Icarus: A Self Portrait—1984

I quit my job that Saturday when I heard my name called by the manager.¹ That motherfucker always
looked at me like I was running drugs for some cartel or there was a stain on my pants after coming
from the bathroom. Two months ago,² I was drunk³ in New York with an au pair who was studying to be
 
a fashion photographer. She was ordering coffee in Harlem when she dropped her change. The barista wrote
her name—“Alizée” with two Es—on the rim of her latte. That was about the same time the energy embargo
began. Her English was better than my French, but in a moment of relaxation, I offer to pay for her
drink. It was the least I could do. In my mind, I was hearing myself say, Let me pay for your hot drink but what
 
came out was Je suis chaud. And to think I walked in to ask directions. I was already late for my meeting.
As I placed my card on the counter she asked, “What do you mean?”⁴ Photographers see the world differently⁵
from the rest of us.⁶ To you and me a day is just a day, but to them,⁷ it is a gathering of time or more
 
accurately of light. The same light Plato speaks about in the cave. In an hour from now,⁸ we would be sat
by the window⁹ talking about migrants cast adrift on flimsy rafts and what Kubrick’s 2001 would have been
like if it had been directed by Orson Welles as her third latte cools off. Behind me white clouds gathered
before the thunderclaps. Alizée was taking pictures while flicking her black hair behind her ears. The next
 
thing I knew, in a moment that I thought was mine, we were in the back of a taxi.¹⁰ Someone had left
an issue of Newsweek on the seat, opened to page 11. This is where the mythology begins. What do you
want to know? That her name means trade wind. Or that a painter can use a myth to reinvent what has
 
happened before. In the same way that we played two jazz cassettes on repeat in her hotel room while
making love, only resurfacing for room service and to purchase scalped Dave Chappelle tickets at a
comedy club in Soho on Friday. I’d be lying if I did not admit we were playing with death. Exchanging
what we owned with what we didn’t own. It was the nature of recovering what was lost until she left for Paris.

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