Saturn's Return to New York by Sara Gran

Author:Sara Gran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2001-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

I saw Austin for the first time in a photograph. I was in Miami, at the bookstore, in a meeting with a sales rep from Buena Vista, a small fine-art publisher based in Los Angeles The rep was a chubby woman in a pale pink suit with lemon-yellow hair in an updo and a dark tan. She didn’t know a lot about Buena Vista, or fine art, but she was a good saleswoman and it was a good meeting. I was flipping through a book of photography she was pitching by a young photographer I liked who took snapshots of his friends in New York and Los Angeles One photograph drew me in; a thin man with shoulder-length, messy blond hair, shot from the hips up One hand was casually stuck in his hip pocket and the other hand held a camera. It was his face that got me High cheekbones, feline eyes, and a mouth that looked to be smiling, then on a second look didn’t, and then on a third did indeed seem to be curling up just a bit at the left corner He looked messy and relaxed and confident, like the term young women use when their hair looks tousled and sexy, JBF—just been fucked I read the caption Austin Ellis, photographer. I bought five copies of the book for the store in order to justify asking for the sample for myself, which the chubby rep happily gave.

Later I looked up Ellis, Austin, on our database. He had three books, each with successively better publishers, and I ordered them all. Most of the pictures were fashion and editorial work for the big women’s glossies and other high-end magazines. A young Hollywood actress in the back of an old limousine, in nineteen-forties style makeup and lingerie, sleeping. An Abstract Expressionist artist, famous for his bombastic attitude, riding the L train in a cheap suit and tie. I read on the back flap of the most recent book, after a list of awards he had won and magazines he had published in, that Austin Ellis recently moved from Los Angeles to Miami’s South Beach. Well Even though I had spent the better part of my twenty-six years spaced out on books, booze, drugs, and an overactive imagination, I had never been one to fixate on a celebrity. I knew when I was daydreaming and when I was living. I knew—as much as anyone else, at least—what was real and what wasn’t. And I was in love with a photograph. In my life so far I’ve only told two people the whole story of Austin, including the photograph One person was Crystal, who raised an eyebrow and put one hand on my shoulder and said nothing. The other was Chloe, who asked what it was I loved about him. She of all people should know, I thought, that you love a person as a whole, not in bits and pieces.

It was a few months later that I saw him in the flesh.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.