by Jenna Blum
“Did you see anyone who looked suspicious?” Julian barked. “While we were walking over here? Anyone who looked like they didn’t belong? Clean-cut, too normal?”
“No,” said Elsbeth. “Only drag queens and dealers and punks—I swear.”
This seemed to relax Julian a little. He reached for his cigarettes as another vodka appeared.
“Thank God,” he said. “I guess they’ve stopped tailing me—for now. But they’ve been following me for weeks.”
“Who?” said Elsbeth again.
Julian cupped his smoke to light it. “The Feds,” he said, barely moving his lips.
“Okay,” said Elsbeth. The Feds? What was he talking about? She looked a little nervously at Julian’s third empty glass; would he start babbling about aliens next?
“They’re after me, Charlie,” said Julian. “They raided my studio this morning,” and then he sat back as Luigi set a platter of antipasto on the table.
“Compliments of the chef,” he said. “May I bring you anything else?”
“Yes, vodka,” said Julian. “And whatever my model wants.”
Elsbeth sat up straighter; it was the first time since they’d been out in public together that Julian had called her this. She flipped her crimped hair over her shoulders and gave Luigi a nod.
“I’m fine for now,” she said and turned back to Julian, who was shaking pills out of a prescription bottle and tossing them into his mouth.
“Why would the Feds raid your studio?” she whispered.
“That’s what I wanted to know!” said Julian, so loudly now that the two other couples in the room glanced over. He slapped the table. “I was like, What is this? Is this America or the USSR? I was in my underwear, Charlie. In my boxers. I was working. I thought it was the delivery guy from the deli. But noooooooo, it was the fucking FBI, there on, get this, a child pornography charge.”
Elsbeth’s stomach jumped. She said, “But that’s ridiculous.”
“Isn’t it?” said Julian. “Isn’t it though?” He started in on another vodka; there was quite a forest of highball glasses in front of him. Elsbeth knew her dad would never have allowed a server to leave the table uncleared, but probably Luigi was giving Julian a little space. “Pornography!” he burst out. “Purportedly the super was in my place to put out a small fire, and he saw my images and called the cops. The fucking NYPD. The child protection hotline!” Elsbeth saw with alarm that Julian had tears in his eyes. “They took my negatives,” he said. “All of them. They took my contact sheets, my cameras, they smashed my best wide-angle lens. They ruined two batches of film. I’ll never get those images back, never!”
“That’s terrible,” said Elsbeth.
“It’s fucking un-American is what it is,” said Julian. His voice was shaking. “I said, Where’s your warrant? Show me your warrant. You know what they said? They said, We don’t need one, Mr. Wilton. Not when we have reason to believe the suspect might remove incriminating evidence from the premises. Suspect. I’m a suspect!” He popped two more pills in his mouth like peanuts. His hands were shaking.
“You should have seen their beady little eyes,” he said. “You could tell they were hoping to find porn. Drooling for it. As if those troglodytes would know the difference between art and porn if it bit them on the ass. Me! A pornographer! When all I aspire to do is capture innocence. Purity. Unself-consciousness. Joy. All the things only kids have, that utter lack of shame before the adult world gets to them and screws them over. Pornography, my ass—I’m the antiporn!”
Luigi trundled up then, and Elsbeth expected him to ask Julian to lower his voice or maybe suggest Julian might be more comfortable in the manager’s office. Instead he said, “Mr. Wilton, so sorry to interrupt, but there is a lady here who is one of your biggest fans,” and from behind him popped a woman with a silvery bob and what looked like a melted fork securing a Frank Lloyd Wright–patterned scarf around her throat. Ah, Elsbeth thought, art lover.
“Mr. Wilton,” she said, “such an admirer, an acolyte really.” She held out a cocktail napkin and pen. “Forgive the intrusion, but would you mind?”
“Not at all,” said Julian graciously. “S’fine.” He picked up the last glass on the table and emptied it, then scrawled his signature on the napkin. He drew a smiley face next to it, finishing with a grand flourish.
“Oh, thank you,” said the woman, “such an honor to meet you. Your Luminous Beings changed my life!”
Julian smiled at her and lurched to his feet. “S’very kind,” he said. “’Scuse me—I have to make a call,” and he pushed past the woman and pinballed into the hallway with the restrooms.
The woman tucked her signed napkin into her purse with reverence. She looked at Elsbeth, and like Luigi’s, her expression changed; she seemed about to say something, then forced a smile and went back to her table.
Elsbeth sat—and sat and sat. The ice cubes melted and shifted in the glasses. She sipped her vodka, then remembered how many calories were in it and set it back down. Her stomach felt hot. She watched in the mirror as more patrons arrived and sat, the waiters lighting their candles. The antipasto perspired before her: marinated red peppers, artichoke hearts dotted with oregano and oil; prosciutto, salami, thick wedges of Parmesan and asiago. Elsbeth’s mouth watered uncontrollably. She lifted the plate and set it, as well as the full bread basket, on the neighboring table.
“Is anything wrong, miss?” asked Luigi, hovering; “may I bring you some other dish? We have gnocchi tonight, made in-house with browned butter and rosemary.”
Elsbeth wondered whether the rosemary was candied, dipped in sugar water and roasted, the way Peter did it. She had started to tell Luigi she was fine—and could he remove the food?—when Julian came crashing back down the hallway. He had some trouble with the velvet curtain at its entrance, getting entangled in it and giving it a few karate chops before he got clear; then he staggered toward the table.
“’Scuse me,” he said again, “hadda make a call. Hadda call Gene—my lawyer,” and he lurched forward. Luigi caught him, bracing Julian under the arms.
“Alley-oop!” he said, “watch your step there, Mr. Wilton.”
“Yessir,” said Julian, weaving, “thank you, Luigi, ’s very kind.” He groped in the pocket of his shorts and brought out a wad of bills, which he dropped onto the table amid the glasses. Luigi and Elsbeth looked at it; it was all twenties, and Elsbeth wondered if Julian would regret, when he woke the next day, leaving Luigi a thousand-percent tip.
“It is all right, miss,” said Luigi quietly, “I will hold it for him. Now you had better go,” for Julian was now bee-lining for the front door at a severe diagonal, as though he were on the deck of the sinking Titanic.
“Thank you,” he said to the room at large, “excellent as always, service ’s always good here,” and he blinked owlishly around. “Charlie?” he said, “less blow this clambake,” and Elsbeth grabbed her purse and followed him. She felt triumphant as well as concerned, because their evening was not over; even if Julian hadn’t expressly said what they were going to do next, somebody had to get the poor guy home.
* * *
Elsbeth had never been in Julian’s apartment at night, although she had visited it in her imagination many times. There it looked like the after-midnight cable shows she sometimes watched at Liza’s or in her own house until Peter wandered downstairs, whereupon Elsbeth quickly changed the channel. There would be stripes of light coming through the blinds, flashing on and off with a neon sign’s rhythm across the street; Julian would lie in his underwear on the black sheets in his bedroom as Elsbeth advanced in a Victoria’s Secret ensemble, a breeze blowing her hair back, Chinese flutes playing . . . In reality, the apartment was much messier than when she’d last seen it, clothes and ashtrays and equipment everywhere, and it reeked of smoke.
Julian went straight to the sink and gulped from the tap. This represented a recovery of sorts from the cab ride uptown, during which he’d passed out on Elsbeth�
��s shoulder and had to be prodded awake to pay the driver. Elsbeth had propped him up in the elevator, but now he staggered off down the hall under his own power, flapping one hand behind him in what Elsbeth took to be a make-yourself-comfortable gesture. She got herself some water as well, pouring it into a MoMA coffee mug with a Magritte streetscape on it, and wandered around the apartment. Squares of light from cars passing below waxed and waned across the ceiling.
On the architect’s table was a jigsaw of scattered images. Elsbeth pulled one of the contact sheets over with a finger pressed to the white margin. Would the Feds confiscate these too? “Pornography: pôr'nägrəfē/ noun: printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings”—Elsbeth had looked up the definition in Webster’s. She used a magnifying cube to peer at images of her naked body: Elsbeth crossing a brook; Elsbeth walking up a wooded hill; Elsbeth sitting Indian-style on a picnic table. She was so much thinner now; in the photos, her breasts were conical, her stomach still had rolls. Elsbeth touched, on the slick paper, the light brown triangle between her legs. This wasn’t an explicit display, and she didn’t feel particularly aroused. The sight of her formerly chubby body naked in Bear Mountain State Park was just incongruous, dreamlike and weird.
She pushed the contact sheet back in place and looked at the clock over the stove. It was 10:15. She’d left a note that she and Liza and Very were going to the movies at the Willowbrook Cineplex, so she had until midnight—if either of her parents had even noticed the Post-it at all. She still had about forty-five minutes before she had to leave for the Port Authority. She ventured to the hall and listened. Nothing except bass pounding up from an apartment below and sirens on Riverside Drive, a city cacophony that Elsbeth, born to it, found comforting.
“Julian?”
Elsbeth checked the bathroom first, in case he’d passed out in the tub—or on the porcelain throne, like Elvis. But it was empty.
“Julian?”
There was only one place, really, he could be. In the bedroom Julian was spread-eagled on his back, one arm slung over his face. The wondrous clock cast its colors over him: aqua, fuchsia, periwinkle, pink.
Elsbeth tiptoed to the side of the bed. His shirt had fallen away from his shorts to reveal a slice of stomach, bisected by the dark line of hair Liza called the goodie trail. Julian had drunk so much vodka and taken all those pills; he could asphyxiate in the night and die, like that senior girl at the prom last year. Elsbeth should turn him on his side; she should at least make sure he was all right.
She eased onto the bed next to him, first sitting, then lying backward very slowly until finally her head was in the crook of his shoulder. She held her breath. Julian! Julian was holding her. Sort of. The air around his face was humid with alcohol; he was snuffling noisily. Elsbeth rolled up onto one elbow and looked at him, then lowered her face until his breath stirred her hair. She put her lips on his—they were as warm as she’d imagined they’d be, and much softer, if a little slack. She was kissing Julian!
He shifted and murmured, and Elsbeth drew back.
“What?” she said. “What, Julian?”
She eased a hand under the thin fabric of his shirt; the hair there was much crisper than she’d thought it would be.
“Julian,” she whispered. “It’s me, Charlie.”
No response. Elsbeth laid her head on his chest, his breastbone hard as a halved walnut, the thump of his heart beneath that. She slid her hand down onto his stomach—she could feel it gurgling. The skin above his shorts was smooth as the inside of a shell. Elsbeth’s fingers dipped beneath his waistband.
He wasn’t wearing any underwear.
She pulled her hand back, and Julian’s hips moved upward, as though seeking her. He was hard beneath his zipper.
“Julian,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
No response. Elsbeth waited. She thought of Liza saying there was one thing men loved above all others. Elsbeth slid down farther. Julian’s fly was half open, and the zipper clicked down tooth by tooth. Elsbeth reached into the nest of hair—he was so warm, if a little soft. She took a deep breath, then dipped her head forward and took him in her mouth.
He pulsed once, twice. Elsbeth gripped him, wishing she’d practiced on something other than popsicles. She moved her mouth up and down; in this warm darkness, the shifting kaleidoscope pastels of the clock, nothing felt quite real. Elsbeth glanced up at Julian, his face watermelon, lime, lavender, pink. Was Elsbeth doing something wrong? Julian remained only half hard; it was like having the world’s biggest mouthful of gum. Elsbeth tried to recall what Liza had said: “Use your hand; they like that. And don’t give up—one time I had a guy take thirty-seven minutes!” Elsbeth didn’t think she could last that long, but she kept trying. There was a chance, if she did this right, that Julian’s eyes would flutter open, and he would say Hey, Charlie, where’d you learn to do that? and pull her up to him and say, I was awake the whole time. And then he would roll on top of her and make love to her, even though Elsbeth would confess she was still a virgin; it doesn’t matter, he’d say, and after that they would be inseparable. Elsbeth would attend the opening of their show with him, and all the others after, and he would shoot her and nobody else from then on; when she was eighteen they’d get married and leave the city to start over on a farm Julian would buy in, maybe, Vermont. They would shun the press, Julian’s reclusiveness only enhancing his fame, but every once in a while reporters would seek them out and Julian would receive them graciously in his barn, where he had his studio, and Elsbeth would bring out wine and cheese. She would sit next to him on a hay bale as he put an arm around her and say how she had saved him from himself, how she was his one and only muse; Elsbeth would be thin and wear her hair in a braid and smoke Gauloises, and Julian would have a rollneck sweater. And maybe a beard.
Finally, something did seem to be happening—Julian was moving!—but then he subsided again, and Elsbeth heard a sound she could not mistake: a snore. She sat up, disbelieving, and wiped her mouth. Sure enough, Julian was snoring—the whites of his eyes just showing between the lids. As quietly as she could, Elsbeth pulled his shirt down over his belly and slid from the bed. Oh, God, she was mortified! The one thing men loved more than anything, and she had failed at it. What was she supposed to do?
In the main room she located her purse, then stood for a moment. She used a grease pencil to write a note on the back of a manila envelope:
Dear Julian, thanks for a wonderful evening! I’ll look forward to the next shoot. Love, your Muse, Elsbeth. XOXO
She was staring at this, debating whether to tear it up and start again, when another snore from Julian’s room decided her. She didn’t want him to wake now and find her here; she didn’t want him to remember a thing. Do-over! they used to call as kids on the playground, and Elsbeth badly wanted one. She needed another night when Julian was less frantic, when this business with the Feds had blown over and things were back to normal, so the two of them could drive out to the country in the non–General Lee and have a shoot and laugh together, and Julian would not be drunk out of his mind nor doped up on pills. Then Elsbeth could try again; she would tell him how she felt, and Julian would make love to her and they would be on their way. She fled.
* * *
The New York Times—August 15, 1986
A special antipornography task force of the FBI, accompanied by members of the Child Protection Unit of the NYPD, searched the Greenwich Village studio of renowned fine art photographer Julian Wilton yesterday in what some say is a blow against child exploitation and others call a campaign against artistic expression.
The superintendent of Mr. Wilton’s studio building, Rob Laubach, noticed photographs of “nude children in compromising positions” in Wilton’s studio while helping put out a cigarette-caused fire there earlier this month, NYPD spokesman Thomas Champoux said.
Mr. Lauba
ch, believing Wilton’s photographs to be child pornography, contacted the police, who then notified the FBI.
No charges have yet been brought against Wilton, 27, whose brightly saturated, large-scale photographs of prepubescent and adolescent nudes are exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., among others, and have garnered international acclaim and controversy since 1983, when Wilton’s first show, “Unadorned,” opened in Chicago’s prestigious Roget Gallery.
“My client is doing what artists have done since cave drawings, which is to celebrate the human form,” said Wilton’s lawyer, Eugene Rubin of Rubin and Homonoff, Esq. “His models and their parents love working with him. They consider it a privilege. And he photographs not a single eyelash without proper consent.”
Rubin maintains that the real criminal is “the FBI, who invaded my client’s studio without a warrant and destroyed his property, his photos and his creative peace of mind.”
The FBI confirmed it entered Wilton’s studio without a warrant, but according to Special Anti-Pornography Unit spokesperson Jocelyn Martin, “We don’t require one for the search of a premises from which the suspect is almost certain to remove incriminating materials, given the opportunity.”
Among the possessions Martin said the FBI took from Wilton’s studio were several rolls of undeveloped film, Polaroids, Wilton’s personal journals and books, and some of his cameras.
Martin said the FBI couldn’t comment more specifically because of a pending grand jury investigation into whether Wilton’s work consists of pornography, in which case Wilton will face several charges of possession and trafficking. But she added, “We believe some of Mr. Wilton’s work to be of a highly questionable nature.”
Pornography as applied to art is notoriously hard to define. Legally categorized as “the portrayal of sexual acts solely for the purpose of sexual arousal,” child pornography is specified by the Federal and New York penal code to be “any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor.”