THE PHOTOGRAPHER’s response: I’m pretty happy with it, technically. She was an experienced model. There’s a nice play, a nice tension between the coarseness of the bull and the dirt, between the roughness of the rails and the bruises, and her obvious delicacy. The light was nearly perfect. You can see how it works differently on everything it hits.
THE PUBLISHER is in late middle age, works as a team with his wife out of their basement in a small New England town. Their daughter works for them as a part-time secretary, takes the calls from their network of photographers and writers around the U.S. and Canada, does the filing and the billing. Their other kids are grown and gone. He didn’t know much about publishing when they started, he has his high school certificate and a diploma in drafting, so over the years he and his wife have taken turns attending conferences and seminars for publishers and small-business operators. They have made many useful contacts with people who have been in the business long enough to know the ropes. It’s been a long hard climb from nowhere but they feel they have finally established themselves. They know they’re not going to get rich by any means, and they’ve accepted that. All they really want is a half-decent living.
THE PUBLISHER’S response: It’s staged, of course. Ninety-nine per cent of this stuff is staged, just like most of what you get at the newsstand, only the rest of it’s called journalism. The bull is doped to the gills. The bruises are made up. We’ve never allowed ourselves to get pulled into the kind of stuff where people can get hurt. There’s no need, really. And the girls get paid, more than you’d think, likely more than you and I get paid. That particular girl’s doing commercials now, we’ve seen her on television, my wife recognized her holding a garden hose in some chemical thing. Her hair’s different, all they have to do is cut it off and let it grow back normally, and she’s got her breasts under control. So working this market hasn’t done her career any harm. We keep a firm eye on the competition, we have to, but there are choices to make. There’s a line we won’t cross no matter what the competition’s doing. And you can make a living without crossing the line.
HARVEY is fifty-six and has worked most of his life at a small factory which makes artificial turf. He has just enough authority at the plant to give him a feeling of satisfaction, and his retirement looks not half bad thanks to some high-interest rates in the eighties. He’s been married to the same woman for twenty-four years, and although he’s been a little rough with her a few times he’s never meant to, it was only because he was real tired and she wouldn’t stop and nothing else would work. And she gives as good as she gets. They’ve got four kids who are going to do all right. Harvey is a sucker for ceremony. His favourite times of the year are Christmas and Thanksgiving when everyone in the family dresses up, sits down and waits for him to carve the turkey. He always wears his suit jacket to the table but halfway through the meal he takes it off and drapes it over the back of his chair. It’s a family joke. He’s had no major problems over the years, except once in a while with money, but that was not a big surprise.
He found the magazine during a routine drug check through his seventeen-year-old son’s dresser. The kid’s no trouble and Harvey wants it to stay that way, so he does an inventory once or twice a month. He dug the magazine out of the bottom drawer and flipped through the pages and stopped at our picture.
HARVEY’s response: I’ll break his ass. If he thinks his mother and I have worked our butts off all these years to have our home polluted with shit like this, he hasn’t been paying attention. This would kill his mother. What’s wrong with the talent at his school, for God’s sake. They better start putting out before he finds himself thinking black and blue is pretty.
RICHARD is Harvey’s son, the one with the dresser. He’s a fair student and no trouble to anyone. He plays soccer every chance he gets. In his Dad’s day it was hockey, but hockey’s mostly for the biggest and the baddest now, and Richard’s never had the weight. When he was very small his Dad laid a couple of good ones on his rear end to establish the ground rules but he’s never touched him since. Richard makes damn sure he has no reason to. He’s dark skinned like his mother and he has most of her facial features, including the overbite which has never been attended to, although she dreamed when he was small of getting that done for him. Still, he turns heads. He hangs out with one girl, the first one to say yes to his awkward interest. They eat together at the mall a lot of the time, Chinese, tacos, pizza, hamburgers, and they see most of the movies.
She’s a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. She thinks he’s a riot. And she watches Richard play soccer, although she’s not athletic herself. She’s not as flashy as some of the others at school, no leather, no nail polish, no hair spray, no boots, no earrings down to her elbows, but she’s considerably smarter. She never talks to him much and she just fumbles around if a teacher asks her anything, but she pulls in the A’s every time. She came to the house only once, his mother’s idea, and she won’t come back. When Richard asked her why, she told him the truth, because she thought it was important. She said, guessing he’d likely drop her, “Your Dad makes me sort of uncomfortable.” Richard feels her up a lot but she’s got control. He thinks she’s afraid to touch him.
He bought the magazine for fun, for laughs.
RICHARD’S response: Right. So what. That picture’s nothing compared to most of it. I can read between the lines. I know what’s normal. I know what the bull means and I know what the chains mean and I know I’m not gonna treat my wife like that. I just like long legs. And I like my privacy. Besides, you start looking for rules about that kind of stuff, you’ve got to decide who gets to make the rules. And it won’t be you and it won’t be me. It’ll be some loser with a Bible.
JOHN is thirty-four. He sells cameras at a department store. He graduated from university with a fairly good history degree but the system’s all plugged up with old teachers, there won’t be any jobs, not any time soon, so he signed up for night classes in engineering at the local university. He takes a holiday once a year in the Caribbean with his wife, who is a legal steno with the biggest law firm in the city. They’re lucky, their two young children can stay with his mother during the day while they earn the money. He’s only ever been in trouble once in his life. When he was in second year at McGill a guy came on to him in the washroom of a pub. He and a friend pounded the guy to a pulp, a reflex action more or less, and subsequently spent the night in jail. But the guy didn’t lay any charges. John believed then and he believes now that everyone should get a shot at whatever it is they want, as long as his own path stays clear. His wife’s still got most of what she brought to the marriage; she works out and doesn’t eat very much. One of the joys of his marriage is seeing heads turn when he meets her at a restaurant downtown for lunch, or when they line up for a movie. He loves taking her south.
He has a subscription to the magazine.
JOHN’s response: That’s not one of my favourite pictures by any means. The bull and the chains, that stuff will pass. The bull is all souped up on something anyway, guaranteed. Probably more likely to fall over than take off. It’s almost an aesthetic thing with me, you know? Women are beautiful and nothing’s going to change that. And who would want to change it? My wife doesn’t mind, but then she’s confident, which she’s got every right to be. Nobody’s gettin’ hurt here.
FATHER MICHAEL is a semi-retired priest who has worked and taught for most of his life in a small Manitoba town. He had been a gentle, shy boy but he gradually learned, with training, how to reach out to people. He looks harmless and has not once in his life raised his voice in anger. He has thanked God for the small successes he has had with the members of his parish. What he’s learned is that people, men and women both, usually just need to talk one-to-one with someone who will let them talk.
He found the photograph taped to the wall inside the confessional. He imagines it was put there by the boys. Not one boy, but a group of boys, one who had the idea, one who taped the picture up, and a few others
huddled outside the confessional in the spirit of encouragement. He realizes he’ll never know who exactly was involved, and this bothers him. It’s the secrecy.
FATHER MICHAEL’s response: I’ve been a teacher you should remember. Very little surprises me. I suppose that’s why the boys placed the picture there, because they feel the need to surprise me, or to shock me. Children want reaction. They need it sometimes. Defiance is just another word for growing up, isn’t it? Perhaps I should make a big show of anger. I’ve given it some thought. Of course, they have defiled their church and one day down the road some other priest in some other church will hear their confessions. I have prayed for them, they know enough to expect that. As for the woman, as for the photographer and the magazine from which the picture was ripped, that’s a bigger prayer, isn’t it?
DON is forty. He works as a broker at the Vancouver stock exchange and wears twelve-hundred-dollar suits. He drives a yellow Mercedes 450 SL. He takes his three children regularly and has taught them to sail and to play tennis. He is seeing two women, the social worker regularly and formally and the university student intermittently. He plans to marry again, the social worker, in about two years. He is adept at making people feel good about themselves. His philosophy is that everyone has something going for them. His assistant, whom he hired himself, works out of her house because she’s partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair. She’s a crack typist and one of the most precise thinkers he has ever come across. Before his divorce he suffered, briefly, from a kind of impotence, which he regarded as simply an outward manifestation.
He picks up a men’s magazine only occasionally, usually because things are a little too tame in his own bed.
DON’s response: It’s been going on from the beginning of time. And fifty years from now, count on it, we’ll be back to modesty, prudery. That’s where we’re headed. Some day soon the mere glimpse of a woman’s ankle will drive a man mad again. It’s like lapels. Narrow, wide, narrow, wide. But right now this threshold is the one we’re on and this is where the thrills are. Take it or leave it. Nobody’s forcing anything. The bruises are make-up, the bull is doped, and the farmer will have something to remember, likely bought his wife a dishwasher with the money the bull earned. The young lady knows what she’s doin’ and a lot of people would probably thank her for it. Maybe you’ve noticed that hookers are fighting in court for the right to hook. And I read in Harper’s about a prostitute, a free woman in a free country, who will let men spit on her for a quick twenty bucks. What’s it to you and me? There are bigger problems. Read the paper, any paper.
DR. FRANCIS ELMERS is an obstetrician. He is fifty. His wife is a dentist. They have a daughter who is just finishing her first degree; she’s a sensible, serious kid. She’s got an academic record which will allow her to choose from almost anything the world has to offer. For twelve years Dr. Elmers has rented an acre of land at the sunny nonindustrial edge of the city. Each year he plants a garden there and he retreats to this garden when he is overtired. He is extremely good looking and even at fifty is still dealing with the inevitable infatuation of some of his undeniably beautiful pregnant patients. In spite of his long-term professional attendance at open birth canals and at the surgical incisions made necessary by C-Sections, in spite of his familiarity with blood and pain and complications, Dr. Elmers regards birth and all things which make it possible, particularly the bodies of women, as miracles. He has never lost either a mother or a baby in childbirth, although there have been failures, deformities, physiological aberrations that would shock outsiders. In these cases, almost always, nature takes its course.
He has consistently refused to sit on the abortion panel at the hospital where he has privileges and, although his daughter occasionally accuses him of hiding his head in the sand, he remains firm. He believes in full state support for young women who must raise their babies alone, and he believes this support should be collected by the state from the young men whose sperm seems recently to be so profuse. He has defended these opinions at many dinner parties. When he was in medical school, his girlfriend, a nursing student, became pregnant. They couldn’t marry and she’ gave the child up. In moments of weakness he catches himself wishing she’d kept the child because he sees now, in retrospect, that he would have been able to contribute financially without much strain. But usually he takes the attitude, what’s done is done. Another of his secrets is that he has been a long-time collector of erotica, not actual photographs or books but carefully selected images to hold in his mind.
Dr. Elmers saw the magazine at counter level in a narrow little convenience store near the hospital, where he’d stopped to buy breath mints. He lifted it out and leafed through it quickly. When he saw the bull he asked to see the store manager. He told the manager to get this material behind the counter or he’d have himself a visit he wouldn’t forget.
DR. ELMERS’s response: Beneath contempt. It is not worth serious discussion.
RAYMOND is twenty-two. He has almost finished serving a reduced four years of an eight-year sentence in Kingston for break and enter with a weapon. He’s tall, he’s got a good muscular build from working out and his face, which is almost a ringer for River Phoenix’s face, is still softly scored with the scars of adolescent acne. He grew up in the East, in poverty, in a family where nurturing meant there was nearly enough to eat. He doesn’t even think his father’s name but he writes to his mother and to his youngest sister every week, she’s had a baby whose middle name is Raymond. Prison has given him the chance to get his grade twelve and he’s also taken some mechanics training; they say he’s a natural. He feels pretty sure there’ll be a job waiting when he gets out, which will be soon. He knows it was a major error getting involved with the guys who organized the thing. He was just young and stupid. He was only taking a few months to knock around before he signed on with the mine. He’s no criminal. They gave him the gun and he held it all right, but to this day he doesn’t know how to fire one. Although he’d never share that. He keeps his nose firmly out of other people’s business and his mouth shut, a skill which he figures is a whole hell of a lot more valuable than knowing how to use a gun. There are lots of knives and drugs around, but not as many as people think, it’s not compulsory. He has been approached a few times in the showers, and once, early on, he didn’t get away, but there was just that once, before he started to work out. New guys will sometimes select him and try to buddy him up, looking for protection from the unknown. But it’s not available, at least not from him.
A friend threw the magazine at him in the prison library.
RAYMOND’S response: I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. I’d be delighted. You want all the slimy details? You have time? I’ll tell you what they got here to offer the average man is sweet nothin’. There is nothing soft or easy in this place. So we respond to pictures. You want to hear about the alternatives? You think we’re the guys who hurt women? You’re wrong. The last thing I wanna do to a woman when I’m outta here is hurt her. There’ll be a woman all right, maybe several dozen, but they won’t be gettin’ hurt and they sure as hell won’t look like this one. A bull, for God’s sake. What’s that, a stockbroker’s wet dream?
RYAN is five years old, and of course he doesn’t quite qualify as a man. But he’ll get there, faster than he thinks. He lives in an apartment in a decent neighbourhood with his single mother, who receives fair and adequate maintenance payments from his father, who doesn’t believe in marriage. She has explained their circumstances to Ryan, using language he can understand, trying to protect his feelings about his usually absent father. She is a thoughtful and careful woman, in every respect. She didn’t automatically enrol Ryan in the closest nursery school but first interviewed several teachers in several different schools around the city. Ryan eats every vegetable but cauliflower and brussels sprouts, he can read a bit, he runs hard and flat out whenever he gets the chance, and he considers himself an accomplished kid. His mother has instilled that confidence in him because she cons
iders it his birthright. She wants them to have their own separate house, away from the stink of the apartment halls and the dingy laundry room and the passing of strangers on the stairs. She inherited twenty thousand dollars for a down payment from her father, who died of an aneurysm in the spring, and she thinks she could manage a small house if she works full-time when Ryan goes to school.
She had to leave Ryan with a neighbour friend when she went downtown for a job interview. Ryan and Cody, the neighbour’s boy, found the magazine in a bathroom drawer. Cody took it out of the drawer but it slipped from his hands and dropped to the tile floor, fell open to our photograph. They stared down at the woman and the bull for a few seconds, they saw the pubic hair and the bruises and the thick tongue hanging from the bull’s mouth, and then Cody jumped on the page, jumped up and down on it and laughed, as little boys do. Neither of them had seen a naked woman before, they couldn’t even remember their mothers’ breasts, although they’d both been nursed as infants. Caught, they said they were just looking for some more toilet paper.
RYAN’s response: When his mother asks him about the magazine, in her careful, thoughtful way, he says nothing, except that he’s sorry and that he will never go looking through other people’s things again, which is a lie for which he might be excused. She tells him it’s okay and the only really important thing he has to remember is that magazines like that have nothing to do with them. He listens, he hears what she says, but he knows he’s discovered something, something no one would have told him about if he hadn’t found it for himself. Like the snakes that crawl around in the woodpile at the farm, for the shade, his uncle said. Or the slugs he found under the tomato leaves in his other grandmother’s garden, trailing what she called mucus but he calls something else. Or the dark round thing that grows under his mother’s arm, a mole, she said, it’s only an ordinary mole, which he saw by mistake the very last time he charged into her room without knocking.
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