Two Self-Important Self-Portraits

#1

One day in April of this past year, I was in New York City, and I was out shooting with Jerry (who I'd been hanging out with outside of our extensive shooting schedule) and afterwards we went to a restaurant in Chelsea for lunch.  Our waiter was a sassy gay whose name, and I swear I'm not making this up, may have Tiki.  He took a liking to us, or perhaps a disliking, or some sort of interest, or maybe he treated all his customers this way, but he had lots of questions for us.  Then he asked the doozy: Are you guys together?  I hesitated.  Jerry didn't, he said yes.  And so, sort of just like that, Jerry and I were together.

The restaurant where that took place is now gone, having lasted not even quite as long as its predecessor.  I think it's a thing in NYC, to open a restaurant or club to great fanfare and as soon as people aren't lining up to get in, close it down and start over with a new name and new concept.  Oh, NYC, I wanna squeeze your weird pretentious little cheeks.

Last weekend I shot a self-portrait reflected in the window of what used to be that restaurant where that happened.

Self-portrait, Manhattan, 10.14.12

#2

Last winter I came back to New York for the first time after moving away, still somewhat emotionally fragile, for the altogether joyous experience of a day of rigorous medical testing at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, tests to determine my eligibility for a surgery that would end up happening a six weeks later.  At the time however, I didn't know when, or if at all, it would happen.  I spent the week leading up to my tests in Beacon, with my parents, but after the tests were done, I decided to stay a week in Manhattan, with my friend Andrew, in Chelsea, awaiting the results of the tests in a somewhat less stressful place, and having, hopefully, goodness help me, some fun.

I didn't have that much fun.  It was cold, as New York City is in December, and it was too close to the holidays to really get any of my friends to commit to doing anything with me.  Spending time with Andrew was great, as it always is, but I felt like I spent a lot of time alone.  I spent a lot of time out with my camera even when it was really too cold to be doing so, and during that week, I took a self-portrait in a telephone booth, or what passes for telephone booths these days, down the street from Andrew's apartment.  I used that picture as my main profile pic on some social networking sites for a while, because nothing says "mental stability" like a blurry photo in a random reflective surface half-obscured by meaningless graffiti.  Nothing, I tell you.

Last weekend, on the same walk as the self-portrait above, eight blocks away, I repeated the phonebooth-near-Andrew's self portrait location.  I do stuff like that, because I'm deep like that.

Self-portrait, Manhattan, 10.14.12