Love at First Sight - Part I
In the late sixties, a photographer showed up at our family home to photograph my parents’ art collection. From the balcony of our living room, I saw a slim, graceful man dancing around an art piece, his thick hair winged out from his head in chaotic waves. I hadn’t yet seen the man’s face, but already I was in love.
THIS IS PART 1 of a SIX-PART STORY
Our four-story townhome
In the late sixties, I was a senior at Barnard College, a serious student of literature and art history, a “grind” who always had to have A’s. My grade point was 4.0 and I meant to keep it that way. In order to do so, I had a system. Mostly I stayed in an apartment I shared with two other girls up near Columbia, but if I had exams or had to write a paper, I’d go home to my parents’ house in Gramercy Park where there were no distractions and I could count on my mother to feed me. On this particular occasion, I had finals to prepare for, but I’d been out with a friend and gotten extremely drunk the night before, so I was dealing with a major hangover. We lived in a townhouse, with a kitchen on the ground floor opening to the street, and that’s where I was, gulping down copious amounts of orange juice, when there was a loud tap tap tap on the door.
I must’ve startled. It was about noon, my father was out of town and I had no idea where my mother was. Also, I looked a sight in a frowsy old bathrobe with my hair curled in rollers and scotch-taped to my cheeks to keep the frizz out of it. My breath probably still stank of liquor. Nervously, I went and opened the door. On the step were two middle-aged men in wide-shouldered trench coats and black turtleneck shirts, and my first thought was, these must be friends of my mother’s from the old country. They looked like they were straight out of a Viennese murder mystery set in the late 1940’s. At their feet stood two or three suitcases and they spoke with heavy European accents, “Hello,” with a harsh, guttural ‘H’ that made me think perhaps they truly were refugees from another time and place.
But then I heard my mother call out from someplace in the house, “Oh, it’s the photographers,” so I gave the two men a weak smile, let them in, and ran upstairs.
The balcony overlooking our living room
About an hour later, my mother buzzed me on the intercom. “You’ve got to meet these men,” she said.
“No way,” I said. Art history exams were a bitch to study for. All those slides of angels’ wing tips one had to identify.
“You must,” she insisted, her own voice harsh and Germanic.
We argued over this, but in the end she won. I removed my curlers, applied some lipstick, slid into a pair of jeans. I’d go downstairs for five minutes, no longer.
On the way down, I paused at the balcony on the second floor. Our living room had a twenty foot ceiling and was as big as a barn; peering down into it, I saw a slim, graceful man dancing around an art piece.
He had a flash gun in one hand and his thick hair winged out from his head in chaotic waves, reminding me of an orchestra conductor passionately wielding his baton. I hurried down the rest of the way. I hadn’t yet seen the man’s face, but already I was in love.
Cover photo: Priscilla du Preez