TATER

Hide and seek.

I hear his voice calling my name, and everything stops.  Early memories, and nowhere to hide but within myself.

I see fear in him now, as illness slowly robs his mind of all the past scenes defining him.  His personality shining and dimming, his blue eyes reaching out to me, to bind him to our present.  Is all forgiven?  He hugs me now and tells me he loves me, quite often.  Hiding unpleasant flashbacks and seeking new bonds, he seems to want to explain things to me, but has never had the courage to start.  I have always wanted to know his reasons, but I refuse to force this gift from him.

We play hide and seek from each other, holding up love and understanding to the one courageous enough to bridge the great divide of time, and change.  We dance around the edges as the sands diminish and he slowly disappears.  We are holding each other up with a love paid of forgiveness, even though the transgressions have never been honestly acknowledged or apologized for.  I paid that bill in full, wishing the circles into straight lines, craving an understanding of the man beneath the memories.

I sit across from him as he opens gifts on his birthday.  I see this stranger I so desperately long to know.   Sometimes I yearn to shake him, to rattle something out that can help me understand us.  I am weary of seeking, and its growing much too late.  We will continue to hide behind “I love you”.

He holds out the card my sister sent, a poem of love to a father.  He asks us all to read it.  He forgets we have done so, and extends it again.  I fear I will always remember him this way, trying to prove his lovability with a printed example, appropriating words for validation, sentiment for truth.   Unconditional love has been his for years, and yet he seems preoccupied with digging for scraps he can believe in.  

I realized long ago that the mixed bag of love, fear, and hurt I experienced as his son, are far less severe than the demons hounding him.  I hope that his nightmares will be claimed by his illness before his memories of being nurtured and loved.  I wonder what it is he wishes for when  he lays his head down at night?  What is the ONE thing in his past that he most wishes he could alter?  If I could only know that thing, perhaps I could banish it and gift serenity to him, instead of another tired present of sweater and slacks.  I accept that what is hidden is forever lost to me, but I just can’t seem to stop the need to look for it.

I earned my living today shooting gourmet caramel apples.  These aren’t your average joe, taffy apples, but a division of  a  taffy apple company, which sells to high flying brick and mortar establishments such as Neiman Marcus.  I have worked often for these clients, and as far as I know, am the only photographer for their website, catalogue, and sell sheets.  I suspect they have also used my work in print ads, but since they haven’t paid for that usage, I turn a blind eye.  There is a copyright law to protect me from such theft, but it comes with a cost as you may suspect;  the cost of losing them as a client if I were to raise a fuss.  $10,000 dollars for violating my copyright, less legal fees and time would net me a paltry sum.  The cost involved in losing the client?    Well my day rate X 15 days a year, approximately $25,000.  My math skills being rudimentary at best, still slap me in the face every time my mouth opens to complain.

The women that grace my studio are all twenty and thirty somethings, and they trust me to do right by them, which I always do.  They like to play a game called torment the shooter, in which they insist on arguing every shot amongst themselves, then with me.  I play along, but rarely put my foot down, and  turn a deaf ear to their internal bickering.  I wait by my camera like a drone on Nembutal, awaiting their decision on which props to include or strike, which angle best fits their layout, how much bleed they need for the layout, what colors they believe set off their product best, yada, yada, yada.  Today is unusual, in that the company sent the new head of marketing (male, republican, Ken Doll), and he didn’t quite agree with the direction we were heading for their new catalogue.

“I would like warmer tones!”

This is a shoot for Easter and valentine’s day.  Pastels, pinks, reds.  He wants earth tones.  We eventually settle on lots of whites with “color indicators” to suggest season.

“I want an extreme overhead shot, to you know, focus on the product, not the props!”

Overhead shots of caramel apples are nothing but apple tops as bullseyes.  I softly refuse.  I explain that a close up shot of the chocolate, caramel, and nuts of their beautiful apples would have the most taste appeal. 

It’s what I do;  tantalize.  I want people to drool, and lick a page of a magazine showcasing my food.  I want them daydreaming about biting into a gooey, sweet, apple, and having to wipe the sugary juice off their chins,  I do food porn, I don’t do eagle eye down shots as gimmick, I do it if it makes the food irresistible.  I don’t argue, I show people the difference, and if they don’t come around, its not exactly the end of the world.  I do what they want.

I build a rapport over time with people, and they come to trust me.  I try to lead them to the tastiest water, and offer them a drink.  My taffy apple women like to flirt and argue with me, they like me to explain and defend my vision.  I’m okay with that game, as it alleviates them the fear of making the wrong decision, by taking responsibility for it myself.  Marketing guy was a monkey wrench in our usual dance routine, and bodies were tripping everywhere today.  Too many compromises were made, too much time was consumed, and I became hopelessly mired in average looking photography.  I wasn’t at all pleased.  I stood my ground to a point, then let go to their demands.  I smiled, I joked, I explained, and I shrugged it off best I could.  Tomorrow and Friday, more of the same.

I left work today feeling that I failed them somehow, failed to grasp the moment which could turn the tide of bad decision making back to beauty.  I have a need to find art in what I do, and strive to create it within the confines of commercialism.  The art was in the argument today, and I lost miserably.  I walked away from the studio feeling wasted and sad.

The walk to the Metra Train is a good mile and a half. It is good cardio, and great stress relief.  I walk straight down Randolph Street, passing produce warehouses, meatpackers, wholesale florists, and Harpo Studios.  The area is being gentrified from Fulton Market, to condo lofts and restaurants.  I walked past the wholesalers, and into the restaurant section, and noticed the same homeless man I see each night.  He was busy constructing shelter from a myriad collection of old clothes, a sleeping bag, and some cardboard.  He saw me and smiled, and I asked him if he was hungry.  I buy him food at the gyro diner on the corner when he asks, but tonight he is set. 

He said to me:  “You look like you had a tough day!”

What do you say to that?

Gratefulness sometimes lies between the lines and in the shadows, waiting patiently for us to recognize it.  Sometimes it leaps out from a battered lump of cloth and cardboard and knocks us to our knees.  I know the rest of the shoot is going to be what it is, and that’s just fine.

He was pinned where he lay, in cold damp darkness, unable to breath but the shallowest of inhalations.  He attempted to move his arms, but they were pinned against his chest.  He was unsure where he was, and scrambled to place himself in this terrifying blackness.  He could feel the panic begin to swell in his chest.  He tried to focus on the next breath, his mind racing through his options.  Through the muffled silence, he heard a siren bleeding on and off, on and off.  His thoughts were scrambled by the excruciating pain behind his eyes at this new sensory invasion.  He took the deepest breath he could muster, and shot out his arms and legs in unison, in an attempt to create space around his body.  His left arm punched through, and he heard the loud crash of glass breaking, and the rush of fresh, cool air.

The siren was louder now, and his foggy brain began to register it's genesis.  His hand fumbled over objects until he felt the familiar source, and managed to hit the snooze button.  His head was on fire, his throat raw and ragged, as if he had swallowed sand.  He pulled himself free of the covers, and managed to push off the stranger who had been passed out on top of him.  The man grumbled and rubbed his eyes, waking in fits.

They looked at each other in confusion.

You need to leave now.

What?

Get dressed and leave.  Now.

Oh, yeah.  Okay, uh whatever.  Where are my pants?

Silence.  His head was being periodically thumped between two bricks, trying desperately to clear out the nightmare of his life, the recurring theme which all the drugs and alcohol failed to keep at bay long enough.  The room was spinning and he needed this person gone, before he was sick to his stomach, before he could humiliate himself any further than he had already managed.  He stuck his leg off the edge of the bed, seeking solid ground, something to pin him to the earth's gravitational pull, and stop the free falling rotation of the room around him.

Did you find them?

Yeah, I got everything.  Hey thanks I guess, you know where to find me if you feel like getting together again.

He didn't know.  He had no idea.  Shame was added to his list of the morning's achievements.

I'll let myself out.

okay.

His foot had found him momentary stillness, but now his sense of smell had returned.  Stale cigarettes, and fresh alcohol washed over him in a nauseating wave, and he just managed to get his head over the side of the bed before his stomach contents followed.  His eyes perceived the broken bottle of Dewars on the floor, next to the overturned ashtray, the cigarette butts littering the hardwood floor like little tombstones.  The cold dampness he was wrapped in had resolved itself, but he was beyond caring that he had wet the bed during the night.  The sobs seemed to come up from his toes, and nearly carried off the top of his head as his body was wracked with each expulsion of grief.

He had thought he was beyond tears, beyond the ability to find any tender or soft spot amidst the rocky landscape of his life.  A momentary crack in the facade was all it took to feel all that pain wash through him again.  So many unanswered questions, and undelivered expectations, they hung from his neck like a millstone as he tottered above  the surface of things, struggling to keep from being pulled down and under.  He cried himself back to sleep, back into the nightmares of his childhood, back to a single day he couldn't chase back into the past where it belonged.

The phone pulled him back from the deep, it's ring a fresh wound to his splitting head.  He managed to pull himself out of bed to answer it, dodging broken glass across no man's land to the kitchen.  He answered it on the fifth ring.

Yeah?

Where are you?

He recognized his boss' voice.

Well you called me at home, so I guess that's where I am.  Listen, I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, but I'm feeling really sick today--

You are sick. You need to see someone about it.  Don't bother coming in, just stop by Human Resources tomorrow morning.

Click.  He hung up the receiver and slumped to the floor.  Great. He laughed to himself a bit as the absurdity of the last few years overwhelmed him. He heard a thunderclap and looked out to see the rain coming down.  He watched as the first heavy drops made their patterns on the wooden deck.  Fuck it all.  He picked himself up grabbed the open bottle of vodka off the counter and took a long pull.  He searched an ashtray, found a roach and sparked it up.  The first hit seared his throat, and he nearly wretched again, the second, though raw, managed to start his mind floating.  He needed to steady himself for act three.

He waited until the lightening started, and then trudged across the roof of his apartment building.  He was quickly soaked, but the vodka was keeping the chill in check.  He made his way to the roof’s edge, and took hold of the steel railing, separating him from 18 floors of empty air and cold concrete.  He looked out across the city, watching the lives around him continue to ebb and flow through their habitual routines. He wondered how so many others could function like clock work from day to day, as he struggled to give himself reasons to keep waking up? 

He looked to the heavens, relishing the rain splashing across his face, coursing down his body.  He thought of his brother again, how dirty and muddy he was when they finally pulled him out from under all that dirt.  He wanted to be clean again, he wanted a peaceful sleep free of guilt and that look on his mother’s face, the expression she couldn’t conceal. That look that said he had failed her, had failed them all.  He prayed to the heavens for intercession as he held tightly to the metal bars.  He watched the lightening streak down nearby, and repeated the same prayer from the previous times he had occupied this very spot.  A long ago fear giving way, to a desperate plead for its visitation upon him.