The romantic pornographer
We walked through the isles of the grocery store, taking turns pushing the cart. We picked out all the ingredients needed to make the things that’s we’d discussed before leaving the house, checking things off of our list as me made our way through the store.
“How are you doing” I asked Mina and she knew without needing any reminder what I was asking about.
“It took a little getting used to, because it’s been so long since I’ve worn it”, she answered as a faint flush of color rose to her cheeks.
”Take them off and hold them out to me” I said to Trouble about the panties she was wearing. She slipped them off and did as she was told, looking at me with equal parts willingness and contempt, which is exactly what I wanted of her.
The metal cuffs made a clanking noise against the wrought iron rail and with every little movement we were closer to drawing attention to ourselves, to what was happening. The air was warm, sticky and it reminded for some reason of the beaches of Lake Huron, which I visited every summer when I was younger. Maybe it was the smell of her skin or her bare feet so delicately resting on the wrought iron, but for a moment, all of this was happening someplace else, in another time. Trouble and I didn’t have a future together and we both knew that, but I wished just then that we’d shared a past and just for a moment I was by the fire in Port Austin with her standing next to me.
I remember the sky always being the sort of blue that is so vibrant that it seems impossible because it’s really almost black. I remember stars and the sound of the water lapping at the shore as I folded the corners of the sheet of newspaper in on themselves and carefully pushed a toothpick through all four of them. I would turn it over and set it carefully on the fire, watching it expand with hot air and fly away as it burned. We called them “Hailey’s comets”, but I’m not really sure where or when that started. I was usually alone when I sent them up, but for a moment, she was standing next to me, watching them fade into the night sky.
The clanking noise of metal on metal brought me back to the moment and made me realize that I must be foolish, hopeless romantic at heart because in front of me there was a beautiful woman handcuffed to my balcony, holding her panties toward me and the place that my mind had taken us in that moment was to a beach that was a few thousand miles and almost two decades away.
At night, from my bedroom window I can see a million lights; so many that night feels only slightly less bright than daytime does. I can also see the place that I used to live from here; I think that was at least two lifetimes ago, maybe three. In the time since I’ve left, I’ve had three mailing addresses in two different cities on two different continents. I’ve fallen in love, out of love and in love again. I’m not the same person that I was the last time that I called Las Vegas home; I’m more optimistic, healthier and I have a greater appreciation for what I can do here.
Somewhere in the middle of all the places that Mina and I discussed when coming to terms with having to leave Amsterdam, Las Vegas became apparent as the right place for what each of us needs to do now. There are shows here and plenty of teaching opportunities, so she can dance. There are models that I’ve got a solid history with that I can photograph and many new ones interested in working with me. Las Vegas doesn’t give away opportunity, but if you are willing to work for it; you can find it.
The pace of life in New Orleans sounded something like “slow down” and it was what I needed when I left Las Vegas the last time. I did, too; I slowed down as much as I could while still making forward progress. It was needed; a welcome break after working very hard for a very long time and no longer being certain of if it was even what I wanted to be doing. I took that time to regroup and decided to move on to someplace else when I had. Amsterdam was someplace I’d wanted to try for years and while the moment that I acted on it wasn’t the most opportune I needed to try at very least. I had three months and a backup plan to go to New York or Las Vegas if it didn’t work, so here we are.
She came home from an audition this morning and crawled back into bed with me; she’d left early and was done before I woke. I’d slept late for a change; something I’d been unable to do since returning. We only have one set of keys at the moment and she’d left without them, so she had to call me to open the door for her. I went back to bed and she followed, undressing before she slipped under the covers and into my arms. I nuzzled her lightly and she told me how the audition had gone; she hadn’t gotten the part, but she’d gotten a lot of good feedback and met some new people who told her about another audition later in the day.
It’d been good for her to dance again, to move. I can tell the difference in her when she’s been holding still for too long. Today, she felt like movement and it appealed to me. I slid my hands over her firm legs and then between them, making her come once, twice, three times before deciding that I was too turned on to let it go at that. We fool around all the time; making each other come much more often without intercourse than with, but that means that when we do have sex, it’s because we are both in the mood, both want it and by virtue of the waiting, the wanting, it’s very, very good.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been editing feverishly lately, catching up on the material that I’d shot in my final days in New Orleans as well as the pictures that I took of Heidi shortly after I arrived. I’m going to launch a membership site soon with all of these photos so i’ve been focused on getting it all in order, which has been a thankful distraction since I’ve been without my camera; it was stolen fom my bag while I was on the train last week.
It’s very strange for me to be without a camera right now; it’s the first time that I have been in probably ten years. It means that I can’t shoot the new material that I have planned until it’s replaced, but given the surplus of raw photo’s that I’ve got at the moment, I suppose it just means that I’ve got plenty of time to catch up on editing.
When we came to Amsterdam, we gave ourselves three months to make it all work. Visas, jobs, a long term place to stay. We allowed for the possibility of a fourth month if things look promising enough. I thought about this as I studied the contrast of black tiles on the wall to the white porcelain tub. My hair (which has gotten long again) is cold against my skin so I slip all the way under the hot water. My face brakes the surface and I lay still, thinking about what I need to do.
My chest rises toward the surface with each deep breath; my body sinks again when I exhale. The room is cold enough that you can see steam rolling off of the water, and you can see something like it just outside of the window. I sip occasionally from the cup of tea that I’d placed on the ledge behind me. Music played from the next room and I considered carefully all the things that we need to do in order to make Amsterdam work.
I noticed the stubble on my jaw more distinctly in the over head light of the dressing room; there’s a bit of salt and pepper in the two days growth and I find that I don’t mind it. It adds some levity to my face which I sometimes feel is unnecessarily boyish for my age. I notice also that my jaw line is more distinct, my cheekbones more prominent. In the last few years I’ve lost all of the baby fat that lingered on my face.
I notice my arms when I pull the sweater over my head; they are larger, more defined than they ever have been and the fit of my clothes lets me know that while they aren’t really large, they also aren’t really small on my three-quarter scale frame. My shoulders are tight in the sweater as are my arms; I think that when small people wear their clothes this way, it runs the risk of coming off as trying too hard, so I put the sweater back on the rack.
It’s cold here; that’s why I’ve come shopping. I don’t have the clothes that are necessary for the considerable difference in temperature between here and the deep south or the desert in the southwest, so I’ve picked up a few things to add layers with and in my wandering, I’ve found myself on a very long walk on something of a grey day. The leaves are golden-yellow and burnt orange and they rain from trees when the brisk wind comes along. They are beautiful against the green grass; under the grey skies they make me feel similar to the days-old beard on my face.
My glasses are dark rimmed rectangles from behind which the deepening smile lines around my eyes are faintly visible. My ash-blonde hair is getting long again and I’ve been considering letting it continue to grow through the winter; my impulse changes with the season, but from what I’ve been told that’s one of the hardest things to keep hold of as you grow older (change) so I’m alright with it.
The people around me are smartly dressed; it’s something that I appreciate after the laissez-faire attitude that I was surrounded by (and probably sometimes guilty of) in the south. Here, the people around you look put together at any time of the day, but they don’t give any impression of trying too hard; they feel like they come by polish naturally.
I stood with Mina on my shoulders so she could put the pumpkin just out of most people’s reach. We’d carved it too soon and the heat was causing its rapid decay, so we made a plan to carve another and placed our first in a tree that we could see from our window. The few leaves that had fallen rustled beneath my feet as we made sure that the pumpkin would stay and hoped aloud that it would bring happiness to the few people who might notice it smiling crookedly at them from the tree.
Earlier in the evening we’d gone to see a show and on our way there had decided what we’d do with the pumpkin. We were taking some time off from drinking and going out before our final days here (which will surely be decadent) and sobriety led to idle time, which led to our planning to find a new home for a jack-o’-lantern. We walked hand in hand; she looked so pretty in the vibrant yellow dress, it’s crimson trim drawing lines across her pale skin. Her hair was up and the lines of her clavicles kept drawing my attention, as did her shoulders, where I’d planted kisses all evening. She’d never seen the show and I thought it appropriate that she should at least once; it also gave us something to do that didn’t involve bars or booze, which we were grateful for.
We ran into the Brit at the show and I went to say hello after getting a bottle of water. He’d just returned from England and while he was away his girlfriend came by to see the things that we are selling off before our move and she’d purchased some of my furniture for their new apartment. He said to me “so I hear I’ll be sleeping in your bed soon” to which I replied “It was inevitable, wasn’t it?”.
When the show was over, we left the theater and were surprised at how much like autumn the night finally feels like. It’s a long walk from the theater to our apartment, but being a particularly lovely evening we didn’t mind it in the least. I held Mina’s hand high as we crossed the uneven streets so she could keep her balance in a pair of delicate heels. I looked down at the crimson polish on her toes, watched the color flash in the street lights and listened to the sound of her footsteps as I thought about the place to put the pumpkin.
It occurred to me in that moment that this is the first time in years that I’ve been able to really enjoy Halloween. It’s always meant something to me, but the last few have been filled with trials and tribulations. The pumpkin branch on the mantle, the candles on the window sill, the jack-o’-lantern in the tree; they are all reminders that this is Halloween and it’s going to be better than I ever remember it being.
