Page 123 of The Photograph

I giggle. “Spouting bullshit and selling your photographs,” I say as I watch the couple talk earnestly to Seo-jun, who then bends over and puts a red dot on the description label.

Nodding across at them, I say, “I just sold them that picture. I’m wasted in tech.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy something the artist would never do again. That you were Jewish, and that coming out was anightmare.”

“What?”

“Don’t you mean,Thank you, Des, my wonderful boyfriend.”

We both watch as Seo-jun hands the Russian couple the credit card machine, talking animatedly.

“He seems pretty happy,” Alex says.

I step into him and pull him close. “Of course he is; he’s sold everything here. I bet that rarely happens.”

Sure enough, as soon as he’s finished with the couple and they’re happily chatting to someone else, he comes scooting over.

“Alex!” he says arms outstretched as he pulls him into an extravagant hug.

Alex goes a little cross-eyed before Seo-jun steps back and sweeps his hand around.

“All the photographs are sold!” he exclaims with a hand clap. “You have more for me to sell, my lovely Alex?”

Alex purses his lips. “Let me think about it. My photographs shouldn’t become too commonplace. And I picked the best ones for this exhibition.”

Spoken like a true artist, I think.

Once we’re out in the cold night air, having talked for another couple of hours with people who wanted to stay on and hang out, Alex squints down at his phone.

“We should go somewhere glamorous now. I want to show off my boyfriend, and after stressing over that exhibition for weeks, I feel like I deserve a slice of the high life now,” he says, blowing out a long breath. “No, amend that: stressing formonths.”

My lovely quiet man. Wrapping my arms around him, I say, “I had no idea you were so stressed.”

“I’m sorry. I know I don’t talk much. The years of bottling things up a home are a hard habit to break.”

I step back, pursing my lips.

“This thing with Janus and Jo. Do you want to go back to New York?” Alex says, eyes narrowed on me. And oh dear, I’m too drunk for this conversation.

“You mean permanently, or to do the photos for Jo and Janus or …” I say.

“Either/or,” he says, shaking his head. “I still think the idea of photographing those two—sorry, three—is insane.”

“Going back so that you can do a photoshoot would be awesome. It’d be great to see everyone. Do I want to go back for good? Yes, eventually. Am I happy here at the moment? God, yes. Very.”

He nods at this and gazes off to the side, and a shiver runs through me. This chat doesn’t feel like the casual one I thought we were having.

“I don’t care where I am, Alex, as long as I’m with you. You’re not happy here?”

He laughs. “Yes, I’m very happy, but this is a weighty conversation and I think we need the opposite of that tonight. Lots of people were discussing my photographs in the context of your body and how gorgeous you are, and it’s kind of been bothering me,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it made me feel like I’m a voyeur or a creeper, that I’d exposed you to a lot of comment on your body and not taken care of your privacy. They are intimate. Ultimately, you are going to be hanging on someone’s wall, naked, for decades.”

A laugh catches in the back of my throat. “Alex, I’m as loud as they come and regularly remove my top: It’s nothing a hundred, a thousand, people haven’t seen before.”

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