i would like to photograph you in the shower, in midday. there is a certain manner in which light diffuses throughout our bathroom at about eleven o’clock in the morning which renders the entire room almost an institutional bluegraywhite, and sets objects and bodies aglow, turning shadows to soft ash and color muted— washed out as if wrung from a soaked canvas. each hue, however, remains itself, contained in defiant entirety within its lines and curves. only in the darkest of corners do the colors bleed; there is harmonized independence in even the walls of this often-dirty little world where we go to soil and scrub ourselves at all hours.
and it is within this world, inside its water-womb, that i wish to place you— in the thin gray light of morning through the distorted glass, water gleaming as breathless and cliche as diamonds on the tile and frames, dirty lilac porcelain bathtub half-full of white sud and silk steam and you— you in glaring relief against all this humble pastel existence in your bold mahogany skin glowing red with warmth. you with your locks catching dewdrops in a headdress of heat and vapor which trails down the expanse of your rounded shoulders to fall in brown-black relief on that most highly praised of your parts, the exquisite curving gleaming broad bulwark against nightmare and need that is your back. (i sometimes suspect i love your back more than the rest of you, but then you smile at me.)

i would not pose you. we have discussed my dislike of poses and their dishonesty with regard to moment. you might be undertaking the sweeping of cloth along each muscle of your right arm when my shutter shuts its eye, or describing with soapy fingertips the circumference of a thigh— sketching the angles of your hips, or standing as still as an attention-deficient dancer can manage beneath the silver spray. i might capture you bending to wash a foot, or arching your back in pleasure as the water unwinds your spine; if i am lucky, you could be looking into all five of my glassy eyes at the moment of the papery click.


we will probably make love after the shoot— perhaps even during, as i have no will but wantonness when it comes to our bodies together. afterward you will sleep warm and clean while i, alight with intent and postcoital humming cells of self, will curl up near you and examine, edit, arrange the images endlessly until i find some measure of satisfaction with what i have produced.
i will title it something silly and indicative of my overexuberant nature like ‘my lover in the shower’. maybe i’ll use your name (i won’t say it here) and black it out to be an asshole, or substitute one of your many pet names.

after all this is done i will turn and watch you sleep; i will return my limbs to their proper spaces entangled in yours, and we will sleep until the signal passes from one of our bodies to the other and we wake to love again.

my next ambition will be to photograph you masturbating, i think.

but only your face.