Posing for Spencer

LesbosOnTheCouch by Beth C, one of the Lesbos

Apparently nothing stops me. Apparently I have finally reached that point in my life when I do what I want to do.  Apparently I really do do what I want. Apparently this can be a good thing – so it is.

A few weeks ago My Love sent me a link. I thought it was clear enough. Spencer Tunick was to be in Israel for a photo shoot on the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, an endangered and beautiful biblical area, slowly disappearing – evaporating into space.  His team was looking for about a thousand models to pose for him. I read the article. I signed up… simple.

So what did you think of the article? says my Love.

Oh, I already signed up and sent it in.

What? Really? Okay – let's do it!

And so it began. My adventure as a Spencer Tunick model…

We didn't tell anyone we knew we were to join the shoot. And the organizers didn't tell anyone where at the Dead Sea the shoot was to be.  They didn't want the paparazzi and the politicians to interfere. And we didn't want our friends to influence and comment about our participation before the fact. When we got the directions – where to meet the bus at 11:30 at night, we still hadn't really told anybody we were doing this and the organizers still hadn't told anybody where it was to be…We were in cahoots, the organizers and My Love and I.  Telling somebody would have given somebody the ability to point out to us what we were actually about to do through their eyes. And telling everybody would have compromised the shoot for Spencer Tunick.  

Spencer Tunick's pictures are world famous. He's the 'crazy' artist who photographs hundreds of people nude in very public places…and then his pictures are sold and appear in very public places. But we knew that – one of the reasons we wanted to do it was because those who pose in his pictures get a copy of the real thing! …A real Spencer Tunick picture, with us in it at the Dead Sea, in the nude…of us in the nude at the Dead Sea. The same picture that will appear in people's homes, on line, in museums of us nude in the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth.

As the day approached, I 'googled' Spencer Tunick and his work.  Lots of people… lots of bodies… lots of butts… And lots of boobs… Butts and boobs… Boobs and butts... lots of them, in lots of vey spectacular places. Wow…I would get to be one of those bodies in a spectacular place… There was something amazing just thinking about it. The oneness of all the nakedness – of all of us being there – just being there and naked for the picture and the art and the cause

And now that I had my own eyes, I thought nobody would really recognize me anyway…right? my eyes, my boobs, my butt, my big jelly belly and all those other people with theirs…at the Dead Sea …alive today once more for a single photo shoot in the year 2011 before it disappears forever…And me and all my parts, am there.

So we got on the bus in the middle of the night…and road to the designated secret beach at the Dead Sea. It was dark and the night was full of stars. People joked. People dozed…we sat and listened and watched the sky and dosed ourselves.

Spencer came and gave directions. We could keep our clothes on until the very last minute. And then we were to go into the sea.  The Dead Sea shoot was actually in the Dead Sea itself. We thought that we would be near the sea, on the dry salty plateaus that have become even drier in the last 2 decades…

At first, for all of the excitement, nobody really heard or paid attention to the directions.  As soon as Spencer said something about clothes – everybody started stripping in the dark… and then pretty much we were all just kind of naked…naked and waiting for the sun to begin to rise…

My love and I thought we would be the last in the water so that we could get out easier and not go in so deep. My love and I thought – but we didn't think it through…

At some point, after we had gotten directions from Spencer, and after we were already in the water lying on our backs, I heard through the bull horn, ''Ma'am…Ma'am, you there... I know this is hard for you – but you are in the first row of my picture – if you can't keep your body still, you can get out of the water. ''

I looked up and saw that Spencer Tunick was indeed talking to me. What, me? Uh oh…didn't think…first row…bobbing boobs, big bobbing belling…first row. Snap Snap…Guess I got my body still…with boobs a bobbing.

And we continued to get directions and we continued to bob in the water. The Dead Sea is denser than any other body of water. It's thick and oily like Grandma's chicken soup…and so in this thick soup you cannot get your buoyant parts to go down. For the entire shoot in the Dead Sea, I felt my buoyance….my old songs --- babababa booby bop…bababab booby bop, took on a whole new meaning…My boobs just bopped and bobbled, too…my jelly belly bopped, my butt bopped…And it was amazing! It was all truly amazing!

The sun rose and shone. Spencer gave us directions: get down on your knees and let the water move you up and down (booby bop), lie this way on the water with your head north and feet south (belly and booby bop), face the Jordanian mountains and stand still (keep from bopping)…walk onto the rise and stand still – ouch those salty dry grounds really hurt…

The beauty was intense. The oneness and the Oneness were even more intense. I was there. We were there. My Love and I, a part of history, a part of art – just us and our bodies and 1000 others ---Posing for Spencer Tunick.

Eye balls and other such weirdnesses

LesbosOnTheCouch by Beth C, one of the Lesbos

So, here I sit, at my computer, writing my blog – glasses less- Yes I did it – The big laser releasing glasses from the eyeballs surgery….Wahoo and yahoo and yeeehaaaaa!

Seriously, that is how I feel. I wake up in the morning, roll over and see the clock on the wall, the trees outside my window and my love clicking away on the computer…But my patient readers, I ask you to humor me – and maybe yourselves and let me begin at the begining …

I have been wearing glasses since the 3^rd grade and probably didn't see very much before that…they weren't too quick and observant of such needs back in the 60's…so I walked into a few walls, never saw a star and didn't recognize anyone on the street – It was New York, kinda…The first real tell it all sign was when I walked in the corner of a bulletin board at school and with blood gushing down my face and my teacher screaming at me for not paying attention to where I was walking (?)Duh, what bulletin board? It must of occurred to somebody that maybe I was having just a bit of a problem seeing where I was going and didn't actually see the bulletin board as it was sitting so close to the wall, it just was actually the wall in my vision!

Anyway, Now MY FACE is NAKED!!! Truly NAKED, NUDE and BARE... I am bare faced…or is that bearfaced?

It all started when I realized that I couldn't read without putting the book up to my nose…and writing – well, let's just say that a candle wouldn't have been much help to me in the dark. And those damn multifocal lenses…I could get them for the price of a kidney or two…

So off we go to get my eyes examined…and what do ya know,  the doc says that I am a 'candidate'  for surgery (the Presidency, I understand is out) …So, it's off to set the appointment…

No makeup for a month…(HEHEH..does she not see me, I am sitting in from of her, maybe she needs the surgery)

No  perfume…. (No smelling pretty, mmmm…good)

No swimming for at least 6 weeks. (Wait, is she talking to me?)

No going to the gym for two weeks (Let's not even go there!)

No this, no that….

And then…No washing your hair for 5 days… (I looked at my Love and said, "Eeeeeeuw  NO WAY!….FORGET IT!")

Obviously she convinced me other wise and the appointment was made…Thursday at 5PM… And we are there…Yes we are –THERE.

They call me in to be prepped…I sign the consent form...I sit wriggling in my seat, they give me a sedative, put a cap and gown on me – As if I'm graduating in to some higher level of something…Beth Cohen, BS in glassless…

And then I am still wriggling in my seat, the nurses and doctors confer-I think they are giggling and whispering about me, I can't see, they've already taken my glasses, they are wearing surgical masks and pill one is beginning to take effect.  I suffer from anxiety attacks, so they give me another bigger and better pill…weeeheee, I am singing and dancing and rocking to the music ( in my head ), play that funky music white boy….play that funky music till you die, till you die…oh.

The doctor comes out with his mask on and I hear, "So you wawawawawa wawawa? And you agree to wawawa? Whaaaa whhaaa? What's the matter with whaaahwhaaa.Waahaaaawahhh?"

HUH?

"So you wawawawawa wawawa? And agree to wawawa?"

OMG---they want to cut my eyeballs out and give it to the guy before me?!!!! I run for the door to the waiting room as the surgical team chases after me in their lovely flowing green gowns and I burst out –"LLLL, come quick, they wanna give my eyeballs away…they want to do an apendectemywwaaaa instead…they…. they……blaaaahhh bllaaaah ooops, don't trip too late, ….Did I agree to that?"

"What? Shhh baby, it's alright, I am here."

Turns out that they just needed my consent to start the procedure and wanted to make sure that I hadn't changed my mind…Well, maybe, just maybe, that was a conversation we should have had before they gave me all of the CALMING pills!

So they lead me into the room and put me on the bed. I am only slightly agitated, so the nurse sits down to hold my hand, which I promptly crush as if it's an empty soda can, or a really written terrible poem I decide to chuck---or as if I've just started to realize that they are about to laser my eyeballs!

So, here I am lying on the table for the world's longest 10 minutes in the world. The nurse leaves, apparently I've crippled her for life and she is now looking for a job as a sales person for prosthetics.

This is really bad for me because I feel a flailing coming on…Yes, I not only have a flailing mouth and incessant noisemaker,  -I am an appendage flailler. ..it is quite obvious to me, even with all the drugs that flailing at this moment is a VERY, VERY Bad Idea.  So, to make up for my 'loss of nurse hands to squeeze to death', I stuff my hands in my pockets and start singing…It really could have been anything – but I believe it was some way down Moses type song…. My doctors, as intelligent as they are, couldn't quite understand what I was doing. Apparently in the 10,000 plus such procedures that they had performed, nobody ever sang. Oh well…I guess, I taught them something!

And we are done! (And just for the record, it did not hurt…) I get my plastic bug eyes put on and my Love gets instructions for putting drops in my eyes and other stuff which I really just couldn't understand…I was too busy looking around through the bug eyes AMAZED! Even with the plastic bug eyes, I COULD ACTUALLY SEE!

Well yes, I can see…but let's face it. I am still me. I can see…as my lunch drops onto my shirt and into the space between my shirt and my boobs. I see as my beer runs down off my chin…I see the crumbs falling onto the floor… I see these things…but they still happen. I still happen.

The other day I was eating a lovely colorful salad that my Love had prepared for my lunch. I could actually see the vegetables and the nuts and the cheese. I also watched as they fell into their spot in my bra. My colleagues laughed as I pulled the sprouts out.

When I got home from work that evening, we ran off to a party…and came home rather late. I stripped down and got into the shower, admiring the shower tiles and my toes, still a new experience for the eyeglassless me.

When I came out, my Love was shrieking, she thought there was a cockroach on the floor…I calmly bent down and picked it up. No cockroach, just a booby nut from lunch, released from the confines of my boob and bra.