It’s oven-burner hot outside. My 3-pound camera feels like a watermelon pulling on my neck as I chase Tekila down the streets of St. Petersburg. But this Tekila doesn’t come with a dead worm. She sports gold jewelry, and she’s squeezed into a white tube top covered in sequins and screen-printed in pink with the word “DIVA.” I do not feel like a diva on this day. Too many pictures I take are back-focused, poorly lit or not there. I’m sleepwalking and dreaming of the picture that captures all that Tekila is in one photograph. The moment. It’s just not happening. Maybe I should have chased the bottled version.
Every photographer dreams of the moment when everything coincides: light, composition, emotion. I look for this instant on assignment and in life. Sometimes I focus on it so much that I miss the real story. Other times I fail because of technical reasons � my dirty, crooked glasses, improper exposure, or my Nikon lens that loves to back focus.
After five hours of Tekila on the Fourth of July, I return to my Mac, dump my 1G compact flash cards and launch Photo Mechanic. The photos I am about to see are my reward for missing the fireworks for the first time in my life. The first dozen alternate between soft and sharp. In Frame 20, I see a hint of emotion, but the composition is off. The photos are static, lacking action. Images that looked in focus on my Fig-Newton-sized camera screen are soft. I’m frustrated, but instead of nibbling my thumb, cursing and throwing foam apples at others in the VJ lab, I try to learn. I whisper in my head that life is about failures as much as successes.
***
I used to drive 116 miles to St. Louis at 78 miles per hour at least twice a month to visit him. I rarely stopped for gas, snacks or the bathroom. Every loving lyric blaring from the radio was about us. I thought of the flowers, dinner and surprises he’d have ready for me. Instead, I would end up meeting him at the office on Corporate Square Drive, waiting for him to put in another full day. After all, he didn’t want to leave too early and hit St. Louis traffic.
We got to know each other over slices of pizza at a campus haunt named Shakespeare’s and talk of pixels, editors and office politics. He drove a Mini Cooper, owned a new house on Jungle Tree Drive and had a Jack Russell terrier named Eddie. I volunteered to dog sit. I fell in love with Eddie first.
Shakespeare boy asked me out on a Friday night. I promised him we’d have dinner. Instead, my friend had a personal crisis and I needed to be with her. At midnight, I delivered a 10-piece nugget and barbecue sauce from McDonald’s to Jungle Tree Drive. He didn’t pay me back for the meal, but I left with a boyfriend.
He was the first guy to say, “I love you,” but I didn’t say it back to him, not right away. It had to be the decisive moment. I would tell him on Nov. 8. We’d be in Boulder covering the CU vs. MU football game � him for the Columbia Daily Tribune and me for the Maneater.
After the game, we drove to see the view from the parking lot at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. We walked through the trees to see the glowing lights of the town below and rested on some rocks. This was the decisive moment, but the words were stuck in my throat. He wanted to go back to the car. He was afraid of bums and mountain lions. I laughed. I stalled. I pretended to tie my shoelaces. Shakespeare boy rushed me. It wasn’t until we got back to the car, that the words came up, “I love you.” My calculated moment happened next to a rental car in a concrete parking lot.
With the wedding all but planned and jobs in the same town, the dream lived on. I gulped down the bits of doubt that crept up my throat. I spit them in the toilet when they wouldn’t stay down. In St. Louis at last, I told the movers where to stack the boxes and unpacked, alone, first my kitchen, then my living room, then my bedroom. This was not the moving day I had pictured for the last year and a half.
Shakespeare boy had to focus on work. He’d stop by later. He’d help move the countless broken down cardboard boxes out of my living room. The next day as I single-handedly stuffed the boxes into the backseat of my car, I tasted the doubt.
In June when I said goodbye, I knew it was more than a “six-week goodbye.” I was so focused on “the moment” � my concept of a perfect relationship � I failed to see reality. The truth was exposed. We weren’t in love anymore.
I used to be a perfectionist, in love and work. Every kiss counted in the same way that every picture I took told a story. I didn’t like to stare at the blur in my relationship and photos because confrontation hurt. I was idealistic but not realistic. Missed photos didn’t represent my passion for photojournalism and my ability to take a solid frame. Doubt didn’t fit with the three words I told Shakespeare boy every day.
I erased the mistakes. I pushed the uncertainty from my mind. I lived in a world that didn’t exist.
***
Back in the VJ lab, I keyed through my first edit of the Tekila story. Something stopped me from deleting the screw-ups. I decided to live with them.
My itchy fingers used to kill every yucky frame from my camera as fast as Carl Lewis sprints the 100-meter dash. I didn’t like to face my misses, so I ignored, hid and drowned them. But now I didn’t mind looking at the blur, the dark, the lack of action. I didn’t mind the sweet, salty and bitter flavors in my mouth. I lingered on the haziness of Tekila holding her son Andre. I thought about the dissatisfaction in my relationship. The imperfections hit me.
I quit deleting pictures, period. I don’t say, “I love you” to him anymore. I may not have a picture of Tekila holding Andre on the Fourth of July that I like, but I have another picture of Tekila that I do like. It doesn’t capture the decisive moment I set out to find. It’s a slice of Tekila’s life that is quieter. It doesn’t show her face, but it shows a part of who she is.
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