Perfect Picturesque Perversions

i wish i could get a picture of the young man next to me looking at porn. it's a different guy from the one i saw the other day, sitting in the corner of a different internet cafe during the middle of a different day. it's different porn as well: hentai, cartoon porn. i only know it's called hentai because i researched it just now, and had never known that such detestable material existed in this pristine world of ours... and even if i did i would never ever be tempted to view those sexy big-eyed, impossibly voluptuous, petitely perfect little lines of lust. ok well at least not while there's a little kid playing videogames right next to me, with over a dozen people packed into the entryway of a family's house that they've converted into an internet cafe.

the reason i can't get a picture isn't because i'm afraid of shaming him. it's because the light from the monitor is turning out too bright in the photos i've secretly taken. the picture is no good if you can't see the ridiculous images this guy is ogling. they're all cartoon characters, drawn by someone much like this guy, except the artist is probably more skillful at manipulating the slender shaft of a pencil rather than that of his penis, though that's admittedly only an assumption. why doesn't this guy just look at actual photos of hot asian pussy like that guy the other day, my hero? i mean drooling over cartoons?! what a shameless pervert.

i hope i never forget this absurdly abnormal moment. given my impressionable but imprecise memory you'd think that i would love photos. you'd think that i must carry a camera with me everywhere i go so i won't forget where i've been and who i've met, but i don't. it was only just recently that i realized how little i remember about my past and how few pictures i have to remind me of it, particularly from my days at nyu. my fear of forgetting everything about my experiences here in vietnam prompted me to buy my first camera just before i left. it was a procrastinated purchase however, because even though i desired this mechanical memorizer, i despise the product of its function: the photograph.

before i get into why, let me bolster the contradiction by telling you that i love photography. the art of capturing the essence of a moment through its colors, composition, characters, and their motivations in a form that allows others to see something that they would otherwise be forced only to imagine is a paradigm-shifting wonder. by creating artifacts of actual moments, the camera forever changed the way we regarded the past, and necessarily, changed our approach towards the future.

but i hate pictures, particularly of me. my grandmother hates to have her picture taken too, and so did the native americans. she's never given a reason, but i believe it's because she prefers to remember herself the way she would like to be: more beautiful, possessing a form more perfect and aesthetically pleasing than the one she has. the injuns, on the other hand, refused to have their picture taken because they believed that it would steal their spirit, something more profound than our fleshy forms.

i am in agreement with both grandma and tonto. a thousand words can be said about each picture and not all those words will be complimentary. that's disappointing. but also, there is a tendency for people to ascribe a picture with a degree of reality (often absolute truth) that is rarely offset with the recognition of that picture merely being a static representation of an arbitrary, artificial moment in time, a characteristic that is diametrically opposed to the dynamism of life and reality. i am not a mute 2-dimensional statue like those pictures would lead you to believe, and it upsets me when people believe i am. or that is to say, "it totally steals my spirit, too."

the first night we went out, phuong asked if she could take a picture of me. pictures taken without my knowledge, and preferably no one but the photographer's, are generally fine. but the "say cheese" kind of pictures always leave me feeling raped. like i know it only took 10 seconds of my time, but now that suspended state of an unnatural circumstance has been captured for all eternity and there's nothing i can do about it. so before she could snap a shot, i told her that i didn't like pictures and without any further prodding she put down her camera, that also happens to function as a mobile phone, a crowbar and lock pick for the safe that contains my soul.

i felt bad about being so coldly dismissive, so the next day i reluctantly brought my camera and we took some photos of and with each other. they turned out uhhh... well let's just say she's much more photogenic than i. after uploading the pictures to my computer, i edited myself out of one of the pictures because she looked great, but i had ruined it with a goofy smile and crossed eyes. funny, i don't remember trying to look at my nose with one eye while smiling like i just found out i came in second place in a shit-eating contest. fucking pictures.

anyway, i really want to get a good picture of this guy looking at naked cartoons while sitting next to a 5-year-old. fuck, and now the battery's dead so this perverted moment will never exist for all to see in the static megapixels of a digital artifact... only in my mushy momentum-maddened mind.