For my main documentary project here at Salt, I’ve been following a small group of gaming teenagers. They play Yu-Gi-Oh! at the store I was covering with another project, and I just kept finding myself drawn into their back room, delighted with the kinds of pictures I could take with them. They were always hugging each other, sitting on each other’s laps, playing with each other’s hair. Their cards were decorated with holograms and they spoke of summoning monsters, scorpion girls, corridors of pain. They had braces, crazy shoelaces, they loved pineapple calzones and Nickelback. They were so . . . teenagery! Man, remember being a teenager?

“Hey, you guys mind if I do a whole project just on you?” I asked one day.

“Sure!”

They taught me how to play their game. I’d follow them to the convenience store, the playground, alongside highways and railroad tracks. We’d leave two of them alone to make out by the lake while we constructed boats for insects and then threw rocks at the boats and then sunk the boats. I followed a few of them around their high school classes (learned about: rugged individualism, the Hoover Dam, John Malkovich starring in Of Mice and Men, whaaaat), and then realized getting some bus shots would be good too.

6:50am, yesterday morning: on it. The din of adolescence slowly quieted in the background as I whipped out paperwork. “Hi there. Adrianne Mathiowetz. Student at the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies. I’m doing a photo project with those two. Here’s the release form from their parents, I’ve also spoken to the high school and received consent, I won’t take pictures including anyone not listed on the form, nice to meet you.” I smiled at the busdriver winningly and followed the twins to the back, our journey dutifully noted by sets of suddenly curious Maine blue eyes.

“Mind if I sit here?” I asked some kid.

“Excuse me . . . Miss?” the busdriver called back to me. “Come up here. I’m going to need to see that paperwork again.”

“Ooooooooo!” the riders crescendoed.

I stood up, jostled awkardly to the front.”Oh, uh . . . of course. Here it is.”

“And how do you pronounced your name?”

“Math – oh – wets.”

The busdriver breathed into her radio. “She says her name is Adrianne Mathiowetz? Have you heard anything about this?”

Static responded, vaguely in the negative.

“Yeah –” a boy quipped from his green pleather seat, “no more homeless people riding the bus!” The riders erupted into howls and giggles.

“Ha ha, homeless!”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you ride this bus,” the driver said. “I’m not allowed to transport anyone who isn’t a student.”

“Really? But . . . I got permission from the school. I spoke with Principal [X].”

“We’re really very strict about it. It doesn’t matter if you got permission from the school, you can’t ride this bus. You’re going to need to leave now.”

“Ooooooo!”

Lord, school bus kids. I turned and looked at one of my subjects, who was gazing back at me hopelessly. I gave her a half-hearted salute as I stepped off the bus. It disappeared down the hill in a cloud of road dust and pollen.

* * *
“Hi there, just signing in,” I said at the front desk. “Can I just grab the visitor pass again?”

“Oh, Adrianne? Could you actually come back here please? It seems there’s been a misunderstanding. The principal will meet with you in his office.”

“Ah, Christ,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder.

No more getting on the bus. Are we clear on this, Ms. Mathiowetz? Are we clear? Yes, we’re clear. Are we clear? Okay.

I defeatedly shuffled my gear into the foyer, and found a bench. I pulled out a book to read. Fifty minutes until the next bell rang; then I could get back to business. Business! To at least feign professionalism, respectability! A cop walked by.

“Excuse me, miss? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

The bell rang.

Last week, Obama came to Portland to speak on healthcare reform (although according to friends who got in, it was more of a brief, comedic act, which at some point caused him to take off his jacket and give all the ladies present heart palpitations). I thought I’d go hang out in the protest for a while, where they were “letting freedom ring” with brass bells.

At one point the protestors expressed their disgust with our president’s arrival by singing the national anthem. The supporters on the other side of the street countered, by also singing the national anthem. It was nearly beautiful.

But it got me thinking: is documenting the crazies the responsible thing to do? Do I want the story to be, “Obama comes to Portland, these people think he’s an undocumented terrorist commie”? Misinformed insanity has a strong enough voice as it is, without my exploitative attempts.

Also, while it was thrilling to be part of a protest I didn’t agree with, it was also kind of a huge bummer. I thought of the Bush protests I’d gone to, and wondered if I’d depressed any of his passing fans. “So much negativity! Can’t you just be nice to our president for once? He’s trying!” I crawled back to the smiling supporters.

A few more from both sides — for better or worse — here.

Of things that have happened in the past twenty-four hours:

1.) We drove three hours through a blizzard to attend a community dinner in Central Maine. This is what you do when you study documentary-making. “So this is kind of awkward, guys,” I said as we buckled seatbelts. “But I’m going to need to grab a pregnancy test on the way up. Cool?”

This is one of my new favorite ice breakers, because it sounds so much more alarming than it really is. I can’t even count how many pregnancy tests I’ve had to take over the past few months, just because my period is going through some dumb unpredictable phase. High five!

2.) I ate a pile of plain noodles. This was more difficult than you’d think, just because of how sticky noodles are in their unadulterated state. What, community dinners at the rural Masonry don’t have vegetarian options?

“We didn’t sleep together in those days, we got married!” the elderly woman next to me cackled. “That’s why I made so many mistakes! Ooo, here comes one of my ex-husbands, I’ll introduce you. You’ll regret this.”

“I dragged that boat all across town to get it fixed,” ex-husband grumbled. “One little diaphragm, it needed. Four hundred dollars. Can you beat that.”

“Get a slice of that cake before it disappears,” she whispered to me, nodding toward the buffet. “I know all the good desserts in this town. The coffeehouse after this, you’ll want the pie.”

3.) I crouched at the bottom of a stage, and took pictures. Sometimes I propped the camera on the stage itself, to steady it, because my hands are constantly shaking (“Drink a lot of coffee?” my professor asked a few days ago, zooming in on a photo. “Ah, no,” I explained, “I’m just . . . usually terrified”). Meanwhile, Madeleine crept into the balcony and shot from there. This actually was not related to our project, but the guy was really good, and we thought we’d experiment with the whole “if you have a nice camera you can do anything” theory. Success. Also, cute musician. Cute musician!

4.) I finally learned how to play darts. It was in the middle of the night, and we were lurking in a bar while the snow poured and poured outside. A 67-year-old man approached us at the pool table, and proceeded to tell us everything we had come to find for our story. So we challenged him to a game of darts. “You’re standing all wrong,” he told me. “Hmm?” I said.

“Like this.”

Fwop. My dart landed in the second inner circle. Fwop fwop. “Oh my God!” I said. “Do you know how many people have tried to teach me that? I thought I just sucked.”

He shrugged. “You were standing all wrong.”

5.) I rediscovered “Separate Ways” by Journey. Jukebox, two pitchers of cheap beer. Secret to happiness.

“Want to play pool?” J asked.

“I would like nothing more,” I said, “than to take pictures while everyone else plays pool.” O camera, perfect, endlessly appropriate excuse; I am wretched at pool.

If he / ever hurts you / true love / won’t desert you! AHHHHHHHGGGHH!

6.) More lessons from old men in bars: PMA, that’s all you need. Positive mental attitude. You wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror. If you don’t think you’re great that day, you don’t leave the house. PMA.

7.) Five people, two double beds, the smell of stale cigarettes. We were going to arrive after the front desk closed, so they left the key in the door. “Christ. There’s going to be like twelve murderers in there, waiting for us,” I said.

“Nah,” said everyone.

It was still snowing. We squished together under the covers, all of us still in jeans, sweaters, clunky belts, and played Two Truths One Lie until we fell asleep: the five of us with our slowly uncovered histories, of arrests, pet trouts, proposals, but not webbed feet (lie).

Last night we sat on Tom’s floor and listened to records. The room was economically cold but had a sweet dimwarm tungsten glow, and cans of PBR slowly crowded the coffee table like subway passengers. As usual I became effortlessly drunk. “Is that a 50mm?” I squealed at Madeleine. “Do you know how long I’ve been meaning to buy a 50mm?”

“You want to try it? Check it out.”

Thick Maine accents from questionably comedic duo “Burt and I” wandered out of the speakers and we reveled in them. “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” Long pause. “Wait,” J asked hesitantly, “so was that . . . the punch line?” Throughout the night we’d repeat this, over and over, attempting to master its timbre, the deliberate tempo. “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” Madeleine’s 50mm made the rounds around the room, from radio producer to writer to photographer to radio producer (there are so many of them), so that underpinning everything, even the occasional soft metallic click of a popped beer tab, was the shutter, always the shutter, click click click click click.

“These will be the best documented four months of our lives,” I said. “We’ll never forget, even if we want to.”

At the end of the night, we all bundled into our coats and hugged goodbye: the first physical contact I’d had with anyone in weeks. I struggled to contain merry chirps. “Hugs!” I said, still somewhat intoxicated. “Hugs!”

“Strip club tomorrow? Yeah? Who’s in?”

Nothing sketchy. This is schoolwork. We raised our hands.