I ask him if he’s cool with doing some more explicit stuff, as a trade-off for the mask. He shrugs – as long as his face is covered, he doesn’t care.
I ask him why he’s doing this.
‘I just…’ He shrugs again. ‘Just not every day this happens, is it? I mean… I’m not ugly. I know I’m not ugly; I’m not fishing for compliments. There’s just a big difference between not being ugly – having an okay face – and being attractive, isn’t there? I’m just… I’m short. I’m really short and… weird. And I know it’s risky and stuff, I just. You’re like… It’s really flattering. It’s really, really flattering.’ He’s red again.
I’d take his photo now, if I could.
Yo…
Saw that dude from Tesco today hes going to drop in for a shoot after his shift on wednesday.
So you know. Thanks for the rec.
As hit and miss as your picks for models normally are, he was a good shout.
I quite like him. Like, more than I expected.
I see you watching my Instagram stories
Ugh whatever.
Eddie from Tesco comes over the day after our coffee date.
He likes my house.
‘Spartan,’ he says. ‘Modern.’ The only decorations are prints of my own photographs, a couple of Flo’s drawings hanging, and a set of pressed flowers above my mantel. The walls are white, the floors are wooden – slate tiling in the bathrooms and the kitchen. My mam thinks it looks like a hospital, smells like one too. I bleach everything.
Eddie from Tesco settles into my leather sofa with a squeak, a cup of peppermint tea in his hand, and asks me about myself. I do this to walk them through what’ll happen in the shoot, get them to sign consent forms, scan their IDs. They normally just sign the paper, and monologue at me for a bit until I ask them to stop talking.
Eddie from Tesco signs without reading, but he asks me what attracts me to a model, and how I get those washed-out pastels when I shoot in colour. How do I know if a photo is going to be black and white? And how do I know if it’ll be in colour? Do I just see a model and instantly know; I’m going to shoot you like this and it’ll look just like this. Or do I just wing it?
‘A mix. Sometimes I see someone and get an idea, sometimes I just like the look of them and want to try some stuff out,’ I say. I don’t have any explicit ideas for this shoot, just that we’ll be working with masks, which is fine. I also warn him my studio used to be a garage, in case he panics at the sight of my dad’s box of hammers and saws and power-tools. The nervous ones do, sometimes.
I have a rack and a bin full of clothes in there, and I set about pulling out masks. I have a couple of gimp masks （which I hate, and I should really just bin, but you never know, do you?）， one of those weird, leather dog-mask things （pilfered from the toilet of a gay bar during Pride last year） and a couple of porcelain masquerade masks I cadged from Serotonin during MA. They’re very delicate, and I’ve broken one before. Easy enough to glue back together, but I still give Eddie from Tesco a sharp warning when he starts fingering them. There’s also the bunny head, a big, mascot-looking thing, but not cartoony. Its face is a bit like Peter Rabbit’s, very… Beatrix Potter, you know? Makes it creepier, I think.
‘Where did you even get that?’ he asks.
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s horrible, isn’t it? I love it.’
‘Well, if you love it… it’s cool, I guess,’ he mumbles. ‘Cool, cool, cool.’
I get him down to his pants and do a couple of test shots of him with the masks, then in the bunny head. He is more or less as I imagined. Thick thighs, soft stomach and a flat, ribby chest. He’s not as hairy as I thought he’d be.
I’m surprised by how into the bunny head I am. Like I said, it’s creepy as shit, and the previews on my camera are just like… gross. But like, sexy gross. So wrong it’s right? I don’t know.
I have a cotton tail, which I pin on him. I clip it to the waistband of his briefs （tight, navy blue）， and he clears his throat when I brush my knuckles against the fuzzy small of his back
I get this great shot of his arse, with the little tail – and it’s round and fat, and the tail is so fluffy and cute. It’s like a peach; I could bite it.
He’s clearly uncomfortable, but he asks for direction, and he does everything I say – which is weird, because normally the models are stiff and ignorant, too busy panting and dribbling to think too much. They don’t think they’re performing – they have mistaken my critically acclaimed artistic practice for a prelude to a fuck. Eddie from Tesco hasn’t, though. Maybe he gets the work, maybe he doesn’t think there’s a world where I’d ever want to sleep with him. Maybe it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I want to touch him. Not just to look, but to actually reach my hands out and touch him. My fingers slip on the buttons of my camera, because my hands are so sweaty, and the plastic in my palms is a stand-in for his hips. I squeeze the lens and imagine it soft beneath my fingertips.
‘Stretch,’ I say. ‘Arch your hips, roll over, put your hands on your stomach, get on your knees, touch yourself.’ He’s a good listener.
After half an hour, we’re done. He takes off the rabbit head, and I find him red-faced, with his hair plastered to his skull. I’m looking at him like a piece of meat. Any man, any proper man, would be on me like a rash, but Eddie from Tesco just sits on the floor of my garage and starts getting dressed, knees lifted to disguise the semi I’ve already photographed.
I ask him on the spot if he wants to be in a film. For Hackney. I tell him he’s great – he’s perfect for it – responsive, engaged, compliant; he was made to be shown in two dimensions. He smiles at me, all pretty, all flattered.
‘It’ll just be a test run, though. I don’t know if it’ll work with the masks.’
And the smile drops, though just a little.
Instead of packing up my equipment, I watch him while he puts his clothes back on.
I see him out, then I am alone with his pictures. I cycle through them on the preview screen of my camera. I’m glad I didn’t shoot on film – instant gratification. My thumb trembles as I click down the tiny left arrow on my camera. The display ticks through two hundred images, and I don’t delete a single one. My hand drifts to the inside of my thigh, the crotch of my underwear.
It’s bad when it gets like this. It’s been a while since it’s gotten like this. I made a rule for myself – when I moved back up here, when I finished the little break from photography I had after my MA: don’t touch the models. I was under the misguided impression that touching was what pushed me over the edge, you know? Touching made my hands wander and my knickers drop. And I broke that, because you have to touch them sometimes, you have to put them in the right places, you have to physically arrange them. Sometimes the photos work better when I’m in them – a hand, a high-heeled shoe, a dramatic silhouette – a powerful female presence, a phantom dominatrix.
So now the rule’s more like ‘Don’t shit where you eat’ with ‘No touching’ applied at my discretion. I probably shouldn’t touch Eddie from Tesco, because I clearly want to, and if I can’t obey my only vague guideline I’m fucked, aren’t I?