Mary, Full of Grace

I found some pictures from a photo shoot I did a couple of years ago. I don’t remember what it was for and I don’t know whatever came of the pictures. I must have been drinking that day. My memory of the shoot itself is blurry. Interestingly, I remember a guy had set up his massage table on the deck of the house where we were shooting; he was a student and was hoping for some hours toward his license.

I’m studying myself in the pictures. I’m done up in black velvet and turquoise jewelry with lots of silver and a flowy long skirt – the quintessential (and stereotypical) Southwestern “look.” I’m thankful my hair is not up in the Hopi-style cabbage buns. I don't wear the Princess Leia look very well, a notable exception being the look she had as Jabba the Hutt’s slave…

I wonder what I was thinking. I am smiling, but I can see that the smile is forced, put on for show; it is stretched into more of a grimace. In those pictures where I imagine I was directed to look pensive, I look fearful, wary. Not of the photographer, but of life.

I’m glad that these days are not those. I don’t know what ever happened to those photos, or if they were ever published. I don't even recall whether or not I got paid. If whoever was calling the shots had any sense, though, they went into File 13, unless the accompanying story was about a broken girl.