#drawing shirtless men during my studio time

[bananas-mode]

Hiiii posted this on Instagram yesterday and forgot to put it here

[freedom-shamrock]

Bi the Pricking of my Thumbs #4

<< Chapter 3

Cautionary note: This chapter includes a references to and conversations with unsupportive queer-phobic parents, some bigotry, and use of straight nonsense. There is also a dildo for comedic purposes.

Also on AO3. If you’re so inclined, feel free to support me over on Ko-Fi

Chapter 4

Ladybug looked out into the colorful sea of Pride celebrants pouring into Place de la République. The energy was amazing, and she couldn't keep the smile off her face. "Oh gosh, check out those wings!" She slapped at Chat's arm to draw his attention to the wire and sheer-fabric construction heading their way. They sat at the feet of the statue of Marianne, where they could catch a good look at the parade while also keeping an eye out for trouble. They'd already delivered two pickpockets, a lost child, and an obvious full-spectrum queer-phobe to the police. The last one had been the most concerning, given that he had a butane lighter and a soaker style water gun loaded with something that smelled highly flammable.

"Wings?" Chat Noir said, frantically looking into the sky.

"No, silly," she said with a laugh. She tilted his head back to the crowd. " Good wings.  Down there."

"I'm kind of surprised people still wear butterfly wings around here," he said, his smile bright as he waved to the shirtless man who had realized his articulated wings had caught the attention of Paris' heroes. "Oh geez, he's hot, too."

Ladybug laughed again.  She just felt so full of happiness, surrounded by this celebration, sharing it with her best friend. "He really is. But I get a feeling he'd be more accepting of your advances than mine."

"Pffft." He snorted. The rainbow wings opened to flash paired male symbols in the upper half of the forewing, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the man was wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at Chat..

"Was it hard for you to get away?" she asked. His father had continued to get weirder as the annual Pride festival approached. Likewise, Gabriel had been increasingly strict with Adrien's schedule, and she worried for both of them.

Chat Noir shrugged. "As far as I know, he thinks I'm in my room binging on anime."

She shook her head, disgusted. She'd already approached her parents about letting Adrien move in with them if he found he couldn't stand it with his father any longer. She wondered if it was time to extend the same welcome to Chat Noir. He deserved it just as much.

"What about you?" he asked. "You’re here with friends, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm supposed to be marching with my school's Gender and Sexuality Alliance. I started the parade with them." She shrugged. "Fortunately, I have a reputation as a total space cadet, and in this crowd they won't be surprised to have lost me halfway through the parade."

He gawked at her. "Your friends think you're a ditz?  Ladybug? The genius behind this operation?" He gestured to the two of them.

She shrugged.  "It just reinforces the idea that normal me is nothing like Ladybug.  And that's good. Besides, I'm not the only clever one here."

He frowned. "I'm not sure I'm on board with them thinking poorly of you just for a cover.  You're amazing, Milady. And I'd bet you're just as amazing in your regular life."

She gave him a hug. "And you're a sweetheart." He melted against her, as he usually did when hugged. "If you need more hugs today, there are some forty and fifty-year olds walking around with shirts that say free mom hugs and free dad hugs." Her parents happened to be part of that group, wearing shirts she'd screen-printed.

"That sounds heavenly." He sat back up. "Eew, cultural appropriation to your right." He shook his head, raising his baton to snap a quick picture. "What do Native American warbonnets have to do with sexuality?"

“Nothing.” Ladybug rolled her eyes. "Like anything, this festival can be used as an excuse to cross some lines that shouldn't be. What are you doing?"

"I'm going to make a post about that kind of thing. Later." His head turned the other way, and his hand came up to cover his mouth. "Holy crap. Look. At. Those. Platforms."

She searched for a moment, eventually finding the person in a fluffy white tutu standing precariously in platform shoes that were easily twelve inches high. "Wow.  Those are like… they're nearly as tall as the Chix on Stix stilts were."

"Blister city," Chat said. " Mad respect for them making it through the parade in those."

"I bet Adrien Agreste could handle those," she said, smiling at the thought of Adrien sweeping down the runway in those ridiculous things. He'd grown quite fond of the over-the-top nature of runway, preferring it to the bland studio shoots he did far too many of. And to be fair, he was crazy good at it.

"Really?" Chat grinned at her, then eyed up the person in the platforms again. "I know he's good, Paris' golden boy and all, but those might be out of his league."

Ladybug vehemently shook her head, and opened her bandalore to catch a picture. "He's a god among men when it comes to fashion and presentation."

"You've got that look," he said, arching one eyebrow.  "What's going on in that clever brain of yours?"

"I want to challenge Adrien to walk in a pair of those," she said. "It might take me a few days to figure out how to pitch it, but I think he'd enjoy the opportunity to flaunt his skills."

"Keep me in the loop on that," Chat Noir said. "I want to see how that turns out."

"Will do." She tucked her bandalore away.

"Is your sweetheart not coming to Pride?" he asked, as if suddenly realizing that could be a thing. "I'm not keeping you from something important to them, am I?"

She patted his shoulder. "They don't care for crowds, and prefer to watch the parade and big festivities on TV. They're hosting a party with several of our friends tomorrow, because we know some other queer folk who need a lower key event." She wished she could invite Adrien, but he wasn't ready to share his identity with anyone else. He'd scheduled a visit with Luka, though, so she was cautiously optimistic that his future was going to be brighter. Their friend group wasn’t remotely hetero, and she was reasonably sure they could all keep a secret. Alya had come out as pan and poly shortly after her amicable split with Nino at the beginning of Lycee. She was currently in a relationship with both Chloe and Kagami that utterly baffled Marinette, but as long as her friend was happy, it didn’t matter. Nino had been a quieter about his orientation, but he’d casually dated men and women, and she strongly suspected he was holding a torch for his best friend..

Chat Noir reached to point out something of interest, but a sudden blast of pop music that could only be Taylor Swift drowned out the sounds of the parade. He froze, his eyes wide and his tail stiff with alarm.

"Crapity snacks," Ladybug muttered. "Looks like breaktime is over, Kitty." She rose to peer around the statue to see the akuma. He stood on the taller brick corner tower of a building on the corner of Rue du Faubourg du Temple. He was dressed all in blue, carrying a white flag featuring old school male and female symbols holding hands.

"Odds on it being that piece of trash we picked up earlier," Chat suggested.

"It's either him, or someone just like him," she muttered. “So gross.”

"I'm The Oppressed, and I'm sick of being spit on by the heterophobic queers of Paris!" the akuma bellowed in a magically amplified voice. "You degenerates have infected my daughter with your alternative lifestyles, so today we're going to celebrate straight pride!"

"Ugh," Ladybug groaned. "Such straight nonsense."

The Oppressed waved his flag at the closest group of revelers, and a beam of white light washed over them, changing their clothes into conservative blue suits or pink dresses. Those now in pink had long styled hair, full makeup, and jewelry that many would have considered feminine.  Those in blue had short hair and broad watches and briefcases.

"Oh hells no!"  Ladybug drew back her bandalore, preparing to throw.  "We need to get him the fuck out of here. There are people here with significant gender dysphoria, and we are not letting Hawkass do this to them during their festival." She loosed her bandalore, cutting through the sky directly in The Oppressed's view, and landing on the corner tower across the street from him. "You want my earrings, you ugly bigot? Come and get them!" She swished her bi flag cape at him, hoping the taunt was enough to refocus his attention.  

"Ladybug!" The Oppressed shouted. "You're the worst offender. Your speeches boasting about your disgusting choice convinced my daughter to come out as pansexual."

"I'm proud of your daughter," Ladybug called back. She felt bad for the girl who had this man as her father. "You'd do better to love her for who she is , than for who you think she should be."

"You know nothing of parenting." The harsh voice carrying over the roof behind The Oppressor gave her chills; for the first time in over a year, Hawk Moth had shown up for one of his own fights. "You're a mere child. And children need guidance from their parents."

She wanted to punch that smug look right off his face.

"Children are suggestible and will make foolish decisions at the encouragement of their stupid friends and… heroes." He sneered the last word.

He was furious, and it was obvious. Could she get him irrational enough to make a mistake? Perhaps today was the day they would finally capture the moth. "Awww. You make it sound so personal," she said, pouting at him, hoping to feed his anger. "Wait-wait-wait. Do you actually have kids?" Now that was a horrifying thought.

He scowled. "If you must know, yes. My naive son is here some where, thanks to you and those idiot friends of his." God his words were so very Gabriel. It was like they used the same conservative parenting guide. "You've made him think there's no harm in exploring--" He was cut off by a sudden roar from the crowd of Pride attendees that rose over the chorus of the pop song How You Get the Girl.

A blast of glitter-filled air rose to the rooftops, plastering both Hawk Moth and The Oppressor in sparkles. She glanced down and saw Chat Noir with a group of people including the butterfly man they'd admired earlier. In a coordinated effort, Chat spun his baton to create a strong enough wind to carry a second pile of glitter up to the villains.

"You take care of Chat Noir!" Hawk Moth snapped, coughing out a cloud of sparkly fragments. "I'll handle the bug."

"I do not consent to your hands being anywhere near me," Ladybug sassed. The very idea creeped her out, but he was the one who introduced hands to the conversation. "Hasn't anyone ever taught you that no means no?" She threw her bandalore up. "Lucky charm!" She caught the spotted item glancing quickly at it, then grinning as she looked across the street at the man who had terrorized Paris for years.

Hawk Moth's confident bearing faltered a moment.

"So tell me Hawky, you wanna get lucky?" She held aloft the sizeable silicone dildo, shaking it enough to make it wiggle and almost giggling as he visibly blanched. "I think my miraculous is suggesting that you need a bit of help getting rid of some tension." She heard chaos below, and suddenly Chat Noir was beside her.

"Milady, I bring you the spoils of war." He knelt, presenting her with the hideous flag.

"Oh Kitty, you always know what I want." She traded the dildo for the flag. "Keep tabs on our dear friend for me. I'd hate for him to go fluttering off." She snapped the thin flagpole in half, ripping the banner for good measure. Once the purified butterfly was released, and the few Parisians who'd been modified by the akuma had been restored, she could focus on the rest of this situation.

"Might I trouble you for one of your ribbons?" Chat Noir asked, watching their long time enemy with a look that could only be described as predatory. "I have an idea."

Hawk Moth's composure was clearly shaken, and he suddenly scrambled to the far edge of the tower, clearly planning to drop to a lower portion of the building's roof in retreat.

Ladybug slipped one of her ribbons free, dropping it into Chat's hand. "I look forward to putting your idea into action. I'll keep Monsieur Hate-Filled-Bigot from straying too far, while you do that." She soared over the gap between the buildings. Early in their tenure as heroes, she'd been responsible for all the ideas. While she'd always managed to come through, it had been terribly stressful. It was such a relief to find that her partner had his share of good plans.

Hawk Moth yanked a sabre out of his cane, training the tip on her. "I will not hesitate to pin you to the roof like an insect in a display box," he snarled.

Close melee with edged weapons was more of Chat's thing, but changing the situation in her own favor, was hers. "I'd love to see you try." Her wrist snapped out, wrapping the line of her bandalore around the thin blade. A quick yank pulled the weapon out of his hand, sending it clattering to the roof behind her.

Hawk Moth let out a screech of rage. It was cut off as Chat Noir launched himself overhead, arcing gracefully to land farther down the roof, trapping their enemy between them.

Chat thumped the bottom of his staff against the roof, and the dildo he'd tied upright on the top jiggled in response. "Mine's better than yours," the cat superhero said proudly. He gestured to his enhanced weapon in case the modification hadn't been immediately clear. He twirled the staff in his hands before lunging and jabbing it at Hawk Moth.

Ladybug grinned, realizing her partner's plan as Hawk Moth apparently forgot all about her in his desire to get away from the spotted silicone dick. With a light tug, her cape came off in her hands.  Two quiet steps and she flicked the end out to snap Hawk Moth's cheek.

In a matter of moments, she was able to wrap the man in a tight cocoon of magical pride fabric, only his neck and head free. If Chat's final blow, a slap of the dildo to Hawk Moth's temple, came later than strictly necessary, she wasn't going to mention it.  The jerk had ruined a ridiculous number of her plans over the years. She stared at him for a moment, the way she might assess an akuma in search for the object they needed to break.

“Tie tack,” she said, keeping her grip on the villain lest he should escape when they were so close to winning.

Chat reached out and plucked the miraculous from Hawk Moth's collar, and the costume vanished in a wave of purple light, leaving Gabriel Agreste tightly bundled in a bisexual pride flag. The irony was not wasted on Ladybug.

"Oh." Chat said softly. "Well I guess that makes more sense than it doesn't."

Furious that the man who had been terrorizing Paris for most of her teen years was Adrien's asshole father, Ladybug grabbed his lapels and gave a yank. As he lurched forward, she brought up her knee, driving it into his nose.

"You'll pay for that," Gabriel snarled as blood dribbled down his face. "Brutality of a suspect in your custody is a punishable offense."

"Brutality?" Chat asked calmly. "I didn't see anything. You must've gotten your nose broken during the fight." He shrugged. "If only Ladybug hadn't already cured Paris of your akuma's damage… I guess you'll just have to live with it." He shook his head in mock sympathy. "Oh look!" He pointed to a collection of cop cars, their lights flashing as they parked along Rue du Faubourg du Temple. "Your escort has arrived to take you to your new home."

Ladybug helped Chat Noir deliver Gabriel to the police but had to go recharge while they took Chat's statement. By the time she'd gotten far enough from the festival to feed Tikki, retransform, and return, there was no sign of the cavalcade that had appeared to deliver Gabriel to the station. In fact, it took her another ten minutes of searching to find her partner, sitting cross-legged as he watched the parade continue to fill Place de la République. He looked a little sad, maybe wistful.

"Hey Kitty," she said, alighting beside him.

"Welcome back, Bug." He sighed, leaning into her as she slipped an arm around him.

"So that just happened," she said. It didn't quite feel real.

He plucked the tiny miraculous from one of his pockets, holding it out to her. "It definitely did."

"Do you want to hold onto it until we get it to Fu?" she asked.

"That would be inadvisable," he replied. "But thank you for trusting me."

She slipped the miraculous into one of the pockets she'd demanded when she'd re-designed her suit a few years back. "So Hawk Moth's out of the picture, and we always said we'd do a reveal once that was done," she pointed out.

He nodded, but didn't leap on the idea the way she expected him to.

"I'm kind of in a mood to beat the crap out of biphobic fathers," she said, squeezing his shoulder. "So I may as well find out who you are. And if he's a real piece of work, you can come live with me."

He stared at her, slowly blinking. "Really?"

She nodded. “I’m friends with Adrien Agreste.  I can tell you that now. And I’ve already gotten permission from my parents for him to take the guest room.” She sighed. “I figured he might need an escape from his father, and that was before I knew he was Hawk Moth.”

“And your parents were just okay with that?” he asked, his eyes wide with shock.

“They love Adrien.  They’d adopt him if they could.” She gave him a sad smile.

“I bet he’d let them,” he said softly, oddly choked up.

“I’m sure the same goes for you,” she insisted, already considering logistics. She could take the spare room, giving Adrien and Chat her room to share. “Now are you going to let me know who you are so I can rough up your father, or what?”

He laughed. “You already did, Bug.” He shook his head. “Hawk Moth was my father, and I am totally moving in with you.”

* * * * * * * *

Chapter 5  >>

Inspirations: Articulated Wings Platform Shoes

[jlf23tumble]

1D Day, Hour Three

Almost halfway through this hour, which is almost halfway through this day, is the point where Louis Tomlinson stops having fucks left to give and starts getting real. He’s still a professional throughout hour three (not like Harry in hour two, oof), but god, how??? Everything here is a disaster, and it’s infuriating when you consider that a) this must have been somewhat planned out (the band is HUGE, allegedly 32 million people are watching), and b) it’s being produced in LA, presumably with easy access to professionals who have had some experience with live shows (since, what, the 1930s???). Anyway, I would have loved to hear the choice words Louis no doubt had for Ben Winston when he ran away during one of the Google+ Hangouts, lmao.

When I first watched this two years back, Niall’s nervous laughter nearly drove me insane, but this time around, I’m loving the subtle nuances w/r/t wtf is happening on this here day as Louis’s rage starts to climb and Niall’s Slytherin core starts to emerge. Deets under the cut.

Niall and Louis literally burst through a paper wall to launch hour three and reveal Niall’s lilac hair (also revealed: the fact that Niall’s “a diva,” according to Louis). The color’s hardly even noticeable, but Niall’s all worked up about it, and I’m betting he had to do this because he has no tattoos, so everyone wanted to freak his Virgo ass out with something “permanent.”

The first bit is so tiresome (Louis’s childhood friend, Stan, forcing the Milkshake City staff to perform the world’s sleepiest version of “Rock Me”), but I’m a huge fan of Stan’s for the Larry purple dildo video alone (ICONIC; ping me if you need a link), plus I love the tidbit about the time Harry came in for a milkshake for himself and “a friend back at home.”

After we survive this long-ass bit of fill, Louis and Stan take the piss out of each other and banter a bit with Niall, which is all pretty hilarious and also makes me sad in the key of “oh how I wish that was me.”

Because it wasn’t at all tedious in hour one, it’s time for another Guinness Book of World Records challenge (Louis: “Of course it is”), this time balancing coins on faces. Hey, speaking of faces, did you know that men are at peak hotness between the ages of 32 and 36? This guy is 22 years old, doing the stupidest task ever, help me, Jeebus:

Next up is the randomizer, which randomly pulls celebrity videos, and this is when the in-ears start acting up for Louis, who’s midway through Robbie Williams asking them for the best live performer they’ve ever seen, prompting Louis to give Ben the evil eye off camera and go off script to say Michael Buble, ha.

Some random sports man (update: Doncaster Rovers manager) demands that they do pressups up and burpees, and Louis gives us a surprisingly strong and steady nine pressups before proving why he’s most relatable:

After fits of unnecessary laughter from Niall, and a lot of exasperation about the technical problems so far from Louis (friend, you’ve seen nowt yet), we get the best VT from this entire day, the iconic bts video for “Talk Dirty to Me,” and if you watch nothing from any of this, please tell me you’ve seen it in full for Zayn the goofball! Liam’s hanky code shoutouts! Harry’s hip chub! Louis and his glorious torso! Niall in full Farmer Ted mode!

Next up, we get astronauts congratulating the D from space, and whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I mean, honestly, WHY? Are these astronauts fans? Is anyone besides Niall into space? I know there’s an intense interest in making space interesting for teens (how many times have people on the international space station beamed their way into MTV award shows at this point), but whyyyyy.

Scott tells us we’ll soon see Doctor Who (mild interest from Nouis) and Simon Cowell (Louis: “SIMON COWELL, WOO HOO, I LOVE THAT GUY!” Niall: “Simon GROWL”), but first up is Doctor Who, and this is where the wheels fall off the bus, technically speaking. First, there’s a 15-minute delay (!!), so Nouis are standing around while the Doctor handles some other interview for the BBC. Eventually, they connect, and Louis makes the understatement of the year (“This is gonna be tough”) as both the video and audio go full Inception and echo in and around each other to make us all woozy:

Louis again understates the chaos happening on screen by saying, “I think actually that this is not working,” and then begging for any VT, they don’t care, help (the VT is Niall being all humblecholy about their success and Ireland and something something, I’m not actually interested, sorry).

We come back to Louis still losing it, curious as to how they can have a link to space but can’t have a studio in LA link to the BBC, and yeah. YEAH. But enough about that, it’s Google+ Hangout (lololololol) time, and we don’t get too many answers to these vital fan questions because Ben is in Louis’s ear so much that Louis starts arguing with him about it and eventually runs off stage to yell at him in person, and god, it’s glorious. READY 2 FIGHT:

Because this is an utter trainwreck, the team decides to do another live link again, this time to the X Factor while it’s airing in the UK, and it’s…yeah, not good. Just awful, cameras out of synch, no sound, etc. Save us, random VT of Denmark!!

Hearing Louis say “tits up” is my new religion, but honestly, this chitchat with McFly is such a revelation. Apparently, they worked with Niall on something, so they gossip with Louis about what a diva Niall is (!) and how he brought a friend of his named Shawn around (!!), and there’s a lot of inside jokes I know nothing about, but I’m LIVING for Niall looking at all these boys on the screen and saying, “I feel like I’m alone in my bedroom,” and Louis’s response, “Okay, Niall!”

“Don’t Forget Where You Belong” is announced, but we don’t get to hear it (although we DO get to see some sweet Nouis dancing), and two more girls go into the call box of doom. Because this show’s producers can’t go ten minutes without a disaster, there’s increasingly urgent screaming from Louis to Ben to just roll the Zayn graffiti VT, which takes at least a full, tense minute to post. 

Zayn is incredibly hot, but my heart breaks for him saying it’s their 127th show, and he’s feeling inspired and creative to make art, and I just wonder how??? How are you not banging your head against a wall instead of painting it? Anyway, it’s a lot of spraypainting/artist au Zayn come to life, with Liam working out shirtless nearby and heaping praise on just about every single thing Zayn puts on the wall (awwwww). Also some nice Flicker reference points (Niall: “Zayn, will you draw a picture of me?” Zayn: “No. I don’t like you”). Ouch.

We come back to Rebecca, an opera singer who’s here to sing some tweets, and this is a horrible idea that Ben Winston stole from Jimmy Kimmel, right? When he used to have Josh Groban sing tweets a million years ago? Anyway, this ripoff doesn’t work because nobody can really understand the words, but credit to Louis for trying to cheat and speed this whole thing up:

When Rebecca finishes, Louis says he got emotional (Niall just laughs), and this poor girl says not to worry, she’ll do more later, and lmao at Louis: “Oh, OH, there’s more in store, Niall” (Niall: “Can’t wait”), sighhhhh, it’s torture for us all, tbh. Anyway, time for some Belgian VT and reinforcement that Louis’s part Belgian, which is why it’s super relevant, I guess.

The last bit is back to Dynamo, to redo the magic bit that failed with Harry in hour two. I’m still curious about this trick because there’s a piece of paper locked in this box (Harry’s dick holds the key to it), and tl/dr, Harry says April for the month an hour ago, but Louis says November, and sure enough, November plus all the other details are in this locked box. HMMMMM. Me as Harry’s finger delivering the key immediately in this segment, meaning he’s literally right there watching all of it. Pick someone supportive, etc.

Anyway, back to the trick, there’s a bit where Louis says he told Dynamo all this information earlier (Niall starts chewing his nails a bit ferociously at that), but then he backpedals brilliantly later about what an amazing, stunning trick, etc., and this group of sneaky liars, god, I love ‘em!

We get more terrible highlights, which sucks, because I kind of liked the way Louis was asking Niall what HIS highlights were, but never mind, let’s get Ben’s. I’ll leave you with this picture that makes me think of Louis hosting Family Feud, you know, the final round, when you have to see how your answers stacked up with a family member’s and if, together, you cleared 200 (“Name someone a person may confess a crime to”):

[1dreality]

It must have been well over a year ago now, when Liam Payne realised he had absolutely nothing interesting to say. The singer, known to most as ‘Liam from One Direction’ until the group’s indefinite hiatus in January 2016, had returned to the studio, settled into the idea of being a solo artist for the rest of his days, and promptly drawn a blank. He was, he says, just too darned happy to think of anything.

Everything in his life had fallen into place. He’d found love, moving in with Cheryl (formerly Cole), a fellow junior royal of the Top 40. Their first child, a son named Bear, was well on the way. He had signed a huge record deal with Capitol. He felt fitter and healthier than he had in years. And, yes, there’s no denying it: he was pretty pleased that he no longer had to be in the biggest boyband in the world.

‘I had a bit of a problem formulating what was going on in my brain into the music at first,’ he says, ‘because I was so content with everything in my personal life. It’s easy to spill your guts out on a ballad. But I was thinking, “Oh God, I’m really happy – what am I going to write about?!”’

More than 12 months on, the answer to that question still isn’t entirely clear. Payne’s debut album, as yet untitled, won’t be released until early 2018. There have been two singles, though, with a third, the unsubtly titled Bedroom Floor, arriving next month.

Of those we’ve heard, the first, Strip That Down, a R&B-inflected club hit released in May and co-written with Ed Sheeran, marked a departure from One Direction’s stadium pop-rock. It was also chock-full of hoary by-the-way-I’m-an-adult-now signposts: there are references to nightclubs, drinking rum and coke, driving Ferraris and having girls ‘grind’ on him. And mixed in with all that were lyrics that caused a minor stir among his acolytes: ‘You know I used to be in 1D, now I’m out, free / people want me for one thing, that’s not me’. Payne, it seems, is keen to reintroduce himself.

‘When I left the band, I felt a bit stranded,’ he says, when we meet in an enormous boardroom at his management’s offices. ‘It took time, but I know as an artist I am starting fresh now.’ He slaps the table with melodrama. ‘This is Moment One. It’s the start line.’

Liam Payne is 24 years old. He is athletically built, as anyone who has seen his shirtless Instagram posts will know, and kind of everyday handsome, in a Love Island, former-youth-footballer way. Both his arms and hands are almost entirely upholstered in tattoos, highlights of which include some thick black arrows on one forearm that look like road markings; the number ‘4’, in reference to One Direction’s 2014 album of the same name, on his ring finger; and, on his left arm, a scale depiction of Cheryl’s eye, that appears to follow you around the room as he gesticulates. ‘It’s so my missus can always keep an eye on me,’ he likes to say about that one.

He is impossibly nice. Before we meet, he plods through the office, saying hello to everybody in the building individually, and in most cases remembering something about them: that they beat him at Fifa last time he dropped by, so they must have a rematch before he leaves (‘I’ll whoop ya with West Brom!’), or they’ve surely had a haircut, haven’t they? (‘It looks really great anyway, man!’). It is the manner of somebody both impeccably raised and intensely keen for people to like him, and it appears genuine and successful.

To an extent, Payne says, the five members of One Direction – or four, after Zayn Malik left the band in 2015 – ended up playing characters over the six years they were together. Whereas the Beatles (arguably the only other group with a comparable scale and speed of world domination), grew increasingly cantankerous towards the end of the 1960s, One Direction stuck resolutely to the caricatures that fans and management assigned them right to the end.

Malik was brooding and mercurial, Harry Styles was a cool, flamboyant ladies’ man, Niall Horan was charming and laid-back, and Louis Tomlinson, who has since admitted to feeling a little redundant, was fun and energetic. And Payne? Well, Payne was The Responsible One.

‘I’ve always been a bit of an older soul,’ he says, mulling over his place. ‘It’s funny: there’s a thing on the net where the fans put what they think are our mental ages. All the boys were around their real ones, but then they put me at about 37.’

Payne admits to feeling a little daunted in 2010, when Simon Cowell thrust the band together on X Factor after they’d auditioned as solo artists. Keeping up with the other personalities in the gang was exhausting, so his coping mechanism was to attempt to rein them in as best he could, and work with management in doing so. Like the popular schoolboy teachers identify as mature enough to be a trusted emissary for his recalcitrant friends, Payne carved himself a valuable niche.

‘I was put with a group of rowdy teenagers, and when I was a teenager, I had mates, but I was always with my dad. I’d go out to the pub and chat with him. So when I was stuck with these boys I was thinking, “F— me, I don’t know how to do it.”

‘When something was going wrong, I’d get a phone call. If there was an apology needed, it was me. I was the spokesperson for the band, as it were, with the press and the label.’

Along with Tomlinson, Payne shares comfortably the most writing credits of the band on One Direction songs. Over their five albums, dozens of songwriting collaborators contributed to the group’s success, but it seems nobody worked harder than the two least-heralded members. Neither was the showiest or best singer; but they kept things ticking over.

One Direction’s hordes of fans around the world noticed the assumed roles, and nicknamed Payne ‘Daddy Directioner’. He lived up to it with them, too. In 2013, on tour in Australia, Payne tweeted a message to warn girls waiting outside the band’s hotel of snakes living in the surrounding fields. ‘It’s just not worth it someone’s gunna get hurt [sic],’ he pleaded.

Two years later, he gave an interview lamenting the fact he and the other boys were being sent sexually explicit pictures of themselves drawn by underage admirers. While the rest of the band seemed to find that funny, Payne called it ‘the sad and sorry side of what we’ve done.’ Yeah, all right, Dad.

Becoming a real-life father has at least given the nickname some purchase. Rumours swirled at the end of 2015 that he had started dating Cheryl – formerly Fernandez-Versini and Cole, née Tweedy – after her second marriage ended in divorce. By the next summer, she was pregnant with the second One Direction baby (Tomlinson, the eldest of the bunch, had one first).

The couple live in a mansion near Woking, Surrey, and aren’t married, but he considers them ‘basically at that stage’. Bear, with whom Payne is besotted, was born in March, and named for the growling noises he was making during his first sleeps. So far, no photographs have been released, but he instantly shows me one on his phone. And here, I can exclusively reveal that the heir Bear is – as you’d expect of a baby with that name, born of two professionally good-looking parents – very cute.

‘We’ve only shown him in glimpses,’ Payne says, explaining their decision to shield him. ‘We don’t want him to have the pressure that me and Cheryl have, as household names. We want him to enjoy himself first and then figure it out.’

Born and raised in Wolverhampton, Payne has an unexpectedly thick Midlands accent that gets thicker the longer he talks – which is a lot. His preferred conversational feature is the anecdote, resulting in a version of the phrase, ‘I remember, there was this one time…’ prefixing the majority of his utterances, which are in turn regularly punctuated with singular handclaps of self-incredulity. It can be mildly alarming, like interviewing a young, heavily-tattooed Ronnie Corbett, but I suppose it speaks to the amount of life experience he has already accrued.

Growing up, Payne’s father, Geoff, worked as a fitter, while his mother, Karen, was a nursery nurse. Money was tight and the house small, but he remembers it as a happy one.

‘My place was on the floor with the dog, there was no space on the sofa. It was great, though we didn’t have much. Dad was in debt, but they did the best they could. It makes you dream a bit, you know?’

As a child, he had two routes to possible stardom, both of which Geoff pushed hard for. One was singing, the other was long-distance running. For a time in his teens, Payne was one of the fastest 1500m runners in the country, getting up to train before school and seconds from qualifying for the London 2012 squad. It was before that, as a 14-year-old in 2008, that he first applied for X Factor.

Auditioning with Fly Me To The Moon, since it was one of the few songs he could manage while his voice was breaking, that year he got as far as the ‘judge’s houses’, before Simon Cowell told him to come back in two years and try again. He became a mini-celebrity back home in that between-period, and carried on performing around town. The adulation was short-lived, though.

Once, performing a Justin Timberlake cover at an under-18s gig in Oceana Wolverhampton, somebody lobbed a coin at his face and managed to draw blood. He laughs about it now. These days – admittedly a largely cashless society – it’s only bras and knickers they fling.

‘I had become less and less famous. One time, I was in McDonald’s with a girlfriend and someone shouted ‘X Factor reject!’ at me. The whole restaurant turned. It was like coming out of fame. So I knew what it was like at 15, and it helped me.’

Following Cowell’s advice, he returned to X Factor in 2010 and found himself shoved into One Direction with the four other boys, eventually finishing the competition in third place, but with easily the brightest future. Within weeks, he had moved out of his Wolverhampton bedroom and into a penthouse apartment in Canary Wharf.

And six years later, One Direction had sold more than 20 million records, become the first band in history to have their first four albums go to number one in the US, touring the world numerous times, and earned a preposterous amount of money in the process. Payne is now estimated to be worth £40 million. He hasn’t been back to Wolverhampton in a long time, but he paid off his father’s debts years ago, and bought his parents a new house in addition to funding the renovation of their family home. He refers to his time spent in One Direction as ‘like uni’.

When they were in the thick of things, all the boys used to obey Cowell’s omertà – relentless enthusiasm at all times, please – and never discussed any negative aspects of their experience. Now safely out the other side, Payne is frank on matters of burnout and claustrophobia.

‘Cabin fever. It sent me a bit AWOL at one point, if I’m honest. I can remember when there were 10,000 people outside our hotel. We couldn’t go anywhere. It was just gig to hotel, gig to hotel. And you couldn’t sleep, because they’d still be outside,’ he says, before telling several stories of how he and Tomlinson would sneak out of hotels just to feel freedom, only to find themselves bored once they got out.

‘People were speaking to me about mental health in music the other day, and that’s a big issue. Sometimes you just need some sun, or a walk.’

Every stop on tour became the same. Earlier this year, Payne was asked which was his favourite city of those he visited with One Direction. ‘One in Italy with a big white cathedral,’ he responded.(The band performed in Milan at least five times.)

‘One of the problems was that we never stopped to celebrate what we’d done. I remember us winning loads of American Music Awards and then having to get on a plane straight away. It got to the point where success was so fluid. I don’t even know what happened to our songs, we just sang them, then sang some more. It was like a proper, hard job. Non-stop. I can concentrate a lot more now.’

The paparazzi and fan attention sounds just as draining. It must feel weird having a Twitter following larger than the population of Australia, as he does, but especially odd to have fans so obsessed that they’ve set up multiple fake profiles pretending to be your mother, for some reason.

Moreover, footage of One Direction out and about makes A Hard Day’s Night look tame: thousands of screaming fans all over them, police escorts everywhere they went, an unending run of selfie requests... It came to a head in New York in 2012, when Payne was walking to a restaurant with his parents and a paparazzo accidentally pushed his mother over. He was incensed.

‘I was like, “Oh, f— this. F— this s—t.” There was a swarm of them and I just wanted a burger with my parents,’ he says, unsmiling for a moment. ‘I cried my eyes out. I thought, “I can’t do this”, and really hated my life.’

He soldiered on, but it wasn’t a healthy lifestyle; none of them seems to miss it now the ‘break’ is on.

‘It’s great that people can see what we’re really like away from each other,’ Payne says. ‘It got to a point in the band where we were just playing characters, and I was tired of my character. Apart from the daddy thing, I was really loud and bubbly. There were a lot of personalities in the band to keep up with, so I had to be all, ‘Ey!’, the rowdy lad, and I don’t have to now.’

There were times when the band would celebrate hard, and in that, Payne had catching up to do: as a child, he was diagnosed with a scarred kidney, meaning he didn’t taste alcohol until he was given the all-clear at 19. Tell a teenage millionaire they can now safely drink, and they’ll go for it. He admits ‘the floodgates opened’ that year.

‘I wasn’t happy. I went through a real drinking stage, and sometimes you take things too far. Everyone’s been that guy at the party where you’re the only one having fun, and there were points when that was me. I got to 13 stone, just eating crap. I got fat jibes, and it affects your head. I have nothing to hide about it…

‘As I say, it was like a musical university. We were pretty reckless, but I got it out of my system. I had my fun.’

The hiatus seems to have come at just the right time. But before he could take a breath, Payne lurched on in life, becoming involved with Cheryl almost at once.

Nobody asks how they met; their introduction is on YouTube for all to see. Ten years his senior, she was an X Factor judge in 2008 when the 14-year-old Payne shuffled in, all mop-hair and waistcoat, to perform his Sinatra number. He winked at her, she called him ‘cute’, they bumped into one another over the years, ended up working on a remix of one of her songs in 2014, and the rest is recent pop history.

Not everybody was happy when the relationship was initially confirmed. That Cheryl was in a quasi-pastoral role when they met raised eyebrows in the usual eyebrow-raising camps, as did the couple’s decade-wide age gap. Liam doesn’t care. In fact, he can still barely get over the fact she’s his girlfriend.

‘It’s a ridiculous place to be in,’ he says. ‘She’s even more amazing than I thought. I was watching her do Fight For This Love [her debut solo single, from 2009] when I was a kid, and now we’re together with a kid. I feel like I’m X Factor’s biggest winner.’

It helps having Cheryl around to ask about business matters. Like Payne, she was scouted on a TV pop contest (2002’s Popstars: The Rivals), had massive success in a group (Girls Aloud), and then went solo with a more urban sound. She is also the unlikely possessor of the record for number-one singles by a British woman.

‘We think about the same things. She understands what my life is like. She knows what it’s like to sit on the Graham Norton couch [or] we can talk about her L’Oréal work. It’s not that we’re “a brand” as a family, but we can help each other.’

In Who We Are, one of One Direction’s seven books, published in 2014, Payne writes in his chapter that he’s ‘worried about the idea of failing outside of this band’ and declared he’d become a low-key songwriter, because ‘there would be less attention on my life’.

The opposite of that is what’s happening, I inform him.

‘Yeah, that was a point when I was scared of our success, and we didn’t want to take a step back from it,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to be a songwriter and not be famous, but happy. Then Simon and Cheryl told me this is where I am supposed to be, and I’d miss the stage. The pressure of what was coming next was scary, but they talked me down.’

The solo product he’s come up with is the sort of music he’d always wanted to make: radio-friendly R&B in the style of his heroes, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Pharrell Williams, and more informed by the rap music he listens to than the pop he’s famous for. Who knows if he can shake the ‘embarrassing dad’ brand to pull it off, but the signs point to success. Strip That Down has been streamed more than 300 million times on Spotify alone.

‘I wanted this to be for people my age. The themes are a bit older, but you have to grow up with your fans. I can’t make bubblegum pop any more,’ he says.

One Direction fans needn’t despair. They might have dispersed and almost all signed elsewhere, but Payne is excited about the idea of a comeback gig in years to come. As, I’m sure, are the band’s accountants.

But that won’t be for a little while, if Payne has it his way, because – as he keeps on telling me – he is just far too happy with his lot at the moment to take a step backwards. When it reaches our time to wrap up, he’s still at it.

‘I feel great about what’s going on in my life,’ he says, giving it one last handclap and springing to his feet. ‘I’m extremely lucky. I feel like I’m in a comatose dream. I’m like, “when did I last bump my head?” because I can’t believe this…’

Liam Payne’s next single, Bedroom Floor, is out on 20 October

[robokraft]

My Summer with Man Ray

I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. My mother was a tennis teacher, and my father was a builder. Down the street from our house lived the architect who had been my father’s partner on his first housing development, David Savage, who was also a noted sculptor and painter. His wife was Naomi Savage, an accomplished and admired contemporary photographer…and the niece of the legendary Dadaist, Man Ray.

The myth of Man Ray was a central part of my growing up. Our family was very close to the Savage family (my mother was particularly close to Naomi), and my best friend throughout elementary school was their son, Michael Savage. There are photos of Michael and me sharing a crib when I was just a few weeks old, and he was 6 months. Little did I realize how profoundly this artistic household would alter my life.

Man Ray’s art was everywhere throughout their house. In Michael’s bedroom was Man’s legendary painting of a billiard table with multi-colored clouds overhead, as well as a framed sketch from Man Ray’s art school days, showing Man’s poorly-drawn rendering of a Native American warrior’s arm….corrected in the margin of the drawing by his drawing instructor.

There was a metronome with an eye on it in the living room (“Indestructible Object”), an old-fashioned iron with nails soldered to the iron’s base (“Le Cadeau”) on a bookshelf - both now in the Museum of Modern Art - and random photographs of poets and painters throughout the house…all epic works of 20th Century modernism that just happened to be by “Uncle Man.”

There were also semi-annual visits by Man Ray - the twinkly and compact artist, with his Brooklyn accent and his signature beret - and his friend, Marcel, a thin and dapper Frenchman who smoked little cigars and laughed as they sat around the pool in the Savage’s backyard. During these visits the kids were usually oblivious to “the adults”, but I was dimly aware that Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp were important guys, because their visits had a very special air to them. There is a great photo somewhere of Laurie Savage, Michael’s younger sister, hanging off a tree above Man and Marcel, as they lounged in chairs in the backyard. It was just that casual.

By the time I went to college, I was fully aware of who Man Ray was, and his subtle yet seminal influence on the history of modern art. And ironically, though I fully intended to study music in college, I received a much warmer welcome from the Art Department, where I ended up. Man Ray was a hero to my classmates, and they were amazed that I had hung out with him as a child.

As the summer break after my junior year approached– 1975 – I hatched a plan to work in Boston until July 1st , and then head off to Europe by myself. It was my sophomoric version of “On The Road: European Edition.” My plan was to burn through my Europass for a couple weeks, and then go find Man Ray in Paris. He had floated an invitation to visit “whenever you get to France”, and I intended to cash in that chip.

Naomi wrote her uncle to tell him my dates, and received a response instructing young Monsieur Kraft to arrive at his studio, “2 bis, Rue Ferou”, on the appointed day in mid-July. I imagined that I would spend the rest of my summer on the Left Bank, making tea for the Old Master, while hearing ribald stories of the Surrealists powering absinthe at Brasserie Lipp and Les Deux Magots.

For two weeks I took trains around Europe... from London to Bruges, to Vondelpark in Amsterdam where I learned the limit of my capacity for hash-laced cigarettes. Finally it was time to train to Paris’ Gare du Nord and start my summer with Man Ray. 

I arrived at 2 bis Rue Ferou, a quiet street just south of the Luxembourg Gardens, on a wonderfully sunny morning. I marveled at how the street perfectly reflected the iconic Man Ray painting, “The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse”, where a shadowy woman is wheeling an object down the narrow lane, next to an ominous wall. Here I was at the front door, the ominous wall in the Surrealist masterpiece stretching along to my right.

After several rings – and a mounting sense of anxiety – an older woman answered the door. This was definitely not Juliet Man Ray (as Man’s wife called herself), who I’d also known growing up, but a housekeeper who didn’t speak English. When I told her my name, she asked me to wait at the door, and returned with a small, folded piece of paper.

It was a note from Man Ray, telling me his plans had changed. He had been invited to spend the remainder of the summer at the home of his art dealer, who had a house in St Tropez. The dealer’s name was Luciano Anselmino, and I was enthusiastically invited to come and visit. There was a phone number, no address, and Man Ray’s familiar signature.

I had no idea where St Tropez was, or how to get there, or exactly what to do once I did get there - except to call that number. There used to be a bookstore on Paris’ Left Bank called “The Village Voice”, which carried all English-language books, and I walked there to do some research.

I spent one more night in Paris, at the Hotel Solferino ($6 a night including a fresh, warm croissant and coffee in the morning) and the next morning I boarded a train to Nice. At Nice, I located the bus that would take me west on the Grand Corniche, a road known for its soaring views and perilous hairpin turns high above the blue-green Mediterranean.

Disembarking in St Tropez, I crossed to a café where a black man holding a trumpet was leaning against a wall, talking loudly on a pay-phone mounted near the door.

“I’m gonna come home and fuck you silly” he was saying in perfect English. “I’m gonna fuck you to death. You just wait. My dick is hard just thinking about you.” I assumed he thought no one could understand him, so it was remarkable to hear this romantic conversation spoken so brazenly within earshot of the café tables.

I always loved the karma of meeting an African-American musician as my first friend on the Riviera. And his call was a fitting introduction to the debauchery ahead.

After chatting and ascertaining that he was part of a touring jazz band, and that he missed his girlfriend in New Jersey terribly (I guess so!), I approached the phone and dialed the number on my folded slip of paper. An Italian answered speaking no English – then momentarily put the phone down – and finally came back - and together we ascertained where my café was, and where I should wait to be picked up.

Had I been more sophisticated, I should have known by the car that picked me up – a late model convertible Alfa Romeo driven by a young Marcello Mastroianni stunt double – that my Riviera adventure was about to level up. And after racing up the hills of St Tropez, where each perilous curve providing an increasingly fabulous view of the sparkling Mediterranean further and further down below, the house that came into view was a good indication of what lay ahead.

The driveway featured two red Ferrari’s, a black Lamborghini, and several multi-colored Vespas. The house was white on white, enormous and regal – a millionaire’s mansion with a two-story glass entryway. And stepping inside, I could see straight through the house to the sloping green lawn and distant turquoise sea, shimmering beyond the grassy backyard and shaded pool ringed with striped umbrellas.

The driver took my backpack and led me out to the pool. This was a Fellini movie in full swing, with topless women sunning on chaises, men oiling lotion on each other, tan and shirtless attendants serving drinks, and an activity occurring on a raft in the center of the water that looked uncannily and profoundly illegal. It was a bright sunny Riviera afternoon, and I had just entered Bacchus’ Personal Pool Party.

A large man - 6 feet, 250 pounds and dressed in some kind of toga - approached me, accompanied by a smaller, thinner, younger blond boy. “Ciao, Robert! Welcome! I’m Luciano! Have a hit!” The blonde boy produced a small silver vial and held it up to my nose.

I knew about cocaine, which was just becoming fashionable, but I’d never had any. Within minutes I was lit up, staring at naked breasts and a blazing Rivera sun, fully entranced by my new membership in the international jet-set.

The afternoon blended into the evening, and by dinnertime I had been high all day. After a rollicking late dinner at an enormous banquet table, with conversation (and loud, drunken arguments) in French, English, and Italian, Juliet Man Ray came up to me to say “I’ll escort you to your room now. You’re sleeping in our wing of the house.“

Juliet and Man Ray had a completely separate area of the house for their bedroom and guest room, and my room shared a little hallway with theirs. Juliet - a famous dancer in her prime - was clearly concerned about my “safety“ in this crowd (and maybe also her responsibility to my mother’s friend, Naomi, back in Princeton). She indicated not so subtly that once she and Man went to bed, I was expected to remain in their portion of the house.

After making a somewhat dramatic showing of how tired I was after a long day of travel, I bid my surrogate grandparents-cum-chaperones good night, and dutifully checked into my room. My intention was to pretend I was asleep, and once it was clear they had gone to bed, to sneak out and check out the non-stop party that had kicked back into gear around the pool. However, Night Number One transpired uneventfully, as my first evening’s plans in St Tropez were trumped by my need for some deep and much-needed sleep.

The next day was absolutely gorgeous. Luciano‘s house sat on a magnificent hill overlooking all of St. Tropez, and the beautiful sloping lawn had several wonderful sitting areas for conversation, reading, and sunbathing.

After coffee and breakfast, I wandered outside to reflect on my good fortune. I didn’t see Juliet or Man Ray anywhere, but sitting alone halfway down the hill was a woman I had noticed at dinner the night before. She was very attractive, an “older” woman who had spoken occasionally in Italian, while looking at me playfully throughout the meal. She seem to be in her mid-30’s - which to me was way above my pay-grade - so I didn’t pay much attention to her.

Spotting her sitting on the lawn, I realized she was beckoning to me to come join her in the empty chair across from where she sat. I walked over, seated myself, and said the only word in Italian I knew, “Ciao”.

In broken English, she said “give me your hand“. I extended my hand to her, and she turned it palm up to begin examining the lines in my palm and fingers. As she traced the lifelines, she murmured and looked soulfully into my eyes. After several minutes of delicate touching, she uttered the words I have long remembered, “You are a pilgrim.”

I was embarrassed, and also excited. I realized she was not only flirting with me, but having pulled her chair closer to face me for the palm reading, she had hiked up her flowing transparent white caftan, to reveal tan, shapely legs. As she leaned back in her chair to laugh, I caught the unmistakable view of a woman spreading her legs with nothing underneath. She smiled at me, knowing that I had just seen exactly what she intended to reveal.

I was 19 years old. Although I had had a few girlfriends in high school, and a couple clumsy collegiate skirmishes, I was definitely under-prepared for this moment. What was the appropriate response? Should I ask “Do you come here often? “Or “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?“ I had no game, and I had even less experience. Plus, I couldn’t speak a word of Italian, so any chance of idle, disarming chitchat was a non-starter.

After a few more heart-pounding moments of meaningful deep stares and sheepish smiles, she took my hand and led me back towards the house. The phrase that kept running through my head was, “When in Rome…”

Thus began my daytime affair with the surrealist painter, Carolrama. Avoiding the watchful gaze of Juliet Man Ray, I would steal moments to catch a sign across a swimming pool or a lunch table, and then slip back into her tiny bedroom for lessons in lovemaking.

This was not the awkward collegiate fumbling that comprised the full extent of my romantic skill-set at that moment. This was adult education, patient instruction, and sensual direction that was both surprising and tender. The most difficult part was figuring out if I should be saying something afterwards, like “Hey, thanks” or “Grazie mille, bella”. I also couldn’t figure out if all the other Italians knew what was happening, though their smiles indicated that this was not our secret alone.

At the same time, I had discovered that the dinner chef had a culinary assistant whose main purpose was to serve the meal and then do the dishes afterwards. This girl, probably all of 18 years old, was a young Sophia Loren, busting out of her waitress uniform, the buttons straining to close over an ample bosom that was often smeared with gravy or tomato-sauce dripping down her chest.

Glistening with perspiration, anxious about balancing the plates in front of the raucous diners, I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she would circle the table, serving the guests. After dinner, I would find an excuse to go into the kitchen where she would be washing dishes, and try to make conversation with her, using a combination of English and hand gestures. She refused to acknowledge my presence beyond a cursory nod of the head, because the chef - an effeminate, overbearing taskmaster - would circle through the kitchen endlessly, giving orders and expressing exasperation.

It would be several nights until I found my moment. After a particularly drunken dinner, while she was washing dishes, I came up behind her to put something in the sink and “accidentally” brush against her voluptuous backside. By now, after almost a week in the Carolrama Graduate School of Seduction, I thought I was James Bond, and I was intent upon sharing the benefits and results of my daytime trysts.

As I leaned over the sink, I detected something I didn’t expect: with the boss nowhere in sight, she pushed back against me and didn’t pull away. We stayed there for a moment too long, communicating wordlessly. It was clear that our dance had begun.

Thus began my late nights with Claudia, complete with furtive meetings after dinner, sneaking behind the house once she finished cleaning up. We would stand or crouch in the bushes near the garage, kissing and touching passionately.

I was convinced that I had a new girlfriend. She was fired by the end of the second week. I had no phone number, no last name, and nothing left but the memory of a beautiful, young, tan, Italian girl with passionate intensity and the body of a Playboy pin-up.

In the middle of all of these non-stop erotic escapades, my primary focus every day was spending the afternoons sitting with Man Ray. He was older and much more frail than my memories of him from childhood. He liked to spend the late afternoon in a chaise on the lawn, partially covered with a blanket, thumbing through art books, or shuffling the bundle of mail that arrived for him every day.

He made it clear that I was welcome to sit with him, and I made it clear that I was available anytime he wanted company. I think he found Luciano’s mania and the jet-set’s never-ending shenanigans amusing, predictable, and maybe even slightly boring. 

Man Ray had already lived that life in Paris, and experienced the greatest moments of 20th-Century bacchanalia with the likes of Picasso, Dali, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and virtually every “celebrity” of the epic era between the wars (many of whom he photographed). His liaisons were legendary, including his famous affair with the courtesan, Kiki of Montparnasse, memorialized in the photograph, ”Le Violon d’Ingres”. Onto a beautifully lit photo, he drew two acoustic F-holes just above Kiki’s naked hindquarters, making her bare back look like a human cello.

In the fading afternoon light, I would sit silently with Man gazing out over the Mediterranean, listening to the distant walla of the party around the pool, and joyfully providing a particular and unique service to my favorite artist.

Each day, Man Ray would hand me a pile of mail, and ask me to read it to him. It was an outstanding collection of correspondence. Among the cards and letters were notes from the world’s most famous filmmakers, painters, gallery-owners, publishers, authors, and intellectuals. I wasn’t familiar with many of the names, but Man Ray would laughingly describe who all of these people were, and how he knew them.

It was an education in the history and cultural life of the 20th century, and also an insight into Man Ray’s wicked sense of humor. I’d finish reading some letter and tell him who had sent it, and more often than not, he’d roll his eyes, and then wink at me with an all-knowing smile, as if to say “Oy. What a pain in the ass.” Although Man Ray was an ex-pat who had made Paris his home for more than 50 years, there was still a lot of Emmanuel Radnitzky in him, the disenfranchised immigrant Jew born in Philadelphia and raised in Brooklyn.

My very favorite correspondence was a letter buried in one day’s mail with the return address clearly marked, “Tufts University.“ As a Harvard student, I was obviously aware of Tufts, the neighboring college in Medford, Massachusetts, and I was very interested to see what someone from that college would be writing to Man Ray.

Inside the envelope was a lovely handwritten note on personal stationery, sent by a young lady who introduced herself as “a sophomore in the Tufts Fine Arts Department”. She was planning to write a term-paper on Man Ray, and wondered if he wouldn’t mind inscribing his autograph on the enclosed 3 x 5 card in the envelope.

If there was ever a moment that I felt a bond between myself and the titan of Dada, it was this. We both laughed at the audacity, the innocence, and the chutzpah of the student’s request. For a moment I wondered if he would indulge the girl, and I handed him the card and the pen. He looked at me with that twinkle I knew so well, shrugged, shook his head, and said conspiratorially, “Non, merci.” Man Ray was not going to break the spell of a golden afternoon by engaging with a random request from a stranger. And I totally understood. 

He was a living mystery, a legend, a spirit, and an inspiration. And above all, he was an Artist. Long before the ideas of “branding” and commodification had taken our culture hostage, Man Ray was showing his resistance to sharing himself, his identity, or his fame. That girl from Tufts must still wonder if her letter ever reached its’ intended recipient.

Within a few weeks, it became clear that the party was nearing its end. Man and Juliet were making plans to return to Paris, while Luciano Anselmino had been spending more and more time away from the house and the endless stream of house-guests, going back to Rome, (or so he said) to attend to business.

There was an afternoon where Man Ray’s chaise was empty, the scene by the pool was remarkably quiet, and the clouds of autumn had started to dot the sky. Carolrama had disappeared (without any goodbye or notice) and suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge to go back to Cambridge.

On my last night , I had a quiet dinner with just Juliet and Man Ray. Man was mostly silent, and Juliet attended to him in a motherly way. I tried to express my deepest gratitude for the summer, but I wasn’t sure if there was any way I could acknowledge the great gift I had been given.

I returned that fall to my senior year at Harvard, and upon graduation in June I moved to New York to start my career as a songwriter. On a crisp November day, after a summer trying unsuccessfully to teach music, I boarded a bus heading down Fifth Avenue, intent upon finding a real job to support myself while I pursued my lifelong aspiration to be a musician. As I disembarked at 55th Street, I noticed the Rizzoli Bookstore directly in front of my bus stop, and spontaneously decided to walk in to see if there was a position available.

I found the floor manager and must have talked convincingly, because 20 minutes later I was being interviewed for the job of book-clerk on the main floor. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned how much I loved Rizzoli Books, and as a huge fan of modern art, I found them to be invaluable. I shared that I knew a fair amount about modern art, and had even spent some time with the legendary Dadaist, Man Ray.

The manager who was interviewing me paused and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry for you. He was a great artist.” I didn’t know until that moment that Man Ray had died that morning, November 18th, 1976, at the age of 86 years old.

I got the job at Rizzoli, and believe to this day that one of the greatest artists of the modern era was somehow responsible for my good fortune, who at that moment was winking at me with an all-knowing smile.

Robert Kraft

Los Angeles

May 2018