His username vibrates my phone. I open the notification to find a blurred silhouette behind a camera lens, no identifiable name on his profile. I stare at the message in the preview.
Hey Maeve, I came across your page and I would
love to collaborate–
The message cuts off, offering the rest like bait. Leave it for a few minutes, at least, I reason, as Rhegan’s steady, sleeping breath rises and falls beside me. Fuck it. I open it. He’s a photographer and he wants me to model for him.
I’m not used to being sought. Most of the photos on my social media are taken for fun, usually by friends who are coincidentally freelance photographers. My friend Minta likes to take my photo because, as she puts it, her camera picks favourites. Each time she says this I could feel this terrible existential guilt reach my gut, as if I’ve committed an irredeemable moral failure.
I pull myself back into the present and look at my profile from an outside perspective. In a recent post, I’m in the back seat of a car, leaning my head against the headrest. My right leg is bent so that the heel of my stiletto is touching my upper thigh, and my left is sprawled lazily across the seat. My gaze meets the camera in a way I find exquisite, but I can’t pinpoint why.
I open his message.
I would love to collaborate on a project, and your
vibe intrigues me. If you’re down, I’d love to work
together soon. Where in Toronto are you from?
I adjust the brightness of my phone screen as Rhegan shifts her sleeping position, groaning as she stretches slightly. I text The Photographer back.
I’m so down, I’m in the North York area, but I’m
good to meet you in the city.
In an instant, another message appears.
Beautiful. How about we grab a drink beforehand?
I immediately let out a scoff. My phone buzzes again.
Sorry to be so forward, I just prefer to get to know
the models I work with before a shoot.
I hesitate as I realize the time. It’s 2:46 AM. Rhegan’s alarm will go off in three hours. Her pantsuit is neatly hung on the back of our bedroom door, reminding me of her stability, her consistency. Once she awakes, she’ll put herself together for the day, and before she leaves she’ll tuck the duvet over my shoulders. As she does this I’ll pretend to be sleeping because I like the innocence of it. My stomach tightens.
I’m free tomorrow night 🙂 What’s the address?
***
I arrive before The Photographer does, so I claim two seats at the bar. Five minutes go by, and I’m convinced he is not going to show up until I can feel his gaze on me, and I’m sure it’s
him. I look away to pretend I hadn’t noticed him. The possibility of holding eye contact is too intense, my face burning at the mere thought of it. Breathlessly, he says my name. “Maeve”?
I confirm by turning my face to look straight at him, meeting his green eyes. “Riley,” he says, warmly.
It was only then I learned The Photographer’s first name.
We exchanged the basic details of our lives. He moved to the city at twenty-two to pursue photography because, as he puts it, there is no inspiration North of Toronto. His dad left when he was young, but he talks to his mom every few days.
“Must be nice,” I blurt, then choke out a laugh before I sound bitter. I haven’t seen my mom since I left home five years ago, but it’s become increasingly difficult to pity myself. I quickly gulp my drink, tilting my head back as if to swallow the same slippery pills my mom used to ingest every night until I moved out.
He studies my face, and I can’t tell if his concern is performative or genuine. I make a comment about him psychoanalyzing me, and he gives me an amused smile, the corner of his mouth turning upward. As he does this, I think, with shame, that his stare is attractive.
As we talk some more, The Photographer seems to laugh at all my jokes, and I can tell he is really laughing by the way he laughs with his breath and not his throat. A little drunk, he teases that he gets to spend time with beautiful women for a living. The comment feels objective, nowhere near flattering. I feel my face warm with embarrassment at the possibility of mistaking it as a compliment.
Surrendering to self-indulgence, I ask, “So what was it about my profile that caught your attention?”
He doesn’t overthink his answer. “Like I said, I liked your vibe. I usually don’t know what I’m doing with a project until I’m already doing it. Sometimes not until after. When I tell models about my process, they think I’m unprepared, or a waste of time.”
“Well,” I consider, “I’ve never modeled professionally for someone, so I don’t know what is typical anyways.”
His eyes widen with surprise. “I assumed you were a professional model.”
“No, actually. I work as an administrative assistant at a bank,” I admit, surprising myself with the reminder of having endured an extensive period of post-grad unemployment until just a month ago.
“Interesting,” he says, studying me. “But I know once I get a camera in front of you, you’ll forget you’re not. You have that look.”
I feel myself blushing, so I distract myself by sipping my drink before it becomes noticeable. “I find it suspicious,” I say to interrupt the silence, “that you take all of your models out for drinks.”
“I never said I did,” he says. He rambles about how each time is different, as if he’s comparing girls he’s slept with.
I tilt my head, not convinced.
“Let’s shoot now, then,” he says, entertained by his own spontaneity.
I can feel my phone vibrate against the table. I glance at Rhegan’s contact photo, a picture of us from our third date. I liked taking photos behind her back when we first started going out. It was a premature intimacy that made me feel close to her.
Are you out with Minta tonight?
She knows my patterns. When I stay out later than I typically do, I’m almost always with Minta. I don’t think I’m capable of surprising her, I’m so predictable it must be so boring. He does not flinch from the buzz of my phone as he helps me out of my seat. He adds a slight, steady pressure against the small of my back, and I pretend not to notice.
***
Rhegan and I met on a dating app four years ago. I was immediately attracted to her androgynous appearance, her pixie cut and her thinned out, bleached eyebrows. I remembered after the first time she went down on me, I traced the fine lines of her tattoos, starting with the wing of the swan on her shoulder, down to the word lucky, the y licking her elbow. It became a habit.
We found our sexual dynamic early on. Rhegan was much more experienced than I was, both of us at the endless age of twenty-two. We were lying side by side on her bed, the one we now share, when we found ourselves disagreeing about sex.
She talked of sex as this spontaneous, urgent desire. She had an on-and-off fling with this girl called Spencer, and she talked about how they had this unpredictable sex life, where they’d make each other crazy and then not speak for months.
“I never understood how people can find that escapism in sex,” I said. “I become so hyperaware of myself. Of my breath, my body, my… ” I choked out, struggling to articulate myself. “It’s so embarrassing to be that vulnerable.”
“I can understand that,” she reassured me. “I guess I’ve just never felt that way. I feel like I’m surrendering to my basic instincts. It’s not so much about how I’m perceived by the other person than it is about making them feel good.”
It was difficult to imagine Rhegan with a desperate, starved desire. An impulse that was incalculable, irrational. I began to speculate if she ever touched herself to my photos on Instagram, maybe the one where I’m looking up at the camera, a cigarette resting between my breasts.
“I hope you never feel embarrassed with me,” she added.
I thought about Spencer. I thought about how freely she must carry herself. I started to fantasize about Rhegan thinking about me that way.
“It’s never not embarrassing for me,” I answered her.
She looked up at me as if she wanted to hold me, but she didn’t. She stayed lying down.
***
The Photographer’s studio is not what I had imagined. The wide, spacious loft in an old industrial building was instead a camped house with three small rooms: a bedroom with a sink and toilet tucked into the corner, an empty spare room, and another loaded with camera equipment.
I think to ask if he has company as I catch sight of a black lace bra sprawled across his unmade bed through the gap of his door, but a sudden visual in my mind distracts me. I imagine it belonging to me, and a casualness with which it might have been left there. My heart palpitates from either shame, desire, or both.
Instead of closing his door he lets me in. The room is filled with cold light from his uncovered window, the glass fogged with condensation from this morning’s rain. His sheets are wrinkled, and as I’m standing there I get this overwhelming feeling that I’m intruding on something.
Almost immediately he takes his camera and we begin to shoot in his room. I don’t change my clothes. I’m wearing a black turtleneck, snug all the way down to my pelvis, and a thin skirt that turned translucent when the light hit it, the lace of my underwear faintly visible through the fabric. I follow his instructions, stand next to the bed, turn your chin slightly left, hands behind your back, yes, like that. I like the way he says yes, yes, yes, when I obey his directions, crouching beside the bed, letting my head rest stiffly against the bed. In some shots I’m leaning forward, my cheek pressed to my knees, eyes lifting to meet the camera. The only space between us is the body of the camera, his face pressing behind it, and the lens, hiding his expression.
***
I’m laying on my bed with only a towel covering my body. I stare at the DM left on seen from a week ago, when I gave The Photographer my email the night of the shoot. Did he really just ghost me? It’s so pathetic to see it like that, as if he owes me a text, something like Hey, how are you? I loved spending time with you. Just the possibility of expecting it is so pathetic, it fills me with a sort of pity or sadness.
I get up and remove my towel. Looking back at my slim flesh in the mirror, it is almost impossible to see where my body and someone’s pleasure could coexist.
Before I met Rhegan, I was convinced I was incapable of sex entirely. That I was utterly sexless. Particularly, sex with men, because it premised on their desire, and I could never seem to embrace the deed of satisfying their greed, their impatience.
As I begin to dress, I glance at the way my breasts sit behind my bralette. Every time I stare at myself like this, I feel robbed of whatever satisfaction or attractiveness I’m supposed to feel. To have such vain desires is the most guilt-inducing thing a woman like me can possess, I think to myself. I need to feel some sort of control. I take my phone, log into Instagram, and block The Photographer. I shut my phone all the way and pick out what top I’m going to wear.
***
I check my phone as I clock out of my shift. My eyes are drawn to a message from Minta, a set of screenshots attached to the message: is this you???
At first I don’t recognize myself in the images. The entire room is washed in a cold blue tint. My silhouette is swallowed by the backlight, my face a shadow, while the rest of me is traced sharply through the thin, translucent fabric of my clothing.
I log into Instagram and unblock The Photographer. A wave of shame rises over me as I’m reacquainted with his profile picture, reminding me of how many times I’d stare at the unanswered DM.
The post has been active for three days.
18.3K likes. 132 comments.
One reads, I need and want you so bad lollll, followed by a string of heart emojis. I click on the profile pictures to find the fathers of daughters claiming me as their own, another comment reading mine, mine, mine.
The more I look at this image, the more ugly I feel. I am detached from the girl I’m looking at on the screen. I feel smothered and suffocated by a desire that is unclaimed, unwanted. Rhegan’s contact photo interrupts my scrolling. I stare at my tear drops that spill down her name onto her shoulder in the photo.
I pick up after the third ring.