It was a Sabbath afternoon. God, how I hated the Sabbath. We were Seventh-Day Adventists at Avondale College in Cooranbong (comes from the Aboriginal word “Kour-an-bong”, meaning “rocky bottom creek”) and you weren’t allowed to do anything fun on the Sabbath.
I was seven years old. It was late 1973. I hadn’t started school yet but I knew how to read.
So after church, we came home for lunch and my parents’ had guests over, adult guests, and after lunch, there was nothing for me to do and nowhere for me to go. For some reason, I had to stay home and stay in. It was summer. The days were long and the Sabbath wouldn’t end until after sundown, which was ages.
So I sat in the big comfortable chair in the living room as the adults did their thing around me, they were probably cleaning up and heading out for a nature walk, and I gathered myself in the chair, and imagined I was somewhere else, anywhere else, having an adventure. And as I drifted into that scene, something out of Coral Island/Treasure Island/Huck Finn, I imagined that my best friend Wayne and I were provisioning stores at the Sanitarium Health Food Factory for our big rafting trip down Dora Creek.
Then I saw us gathering everything on board the raft and pushing away from the shore, away from the adults, and heading downstream to have adventures with abos.
As I disappeared into my reverie, I found that all of my boredom and unhappiness and lack of ease disappeared and I felt alive and happy and the hero of my own story. My mom was thrilled that I could entertain myself and not be a bother. Such a good boy. And I was off surfing the waves of fantasy, letting go of my problems and getting high on my dreams, transforming my state with a blink of my mind’s eye and elevating to a better world where I was an admirable guy doing great things and operating at the peak of my powers.
Getting lost in my dreams became my favorite hobby. Later, I’d follow sports, chase girls, watch movies, and work and exercise to the extreme — all to ward off the pain of my failure to attach normally. As the years rolled by, my distractions became addictions.
I fell in love with books at age eight. One Saturday, I finished five, my all-time record. I’d experiment with how much I could read in a day and found eight hours was about my limit.
In fifth grade, I began jogging a couple of miles before breakfast. In seventh grade, I got serious with my running, and finished five marathons (26 miles, 385 yards). I thought that was how I would become great. I’d drive myself out of bed every morning and run five miles before breakfast. By sheer force of will, I’d gain distinction and love. Then in eighth grade, I developed sore knees (Osgood-Schlatter disease) and had to quit running. Without it, I would’ve pushed myself to collapse in my drive to achieve.
And the thing is — I had no running talent. I just had a desperate need to escape from reality.
Just before my knee problem became insuperable, I was headed towards my fastest time in the marathon. I was on pace for a 3 hour 30-minute marathon (my previous best time was 4:13) when I dropped out of my last race at the 18 mile mark due to the pain.
Realizing I’d never become great through athletics, and there was never a shred of evidence that I had any athletic talent, I decided in eighth grade to become a journalist. That was my great pursuit through my teens but there was never a way to overdo it to injury. I stayed up most of the night on a couple of occasions covering a story but that wasn’t a big deal to my health.
I only became serious about education at age 20. I took 18-units at Sierra Community College in the fall of 1987 and I got my first straight As report card by rising at 4 am every day to tackle my most difficult subject first — Calculus. I learned that my daily limit for serious study was six hours and if I wanted to write, I needed to do that first. I’d get the flu with everyone else, but by fasting and a massive intake of fluids, I’d usually bounce back within 48 hours.
In the Spring of 1988, I was taking 25 units and working about 25 hours a week, when I felt myself running down. I was bewildered. I had discovered my passion at last — academics — and I was determined to bull through to great achievement. “I’ll break through or break down,” I told myself. “Either way I’ll get love.” Only my destruction would stop my approach. I was an atheist, a communist and a virgin.
One day in February, 1988, I woke up with what became Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I’d never again be strong.
I fell in love with Judaism in 1989 and became increasingly strict with my observance. This did not cause me any injury, but in 1993, as I brought girls into my life, I decided to temper my religiosity to sate my desires. After enjoying a couple of women, I was never again in danger of religious extremism.
I took up blogging in 1997 and sometimes put in up to 60 hours a week at it, often mixing with dangerous people and putting myself at risk. I never pushed to physical collapse however, I simply flirted with the edge, with insanity, with social ostracism. By 2007, I realized I wasn’t getting the results I sought from blogging and so I started looking for a new approach to life and in late 2008, I embraced the Alexander Technique. There’s no way to Alexander yourself to injury so that never happened to me. I did burn out on trying to establish a practice, giving it my all for four months until deciding to put that on the back burner.
The past six years, I’ve been taking it easy, seeking out my next opportunity for total effort, but now I’m 47 years old and perhaps that kind of exertion is a thing of my past.
What obsession or addiction have you suffered from?
Addiction to sex, love and fantasy. Since the age of seven when I learned I could sit in a chair and drift off into a daydream of doing great things, going on adventures, leading armies into battle, ruling a nation, and this would immediately numb my pain, fill me with excitement and adrenalin, and I’d just get lost in a haze. It was like a drug.
How did you originally get involved?
My parents were busy. They didn’t want me to bother them. I didn’t have friends around. I read a lot of books and it was easy to imagine myself stepping into these stories, such as Treasure Island, Coral Island, etc.
How long have you been doing this?
Since age seven.
Describe the satisfaction or joy that it brings or brought you?
It makes me feel even with life. All of my anger and frustration goes away. My pain is numbed. My frustration is taken away. I’ve had to absorb a lot of punishment and humiliation at the hands of women, particularly my step-mother, and now I get to dish out the pain or at least watch it acted out in porn. Watching a good sex scene is like watching my favorite team score a touchdown. Watching a good bukkake shower is like watching my favorite team score 14 touchdowns in 50 seconds. It’s orgasmic.
I can take all my pain, rage and humiliation at the hands of women, all the hundreds of hot women I’ve known who’ve ignored me or turned me down and refused to fuck me, and I can see women hotter than them get fucked 15 ways to Sunday in the most degrading ways possible, bitches got it coming.
How has it impacted you financially?
I’m not sure exactly. I’ve never made more than $50,000 a year and yet I obviously have a three digit IQ and most people as smart as me make good money. I’ve never been willing to part with much time and money in the pursuit of my addictions. I’ve long used my laziness to keep that in check. As a good friend once wrote of me, “Luke is a lazy womanizer. He can’t be bothered to put much effort into it.”
How has it impacted relationships with friends or family?
My inappropriate comments, tasteless jokes, raunchy behavior, revolting writing, shameful topics of obsession have hacked away at my bonds with others, leaving me isolated and lonely. My bosses and my rabbis say I’m not controllable. I was born to be wild. I live in rebellion to my parents. I’m doing battle with them every day even though they live in Australia and I live in California.
I remember jogging beside a foggy canal in 95658 in December of 1987. Running was rarely fun, particularly not after a long day of study and work. I wondered, where was my reward for my hard work? I figured that good things came to those who sacrificed present pleasure for future reward. I was set to transfer to UCLA in the fall and I would get the goodies there. I’d get love and recognition and friends and success.
And so I ran on through the fog before dinner, the only person on a lonely trail, a couple of miles from a cold home, telling myself that by giving up the present, by building up my strength and vitality and savings and GPA, I was setting a foundation for a magnificent future, blithely unaware that all my plans were about to crash down on my head and that 25 years later, I’d still be unmarried, sitting at home alone listening to the same ’80s pop, dreaming of jogging, blogging about jogging, fantasizing about jogging, visualizing jogging while unable to walk more than a couple of miles without my feet aching.
In July, 2013, I bought a stationary bike and soon worked my way up to ten miles a day until a mammoth CFS collapse in late August presaged three months of exhaustion and social withdrawal.
Oh life, it’s bigger
It’s bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I’ve said enough
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Something broke in my system in February of 1988 so that since then, when I exercise much past a mile or two daily, I quickly or slowly get a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome relapse that matches exactly the level of my exertion. For example, sustained exertion over weeks brings a sustained relapse that lasts weeks while a one-time exertion of many miles brings a sudden but short-lived relapse of a few days. Given that I can’t exercise much in real life, I’m experimenting with active visualization of my past experiences with jogging and working out. I find this makes me feel alive and fills me with adrenalin and provokes memories and strong feelings. I don’t want to live passively, so I’m writing everything out.
Remember my jogs through Angwin in 1978, hoping to find a better way to live? I was frustrated with my life. I was disconnected. I was lonely. I was unpopular. I knew what I had wasn’t working. I had to try something new. So off I went on a run. I’d chew up the miles and hope to run into a girl who liked me. I thought that by getting ahead, winning awards, pushing myself forward, securing fame and fortune, I’d get more of what I wanted — connection, friends, family, love.
I was ill at ease, restless, discontented, and I tried to run away from my problem. I’m always trying to run away. Get away. Fix the damn thing! F***! F***! I hate my life. It’s not working. And my attempts to fix things don’t work either but I won’t go down without a fight. Something is so wrong.
I was a 12 year old kid and I was running 40 miles a week. Something is wrong here. What’s wrong with this picture? Why does the kid have so much desperation and unhappiness that he runs marathons at age 12? I found a measure of distinction through my running but that ended in the fall of 1979 when my knees began swelling up, they couldn’t take the pounding, and I had to abandon running for the next five years.
I’ve lived many places aside from Pacific Union College but there was something special about that place and I keep returning to it in my visualizations. I see myself racing up Howell Mountain Road and hear the honk of the horns of friends and see their waves and I wave back and I feel connected. I feel alive.
When my parents were gone in Washington D.C., and I finished up eighth grade at PUC during those first six months of 1980, that was the first time I felt normal. That was my first taste of sustained and deep happiness. Over the next four years, I kept returning to the Adventist college to fill up on this feeling. Those were the best times of my high school years. PUC was my community. People knew me there. Everyone knew my name and they were always glad I came. We were bound by a similar religion and way of life. It’s easier to connect when you’re part of the group. And when those tanks of connection are filled up, it’s easier to face the world and to explore. Without that connection and community and love, I feel weak and fragile, ill at ease, restless, discontented, angry, frustrated, broken.
When I was at PUC, I never saw myself living there. I just wanted to launch myself into the world, knowing that the place would still be there for me forever. I had a home. I had a place for me.
My God, that evening in May of 1980, when I found out we would not be returning to PUC, that we would have to live elsewhere, my heart broke. I was glad to find out four months later that we were going to Auburn, it was less than three hours drive away from PUC.
Auburn was lonely compared to PUC. PUC was lonely for me too but at least there were lots of people there I could potentially connect with, but in Auburn, our religious community was spread out. There was no one to hang out with on most Sabbath afternoons. It was just me and long walks and books and I felt so empty and sad.
Remember all my jogs from 1985 to 1988 through the fog along the canal that flowed a mile below our home at 7955 Bullard Drive? I’d just run mile after mile and there was nobody, nobody I wanted to f***.
I had my moments at Placer High School, a public school. It was an opportunity for me to spread my wings outside of Adventism, outside of Christianity, and to begin to explore the wider world through the tool of journalism. I had success, but it didn’t fill me up the way life at PUC did. There’s something special about belonging to a close-knit religious community with transcendent purpose. Everything becomes more meaningful. Life has more depth and texture and color. There were so many great people at PUC, we shared values and a way at looking at life, it was easier to communicate and to eat together and to do everything together. The outside world is much more complex.
I took that year off after high school and went back to Australia and felt so lonely as my mates back in California moved ahead with their lives. So I came home and I still couldn’t get it together at Sierra Community College. Imagine Desmond Ford’s son taking a semester off — only six unit! — to work as a landscaper. Oy! In that miserably cold winter, I was slogging away in the mud and rain for $4.50 an hour. I was nuts. I made such bad choices.
I was desperate, searching, trying things, shaking up my life, looking for a better way, and I was lonely. I thought my muscles and toughness would help me find a woman, or at least build a foundation upon which I could accomplish great things and then get the woman I deserved and then things like friends and community would fall into place.
These visualization exercises, taking me back to my daily runs of seventh grade, do get my blood pumping. Sometimes, when I remember running along a beautiful trail, I feel strong and I pump with endorphins, even though I’m just lying on the floor listening my favorite pop songs of the era.
Remember how much of the time I was hungry? Eating between meals was a sin. Eating much for dinner was a sin. I was starving, sad, lonely, miserable, disconnected. I wasn’t cared for and I didn’t know how to care for myself. I kept seeking out sustenance and I usually found it through my friendships with the bachelor PE teachers Chuck, David, Duane. I’d hang out in their offices. I could talk to them about everything that interested me. I was closer to them than my classmates most of the time.
What would I say today to my miserable seventh-grade kid? My God, I am today just the type of mentor and friend that I sought out in 1978-1979. So what would I say to my 12-year old self? What kind of conversations would we have? What wisdom would I impart? Let’s imagine that friendship.
He’d come into my office. I’m the school’s Alexander Technique teacher. He’s awkward, scrawny, carelessly dressed, only washes his hair once a week.
Luke Senior: “Son, the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Reduce doing the things that separate you from the people you want in your life.”
Luke Junior: “But I feel driven to antagonize people. Driven. It’s in my DNA. It’s beyond my control. I can squash it for a few days but it always roars out. Look at you. You’re constantly antagonizing people, keeping them at arm’s length. You’ve never married. You have no kids. You don’t have so many friends or why else would you be hanging out with me?”
Sr: “You’re right. I’m right. We both need to get help. This is why there are psychologists. Religion and running are not enough. We can’t just distract ourselves from our problems.”
Jr: “If I can only be great, these problems will disappear. If I can win some races, get some fame and fortune, I’ll get more friends, I’ll get a girlfriend, I’ll be honored and people will want to be close to me.”
Sr. “There’s enough to what you say that I can’t dismiss it entirely, but let me ask you, how’s that working out for you? Do you have any talent as a runner?”
Jr. “It’s not working out. I don’t have any talent as a runner beyond an ability to discipline myself to do it.”
Sr. “That’s not going to be enough to get fame and as for fortune, there’s no fortune in being a famous runner. You’re a writer. It’s fine for you to devote all your effort right now into running. It’ll give you insight you can use in your writing, but at core, you’re a runner with no special gift, but when it comes to writing, that’s not just your gift, it’s your mission in life. Channel your frustration into your writing. Write every day. Fill up notebooks and don’t lose them and don’t let your parents read them.”
Jr. “I have no place I can hide them that my mom won’t find them and read them, so it kills all desire I have to pour myself out into a diary. So I pour myself out to you instead.
“I gotta know. Does it get better?”
Sr. “It gets better but there are also necessary losses every step of the way. There are things you have now you’ll never have again. With every year, you’ll gain stuff and lose stuff. In all likelihood, as you age you’ll gain more independence and you’ll be happier. But you gotta get help. You can’t be proud. You’re survival, your happiness, your life is at stake. You can’t just will your way out of the rut you’re in.
“Let’s go for a run.”
OK. We set off.
Jr. “My knees knock when I run.”
Sr. “That’s no good. You’re not exactly poetry in motion.”
Jr. “I know. I run as awkwardly as I talk to girls as I do everything, just ill at ease and constantly banging into myself and going in circles.”
Sr. “You’re heavily armored with unnecessary body tension and this is distorting your gait and making jogging more painful. You’re jolting your connective tissue with every step and straining yourself and putting yourself at risk of injury. You need Alexander Technique.”
Jr. “It’s too expensive. My parents can’t afford it.”
Sr. “There are easier ways to run. There are easier ways to talk to people. There are easier ways to relate to yourself. There are easier ways to go through life. When you tire of the results you’re getting now, you’ll be open to learning new things that will impart more grace into your efforts.”
Remember how miserable I felt running my five marathons at age 12? Remember the misery of the first one, the Hidden Valley marathon, which took me four hours and 43 minutes and I was almost beaten by that 70-plus year old woman, Mavis Lindgren? It was hot and far and the terrain was unfamiliar and I hardly knew anyone and I ended up walking much of the last half of the race.
It was easy to cheat in my training and to tell myself I ran ten miles when really it was only seven, but there was no way to cheat in an official race. The race was laid out. It was just over 13 miles there and just over 13 miles back and that was all there was to it. There was no way to cheat.
Remember the rain, fog and cold of my second marathon, the Avenue of the Giants? We had to drive down there Saturday night, sleep in a strange place, and then race in the morning and make the long drive home.
Remember the killer hills of the San Francisco marathon? One mile, it was about mile 22, was uphill all the way. Remember running across the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge? I’ve never felt so close to suicide. I just wanted to jump into the cold blue waters. Remember how much a kind word meant to me then? And now.
I was miserable because I was doing the thing that I hoped would make me great and it hurt so much and I hated it and I wasn’t particularly good at it, there was no way I was ever going to be great in running, and yet I kept slogging away for the attention. I felt trapped.
How many times in my life have I done this? I’ve sacrificed everything to be great at one thing only to find that I hate it and I’m not particularly good at it. It’s not what I expected. Where’s my runner’s high? Where are the endorphins?
So when did I have a better time running my marathons? I got my best time at the Sri Chinmoy race which I had to enter with another runner’s number because the marathon didn’t allow kids. I finished in four hours and 14 minutes and at the end, Sri Chimnoy was screaming the name of the female runner registered in my name, encouraging me on (he did that for every runner). I liked that they had water stations on every mile and the race was flat and there was lots of encouragement.
My favorite marathon was the Napa Valley marathon, near my home town. Many of my friends turned out to cheer. My classmate Lonnie sherman biked beside me the last eight miles of the race, offering kind words. I finished hard, with a long wild sprint to the line that got captured in a movie about the race.
Osgood-Schlatter’s disease ended my running at age 12. I didn’t pick it up again until 18 and then only periodically. I never particularly liked running but I liked it most when I did it around people I liked, and that was mainly at Pacific Union College (PUC), my home from 1977-1980 as well as the summers of 1982 and 1983. As I ran up and down the hills of PUC, people would call out to me. I liked that. It made me feel connected. Human connection is what life is all about and what I’ve missed most in my first 47 years. My memories of PUC are so filled with emotion. Compared to PUC, my years in Auburn (1980-1993) were dry and barren.
Just take the scenery of PUC compared to Auburn. PUC is much greener and moister. Auburn is hot and dry all summer and the grass dies and my soul withers outside the bosom of the Seventh-Day Adventist church (my family lived in Adventist colleges (Avondale and PUC) until I was 14).
I returned to running in my final year at Sierra Community College. In the fall of 1987, while taking 18-units and getting straight As, I ran a couple of times a week along a dusty trail. Then I’d finish off my work-out with 20 pull-ups and I looked forward to transferring to UCLA, where my life would truly begin. There I would shine and my talents would be recognized. I’d recapture the human connection I had at PUC but it wouldn’t be based on shared religion but on shared academic excellence.
* I have the day off so I’m lying down, listening to my favorite music, and imagining myself going for a long jog, just like I did as a kid, and then writing out what comes up.
There’s definitely a big physiological and emotional reaction going on inside of me when I visualize myself running, doing pull-ups, working out, charging down the streets of my youth. I’m going to put more effort into learning about and using visualization. I can sense its power. Now I have to get disciplined and use it every day towards good ends.
As I moved through my teens, my father foresaw that I had misery headed my way. When I wouldn’t heed his admonitions and insisted on my own way, he said, “Perhaps you’ll only learn through pain for I fear that life has some rude surprises for you.”
What did my father see for me that I didn’t?
My destructive self-absorption.
For most of my life, up until February of 1988, it seemed to me that every year was better than the previous one and that growing opportunity and freedom would bring me happiness. And then I moved through my 20s into my 30s and 40s and now I can look back and puzzle out what my dad was on about. What did he see that I didn’t?
* That pursuing what I wanted against reality would end in disaster. It turns out I’m the type of bloke who needs transcendent purpose in his life or he’ll go off the rails pursuing his lusts. I’m naturally all about me. That hasn’t served me. I’ve made a hash of things. I have to keep coming back to God after totally stepping in it and pledging anew to put Him first.
* That spending my health to get my wealth would result in me spending my wealth to try to get my health.
* I couldn’t talk to women like I talk to men.
* If I treated people carelessly, as means to my ends, they would resent that and hurt me. Nobody likes a know-it-all.
* My indifferent work ethic would not allow me to get ahead. I couldn’t only expend effort when it suited me, when the subject interested me, or I’d get stuck in minimum-wage jobs. Most advancement comes through connection.
* My father taught me that women are not lemons that you can squeeze and throw away. Women are not watermelons that you can drill a hole in to see if they’re sweet. Women are not mangoes that you can eat out and discard. Women are not apples that you can munch and trash. Women are not strawberries that you can cover with whipped cream and eat for dessert. Women are not a box of chocolates where you can take a bite out of each to see if you want more.
* Once a day, I like to lie back, close my eyes, listen to my favorite pop songs, and visualize myself running around Pacific Union College like I did in seventh grade. Back then when I jogged my 40 or so miles a week, I dreamed that one day I’d leave for the big city and my life would really begin. Now I live on my own in the big city and I dream about jogging around my insular Seventh-Day Adventist community of 1978.
I feel so many shades of sad. There’s the glaring exposure of running through sunshine when the whole world sees how alone you are. There’s the brooding darkness and fright of running through deep shade. There’s the bite of running through early morning cold when no one’s around and then there’s the struggle of pounding through the oppressive heat of the Napa Valley summer. And as I run, I think about whether I’m getting closer or further from the girl I like, Denise.
The meaning of every street I run down in my imagination depends on the amount of love in it for me. I’m an emotional vampire, seeking to suck the love out of life. People like me who are needy haven’t yet learned to care for ourselves so we can transcend ourselves in our care for others.
Even in seventh grade, I was aching for a love fix, though that diminished once I connected to the Muths and was made an honorary member of their family. My God, it is such a beautiful warm sunny Christmas day in Los Angeles, and I’m lying back imagining running through seventh grade. Only now I can’t blame anyone. In seventh grade, I could blame my parents, my church, my school, my teachers, my classmates. Now it’s all on me. I wish I could accomplish something magnificent.
My default state of mild depression hasn’t shifted much over my life.
* I was talking to my therapist about how it is easier to feel good about yourself when you get external validation but I’ve learned through therapy I have to build up internal validation, which is hard work. And then I just imitated some of my former therapists and our interactions around trying to build up my sense of self by doing things I enjoy that are good for me such as writing, taking classes, going to writer events, launching into Orthodox Judaism, reading books, and pursuing healthy activities instead of sewer activities. And we both started laughing for about 10 minutes.
The great thing about cults is that they are welcoming. They don’t care about your past as much as they care about what you can contribute in the future to their cause. I’m susceptible to cults because I want to feel part of a family but my stubborn independent streak always dooms me for these insular societies.
* As I go through life, I see people with all sorts of problems that could be solved if they would only listen to me, and yet people don’t listen to me. They look at me and they see little that they want to emulate and so they disregard my good advice.
It’s frustrating. I want to be a leader, I want to be a guru, I want to be a preacher like my dad, and yet I’m terribly unhappy with my life and none of the things that I have embraced with great enthusiasm and expounded on at great length in my blogs, have moved me into the winner’s circle, and so it is probably best that you continue to disregard me.
* Almost all of my buddies are like me in the following ways — depressed, not working in their chosen career, trying to get their lives in gear, in therapy, trying things that don’t seem to shift their lives, single, aging, aching, struggling with their weight and with their place in community. So when we hang out, we may enjoy each other, but we hardly get inspired. I get inspired when I hang out with my married friends who have kids and rewarding work and esteemed positions in the community.
* So I was whining about my sadness to my therapist tonight (this feeling was brought on by an amazing meal I had on Rosh Hashanah and how happy I am with my friend and that made me sad when I thought about the 95% of my life spent without such connection), and she told me to focus instead on the positive actions I could take to improve my life. And I felt, can’t we wallow just a little longer in my desolation? I only enjoy about 1% of the people I meet. The rest? I may try to develop a conversation but I feel myself forcing and working at it and I get tired and I feel sick and I just want to be alone. I dig mismatchers, my personality type, people who look for what doesn’t match. Mismatchers tend to have few friends. Duh.
* In 1998, I met a woman at synagogue. We started talking. I found her attractive, smart and accomplished. She had a PhD. She’d dated this rabbi I admired.
I started going out with this woman. After a few dates, I brought her over to my apartment. It was around September.
I showed her my website on Dennis Prager. As she read it, she started crying. “This is how you write about someone you love?” she said.
I felt strange. I thought my writing was funny.
We lay down. The neighbors were yelling. “You’ve got to get out of here,” said the woman. “You’ve got to move.”
A few days later, we hung out at the pool. It was the first time I saw her legs. They were flabby. There were no muscles. They were a big turn-off to me.
I decided to break up.
Despite my decision, or perhaps because of it, I started questioning her intensely about her life.
She’d set a rule for me, no photographing naked women for my website lukeford.com. No topless shots. No nudity.
So after I decided to break up with her, I went on a set and shot some topless photos and posted them on my website.
She called me that evening. “I guess you’ve made your decision,” she said. I agreed.
She was confused. Why had I questioned her so intensely if I was breaking up with her?
She went on to a long relationship with a friend. He later told me it was the relationship from hell.
