January 19, 2012
Lyrical
Bondage man she called me as she attempted to wiggle her way free of her restraints. Her cadence and thick Scottish accent have a melodic quality to them that makes me nearly miss what she’s saying because of the effect that it has on whatever part of my brain that is that has decided that she speaks in music. I like to listen to her speak and I’m often too quiet during conversation because I don’t want the sound of my voice to interrupt it.
“Do you feel like a bad bondage man…” she asked me, because she was wiggling free. I smiled from behind her while unbuckling the straps and I told her that it didn’t.
“I’m sure you could have kept me if you wanted”, she said, or something to that accord.; I was inside of my head as I unbuckled the straps enough that she was able to work herself free and I might not have heard her correctly.
There is a lightheartedness to Heidi that I appreciate. She possesses an awareness of herself that leads me to believe that she knows that people find her attractive but in the moments that she is shining the brightest, that isn’t the most significant thing about her. Her warmth leaves the most lasting impression on me, which is impressive in the fact that it does compete with her exceptional beauty. When we finished shooting and she said goodbye, I hoped that I would see her again.
This morning I filled the bathtub; it’s been three months since I last stood up to bathe because there isn’t a shower in my apartment, only a tub. I do a great deal of thinking while I soak in it, but today I climbed into it empty and read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer while I waited for it to fill. I listened to the London Philharmonics recording of Adagio for Strings and flipped through the pages of the book which I started six years ago according to the bookmark. When the water hit its mark, I put the book down and contemplated why it had taken me so long to read; I’ve felt differently about it every time that I picked it up, but I believe I’ll see it through to the end this time. I finished the tea that sat cooling on the ledge, put down the cup and slipped almost all the way under the water, stopping at a depth where I could still hear the music.
I looked at the walls and thought about what Miu said when we’d worked together: “You wouldn’t expect this bathroom from looking at the rest of the apartment”. She was right; I wouldn’t. The tub is tall and deep, darkly tiled like the walls on the outside, white on the inside. There is a mirror on the wall that’s hung rather high and a single tiny window that’s nearly to the ceiling (daylight always looks a pale grayish blue when it peeks through). I wanted to pick the book up again and read a little more, but my hands were wet and I thought it best to finish my bath and save those pages for later.
My time here is coming to an end and these are the things that I will remember when I’m gone: the shower that I don’t have, the new friends that I do. Henry Miller in the bathtub, suddenly seeming to make sense. In a few years I’ll have forgotten most of the phrases that I’ve learned. I won’t remember the name of the orange cat that sits on me when I’m in the pub that we frequent. I won’t remember the things that frustrated me about living here either, which is a blessed forgetfulness that leaves one with only the romantic remembrances of time spent in a strange land.
“When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music” -Rumi
January 17, 2012
Again
I had my second shoot today with Heidi, who I’ve come to appreciate even more after working together again. She’s fun to talk to in general which when combined with being smart, beautiful and perhaps even a bit on the nerdy side makes her very easy to enjoy working with. She kept me amused with her (mostly successful) attempts to free herself from bondage at the end of each set. I can’t wait to get more of the pictures posted
January 1, 2012
A New Year
Little mounds of red paper littered the streets, remnants of celebrations that had lasted all day. Some of the piles burned, sending pink smoke into the air that the fireworks cut through as they soared in to the sky over the river, exploding in brilliant displays.
We stood in front of the window watching the people gathering in the street below us. Sparks flew perilously close to the building as did the smoke that hung in the air, so we’d shut the window and stood sipping whisky in front of it. People looked to the sky as midnight approached and all over the city you could see explosions of color. My favorites were the little lanterns that drifted on the wind.
Mina stood in front of me with a huge smile on her face; appreciating how extraordinary our life here is. We heard the roar of people below us, which meant that the new year had come, so we kissed and said ‘I love you’ to each other.
Below us, someone was unwinding a long line spool of firecrackers and as we waited for them to fire off, I slipped my hand down between Mina’s legs. The people in the streets looked in every direction, their eye’s passing over us, but never lingering. If they saw us standing in the dark, they thought nothing of what was happening. Mina put her hands on the window sill and stifled a moan, but the sounds of explosions outside of the window drowned out anything that escaped her lips.
We looked out at the crowds, up at the sky and in to the apartments across the street. I worked my fingers between her legs while red and green sparks bounced off the glass in front of us. When she came, I held her weight as she sank against me, kissing her neck while she found her legs again. She turned around and faced me, pressing her lips to mine as she reached down between my legs. She tried to kneel in front of me, but I brought her back to her feet because I wanted the moment that we were already having together more than I wanted anything for myself. I turned her around in front of me again and let my hand find its way.
She was more vocal, more free the second time around and the crowd below us continued to send fireworks in to the sky for what felt like a lifetime. The cheering, the well-wishing, the pop, pop, popping in the sky; it was music that scored the moment when she came again.
December 29, 2011
S/M
It feels colder here than I remember it ever feeling int he place that I grew up. I know it isn’t true because Detroit has seen snow already this year and we haven’t, but it still feels colder. Perhaps the time I spent in the deep south and in the southwest has put such a distance on my memory of the cold that here it feels new; like something I’ve never felt before.
I turn on the light on my desk a littler earlier each day. Today I flipped the switch at just after four. Day gives way to dusk so quickly that one moment it feels like afternoon and the next time you look up, night has fallen. I watch the deep blue sky from behind the empty branches that shake (sometimes furiously) in the wind. I see the lights pop on across the river and I know that people are coming home from work; I wonder what they do all day and if they feel like nighttime people because of the fact that they always seem to arrive after dark.
Today I booked models, worked out schedules, planned shoots for the next few weeks. I answered emails and made phone calls, looked at budgets and caught up on a bit of reading. I listened to a lot of music, trying to find the right soundtrack for today, but I never really did. I flipped through the pages of Model Mayhem, FetLife and skimmed twitter for something that would inspire me, but it only succeeded in distracting me while the sun slipped out of the sky.
I blame the cold for my melancholy and the lack of sun for my lack of inspiration. There are more likely possibilities though, including the fact that I’ve had a perfect storm of technological bad luck (stolen camera, hard drives damaged in shipping). It could be the apartment we are in, which is pretty, but never seems to get warm enough. It could be the fact that our time here is coming to a critical moment where we have to choose to either stay or go and in what amounts to a very rare occasion; I’m not sure what to do.
The masochist in me believes in suffering for a little longer than necessary to make sure that I don’t make the same mistakes in life repeatedly. The sadist in me approves of the course the masochist in me is taking.
December 20, 2011
Mistletoe & Holly
The white lights twinkled all over the front of the department store. In the middle of the afternoon you might not have noticed them from as close as I was standing but the sky, which had been blue and was giving way to gray as it did every afternoon, gave the little lights a better chance of being seen.
I’d arrived early and stood outside waiting. I’m almost always early to a first meting and this afternoon I’m come to meet Miu for the first time. I’d left the house later than I expected, still arriving in the square earlier than I thought I would. I looked around as I waited for her to arrive, having a vague notion but no certainty of which direction she was coming in.
A man sat with a xylophone in his lap, playing something that sounded vaguely like christmas music, but I wasn’t sure what it was. It was light, but not quite cheerful and felt just a little off, sort of like the sky did. Birds passed low overhead as people parked and collected bicycles from the sea of them that surrounded me. Footsteps fell on the cobblestones in varying heaviness as people of all sorts passed me by.
I saw Miu approaching from a distance and knew it was her with immediate certainty. The first thing that I noticed were the earmuffs she was wearing, followed by the face that I’d seen in photographs. She saw me and waved, greeting me with a smile. When we were face-to-face we shook hands and went inside.
The people inside were clustered together, but it wasn’t as busy as I might have expected. A man dressed as Santa stood near the front doors and that’s where the largest congregation of people were gathered. We moved past him and to the escalators, riding up the five or so floors until we came to the cafe where we ordered coffee and muffins. We took a seat at the far end of a long table, which I figured would afford us the best opportunity to talk privately.
Taking off our coats and scarves, tucking away our gloves, the conversation we’d started outside continued. The low hanging orbs that held the lights over the table came between us and threw my reflection back at me with all the care of a fun house mirror. I noticed my hair, which I’d described to Miu in the text message before meeting as “sort of long dark blond”, looked wind whipped and in need of a cut. I took the seat across from her as we chatted about how long we’d been in this city, where we’d been before, what the differences were from where we’d come from and where we were now.
The conversation moved gradually to the material we’d discussed shooting. She’d seen some of the samples of the videos that I’d shot in the past and she knew that bondage and tickling were what I was proposing. She asked about the other things that I’ve and in a way befitting the tone of the conversation I assured her that I wouldn’t do anything that would leave any marks (and that I’m not shooting anything explicit any more). She seemed relieved and having gotten that out-of-the-way, we talked about other things, only coming back to the shoot when it came to figuring out when we’d work together.
I glanced around the room and doubted that any of the people that I could see would suspect what Miu and I were talking about. If they were to look in our direction, they might think “small” or “soft-spoken”, but I doubted that bondage and tickling would be conclusions they would come to without help from us. I appreciated the mixture of ease and delicacy which she approached the discussion.
We finished our coffee and made plans to shoot after the holidays. I made a note of it in my phone and bundled up again for the cold outside. We rode down the escalator again, passing by a group of young women in hijab having their picture taken with Santa before exiting to the square where we said our goodbye’s.
It was sprinkling just a bit as I walked away and I called Mina to tell her to bring an umbrella when she came to meet me. I walked quickly through the crowds, determined to out distance the rain and not be forced to buy another umbrella. Cold drops splattered on my warm cheeks and the wind made my scarf ripple behind me. My boots hit the ground with a strong cadence as I worked my way around people, rarely stopping, rarely slowing. I crossed the streets, thinking about how I’d hoped for more time this year to do a christmas themed shoot, but that the loss of my camera had put an end to that. I blew past the sex toy shop that I’d meant to stop in before I knew it, I was standing outside of the restaurant waiting for Mina, having arrived sooner than I thought I would.