A few days later I was walking through Fairmont Park in a cold light rain. I stopped when saw the hawk, not ten yards from the path. His feathers were brown with white speckling, and white feathers covered his legs. He stood calmly, eating the steaming heart out of a gray squirrel. His was a relaxed, extended meal. The bird dipped his head, pulled up a string of bright scarlet tissue, swallowed, then in precise motions he looked to his right, and then to his left. Then he thrust his head down again for another bite.
For twenty minutes in a light drizzle I stood watching, waiting, feeling coldness numb my hands and feet. For a moment the hawk stood still and then slowly raised its tail feathers. Out spurted a short stream of white shit. Then he resumed his leisurely feast, with repeated dips of his head, and his swallows, and his hard gazes off to the right, the left, and then toward me.
I kept watching until finally he flapped his massive brown wings and flew—to my astonishment—directly toward me, as if attacking. I put my gloved hand out, defensively...but when he got close he veered sharply and in a wide arc flew upward, and settled lightly on a horizontal branch of a tall tree.
Such encounters have profound meaning, or at least they did to Native Americans a few centuries ago. I spent the rest of the evening trying to figure it out. I asked myself: What can I learn from that hawk's insouciance? His total lack of fear of me watching him? His choosing to fly directly toward me, as if emphasizing his fearlessness? Or maybe there's a more important question: In this vision who am I? The squirrel? Or the hawk?
* * *
Dr. Joan called last night. I wasn't going to pick up but her voice on the speaker was apologetic and conciliatory, so I did. We had a lovely talk, full of mutual reassurance. I said I would be happy to honor the agenda she desires to set, and she replied it should be OUR agenda. I said I didn't want to displease her, therefore she needs to continue to be open and clear about what displeases her. She repeated she needs space, always has, but at the same time she's enjoying our exploration and is eager to see where it will lead, and, most important, she isn't going anywhere.
"You must keep in mind that my feelings change constantly," she said. "My wanting space today might not be as strong as it was yesterday."
Then she said her house now was a total wreck, a bloody disaster. That Mr. Fixit genius of hers, Marvin? Well, she had to call him back. Why?
"Because this morning I went to the new closet he'd just built for me and I reached up to get a shoe box, and suddenly all the shelves just collapsed! I thought a bomb had gone off in a terrorist attack, or that I was in the middle of an earthquake. I couldn't believe it."
"You're kidding!"
"No. Lucky for me I didn't suffer a concussion from all those tumbling boards and shoe boxes and books."
Good thing we were talking on the phone. Otherwise she'd see my big silly grin of delight at Mr. Fixit's fiasco. Oh, Marvin! You know so well how to make things work!
* * *
We had dinner that evening at Bravo Bistro, near Villanova University, where we first met. And by coincidence she was dressed as she'd been before: Soft brown sweater, dark skirt, plaid shawl, gold necklace, bracelet, earrings. Very formal, elegant, regal.
As we waited for our drinks, she said, "You know James I hope I fall madly in love with you and that I see more of you than I do now."
"That's nice of you to say."
She smiled. "But of course as you know there are no guarantees."
"You could have left off that last part."
"Why?"
"Because it sounds too much like you want to weasel out of commitment."
"I've never been married, so to me commitment is merely an abstraction."
I laughed. "And you claim you're not an intellectual. That was a clever comeback."
Her glass of Chablis and my scotch on the rocks arrived. We raised our glasses. "Happy holidays," I said. Clink-clink. I gave her the card I'd made for her. It was my own drawing of a menorah, in pen and blue ink on heavy glossy stock. Not bad at all, it came out rather better than I expected.
"Why are only two of the candles lighted?" she asked.
"Because we've made love twice since the holiday began," I replied.
"Ah," she smiled. "And when do you plan to light the next one?"
"That's up to you, dear. Entirely up to you."
When the waiter arrived to take our dinner order Joan questioned him about what, exactly, were the ingredients in various items on the menu, and when she made her selection she asked that it be prepared in a way that was different from how it usually was. The tight-lipped waiter in white shirt and black bow tie said "That will be no problem at all. Ma'am."
Ouch! But Dr. Joan didn't pick up the guy's sarcasm.
"I meant to ask you earlier," she said, "but why is it you no longer photograph famous people? Did that uncomfortable episode with Susan Sontag have anything to do with it?"
She was referring to what had happened to me two weeks earlier, on a UPI assignment at Lafayette College. A PR woman informed me that Ms. Sontag does not permit pictures to be taken of her when she is speaking, but rather afterward. So I sat down in the first row and listened to a grim, humorless and totally incomprehensible lecture that was every bit as humorless and incomprehensible as her book On Photography. I'd read it carefully and decided it was impossible to read not because her ideas were so lofty, but rather because she had written it badly. Surely a woman of her formidable intellect could have found clear, direct language to express her ideas.
At the conclusion of her lecture Sontag looked at me, the only photographer in the room, and announced: "You have exactly one minute to take your pictures."
Her unexpected rudeness threw me off balance. I felt self-conscious because the eyes of the audience were suddenly on me. As a photojournalist I avoid public interaction with my subjects so as to be the objective observer, not the observed.
I raised my Nikon, took a single shot, then turned and walked out.
Later that day Ed Hart, my editor, looked at the still damp print I brought out of the darkroom. "Christ, this chick looks like she really needs to get laid."
Anyway, I said to Dr. Joan, "I'm not aware that I've quit taking pictures of famous people."
"But you would have mentioned photographing a movie star or, say, the mayor."
"It just depends on what assignment I get from UPI or my other clients."
"But you make more money from pictures of famous people, don't you?"
"Yes, but as it is I earn more than enough to pay my rent, utilities, food, and so on. Actually I'm indifferent toward money or material things beyond what I already have."
"Really?" "Yes. I've been liberated."
"From what?"
"Inauthenticity."
Naturally Dr. Joan frowned, as if I'd just said something utterly too pretentious.
My filet mignon and lobster tail, and her special request for a plate of white rice and broiled chicken breast and tomato slices covered with basil and a dribble of olive oil, arrived. I was famished, and energetically cut into that lovely piece of medium rare beef. Dr. Joan speared a wedge of tomato with her fork.
"Tell me, James. How many sexual partners have you had in the past year?"
Her question embarrassed me. Why? I suppose I saw where she was going with it. I replied that Elizabeth was my only partner before her. So that made just two partners in, let's see…four years.
"So you were faithful to Elizabeth all through the marriage?"
"Yes, and I've already told you that."
"No need to be so defensive," she said. "These are legitimate questions."
"Don't worry. I'm disease free."
"When were you last tested for STDs?"
"I guess before I married Elizabeth."
"Would you mind being retested?"
"No, I don't mind. And you'll be happy to do the same, I presume."
"Yes, of course."
"Well, I'm glad we got that issue settled."
The next morning I made a big show of getting my colored marking pens from my overcoat's pocket and carefully sketching and coloring another flame on the menorah I made for her. She didn't say anything, but her smile told me it was good. Very good.
She put Handel on the machine and in a few minutes brought coffee made with freshly ground Colombian beans and a plate full of raisin and blueberry muffins. And this, I thought, is exactly where I like to be. At the side of a beautiful slim woman, eating freshly baked muffins, and listening to music.
Dr. Joan told me about one of her patients. A teenaged girl who was dangerously underweight. Major eating disorder. "And where do you suppose she got the idea that she was too fat? Hmmmm?"
I grinned. "From the media, of course. If it weren't for Vogue and Cosmo and MTV, why, the problem just wouldn't exist."
"Don't be cute," she said. She explained that in therapy she tries to encourage women with eating disorders to visualize their dysfunction as a monster. The healing comes with first putting a shape and a face on the beast, and then acknowledging that, despite its ugliness, it has served an important function in the past. But what was once useful may now kill them.
"Such coping strategies over time often become wholly inappropriate and dangerous," Dr. Joan said. "And consider also the relentless bombardment of visual images that glorify slenderness, as if that particular female shape is somehow superior to all others. Which is odd, given that in the Renaissance and even in the 19th century plumpness was an ideal because it represented fecundity, fertility, health."
The disapproving messages these poor girls get from their mostly absent parents, Dr. Joan said, are reinforced by television, magazines and movies. "The primary message is: If you are not slim, you are not good. And all that disapproval is internalized. They believe if they're told they're bad they actually must be. It's a circular, self-perpetuating cycle."
These girls begin each day with: "OK, today I'll be good. I won't purge. I won't eat more than 500 calories." But then they purge, or eat more than they planned. "See?" they tell themselves. "Everyone is exactly right. I'm just no good at all."
Now it's easy to see how The Monster keeps them in the cycle. It's a form of dissociation that keeps them in familiar territory. Why? So as to avoid feeling the pain that's beneath the shame. Which is the original pain of the parental message, reinforced, of course by the bloody media. The message? Badness, worthlessness is what will make your parents abandon you, and you brought it on yourself. It's not their fault, but YOURS. Bitch!
Oh, how Dr. Joan's eyes flashed as she spoke! Her words were suffused with fiery passion. How beautiful she was then! I saw her as a determined, righteous crusader on a mission from God. A noble rescuer. Determined to help those poor girls who are unable to help themselves. Dare I call her my girlfriend? Lover? Partner? Whatever. By God, she's the best!
