Page 18 of Goode Vibrations

“And who do I run into but my mum’s old mate, the editor? I had my camera, and my laptop full of photos I’d taken over the last few years on tour with my dad’s band, right? I’d gotten good, and I asked him to look. He knew me, knew why I was traveling with the band, he’d been there with Mum at the end, and he was the best sort of sport there is, so he looked at my stuff again. And this time, I had stuff worth looking at. He said publications have rules and regulations as for needing college degrees and a minimum experience requirement and specialization and all, but I had something that can’t be taught in college and can’t be learned in any amount of experience…that being raw golden talent.”

I sighed, thinking back to those days, fondly but also with a heavy patina of bitter pain. Poppy was rapt, so I continued.

“I’d already developed a specialty—the adrenaline shots. We traveled all over Europe—we being my dad and the band he was in—and I’d hang off railway trestles to get the steam off a stack as it passed under me, climb up the outside of a high-rise to get the sunrise off a particular window at a specific angle. I was crazy. I liked the danger. I figured I had no reason to be careful, so fuck it, right? Get the shot. If I cark it, I cark it, so what, who the fuck cares. Right? And my portfolio showed it. Jerry knew it, and he remembered the promise he’d made to Mum, and he knew it wasn’t to humor a twelve-year-old boy who liked to play with cameras. He knew Mum had seen my natural eye even then, and so old Jerry took me in. He used seniority or some corporate shenanigans to get me on salary despite being eighteen with not even my level one qualifications, much less any higher education. He says he just showed them my amateur work and it spoke for itself, but the corporate world doesn’t work that way, which means the old bugger pulled some very serious strings to keep his promise to Mum.”

She was quiet a while. Eyed me seriously. “There is a whole hell of a lot to pull out of that story, Errol.”

I focused on the road. Shrugged. Studied the way the yellow lines flashed past in dot-space-dot rhythm, the trees here and there, a cluster of cows browsing, an underpass…anything to avoid seeing her work through to the realizations of what I’d hinted at—the ugly tragedies which had shoved me out into the world alone as a kid posing as a man.

I didn’t want sympathy or understanding. That led to people thinking I needed to behealed. Thinking I neededhelp. Thinking I was this poor damaged thing that needed to be given sweet succor. Nah, mate. Bullshit. I made it through. I like my life. Sure I’ve got shit that keeps me awake some nights, but who doesn’t? And the problem with sharing the sad bits is people stop seeing you asyou, they just see you as you-plus-tragedy. Then the you-plus disappears and, in their eyes, you’re just the tragedy that defines you.

I refuse to be defined by my tragedies.

Keep your sympathy and your succor, thanks, and fuck off.

That’s where the stories come in, the cool, swashbuckling tales of embedding with special forces and skydiving into volcanoes with a high-speed camera machine-gunning and hanging off the side of a freight train as it barrels along a mountainside in remote, rugged China.

It’s all real.

It’s no smoke screen.

But if it distracts from the shit I don’t want you to know about? Great.

So why thefuckwas I getting into that shit with this girl?

5

Poppy

God, he was fascinating.

Hot asfuck.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m all stuck-up and snotty about what I look like, but let’s just say I’ve gotten into some pretty highbrow, high society Manhattan parties simply because I look like I belong there—I’ll splurge on a blow-out, have my friend Zeke, the makeup artist, do my makeup, and put on my trusty LBD, and I can bluster my way into just about any party. Point of this little aside is that I’ve rubbed elbows with some wealthy, fascinating, famous people. Some of whom have in fact graced the covers of magazines, and been named sexiest men alive. So, when I say Errol Unknown-Last-Name is hot as fuck and interesting as hell, it is with some level of objective authority on the subject.

He’s a golden god, of the devil-may-care surfer variety. Tall, over six feet for sure, lean and hard. What he’s said of his profession makes sense of his build—he’s not bursting with gym-rat muscle, he’s not some skinny-fat pud, nor is he an ultra-shredded IG fitness douche. He’s powerfully built, with broad shoulders and a thick chest and strong arms, but it’s the kind of power and strength you can only get by living hard, being outside, and doing hard physical things. Like climbing mountains, rock climbing, hiking for miles on end with a backpack full of gear. His is functional power, not simply aesthetic muscle. And maybe it’s just me, but damn is it sexy.

His hair is longish, not quite to his shoulders but long enough he could tie it back or put it in a man-bun, wavy and messy and curly and a sun-bleached dirty blond. At the moment he had it down and loose, and strands stuck to his beard, which was somewhat less than a real beard of the lumbersexual variety, but not just heavy stubble. It’s the short beard of a man who rarely cares or has the time to shave, but also has neither the time nor the interest in maintaining a fancy beard. It’s masculine, and sexy. Run your fingers over it and it’d be soft and scratchy at the same time. I bet it would tickle if he kissed me, and burn so good if he went down on me.

His eyes, the glimpse of them I got from behind his care-worn Wayfarers, were blue as…well, honestly, metaphor fails me. The Greek island of Santorini is famous for many reasons, chief among them being the white houses with vividly blue domed roofs. Errol’s eyes were the exact shade of those rooftop domes. The color of the Aegean at noon on a cloudless day.

I wonder if he’s been there.

“Have you ever been to Greece?” I asked.

Because that seemed a hell of a lot safer than diving into the details of that story he just told, which was just brimming with untold tragedy.

He blinked at the unexpected conversational shift. “I…yeah. I did a piece on the locations of Greek mythology, like the actual mountaintop said to be Olympus, and where the oracle of Delphi was said to be, stuff like that. I worked a cool angle, too, because I found these guys who built wooden boats in the style of the ancient Greeks, and we went from location to location in that boat, and I did some features on locations fromthe Odysseyandthe Iliad, using the latest archaeological data. It was a fun piece to do, actually. There’s just heaps of fascinating history in that area. I’ve had an idea of doing a piece on the actual route taken by Philippides, the soldier who ran from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of the victory of the battle at Marathon, creating the sporting event. I just can’t get Jerry to sign off on it yet.”

“That sounds cool,” I said. “Why won’t your boss let you do it?”

“Because he said my job is the high octane stuff the sissy old fart photographers are too scared to do.” He laughed. “Nah, I’m just kidding. They’re all wicked talented and manage photos I couldn’t even dream of. Jerry just likes to assign me the wild stuff that takes a certain amount of ‘don’t give a shit adrenaline junkie bravado,’ and figures that piece is too fluff for a man of my specific talents.”

“So, then, what are you working on here in the States?”

He passed his hand through his thick mop of messy hair, pulling it away from his cheekbones and jawline, checking traffic as we reached a junction where the highway we were on crossed paths with another. He gestured at the intersection. “Straight, left, or right? Up to you.”

“I don’t know. Which way are you going?”