by Razvan Coloja
(09/23/09)

I'm a photographer.

That's what I do best. Point the camera at some object others regard as common, push the button, and the reality changes drastically. I liked to take snapshots since I was a kid and now, at the age of 30, it has become second nature. I like to think how the images I take come to a life of their own once the developing solution slowly pushes them into existence. Stooping over so much paper in a darkroom can give life to hundreds of thoughts while you await unruffled for your latest work to be seen again by your own eyes, now in a different manner. Colder. More detached. A flower can turn into a plastic ornament or into an organic form that you can almost smell, beyond the chemical imbalance depicted by the environment.

I met her on the street. The same way I meet tens of new people every month while taking their picture. I always try to hide myself -- in a not-so-obvious manner -- so I can capture their true nature. So I can take home with me a part of their lives without their knowing it.

She was slender and in her 20's and I just couldn't stop pressing the button that makes the so well-distinguishable mechanical noise, a noise that made me fear her turning head.

Pressing the button made me afraid, but her beauty took all that fear away. It was a sweet and tasty paradox, not counting the fact that my photographer's inner sense told me not to stop.

When she finally noticed me and smiled, I instinctively let the camera down and looked the other way. In my head I was praying for her to get on with her life and just move away from the scenery. But the scenery suddenly became filled with a presence and a faint odor infused my nostrils as my eyes fell on her scarf. A green scarf, tied softly around her neck.

Tall and slender legs made their way out shyly from a white summer dress. The humidity was low and the air was a little cooler than the day before. Ergo the dress. Or maybe she just felt like wearing something softer and more casual.

In five minutes I was about to know her name. Her name was Jane. I wanted to put the camera away, hide it in my bag as if the gesture would erase all seven pictures I had taken of her until then. I was already turning to walk away from her beauty when I heard a smiling "Were you just taking pictures of me?" coming from my left ear, some few meters away.

Still undecided if I should hide the apparatus or stay put and explain the same words I use whenever a stranger catches me in the act, I tried a faint smile, and the same smile reverberated back to me in twenty-something shining white pearls.

"Were you just taking snapshots of my back?"

"I guess I was," I replied, suddenly realizing I was holding my breath and choosing my words carefully.

"Don't you think you should ask permission before capturing someone on film?" She laughed. Her laugh relaxed me instantly in all its natural glory. The green of the park started to fade just like a camera lens fades out the view while you're adjusting it, and all that remained in the center of my spectrum was a young and beautiful woman who knew I had just taken images of her.

"I'm a photographer. That's what I do. I take pictures." I sounded like such a baby.

"Could you show them to me?" She leaned towards the camera as to catch a glimpse of the small screen. The LCD was dark as my reflexes told me seconds before to turn off the soul catcher.

"I like to keep my work private. It's a thing I have with people."

"What thing?"

"A private thing," I laughed. The sound of my own voice pushed me back into my circle of trust, into that zone where I'm comfortable, the same place I like to hide while capturing other people's lives.

"You can hardly talk about privacy."

Beyond the glimmer of the blue eyes, beyond the thin dress Jane was wearing, beyond all the naturalness of the way the wind blew in her hair, there was a certain scent of the erotic emanating from somewhere around her aura. That was the first thing I noticed. The smell. The sweet and natural odor of her entire body, not poisoned by spray tubes and commercially available products. It was all her, it was all the long and brown-haired Jane I always wished to encounter.

And there she was -- a breath away from me. Letting out words I was struggling to comprehend and interpret in a thousand possible ways.

"Privacy and photography don't mix. Trust me, I know." We were walking, she still checking me out and alternating her perception from the camera to my face and back to the surroundings. And back to the camera.

"...because you're a photographer. You already said that."

We both laughed.

Her open hand thrust sideways, toward my body, her thin fingers stretched in a greeting: "I'm Jane."

Five minutes earlier I was thinking I will know her name. And her name was Jane.

Jane and I were walking through a beautiful park, crowded with kids and nannies and old people holding hands. Somewhere on the right, the corner of my eye caught a child playing with a red rubber ball the size of a watermelon. I could feel the wind rustling through the trees, the scattered stones pressing hard against the bottom of my shoes. I could hear the birds twittering like crazy all around me. I could feel her entire self urging to ask me questions. Hundreds of questions. Thousands of questions. About photography, about her seven pictures, about how she looked, if I thought she was pretty.

Pretty girl, you wouldn't be on my film if the film would not think you're worthy of it.

I talked about my job and my passion for making the world sit still for a fraction of a second, and she spoke to me about how she just had her morning coffee and how she feared the heat would start dripping on her in several transparent tones of sweat.

After half an hour, Jane asked me if I would like to take some more pictures of her. I agreed instantly, much faster than I had anticipated the question in itself.

Jane was beautiful. Jane was leading me to her building block, just across the park. All my inner senses screamed of anticipation. All of my photographer's being told me she was going to take me home to her place. Maybe for a coffee, maybe for a drink. Although she already had her coffee, so it must be a drink.

The tied ends of the green scarf were dancing right next to her face, right between the place where her earlobe and the neck join together in flesh.

I didn't realize where the street was leading us when I found myself in front of a building door. Then, in front of a rust-covered metal door that said "Elevator." Then, in front of a wooden door that she opened with a noisy set of keys, as she was still pretending to listen to my life's story.

Her apartment was spacious. Well-lit windows were telling the sun to enter the rooms without fear. Just as I was telling myself to do the same. All that didn't matter now, because Jane took off her low-heeled shoes and walked barefoot, long hair following her every move.

I was asked to take a seat as my fountain of energy disappeared into one of the more shadowy corners of the apartment and I was left alone for a while. Alone to contemplate every object that was resting on glass shelves, every wooden native African-American mask hanging from the walls. There was an ashtray on a transparent table, right in the middle of the enormous room. I wanted to smoke so badly, but I couldn't bring myself to light up without asking for her permission first.

She wasn't speaking from beyond the doors, she wasn't comforting me that she'd be right back, like most people do in situations like this. She didn't offer me a drink like I thought she might do.

When I first heard the water, my thoughts rushed towards images of washed hands, women trying to impress a man by cleaning up themselves or putting on makeup. Jane wasn't wearing any makeup when I had first met her just an hour ago. Only the tips of her fingers were decorated in a see-through nail polish that reverberated into my mind as I watched the inviting ashtray.

"So you like to immortalize me on film." I heard a voice reverberating across the hall. It was Jane's unmistakable tone of happiness, just the way I heard it while we were talking in the park and walking to her home.

I was hesitating, but got up immediately after an almost unheard "I can't hear you..." I went to look for her, passing a narrow hall and into a longer and colder hallway where the running water on the right was letting Jane's presence be discovered step by step.

The air was cooler inside this space than in the living room where I had been waiting, and I could see through the windows that the weather outside was getting hotter and hotter. The sun was still shining bright, but it seemed as if each cloud has suddenly disappeared from the sky. Some leaves were reaching out to the windows, blown by the occasional wind, and I felt comfortable that I was in this place and not any other.

"In here..." I heard her speak for the third time. Unsure if I was to enter the bathroom, I stood outside, my back against the frame of the doorway, as if to give her a comfort of some sorts that her intimacy was being respected.

As to reassure her that my intentions were pure, I made a remark about how beautiful her place was, although when the word "beautiful" hit my mind I was thinking of her body, face, arms, the green scarf that held its place around her soft neck.

Then she told me that she wanted me to take more pictures of her.

"I want to see myself as others do."

I was still holding my bag, probably because of the uneasiness that I had not yet overcome. I could've left it there on the couch, there in the sunlit room with the masks and the ashtray and the wide screen TV that was carefully placed with the screen away from the light. Just like I do with my camera LCD whenever I check my photographs outside a shadowy place. I cover it with my hand so I can distinguish the images taken moments before.

She was laughing, and I made a bold move and turned one hundred and eighty degrees to face her. My mind processed everything in slow motion -- I first saw the impressions she left on the floor: wet puddles of water, placed each at an almost equal distance from the other. Then came her bare feet, resting on the whetstone, one on top of the other, in a perfectly protective manner that screamed "feminine" from every toe. Then her legs appeared -- long and slender, every muscle tuned to perfectness.

I was already grabbing the camera while words like "naked," "of me," "photos," "long hair" and "scarf" were rushing through my head at a pace I couldn't control.

And there she was: resting against the side of the bath tub, her arms holding her body's weight in an unmistakable womanly pose. Her smile didn't reveal any pearls, her blue eyes did not flinch, her hair was tied behind her back in a soft knot.

"So here we are." She turned to check the temperature of the water with her fingers. I took out the camera. The lenses were not well adjusted for a shot this close to the subject. I was taking nature pictures just before, but I was not thinking of that right now.

"Should I stay like this or would you want me to enter the water?"

I thought "stay like this" but I didn't mutter it, focusing my attention instead to her entire picture, so that whatever the camera catches would be well aligned and not out of focus. And then came the first distinct sound, the "click" I heard so many times before in so many different occasions. On so many radically different circumstances.

It was well preserved, no shutter of movement on top of the image. I looked at Jane through the glass sight of the machine and clicked again.

She let the water run, possibly to adjust the warmth of it as I was adjusting the lenses. The sound didn't bother me, but the "clicks" might have bothered her. The pure and mechanical sound of a machine capturing another person.

A hand crossed the skin through the camera sight and I slowly let go of the bag. We didn't speak anymore, and she acted like I wasn't even there, although small gestures she made betrayed my presence.

Small vapors were forming on the bottom of the mirror just a few feet away from the bathtub where her fingers were playing with the water.

Click.

She took a handful of foam and started playing with it on her skin. Jane's skin looked soft, and I almost regretted that the water could somehow humidify it. As if the water could damage the stillness of the moment and...

Click.

She looked straight at the glass and metal and plastic cyclops eye that was studying her and there it was again: the perfect set of teeth shining from within her smile. She was playing with the water on the side of the bathtub, surrounded by the delicate noise the dripping made and the echoes it generated in the room. I could see her long nails embedding themselves with the natural whiteness of the soap. Now and then a rebel flow of water drops started a miniaturized avalanche between her breasts -- a thin, liquid snake that hurried downward to nowhere, along small patches of soap snow, just like a natural disaster would start somewhere in the mountains, on a sunny spring morning...

Click.

Hands began to raise themselves as a new smile formed on her face, went past the second and fourth ribs, and she hid her long fingers in her straight hair, so splendidly tied behind the back of her head. She unfolded something there, and I began to feel the cold in the air just like her wet skin would have felt it, wrapped around her body.

Click.

I forgot all about the flash setting of the camera, ignoring the fact that the room was well lit and that I didn't really need one. I was just going with the flow, adjusting the lens, caressing her silhouette with the "New Times" 6mm special lenses I bought a few years back for my precious camera.

Jane was rubbing her legs, massaging them with the warm water that her hands were soaked in. Her toes were unnaturally long and were acting as a holding point for the equilibrium of the entire body. She was a pendulum on the side of the bathtub, alternating between the dry element that was the air and the moist element that was the water, forming small clouds of wetness that embedded her hair, now fully developed from the prison of the loose knot she so carefully formed earlier.

Her hands were caressing her head and neck.

Click.

The last picture surprised even my photographer's intuition -- eyes looking down, thin lips marking a serious look, a perfectly shaped nose, maybe a little too small for her facial figure, one hand across the head arranging her hair while the other one was slowly elongating it into thin stripes. Here and there an insignificant birthmark would crawl from beneath the wet desert that was her skin, somehow racing with the water snakes that were forming on her chest each time she would pour a handful of water just above her belly.

In a sudden move, Jane looked straight into the camera, hair covering half her face, breasts perky and hopping slightly up for an instant. Her expression was different, dare I say defying? She was playing a role, a role intended only for the camera. Or was all this acting part of her nature? Or was the actress playing her part for the puppeteer behind the object?

Jane raised her right leg, letting the left part of her body sustain her weight, toes elongated, knee bent, heel cramping itself on the side of the corner bathtub.

Click.

A smile betrayed her intention right before she made another sudden move and let herself slide into the water. I almost felt sorry that the water was now covering that beautiful body, foam forming a gigantic cloud that was floating in a protective way, right above the limit drawn by the splashes and just below the portion that was humid air.

Her elbows rested in the corner of the triangular bathtub, chest forward, exposing herself with a bite of the lower lip -- one leg hidden by the white water, the other bent upwards. Jane looked like she was daydreaming, with all the rebel hair throwing a fine shadow on her face and her relaxed torso sustaining a balance.

Click.

She arched her body and let her head tilt back all the way, as if examining some unseen spot on the ceiling. Breasts came forward and feet slowly sought a place to anchor themselves onto the same edge they were resting just moments before. It was as ecstatic Venus pose.

Click.

Covered by the warm and relaxing feeling of the water, Jane was playing delicately with the soap, washing herself of all that imaginary sweat she accumulated during the day. Jane didn't need any real bath. Jane was pure, Jane was sunshine, Jane was the tiny and perfect pink flower you envision so much that you're almost afraid not to disturb it in it's private element.

Whenever you take a snapshot of a very beautiful crown of petals, you don't immediately feel the need to pick the flower up afterwards, to tear it from its roots and take it home with you. But when the flower decides to take you home with her, the petals, the green scarf-like leaves and everything else about the plant screams "prudence."

Click.

It was all slender legs, fine arms, slightly raised eyebrows that were periodically trying to check the man behind the machine, it was foam and it was the occasional double string of pearls, bringing even more light to the environment of a photographer that knew how much a well-lit space mattered for his images.

Click.

Then she submerged her entire body under the sea of soap and for a moment she looked just like a mermaid, dipping her perfectly curved shoulders into a petite ocean of milk. With eyes closed, Jane pretended to fall asleep so I could take yet another photograph of her, then moved up and looked straight into the camera.

Click.

Turning her torso upwards, almost without a sound, she arched her back once more and let both of her knees touch the outer sides of the now emptying bathtub. The camera sighed once more. It was then that I felt my photographer's self vanishing with the sound of the last drops of water. Just like the bubbles of soap were racing through the drain, so my artistic sense let itself flow into a world surrounded by reality. I started to become aware of the sink, the toilet, and I started to become aware of the color of the floor and of the now even smaller puddles of water. Here and there, around the bathtub, there were patches of bubbles popping without a sound, minuscule entities that would no more come to life but were doomed to disappear forever in an unheard and unseen "plop."

The last "click" came as she was showering. Her smile was gone, her body wasas clean as a body can be, and almost all the soap was going down the drain, slipping from her knees, washed down by fresh water.

Jane turning her face from me.

Jane was arranging her hair.

What now, Jane?

"I was..." I made a pause as she didn't seem to notice me. It was as if I wasn't even there.

"What now, Jane?" The words came out of my mouth without me even comprehending them. Although whispered, they reverberated through the walls of the now small bathroom in a thousand echoes that made me nervous.

Jane's eyes were again searching for a daydreaming spot on the wall, on the opposite side of the bathroom. I could see her long hair settled behind both her ears. I could see glimmers of light shining from her wet skin, the curvature of the buttocks moved in an everlasting stroboscope of skin color and bright glimmer.

I put the camera into my bag and slowly moved out of the room. The couch in the living room was inviting enough for me to settle in it, bag on the side, zipper closed, camera inside, photos inside the camera.

I noticed the ashtray and took out the pack of cigarettes. Lit one with the gesture that my hands had done so many times before on so many occasions. Exhaling the smoke seemed like the best thing in the world right there and then. Inhaling it seemed the next best thing. Inhaling and exhaling toxic clouds while on the other side of the walls the world continued in the same pace I had left it. On my right side, a young woman was probably drying out a myriad of water drops with the softest towel she could find.

Puff in and puff out.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I was sitting in her living room with a camera next to me, on a couch that wasn't mine, in an apartment I didn't own, with a total stranger drying herself meters away from me, hidden by concrete and paint.

Concrete and paintings.

Concrete and African-American native masks.

Inhale.

The glass of the windows seemed so clear now. The green outside was still touching the fiber of the building block, ravished by the wind.

Exhale.

Smoke filled the room as I heard Jane turn off the lights with the push of a button. The bathroom must have been so very dark right now...I was anxiously awaiting her. Would she appear naked? Would she appear wrapped in a towel? Would she be fully dressed, and if so, in the same summer dress she wore when I met her today, or some clean, casual clothes people wear when indoors?

Inhale.

She might be offended by the smoke. She might not even be a smoker for all I knew, so I put out the cigarette and let the air clean my lungs. I heard her coming down the hallway.

I first saw her shadow. In the same slow-motion event I experienced earlier, first came the sound of her legs brushing against something, then the shadow, then her silhouette, then came Jane.

Jane was smiling. It wasn't the same smile as before. It wasn't a smile of joy or a smile of arousal like the ones the camera caught earlier. It was some indistinctive smile that reflected everything I felt right now.

She was wrapped in a towel, a long, blue, soft towel. Her hair was still wet but her body looked freshened and dry.

Her eyes avoided mine as she stopped in the doorway. Long and slender legs were timidly showing from where the bottom half of the towel ended and her perky breasts were held tight by a knot in the fabric.

"I see you made yourself comfortable," she said in a low tone, looking at a rebel strain of smoke that disappeared right before my eyes. I was still silent, unsure what to reply. The bag was still next to me and it was the second strongest and more "existing" thing I felt in the room.

She looked at my cheeks and started to move toward me as if afraid to disturb the silence that settled in the room just as the smoke started to clear. After all, it was a spacious room and the smell should dissipate fast enough.

I thought she might be bothered by the smell.

I heard her smiling voice coming from the right side, slowly approaching me: "What now, Jane?". Her hands were fiddling with a corner of the towel, somewhere in the lower part of her body.

What now, Jane?

She stopped right in front of me: self-assured, a devilish smile stretching from both sides of her cheeks. She let the towel fall. There she was, in her total inner and outer beauty.

My arms were reaching behind and pulling Jane's stomach towards my face. She tasted good when I kissed her belly button and the surrounding areas.

Her hands were caressing my hair, pushing my nape into her flesh. She slid down and we kissed, playing with her tongue in a frantic dance that reminded me of a fire's bustling flames. We were both breathing hard and I couldn't get much air through my nostrils while I was pressing my lips against hers, my chest against naked breasts.

Kissing my neck, she reached under my T-shirt and pulled it up in a swift move that almost left scratches on my skin. I reached and cupped her breasts with my palms, slowly pushing them upwards, flattering my senses with the intoxicating smell of freshness emanating from her skin.

I smelled her neck as she was playfully letting her tongue slid across my chest and it felt like fire. It felt like the humid trace she left was burning every inch of the skin it covered. She took my index finger in her mouth, and once again I felt her playing with her tongue, I felt the moist inside her mouth cover every trace of my fingerprint.

The smoke was gone.

I didn't even bother to think that my hands were probably full of nicotine by now and that the same index finger in her mouth, the same index finger that pushed the button minutes ago, the same index finger was the one I used to hold the cigarette end with.

I pulled her face toward mine and we kissed again, lips slightly parted this time, tongue and tongue letting air flow in between the crevasses of flesh.

Her hands were unbuttoning my jeans, one secret unfolding after the other.

"Now..." she gasped.

Jane smelled like summer. She was a field of wheat dressed in sunshine, she was the smell of snow in winter when you take a piece of ice and put it under your tongue to clench your thirst. Jane was the taste of fresh peaches in the morning. That first taste you take from a fresh apple after two seasons of cold when the fruits are no longer available at the market.

She pulled the jeans down my legs and let the underpants go with them as she started to kiss my feet, and the hands that were struggling together with hers to get my clothing off. I felt the cold skin of her chest touch mine while she was mumbling thoughts I could not hear clearly.

"Now... I want..." I thought I heard her say.

Jane put one leg on each side of me and, embracing each other, we held still for a couple of seconds before I kissed her again passionately on the mouth.

Jane was the taste of fresh baby powder. The indefinite smell human skin has right after bathing. The sense of freshness only a bathing soap can give another person.

She was warm inside. She let a sigh escape her mouth, a little louder than the ones she gave the bathtub. A little less prudent than the well-thought ones the actress was imitating. This was not a movie scene. The couch was not a stage, and the woman I was holding in my arms was not a performer anymore. The only evidence of the play that took place before was buried deep in the bag next to me.

She was a furnace inside and I could feel it on both fronts -- both the sentimental and the physical. She was burning like a flame, like the tips of her hair being ravished by a warm water pouring from a plastic shower.

Moving back and forth in slow motion, Jane could feel my heart beating at a palm's distance from hers. Arching her back just like she did before in the bathtub, she let her head tilt back once again, the endings of her hair barely touching my knees.

"Now..." I saw her lips move. Her mouth was open and her eyes closed shut, but my inner lenses were studying her every move, taking mental snapshots of every pose, every new gesture she made.

Her sweat was mingling with mine just like foam mingled with water, just like water mingled with the mirror on the wall of the bathroom, just like the wall rejected the coldness on one side and accepted warmth on the other. Jane's toes were clenched and her fingers were looking for my fingers. Every muscle in my body screamed out as I closed my eyes and let out a breath of air that brought with it peace on Earth.

For a moment the sounds outside the windows were dim, and I felt the sun rays hitting the carpets on the floor. I heard music in my head and I felt her relax, felt her getting tired in my arms.

She started to slowly move away from me, putting feet on the floor and straightening herself.

I had my pictures to develop. So many pictures, so many water drops, so many still showers to examine in the evening. Still showers just for me. Jane just for me. All mine. Body and soul.

She kissed me on the cheek with the smile of a thousand pearls and walked toward the hallway with careful steps, her mind running wild elsewhere -- away from my world.

I got up, got dressed, listening to the sounds coming from the other side of the apartment, took a last look at the masks on the wall, grabbed my bag and walked out the door. There was no need for goodbyes this time.

I had Jane with me.

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