Peek-a-boo

“One should always keep a diary in order to have something scandalous to read in the train.”

–Oscar Wilde

BUENOS AIRES, January 18

I am walking through the Sunday street fair in San Telmo and enjoying the feel of being back in Buenos Aires. Despite yesterday’s summer swelter, today is cool and there are people out in the street wearing jackets. I have just finished my usual Sunday brunch at Brasserie Petanque, a very good French restaurant, and I had a little Lomo (tenderloin) a la Bearnaise. I try to speak Spanish when ordering, but no one is interested in playing along. The owner says “thank you” and “merci” when I leave. This slightly humiliates me.

I snap pictures and I feel a bit rusty. My hands are shaking. I know I need people in my pictures, but I also don’t wish to invade people’s privacy. It becomes a moot point when my hands shake too much to keep the camera steady. I walk on and try to recompose the compositions and to regain my composure.

One part of Defensa is completely torn up and there are narrow sidewalk passages. To pass you have to turn shoulders when people approach you. An attractive and tall blonde woman is making her way toward me behind her friend, a small dark-haired man wearing glasses. “It was SO good,” she proclaims loudly in Scandanavian-accented English, “that I would think about getting a second boyfriend.”

She pumps her fist in the air and I do not stare directly, but I hustle through the construction so that I can write down her comment. It is the perfect overheard comment, at once scandalous and a non sequitur. Many options race through my head as to what it means, and all are deliciously filthy. Probably all are wrong, but the episode sums up the voyeuristic activity in which I engage.

Street photography is my genre and, according to the entry in Wikipedia:

“Shyness and street photography seem to be mutually exclusive. However, most successful street photographers have started as shy photographers.”

My shyness certainly presents itself in the shake and in the reticence to put myself directly in the middle of the scene. Yet I realize that I have to overcome the shyness in order to take the photographs I see. Occasionally, I am very successful; often, I end up with a poorly composed or blurry picture of interesting people.

What a job I’ve made for myself, a shy man. I have assigned myself a project that requires me to be a street photographer, Tango dancer, and Spanish speaker. They are all a struggle. The photography is the easiest because I am able to use the camera as a shield and composing the photograph creates something of a distance from my subject. Tango and Spanish do not offer any shield. Passively listening to a sexually suggestive comment by a tall Scandanavian is the best job of all, just like listening to the amorous couple in the next apartment as I did in “Again at 3 A.M..”

Before you judge my task of listening and watching, remember I am reporting all this back to you. You read this for the same reason I listen and watch. Some of my friends have asked me to publish salacious details from my life and I have no intent to become that transparent. Men of Mystery must keep a bit of obscurity about them, otherwise their notoriety prevents them from achieving the proper anonymity to photograph and report street scenes. Also, we may prohibit ourselves from executing dangerous clandestine international missions.

In the Subte train on the way back to my apartment, a woman of about 60 is seated across from me. She stares at me in a way that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, as if I am being judged. Her dozing husband is not interested.

She takes her cellphone out of her purse, opens it, studies it and pushes a button. She does it several times and stares into the phone.

A sudden insight brings a smile to my face. I turn my back to her and pretend to look out of the window at the dark walls rocketing past.

She has been taking my picture.

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