Photography

There's a photographer who lives
down my street who carries
his old camera everywhere. I've never
seen his right eye and his other eye is
always closed, but I imagine them to be
different colors since the light must always
hit them different ways.
He is always stooping around
with his camera over his right eye
looking up girls' skirts
but the girls think it's okay because he's
a photographer, and besides,
his other eye is closed so they can't even be
sure of what exactly he's looking at.
I would not be okay with him looking
up my skirt but I never wear skirts so I don't
mind him stooping around me much.
Sometimes he talks to me when he's stooping around
about his grandmother in Wisconsin who always forgets
where she puts her glasses and calls him about it
because he always knows that it's on the counter
next to the cat food. I always ask him to ask his
grandmother whether her cat has different colored eyes
but he always tells me it's no use since his
grandmother has bad eyesight. I wonder if he stoops
around his grandmother looking up her skirt.
When girls aren't around
he stoops around stop signs.
Stop signs don't mind him stooping around much
because they never wear skirts either.
He never stoops around street signs or one way signs or
deer signs or yield signs. He only stoops around stop signs.
I asked him why that is one day and he told me that
his grandmother made stop signs for a living and he wanted to take
a picture of every stop sign all around the world
and glue them together into the shape of a very big stop sign
and mail it to his grandmother so that she can travel
all around the world finding the
stop signs in his pictures. I asked him whether his grandmother
also made girls for a living and he told me that his pictures
of girls weren't for his grandmother. They weren't even really
pictures of girls. I told him that he's right, that they're really
pictures of up girls' skirts and he got angry at me and told me
that they weren't pictures of those either. He told me that the
pictures were of girls' shoes and they were for his sister who
wanted to be a shoe designer in Italy. I didn't believe him
because of the way his camera was always angled but I didn't want
to point that out since he was already
offended by me. Instead, I asked about his sister. He told me
she went to a boarding school in England where all the girls
had to learn how to cross-stitch and embroider pillows and
make hospital beds. I asked him whether she had an English accent
and he told me he didn't know because she was only allowed to
write letters to him in perfect grammar using calligraphy. But
her letters looked as if they were written by someone who had
an English accent so she must have one. I thought she
must have one too by the sounds of it or else she might have been
kicked out of that school. She must also walk around all day
with five books stacked on top of her head to maintain her posture.
What's her name, I asked him. Kyle, he told me. I wondered
how Kyle got by with a name like that
at a school like that, she must be very good at
cross-stitching and embroidery and hospital-bed making.
Then it got dark and I got hungry so the photographer
stooped by the stop sign on our corner. I asked him why
he was taking pictures of that stop sign since I had
already seen him taking pictures of it last Sunday. He told me
that there were many ways to take a picture of a stop sign and
he wanted to do the best job he could for his grandmother who
made stop signs for a living. I wondered if he had ever run out of
film or if he had ever thought of standing up to take the picture but
I didn't want to offend him again, and besides, I have never seen
his family so they might all be midgets for all I know.