Exposure
26
New Living
“Sandra” by George Mayer, ID86795689, licensed from Shutterstock.com
I HAD ONE MORE TASK before I could move back to Chicago for the winter. She was waiting for me at the top of the stairs when I got to the studio.
“Hi, Sandra. How does it feel to be a junior in high school?” I said.
“Blech! If it weren’t for not wanting to be out in the real world being an adult like you have to be, I’d say I hate it. But it’s saving me from the life of labor and responsibility that I know awaits,” she said.
“Well, by this time, you know what school is all about and you can do what’s necessary to get through. Are you considering what college you’re going to?” I asked the sixteen-year-old girl collecting photos of herself to compare her development over the years.
“Yeah.” She unceremoniously stripped off her clothes as I got the camera attached to the tripod and pulled down the backdrop. This was our tenth photo session together. Over the past two years, I’d probably learned as much about human female development as my client had. I’d seen her budding little breasts when she was not quite fifteen, had photographed her hymen, and had compared each session’s photographs with the previous. I’d held her breasts, spread her labia, broke her maidenhead at her request, and fingerfucked her to orgasm. All in the name of her research on how her body grew and changed. Now, she was nearly seventeen and was truly a beautiful young woman. I hate to make comparisons, but far more beautiful than her older sister Pam.
“The difference I see in you this morning is far more dramatic than anything I’ve seen before,” I said. “And at the same time, I’m having trouble describing it. Are you taller? More developed? New haircut?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” she smiled. She took the first position for her comparison shots and we started working. “If we don’t have to take as many pictures to get good comparison shots, I’d like to try some other things, too. I mean poses. We’ve taken all these pictures—like more than a hundred—and I don’t have one that I can show anyone else. Do you think we can do something new?”
“Of course we can,” I said. “If I need to load a second roll of film, I have no problem with that. If you don’t mind, I’d like a picture I can show of you, too.”
“Oh, good. I could sign a model release. I’d love to become one of Nate’s models.”
I took just two of each pose, confident now that I knew what I was doing when I set them up. We moved the couch to its position, covered with a white sheet and she laid back on it, spreading her legs to expose her pussy to me.
“Nate? You know, I really enjoy it when you… you know… open me up. I mean touch me. Would you mind? I feel that I’m beginning to moisten. I’d like one photograph in which I am truly lubricating. Would you touch me? Please?” she said.
I was tempted to laugh. How ridiculous is it for a beautiful girl to practically beg a nineteen-year-old boy to handle her pussy and try to get her turned on so she lubricates? How absurd to think that I’d refuse that invitation. I stroked up the inside of her thighs to her pussy and she sighed, pulling her legs back and open even further.
“You know, this is very special to me,” I said. “I have girlfriends that I touch, and make love to, and sometimes I touch models. But you are the only girl I sit with and talk about her development and just look at. Your little research project has been very informative for me.”
“I know you like to look at my naked body—especially my pussy. I know you like to touch me and feel my breasts and even put your fingers in my vagina. But do you like me, Nate? Just me, without thinking about my tits and pussy?” Sandra asked.
I stopped what I was doing and moved up to sit next to the girl who had been coming to me for two years to have a record of her growth made.
“Sandra, I have grown very fond of you. I can’t exactly say, ‘like a sister,’ because I would never do these things with my sister. And not like a girlfriend, because I don’t think of you as a life companion. But I consider you to be a dear friend who has shared with me a rare gift, and has invited me to be part of her world. And I love being a part of your world, Sandra. I care very much for you.”
I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips—a kiss that she invited deeper. We kissed and I caressed her, treating her breasts the way I’d learned she liked most. When we parted from that kiss, I saw moisture in her eyes and kissed them.
“I had better finish our little task before we get carried away,” I said. She nodded.
Inviting me into that kiss had done as much for Sandra as I could have done manipulating her clit. Her pussy was well lubricated with a white mucus that dripped out of her vagina and down her crack. I took the picture and backed it up with a second. Then I moved the camera away.
“Nate? Please?” she said. “Make me come?”
I found myself helpless to resist her innocent plea, even though we had done this before, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her pussy so ready to fuck. I bent to it and licked her bud, then inserted my fingers in her very wet hole. I moved my other hand in so I could press my thumb against her rosebud. So much of her lubrication had run down her crack that the back hole was very slippery, and the tip of my thumb entered the passage.
Sandra gasped and pushed her pussy into my mouth so I would continue to lick it. In a moment, with the triple stimulation, she came hard. But she didn’t pass out. She rolled toward me and found the zipper in my slacks. She quickly began licking and sucking on my cock until I finally moaned and filled her mouth with my come.
I pulled myself together and stepped away from where the sixteen-year-old was still splayed wide open. She sat up and took my hand so she could stand.
“I was thinking of a pose with a sunbonnet that would cover my eyes and maybe part of my face so I couldn’t be recognized. Then you could display a picture of me and no one would know it was me. You know, you’re still the only boy who’s seen me like this,” she said.
“Do you have a bonnet?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Let me get the seaside backdrop up. You’ll need to help me.”
She helped lift the backdrop up onto the stand and I deployed it while she fetched her sunbonnet. She was pleased with the backdrop, which had been labeled, Sur la Plage, but didn’t have a show name on it.
“Now, let’s get you in a good position as we only have two frames left.” I moved her around until I thought we had a good position and took a shot, then lit her a little differently and took the last frame.
“That’s it?” she said.
“Actually, I’d like to take one more, but with a different camera and film. The texture of your skin is so beautiful, I want to see if I can capture it with slower film and a large format camera. It will take a minute or two for me to set up.”
“Okay. I’ll just stay here looking out at the sea and imagining I am in Hawaii or something.”
I got the 4x5 camera and a sheet of x-ray film to shoot at an extremely low ASA. I got Sandra aligned like I wanted her and then had her fold her arms so her breasts would not be visible. I spent time holding her in an embrace as I made subtle adjustments. Then, finally, I got behind the camera lens and carefully focused.
“Hold steady now. Long exposure.”
I pressed the cable shutter release and the big camera clicked loudly.
“Now, let’s see what we have on this frame,” I said as I pulled the film holder. I headed for the darkroom and Sandra followed me in without dressing.
I set Sandra to agitating the developer tank with the Hasselblad roll in it, while I set up the bath for the 4x5 film. When Sandra had the roll of film processed, we rinsed it and I set it up to print the usual set of photos. While the paper was being exposed, I rinsed the x-ray film and got ready to print it. I had the feeling Sandra was being more… loving than usual. She always came into the darkroom naked. But as I set things up, she was constantly touching and hugging me.
“You haven’t told me anything about how life is going,” I said. “When we last got together, you were dating a guy named Bruce and were thinking of going all the way with him. How’d that go?”
“Hmm. I suppose you couldn’t just tell by looking at my vagina that nothing’s been in there but my fingers. Or yours,” she sighed. “I could have slept with him, I suppose, but it turned out that I didn’t like him that much. You know, he was okay. I can’t think of anything that was particularly wrong with him, but he just didn’t seem important enough to me to have sex with.”
“Well, I’m sure the right guy will come along. Are you dating anyone else?” I asked as I exposed the enlargement of her beach scene.
“Yeah. This is where having an older sister who’s a slut comes back to bite me. Guys with older brothers have heard that Pam was a juicy lay and all a guy had to do was find out what she wanted at the moment and she’d fuck him. So, the younger brothers figure that if they take me to dinner or buy me flowers, I’ll at least let them finger me. I’m getting disgusted with it.”
“Ouch. That smarts. You don’t give off any of the same vibe as your sister did.”
“I know she offered to fuck you just about every time she saw you. And she would have, too, just because you made her look so good in your pictures. She considered that a fair trade. I can’t think of anything I’d trade my pussy for if I didn’t really like the guy,” Sandra said as she hugged me and I turned off the enlarger lamp and moved the 10x16 print to the developer. I turned in her arms and wrapped mine around her bare back.
“You’ve chosen a tough path, I think, but it’s a good one. I don’t think I told you that when I was dating Chris and Ronda—before we’d become lovers—I was also dating a girl named Kelly. My mission was to get experience with Kelly so I’d know what I was doing when I made love to Chris and Ronda. But when it came down to it, the night I was supposed to go all the way with Kelly, I didn’t want to. I wanted to share that experience with Christine. I wanted her to be my first. It turned out that Kelly really wanted to have this guy named Allen be her first, so we agreed to not go all the way that night and to save the experience for our ‘real’ boyfriend and girlfriends,” I said.
“Wow! So, you were both prepared to go all the way but just stopped? That must have been hard.” She punctuated her statement by grinding her pussy against my cock. She knew what condition I was in because I was always hard when Sandra was around. I pushed back against her.
“We didn’t just leave each other hanging. We were two naked teens in the back seat of my mother’s car and definitely found a way to relieve each other. Then we went to a movie, and when it was over we went back out and parked, so we could have a good time with each other again.”
“But you didn’t fuck her.”
“No. Not until a couple of months ago. We just ran into each other by accident and ended up spending the night together. She’d broken up with Allen that first summer, and the next summer Christine broke up with me. So, we just decided to enjoy finding out what it would have been like with each other. Turns out, it would have been pretty damned good, but neither of us would have been happy with it.”
I released her and moved the photo to the stop bath. Sandra pulled at my shirt to try to get it off.
“Hey, what gives?” I laughed.
“Get naked. Get naked and do with me what you did with Kelly. I don’t mean two months ago, but two years ago when you decided not to go all the way. I know you don’t want to go all the way with me, but I want to feel that naked happiness like you had then.”
“You know, it’s hard for me to resist you, Sandra. You are far more tempting to me than your sister ever was.”
By the time I’d finished with that statement, my shirt was off and Sandra had my belt unfastened and my pants unzipped. I glanced at my watch. We had more than an hour before anyone would come to the studio. They all knew not to show up when I blocked the time off as private session. I pulled Sandra to me and kissed her. I don’t think I’d ever kissed her with such passion and intensity. It was very good. My cock was pressed up against her belly and she was rubbing up and down against me.
I moved the print to the fixer. Then I went back to kissing Sandra and working my way down to suck on her tender nipples. I kissed her all over, as much as we could do standing in the darkroom. Then I grabbed the print out of the fixer and rinsed it. As soon as I had the print on a drying plate and squeegeed off, I set it aside and picked Sandra up in my arms. I stepped out into the studio and carried her to the fainting couch. I hadn’t turned any lights on in the studio except the photo lights, so when I turned those off, it was pretty dark. I lay down with Sandra on the couch and began worshiping her lithe young body with my mouth and hands. I made sure she came on my fingers before I gave her a chance to start kissing my cock.
“Are we going to make love, Nate?” she whispered.
“We are making love, Sandra. We just aren’t having intercourse,” I answered.
I moved her around so her pussy was over my mouth and she had easy access to my cock. Then we went to work on each other. We both came, and didn’t slow up a bit. I kept munching on her clit with a finger in her pussy and another pressing against her asshole, just wiggling and stimulating her there. She liked that a lot. She acted like she’d just fallen in love with my cock and wanted to kiss and pet it in every way possible. Eventually, I let another load go in her mouth. She came on my tongue again and collapsed. I pulled her around and held her in my arms, kissing her all over her face and lips. Kisses which she was soon returning.
“I feel it,” she finally whispered. “I feel the satisfaction and the desire. I’ve shared so many of my thoughts with you as I’ve grown up the past two years. And now I feel how close I’ve really become to you. And I feel hope. I know now that I don’t need to just choose a guy to give my virginity to so I can have that experience and write down my thoughts. When I find a guy that clicks, I can go that step without making it the goal. And one day, like with Kelly, you might find me naked in your arms with your cock in my vagina. And we’ll both find out how wonderful that could be.”
“I think you’ll have a very good year in school this year,” I whispered. “I’m looking forward to recording more of your progress, and sharing this little bit of love with you.”
Sunday afternoon, I kissed Patricia and Little Toni goodbye for a while and took Anna and Ronda east with me. We had the VW packed with what we felt we needed to get started on the school year. In Rockford, we got Anna moved into her room and spent a little time loving her before Ronda and I continued to Chicago.
We didn’t have a place to stay Monday night. We didn’t feel comfortable crashing at Elizabeth’s again with just the two of us. We couldn’t move into the apartment until Monday the first. So, we checked into a Motel 6 about five miles west of the campus. We went out for dinner and just talked for a couple of hours. It seemed I’d had a lot of time with Anna the past few weeks, and not as much with my other girlfriends. Anna had become my righthand person in the studio, managing the accounts and making sure I was seldom alone in the darkroom. I spent time with Ronda and Patricia and Beth, but whenever I turned my head, it seemed Anna was with me.
“I like having Anna with me in the darkroom and in the studio,” I said. “I feel like I don’t spend enough time with you and Patricia.”
“Or Beth.”
“Yes, but there’s no real remedy for that. Beth and I were together a lot during the school year last year, but the calendar doesn’t always work in our favor. And now she’s on tour we won’t see each other for weeks.”
“Now you’re stuck with me.”
“Ronda, I don’t consider being with you the same as being stuck. I can’t believe we’re going to live together. Are we ready for this?”
“I’ve been thinking about shacking up with you for two years, love,” she laughed. “I don’t know if we’re ever ready for that kind of thing, but I’m sure looking forward to it.”
“What are you looking forward to most?” I asked.
“Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say making love to you as often as we want isn’t high on my list,” she said. “But there are simple things, too. Like just having dinner with you at night. Sitting with you and studying. Grocery shopping. And then making love. I want to go through my day, studying and listening to lectures and writing papers. But I’ll know that at night when I’m exhausted and fed up with people, I’ll be home with you. Even if you’ve had a bad day, you’ll hold me and comfort me, because that’s what I’ll be doing for you. We’ll take refuge in each other’s arms and know that no matter what the world throws at us, we have each other.”
“I love you so much, Ronda. Are we going to become a couple this fall? I mean like Christine and I did when you went away for the summer. We were together. We became a couple. When you came back home, it was different than it had been. I often wondered if she’d still be with us if we hadn’t become just a couple and then broke up with each other,” I said.
“We’re already a couple, honey. We became a couple the night you told me we could share Chris instead of fighting. And you didn’t become a couple with Christine that summer. You became a couple when you kissed after midnight on New Year’s Day. You became a couple with Anna the day you met. You became a couple with Beth in the darkroom after her first photo shoot.”
“And Patricia?”
“That was complicated because there was Tony. But you truly became a couple with Patricia when you went into the delivery room to hold her hand while Little Toni was born. You might have a deeper bond with her than with any of the rest of us, even if you don’t spend as much time together,” Ronda said.
“And we’ll still have room in our lives for all of us?”
“I’ve come to love Anna, Patricia, and Beth. You know, I played around a little with Leanne and Theresa. And Judy. But even though we aren’t lovers, I can go to bed naked with naked Anna and we’ll hold each other and kiss until we fall asleep in each other’s arms. The same is true of Patricia and Beth. Not lovers, but we love each other.”
“Hmm. I think we need to pay the check and get out of here. Our waitress is eying us,” I said.
“Yes. I want to lie naked in your arms tonight. I want to feel your hard cock invade my pussy, slide in and out of me, and feel your semen splash against my vaginal walls. I want to couple with you.”
We went to meet the apartment manager and get our keys Monday morning, thankful that he’d meet us on the holiday. We carried our bags up to the apartment and then went shopping. By the time we were done, the back of the bus was full of stuff we’d need. I was thankful there was an elevator up to our sixth floor apartment.
“I think we need to go on a scavenger hunt,” I sighed as I looked around. We’d brought everything up to the apartment that we had in the microbus and it didn’t look like much. The only furniture we had was a kitchen set with a table and four chairs. Ronda had managed to find dishes and pans to cook with. We’d brought the air mattress from the bus up to the apartment and I was still puffing to get it blown up enough for us to sleep on. Our clothes were either in the closet or still in our suitcases since there was no dresser.
“I never thought about what moving into an apartment that wasn’t furnished would be like!” Ronda laughed as she put away the remaining dishes. “Um… We’d probably better get groceries tomorrow before we start on scavenging anything else. All we managed to get today was cereal and milk for breakfast. And a couple of sad looking bananas.”
“I think we’ll be able to find some furniture in the studio. And we should plan a trip to Tenbrook to raid the studio there. We do have some pieces of furniture that are usable. I don’t think Patricia will be able to bring that much in her little Rambler. She’ll need to bring a bed for Toni and the other baby stuff she needs here,” I said.
“Baby. We’ll be living with a baby. At least part of the time. It won’t be the same as Las Vegas where Elise was there to pick up childcare. It will all be on us… the family. Nate? Do you think we’ll have children one day?”
I fell back on my butt on the mattress and just stared at Ronda. Children. I always assumed that ‘someday’ in the distant future, I’d have a wife and we’d have children. Until that someday, my responsibility was to prevent impregnating my girlfriends—even though, thanks to Dr. May, three of my girlfriends were on the pill, ‘to regulate their period and reduce cramping.’ I’d never imagined that one day Ronda might swell up in the middle as she carried our child.
“Um… You took me by surprise there. I hadn’t really considered the possibility yet. I can tell you, though, that, yeah, I think I’d love to have children with you,” I said. “Want to come to bed and practice making one?”
“I do.” She started stripping off her clothes and I quickly finished getting the sheet on the mattress and started taking off my own clothes. “I wonder if Patricia would want to have hers at the same time I have mine or if we should space them out. What do you think?”
“Patricia mentioned once that she’d like to have a baby with me. Are two at once twice as much work as one? And what about Anna and Beth?”
“Kiss me. Love me. Oh, I love you, my partner.”
We spent a long time just touching and kissing. When I rolled on top of Ronda and she guided my cock to her slippery center, I felt the world was complete. As I entered her, I fell into her eyes and was lost there. How could I ever love another as much as I loved her?
“Anna might change her mind one day,” Ronda sighed after we’d cuddled and held each other in the afterglow of our lovemaking. It took me a moment to realize she was continuing our earlier conversation. “Right now, she’s said she doesn’t want to have the immediate responsibility for children. I think it is just like her not being horny until you kiss her. Then everything changes. And Beth? I don’t know. She’s out there showing us more about what life will be like for us when our work and our loves send us in different directions.”
“What kind of work do you think you’ll be doing?” I asked. “The whole field of International Relations is a mystery to me.”
“Oh. Um… There are lots of things that range from interpreting and language specialties to marketing and promotions to politics and um… diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy? You hesitated there. That’s what you are hoping to do? Become a diplomat?”
“Sort of,” she squeaked. “Ambassadors are political appointees, but diplomats cover a whole range of things. They might handle foreign visitors to the US, for example. Or run messages back and forth between ambassadors to the UN. It’s all part of the Diplomatic Corps.”
“Um… That means you’ll be traveling a lot, I suppose,” I said.
“Nate! Are you going to break up with me because I have a job where I travel?” she cried.
“No! Oh, no! That’s not what I was thinking at all,” I said. “I was selfishly borrowing trouble from the future. I was thinking already about how you would be leaving me and I’d be miserable like I am without Christine and Elizabeth. Of course I’m not going to break up with you. I’ll just be sad when you are gone.”
“Well, quit it! Yes, we’ll be sad when we’re apart. Me no less than you. But that just means that we should be happier when we’re together. What if you get a photography assignment in Manila for a few weeks or a few months? Do you think we won’t all be sad when you’re away? Beth is going to tour a lot. That’s what comedians do. We’ll miss her when she’s on the road. That doesn’t make her like Christine. Christine didn’t go off on assignment or on tour or to college. She broke up with us. And I hate her because she did that! But she chose to break up with us. I am not choosing to break up. Don’t… Please, don’t break up with me.”
I pulled her to me and kissed her. I did whatever I could to show her how much I loved her and to convince her that I would never break up with her. It was hard to get up and go to class in the morning and leave her in the apartment. She said she’d meet me at noon and we’d go shopping in the studio together.
In spite of having to catch the train at seven-ten every morning, I had a better schedule this year than last. My first class of the day was Chemistry. I had an hour lecture on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and a two-hour lab on Tuesday and Thursday. All at 8:00.
My History of Photography class looked like it would be interesting, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00. Then I had Photographic Practices II, five days a week at 11:00. My big break was that Black and White Photography and my core math class, Geometry in the Arts, were only held on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:00 and 2:00. That meant I was out of class by three on those days and by noon on Tuesday and Thursday. Much better!
I figured Tuesday and Thursday, I’d plan on studio days in the afternoon. On the other days, I’d head home right after my last class and make dinner for my lover. That was my plan. For the first day back to school on Tuesday, I had only Chem Lab and Photographic Practices.
It was good to see friends at school again. My little study group reassembled for lunch. I’d seen Leanne just a couple of weeks ago, but Carrie, Devon, and Leslie were all excited about what we’d done over the summer. I promised to look at the new gallery when I went over with Ronda that afternoon. Leanne said it was ready for business. Leslie was in two of my classes, History of Photography and Black & White Photography. She was a term ahead of me in Photographic Practices.
Ronda and I didn’t get very much at the studio, but a few things looked like they’d work. As much as would fit in the VW, anyway. We got a small couch (not the red monster that had figured prominently in other sittings), a comfy beanbag chair, and a bedframe. We needed to decide whether we would put the air mattress on the bedframe or get a real mattress and box springs delivered to the apartment.
Leanne, Theresa, and Cassie had done an excellent job of putting the props closet in order after the trailer got back from Las Vegas. I planned to take each of them to dinner to show my appreciation. We had our first client coming in Thursday afternoon and all three girls would be in to help. I checked with Levi to make sure we were set and also that it was okay to take the few items of furniture. His comment was that technically, I should consider everything in the props closet to be the property of Attic Allure, and therefore, I should feel free to dispose of it as I saw fit. I guess that’s how we’d been managing the junk already. It was nice to have it explicitly spelled out, though.
Wednesday afternoon, after geometry in the arts, I caught the El home and the trip south wasn’t bad. I had about half a mile to walk from the station to our apartment building and the streets felt remarkably safe to me.
When I got home, Ronda proudly pointed to the cream-colored Trimline wall phone in the kitchen. She pointed out that it had a long cord that could be carried anywhere in the kitchen and into the hall. I couldn’t believe we had our own phone. Of course, Ronda had her own phone in Boston. Beth had a phone in her room at home. The rest of us had all grown up with and accepted as fact a single home phone that everyone used. If we were lucky, there was an extension. The parsonage in Tenbrook had a phone in Mom’s office and one in her bedroom. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to call me after ten.
We immediately set about calling our girlfriends to give them our new number. We found Patricia at the store, so had to keep the conversation short. Anna had a hall phone in her dorm, much like I’d had in mine.
We gave them our new number and then Ronda and I called our families to give them our new number. A quick estimate told me we’d already spent over two dollars on long distance charges calling Tenbrook, Sage, and Rockford. We needed to be very careful about how much we talked on the phone to our girlfriends. But I now had a phone number that clients could call to set up appointments if they couldn’t reach Cassie at Camera Warehouse. Or, if they called Cassie, she could let us know that we had an appointment coming up. I called Camera Warehouse and gave Cassie our contact details.
The most memorable part of my appointment Thursday afternoon was that I was totally uninterested in the naked girl who practically threw herself at me while I was taking pictures. There was no way to avoid having her breasts in my hand or dragging my fingers through her pussy. I mean, there might have been, but I couldn’t think of a way. I had boobs and pussy in my hands.
And I took some decent photos. I left the film with Cassie and Theresa to process and told them I’d print proofs on Monday. Then I rushed home to wait for Anna and Patricia. I got there at dinner time and Ronda had the meal nearly prepared. She was naked and had just an apron on to protect from spatters.
I was instructed to go get undressed. I thought that was an odd request when we were expecting Anna and Patricia and Toni any minute. But I complied.
About ten minutes later, the girls got to the door and I let them into the house. They took one look at Ronda and me and began stripping as quickly as they could get inside. And that started our weekend. Even Little Toni spent some time running around naked—which she thought was great fun!
I was happy to have my three lovers with me and we all managed to cuddle together on the air mattress that night. Unfortunately, I still had Friday classes until three and while I was gone, the girls and Toni went shopping and brought furniture, bath towels, food, bedding, two rugs, utensils, measuring cups and spoons, and pie pans. They had to make several trips to different stores and filled the VW each time. Included was a second full-size bed frame, mattresses and box springs for both beds, and a play space for Toni in what we called the sun room.
When I got home Friday night, there was a fully furnished and decorated apartment waiting for me, three naked women, and dinner. I spent my weekend making life as pleasurable as I could for my women.
Our weekend was not exclusively lovemaking, though we did our best to make sure each of us was well-satisfied. I was glad the girls were willing to help each other out a little, too. We went to the studio for a while on Saturday and I got the proof sheets from Thursday printed. We chose frames to enlarge for the client, and further inspected the job Theresa, Leanne, and Cassie had done organizing the room.
We were feeling like a family and Patricia and Anna didn’t want to leave Sunday afternoon, but had to so Anna could be in class Monday morning and Patricia could be at work. The four of us felt more in love than ever.
I was in the studio on Tuesday with my study group. I’d agreed to bring them all over to see what was new since Leanne was talking about it every time she saw Leslie or Devon or Carrie. I was glad to have them over. These four were the closest friends I had at college. I imagined that in twenty years, these would be the ones I’d be happy to see at a reunion. Not that there weren’t others.
A group in the dormitory had reached out and invited me to join them as a support group. Even though Columbia wasn’t a religious school, it seemed a lot of preachers’ kids found it met all our needs, including good financial aid packages. So, I got together once a month or so with eight other guys who were sons of ministers. Not all Methodist. We had a Lutheran, two Baptists, three Presbyterians, another Methodist, and—don’t ask me how this worked—the last member of the group was the son of a Catholic priest. When we were all living in the dorm, we’d just get together one night a month or so and sit in one of the guys’ rooms, drinking pop or an occasional beer, and smoking. We’d talk about life in the fishbowl, which is what we called the preacher’s home in any given situation. Mom made a point of telling her congregation the minister’s home was a home first, and to treat it that way.
The philosophy of the guys ranged from very religious and uncomfortable with the idea of having beer in the room to absolute denial of the existence of a god in any form. But I found the group to be entertaining. The other guys in the dorm called us the God Squad. It was not because of our godly behavior. One of the guys had been disciplined by the dean of students on two different occasions. One had been arrested in a protest. I’d been beaten by the police. And one guy in the theatre department was writing a farcical play called Fishbowl about life in the minister’s house.
It all seemed irrelevant when I was talking about my freshman year in college and no more important than the details of a test I took in History. I bring it up because of something that occurred during my Tuesday afternoon meeting with my study group.
“We miss you in the dorm,” Devon said. “The God Squad has two new members, but I don’t think any of them has photographed thirty-five naked women in a month.” He’d been a late discovery of the God Squad and was the son of a Baptist minister. No wonder his parents had told him to not come home after they found out he was a homosexual drag queen. Not an excuse—just enlightening.
“Well, if I knew when the guys were getting together, I’d come over for a drink that night,” I laughed. “We didn’t exactly have a schedule.”
“You’re still willing? I’ll make sure Mike calls you next time we get together. I’d call if I had a phone. I hate to make that kind of call from the payphone in the hall,” Devon said.
“What’s the God Squad?” Carrie asked. Leslie rolled her eyes. Leanne smothered a giggle.
“These guys,” Leslie said, “a bunch of preachers’ kids, get together to share dating tips. It’s no wonder they miss Nate. He’s the most successful dater among them.”
“It’s not just dating tips. We mostly bitch about our parents,” Devon answered. “Mine are the only ones who have disowned me, though. I’ve been thinking of applying to Nate’s parents for adoption. If they can handle his dozen girlfriends, surely they could accept a homo fairy.”
“What have we told you, Devon? Don’t talk down about yourself. You can acknowledge your sexuality without using disparaging words about yourself,” I said. “Yes, my parents would accept you with open arms.”
“See? That’s the kind of thing we miss Nate for,” Devon laughed.
“There’s a new squad in town,” Leslie said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well, you all seem to think that because you were sons of preachers, life was especially hard on you. There are a lot of us, though, who are the daughters of school teachers. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get away with something in school when your mother is teaching in the next classroom? I guess you guys were kind of an inspiration for us to get together for support,” Leslie said.
“That’s cool. I wonder if we could get both groups together. The God Squad meets the… uh… teacher’s pets?” Devon suggested.
“The Whore Corps,” Leanne supplied.
“What?” I said. Carrie was just watching the conversation as if the rest of us were all aliens.
“Um… Thanks for spilling it, Leanne. It started as an insult by one of the girls who saw us all dressed up to go out one night last spring. We were being kind of trashy and were all wearing the shortest skirts and skimpiest blouses we could find. A snotty musician saw us and said, ‘Would you just look at the Whore Corps?’ and it kind of stuck. We like it because it’s definitely distinct from the God Squad,” Leslie said.
“That is just… Wow!” I said. “I had no idea that was going on.”
“Can anybody join?” Carrie squeaked. It was the first she’d said in the entire conversation.
“Only daughters of teachers,” Leslie said.
“My aunt’s a teacher. But she lives in California. Damn! It sounds like fun.”
For all her newly found liberation and campaigning, I wasn’t sure if Carrie had ever been out on an actual date yet. She’d asked me if she could come in for another photo session almost as soon as I saw her this fall. Of course, I said yes. I suspected she wanted to be undressed and stimulated again and I had nothing at all against doing that. Carrie was weird as hell, but she was kind of sexy.
“These pictures are really great,” Leslie continued as she passed another of my Las Vegas photos around the table. “Did you do the makeup, Leanne?”
“Nate and I are working together occasionally to do a new series of body paint photos. I love to do the body paint and decorate a woman and I know some women who are willing to do it. But what do you do with them once they’re painted? You can’t exactly hang them in a gallery. So, I hope that Nate will help me paint them and then work on photos that we can both display of our work,” Leanne said.
“You know, I hate to say this, but taking pictures of a colorfully painted girl might need to be done with color film. I have to read up on color processing and see if I want to get involved in it,” I said.
I’d always hated color photography because it wasn’t artistic in my opinion. Not like great black and white photography is. But when I looked at the photo of Gloria painted up like a tiger out among the red rocks of the Valley of Fire, I was constantly seeing the colors that weren’t in the black and white pictures.
“I’d like to study color processing with you,” Leslie said. “Um… And some other things. Oh, shit, I might as well say it. I’m the only one of our study group you haven’t taken pictures of. I know I’ll be a crappy model, but I really want to know how you get this level of artistry in your photos.”
“What is your area of photography?” I asked.
“Like you, I’m studying photojournalism, but that is like what I have to fall back on. I’d really like to get into fashion photography. I’m thinking I might pick up some courses in commercial photography, too. I don’t really like people that much. But either way, I’ll need color photography,” Leslie answered.
“My only real objection to color photography is from an artistic side,” I said. “But with Leanne’s concept, it’s almost closer to fashion photography. She’s combining costuming and body paint and no one will really ever see the original work. I mean the decorated model. It… She deserves to be seen in more realistic detail.”
“So, when can I come in for a photo session?” Leslie asked.
“We can set it up Saturday if you want,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment on Thursday this week, but I haven’t really been setting anything up on weekends yet. I plan to spend some of them going back to Tenbrook. Ronda’s going to drive back on Thursday to load up some things from the studio there that we want for our apartment, but I wasn’t planning to go this weekend.”
“Sounds good.”
“You need to be prepared to help set scenes,” Leanne said, surprising me. I figured she’d be all over assisting me on this one. “Cassie, Theresa, and I aren’t working this weekend. Nate said we’d have it off after the Thursday afternoon session, so we all made other plans. You need to move furniture or backdrops or search for props with Nate as well as just getting naked and having him take intimate pictures of you.”
“Oh… Um… Well… Sure, I’ll help do all that. I know… mostly what to do. I wasn’t thinking of…”
“Leslie,” Carrie said. “You need to know exactly what Nate does. The best way to learn that is to put yourself in his hands. Literally. Completely.”
Leslie looked at me with a wide-eyed expression as Carrie’s words sank in.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
