he's closing four restaurants.  There is plenty of money at the top," he said, "but," waving his arm across the nearly empty room, "the middle class is suffering.  The cost of everything is going up.  My rent. Electricity.  I bought pork and brisket the other day and we had to trim two pounds of fat off it.  That is how they are offsetting the cost."

"At the grocery store, the asparagus stalks keep getting longer," I said.  "There is a lot more woody part you have to cut off.  People are eating at home and cancelling their HBO subscriptions."

He grinned and nodded sadly in agreement.  

Trumpism.  It is killing everyone.  

"I'm just trying to keep my head above water," he said.  

Back to my mother's house.  She watched me eat.  

"Is it good?" 

"It's cold," I said.  Takeout is usually a mistake, but I had to get back and I didn't want to cook.

I got a text from T.  He said it looked like the roofers had done a good job.  I felt a little better then, but he didn't say anything about the photos I had sent him.  

And so it goes.  

One of the women with whom I had shared a few of the pictures said, "You've got a second career."

"If I had to do commercial photography for a living, I'd blow my brains out.  I like doing what I do, fucking up the photos, making a mess.  I don't want to do what other people want me to do."

Snapshots.  Vernacular.  Personal.  Like I said, I can't take a compliment.  I'm more comfortable with slings and arrows. 

"Oh. . . who hurt you?"

Nobody.  Everyone has always treated me well.  Ain't that something?