The CLEAVAGE PETS™ — A NYC REALITY NOIR — episode 2

“Damn,” she said, “Don, I can’t figure out just, just how to start doing this.”

Holly’s last words reverberated in my head. It was interesting seeing what she could and couldn’t do, what she did and what she didn’t, and when she did things. It WAS sortof a weird new thing, even for where I was now, “decades” after she’d actually said such things, I saw no evidence that anyone else had ever tried to do what she was doing… here where I was.


“I know I gotta do stuff like this,” she said “it just makes sense to make it seem more like I am actually there in the future, and by the way thanks for sending the letters in Don, mwa,” she mock kissed me. “Puff,” she puffed. I love it when you can hear that someone is smoking, over a phone… or the thing I had to listen to her on.


I was shooting Lydia, and I was hoping HVV could use this one. She wanted pictures that had a resonant quality.

“If you want to blow people’s minds, you have to have… there has to be a certain amount of familiarity or it won’t work… I think. What I am doing is about the past and the future… it just, I just want something THERE. Like — so I can totally make up things to go with these pictures and there will be a resonance to pick up on… the cool has to be believable, you know what I mean Don.”

“With an element of the actual past so obviously there in the pictures, it will be easier for the past to digest the imagery, and perhaps even believe what I write, as long as there is real energy in the shots… this should work.”

Since I probably wouldn’t see what she was going to do with these pictures till a while later, it really was hard for me to shoot for the years and years as I did… relatively blindly to the actual narrative that would emerge. We had to trust me. It was a zen photography experience. But, the basic reporting was all we cared about in the beginning anyway. Holly and I concentrated on that.


“Fuck I love you,” I said without thinking. She started laughing. Right after this.

Right now I was trying to concentrate on shooting Lydia, but as you can tell, it’s hard for me to focus. But really, this is a big big picture. Just knowing how to think about it is a difficult challenge. I don’t want to miss things, and there is no map. I listened to my friends that I made, and didn’t pay attention to any papers or other “media” as I have found the call electronic information/entertainment outlets.

Goddamn, look at those eyes. I want to kiss you now baby. I want to wipe that look off your face with my dick. That’s right, you are the first bi-era, double timing, living the vida LOCA superlife baby. You. You are a part of the real Marvel Universe. Sexy.
To quote my mind.
“Fuck I love you,” I said again, and she laughed again.


Even now, sometimes, Lydia made me think of Diane. I wish she could have seen this. She almost got to, she could have. We all could have had a big fucking laugh over this shit.


I loved Diane, she would have helped me with this writing...

Noone is writing this down but me, there is no way anyone would ever know this ever if I didn’t write this, and it is a strange thing to know. At any rate, this is the only account that the future will have of this. “The past will never know,” HVV said over and over. But the future would, I would think to myself at the same time. HVV never knew I was doing this.
She only knew I gave her exactly what she wanted like I was her herself.

“And this internet thing you told me about is very interesting. Data is totally doable then?”

It was!


Somehow, we could rig the machine we used to (among other things) transport me here to carry the data back to where HVV was. That’s the machine in the background of this picture. That’s Tigger James Ferguson, and Dirty Martini,

“Don, we are gonna tell the past that The Capitol is Coney Island, and that Tigger is Mayor of Coney Island.”

“Oh — and that Dirty Martini is a General.”

“Maybe others of these times,” (and HVV definitely meant both times — 1933 and TwoThousandThen) “think black politicians are radical… but till I see a man like this man Tigger you found, in office… I am not impressed.”

Me, when I saw this, I had to shoot it for HVV, it was just what she would think is funny. “We’ll tell the people that he’s at an art show, that will cover up the machine being there, hahah. Mayor Tigger James Ferguson and General Martini attend the exhibit by Donato Giancola at Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, hahaha. You would totally think that is an art gallery hahah.”

That was when I started to really catch on. What was the truth what was the past what was the future, what lies… could mean to history. It was really screwy, because it wasn’t a linear development with us. At all. Sometimes it felt like it was threatening to melt my brain like she said how porn from where I was now would melt people’s minds back then. But at least that could be understood far easier than the initial creation of such a machine as we were trying to make, just from pictures and text.

“They are going through the same things where you are now — as they were where I am! Where we were! They even talk about it [the past] — as a way to figure out what to do! Can you believe how lucky we are? That we have that to work with as a reality to show… to show that progress is an illusion.”

That was uncanny, that’s for sure.

“Progress is an illusion like a new suit of clothes is an illusion, I just bet your ass, Don.” HVV knew that, knew that before history would prove her right decades later during times no one could have imagined.
Look, people still had horseracing!


And guys like John Velazquez.

HVV loved my horseracing/jockey coverage… which in itself was actually super ahead of it’s time…

“It hasn’t changed at all,” HVV said, looking stunned at the first of the racing pictures I showed her. "Shit, look at that!"


“Look I know and trust you Don, but seriously, that horseracing still exists and that it still looks so the same, and that — look, you have to start covering these guys, now, I mean I never saw that as happening, and we can totally use these pictures because they are so close to both eras. So close. Perfect. What’s this guy’s name?”

“John Velazquez,” I said.

She’d have no idea why I did not sound as excited as she did… HVV knew all about Lydia, but she had no idea I had been shooting the tracks for a couple of years already… and the track stuff as I’d shot I just knew after awhile that that is just what she wanted me to do. I actually did take this relatively seriously, almost as a battle, and this is the kindof thing that the leader would want to know.

“He doesn’t know anything about this right?”

“Uh, no.”

“Fucking, oh Don, people would totally relate to this shit right now!”

“Yeah, I uh, I really thought you would like these… since we didn’t talk about it ever… you know, but then one day I saw an ad in the paper and it stopped me in my tracks. You know what it was like when I just got over into T3…” Nothing looked familiar.

“Haha 1933 was the racing year for news too we got a bump from the fight — hahah, Don.”

When I asked her how she thought that 1933 was the best year for doing what she wanted to do, she told me that a superficial change, like the one she imagined would happen — “if in fact change happened at all” — would not stop what she thought would happen, judging by the way people were.

She wasn’t answering my question hahah.

In the end, she found the machine in 1933. That just happened, and we got lucky. The genius year she chose to send me to, was TwoTousandThen. Where another depression was happening! And that wasn’t all. I haven’t asked her how she came to that year, I am not sure I could understand, and I am not sure HVV does either.

“Timing is so everything.” That was her version of religion, time. She followed it, she worshipped it — “You don’t call yourself lensjockey if you don’t feel time and timing, pace, making time-based decisions on the fly.”

Anyway, it was too bad for me that Johnny looked just like then.


Horseracing indeed was one thing that I found that just had not really changed. In fact, the only real action in that scene (after decades) was happening now… of course. It wasn’t doing too good, I’m not saying it was doing good, but it was still around.

The few times HVV asked me for some special image, say, a composite, she gave me such great direction the results were stunning. The first one she wanted was of a horserace running out of a cemetery.

“Hahahah, I doubt that many people in 1933 could comfortably deal with horseracing in cemeteries. See if you can give me something — people will think the world just went to SHIT.”
And she was right. I even sent images of composites I’d made with tape… and people reacted to them in even stranger manner.


Tape itself had only recently been invented in 1933, I found that funny…

That "The Woodlawn Invitational Cup" was the first feature story she published under the “operation.” That story broke from the gate like a winner, and caused a commotion for months. She just had a really good way of putting things together… I bet she had fun writing that.

"...disgusting, sick, crazy."

That was what people really said about these pictures in T3 — imagine what they would say in 1933, I couldn’t really finish imagining… somewhere along the line the concepts would all bottleneck and my thoughts would jam entirely.

We never had time to talk about what she was doing after I came here to T3. But somehow, we had such a rapport, a creative understanding that I could think for her here sometimes. This picture I sent along with “The Woodlawn Invitational Cup” images. I thought she’d weave that into some spell.


“Thanks Don! That will look great in black and white, Lydia’s ass, totally pops. You are a genius matching that stonework, hahah from such different locations, and the lighting is perfect! Shit!”

Looking at her ass, made me think of John Velazquez.


Because I had just found out recently that they had been having an affair. And I still had to shoot him at the tracks. Now especially. I didn’t bother telling HVV what had happened, I showed her the racing stuff and that was my responsibility, but I couldn’t figure out how to deal with it yet myself. This shit me and HVV and Lydia were doing was too important to fuck up with emotional shit… but it was gonna drive me crazy.


He knew I knew, but he didn’t know why I wasn’t doing anything and mistook that for me being an idiot — the smiles I'd started getting in the shots could just be mistaken for sportsmen courtesy, but they weren’t. I’d started getting these looks from the jocks that were different…


I believe it flew around like gossip does, and then I think, well, now I think, I think quite a few people know. I think Calvin knows, and Edgar…


shit. Things started to make more sense…
Shit, I don’t know what to do. This is not what I need… and it didn’t seem like Lydia really knew what kind of guys these jocks were, but it doesn’t matter why it happened, only that I know it has and all of this together would make anyone’s head fucking spin.

But I’m a patient guy.



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

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

SAM WAGSTAFF, the Anti-Warhol

I’m thinking about Sam Wagstaff today.

I have a phantom art book. I can see this book clearly, and can browse it in my mind. It has a plain silver toned, glossy dustjacket with the name WAGSTAFF in big black fantastic letters on its 2” spine. On it’s front, the tiny word “silver” appears in a simple black non-serif typeface, like a little obvious mystery. It has a monumental presence in my own collection of books, and I like pretending that the more I learn about Sam Wagstaff, the more real the book becomes. WAGSTAFF — The book that should be.

Btw, I love the idea that Sam Wagstaff was so much better looking and perfect for playing the part of his own life than ANY ACTOR EVER COULD BE. That seems so cosmically right.

January 14, 1987 was the day that Sam Wagstaff died.  It was over two decades ago, and more than enough time for someone to have produced a biography of one of the greatest New Yorkers ever. That has not happened… and the book in my mind is all I have — and since noone else has one either, in a funny way the book in my mind is all anyone has. Lately I wonder if there is someone out there working on a biography of Sam Wagstaff, paralleling my own thoughts. Anyone out there?

You won’t find too much googling him, bookwise. There are books on the city he lived in, books on those he knew, books on the arts he promoted by his collectings, books on so many lesser beings. Countless books on lesser men and have been written. Every day, books on lesser souls are written and read. Books on absolute hoaxes are written and read. Fictions with less story are written and read.

Sam is known partly for his photography collecting, which defined photography collecting for all time. Long story. He was also (arguably perhaps) the person most responsible for an art driven advertising campaign (via the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, his lover and friend) that in a completely New York way — a way unequaled since — an advertising campaign that advertised and defined the underground glossy elegant stylish nature of the gay sex scene (and not just any gay sexual scene, the New York City 1970s 1980s gay sexual scene) at it’s most graphic and unforgettable. It is hard to imagine a better advertisement for the sexual underground than the lifestyle and photographs Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff unleashed upon the city and the world. It was classy and nasty in the best ways. Supposedly, Sam Wagstaff hated advertising — an industry he was involved with earliest in his professional career — but it sure seems like that’s what he ended up doing all along. Sneaky?

He was a man-witch and a WASP. I wonder if the reason that there is no biography of Sam Wagstaff could have anything to do with the idea that — like it was a rare occurrence for him to even have happened — it is equally rare to find someone who can/could see him as a whole without falling prey to your own issues and biases. Waspy people aren’t into graphic depictions of gay sexual events and portraits and the undergrounders cannot get what someone could possibly see in some old silver.  You know really, like oh, stupid old silver… yawn, like, someone who fully appreciates American silver from the 19^th century just might not get the sometimes icky reality of the sexual portraiture. And it seems like most people who saw the art in Mapplethorpe’s work, and even see the art in full on modern minimalist art, just cannot see the inarguable beauty and craftsmanship of imaginative silverwork — silverwork that Sam actually slept with like a lover in one instance. There is no more of that silver that will ever be made, ever, and it is beautiful, but if you listened to some people, you’d never know it. Each side has it’s own issues whech seem to make it harder for a whole and true picture of Sam to have emerged. More than most I can think of, he personified the story about the blind men and the elephant. People can see something in Sam, but few can see all comfortably. He is known for being so many things for people who interacted with him, so many real and genuine and genuinely outrageous things. You know, genuine. Fist-up-your-ass, cuddle-the-silver genuine. Defiantly genuine.

In Sam Wagstaff’s New York City in the mid seventies, it truly was the best of times and the worst of times.  President Ford told the city to DROP DEAD — fiscally the city was in horrible shape — close to bankruptcy — yet the coolest scene was alive in ways later scenes not so much been since. It was the sparkly golden age of the Bee Gees, David Bowie (Fame — what a time for that song), Vicki Sue Robinson and Andrea True Connection. I only wish I could have experienced New York City then.

He was like the First President of Porn all holed up in his classical white spaceship apartment — even his name SAM WAGSTAFF sounds like both a political name and a porn name, and the two Sams (president and porn) flicker like a tricky lenticular picture, the two polar extremes cohabitating effortlessly in his life, constantly replacing each other — overlapping, nudging each other — extreme opposites transcending by alchemy, to the music of Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony. Do the Hustle!

The elegantly witty deco apartment building One Fifth Avenue — ONE FIFTH AVENUE, let that sink in alittle (One Fifth Avenue of the worldknown Fifth Avenue, known throughout the world Fifth Avenue, known perhaps more than any other street in the world Fifth Avenue, the ONE, 1, 1 Fifth Avenue of the one New York City of the ONE world)— was Sam Wagstaff’s Mount Olympus.  His faceted-like-a-jewel penthouse apartment was his White House. From it he ventured and collected the best (for that was his art) like the best New Yorker you could ever make up. You hear him talk in an old video and hear art/photography politician. You could never make up anyone better than Sam Wagstaff. He was a character called THE COLLECTOR.

He had a face that once sculpted, could have (and still can) comfortably exist next to any historical figure’s bust. He had Lincoln in him, he had Redford in him, he had such a frighteningly timeless visage. There is a double portrait by Scavullo — of Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe that seems like a photographic version of Mount Rushmore, if Mount Rushmore was in New York City.

I want to contribute some of my own thoughts about Sam and what he did to what is out there to be known. Sam Wagstaff is the kind of person where you find that the more you know, the more you want to know. Yeah, he was a super private man, and there are few of his contemporaries left (many died of AIDS), but is there no more digging to be done? Has Sam Wagstaff been fully dug? Is what we have now all that there is to dig? I mean dig in both ways — can you dig it?

I can’t help but feel akin to a man who was known for seeing greatness in a subject before others like some art world handicapper. I after all, call myself a lensjockey. He wanted to be first to collect in a scene, to be the defining voice of the subject — his impression/vision being the first, (and cheapest and easiest) to produce. Collecting was partly an investment and test of his own mind for him. In my own photography, I’ve tried to find subjects with my own compasses and hoped that my pictures would lead others on and grow in worth, exactly as Sam wanted his collections to grow in worth and scope of influence. I have wanted to be like him ever since a lover/photographer named Bernard Warkentin brought him to my attention almost twenty years ago. He had his own Wagstaff story to tell me, he’d been in the spaceship apartment. Bernard himself has a beautiful singular collection of eighties portraits. 

This is a portrait Bernard shot of me around 1989. He was a photographer who really saw something in me, and we'd talk alot about art and we had all these projects we were gonna do. And we talked about Sam. So New York City. He was another collector.

This is all what I have been thinking about for weeks and I am posting it today in honor of the man who inspired me so much, (at least that much) on the anniversary of his death, January 14, 1987. You can’t say Sam Wagstaff doesn’t deserve it.

FIRST REVIEW OF LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE

Here it is:

I picked up a copy of your magazine at the DUMBO photo fest this afternoon.  I read it on the train going home.  I was very impressed.  On the front cover there's a price of ten dollars.  Is that how much you charge people for the magazine? Or is that how much you pay people to read it?  Cause I read the whole thing and want to know where I can go to collect my ten dollars.  I never read such drivel.  And the photographs in the magazine, well, what can I say.......... drek.

— Hasifleur Wagibigit

fair enough I'd say - yet it has been very strange seeing the really angry responses that I got personally... for what really is a valid effort at presenting a fun, original and different look at a part of the NYC photography scene... perhaps it is right in the end that negative attention is still attention. In the spirit of punk — it seems right! I mean, this wildly named person will probably not forget the LENSJOCKEY name! And if you want to see for yourself how awful my magazine is, you can see it at St. Mark's Bookshop in NYC and at McNally Jackson Booksellers!

I told my friend Steve in Texas about this letter and he immediately said that the name was made up hahah. I love that someone hid their name while writing me this. That's a pretty good one, I never thought of that. I guess it would also have to be someone who sortof knows French, some sort of European something... a worldly wit of some sort. The truth is though, that if someone wants to make up a name to tell me they think my magazine is bogus, or too expensive, with such silly (and rather unseeing) venom, well, I still have to think that no matter what, they know I'm doing something, they will always be able to change their minds later. Because it is not just about that 2nd Issue of LENSJOCKEY. People really did think punk was awful when they were confronted with it. That's a real effect. Just looking at my magazine as an experiment, I feel like it is a success.