Mr. Kline – Trust The Devil You Know

Owsley

When people ask me who Owsley is, I tell them he is my estranged web designer. I don’t tell him this though, because it’s not true.

I imagine that Owsley and I weigh about the same and, while 110lbs is a fine weight for a little girl of 5’2”, it makes it easy to count the vertebrae of a 5’11” man. I try not to notice his various bones sticking out all over the place and this is easy enough to do just by concentrating on his half of the conversation and trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about at any given time.

Owsley knows a little about a lot of things and, like a human edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, he begins his monologue at A and continues until the sun goes down or the drugs wear off, whichever comes first. When Owsley really was my web designer, I let him do pretty much anything he wanted to my website because I was too polite to admit that his explanations sounded like gibberish to me. He doesn’t have a speech impediment, it’s just that, not unlike reading an Encyclopedia, I hear his words and fail to assign meaning to them. All I hear is words words words words words and his oft repeated phrase “if this, then that”, which in his mind explains everything.

Despite our failure to communicate, I actually do like him. We seem to get along better in writing as this gives my slow mind time to formulate a response before he’s ten topics down the road. What Owsley sees in me, I have no idea. Dry humor and the slow speech of a westerner, what’s not to love? I don’t pay him for stuff anymore so I can only assume he enjoys watching me bake in his pool and drink his vodka. Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Speaking of baking in the pool, I was sitting in a windowsill in Owsley’s living room. There are three tall windows side by side that look out onto the peach trees “that the drug dealers planted” he told me. “You mean the other drug dealers?”, I asked him. The property had been seized by the feds for housing a meth lab which later allowed him to purchase it for next to nothing. The tile floor of his home sprawls across 1000’s of square feet into multiple bed and bath rooms and what could almost be considered a commercial kitchen, all of which proved to be nearly impossible to navigate. I was sitting in the windowsill watching the drippers water the trees and Owsley said “we’re gonna get really fucking high.” Here again, I heard the words “really fucking high” but failed to assign meaning to them and, just like with my website, I went along with whatever he said.

I was still sitting on the windowsill when Owsley brought out a collection of baked goods and glass pipes. “Good god man, you’ve got a regular fucking bake sale going on here” I said. He told me I should eat a biscotti which would kick in in an hour and use the bubbler to fill in the blanks. ” This will be good”, I thought, “a twisted experience with the thin man…” Owsley was talking about drugs and pain and rubbing alcohol and since I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it, I did as he suggested. It was 12:30 in the afternoon.

Owsley does this kind of thing every day, it is his method of managing a chronic pain condition. I don’t. I wasn’t ready. I’m an amateur. Some people like to talk about finding god or opening the doors of perception but let me tell you: there is neither such thing.

Once, when I worked at Kline’s Photography, a shelf holding about 30 big Tupperware containers housing album orders for clients, tipped over and fell on the floor. Every one of those fucking Tupperwares came open; order forms and negatives fluttering together like confetti in a parade. The resulting mess took days to sort out.

I was sitting on Owsley’s windowsill trying to figure out what the fuck he was talking about when a shelf fell over in my mind, flinging boxes of grey matter against the wall and mixing their contents like a bad cocktail. The only thing on the other side of the doors is a whirlwind of doomed voices and blendervison, things you don’t want to see.

The dust was still settling when Owsley offered me more but, fearing for my sanity, I politely declined. “See there what you just did,” he told me, “people with no impulse control can’t do that, drug addicts can’t do that.” “Do what?” “They can’t say no to any offer, doesn’t matter what it is: weed, coke, crack, whores, vodka, they say yes until they end up face down in the pool.” I think this was a compliment. “You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with”, I said, but then realized he was still talking and I hadn’t said a word.

Many years ago, when I lived in Sun Valley, I had to drive some douche bags to L.A. for the filming of a porn flick. The scene: most extreme anal scene for which the girl was paid with tequila, was later nominated for an AVN award. She did shoot bananas and ice cubes from her ass before being gang raped by several guys dressed as circus animals but all I could see when I looked at her was her stubby little fingers. Those beeny weenies will never play piano, I thought, poor stupid bitch. Before I was to drive home by myself, I was laying on the infamous Mick Surewood’s bed in Van Nuys, listening to the sounds of his aquarium and worrying that I would fall asleep on the road. I played the resulting crash out in my mind over and over again. I knew the sounds and just how it would feel when the car landed upside down and crushed my head.

Owsley’s kids were coming to visit at 5:00 and it was already 12:30. With the contents of my mental shoeboxes now strewn across every surface between my ears, the first waves of panic began to set in. The imaginary car accident was back. I didn’t want to die but I sure as hell couldn’t keep the car on the road. 5:00 seemed impossibly early.

People have reported waking in the middle of surgery. They can hear and feel everything but cannot respond to the stimulus. “After I sew her up, let’s take turns eating her pussy”, says the doctor while licking his lips and making shadow puppets on the wall. Paralyzed in a cocoon of hallucination, that shit will never stand up in court.

“Four more hours of going UP!” Owsley gleefully reminded me. I put my sunglasses on so I could stare at his eyes without him noticing. “Let’s swim” he said.

I had already told him that I can’t swim but I had also promised to join him in the water. Were we supposed to fuck? I should really know the answer to this but had completely forgotten the pretense under which I had come over. I stared at his eyes awhile longer, looking for an answer. No, no, pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan. Besides, I might break him or something. Before heading out to the pool I had to change into my bikini and this involved not only remembering where I left it but exhibiting an enormous amount of dexterity. For this I credit my extensive athletic training. Surely only a gifted athlete could shuffle down the hall to change clothes in the bathroom without cracking a skull on the side of the toilet.

Owsley got distracted on the way to the pool. “My yard’s not square, see”, he said holding his arms at right angles, “so I made a zen garden over there.” I had no idea what he was talking about, it looked square to me, but I followed him across the grass anyway to a hole in the fence. “I just put all this together the other day”, he said, “bought it all at Lowe’s”. I don’t remember anything about it except that it seemed like a lot of money and effort to square a yard that was already square.

“Pain doesn’t respond to moderate use.” We were somewhere in the expanse between the zen garden and the pool. I worried that I would step on a bee. “That’s funny, you know, because I can’t respond at all.” I meant to say that but nothing came out. “Bee stings are used to treat MS”, Owsley said. Are we conversing? “Shut the fuck up, I can walk just fine.” I was not walking just fine but it didn’t matter because he was going on about the suspected link between naturally occurring high levels of Vitamin D in people who live near the equator and low diagnoses of MS, and all the while I hadn’t said a word.

“It’s so nice to bake in the pool”, he told me, “I’m going down the slide!” Well flutter by butterfly, I thought, not to Owsley but to the yellow butterfly making it’s way across the yard. Owsley hit the water with a huge splash and suddenly the butterfly was in the pool. Like me, they can’t swim. I wanted to help but ten thousand years passed while I just stood there watching it struggle. Finally Owsley scooped it up with a stick. The tiny creature crawled out of the water with a fierce determination but the butterfly’s wings were saturated and clung to it’s body like wet bed sheets. Owsley set the stick down in a shady part of the lawn.

The water was shockingly blue and up to my armpits. Chorline was leaching into my skin, I was very sure of this because I was once a test subject in just such an experiment. I looked calm but kept swallowing air, and continued to look calm because my other expressions were not working. “Here, take a noodle”, he said tossing me a pool floaty thingy. Dr. Owsley eventually prescribed two noodles and a kick board. It’s not true what they say, I was an island.

From the stereo on the porch I could hear PJ Harvey’s Down By The Water. I think it’s on the album called Songs Of The Drowned. Or not. Little fish big fish swimming in the water, come back here and give me my daughter. Fish, spirit animal of the disturbed and the subject of many a horrifying dream. Beta fish have magnificent technicolor fins. They fly in the water like silk ribbons and when I used to keep them as pets each of my fish lived in a color coordinated bowl and was named accordingly. I was cleaning Red Fish’s bowl one night. You can’t clean fish bowls with the fish in them so I had put Red Fish in a cereal bowl for safe keeping. I scrubbed the glass and changed the water but when I was ready to return Red Fish to his home the cereal bowl was empty. Beta fish jump sometimes, I was wearing cowboy boots and my heart stopped. My eyes swept the counter top and the stove: nothing. I looked down. A terrible painting. Long red fins coated the toe of my boot like wet tissue paper. Red scales and red blood coated the floor in a smattering of footprints. Red head and bulging eyes still gasping for oxygen.

“Why can’t you swim?”, Owsley wanted to know, “was it a sport’s injury?” “No, I just never learned.” My voice sounded dreadful but at least something came out, maybe. “So you were traumatized as child?” What? I never said that. “No, I have very dense bones.” Is there tree bark in my throat? Christ I sound awful. “Well maybe you could see a therapist?” he suggested. This stopped me for a moment. “I have a therapist”, I was going to say but didn’t. It’s too bad I don’t have any business cards for him, I thought. Dean Reynolds: Terrible Therapist. Owsley was jabbering on about who knows what and I decided it best not to refer him to my therapist after all.

I should have left Dean out of it because I suddenly grew very worried that his heart may have stopped and that I would read about it on Twitter. The meanest thing anyone ever said to me was “I hope you die alone because you fucking deserve it.” The asshole that said this and I were both childless only-children so this was a well thought out insult, a legit concern for people like ourselves. He said this in another decade but it still haunts me. As the elders in my family have died off, each of them had their turn in the barrel. Frail bones in beds that smelled of the end, searching the sad faces of their younger relatives and conversing with aberrations. I wondered how old I would be when the last of the people I care about passes away and how slow the days will click by without them. I need some younger friends otherwise, when my time comes, all my visitors will be invisible. So far I only have one younger friend and he’s a porn star. I mean, like, a bona fide, according to Hoyle, porn star. Will he sit with me when I’m old? Don’t count on it. Will he fly across the country, rent a car, and meet me in a ghost town while I’m still young? Probably. My Mom has already told me to meet her at the river. All of this is temporary, temporary, temporary…

“Hey you know, no one ever died from smoking too much weed”, Owsley said before going down the slide again. He was having a terrific time. “And”, he continued, “we still have at least another hour of ascending”. I really wanted to punch him for pointing that out, I thought we were almost done. “I’m the welter weight champion of not talking”, I did actually get the words out but it wasn’t pretty. “That’s ok,” he said, “you’re safe here.”

Tales From The Dark Continent: The Elephant

I have photographed Africa, but no one has photographed Africa like Nick Brandt. His work is breath taking and awe inspiring, it is all of those adjectives people use to describe something exceptional.

About a year and half ago, in August, I was visiting the Open Shutter Gallery in Durango. The day before, I spent nine hours riding in an open air coach behind a steam engine. The train went to Silverton, where it was greeted by a cardboard cutout of Bigfoot. Bigfoot told everyone to eat at Handlebars Food & Saloon, so I did. I had a big plate of rainbow trout, the quintessential mountain fish, and then rode the train back to Durango. It was a long day and, at the end of it, all kinds of black shit, train people call it soot, was stuck in my hair and even after a shower I was still digging it out of my ears. That’s what I was doing while walking around the Open Shutter Gallery: I was digging black shit out of my ear with my pinkie finger. It kept me occupied until I found one of Nick Brandt’s books.

I honestly don’t know how he gets his shots. They seem impossible to execute. He shoots from angles and at proximity to wild animals that can and should eat him alive or trample him flat. Somehow though, he is still with us.

I was looking at Nick Brandt’s book, page after page of miraculous photography, when I had what some would refer to as a spiritual experience. The gallery went away, as did the black shit in my ear, and I was back on the Dark Continent in a time before man. A thundering heard of wildebeests crossed the plains in a seasonal migration and crocodiles waited for thirsty zebras to venture too close to the water. Lions watched the sunset and leopards carried disemboweled antelopes up into trees. Giraffes ate everything they could wrap their tongues around while elephants walked with their families and buried their dead.

I wasn’t expecting all that. It caught me off guard.

I stood in the Open Shutter Gallery and was surrounded by Africa, quite unexpectedly. The Dark Continent was alive and well and I knew that it was better off then, in the time before us. It made me sad: the realization that the Earth was happier once than it is now. My vision was disrupted by a little drop of something that fell into the book, it was followed by another and, well fuck it all, I’m having a breakdown in a public place. I pulled my shades down over my eyes, preferring to look like an asshole than a lunatic who cries over books in art galleries. There were lots of other people there, looking at pretty pictures. The gallery housed the world like flowers growing by candlelight.

There was once a rouge elephant wandering in exile through the Kalahari Desert. It was a bull elephant that just happened to have a book written on it. Wrinkled pages told the story of a long life with a sad ending. In the next to the last chapter, the old bull was excommunicated by it’s family and it strolled through the sand leaving a path of destruction in it’s wake. This is what we were told.

I traveled to South Africa with an American hunter who commissioned me to photograph his safari. We had been working together for years and I wanted to see the world. Some places bring out the worst in people. The beginning of the end was well underway.

All days on the Dark Continent start before dawn. We were 12 hours from the Kalahari Desert and wanted to get there in time to eat dinner, sleep well and start the next day before dawn. We set out at 6:00am, driving across the Dark Continent on the wrong side of road. Sometime around noon, we passed a chicken processioning plant called The Fat Chick, no one else seemed to think it was funny.

A surprising amount of traffic crowded the highway. Our van was new and swift and we flew down the road like a rocket ship, weaving in between the taxis like a mild annoyance. Our Afrikaner hosts informed us that the overstuffed VW buses are referred to as chocolate boxes. We decided then, that it was only appropriate to call our van a cracker box.

The Kalahari Desert is not a very nice place. It’s hot, like Africa hot, and it’s oh such a dry heat.

Our host was called Frickie. He was the outfitter who would host the elephant hunt. Frickie was tall and broad, a perfect Afrikaner specimen. He was loud and drunk and my employer hated him. Frickie cooked our dinner over his stone fire pit and we sat around a huge table trying to look calm.

Most people don’t know that my employer had made a previous trip to The Dark Continent for the purpose of hunting an elephant, but he lost his nerve and came home two days later. He was very worked up this time too and the adoring eyes of his mistress were not making him any calmer. During dinner, Frickie called my employer an American pussy boy and informed him that this was not Disney Land. We were all terrified of Frickie so when my employer stood up and left the table, it was very awkward.

The guest rooms at Frickie’s place looked so adorable, from the outside. Little cottages with thatched roofs were arranged in a semi-circle like a village for African smurfs. It is important not to take anything at face value in a foreign country. At bedtime we discovered that the cottages lacked both air conditioning and windows with screens, forcing all of us soft handed Americans to choose between stifling heat and a very exotic vacation. Decorative little bug nets hung around the beds like a practical joke. The bugs in the Kalahari desert are as big as rodents, fly like army helicopters, and feed on human flesh with such voracity that, in order to survive the darkness, one must sleep fully clothed in a puddle of DEET.

After a sweaty, bug filled night, our crew arose before dawn and discovered that there was no hot water. You would think with temperatures already reaching 100 degrees, that the water would be hot anyway. It wasn’t.

The sun rose and a van full of tired, flea bitten, sweaty Americans, and a few perfectly happy Afrikaners, set out in pursuit of the elephant. After stopping at yet another lodge to trade in our van on a pair of safari jeeps, we raced through the desert, desperate to find the elephant before it crossed the boarder into Botswana. A helicopter and trackers on horseback were sent ahead to scout. The Kalahari Desert is an awfully big place.

I was in charge of still photography which apparently made me expendable. The whole camera crew was relegated to the back of the jeeps, armed with only two hands apiece to hold our gear and keep ourselves from flying out of the vehicle while thorny tree branches whizzed past our heads and great clouds of dust covered our faces and lenses.

I did not want to see an elephant die, I really didn’t. At the last minute it was decided that most of the camera crew would stay on the truck and only one videographer would film the hunt. I was ok with that. Hunting an elephant is dangerous business and hunting one with a Pedersoli 45/70 rifle is akin to throwing snowballs at a school bus. Even the good ole’ boys were worried.

We waited, but not long. Rifle shots rang out, 5 of them, and news came over the radio that it was done.

I will tell you a few things about the last chapter of the elephant’s book, just to prove that I was there. The old man lay on his side and his upturned eye was open and wet. Long lashes stood up in the sun and the eye did not yet realize it was dead. Before the old bull fell, he stepped on a baby snake. There behind the back feet lay a pale ringlet, just the size of a necklace. The snake was belly up and had pink eyes. It wasn’t as squished as you might think because the sand had absorbed most of the impact. The elephant’s head did not happen to fall into the ideal position for the photographs. The great tusks were turned away from the camera but all the men there put together were not strong enough to lift and turn the mighty head. A fork lift was brought out for the task. I suppose my employer felt brave and manly, having taken down the biggest and most dangerous of the Big 5, I imagine he felt that way, but he wasn’t sayin’ much.

After the official photos were completed came the time for moving the carcass back to the tanning sheds. It certainly wasn’t going to move itself. A Ford F-150 pickup weighs 4685 pounds. An African Elephant bull weighs 13,000 pounds. So, you see the problem right? We waited around while a very big truck, with a very big trailer and a crane were sent out to find us. There is no graceful way to pick up and move 13,000 pounds of dead elephant so they just wrapped some chains around the legs and began to hoist. The feet came up and the head fell back. The trunk drew pictures in the sand. The crane engine sounded worried and, when the elephant did finally become airborne, the chains tore into the skin, peeling it from the bones and leaving thick grey flaps to tell us which way the wind blew.

The last page of the elephant’s book said only: The End

Tales From The Dark Continent: The Zebra

When visiting the Dark Continent, you can order up animals to kill from a menu, like a do it yourself restaurant. When you think of it that way, it’s difficult to imagine going to a steak house and paying $14,000 to go hunt your own steer, even if you do get to keep it’s head, but whatever.

He killed a zebra. That’s right, my employer paid $14,000 to kill a zebra. A zebra. While technically not a horse, it’s pretty much a horse. John Wayne and The Lone Ranger rode horses. The horse is how the west was won. You know, Hi-yo Silver!, and all that shit. Girls love horses. I’ve seen The NeverEnding Story at least 100 times and still cry when Artax sinks into the Swamp Of Sadness. This zebra hunting business didn’t sit well with me. It seemed no different than hunting a dairy goat or a Saint Bernard. Horses, even if they are wild and striped, are a friend of man. Where’s the sport in that?

I wanted to tell him that zebra hunting was un-American but his mistress’s tongue was in his ear so he couldn’t hear me. After he shot the zebra, I heard him saying to the trackers, “Look how it’s fur glistens in the sun!” I looked down and saw I was standing in a little puddle of zebra blood. The clean up crew did their work; they wiped up all the mess and positioned the body like it was just taking a little nap, sunbathing in the African bush. I shot the photos, the ones that are now in magazines and on websites. When we were finished, some Africans were employed to scoot the stripey carcass on to a flatbed trailer. The trailer was 10 feet long so I don’t know why the zebra’s head didn’t fit, but they left it hanging off the end. While the good ole boys stood around congratulating themselves, I noticed that blood had begun to flow from the zebra’s nose and the soft skin around it’s mouth hung loosely, leaving the teeth naked and despondent. Drip drip drip drip drip. The boys were still pissing pretty pictures, one of them broke out a cigar.

We never ate any zebra steaks but a month or so later, back at the office, we ate some ham sandwiches. We sat around the glass table: my employer; myself; a girl who dropped out of homeschool because her parents, stating that girls shouldn’t put wood in their mouths, would not permit her to play the saxophone; and his mistress, who had come all the way from the Dark Continent and still didn’t realize she was the other woman. We sat there chewing on our sandwiches and it was during this meal that the International Hunter said the funniest thing ever. He said “You know what’s wrong with America? They don’t teach family values in school anymore.” I swallowed my food and said “You’re god damned right!”

He gave me a dirty look and I slurped on my juice box. It’s true what they say: knowledge is power.

Tales From The Dark Continent: The Hippo

It seems weird now, seven years later, to return to the Dark Continent for these stories. I wish I had never gone there but people wish for a lot of things. The past tense of wish is regret.

I was talking to my former employer the other day and he told me that he quit hunting and sold all his trophies, and by trophies he means heads. He sold them all. It doesn’t seem right to kill something just to put it’s head on your wall but at least you can say, “I did that. I killed that thing and now you see it’s head there on my wall.” No one wants to say, “Aren’t all these heads beautiful? I bought them!” Now that I think about it though, it really is splitting hairs to differentiate one statement from the other. When a white man goes to Africa to hunt a wild beast, a team of baby sitters take him out, track the animal for him, point his gun in the right direction and tell him when to pull the trigger. After that they wipe his ass and present him with an invoice that ends in six zeros. So I guess it really doesn’t matter how one acquires their African animal heads; one way or another, they were all bought anyway.

The first big score of our safari was the Hippo. They look docile but the 7,000 pound, wickedly territorial, sea bull is the undisputed king of the water. Even the crocodiles and venomous water serpents leave them alone.

On the first day, we went out to the Hippo pond and waited around, and around, and around. My employer got off a few shots, injuring his target which, when describing a Hippo hunt, means that he pissed it off and then it disappeared. To get a kill shot you have to shoot them right in the brain and that is difficult because they sit submerged in the water with only their eyes, nostrils and ears exposed. To kill a Hippo, you have to hit a target that is 50 yards away and roughly the same diameter as a beer bottle.

On the second day, a wild gun battle ensued. The injured hippo, having gone mad from it’s wounds, ran from the water and charged the camera crew. A few more rifle rounds to the ole noggin’ put ‘er down but not before it ran back into the pond, dieing in the water as a final act of vengeance.

When your Hippo dies in the water, it’s a little bit of a fucking problem. For one thing, it’s Hippo brethren just witnessed the massacre of their patriarch, which they find both frightening and upsetting. They’re not coming out and they stand guard in such a way that suggests you shouldn’t go in.

It was getting late, the sun was going down on the Dark Continent, and the Hippo I was supposed to photograph was at the bottom of the pond. I don’t know who thought retrieving it from the water with a helicopter was a good idea but, sure enough, a helicopter arrived all chop chop chop and gail force winds, to hoist the Hippo onto dry land. A discussion was held with the land owner, the trackers and the pro hunters who were actually in charge of this adventure, and it was decided that Crazy Barefoot Man would climb in his tiny canoe, that he paddled with his hands, and paddle on over to the fallen Hippo, wrap some chains around it’s feet and then hand the loose ends up to the helicopter. I never caught Crazy Barefoot Man’s name but he was there with his Crazy Barefoot Kid who probably called him Dad. Both of them were white and ran through the bush in their bare feet, somehow avoiding the giant stickers that carpeted the ground.

The sun was setting on the water and it looked lovely with all the ripples from the helicopter wind and the silhouette of Crazy Barefoot Man hand-paddling his canoe across the surface towards the family of Hippos, one of whom had sank to bottom.

The bulk of a Hippo’s 7000 pound body is not comprised of it’s brain and, because of this, they operate primarily on instinct. What little brain power they have is allocated to their senses, which are very keen.

This whole canoe scheme seemed like a bad idea but no one asked me and off he went. As the little boat approached the middle of the pond, the surviving members of the Hippo family saw, smelled and heard the intruder. They sounded the alarm and silent, angry water tanks mobilized in the direction of the hand paddled boat. I saw then that Crazy Barefoot Man could actually paddle backwards a hell of a lot faster than he had been paddling forward. He made a hasty retreat and the helicopter was sent home.

On the third day we left the lodge at 5:30am and sat in the back of a pickup for half an hour while we were driven back to the scene of the Hippo. During the night, the smell of death had permeated the water, choking the surviving Hippos until they forgot about being sad and grew more concerned over being grossed out. They were too disgusted to eat breakfast so they left the pond in search of greener pastures.

As the first rays of golden sunlight spilled over the horizon, we arrived at the pond ready to do battle, and by “we”, I mean an army of 15 Africans had been assembled to wade out in the water, tie chains to the now bloated and floating dead Hippo’s feet, and tow it back to the sandy beach where all the Americans and white Afrikaners waited patiently. Crazy Barefoot Man was there too but he didn’t bring his canoe.

Believe it or not, 7000 pounds of floating dead Hippo really doesn’t weigh anything. They towed it along effortlessly until it’s bloated sides started to drag the bottom and then 7000 pounds suddenly weighed a lot. A safari outfitted Toyota Hilux pickup, the same one we had just ridden in, was backed up to the shore and the chains were attached to the come-along winch on the back bumper. Moving dead animals is serious business in this part of the world.

Once freed from it’s watery grave, the carcass of the Hippo ceased to pollute the water and began at once to pollute our air, still seeking revenge for it’s untimely death.

The same team of men who were sent into the pond were now assigned the task of making the Hippo “photo ready”, which meant doing things like cleaning all the blood from it’s orifices, scraping barnacles and other unsightly debris from it’s body, prying it’s jaws open with a hydraulic car jack, thereby releasing a terrific stench into the morning air, and cleaning the swamp out of it’s mouth so that my employer could stick his head in there and tell me to take his picture.

I was supposed to wait until the Hippo was officially released from it’s hair and makeup chair to commence photography but I shot every detail of everything, all the while my employer saying “Just wait, you don’t need to shoot that.”

When the Hippo was finally deemed ready for it’s 15 minutes of fame, my employer knelt behind it, Pedorseli 45/70 hoisted over his shoulder. He looked straight into the camera and said “Isn’t it magnificent!”

Tales From The Dark Continent: International Ass

South Africa is the queen mother of all brothels.

When you talk to a man with soft hands who claims to have killed an elephant, you have to wonder what reason a man with soft hands has for doing such a thing. Unlike Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes, elephants are not high on the 1st world list of threats to humanity.

My job was to portray the gentlemanly sport of big game hunting as genteel and aristocratic, which is not at all like it really is. What it is, is paying for pussy. I mean how else does a man with soft hands end up with an elephant head on his wall?

My employer wanted me to make him look important and distinguished. He wanted to make sure the world knew of his international exploits, so long as they met the first two criteria. My photographs of him have been published in prestigious hunting magazines that are read by tricks everywhere. I guess that makes me famous.

I did my job perfectly. He knew I would and this is why I got the gig, but I wasn’t happy.

My employer, who usually looked to me for council, had become deaf in both ears and was making an international ass of himself. An adolescent boy with a rifle; spending big money to kill big animals, running his mouth like a fool and fucking his mistress who was a carbon copy of his wife. I would have let all this slide, had he been nice to me, but seeing as how that was evidently not part of the plan I decided to show him what big game hunting looked like to me.

I shot his photos, the ones he wanted, and then I shot my photos, the ones I wanted him to see. For every one magazine ready portrait, I shot hundreds of gruesome images: tongues lolling from bleeding mouths, heads with lifeless eyes hanging from the back of flat bed trailers, pools of blood in the sand, ripped skin.

Tales From The Dark Continent: Smothering Silk

I was commissioned to photograph an ego maniac’s big game hunt in South Africa. It seemed like a bad idea, but it also seemed like a free trip to Africa.

What kind of idiot fool would say no to a free trip to Africa?! On the other hand, what kind of idiot fool would say yes?

It took 27 hours to reach our destination on the dark continent and, even though our crew rolled in at 4:00 in the morning, we were greeted at the lodge by a cheerful welcome committee. They presented us with snacks and tall glasses of a fruity potion that tasted like air freshener. I sipped at my Glade Hawaiian Breeze and thought of motel rooms with pineapple bed spreads and torn curtains.

Other workers gathered our luggage and toted it to our cabins. “Be careful walking on the lighted paths at night”, they warned us, “The light attracts insects and the insects attract frogs and the frogs attract Black Mambas, so watch where you put your feet.”

There were some other things our hosts failed to mention, like what to do about the palm sized spider poised directly over the bed. It was working a crossword puzzle and knitting a sweater while waiting for the perfect moment to repel from the ceiling. Spiders have lots of eyes so they are good at multitasking. Arachnid motives, however, are difficult to discern. This one wanted to turn my face into a cocoon, or maybe not.

“Cocoon” – a 6 letter word for Smothering Silk.

Too tired to care, I fell asleep and was not bothered by the twinkle of round lemur eyes peering through the window.

Tales From The Dark Continent: Baboons

The dark hills of South Africa are filled with baboons. They hide in trees, scanning the landscape with human eyes, barking monkey messages to their monkey brethren and smiling broadly so the sun glints off their razor sharp lion teeth. To hunt a baboon is both murderous and futile. While a human predator camps out in the bush, waiting for an unsuspecting beast to wander in front of his gun, the baboons are stripping his truck and using the parts to build a spaceship.

Troops of baboons crowd the shoulders of the highway; making obscene hand gestures and waiting for food scraps, live chickens or unwanted children to be thrown from the VW Buses rattling non-stop up and down the wrong side of the road. You never, ever see a dead baboon in the road. They don’t get hit by cars. The same cannot be said of dogs or boa constrictors but baboons understand traffic laws. A baboon always knows who has the right of way.

While it is not uncommon to see unemployable men camped in front of the general store; cooking fowl meat with a butane lighter and pissing in a Coke bottle, this is not a fate that would befall a baboon. They don’t smoke dope, grow delirious from malaria, or live in shanty towns. A baboon does not call plywood and a tarp with a house number a house, nor is it a master of exploitation. A baboon knows it’s place in the scheme of things.

A successful predator in any environment, this intelligent, albeit ugly, lion-monkey is a marvel of nature. If I were you, I wouldn’t fuck with the baboons. They know where you live.

Compassion

glos·so·la·li·a – noun
incomprehensible speech, sometimes occurring in a trance state, an episode of religious ecstasy, or schizophrenia.

In short, this word is used to describe all types of gibberish. Come to think of it, I should probably change the name of this blog to Glossolalia, but for now I’ll dish up this reference: Some venomous snakes are pacified by glossolalia but the ones that aren’t will bite you in the face.

I was on the phone with a miserable woman named Marnie Anderson. She was demanding that I tell her when Mr. Kline would be available to come to her house to take her album order from her daughter’s wedding. “Well…, never” was my reply. Even if he had time, which he didn’t, there was no way in hell he was voluntarily going to this woman’s house. Marnie was a repeat customer which, under normal circumstances, would have been considered a good thing. Mr. Kline had photographed her eldest daughter’s wedding a couple years prior and they were very pleased with the results so, when it came time to unload daughter #2, they knew who to call. Unfortunately, some tragic events had unfolded during the interim so, when we got the call from Marnie about Maria’s wedding, the conversation was heavy with “oh that’s terrible” and “we’re so sorry to hear that.”

Having been dealt an extraordinarily bad hand, it seemed that both Marnie and Maria were stricken with some type of inoperable cancer and they needed to get this wedding done pronto because no one was sure how much longer Maria was going to live. Naturally, they wanted Mr. Kline to do the honors but, due to the short notice, he was already booked. Carl was still available and we all assured the dying Andersons that Carl was an excellent photographer and that everything would be fine. During the initial consultation, while we sat around the table looking at photo albums and discussing logistics, Marnie hugged her arms around herself, coughed, hacked, rocked back and forth in her chair and got teary eyed. We all felt terrible about her situation and Mr. Kline tried to be as helpful as he could by offering her a very nice package, complete with bride’s album and two parent’s albums, all at half price. This pretty much meant that the studio was taking a hit in the name of good karma and barely breaking even.

“I just need to know when Mr. Kline can come to my house so I can tell him what pictures I want in my album” Marnie groaned at me. I’m not sure if her condition also rendered her hard of hearing so I repeated myself, again. “I’m sorry but he is not able to come to your house. You can either send your order in with someone else or you can tell it to me now over the phone.” “Well”, she continued, “I need to talk to him about these photos so you find out when he can come to my house!” I see, too sick to visit to the studio but not too sick to talk to me like her bitch. I was beginning to wonder if I had a speech impediment and that maybe she had I thought I said “if you make vague implications while raising your voice, I’ll find a time when he can swing by.” Mr. Kline, by the way, was sitting right in front of me refusing to take the phone and making it quite clear he wasn’t going to her house. I decided to try a different tactic. “Ok”, I said, “Mr. Kline can come by your house at 1:00 in the afternoon on November 15th”, a date that was approximately eight weeks in the future. As expected, she didn’t like that so she said “you tell me when Mr. Kline will be in the office so I can call back and talk to him directly!” Yeah right, like he was ever going to speak to her directly. “He’ll be in tomorrow” I told her and hung up the phone.

All three of us; Mr. Kline, myself and Carl, had gone through the photos prior to sending them out and we all knew they were fine, or at least as good as they could be. There was nothing spectacular about them but that wasn’t Carl’s fault because, as he explained to us, there were a number of obstacles he had to overcome just to get any shots at all and a lesser photographer probably would have hidden in the bathroom and cried. Upon arriving at the Anderson residence, where the photos were slated to begin, it was obvious that it was going to be a bad day. The house was in total chaos with all kinds of people running around yelling at each other and no one even close to being ready. Carl was told to wait in the living room. After clearing a pizza box and some empty soda cans off the couch, he made himself at home and spent a few minutes admiring the Christmas tree. It was July. After awhile a diapered, but otherwise naked, toddler came and sat down on the floor to watch TV. By the time the girls were actually ready there was no time left to shoot at the house, which was a downright shame with the trash and Christmas decor and all, and so they went on to the church and spent the rest of the day playing catch up.

There is only one customer service policy at Kline’s Photography and that is : unfounded complaints are not tolerated.

Eventually Marnie gave up on her mission to coerce Mr. Kline in to making a house call so she agreed to make the the trip across town to place her album order and talk about the photos. Despite being the newest, smallest and weakest member of the team, I was left to deal with the Andersons by myself, a slight that motivated me to set my sights on Carl’s position in the company which I acquired a couple months later. I mean, the way I look at it, if I have to do his job then I should have the title and the paycheck to go with it. Right? I refuse to take orders from anyone who would hide behind me.

I sat across the table from both Marnie and Maria. Marnie sat at the edge of the leather couch while Maria huddled with a blanket in the corner. Both of them looked rough but Maria was in especially bad shape: emaciated, completely bald from the chemo, black circles under her eyes and a catheter taped to each arm. Clearly, she had gone downhill since the wedding and I don’t understand why Marnie even brought her to this appointment in the first place. Maria never said a word but I could hear her labored breathing over the gravelly drone of Marnie’s griping. Marnie didn’t look too hot either but she did still have hair and, as far as I could see, only one catheter. She opened with “I wish we had hired a different photographer. I should’ve known what would happen if Mr. Kline didn’t take the pictures himself.” Honestly, given the circumstances, I don’t see how anyone could have done any better. When I didn’t respond, she followed with “I can’t believe we paid all that money and this”, pointing at the proof book, “is what we get. When Mr. Kline shot my other daughter’s wedding, the photos were soooo beautiful.” “Actually”, I said looking up and making eye contact, “you only paid half.”

Freeze frame right here. So what is this? Some kind of sick cosmic joke? A moral test of compassion? Have I become the proverbial Job while God and the Devil are making bets as to how long I can tolerate this trash talking corpse? Can I look past her rough exterior and see through to her inner pain, thereby cutting her some slack, or will I reach across the table, yank that catheter out of her arm and stab her in the fucking eye with it?

I decided to try, key word being try, to be compassionate. I can hardly imagine the horror the two of them, mother and daughter, must feel while watching each other die of the same disease. I have no problems that could even be called problems when viewed in comparison to something like that. The thing was though, like a blood sniffing jackal, Marnie could smell my sympathy, was turned on by it, and evidently felt compelled to use it against me; prying at my conscious like a lever, until something gave. I then said the stupidest thing ever. I said “What is it about the photos you don’t like?” Que flood gates at stage left. I may as well have given her a sack of hammers and said “here, throw these at me.” What followed was a deranged critique of every single image in a 30 page proof book. A mind blowing shit storm of ridiculous nonsense which was only made worse by my calm explanations for why certain photos were shot the way they were. I had lost my respect for Carl when he left me with this bone crushing hyena but I still wouldn’t throw him under the bus for Marnie because she was wrong and that’s all there was to it. Like a two year old that asks “why?” all day, Marnie’s interrogation went on like a broken record. “Why is this picture so close? It cuts off Maria’s hair.” Maria’s “hair” that day was an ill fitting brunette wig of the Marge Simpson beehive variety. It sat askew on Maria’s head and the bangs were too long. There was no way to get a close up portrait of Maria’s face and not crop out part of her hair which, given how bad the wig was, should have been interpreted as a favor. “Well, why is that one so far away, you can’t even see Maria’s face.” Yes you could. “Why is this photo slightly crooked, why is that one in front of that ugly wall, why is this one so far from the building, why this, why that, why why why???” She just wouldn’t stop, or listen, demanding explanations for nearly every single image in her proof book and accusing me of unjustly defending the quality of the pictures. Somewhere around page 6 was a whole set of very nice portraits of Maria with an old guy in a tux. In an attempt to create a pause in the bitter machine gun fire spilling from Marnie’s mouth, I said “Aww, look at all these great shots of Maria with her dad.” “Maria doesn’t have a dad”, Marnie spat at me, “that is the groom.” Stifling a chuckle I said only “oh”. Right then I heard a rustle and a thump as Maria slid into a coma and her head bounced off the arm of the couch. Marnie didn’t seem to notice. “why is this one in the sun, why is that one in the shade? I thought you said Carl was a good photographer? Well let me tell you these are the worst pictures I have ever seen! Why is this one vertical, why is that one horizontal, why does this one have square corners?” She was relentless in her attack of rhetorical questions and never once did it seem to occur to her that most of the things she was upset about were her own fault for completely disregarding the time line on the day of the wedding.

I tried hard to hold on to my compassion, to remember that she was hurting and angry, but god damn, this situation was getting out of hand. Is it possible that being a psychotic, irrational bitch actually causes cancer? Because that would explain a lot.

Marnie continued turning pages and berating me. For awhile I stopped listening, tuning in to the sound of Lydia’s raspy breathing and wondering if she was going to die on my couch. Marnie talked a blue streak, barely pausing to breathe. Having shifted her voice into the background, she sounded like the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon, wonk wonk wonk. This was probably the only time in my life I actually thought to myself “what would Jesus do?” Oh, I dunno, maybe swoop down from the sky on a magical dragon and smack her in the face with his sandal. I don’t know if that’s what Jesus would do but that is definitely what I would do if I were him. I didn’t hear anything at all from pages 15-19 and focused instead on the transformation of Marnie Anderson into a talking donkey pinata; beaten by a child with a stick and a Kool Aid mustache until her side split open and candy rained down, delighting both kids and parents alike. Somewhere on page 20 I felt my seal start to slip. Like a pressure cooker, it only takes a small breach in the seal for pinto beans to spray 30 feet across the room thus coating the whole house with a mutilated version of your dinner. She was going on about why, and how much they paid, and being disappointed when I surfaced from my trance and said “look, if you don’t like that picture then don’t pick it!!! You have over 900 images here and your album only includes 48 so figure out which ones you want and write them down! You can mail this form back when you’re done.” I snapped the book closed, signaling a premature end to this little convo, and pushed it, along with the paper work into Marnie’s lap. Then I locked eyes with her and folded my arms until she started gathering up her things, including Maria, muttering something about how she was going to tell Mr. Kline about the way I had treated her. “Yeah”, I told her, ” you can tell him all about it when he comes to your house.”

I guess everyone has a breaking point.

A few weeks later, Marnie mailed in her album order. Maria died before the albums were complete. Marnie passed away 3 months after receiving her order.

Empathy

“Kline’s Photography”

That was always how I answered the phone and no number of staff meetings or memos would make me bend to include my name in the introduction. The last thing I wanted was to identify myself prior to finding out the nature of the call.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kline is not available at this time but perhaps there is something I can help you with?”

Uh-oh….

“I would be happy to take a message for him, can you please tell me what this is in reference too?”

No, of course not, she just really needed to talk to Mr. Kline. Somewhere along the way, a rumor got started that Mr. Kline actually gives a fuck. Let’s clear that up right now. He doesn’t.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but due to the high number of solicitation calls, Mr. Kline will not return phone messages unless he knows what they are about.”

Special code for: He will not call you back just so you can chew his ass.

“Uh huh, yes, so you want me to tell him that the photographer at your daughter’s wedding did not get all the pictures you had envisioned?”

She had uttered the magic word, “disappointed” and also threw in another inflammatory phrase, “your photographer”, as if the person in question were a rabid dog that had jumped the fence and eaten the neighbor’s cat. “Your photographer took a dump right in the middle of the church and we’re a little disappointed.” Well now, them’s fightin’ words.

“Excuse me m’am, he’s not actually my photographer. I just work here.”

That was not the answer she was expecting but I said it so nicely that it threw her off balance. I spoke slowly, in my best cheerful monotone, a technique that had come to be known in the office as “the calm voice”. My co-workers knew, when they heard the calm voice, to put down what they were doing and gather around for the show.

“Can you tell me specifically what it is that you’re displeased about?”

By all means, please, do tell me the way in which my photographer made the unholy union of an unfortunate young man to your truffle snacking, biscuit kneed, cow faced daughter somehow less momentous.

“Oh I see, so what you’re telling me is that my photographer failed to “snap” a close up photo of the flower girl’s shoes that you personally spent hours gluing red sequins and silk carnations to and that this was the only photo you really wanted from the whole day. Is that correct?”

No, apparently there was more.

“So you’re also mad that there are more photos of the groom’s family than of your own? Yes…, yes, I understand, you’re not mad, you’re disappointed because the day was just so special and, I’m sorry, what else? Oh, it also pains you that the photos do not in any way resemble the samples you were shown in our studio and you thought you were hiring a professional. I would really like to help you get to the bottom of this issue, but since the photographer is not actually here, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions, just so I can try to understand what may have happened?”

I am not a musician, per se, I can’t tune a guitar by ear but I have perfect fucking pitch when it comes to voice diagnostics. While her accusatory tone gains momentum, reaching a frantic pitch, I can see her, clear as day; a heavy set cyclone of a woman who spends most afternoons watching court TV with a diet coke in one hand and a skinny menthol cigarette in the other. She has eye liner tattoos. Sunspots on her face and smoke lines circling her painted-on red lips, her personal motto is “flaunt it if you got it” and by that she thinks her mammoth tits are sexy enough to overshadow her back fat and she’s sporting a tube top to prove it. Aside from the time she spends flogging her husband like a trash digging chihuahua she rarely gets an opportunity to feel important. She’s got me on the line and now is her time to shine like the power tripping bovine that she is. By this point I have retrieved the file from the wedding and am reviewing the photographer’s notes.

“Ok, on the day of the wedding, was the bride ready on time?”

Photographer’s notes: Bride 45 min late, arrives with dress in bag, takes another 20 minutes to put it on. Flower girl’s parents do not deliver her to the church until 5 minutes before the ceremony. She is crying and says her feet hurt.

“No…, no, of course I’m not implying that anyone other than my photographer is at fault here. I just have to ask so I can have a accurate understanding of what happened. So, tell me, was the groom ready on time?”

Photographer’s notes: While waiting for the bride to arrive, shot all of groom’s photos, including extended family and friends from grade school.

“I understand that you paid for this and, by doing so, have elevated your family’s status to that of the utmost importance. If it would make you feel better, we could delete some photos of the groom’s family so that the distribution of images will be more equal. I would be more than happy to personally take care of this for you, just tell me which ones you would like me to remove…. Hello? Are you still there? I’m sorry, my phone cut out for a minute and I thought we got disconnected…. Oh ok, so you don’t want me to delete any images? Are you sure because I really think it would make it seem like there were more of photos of your family if there were less photos of the groom’s family…. I’m so sorry ma’am, apparently I’ve misunderstood you. Can you please tell me again what it is that you’re upset about? Oh, so what you’re really upset about is that you can see a parking lot in all the outdoor photos of the bride and groom together. Right, of course that would be upsetting and especially since the venue was so picturesque, what with mountains being right there and all.”

Photographer’s notes: Church is a brown corrugated steel building with NO landscaping and surrounded on all sides by power lines and parked cars. The minister has to yell to be heard over the drone of a window mount AC unit in the sanctuary. I can barely see the tops of the mountains over the apartment building across the street. Bride is complaining that it is too hot and that she wants me to hurry up. She is also sweating profusely and it is staining her dress.

“I certainly understand that you are heartbroken over the missing photos of the mountains. I’m not sure that I have personally ever been to your church. Is it housed in a portable building? Yes, I understand that this church is your “home” and that you married your 3rd husband there five dreadful years ago but what I’m getting at is does it have a trailer hitch??? Yes, I’ll hold.”

I hear her lighting a cigarette.

“Yes m’am, I understand that your soiree of failed marriages makes you an expert on weddings and I am certain that Mr. Kline would gladly fire the photographer who ruined your daughter’s special day… Oh, so that’s not what you had in mind? Tell me, how I can make this up to you then? You want a… a what now, a free album upgrade? But ma’am, you hate the photos so much I am afraid that if we give you more of them it will only cause you further distress…. No, I’m sorry, Mr. Kline is still not available to take your call. Listen, I feel so bad about how much the photos are upsetting you that I will just cut you a check for a full refund and you’ll never have to see them again. How’s that sound?”

This game of verbal badminton went on for quite a while. When I did finally hang up, being totally pleased with myself for having accomplished nothing but to further enrage the troll on the other end of the phone, my co-worker, Thomas, was staring at me. There is something wrong with Thomas. Anyone who gets creeped out by big foreheads could tell you that. Mr. Kline had hired him two weeks prior, without consulting me, in an attempt to impress his mistress who was a devout Christian woman and who also did not realize she was fucking a married man. Thomas, it seemed, had graduated from some bible college and this, Mr. Kline decided, qualified him to wrestle the lions. Being the new kid, Thomas did not yet understand the level of depravity that people will sink to in an attempt to get some free shit so it didn’t surprise me when he said “you’re not a very nice person, are you?” “That all depends on how you look at it.” I replied curtly. He was constantly on my nerves and that, coupled with being immune to sarcasm, meant that we did not communicate well. “All that lady wanted was for you to listen to her” he told me. “Fuck that” was my response. Then he said something I’ll never forget, he said exactly these words “the reason you don’t empathize with people is because you have no feelings.” Leave it to Thomas to completely misdiagnose the issue, like completing a jigsaw puzzle, image side down. I sat back in my chair and looked at him, not knowing what to say. While it was clearly to my benefit for him to think that, I couldn’t help but feel a little horrified. “Is that what you think of me?” I asked. He shrugged and went back to his usual routine of making avant garde sculptures out of paper clips and tape. I never told him it was empathy that killed my feelings in the first place.