Soon, Justine and Joseph were a couple. Joseph supported himself as a bartender in a restaurant uptown. Justine had a small inheritance from her mother, which she used whenever she was between photography jobs. Joseph had no such cushion. His father was a lineman for the telephone company. Joseph came to Justine’s apartment in Little Italy every night after work with a tub of salad from what he called the “sneeze bar” of the local deli. He ate his salad drenched in French dressing. She had convinced him to stop eating burgers every night. He spent a lot of time in his black turtleneck, naked from the waist down.

Joseph started photographing Justine unclad in his apartment, as part of his still life series, with grapes on her stomach, or curled up on a platter of raw sausages. Sometimes Sweeney was in the photos, her massive form hunched, cross face pointed to the camera.

The first time Joseph was a little bit mean to Justine, they were on the beach in Far Rockaway. As they walked along, talking, Joseph threw sand in Justine’s face. She laughed and threw sand at him, but then he did it again, and again, and again. She felt as she had when she was a child and other children had bullied her. It was a confusing moment. She tried to smile. Maybe the fact that Justine had been bullied as a child made her the perfect partner for Joseph. But whatever the reason for her tolerance, she looked back on that day on the beach as the beginning of everything else. There was a slight bondage-y aspect to the sex, but that was really nothing compared to the bondage of everyday life.