"Pregnant Embrace?", Rockaway Park, NYC, August 2009.
"Hey, Juliana, come over". I finally got Bryan on his cell phone. I forgot the last two numbers from my phone book on my cell needed to be deleted. This didn't surprise me. Ever since, I started shooting in the Rockaways seven years ago, I had seen people come and go and then a couple of years later reappear. They always seem to migrate back to the peninsula.
Bryan came into my life and my story about 3 summers ago in 2006. He was a relative new comer to the area. He wasn't like many of the old timers I got to know over my time spent out there, he was much younger, unsettled.
I was at the Kerry Hill Pub on Rock Boulevard, sitting on a stool on a hot afternoon, shaded from the heat and sun in the dim and coolness of the bar. I was drinking a Jamenson straight in a rocks glass.
He walked into the bar, shirtless, his flesh the permanent tan of cowhide that never lightens or peels nor matter what time of year. His bronze skin marked him as a beach dweller and it most likely always would. He came in pushing a bike. The same bike he drove everywhere he bought off the streets in Rockaway Park, I imagined. And every so often, the bike would be stolen but he always got another one to take the place.
I would learn Bryan, his bare chest, shorts, and bike were none without the other. Nor, the long sweaty long blonde high lighted hair, he pushed repetitively behind his ears. Occasionally, he carried a polo shirt to cover up in the respectable places along the boulevard.
What was most remarkable was the strange curvature of his back. Beneath his scapulae, his back appeared to be a rag wrung out, two hands forcibly pulling from shoulder to hips, frozen permanently in this twisted form.
That first day, he sat down on the stool next to me bought rounds of beers for several patrons in he bar. He bought me a couple Jamenson's. He was trying to make the moves on me. I was pleased that he was paying for the high shelf drinks.
That first day, he informed me that he was not only a hair model for L'Oreal, but that he had one of the most severe cases of scoliosis documented in history. Most things that he uttered from that point on he exclaimed with bravado and superlatives. He was known and he wanted me to know this.
Reasons to Presently Move Away from the Computer:
Reason #1: I stopped here before finishing-- Got too tired to write must get to sleep so, I can make 5am wake-up call and work. It's 2 am.
Reason #2: Intellectually impaired and emotionally exhausted. Not feeling the words come together. Maybe this is an exaggeration?
Bryan came into my life and my story about 3 summers ago in 2006. He was a relative new comer to the area. He wasn't like many of the old timers I got to know over my time spent out there, he was much younger, unsettled.
I was at the Kerry Hill Pub on Rock Boulevard, sitting on a stool on a hot afternoon, shaded from the heat and sun in the dim and coolness of the bar. I was drinking a Jamenson straight in a rocks glass.
He walked into the bar, shirtless, his flesh the permanent tan of cowhide that never lightens or peels nor matter what time of year. His bronze skin marked him as a beach dweller and it most likely always would. He came in pushing a bike. The same bike he drove everywhere he bought off the streets in Rockaway Park, I imagined. And every so often, the bike would be stolen but he always got another one to take the place.
I would learn Bryan, his bare chest, shorts, and bike were none without the other. Nor, the long sweaty long blonde high lighted hair, he pushed repetitively behind his ears. Occasionally, he carried a polo shirt to cover up in the respectable places along the boulevard.
What was most remarkable was the strange curvature of his back. Beneath his scapulae, his back appeared to be a rag wrung out, two hands forcibly pulling from shoulder to hips, frozen permanently in this twisted form.
That first day, he sat down on the stool next to me bought rounds of beers for several patrons in he bar. He bought me a couple Jamenson's. He was trying to make the moves on me. I was pleased that he was paying for the high shelf drinks.
That first day, he informed me that he was not only a hair model for L'Oreal, but that he had one of the most severe cases of scoliosis documented in history. Most things that he uttered from that point on he exclaimed with bravado and superlatives. He was known and he wanted me to know this.
Reasons to Presently Move Away from the Computer:
Reason #1: I stopped here before finishing-- Got too tired to write must get to sleep so, I can make 5am wake-up call and work. It's 2 am.
Reason #2: Intellectually impaired and emotionally exhausted. Not feeling the words come together. Maybe this is an exaggeration?
