The day is coming to a late close. Doolies spent the day working, and I tagged along, carrying bags and trying not to make too much of a nuisance of myself. We’re in a photo studio after finishing Doolies’s music recording appointment for “The Dr. Julie Show” this afternoon. The best I can hope for is a short sleep as it will be another late night. We’re not supposed to leave the studio until 2:30am, and my flight to Korea leaves at 6:30am, assuming they let me on, that is. I’m still concerned about the visa issue. I won’t know any more until I ask at the ticket counter, and then again, when I arrive.

The photo studio is a converted apartment, with rubberized floors and a too-cool art décor. Cinderblocks and glass mix with metal sculptures and colorful cartoon knickknacks. Lights hang on chains, and scribbles and pocket photographs bunch in groups along the walls. The air is heavy with cigarette smoke and the low din of street sounds drifting through the two open windows in the kitchen area. This place brings to mind the origins of the name ‘studio apartment’: except for the dressing room and a small offstage area, there is only open space with little in the way of walls.

Two Apple computers sit next to the sole Windows PC, which except for an instant messaging client over a messy desktop with a dark photograph of a U.S. rapper, is not used. Photoshop runs on both Apples, showing various stages of glamour photos, which the two studio assistants make more glamorous in Photoshop with clicks and presses. Small speakers pump tinny music with a heavy beat near the computers.

The photography area dominates the middle of the studio. It consists of a large white cement floor and a wall over which the studio hangs different colored backdrops depending, I’m assuming from Doolies’s shoot, on the model’s outfit. Lights on long and short black arms and small fans surround the floor. Tripods of different heights line the walls like soldiers loafing after a parade.

A drum set and acoustic guitar anchor the waiting room off the photography area. A couch with a foam cylinder for back support covered by a bronze leopard print sits opposite one leather chair. A cinderblock glass table shows the months of newspapers and magazines stacked underneath. A chair hangs from yet another chain at the border of the waiting room. It is blue with yellow stripes and looks slightly pornographic. Outside the kitchen is the dressing area, with a large mirror surrounded by lights and a changing room behind the mirror. Doolies spends most of her time there changing outfits, having her hair stylized or her makeup painted.

It is difficult to determine the age of the photographer. He has a young face but his eyes betray him. He wears two sets of glasses, one thick for reading, and the other tinted to protect his eyes from the flashing camera. He a small scraggily patch of hair growing from the bottom of his chin, which—and here I’m speculating—provides him with the authority necessary to tell beautiful girls how to look good for the camera. The hair fascinates me. It looks like well-groomed pubic hair.

There has to be a story in there somewhere….