Mary-Grace, the jaded scenester

15Sep08

I’d first seen her on the dance-floor at a warehouse party in Berlin, but was too unnerved to speak. Two weeks later, after I’d returned from abroad, I bumped into her at my pot dealer’s house in Montreal. I was going to pretend I didn’t remember her, but she called me out immediately. “Hey, weren’t you that creepy dude staring at me at Crystal Pistol Whip the other night?”

She was just 20 years old, originally from Croatia, already a professional nightlife photographer/dj/model scout/journalist. Initially, she rebuked my attempts to seduce her, citing the still-raw collapse of her first marriage. However, we kept on running into each other, and not just in Montreal. I had produced a documentary on electro cults in Spain, which was making a serious festival run, taking me all over the world to promote it. And it seemed like everyplace I went, Mary-Grace was there, too.

At my sister’s art opening in Amsterdam, she was there. Same with a pool-party in Silverlake, California. When I saw her on Plaza Serrano in Buenos Aires, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Austin, Cannes, Tokyo, Reykjavik. Wherever my travels took me that year, she was there, drinking whiskey, snapping photos and making dry comments about the dull, monotony of the world’s cultural elite.

When we were both in Montreal at the same time, which was rare, we’d share drinks at various lounges, and share stories of our travels, our former loves, and new ideas incubating in our imaginations. She went back to her ex before I had the chance to ever court her, but she still stands as a monument in my mind to ever-fleeting youth.