Goodfellow and Mills

The Goodfellow & Mills Funfair was a new thing, a company no one had ever heard of, but their representative had shown up at the end of summer with a proposal for an October carnival, and Mayor Robertson and his cronies on the city council had decided that it would be a good opportunity for some last-minute voter goodwill a month before election day. There was nothing else going on at the fairgrounds, so G & M was booked in for five days in the second week of October, Tuesday through Saturday. Danny Brandenburg was hired to photograph the event.

He was not a fan of carnivals and county fairs, but such events were definitely photogenic, and the challenge for a photographer as serious as Danny was to find a line between postcard-pretty shots and views of the more sordid, behind-the-scenes aspects of the event. For an hour on Tuesday afternoon, he just roamed, thinking about the night before with Josh, taking shots here and there of townspeople queuing up for target shooting or the tilt-a-whirl, getting a feel for the place.

The Goodfellow & Mills Funfair was not quite the same as other such operations that Danny had photographed. This event had a kind of nostalgic feel to it, with old-fashioned signage and attractions that might have been right out of the early nineteen hundreds, strangely convincing rather than just self-consciously quaint. The whole fair might have been transported through time from a century ago. Danny found himself getting interested in his task, and he started wandering back into the spaces between and behind the tents, watching the workers -- the "carnies" -- at their jobs, setting up attractions, picking up litter, tending animals. He had been issued an ID card on a lanyard that hung around his neck and gave him access to anywhere he wanted to go.

There were a number of structures, ramshackle hybrids of tent and plywood barn, in which animals were kept, along with their feed and water tanks and other paraphernalia. Danny walked into one of the big sheds and stood blinking, his eyes adjusting from the bright light outdoors to the dim, dusty interior.

A carny was raking hay off a big round bale and tossing it into a makeshift stable. Four horses stood quietly, champing on feed from a long wooden trough as he piled in hay then entered the stable and spread it around, stomping it down. Danny watched him quietly for a few minutes, wondering if it would be acceptable to snap a few photos.

The man looked up and stood leaning on his pitchfork.

"Can I help you with somethin'?"

The carny was tall, wiry, with stubbly scalp and a clipped black beard. He had been sweating, and bits of hay were sprinkled all over his bare chest and arms, snagged in his skimpy chest hair, and there was manure smeared on the knees of his jeans. He was wearing big, floppy gumboots.

"No, sorry to bother you. Well, maybe. I'm the town photographer. I'd like to get some photos of you working, if that would be all right?"

The man squinted at him, glancing at the camera briefly, then back at Danny's face.

"What're you gonna use 'em for?"

"History, mostly. I document things that happen in this town, keep archives. Just a record for future generations."

"And you want me to be part of your history?"

Danny grinned. "You already are, just by being here."

The carny returned the grin. "I guess there's no harm in that."

"Thanks."

The carny returned to his work and Danny moved in closer, taking shots from different angles, different heights, experimenting with focal lengths and shutter speed, at one point stepping inside the stable to get closeups of the man's hands and forearms, his back and shoulders, his torso, as he worked the pitchfork. Danny found the images erotic, but he found just about everything erotic, so he made an effort not to overemphasize the sexual elements of the scene.

After fifteen minutes or so, he stepped forward and extended his hand.

"I think I've got enough. Thank you very much for you time."

The carny leaned his fork against the partition and stepped forward, brushing dirt off his hand before sharing a handshake with the photographer.

"You're welcome. Come on back any time if you want more of the same," he said with a wide -- and slightly unsettling -- smile.

When their hands met, Danny felt an electric shock, almost painful, as though one of them had been shuffling around on a carpeted floor, but the carny didn't seem to notice.

"Thanks, I will."

Back at the shop Danny paged through the first dozen or so shots and was delighted with what he found. The dramatic side lighting, the warm neutral tones and textures of the stable and the hay, all created a sense of atmosphere and tactility. The horses in the dim background and the flesh and fabric of the sweating, hay-sprinkled man added meat and bones to the scene.

The twelfth image was puzzling. Here, the carny was standing facing the camera, smiling slightly, his pitchfork held to one side. Danny could not recall having taken that shot.

In the next image, the carny had turned, and was leaning the pitchfork against the partition. Danny thought this might have been from the very end, when they shook hands, although he didn't remember taking this picture either, and there were dozens more images to follow, which meant that this picture would have to have somehow ended up out of order.

Image fourteen: The man is facing the camera, thumbs hooked into the waistband of his jeans.

Image fifteen: The man has unbuttoned his jeans, and is in the middle of unzipping them.

Danny got up and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen, drank it down, then returned to the desk. (What the actual fuck is going on?) He continued paging through the pictures.

Image sixteen: The man has unzipped his pants and pushed them down to his thighs. He is wearing no underwear, and his penis is fleshy and fat and half-hard.

Image seventeen: A second person has entered the frame. He has fluffy mouse-brown hair and a green t-shirt and cargo pants, and can only be seen from the back.

Danny looked down at his green t-shirt and cargo pants, and paused to gather his thoughts.

Image eighteen: The second man is kneeling in the hay in front of the carny, who has tangled his fingers the in the newcomer's hair.

Over the next few shots, the angle shifts, and it can be seen that the second man has the carny's dick in his mouth. It is also clear that the second man is Danny.

Danny closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. The notion that he might have given the carny a blow job was certainly not unreasonable; he would have done it quite cheerfully if he had detected the slightest sign of interest from the man, but nothing like that had happened.

Nothing.

The carny is now fully aroused, and Danny is standing up. Over three or four shots, Danny strips to the skin. He turns and braces his hands on the edge of the feed trough, his legs spread.

For another dozen shots, the carny sodomizes Danny. The camera angle shifts slightly from shot to shot, moving in closer, altering its angle. Danny's face is a picture of abandon, his mouth open, slack, his eyes half closed, unfocused. In some shots the carny's hips are pressed against Danny's butt, mashing the pale flesh. In others, he has pulled out so that only the head of his dick is still inside, and the greasy shaft is visible between the two bodies, like a bridge. A clear red handprint appears on Danny's butt between one photo and the next, and a pair of images shows Danny bending backward, the carny's rough, avid face buried in the side of his neck, the hard hands gripping the photographer's hips hard enough to leave red fingermarks.

One photo shows the carny gritting his big white teeth, his eyes closed, his whole body rigid, his hands dragging at Danny's shoulders, pulling the smaller man back onto his dick. The carny's hard, skinny butt is clenched like a fist, and the intensity of his climax is visible in his shoulders and neck.

In the next sequence, the carny steps back, pulls up his jeans and fastens them, and Danny dresses and moves toward the camera and then out of the frame.

From this point on, everything is exactly as Danny remembered, ending with the carny looking toward the camera as Danny tells him that he has everything he needs.

Forty-eight shots. Four dozen images. Of which he can explain only about sixteen.