I knew what he meant when he said the light was better at his. Everyone knows what that means. It is the same sentence as come up for a coffee, just dressed in a slightly more creative job.
We had been shooting for maybe two hours. Nothing glamorous. Me in a black dress I already own, him with a camera that cost more than my monthly rent, wandering around a bit of canal that photographs well if you crop out the bins. I do this sort of thing a lot. Content. Faces. Clothes that look more expensive than they are if you stand under the right tree.
He was good. I will give him that. Quiet in a way that made me fill the silence, which I always do. Asked me to turn my chin a fraction. Told me to stop smiling like I was in a passport photo. I looked at my reflection in a darkened cafe window between setups and redid my mouth. Habit. Maintenance. Also I knew he was watching.
The last few frames were the ones I liked. Not posed exactly. Hair a bit wrecked. That look I get when I forget I am meant to be performing and then remember again half a second later. He flicked through them on the back of the camera and said, almost offhand, that the rest would look better at his. Natural light. A wall he likes. No one walking through the shot.
I said fine.
I said it quickly enough that we both understood I was not talking about walls.
His place was not about the light
It was a one bed in a new build near London Bridge. The kind with a hallway that smells of other people’s takeaways and a living room that has never decided if it is a studio or a waiting room. There was a plant that was trying. There was a sofa that had seen things. The famous wall was just white, which I suppose counts as a choice.
The light was ordinary. Late afternoon going grey. London doing what London does in September, which is pretend it might be nice and then change its mind.
He made tea. I did not drink it. I sat on the arm of the sofa because sitting properly felt like committing to a conversation I did not want. He talked about lenses for a bit. I nodded. I am good at nodding. Then he put the camera down and that was the end of the professional portion of the afternoon.
I am not going to pretend I was swept away. I was curious and a bit bored and he had been looking at me like I was the only interesting object in the room for two hours, which does something to a person even when you know it is the job. Also I had not had sex in eleven days, which for me is a drought I start narrating in my head like a nature documentary.
We kissed standing up first. He tasted like gum and nerves. His hands were surer on my waist than they had been on the camera settings, which I filed away as information. The dress came off in the doorway because the zip catches if you are not paying attention and I was not in the mood to be delicate about it.
His bedroom was darker than the living room. So much for the light. The sheets were clean though. I notice that. I always notice that. There is a difference between messy and unclean and I will forgive one of those on a weekday.
He was better than I expected and worse than the version I had already started writing in my notes app. Good mouth. A bit too proud of a move he had clearly practised. Asked if I liked it in a way that wanted a review, not an answer. I told him anyway. Honesty is meant to be one of my flaws. It is also efficient.
We did it twice. The second time because the first one ended faster than either of us had budgeted for and I was not leaving on that note. I am not precious about it. I also am not going to write the choreography out like a user manual. You can fill in the gaps. Most of you already have.
After, he did that thing some of them do where they go quiet and suddenly remember they have a personality that is not just hands. He asked if I wanted water. I did. He brought it. I drank it sitting up with the sheet around me, checking my face in my phone camera because of course I did. Mascara had held. Lipstick had not. I put more on from the tube in my bag. He watched that too.
The pictures were actually good
That is the annoying part. He was not lying about being decent at his job. While I was in the bathroom he went back to the files from earlier and a few he had taken of me on the sofa before we stopped pretending this was still a shoot. The sofa ones were the ones. Soft, a bit messy, my mouth slightly open like I was about to say something rude. I looked like myself, which is rarer than it should be in photos.
He sent a drop folder that night. I opened it in bed at the flat with the brightness down so Sophie would not clock the glow and start a committee meeting. Mia was out. Sophie was in the kitchen pretending not to wait up. I flicked through them with one thumb.
Two of them were immediate. You know the ones I mean. The kind you can post without a paragraph of explanation because the picture does the explaining for you. Shoulder. Mouth. That look. A bit of the dress in one, just enough black fabric to make it a fashion thing instead of a sex thing, even though we all know it is both.
His face was in the corner of the second one. A sliver. Jaw, ear, the idea of him. I cropped it. Tight. No discussion with myself about whether that was kind. It was not about kindness. It was about the frame.
I posted them the next morning with almost no caption. People do not need a caption when the photo is doing overtime. A few friends asked who took them. I said a photographer. Which was true. Sophie stood in my doorway with a mug and said, you slept with him then. Not a question.
I said yes.
She said she hoped the pictures were worth it.
They were. That is the part that sits a bit wrong if I let it. They were worth it in the way a good night out is worth the hangover. You would not repeat the exact evening. You also would not delete it.
What I told him and what I did not
He texted after the post went up. A fire emoji and then, later, a longer message about how he had not expected me to use them so fast. I said that is the job. He said he knew. Then he asked if I wanted to do another shoot.
I left that one on read for a few hours. Not as a game. I was in Tesco buying milk and those little yoghurts Mia eats when she is being healthy for eleven minutes. By the time I got back to the message I had already decided.
I wrote: maybe. different location though.
He sent a laugh. Then a pin. Then nothing for a day, which is the correct amount of nothing.
I am not seeing him again in the way he might want. I can tell when someone has turned a Tuesday into a story about fate. I do not do fate. I do afternoons that turn into something and then turn back into content. That sounds colder than it feels when you are in it. In it, it just feels like saying yes to the thing in front of you because the alternative is going home early and being nobody on the sofa.
Mia asked if he was fit. He was fit enough. That is a different scale to handsome and a different scale again to interesting. He landed somewhere in the middle of all three, which is how most of these men land if you are being honest and not writing them into a novel.
Sophie asked if I felt weird using the photos. I said no, then I said a bit, then I said no again. The truth is I felt the usual mix. A small pinch of something that might be guilt if I let it grow, and a larger feeling of getting away with a good frame. I cropped his face. I did not crop the afternoon. Both of those were choices.
The bit I keep coming back to
He was not wrong about the pictures. He was wrong about the light. Or maybe he was not wrong. Maybe the light he meant was never going to be in the room. It was the excuse you use when you have already decided how the next hour goes and you need a sentence that keeps everyone polite.
I use sentences like that too. I used one when I said fine. I used another when I posted the photos like they had arrived from a studio and not from a white wall in a flat near the station. We all tidy the edges. The difference is I write the untidy version down afterwards, which some people call brave and some people call a problem. I call it the only way I know how to prove I was there.
If you are waiting for the moral, I do not have a clean one. Do not sleep with the person holding the camera if you want the pictures to stay uncomplicated. Or do, and then crop carefully, and then live with the fact that your flatmate will know before the comments do.
I still like the two I posted. I look at them sometimes when I am meant to be answering emails. I look like I got away with something. I did. The something was not even the sex. The sex was fine. The something was walking into a stranger’s flat on a grey afternoon, coming home with proof, and turning the proof into a version of myself I can stand to look at.
That is the job. That is the vice. That is the story.
Anyway. If he reads this, which he might, the tea was a nice touch. The wall was just a wall. The pictures, though. Those I kept.