STRKNG Photography Blog

Greek National Opera – Choreography K. Rigos

Laura, part of a session at the beach of Tamariu. I asked her to act the part… I think she did it well.

Nikon FM2n, Voigtlander Nokton 58, f1,4 Foma 400 dev Adonal

We had maintained a leisurely pace that demanded the investigation of any likely drinking establishment and some kind of mid-afternoon search for interesting lodging. We were maybe making it fifty or sixty miles south any given day and at this rate wouldn't reach the Mexican border…well…it was going to take a while.

Jay found a cabin just off our route and was gleeful that it had a hot tub. Our rigorous day was taking a brilliant turn as she made drinks while I drove, wiggling her ass over the seats and returning upright with perfectly mixed cocktails. We interspersed those with droplets of liquid LSD. Surely this would work out – we weren't going very far.

To say that we weren't sober when we made it to the cabin would be an understatement. We tossed suitcases in and unloaded a batch of snacks for a miniature feast before stripping and relaxing into the hot tub. Jay straddled me and wriggled around in my lap while we made out. I felt like I was in high school. She had brought the vial of LSD and poured some into my neck and licked at it. I returned the favor, nipping and sucking at her skin and up into her earlobe. I remember looking up and seeing her long red hair lift into the air in snaking dreadlocks of primal goddess energy and then felt her fingernails rake deep into my skin and catch on my shoulder blades. Jay dove into my neck and simply bit into it, catching the thick muscle that led into the meat of my shoulder. I yelped and pushed my armed up inside hers to break her fingers away from me, slid down to her wrists and pushed them behind her and scolded her. Absolutely NO. Her eyes were blazing and I wasn't sure that she really recognized me. I was half-crazy myself from lust and drugs but that level of physical combat in sex wasn't something I wanted to engage in. I saw the change in her as my words sank in and she slid off my lap and rushed into the house. I gave her a minute. Holy shit, I was high. The afternoon of acid flirtation was really setting in. Jay was half my weight or less — I should check on her. I didn't see her immediately and the next thing I knew I was curled up and warm on the bed and tired from a long day and comfortable and asleep.

I woke in half-light. How long had I been out? I felt wonderful….and very very high…and wonderful. I had to consider walking. Naked, I felt my way out of the bedroom and into the main part of the cabin and stopped cold. Everything was upended. Broken plates and glassware. Clothing tossed around. Jay? Where? I reached down to my suitcase and pulled out a pair of pants that….that were wet? Sniffed them. Urine. Someone had peed in my suitcase. What? Jay?? I called out, trying to imagine where she could be. Suddenly she bolted from behind the couch and I caught the jangle of my car keys in her hands as she rushed for the back door. She was ten steps out and heading for my big Suburban, apparently intending to try to drive down the curvy and foggy mountain road in this state. Naked. High. She had taken as much or more LSD as I had and I could barely deal. I managed to catch her as she fumbled with the door and wrestle the keys away. Baring her teeth at me she took two steps to the front of the car and ripped a reflective marker from the ground and menaced me with the pointy end. I backed up and held my empty hands out in what I hoped was a calming gesture and she threw the thing at me and ran into the woods, screaming like a rabbit being murdered by a fox. Holy shit, this had gone sideways in a hurry. What. The. Fuck.

I stood there for a bit, trying to understand which way she had disappeared and then decided that chasing her through the woods was going to be a bad game. I shivered in the cold and went inside to find some dry clothes. It felt like an hour trying to figure out how to put on socks. I never figured it out. I did get pants on but it was touch and go. Shirts were confusing.

Further down the lane was a set of lights and the shape of a car I had seen on our way in and I assumed it was our hosts home. I didn't know where Jay had gone but there were other driveways and I worried that she had found someone out there and was babbling something incomprehensible to them that would necessitate a call to the local police. Had our hosts heard the screaming? Noises of destruction from their rental? I was going to have to try to stop them from calling the authorities. Living out here there was a good chance they were hippies and had some drug experience. Some amount of truth might make a believable story. With THAT idea in mind, I started gingerly down the drive in bare feet, shirtless. What I didn't realize quite yet was that Jay's bite to my shoulder had been bleeding the entire time I was asleep and that I was covered in blood as I ambled through the dark toward a semi-distant light.

Ten more feet and I could see the light more clearly. A line of aging Xmas bulbs hung over an old and not-likely-working vehicle covered in leaves. No home. No host. Thank God. I turned and as I headed back to the cabin I caught a movement in the fog — Jay's pale form stumbling back into the light, shivering convulsively. Chalk up another point for us.

I walked around to the other side and closed the patio door behind and made a beeline to the back door and locked it. Jay darted back and forth as if in a trap and I spoke as calmly as I could. She finally cornered herself in the bedroom and I threw her a blanket and kept the bed between us as I talked her down. After a good long time I got her to get into bed and tucked her in, piled extra blankets on her for comfort and turned off the last light. She was quiet quickly and I let myself out to survey the situation.

Using the bathroom revealed my own bloody state — I looked ghastly and I could see why I might have freaked Jay out. A bit of cleanup on myself and then a load of laundry started. Broken dishware into the garbage, restore some order to the kitchen. I walked out on the patio and called a friend at 6am. "You'll never believe what's going on around me right now," I started, and laughed. He laughed too.