Bear Pride 2011: Day the Last

Well, Mrs Cleveland (a.k.a. Calphalon Bear) and her trophy husband have already indemnified me for the mental anguish I suffered at Saturday's dinner. They called up yesterday morning inviting us to a barbecue on their balcony--just about the most perfect ending imaginable to a sunny summery day of debauchery with big men--so I was all primed to accept. But first I wanted to hear the guest list.

As it turned out, there wasn't one. "We were hoping you would have suggestions," admitted RB candidly. So not only did they feed me in the calm and splendor of their gorgeous home, but I had final say over invitees. Is there really such a thing as instant karma? I was already on my way to Sidetrack, where I ran into the new hotness they'd brought along to our last cocktail evening. Coleman was meeting up with me there, and he turned out to have his Evil Twin in tow. So as the spoogcream of bear society began to drift away to their varied destinations, I packed the three of them in cab and we headed down.

It was wonderful: homemade sangria (spiked with homemade Italian mandarin liqueur); soy-marinated chicken thighs and beef ribs; grilled asparagus, squash, and onions; homemade chili truffles; and a sunset on cue only a bit less beautiful than the one the evening before (when I was at another barbecue, this one hosted by one of monshu's oldest friends in town). We got to see their fabulous (and fabulously expensive) new kitchen, and to top it all off, the New Hotness not only rode back north with me but insisted on having me get off at his stop so he could give me a ride right up to my door.

I was thankful for the companionship, not least of all because two drunken louts got on at Chicago and decided the el car was their comedy club. I really thought I was about to see one of them get popped when he decided to try chatting up two women in jilbâb, but it only took two stern warnings from a large man standing nearby for him turn his attentions instead to the women in hot pants on the other side. (For me, the dingleberry topping on his shit sundae of monumental cultural insensitivity was using his smartphone to look up conversational phrases in Arabic despite their being most likely Somali.)

All in all, it was a wildly successful weekend. Sunday was the craziest day: I thought I'd be able to stay home and catch up on laundry. Ha! I'd hardly started thinking about it when my father called asking if I wanted to get together. Then aadroma got in touch wanting to do Ethiopian. So that's how I found myself running into Turkish Cuisine and Bakery in the middle of a monsoon, then getting dropped off at Ethiopian Diamond for tibbs, tej, and coffee with Raja and the delightful kumazuki, and going straight from there to the aforementioned barbecue; it was well past midnight that I was finally able to pull the last load of clothing out of the dryer and collapse into bed.

So if the long-established pattern of alternations continues to hold, BP next year will suck pus. And I'm okay with that--I had more fun in forty-eight hours this go-round than I usually have in a month. And most of the reasons are people I will see again sooner rather than later. Go me!

Posed

Pics are up! (Not safe for work? You better believe it!)

In honour of which I present:

What will happen when you finally have your photo session with bitterlawngnome

• He will not have sex with you during the shoot. I would've thought this was a no-brainer--after all, if you come to see me at my work, I'm not about to bring you off while cataloging a DVD. But I mention it because apparently more than one subject has shown up needing to be talked out of this misconception. (After the shoot is a different story altogether. As is, for all I know, before.)
• He will take your suggestions seriously. Before the shutter opens, he will want to know your ideas. And he will keep responding to them the whole time it's flying. It doesn't even matter how flippantly they're delivered--if you make some crack about having close-ups of your dogs for your foot fetishist friends on Facebook, then by dad you will end up with beautiful photos of your filthy feet suitable for iconising there.
• He will not tell you to smile. I know why this is due to past discussions in his LJ, but I was still taken aback by how little direction I got on facial expressions. All I recall is hearing, "Serious face" three or four times when I was smirking over some smart remark and "Close your eyes" a couple times more. This is an issue for me, because I seem to have very little idea what my expression is most of the time. I've had people tell me I looked as if I were about to murder them when really I was only trying to recall whether I'd met them before or not. Though after three hours of contortions and freezes, I know I was looking daggers of death at him. And perhaps that was deliberate because those turned out to be some of the best photos.
• You will be sore afterwards. Unless your yoga practice is fairly advanced, he will put you into some positions you have never been in before and certainly haven't held long enough for someone to take a dozen snaps. I prepared with a laughably inadequate slight extension of my daily stretching routine. "No one believes I'm a sadist," he told me. After only a few minutes, I needed no further convincing. (I took some consolation in the fact that he adopted some fairly demanding postures himself in order to get the angles he wanted. Some, mind you, not much.)
• Yes, that floor is really really cold. quemadmodum warned us all about this and it's as true in May as it is in September; my sympathy for those photographed in the half of the year when the sun doesn't shine on Toronto is now boundless. He says he hopes to have this remedied at the new studio in Vancouver. Let's all pray that it is!

Also, he's right about how easily the paint washes off. danthered allowed me to come over to his office afterwards to scrub down, but we actually got almost all of it off at the studio with just a little cold water. And this despite the fact that (as he said when first struggling to fix a word I'd smudged by looking down) "Dude, you stain!"

Demystifying inspiration

So it's a sunny Sunday afternoon in Toronto. monshu, danthered, bitterlawngnome, and I have been discussing the upcoming photoshoot over a late lunch at Caplansky's. Now we are all walking west down College Street into Little Italy for gelato. Suddenly bitterlawngnome asks me, "How furry are you?"

In answer, I turn towards him and pull up my shirt, revealing a mostly smooth torso.

"I want to ride on you," he says.

I'm both taken aback by the bluntness of this statement and at the same time not fazed at all. I mean, artists, amirite?

"You're a librarian," he continues. "Librarian, lettering. Let me show you."

It's only after he produces pictures on his smartphone of calligraphy on human skin that I realise what he's actually said is "Let me write on you." And I quickly forget my chagrin as we get right on the business of discussing the technical aspects of the process. (The secret, as I discover, is pancake makeup--not Chinese ink, which I experimented with myself after seeing Greenaway's Pillow Book.)