marksink

Mark Scott on Mark Sink
I had a friend who grew up in the gap between Lauren Huttons two front teeth, but the gap was too small. It was also too thin. It had little or no depth. He forced himself to find that out over and over again. It was bright and white on the front side, the side he could see. He wanted into that light, that limelight. But no sooner had he gotten into it then hed come upon darkness, the gap as it looked from the other side. It was the darkness that had seduced him after all, or in the first place, and so he started to pursue that. But he didnt want to do it alone, and he wanted to be able to come back into the light. He decided to take a light with him, a camera, a dark box for storing light. He would expose the darkness in the gaps. Men, al l most by definition, had no gaps. They were not worth going into. Women had gaps, had them everywhere. The belly button, which my friend had a special fondness for, never ceased to disappoint him. It seemed to be an opening, but it would not yield to penetration. Still, as a kind of compensation, it could be beautiful--but, again, only on women. And that was the problem: it was on women, and not in them; and my friend wanted to be in women, not on them.
He got to like throwing things on women, or getting women to throw things on other people--vomit, cocktails, a snake, popcorn--but he wouldnt throw himself on women, or have them throw themselves on him. As he got older, his preference for being in women expressed itself more and more indirectly. He would go in with a lens. He would go in with a feather. He would go in with a cats paw. He would go in with a boot. And quickly withdraw. In and out. That was his way with food, also; nobody ate faster. He inhaled his food. He didnt use plates. He ate out of paper bags and waxed servettes. He ate off of napkins. He ate down into wrappers. Beer he could pour directly into his stomach. He treated all liquid equally. His throat was open to any beverage, flat, sparkling, still, bubbly, carbonated, hot, warm, cool, cold--it didnt matter. Nutriment meant nothing to him. It passed in and out. His hunger wasnt hungry, his thirst wasnt thirsty. He passed in and out of a stream of appetite, but he lingered over a cigarette.
He was the most casual person Ive ever known. Nothing hurried him, nothing slowed him down, nothing particularly interested him. You could rarely tell what he was looking at, thinking about, about to do, trying to say. He had that one trouble: it cost him to express himself in words. If he were driving, and he felt frustrated, or he was upset with you, he might turn the car up onto the sidewalk, park it, climb into the back seat, and go to sleep; but he would say nothing. Often people thought he had said nothing when hed spoken for five minutes. He made up his own words as often as not. He told me one day that he was an instamatic person. He never used that kind of camera, but he loved to think of himself as spontaneous. He liked to think he came up with thi ngs instantaneously. He believed in the instant, not the moment.
If he believed in anything at all, he believed in her. He told me that it all started for him in her, in the poster he had of Lauren Hutton on the ceiling of his bedroom. It must have been an Avedon photograph, from his first years at Vogue. The image is a cluster of gaps: legs, arms, mouth, teeth, the part in her hair. Mark must have imagined himself, inserted himself, into every cleft. When he would leave his room, he would have to withdraw, pull out; but he would know that the gaps would be there when hed return. While he was out, he would see gaps everywhere, and everywhere he would try to fill them, some with his tongue, some with his hansom me looks, some with an irrelevant gesture, some with a soccer ball, some with a pipeful of pot. His eyes would dash out ahead of him. His hands would reach out farther than his arms could reach. He was tall and thin. His legs were long. His lungs were long. He had more breath than the rest of us.
One day in New York, about ten years ago, Mark saw Lauren Hutton in a restaurant. She was eating lunch. He went over to her table. He got down on his knees and told her that he worshipped her. She noticed the gap in his front teeth. She told him that gap-toothed people had to stick together, and she gave him her number. He took a picture of her--he didnt go anywhere without a camera--but he never did call her up.