Generation Loss Read Free Page A

my camera at CBGB's. I loved the rituals of
processing film. I had an instinctive feel for it, how long it would take for
an image to bleed from the neg onto emulsion paper. I loved playing with the
negs, manipulating light and shadow and time until the world looked just right,
until everything in front of me was just the way I wanted it to be.
    But
best of all I loved being alone in the dark with the infrared bulb, that
incandescent flare when I switched the lights back on and there it was: a
black-and-white print: a body, an eye, a tongue, a cunt, a prick, a hand, a
tree; drunk kids racing through a side street with their eyes white like they'd
seen a ghost with a gun.
    This
is what I lived for, me alone with these things. Not just knowing I'd seen them
and taken the picture but feeling like I'd made them, like they'd never have
existed without me. Nothing is like that: not sex, not drugs, not booze or
sunrise off the most beautiful place you can imagine. Nothing is like knowing
you can make something like that real. I felt like I was fucking God.
    You
read a lot of crap about photographic craftsmanship in those days, and
technique; but you didn't hear shit about vision. I knew that I had an eye, a
gift for seeing where the ripped edges of the world begin to peel away and
something else shows through. What that whole downtown scene was about, at
least for a little while, was people grabbing at that frayed seam and just
yanking to see what was behind it; to see what was left when everything else
was torn away.
    My
story was picked up by the Daily News. Then the Sunday Times Magazine interviewed me for a very brief piece. And there were the "Dead
Girls" photos, and there was me, smoking a Kent and wearing beat-up black
jeans and red Keds and a MC5 T-shirt filigreed with cigarette burns, my hair a
dirty blond halo around a pale face with no makeup. I looked like what your
mother dreams about in the middle of the night when you don't come home.
    I
was actually a little worried about what my father would think. He finally
called me after the Times Magazine story ran. He made it clear that he
had no interest in seeing the show—a relief to both of us—but he also wanted to
make sure I wasn't in any legal trouble.
    "Anything
comes up, call Ken Wilburn over in Queens," he said and gave me the
number. "He represents some guys, they'll help you out if you get into
trouble. I don't know how the hell you can make money out of this stuff, Cass,
but I hope to God you do. Especially if you need Wilburn."
    I
never did need to call Wilburn. But I didn't make much money, either The Times article did its business, and all the photos sold; but I had only set the
price at seventy-five bucks a pop. Jeannie bought most of them—God knows where
she found the money—but about six months later they were destroyed when her
apartment flooded. The girlfriend of Anubis Rising's lead singer bought the
picture of him with Jeannie then proceeded to set it on fire with her Bic
lighter in the gallery, screaming "Fucking cunt!" until someone threw
her out. John Holstrom bought a picture that had Johnny Thunders in the corner.
    And
the last photo went to Sam Wagstaff, which is how I got a book deal. I'd met a
literary agent at my opening, a petite red-haired woman in a red latex
miniskirt named Linda Kalman.
    "This
is very interesting," she said, peering at "Psychopomp." She was
older than most of the people at the show, in her mid-thirties, and wore
expensive gold jewelry and stiletto-heeled boots. I pegged her for a socialite
slumming among the barbarians. She glanced at the crowd drinking white wine in
plastic cups, Jeannie and her friends hooting raucously as a reporter took
notes. "Do you know which one's the artist?"
    I
dropped my cigarette and stubbed it out with my sneaker. "That would be
me."
    "Really."
Her eyes narrowed. She gave me a small smile then extended her hand.
"Linda Kalman. I'm working on a book right now with Chris Makos. Do you
know