Stock photography is a thing. A very blatant and obvious thing. Used by companies to make their web pages, brochures and advertisements make the simplest most mundane tasks look ridiculously exciting or utterly impossible. But it's not all advertising. Advertising is pretty clear. "Buy this product because then you will look like this beautiful model!" or whatever. Ever buy a picture frame? Who is that person? Where are they from? Do they have a history? Forever locked in this frame, the image of a fake family. Fake though? Fake for real? Or fake just to you? Or perhaps, even real to you?
I knew a girl once. Not unattractive. In fact quite pretty. Intelligent and funny. But despite the constant advances she would get she never once found anyone that lived up to her standards. I guess you could say that her one fault was that she was too picky. But is it wrong to have standards? Is it wrong to set the bar unrealistically high? She didn't seem to think so.
She invited me over to dinner one night. It was not out of the blue. We in fact had been supposed to get together the previous week but I had had to cancel as I had landed a hot date last minute. This was really no big deal as we both knew that there was nothing more than friendship between us and she was more than willing to let me have my turn at bat. She had called me the night before to ask if I we could do our little dinner party the following night. As I had nothing planned I figured why not. She had already offered to cook. I stopped by the liquor store to pick up a bottle of pinot to go with dinner. We had originally wanted to try out that new little Italian place on the corner, but we couldn't get a reservation until late so we decided to eat in.
As we sat on the couch after dinner talking and finishing off the bottle, a fire crackling in the hearth, I noticed up on the mantle was a picture frame with no picture in it. There were very few picture frames up on the mantle to begin with and as this one was larger it stuck out more than the others. I should say though that the frame wasn't empty. It did in fact have a picture in it. It was of a man, probably in his late 20s early 30s in a shirt and jeans casually leaning up against a tree. Very clearly a stock photo though as you could see the logo across the bottom left corner of the picture. I didn't think anything of it though. I hadn't noticed the frame last time I was over so I just assumed she hadn't yet found a picture to put in it. Gods know I've been guilty of the same thing. I paid it no mind.
Three days later I met her for lunch at the deli down the street from her office. I got there first so I sat in a booth to wait. She came in a few minutes later apologizing. She had had to stop at CVS to pick up a prescription then on the way out had noticed a frame that appealed to her so she'd had to wait in line again. It was no big deal as she was only about five minutes late. But I did recall the empty frame I had noticed the previous evening. I mentioned to her that she had better fill up the ones she had before she ran off to spend money on more. She laughed and we went up to order our sandwiches.
We sat there eating our sandwiches and she explained that she had always been jealous of her friends in high school whose parents had tonnes of photos of them around, and who would regularly sat for portraits. She had always wished that it was something her parents had done. It wasn't that they didn't want to, it just wasn't their thing. And it wasn't that they were opposed to photos either. There were albums of photos from vacations and school plays and graduations. But she always felt that they were lacking the wall of photos. It was as if in her mind the memories weren't real unless you were staring them in the face. Not really having anything to offer or compare it to I took another bite and muttered noncommittals as she continued her story. She sought to capture that dream of her youth by making her own photo wall of her life. There was absolutely nothing about her story that I found irrational or unreasonable. In fact I even offered to help as I had a few picture frames that I wasn't using and were just taking up space in a box. Space that I could be using for other items that I wasn't using. I offered to bring them over the following week along with a bottle of bourbon I'd been saving for no reason in particular. She agreed and the event was calendared.
I flew to Barcelona the next day for business. I didn't hear from her much the rest of that week. I hadn't really expected to. I would say that we communicated at least every day, even if it was just a few texts back and forth. But it was also not uncommon to go a day or three with nothing. Given the time change and that she had said that work was getting hectic that week I wasn't surprised at all. I had other things to occupy my mind while I was there anyway. Long, boring, tedious meetings during the day with the promise of nice cool evening dinner, and a little warmth if I was lucky. My time there was, as always, far to short, and as I walked through the duty free before boarding my flight I noticed a rather attractive souvenir photo frame and decided that I'd pick that up for her as well. When I got home I dug through my computer and found a good photo of the two of us at the beach two summers previous. I figured I would help kick start her collection.
I arrived at the agreed upon time and rang the bell. After a minute I rang it again. Still nothing. I dug through my pocket and pulled out the key she insisted I take after she had locked herself out and had to wait four hours in the rain for her brother to show up. A good man, but not the most reliable when it comes to getting places in a reasonable time. I had previously given her a key to my place so that she could feed my fish when I was away. When I had asked why she just hadn't gone back over to my place to wait, as she had just fed the fish, she simply said that she did not want to be a bother. I pointed out that I had been out of town and she just shook her hair and gave me a smile which hit me like a tonne of bricks. We may only consider ourselves friends, but she is also well aware that she can still push the right buttons.
I let myself in and called out to her but heard no response. I went in to the living room and put the bottle in the bar. Then I heard the shower running. I moved toward the bathroom and called out again. She heard me that time and said that she would be done in just a minute. I went back to the living room and sat to watch TV while I waited. A few minutes later she came out in a bathrobe, kissed me on the cheek, commented on the rerun of NCIS I had found and went off to change. A few more minutes and we were seated on the couch sipping at the bourbon and discussing matters of little consequence. She had loved the frames I had dug out of my junk box, but when I had given her the one I bought in Barca with the picture of the two of us she only smiled. I didn't think much of it, noting that women are often most critical of pictures of themselves, especially in swim suits, but the event did trigger off a series of thoughts in my mind. Thoughts that something was not quite right. She did not seem to be acting in a peculiar manner, and there was nothing odd about the house that I could see at the moment. Yet something did not feel quite right.
Eventually, as is often the case when enjoying good drink of any variety, one must relieve ones self. I excused myself and moved off toward the bathroom. It was then that I noticed what I had felt was off: The entire west wall of the hall was covered in picture frames. Yet she had not put a picture in a single frame. With the exception of five or six that simply had a logo, every singe frame still contained the stock photograph. I called back to her and asked what was up with all the frames. She simply replied by reminding me that she was putting up pictures of her family and friends. As I had had a few by this point I accepted her answer, though it disturbed me.
Later that night as we headed off to bed I was again reminded of what had disturbed me so. As we crawled into bed she kissed me on the cheek, said "goodnight" and rolled over to go to sleep. I thought I heard her say "good night to you too," but I wasn't sure, and when I asked what she said she had already passed out.
A few more weeks passed. There were occasional text messages back and forth and a few brief phone calls but that was it. I was traveling again and she had some big projects finishing up at work. But when I returned from a two week trip to Paris I figured it was time we got together. I called her but when she didn't pick up I decided against leaving a voicemail and sent her a text to call me when she got the chance. Another day went by and I still hadn't heard from her. That was atypical, but given the amount of stress she'd been under recently I figured it was probably just overload. I shot off another text message and figured I'd stop by her office the next day as I was going to be in the area anyway.
I walked into her building the next day. I smiled at the receptionist as I approached and she said "Hi." She knew me as it was not uncommon for me to stop in when meeting her for lunch or to persuade her to knock off early for a happy hour. I asked if it would be alright if I just went up and surprised her. The receptionist said that it would, but that she wasn't in the office. I asked if she knew where she had gone and when she'd be back. She hesitated for a moment and I could tell something wasn't quite right.
I knew something was wrong when her boss came out. He had actually hoped that I had had some information. He told me she hadn't been to work in almost three days. No one had heard from her. He had even tried to stop by her house the previous night, but she either wasn't in or wasn't answering. He had hoped that I would stop by soon in case I had any information. I didn't, of course. He said he had been going to file a report if he hadn't heard anything by today. I told him I would head straight over to her house and if she wasn't there I would call him and let him know.
I headed right over. I pulled into her driveway. The windows in the garage door are at the top of the door so I couldn't see if her car was in. I walked up and punched the code into the garage. Her car was there. I went in through the garage door. There were picture frames everywhere. Hung over every surface, cluttering every counter. Not a single one had a picture in it other than the standard stock photo. I walked through the house to the living room. There she was on the couch. Just laying there. I ran to her. She was laying there, staring at a picture on the coffee table. Mumbling. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I could tell she was talking to it. I called out to her. She looked at me, eyes hollow. Then she saw me. She jumped up ecstatic I was there. She ran into the kitchen and came back with a picture of "her cousins new baby." It was a silver frame with a picture of woman holding a baby. Clearly not her cousin though. Aside from the company logo along the bottom corner, I had met her only female cousin and her baby the previous year.
Then she was gone again. I followed her upstairs to the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and started at the frame with a stock photo of a solider. She told him how much she missed him and couldn't wait for him to get back. I didn't know what else to do, I called her brother. It was one of the first times he's ever been somewhere when he said he was going to be there. That whole hour I just followed her around the house, listening to her describe her "relationships" with the different photos. They all had names, histories, personalities. She ignored any questions I had. When her brother arrived he was in shock. He had always considered her the sane one. He called a doctor friend of his who came over to examine her, made a few more calls, and had her transported to the local hospital.
Eventually her mother had her moved to a hospital near her. I helped her brother clean out the house. We threw out all the frames. Neither of us wanted to look at those anymore. All the furniture and other odds and ends were put into storage. Her mother took some, her brother some more, but eventually it was all sold. The doctors speculated that she had suffered some sort of mental breakdown. Some kind of psychosis that had caused her to create a fantasy world out of all the photos in the frames. She wasn't buying the frames because she liked them, she was buying the frames because she "recognized" the people in them. That's why she hadn't liked the picture of the two of us. Her fantasy world couldn't wrap itself around objects and people in reality.
I went to visit her a few times. But eventually I gave up. I couldn't justify the trip to see someone who wouldn't even recognize me, if she even bothered to see me at all. Even her mother, who used to visit daily, then weekly, then monthly, barely goes anymore. There's little point. She doesn't notice. It ends up being harder on the visitor.
I've often wondered about her fantasy world. What prompted it? What was it like? Was she happy? Why were there no signs before? Could I have done anything if I had noticed a sign? Probably not. It just seems one of those freak occurrences that invade life from time to time. Or in her case take it over.
But the question still remains. Who are these people? What are they like? Locked forever in a gaze or pose. The eternal bride. The forever baby. The lovers staring endlessly into each others eyes. All these people. Immortalized, yet unseen to those of us who cast them aside like so much junk mail. No one ever notices them. Well, almost no one.
Somehow she saw the truth. Perhaps that is the best way after all.
I knew a girl once. Not unattractive. In fact quite pretty. Intelligent and funny. But despite the constant advances she would get she never once found anyone that lived up to her standards. I guess you could say that her one fault was that she was too picky. But is it wrong to have standards? Is it wrong to set the bar unrealistically high? She didn't seem to think so.
She invited me over to dinner one night. It was not out of the blue. We in fact had been supposed to get together the previous week but I had had to cancel as I had landed a hot date last minute. This was really no big deal as we both knew that there was nothing more than friendship between us and she was more than willing to let me have my turn at bat. She had called me the night before to ask if I we could do our little dinner party the following night. As I had nothing planned I figured why not. She had already offered to cook. I stopped by the liquor store to pick up a bottle of pinot to go with dinner. We had originally wanted to try out that new little Italian place on the corner, but we couldn't get a reservation until late so we decided to eat in.
As we sat on the couch after dinner talking and finishing off the bottle, a fire crackling in the hearth, I noticed up on the mantle was a picture frame with no picture in it. There were very few picture frames up on the mantle to begin with and as this one was larger it stuck out more than the others. I should say though that the frame wasn't empty. It did in fact have a picture in it. It was of a man, probably in his late 20s early 30s in a shirt and jeans casually leaning up against a tree. Very clearly a stock photo though as you could see the logo across the bottom left corner of the picture. I didn't think anything of it though. I hadn't noticed the frame last time I was over so I just assumed she hadn't yet found a picture to put in it. Gods know I've been guilty of the same thing. I paid it no mind.
Three days later I met her for lunch at the deli down the street from her office. I got there first so I sat in a booth to wait. She came in a few minutes later apologizing. She had had to stop at CVS to pick up a prescription then on the way out had noticed a frame that appealed to her so she'd had to wait in line again. It was no big deal as she was only about five minutes late. But I did recall the empty frame I had noticed the previous evening. I mentioned to her that she had better fill up the ones she had before she ran off to spend money on more. She laughed and we went up to order our sandwiches.
We sat there eating our sandwiches and she explained that she had always been jealous of her friends in high school whose parents had tonnes of photos of them around, and who would regularly sat for portraits. She had always wished that it was something her parents had done. It wasn't that they didn't want to, it just wasn't their thing. And it wasn't that they were opposed to photos either. There were albums of photos from vacations and school plays and graduations. But she always felt that they were lacking the wall of photos. It was as if in her mind the memories weren't real unless you were staring them in the face. Not really having anything to offer or compare it to I took another bite and muttered noncommittals as she continued her story. She sought to capture that dream of her youth by making her own photo wall of her life. There was absolutely nothing about her story that I found irrational or unreasonable. In fact I even offered to help as I had a few picture frames that I wasn't using and were just taking up space in a box. Space that I could be using for other items that I wasn't using. I offered to bring them over the following week along with a bottle of bourbon I'd been saving for no reason in particular. She agreed and the event was calendared.
I flew to Barcelona the next day for business. I didn't hear from her much the rest of that week. I hadn't really expected to. I would say that we communicated at least every day, even if it was just a few texts back and forth. But it was also not uncommon to go a day or three with nothing. Given the time change and that she had said that work was getting hectic that week I wasn't surprised at all. I had other things to occupy my mind while I was there anyway. Long, boring, tedious meetings during the day with the promise of nice cool evening dinner, and a little warmth if I was lucky. My time there was, as always, far to short, and as I walked through the duty free before boarding my flight I noticed a rather attractive souvenir photo frame and decided that I'd pick that up for her as well. When I got home I dug through my computer and found a good photo of the two of us at the beach two summers previous. I figured I would help kick start her collection.
I arrived at the agreed upon time and rang the bell. After a minute I rang it again. Still nothing. I dug through my pocket and pulled out the key she insisted I take after she had locked herself out and had to wait four hours in the rain for her brother to show up. A good man, but not the most reliable when it comes to getting places in a reasonable time. I had previously given her a key to my place so that she could feed my fish when I was away. When I had asked why she just hadn't gone back over to my place to wait, as she had just fed the fish, she simply said that she did not want to be a bother. I pointed out that I had been out of town and she just shook her hair and gave me a smile which hit me like a tonne of bricks. We may only consider ourselves friends, but she is also well aware that she can still push the right buttons.
I let myself in and called out to her but heard no response. I went in to the living room and put the bottle in the bar. Then I heard the shower running. I moved toward the bathroom and called out again. She heard me that time and said that she would be done in just a minute. I went back to the living room and sat to watch TV while I waited. A few minutes later she came out in a bathrobe, kissed me on the cheek, commented on the rerun of NCIS I had found and went off to change. A few more minutes and we were seated on the couch sipping at the bourbon and discussing matters of little consequence. She had loved the frames I had dug out of my junk box, but when I had given her the one I bought in Barca with the picture of the two of us she only smiled. I didn't think much of it, noting that women are often most critical of pictures of themselves, especially in swim suits, but the event did trigger off a series of thoughts in my mind. Thoughts that something was not quite right. She did not seem to be acting in a peculiar manner, and there was nothing odd about the house that I could see at the moment. Yet something did not feel quite right.
Eventually, as is often the case when enjoying good drink of any variety, one must relieve ones self. I excused myself and moved off toward the bathroom. It was then that I noticed what I had felt was off: The entire west wall of the hall was covered in picture frames. Yet she had not put a picture in a single frame. With the exception of five or six that simply had a logo, every singe frame still contained the stock photograph. I called back to her and asked what was up with all the frames. She simply replied by reminding me that she was putting up pictures of her family and friends. As I had had a few by this point I accepted her answer, though it disturbed me.
Later that night as we headed off to bed I was again reminded of what had disturbed me so. As we crawled into bed she kissed me on the cheek, said "goodnight" and rolled over to go to sleep. I thought I heard her say "good night to you too," but I wasn't sure, and when I asked what she said she had already passed out.
A few more weeks passed. There were occasional text messages back and forth and a few brief phone calls but that was it. I was traveling again and she had some big projects finishing up at work. But when I returned from a two week trip to Paris I figured it was time we got together. I called her but when she didn't pick up I decided against leaving a voicemail and sent her a text to call me when she got the chance. Another day went by and I still hadn't heard from her. That was atypical, but given the amount of stress she'd been under recently I figured it was probably just overload. I shot off another text message and figured I'd stop by her office the next day as I was going to be in the area anyway.
I walked into her building the next day. I smiled at the receptionist as I approached and she said "Hi." She knew me as it was not uncommon for me to stop in when meeting her for lunch or to persuade her to knock off early for a happy hour. I asked if it would be alright if I just went up and surprised her. The receptionist said that it would, but that she wasn't in the office. I asked if she knew where she had gone and when she'd be back. She hesitated for a moment and I could tell something wasn't quite right.
I knew something was wrong when her boss came out. He had actually hoped that I had had some information. He told me she hadn't been to work in almost three days. No one had heard from her. He had even tried to stop by her house the previous night, but she either wasn't in or wasn't answering. He had hoped that I would stop by soon in case I had any information. I didn't, of course. He said he had been going to file a report if he hadn't heard anything by today. I told him I would head straight over to her house and if she wasn't there I would call him and let him know.
I headed right over. I pulled into her driveway. The windows in the garage door are at the top of the door so I couldn't see if her car was in. I walked up and punched the code into the garage. Her car was there. I went in through the garage door. There were picture frames everywhere. Hung over every surface, cluttering every counter. Not a single one had a picture in it other than the standard stock photo. I walked through the house to the living room. There she was on the couch. Just laying there. I ran to her. She was laying there, staring at a picture on the coffee table. Mumbling. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I could tell she was talking to it. I called out to her. She looked at me, eyes hollow. Then she saw me. She jumped up ecstatic I was there. She ran into the kitchen and came back with a picture of "her cousins new baby." It was a silver frame with a picture of woman holding a baby. Clearly not her cousin though. Aside from the company logo along the bottom corner, I had met her only female cousin and her baby the previous year.
Then she was gone again. I followed her upstairs to the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and started at the frame with a stock photo of a solider. She told him how much she missed him and couldn't wait for him to get back. I didn't know what else to do, I called her brother. It was one of the first times he's ever been somewhere when he said he was going to be there. That whole hour I just followed her around the house, listening to her describe her "relationships" with the different photos. They all had names, histories, personalities. She ignored any questions I had. When her brother arrived he was in shock. He had always considered her the sane one. He called a doctor friend of his who came over to examine her, made a few more calls, and had her transported to the local hospital.
Eventually her mother had her moved to a hospital near her. I helped her brother clean out the house. We threw out all the frames. Neither of us wanted to look at those anymore. All the furniture and other odds and ends were put into storage. Her mother took some, her brother some more, but eventually it was all sold. The doctors speculated that she had suffered some sort of mental breakdown. Some kind of psychosis that had caused her to create a fantasy world out of all the photos in the frames. She wasn't buying the frames because she liked them, she was buying the frames because she "recognized" the people in them. That's why she hadn't liked the picture of the two of us. Her fantasy world couldn't wrap itself around objects and people in reality.
I went to visit her a few times. But eventually I gave up. I couldn't justify the trip to see someone who wouldn't even recognize me, if she even bothered to see me at all. Even her mother, who used to visit daily, then weekly, then monthly, barely goes anymore. There's little point. She doesn't notice. It ends up being harder on the visitor.
I've often wondered about her fantasy world. What prompted it? What was it like? Was she happy? Why were there no signs before? Could I have done anything if I had noticed a sign? Probably not. It just seems one of those freak occurrences that invade life from time to time. Or in her case take it over.
But the question still remains. Who are these people? What are they like? Locked forever in a gaze or pose. The eternal bride. The forever baby. The lovers staring endlessly into each others eyes. All these people. Immortalized, yet unseen to those of us who cast them aside like so much junk mail. No one ever notices them. Well, almost no one.
Somehow she saw the truth. Perhaps that is the best way after all.
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