Not Another No Good Blog

You May Kiss the Bride 💔

1956. A small California town.

Helen Vance and Margaret Ellison have loved each other in secret since they were teenagers. What began as childhood closeness slowly became something neither of them could name out loud. Stolen afternoons, late-night drives, and careful silences filled the years between them. Helen learned to love in fragments. Margaret kept believing there might still be a way to keep both her family’s approval and the only person who had ever truly seen her.

There wasn’t.

On the night of Margaret’s wedding to a man her father chose, Helen — serving as maid of honor — pulls her into the shadows behind the stone church wall. Away from the string lights, the guests, and the waiting car, they finally stop pretending.

The kiss is desperate and restrained at once. Tears slip free without either of them fully crying. Hands hold on too tightly. Between broken breaths, the words they have never spoken are finally said — quiet, almost lost under the distant music:

“I love you.”

“I love you, too."

It is the first time, and the last.

When they step back into the light, the moment is already gone. Margaret returns to the life waiting for her. Helen remains in the dark, carrying the only honest thing either of them was ever allowed to give.

Marilyn Monroe’s final professional photoshoot was taken by photographer George Barris between June and July 1962, primarily around Los Angeles, with the key beach sessions on Santa Monica Beach.

The work spanned roughly six weeks beginning around her birthday on June 1, 1962. It included indoor sessions (at a borrowed midcentury home in the Hollywood Hills/North Hollywood area owned by real-estate figure Tim Leimert, since her own Brentwood house was not yet fully furnished) and outdoor work. Trusted stylists such as hairdresser Agnes Flanagan and makeup artist Whitey Snyder were involved for some of the more formal shots.

The Santa Monica Beach sessions—often dated specifically to July 13, 1962, for the final day—are the best-known and produced the very last images. Monroe appears relaxed, playful, and largely unstyled: minimal or no makeup (freckles and a gallbladder-surgery scar from the previous year are visible in some frames), wind-tousled hair, and casual clothing. She wore a bikini, a bulky hand-knitted Cowichan-style cardigan from her own wardrobe, a green towel, and similar relaxed pieces. She ran and almost danced with the waves, posed in the sand and seaweed, sipped champagne, and showed a carefree, luminous energy that contrasts with the tragic circumstances that followed. Natural lighting and a candid, unguarded approach defined the look; Barris later recalled her saying of certain frames that they showed “the real me, freckles and all.”

As the afternoon light faded and it grew cold on the nearly deserted beach, she asked if they were finished. Barris had one frame of color film left and asked for a final shot. She leaned forward, clasped her hands, and blew a kiss toward the camera, saying words to the effect of “This is just for you, George” (or “for you and the rest of the world”).

That became the last photograph he ever took of her.

Cosmopolitan ultimately did not run the photos after her death. Some appeared relatively soon in the British press (including the Daily Mirror and the magazine Town). Barris, deeply affected, delayed broader publication for years and spent time living in Paris. The images later featured in books, including a 1986 collaboration with Gloria Steinem (Marilyn) and Barris’s own Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words (first published 1995), which pairs many of the photos (over 150 total from the sessions, black-and-white and color, some previously unpublished) with her interview material. Prints and related material have been auctioned (notably a 2017 Paddle8 sale) and exhibited; the National Portrait Gallery in London included several in its 2026 Marilyn Monroe centenary show.

These beach portraits stand out for their intimacy and vitality. Unlike more glamorous or highly produced sessions (including Bert Stern’s concurrent “Last Sitting” for Vogue at the Hotel Bel-Air in June 1962, a separate studio assignment), Barris’s work captures a playful, natural Marilyn at the ocean—settings that also echoed earlier moments in her life, from childhood photos with her mother to 1940s beach shoots.

There are always two of her.

The one they put on the screen — the lights, the glamour, the star they think they know.

And the quieter one. The one who stays after the cameras stop. The one who dreams.

She’s the real one. The one she holds on to.

The Blade Knows The Body

The Sculptor’s Desire ❤️‍🔥

In studio dark she waits on grain-warm wood, Knees drawn, back arched in living marble’s grace, Each ridge of muscle carved by sweat and blood, Soft valleys holding light against her face.

She slowly yields—the spine’s long, quiet stretch, Dark hair cascades like silk across the skin, Shoulders roll free of tension’s tight-drawn etch, Warm flesh replaces what the chisel left within.

Her eyes lift last and claim the watching air, A gaze that turns cold stone to breathing fire; The sculptor’s hands remember every curve, Yet long to touch what only sight may hire.

The Beginning of Forever 💍

Robert: If I had to live my life all over again… I’d still choose you.

Mandy: I’d choose you every time.

Janine’s long blonde hair falls like a curtain as she leans in, that wickedly teasing smile curling her lips while her manicured fingers slowly drag across the soft wet curve of Amy Lynn’s open mouth. Red light pours over their bare skin, turning every bead of sweat into liquid fire.