My girlfriend pulled at my arm trying to yell something above the music. I followed her because I'll pretty much follow her anywhere. My right eardrum was perforated when I finally understood she was yelling something about "...she's beautiful!" As my girlfriend seems to twitter both ways, and has pretty good taste in women, I followed her up the tiers of the club floor to see the tall Asian girl in a tiny rubber skirt and top, draped with a cape, surveying the place.

Pardon my stare I was thinking when the girl glanced my way, then looked away again. I approached her, explaining that I was a photographer and would give my right nut to have her in front of my lens. She looked at my girlfriend and figured I was probably harmless, or why would that chick be anywhere near me. (If she'd known the nature of our co-dependent, sick relationship, it would have offered no assurance.) She was visiting from San Francisco, she said. No time to shoot. But if I'm ever up that way, she'd love to. Of course I gave her a card, but didn't get a number for her. Real quick on your feet, Fran.

Later I watched her dance, with that little flared skirt flipping up with every twitch of her narrow hips, flashing red rubber undies. Without the cape I could see she was skinny everywhere. And still beautiful - just the way I like 'em.

Ah well - another opportunity for great pictures lost because of my shyness.

And that's the way it goes...

-Fran Bilder, Private Photographer

Paradise Regained

My girlfriend's pissed. She says I should write about her, not some strange girl we saw in a bar. If I don't write about her, I'm going to get cut off. One way or the other.

First, she's not really my girlfriend. More like nemesis or something. D. Brian introduced me to her just before he left for Billings, so I took that opportunity to get to know her. Remember Faust, the guy that made a deal with the Devil? It's kind of like that. Except Faust got what he asked for. I'm a sucker for a girl with all the right parts and an endearing Eastern European accent that turns my name into "Biildaire."

Anyway, she was over at my digs last night. I made the huge mistake of showing a model (did I tell you she's a model?) the slides from a couple of shoots we did. Big mistake. "This one's cute. OOOH! LOOK AT THIS ONE! Scan this one." For hours. I jumped out of the office chair each time, because I'm pretty stupid about women and never did figure out that's why she was doing all that exclamation point dropping. I told her that if the pictures were to be scanned, she'd do it and she couldn't give me credit for any of the outtakes she wanted. She didn't understand. I had to drop back to Brian's difference between a photograph of a beautiful woman, and a beautiful photograph of a woman. She didn't understand. So I got her to agree to handle the tedium of scanning. And somehow I got assigned to fix her car's brakes while she was doing that. Of course.

We're going out on Saturday. One of those upscale "European" clubs where Gucci is the ticket in. I won't be wearing Gucci. Just the usual work clothes, with the trenchcoat, the old LX and a dame on my arm that can out-Euro the "Euro" crowd. And I'll make pictures. That's what I do. I'm...

Fran Bilder, Private Photographer