by Victor Yates
During an oppressive summer afternoon, my friend and I snuck into his older brother’s room to steal a kung fu movie. The number of posters with shirtless men and his sexualized comments should have revealed that my friend was testing my straightness. How could I acknowledge or suggest that the maleness of the models aroused my interest over the single buxom diva poster? My friend pushed a videocassette tape into the clunky VCR. The grainy video panned to a wall-hung tool cabinet, to two construction hats, to a mesh jockstrap on a concrete floor, to two nude blonds. The scene mirrored a professional wrestling match, but more provocative. As I gawked with my mouth open, and blood rushed between my thighs, my friend sprinted out of the room, roaring with laughter. The door slammed. That was my golden opportunity to shove the videotape in my underwear and hurry home. The scene switched to two Latinos sitting on a bench in a locker room. One had a neck tattoo and the other played with a dookie rope chain around his neck. At the same time, they stood up. Both wore baggy sweat pants pulled down low, showing stretched out white boxers, then the screen faded black. When the two men reappear, they were naked. I wanted to kiss my friend and experience that, to have on clothes and become naked in my mind and be so unaware of everything except his tongue in my mouth. The title, “Big Booty Boriqua Boyz,” then appeared. Unhypnotizing myself from the sex scene, I bolted to the door. My friend tugged on the doorknob. I heard someone yell, hey, on the other side, followed by a soft, “ouch” and a louder, “stop punk.” The bedroom door swung open. My friend giggled, and I watched the back of his kinky head as he took off to his room. Blood rushed to my tanned face as his brother asked what was in my pocket. The expression on his face softened, and I knew he wanted to ask a personal question, but before he could, I ran out of their house.
Twenty-five minutes later, I stepped off the city bus on North Halsted Street in Boystown. The word adult flashed neon red inside a bookstore window with a gang of men with bright-colored tank tops. The packed store stocked adult magazines and, strangely enough, workout videos, which were cater-cornered to the highly palmed material. At first glance, the workout video covers were equally as erotic as the suggestive magazine covers. However, their back covers were raunchier with Speedos, spandex, short shorts, leotards, string bikinis, underwear, and lighting that transformed the risqué material into see-through deliciousness. Juan’s Butt Blasting Workout, a homoerotic porn disguised as an exercise video, guaranteed Father would not stomp me to death if found. In contrast, Honcho magazine, with an extreme close-up of two hirsute lips kissing, would. I purchased Juan’s Butt Blasting Workout. Then, returned multiple times and bought The Chippendales Shakedown, Secrets to Getting Harder, Extra Harder, 30-Minute Butt Pump, Pumping Iron, and Bodacious Body by Blake. Since the move to Michigan, I have added one additional item to my collection – that is the intimate photograph of Brett. A possible title for it is Brother of Scissors.
Chapter 9
Ching, ching, the door bells chime and clink as I kick the glass. Clap, I hear in back from Father testing the flash. The front room in the studio is bare and unimpressive. Framed magazine covers, photographs of couples, stacks of bridal magazines, and fresh flowers give it the appearance of a wedding planner’s office. The magic hovers behind a floating wall. Step in and the studio space is minimal: white-coated ceiling, high-gloss walls, white infinity cove, and silver equipment cage. Two rows of professional cameras in the cage offer a number of possibilities. I prefer shooting with the Nikons.
At the front counter, I squat low, setting down the case of mangoes, and then jot down a list of equipment to triple-check: camera body, flash units, batteries, filters, and lenses. We have one hour before a photo shoot in the studio. I cross my arms, staring at the dashes. Dashes calm me before and after they get checked off. Tap, tap, I hear, Father’s church shoes walking from the back.
“Carsten did you get the. Boy, why are your arms crossed like that?”
I drop them at my side, and huff acknowledging this is my fault. I failed to prepare myself at the door. A son who buys a pair of shoes for his lame father needs to remind himself of his father’s disability.
“Why did you keep doing that?”
I stare out of the storefront window to Father’s car. It is his second favorite child after my older brother.
“Do you want to be a girl? Girls roll their eyes; boys do not.”
“Whatever.”
Realizing my mistake, I turn back to him and am unable to move out of the way. He slaps me across the face. I punch him in the chest and watch the life drain from his eyes. He drops to his knees wheezing.
Running around the counter, I yell, “are you okay?” and grab his shoulder.
“Damn you. You little punk,” he says and shoves me away. “Get out. Right now.” He clutches his chest and squeezes his eyes shut. The lines beside his eyes become pronounced. “Damn you. Damn you.” His other hand, a fist, pounds on the floor.
Outside and away from his eyes, I kick a trashcan and the trash spills into the street. Most notable in the heap are mango seeds and junk food wrappers. I feel a loneliness so great that I can see it in the slow movement of the hands of the clock next door. Loneliness is another fear of mine because a lonely person is at home everywhere. My home is with my father. However, the ache for faithfulness within our home lives within me – to have a safe place where I can go as I am and not be questioned. For the first time, I notice the words, Storage Room, painted gold with a black arrow pointing up the stairs beside our studio.
Ching, ching, the door bells chime and clink as I kick the glass, on purpose this time. Forty-five minutes have passed. I grab the pencil off the counter. The wood crunches as I snap it in half. Before I forget, I hide the pieces in my pocket. I should not have hit him. Behind the floating wall, an electric motor whirrs. I step loudly; hear nothing. Then, I walk into the studio into the equipment cage and grab the Nikon I am shooting with today. Father, standing behind his camera, says nothing. We make separate spaces without dividing the room. My mood lightens as I move around the room. Lighting umbrellas, a tungsten light stand, various stands, a ladder, an apple box, and a camera being checked by Father are around the cove. Building the cove took Junior and me two days and painting the ceiling and walls took four. The fumes hurt Father’s chest. When he sneezed, and blood blew through his fingers, I asked him to leave and see the doctor again.
The entrance door opens. My palms start to sweat. Father greets the married couple. Heels click on the hardwood. Frankincense wafting from the front reassures me he will not humiliate me. The clients are not Somali.
“Over here,” Father directs them to the cove.
“And take off your shoes please,” I say. Dirt, from the bottom of shoes, tracks onto the cove, and I have to clean it. Cleaning up takes away from time in the darkroom.
The wife hands their sleeping baby to a wrinkle-faced man that she resembles. The man winks at me while rocking back and forth, kissing the baby. He hums a lullaby in a slow rhythm. The wife twists a lacquer brooch with a maroon background. Blue and orange flowers fill the foreground. A gold braided chain adorns the edge. Her piece appears similar to the ones Russian mothers pin to their breasts in Chicago.
Getting on my knees, I hold up a reflector close to the clients to provide a soft fill light. Father nods at me.
“I came in my best and he wants to be a gigolo. Don’t show his hairy man arms.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“I look older than him,” the husband says and nods at the wrinkle-faced man. “They’re making me a crazy man.
“Isn’t he silly?” the wrinkle-faced man says to the baby.
The husband smiles, showing a gold tooth. The two slender men look about the same age; however the husband is dressed younger in a shiny black t-shirt and slacks. The wife wears a black blazer with shoulder pads and a flipped-up collar. The busyness of the top accentuates the smallness of her waist
line.
“Carsten, change the lighting.”
Experience moves my wrist. I angle the reflector lower to watch the light on them. Father nods again. Our routine is methodical. I assist first; then we switch roles, and I shoot second. We switch again and again until the film runs out.
“Straighten your shoulder,” the wife says.
“Don’t ever get married, son,” the husband says.
“He has to or I will kill him.”
Everyone else laughs. I bite my tongue on accident. Clap, the flash goes off. I taste death in my mouth. The door bells ching.
“I will see who it is,” I say in pain and run before Father responds.
Behind me, the room glows white from the flash. I pinch my nose to stop the tears, but it does not work. The bells clink as my foot hits the door passing the mailman. Rainwater wets my pants as I run up the stairs and unlock the storage room above the studio. Emptiness greets me like the word, please. I slam the door, and dust falls on my head like snowflakes.
Chapter 10
On every photography job, elegantly packed with cameras and lenses are a mango and pocket knife. Father relishes peeling the flame-colored skin and slicing into the fruit. Then, he cuts thick chunks and inserts the meat into his mouth, using the flat end of the blade. The practice became a sacrament, food as a spiritual service, performed after the final roll of film was finished. Last year, after the wedding of two eighteen-year-olds, their parents insisted we celebrate with them. First, Father savored his mango while joking with the elder men about women and sex, then he asked the bride’s mother to prepare our plates. We ate dishes seasoned with cumin, cardamom, cloves, fenugreek seeds, and other spices. The parents and ten elders sat with us in the kitchen and the groom and bride and their guests danced in the living room. Their joy was so alive and contagious that I giggled. Father asked me to join them, but an elder said no, and the decision was final. The man’s dead eyes nudged my face refusing to budge. Self-conscious and terrified, I tried to shrink as tiny as possible to the size of a fire ant. A gravelly voiced man whispered a slur, not at me, about a man in a story someone else was telling. The word flew up in the air, buzzing around, seeming less offensive off of his tongue. His skin was pockmarked, scratched, and discolored, a painter’s palette of black oils. His ugliness offended me more than the word. The word, ugly too, was not dabbed onto me. So I was thankful. I wanted to wipe the grease off his face, but instead I crept to the banquet table to pour myself a glass of camel milk. Each step, smaller, more particular than the proceeding. Most of the dishes had goat: curry goat, goat stew, goat-filled hand pies, and fragrant rice with goat.
“If there is no meat, it isn’t a Somali meal. Eat it all,” the one woman said.
Hearing her say that, I felt as finely chopped as the baby goats that had their throats slit earlier that morning.
When I eased into my chair, Father asked, “why do you walk like that,” in front of the elders.
“Walk like what?”
“Men do not swish this way and that way.”
“I wasn’t doing that.”
The woman gasped when Father flashed his knife. Her hands covered her eyes, and with the black henna on her hands, they looked like eyes. I dropped my paper plate as I hopped up from my seat. The dead eyes sparkled, waking up from their dream. None of the male mouths moved. Father yelled, stop. I bolted out into the living room, past the dancing, out of the bungalow, past the brick homes, and did not stop until I reached the Brown Line on Lincoln Avenue.
A graying man and a teenage girl, both in blue work uniforms, nodded as I boarded the train of my childhood. Amir, his nametag read. Hers read, Maya. She smiled more than the man. I slumped into the seat ahead of them and overheard the man tell the girl, “Yes, he’s handsome, but not someone you want to marry.” He underlined his you and could have punctuated the end of his sentence with a limp wrist. For Somali elders, fruit always tastes bitter on their tongue.
“What do you mean?” the girl asked.
I squinted over my shoulder, into slices, into the man’s eyes, and asked, “Yes, what do you mean?”
My question mark was so sharp-edged, the man snapped his neck to look out of the window, but I did not.
Chapter 11
Lighting to a professional photographer is as provocative as bird’s nest jelly to a sous-chef. A built-in flash is lighting at its unsexiest level. Attachments are the definition of sex: strobes, flash meters, hot lights, reflectors, filters, umbrellas, and softboxes. They lead to reproduction – of images, that is. Low lighting can shape a dramatic photo-story; poor lighting, however, can ruin picture quality. In the absence of adequate lighting, even a noted photographer could not produce mediocre work. And, without good lighting I lose focus. The reason I have been in a permanent dazzle staring at Brett for thirty minutes and not memorizing street signs. This Michigan night, a fog-hinted dreaminess, is perfect for woolgathering. High beams passing us on the road cast a shadow of Brett’s power over me. Instead of Brett in the driver’s seat, I see my father. At intimate moments, Father’s image attaches to me like a second body and projects onto the faces of men I find attractive. To detach my father, I allow the camera, strapped around my neck, to become part of my body. The built-in flash will translate a fact to my eyes.
Rocks and rubble thump the truck’s underbelly as the wheels screech, turning onto a black path. The truck shakes. My calf smacks against a level and tape measure set on a hook beside the gearshift. Tears come from the shock of pain. Father punched me repeatedly in the same spot yesterday while holding my head down in the sink. A pebble whacks the passenger window, and we slow to a stop. The headlights illuminate the skeleton of a house surrounded by tall trees.
“We won’t stay long. I have to make sure they secured the heavy equipment. We’ve had forklifts and excavators stolen.”
“Are we still in Beverly Hills?”
“No, Bloomfield Hills.”
The only source of light fades out, and the darkness that settles resembles Somalia at midnight after all whispering campfires have cooled. Brett’s door screeches as it opens. Gravel crunches under his gym shoes. The driver door hiccups as it closes softly. A flashlight clicks on, lighting the unpaved footpath to the front door.
Each step that I take in black air is on purpose. Oak swallows the moon. Muted tones and nervousness transform gray-black into the blackest black. My foot kicks a mound and sand sprays into my face. As I struggle, focusing, trying to distinguish shapes, Brett shines the flashlight at my bare legs. I move a quarter step to the left so that the purple bruise on my leg is in shadow. My shirt covers up other injuries. Under the beam, I see a brick and a honeycomb-patterned shoeprint. Trail marks, the width of my feet, lead into the house. We follow the marks inside.
The front door closing creates a sound similar to photographic paper being cut by kitchen scissors. Brett leads the way through the house, and the house slowly reveals itself to us. Eight industrial-size buckets are along the wall that is opposite to the entry wall. The cement floor is unfinished. The walls have a grainy texture. Everywhere light lands the colors live between white and wandering Timberwolf.
Brett eases a rough-textured flashlight into my hand and says, “This is a courtyard.”
My flashlight reveals a cold, gray landscape ahead of us.
“We’re putting glass sliding doors around here. The living room opens out into four courtyards.”
“If you could live in this house with the man you loved, would you?”
“Are you asking to come stay with me?”
“No, I was curious. Somalis are not as accepting as other cultures are. Thinking about telling my father, I am moving in with a man. I feel him choking me.”
“But you don’t know how he’ll react until you tell him.”
“That’s easy to say.”
“Well, if he kicked you out, y
ou could live with me.”
“That is not a serious option.”
“Why not?” Brett asks.
“Somali families are very different.”
“Only if you believe they are.”
“They are. Trust me.”
“Have you ever had sex with a guy?”
“No. Only oral.”
“He approached you, right?”
He liked to throw hunting knives at his bathroom door; it killed time. The slits in the wood were thin enough that quarters could slide through to make a wish. I would rub my frostbitten fingers in the grooves, all smooth, perfect for spying. February is always freezing in the Midwest. Last February, on an exceptionally icy night, he asked about my assignment for Chicago Magazine at Union Station. A door slammed as I was finishing my sentence, sitting in the living room. The showerhead squeaked. A curiosity I could not quiet coaxed me off the camelback couch. I peeped into the bathroom through six knife slits, stacked on top of each other like syrupy pancakes, and watched him undress. I loved the roundness of his thick body: the extra skin and the possibility. He bent over grabbing shampoo out from under the cabinet. Him, bending over, made his butt stick out and look rounder. His hand had reached for the doorknob before I had a chance to rush into his bedroom. Naked and ferocious, he yanked me into the bathroom and unzipped my pants. Watching him on his knees confirmed my attraction to men. My eyes locked onto his eyes. Something I could never do with Cecilia. Kissing her was equivalent to sticking my head in a muddy backyard lake to kiss a catfish – delicate and weird. I wondered where to put my hands. My hands fondled every part of his body that I could reach. But something in my friend’s face changed, and I saw my father on his knees.
