The shoot took
place three days after my meeting with Joe Romeo. “Last chance to back out,” Joe
said as I opened the door to the apartment I shared with Bill M.
Joe had a
camera, a bag and one set of lights. The photos started in the kitchen, I was
asked to remove my clothes and sit on the table, sit in the chair, look out the
window, glance up, reach for the cabinet, move to the bedroom, lay on the bed face up, face down,
smile and to stop smiling.
David was there the
whole time just out of the shot and the whole thing was very clinical there was
nothing sexual about it. I had left my body and soul behind I was floating far
above it all just waiting to get paid. Joe had me stand naked outside, sit in
the lawn chair, and to lift my coffee “just right.” I could see Tommy standing
in the upper window looking down trying to figure out if I was really standing naked
in the backyard.“Smile, don’t smile and lean back, look at my eyes,” Joe said
as he laid in the dirt on the patio aiming the camera at me.
The whole thing
was done in two hours, I signed a release and he was gone. David made dinner
for me and in the next couple of days began to brag that I had posed naked for
photos and that I was the hottest boyfriend in the world. A month later Joe
would sell the pictures to Blueboy and Rump Magazine and people would buy these
issues and show me copies of myself naked. Then Rump did a “Best of Rump
Magazine,” where pictures of my butt appeared. I was honored.
After dinner, David
and I had packed my room and everything in the apartment that belonged to me,
we put it in boxes that sat everywhere stacked on top of each other. My goal
was to be long gone before Bill M. got home from the hospital. I told Roy and
Tommy about my plan to leave before Bill M. got back and I had worked out money
with Roy to give a two week buffer of money to Bill M. That’s why I did the
pictures, so I could just go and live somewhere else, somewhere safe, somewhere
with David.
Rumor had it that
Bill M. was due back any day and no one but Roy had spoken to Bill M’s mom and
he had passed the word on to me. Allegedly, Bill M. was on a much stronger
prescription than he was on when he lived here and the voices have been quieted.
I told Roy that I couldn't live with Bill M. anymore.
David and I put
our heads together. I still needed to find a job other than my modeling for art
students, that job only paid $30.00 an hour. I put the word out to friends and
in two days I began the once weekly job of cleaning a house of three girls enrolled
at SUNY Albany. The money was $40.00 for the job and I took it in the hopes of
getting more clients.
I was greeted at
the door by a brown hair girl holding a phone receiver cradled to her ear. “Yeah?”
she said cupping the phone to her shoulder so the person on the other end of
the phone couldn’t hear what was going on. I introduced myself and was ushered
in. The cord of the phone was stretched from the kitchen, into the hallway and
all the way to the front door. Not talking to me she began to mime what she
wanted me to do, never stopping in her conversation to who I believe was her
mother.
Looking around, I
was shocked at how disgusting college students can be. Garbage was everywhere
as were clothes and the kitchen seemed to be just a staging station to show off
all the dirty pots and pans they had in the house.
The girls had a cat that eyed me from the
counter. I could smell that had a litter box in need of a changing. On the
kitchen floor in the corner sat the litter box. The cat had given up using the
litter inside the box and started using the floor around the litter box to poop
and pee. I saw the girls the whole time I was cleaning; they were stationed on
the living room couch watching General Hospital or on the phone in the kitchen begging
their parents for more money to pay a cleaning person.
Cleaning was fun
and gave my mind something to do. I wore my Walkman and listened to The
Pretenders. The only downside was at the end when I had to walk all three
around the house and show them what I did while cleaning. The girls would run
their fingers over all the surfaces and get down on their knees to make sure I
had cleaned everywhere. “Hmmmmmm” said the girl with Brown hair who answered
the door, holding a dusty finger in my face that she had just pulled from behind
the dresser.
I was paid $40.00
in singles, fives and a ten; it took an extra thirty minutes for them to find
the money they owed me. “Starting next week,” one of the girls announced to me
as I was leaving, we will pay you every two weeks and then she started to close
the door, I stopped and looked at the girl. “Is there anything else?”
she said cupping her hand over the phone receiver just as her roommate had to
talk to me. I shook my head “no” and headed down the walk.
To be continued…….
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
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