Brotographic Exploits, Part 2

Brotographic Exploits, Part 2

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As promised, here is the second installment chronicling my adventures as a brotographer in the broed-out streets, bars, and clubs of San Francisco.

Heard for the first time in 2006: “I’m a Photoshop artist”

Heard for the first time on August 16, 2010, on mentholuniversitypress.blogspot.com: “I’m a Brotoshop artist”

This is history in the making.

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As I’ve mentioned to some of my readers, I’ve been not drinking much lately. This can be a challenging choice when I shoot in places where drinking is common, and indeed I do much of my shooting in bars, clubs, and similar venues. I find that the best strategy is to tell others that “I am LDS”. Most people do not know that LDS means “Latter-Day Saints”, short for “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”. The LDS movement is commonly known as Mormonism; however, the term “Mormon” was initially introduced as a religious slur, in reference to the Book of Mormon which forms much of LDS scripture. To be brief: Jews believe in the Old Testament. Christians believe in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Mormons believe in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon. Calling someone “Mormon” is perhaps equivalent to calling a Christian a “Bible-brandisher” or a Jew a “Torah-toter” or a Muslim a "Koran-coddler". In Ely, Nevada (where I spent some six months working in a copper mine in a miniscule town where perhaps 50% of the population was LDS), the term “Mormon” was seen as quite acceptable for in-crowd usage but somewhat rude for non-LDS people to use. Thus, LDS people freely used the term “Mormon”, but it was seen as more polite for a non-LDS person to use the term LDS.

The great benefit to saying “I’m LDS” and then explaining “Mormon” in response to the inevitable “What does ‘LDS’ mean?” is that it immediately removes any suspicion in anyone’s mind that I might be lying. I am thus free to not drink, and beautiful women are filled with desire to corrupt me. There is a third benefit: since I am teaching people what “LDS” means, I can consider myself to be doing a public service which completely eliminates any self-consciousness resulting from my dishonesty and allows me to feel good about myself as a gentleman, a scholar, and an educator.

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I recently got a good taste of red wine as a result of this. Her teeth were stained dark with it, which I didn’t mind at all. Erik advised me that photography would lead to hooking up with random women, and it has. I'm about 90% sure that this isn't "morally wrong" and about 99% sure that it is "fucking stupid".

On the topic of red wine, I recall drinking wine with a friend of mine months ago. He said “This stains your teeth”. I said “Well, you can’t see your own teeth, so you must be telling me my teeth are being stained”. He blushed and said “A little. I fear my teeth are being stained”. I said “Well, your fear has come to pass”. He was very self-conscious after that. Pity. I’m not usually much of a wine drinker. I went to a wine tasting six months ago, which was a new experience. I’d never tasted wine before, though God knows I’ve drank enough of the stuff.

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From time to time, people have thought I am gay. Part of this probably arises from my obsession with Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, and I’ll admit that my feelings for Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan perhaps transcend the norms of heterosexuality. When I came to Stanford, one of the young men in my dorm admitted that he had thought I was gay for the first three months we knew eachother.

At the events I shoot, people seem even more inclined to think I am gay, which is a good sign: It means I am dressing better, moving away from being a JC Penny model and the posterboy of straight men’s fashion. I don’t mind being misperceived; straight women are no less sexually attracted to men they perceive as gay, which makes sense, since gay men are no less sexually attracted to men they perceive as straight.

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When I shoot for a promoter or venue owner, I try to negotiate several things. Besides having my car valeted, I tell the client that I want access to a space within the venue that is well-lit, clean, dry, and protected from theft. I need such a place to change batteries, memory cards, lenses, etc. and to leave my camera bag in a location where I know it won’t be stolen or spilled/trampled on. It’s nice to be able to “get away” from a party for a few minutes in any case, and most people take a breather by going outside, but the streets of San Francisco are not a good place to maintain delicate and expensive photographic equipment.

Usually, venues provide me with access to either the security room (where the security guards monitor cameras) or the dressing room (where the dancers get ready). It’s not as if most venues have a dedicated “brotographer’s room”. I was once given access to a kitchen, and it was all steamy there with water dripping everywhere, so I added “dry” to my list of required attributes for a space.

There is one particular club in SF where I’ve shot a half-dozen times and where I am always given access to the dressing room. As such, I’m doing “camera things” while the dancers are doing their makeup, getting dressed, etc. Sometimes we chat idly; a typical question I answer is “what do you do for a living?” I answer, and usually end up rambling about my work and thereby teaching exotic dancers about Feminism. I think this could be best described with a word that ends in “-ic”, like “ironic” or “apocalyptic”.

Knowledge of Feminism has proven quite useful to me. Last weekend, I did a shoot at a new venue (new to me). It is on the Presidio, far enough from the heart of San Francisco that it is possible to find street parking. I’m not withholding more detailed information because I have a strong sense of privacy but rather because I have a weak sense of direction.

EDITOR’S NOTE: To understand this section, it is helpful to know the following about me: I like curvy women, I do not like skinny women. Some would accuse me of making an understatement.

After the shoot, I was sitting at the bar with a woman who was telling me about her (film) photography and experiences in art school (red flag). She mentioned that she wanted to lose 20 pounds, which was outrageous (she was substantially thinner and shorter than me). I told her not to. She said “Oh, you wouldn’t be saying that if you could see me twenty pounds lighter”. Rather than beg to differ, I took a Feminist stance. I started by explaining the difference between sex (countable) and gender: sex refers to biological differences between men and women, while gender refers to socially constructed differences in such variables as dress, education, employment, etc. The catch is that the difference between the two is not always clear. I told her about a grant I was working on to study gender variables in osteoporosis. In America, osteoporosis is mainly thought of as a women’s disease, and indeed white American women do suffer from osteoporotic fractures at greater rates and younger ages than white American men. However, there is a twist: in many countries and in certain ethnic groups in the United States, osteoporosis is much less a “women’s disease”. It strikes men and women much more equally in regions of the world where there is not a strong social impetus for women to be thin. The reason for this is that dieting (especially in the teens and twenties) dramatically reduces the amount of bone mass a person lays down, which creates a predisposition to osteoporosis later in life. In an environment where women are “supposed” to be thin and men are “supposed” to be big and muscular, osteoporosis is a woman’s disease- not so in other countries, especially in countries where women do much manual labor, most commonly in agriculture.

She agreed to only try to lose 5 pounds instead of 20. A measured victory.

Feminism provided me with tools to argue my case. My guess is that I was much better able to scare her straight (or, perhaps, “scare her curvy”) by raising the spectre of “hip fractures” than by raising the spectre of “I might be slightly less interested in sleeping with you”.

I’m tempted to post a picture of her to “prove” that she would be unhealthily thin if she lost 20 pounds, but I think that would be inappropriate, and I want to continue Menthol’s policy of only posting appropriate content.

Peas out, V4L, Foamcore.

-A2