RIP, dear Scott

We were never officially hang-out friends, due mostly to the fact that we never lived in the same city at the same time. He'd found me probably 10 years ago through this blog, when it -- and the all-topic, open-diary blog trend -- was enjoying its peak. I was living in Chicago and he was in Indianapolis. I was a regular marathon runner with a high-end personal trainer and a (desperate?) level of vanity that compelled me to post lots of shirtless pictures on here and on my blog. He was a budding photographer who had a growing portfolio of decorator interiors, event venues, commercial work, and head shots and editorial photos of both models and the everyday people he always saw the everyday beauty in. He wanted to expand his portfolio to include male figures, and he contacted me through my blog to invite me to Indianapolis for a shoot.

My first thought, of course, was no -- I wasn't driving six hours to have a complete stranger take shirtless pictures of me, no matter how flattering and ego-boosting the subtext was. But I looked through his portfolio and saw the casual, unassuming beauty and unaffected composition in both his commercial interior photography and his human portraits. And I read through his blog and admired the frank, self-effacing, dry-humored way he incorporated himself into his world. And I had a friend in Indy I'd wanted to visit anyway, so I agreed to make the trip to meet him.

He seemed very shy when he answered his door. It took him awhile to make level eye contact, but he got clearly more comfortable as he gave me a tour of his house, introduced me to his delightfully affectionate cats, and eventually took me upstairs to the sizable, airy studio on his top floor. I'd brought a ton of clothing options, he'd already set up a range of backgrounds and set concepts, and we got to work. He was patient and clearly knowledgeable about his cameras and his lighting equipment, and he took lots of "test" shots to capture me when I was relaxed and natural along with lots of carefully composed shots when I was posing as a model wannabe or a figure that was part of the story of his creative use of props and settings. It was an enjoyable day, he repeatedly invited me to come back to do more, the photographs he took were beautiful and thoughtful and always flattering ... and I felt like I'd made a new friend.

I traveled back two more times to pose for him, and we made time to have dinner and hang out both times. And as he gradually decided he wanted to move to Chicago, we spent more time together on the visits he made to see if the city was a good fit for him. And when I became single five years ago, he was the first person to stay in the guest room of my new apartment.

He didn't end up moving to Chicago until after I'd moved home to Iowa, but he extended to me an open invitation to come back and pose for a conceptual series of gritty, vérité, deeply urban photographs he called Drifters. I never made it back to pose for that series, and our communication slowly reduced itself from emails to texts to likes on each other's Facebook posts. The last time I talked to him was in April when I asked if he could find a high-definition file of a headshot he'd taken for me that I could use in the program for a show I was in. He said he'd have to dig through a few archive hard drives and it might take a bit, but he found it and sent it to me the next day. I gratefully thanked him, he invited me to come back for a visit ... and we went back to communicating through the austerity of Facebook likes and hearts.

Scott Barnes died last night, very suddenly. Three days shy of his birthday. He was enjoying a night with friends -- and he very carefully cultivated his friends, so he was always surrounded by decent, loving people -- when he abruptly collapsed and died. The details I know are only speculation, so I choose to focus on the fact that by all accounts it was quick and he didn't suffer. But he's left a world of friends and people he photographed in shock and mourning.

I know pictures exist of the two of us together, but I can't for the life of me find them on Facebook or my hard drive. So I'm including here a photograph of him smiling happily as his new city stands majestically against a brightly setting sun behind him, the headshot he took of me that I LOVE because I think it makes me look serious and thoughtful and handsome without looking like I'm trying desperately to be handsome, and one of a series of running-related photos he took of me where I'm lacing my shoes. He and I both loved it for its composition with the bright palette and the precise angles providing visual balance to my draping shirt and human shape ... and for the cat who wandered in and sat directly under my butt right before he took the picture. He and I have since then always referred to this photo as proof of my magical ability to poop cats.

I didn't know him to say anything as racy as "pooping cats" ever. So it was kind of a gift that we had this odd little inside joke between us. Scott was a quiet, gentle soul. He was unfailingly loyal to his friends. He seemed to be genuinely full of wonder at the world and people and life around him. He captured so much of it so beautifully, and he was both proud of and humble about his work.

Scott Barnes was a dear, sweet man. I'm truly sorry our friendship had become so casual, but I'm grateful that we'd shared it. His life was too short. But I urge all of us to use it as an inspiration to treasure all the friendships we have while we have them ... and to take the time to tell our friends and loved ones how much we love them.

You were loved, Scott. By so many people. And we already miss you greatly.

Super Bowl glory

Five years ago I actually headlined the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Well, technically I just led my team to confetti-covered victory at the Super Bowl. Well, technically I just had seats over the dugout with Gisele Bundchen at the Super Bowl. Well, technically I just sold commemorative popcorn at the Super Bowl.

OK, fine. I was just in Indianapolis the weekend of the Super Bowl. But I was visiting my gracious and hospitable friend Bill and we had a great time touring the Super Bowl village and riding the Super Bowl shuttle with Madonna and shopping at the Super Bowl store that had a convenient mortgage department right inside the door to help us buy commemorative shirts and other merchandise.

But I didn't need a mortgage or commemorative shirts or merchandise because I had my $12 all-purpose sportsing shirt. And that's all I needed to inflate my footballs.

It's supposed to balance out

At family reunions, I mean. You gorge yourselves on every kind of food that's not good for you and/or not nailed down. Then you chase after the kids and do goofy uncle things. And you burn off all the calories.

So why do I still feel so unpurgeably full?

Our Dayton visit with the fiancé's grandmother and extended family was lovely, exploding tummies notwithstanding. Everyone has welcomed me—the gay boyfriend of the tallest grandson—as though I've been a member of the family since Justin and I both were suffering through our child-nobody-could-love phases. (Did I mention we went through some old photo albums while we were there? Did I mention the fiancé and I are now joining the local chapter of Survivors of Childhood Haircuts that Involved Tape to keep our Bangs Straight (SCHIT–BS)?)

Here are some memories of our trip home this afternoon, starting with a taken-from-a-moving-vehicle shot of the Warm Glow Candle Outlet, which is shaped like an actual candle:
Then the freakishly huge cloud of smoke we drove through on the Indianapolis beltway:

Then the bathroom stall of the BP Amoco in Frankfort, IN, where we didn't see Larry Craig, but we did learn valuable lessons about Jesus and following the rules:

Letter from Indianapolis

It's Saturday morning and we're STILL full from last night.

Bill took us to Santorini Greek Kitchen for dinner, and we each ordered the chef's combo platter. Which the menu failed to note contained enough food to feed seven deadly sinners and a professional football team. But it didn't stop us from ordering dessert. Something called galaktabouriko. Which was possibly the most delicious custard I've ever eaten. And the serving was the size of my head. Urp.

Afterward we headed back in time to the 1950s where we could pretend we'd never eaten the entire country of Greece AND we could engage in a couple wholesome games of duckpin bowling in a nuclear-age-themed setting. I'd never heard of duckpin bowling, but rest assured it doesn't involve the wounding of any ducks. But it does involve cute little bowling balls, cute little pins on invisible strings that yank the pins up into the heavens after you knock them down, and apparently the need for Bill and Justin to kick my ass.

This morning, Bill took us to a gay brunch place (is there any other kind?) and a walk along the scenic Indianapolis canal. And since the boys spent the morning being decidedly insensitive about my wounded bowling pride, I'm totally posting this goofy, unfocused picture of them in retribution:

Who’s your Hoosier?

I am! I am!

I spent the weekend visiting my formerly-of-Chicago friend Bill in his fabulous new Indianapolis home, with its cool architecture and its multiple bathrooms and its endless supply of closet space. (Bill, knowing the depths of my storage envy, showed considerable restraint by not rubbing my face in his ample closets. So to speak.)

Our weekend was packed with the best kinds of fun, much of which involved lounging around chatting. But we also squeezed in two lovely brunches, an expert driving tour of Indianapolis’ fabulous neighborhoods and museums and historical buildings, and a lovely afternoon in the ultra-cool Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The IMA building is an authoritative structure situated in a corner of the sumptuous Oldfields-Lilly House & Gardens. Like much of the newer architecture Bill showed me in Indianapolis, the IMA building has a sense of adventure, achieving its intended purpose with creativity and humor and a little visual experimentation. And the collection inside, while not as exhaustive as the building’s epic scale would suggest, is thoughtfully displayed, with useful information and a logical flow of ideas.

The best part of our tour: The Amy Cutler exhibit in the museum’s Forefront series. Amy (I call her Amy) has defined her own post-feminist genre, commenting on the social and familial experiences of women with a visual vocabulary that’s at once amusing, resigned, earnest and at times unapologetically ridiculous. Her images walk a line between the disturbing grotesqueries of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the oddly pedestrian horrors of Edward Gorey—especially in my favorite of her works, Dinner Party (left column, middle row), which features corseted ladies in gargantuan farthingales fighting each other with antlers made of upturned chairs and strapped-on cutlery.

If you do go to the museum—and you should—take care not to gesture too closely as you point out the carved penises on the wooden chair in the African exhibit. Because you’ll set off an alarm. And a suspicious-looking guard will follow you around and treat you like the penis-obsessed threat to moral decency you are.

One more word to the wise: Don’t go see The Hills Have Eyes just because your friend Bill’s hunky friend Eric wants to see it. Eric will still be attractive if you elect to do something more useful with your time, like organizing your celebrity crushes in the order of who has the prettiest feet.

My bad-movie-dar started beeping the moment Eric suggested it to us, but I was being polite—and for a man who saw all of three movies that got any Oscar nominations this year, I was in no position to pretend I was any kind of cinema authority.

But oh, the pain! With all the production qualities of an early episode of Land of the Lost and the kind of snappy, smart dialogue you’d find in the rough draft of a junior-high book report, The Hills Have Eyes was most definitely NOT alive with the sound of music. In fact, its best feature was its tagline: The lucky ones die first. And it wasn’t even true! Bill and I left soon after the first sleestack mutant desert creature appeared munching on a very unrealistic severed limb, and we learned that the lucky ones leave after losing only an hour of their lives—and get a refund without even a hint of resistance! We figured the road had already been paved for us by armies of equally insulted movie-goers who opted instead to get their money back and head home to watch Dynasty reruns on the Soap Opera Channel. Just like we did. (Maxwell Caulfield … mmm …)

Butt-stupid movies notwithstanding, the vacation was a delight from start to finish, and it ended way too soon. But I did get to enjoy a sunny drive home in the land of 70-mph speed limits. And there were no laughable mutant desert creatures hiding in my tiny closets when I got home.