5:30am.
My alarm goes off. I have slept for under 45 minutes. I cut off the alarm and wait for the one that will go off at 6am, never really going back to sleep because I know that alarm is coming. If I sleep, I’ll sleep right through it.

6am.
I step outside. Cleopatra and Poison Ivy are laughing, the party continuing at Club Meridian. I look to my right. Three young men (one of which I know) sits on the patio outside the unit next to mine. I nod.

I need coffee.

I text the girl, already knowing the answer.

“Are you on your way?”

I smile with my neighbors as they laugh at all of the funny things that make 6am Saturday morning funny. My eyes can’t really open fully. I feel their redness. I decide I will sleep.

10am.
I text the girl and then email her. We’ll reschedule. She responds six hours later. It’s okay. This is exactly how it should be. If she weren’t so perfectly beautiful, it would be enough to make a man cry. Instead, all one can do is laugh. And I do. And my roommate does. And my neighbor does. Truly, this girl is magical. I debate driving my scooter to shoot her, 100 pounds of camera equipment, strapped around me and in bags and backpacks.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

12:19pm.
I get an email from the Bad Hatter. It reads:

“God works in mysterious ways.”

He attaches a picture of a young woman, half-naked. God’s costume is surprisingly similar to the Devil’s. Perhaps they coordinated.

But God’s ass can’t touch The Devil’s. (How YOU doin’??)

Mid-afternoon.
Did I go to the beach? No, that was yesterday. I worked on films. I pulled video to my computer. I looked once more at content management systems. I put most of the finishing touches on HeadlessBuddha overnight. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be open to the general public.

And another day in South Beach turns into night.

2:06am.
“What day was that,” I ask myself. Every day runs together in this life.

I am pulling photos off of my camera from days prior. I remember seeing the woman on the beach. She was an older woman with gray hair, but not too old. Lots of black. I couldn’t tell if she was a tourist or poor from where I stood. I had just stepped off the boardwalk by the showers, going to a part of the beach I hadn’t been to in over a year.

I remember the ocean. Rough. The current was strong, pushing all the foam southward toward my home, toward the jetty. You couldn’t swim out more than 30 feet. No way at all to make it to the buoy. Wind across the sand on the beach. Two couples, each by themselves, on vacation sitting there. The men sitting up talking to the women who laid beside them trying to soak up what sun they could. Tourists. Enjoying that moment.

It was when I left the beach that I saw that building. That glass. Those lines. And those colors. I remember smiling. Happiness.

1:34am.
Cuban Boat Girl has found her phone. Rather, Poison Ivy found it. They had just come up the stairs. CBG had a frown on her face, she had lost her phone. Poison Ivy was particularly leggy in all of her green. CBG was too, with her navy and gold miniskirt dress thing. With bonus sailor cap. And Batgirl earlier in the evening was as well. But she’s always leggy. And then Serbian Mod-Squad. She made quite a look with her eyes against the afro. And the.. is it a tan wool shawl? With tassels?

I wonder about my friend. I wonder if he killed himself.

It seems like she has just the right amount of orange in her dress for Serbian Mod Squad. Rather striking.

1:08am.
Cleopatra is putting on her makeup. The Bad Hatter is out in the field somewhere. Horror flick glowing on the large-ass flatscreen across the room. Hip-hop music plays at full laptop volume. There is pink vodka. Everything else is blue in this place.

“Just because two of your friends say I like you, doesn’t make it so,” I say in my defense.
“I don’t HAVE that many friends,” is, of course, her natural response.
“You’ve got four,” I tell her.
“Right, so that’s like half my friends!”

She’s going out. She looks as beautiful as always.

12:10am.

“I’m not stopping the car!”

The door is halfway open, she leans out, and I grab her arm. We’re only going 5 miles an hour, but I’m certain that stepping out of the car right then, stopped or not, was a horrible idea.
Minutes earlier, The Devil came out. At least, she thinks she was The Devil. Well, she wasn’t really sure. The small black bra, the tiniest of panties, silk thigh-highs on those ridiculously sexy legs. And heels.

“I mean, I don’t want to interrupt, but I just want to know… what this is.”
“I’m kind of going with Devil,” she responds with eyebrows upturned, asking for my belief from the back seat of the car.
“Ok. Devil’s fine.”

The Devil had come outside to consult with my passenger. I am driving Miss Daisy. And she panics in the seat beside me. We are leaving this place. She cannot be there. She cannot be there. She needs to be in a good place away from this.

There are luxury automobiles around. There is a 4X4 in the driveway. It has those headlights that run along the top of the front windshield. I picture the tires caked in mud. A girl in a sheer white dress and matching thong and bra passes before my headlights. In my rearview mirror, two girls walk down the dimly lit tree-lined street. Thongs. Bare bottoms, with legs stretched all the way to their heels. Shining in the tail lights. I crack my window again and listen to the club music playing in what I guess is the patio.

“I’m sorry, I can’t get rid of him. Are you mad at me?”
“Yes, I am.”

The Devil frowns, she opens the car door, and leaves. I had never noticed until then what a cute butt The Devil has. If only she were older. And not her. Miss Daisy tells me not to tell her she looks great. Too late.

The Devil and I have a game. She thinks I like her. I not so subtly joke with her that I do. So we play this stupid game. She probably thinks I’m some special kind of retarded. But she’s just a kid, so it’s okay whatever she thinks.

Which leads us back to the problem at hand: The Bad Hatter. At 28, or 29, HE should know how to think. Or at least recognize patterns. Crashing the party, after publicly humiliating his love/obsession. After threatening others. After causing a scene. And then closing out his evening (at last check) by threatening suicide, saying his farewells via phone calls and text messages. Final words?

Lata Bro…

2:28am.
“It’s a shame about him,” he says hunched over. He’s wearing tans and khakis tonight. Where did those clothes come from? I’ve not seen them before. We’re smoking Parlies. The cigarette of choice for every South Beach party girl. I don’t know why I bought them. I like the word: Parliament. And I like the packaging.

“It is, but I can’t feel remorse. I can’t feel good or bad about what he does. We did all we could. I was good. You were good. We were ALL good. He needs help. Right now, he needs to be in a controlled environment.”

(I had talked to him on the phone earlier. He had called me. He had called his dad, he told me. He was saying his goodbyes. I told him it was time to step up his game and man up. That he needed to step back and go immediately to the hospital. I told him he needed to step out of this. And that he could. Somewhere in the middle, he hung up on me. He had texted me just prior to the call what a good friend I was to him.)

The conversation wanders to philosophy of human action/reaction. We reflect on what a good day it’s been (with the exception of the business about our friend). I tell my roommate that we should finish the conversation over the large-ass flatscreen inside. But let’s not watch a horror flick. Let’s watch something good. The Bad Hatter will be fine.

3:18am.
My alarm is set for two hours and twelve minutes from now. At sunrise, I shoot an erotic film, or at least capture the footage of it. Photos and video. The batteries are all charged. The furniture has been rearranged. Mini-DVs purchased. Should’ve bought more cigarettes at the store earlier. One more smoke, and then I’m out.

4:03am.
Now, I’m out.

I’ve created a sort of trailer/slideshow for my model photography. It’s a pretty good representation of what I shoot in terms of models, although there is little erotica in the video; don’t let the implied nudity throw you. And yes, the video is the entire length of the song. And the introductions go on forever. However, that last fact kind of makes me smile.

It’s REALLLLLLLY worth it to let the video buffer. Hit play and then pause it until it loads fully. I’m uploading to YouTube, but it may not rest there.

To put things in perspective, there are 141 images in the video. This is about %1 of the photos I’ve taken during all of the model shoots. If only there were a place to VIEW a lot more of those photos! Wait! There’s this place! And even HeadlessBuddha.com for the more erotic (only a select few models in the trailer appear on Headless)!

Enjoy!

Feed people, link to video here.

So things have been going pretty well. Got a new job. Continuing good relationships. Headless is about to make it’s place fixed. And things have sorted themselves out, like in the case of Flickr.

After they set up my account, I had to wait a couple of days to get my login info sorted out. When I finally got into my account, the first image I uploaded was the tiled image that I use for my twitter background. I captioned the photo, “Hello again to all my friends. ” I wrote a brief description about how I was glad to be back and was hoping my old contacts could find me since they were deleted from my account. And that I would be rebuilding. And I linked to ipanemic to explain the story of what happened (which I see now is the last post I wrote).

The next 7 or 8 or 10 photos I uploaded were of Salome, from our fashion/implied nude shoot here last week (one implied nude marked Moderate). All of the photos of Salome were watermarked ipanemic.

Building up my new Flickr account… this was going to take a while. My total number of views was now, at day 3… 158. It was goign to take time to get back to 1.6 million.

The next day, I uploaded three photos of Madison, two in lingerie, one implied nude, all marked Moderate. They were watermarked for HeadlessBuddha.com. I joined a few of the groups I remembered from my old account and added my photos to various groups. And I left a note on each photo that I had lost all my contacts, hoping my friends would find me, and I left the link again to the story.

I was just going to upload the photo appearing in this post and, um…. my Flickr account has been deleted. Again.

I’m sort of wondering if I should even bother mentioning it to them or just… what? I don’t even know! I mean, seriously? As far as comedies go, I couldn’t write material this good. I’m sure it’s just a mistake. And I can’t be on a path of negativity right now. I’m certain I was having a panic attack the night I went to the ER and that set me back a couple of days.

But really, what’s up? This is so just… so just entertaining me.

what. the. hell. Update!
OK. Well, now, I don’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity of it or cry at the lunacy of this. Flickr reinstated the account with the following email:

Hello again,

I’m very sorry for the inconveniences.

I’m gone ahead and again restored the account (without the
photos) and sent an email to the following address with log
in information:

theipanemic@yahoo.com

Regards,
Omar

What’s that song? I hear Dolly Parton singing “Here you come again” in my ears.

But wait! There’s more!!!!

A mere 13 minutes after receiving this notification, I received a wholly separate email with the subject line “Flickr Terms of Service.”

The body of the text is here:

Hi ipanemic Street +/ Life,

Voyeur content is a violation of the Flickr Community
Guidelines.

www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

# Don’t be creepy.
You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.

Read the following help forum discussion below about the
definition of voyeur content on Flickr.

www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/#reply625343

You need to delete(not mark as private) all voyeur content
from your photostream or you risk deactivation of your
Flickr account.

-Terrence

At first, I was entirely, entirely, ENTIRELY baffled. What the hell? Everything that was on that stream was shots of models (with a straggling photo here and there from when I tried to separate the 5000 photos on my account into two streams, the other one being street/life). So what the hell?

Then I realized that the email was addressed to my street/life account! It comes to a separate email account on ipanemic but it shows up in my email client grouped together with everything else.

But wait… what? Don’t be THAT guy?!

Is this a warning? Like a mob kind of thing? I don’t see where any photos have been deleted. My account is still there? I didn’t have any photos marked as private, soooooo what. the. hell?

And on the heels of the other issue? Why do I feel like these incidents aren’t entirely unrelated?

But…. THAT guy?! Wait…. WHAT?!?!?! I think my good name is being besmirched here. Any lawyers in the house? I kid.

This is totally off the charts in terms of nutty. I think I need to respond to this in a fashion similar to this. Because what. the. hell? I really have other things I need to be doing tonight. Flickr, you so crazy. I just want things to be good. Dozens of photographers, dozens of friends who aren’t photographers… they will all defend what it is I do and that I’m NOT that guy and that the very notion is absurd.
(By the way, I’ve never really been crazy about this line in your terms of service. Little bit vague for such a large corporation. I know you’re trying to be cute and all, but it really doesn’t work in Terms of Service.)

A short while back, Flickr deleted my account which I’ve had with them for two years. Today, Flickr restored my account as you can see from the photo below.

I’d like to share with you my exchange with Flickr. I initially inquired as to why I couldn’t log into my account, thinking that it couldn’t have been deleted and that my page on Flickr with the ominous message “This member is no longer active on Flickr” couldn’t really mean what I thought. This was their initial response:

Flickr account “ipanemic” was deleted by Flickr staff for
violating our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.

www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

# Do upload content that you have created.

Respect the copyright of others. This means don’t steal
photos or videos that other people have shared and pass them
off as your own. (That’s what favorites are for.)

# Don’t upload anything that isn’t yours.

This includes other people’s photographs and/or stuff that
you’ve collected from around the Internet. Accounts that
consist primarily of such collections may be terminated.

Flickr reserves the right to deactivate your account
without warning at any time.

Regards,
Emily

This was my response:

Subject: Re: [Flickr Case 1338655] Re: Logging in
From: me
Date: Wed, October 14, 2009 6:15 pm
To: Flickr

This is a large, large error because every BIT of content that was (and always will be) on my streams is content that was shot and copyrighted by me. Every photo and every video. I’ve also never posted anything from the internet and definitely not anything from someone else’s stream. I own and operate both ipanemic.com and headlessbuddha.com under which names I have copyrights.

So there has been a tremendous error here.

I’ve been a loyal fan and paying member of flickr for almost two years and will continue to do so. I love flickr. And I’ve LOVED my ipanemic account. I’ve used your service to network with people and have built up a rather nice collection of both friends and fans through that account. Now, suddenly and without warning, to a loyal and paying customer, my account has been deleted with me unable to access anything. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours of my life on Flickr with it being part of almost my daily life. For me, Flickr has helped me become the photographer and person I am today. The thought that I would, as a photographer, take credit for other’s work or post stuff that didn’t belong to me is ludicrous. I had close to 5000 people following my work on flickr. They weren’t looking at other people’s work; they were looking at mine.

I’m confused as to how the decision was reached that ANY of my content wasn’t created by me or isn’t mine when I very clearly stated in my profile that that was the case and everything was marked as such. Could you please identify which work you’re saying violated the ToS and/or Community guidelines?

Thanks.
Scott

I didn’t hear from them.
And then I sent a follow up email stating that I was looking forward to the matter being resolved and my account being fully restored.
And then I sent them an email telling them I was still waiting for a response. Maybe two of those emails.

Then I received this:

Hello,

Your case was escalated to me.

I’m very sorry but once an account has been deleted, the
photos are removed and cannot be recovered.

Again, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.

I’m gone ahead and restored the account (without the
photos) and sent an email to the following address with log
in information:

xxxx@xxxx.xxx

I’ve also added a year of Pro to your account (in addition
to the 3 years you had remaining).

Thanks for your understanding.

Regards,
Omar

That was it.

I thought about it for a minute. I thought about it for a few, actually.

I sunk my lifeblood into building that account. At one point, I had over 5,000 photos in that account. I had roughly 500 people whose photostreams I was following. I had over 1.6 million views on that account. I had somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000 people following me. On that account.
Thousands of comments.
Tons of favorites.
People and friends in the social network which was a huge part of my life.
And then, whoosh! Gone. Everything.

And so…
There is nothing to argue here. There is nothing to question. There is nothing to do here except smile. Because now? Now I get to enjoy building this account from the ground up. I get to enjoy building up a network of friends again. I get to enjoy the comments, the feedback, the notes, the favorites on photos as I post them and as they sit there. And I get to enjoy every minute of this account. Just like I did the first time around.

Life is good.

So…. pretty excited. Saw my face on the cover of a magazine. Al-Ayyam Al-Jamilah.

This was mildly funny. Art, who was writing the article and who I kept in touch with through the journey, kept asking for a photo of me with the scooter. I kept putting it off because I REALLY hate being in photos. I ended up taking this photo actually at the end of the trip, back in South Beach, never having gotten one anywhere along the way. I took the self-portrait at the beach entrance just outside of Nikki Beach. I really, really, really tried to smile. Art was funny; he told me the cover shot was between me and a lizard. I’m glad I beat out the lizard although I’m sure it made a better photo.

There’s a nice little 3-page article inside that sums up my trip. Kinda dug it.

are back. Right in the middle of my sternum. I need to go the hospital.
I’ve been writhing in pain for the past 20 minutes or so. I think I should go. But it feels kind of like it’s subsiding. What the hell is this? It’s the same pain as last night. And an ekg showed nothing?

People have said maybe it’s a panic attack. I’ve been so devestated by the actions of this one girl who seems hell-bent on destroying my name, my reputation and my livelihood when I’ve done nothing to her.

But maybe it’s all in my head.

Thrice now, I’ve sunk my heart and soul into projects (two girls and flickr), with all of my love and devotion. And thrice these things have been ripped away. All of the time and blood invested and I just walked away (although I’m not through with Flickr yet; it’s soooo, sooo very wrong).

My chest hurts badly. It can’t be connected.

update:
I’m better than this. I can take the high road. I can ignore this. I can put everything behind me. I can not care about the negative. I don’t have time or energy for it. I don’t. The pain is nearly gone. I’m feeling better. Maybe it’s psychosomatic. I don’t know what the hell it is, but if it hits again, I’m going.

I just got back from the VA Hospital. I woke up this morning to this pain in my left shoulder and neck. And then tonight, instantly, I had intense pain in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. I got scared.

My friends raced me to the ER. They did an EKG. Results were negative. So I don’t know what that was unless it was a panic attack. I know I was scared enough to ask someone to take me to the doctor. Neighbors in the car and we tore across 395 to the hospital. And I never ask anyone to do take me to the hospital when things are bad. Last year, around the holidays, I was practically immobile and still didn’t want to put anyone out. So I waited.

But this scared the crap out of me. And it was nothing.

The pain in my shoulder they estimated as being soft tissue damage. A shot in my butt of something or other and the pain subsided after about a half-hour. And so here I am, back among friends. And I’m okay.

Pretty happy about that.

Preface:
Two days ago, I received an email, asking for my mailing address. A magazine would be arriving shortly and I would be on the cover. The cover shot would be a self-portrait, a photo I took nearly three months ago after my trip across the US and back. A story would be inside about me and my trip accompanied by photos I took on my journey. Circulation to a demographic consisting primarily of people from my homeland. The land of the desert sun. The land of tanks and dunes and shwarmas and filth and disease and riches and wealth and health and happiness.

What I would give to be cradled in my desert land right now… to bask in that love… but nothing can save me now.

I.
Not long ago, an infatuation swept through my body. Through every vein, through every pore, in every heartbeat and in every breath. Not love, because I know better. Forty years of love like mine and you memorize the menu.

What I felt, I kept hidden. Something I’ve done throughout my life.
See Dana.
See Bev.
See NameWithheld.

I knew what I had inside of me, I should keep buried. What I had inside of me was wrong. Here was a woman who laughed. Here was a woman who smiled. Here was a woman who was beautiful. Here was a woman who was everything I could hope for. Here was a woman who made me smile.

And Sting’s voice echoes in my head, “This girl is half his age.”

And married. And with a newborn child at home.

Only a madman or a monster would tell her how consumed his thoughts were and how he struggled nightly. How he lost sleep over it, waking in cold sweats. Only a madman would tell her.

Or maybe, just maybe that madman – and here, I should clarify that this madman is me – maybe that madman would simply get rid of all of his worldly possessions, strip himself down to nothing in his life, hop on a scooter, and ride as far away as he could go. Only a man truly dedicated to inflicting pain on himself would estimate the best move he could make, the most clarifying and inspirational move he could make would be to torture himself by being utterly and completely alone in places unfamiliar for weeks upon end. Only a madman would see that THAT was his best option.

Run as far the fuck away as he could. To clear his head. To clear his motherfucking head.

Clarity came. It really was rather obvious when it hit; once I had a chance to distance myself. Standing on the sands of Padre Island, clarity came. And then, looking out at the Gulf of Mexico with not a soul in site for as far as my eyes could see, reality hit me: I am alone. I have no one. And this is my life.

It was a sad moment. And I cried.

II.
Throughout my trip, the resentment I held for another woman, a woman I felt was poisoning any chance I had of something ever developing between my infatuation and I, slowly started to dissipate. I realized the foolishness of everything. And then I saw her, and I felt very used. And what the object of affections had told me all along was confirmed. And I left the child in me behind.

Clarity came once more.

I returned to this place after my trip. My friends noted a new swagger in my step; I had returned with a certain je ne sais quoi. I had stepped into who I was. I walked in the front door and said, “Hello. I’m Scott. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I like. This is what I don’t. And life is grand. My god, life is grand. And I love you, my friends.” I became more of me.

Some people didn’t like this me.

III.
When I returned, I saw the woman I loved. She was beautiful. She was still perfect. And I was contentedly happy for her in her life. Happy for her. My emotions were properly where they should be and my head had cleared.

I told her how I had carried inappropriate feelings for her, feelings I had never expressed and, as she knew, certainly not acted upon. I felt it best to be honest with this friend. No harm would come from me telling her that I had seen her as yet another mirage of that mythical Girl from Ipanema. I had thought she was. And let me get an Amen as the choir screams from the rafters, “The Truth shall set you free!”

I believe I even told her of how I grew to resent our mutual friend, that I saw her as a hindrance to something that would never conceivably (and I obviously would never have let) happen.

I was free. Free to live my life the way I had. My mind was clear.

IV.
Freedom. Freedom to be me. Freedom to be who I am. And who I am… I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh lord.

I am a man who sees the beauty in life. And I’ve seen so much.

The girl and I don’t speak any longer. We had a misunderstanding which is inconsequential. And then I became a villian and monster to her. After looking at everything, I decided the best course of action was to simply walk away from everything her. I wished her well and left her behind.

Everyone comes for a season, everyone comes for a reason.

I’ve been fortunate to have the people in my life who have been here. I don’t hate myself for being who I am. I love me. It’s hard when others hate me. It’s hard when the ones I loved hate me.

Epilogue.
I’m going to the hospital now, I believe. I have a lot of pain. If anything should ever happen to me, I love you Alec and Zach. And everything belongs to you.

Today, I had the great pleasure of shooting Salome, a young woman I met just about six months ago. An interesting little twist here: I was actually supposed to shoot Christie today, but that was postponed until tomorrow and ended up shooting Salome entirely last minute after she called me today. The first time I shot Salome, I shot her with Christie.

SUUUUUUCH a great girl. I’ve always been so taken with Salome; just such a truly great personality and so sweet, not to mention ridiculously beautiful. Through and through. Funny story: two weeks ago when we had our party here at Club Meridian, none of my friends showed up. Save one. Any guesses as to which one?

Salome’s photos can be found here. These are the images she picked out tonight. There are a lot more to go through which I’ll be posting over the coming days. I particularly like the Pop Art Edition of Beauty. As we were going through post-process, I showed her this image in these colors and we decided to go with it.

(By the way… friends? You suck! I kid. You missed a good party, maybe next time.)