“Some payroll,” said Frank. “Subsistence — that’s all I get.”
“You let them buy you Tootsie Rolls, is that it? Ain’t it a riot? They’re paying you to study my work, but they refused to pay me to produce it. What’s wrong with a Guggenheim? That’s what’s wrong. They don’t care about the ship — all they’re interested in is the goddamned barnacles.”
In my anger over lunch I almost blurted out to Frank that I had seen his raunchy pictures. But I resisted: his back was to the wall — I couldn’t throw that at him. And furthermore, I had not worked out in my own mind how they mattered: the mind is more fastidious than the eye. I didn’t know whether to witness or judge, and had not decided if such stuff should be suppressed. The soul of art is human emotion. Although pornography depicted anonymous emotion and was crude as a cactus, the people who needed it brought imagination to it and pulped the lumps and spines into art. and let this simmer in their brains. It was like making your own amorous masterpiece, the pure glory of love’s double image — the classically serene embrace — out of the furious meat of Kenny and Doris. Perhaps in Doris’s bivalve and Kenny’s knobby anemone Frank saw a whole sea-floor of possibility, or were these fuck shots merely a sleazy detonator for his libido? “Rhetorical,” he might say; but how did they refer, and to whom, and why?
It baffled me. I resolved to wait.
Quite late — I was in my room, something on my mind, an unformed consequence — Frank knocked on my door. He rapped impatiently, loudly hectoring to alert me to his anger. He burst in, heaved himself at me, then drew back.
He shook his bony fingers and glared.
“You’ve been in my things!”
Enraged, he had a look of starvation. I had never seen him so skinny or so pale; his eyes bulged, there was a beggar’s cringe in his shoulders. But I had seen this sort of thing once before. I knew this intrusion, a particular one — which?
“You know what I’m talking about.”
I smiled at him: I had heard that once, in precisely those words. “Haven’t the faintest.”
He said, “My personal property. Pictures.”
“Describe them.”
“Don’t be funny — you know the ones I mean.” His voice cracked and I thought he was going to burst into tears. Single people are fairly unembarrassed about crying: they practice it alone in their rooms. He sat down and took a deep breath and after exhaling it seemed much calmer. He recovered his aggrieved tone. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s people who don’t respect private property.”
“Then get your skinny ass off my chair and clear out. This is my private property, buddy.”
“I want an explanation. I’m not leaving until I get it.”
“I went into a room in my house, opened the drawer of a table I happen to own and found some of your pictures. I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you raised the matter I can tell you I think you have rather a grim taste in anatomy. That’s all there is to it.”
But I didn’t want him to go. I needed him to help me remember that other intrusion. His eyes were damp with anger. He had gotten even skinnier since entering my room and looked as if he might let out one maniacal honk of wind and shrivel like a bag before my very eyes.
I said, “Also, I thought I recognized the people in them.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Turns out it’s the same couple I’ve been seeing for years. Kenny and Doris. They could use a vacation. I wonder what folks like that do on vacation. Probably tear open a six-pack and shoot the bull. Watch television. Stuff themselves with Twinkies.”
“You’re not even sorry.”
“Sorry?” I said. “I’m appalled!”
“I want an apology.”
“You came to the wrong place, buster.”
He shook his head vengefully. “Know something? You’re really incredible.”
“Just as a point of interest,” I said brightly, “how did you know I’d seen them?”
“That’s my business.”
“Very clever of you, I’ll grant you that. Seriously, how’d you know I’d been nosing around?”
“So you admit you were nosing around!”
“Of course. I’ve got a right to in my own house, haven’t I?”
“Not with my stuff you haven’t. No one touches my stuff.”
“Your ‘stuff’? If us photographers said that, where would you museum people be?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Listen, you peckerhead, for the past three months you’ve been pawing over my pictures and drooling. Have I complained? I jolly well haven’t. And remember,” I said, flinging a finger at him, “when they were handing out Guggenheims no one gave me one. As far as I’m concerned you’re just another burglar using his Guggenheim as a license to pry, so shut up and be glad I don’t report you to the police.”
“That’s all you have to say, is it?”
“No. I still want to know how you found out. Just curious, I guess.”
“I’m not telling you.”
“And the other thing. Why does a fellow who has so much regard for the integrity of the photograph waste his time with that kind of pictorial garbage? What do you see in it, huh?”
He panted crossly instead of replying.
“You’re a very mysterious person, Frank.”
“I just want you to know that I’m having serious doubts about this entire project. Yes, it’s a great idea, but if my personal life is in in jeopardy—”
“What about my personal life!” I said and noticed a scream rising in my voice.
I had been calm. I had had a vague desire to re-enter my own picture palace and examine that moment in the rowboat with Orlando. Had he really been so dark, so tense, so obviously deceived, as the picture showed? And what was the sequel to it? Frank’s intrusion shattered my mood, destroyed my calm. But he had given me a notion. He had reminded me that I had endured another unexpected assault, and his heckling — all this woeful indignation — had woken a memory, not pleasant but necessary.
“I’m going,” he said.
“Don’t go.” I needed his indignation now to stir my past and make me remember. Someone had come, just like him, and accused me.
He sat on the edge of his chair and gave his Adam’s apple a workout. Plunge, plunge: it was like sarcasm.
I said, “I want you to know that I didn’t take those pictures lightly. No sir. They worried me. Frank, I was shook. Now I respect you — you’ve always found things to admire in my work. But how do you account for them? What, may I ask, are they in aid of?”
“It’s a different ball game altogether.”
“Well said. But these horny pictures — are you doing something with them?”
“What do you mean ‘doing something’?” his voice was uncertain and shameful.
“Writing a learned article, that sort of caper.”
He hung his head. “Not exactly.”
“Go get them. I want to look at them again.”
“Never.”
“Don’t be ashamed of them. It’s an aspect of photography that’s been somewhat overlooked.” Frank didn’t budge. I said, “I found them rather alarming.”
“So you said.”
“Photography is all about secrets — the secrets in surfaces. But Kenny and Doris don’t have any secrets that I can see. They’re out of sync, there’s no surface — technically, they’re nowhere, they look like they were bled off by Dracula, so you can’t use the old erotic art gambit to justify them. Or is erotic art just another way of saying tit-show? And doesn’t it scare you to realize that in order to enjoy that sort of thing — Doris double-clutching, say — you have to endure the sight of Kenny’s great hairy ass or his dripping tool?”