Uncommon Curiosity

I met Arron last August, when he agreed to go to lunch with a total stranger who was a friend of a friend, and we hit it off well (most importantly he didn’t complain that I wanted to take pictures of everything – really, who takes pictures of pizza slices?).   A week later I invited him to go to Folsom with me, along with the Eclipse play party afterward.  Was it impulsive of me to invite a guy I hardly knew to let me lead him around on a leash all afternoon and then encourage him to beat me senseless that night?  Probably, but I had a really good feeling about him right away – that we would connect well, which, over the 6 months I’ve known him, we really have.  He’s become a very good friend, and he’s taught me a lot about the world in a very short time.

I realized the other day that I haven’t written much about him, which is odd, because he’s become a rather large part of my life.  We’ve fallen into meeting once a week for frozen yogurt in Berkeley, or, lately, to go see the drag king show at the White Horse Inn.  We bicker like siblings over who’s gonna get to pay for things, but it’s worth it, because I love going places with him – when I make a snarky/silly comment under my breath, he gets it, and he’s ready to shoot back with one of his own.  He’s got my back and I’ve got his – I feel safe with him, which is a precious thing to find in a friend, and not something I take for granted.

I think one of the reasons I like him so much is that he’s nearly as awkward as I am (and, yes, we’ve actually argued over who wins the awkward award, but this is my blog, and so I can go ahead and claim that I won) and that’s incredibly comforting as we’re attempting dangerous maneuvers like going to an intimidatingly infamous gay bar for the first time.  He’s unlike anyone else I’ve ever met – extremely smart and funny, but so completely unaware of his attractiveness that it’s almost hard to believe.  And yet, under that self-deprecating shell, he’s a very real, deeply caring guy who happens to be a lot of fun.

I’ve been asking to take his picture for awhile, and he graciously agreed to let me last week.  Unfortunately, that night I was exhausted and suffered a few false starts, but he was very patient with me, and allowed me to keep stumbling along until we found our groove (in this case, a guitar and a pair of sunglasses that had us both laughing.)  I’m really pleased with the pictures that came out – they capture little glimpses of the sweet, funny, sexy, handsome guy I’ve come to know.

(And, for those of you keeping score, I managed, as I took the 300+ pictures, to knock over a glass of tea – spilling it across the floor and under the bed – to nearly lose his glasses behind the bookcase, and to just barely miss stepping on 5 billion trumpet parts by slipping sideways and falling awkwardly onto the bed, nearly knocking said bookcase over onto myself in the process.  I honestly did not know trumpets had that many parts.  But I did manage to avoid serious injury to either of us, and, given that my face was obscured by a camera and my mind obsessed with the next shot, that pretty much counts as a miracle. )

So, without further ado, here are my favorites:

Photography geek picture.  I just love the composition on this one:

This is the Arron I know best, with his eyebrow crooked up and wearing those awesome glasses:

This is the face he made every time I asked him to smile (there was growling as well):

I threw a little tantrum that he wouldn’t smile for me and then sneakily caught this gorgeous picture as he was laughing at me over it:

Yeah, ok, this one just seemed so right.  The poor guy is so amazingly awesome, and yet all people seem to wanna know is what he’s got in his pants.  The answer, of course?  Red plaid boxers:

As devastatingly sexy as this picture is, all I can think of when I see it is the gel that was all over my hands (…and my shorts…and my camera…) from trying to style his hair for the shot.  Note to self – I am not a hairdresser.  I need to stop pretending I am.

Yup, I was lying on my back on his bed, pointing the camera up at him when I got this super-cool reflection.

Plus, damn, has he got that hungry look down or what?

I love the motion in this picture.  The song he was playing was beautiful:

I forget what I said to him, but, whatever it was, it made him suddenly very shy.  And that “morning light” effect?  It was nearly 2 in the morning, nowhere near a window.  I learned a cool trick with my flash to make it look this way:

At one point, he jumped up and raced over to grab these sunglasses.  Maybe we were just punch drunk with exhaustion, but we both loosened up and ended up getting lots of great shots (including a few without his shirt on that I’m not gonna print here.  Yeah, I’m totally showing off now.)

The look in his eyes makes this shot for me: