Lapdancer Excerpt #3

"No Comment", Ft. Myers, FL, 2001. Juliana Beasley

In one topless no-contact club in New York City, a fellow dancer in the dressing room suggested I allow the customer to touch my breasts for a minute or two in exchange for a good tip. And so one night I was pimped out by an overly zealous and greedy club hostess and sent up the black-lit stairs to the champagne room with a polite and very drunk Japanese businessman. We were escorted to our cheap cafe table in the corner while the hostess, using the finest etiquette, presented the label of the bottle to the customer. After ensuring her own tip on his credit card, I was left alone to entertain the gentleman. Eye on my wristwatch, I went through the usual routine: fifteen minutes of champagne drinking, party chat, and a half-hour of table dancing and neck massage. As a grand finale, I reluctantly tried out the minute-grope ploy. For two brief moments he touched my breasts. Then with a cheerful grin I said that was enough. It was the beginning of the end before I left that club.

"Stage Work", Las Vegas, NV, 2001. Juliana Beasley

Come with me. I really want to dance for you.

When I discovered lap dancing, I was delighted because my job description was cut and dry—no more conniving for tips. I provided a service and was paid upfront. I had the freedom of choice to interact with customers verbally if I cared to, but my income didn’t depend on me making conversation with men or developing regulars. If they were difficult, I always had the option of turning my back and walking away. Since alcohol is not served in nude clubs, I never felt the pressure to sit with a customer for drinks, which invariably left me with a hangover the next morning. I personally found it less emotionally taxing.

Besides doing the obligatory dance sets—either sharing the stage with other dancers or performing alone—I made the majority of my money walking up to customers and soliciting “private dances”—lap dances—and taking them into “private” areas of the club. Private dances are really not so private: they are often wedged between undulating couples biding for space. During peak hours on Fridays and Saturdays, customers and dancers wait their turn outside the lap dance room.

A lap dance has a beginning, a middle, and an end. First, I would systematically lay down a cloth on the customers’ laps, then grind against their crotches, either by straddling them frontally or by rubbing my buttocks against their groins. In nude lap dance clubs, many dancers carry around personal wraps or leave them in the lap dance room. They lay the material across customers’ laps to provide a hygienic barrier between themselves and rough or dirty pants and unwanted fluids.

"Pregnant Dancer #1", Las Vegas, NV, 2001. Juliana Beasley

In a way a lap dance is like being a teenager again—rubbing one’s genitals against another without actually having intercourse. Customers keep their clothes on. I do remember one unusual occasion when a drunken customer pulled out his penis, and I politely told him “to put it away”—which he did. I felt more like a mother scolding a child than an erotic dancer.

Once in a while the customer was too obese to wrap my legs around, making me feel like a splayed chicken awkwardly bobbing up and down. So instead I would kneel between his legs and rub my breasts against his crotch, mimicking other more well-endowed, voluptuous dancers. This method was also a relief when my hip and knee joints began to fail me at the end of the night. After wearing stiletto heels for eight to ten hours a night, I preferred to do most of my work sitting down.

"Neon Sign", New Jersey, 2001. Juliana Beasley

For several years I worked in a lap dance club where customers were allowed to touch my ass, and at the time it didn’t bother me (sometimes the kneading even felt like a deep tissue massage to sore muscles). In another “hands-on” club in Jersey, which I nicknamed the Inferno, beautiful dancers would fly in from all over the country just for the chance of working a three-day booking where they would make $3000 plus. Because the manager had a penchant for large-breasted blondes, I actually felt fortunate to be hired. But after the three-day stint, burning candles and incense trying to meditate it out in my hotel room, I decided to quit, no matter how great the money was. I couldn’t just smile through it. I was completely enraged by men touching my breasts. I felt out of control, violated. I was relieved to finally find clubs where customers were told to keep their hands braced to the sides of their chairs, bouncers at the ready. I had found my own personal boundaries—every dancer does.

On a conscious level I discovered I could turn myself off emotionally. I then worked on automatic, transforming every man that followed me into the lap dance room into a twenty dollar bill. Sometimes it seemed that the only way I could tolerate the monotony was by focusing on numbers. As I methodically went from customer to customer, I slipped into a mental trance: a rhythmic meditation of counting songs, counting dances, counting singles, counting twenties, counting customers.

I habitually performed the same sequence of moves for each customer, whispering to him in his ear near the end of the song, “Would you like another dance?” Lap dancing had become an intense physical workout and an emotional no-brainer. I felt victorious as I kept each succeeding customer underneath me, knowing that with every gyration I was closer to emptying their wallets—and filling my garter. A positive attitude, a good sales pitch, and the physical stamina to keep hustling until the club’s last call were vital in meeting my nightly goals.

However subversive my job might have seemed to the outside world, for me it was just another day at the office. I provided a service and was well paid. I often compared lap dancing to waitressing in a diner. “Turn and burn ’em” became my personal decree; my earnings were based on bulk rather than on quality. For $20 a song, the key was to keep the customer hard. Or not hard, depending on the customer. After years of dancing, if I were to conjure up one of these customer’s faces today, besides a few memorable regulars, I would permanently pause on the image of a blurred face wearing a baseball cap.

I’m going to give you the best lap dance you ever had.

When the monotony of the job began to wear me thin, and the customers seemed to be getting bored watching me dance five days a week in my “home” club in Jersey, I convinced a dancer friend to hit the road with me. The options were endless—Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Guam, Europe, Japan. The geographical solution was based on the theory that, at least in the short term, being the “new girl” in a chosen club might increase my income.

"Mint Lounge", Miami, Florida, 2001. Juliana Beasley

Many of the dancers traveled back and forth from Florida—like Michelle, who owned several condos near Miami and rented an apartment in Jersey. There I might meet dancers from all over the country and abroad who might convince me to come work at their home club, or who might offer insight into clubs in other cities. The names of good clubs are highly coveted pieces of information. It makes sense to only tell your closest confidante where the money is being made before news runs like wildfire and every dancer in the vicinity floods the club, destroying business for the lucky few who got there first.

"Cowboy", Tampa, Florida, 1995. Juliana Beasley

One February, when the low season in New York set in, a dancer named Kaylani and I took a working vacation to Tampa where high season was just beginning. Driving from the airport, we plugged the driver for valuable stripper information—where the strip clubs were, which ones were the best, which ones we should stay clear of, phone numbers for take-out, and the nearest tanning and nail salons. Taxi drivers, often independent contractors like strippers, are reliable allies in unfamiliar towns. We set up our home base at the local Indian family-owned Howard Johnson, unpacked our makeup, and prepared for that night’s auditions. Within a day or two, we had pinpointed the most lucrative clubs and agreed on the one that seemed the most tolerable.

With every new club came a new stage name. I changed my name as often as I changed the style and color of my hair. Nico sounded too butch outside of New York. In Tampa I was Sophie; in Hawaii I was Jessie; in Reno I was Amanda; in New Jersey I was River—and so on. Traveling to different cities definitely broke up the assembly-line quality of the business (bend over, smile, grab a dollar), but after expenses proved less lucrative than staying home and working at one particular club as a “house dancer.”

Working in Hawaii proved in particular to be a painful experience because most of the house dancers at the club despised me. I was accused of selling dances at half-price and allowing customers to touch me. True, I didn’t socialize much with the other dancers, but you had to be a dedicated hustler to make up the costs of hotel rooms and flight tickets and still return home with some savings. When I walked into the dressing room, conversations would halt. When I finished my dance set on stage, none of the dancers applauded. It was incredibly alienating, but I was determined to stay despite friends in New York urging me to return to the mainland. Eventually I did make one friend, a fellow hustler. And then I left town.

Coming home to a lonely hotel room, I suspected, was not a far cry from what many of the customers on business trips felt—just another hour, sit with the pretty girl until last call, then back to an empty room with over-bleached towels, stiff bedding, and a remote control, dreams and fantasies left behind.

"Lapdancer" Excerpts #2

"Jillian", Mons Venus, Tampa, Florida, 2001(?) Juliana Beasley

The following excerpt is taken from my introduction from "Lapdancer", powerHouse, 2003. Over the next couple of months, I will be reliving my years working as a stripper and the subsequent making of the book.

Please, inform me if the excerpts are too long to keep you involved. If so, I can shorten them. However, I imagine some of you savvy blog folks are used to keeping your eye on the monitor. Have fun and enjoy the dance!


Introduction


A couple of years after I had graduated from NYU, I began working in a strip club in Queens. It was to be one of many clubs that I would pass through over the following eight years, and it was there that I first encountered the notion of being a professional, business-minded stripper.
Sitting at the juice bar (nude clubs in New York were not permitted to serve alcohol), relaxing between half-hour dance sets, I became friends with Beth, a dancer from Florida with a laugh that you could hear from the stage all the way to the dressing room.

After asking the usual—”Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been dancing?”—I asked the other predictable question: “What are your plans when you get out?” She told me about her goal to save $100,000 and invest it in real estate and the stock market before quitting. Beth was just one of many disciplined strippers that I got to know over the years who were determined to leave the business with enough money to allow them to retire permanently or start some other kind of venture. Meeting her and discovering her resolve marked a turning point in my dancing career. For the first time I realized that I had the potential of amassing a substantial nest egg—one that unfortunately I felt I would never make as a freelance photographer.

Besides, I was happier having a job where I was able to set my own guidelines and schedule instead of the alternative: working as a photographer’s assistant for a fraction of the earnings, turning in numerous invoices that weren’t paid on time, being yelled at, and taking the brunt for mistakes on photo shoots. I was also tired of carrying around their equipment and running behind them in a sweat. In dancing, I felt like I had regained my self-esteem.

"Dancer with Female Customer", New Jersey, 2002. Juliana Beasley

I named myself Nico, inspired by the heartless blonde German model-turned-rock-icon from the Velvet Underground. I believed her name would provide a constant reminder of the stamina and strength I would need to get the job done.

I created an impossible schedule of self-inflicted boot camp for myself. Totally immersed in the “cult of the strippers,” I lived my life by a timetable and a calculator I kept at my bedside. After work, at 3:00 in the morning, I pulled down the shades in my apartment, counted my earnings on the bathroom floor, and diligently jotted the figures down in my agenda. The plan was to get out of the business within a couple of years. Working eight to ten hours a day, five to six days a week, I was determined to meet the strict goals I had set for myself. I never accounted for physical burnout, the frequent colds and chronic bronchitis induced by customers’ cigars and cigarettes and the clubs’ smoke machines, and the emotional fatigue of staying in character every night.

The stripper lifestyle has its own comforting and predictable routine. Sleeping until 11:00 a.m. (or later, as the week progresses), I drag my tired body out of bed across my studio apartment. A sore body is a reminder of a night well spent, money made, counted, and stashed in forever changing hiding places. Mysteriously browned and callused knees and elbows offer further evidence of my nightly pursuits. Some mornings, I awake still brooding over a night when I have fallen below my average, and berate myself for my lack of motivation on the job or some other possible personal defect that might explain falling short of my quota.

A shower would follow, then a walk into the daylight to a local restaurant where I would sit alone, ponder my future, and reward myself with a sensible non-fattening meal in my trendy Manhattan neighborhood. I hardly had time to hand wash my costumes. They smell of cigarettes, sweat, and the sweet perfumes customers complement me on. Instead I opt for a nap, awake, pop three Advil, and an hour later pick up a double espresso on the run, toting my work duffel bag filled with my best moneymakers—a tight leopard-print dress, a silver Brazilian bikini, a sequined mini, and stiletto heels. One might have thought I was just another ballet dancer running off to a class in the middle of the day.

"Customer #1", New Jersey, 2000, Juliana Beasley

At first it was buses, trains, and taxis; then later, private drivers like Aman, the yellow cabbie who doubled as my therapist, forever bolstering my spirits like a trainer with his boxer before entering the ring. We would make the usual stops: coffees, brownies, bottles of Jack Daniels. Several blocks before arriving at the designated club, I would let out a sigh. No, I don’t want to go. I’m too tired. I’m sick of the men and I’m even sick of the girls.

He teases me, “Do you want to go home?”

“No,” I reply.

Next came Aramis, the crazy-eyed driver from Uruguay who charged less than Aman, but with him there would always be the risk of getting into some sort of collision, like the time we hydroplaned across three lanes on the Westside Highway, hit a marker on the side of the road, and flipped his Suburban. But the price was right and I was determined to keep expenses low, even at the risk of dying next to a man whose conversational skills consisted of “Hi, Nico.”
The structure I’d created for myself was satisfying for the most part because I immediately saw the results of my hard labor. Here I was, an unskilled worker, earning double what my friends in “straight” jobs were making.

I loved the music, dancing on stage, and the instant connections I made with fellow dancers—and at times, even with customers. For eight hours on nights I danced, I was taking a break from my own complex and contradictory life. In reality I rarely dreaded going to work, unlike with other jobs I had had in the past. Dancing felt emotionally cathartic, empowering, and at times just like another creative extension of myself. I developed my dancing style partially by mimicking other dancers and partly through trial and error. I performed five days a week to a normally adoring public. Sometimes it felt like being a rock star, or what I imagined being a rock star might feel like: discounts on hotels, personal drivers, and makeup.

Do you want a really hot dance? You won’t be disappointed

Like many of the dancers I worked with over the years, I started my career in the local topless dive bar, and after a month graduated to working in the fully nude-lap dance clubs and never looked back. I chose working in fully nude clubs over other strip club formats like go-go or topless dancing because it offered the highest cash earnings for what I believed to be the least amount of mental and physical stress.

In so-called “no-contact” clubs, a dancer makes most of her money not only by being well dressed and dolled up, but ultimately by her ability to be a good conversationalist. The most beautiful girl in the club isn’t necessarily the one making the most money—it’s the dancer who is patient, covertly demanding, and capable of laughing at even the crassest jokes.

In these clubs, dancers make their money table dancing, swaying between the legs of a customer, and, employing the classic stripper move, tossing their heads around and showering their long tresses or hair extensions over the heads of the mesmerized. Supposedly there isn’t any physical contact. Yet different clubs have different sets of spoken and unspoken rules. One club might have a hands-off policy, with a bouncer watching the customer’s every move; another club might allow customers to touch more liberally. Rules existed to be observed or disregarded, depending upon the individual dancer and the management.

"Couch Dance", Philadelphia, PA, 2001, Juliana Beasley

Another variation is the champagne room, or the VIP room, in which the dancer or cocktail waitress convinces the customer to buy a bottle of champagne and spend a “private” hour in a room often full of other couples hidden discreetly behind fake plants. One night at a club in Manhattan, I spent eight hours in the champagne room with three different customers. By 10:00 I was on my third bottle of Moët, and I was trashed. I staggered to the men’s room and asked the attendant if he had any suggestions for topics of conversation, so I wouldn’t appear too lifeless.
Prices in the VIP room are invariably high, and the dancers make their money on a small percentage of sales and tips. By the end of the hour I often had difficulty convincing a customer to tip me $100 when he had already doled out $300 plus to the club for something inevitably less than he had expected. I got sick of listening to an hour of often dull sexual fantasies and clumsy advances, then being subjected to the humiliation of begging for uncertain tips.

Excerpts from "Lapdancer" #1

Titles Posted Later Today

I thought it would be fun to take the next couple of months to revisit my first book "Lapdancer", as I have a new book called "Juliana Beasley/ Sete 2010 coming out in the spring this year.

The following is a short story taken from an interview that I did back in 1999-2000 with a manager from a strip club in Monsey in Rockland County in New York state. The owner told me that I would have to work there to photograph there.

Some of the following photographs have never been published before. Look for more writing and pix in the weeks to come.

I dance a set of 20 minutes, rush to the changing room, grab my Contax, attach my heavy Quantum battery to the side of a g-string that would begin to sag from the weight of it , and hit the floor. In in a half hour's time, I have to play producer, convincing customers to let me photograph them with dancers, collect model releases and snap shots. I hear my stage name over the speaker, "Now, performing Nico!" I dash back to the dressing room, put away my equipment in my duffle bag and reapply my make-up and run back on the stage with a stellar smile on my face.

“The Million Dollar Question”- John

I started out working as a bouncer at a place called Erotique back in the early ’80s. It was the first big club to come into the area, a big strip club. And it was not nude. It was just topless, and there was no alcohol and no lap dancing. Then I went to another club called T & A. Again, no alcohol, no lap dancing. I came here in the early ’90s, and it was totally nude. And so the girls were up on the bar getting their money and stuff. And then one girl came up to me and said, “A guy wants a lap dance.” I had never heard of it. So I went back to my boss, and he knew less than I did. And so what we did is, we put about six chairs towards the back of the club and said, “These are chairs you can lap dance in.” And at that time we told the girls to charge ten bucks per song, and we would get three bucks out of it.

And it got so popular, it was like a mad house, the line to get in and sit on these chairs. And the funny thing was, they did it in front of everybody else. Nobody got shy, nobody was embarrassed. Me, I would have been embarrassed with an erection with a pretty girl sitting on me and everybody else gawking. Because at that time you did have people leaning against the posts or whatever, just looking at the customers with the girls. And the girls didn’t seem to mind—and they were pretty girls.

Eventually my boss, he got this idea. We took out part of the kitchen and we turned that into a lap dance room. We put like little cubicles up, with no doors because we wanted to see what was going on, and made like eight to nine stools. And then the girls were charging twenty-five bucks, and we would charge the customers five dollars just to get into the room. It just took off. People were coming here not to see the girls on stage, but to do the lap dances. And I always said lap dancing is probably going to put prostitution out of business. And what I meant by that is if a guy comes and gets a lap dance and he puts on a condom and if he does spill a little bit, it’s not going to get it on his clothes. Now there’s a plus; you call that safe sex. I think that’s what a lot of men look at it as. They’re not going to take any disease home. They’re going to come to a place like this and if it happens, it happens—you know, if they have an orgasm. Then they go home to their wives.

I’d never heard of it until we started doing it about nine years ago. I’m sure it happened before. But I think since we started doing it, word-of-mouth got around and now all the other clubs around here are doing it. And we advertise: “The best lap dance around.” And that’s what really works for us. We’re known as the club with the lap dance. We used to be called “Up Close And Personal”—the way the girls got on stage and got up in front of the guy. Believe it or not, some of these guys spend thousands of dollars a day on getting lap dances—a day.

Now we’ve even got VIP rooms in the back, where the guy can go in a little private room. There’s cameras in there. And these guys are paying a buck and a quarter [$125] for a half-hour, so they can get a private lap dance with a girl. It’s amazing. It really is.

They don’t know I have cameras back there. I have two different cameras, one an infrared—they think if they turn the lights off I can’t see them. Because let’s face it, I got to support my wife and kids. And knock on wood, I’ve never been shut down or raided. And a lot of clubs that have total nudity and the lap dances and the private rooms and whatever, they’ve been shut down several times. And we haven’t because of that security system.

The girls go back there. The guys tell them stories about how they like their wives, the position of them when they’re making love. Because I have sound on the cameras, too. And the guy will say, “You know, my wife likes it when she gets on her knees and this and that.” And the girls, you know, they talk back to the guys. Some of the guys like to be insulted. They like to have a girl put her high heel in their balls, you know, stuff like that. Some guys are just really weird. They don’t want to get off where other people can just walk by them or whatever. So the private rooms are worth it to them. And some of these guys are like bankers, or big shots in computers and chemists and all this. They come in, they have women’s clothes beneath their own clothes. So they undress; they got a woman’s bra on or whatever. And the girls spank them a little bit on their rear end. Things like that. But no sex goes on. Some guys don’t even want sex.

Several times I’ve caught a guy taking out his penis. And I have a buzzer back there. I hit the buzzer, and send the bouncer back there; he tells the guy the dance is over and he has to leave. I tell the guy he can come back another day. But if I catch him again—which has never happened—he’s out for life.

Don’t forget, I used to bounce before I became a manager. I was a bouncer out there for about three years. And what that means is, I was right next to the customers. So I had relationships with customers coming in and talking about sports, about wives, kids, work, etc. And a lot of guys who came in, I got to be close with, to talk to like once or twice a week. Some guys even came in three or four times a week. A lot of guys just like to come here to get away. I’ve been married seventeen years myself and I can understand…well I can’t understand spending that kind of money on these girls, but I understand when they say they want to get away for a while.

I get to see and hear why they really come here. A lot of guys get into an argument with their wives; they walk out, and they go to a bar and drink. The next thing you know, they get drunk, they go home, now they’re getting violent about it or whatever. Here, it’s a juice bar. So when some guys get into arguments with their wives or whatever, they come here, they see a pretty girl. They know they’re not taking a girl home. The girl will make the guy feel like he is royalty. You know, “Hi, honey. How are you doing?” A guy could be a fat slob with no teeth in his mouth, you know, somebody a girl wouldn’t take a second look at. But if he came in here and he spent a couple of dollars on a soda and paid the admission to get in the door and tipped the girl a couple of dollars, the guy would be treated like he was Brad Pitt.

And so he spends a couple of hours in here. And when he goes home, he feels like he’s taken ten, twenty pounds off his shoulders. He comes home and he’s in a much better mood. He speaks to his wife in a much different tone. Maybe he makes love with his wife that night because he came here and got aroused by the pretty women. And he doesn’t tell his wife where he was. Because if he ever told his wife, his wife would call him all kinds of names and think he was coming here and whoring around and whatever.

It’s just to get away where nobody else knows you—not your boss, not your wife, not anybody. And you come here and because you have a couple dollars in your pocket, you get treated like you’re the boss. You know, “Could I get you a soda?” “Hi, honey. Can I get you a match?” “What’s your name?” Every girl comes around to you asking your name. You know, they’ll listen to your story about what’s going on. And even if it sounds like you’re completely wrong, the girl’s going to tell you you’re completely right. And that’s what you really want to hear. It’s sort of a therapy.

I’m not a therapist. I’m not a psychologist. But you know what? I would think—let’s say people that rape girls—I’d rather have a guy come into a strip bar and get a couple lap dances and whatever and go home than go out looking for a pretty woman and raping her. You understand what I’m saying? That could help them also.

There’s a whole bunch of really good reasons why clubs like this should be allowed to operate and offer lap dances. Because some guys…let’s face it, there’s some ugly guys out there; their grooming is not…they smell or whatever. And these guys can come here and get a beautiful woman who would never give them a second look, who give them a lap dance, wrap their arms around their neck and whisper in their ear. It’s almost like a date.

Don’t forget, some of these guys are not married. They will probably lay in bed for weeks at a time while they save up their money and think about, “Wow, I know Vanessa’s going to be there on a Wednesday. I’m working overtime this week. Let me go there and see my baby.” They call them regulars.

These guys get thinking that they’re the only guys in these girls’ lives, know what I mean? They send them flowers, candies, Christmas gifts, all that sort of stuff.

I sit back here with my two bosses and sometimes we’ll see a girl in the lap dance room with a guy, and he’ll put like twelve hundred dollars on his credit card. And our question will be, “Well, Jesus, he’s back there for all this while, why the hell doesn’t he just go down to Atlantic City and get an escort?” I don’t have the answer to that. I really don’t. That’s the million dollar question.

The million dollar question. We often wonder about that around here. Because I can speak for myself. If I was not married or I had problems with my wife, instead of coming here and spending four or five hundred dollars and then going home with a big old hard on, I would probably go somewhere, down to Atlantic City or to New York City, so that I can get an escort that’s kind of classy, and pay the five hundred for I don’t know how long. And then I’m definitely going to get what I went there for.

The Boy and the Cat

"Boy, Kitty, and Renault", Sete, France, August 2009. Juliana Beasley

Last August, a few nights after I arrived in Sete on the south coast of France, I walked up a hill with a backpack filled with my Rollei, film and flash.

I was exhausted. It was 2 or 3 am in the morning. The city was still busy with masses of people you had come to Sete for the Festival of St. Louis! Dancing, plastic glasses once filled with drunken concoctions littered the street, as I called it quits and headed to my comfortable residency home.

Just before hitting the final climb, three adolescents walked past me. An old Renault was parked off to the side on a narrow street. In a few minutes, I had photographed a young man. Not until later, did Gilles Favier, the organizer of my residency with Ce Ta Voir, notice two green glimmering eyes popping out in the back round. Magic does happen.

We are getting close to the end of putting "Juliana Beasley Sete 2010" together.

This will probably be my last posting about the book until it comes out in the early spring or even as early as late winter. But, ya' never know.

Old Photos Posted... John Trainer

"John and Mural in Squat", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley.

John Trainer. I miss him. He died of an aneurysm in 2004. Word went around that he keeled over a display rack of pretzels and potato chips in a local Arab owned botega.

We became friends out in Rockaway Park in the winter of 2002 when I first started going out there to photograph. He was usually the first person I saw when I got off the S Train. He was either passed out under some benches or standing by the radiators trying to keep warm in the MTA station on 116th St. He was flirtatious, but not dangerous. What he lacked in his alcoholic boundaries, he always made up for it with his staid respect for my space, despite his flirtatious ways with me.

I wanted to post these photos. They were shot with my Contax, not the T2 but another awesome Contax 35mm camera before I began to shoot the project much later entirely with my Rollei Twin Lens. All of these photographs have never been posted except the one, "Trainer as James Dean".

On one frigid day, he took me into the squat where he lived. He guided me through a dark hallway, holding my hand as we walked over a beat up mattress under are feet. As he explained to me the way toward the stairs, I held tightly onto him, not only to steady myself, but to catch him from falling over in a drunken state.

As they say the blind leading the blind. He was more disabled, despite knowing the territory than I was as we tried to locate a glimpse of light. My fear dissipated when I realized he was no more than a child afraid of falling.

I had just given him a portrait of himself. He placed the photograph of himself next to in an article from the Daily News that was leaning up against a wall in a special nook where he kept his belongings. He chuckled with pride.

"Trainer as James Dean", Rockaway Park, 2004(?). Juliana Beasley. The photograph that I gave to John.

"Empties in a Dresser at the Squat", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley.

In a low-lit room, I sit on a once dark orange carpet now turned brown through years of spilled beer, bitter cigarettes butts, and rancid dog urine. I look to the ground. I am in a lotus position; like the child I once was, sitting “Indian style” at a friend’s birthday party. Looking down to the carpet…I notice several cockroaches scurrying around me. I am probably more at home than I should be, my Contax on my lap as I change rolls of VC-400.

"Paddy's Amputated Big Toe", Rockaway Park, 2003(?). Juliana Beasley.

No, I am not at a relative’s house, but instead sitting center stage in a circle of frayed and worn Lazy Boys. I am at Paddy’s boarding house in Rockaway Park, surrounded by a bunch of grumbling older Irish men with rosaceous drinking cans of Cobra and Guinness beer, engaging in a silent exchange. They share mutual glances every so often while eyeballing an old television. It sits upon a pedestal—another broken black and white television. The reception is shot; skin tones are fluorescent pink. Occasionally, a cackling grumble spills over.

“Oh, the fuggin’ cunt!”

and a look of half acknowledgement and laughter at the crassness of it all.

The broken windows are covered in a blue tarp and the cold winter gusts whip against them and into the living room. Last week, when I back at home in Jersey, Paddy had thrown a chair out of the window in a belligerent drunken fit. It’s all makeshift and make-do around here. Charlie, Paddy and Deuce, the guy who lives in an adult residence down the boardwalk seem not to care about the chill in the air. Deuce appears at Paddy’s maligned boarding house to sit with the boys. He drinks for free. In his shirt pocket is a Xerox photo of a pet cocker spaniel that he talks about with loving nostalgia.

"Deuce at Paddy's", Rockaway Park, 2003(?). Juliana Beasley

"Paddy as Young Man", Location, Date and Photographer Unknown.

Trainer arrives to the scene and picks up a gallon plastic bottle of generic vodka lying on the floor next to Paddy’s amputated toes. He guzzles it down, sits down on a milk crate. He’s a mooch. Everyone hates John Trainer, the itinerant thirty-something alcoholic. He owes everyone either a drink or a cigarette in this town. He looks like a forlorn Irish James Dean. They say he comes from money and he likes to say it’s his choice for being out on the streets, homeless.

The others tolerate his presence.

I hear a gurgle and look to my right. John is foaming at the mouth. His eyes are rolling back. Boom. Man down. He’s fallen off the crate and presently, is on his back, twisting and bucking. His head is spilled into the kitchen, his torso in the living room. Drool covers his chin. I put my camera down, rush to his side.

“Are you alright, John? I’m right here with you…you’ll be O.K. don’t worry, John.”

The blokes remain careened back in their majesty, completely disassociated from the events. unfolding.

“Throw me a pillow,” I say calmly.

I put it under John’s bobbing head.

Then, “Call the cops!”

I drill like a captain at the helm. I turn John’s head to the side. He won’t choke on his saliva this way. I make sure that his mouth remains agape so that he won’t bite his tongue in two.

This is the shot! This is the action shot. This is the shot that explains in one photograph the level of self-destruction and dire loneliness I have been witnessing for the last several weeks. This is the shot that will make my book complete.

Again, the voice in my head, “Take the picture! Leave his side and pick up your camera!”

I don’t. I can’t. The voice that has always had its way…goes away.

The police have arrived. John has become conscious and returned from the world of cerebral thunderstorms and in congruencies. They strap him to what appears to be a hand truck and pull him through the door. I hold it open. They know John well.

“You’re going over to the Pennisula, John. It’s the best we can do for you”.

I can hear the boredom and callousness in their voices becoming more faint as they roll him down the path and into the darkness of the Rockaway Boulevard.

"John on Boardwalk Ramp", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley

I wrote the following story a couple of years ago for Will Steacy's book project entitled "The Picture Not Taken". When you get the chance take a look at the website. There are some interesting quotes from some interesting photographers.

The Last Days of the Decade

As I've walked the streets of Jersey City, headed to my overpriced gym which has become a necessity in my mental wellness, I have mulled over many things that I would like to write on my blog as we reach the New Year 2010.

I've thought of my friend, Brian who died several weeks ago in the Rockaways and how going out there won't be the same. I've thought about all the dear friends, new and old that came into my life over the last year and how they really got me through some rough patches. And they are still there.

I thought about my lack of motivation to post anything at all unless it was seamless... which as you know it never is... it's always full of grammatical and spelling errors.

So, this is lame but all I could come up with was a groovy tune. And it made me wonder what my life would be like without music. The music that makes me dance and sit and just listen.

So, I toast to good vibrations and hope to send them out and maybe they'll come back to me in 2010. And to you too.

Irish Christmas.... Ode to the Rockaways

"Untitled 1", Rockaways, NYC, 2008. Juliana Beasley

"Untitled 2", Rockaways, NYC, 2008. Juliana Beasley

"Untitled 3", Rockaways, 2008. Juliana Beasley

"Untitled 4", Rockwaways, NYC., 2008. Juliana Beasley

Untitled for now. Later date. Tomorrow? Maybe, I'll have words coming out of my fingers.

Pic of the Day

"Celia Behind Locked Door", Sete, France, Juliana Beasley 2009.

Less than one week left, I'm working ahead towards the 30th of the month. Than a lovely vacation with Victoria on the Canal du Midi. Wow, how long has it been since I took a vacation. Although, right now I would prefer prefer lying on the beach! Wouldn't you after the chronic photographer's ailment: the backache. 

I took the photograph above in the Arab quarter of Sete. Celia is part Algerian and French. She was a real tough girl and the oldest in her family. They live in a converted attic. Celia, the young "ado"(adolescent) lives in her own room locked behind a close door across the hall from the main living area where her mother, sister and baby brother live.  She didn't like smiling for the camera and stared deep into my Rollei lens as if she owned it.

The Vulnerability Of Men

Nice Photographers Wear Dresses Too!

 Juliana Beasley written up in local Sete Newspaper in France, September, 2009.

I thought I would throw up this post. I was written up in the local newspaper of Sete, France where I am working on a photo art residence....if you are catching up on prior entries. I am making a book in a month which I believe should be a reality show for photographers called the obvious, "Survival Photo Book in 4 Weeks".

I am not happy with the part in my hair. It was one of the sweaty days when I pulled my greasy hair back; hence, the zig-zag part was not intended. Where was my stylist. At least, I got the dress right! Who says women photographers don't where dresses and cannot get the job done? All lies!!! 

I can actually read this piece that was written by Laurence Laden who was kind enough to take a morning to hear me blather on in circles about what I don't know. And she made sense of it in French. Problem, now is that the type is so small and I am too busy that I will not be able to translate it. But, heck, I'm happy with the title. It seems to suit me more than any of the subjects here.

Well, I'm in the final stretch, y'all. Got some lasting photos to show before I call it quits and hopefully a flip video.

To look at the article in larger form just click on the newspaper article and voila, all in francais!

Juliana as a Photographer!

Hi All, 

Writing here from Sete, France. Getting into the groove of things here. Yep, it's hard to tell a story and make a book in one month, a real challenge for a woman who is used to hanging out and hanging onto and getting attached to her subjects.

So, my dear intern, Ashley Curry a talented young photographer who spends her time building minature landscapes took this photo while she, my other intern, Jazmin (yep, i'm spoiled) spent the day cruising my new favorite state....New Jersey, but of course.

So, here is the photo of me as a photographer. On a superficial note, check out the bikini top bought in children's department at Old Navy. Love it....very Sporty Spice.

"Juliana with Rollei at Jersey Shore Waiting For Deep Fried French Fries", Ashley Curry, Summer 2009.

Today is the Fete de la Bierre...I might take the day off for that one and head for the beach!

Back in New Jersey

"Pink Granny, Grandson and the Hand," New Jersey, Summer 2009.

I thought I would post some of my last photographs that I took while I was still in Jersey, now just a sweet memory....

I took these images before leaving the country. Me and my interns, Ashley and Jazmin had a wonderful hot summer day a couple of weeks ago. We were out shooting and at the end of the day rolled into a Trailer Park in an industrial section of New Jersey...not far from where I live.

The sun was setting and there was little light left to work with but we met some of the folks and I can't wait to return and move in with them for the winter....hmmm....if they will have me that is.


Enjoy! I will put up all of the ones here and if you like tell which ones you like and why. Mucho besos, Juliana reporting from Sete.

Au Joutes!

" Pink Granny, Grandson and the Hand #2", New Jersey, Summer 2009.

"Pink Granny and Grandson", New Jersey, 2009.

"Granny and the Kitty Cats", New Jersey, 2009.

I Could Be In New Jersey But I'm Not

"Tired and Tan in Sete, France" 8/09.

Hi Friends,

Letter from Sete.

The games have begun! I have arrived just in time for the Joutes games in Sete. A game to be taken very seriously and a badge of honor for those who dare to joust one another.

I arrived on Thursday morning and ate my first dish of squid. And I began to drink the Ricard. My new French friends find it very amusing that I take my Ricard with seltzer or rather the stuff that has the little bubbles like Pellegrino.  What I would do for some big bubbles right now!!!

Since Friday, the place is a full of tourists who have come to see the Joutes games. At night parties in the night with lot's of booze last until 5am. Night after night. So, you might wonder what Joutes is...if you don't know already. As it is hard to explain, I will ask you instead to watch the video from Youtube. 

Just imagine Sumo wrestlers holding poles, standing at the top of a elevated stern of a gondola and jousting as the macho dudes on horses did in medieval times. The point however is not to impale your nemesis who is either in a blue or red boat....the best thing you can do is set him off balance by pushing the pole into his armor made of wood. Just watch the video. 

Yes, and the people here love it too.

So, it's a big Sunday night here and the festivities will begin for me at around midnight. It will be a non stop night of shooting people in the streets and drinking. I am shooting lovingly with my Rollei Twin lens with Sun Pac or is it Pack?  The organizers of the Photo Festival of Sete want film and since they were kind enough to pay for it...I am happy as a squid!

Here however is a digital of me....as always...in the bathroom.

Hello From Paris...Soon to Be in Sete!

"7-11 Twins", Jersey Shore, Summer 2009.

I am sitting in the Contact Press office in Paris. My laptop is not finding a connection in Cathy Remy's apartment near the Eiffel Tower.

So, finally, I can share the good news.

I have been invited by the organization Ce Ta Voir to participate in a month long residence in the south of France in the port town of Sete.

I am the first woman chosen for the residency and to make a book in a months time. BTW, the first was the glamorous and my favorite, Anders Petersen. So, I feel honored to be a part of it.

In the spring of 2010, I will return to Sete where they will show my work at the Festival called Images Singulaires, along with other documentary photographers works. Yes, it is a doc festival, not from Arles and less far from Perpignan.

My work would have never fallen into the hands of one of the organizers, Gilles Favier from Agence Vu, had it not been for the curator, Nathalie Belayche who organizes "Food for Your Eyes" in Paris. Last year, she brought my work to show to Gilles at the Perpignan festival and I became a part of a pool of selected photographers for the residency.

And I got it.

I should have brought this up earlier but there was much going on and I needed to apply my french to english translation skills of the information on their website.

Yes, I am very thrilled and excited. Throughout the month, I will be in contact and showing snapshots from my time there.

Here are some pictures that I took before I left. As Miss New Jersey--I write that with pride-- I take photographs every couple of months to go up on the 50 States site. These should be up shortly.

"Slurpie Teens", Summer 2009, Jersey Shore.

"Josh in Front of Trailer Home", Passaic, New Jersey, Summer 2009.

A Short Story From My Memoir, "Tangled Sheets"

The last couple of weeks has been taking care of my dear Moishe. The good news is that he is back in action. A true miracle for the little fluffy who came into my life in 1998, a couple of months before my father died and a year after my mother had died. He changed my life, little by little. And without him and the security and sense of hope he gave me... I would have never been able to accomplish all the things I have been able to do since he arrived into my life.

"Moishe's Staple Stitches After Gastro Abdominal Surgery", 7/09, Jersey City, N.J.

He was only 3 years old. Now he is 14 or 15. No, one knows his story. I adopted him on a hot August day from the ASPA shelter on the Upper East Side. It was a classic love story. I needed love, he needed love...we found each other; he in a cage and me in my own self-made one.

I wrote this following short story back in 2002. I was taking a memoir writing class at Gotham in the West Village. My life was very different and very difficult. I need to remind myself of this when I hit walls or swing up and down, from one mood to the next.

This was the beginning of a series of pieces I have written with the hopes of publishing one day in the future. Blessed ones only know it's a lot cheaper to have a lap top and a ream of paper than it is to work in fine art or documentary photography.


From: "Tangled Sheets", Juliana Beasley

4/12/02

We have a complete relationship. We can read each other’s minds. We have the sort of relationship where we can take a shit in front of each other.

Most of our time we spend in bed, me at her feet or sometimes by her side, my head on her pillow, her left arm folded over my body, our bodies not curved spoons. Over the last four years, I’ve learned a lot about her in bed.

Before she retires for the evening she pops some pills. Sometimes, the orange bottles sit by her side on a nightstand amongst the half-filled water glasses; in worse times they lay on the floor commingling with partially read books, aluminum take-out trays, and empty seltzer bottles.

Her sleep is erratic. I’ve witnessed her suffer through nights of drug induced sleeplessness. She watches late night shows on t.v. where twenty- somethings openly display their libido and stupidity for the all the lonely insomniacs to see. At four a.m. the commercials for sleeping pills come on; she hates the model/actor who raises his blinds and arms, refreshed and ready for a “brand new day.” She frantically leafs through her phone book and looks for someone to speak with in a later time zone and settles on calling Paolo on his cell in Tuscany. 

I’ve heard her talk at night while she sleeps. She has lengthy conversations in broken Russian and French. She laughs aloud and carries on like a dilettante. There are nights, when she’ll awake and pull a strange stick plugged into the wall from under her bed, bringing it between her legs, vibrating and tensing her body until she gives herself over to temporary limpness. But, she still lies awake. Other nights, she turns on the lights, crying and coddling me in her arms. She tells me, “I love you Moish.” and I know what she means. One morning, she awoke from a couple of hours sleep, embracing her pillow and kissing it like a desperate lover never returned.

Late afternoons, she calls the Guayanese restaurant for take-out. The doorbell rings and she searches her bags for money; this is the most exercise she’s gotten in months. She’s just plain unpresentable. She pays the deliveryman and tips him. “Thank you,” she says, and closes the door behind him. He’s the only person she’s had a conversation with all day. She removes the foggy plastic cover, pulls a fork from the overflowing sink and washes it briefly. It’s a fast and gluttonous feast. She’s ordered the largest portion of chicken stew as usual and if I’m lucky she throws me a piece on the floor. Afterwards, she says, “Come up,” and I spring onto the bed of tangled sheets.

It wasn’t always, this good. There was a time when I never saw one scrap. It was a cold winter; our first year together and we lived in the East Village. And then it happened; the depression set in and we went to the local pizzaria. We were standing at one of those circular tables, the kind without the bar stools and I was sitting patiently at her feet while she ate a pepperoni slice of pizza. She looked down on me and I knew exactly what she was thinking--she needed to share with someone, she needed to be a part. She threw me down a greasy circle and that’s how it all began.

We’re a perfect match. I’m an irrevocable beggar and she’s an incurable slob. Even though she tried for many years to reform, her piggishness is inherently coded, a maternal birthright. She remembers the last years of her mother’s life and how her mother had begun to keep her own home clean. The collectables were stored and obsessively labeled. And even if the white tile ceramic floor in the kitchen was hopelessly dirty and the oriental rugs were imbedded with the permanent stench of dog piss, there was a marked difference. Juliana is holding out hope for a similar rebirth. Or possibly she might consider what every one had suggested, especially her therapist—a cleaning person to come in and take care of the basics. 

The meds are working and she sleeps throughout the night. She stores her nighttime pills in the medicine cabinet and her daytime anti-depressants and mood stabilizers in the kitchen. Her home is tidy and organized. She spends hours editing her photographs and writing. She has found a new faith in life.

Better times for her mean longer walks for me. She wakes early and doesn’t feel so alone. I lick her face. We yawn and stretch. I do a downward and upward dog and she twists her torso side to side. Sometimes, I linger in bed until I realize for sure she isn’t coming back. Trailing behind her, we go to the kitchen and she begins the morning ritual, dumping yesterdays coffee grounds in the garbage, pouring in the half decaf, half not. Mornings like these are the sweetest. I can see it in the way she slips from one task to the next. National Public Radio hums in the background and she’s barely paying attention; she’s at her laptop reading e-mail religiously, looking for messages and trying to connect beyond the drawn curtains her last boyfriend put up for her.

This is my favorite part of the day and perhaps hers too. She grabs her shoes and I know right away. I bark and spring in the air, circling a 360. I run for one of my toys and she says in the low scratchy voice her father used when he told her secrets at the kitchen table. She still hears the good ol’ Southern boy in her head. “Go, on boy, get the toy.” We dance to disco music. She’s still in her dirty bedclothes, the thick Polo sweats the ones she cut at the bottom so the elastic wouldn’t bunch at the bottom-- the last thing she wants is to show off her surburban roots. She showers later in the day or every other day. She never smells or that’s is what her friends have told her when they found out it was days before she hit the shower. We are the same, we are as adverse to water as cats who hate the assault of hard drops on flesh. She prefers to soak in the embryonic bath water alone. When she does shower, it has to be incredibly hot, force deep into her muscles. When she bathes me in the kitchen sink, I shrink to half my size and frankly, I feel irritated and simultaneously, tormented.

Springtime is here. We walk out the door together. We’re going to do the usual walking meditation, a yogic trinity around the preferifery of the park. I go and she picks it up with the plastic bag as she watches the showered and gelled nine to fivers walking swiftly and diagonally through the park. They’re on their way to the smothering Path train. She wonders, “How do they do it? How do they go to the same place five days a week and see the same people, playing the office politics game and laughing aloud but not too loud at witty banal jokes? They look so perfect. It’s freezing out here and they’re wearing stylish thin coats while I’m loaded down with two layers, a pair of long johns and a down coat. They’re stronger than me.”

The march of the office workers ends. It’s just me and her and her cell phone. She sighs with relief, stretching side to side. Actually, she’s very fulfilled to be on her own. We sit on a bench in the sun and gaze upon the yellow daffodils.