horse track, I snapped pictures of thoroughbreds in flight. Their powerful legs propelled them forward, while their chiseled bodies stayed in perfect alignment with the track. Stall cleaners started recognizing me. At first it was daily waves, but soon they offered me unrestricted entrance to the stalls. With theirpermission, I was able to capture the horses in peaceful repose, waiting until it was their moment to shine.
Seven days turned to fourteen. I had hundreds of photos, but I still took more. My camera offered a safety I hadn’t known before. For the first time in my life, I was in control. But my refuge proved temporary. A horse owner’s son noticed me. A few years older, he was handsome and kind. He offered to show me how to ride the ones I admired. English versus Western. We began to spend our days together. When he kissed me, I expected it. The first time we slept together, I told him I was quiet because it was so beautiful. When he told me he loved me, I was lost, falling off a cliff with no parachute. I struggled to say the words back to him, but images of my father strangled any hope. That night I left without saying good-bye. Drove until I found a motel off the highway, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Turning on my computer, I searched the Internet until I found what I was looking for. I read from sunset until sunrise, each account filling an unspoken need within me. Exhausted, I laid my head down on the cheap wood desk and cried.
After leaving Kentucky, I had no idea what to do with the hundreds of pictures I had taken. With no formal training in photography, I had no concept of how to create a career in the industry. Searching online, I found a website where amateurs uploaded their pictures for anyone’s viewing pleasure. I did so and thought nothing of them until I received a call from an agent a month later. Linda was with a large management company that represented some of the premier photographers in the country. She asked to see a portfolio. When I told her I didn’t have one but was currently in Turkey and could send her pictures I had recently taken, she laughed. “You do that,” she said. She signed me, and I’vebeen with her ever since. Through her contacts, I’ve been hired to work all over the world.
I call Linda days after promising Trisha I won’t leave. When I reach her answering machine at the agency I call her cell phone.
“Sonya, sweetie, how are you?” My name has come up on her caller ID.
Linda is quintessential LA. She drives a convertible with the top down; her house sits on the bluffs of Malibu though she hates to swim in the ocean. She has two dogs, Pinky and Princess. She dresses them in identical sweaters, like twins, but somehow is able to tell them apart. Though she sleeps with the dogs nightly, she is a sworn germophobe. Nearing fifty, Linda dresses and looks like she’s in her thirties. Swearing that green tea is the fountain of youth, she devours gallons a week. The Botox remains unmentioned.
Linda started her career as an intern at the agency. Over drinks one night she confided that she only had to sleep with two partners before climbing the ranks. That one of them was a woman barely fazed her. When I asked her if she had ever demanded the same from underlings, she winked and told me she would never tell. Linda changed her hair color by the decade. Currently a redhead, in the nineties she was a blonde, but she decided they really don’t have more fun. A brunette before that, she has forgotten her natural shade. And since she keeps her weekly Brazilian wax appointment, she said, she’ll never find out.
“Good,” I answer her over the phone, our connection clear. She was also the first one I called when I decided to come back home. I needed to let her know that I wouldn’t be available for any new assignments for a while. Not a religious person, she had nonetheless wished me Godspeed and the best for my father.
“And your daddy? How is he?” she asks me
Seven days turned to fourteen. I had hundreds of photos, but I still took more. My camera offered a safety I hadn’t known before. For the first time in my life, I was in control. But my refuge proved temporary. A horse owner’s son noticed me. A few years older, he was handsome and kind. He offered to show me how to ride the ones I admired. English versus Western. We began to spend our days together. When he kissed me, I expected it. The first time we slept together, I told him I was quiet because it was so beautiful. When he told me he loved me, I was lost, falling off a cliff with no parachute. I struggled to say the words back to him, but images of my father strangled any hope. That night I left without saying good-bye. Drove until I found a motel off the highway, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Turning on my computer, I searched the Internet until I found what I was looking for. I read from sunset until sunrise, each account filling an unspoken need within me. Exhausted, I laid my head down on the cheap wood desk and cried.
After leaving Kentucky, I had no idea what to do with the hundreds of pictures I had taken. With no formal training in photography, I had no concept of how to create a career in the industry. Searching online, I found a website where amateurs uploaded their pictures for anyone’s viewing pleasure. I did so and thought nothing of them until I received a call from an agent a month later. Linda was with a large management company that represented some of the premier photographers in the country. She asked to see a portfolio. When I told her I didn’t have one but was currently in Turkey and could send her pictures I had recently taken, she laughed. “You do that,” she said. She signed me, and I’vebeen with her ever since. Through her contacts, I’ve been hired to work all over the world.
I call Linda days after promising Trisha I won’t leave. When I reach her answering machine at the agency I call her cell phone.
“Sonya, sweetie, how are you?” My name has come up on her caller ID.
Linda is quintessential LA. She drives a convertible with the top down; her house sits on the bluffs of Malibu though she hates to swim in the ocean. She has two dogs, Pinky and Princess. She dresses them in identical sweaters, like twins, but somehow is able to tell them apart. Though she sleeps with the dogs nightly, she is a sworn germophobe. Nearing fifty, Linda dresses and looks like she’s in her thirties. Swearing that green tea is the fountain of youth, she devours gallons a week. The Botox remains unmentioned.
Linda started her career as an intern at the agency. Over drinks one night she confided that she only had to sleep with two partners before climbing the ranks. That one of them was a woman barely fazed her. When I asked her if she had ever demanded the same from underlings, she winked and told me she would never tell. Linda changed her hair color by the decade. Currently a redhead, in the nineties she was a blonde, but she decided they really don’t have more fun. A brunette before that, she has forgotten her natural shade. And since she keeps her weekly Brazilian wax appointment, she said, she’ll never find out.
“Good,” I answer her over the phone, our connection clear. She was also the first one I called when I decided to come back home. I needed to let her know that I wouldn’t be available for any new assignments for a while. Not a religious person, she had nonetheless wished me Godspeed and the best for my father.
“And your daddy? How is he?” she asks me
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