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Blue Christmas
28 December 2007 17:51He had chess pieces tattooed on his knuckles, prison style.
Black on the one hand, outlines on the other. He had castles on the pinkies, knights on the ring finger, bishops on the middle, the queen on his left index finger, and the king on his right.
“No pawns.” he said, jutting his chin up with a mixture of pride and disgust, like it was self-explanatory.
He owned a two-story black houseboat moored at the wharf on the inlet. It had a lot of skylights but not many windows. He had a pornography studio set up on the top floor. Just a camera and a bed, really, but it paid the rent, he said.
The films he posted on the site were shot during sunny days. If it was dark or raining, he’d pull a vertical blind across the skylights and use cheap lights. It was no-frills. He treated the talent as fairly as a pornographer could.
After I’d known him for a while, he showed me his artistic streak. He’d rented two more cameras and shot a girl-girl-boy threesome with very athletic models under the skylights during a rainstorm. Using only available light, the blue bodies writhed around each other, oiled, with raindrops hitting them and pooling in their hollows. They shoved in and out of the shadows, moaning softer than the rain hitting the windows. The water ran off of six packs and flawless shoulders in a beautiful illusion.
He cut it together, some of it in slow motion, looped some of the sound, and added a slow-moving symphony soundtrack with some synth.
It was gorgeous. I begged him for a copy. He said no way. I was welcome to come over and watch it whenever, he said, but it wasn’t leaving the house. He was a little embarrassed by it, I think.
I told him that he should do stuff like that more often.
“Yeah, but it’d never sell,” he said with a laugh. “This is not the eighties.”
He had a laugh like a poodle whining, completely at odds with his huge, threatening, craggy body. He looked like he was carved from a mountain. I could picture his wrinkles filled with soil, leaves in his hair, dirt under his knuckles.
I got the feeling that he hated the city. He didn’t see anything wrong in what he was doing because he felt that everyone in the city was doing something similar, that all we city-dwellers were soulless and available for a price.
The houseboat gave him the illusion that he wasn’t really part of this stinking, money-infested metropolis, just attached to it.
I remember the footage of him being arrested. I remember him ‘giving the bishops’ to the news camera. Something about not filing his permits properly. It was strictly neighborhood watch stuff. They just didn’t want him around their daughters. He was out within a year but the houseboat was broken into while he was in prison. Cleaned out.
He packed it in after that. He moved up to a small town in the interior and got a job at a friend’s bar. That was the last I saw of him.
Right now, though, one year later, I’m staring at Christmas present. It’s a dvd with no label on it.
The card says that he hopes I have a Blue Christmas and then there’s a smiley face.
tags
Black on the one hand, outlines on the other. He had castles on the pinkies, knights on the ring finger, bishops on the middle, the queen on his left index finger, and the king on his right.
“No pawns.” he said, jutting his chin up with a mixture of pride and disgust, like it was self-explanatory.
He owned a two-story black houseboat moored at the wharf on the inlet. It had a lot of skylights but not many windows. He had a pornography studio set up on the top floor. Just a camera and a bed, really, but it paid the rent, he said.
The films he posted on the site were shot during sunny days. If it was dark or raining, he’d pull a vertical blind across the skylights and use cheap lights. It was no-frills. He treated the talent as fairly as a pornographer could.
After I’d known him for a while, he showed me his artistic streak. He’d rented two more cameras and shot a girl-girl-boy threesome with very athletic models under the skylights during a rainstorm. Using only available light, the blue bodies writhed around each other, oiled, with raindrops hitting them and pooling in their hollows. They shoved in and out of the shadows, moaning softer than the rain hitting the windows. The water ran off of six packs and flawless shoulders in a beautiful illusion.
He cut it together, some of it in slow motion, looped some of the sound, and added a slow-moving symphony soundtrack with some synth.
It was gorgeous. I begged him for a copy. He said no way. I was welcome to come over and watch it whenever, he said, but it wasn’t leaving the house. He was a little embarrassed by it, I think.
I told him that he should do stuff like that more often.
“Yeah, but it’d never sell,” he said with a laugh. “This is not the eighties.”
He had a laugh like a poodle whining, completely at odds with his huge, threatening, craggy body. He looked like he was carved from a mountain. I could picture his wrinkles filled with soil, leaves in his hair, dirt under his knuckles.
I got the feeling that he hated the city. He didn’t see anything wrong in what he was doing because he felt that everyone in the city was doing something similar, that all we city-dwellers were soulless and available for a price.
The houseboat gave him the illusion that he wasn’t really part of this stinking, money-infested metropolis, just attached to it.
I remember the footage of him being arrested. I remember him ‘giving the bishops’ to the news camera. Something about not filing his permits properly. It was strictly neighborhood watch stuff. They just didn’t want him around their daughters. He was out within a year but the houseboat was broken into while he was in prison. Cleaned out.
He packed it in after that. He moved up to a small town in the interior and got a job at a friend’s bar. That was the last I saw of him.
Right now, though, one year later, I’m staring at Christmas present. It’s a dvd with no label on it.
The card says that he hopes I have a Blue Christmas and then there’s a smiley face.
tags