Helena Thomas is a model.
Today, Helena spent the entire day posing in front of a camera for a guy she met in a coffeeshop a few months ago.
Holy shit, what fun!
Okay, now I had my misgivings about posing for this guy, because last time we got together, I don't think we had much to say to each other, and he seemed a little nervous around me, at which point I started to get a little frustrated and pissed off, because I couldn't get him to act like an interesting human being. But what the hell; he wanted to shoot pictures of me, and I'm not going to say, "no, you can't shoot pictures of me, I don't think you're interesting."
I had SO much fun posing. Particularly since this guy, Kevin, really knows almost nothing about me. He doesn't know my friends, my musical tastes, the story of my life, my family... He doesn't know my mom likes girls and my boyfriend's in a jazz band. He doesn't know steamy stories about love affairs. He doesn't know I take my peach tea with a lemon and honey. All he really knows is that I'm 21, I like David Lynch a whole lot, and I have a cool apartment. And THAT makes posing a whole hell of a lot easier than standing in front of a camera for somebody who knows you backwards and forwards.
I could be a dreamy little kid if I wanted. I could be a crazed vixen. I could be bored and sexy. I could be gleeful and silly. And I WAS all of those things, because all of those things ARE me. It's just that I try to hide most of that when I'm with people who know me. I'm not sure why, exactly. There's a sort of obligatory privacy when I'm with people I know well.
In front of Mike's camera, I was nervous, pensive, thinking, I don't want you to know I think I'm in love with somebody else... The pictures were nervous and pensive. There was a brick wall in my eyes. In front of my mom's camera, I'm nervous and pensive, thinking, I hope you have no idea what I do when you're not around... Her pictures of me are nervous and pensive, sort of agitated, always a little pissed off. In front of Aaron's camera, I'm nervous and pensive, thinking, what the fuck, Aaron? and THOSE pictures aren't too bad, miraculously, but for some reason I look like a dork in those pictures too. In front of Brian's camera, I just smiled, thinking, I hope you have no idea what I'm thinking right now, and I haven't seen that picture, but I suspect it picks up a little bit of pensive nervousness...
There are literally NO good pictures of me anywhere. I always look so fake. I wonder if I come off that way in real life? Gahd, I hope not.
But today, I wasn't nervous at all. I wasn't shifting from foot to foot, poking nervously at my clothes, huddling self-consciously behind crossed arms... I wasn't wondering if there was anything in my teeth. I wasn't wondering if Kevin was thinking, I wonder if she's in love with me? I don't think he suspected anything really personal about me. So there I stood, in front of his camera, thinking thoughts about people hundreds of miles away, thinking thoughts about events from years past, thinking thoughts about sexy women in movies, thinking about what I WANTED to look like, instead of fearing what I actually DO look like.
Shit, this guy walked up to me in a coffeehouse and asked if I'd be his model. I can't be TOO hideous, right?
I'm actually fairly comfortable with the way I look. I don't look in the mirror thinking, "damn, I'm fat," or "gee, I wish my boobs were bigger." I think that when I put my mind to it, I'm a pretty good-looking person. I lucked out with a lot of things; I got good genes for a lot of things, like my weight and my height and my bone structure and my skin. That's a fairly recent development; I used to sob the night before school pictures were taken because I thought I was ugly. But now... now I'm not scared to look in the mirror. I don't bother with makeup or hairspray, because I'm okay without it. Honestly -- and I'm not bragging here -- I think I'm sort of hot.
*grin*
So I wasn't scared to be the subject of a stranger's photographs. It was oddly liberating. It was a little like role-play. A little like acting. And a lot like just standing around being my plain old self while somebody else admired what that looks like. Wow, does that feel cool!
Sitting next to me on my desk is a photograph Kevin too the last time we got together. It's of me, standing on the South Washington Street Bridge in Binghamton. I'm standing between two cables, my face lifted up toward the sky and my hair blowing back a little bit. I'm wearing my usual jeans, tank top, and black sweater, and I have this small sort of hopeful look on my face. The photograph is in black and white, and the shadows are intense, but still light enough to be fresh and sunny. I'm not wearing glasses; they tend to reflect weird light back on the film. There is SO much captured on this picture. A sort of youth and innocence and joy. A sort of anticipation. A sort of yearning. A sort of homecoming and satisfaction. A sort of peace. I cannot believe that I'm looking at a picture of myself, so vivid and accurate. This is a picture of a 21-year-old kid who's thinking lots of thoughts that begin with "someday..." Who's imagining herself on a Greyhound just a few miles from some glorious destination. Who's imagining herself standing a few dozen yards away, at the edge of the Rivers' confluence, kissing somebody beautiful and whispering drunken sweet nothings. Who is absolutely in love with life, and just waiting for it to love her back. Who was once told she had a few things in common with Björk's character in "Dancer in the Dark," and once walked across that very bridge in the photograph, sobbing after she'd seen that film. Somebody who's a little bit different than anybody else in the whole world; a sort of new-age school-teacher-ish kid who has a stash of goth-kid clothing in her closet and every Tom Robbins book ever written. A sort of wistful person who's fresh and clean and ready for something very cool to happen. The kind of person who drinks coffee and writes letters all day, dreaming happily of secret love affairs and of putting her feet into the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. Who watches Lifetime movies when nobody else is around. Whose absolute greatest joy in her mundane little life, is crossing the South Washington Street Bridge and staring at the Rivers.
A picture is sorth a thousand words. I wish to gahd I could scan this for you. Those of you who have never seen my face would look at this photograph and say, "well gah-damn; she looks EXACTLY like I thought she would." It looks like ME. Exactly the way I imagine myself. Only, oddly -- very oddly -- the girl in this picture is absolutely beautiful.
Kevin said today, "You're a natural." I don't think I'm a natural. I just think that today, I wasn't all that scared of being alive and remembering that other people can see me doing it. And what the hell -- as long as somebody's going to be watching, may as well put on a little show, right?
I want my scanner to work.
I cannot wait to see the pictures from today.
~H.T.*