Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Brittany Menjivar

Famed fashion photographer Max Keefer has been accused of statutory. “Now we have to go to his opening tomorrow,” Marcie says. We are living in that liminal space, she claims, where his clout still eclipses his impending cancellation; if we don’t meet him in time, we might forever lose access to his enchanted world of pink flashes and exposed ribs, bright enough to wish on.

“Who’s Max Keefer?” I ask. She grabs my laptop, pulls up his website. I navigate to the “about me” page; my screen is promptly overtaken by a virus.

“That’s supposed to happen,” Marcie says. Apparently, it’s part of his most recent project: anyone who clicks the link immediately has spyware installed on her computer, granting Max (hypothetical) access to her webcam.

Later, I watch an interview in which he explains the “controversial piece.” “We live in a desperation economy,” he states. Art directors beg him for more “intimate” shoots. The girls who pose for him—he calls them girls even when they’re women—get up close to his camera, slide their sleeves down their shoulders, beg him to place them in more vulnerable positions (perhaps, I think, trying to compete with the wasted-looking waifs in his back catalogue). “We’ve exhausted almost every obvious notion of ‘vulnerability.’ What’s more, vulnerability has been commodified—and thus sanitized—to an unprecedented extent. The only true vulnerability these days, for better or worse, might be achieved through the invasion of privacy.”

Max’s lips are strikingly glossy, like he just kissed a seventeen-year-old. His hands are unnaturally large, his fingers so long they could reach through my nostrils and take out my brain. If I go to his opening tomorrow, I fear, I might let him do it. 

I look up how to disable the software. Then I decide I’d rather leave it on. I fall asleep thinking about angels—how all the special prayers to them revolve around being watched.

Brittany Menjivar was born and raised in the DMV, but now works and plays in the City of Angels. With her partner in crime Erin Satterthwaite, she runs the late-night literary reading series Car Crash Collective. Her writing has been featured in Versification, Spectra, Bureau of Complaint, HAD, and Lowly Dirt Children, among other publications. Additionally, she was named a Best of the Net Award Finalist in 2022. Her short film "Fragile.com" (dir. Alison-Eve Hammersley) can be streamed via the ALTER Channel on YouTube.. Follow her exploits on Insta and Twitter @BrittMenjivar

Photo by @salllysum