Yes, I knew you weren’t here last year and you don’t know about it. Even the Girl had to start small. But if you hunted through the files of the local newspapers, you’d find some ads, and I might be able to locate you some of the old displays—I think Lovelybelt is still using one of them. I used to have a mountain of photos myself, until I burned them.
Yes, I made my cut off her. Nothing like what that other photographer must be making, but enough so it still bought this whisky. She was funny about money. I’ll tell you about that.
But first picture me in 1947. I had a fourth floor studio in that rathole the Hauser Building, catty-corner from Ardleigh Park.
I’d been working at the Marsh-Mason studios until I’d gotten my bellyful of it and decided to start in for myself. The Hauser Building was crummy—I’ll never forget how the stairs creaked—but it was cheap and there was a skylight.
Business was lousy. I kept making the rounds of all the advertisers and agencies, and some of them didn’t object to me too much personally, but my stuff never clicked. I was pretty near broke. I was behind on my rent. Hell, I didn’t even have enough money to have a girl.
It was one of those dark grey afternoons. The building was awfully quiet—even with the shortage they can’t half rent the Hauser. I’d just finished developing some pix I was doing on speculation for Lovelybelt Girdles and Buford’s Pool and Playground—the last a faked-up beach scene. My model had left. A Miss Leon. She was a civics teacher at one of the high schools and modelled for me on the side, just lately on speculation too. After one look at the prints, I decided that Miss Leon probably wasn’t just what Lovelybelt was looking for—or my photography either. I was about to call it a day.
And then the street door slammed four storeys down and there were steps on the stairs and she came in.
She was wearing a cheap, shiny black dress. Black pumps. No stockings. And except that she had a grey cloth coat over one of them, those skinny arms of hers were bare. Her arms are pretty skinny, you know, or can you see things like that any more?
And then the thin neck, the slightly gaunt, almost prim face, the tumbling mass of dark hair, and looking out from under it the hungriest eyes in the world.
That’s the real reason she’s plastered all over the country today, you know—those eyes. Nothing vulgar, but just the same they’re looking at you with a hunger that’s all sex and something more than sex. That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.
Well, boys, there I was, alone with the Girl, in an office that was getting shadowy, in a nearly empty building. A situation that a million male Americans have undoubtedly pictured to themselves with various lush details. How was I feeling? Scared.
I know sex can be frightening. That cold, heart-thumping when you’re alone with a girl and feel you’re going to touch her. But if it was sex this time, it was overlaid with something else.
At least I wasn’t thinking about sex.
I remember that I took a backward step and that my hand jerked so that the photos I was looking at sailed to the floor.
There was the faintest dizzy feeling like something was being drawn out of me. Just a little bit.
That was all. Then she opened her mouth and everything was back to normal for a while.
“I see you’re a photographer, mister,’ she said. ‘Could you use a model?’
Her voice wasn’t very cultivated.
‘I doubt it,’ I told her, picking up the pix. You see, I wasn’t impressed. The commercial possibilities of her eyes hadn’t registered on me yet, by a long shot. ‘What have you done?’
Well she gave me a vague sort of story and I began to check her knowledge of model agencies and studios and rates and what not and pretty soon I said to her,
‘Look here, you never modelled for a photographer in your life. You just walked in here cold.’
Well, she admitted that was more or less so.
All along through our talk I got the idea she was feeling her way, like someone in a strange place. Not that she was uncertain of herself, or of me, but just of the general situation.
‘And you think anyone can model?’ I asked her pityingly.
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘a photographer can waste a dozen negatives trying to get one half-way human photo of an average woman. How many do you think he’d have to waste before he got a real catchy, glamourous pix of her?’
‘I think I could do it,’ she said.
Well, I should have kicked her out right then. Maybe I admired the cool way she stuck to her dumb little guns. Maybe I was touched by her underfed look. More likely I was feeling mean on account of the way my pix had been snubbed by everybody and I wanted to take it out on her by showing her up.
‘Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to try a couple of shots of you. Understand, it’s strictly on spec. If somebody should ever want to use a photo of you, which is about one chance in two million, I’ll pay you regular rates for your time. Not otherwise.’
She gave me a smile. The first. ‘That’s swell by me,’ she said.
Well, I took three of four shots, closeups of her face since I didn’t fancy her cheap dress, and at least she stood up to my sarcasm. Then I remembered I still had the Lovelybelt stuff and I guess the meanness was still working in me because I handed her a girdle and told her to go back of the screen and get into it and she did, without getting flustered as I’d expected, and since we’d gone that far I figured we might as well shoot the beach scene to round it out, and that was that.
All this time I wasn’t feeling anything particular in one way or the other except every once in a while I’d get one of those faint dizzy flashes and wonder if there was something wrong with my stomach or if I could have been a bit careless with my chemicals. Still, you know, I think the uneasiness was in me all the while.
I tossed her a card and pencil. ‘Write your name and address and phone,’ I told her and made for the darkroom.
A little later she walked out. I didn’t call any good-byes. I was irked because she hadn’t fussed around or seemed anxious about her poses, or even thanked me, except for that one smile.
I finished developing the negatives, made some prints, glanced at them, decided they weren’t a great deal worse than Miss Leon. On an impulse I slipped them in with the pix I was going to take on the rounds next morning.
By now I’d worked long enough so I was a bit fagged and nervous, but I didn’t dare waste enough money on liquor to help that. I wasn’t very hungry. I think I went to a cheap movie.
I didn’t think of the Girl at all, except maybe to wonder faintly why in my present womanless state I hadn’t made a pass at her. She had seemed to belong to a, well, distinctly more approachable social strata than Miss Leon. But then of course there were all sorts of arguable reasons for my not doing that.
Next morning I made the rounds. My first step was Munsch’s Brewery. They were looking for a ‘Munsch Girl.’ Papa Munsch had a sort of affection for me, though he razzed my photography. He had a good natural judgement about that, too. Fifty years ago he might have been one of the shoestring boys who made Hollywood.
Right now he was out in the plant pursuing his favourite occupation. He put down the beaded can, smacked his lips, gabbled something technical to someone about hops, wiped his fat hands on the big apron he was wearing, and grabbed my thin stack of pix.
He was about half-way through, making noises with his tongue and teeth, when he came to her. I kicked myself for even having stuck her in.
‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘The photography’s not so hot, but that’s the girl.’