Work Text
Day 1
I'm at a bar. The music sucks and I'm just not in the mood. But my friends dragged me out and there I am. Brought my camera, so I take some pictures. Brad is in my ear about how so-and-so is sleeping with whoever. I catch a couple making out with the light behind them. Nice shot. Cliche. I take a couple of the band, but they're just not that interesting, bless them. There's one group dancing. I take a couple photos. They'll be blurry. Then something else. Something catches my eye in the mosh pit and I press the trigger before I can even look. It's a boy. Dancing under a yellow stage light. He's glowing. I hammer the shutter, but I'm out of film.I’m home early. Boring night. I hang my camera on my doorknob and collapse onto the tiny bed of my tiny flat. I stare at the next over apartment tower through my tiny window.
Day 2
It's too early to still be alive. I didn't drink enough to be this hungover. The walls in my bedroom are bare, waiting for the great art I’m going to start knocking out any day now.I pull my carcass out of bed piece by piece and assemble myself into something human in front of the mirror over my dresser. The hair is not great.I spot my camera in the reflection. I grab it on my way out.I go to the darkroom at the school. Try to act interested in other people's boring art.The negatives reveal themselves one by one in the dim red light.The couple sucking face. The blurry dancers. The cliched backlit shot.The boy. With his arms in the air. Not blurry. Like he stopped just for me. He was backlit. In the negative, it's like a weird dark aura hanging over his head.I want to make prints. I pick the cliche photo, because I know it'll do ok with the teacher, and I pick the boy, because I just like it.
Day 11
I get an ok grade with the photo of the backlit couple. I already sort of hate it.I don't show the picture of the boy to anyone. And I don't hate it at all. I tack it up in my room. I look at it for too long.
Day 14
I'm walking downtown. Late to meet a friend for brunch. I walk by a poster for the ballet and freeze. There he is. The boy. He's a dancer? A ballet dancer?Why do I care. And fuck this photo of the ballet troupe, by the way. It's shit.
Day 21
I'm at the ballet.I don't really know what to expect.Actually, I did know what to expect. This sucks. It's just endless awful people and classical music and tutus. Check, check and check.But then he comes out. I guess he's not like, the main character of this ballet. Not that I have a lot of idea what's happening.My seats aren't great, but they do sit me at the front of the upper balcony, so when I pull out my camera, nobody notices.This is stupid. With the long lens and the low light, it's just going to be a smear lit in the tacky red lights they're shining on everybody.But I set up my shot as quickly as I can. And the music is swelling for whatever reason, and he's dancing. My boy. Ha. The boy.He's... not bad. I mean, he's sort of blowing me away. What do I know about ballet? But I'm becoming a fan, just watching him.The music reaches a crescendo and the lights flare up and he leaps. I point and I shoot and he lands. And his arms are just so. Huh.
Day 22
The photo comes out great. His face is lit in profile. His left arm casts a shadow over his cheek. I think he's looking at the camera.It goes up on the wall. I don't share it.
Day 34
It's hard to get tickets to the ballet. They're expensive. In the meantime I keep going back to that shitty bar.After five miserable nights watching boring people dance to bad music, here he is. I instantly think more of this band. He must know his stuff.He's all smiles. But he moves like a dancer, which is, he moves like he's not really there. Or like he's the only predator. Or like he's just choosing to let his feet touch the ground.The next song starts and he's on the dance floor.It's not that he knows music. He knows fun. And he's enjoying the beats from the dude at the turntables so deeply, so believably, that it basically sells the music. He's doing that.He works up a sweat, I can't help but notice. I feel guilty. This, somehow, is the first indicator that I'm intruding. It doesn't stop me from taking some shots. I think he sees me. I leave.
Day 35
I took a lot of photos of the boy. They're not all great, but I decide to print them all. I lay them out like a motion collage thing. It starts to the right of my mirror and wraps around to the next wall. It's like he's dancing around me. Arms up. Hands in his hair. Hands on his face. Hands upraised, fingers touching the music.I run my own fingers along them.
Day 37
Still no ballet tickets. None where I'm sure he'll be there.But I see him at the club two more times.And he's here tonight. It's some sort of live drum and bass thing. Fine.He goes out to the dance floor and I start snapping. The drums are loud and the place is packed. I don't know if any of these are going to be good.I lose sight of him. I'm scanning the dancefloor and then the chair to my left pulls out.There he is. He plunks his elbows down on the table, rests his chin in his hands and looks at me."So."My blood runs cold. My fingers wither and I wish I could just shrink down into nothing.“Uh, hi,” I manage. “Ha ha, hi. Yeah,” he seems so carefree, even here, catching me. “Come here often?”He’s looking me in the eyes. I don’t think I could shrink into nothing anymore. I feel like those eyes are pulling me out of my shabby skin and up into the light.“You saw me,” I say. As a statement. I clutch at my camera then, thinking he might grab it and smash it. Rob me of the candid shots I robbed of him.“I saw you,” he says, smiling coyly. “You should come dance.”All the blood rushes to my face, but he grabs my hand and pulls.I'm on the dancefloor. My camera dangles like a literal boat anchor hanging around my neck, but he ignores it.Up close, he's even more ethereal. His skin has these blemishes, imperfections. He's not some perfect adonis. His teeth are a little funny. He's not perfect. He's better.He arcs his head back when the beat is lifting him. He curls his fingers when the suspense is killing him. He twists on his heels and shimmies on his toes when the spirit moves him. He dances so naturally it's both completely obvious that he would be a professional dancer, but also somehow impossible. He's smiling all the time. And I'm smiling too. He grabs hold of my hands in fits of minor ecstasy. He bumps into my body, transferring his energy into me. It raises me up with him.I didn't think I would ever like dancing. I didn't think I could ever get to not caring how bad I must be. But he doesn't care. So I don't care.He takes a break. Drinks from a water bottle."Take my picture," he says. I look at him. A long look. I don't know what to say."You took some before, right? Let me give you a nice one.”I mutely pull my camera to my eye and start snapping shots. I feel sort of dizzy.Through the lens he's dancing at me. Exaggerated ballet poses, dramatic stares down the barrel of the camera. He's having a great time, and somehow I don't even know how to feel. This is exactly what I wanted. I fill my whole stupid SD card with a million photos of him, taken willingly.We'll have to dance more next time.I show him some of the shots."You're good! Send me those!"I nod and smile. He gives me his email. It's late, I mutter, and I get myself home.I stay up later fishing through the pile of shots.And I stay up until morning retouching the best ones. I send them to him in an email at 7am and try to play it off like it didn't take me all night.I send my favourites to the printer and collapse into my bed.
Day 38
Oh my god, those are amazing!
I stare at my computer and grin like an idiot. He likes them.We agree to meet up. That is, he asks if we want to meet up and I say yes, hoping my mania isn't transmitting over the internet.
Day 42
We meet at a cafe. I have my camera. I can just claim that I always have my camera. It's almost true.He's sweet. He loves to dance. He loves music. He likes my photos. I say I love the way he dances. I say he would make any photo look good. We go in circles like that, complimenting each other.While I've got the camera on the table, I semi-subtly take a couple of shots of him. Daring to spoil the mood. But he knows. He smiles into the lens for me. Then he poses, thoughtful-like. It's funny. Damn. Do I love him? His name is Stephen by the way.
Day 51
I decide to submit a photo to a competition. I spread out all my favourite shots of Stephen. It makes me smile, marvelling at my riches.The ones at the cafe and at the club where he's posing are sweet. They're keepers. But the ones that jump out are the candid ones. He's beautiful when he's just being himself.In the end, against all odds, it's the photo from the ballet that I choose. It's grainy. It's a little blurry. But it's him. Candid. Private. Public. Formal. Ecstatic. You can see the passion on his face. You can see the passion in the curl of his fingers. Everywhere. He looks like he's being struck by lightning, but in reverse. Like the bolt is shooting out of him, blasting the whole sky.
Day 60
I win the award.It's not a cash prize or anything. But I clip out the page of the magazine with my photo and the headline and stick it up on my bedroom wall beside my personal, blown up version.
Day 65
I'm having lunch with Stephen. He's back from being on tour.He smiles at me in a funny way once we've sat down. He fishes something out of his bag. A photography magazine. Oh.He pulls it out and flips to the page. Flaps it in front of me. There he is, with my name under him. Winning an award for his beauty. I'm inches from grabbing my bag and bolting."That's amazing!" he says. He beams. I nearly melt as the tension flushes out of me.
Day 78
We’ve had sex now. At his place. He’s in bed, asleep. I’m sitting on the side of the bed. I feel beside myself. But with what? It’s this open euphoria. But also, really like an out of body experience.His bedroom has no curtains. His bed has no blanket. His body has no clothes. I look at him.Even asleep, it’s like he’s frozen in some zero gravity jump.His sleeping arm reaches over, trying to find where I was lying. My heart moves mysteriously in my chest, and I’m frozen, watching. He mutters something adorable. And a little sad. His hand travels up and rests on the empty pillow for a moment, and then he rolls onto his back, his hand suspended above his head. His other hand, lightly on his abdomen.I want to hold him. I should. I’ve earned it. He’s looking for me, and I’m right here. And he’s right there. Beautiful and real.I reach out and my hand is catching on a black nylon strap. Why? My other hand moves without me even looking. The grip is firm in my hand. I shouldn’t. He should be mine. But the camera saw him first.