I am on the verge of surviving the 9 mile bike home. I turn off of the river and onto the city streets for the home stretch. I start daydreaming on how good it will feel to curl up on my couch for a minute. Soft cushions cradling my bruising tail bones. The slamming of my garage door settles it. I'm hard core. Now to find soft comfort for my aching joints, gasping lungs and twitching muscles.
I collapse. My midget sofa forces me to tuck my knees in tight beneath my chin. But my left leg isn't going there easily. The crease in my thigh is resisting the angle. Pockets. I am not usually a pocket stuffer. I shove my hand into my tiny pocket (don't get me started on women's pants pockets) and expect to find one of those treasure cards of information. Instead, I reach in my pocket and pull out a butt.
A 1.5" x 3" butt.
The story could end with a wildly inappropriate business card. Or it can end (or start?) this way...
That butt made it to my pocket yesterday (Yes, I may have just admitted to wearing the same jeans twice in a row. Don't pretend you don't). Spending the day studio hopping in NE Minneapolis, one of the nation's largest open gallery events was afoot. We entered dozens of work spaces. Some artists talked to us. Some waiting for us to talk to them. Some didn't talk at all and for some of those some, I am glad it worked out that way.
We enter a gallery just like the last but vastly different from the before. These studios share walls but their similarities lie and die there. This one is lined with framed photography. Figure after figure. If these bodies escaped from under their glass, there would be 40 people filling this room. But instead there were three. Me, my friend and the photographer himself, who made a bee-line for us as we entered the space. He launched into his artistic process. He tells me he paints with light. The camera is set in the dark, the model frozen in pose and the lens set on long exposure. With a flash light he traces the areas he wants captured. So that highlight on that women's left cheek was him circling and circling her bun for a good minute's time. I took his eager attitude as an attempt to make a sale. I already know I can't afford to buy anything and try to leave the conversation at a simple 'Cool, thanks. We're going to look around'.
And then the approach. My friend later told me she smelled an ulterior motive. I am none the wiser. He separates me from my friend and tells me he'd love for me to model for him. Cue cheeks. Fully flushed red, I mumbled something about not being good at cute. That's when he hands me the butt. His card. Only it's an appropriately nude business card. If there is such a thing.
Feeling a little bit like I was just undressed with a stranger's eyes, I can't recall the last of the light paintings in that room. I continue to giggle, while secretly considering it. What am I twelve?
I am under no impression that he was hitting on me. Or any other egomaniacal rant I could conjure up. In all honesty, it makes a lot of sense for an artist to solicit models in this kind of environment - in his professional studio, among his work, face to face all equate to a legitimate preposition.
What weirded me out a bit was as we were leaving the girl appeared out of nowhere. It was like a strategic tag-team. AND I'm the one getting worked over by them. She keeps trying for my eyes and I keep avoiding them because now I've caught onto the sense my friend was privy too from the get-go. I can't get by her, she stops me at the door.
As gently as she can, she starts telling me her own experience being approached by him. How, as a model, you are in complete control of how you want the shoot to go. 'He only works within your comfort limits,' she says.
I couldn't help but feel like I was in one of those strategic manipulation stories. The kind that makes you as a little kid believe that your mom was running late and had her 'friend' Al come pick you up from school and you believe Al because he has a kid your age sitting in the seat neat to him and he's driving the same minivan as your dad. (Ok, I may have just launched into a movie I recently saw ... but you get the point). A well articulated plan. The aggressor followed up by the comfort character.
It kinda gives me the heebie jeebies. Well, the story ends with my clothes on, which means if I was that kid I never would have gotten into that van.
Really, I just wanted to say that I pulled a butt from my pocket today.
