“Where’s Kevin?” J asked, we’ll call him J for the sake of this story. A smile he couldn’t hide crossed his face when I told him we were no longer together, followed by him announcing that he too was recently single.
I had met J a few months before, through my studiomate Daniel. I had been working in the studio and Daniel had set up a test shoot to try out his new film video camera. Being that J had picked up film photography, I believe Daniel had invited him over to assist in this shoot. It was a very brief meet, and I didn’t think much of him. I remember showing him my death song, the one I pictured playing at the end of my life as the end card “FiN” shows up on screen, and I remember handing him my Milwaukee drill to help Daniel install some screws before going back to my own work in the other section of the studio. Daniel was inviting many people to come visit us and collaborate at the new studio and I enjoyed the brief encounters meeting them.
There were a few other scattered encounters with J after this initial meet. He had tossed my name as a potential artist to photograph for a collaboration merch line that was releasing at a store in Chicago. I declined that invite although I thought it was very sweet of him to consider me. My studio mate Daniel had also commissioned him for a chair, J was also a carpenter, and a skilled one, so I think he had come by the studio a few times for this, and then once more when he and his collaborator had asked Daniel to shoot photos of them for an upcoming thing. In the spring, I had responded to an instagram open call for people to photograph, I was like why not, his work looks cool, so I met J at a park near the studio in Pilsen to do this shoot.
It was March 2021. I remember Kevin coming with me to the park, he had quit his job a few months prior and had been going everywhere with me. Kevin decided to stay in the car that day and I shot with J for a few hours, it was a fun shoot. A few weeks later Kevin and I broke up for reasons I name somewhere else on this blog. I was 27, single for the first time in my adult life, for the first time since I was 17 and with Chicago summer approaching. I started therapy shortly after, I was worried that the grief would hit and I would miss Kevin, but I never did, instead I felt relief.
Somewhere in this period of singleness, I began to think of J. Between the shoot and the break up, I had developed a curiosity about him, I had felt so comfortable shooting with him and he was attractive. How had I not noticed that before? At some point he had reached out to do another shoot, and the thought of seeing him again was exciting. So we set up a time to shoot and my studio mate Daniel was out on vacation.
J came by the studio sometime late June, and we shot another series of photos together. He had brought a chair he had made in honor of his grandfather for me to pose with, and I had brought a bunch of clothes to try on. After a few hours we decided to take a break, stepped outside and smoked some weed I had brought back from a recent trip to San Diego, then we went for a walk around the neighborhood to get smoothies. After, we sat and talked for a while, I found out he had a son, and he told me what he was up to in life. Before he left, we hugged, it was a long hug and then he called me shortly after. He had left his chair at the studio and would have to return and asked me about the music I had been playing during the shoot. It was Natalia Lafourcade and Los Macorinos, I had been listening to those two albums almost every morning that summer, they were peaceful.
A few days later we arranged for him to come back to the studio to pick up his chair, I was going to a daytime garden get-together and then to the studio to work for the night, and I wanted to see him. I had taken off my dress and heels and changed into my studio clothes before he showed up holding a half-filled bottle of Jameson and a McDonald’s cup of ice and coke. We talked for a few hours and took an edible, before he said it was time for him to leave. We hugged again, another long hug, and he left. A few moments later he returned, he wanted to know how I had felt about our hugs, I liked them, I liked feeling him. We hugged again and this time I stuck my hand down his pants. He picked me up and pinned me to the pillar in the studio then walked with me over to the one-seater couch sitting us down in a position where I was straddling on top of him. We were kissing and he wanted to eat me out, and I wanted to do everything with him. But I knew I couldn’t, I was on my period. I was also not that kind of girl, I had just come out of a 10-year relationship. I had only been with one man in my life, yet, here I was getting wet for a man who hadn’t even taken me out on a proper date.
I had started this piece in the studio before J had arrived and I finished it that night after he left, in it are hidden details of the events. His grandfather's chair, across from it on the other panel, the one seater he sat us on. My friend Xerx had brought anemones to the studio a few days prior and I had always thought of them as “eyes” but here in this drawing they serve the dual purpose of referencing my boobs. I also found a phallic looking vase in one of the ikebana books and the occasion seemed appropriate to include.
