Commissions

Ok, here we go. It may be a bit hard and a bit soon, but here we go.

I get regular requests from photographers to do a photo shoot with them. It surprises me because if they had taken a look at my profile, they probably would have come to the realization that I am not what they are looking for: I am not attractive, I am not soft and pretty; I am broken and don’t come across well, but they usually don’t look. They just see a young girl into kink things and think she will be perfect. It’s my fault too. We all do it, we see what we want, or what we fear in my case. 

I usually will write the photographers back and explain that we probably are not looking for the same thing. I try to explain that the thing they do with the bright colors, the vivid tones, the sharp angels and even the focal length, well it’s the opposite of everything I want. Typically they initially show some sort interest in learning about my desires as I think its pretty natural for people to want to have a beautiful, or, better said, lovely, photo and so I begin to tell them. I tell them about the grayed out photo with low contrast that is so grainy it is difficult to make out the details. I tell them about the small girl with enormous white space. A girl, a tragic girl emerging from the water, the shallow waves still tossing around her legs as she somehow walks to higher ground, to safety, along the water. I picture her with wings because I do so love that image, still pure, holy, someone who didn't compromise but didn't drown either. The people to whom I tell this always feign interest and sometimes go so far as to tell me that that is something they are capable of creatinng, that it is a picture they want or can make happen but that they just prefer another type. 

Do you know the etymology of the word barbarian? Greek. It means foreigner. That’s all. Originally it had very little context towards it. Into the 14th century that took a different direction and it became closer to how we would now think of the term. But initially, it just meant someone from outside. They called them barbaros because to the Greeks, or so its said, the words the foreigners spoke sounded like "bar bar." 

Do you want to know what I found so interesting about the Romans compared to the Greeks? The Greeks were so focused on Greek-ness. Indeed it took that version of other to help define them. For the Roman it was far more about improving roman-ness by expansion. More romans, stronger romans, less non-romans. They made settlements in Britain, in Syria. It’s a different mindset. I think it is easier to see the threat level change. When you are only concerned about your role you don't worry so much about the foreign words but when those foreigners are out to conquer the world, to conquer you, it becomes another story. 

I sometimes will have the photographers write me for months, telling me that we should get together and try to take some photos. They’ll send me links to their portfolios and I will look and I will see the same things over and over again: the girl will take the obvious center stage, she will be the neon light and you will be forced to pay attention to her, to see her, instead of the subtly, the devotion, the attention and time needed with my version, with hunting for the girl. 

Do you want to know another word I have spent some time researching lately? Narrow-minded.  Want to guess the first time the word came up? 1615. Want an idea of the things going on at that point? The Jews were being killed by the Roman Catholic Church, Galileo was proposing that we could use Jupiter as a way of determining longitude but the church was about to tell him he needed to stop with this theory about the earth revolving around the sun, explorers had just rounded the Cape of Good Hope, Christian missionaries were band from Japan, Notre Dame cathedral was about to reach completion, Pocahontas was just married-and along came the term narrow-minded. 

Things have changed in some ways I suppose. History, of course, is still written by the victors: look at Galileo. He won didn’t he? What would you say to the devout mothers who stand outside packed school board meetings demanding that intelligent design be taught along side evolution. Crazy right? 

Sometimes I try to show the photographers examples of what I’m looking for but it is becoming harder and harder to find. I told this recently to a guy I met who replied as if it were entirely obvious, that naturally my types of images are becoming harder and harder to find: people don’t want to find them anymore, they are *archaic* and not the direction people are moving. People want things that are brighter, more modern and free.  

A few months ago I did try to meet with a photographer, back when I was still willing to try any type of photography(er) and see if maybe I would love the way it came out. Ever have to apologize for absolutely detesting something someone has shown you of himself or herself?? It was an awful feeling, having to look at him and tell him how much I really, truly hated the pictures he had taken of me. I was ashamed because I knew he had worked hard. He put up with me for goodness sakes! I know how hard that is. It was an awful moment. I was ashamed and tried to keep all of how I felt to myself: that I was ugly, that I looked garish, that I felt too exposed, that I looked like a slut, gluttonous. None of it was because of him though, he had done a nice job with what he wanted but it just wasn’t at all what I wanted. It wasn’t what made me happy and wasn’t something that I really thought I would grow to like. But he was only able to keep taking the photos in the way he wanted.

Therefor, when another young man approached me a few days ago and said that he was pretty sure he would be able to match what I wanted to do but that I had to act quickly and take him up on the offer, and when I said that I wasn’t interested, that I wanted nothing to do with it, he became angry and I became defensive. He said I should stop being stupid and take him up on the offer to do it for free, because other people would charge me, would be mean about it and he would be patient. I called him the day after and tried to explain how I felt after the last go round of photos but he was already insulted that I told him that his photos were ugly. Truth is, I didn’t. It was me that was ugly in that light, in that style. But it’s what he heard and he left me some bitter, immature, angry messages. He said I was judging him. He said I was contaminating his creativity and to get away from him, out of his life. To not bother him or anyone he knew again. That I was awful.

Why write all this? Why spend this much time on a photo? Remember the three life goals? Remember the sub goals? To have one beautiful photo. I want to be remembered the way everyone does. Positively. Beautifully. And I love the idea of a snap shot being able to summarize. Who hasn’t found an old photo in an album and been struck by something? By raw emotion, by the clothing, by the light, by the expressions? There is something simplistic and powerful that lasts through that. I like to think it’s the lighting and the eyes but then I have a fascination with light (it is God after all right?). Anyhow, enough new age. Remember those people who used to think that taking a photograph of someone were to steal their soul? 

What if it were true? What if what we showed in that snap shot, in that moment was the one thing for which we would be remembered? The one thing we would be remembered as? And all of our thoughts and values had to be caught in that. Where would you go to look for the photos you wanted to see? I know I’m not going to a casino. I'd go to the docks perhaps. To the ships coming to port and loved ones waiting, waiting for that one special person in their life. It’s the photo I would want to see. I don’t know why anyone interested in long stockings and purple lipstick would ever look at my profile. And why they would ever hope to find themselves there. 

But then I guess I can’t see why the photographer, or myself would push so hard for our versions of beauty. I think it’s the Romans. I never felt like I was in Greece. I always felt that I had to be aware, that the empire was spreading. I think I was trying to find someone who didn’t hear everything I said as "bar bar." I think I wanted someone to recognize that there is another type of beauty and in that, I think found only ugliness: the threat of the sharpness, contrast.  

But when I hear them telling me that I should try their way again, that the world now teaches evolution... I want my Polaroid. 

I want to save myself in a locket that I can give to my master one day. Show him who I was, how I was. That even though I felt I was drowning so often, that I felt pulled under, that I felt to survive I had to compromise, that even though all that was true, I tried and I fought. Now, lying on the beach, my wings are wet and I am tired and I can’t stand anymore. I want him to find me anyhow. I want him to see me through the static and think I was worth it, think I was special enough to take all his time even in muddy shades of gray, even without a flash. 

I love photos. The promise they entail and the threat. The camera lies every day. It shows happiness when there should be tears, it shows love when there is nothing. It can be used to make any statement you need. The lengths everyone needs to go to find the picture they want of themselves, it's hard enough, made harder when you're told there is a certain way you should look, should act. And I say it, and I see it in the photos of myself. And more and more I lose myself in those. And instead, we see our fears. And when we act on the fears, the beauty that we wanted to show, is all forgotten. 

I read this article recently for Christians who are hearing people telling them that they needed to be more open-minded (oddly this phrase didn't come for a few centuries after narrow-minded). The argument is for when you're being told that by keeping your beliefs you are being closed-minded even if the person talking to you is the one who wont hear you. The argument essentially goes: listen. Start by just listening and learning. Then, after you have listen to what the other person is saying tell them a story of yourself, a story of your own failure, of your own humility and how you had to ask forgiveness. Then ask the person with you, invite the person With you, to open themselves up and tell of the last person from whom they asked forgiveness because to ask forgiveness is to see it in another light, to open your heart and mind to something else. 

I know I will never be beautiful under those bright lights. But those aren’t the lights that I think show beauty. I want simple lighting. I know with enough lighting, with enough, it’s easier to be beautiful but I want a simple beauty that won’t hide when the lights turn off, or wash away at night.

I went to Four Square Church months ago and remember their music. It was so full of everything: Triangles, Guitars, Pianos, everything. Comparing that with the Gregorian Monks and their simple chanting; that is what I want in my photo. Intrinsic beauty where the less there is, the more each part is shown entirely and has to be beautiful. I love that.

That is my view of beauty. Sometimes, It's hard to talk to photographers who have different goals and different values and different views of beauty. I wish I knew how to do so better, to talk with no hope on anyone’s part of changing the other’s beauty.

I'm still developing and I'm still looking. I guess it might be too soon still but I’ll keep looking for the photographer and the commissioner.

Year In Review

I wanted to take a second to welcome in the new year, think about the old year and dream about the year to come.

Let's start with 2011. There were some lows but i am hoping, upon serious reflection, highs will be remembered.

The Less Good
well the attempt ranks fairly high on this list.

the boys. the number of guys i trusted and who hurt me, staggering. the number of "relationships" i put faith in and missed the mark completely. thats probably the longest single streak of times ive felt stupid. especially the summer. especially the summer. but how many times can you ask the same questions? how much can you ever turn off your heart? i know im supposed to. i know its expected anymore. im not that person.

therapy. what i splendid idea that colossally failed. failed me and most everyone in my group. and watching it fall. and hearing the same attempt, the same hollow answer because no one knows.

the deaths. my father in 2010. but this year wasn't good either. i lost track of the phone calls but i knew them all the same. i could feel them coming. and there was so much other loss. that get's hard. part of me sees the line dying. lie my family slowly having the limbs burn up but then i was never a part of that family i guess.

The True Good
I found Fred. if nothing else is to be said of this year let us stick with that. i waited seven years to find him and i did. i tracked him down over another country, a new wife, and a different name. Yet i found him. I waited all of this time and i found him. When i first found him i remember asking my friend Adam if it would be enough for me, it would last me, if the happiness would stay. He said no. I never wanted to believe it. It was fred. but he was different, and so was i. his voice was different. lower, slower. married now. no patience. no desire. he was occupying the same space he had before but in a new body. he asked me you know. if i wanted to be his slave again. he was married now. i heard his voice. i found him.

friends. i have met a number of people this year that have changed not only me but how i see the world. they have given me memories i would have never had, experiences i hadnt known i wanted and shown me things that will effect my outlook on everything else. i wish they would have lasted longer but then, there's one person that i'm pretty sure ill be able to look for in fifteen years: eduardo.

birthday. my birthday was one of the best nights ive had in year. and im grateful for that. but there have been others. there have been many other nights that have left me feeling i could fly. even if its just for a moment, and even if its just with rope around me. i still loved it.

Entering the New Year, what has changed:
perhaps nothing. perhaps i am still in the same place. but i know a few things. i know a few more people and ive had some new experiences. ive grown a bit and found things i hated and things i loved.

im not foolish enough to say im over evan. im not foolish enough to say things are all better, they arent. i'm not. ive changed a bit but much is the same. same roommate, same house, same job. ive made no strides in my three primary life goals: marriage, career, God. i haven't even made much progress on my secondary life goals: touch a whale, good picture of me (though i did come very close thanks to a man in tacoma), and being a slave for the man in my dreams. i didnt travel nearly as much as i wanted. didnt apply to schools again. didnt really find the great support system i wanted.

but i tried. i left the house... i tried to be social. i met people. i did things on my own that i never did before. and i fought for things i believed.

i still miss him and i still miss that life, the life with him.

but now i have another year. now i have another chance to keep trying.

maybe not the best new years toast but champagne worthy none the less.

thank you to those of you who have helped make 2011 better than 2010. thank you specifically to the three of you who have proven that you would step out of your comfort to help me, to step out of your views to listen to me. thank you for catching me.

Sitcoms

My favorite comedy on TV right now would definitely be how I met your mother. I have grown to very much enjoy that show. When I watch it though I keep thinking about their group of friends. You have the married couple, single girl, the guy who only wants sex and the guy looking for marriage.

In Seattle there is this phenomenon known as the Seattle Freeze. It’s basically this thing that people from Seattle do where they lock out any new people you can always tell too. People in Seattle are very surface friendly but try to join a group of friends. It’s nearly impossible.

Last night I met someone and asked if they were from Seattle, she took a few seconds as if contemplating which I knew meant she was from four miles outside Seattle. She explained she had just moved to Seattle from Redmond. There’s this notion of distance here that is foreign in other parts of the world. Seattle is so protected on all sides, no one in or out without crossing the bridge. Bridges.

I think about ted on the show and wonder why he is friends with barney. What is he still getting out of all of it? They aren't from the same place and don’t move in the same social circles.

Once a month I put on a grand performance and make myself outgoing, outspoken and friendly. It takes an entire day to prepare and I can only keep it up for a short while. It’s worth it; I always meet wonderful people but slowly the fade away. For the longest time I thought it was me but I have learned otherwise. Everyone says the same thing: it’s impossible to meet friends here.

Think about it. Where are you from? Did you grow up here? Do you have your group of friends that you have known for years and every memory involves them? Or are you the one who has moved up here and are still not entirely sure who your group is? Maybe you’re different, maybe you have your established group, let me ask this: when was the last time you let someone new in? How long did he last? Did he ever feel welcome?

Ted has no reason to hang out with the group on the show. He has money (though I have no idea how) and seems to spend nearly every minute with another girl. I barely understand how he has time to be friends.

When you talk about things like meeting new people, making friends I think the same advice is thrown out all the time: join something you enjoy- take up football or golf, join a book club. Its basically saying 'find people with similar values'. So is that what it comes down to?

Are you friends with people who have similar values to your own? If not, how do you make it work? Lets say you are a staunch atheist, is your best friend a born again? How do you make it work?

I went out the other night with a group of guys that I genuinely adore but I had nothing to add to any conversation as the entire night people were just discussing what its like being gay, how hard it is, who they know who hasn’t come out yet. At one point someone turned, feeling bad for me I’m sure, and said 'lets talk about straight people things for a while.' what on earth is a straight people thing? Banging chicks? Football? I think they expected me to suggest a conversation but I was a bit out in the deep end. It was an odd moment.

On the show the conversations are usually about events from they’re past, shared memories or random pop culture debates if not about something immediately at hand. I have a hard time with that. How do you get to the point of shared memories if you have nothing to talk about in the initial?

I went out the other night to this party where I knew just about no one. People were exceptionally kind and I rather enjoyed meeting many of them but at some point every single conversation turned to that awkward moment where the person was attempting to figure out some commonality with me. And while I understand what happened next, it didn’t get easier, they would all ask the same question: who are you here with? When I explained I wasn’t really there with anyone it would be followed up by a worse question: oh, I see, well who are your partners. And cue lights. Best way to end a conversation, especially with me. I know why they asked and I appreciate the intent- trying to find a common ground, a common group to establish a friendship. Has to be something right? But when I am as staunchly anti poly as I am and in a great deal of pain about my current status, having that question again and again never helps.

Marshal and lily is the married couple on the show. Marshal was a roommate with ted so I understand that connection but I do wonder about lily. I was talking with someone at the party about the types of people you meet at the gatherings. Part of the reason I went was I wanted, desperately, to meet some new folks, to meet some new friends. But in the end it’s the same story: same people, different drinks. A guy was telling me that the reason its that way is because the poly people tend to keep going out looking for more, being more social, gathering more and more while the monogamous people find what they are looking for and drift away into oblivion. This caught me off guard. It seems wrong to me.

I don’t want that to be my life, I want to find a partner I can then enjoy my life with, my friends with, my events with. I am not looking to find someone and squirrel away to die. I mentioned that to the boy who said he didn’t think most married people felt that way. I assured him that I believed him wrong. What married couple never wants other interaction? After discussing for a few minutes he relented and told me something I had not considered, he admitted that poly people get bored of monogamous couples-nothing to gain. It seems that instead it is the poly people who contribute to this; they are the ones who don’t really want more friends, just partners which makes sense from their point of view right? Why have a just friend when it can be a friend and a play partner.

I thought that was crazy and couldnt be true though so I started asking some other folks some questions. I asked a number of my poly friends about their Friendships. Most admitted they didn’t have close friends out of their laundry list of toys/partners. They didn’t have time and didn’t see the point in investing in someone they wouldn’t have an intense (Read sexual) connection with. I was taken a back.

Then I remembered the one person I see every month who truly doesn’t care for me. He has been nothing but polite and kind to me but I know he doesn’t really like me. I rather like him and have tried on a few occasions to spend time getting to know him but I understand that I am not someone he would like to do that with. And please, don’t misread this, I greatly respect him and like him I understand that he does not wish to get to know me better. Anyhow so we share a number of acquaintances that speak of him regularly and I mentioned to two that I have had a difficult time getting to know this individual. Entirely separately they replied the same: you aren't someone he is going to fuck.

I think that perhaps what happens is that we get thrown into a city at some point in our lives and we try to make the most of it. Most people meet friends through work. It’s how I have met some of my closest. College is a wonderful place since everyone is new and half aren't local, it has worked as a wonderful way to meet people who are open to new friendships. But as for finding common ground, it gets a bit harder in this community.

There is not a true-shared identity amongst the group on the show. They seemed to have randomly collected and lack any nucleus holding them together or letting others in. they are just static.

I have worked quite hard to try to be social and more out going but I know I fail sometimes.

When evan left me, I gave up. I disappeared for nearly a year. I just stopped.

Last month something similar happened. I thought I had met someone for whom I could, well, shouldn’t have, but did, develop strong feelings. When that blew up I did it again, I crawled into my safe cropping of rocks and let the world spin its maddening slow spin around me. I watched the tide ebb and flow around me and prayed it would just take me out to sea.

I feel like these parties, these gatherings, are ways of putting weight around my neck. I feel like every time I have to make a compromise that boils down to: conform or be lost. I think about whatever the hell name he wants me to call him here, Eduardo and I imagine how he would do. I think in my head he does better than he really would in life. I imagine him fitting in perfectly, talking to everyone and making a ton of friends. And then I think of me. Of the way people stare at me waiting for me to answer who my partners are. And I know I don’t belong. Not because of anything anyone else has done but because I don’t know how to have that sitcom friendship. I don’t know how to get past the part where I don’t know any common values. So I compromise.

Until a year ago i had no idea poly was read beyond the group of mormons living in Utah. I came across it so much here i thought it might be worth a try. i knew fairly quickly it wasn't for me. to me it felt like being poly is lazy, it’s selfish and it’s greedy. Its glutinous and I think ruins friendships. I think it puts people in an unnatural situation and pushes out people who want to have true emotions and true feelings. My experiences were pretty bad though. So i kept thinking that old timeless tune: well it may not be for me but it clearly works for them. But even that doesn't seem as true anymore. I want to believe it because occassionaly i get these incredible glimpses of poly relationships that seem so happy. and i want to think it works because, well, in my world view, love should trump everything. but that hasnt been what ive seen. 


instead, ive watched as People treat it as a drug, going from one hit, one high to the next. And they become addicted. No matter who it hurts. I think its tragic (has been for me at the very least and for far too many people i've seen) but it has been so prevalent in the community that it is taken for granted as the accepted practice. It is the normal and monogamy is considered "Archaic" as someone told me the other night. All it means is that we have (and I swear this will be the one time I say this) a male ruled mini world. Lets face it; evolution encourages this in men correct? Don’t be foolish enough to dispute that part. So what happens? in my singular hypothesis, we have a bunch of men collected who somehow found a way to get a group of women to say 'no this is as good as it will get for me, I will go ahead and sleep with this guy because this is all I can get.' so men hit the jackpot here. another option, they somehow found and CONTAINED a group of women who are wanting to have sex and convinced them that it is "more free, more modern, less part of the system' to have multiple partners. Yes. Way to prove something there, women. You’re conforming just the same, except for sex. Anyhow. So men have it made in the shade here. They got to the point where they got hotter and hotter women somehow coming because they weren’t accepted elsewhere. Why the hell would any man want to settle for one then? So he keeps coming and coming and coming, needing more and more and more partners. Only he says that’s not what it is any longer, now he is willing to say primary partner but he is looking for play partners. Yes. Somehow this was ok. You know what's amusing. Ask any poly guy if they're polygamous and watch their eyes bulge out as they take a defensive stand against your insult. 

It’s not ok. It’s not safe. Its not love. It’s not trying. And it’s not good enough. I should get to be worth more than that. I should get to have a man say that I’m worth more than that. And I should get to have friends who understand that too. Real friends. This city is hard, this community is worse.

Married couples don’t stick around because they aren’t welcome. Transplants don’t stick around because they aren’t welcome. and Sitcoms don’t stick around because they aren’t real.

For nearly two weeks in November I would awake every night from nightmares about death. Then I got a phone call that changed it. My grandfather had died. The nightmares ended and it was like I was finally told news that I should have already know. I will say that in not one of the dreams do I remember it being my grandfather who had died but when my mother phoned me I knew what she was going to say before she spoke a word.
This week I have had nightmares every single night about the same thing, the same person. I k ow what's coming, just not how to deal with it. Every single night for the past six nights I have dreamed of Evan. In various ways, various places, I've seen him. In almost all it's split into two parts. Something about us and something about her. I hate to guess prematurely but something is about to happen. It's just too many nights, too many dreams. And I'm helpless.