YDN Magazine by Yale Daily News

INSIDE NONFICTION 12

80,000 prosthetic eyes stare out of the crowded offices of Mager & Gougelman, Inc. Against the backdrop of 158 years of history, the Gougelmanns continue to make a name for themselves as world-reknowned ocularists.

Daniel Fromson

MANAGING EDITORS

Ben Brody, Jesse Maiman

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

DESIGN & PHOTO EDITORS

Ginger Jiang, Loide Marwanga, Jared Shenson, La Wang

POETRY EDITOR

Rebecca Dinerstein

STAFF WRITERS

Rachel Caplan, Rebecca Distler, Jacque Feldman, Nicole Levy, Frances Sawyer, Eileen Shim, Jonathan Yeh

You Are a Princess Heating pads, wicker baskets, and a Civil-War-era chest are some of the tools in Joan and Rene Genest’s search for the elusive on-back foot-grab. Their studio in North Haven sees a steady stream of infants waiting for their portraits to be taken.

Adrienne Wong

FICTION EDITOR

SECOND PLACE BY MOLLY FISCHER

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Angelica Baker

Googly Eyes BY ANTHONY LYDGATE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Anthony Lydgate, Naina Saligram, Kanglei Wang, Victor Zapana

FIRST PLACE

THIRD PLACE

Hairy Business BY JERRY GUO

For $10,000, John Reznikoff would sell you a strand of Einstein’s hair. Dealing in historical locks has been lucrative for Reznikoff, and the relics he sells may represent the best — or worst — of our culture.

ILLUSTRATORS

Maria Haras, Sin Jin The YDN Magazine invites letters to the editor. Please send comments to the editor-in-chief at daniel.fromson@yale.edu. The views and opinions represented in the Magazine’s articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false, or in poor taste. COVER AND “CLEVER TITLE” GRAPHICS BY LOIDE MARWANGA “THE CATECHUMEN” ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARIA HARAS “GEOGRAPHY” ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIN JIN

HONORABLE MENTION - NONFICTION

Deeply and Completely BY ANDREW MANGINO

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

FICTION 4

FIRST PLACE

The Catechumen BY NELL PACH

SECOND PLACE

Geography BY SIBONGILE SITHE

Struggling with insomnia by night, mechanically churning out cream cheese brownies by day, Ellen wrestles with the death of her lover George, and with the unwelcome attention of his mother and sister.

GINGER JIANG

She just helped baptize her goddaughter. Lost in the safety of her family, she thinks of her disconnect with reality — especially with love and college life. One question: Can she change?

THIRD PLACE

Clever Title BY BRYCE TAYLOR

With a feisty mouse on one side, a metaphysical pickle named Dylan on the other, and a handyman roommate named Herblin in the middle, the author writes a story about writing a story.

HONORABLE MENTIONS - FICTION

385

BY STEVEN KOCHEVAR

A Thanksgiving Story BY STEPHANIE RICHARDS

The word “handmade” typically brings to mind furniture or pottery, not eyes. Turn to page 12 to learn the finer points of eyecraft.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

ince becoming involved with the Yale Daily News Magazine, I have seen a lot of stories pass through these pages, ranging from an exposé of a pro-concealed weapons movement to a photo essay about two anthropomorphized and lovestruck bananas. The pieces in this year’s Wallace Prize issue, however, are especially noteworthy, and definitely a step up from the bananas. The Wallace Prize for fiction and nonfiction is awarded annually in memory of Peter J. Wallace ’64, a former member of the Yale Daily News editorial board. The Prize is endowed by the Peter Wallace Memorial Fund, which was set up with contributions from the Wallace family and Peter’s friends and classmates. This year, more than $12,000 were awarded to a total of nine winners, including three honorable mentions. The top three winners in each category appear in this issue in their entirety. On behalf of the rest of the Magazine’s staff and our panel of judges, I would like to congratulate this year’s winners. We had an unusually large number of submissions, and the judges noted that their decisions were especially difficult. I would also like to thank John Crowley, Alfred Guy, Mark Oppenheimer, Margaret Spillane, Brendan Sullivan, and Leslie Woodard for donating their time and energy to serving as judges and evaluating dozens of submissions. Finally, I would like to congratulate Ben Brody, who has been elected the Magazine’s next editor-in-chief, as well as Anthony Lydgate and Jesse Maiman, our incoming managing editors. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine. Best wishes, —Daniel Fromson

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

BY NELL PACH

Bookish and quiet, she has been living her life in her head. Given the opportunity, can this overwhelmed college student shock herself back to life by chasing a frisbee? baptismal font is not a font. This occurs to me as I take my place beside the pedestal. I run a finger along the rim of the broad, shallow bowl. It’s made of brilliant emerald stone, something like marble, grander than the one at our church. There is a drain in the center. Surely they don’t let the christening water go into the sewage pipes. Where, then? Maybe it collects in a holding tank and they use it again. How many Catholics can you get out of one liter? Instant Christian, just add — It is my cousin Lara whose sins are to be forgiven today. My grandmother, standing beside me, is holding her. We are so close around the basin that the tangled skirts of the gown spill over my arm, blend against WALLACE PRIZE WINNER my dress. I wore white too. I wonder now if there is a st customary prohibition against this, if white is supposed to be the sole privilege of the new believer, as for the bride at a wedding. The font is already full of water, far more than you’d ever need for single baptism, and when I exhale it ripples like a lake blown by wind, which makes me think of The breath of God moved on the water. It frightened me when I was little, the image of the wind on the dark surface. Empty. When someone in Sunday school asked why God created the world, the teachers told us that it was because He wanted to. I imagine the spiraling black before creation, not a star in the sky. Why didn’t they admit to us that He must have been lonely? No weakness in it. Nothing more difficult than having to be alone with yourself. I am smiling, tightly, and across the font, Annie catches my eye and smiles back, and then returns her attention to her new daughter. Tom is to her right, hand on his hip, and she eases her own hand through the space between his arm and his body, takes hold of his wrist, rubs it. It’s been a long haul for them, with Lara, at least two miscarriages before the final successful pregnancy and two scares with that one, at two months and then at five months. “All right,” says the priest. “Grandma, you’ll bring our candidate forward?”

1 Place Fiction

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARIA HARAS

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

My grandmother leans over the basin, proffering the baby. I see Annie’s mouth tense a little and pull thin. She and Tom made plans to go on a ski trip back in January, their first vacation since the birth. They were going to leave Lara with my parents. Annie couldn’t do it, turned the car around when they were halfway to New Hampshire. You’ll understand if you have one, my mother tells me, usually when she comes to visit me at school and I laugh at her for reminding me to wash my hands, to look both ways before I cross. When you have one. “Lara Alena McGavin,” the priest says. “What do you ask of the church of God?” This is my speaking part. “Faith.” Lara’s eyes roll toward me. Hey, kid. Just signing you up. Don’t lift a finger. “What does faith offer you?” “Eternal life.” See? Not bad, Lara Alena McGavin. Alena is included at the behest of my grandparents, who wanted their granddaughter to have a saint’s name. Annie threatened to make it Aphrodisius. Tom talked her down. The priest places a hand on Lara’s skull, thumb cocked above the forehead. Something glistens on his fingers. “Do you renounce Satan?” What is that? I almost miss my cue. “I do — renounce him.” “And all his works?” Those too. “I do renounce them.” It looks wet. Is that all the water he’s going to use? He’s not even going to take any from the font? “And all his allurements?” They want you to be absolutely clear on this point. “I — do renounce them.” I’m trying to vary my inflection from line to line to make the responses more interesting for the celebrant, who must go through this drill a lot. He looks at me, and I think he notices me looking at his thumb. It can’t be water, water would have dried by now. Oil, some kind of oil. It reflects the light of the baptismal candle and for a moment the thumb itself seems to hold its own flickering flame. I flash on a series of Biblical fires. Tongues of, and then the apostles could speak all different languages. He will baptize you with. He passes his thumb over the forehead and withdraws his hand, and now the candlelight picks out a cross on the vulnerable brow, traced in oil. I’d forgotten about that part. Lara shifts and my grandmother readjusts her arms. Main event still to come. The priest produces a shallow dipper, slips it into the water and brings it up swiftly. The last baptism I remember was back at home, seven or eight years ago, just before my parents gave up dragging me to church. It was one of the last ordinary Sundays that I went, a group ceremony during the regular mass, two baby girls and two boys. The girls cried when the water touched them. The boys didn’t. I remember that I wondered if maybe God inflicted pain on females during baptism, an extra punishment for their instigating role in the tree of knowledge debacle. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it in some theological tract. Twelve years old, or thirteen, a self-declared feminist since four, but already blasé when it came to divine misogyny. Water splashes back into the basin. Lara cries.

he godmother!” Tom squeezes my shoulder and offers me a piece of frosted angel cake. I wave it off. “Thanks. I’m set.” “This is the one they all look up to,” Tom says to the priest, who is a friend of my grandparents’ and so has been invited back to their house for the reception. “The eldest grandchild?” the priest asks. I cross my arms over my stomach. “Feeling very old today.” “She’s a tough act to follow,” Tom tells him. “Went to Zylman for high school. I don’t have to tell you where she goes now. Smart. Intrepid.” “You were flawless in the ceremony,” says the priest, smiling. I shrug. “I don’t know what kind of religious guide I’ll make. I wanted to start out on the right foot, at least.” They laugh, and Tom shakes his head. “This one,” he says. “This one was memorizing the Bible when she was six. She and her mom and I used to take walks by the river when we were all visiting here, and she’d tell the stories to us. The lapsed generation.” Our man of the cloth looks impressed. “Oh, you like the stories?” People always act this way, as if someone who can identify Mephibosheth or recognize an allusion to Moses striking the rock must be one of the faithful. I know nothing, I told Tom and Annie when they asked me to be Lara’s sponsor. I can tell you all about it, but I don’t know any of it. I know about Hildegard and her headaches, I can remember 1054 and 1517. No spirit moves in me. I don’t pray. They told me they wanted me there for her anyway, as an advisor in general, if not on matters spiritual. I’m sure there are things you don’t talk to your mother about, Annie said, conspiratorial. I’d love to know that she has someone to go to when that comes up. I know you’d be great for that. I think that was meant to be a vague noun. I don’t know about that, I said, and meant it as a specific demonstrative. She heard it the other way, of course, and I didn’t clarify. That ignorance, I have always kept quieter than heresy in time of inquisition. “At mass when I was younger — when I was too young to really follow the service, I’d read — ” “A boredom that my brother and I chose instead to address by crawling under the pews,” says Tom, who has apparently chosen to be hearty, rather than apologetic, about his lack of religion. Better the charming unbeliever than the simpering one. The priest nods. “I’m just one of those people — I get bored in the shower, I read the shampoo bottle ingredients — ” I am twisting one palm against the other, elbows raised, an attitude I assume when trying to entertain people I don’t know. Shower — is it taboo to mention a situation that implies nudity in front of a celibate? “ — so they had a lot of — sort of — children’s Bibles and things, and of course there was the actual Bible — ” The priest is still nodding. He is probably thinking that it’s nice to know there are still girls like this, white-clad, bookish, fetchingly shy. He says nothing. For lack of anything else, I ask him about the use of the word font to describe something that is clearly not a font. He commends me for an interesting question.

’m pouring myself a third Diet Coke at the card table they’ve set up as a bar in the living room. A pair of arms slips around my waist and draws tight, and I start and turn to find my cousin Cait — eleven, exuberant — behind me. I twist to return her

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

embrace with one arm and work the cap back onto the soda bottle with my free hand. “Hey.” She looks up at me, tilts her head. “Are you twenty?” “Yep.” “You’re old.” Still holding onto me, she starts to sink toward the floor, clasped arms sliding over my hips. This has been her favorite move since she learned to walk. Once, at a Christmas gathering, she took my skirt with her. “Easy.” I feel the seams of my dress strain; the neckline, already low for my taste, is receding precipitously. She lets go suddenly and jumps up. “I missed you!” “I missed you too. It’s nice to see you. How’s your sister?” Nadia is four years older than Cait, drastically different in temperament. “Ai-dan,” says Cait in a singsong voice. This is what she calls her sibling when she wants to antagonize her. I am to blame for this, having noted a few years ago that the name, spelled backwards, is a boy’s. Luckily, Cait does not remember that it was I who pointed this out, and so her parents — my mother’s older brother and his wife — think she came up with it herself, one more thing for the girls to fight about. “Aidan has a boyfriend,” says Cait, making a face of rigid disgust. “A boyfriend? No way.” “Yes way. She’s a real teenager now. She has a boyfriend.” “What’s his name? Have you met him?” “No, but she talks to him all the time on the phone in her room. His name is Richard.” “Richard, huh?” “She probably wants to talk to you about him.” “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m too old to talk about teenage romance now.” I think Nadia, who spent her youth fawning on me much as her sister does now, has recently begun to suspect that I am perhaps not as infallibly worthy as she once thought. The last time we saw each other I had to confess that I didn’t have a first date story to tell her. I also admitted that I only sometimes liked college. She was polite, but I could tell she wasn’t happy with either answer. “You’re not a teenager anymore,” says Cait, nodding, and then lunges for me again. I inhale sharply. That feeling, that closeness. A hug from a kid. You wouldn’t think it would send me back like that, arms around my waist. Hands shaking, fingertips across the skin of my abdomen. Cait reaches up and puts a hand on my neck, pulls me down close to her. “Do you know what a nickname for Richard is?” she whispers, and giggles.

a new diaper at her daughter’s hip. “We were just talking about you,” my mother says when I come in. “I was telling Annie that I thought you’d had a pretty good year at school.” “Yeah,” I say. “Great, really.” Annie works a blue tunic over Lara’s freshly Christian head. “I think Cait was looking for you earlier. Did she find — ?” “Oh yes.” “God, she looks a lot like Tom did when he was a baby,” my mother says, offering her index finger to Lara, who wraps her own small digits around it. “Like you, too,” she adds, glancing up at Annie. “Something around the eyes. Looks like they’re going to be brown, after all.” “It’s good to know that some of those dominant genes actually came out,” says Annie, smiling. “Even though she’s got all this blond hair.” She puts the baptismal gown onto a hanger and lays it on the bed, smoothes it. “Who does this go back to? Is there a keeper of the family gown?” “Actually — ” My mother considers. “You can probably leave it here. Or bring it home with you. It’ll probably fit Lara for her first communion.” “Is that why they make them so long — ?” Annie starts, and then laughs. “The Catholics. You never know.” “That’s why the outfit is the same for every occasion,” I say. Confirmation, wedding. You get a good one when your daughter’s born and you never have to shop again. “Oh, you’re kidding me.” She runs a hand over the top of the baby’s head. “Are they kidding me? I hope you enjoyed that, miss, because you’ve got seven years until your next big Catholic moment.” A torturous period, when you’re in the church but still kind of a junior member. They’ve got to keep it interesting, I suppose, space out the thrills. Before I was old enough to take the host, I used to administer pretend Eucharists to myself with water crackers. I worried, when I was finally of age, that I might appear at first too practiced, suspiciously adept in the consumption of the body and the blood. “I’m going to take a walk by the river,” I tell my mother. “Okay,” she says. “We all might go down to the beach later. Do you have your cellphone?” “No.” “Stick on this side, then. You’re going to be where we usually walk? I’ll come down and find you if we decide to go.” Downstairs again, I locate a cluster of grapes in the refrigerator and put them in a plastic bag. I stop at our car in the driveway to get the novel I’ve been reading out of the glove compartment. From the house the town rolls downhill. It’s a clear day and nothing is obscured. The green corridor of the river, the drawbridge at its throat, the ocean beyond. Hand over the top of the head. I wasn’t practiced for that. And, in the moment, a little self-conscious, because I had been swimming earlier that day and I still hadn’t showered, and my hair was matted with chlorine, fastened tightly back, no treat to run your

Before I was was old enough to take the host, I used to administer pretend Eucharists to myself with water crackers.

t three o’clock, some of the guests are beginning to leave, the tennis partners of my grandparents and the church acquaintances. I go upstairs to the room that has been mine for as long as I have been visiting here and put on my bathing suit. I put the dress back on over it and find my mother and Annie in my grandfather’s study, where a cot has been unfolded for one of the cousins. Lara lies on a towel spread over the cot; Annie is fastening

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

hands through. Just once, a hug and head inclining to head, click of mouths and then you brushed my hair back, in a gesture that seemed to hold relief. Witnessed, and thus somehow formal, but no one but I saw your face just before it. You were smiling, the gentlest smile I had ever seen, sweet. I take the straightest route, through the center and across the fenced green to the quay. People are everywhere along the brick walkway but I find a bench and sit down. The river is busy, motorboats negotiating around long sculls, crew teams from the local high school. I find my place in the book and hold it open on my lap. I eat my fruit, I listen to the shouts of the coxswains. I am still on the same page. Why am I still on the same page? What are you reading, he asked me in the waiting room. I was in my second month at college, exhibiting a range of conditions that summed to failure to thrive. Not least among them, failure to eat. And so they hauled me in to check me out and scare me straight. He was there to resolve some question of medical insurance. I was reading Chekov for my theater survey. He’d taken it the year before. We agreed that the teacher was great. Other classes? We were both considering an English course in Shakespeare’s comedies. We had both read Measure for Measure on our own. I hadn’t known anyone else liked it. It was a bunch of typical reasons to like someone, a bunch of typical connections and coinciding interests. Friends, all last year, a time when I didn’t make or hold many. He didn’t save my life, he didn’t turn everything around for me, but he was there when I was ready to do it myself. My stomach cramps around the grapes, and the need to lie down comes on me suddenly, a craving. I look around and then sink from the bench to the ground, stretch out until I am prone on the side of the walk. The sun has been gathering in the bricks all day, and beneath me, they seem to generate their own warmth. It is a heat that feels intense enough to sear through clothing; I rise up on my elbows a moment to make sure that the material isn’t singed. I wore this dress to my high school commencement, and got a sunburn that took six months to fade, a squared patch of red over my upper chest and collar, interrupted on both sides by narrow white bars where the shoulder straps had been. A handful of the boys in our class went out the night after the ceremony for matching tattoos, the year of graduation and the school seal. People were devoted to Zylman. I was. For six months, I smiled at the browning skin and thought of the white tent, the book prizes, the terraced trays of strawberries. I didn’t smile at a lot of other things during those six months, the rainy autumn of my freshman year. It was the usual story. I missed my old friends, I missed home and the convenience of it. I wanted to be a child again. Was. A group of girls, probably high school, have formed a circle on the green. They are throwing a Frisbee, and playing some kind of game — whoever has the Frisbee gives a hint, and the others have to guess what famous person she’s thinking of. She throws to the first one who gets it.

“Okay — hold on — someone who just got arrested. An actress.” There is a chorus of answers, laughter, and the Frisbee is passed. “All right — okay, someone who has a pirate ship.” They don’t throw well, and they’re falling over themselves, making fun of each other, happy and stupid together. Is it that one feels less inhibited in a group, able to be stupid without feeling it, or is it that people who want to act as a unit have to operate on the level of the slowest member? My stomach is still bothering me and I am feeling uncharitable. The Frisbee flies above me and then curves back around, coming to rest atop my book. The girls make playful sounds of distress and one of them rushes over, a girl in pink shorts and a T-shirt that identifies her as a member of a junior varsity crew team. “Sorry!” she says. “Don’t worry about it.” I smile and hand the Frisbee back to her. My gut is gradually beginning to unclench. I slip a hand underneath myself and knead it gently. I don’t think, in high school, that I would have taken up this position in public, no matter how much my stomach was hurting me, and that’s something good that came out of that first year of college, an utter indifference to what people might think. I was doing what I could to get through, and sometimes that meant I didn’t brush my hair or ate alone in a teeming dining hall or went to bed at ten while my roommate stayed up in the common room. I never thought about how people might see me — or, if I did, I realized I didn’t care — never once considered boys or romance. I knew, abstractly, that he was perfectly fulfilled in regard to that. I didn’t care. I spot my mother on the other side of the river; she is with Nadia and Cait, standing before the display window of a tourist boutique. Annie emerges from a neighboring store, with Lara in a stroller, and joins them. I return my attention to my book, willing myself inconspicuous. There will be time with all of them tonight. Games and conversations, probably music. I was happy to be home, last year at this time, more than happy, instituted a moratorium on discussion of school. By that spring I had given up, started marking the time until I could retreat for the summer. But sophomore year, I tried. And things were better. I met more people, and suddenly we had more friends in common, he and I. We took absurdist theater together. He started stopping me when we met on the paths around campus, asking me where I was going, what I’d thought of The Future is in the Eggs. By then, I had been so long removed from the world outside the head that I didn’t understand what was going on. And then we were seeing each other every day when we both had parts in a production of Twelfth Night, and finally there was the cast party, I leaving early to study for a French test, everyone else, well aware of what in the offing, trying to distract me into staying longer, one more minute, I think someone was looking for you. It was supposed to be discreet, an invitation to walk outside, but it was so cold and I, still oblivious, was insisting that I

They don’t throw well, and they’re falling over themselves, making fun of each other, happy and stupid together.

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

had to get back to my room, I had fifty pages of reading, Flaubert, small type. And so I was out the door and down the hallway when someone yelled for me to stay, drew me back to stand at the threshold before them all as for a judgment. Then you. A boy, seven or eight, stands on the quay and throws rocks into the water. The Frisbee sails over and lands at his feet, and he picks it up. “Want to play?” calls one of the girls. He nods, and they explain the rules. He can’t think of a famous person. “Just throw it, then,” says the girl who invited him into the game. “There’ll be more chances. You can come up with one after.” After, there were strained joking emails, both of us trying to feel out where the other stood, and finally I decided to show my hand and sent some bloodless message, I really enjoy being with you and let’s get together for dinner sometime. No reply, and for a day I wondered if I had imagined the entire scene, and then the next afternoon my phone rang and he wanted to borrow my copy of Albee. I went down to let him into the dorm and we were wrapped together before the door closed behind him. Side by side, we tramped upstairs. I’d left my room unlocked. Someone is standing over me. Cait squats, puts her face close to mine. “Wake up!” “I’m not sleeping.” I lift my head and squint. My mother is beside her. “We’re just doing a girls’ expedition around town. We wondered if you wanted to come.” “No, thanks.” Of course she wants my cousins to have fun, wants me to have fun as well. But, to my own shame, I cannot stand their

presence, cannot even talk to them. She makes a few more entreaties, bends down and rubs my shoulders. “Don’t touch me,” I murmur before I know what I’m saying. They go. I never imagined that contact could devastate. Maybe sex itself, but not merely the fitting of lips, the hand in the small of the back, the sapid spinal arch as one body bends the other backward. Perhaps, as with opiates, the first exposures are the most intense. So new. Sublime, terrible, in the slightly archaic, less adulterated sense of both words. In between kisses we clung to each other like brother and sister, a firm, comradely hug, not a romantic embrace at all. My legs, interlocked with yours, shook. When you left, I stood against the bed and held my arms straight over my head as you had, tried to feel again the blind fall onto the comforter, your hands pinning mine, my face exposed, unapologizing. For the first time I knew the value of that meager clairvoyance that all of us seem to have, that ability to know what’s about to happen the moment before it does; it was this that allowed me to sway with you, to be moved and touched without question. You pulled me up from the bed and turned me so I stood in profile to you, you put your mouth to my ear. You ran your hands — shaking also — across the skin of my abdomen, and my muscles tightened, I almost laughed. You seemed to like my stomach so much. Why? You were busy, and you had to go. After you pulled back and told me that, you kissed me on the forehead, and it fell heavier and lovelier than any of the other touches. There was attraction and there was fondness — can I say love, without you here to ratify it? — but also approval, almost paternal. I put my arms around your shoulders and

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

kissed you again, mouth on mouth, and you were smiling when I released you. You put your bag over your shoulder and left, ducking forward as if you were sneaking away. And I in my room was quieter too, trying also to be unobtrusive in the presence of something so large. I was uncomfortably charged, desperate to touch again, left with the shopworn metaphors and paradoxes — the rush that is amphetamine and heroin in one, the revelation that what is gentlest resides in the heart of savagery. We made plans to have dinner together a few nights later, but he had an unforeseen rehearsal. There were a few weeks of more abortive plans to see each other again, and of course we still saw each other in class. I don’t know what happened. It was the end of the year, he was preoccupied with all the considerations of a rising senior, he’d had a girlfriend not long ago and wasn’t ready, I made reasons. I sent emails. I cried when I thought of his hands in my hair. I rest my chin in the center of the open book and let my head fall until my right cheek presses against the page. Through the space beneath the bench, I can see the legs of the Frisbee players. “I’m thinking of someone,” sings a girl, someone I see only as a pair of sweatpants rolled to the knees and socked feet in sandals. “Someone who’s really strong. In a story.” “Samson!” says the little boy. “Hercules!” says a girl in pink shorts, the one who reclaimed the Frisbee from me. “It was Hercules,” says the first girl, sounding apologetic, as if she is eager to include the boy. She takes an awkward step forward and presumably throws; the Frisbee glides wildly high and drops over the edge of the quay. Cries of dismay. They all run to the path, squat down to reach for it. The thrower and the receiver apologize to each other. “Nick is going to kill us,” says the one in sweatpants, and giggles. She is holding onto a post meant for securing boats and leaning out over the river. Her upper half is as I imagined it: slim, tanned, brown hair slung up in a lopsided bun. “We could dangle the kid over the side to grab it.” Laughter. “He wouldn’t be long enough.” The girl in the pink shorts slips off her flip-flops and climbs haltingly down the quay ladder, stops just above the water, reaches. Unsuccessful, she turns around to address the walkway. “Does anyone have a net or anything?” Already young men are massing in a loose ring around the stricken women, conferring with each other over retrieval strategies. I mark my page and then weight down the empty plastic bag with my book. The little crowd is drifting down toward the bridge, apparently following the progress of the lost Frisbee. I push myself up off the ground and join them. It seems to have gone farther out into the water than I would have guessed, or maybe the current pulled it; it is ten or fifteen feet from the dock. I stretch a hand behind me and get hold of the zipper that runs up my back. My heart is accelerating and my fingers slip off the tab; I catch it again and draw it down. I turn away to step out of the dress and align myself with the floating quarry. It starts to sink, and there is another outcry from the girls before it settles a few inches lower, just below the surface. One of the boys, muscled and tall, notices me. “Hey — are you — ?” He glances out at the Frisbee. “Hey, she’s going in.” “Really?” says the girl in sweatpants. I shrug and smile. Everyone is looking. I lock my hands together

and bring them up under my chin to cover my chest with my forearms. My face is hot; I do not know if it is a self-conscious flush or an excited one. The water is five or six feet below us and gives away no indication of depth. Around me there are the girls and the boys and the bridge down the river. I extend my right leg out over the side for a natural stride, the lifeguard jump, but I am thinking too hard about it and I freeze in a goosestep. I step back, retreat a few feet from the edge, step forward again, right leg, a step that takes me up to where I was a moment ago. And then I am left leg first, falling through, groping for purchase in holdless cold. My foot hits silty bottom and I send myself hurtling back toward the surface, hands raised over my head in a sort of inverted dive. Above, people lean over me, pointing. I look up and my eyes are full of sun. The bridge seems no longer entirely even with the land on our bank of the river, and I realize that in fact it is not; it must be twenty of the hour, and it is rising. The layers of water at the surface are warm, and I tread and look for the Frisbee. The current seems faster than it did from the land, and already the toy has moved considerably since before my jump. I check for boats, but the river is empty now and I chart a diagonal course, breast. Water washes in and out of my mouth, salt and vegetable and something vaguely chemical. The white circle bobs ahead; I snag it without interrupting my stroke and swing a wide arc back toward the quay. I will have to get out at the ladder. I swim onehanded, and the onlookers walk alongside. “Hero! Hero!” shouts one of the girls, and I, chin trailing through the water, am smiling, laughing with them, stupid with them. I find the mossy submerged rungs and pull myself out, dripping long strands. Every puff of wind is ice. I’ll have to walk all the way back to the house like this; I can’t put my dress over my bathing suit, at least not unless I dry off here first. Someone helps me out and someone else takes the Frisbee and offers appreciation. A man holding a telescoping metal rod touches my shoulder. “If you’d waited another few minutes, I maybe could’ve gotten it with this,” he says. “Hey, I was ready to get in the water,” I say. I am shivering now, shoulders flinching toward each other, and my hair is splayed over my back like a single wet wing. Hands passing over my hair, scraped into its braid and matted with chlorine and wind, and still you slid your hand into it, and it felt like relief, grateful. So I exonerated myself with a million stories, when you didn’t come back. However I told it, it had nothing to do with me, and maybe it really didn’t, but of course I only came up with so many different explanations because I had a feeling that it did. There were the usual worries, the pretty-thin-good enough triad, but I suspected my own deeper faults, couldn’t deny that they were probably evident. You knew how green I was. Maybe you thought I’d cling, and maybe you were right, because here I am, and God knows I haven’t read a word of this book in all this time. My suit has stopped dripping and I feel the sun again. Across the grass, a bus stops at the curb and the girls pick up their bags and shuffle toward it. They wave at me. My body dries in patches. Wherever the water evaporates, it leaves the aired regions prickling and cool, as if it carries the skin away with it and bares the raw keen flesh. So acute that almost everything is painful, but glowing with vitality, pulse visible. New.

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

BY ANTHONY LYDGATE

Whether made from tar or asbestos, glass or plastic, artificial eyes have been around for millennia. David Gougelmann, one of the best in the business, has been fabricating them for New Yorkers since eighth grade. he clock has twelve eyes, one for each hour. Three and nine o’clock are green, twelve and six are gray, and two is hazel. The eye at five o’clock looks as if it’s just been on a bender; its iris is surrounded by a dense network of red veins, and its sclera (the “white” of the eye) is pink with irritation. The eyes are glued onto a standard-issue square office clock, black with white tick marks. From their vantage point on the wall of the New Haven office of Mager & Gougelman, Inc., the eyes can see several chairs, a small table with a stack of magazines, and two paintings of churches. I am staring at five o’clock when a man walks through the door to my left. WALLACE PRIZE WINNER looks to be in his early 40s and is wearing a white st 1 Place Nonfiction He lab coat. His eyes are slate-colored, but will seem to change every time I meet him over the next few weeks — something to do with the lighting and the color of his shirt. Introducing himself as David Gougelmann, he ushers me out of the waiting room and into the back. Like generations of his predecessors, Mr. Gougelmann is an ocularist, a maker of artificial eyes. His corner office, high-ceilinged and small, seems to function primarily as a storage facility. He apologizes for the mess, explaining that his company’s New Haven branch is just a satellite; in addition to serving his New England clientele, it must accommodate the paperwork and retired inventory that flows out of the cramped headquarters in New York City. Though the cardboard boxes piled on the floor say things like Crown Towlmastr III Roll Towel Dispenser, they actually contain files — and eyeballs. The files consist largely of appointment books and ledgers from years past, ruled beautifully in red and blue, PHOTOGRAPHY BY GINGER JIANG

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Surrounded by manila envelopes containing pending orders, David Gougelmann paints an eye at the workstation in his lab.

filled with minute cursive. The eyeballs are mostly made of glass, which means they’re quite old. Though glass is no longer used to fabricate prosthetic eyes, Mr. Gougelmann keeps these specimens around for their historical importance; many of them were made by his forebears. The family business, Mager & Gougelman, Inc., has been accumulating eyeballs for over a century. Though the New Haven office is interesting for its clock and archives, little goes on there in the way of eye-making. All the action takes place in M&G’s main office, which is located at 345 East 37th Street in New York. I go there one day in late October, taking the elevator up two floors and walking into Suite 316. In the waiting room, two Spanish-speaking women are poring over a Medicaid form. There is a door with a sign forbidding the use of cell phones, and it is from here that Mr. Gougelmann emerges. He is wearing the same boxy lab coat as before; it makes him appear shorter and stockier than he really is. His eyes look blue today, but his hair hasn’t changed: it is the same carefully coiffed brown-gray, longer on the top than on the sides, with sideburns that curve slightly forward. Sometimes Mr. Gougelmann looks up at the ceiling when he’s answering a question, as though a committee in his mind is deliberating and he’s awaiting the results. In these instances, he prefaces his responses with the phrase “We’re gonna say…” Other times, he answers

quickly and concisely. Whenever I ask a particularly stupid question — “Why don’t you just paint the pupil freehand?” — Mr. Gougelmann remains silent; he waits patiently while I figure it out for myself.

n December 2006, a woman’s body is found in Shahr-iSokhta (“Burnt City”), Iran. Little of her is left — a few shards of bone, a fractured skull — but this is not surprising, since her skeleton is as old as Stonehenge and the pyramids. What is surprising is the contents of her eye socket: a small sphere of bitumen paste, a tar-like petroleum derivative, inlaid with capillary-like golden wires. Though the eye looks something like a chocolate truffle — far from real, in other words — it is quite advanced for its time. Five thousand years ago, ocular prostheses were usually glorified patches, painted pieces of clay worn over the eye. The Burnt City woman, however, had enough money and clout to commission an in-socket artificial eye. Though the prosthesis didn’t fit perfectly (there is evidence of an abscess on her upper eyelid), it must have been a striking sight just the same — a glittering chunk of tar in her left socket. The idea of wearing a foreign object inside one’s skull might seem bizarre to some people. But as Mr. Gougelmann explains,

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

The 20th-century glass eye, light and hollow, was little better. It would sometimes explode in the wearer’s socket due to temperature changes, like an ice cube dropped in warm water. not wearing anything in the place of a lost eye would be even more unsettling. “It would be like walking around with your mouth open,” he says. If left to its own devices, the cavity formerly filled with an eyeball (also called a “globe”) eventually collapses, giving the face a distorted and droopy appearance. Until about a century ago, there had been comparatively little progress in the socket-filling arena. Though a tar eyeball sounds strange, the millennia after Burnt City saw a host of even stranger fillers, including aluminum, silver, gold, fat, platinum, silk, ivory, cartilage, bone, catgut, sponge, wool, cork, rubber, peat, agar, paraffin, and asbestos. Today, ocular implants are typically made of thermoplastics or porous materials like coralline hydroxyapatite, which comes from sea coral. For a long time, of course, artificial eyes were made neither of asbestos and catgut nor of polyethylene and sea coral. For a long time, they were made of glass, like the specimens in Mr. Gougelmann’s New Haven office. The practice of blowing solid glass eyes appears to have begun in 18th-century Venice, though it is generally accepted that the Germans perfected it. The craft spread throughout Europe, quickly becoming the mainstay of ocularists. In many ways, glass eyes were superior to what came before; they mimicked the colors and general appearance of a human eye better than most other materials, and were not rejected by the patient’s body. But they were also extremely hard to fabricate, and could not be altered once they had hardened. As Mr. Gougelmann put it, “If your glass eye maker was having a good day, you’d get a good eye.” The 20th-century glass eye, light and hollow, was little better. It would sometimes explode in the wearer’s socket due to temperature changes, like an ice cube dropped in warm water. One of the best descriptions of glass eye-making comes from the British writer Henry Vizetelly. In his memoir, Glances Back Through Seventy Years: Autobiographical and Other Reminiscences, Vizetelly describes the office of a Parisian ocularist in 1868: … collections of artificial eyes were displayed in hermeticallyclosed glass cases for the admiration of visitors on the look-out for a visual organ … Most of them were brilliant and so piercing that they seemed to look through one. On one side were laughing children’s eyes, next to them liquid-looking, love-sick eyes of young girls, languid eyes of middle aged women, eyes with an amiable or sinister expression, severe official eyes, then old men’s eyes that were slightly filmy.

Though the eyes Vizetelly saw were varied, the Parisian ocularist’s clientele was singularly elite; these were people who “would no more think of wearing an artificial eye of home manufacture than a pair of gloves that had not come from Jouvin’s.” Though the masses generally couldn’t afford glass eyes — as Vizetelly remarks, “we all know that superfluities are not for needy

people” — botched or secondhand eyes trickled down, and nice ones were sometimes available for rental. Really screwed-up eyes, the “waste eyes” that not even the poor wanted, were given to the only people who would accept them without complaint: “that section which enjoyed the honour of being embalmed.” In other words, they were pawned off on dead people. I do not ask Mr. Gougelmann if he engages in this practice. Another peculiar habit of the Parisian ocularist was to employ a one-eyed manservant, whom Vizetelly affectionately dubbed “Jean Polyphème.” This “liveried cyclops” received a custommade glass eye as part of his service. When prospective clients seemed anxious at the thought of getting an artificial eye, it was the servant’s job to “introduce a knitting-needle under his eyelid, remove his eye, and place it in the hand of the astonished spectator as unconcernedly as though it were a shirt stud.” The idea was that if the ocularist could make a fine eye for his servant, he could do the same for a gentleman. There are no liveried cyclopes lurking around Mager & Gougelman, Inc., and there are no longer any glass eyes either (other than the curios in cardboard boxes). By the time Mr. Gougelmann started apprenticing in the summer of eighth grade, acrylic was the norm. World War II was largely responsible for this, as German glass became scarce and plastics technology improved. (The War also accounts for the missing n in the name of the business; the Gougelmanns dropped it to avoid sounding too German.) Though he began by sweeping floors and polishing color samples, Mr. Gougelmann was painting eyes by eleventh grade, and sitting in on appointments by the summer before college. He practiced his skills by making joke eyes for his friends. These found their way into earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and guitar picks. Some ended up in ice cubes, and one especially large one was used to adorn a transmission shifter. As Mr. Gougelmann says, “Growing up in the business, we put eyes in lots of places.” “The business” has been around for 158 years, ever since Swiss immigrant Peter Gougelmann founded it in 1851. Though it has grown and shrunk amoebically over the decades, Mager & Gougelman, Inc. continues to be one of the most famous makers of artificial eyes in the world. Its clients have included Peter Falk, Joseph Pulitzer, Helen Keller, and several thoroughbred racehorses. (There was also nearly an old Central Park Zoo lioness, but she “reverted to youthful vigor” upon the ocularist’s entry into her cage, and was therefore never fitted.) One article from the New York Daily News even alleges that the Gougelmann name is responsible for the phrase googly eyes. This is an etymological claim with which other sources, most notably the Oxford English Dictionary, disagree. Besides, the whole point is that Mager & Gougelman, Inc. does not manufacture googly eyes, which are defined as “large, round, and staring.” They tailor

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

the eye to the patient, easing the transition back into normal life and scrupulously avoiding what Mr. Gougelmann calls the “mannequin effect.”

o the one eyed golfer all greens are flat.” According to George Godber’s November 1987 letter to the editor of the British Medical Journal, the “one eyed individual” must engage in a number of compensatory behaviors, including: reaching nearly to an object quickly, but feeling for the last few inches; always touching the cup or glass rim before pouring into it; constantly turning one’s head and watching for kerb edges or raised paving stones; always feeling with one’s foot for the height of the first step down; never hitting across the line of a moving ball, whether at cricket, tennis, or squash.

Other concerns include transitioning to spectacles when “one’s aging skin fails to hold the monocle reliably,” and circumnavigating half-open doors so as to avoid walking into them. At the most basic level, loss of stereoscopic vision means a damaged sense of depth perception. But the trauma of eye loss is also accompanied by a wide range of psychological problems. Some patients react apathetically, says Mr. Gougelmann, while others seem suicidal — he often refers people to therapists. (This may be why the American Society of Ocularists recommends studies in “communicative skills and applied psychology.”) For those who have lost both eyes, the difficulty is of course even greater. Many of the associated effects are relatively predictable — decreased mobility, difficulty with the techniques of everyday living, the possibility of unemployment and financial insecurity. But there are also ramifications that sighted people might never expect. Many of these are enumerated in Father Thomas J. Carroll’s Blindness; what it is, what it does, and how to live with it. Though the book is far from recent (one chart makes reference to “professionally recorded 33 rpm records”), its psychological insights remain relevant. Some blind people experience a loss of kinesthetic pleasure, the satisfaction of seeing themselves moving “against a background of nonmotion.” There is also what Carroll terms a “loss of obscurity,” the inability to blend into a crowd. For many blind people, the most profound and tenacious loss is a constant feeling of incompleteness. It is perhaps no accident that the surgical procedure for removal of the contents of the eyeball is called evisceration, suggesting that the eye is at least as important as the liver or the spleen. Even for patients who have come to terms with eye loss, the idea of wearing a prosthesis can provoke anxiety and fear. From the online forum of the Royal National Institute of Blind People:

other eye there are so many things i need to know has anyone else been through this?

The answer to toni9101’s question, as Mr. Gougelmann would doubtless say, is that a plastic eye can do all of the things a natural eye can — except see. An artificial eye’s verisimilitude and motility (ability to move) will depend largely on the patient’s physiology, on the state of his tissue and muscles. But even a patient with extensive trauma and an immobile prosthesis can expect some relief. Tinted lenses and thick frames go a long way; self-confidence goes further, as nicolawyatt, one of toni9101’s respondents, proves. A neighbor of hers, she says, has a prosthetic eye — but he still “seems to get the girls lol.”

r. Gougelmann takes me to see his lab, which is in the back of the New York office. My first impression is that it stinks; my subsequent impression is that it’s tiny. Mr. Gougelmann has to go see a patient, so I am left in the room with his brother, Andrew, who is at his workstation polishing a finished eye. (Andrew is the one who made the New Haven eye clock.) I spend some time looking around, not wanting to disturb him, and it is then that I become aware of the origins of the smell. The desks are strewn with hazardous materials — a jug of Sunnyside Denatured Alcohol Solvent, several canisters of Blazer Triple-Refined Butane, globs of Winsor-Newton oil-based paints, a number of seedy-looking bottles simply labeled MONOMER — and there is no ventilation system to speak of. When I ask Andrew whether the smell bothers him, he seems surprised. The fumes have become such a fixture that he doesn’t register them anymore; it’s only after he returns from long weekends and vacations that they become noticeable. The flammables are scattered among the usual tokens of office life: form letters, family pictures, themed calendars (one puppy, one classic car), and a wayward bag of Mrs. Cubbison’s

When injected into the patient’s eye socket, impression material has the consistency of pancake batter.

toni9101 said on 24 August 2008 at 11:25 PM My optician has told me that i have to have a prosthetic eye … i am so scared of having this operation and wonder if it will be the best thing to do or shall i just leave it? Will i be able to do normal things like swimming having a shower, lifting things - will i be able to drive? Will my eye look normal will it move with my

Onion & Garlic Restaurant-Style Croutons. Altogether, there are five workstations, only four of which appear to receive regular use (the fifth looks like an abandoned dumping ground for eyes). The lab is barely large enough to hold everything. It consists of two rectangular areas, the top of one joined to the bottom of the other by a small crosspiece. One area contains the workstations, and the other has an array of polishing and casting machines. When they’re not scurrying between exam room and lab, the ocularists take time to work on their eyes. David Gougelmann’s desk has a three-tiered carousel that looks like a tiny lavender wedding cake. It has little holes on each level for tools. The tiers are filled with various drill attachments — there are grinding stones like thimbles, brushes like Brillo pads, and metal bits shaped like the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Next to

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

material similar to sculpting clay, which will provide the base for the eye. He packs the dough into the mold, then cures it with heat and pressure. It emerges as hard plastic. When I ask Mr. Gougelmann what this thing is called, he says, “We’re gonna say… the scleral piece.” The scleral piece is fitted to the patient. Mr. Gougelmann may go back and forth between exam room and workstation several times, grinding the piece to the desired proportions. This is the hardest part, since the shape will determine how the prosthesis interacts with the underlying tissue, and therefore how normal odern artificial eyes are not spherical. Patients’ sockets it looks. Once he is finished sculpting, Mr. Gougelmann uses a are filled with either their natural blind eyeball or a tis- blue marker to draw the outline of the iris, carefully matching its sue-covered implant, so they have no need of anything size and orientation to the sighted eye of the patient in front of to replace the globe. Because of this, ocular prosthetics come him. He places a small dot in the center where the pupil will go. mostly in the form of the scleral cover shell, a piece of plastic that Then the scleral piece goes back to the lab. Mr. Gougelmann casts a new scleral piece, this time with sits just behind the eyelids. Like a contact lens, it floats on top of a dark “iris button” the globe and, to some countersunk into it. extent, moves with it The iris button is a (some implants even small plastic cylinder have a small peg that that juts out from the connects to the shell center of the eye, indiin order to improve cating how the pupil motility). Unlike a will be pointed. Mr. contact lens, however, Gougelmann “exposthe scleral cover shell is es” the iris, grindopaque and quite large, ing down the button fitting over the entire he has just inserted. visible part of the eye. Now he has a white The shell is made from shell with a dark plawhite acrylic and has teau in the center. all the aesthetic charThis is where he will acteristics of a natural apply the paint. For eye — iris, pupil, veins, inspiration, he uses tint. color samples, eyes The first step in makpreviously fabricated ing a scleral cover shell by apprentices. Since is to take an impresThe polishing wheel, located in the back of the lab, helps to give acrylic eyes a each apprenticesion. When injected sheen that makes them look moist and little different from typical eyes. ship lasts for 10,000 into the patient’s eye socket, ocular impression material has the consistency of pan- hours, there is quite a large selection — about 80,000 eyes. Of cake batter. Like Bisquick, it begins as a white powder. Mr. these, one might match a given patient’s iris closely, one might Gougelmann combines the powder with distilled water, mixing have a similarly yellowed sclera, and one might have the same with a spatula to create a thin paste that he promptly pours into vein structure. Mr. Gougelmann perches eyes in progress on what he calls a large syringe (no needle). Behind the patient’s eyelid, he places the fenestrated acrylic tray, a turtle-shell-shaped piece of plastic a “toadstool” (actually just a bottle cap packed with sculpting with a tube protruding from the center — it sits against the clay). He mixes and dilutes paints in an “inkwell” (an upsidepatient’s globe. Mr. Gougelmann fits the syringe to the tube and down shot glass). He begins laying down striations of oil-based injects the batter; if too much is injected too quickly, it goops out paint on the eye, mixing it with a substance called molypoly of the overflow holes in the tray, streaming down the patient’s (pronounced Molly-Polly) that hardens almost instantaneously. face. The impression material goes in cool and sets for several Each layer, though paper-thin, will help to give the impression of minutes, hardening and absorbing moisture, slowly warming to depth and richness of color. He punches a pupil from a sheet of body temperature. When it is removed, it leaves the underlying black paper, gluing it onto the center of what will be the iris. He globe feeling gritty and temporarily dry. The impression is firm pulls apart strands of red cotton, placing them on the sclera and but squishy, like the white of a hardboiled egg. It perfectly mir- adding wiggles with his paintbrush to simulate veins. When the eye looks right, Mr. Gougelmann puts on the finishing touch: a rors the shape and contour of the patient’s globe. A cement-like liquid is poured around the rubbery white thick coating of acrylic. This will round out the eye, magnifying impression, creating a stone mold that separates into two halves. and lightening the details he has just painted. He polishes the eye Mr. Gougelmann then mixes up a batch of scleral dough, a white using progressively finer gradations of pumice and rouge. The

the carousel is a white ceramic tile covered with tufts of paint. David Gougelmann uses orange, green, black, white, two shades of blue, four shades of yellow, and six shades of brown. Andrew likes to keep his palette cleaner, so he has fewer colors (only four shades of brown). Unlike his brother, Andrew prefers to polish eyes at his workstation rather than at the wheel in the back, so there is a cratered block of rouge on his desk. It looks like pink Swiss cheese.

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

Some patients request novelty eyes for special occasions. These carry images relating to hobbies, clubs and favorite pets.

gloss he establishes will help to make the eye look moist (patients with dry eye syndrome sometimes request duller finishes). The final product takes three or four visits to perfect, and will fit the patient for five to seven years. Some people can go months without ever removing their eyes, while others must do so every night before bed; it all depends on body chemistry. Whatever the routine, the process for insertion is always the same. It calls for a suction cup and some lubricating drops, and is described succinctly on Mager & Gougelman’s website: 1. Dip the open end of the suction cup in water 2. Place the suction cup on the color of the prosthesis 3. Rub a “wetting solution for lubricating” on the surface of the prosthesis 4. Lift your upper lid by the eyelash margin so that there is a space between the eyelid and the blind globe or tissue covered implant 5. Place the top of the prosthesis … underneath the upper lid 6. Release the upper eyelid 7. Depress your lower lid and place the prosthesis behind the lower lid 8. Squeeze the suction cup to release from the prosthesis.

y the time I leave the New York office of Mager & Gougelman, Inc., the wind has picked up and it’s colder. The sun is perfectly aligned with 2nd Avenue, shining down its length and shedding light even on the storefronts beneath scaffolding. As I walk, I think about one of the last things Mr. Gougelmann showed me: the case of novelty eyes. Instead of a normal-looking iris, these bear an image of the client’s choice. There is a cat, a dog, a turtle, a heart, a rubber ducky, a bald eagle, a smiling moon, and a skull and crossbones.

One eye is mottled to look like a golf ball. Another, ordered by a patriotic bartender for the Fourth of July, has a tiny American flag. Yet another eye carries the image of an 8-ball, and belonged to a professional pool player. Mr. Gougelmann tells me about a man who asked for a Nike swoosh. When the sneaker company wouldn’t pay him for advertising, he had the logo removed. A FOR RENT sign went up in its place. Where a natural-looking eye helps the wearer blend in, a novelty eye demands attention — there is no illusion of normalcy. Because of this, novelty eyes are usually meant for special occasions. The 8-ball once appeared on ESPN. The turtle, a symbol of some kind of club, crawls out only during weekly meetings. The skull and crossbones go with a patient’s Harley, and are worn in the brisk air of the open road. Though the images they carry are showier and more exciting than a humdrum iris, novelty eyes are just like regular prostheses. In fact, Mr. Gougelmann usually makes them by painting over an outdated eye that has recently been replaced. The result is a kind of palimpsest, with the patient’s chosen image placed over his old iris. A thin layer of paint, measurable in fractions of a millimeter, separates the flashy from the understated. Of course, the bulk of Mr. Gougelmann’s output is naturallooking rather than novelty. The steady stream of browns, blues, hazels, grays, and greens is punctuated only occasionally by the image of a pointy-eared Doberman. Most of the eyes around the office look the same to me. But I find myself wondering whether Mr. Gougelmann isn’t more discerning. Two conventional brown irises — this one with traces of copper and burnt sienna, that one with tinges of mahogany and sepia — might look identical to the uninitiated. I bet Mr. Gougelmann can distinguish them in the blink of an eye.

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

Geography BY SIBONGILE SITHE

When she is devastated by the death of her beloved George, Ellen realizes that the emotional city they had built together is not as desolate as it had once seemed.

don’t like math, talk of the economy goes over my head, and it baffles me that the dollar is backed on “good faith,” but I’ve got a soft spot for the economist John Kenneth Galbraith. I used to tell George, without Galbraith, we might never have met. George was finishing his book when I came to work at Dottie’s, and he spent every afternoon that spring at the corner table wading through a manuscript the size of Ulysses. The note WALLACE PRIZE WINNER was face up on the table when I passed by on my way to nd the coffee bar. The task is yours my friend, read the messy scrawl, “the freshness and spontaneity that come only with the sixth draft.” I laughed, out loud laughed. “Jackass,” I heard from over my shoulder. I started the apology before I’d even turned all the way around, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — ” Dimples, blue-striped button down, blonde, blonde. He laughed. “Not you; my editor. Brilliant, but a jackass. He thinks crossdiscipline quotation makes him some sort of Renaissance man.” “You’ve got to feel bad for the guy though,” I said, pointing at the cover page, “Spending days on end reading about ‘Outsourcing the Business of Dying: Who’s Really Been Fighting Our Wars.’ Not exactly a beach read.” He grinned and told me I was lucky I baked for a living — he spent his days lecturing to sleeping undergrads, and years writing books no one would read. “But,” he sighed dramatically, “Somebody’s got to do it.” “How noble of you,” I said, with mock admiration. He stopped at the counter to chat the next two days. “What’s that about?” Melissa asked after he left. “Nothing,” I told her. “Fine,” she said, adding more rainbow cookie pieces to the sample plate, “but he’s cute for an older guy, in that all-American, feel-you-up-on-my-boat kind of

2 Place Fiction

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIN JIN

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

way.” I pinched her arm. She raised her eyebrows.

put George in a red mahogany casket and on a plane to Virginia. After the funeral, his mother and sister, Molly, fly back to New York with me for a week to put his affairs in order. They spend their days on the phone arguing with insurance companies and rifling through his filing cabinet and their nights whispering. They’ve made headquarters in the dining room and our long oak table is covered with papers and boxes and their lipstick-stained coffee mugs. I hate having them there, dirtying our dishes, running their fingers over our photographs, leaving their hair in our shower. I try to be helpful, but they’re not having any of it. His mother says my pound cake has too much butter, and Molly, with her Harvard J.D., drops legal terms I’m almost positive aren’t relevant, but she knows I don’t understand. On the Monday we get back, George’s department head calls to ask whether I want to come over and go through his office, or if they should pack everything up and deliver it. I’m about to answer when Molly cuts me off from another phone in the house: she’ll come and do it. It’s not worth the argument anymore; this is her way of reminding me that I’m not family, that I can’t decide what to do with his stapler. I put the phone back in the cradle, walk to the bathroom, turn the shower on and sit on the floor until the room fills with steam. I start to sweat but leave the water on, and take comfort that in her thoroughness, Molly will find the condoms tucked behind High Fidelity and the Oxford Dictionary of Slang.

eorge is charming, charming. We go to dinner and talk about Coachella hipsters, buttercream icing, what if Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger were the same person. He asks about school: I skipped third and fourth grade, went to Bryn Mawr, majored in art history, and on the weekends took the train into the city and my shirt off for the Wharton boys. After that, culinary school sounded like fun. I ask about the movie he hates that he loves: “A Night at the Roxbury,” he says, ducking his head a little. What can I do but laugh. That Thursday, George asks me to meet him at the manuscripts archive at 3:00. I’ve cleared out my entire afternoon, but I don’t drive over until five after so it doesn’t look like I’ve been waiting. When I get there, he’s leaning against the information desk, chatting with a security guard. I watch him for a moment; he’s wearing French cuffs and white Chucks and is talking with his hands. He glances at his watch and I nearly trip over a chair on

my way in. He’s already smiling when he turns around. “Hey there,” he says, leaning in to kiss my cheek. I follow him as we wind through the narrow rows of shelves toward the service elevator on the far wall. He swipes his ID and punches in a code; I can hear the gears whirling from inside the shaft. “So, do you want to tell me what we’re doing?” I ask. He looks down at me and grins, “Not really.” I point to the ID badge, “Is it legal?” His smile widens, “Not really.” The doors open. “And if anybody asks,” he says stepping in behind me, “we’re from the Architectural Planning Committee.” He swipes the ID again and pushes “R.” George takes me to the top of the library tower, and from there, the city stretches out in every direction until it meets the horizon. The buildings look like match boxes and further out, the river snakes in and out of view, disappearing behind shops and thickets of trees. He rests his bag on the ledge and pulls out a map and a pair of binoculars. “Since you’re new here,” he says, opening the map, “I thought some geographical orientation was in order.” He’s marked up the whole city — best sashimi, late night diners, salsa bars, places to avoid at night, running paths, vintage book stores, outdoor markets, places to avoid completely. It’s warm and bright and he stands next to me, pointing out the two Indian restaurants, side by side, run by rival brothers, the African art dealer, the natural fiber store that sells Minnetonka Moccasins year round. He draws a finger along the arc of farms north of the city limits, puts a hand on my back to turn me east towards the arts district and Dottie’s with its cramped parking lot and pink awning. His hand is warm and he smells like bergamot and guiac wood. He sends white calla lilies to the bakery the next day and the punctuation on the card is meticulous. Melissa tells me to stop smiling. When my sister calls, we talk for forty-five minutes before I mention George. She squeals and begins the requisite interrogation. We only get through name and occupation before she asks how old he is. I hesitate a moment, “Thirty-nine.” “Ellen!” she says, shocked, “Are you serious? Is he married?” “No, not married,” I tell her. “He’s really sweet.” “He’s also almost twenty years older than you. Ellie,” she says, serious this time, “What are you doing?”

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know I should stop wearing his shirts to bed, but it’s the only way I can sleep. Waking up is disorienting, and after the sucker punch at four in the morning, the day seems endless. Sometimes work distracts me. It’s still dark out when I go in, but Dottie already has the mixers going and a thin layer of flour is settling softly on her gray hair. I start on the lemon poppy seed bread while she’s finishing the raspberry scones, and the radio plays show tunes softly in the background. Melissa comes in for the breakfast rush at seven, and for the next two hours we’re vending machines with smiles. There’s a lull at nine-thirty, and Dottie and I go back to the kitchen. We face each other across the wide, metal island and frost sugar cookies shaped like farm animals. Her hands are small and pale against the bright pink of the piping bag and she starts talking without looking up. “When Harold died, someone gave me a book on grieving, but it was all wrong.” Her husband, Harold, has been dead for eight years: pancreatic cancer. “It kept saying that losing someone is like drowning. Can you believe that?” I’m not sure if she’s actually asking me, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. “It kept trying to describe it as a tide that keeps coming and how the water washes over you and you can’t get your head above the break.” She draws two small, black dots on a pig’s snout. “But the water is something right? And maybe you can float.” Sometimes it’s hard to follow Dottie, but I nod anyway. “And if there’s a tide, then there’s a moon. And at least you know where you are, right? The ocean is somewhere. That’s something isn’t it?” She sighs, but doesn’t look up, and starts in on the row of cows. Sometimes work doesn’t distract me and when I hear someone order orange tea and biscotti, I have to stand in the cold room and wait for my heart to unclench. I run in the afternoons. I try not to do the routes George took me on his “Introduction to the City” running tours, but sometimes I’m on auto pilot. I cruise down Madison, passing the stationery store, the dry cleaner, and the turn-of-the-century mansions with lawns the size of parks. I hang a right after the hospital to avoid the university and head down the hill on Probasco to the river. It’s May and the water is quick and almost blue.

olds and moms pushing strollers that look like battle tanks. The everything of outside is overwhelming and I’m starting to feel dizzy with the squealing preteens and the loud tank tops and the smell of incense and Indian food. I duck into the movie theater to catch my breath; it’s cool and dark and the silence feels good. I don’t want to go outside again, so I buy a ticket. The theater specializes in low-budget science fiction films, and the one I’ve picked is Argentinean and depressing, but I keep watching anyway. When it’s over, I slide down in my seat, wait for the ushers to finish their rounds, then sit up again and answer the loop of trivia questions until they rewind the reel and play it again. I’m embracing the idea that life imitates art, and that watching someone else’s so-neatly resolved disaster will rub off onto mine. It doesn’t; but on the bright side, I’ve made it through another three hours. At night, I lie awake and listen to them talk about what to leave me. His mother says to let me keep everything but the photo albums; Molly wants the vintage film posters, the wine, and the green hutch from Prague where we keep the china. I want to get up and tell her she can have everything but the glass dish under the stove and the clothes that still smell like him, the rest I can replace. I hear Molly laugh from the living room and I hate that they have each other. I’ve left as many things as I can on the bed: hardcover novels, bottles of lotion, purses, sweatpants — anything to take up space when I sleep. Outside the door, the hallway light goes off and the apartment is quiet, except for the sounds of sleep preparations in the guest room. I push everything off the mattress, but it makes less noise than I’d hoped; no one comes to the door. I spread out in the middle of the bed and cry for more reasons than I can count. Before they leave, Molly writes me a check for six months’ rent. It’s the nicest thing she’s done since I met her. In the kitchen, Dottie and I are cutting pans of cream cheese brownies, putting each chocolate square onto a pink doily, and then onto a tray for display. “When Harold died, I tried out a support group on Wednesday nights, but the people were idiots. One man said losing his wife was like losing his right hand. He said sometimes he would forget, and reach for her anyway.” She’s standing on a stool to get a good angle on the trays and slicing in long even strokes “But, then you’d just open the door with the other hand, right?” she says, “Or peel a banana holding it between the nub and your side?” She turns the pan to cut in the opposite direction. “At least the other hand has been there. How can you catch someone up on everything? The other hand, that’s something, isn’t it?”

I’m embracing the idea that life imitates art, and that watching someone else’s so-neatly resolved disaster will rub off onto mine. I fly along the asphalt path, passing the students playing Frisbee on the grass, two women eating sandwiches on a purple raincoat, and a couple in matching yellow jogging suits kissing on a wooden bench. The colors start to blend together like I’m running through a wet painting and realize I must be crying louder than the world outside because people are starting to stare. I veer off the main path and onto a narrow trail that cuts a quick line to Hamden Avenue. I hear it before I see it, and when I reach the sidewalk, school’s just gotten out and it’s crowded with flocks of eight-year-

eorge asks me to teach him the recipe for the devil’s food cake dish we sell at Dottie’s. I bring all of the ingredients in a paper bag to his apartment, but I know by the time we’ve put the chocolate in the double boiler, there’s no point in greasing the pan.

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

George lays me across his dining room table and I can feel the heat emanating off the sauce pot by my thigh. He asks about summers in Begur. “My mother said our Catalan was embarrassing so she sent Liz and me to Sa Tuna for a month every summer to stay with our aunt.” “Really?” he says, dipping his index finger into the melted Callebaut. He stretches his arm across me and begins to draw the eastern coast of Spain on my stomach. The French border is at the top of my ribcage, and he drags down along the edge where Costa Brava meets the Mediterranean. “We helped out in her restaurant. Waiting tables, selling souve-

where the moon is lighting up the white hydrangeas by the gate like a spotlight. If I had to make a list of frequently asked questions, they would come in this order. By strangers: 1. When are you due? (January) 2. Do you know what you’re having? (The linguini — they chuckle — a girl) 3. Have you picked a name? (Abigail) By friends: 1. How are you? (Fine) 2. Have you told them? (No) 3. What are you waiting for? (One catastrophe at a time) I’m not going to guilt them into keeping me in the fold.

The university forgets to erase his office voicemail, and on bad days I call over and over just to hear him say he’ll get back to me. nirs in the gift shop, scamming tourists with our charm.” He smiles, “I believe that.” He makes a dot for Sa Tuna at my waist and a tiny inward curve for the bay, then goes back to scribble in the Pyrenees with his pinky. I’m finding it difficult to concentrate, but he doesn’t seem to have any trouble multi-tasking. “Is that what inspired the baking?” he asks pleasantly. He dips his finger again and draws a long line to Barcelona below my navel then down further to Tarragona. I can’t remember the question, but his geography is impeccable, impeccable.

’m crossing the street toward the Armenian deli when I see a photograph of George hanging in the bicycle shop window. I can’t even read the poster before I start vomiting into the garbage can on the curb. But when it happens again the next two days, I check the calendar and it’s twelve days past the little red circle. It’s late, but I’m still awake. According to the book, at seven weeks, all of her baby teeth have formed and she can move her hands. I lift up my shirt, put my palm flat against the skin, smile softly into the darkness, and imagine we are waving to each other. I move out two months later when the lease is up. July is hot, and the whole process is exhausting even though Molly took a moving van of stuff with her, and Melissa, who comes over to help, won’t let me lift a pregnant finger. The new apartment is just off Ellis Street and close enough to the bakery that I can walk there. I attribute the $200 jump in rent to the school district’s high performance, but I figure it will be worth it in the long run, and for the moment, I’m grateful I can stop avoiding his colleagues in the grocery store. Melissa and I sit in my new living room in complete darkness, too tired to find the box of lamps. She gently asks if I’m ever going to tell his family. I don’t say anything, but look outside

he’s a child, George,” I hear Molly hiss as I turn into the kitchen of his parents’ house. He’s leaning against the counter as Molly and his mother stand in front of the marble island, their faces caught somewhere between disbelief and disappointment. I stand there for a moment, holding the stack of dinner dishes, then move towards the sink. “Ellen,” he says. I set the plates lightly on the counter and turn around. He calls after me again. “Christ, Molly,” I hear him say. I’m almost to the front door when he catches me by the arm. “She didn’t mean it,” he says, his voice is soft, soft. I can’t look up. “I highly doubt that,” I say to the coat rack; then, “Tell your parents I said thank you for dinner.” He turns me around to face him and grips my waist; we could be dancing. “Give them time,” he says, “This is an adjustment.” I put my palm flat against his chest, “This is a bad idea.” He bends his head close to mine, “Probably,” he whispers. I slip my arms around his neck and before I close my eyes, I catch a glimpse of Molly leaning against the door frame, fists tight as knots. We fly out of Dulles the next day and spend his fortieth birthday in Paris. We stay up till six a.m., stumbling drunk and giddy outside of the Odéon and tango in the Luco at dawn.

make friends with my neighbors down the hall, Ethan and Lisa, and their two-year-old daughter, Penelope. Lisa shows me how to make onesies out of old t-shirts, and we spend an entire Saturday afternoon cutting, sewing, and velcroing George’s British pub shirts into infant clothing. Melissa drags me to Lamaze, I eat Coco Puffs and refried beans, gain twenty pounds, and for five months, lie to everyone I know. The university forgets to erase his office voicemail, and on bad days I call over and over just to hear him say he’ll get back to me.

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In January, Liz gets to the hospital two hours before Abigail is born. She holds my hands while my mother retreats fervently into Catholicism and alternates between praying the rosary and to Gerard Majella, the patron saint of childbirth. Melissa snaps pictures, even though I’m sure no one will ever want to see this. Abigail is 6 pounds, 11 oz. has a port-wine stain on her stomach, and her father’s brown eyes. Two days after she is born, I send his family a photograph of her in his George Inn shirt; I think it’s clever. I write her name, Abigail Reid Allston, her birthday, height, and weight on the back and I am about to seal the envelope when I pull the photo out again and write “Mom and daughter are doing well,” below the rest of the information. I don’t include a return address, but it only takes them four days to track me down. Molly calls our first day home and asks if they can come up that weekend. I tell her no, but that we’ll come and visit when we’re up to the trip. All of a sudden, she’s crying over the line, asking why I didn’t tell them, why I didn’t let them help. “I wasn’t going to give you another reason to make me feel like shit,” I tell her, and hang up. In the intervening weeks the UPS man and I become good friends thanks to all the stuff they send me: diapers, clothing, toys that come with intellectual activity cards, Baby Einstein videos, and the complete works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff — I opt for Tracy Chapman instead. We fly to Alexandria on Valentine’s Day. They adore her, as expected; I am only the messenger. I go for a run while his mother shows her off at the house. I am not used to having my body to myself again. When I run, I feel like I’ve forgotten something, and during the first mile, triple check the pocket with my keys and constantly feel if my phone is still clipped to my waistband. The second mile, I count the number of steps — 1934 or 2086 or 1978 — just for something to hold on to. The third mile, I let myself say anything. I never know where I’m going to cry and it scares me—at the gas station, waiting in line at the bank, peeing, trying to get through a thirty-minute sitcom. Sometimes I go to Barnes & Noble, pick up his book, and ask complete strangers if they’ve read it. I hate that none of my bras fit; that my breasts are twice their normal size and he’s not even here to enjoy them. When Abigail spit up on the last of his sweaters I hadn’t washed, I had to put her down and leave the room. I haven’t been on a bicycle since his accident and the “Share the Road” posters with his face on them still make my hands shake. I hate that I cashed the check from his sister. I hate that Abigail doesn’t scream when his mother picks her up. I hate that they give me his childhood books, that at the airport I let Molly wrap her arms around me like we have not been fighting over a life and the remnants of it, that sometimes they make my life easier.

“I think it’s like Nagasaki. Or Hiroshima,” Dottie starts as I shake powered sugar over a tray of lemon bars. “One day, you’ve got a place with parks and side streets and shopping malls, and then the next day it’s gone. This whole emotional city you’ve built with another person, suddenly up in smoke.” I put down the sifter and watch Dottie’s hands as she ices a red fire truck on a birthday cake. “And for the first few days, you can’t see anything, and you think that’s bad, but you don’t even know. Because when everything settles, and you can finally see beyond the hand in front of your face, there’s nothing there — no skyline, no telephone, not even a bench. It’s not even that you’re lost and have to stop and turn around and ask for directions only to get lost again — because that might be bearable.” She starts on the ladder. “It feels like that for while, sometimes a long while. But eventually you get up the nerve to walk around, and find out that it’s not as barren as it looked.” Dottie looks up at me, “And all of a sudden, there’s a crossword in the newspaper.”

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You are a

Princess BY MOLLY FISCHER

Children’s photographers need to have more than just good lighting and alluring toys. Meet Joan Genest, a “piggy toes”-loving, sweet-talking friend of infants everywhere.

his morning, Joan Genest’s first order of business is piggy toes. “What’s he doing these days, besides sleeping?” Rene, Joan’s husband, directs his question at Marcus’s parents. Assessing Marcus’s infant abilities is crucial to planning the session. “Is he sitting?” He is. “Crawling, walking, riding bikes, doing complex math problems?” Rene’s joking now, but the next question is important: “When you put him on his back, does he grab his feet?” Marcus is a mild-mannered boy with a sweater vest and enormous cheeks. He is here so that Joan and Rene Genest, proprietors of Storytellers Photography in North Haven, can take his seven-month-old portrait. But WALLACE PRIZE WINNER first they need to get his shoes off. Bare feet are known, 2nd Place Nonfiction in the Storytellers literature (“Tips for a Successful Session”), as “piggy toes”: “There is nothing cuter than piggy toes showing in a portrait.” Piggy toes are ideal for the highly desirable on-back foot-grab. In the studio, Joan changes into ballet slippers before assuming control of the baby, placing him on the blanket-swathed “boppy”—a plush donut designed to aid inexperienced sitters. “Gimme those fingers!” she says as she crawls on the floor, just to the side of Rene, who is poised silently with a digital camera. “I saw you! I saw you! Where did you go?” Joan maintains a steady, ceaseless patter. “Can I have those fingers? I want them! I want those fingers! Gimme those fingers! Where did you go? I want those fingers! Oh, you want them too.” She then makes a choochoo noise. “I saw that teddy! I said, uh oh, what’s he doing? He’s a dribbler!” Here Marcus’s face requires mopping. “Make some noise,” Joan says to Rene. He emits a series of Donald Duck quacks. While Joan and Rene shoot, Mom and Dad are strictly forbidden to interact with them or with Marcus. They hover in the PHOTO (LEFT) BY CHARLIE CROOM OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY STORYTELLERS PHOTOGRAPHY

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

background, smiling and looking a little amazed. Finally Marcus is diaper-clad, on his back, and coiled in pale blue chiffon. He’s giving wide, open-mouthed smiles—and, as hoped, grabbing his toes. “Who’s eating his toesies?” continues Joan. “Where’s Marcus?” Marcus is right where she wants him. He vomits promptly upon completing the session. There’s soft music playing in the background, the kind you might expect to hear in a jewelry store or the waiting room of a spa. Joan puts her street shoes back on. She escorts the family downstairs to discuss their next appointment.

he documentary photographer Dorothea Lange claimed, “It is no more an accident that the photographer becomes a photographer than the lion tamer a lion tamer.” This was not obviously true of Joan Genest. Joan says that before she started dating Rene and assisting him on shoots, she was never particularly interested in photography. She offered to help carry his equipment, and ended up deciding that she might as well learn to take pictures herself. In three months she was shooting weddings—one of the most challenging assignments for a portrait photographer. She was a blonde twenty-one-year-old who looked about twelve; all things considered, she says, “I think people were surprised by how confident I was.” Now the Genests are a team. For baby portraits, Joan does the legwork while Rene snaps away; at nursery schools, Rene takes the lead; and when photographing high school seniors (another substantial chunk of their business) they each work independently. Rene might reminisce fondly about his mother’s twin-lens

reflex, but Joan came at photography from a business perspective—growing up, she had helped her dad with his tire store. “I knew every kind of tire there was,” she recalls. Photography was just another family business. Still: “I have a creative side,” she says. “I am left-handed.” She grew up in Connecticut and studied French at UVM before marrying Rene, who was one of her older brother’s friends. At the moment, she’s working to earn a fellowship from the American Society of Photographers. “I’m very competitive,” she explains. Qualifying entails selecting twenty-five prints around a theme (in her case, children’s photography) and writing a 2000 word thesis. Fortunately, she has plenty to say. Two-week-olds: This is the perfect age for a sleeping-baby photo. Lay them on a heating pad and set the thermostat in the room to 85-95 degrees. Wait. Three-month-olds: They can focus at a distance of one foot. If they see a human face, they’re happy; they don’t care who it is. This is a good age for portraits in christening outfits, maybe in a wicker basket. Six-month-olds: When propped in the boppy, they can hold their own heads up. Mothers claim this is possible at three months; they’re wrong. One-year-olds: Babies of this age are good for standing against props, because they generally can’t escape. Good props to stand a one-year-old against include bathtubs and chairs, although the Genests also have a restored Civil-War-era chest that works nicely. You just have to edit out any photos where the babies manage to detach themselves from the props, because if they do this they look weird and adrift. Two-year-olds: At this point you have to worry about stranger anxiety. Here Joan’s real skill comes in—she has “a lot of psychology things” to coax forth a photo. She ignores the baby and plays with Mom to get its attention. “If they’re shy, I’m shy,” she says. “I hide behind Squeaky Bird.” Squeaky Bird is old, maybe twenty. Joan has already had to replace his squeaker. As a “puppet connoisseur,” she knows a winner when she sees one, and Squeaky’s mouth opens wide enough that he can play catch. Still, she recently acquired a frog puppet as backup. Another important part of her arsenal is a collection of small, pastel-colored foam cat toys, which the Genests buy in bulk at the pet store. In 1937, Alfred Dé Lardi wrote Your Child’s Portrait, a small but exhaustively specific guide to photographing children. To parents and other aspiring portrait photographers, he offered a compendium of suggested poses, sorted by age and accompanied by descriptions of the elaborate ruses necessary to achieve them. For example, he presented the following instructions on photographing two-to-four-year-olds: To hold the child’s attention while you are photographing him, place a coin, preferably a twenty-five cent piece, in the center of your forehead and ask the boy to watch and see what happens. When you have attracted his attention, wrinkle your forehead and the coin will drop to the floor or into your palm, as the case may be. In this fleeting instant you will get a perfectly natural expression on the boy’s face.

Joan favors a less precisely choreographed approach. “The key up there is just to play,” she explains. “Up there” suggests a stage, and it’s true that the studio becomes a kind of theater: the child

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performs for Joan (maybe), Joan performs for the child (definitely), and even the parents do their best with the roles of Mom and Dad. In Joan’s hands, though, the show is all improv. Of course, it’s partly the evolution of technology that encourages such spontaneity. Digital photography—with its liberating lack of film costs—means that contemporary photographers can shoot with an abandon unknown to Dé Lardi’s audience. Storytellers began the transition to digital shortly after high-quality digital cameras hit the pro market, around 1998. At the time, they cost $25,000-$35,000. After waiting for Kodak to release its next model, the Genests bought a DCS 520 for $9000, and it paid for itself in six months. Joan remembers staying up until two or three every morning when she was first learning the digital processes. She still handles the computer work, which involves editing as well as such Photoshop tweaks, as acne removal and the occasional head-swap. Head-swaps are complimentary if necessary to create “the perfect shot” in a group photo—smiles all around and no messy hair. Sometimes, though, families specifically request them. In these cases Joan charges $25 a head. She scorns the photographers who dump all their photos online and allow customers to wade through them. Storytellers does all sales on-site. Customers sit in a comfortable room and watch a PowerPoint presentation of images Joan has selected, highlighting her favorite few. She estimates that about 85 percent of the time the customers choose the pictures she recommends. With film, it took eight to ten weeks after shooting to fill an order; now, it’s one week at the most. Today the Genests shoot with digital SLRs, a Canon 5D and a Kodak Pro SLR/n. They don’t have to worry about the silver stains and dichroic fog of 1937. But the spirit of their profession hasn’t changed much in the last seven decades: “First and most important of all, you must really like children,” Dé Lardi wrote. “You cannot pretend.”

his will be a rare autumn-themed portrait: the occasion calls for a painted backdrop and small scarecrow. Joan claims to be a Michael’s fiend (as in Michael’s craft store) while sprinkling fake leaves through the studio. The family— Mom, Grandma, Isabella, Luciano, and Amalia— comes upstairs. Joan is already back in ballet slippers. Rene turns to the mother and grandmother. “You remember the one rule, right?” Dé Lardi would have supported the Storytellers ban on parental chatter. “The greatest annoyance in making photographs of children is that everyone in the room usually thinks up cute things to say to the baby,” he sniffed, “with the result that the infant does not know in which direction to look and your photographic efforts are a total failure.” Rene puts a finger to his lips, and Grandma gets in a last word before forking over the baby: “One thing about her—she loves ducks.”

All three kids wear clean white sweaters. Isabella, the oldest, looks bored. Mom has been placed out of sight behind a silver reflector, where she stands looking worried. The Morizios are, on the whole, a worried-looking bunch. The baby, Amalia, becomes desperate once her pacifier is uncorked. She starts to whimper. “Where is that…jingleball?” Joan trills, and then begins to sing the alphabet as she fetches the ball from a shelf of toys. “She doesn’t like to sit like that,” says Isabella. “I think she wants the ball.” But now Joan is blowing bubbles and instructing Luciano to say “bananas,” then “hippopotamus,” then “pickles.” Amalia’s brown eyes remain concerned. Luciano’s hand drifts out of his pocket. “Don’t pick that nose,” says Isabella. Squeaky Bird is called into action. “Ducky. Ducky. Ducky. Ducky,” says Amalia. Joan is doing wind sprints back and forth with Squeaky before she resorts to bouncing a ball off Rene’s head. The silver reflector billows. “Ducky. Ducky,” continues Amalia. “Ducky.” The Genests will shoot children only in the morning: despite what some parents claim, it’s the time when they’re happiest and best behaved. “The personalities—the pleasant personalities— really come out,” explains Rene. Amid the bubbles and jingleballs it’s hard to remember this, but the three kids have to smile for just a fraction of a second to make the picture. Or, failing that, Joan will head-swap.

gold book sits on the coffee table in the waiting room. Its cover shows a blond family, all in white shirts and khakis, and the photographs inside have captions like “Beach Walkers,” “Threshold to Motherhood,” “The Whole World in My Hand,” and “Loving.” Some have painterly edges, or artificial colors. One is sepia-toned. Nowhere else do the blond children appear, but still, you can’t help feeling that you’re looking at some sort of surreal family album. The whole building continues this impression: it invites you to take a plush seat, stare at the myriad faces that line the walls, and imagine yourself, your picture, among them. The illusion of a hyper-home, a building oversaturated with family, is disrupted only by the businesslike restroom sign on one door. In fact, the front part of the building is the Genest family home—their two children are away at college now, but they grew up here. Joan and Rene have made three additions to the house since buying it in 1982, creating more studio space, a couple of sales rooms, and a camera room. Despite the big-box stores nearby, the gray house’s maroon shutters look idyllic among the autumn leaves; the Genests used to take pictures out front, but the girls who came in for senior portraits would get catcalls from cars at the busy intersection. Now they shoot in the ample backyard, where they have enough props to simulate many photographic worlds. The highlight is their beach scene, a sandbox-like rectangle of gravel and tall grass surrounding a very brief “dock.” The studio archives are located in the basement. One shot from

The greatest annoyance in making photographs of children is that everyone in the room usually thinks up cute things to say to the baby.

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

1986 shows a sassy girl with red nails and a red shirt peering over red sunglasses in front of a red background. She stands behind Venetian blinds, a popular prop at the time. “Holy smoke!” Rene says as he comes upon another photograph, the first he entered in professional competition. From 1982, it’s titled “Sweet Innocence,” and shows an angelic blond girl child. “Except for the clothes and the hairstyles,” he says, “it’s timeless.” Of course, claiming a photograph, any photograph, as “timeless” is a tricky thing. Time is what photography captures; time is what photography depends upon; time is what gives photography its power. Time helps explain the particular appeal of photographing children: parents’ desire to record the passage of time, and the fact that children’s rapid changes give their recorded images an inevitable elusiveness. Portraits were one of the earliest popular uses for photographic technology. With the development of the reasonably convenient and reasonably priced daguerreotype, ordinary sitters could own an image of themselves, provided they were willing to endure exposure times of several minutes and the use of a rigid posing apparatus to hold their head in place. Given the challenge of sitting still, perhaps it’s not surprising that many early children’s photos are post-mortem—families would bring deceased children to the studio for what would likely be their only portrait. The body would be posed as if sleeping. Children and families were considered ideal subject matter for aspiring female photographers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: such portraits allowed them to work from home, and they were assumed to have an especially intuitive understanding of their sitters. Gertrude Käsebier was a member

of Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession (a group of self-consciously artistic photographers formed at the turn of the century), and the first issue of Stieglitz’s journal Camera Work was devoted to her photography. But, starting in 1897, she also ran a successful Fifth Avenue portrait studio. She was best known for her images of children and mothers, which captured spontaneity and activity, maternal bliss but also babies’ natural squirminess. One of Käsebier’s most famous works, “Blessed Art Thou Among Women,” depicts a softly focused mother and daughter in a doorway. It exemplifies her sense for elegant lighting and composition, fusing the subject matter of her portraiture with the sensibilities of her artistic work. Still, Käsebier resigned from the Photo-Secession in 1912 after Stieglitz, disdainful of her business acumen, accused her of operating “a commercial factory.” As photographic technology became more convenient (no more glass plate negatives or messy emulsions), Kodak used kids to sell cameras to the masses. “All the little kings and queens of childhood’s realm command your Kodak,” declared one ad from the early twentieth century. Or, as a 1909 ad more tersely put it: “Kodak the children.” Kodak promised that if you pressed the button, the company would do the rest—and photography’s ease and accessibility only multiplied over the following century. In 2007, the New York Times ran a business story about mothers who bought cameras (the newly affordable high-end digital SLRs) to document their own babies, and then went on to start part-time photography businesses. The democratization of the medium, it seems, has come full circle. Although they’re derisively referred to as MWAC—“Mom With A Camera”—operations on some photo message boards, the Professional Photographers of America con-

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of cell phone cameras. So why are we still doing this? Why has so little changed in the 71 years since Alfred Dé Lardi instructed his readers to stick coins to their foreheads? What keeps families coming back to the studio?

CHARLIE CROOM/YDN

Joan and Rene Genest, proprietors of Storytellers Photography.

firms their rising numbers. The MWACs may not have Käsebier’s artistic skills or aspirations, but they seem very much in line with the turn-of-the-century model of a domestic portraitist. These days, when artists photograph children, they’re often trying to subvert such a tradition. In the early nineties, Sally Mann achieved enormous success with portraits of her three children playing, often naked, around the family’s rural Virginia home. The photographs depicted childhood as feral, messy, sexual. Wild controversy ensued. Mann was accused of child pornography but also inundated with press and sales; the work was deliberately provocative and shockingly beautiful, defiantly unlike any standard image of a child. In fact, the stereotypes of children’s portraiture (smiles, toys, a solitary figure in front of an artificially cheery backdrop) are familiar enough that riffing on them is a project unto itself, as in the work of German photographer Loretta Lux. Lux uses her own paintings as backdrops, turning the clean environment of the studio into a disconcerting void, and Photoshops her child models just enough to render them otherworldly—wide-eyed and feverish. As Critic Richard B. Woodward has noted, the modest scale of her prints further aligns the work with commercial portraits rather than fashionable art-world hugeness. In On Photography, Susan Sontag said that “recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing”—and this was in 1973, long before the advent

oan claims it’s the lighting. “Lighting is everything. It’s what sets us apart from the soccer mom with a point-and-shoot,” she says. The studio’s main light, the one that provides the picture’s base exposure, is covered in a large, square soft box that melts away shadow edges. Another set of lights gives the background texture. A fill light bounces off the ceiling. An accent light, with a strip soft box, skims in from the side to give the arrangement a touch of flavor: “It’s like garlic,” Joan says. She shakes her head. “My sister won’t go to the movies with me because I just talk about the lighting.” When newborn Madison arrives for her session, the lights are indeed radiant. A swath of chiffon hangs from wires across the studio background. It’s supported by a combination of tulle and powerful-looking clamps. “Did Joan tell you the one rule?” Rene asks Mom. Joan did. But it’s hard to see why Mom would even try to interfere—Joan’s already working her magic. “You are a princess!” she informs Madison. “I never saw such a—what a silly girl! Peekaboo! I know you’re so funny. I know you’re so funny. What’s that all about? Beep beep. I said, beep beep beep.” Madison is propped on her back, head elevated. She appears to be experiencing delight too great for her body to express. Her arms stretch and her mouth strains open in a smile. “Can we borrow Mom for a minute?” Joan asks. “Can I borrow your hand?” She instructs the mother to take off her shoes and push up her sleeves. They get some shots with Mom’s hand resting near the baby on the baby stand. Then Joan escorts Mom off to change into a giant white men’s shirt. When she returns, Rene instructs Mom not to worry about the baby, just about herself. Joan adjusts the chair and demonstrates a pose. Rene turns to the grandmother who escorted Madison and Mom, and tells her how glad he is that her daughter would participate in the picture.

Lighting is everything. It’s what sets us apart from the soccer mom with a point-and-shoot. The studio, it seems, transforms everyone into a well-behaved child. And perhaps this is what keeps people coming back—the ritual that takes place beneath the lights. Here you can see yourself through Joan’s lens. You can play the role Joan creates for you. You are so funny, and Joan knows it. The baby is curled against her mother’s forearms, their heads almost touching. Mom is frozen in place; Madison wriggles. Joan hovers behind Mom. She gives her a rub on the back and strokes her hair behind her ear. “Relax your shoulders a little,” she says. “I know. I know you’re working so hard.”

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Clever Title

BY BRYCE TAYLOR

Creation is never an isolated business, especially when it’s for a creative writing class. In this story, what you think you know is very different from what you will have known.

For Herblin. Thanks for all the help, old dog. (And for Cindy...) HE MOUSE IS feisty today,” y’all will have said. The sun will have shone [adverb beginning with s] on the soapy skin of y’all’s faces. Y’all will have opened the cage and reached y’all’s hands in, having arranged the mesmerizing, [m adj.] maze. “That’s a good mouse,” y’all will have said, ogling behind y’all’s laboratory goggles. Then IT TOOK ME a full hour to write that. Donna made me start with, “The mouse is feisty today.” She exhorted me to be “crazy outlandish” with the point of view and the verb tenses. So I was. It was to be the first secondWALLACE PRIZE WINNER person-plural future-perfect-tense short story ever written. 3rd Place Fiction The first one about a feisty mouse, anyway. She also told me to be alliterative, absurdly alliterative. Basically she set me up to smear excrement all over innocent sheets of paper. I was feeling constipated. So I forsook my Word Document (“excrement3.doc”) and set out for the shoddy basement of my shoddy apartment building. There was coffee in the basement, sometimes. There was also Herblin in the basement, most times. Herblin was, Herblin is, my notorious roommate. His notoriety stems principally from the salacious sci-fi sagas he’s so fond of writing, which rarely fail to make Donna GRAPHICS BY LOIDE MARWANGA

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May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

cross her legs in wrath as if crushing a stubborn nut between her kneecaps. “Utterly unprofessional and unartistic,” she snaps. After three installments of “Adventures in the Black Hole” and three of Donna’s resulting discourses on the nature of art and the pleasure of fiction and the value of metafiction — Donna loves metafiction — Herblin had finally decided to try something new. His next piece was due Friday. Mine was due Wednesday. It was late Tuesday night when I descended the stairs to find coffee and Herblin and a muse. The basement was dark and deserted. There was a light flickering timidly in a far corner, as if fluttering its eyelashes, and the television was on. I turned left and strolled to the coffeemaker with the exaggerated nonchalance of a lone nocturnal basement wanderer taking pains to assure himself that ghosts and serial killers dwell exclusively in bad movies and cheap fiction. Or perhaps: I turned left and strolled to the coffeemaker with the forced indifference of a solitary basement explorer struggling for self-assurance. Y’all will have judged which is better. The pitcher was halfway full, the coffee ostensibly hot. I snatched one of two remaining Styrofoam cups from the counter and began to pour. “Hello!” “Holy shh…!” I shrieked, turning around savagely and spilling coffee all over my arm, pants, and shoe. Then I shrieked again. The coffee was hot. “What the hell, man?” “Sorry,” said the perpetrator. He had been lying, silent and still, on the couch in front of the television. Now he was stand-

“Well, it’s the truth.” “What are you doing down here, son?” he asked, scratching his round, stubble-decked face. “Besides getting the living bejesus scared out of me?” “I guess.” “Quit calling me ‘son.’ I came down to drink some coffee and think about this goddamn story.” “What story?” he asked, eyebrow raised. I glared at him. I walked over to the couch and sat down. He followed, sat down on the other side. “All right, goddamn it. If you’re so curious, I am obliged to compose a short story by tomorrow night. I’m in a creative writing class at Thurman, a night class. My dumbass roommate is in the class, too,” I yawned. “Mechanics by day, Shakespeares by night.” “Mechanics, huh? That’s a good trade.” He sighed. “Any ideas?” “What?” “D’you have any ideas for your story?” Beneath his voice a quiet hum reached us from the television set. SportsCenter was flashing inaudibly. “I have to start with a sentence about a mouse. ‘The mouse is feisty today,’ something like that. I’m thinking I’ll make it a story about a science laboratory, and the mouse is a lab rat. Lab mouse. You know.” “I see,” he nodded. There was a hint of befuddlement. “Sounds… nice.” “What’s your story?” I asked. “My story?” “Forget it.” He shifted his weight to the tune of a creaking couch. “D’you say your roommate was a dumbass?” “Most certainly.” “What’s his name?” “Herblin. The Herb. Herbit the Frog. Herbal Essences.” “Anybody named Herblin can’t be too bad a fellow, can he?” He crossed his legs and smiled. “I mean, he sounds like, you know, like the kind of guy who’s got an innocent face, a nice smile…” “You’re right, actually. His face is innocent as hell. But he’s a chronic show-off. In this class, for example. He writes absolute garbage, stuff about aliens and robots, but he does it in a show-offy way. He’ll pull out these words, like ‘befuddlement’ or something. And you know why? He’s showing off for Cindy, the blonde who sits in the first row. He denies it, but I know. There’s this secret war going on between me and him, and the winner is supposed to get Cindy. She has no idea about any of it, of course. Not yet. And I’ll admit it: I write for Cindy, too. But at least I will admit it. I’m more manly that way.” “I’m sure if he was writing for Cindy, he would tell you.” “Nah. He’s a chronic liar, too.” I took my last sip and tossed the cup to the waste bin. Missed by inches. “How long you been a mechanic?” he asked, eyes on the television. “Look, man, I’m tired of talking,” I said. He just sat there, quiet, eyes fixed on the screen. I sighed melodramatically. “I have been a mechanic for the duration of five years. Ever since

It was to be the first second-personplural future-perfect-tense short story ever written. The first one about a feisty mouse, anyway. ing. His face was round and his belly bulged. “What are you doing down here?” I asked, wiping my pants with napkins. “My job.” “Your job?” “Yes. Security. Didn’t mean to startle you, son.” He grinned. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.” I finished cleaning myself off as he looked on with a grin that meant to be endearing. I grabbed the last cup. “Don’t you think,” I started, “I mean… shouldn’t you be on the lookout somewhere? Doing your job?” “I’m on break.” “Likely story,” I muttered. “Beg pardon?” “Nothing.” I gulped the coffee. “So what’s your name?” “Gradington,” he said. “And yours?” “Gradington?” I laughed. “I don’t see anything funny about it. What’s your name?” “I don’t give my name to rotund strangers,” I said. He frowned, and I gave in. “Fine. I’ll play along. My name is Jim.” “That’s boring,” he said.

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goddamn Herblin talked me into dropping out of high school with him.” “And how long have you been writing?” “Forever. My dad’s a writer. The fancy New Yorker type. And Herblin’s crazy dad is a mechanic, so we learned to do both. Cars and words.” I yawned nostalgically, if possible. “We essentially lived at the auto shop growing up, and Herb’s dad taught us all about cars. Words, on the other hand… we had to learn about words on our own. We read a lot, and wrote awful stories. Then we started taking these writing classes a couple years back. Laying under cars all day can leave you feeling… I don’t know. Itchy inside. So we write for sanity. And for the hell of it.” “Lying,” he said placidly. “What?” “Lying under cars all day.” “Jesus! I said ‘laying’ for your sake. You’re supposed to be some kind of security guard, aren’t you? I’m not gonna go around saying ‘lying’ in front of a goddamn security guard. Do you want me to say ‘whom,’ too?” “What are you talking about?” “Just shut up, will you?” I leaned forward, checked my watch. “I need to get some writing done, or else Donna with her rosered fingers is going to give us another angry lecture.” I stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll tell you my story,” he said, looking back at me over his shoulder. “What, like your autobiography?” “Well, no. I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you how I got to be a security guard.” I glanced at my watch again. “Fine,” and I returned to the couch. After a couple of Let’s Sees and Where Should I Begins, he saw, and he began. “I used to run this restaurant,” he said, “with my friend Tony. It was an Italian joint, over on Kings Street.” “What was it called?” “The Pizzatarian. But we had more than pizza.” “Never heard of it,” I said. “Well, it was there. And we were raking in the dough, I tell you. It was like we’d always pictured it. Just me and Tony, and our families, running our own restaurant. ” “How long had you known Tony?” I asked. “Oh, since we were kids. He would always come over to my place, growing up. Over in the Italian slums.” “You’re Italian?” “Well, sure,” he said. “What’d you say your name was?” “Gradington.” “Hm.” “My dad was only half Italian,” he explained. “Right.”

“Anyway, Tony and me are running this Italian joint, and we’re raking in the dough, you know. We were the kings on Kings Street, as Tony put it. Everything was great for a couple years.” “What happened?” I asked, with only mild facetiousness. “Well, see, Tony started running into some trouble. Gambling and all that. And his wife wanted to leave him. And his daughter… well. Let’s just say he was having some problems at home. I had to take care of things at the restaurant. Tony didn’t show up for days at a time. And then comes the worst thing you can imagine. Tony storms in one day, just shouting away and sobbing, looking drunk, you know, and he runs back to the kitchen where I am, where I’m cooking some pasta, and he runs right up to me, you know, sobbing. But he doesn’t make it all the way to me, because there’s grease on the floor, and he slips, bang!, and he hits the back of his head against one of the metal pots on the floor, and he’s out cold. “Well, we call the ambulance and everything, you know, and they rush him to the hospital. I’m sitting in the waiting room like a lunatic, waiting to hear how he’s doing, how he’s holding up, you know. Soon enough, doctor walks up to me and says, he says, ‘Sorry to say it, but your buddy’s in a coma.’ Well, that was the tops. And his wife and daughter, they aren’t even at the hospital, see, they’ll have none of it. So I’m the only one that pays him any visits, really. Every night after closing things up at the restaurant, I’d drive over to the hospital, see how he’s doing. It was horrible. And it was really boring, too, I can tell you that. Because he was just laying there on the bed, unconscious. Lying there, I mean. So one night when I’m really bored, you know, I think to myself, how can I pass the time? I’ve already prayed a lot. I’ve already bought a sandwich and eaten my fill. So I’m sitting there in a daze thinking about what to do, and my eye must have been set on this pickle I hadn’t eaten, over on the table, because all of a sudden this idea comes to me about making up a story, and telling it to Tony. A story about a pickle, see. I know it sounds weird. It was the first and last story I ever made up. And it was a nice way of passing the time, you know, so every night I’d sit down and tell a little bit more of the story, even though Tony was out cold. Anyway, it was really an awful story, and so one night I’m going on about the pickles, and all of a sudden — ” “Whoa, time out. Aren’t you going to tell me the pickle story?” “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “Hm. Yeah, I’m gonna have to hear this one. It’ll make a nice contrast with all these sci-fi sagas I’ve had to put up with recently.” “Fine,” he said. “I can’t tell you all the details, of course. It got to be a pretty big story. But here goes. “Once upon a time — God, it’s really an awful story — any-

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way, once upon a time, there was this pickle named Dylan. And ever since he could remember, Dylan had lived in this dark cellar, by hisself, just him and the pickle juice he swims in. Except one day, this bright light shines up at the top of the cellar, and down plops this other fellow, this really tall fellow named Raymond. Dylan isn’t sure about Raymond at first, and even a little jealous, because, you know, Raymond is tall and has nice skin and a nice haircut. But Raymond wins him over by telling him stories about his childhood as a cucumber and how he was almost sliced up and tossed into a salad one time. So Dylan decides to be nice to Raymond, and they become good buddies. They play cards and have swimming races in the pickle juice. “But then after a while, the light breaks in again, at the top of the cellar, you know, and this monster of a hand reaches down and pulls Raymond out, and then slams the cellar shut. So Dylan, you can imagine, he’s trembling from fear and wondering what the hell happened to his new buddy. But sure enough, a few hours later, Raymond opens the cellar door and plops right back in again. Dylan asks what the hell happened, you know, and Raymond says he doesn’t know for sure, but they should enjoy themselves while they can. So they play cards again, and swim in the pickle juice, and play catch, you know, all the stuff pickles love to do. Dylan’s having the time of his life, although he’s a little worried about Raymond, because he looks a little worse than before — you know, his skin isn’t so healthy-looking, and he’s not standing so tall. But he doesn’t worry too much, because they’re having a heck of a time playing together.” “Where is this cellar?” I asked. “I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it. Patience. Where was I?” “They’re playing in the cellar.” “Right. So Dylan and Raymond, they’re having a ball together, you know. Well, sure enough, a little later, the monster hand reaches down again and yanks Raymond out. And, sure enough, Raymond’s back after a few hours, now looking a little worse than before, but he’s healthy enough to play with Dylan. The same thing happens again and again. Eventually they can’t play anymore, since Raymond’s gotten so weak and sick. He’s gotten to be even shorter than Dylan, and his skin is all wrinkled and gross, and he’s tender, real tender. As usual, the light breaks through from the top of the cellar, and the monster hand reaches in, only this time, see, it stops all of a sudden, and doesn’t pick up Raymond. It just leaves and shuts the cellar closed. “Now, Raymond’s on his death bed, and Dylan’s bawling like

a baby cucumber. ‘Quit crying,’ Raymond says, ‘quit crying.’ And Dylan says, ‘But you’re dying!’ All of a sudden Raymond, he starts quivering, like he’s about to cry too, and he says, ‘Listen, Dylan. I gotta confess something to you.’ ‘What’s that?’ Dylan asks him. ‘Well,’ Raymond says — and his voice gets real quiet and serious, you know — he says, ‘Well, Dylan… I’m not exactly a pickle.’ Dylan gasps, you know, because he’s in shock, and then he asks, ‘Are you a regular cucumber, then?’ ‘Not exactly,’ Raymond says. ‘The truth is, well… I’m a banana.’ And Dylan cries, ‘A banana?’ ‘Yes, a banana,’ Raymond says. And he explains to Dylan, he says, ‘I was coming into your cellar so I wouldn’t get mashed into a pulp, like all the other bananas.’ ‘Mashed into a pulp?’ Dylan says. ‘What do you mean mashed into a pulp?’ ‘Well,’ Raymond says, ‘don’t you know where we are, Dylan? Don’t you know where you’ve been living all this time?’ Dylan’s eyes get real wide, and he says no, he has no idea. ‘We’re in a gosh darn smoothie shop!’ Raymond says. ‘They call it “blending.” It means death, bloody death. I was coming into your cellar,’ Raymond says, ‘because nobody ever orders the Sour Pickle Smoothie. This is the safest place in the whole shop. And every night, when the murderers were looking through the cellars to make sure all the fruits were in order, they saw me in the wrong place and moved me to the banana cellar.’ ‘Well,’ Dylan says, ‘why didn’t they move you the last time?’ And Raymond answers, in his weak little whisper he says, ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’ve become so rotten, so brown and shriveled, so, you know, so soaked in pickle juice, they can’t tell me apart from a pickle.’ “So Dylan was devastated, you know, just devastated, because his friend had been lying to him, but even more because his friend was wasting away. And just when it sounds like Raymond is gasping his last few breaths, the light breaks in and the monster hand reaches down. The hand fiddles around on the cellar floor for a second, and then it snatches poor old Raymond. And as Raymond’s being yanked out of the cellar, he shouts to Dylan with all his strength, he says, ‘Dylan! Somebody ordered the pickle smoothie! It’s for the best, buddy. Thanks for all the good times!’ And then the cellar door’s slammed shut, and it’s dark, and the echoes from Raymond’s voice keep jumping back and forth along the cellar walls.” Silence. Then my voice. “Is that it?” “That’s it for Dylan and Raymond,” he said. “Oh, come on,” I said. “You can’t very well start with a ‘once upon a time’ and then not end with a ‘happily ever after.’”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You can’t very well start with a ‘once upon a time’ and then not end with a ‘happily ever after.’”

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“Well, maybe I would have. But I never got to finish with the story.” “And why is that?” I asked. “Soon as I told that part about the cellar door being slammed shut, and the darkness and the echoes, Tony turns to me and he says, ‘You can’t end it like that!’ and he gives me a big thump on the head with the backside of his hand.” “Tony?” I asked. “Yeah.” “Comatose Tony?” “Believe me, son, I was more shocked than you are. I didn’t know whether to thump him on the head or give him a big hug. So I do neither one, I just start to shout something, and he shushes me and pulls me in close and starts to whisper. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I ain’t been in no coma. I had to pretend to be in a coma for a while — ’” “Because of his gambling debts,” I said. “That’s probably part of it. Plus his wife was trying to get him to sign divorce papers. Anyways, he says, ‘I had to pretend to be in a coma for a while, but now you’ve gone and ruined a perfectly good story! You gotta change the ending,’ he says, ‘you gotta go back to the part where they’re playing cards and change everything you said after that.’” “So did you?” “Well, no! At the time I was pretty proud of the way the story was going, and I wasn’t about to change it for some, you know, some lunatic who’s been pretending to be in a coma for two weeks! So I stop visiting him at the hospital. And pretty soon he pretends to wake up from the coma, and he leaves the hospital and gets back to living life. I guess by now he could be floating in a river somewhere, I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. I’m just being honest. But anyway, after he left the hospital, we closed down the Pizzatarian. Sold it, split the money. And a week later, here I am. A security guard.” I crossed my legs and stared at the flashing television screen. “So that’s your story, huh?” “That’s my story,” he said. “For Friday?” “What do you mean for Friday?” he asked. “Oh, come on,” I said. “What?” “Knock it off already. Is that your story for Friday or not?” He sighed, resigned. “Yup. That’s my story for Friday.” I tilted my head back and laughed. “My God, Herblin,” I said. “How in the hell do you come up with this stuff?” He grinned his Herblin grin, and the light flashing from the Mercedes Benz commercial danced frantically on his white t-shirt, his bulging belly.

HE NEXT DAY we were laying under cars and talking. “I mean, if it works for you, fine,” I said. “But it is strange.” “What is?” Herblin asked. “Hand me the socket wrench, will you?” “What’s strange?” he insisted. “Becoming your characters before you write their stories. It’s very odd. But I will say,” I added, “I liked Gradington a hell of a lot more than I liked Horny Hopkins the Space Ranger.”

“Come on. Horny Hopkins was a saint.” “Right,” I said. “You do know I owe it all to you.” “All of what?” “My story.” “How’s that?” I asked. “I had no idea what I was going to write about. Then you spilled your coffee, and I got this image in my head of someone spilling grease all over the floor, and then someone slipping on it and smashing his head. It’s like they say. Creation is never an isolated business.” “Who says that?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Somebody.” “Hm.” “Plus, I essentially stole the Dylan-Raymond plotline from that story of yours about the tablespoon, the one you wrote a couple years ago.” “Not exactly.” “Well, they are similar,” he said. “Are you going to dedicate your story to me, then? Since I basically wrote it for you.” “Nah. I’m thinking I might dedicate it to Cindy. The semester’s wrapping up. It’s my last chance.” “I thought you didn’t write for Cindy,” I said. “I don’t.” “Right. Could you hand me the torque wrench?” “She does seem to like the story-within-a-story thing,” he mused. “And plot twists. So my Gradington story could work wonders.” “You should lay off of her, you know. To be fair. You always get the girls.” “Do you have any idea how much toil and trouble it takes to make this belly endearing to beautiful women? It takes a lot of good prose. A lot of good prose. I’m this close. I can feel it. Besides, you went out with What’s Her Name. Last year.” “Yeah,” I said. “Look. I’m all about being fair. Just write a good story for tonight, and we’ll see who she flirts with after class.” “Whom.” “Speaking of which,” he said, “did you finish writing your story last night?” “Almost. I still have to add some final touches before tonight.” “What’s it about?” “You’ll see,” I said. “Do you think Donna will mind if it’s not exactly fiction? If it’s just an account of a… I don’t know. A lived experience?” “Nah. She’ll eat it up.” “Hope so,” I said. “I thought you had to write about a feisty mouse.” “Yeah,” I said. “I hope she’ll overlook that. Donna has a pretty good sense of humor, doesn’t she?” “All you need is a good title, and you’ll be fine. She’s a sucker for clever titles.” “Hm. Being clever is difficult. Maybe I’ll just title it… ‘Clever Title.’” “Very meta. Donna swoons for meta. Go with it.” So I did. Y’all will have known that already.

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

BY JERRY GUO

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

One collector’s love of history evolved into a multimillion-dollar industry, but will eBay, Britney Spears, and DNA technology ruin his controversial hobby?

heard John Reznikoff ’s booming voice, reminiscent of a seasoned announcer’s on Antiques Roadshow, before I saw him. He came bounding from the office kitchen in Nike sneakers, looking much younger and livelier than how I’d expected the “father of modern hair collecting,” as he put it, to appear. Forty-six years old, Reznikoff still had hair in all the right places — a respectable amount on the eyebrows, more than average on the arms, and none coming out of his ears; that is, except for the fact he was completely bald. “I just shaved this yesterday,” was one of the first things he said, and throughout our conversation, he continued to drop subtle hints that he was not, in fact, going bald. I learned he occasionally treats himself to $60 hairWALLACE PRIZE WINNER cuts at Peter Coppola Salon and that his favorite shampoo rd 3 Place Nonfiction is a tossup between Paul Mitchell Tea Tree and Nexxus Sleektress (their website seems to suggest the target user is seventeen and looking forward to the prom). You see, for someone who owns a $10 million collection of hair from historical PHOTOGRAPHY BY GINGER JIANG

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Reznikoff points to hair snipped from Abraham Lincoln’s head after his assassination by Booth (whose hair Reznikoff also has).

figures — the largest in existence, according to Guinness World Records — it’s important to stop any rumors suggesting he has a hair loss problem. Selling locks of hair to other dealers of collectible memorabilia nets him enough to pay the salaries of his ten employees at University Archives in Westport, Connecticut. He already has strands from some of the greatest names in history: Washington, JFK, Napoleon, Einstein, Beethoven, Chopin, and about 120 others. Each year, he lets himself buy three or four additional locks from auction houses, a global network of “pickers” (small-time dealers), and the occasional grandmother who just cleaned out her attic. Reznikoff energetically advertises his $10 million plus annual business in stamps, autographs, and Americana, but when it comes to his beloved hair collection, he keeps a low profile — he doesn’t advertise, sell to the public, or buy clippings of living people. With the rise of eBay and celebrity mania, what was once a gentleman’s hobby among a few dozen enthusiasts has turned into a multi-million-dollar industry, complete with professional dealers and professional quacks. Thousands of small-time collectors now jostle alongside Sotheby’s and Christie’s for snippets of Marilyn Monroe’s golden curls (rare), Katherine Hepburn’s brunette tresses (rarer), and Elvis’s black locks (rarest). In October, one collector paid $119,500 — edging out Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — for the only known tuft of hair from revolutionary hero Che Guevera. In February, a hairstylist offered to

sell Britney Spears’s shaved hair for $1 million. Beyond the initial yuck factor, hair collecting has turned into a tabloid exercise, as people use DNA tests to dig up dirt on celebrities past and present. Did Lincoln have syphilis? Was Beethoven hooked on prostitutes? Is Britney still doing coke? As the de facto spokesman for the world’s hair collectors, Reznikoff remains unfazed amidst the swirls of controversy and the perversion of an innocent hobby. He continues, much as he has for the past twenty years, tracking down the rare pieces, poring over historical documents for provenance, and praying that he doesn’t go bald anytime soon.

idden in the back corner of a renovated thread mill, concealed on all sides by neatly trimmed lawns and clapboard houses, University Archives couldn’t have found a more nondescript home. The view used to be slightly more interesting when the Saugatuck River flowed behind the office, but the town rerouted it two blocks away to make room for more houses. The first time I paid a visit, the keyless entry system was broken, so I walked right in and found myself alone in the airy loft. Lisa, the receptionist, was off brewing coffee in the kitchen. At this point, the only obstacle between Reznikoff ’s hair collection and me was an “Employees Only” sign, tacked on a half-opened door across the room. Inside this storage closet, the famous hair had been unceremoniously stuffed into three filing cabinets. The keys were left in the locks.

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

Before he took me into the back, Reznikoff wanted to show off some of his creative handiwork. Propped against one wall was a large gold frame set against a scarlet red background. It contained three individual era portraits of Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and Wellington’s horse, mounted above their respective hair. In another frame, a fading photo of Elvis after getting his famous G.I. haircut (“hair today, gone tomorrow”) with the obligatory hunk of hair were glued onto blue suede. A third frame held yet another era portrait, this one of Charles I (before he lost his head), posed with a few strands of hair taken from his tomb (after he lost his head). I wished the hair wasn’t behind glass so I could give it a good sniff. “Nobody likes just a clump of hair, which is why you need to illustrate the history,” Reznikoff explained as we entered the heart of University Archives — the aforementioned storage closet. It was easy to see why Reznikoff rarely entertained walk-in guests, as the showroom looked (and smelled) more like Grandma’s cluttered attic than the storage facility of a multimilliondollar auction house. But Reznikoff was in his element. “Look at this. Hemingway’s typewriter,” he said matter-of-factly. “That? Cosmonaut spacesuit.” Feeling solemn, as if I were backstage at the Smithsonian, I pointed at a blue dress, hoping it had belonged to Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana. “Oh, yep, you found the Lewinsky dress,” Reznikoff said proudly. I was glad I hadn’t tried to touch it. Our pace sped up even more — so much to see and so little time — once he opened the file cabinets where the hair was kept. Each person received his own folder, usually overflowing with historical documents such as yellowed news clippings and torn pages from diaries that prove the hair’s authenticity, as well as an envelope containing the actual hair. Naturally, nothing was alphabetized. “This, Jack Ruby’s. And here’s John Dillinger’s. Oh! I forgot, I just got Eva Braun’s,” he said, as if their hair were novelty stamps you could simply buy at the post office. Reznikoff had just finished recounting his failed attempt to buy John Wilkes Booth’s hair fifteen years ago. He offered $20,000, because the hair was well documented — Union soldiers had clipped it as a morbid souvenir after shooting him in the Garrett barn. His offer was promptly dismissed with a laugh. He finally snagged the hair years later and only because the collector had died. “The whole experience was sour grapes,” Reznikoff said. “After that, I didn’t want to collect the bad guys.” I wanted to ask why sleeping with Hitler wasn’t bad enough, but as I was pondering this, he had already gone through Dickens, Geronimo, and Hamilton. After seeing that I was sufficiently impressed, Reznikoff beckoned me over to a five-foot-tall safe in the back. The key was not in the lock this time. Inside were most of his autographs and historical documents, neatly organized in three-inch binders. He pulled out a gold case, the pièce de résistance of his collection. Inside was a clump of Lincoln’s hair, bearing a striking resemblance to a Brillo pad. He said, with an air of complete author-

ity, that the hair was easily worth $500,000, and that if I looked closely, I could see dried brain matter. To me, it looked more like the egg bits you find stuck to the Brillo pad after you scrub the frying pan. He waved a thick leather book in front of me, stuffed with documentation that traced the hair’s journey from Peterson House to University Archives. One letter, its flowing script faint from age, was from a General James Grant Wilson, dated 1913: I occasionally had the opportunity of adding some acceptable Lincoln items to Major Lambert’s large collection, but the greatest service of this character, in his judgment, was acquiring for him at a cost of $600 the large blood-stained lock of hair cut from the President’s head when the surgeon was examining the wound made by the assassin’s bullet. It was given to Dr. Taft, an army surgeon, among the first to reach the victim, and who was assisting the chief surgeon in charge. Taft’s son offered the precious relic to me and I secured it for the Major, who deemed it his most precious Lincoln treasure, for locks of his hair are more difficult to obtain than those of Washington.

Reznikoff also showed me some green yarn he kept in the safe. “This is just as valuable as Lincoln’s hair,” he said. “From my son’s blankie.” As we leave the showroom, I noticed a few bottles of wine, dusty and black. “I’m thinking about getting into wine,” he said casually. “I’ve always been a collector. I really believe that’s something genetic — you’re either a collector, or you’re not.” In college, he became so obsessed with stamp collecting that he found himself going to stamp shows instead of his pre-law classes. He ended up making $20,000 a year trading with professional dealers. “That was a lot back then,” he explained. “If you got into a decent law firm, you might have started at $30,000.” So he dropped out in 1981, to the shock of his father, a professor of psychology, and founded a stamp business the same year — naming it “University Archives” as an ironic jab at his dropout status. Twenty-six years later, Reznikoff trades in some of the most valuable memorabilia on the market: JFK’s convertible from the day of his assassination ($1,000,000), a piece of the moon ($100,000),

I pointed at a blue dress hoping it had belonged to Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana. “Oh, yep, you found the Lewinsky dress,” Reznikoff said proudly. a copy of the Declaration of Independence ($50,000). In short, he has become such a financial success he can buy bottles of wine from Edward VIII’s personal collection on a whim.

efore John Reznikoff, there was Mrs. Edwards Pierrepont, the wife of President Grant’s attorney general. She would surely have held the Guinness World Records title, if it had existed in 1860, for the largest hair collection. She collected at the height of the Victorian era, when, instead of asking for

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

autographs from celebrities, people would ask for a lock of hair. Reznikoff, whose own business had already become a financial “More so than an autograph, it was a sign of affection,” Harry success, bought White’s entire collection of 60 figures for just Rubenstein, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum under $100,000. In the last decade, hair collecting has come back in vogue. The of American History, explained to me. Hair collecting became such a trend that in 1840, the U.S. patent office put out a demand has been “insatiable,” said Brian Marren, vice president box for donations towards a national archive. These donations, of acquisitions for Mastro Auctions, which sells approximately Rubenstein said, became the Smithsonian’s current collec- $100,000 in hair per year. In 2002, Marren’s company sold a jar of Elvis’s hair, saved by his bartion — which comprises fourber, for $115,000. “It’s a celebteen presidents and twenty-five rity-driven culture, so almost notable Americans. anything attached to a celebrity Hair collecting in the Victois sellable,” Marren said. “EBay rian era carried more sentimenhas hair for sale every week.” tal value than it does today, Louis Mushro is the most added William Yeingst, another prolific of these eBay dealers, curator at the Smithsonian. selling roughly two thousands Civil War soldiers would wear lots per year from his hair cola locket of their sweetheart’s lection of 36 figures, most of hair. Mothers would save the which he obtained at some hair of their daughters and point from Reznikoff. “There’s incorporate it into pieces of a great interest in hair because jewelry. And middle-class famiof the history, like the Civil lies would construct elaborate War,” he said, referring to his wreaths of flowers, yarn, shells, Abe Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and hair as home decorations and William Quantrill hairs. and memorials. “Its beauty is like the mane of Before the 19th century, hair a horse, something that lasts was even more revered. Alexanforever.” Before ending the der Pope had to write an 894interview, Mushro urged me line epic poem in 1712, The to check out a strand of John Rape of the Lock, to smooth Wayne’s hair on his eBay page. over the ill will created when a “I have the best feedback in the friend of his snipped some hair world,” he said, paused, and from a young woman he fanquickly added, “Besides John’s, cied. This level of emotional of course.” attachment had its origins in But as the Elvis sale sugthe Catholic veneration of hair gests, today’s top dollars don’t as a “first-class relic,” defined as Reznikoff is the de-facto king of the world’s hair collectors. go towards Civil War fogies. In the physical remains of a saint. He is unfazed by the controversial nature of what he feels is February, when Britney Spears St. Helena, mother of Emperor an hobby, and he prays that he won’t go bald anytime soon. had a meltdown and shaved her Constantine I, may have inadhead, her hairdresser Esther vertently become the first hair collector (aside from the ancient Scythians, who had a nasty scalp- Tognozzi was there to help. In an online auction, she wrote, “I ing habit) when she allegedly salvaged the Virgin Mary’s hair from am selling the hair as well as the 3/4 full can of Redbull she was drinking and her blue Bic Lighter … We are offering it for sale Jerusalem in 330 AD. Towards the end of the Victorian Era, hair took a backseat to here at what we feel is a realistic price.” The realistic price? $1 milbaseball cards, a more commercial pursuit fed by the brand-new lion. (Reznikoff appraised it at $3,500.) On the phone, Esther sounded as smooth as her online pernotion of pop culture. Then, with the advent of radio, motion picture, and television, the modern celebrity emerged, and col- sona, as she lamented about how dozens of other entrepreneurs lecting autographs became a national preoccupation. Hair was have been selling fake Britney hair to capitalize on her idea. simply too unwieldy, too impractical, and, frankly, too creepy to One collector offered her a six-figure sum, which she declined. “We just wanted to get enough money out of it so we can help hand out to fans. It was in the 1970s, when hair collecting was at its lowest point the orphans in Armenia and the people who have cancer,” she of popularity and Reznikoff was still a kid collecting comic books explained in absolute seriousness. When I asked her why someand autographs, that Robert L. White, a cleaning-supplies sales- one would pay six figures for Britney’s hair, she made perhaps her man with a curious fetish for collecting shrunken heads, came to first sane observation, “I understand this obsession with celebrithe rescue. He bought Pierrepont’s collection and gave it some ties, but we’ve gone beyond obsession. I don’t even know what Hollywood allure by adding clippings from household names to call it, it’s just sick.” Of course, like a true Hollywood veteran, she had one more like Katherine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. Twenty years ago,

The Yale Daily News Magazine May 2009

thing to add. “So, like, can I get paid for this interview?”

hen I returned to University Archives a week later (Reznikoff had gone to a charity boot camp in the meantime, which explained the shaved head), Lisa told me to head straight into his office. He was wrapping up a phone conversation with someone who wanted to sell him the English novelist William Thackeray’s hair. “Oh, there’s a lock of hair in the front of the book?” he said into a wireless headset, legs propped on the desk. Pause. “Well, it probably wouldn’t be for me without any direct attribution.” Slight pause. “And I already have the hair.” After the call, he explained, “Any relic requires a leap of faith, but the question is, is it a crack in the sidewalk or the Grand Canyon? And that was the Grand Canyon.” Soon after opening his stamp business in 1981, Reznikoff branched into a more academic domain: historical documents, a natural direction since he loved history. “As a kid, I would always know little facts like who was the shortest president (Madison) or the fattest one (Taft),” he said. Perhaps more than anything, his expertise as a historical document expert — he frequently serves as a top witness for the Justice Department on appraisal and fraud cases — sets him apart from the recent crop of smalltime hair collectors. “John is the most diligent, most research-oriented type of person you will meet,” said Mushro, the eBay dealer. “He’s not going to buy something unless he knows it’s absolutely real.” The dealers I spoke to all talked extensively about Reznikoff ’s experience, and in particular, his knowledge of history. “He’s certainly smarter and has a lot more energy than most other people,” said Bob This stamp is among the many relics in Reznikoff’s showroom, which looks Eaton, owner of the auction house R&R Entermore like a cluttered attic than the storage facility of an auction house. prises. “Everybody loves John.” Well, not exactly everyone. Reznikoff, though around with scissors, and that’s not me.” he collects mainly for personal enjoyment, hasn’t Hair collecting poses bigger problems. Thomas Serafin runs escaped controversy. In 2005, he bought some of Neil Armstrong’s hair from his former barber for $3,000. Armstrong was International Crusade for Holy Relics, an organization that profurious and threatened to sue. Reznikoff settled the dispute by tests hair being sold on eBay, mostly because of unscrupulous offering $3,000 to charity. “I don’t do living celebrities any- dealers selling fake relics, but also because hair from American more,” he said. “That has the connotations of a stalker running Indians and Moloka’i Hawaiians are available. “They shouldn’t be collected as history’s baseball cards,” he said. Likewise, many families of contemporary celebrities oppose a part of their loved one being sold for profit. It’s only a matter of time before this pursuit gets dragged into court. A legal squabble already ensued in 2003 over Ted Williams’s head. The most fundamental criticism strikes at the core of hair collecting — a sense that it is a violation of a basic right to privacy. History buffs have used DNA testing on hair from collectors to focus on the dark side of history’s

After the call, he explained, “Any relic requires a leap of faith, but the question is, is it a crack in the sidewalk or the Grand Canyon?

May 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Herein lies the conunbeloved figures. We’ve drum — that though we learned, for instance, that pay people to style it, Jefferson had sex with though it’s painless to cut one of his slaves, and that off, and though there’s an Beethoven, though he almost infinite supply of it didn’t contract syphilis, (as long as you take your was somehow poisoned vitamins), when it comes by lead. to collecting it, well, One collector, Bob that’s just icky. Reznikoff, Eaton, has already sworn however, doesn’t see any off hair collecting, fearmoral or social ambiguity. ing that it may hurt the “Anybody who’s a celebrest of his auction busirity has signed up for this ness. “It’s basically a — that people are going to credibility issue,” he buy their autograph and said. For now, Reznikoff their hair if they can get treads a fine line. “I try it. But I wouldn’t exploit to be generous with the hair to see if someone people doing scientific has an incurable disease. work, but I don’t want That’s not ethical.” to get involved with the Reznikoff preferred wackos,” he said. Case in not to get too philosophpoint — he donated hair ical, because after all, to the Napoleonic Sociit’s just hair. “If I wasn’t ety so researchers there having fun doing this, I could test if Napoleon wouldn’t do it,” he said. was poisoned by strychAnd it looks like he won’t nine (he was not), but stop collecting anytime declined to provide hair soon. “I can’t let the secto someone claiming to ond-place guy catch up. be Charles Lindberg’s Not that I’m counting,” long-lost baby. he said with a grin. In many ways, hair collecting, once a sign of intimacy, has turned into is sheer enthusian emblem of sensationasm and goodA copy of the Declaration of Independence sits beneath a casting of alism and commercialguy demeanor Lenin’s death mask and many volumes of Christie’s auction catalogs. ism. Even Reznikoff has swayed me. After all, I had to face the facts — rationalized, isn’t a strand and the financial reality. In September, he sold a few strands of of hair just a more exclusive autograph? Both are expendable George Washington’s hair to a baseball card company, which set and ephemeral. Plus, it couldn’t be as bad as owning Evander off a media frenzy when the company announced the “Find the Holyfield’s chewed ear or a couple of shrunken heads from the Hair” contest. The same month, he sold a wisp of Beethoven’s Jivaro Clan. Caught up in the moment, I asked Reznikoff about hair to a company that incorporated it into a synthetic diamond buying a strand of Einstein’s hair. Turned out his last sale was and listed it for $1 million on eBay. $10,000 for a single hair. Never mind. Yet in other ways, hair collecting satisfies a basic human inasSo I logged onto Craigslist hoping to find a cheaper deal. tinct to seek and cherish social connections. Hair is a synecdoche Although I couldn’t find anything on hair, I did come upon the for the self, not to mention a tangible asset that can outlast per- following posting, which offers hope for anyone looking for a sonal expiration dates. A century after the hobby’s peak, mothers head start in becoming the next John Reznikoff (of nail clipcontinue to save hair from their newborns as sacred mementos. pings): “Hair is something we celebrate and identify with,” Reznikoff I work at a very prestigious nail salon in new york, with an a-list said. “We’re a society of hero-worshippers. An autograph is a clientel (sic). I have a collection of nail clippings from various cligreat thing to have, but what brings you closer to a person than a ents such as Cameron Diaz, Gweyn Stephani (sic), Beyonce and piece of their actual being?” Scarlett Johansen (sic). My son who is in 7th grade is in desperate Still, criticism won’t subside anytime soon for Reznikoff and need of a Math tutor. I live in Manhattan and I would be willing his cohorts, if not for anything else than the same reason why you to meet at a mutual location with my son. I will be willing to trade my collection for four one hour sessions. Serious inquiries only wouldn’t want to find Farrah Fawcett’s hair in your soup, no matplease. Thank you. ter how many young girls have swooned over her feathery curls.