What is the phrase? I have a past but no history with Johanna? Or is it the other way around? I met the naked woman you see here at a restaurant in San Francisco. She was sitting at the counter, attempting to eat lunch and read a book. There were empty stools on either side of her, and the maitre d’ of the now defunct Ciao, who had lost my reservation, positioned my then business partner Angello Pezzani and me as Johanna’s tight ends. (In truth, Angello would make a better defensive lineman.) We talked. She ate. She read. Or at least she tried to read. Finally she told us that we were both being rude, talking back and forth past her, and that we should include her in our conversation. Bend my arm. The three of us laughed a lot, and at some point Johanna told us that she might be looking for a job. She did not get a job. This is Johanna in St. Barts, where I had some years earlier made lots of pictures of models. Like Patti Smith, Johanna has sometimes been heard to say, with equally clear irony, “What I’d really like to do is model.” But why not?

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