How to survive a bohemian lifestyle
05 December 2011 01:44 PM Categories: Fiction | Blogs & bloggers
It should have been nothing, just a picture of an evil man holding up a cat, a peevish animal that looked more like a Pomeranian in the early stages of rigor mortis, unnaturally stiff with dull, sunken eyes, than a feline. But behind the man loomed a woman, huge, over six feet tall at least (though the man, kneeling in the middle of a dirt road, was of indeterminate height; perhaps the perspective was off). She leaned over his head, her pendulous breasts forming a cushion, a pillow, behind his thinning scalp. The woman’s body, a blurry backdrop to his, was crawling with tattoos, a fest of fists and skulls and wrinkled barbed wire. She was clearly going through the usual middle-aged skin deterioration. I reflexively ran a hand over my over-tanned arms in solidarity.
He looked as if he were about to lie back and sink his head into her ample chest. I’m not into tit comparisons. I’m fine with what I’ve got. Still, I could imagine the scene afterwards as he jettisoned the cat (maybe it was stuffed?), tossed its stiffened body into the gully by the side of the road, or placed it beside him as though it were “sleeping,” before burying his face in her cleavage. There would be kissing on that road, tumbling in the dust, and all I could see was her face, that fading pixie face, all hidden-eager and faux-tough, and been there, done that and I knew just what she wanted, 25 years after her the first ink job: a punk pregnancy. I could feel the ache, the desire, coming off of her and I wished I could reach out and give her a hug: he’s not worth it, sister. You’re fine on your own. A baby isn’t the only thing that makes life meaningful.
I run a photo blog that’s all about how to survive on bad memories. The pictures aren’t mine. They come from my public. My market research tells me that they’re mainly INFJ neurotics like myself, you know, fucked up, insecure, emotional. What people don't send me: funny pictures of people sleeping with wild animals. What they do send are arty images. Erotic arty. These people are into clowns. They are into daddy-complexes, and sex in the woods (naked ladies sneaking around cabins, sex in cabins with small children present – I don’t post those). But the majority of them are into feet.
We’re not talking hot porn girls with their feet in flip-flops. No, these images come with stories, narratives penned by people with borrowed souls living on borrowed time. Or that’s how one of them described herself, anyway. The feet aren’t just bare, they are bare feet at the airport. In the jungle. Over the edge of a cliff. They’re dirty and in the street. They’re impaling themselves on briars. Or nails. Or thistles. One black and white foot (the ankle so delicate I wanted to snap it in two) was so buried in sludge that the only hint of foot was a patch of painted nail, gleaming and pearlescent in the muck.
I don’t post them all. I bounced the image of bare feet trampling a face, some grimacing man in 80s fashion grandpa pajamas – you could tell from the frayed paisley collar – to the sender, someone whose email address was 12yearoldcodfan@gmail.com (yeah, right). The image was too personal. It brought me back (bad memories, remember? most of my contributors don’t, but I post the stuff anyway). My mom with her gray-white hair, mistaken for my grandmother yet again, my dad in that too-tight shirt, his eyes glassy, with splotches of mud on his cheeks and lower lip – the fissures were just starting to show in the armor of his steely personality.
I don’t like to think about it.
You know why I do this? I want to tear down a wall of feelings. I want to own parts of myself that have been traumatized since childhood. I really don’t give a shit about barefoot freaks or people playing footsie in the bathroom. I am sick of the bun still lifes, of the shoeless men on the corner with their heroin-dark circled eyes. I am through with it all, these photos with their creeping existential soul-crushing dread.
The last picture I post will be of me, a reluctant room mother who plans parties I don’t want to attend. I will pose with my middle finger up, a glass of liquor in the other hand, a handgun tucked into my waistband.
And then I’m quitting my job and going to culinary school.
Image: My feet.
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