It's been awhile since I talked about books. Currently I'm reading Celine's Journey to the End of the Night. I got there because in Pulp, Bukowski's protagonist calls Celine "France's greatest writer." And I was reading Bukowski as an antidote to overdosing on Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" novels. It's good to be back reading challenging material after four or five bubblegum books in a row.

In other news, Lucky commented that because of my shoot on the 9th I'll miss his birthday party. And because his birthday party includes heaps o' naked chicks, that will be a shame. It will indeed. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Besides, it's still possible the model might change her mind. I hope she does not, but if she does, Lucky's party is a fine default.

This is Anne. She modeled for me a little, but mostly was a fine make-up artist. She's another of those girls that is there...then isn't. Then is again. Etc.

Anne here contacted me in 2001 asking if I'd make some pictures of her. She was short, beautiful and very much a part of San Diego's Asian community. The initial pictures were fashion, as she wanted to model within that segment. Over the next few years she studied makeup with one of the big cosmetics companies and rose to a manager position, then left there and worked for a financial company in sales. She excelled in that. In the mean time she was the model that assisted me during my first bondage shoot so the bound girl wouldn't get eaten by my cat if I had a heart attack during the shoot. And she did a lot of makeup work for me, though I always had the strange jobs for her. She painted BonBon (including coloring her very pale nipples) for her first shoot, for example.

This was the last time I photographed Anne back in 2003. She'd left her makeup kit and chair at my studio and came to get them. By this time she wasn't modeling anymore, but I convinced her to do some last pictures and we shot in the warehouse next door. Last I heard she was engaged to be married to a nice Caucasian man and was still working in finance. And then she disappeared off the radar screen.

It is a sad thing, but models come and go. They model for awhile then move on to other things. Modeling may be a lark, or it may be an occupation, but while photographers usually keep getting better as they get older, models will often decide that age means they must go do something else. So we see this succession of pretty girls, and get to know some, but the relationships are mostly ephemeral. And that's sad.