Tom Clark Photography

Life's An Adventure...

For the three of you that read my blog...

I'm leaving in a few days for Italy and Greece and am up to my eyeballs in preparations, so updates here are going to be few and far between for awhile.

This is a picture Lisa took of me last year on the ferry boat as she and Giacomo and I were making our way to Paxos from Corfu. In a few days I'll be making that same crossing of the waters with Kelly & John. It's amazing to me how much can change in the space of a year. The short bleached hair was fun for a few years but now I'm back to my natural color and of course all my curls are starting to show up again. I'd almost forgotten how much fun my curly hair is when it gets to this length. At 52 there's a lot of things I'm grateful for but having all of my hair still has got to be close to the top of the list.

What's going on on the outside is hinting at what's going on in my life otherwise. Lots of changes and hopefully lots of growth. As time permits over the next few weeks I'll share some of what's going on and hopefully have lots and lots of new pictures and stories to share with you.

I think I'm ready for this trip. I have the perfect board shorts, the perfect little gay swimsuit, the perfect sarong, the perfect headband and the perfect flip flops. Other than a boyfriend I think I've got everything I need! I even found an acrylic piece of jewelry to replace my steel PA ring with so that I wouldn't be setting off any alarms as I pass through airport security. I'll miss the weight of this 2 gauge ring but at least I won't be worrying about getting strip searched by some grumpy matron in a starched uniform. That might be somebody else's fantasy but it's not mine.

So it's off to the Greek Islands for ten days on a sailboat and then up to Rome for another ten days after that. Someone I once loved a lot told me that life's an adventure and that I should be out there with all my stops pulled out having fun.

I agree!

Lucy...

No doubt about it, meeting and taking a few pictures of Lucille Ball was the highlight of my time in Hollywood. Even though these pictures were taken just a year before she died, Lucy was the life of the party and kept everybody laughing and smiling every moment they were near her.

Just before this picture was taken she asked me to hold on a moment while she fixed her lipstick. She pulled a tube out of her purse and without even looking in a mirror just started drawing circles around her mouth - round and round and round went the lipstick while Lucy laughed and carried on with those around her. She tossed the lipstick back in her purse, snapped it shut, looked up at me and smiled and that was it - she was good to go!

There's a reason why everyone loves Lucy; Her smile and her laugh were totally irresistable and gosh, she was just so damn funny. In this picture with Dolores Hope, Lucy was getting quite a chuckle out of the fact that everytime I went to take their picture one of the guests walked in front of my camera. He wasn't messing with me - he just wasn't paying attention. Sure enough, just about every shot that came back had the guy's head in the picture.

Lucille's floor-length gown was slit up to her hip on the side and at one point she looked at me, laughed and pulling back the front of her dress said, "Well, whaddya think of these gams? Not bad for an old lady, huh?" (Unfortunately I can't find the picture right now.)

Not bad indeed - they looked like the legs of a twenty year old girl. I laughed, said "whoa baby," snapped the picture and left Lucy to her adoring friends and the endless stream of people who wanted a few minutes with her.

Chances are good we'll never have another Lucille Ball. And that's OK because I think we can count on the fact that she'll be with us in reruns till the earth stops spinning on its axis. I loved meetng her and getting to take a few quick, casual pictures of her at this party to honor Elizabeth Taylor. She was so gracious and so funny and it was just the most amazing thing ever to hear that voice and that laugh up close and in person.

The last thing I remember hearing her say, in response to someone asking her about her hair color, was: "Henna honey, Henna!" A few moments later Elizabeth Taylor entered the room and that was my cue to move on. But gosh, for a few minutes there I felt like the luckiest guy in the world - getting paid to take pictures of one of Hollywood's most beloved legends.

late-night confessions...

I miss being held.

I miss being touched.

 

Born In The Cove...

I like reading other people's blogs - it gives me ideas for my own. I was just over on Agnostic Mom's blog and she was writing about her departure from Mormonism, which of course prompted me to share my story for those who haven't already read it or heard it somewhere. I could make this a very very long story, but because I have other pressing matters I'm going to keep it brief. And you all know of course how skilled I am at brevity.

I'm gay.

There, that's it's. That's my story about my departure from Mormonism.

You want more than that?

OK, well, hmmm, let's see...

Just a bit of background is helpful: born to a Mormon mom and non-Mormon dad. Dad didn't care that mom wanted to raise us Mormon, he just didn't want anything to do with it. My mom tried to overcome her guilt for having married outside the church by vowing that at all costs her children would be raised Mormon and all go to the Celestial kingdom, come hell or high water. Anyway, not sure what you call someone who's half born in the covenant and half not; maybe "born in the cove" ?

That's me I guess - born in the cove instead of the covenant because my dad wasn't a Mormon and the spell couldn't quite be cast the way it needed to be. I totally went along with everything I was taught and did pretty much everything I was told to do. But you know how it is when you have a pair of shoes that don't quite fit right? Yeh, well that was me and Mormonism. Maybe a better analogy would be a pair of underwear that's too tight because that's what Mormonism felt like around my balls. Way too tight.

I think if I had to pinpoint the moment when I began to realize something wasn't quite right, was when everybody started talking seriously about me going on a mission and all I could think of was, "I don't want to go on a mission." I really really really didn't want to go even though it'd been my mom's plan for me from the moment of my birth to go on a mission. My twin went on schedule at 19 but I was digging my heels in and refusing to put in my papers. I don't even really know why I didn't want to go - I just didn't. And I think that's when I first began to wonder what was going on with me and Mormonism. About the same time my homosexuality, emphasis on the sexuality, began to kick in with a vengeance.

As it turned out, going on a mission was a pretty amazing experience for two major reasons. One was that I was sent to Rome where I'd grown up, and the other was that while over there in Italy I fell in love with and surrendered my vriginity to a beautiful young man named Gianni. I baptized lots of people who promptly left the church after I left the country - but the person I fell in love with and made love to is still my friend all these thirty years later. It wasn't a wasted two years, that's for sure!

Falling in love...

This picture of me was taken 26 years ago when I was 26. My ex-wife and I were on our honeymoon in Mazatlan and she shot this of me through the glass doors of our suite, thus the strange reflections on my body.

I have a hard time believing it now, but 26 years ago when this picture was taken I hated my body. I keep looking at this picture now and thinking, "Good gawd almighty Tom, there is nothing wrong with that body! How could you have possibly hated it so much???"

It was religion, plain and simple. Religion, in particular Mormonism, turns young people against their bodies by making anything even remotely approaching self-pleasure a sin. I learned to hate my beautiful slim body because Mormonism told me it was a sin to masturbate and so everytime I ejaculated I hated myself a little more for being such a hopeless sinner. Can you even believe that religion teaches young people to turn against their bodies like that?

It wasn't really my body I was hating back then - it was me for not being able to stop having orgasms. But my body was the only place I knew to focus the guilt - and so my body got hated on a lot. It's sad - I remember being mortified to take my shirt off in public or be seen at the beach in a swimsuit. And for what? Because I was having lots of orgasms? Fucking religion. Who in their right minds would tell a teenaged boy to stop masturbating? That's got to be one of the most fucked up things ever.

I'd love to have those years back and live them differently - loving that beautiful body of mine instead of hating it like I did. I can't have those years back of course but I can learn a little lesson from them if I've a mind to. I'm 52 now and though I weigh exactly what I did when that picture was taken, 150 pounds, my body is changing and some of the parts have shifted around and not everything is where it used to be. I offer this recent photo that Auri took as evidence...

My belly is a little rounder and my butt isn't quite so perky anymore and well, you know. But I won't start hating on my body again because 26 years from now when I'm in my seventies I'll look back on pictures like this one and think, "Gosh Tom, there was nothing there to have been unhappy about."

I hated my body once-upon-a-time but that's all behind me now. Though things are definitely changing I'm going to stick with loving who I am and what I have right here in this moment. I like being at peace with my body. I love that I can still play with my body and do wonderful things to it and I love that it can still give me so much pleasure.

My body, my life, my choices...

Judith Chapman...

Judith circa a few years ago...

I just found some negs of a shoot with Judith that I never got around to doing prints of. Damn, there's some good stuff here too. I need some serious organizational help. Isn't it enough that I'm the photographer? Do I have to be the details guy too???

I need one of those Tinkerbell things like Lisa Souza has.

White Picket Fence Around A Pigsty...

I just read, with equal doses of fascination and irritation, a very long conversation between Mormons and ex-Mormons about gay marriage and a half-dozen related tangents. It can be found here if you have the patience for it. So many thousands of words that at some level completely fail to address the reality of what Mormonism's bigotry means to those of us who've had to live through it.

I understand that this conversation needs to take place, so I respect it if for no other reason than that. What's happening though is an intellectualization of bigotry that keeps things at a safe and tidy distance from the messiness at the heart of the matter. Mormonism's attitudes, practices and policies regarding homosexuality hurt people - and in some cases hurt them so badly they can never recover. Some of us are lucky enough to get out before too much lasting damage is done. Others struggle along as best they can in lives of quiet desperation while others just simply crumble under the weight of so much condemnation and opt to end the pain by ending their lives.

Mormonism's leaders know full-well the pain and the damage their attitudes cause gay men and lesbians and their families and friends and yet they choose to continue perpetuating that pain and damage. That is pure evil - the willful perpetuation of harm even when you know what you're doing is hurting someone.

Daniel Peterson, an often beleaguered spokesperson and/or apologist for the Mormon church, weighed in on the conversation I mentioned above. His words and his obfuscations are exactly the kind of stuff that helps keep Mormons at a safe distance from the messy consequences of their bigotry. I think Peterson would be well-served by having his intellectual protections stripped from him for a spell and be forced down into the mud where he could see and feel and know firsthand the damage that Mormonism does to gay men and lesbians. As it is, Peterson hides behind a smug intellectualism that shields him from any real understanding of what's going on.

If it weren't for the ongoing harm that Peterson perpetuates with his rhetoric, he would be pitiable. As it is I feel only contempt for him because on the receiving end of his bigoted words are real flesh and blood human beings who are harmed by that which he continues to justify and perpetuate.

Daniel Peterson has the intellectual capacity to soar above the stench rising from the cloaca massima of Mormonism's bigotry and yet he chooses to stand fixed in the fetid backwash and do harm without regard for those being harmed. His intellectual capacity is both a shield and a bludgeoning tool.

You can blah blah blah till the cows come home Daniel but out here in the real world there are a lot of us who need something a little more compassionate than your high-fallutin' apologetics. Hopefully someday you can employ all of that intellectual capacity for something more useful than a white picket fence around a pigsty.

Treasures...

Just found this picture a few minutes ago as I was packing some of my boxes of pictures up. Oh my gawd, it made me cry to see this again. I remember exactly how Auri felt in that moment all squeezed in up next to my cheek. It's been more than twenty years but I still remember how soft her skin was, how she smelled, how silky and fine her hair was and how her little hand felt all nestled up safely into mine. And that look on her face? Well, there are worlds in there that I know intimately but could never explain.

I have adored this child of mine every second she's been alive. And in a few weeks I'll get to start adoring her daughter. I didn't just get lucky with having a gorgeous, loving daughter - I got one who's ultra-fertile and loves having babies!

I love you Auri. I adore you and treasure you and worship the ground you walk on. For me, the sun and the moon and the stars all rise and set and shine for you. I hope you'll always know the great joy you've given me. And I hope too that if your skies ever get a little stormy and dark you'll reach out for my love that will always be there for you whether I'm around or not.

Ben & Georgie...

I met Ben & Georgie on the island of Paxos last summer. I don't know about them but for me it was love at first sight. They had only met each other a few days before I met them and were crazy in love the night we sat around in Dio's Taverna having lots and lots of Ouzo after dinner.

OK, so it probably took me all of about three minutes to decide I wanted to photograph Ben & Georgie. I only had a little digital with me but we got some pretty wonderful pictures anyway my last day on Paxos before heading back to Italy.

Anyway, just in the past few days Georgie and Ben made the final decision to fly me over to photograph their wedding on the island of Paxos in May of '07. I don't do weddings anymore but gosh, this was one wedding I was thrilled to make an exception for. I just love these guys - don't know how else to say it. Photographing their wedding is going to be one of the biggest honors of my nearly 25 years in the picture taking business.

I'll be seeing them in three weeks when I get to Paxos. Ben's taverna is there on Monodendri Beach and we'll be getting together for food, drink and lots and lots of talk about the wedding. Here's Ben's taverna:

Pix & stories about Ben & Georgie are on my website here.

Or start here and read about the rest of the trip and see lots of pictures. It's a work in progress so don't be surprised when the story just suddenly stops.