Requiem: ILikeToShow.
In the course of Our Lives, we meet many people; sometimes, we lose track of one another only to run into each other later on. Sometimes, we lose each other forever.
Relaxed, Active, and Agreeable.
In the Fall of 2015, I met a man (pictured above) that loved to show off - called himself “iliketoshow” for that reason - and he turned out to be one of my most relaxed and agreeable models to date. We had our first face-to-face on a Sunday afternoon in November and spent the course of the next nine and a half hours creating a little over 1000 images, covering just about half the spectrum of his modeling desires. We communicated by e-mail and Flickr with him expressing his great satisfaction with the images we shared on the array of our respective internet portals. About a year later, he requested that I shoot some images of him and his new girlfriend and we made about 500 of those. We kept loose contact with one another over the next four years and about halfway through that time period, he contacted me to say that he would be unavailable for a while as he was dealing with some personal and legal issues and would be maintaining a lower web profile but for me not to worry about any images that I might already be displaying. (this mainly because he and I both knew that I couldn’t possibly match the rate at which he posted his own collections) Didn’t hear from him for a while until the beginning of last year, 2019, when he contacted me to see if we could meet for photos again. Of course, I said, and apologized for not being more proactive about his desire to do some work outdoors, as biking, hiking, swimming and camping were a significant part of his lifestyle: a major reason he was more fit in his mid 50s than a lot of men were in their 30s. He told me not to concern myself with that as he specifically contacted me to record his interest in exotic apparel. That we did, and about four hours and some 350 images later, we shook hands and I went back to process his images for him. Some days later, we agreed that we were both very satisfied with this last set of images and we agreed to get together again in the not too distant future. We spoke a few times about warm weather shooting. Didn’t hear from him at all as Summer approached and again, I found that his web presence had evaporated. He had dropped off the Radar before but this time, he was nowhere to be found and did not respond to e-mails. I had no idea that our last few quips in Twitter messaging would be the last responses I would ever receive from him.
An Unpleasant Realization.
Earlier this year (2020), I attempted to locate him based on his real name and the real world information I knew of him - All searches began to lead me to the discovery of a body this past August of a previously missing swimmer in the Columbia River (near a place that he frequently went swimming and camping) matching the Name, Age, and Description of my former model. Since I can find no other information leading me to any other results, I am forced to conclude that my friend has lost his life in an outdoor mishap. I have struggled with my expressions on this subject, and whether to make a public statement and in the end, I felt I couldn’t remain silent; I had to make some sort of “noise”, as it were, to let the rest of the World know that one of the lights had gone out.
He will be Missed.
