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William ShawTHE LION"He's late," says the art director, leaning on a wall outside in the Florida sunlight. People look at watches. "We're calling his manager's mobile," he says, "but there's no answer." People roll their eyes and snicker. "It's a joke, man. C. P time." The person we're waiting for is a hip hop star. They are never on time. Rappers are always an hour, two hours late at the very least, industry standard. Coloured persons' time. They've hired an industrial unit for the photo shoot, a vast warehouse on an estate somewhere in Miami. I pull back the doors to go inside out of the sun, leaving natural light for neon, and walk a few paces... before I see the lion. He stands on all four paws on the concrete floor, unexpectedly massive. It's like someone has just yanked a string on my back and tugged at every muscle in my body. My body temperature has just dropped a whole degree (or is that the air con?) I have never been in the same room as a predator before; there aren't many species left that eat humans. This fear must come from somewhere very deep. I suspect it's something very ancient that makes me check the distance back to the door before I've even realised what I'm doing. No. It's only a few yards but it's too far to run if the lion decided to leap. Instead I look at a pile of packing cases to my right. No. The lion would chase me up them and maul me before I was a quarter of the way there. I had known the lion was going to be there; I just hadn't imagined what it would be like to be in the same room. I remember, now, video footage I've seen of a mentally ill man who climbed into a lion enclosure beign mauled, almost casually. "Any news?" asks the photographer. "Any time now," says the press officer, still attempting optimism. The lion stands, a chain around its neck. It is a magnificent animal; but it looks bored. It yawns. The teeth are enormous. Claws lurk under the soft fur of the paws. You can see where the art director was coming from. It's a cool concept. No, really. The lion as a symbol of manhoon, of African-ness, idomitability, maybe, but mostly the lion a symbol of terror. So that the man who stands beside the lion (if he was here) would be saying, "I am afraid of nothing." Like an illustration of a Zulu in a Rider Haggard novel; only less racist. Or maybe not. Not that anyone ever says anything like that in situations like this. Photography is so non-verbal. In the presence of the lion, people are acting with deliberate cool. The photographer wants to take a couple of shots of the lion without the rapper, maybe just because he's being paid a day rate and he should be doing something. The thin man who comes with the lion yanks on the lion's chain until the lion is pointing in the right direction. I ask, "Are you, like, a lion tamer?" "I just come with the lion," he says. It turns out he owns it; this is his lion. He adds, "You don't really tame lions. You just feed them." He explains that all you do is give a lion a heavy meal. After that it doesn't want to kill anyone for a while. "Oh." 
The lion slumps down on the cold concrete. "When did you feed him?" I ask. "Look at the size of his cojones," the make up woman gasps. Laid out, his balls are indeed large, like she says. "Can I stroke him?" she asks. "Sure." She's Chinese-American maybe, pretty, with long black hair and long legs in tight trousers. She leans forward and strokes the coarse sandy fur. "He's so beautiful," she says. Everyone here already knows the hip hop star will never show in time to be photographed with the lion. By the time he gets here the meat will have been digested and the lion will be considering another course. The photoshoot will turn out to be an elaborate, expensive waste of time. The whole scene will have to be photoshopped. The afternoon passes. Every now and again, someone else new enters the warehouse, but never the hop hop star. Each time it's the same reaction as mine. They stop; their eyes widen. They are making the calculation, "Would I make it back to the door in time?" The make-up girl is less easily scared though. She looks at the lion's testicles, then turns to the wiry young man who owns the lion. "They're amazing. Can I touch them?" she asks. She wants to tell her friends she has touched the balls of a lion. I'm waiting for him to look appalled, to tell her no, that that would be a crazy thing to do to his lion, this beautiful predator; all he says is, "Sure." She leans forward towards the lion, hand outstretched. William Shaw runs Un-Made-Up. The lion was drawn by Rembrandt around 1650. 2:48 PM - 2/5/2006 - post comment
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