Chapter 12 - Mike's Poster of Evie

According to Boy: (For some reason, I have the sense that I wrote about this before. Perhaps not as a chapter topic, but maybe in connection with another topic.)

The infamous Evie poster started out as a prank on Evie’s first visit to New York. We were staying in a room I had rented at the hotel where I lived—the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Unlike subsequent stays at the Waldorf-Astoria and the Statler Hilton, I was not able to get a student rate at the Fifth Avenue, even though it was owned by the university. The cost of the room was exorbitant for my budget. We barely had money for meals. Lucky for us, we were not much into eating those days. We lived on sandwiches from a great little deli in the Village, and on wine.

It was during this visit I for the first time in my life realized just how sweet life could be with a girl like Evie. The feeling was right, the smell was right, the taste was right, the lips were right, the brown eyes were right, the soft thighs were right—everything that could be right, was right. And, best of all, she was a terrific girl. I was in love.

So, being the consummate (perhaps aspiring) photographer, I had to get a picture of this girl. And I did. She had nothing on but my white dress shirt. She was sitting on the bed, her dark curly hair tousled sufficiently to be interesting, knees crossed, shirt unbuttoned (but not disclosing anything), and gripped in her right hand was a can of Budweiser. She still swears that she never drank beer, but I the picture to prove otherwise.

What made the picture captivating to me was the deep color of her brown eyes and thick lips. I shot the photo with my Nikon Photomic T, using Kodak Tri-X Pan black and white film. I knew from experience that this film would render a grainy, but very sensual picture.

I got the negative developed and printed after she had gone back to Grand Rapids. I remember looking through the pictures while still standing at the photo counter. I could not believe what I saw. It was the most incredible picture I had ever seen. It looked like something you would expect to see in the ad of a new perfume. She looked so unbelievably beautiful, and sexy.

I spent a large part of the evening opening up my desk, and checking the picture out, then putting it back. It was not the type of picture that you allowed your roommate to see. I knew that if he did, he would make some comment, and I would break his nose. So I left it in my desk.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered how it would look as a poster. So one Saturday afternoon I took the negative to one of those specialty shops in the Village, and had them take a look at it. The photo clerk blew it up on his viewer, projecting it on the wall. The clarity and contrast were pretty good, so I ordered a poster.

I think they had to send it out to a studio to have it made, because I waited about a week for it. Every other day I would stop in to see if they had it. Finally, they told me it was done, and they brought it out to me, sliding it out from between two pieces of cardboard, they laid it out on the counter. My jaw dropped. While it was produced from a small-format camera, the focus was perfect, and the contrast high. They had done a great job. I think it cost about twenty-five dollars.

I didn’t tell Evie I had it made. And I certainly did not put it on the wall of my shared room. I rolled it up, and tucked it away in my closet.

Then, the next time Evie came out to visit, while she was in the bathroom I taped it on the wall above the head of our bed. At first she did not notice. But when she did, she just about blew a gasket. She was not terribly happy about my having it made up. It was more than a little risqué, and that was the part that she did not like.

I did assure her that no one but she and I had ever seen it. Then it was a little easier for her to handle.

Until this book was written, we remained the only two people who had ever seen the poster. With a little coaxing, I managed to convince Evie that we should include a picture of it in these pages.