The walls back then were an unabashed bordello red. I tried tempering it with a rag-off technique, but there’s just so much one can rag off when blood red is splattered over all the plaster. It didn’t translate to most photos anyway, so for all intents and purposes it was as red as the reddest rose. The kitchen, adjacent but for an occasional curtain (at the time it was purple velvet, I believe) was a bright Kelly green. The recessed lights glowed warmly, bouncing off the shiny wooden floors and lending more visual heat in a Boston fall which grew colder and colder with each passing day. This then was the condo in the fall of 1997, a mostly uneventful pocket of time – and one that is slightly hazy for its lack of memorable events. I’d just gone around the world in the first half of the year, and now I was back in Boston a little lost and a little found.
WE HAVE A SPECIAL NEED
TO FEEL THAT WE BELONG
COME WITH ME INSIDE
INSIDE MY VELVET ROPE
On the stereo, the new Janet Jackson CD spun its challenging music and concepts, and the title track provided the aural backdrop to a photo shoot for that year’s holiday card. The song became a fall staple, bringing me back to that cozy evening, where I made myself one of the first true martinis I ever had, as much as in service to the photo as to the desire to try something new. I didn’t do a very good job. Consulting Mr. Boston’s book of cocktails, I found the requisite ingredients (gin and dry vermouth from a recent party) but didn’t have any ice readily made, so I tried it without. (I know, I know – one, how was there a time when I didn’t have ice on hand, and two, what on earth was I thinking to make a martini without chilling it?)
Early days. Fledgling kills. Myriad mistakes.
THIS SPECIAL NEED
THAT’S WITHIN US
BRINGS OUT THE BEST
YET WORST IN US
FOLLOW THE PASSION
THAT’S WITHIN YOU
LIVING THE TRUTH
WILL SET YOU FREE
It went down my throat like fire, and I cringed. What in hell was this all about? What the fuck was wrong with James Bond? And why would anyone drink this? I set up the camera and posed, the martini would mostly be a prop that night, and I sipped a few more sips for photographic documentation. Wearing an acid green 60’s/70’s wide-collar shirt in swirls of psychedelic paisley, I had on a pair of matching tights. Yeah, tights. These shots would end up on the cutting-room floor, as the outfit wasn’t quite reading the way I wanted it to – the final holiday card would show me in a more dramatic ostrich feather robe, and a blue cocktail in hand (composed mostly of Windex and quite clearly for looks only). It was the 90’s. I was a fucking mess, but I didn’t see it then.
WE HAVE A SPECIAL NEED
TO FEEL THAT WE BELONG
COME WITH ME INSIDE
INSIDE MY VELVET ROPE
Ms. Jackson sang of the need to belong, and ‘Velvet Rope’ became one of my main songs that fall, mostly due to this single evening of solitude in the condo, continuing a tradition of fall songs that came to signal the shift in seasons, and the short path to the holidays. There was a coziness to it, and a certain dramatic flair that came with the falling leaves and the harsher winds.
Outside, Boston twinkled and glowed in the night – as my head danced with visions of those holidays to come, the friends and family I’d get to see, and a time we would be together again. This distance – of time and space – kept me feeling safe. I didn’t need the martini as anything more than a prop, and on that night I didn’t even bother to finish it. Feeling a twinge of waste as I poured it down the kitchen sink drain, I couldn’t stomach finishing it, as lovely as I suddenly felt.
PUT OTHERS DOWN
TO FILL US UP
OPPRESSING ME
WILL OPPRESS YOU
OUTSIDE LEAVE JUDGMENT
OUTSIDE LEAVE HATE
ONE LOVE’S THE ANSWER
YOU’LL FIND IN YOU
The rest of the ‘Velvet Rope’ album played out in the background as I cleaned up and gathered the rolls of film for developing. (Does anyone remember 35mm film anymore? Oh you kids – you had no idea how much work we once had to go through to get a decent image…) It ended with something called ‘Special’ – an echo of the sentiment of ‘Velvet Rope’ – and this remains one of Ms. Jackson’s under-appreciated jewels. This too became a song of that fall, and every fall afterward.
“You see, you can’t run away from your pain, because wherever you will, there you will be. You have to learn to water your spiritual garden. Then, you will be free.” ~ Janet Jackson
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