the photographer
The phlebotomist finally managed to locate one of my shy veins and extract three vials of blood for all the tests that came with my annual physical exam. He told me not to bend my arm as I held the gauze to it, as that would make it bruise more. He then taped down the cotton ball, using enough medical tape to go halfway around my arm. Overkill, but, when I took it off later, it came off of my arm hair more easily than I’d feared.
By the time he was done with me, I was running a little bit late, so I texted the photographer to let him know I wasn’t standing him up. I circled the block twice for parking and made it there only fifteen minutes late. As I was parking, the thought flashed through my head that I was meeting a stranger in a café, so how would I know who he was? Of course, half a second after that, I remembered that he already knew what I looked like, hence this whole encounter. Plus I had looked him up on facebook so I had some idea what he looked like. But still, apparently “meeting a stranger in a café” is enough of a routine that I have a routine set of thoughts and worries, just like I have an automatic list in my head of things I probably forgot to pack, and that list pulls itself up whenever I’m loading up a suitcase.
We got sandwiches and drinks and sat down to chat. He showed me the draft of the book - a single copy draft of what they intended to self-publish through a site called blurb. I was on the cover. Well, really, all thirteen photos were on the cover. But I think mine stood out more than the others. And not just because my own photo naturally caught my eye. In the photo, I’m wearing a neon yellow safety vest.
He explained the concept. For the past few years, he had been taking photos of “gingers” - attractive redheaded men, primarily gay ones. Recently, he teamed up with a writer friend, and the friend wrote a short story to accompany each picture. He didn’t tell the friend anything about the people in the photos, even the ones he knows personally.
What amazed me about my story was how much it got right - my general attitude about my beard, the fact that people often are hesitant to ask me about it, that I’m very open to talking about my beard, getting teased for a few errant facial hairs in middle school, years of tweezing and shaving and the occasional depilatory cream, being Jewish, attending a top-tier college, even my parents being accepting of my sexuality and beard once I told them.
The parts that weren’t technically accurate weren’t far off either. He had me at MIT rather than Pomona (I’m flattered) and had my girlfriend at the time I started growing my beard attending Radcliffe, when she was actually a Bryn Mawr dropout in the 60s. He had me starting to grow my beard during college rather than before grad school. He had me as an “I always knew I was” lesbian rather than a pansexual queer who happily dated only boys for years. The detail that seemed furthest from the truth was that he had my mom pushing me into all the unpleasant cosmetic “fixes” to my chin; he had her as a conformist, looks-focused, feminine woman, trying to raise a pretty daughter. And, consequently, he had me hiding my beard and being scared to come out to them.
Really, it was equally as reasonable to postulate that I was a pure lesbian and that my mom wanted me to grow up into a pretty young lady. But the latter was the one that made me bristle a little, that made me want to protest, “That’s not right!” though clearly it was a work of fiction.
I get mistaken for a lesbian all the time. And, really, that’s fine. It gets to the “I’m not het” kernel of truth which is usually the important detail.
But my mom… my mom is awesome. Both my parents are. My mom never would have pushed me to painful hair removal. My mom doesn’t own a single pair of heels, doesn’t wear pantyhose, doesn’t have her ears pierced, doesn’t own any makeup, nor any hair products, nor any perfume. These things would be too painful, or too uncomfortable, or just too inconvenient to justify in the name of fashion. So there’s no way she ever pressured me into painful hair care that I didn’t want, and there’s no way she made me feel ashamed of how my body looked left to its own devices.
My parents have been fantastic and supportive of my queerness and of my beard all the way along, and seeing this story that might give some reader, somewhere, the idea that my actual mother was controlling, mainstream, and slightly homophobic fired up a bit of defensive loyalty in me, with a bit of a schoolyard edge to it. “My mom’s cooler than that!” I pictured myself bouncing like a boxer, dukes up, daring the kid who’d just insulted my mom to say it again.
But, of course, this was fiction. The author had no knowledge of my actual, fantastic mother, so he inserted a stock character. So I didn’t threaten to punch the photographer, or his absent friend either. Instead, I told the photographer how much of the story rang true, and I chatted with him about the project in general.
He explained that they’re planning to print maybe a hundred copies, to be sold at cost, mostly to friends but also at the occasional event or art show. Their next project will be photos with short biographies, this time based on interviews, of LGBT families.
I explained my concerns about getting outed on my Folsom affiliation, since that might not go over so well at work. He was understanding and ensured that my name wouldn’t be attached to the image and that he wouldn’t talk about my Folsom role. I pointed out that I was relieved that the image didn’t show anything overtly kinky. You’d have to know the fair to figure out that the yellow vest, ManHunt lanyard, and radio earpiece indicated that I was in charge of something. And, if I recall correctly, neither the caption nor the photo reveal that I was at Up Your Alley. The only scrap of kinky detail in the photo is my tshirt, but the image is obscured by the vest, so you’d have to know image, and at that point you’d probably already know about the right-wing beer boycott it inspired. All in all, the photo didn’t make me worry about being outed. There are far easier ways to figure out that I’m kinky.