I wrote a story...
Okay...I'm going to pray that my lj cut thing works, cause this is kind of long. Here's a blurb to start you off.
The Photographer
Another day, another nymph. Beautiful. Thin. Poised. Dumb. He hates them as he hates himself. But like all those in his profession he can make the camera see what he sees. Ugliness. Pain. Disgust. He catches this one sneezing. Freeze frame of her eyes bugged out, mouth wide open, snot spraying into the air. Last month she was on the cover of Vogue.
Two months ago he had a show at a hip downtown gallery. The press went into raptures. All but one of the models filed suit. His mission statement read:
Exalted Beauty:
We are all base. We are all simple. We are all ugly. These women that are worshiped for their faces and bodies are no different. Look at them. Watch them coughing and choking out the same diseases we suffer from. Look at their pain and know equality. Know exultation. Know the meaning of beauty.
Three years ago he had been an insurance agent. Three years ago he had made more money than he could ever imagine spending. Three years ago he had met a dancer and fell in love with her. Her name was Katherine and he found her more beautiful than the stars in the sky and more elegant than the planets in their elliptical dance around the sun.
First he became a poet for her. He declared her lips as roses, red and scented sweet. Her eyes, he said, were portals of green energy, crests and waves of passion. He described her every aspect in careful turns of phrase. He worshiped her with words. Syntax was sex and semantics foreplay.
Second he started spending entire days watching her. He'd go with her as she taught delicate movements to girls barely able to stand. He'd sigh and grin seeing her wrapped in another man's arms only to be flung away and gently returned. When they got home he would kiss every inch of her and then make her twist and turn in the light, casting shadows on the pale walls. He would draw the shadows, then her face, her body, her curves and lines. Thus he became an artist, a painter, a master architect for the structure of one woman.
Third he touched her and then touched clay. Back and forth until her living skin was covered in red mud and there lay a sculpture that was her mirror image.
He turned their house into an ode for her. Framed copies of poems in the hallways. Larger than life portraits over the fire place, in the bedroom. Sculptures of her hands, her face, the outside of a thigh, the bend of an elbow littered every available surface. Copies and copies of the woman he loved. He could not look anywhere without the remind of an intimate moment of creation:
The night he persuaded her to open her legs wide as he removed her hair with a razor. The intimacy of touching that revealed skin, soft and smooth as a child's. Laying vaseline over sensitive lips, pushing gently inside of her. Then the carefully planned strips of plaster molded over every fold and crease. Her moans as it heated and dried. Her body convulsing when he removed it and thrust inside of her. When it was finished he hung it over the bed.
He loved with a love that was more than love. He was blind. She was a goddess and he as mortal. She was beauty and he was base. He was created in her image and therefore only lived to create her. One day she told him, 'Make no graven images.' The next day their house burned down in a mysterious fire.
With the insurance money he bought her a new house. The walls were bare of any decoration. The surfaces free of clutter. He saw her less and less. She went on lengthy tours with the ballet and he was left alone. He tried gardening, but everything he planted died. He adopted a dog, but it ran away. He tried to write poems about nature. He tried to paint pictures of birds. 'Make no graven images.'
He read books. The Portrait of Dorian Gray. He painted a picture of his own face and watched for signs of decay. He made razor blade slashes across his cheeks and wrote with the blood in a child like hand all over the walls. Make no graven images. Make no graven images. Make no graven images. Katherine had been gone for over a month.
A phone call. Katherine is dead. Come identify the body. Pain. Wreck. Ice. Disasters of the soul look like a mirror shattering into a thousand pieces. He could no longer see his own face. He could no longer see the world around him. He bought a camera and went to the morgue.
They unzipped a black back to show her face. 'More. All of it.' Was that what his voice sounded like? Husky. Old. Body exposed, vessel of a deity emptied of life. This was not the woman he had loved. This was a puppet with its strings cut. A slab of meat that would never nourish a family. He looked at it, studied it. Had he once found this beautiful? He looked at her feet. Broken and battered from years of dancing on point. Scabs of blisters that hadn't healed. Bent. Ugly. He started to take pictures. First of the feet, but then the bluish gray of a nipple, the crisp edge of pubic hair against dead thigh. The corner of the mouth where spit had dried. Ugly. Vile.
The pictures won him acclaim. The subject matter earned him pity. 'His own wife.' 'So brave to take such pictures.' 'I wonder how he felt taking them.'
People speculated, but never asked. They wouldn't have liked his answer anyway. Then he would look in the mirror he would say over and over again, 'We are all base. We are all simple. We are all ugly.'
The Photographer
Another day, another nymph. Beautiful. Thin. Poised. Dumb. He hates them as he hates himself. But like all those in his profession he can make the camera see what he sees. Ugliness. Pain. Disgust. He catches this one sneezing. Freeze frame of her eyes bugged out, mouth wide open, snot spraying into the air. Last month she was on the cover of Vogue.
Two months ago he had a show at a hip downtown gallery. The press went into raptures. All but one of the models filed suit. His mission statement read:
Exalted Beauty:
We are all base. We are all simple. We are all ugly. These women that are worshiped for their faces and bodies are no different. Look at them. Watch them coughing and choking out the same diseases we suffer from. Look at their pain and know equality. Know exultation. Know the meaning of beauty.
Three years ago he had been an insurance agent. Three years ago he had made more money than he could ever imagine spending. Three years ago he had met a dancer and fell in love with her. Her name was Katherine and he found her more beautiful than the stars in the sky and more elegant than the planets in their elliptical dance around the sun.
First he became a poet for her. He declared her lips as roses, red and scented sweet. Her eyes, he said, were portals of green energy, crests and waves of passion. He described her every aspect in careful turns of phrase. He worshiped her with words. Syntax was sex and semantics foreplay.
Second he started spending entire days watching her. He'd go with her as she taught delicate movements to girls barely able to stand. He'd sigh and grin seeing her wrapped in another man's arms only to be flung away and gently returned. When they got home he would kiss every inch of her and then make her twist and turn in the light, casting shadows on the pale walls. He would draw the shadows, then her face, her body, her curves and lines. Thus he became an artist, a painter, a master architect for the structure of one woman.
Third he touched her and then touched clay. Back and forth until her living skin was covered in red mud and there lay a sculpture that was her mirror image.
He turned their house into an ode for her. Framed copies of poems in the hallways. Larger than life portraits over the fire place, in the bedroom. Sculptures of her hands, her face, the outside of a thigh, the bend of an elbow littered every available surface. Copies and copies of the woman he loved. He could not look anywhere without the remind of an intimate moment of creation:
The night he persuaded her to open her legs wide as he removed her hair with a razor. The intimacy of touching that revealed skin, soft and smooth as a child's. Laying vaseline over sensitive lips, pushing gently inside of her. Then the carefully planned strips of plaster molded over every fold and crease. Her moans as it heated and dried. Her body convulsing when he removed it and thrust inside of her. When it was finished he hung it over the bed.
He loved with a love that was more than love. He was blind. She was a goddess and he as mortal. She was beauty and he was base. He was created in her image and therefore only lived to create her. One day she told him, 'Make no graven images.' The next day their house burned down in a mysterious fire.
With the insurance money he bought her a new house. The walls were bare of any decoration. The surfaces free of clutter. He saw her less and less. She went on lengthy tours with the ballet and he was left alone. He tried gardening, but everything he planted died. He adopted a dog, but it ran away. He tried to write poems about nature. He tried to paint pictures of birds. 'Make no graven images.'
He read books. The Portrait of Dorian Gray. He painted a picture of his own face and watched for signs of decay. He made razor blade slashes across his cheeks and wrote with the blood in a child like hand all over the walls. Make no graven images. Make no graven images. Make no graven images. Katherine had been gone for over a month.
A phone call. Katherine is dead. Come identify the body. Pain. Wreck. Ice. Disasters of the soul look like a mirror shattering into a thousand pieces. He could no longer see his own face. He could no longer see the world around him. He bought a camera and went to the morgue.
They unzipped a black back to show her face. 'More. All of it.' Was that what his voice sounded like? Husky. Old. Body exposed, vessel of a deity emptied of life. This was not the woman he had loved. This was a puppet with its strings cut. A slab of meat that would never nourish a family. He looked at it, studied it. Had he once found this beautiful? He looked at her feet. Broken and battered from years of dancing on point. Scabs of blisters that hadn't healed. Bent. Ugly. He started to take pictures. First of the feet, but then the bluish gray of a nipple, the crisp edge of pubic hair against dead thigh. The corner of the mouth where spit had dried. Ugly. Vile.
The pictures won him acclaim. The subject matter earned him pity. 'His own wife.' 'So brave to take such pictures.' 'I wonder how he felt taking them.'
People speculated, but never asked. They wouldn't have liked his answer anyway. Then he would look in the mirror he would say over and over again, 'We are all base. We are all simple. We are all ugly.'