The Cleavage Pets™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 3

HVV sent me this... the text only, I put the right pictures in for you — of course, the pictures the past would see would be in black and white, but I think you'll get the picture. It was the second of her pieces in LENSJOCKEY™'s published view of the future. Imagine this in 1933!


Straight from the future!

The country that blew the world’s mind — that’s us. And that’s a long story. But in TwoThousandThen — or T3 — there are still some people riding around in 1929 De Sotos — check this out! The same fucking cars! Oh, I’m not saying that some things haven’t changed. Nope. There have definitely been some new developments!
I suppose the sharper of my readers might have already figured out what has happened to our dear world in the exciting decades beyond now. If you can’t see what is happening when horseraces are held in graveyards, the news might not help you, but for those of you who can run in dirt that is alittle deeper — well —


My friends, we the past of the future are being sold! We are the substitute for real creativity in the future! People watch pictures of us on TV and look at dummies of us in the stores dressed like us. The have nothing better to invent than us then! Decades later! With all their fucking self-impressing inventions… they can’t make up a damn thing to entertain themselves but us. Isn’t that fucking crazy? They want to come back to us! We must be pretty damn hot commodites. We were before their time! Hahah. Let LENSJOCKEY™ be the first to congratulate the future for it’s complete lack of imagination and real style, but super marketing savvy!
If the big important new future had something better to offer itself, they would have made it. You’d see it here! In the windows of Bloomingdales! And keeping up with the oh-so-timelyness of time and trend, they have introduced bedbugs to their attraction, in the hopes of seeming more authentic to the times! Classic I say! Bedbugs and the 30s go together like Busby Berkely, everyone knows that. It was a genius take-home advertising campaign!
But that’s The Re-publicans. And, there is hope!


Hang onto your tomatoes — A store mannequin has given birth to our saviors! I know, I know, it’s hard to believe dear readers, and it happened a little before the time I am showing you, but it is the very reason that there is no more separation of church and state. You need church to do that, and in T3, they realized that church is so last millennium, because of a miracle.
The mannequin was the miracle. Her name is Gretchen Bergdorf, she is one of the Fifth Avenue Bergdorfs — not to be mistaken for the 58th Street Bergdorfs or (especially) the 57th Street Bergdorfs. Born into a life of “being in the window,” exotic settings, outrageous costumes, makeup., a cool inhuman demeanor… not really what one would imagine for the mother of the future of true spirituality. Or is it? Most other “gods” and their relatives, they always looked pretty Hollywood-ready to me.
I am not kidding people, readers, you. Have faith! Please please continue on with me!


Well, there he is. I know I know I know I know he is not what you want one of your saviors to be, this Tigger Ferguson, the way you have been brought up, but I promise you… in the City Of New York, of the mother Gretchen Bergdorf, of the Fifth Avenue Bergdorfs, there was born unto us some saviors. Some fucking saviors!

The reality then is that... that the center of fashion is the center of spirituality, I know, it must take great faith to believe, really I do… but that is where people look to. Acceptance is the new faith! Accept that and you are saved!


Another miracle — the mother Gretchen had a daughter, and her name was Bunny Love. I am so serious. No boyfriend, nothing! Look, if you can believe the costumery and superficial denials of reality that engage the religious mind of today, in 1933, a miracle only decades in the future with details of only slightly more believeable characters should not be that hard to grasp. You all already worship, I mean shop at the House of Bergdorf anyway. There is a god in Bergdorf if you really look hard enough, that is the reality. Where is the god in church? Only faith tells you it is there. Acceptance will tell you that there is a god in Bergdorf Goodman. Not once but twice! AND in Bloomingdales, although a bit harder to see! This is why everyone follows NYC fashion, and they don’t even know it. EVERYBODY follows, the true religion, without even knowing.
I know it’s hard to swallow this information now, with the depression, but you should feel more comfortable knowing that the future understands you and your depression! They are only just starting to see this stuff even in TwoThousandThen… and they have their own depression to deal with! I am trying to do us all a favor by just trying to gain acceptance for what is to come. Those crazy kids! You think Jesus was accepting? Your fucking god didn’t want a daughter! Who’s did? I mean, we’ve all bought this for centuries… that is, you did. I just couldn’t believe it. That’s why I saw this. This is the latebreaking NEWSFLASH before it’s time!
Fashion can tell that religion looks old. Fashion changes. Fashion and shopping give comfort. To the future, religions are just old fashions. That is the reality that is the new heaven. Reality is where everyone wants to go! And reality is actually here, like bagels, swimming pools, electronic media (I can explain that later friends —)


This is a portrait of God. The true god. This is the god that cannot be fooled, this is the god who has heard it all. This was the god found on a sidestreet near Times Square. This was not the second coming, this was the first coming, of the fucking truth. Straight from the future! People could feel the power. God was found. Now if it surprises you that she looks like a grandmother… well, if you look closely, there is god in grandmother. I don’t see it in Father anywhere do you? Grandfather, sorry, no god there! This is just the truth I am telling you! Isn’t grandmother the one who ALWAYS cares? “God” as we all know him, has been taking the credit for Grandmother all this time. All this time. On faith, not evidence. Grandmother is the new God.
As you can see, in the future we don’t have stained glass for the grandmother god, we have photography, a truly magical and mysterious artform. Because photography is so closely linked with reality. And the truth is in black and white.
To make this clearer, dear readers, I include here one of the worshipful songs of the time, TwoThousandThen — sung by The Criminal Religion themselves.


“The New Religion — is fucking reality!
Oh when I was young,
I’d wished for something like this — when I saw praying as the begging it is!
something to see me through
something that would REALLY fucking HELP me —

Why oh why didn’t you?

Religions were made up by men (evidence has seen — and we of the future are having our say!)...
to explain (sortof) some mysteries the best that he can (it seems)
but guess what?
a lot of men’s stories and a lot of men’s schemes well, A-men
we can’t see that they work so well, so obviously, okay?

You can’t build an asshole in your mouth and blame it for shitting

You can’t put priests into power without some icky pedofeelings

And I have always wondered at the statements, like these — that God created man in his own image, when the UNDENIABLE truth is, the evidence PROVES — WE are the ones who made God in OUR (man’s) image…
And we all, got it wrong, for CENTURIES!

Is that really so fucking hard to see?

Well, OUR religion says, get this, A-men, our religion says A-men —
That men are not O-kay!”



Some song huh? That’s the song of TwoThousandThen! I swear. That’s as close to a heavenly choir as you are going to get on this earth. I hope you my readers will agree.


“Don, I am gonna call all these people you’ve shot “The Deck” — because they have to be played. I just wanted you to see alittle of what I am doing… I can’t send you everything.”

“I am so thankful that you have been shooting the 24/7 people of the time you are in now, without people like this I could not do what I do… any guy with a camera can go and get a couple of magazines and see who to shoot to make money. But what you did for years is consistently incredible to me. I need the 24/7 people, people who live their lives 24/7, write their own worlds, people who create their own lives, these are the people to trust! And these are the only people I could use! I don’t even have to ask how you found such people, I am glad that I put my faith in you. I cannot wait to drop these people on the past!”


Shien Lee, it seemed to me, would be Queen of “The Deck.” I knew what HVV meant when she was talking about decks… it’s not the way I’d thought when I was shooting Shien, and saw her effect on men, and what she was doing with her life… but I saw her genuine qualities… immediately, and powerfully. As they say now — “Duh!”

She was young and sexy and exotic and smart, and she had the NYC scene in her hands at night. I was tired myself of all the bogus overrated “personalities” chosen by ignorant lifeless boredsters — “personalities” chosen from fantasy “sets” — TV and movies… that had such control over people that people actually applied writer’s qualities to actors who simply acted. I saw most personalities of the time like the popular breast implants… celluloid was just silicone to these people where I was.

“The Deck,” The Deck indeed was a good way to put it. We were playing another deck entirely. A deck based on the 24/7 people who ALWAYS know themselves. Me and HVV, our fantasy for the past was based on the present realities… using reality as a fantasy… seemed so revolutionary and subversive in the climate of the days, of both times!


Matthew, not your Saint Matthew — I called him DJ 78!


Cornelius Loy, Jr. — plays an instrument called the Theremin — I could only imagine what HVV would say he was doing — to our friends in the past, he’d look like a man from space! What would she make of that glowing singing rod… I had shot him in dingy club rooms… far away from the past.


Michael T ... was a “promoter” like Shien Lee. As I saw it, promoters were the preachers of the day. I knew that HVV would make something up about him that could not help but blow the past’s collective religion-warped minds. The Deck The Deck The Deck… what a beautiful way to put it. To me, The Deck became my unorganized religion of the truth and reality. In the Holy land of New York City, the city EVERYONE worshipped… and I loved Los Angeles. The Sixteen Chapel is the new Sistine, if you know what I mean.


This is Muffinhead. Hahaha, unleashed on the past, I could see the confusion and chaos he could cause. Can’t you? They were all the wildest of wildcards to me, and the game HVV was gonna play with them made me want to be there with her, but I had to be here.

A Deck full of wildcards. A city full of stories to me made.


The face of New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg — perhaps the people of the past would understand a less flashy character… but I doubt the way HVV would present him would make the past comfortable… as I think she planned to marry him off to Heather Holliday…


A firebreather from Coney Island! Haha. The mayor’s own girlfriend would just not cut it as far as we could see. Diana Taylor seemed like a surprisingly intelligent partner for a mayor… truthfully shocking in it’s own way — but HVV probably was not gonna see her as useful for our plans.


“You know the drill,” she’d probably have Donny Vomit say. Donny was a deck definite. He even looked like someone you’d see in a deck… if Jacks had big nails and drills in their hands instead of swords. Hahaha. Couldn’t wait to see how HVV played the Donny card. Couldn’t fucking wait.

Me and HVV were like two halves of a brain. I didn’t know which halves we’d both be, but that’s what it was like.


Jennifer Miller? Hahaha, who would she become for the past? She’d drop machetes as fast as she’d juggle them. A bearded wildcard of a woman. Funny, silly, and realistic…all of these people exist and are real! Is Heather telling our Jennifer a state secret? What’s the story?


“Selene Luna is fantastic!,” HVV would write me later.

“She is like a Velazquez painting in your shot Don! She could be anyone! Thank you thank you thank you! You may make my dreams come true!”

We’ll see. The Deck would deliver I bet.

— to be continued —



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NOTE! THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL ACCOUNT USING THE REAL PEOPLE I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY FOR YEARS. IT IN NO WAY REFLECTS REALITY!

here are the other episodes sofar:

episode 1) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 2) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/09/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir.html

episode 4) — http://lensjockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/cleavage-pets-nyc-reality-noir-episode.html