Peter and Max met about three years prior to tonight’s festivities. Peter was shooting pool at one of his upper Eastside hangouts, not to be confused with one of his upper Westside hangouts. Peter was confidently cleaning the one pool table in the small bar of all its remaining striped balls. When suddenly this big, burly, blonde guy leans out from the row of red barstools and snaps a picture of him. As Peter watched the fourteen ball miss its mark, he could feel the pressure building up in his body– and this was no small body. Peter stood a solid six feet three inches tall and kept himself at a strict two hundred and ten pounds.
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Peter was told as a child that he may be suffering from obsessive-compulsive tendencies. He couldn’t make much sense of it, even when he asked his uncle Louie. His uncle had told him that it meant he would have a lot of bad habits if he didn’t choose good habits first. This didn’t clarify the matter for the then nine-year-old Peter. But as time went on he started to understand.
He began to smoke cigarettes at the fine age of ten. Drinking and smoking pot habitually since the age of thirteen, and vaguely remembers the three years he was high on cocaine, which happened to coincide with his first attempt a collegiate life.
So Peter figured he had better get his obsessive-compulsive ass some good habits, especially after that three year coke binge. Peter needed some beefing up. He decided to take all that energy and compulsion and put it into himself, he joined a gym. So, after spending two years hooked on anabolic steroids, blowing up to a whopping two hundred and forty five pounds of solid muscle. He has managed to condition himself to training five times a week, provided he wasn’t too hung over. He also developed a habit of counting protein gram intake throughout his day. By Peter’s precise calculations with a protein intake of two hundred and twenty grams a day, keeping with a full week of training he would remain at his desired weight.
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None of this information was given to the Swedish student photographer before he had taken that one innocent picture. Alas, the product of all that meticulous calculating and rigorous training was headed across the pool table straight for him. Max, no small puppy himself, stood at six foot one inch, and weighed in at two hundred and fifty-five pounds. But Max’s weight was distributed differently than his soon to be opponent’s.
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Max was always a big boy — a chunky child growing up in the safety and snowbound tranquility of northern Sweden. Sundsvall, a little town tucked safely in the snow about a hundred miles from Stockholm, the capital of his frozen homeland was the place Max spent most of his peaceful childhood. He could remember bright winter nights when the sun never set, sitting on momma’s lap as she sung sweet Swedish songs, slowly lowering his eyelids and slipping into slumber.
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Turning the small handle attached to the film spindle on his HassleBlad 5×5, an old knocked-about camera, which was the tool of Max’s study. It also being the only thing Max had of his father’s, except, the bad memories.
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Max’s father was a gambler and a drunkard, who seemingly for no apparent reason, just up and left one day.
The feeling of being left alone, abandoned in the snow, left to take care of his mother; only the two of them in the home. He was only five he didn’t know how, there was no male role model to show him how men deal with life or to watch the relationship between man and woman grow as his parents spent a lifetime together. None of this had he had.
Max loved his mother with all his heart but there was something he needed to discover which he couldn’t find in his own small town. Departing for America was the last of many attempts to leave home. First, to Stockholm. Not far enough. Then Prague, too much like home. Then to the south of France for a summer, something was still missing.
Max decided to come to America to follow his dream of being a professional photographer, a paid voyeur. He loved the idea of watching someone through his lens, then when he had created a mood for this image in his mind, push and click. The world, in his control, no one to say he wasn’t good enough. And there was no better way to get girls to take their clothes for you.
Ah naked girls. Always better in front of the lens. Never have to worry what to say, what to do, if I’m good enough, big enough. In front of the lens I have the power. I have control. There are no “what if’s” in front of my lens.
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Max finished rewinding his roll of film, content that the images he captured would develop wonderfully. As he raised his big, blue, bloodshot eyes the locomotive of a man headed his way. Max could not look away. The image he had just captured, strong, graceful, frozen in time in front of his lens, was now headed right for him.
Max met eyes with the charging man of steel, they were gray and piercing, staring into his. The face he saw, clenched with anger, jaw line and cheekbones razor sharp; this man’s black hair streaming in his wake, as he got closer. His equine nose a flair and his full lips set askew as if he were about to let out an ancient war cry.
Max could not help but see this approaching animal as a vision of beauty, sheer strength and raw power in its essence. What an image, he wished he had loaded his camera again. The raging man stopped right in front of max.
“What the f#@k do you think you are doing?” Peter snarled.
Max checked over his shoulder to see who the recipient of these coarse words was. He looked back in front of him, pushed a lock of his blonde hair away from his eyes, only to lift his head and have a clear view up this guys nose.
“What are you some kind of wizeguy. I’m talkin’ to you, what’s with the picture.” The enraged American was now poking a finger into the soft fleshy part of Max’s chest, which more resembled a breast than a chest.
Max wasn’t too good with speaking English yet but two things were clear, this guy was mad at him and it was something about the picture he just took.
“B…B… But I’m just student.” Was all max could unscramble in the whirl of Swedish, English, and adrenaline, spinning uncontrollably in his head.
