Over Exposure
6
Happy Holidays
“Patricia” by Hank Shiffman, ID337426358 licensed from Shutterstock.com
LESLIE CAUGHT ME just after our tribal class Tuesday afternoon.
“We need to talk!” she said. Wow! Sounded like a girlfriend breakup intro, only Leslie wasn’t my girlfriend.
“I’ve got to run for the train. It’s my night to cook. Can we talk on the way to the studio tomorrow?” I said.
“Yessss. I want to see the pictures,” she hissed.
I nodded. I assumed she meant the pictures of Rita, since Rita was a member of the Whore Corps. I was really running to the studio before the train to pick up the transparencies. I’d look at them at home.
I was on dinner duty, but I’d prepared everything the night before and all I had to do was heat the oven and shove it in. When Ronda and Patricia got home—and I’d spent a satisfactory amount of time dancing with Toni—I showed them the transparencies. They’d already seen the portrait I’d developed and printed Saturday before I came home.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Good enough for the gallery?”
“I’ll have to see it as a print,” Ronda said, “but it looks good to me.”
“I like the sense of whimsy,” Patricia said. “I mean, lying there on the couch dangling her panties from her fingers while she winks at you? That’s just precious!”
“Well, I’ll get a copy printed tomorrow and have it here when Anna gets home Thursday. If she approves, we’ll go talk to Mr. Zefford after my shoot on Friday,” I said. “I hired her, by the way.”
“Um… To do what?” Ronda asked. “I mean, you said she didn’t go all the way.”
“No, silly. In fact, I think she entirely forgot I had a cock,” I said. Anna had been the beneficiary of that oversight Saturday night. We didn’t sleep much. “I hired her to replace Theresa as an assistant in the studio.”
“Is there enough work?”
“I’m amazed. Anna’s promotional plan has really worked and I’ve got four a weekend scheduled for the next four weeks. Plus, the props closet is a mess. We didn’t really do a very good job of organizing things when we got back from Canada, and Leanne has cut back her time with me, too. Cassie pretty much works full-time for Levi and is only shopping for new stuff. I’d say I might need another assistant if this keeps up. Besides, the girl’s broke.”
“Ah. That’s the real reason. Beautiful girl in need. Nate to the rescue,” Patricia giggled.
I put the casserole on the table and we dished up plates of Almost Dinner. It was a dish I learned to love growing up poor in South Chicago. Cream of mushroom soup, vegetable soup, tomato soup, ground beef, noodles and onion. Seasoned with soy sauce. Crumble potato chips on top. With just the four of us and one being a toddler, it made enough for two meals.
“Am I really bad?” I asked. “I mean, yeah, it was sexy but I try not to be led around by my dick all the time. And she was enthusiastic about the job. And the modeling. I think I might use her to model again.”
“Honey, calm down,” Ronda said, patting my hand.
“Cahm down!” Toni giggled. I really needed to remember to think about what was appropriate dinner conversation with a little girl at the table. Like Mom always said, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’ I never did figure out what pitchers had to do with ears, but I got the meaning.
“Yeah. We can talk about it later,” I said. “How were your classes today?”
From there the conversation went to how our day went and Toni got to contribute about what she did in daycare.
Leslie was waiting outside the door when I walked out of Makeup Techniques class Wednesday. We waited for Leanne to catch up, then grabbed a sandwich in the cafeteria and headed for the studio for our study group.
“Wait until you see the new design!” Leanne said. “And I have a model who is willing to perform!”
“I think you need to wait in line,” I said. “Leslie is waiting to ream my ass over something.”
“Are you kidding?” Leslie asked. “I wanted to congratulate you for landing the most in-demand fashion maven in the department. I’m just hoping that means, you’ll share with me. Can I come to your studio to photograph her with you?”
“Um… You mean Rita? You recommended she model for me. You could have warned me,” I said.
“I didn’t know she was taking the plunge. I told her she’d have to get naked. I was sure that would chase her away.”
“Wait till you see the photo,” I said. “The girl is scrumptious.”
“Do you have the print already?”
“No, just the transparency. I was hoping to get a print pulled after we meet today.”
“Do it first!” Leanne said. “I’ll come into the darkroom with you and… um… help fill the time.”
“No, me!” Leslie said.
“I haven’t had time in the darkroom with Nate, ever,” Carrie complained. “I wanna!”
“You should complain,” Dora said. “Why don’t we all go in the darkroom with Nate? That would be fun.”
“Um… A little crowded and you know how I feel about some things, Dora.”
“In the dark, how are you going to know who’s who unless you start groping pussies?”
“It’s not like I can’t see under red light,” I said.
“We can’t leave poor Dora out here all alone,” Carrie said. “She should at least be able to come in and live vicariously through the rest of us.”
“All right,” I finally agreed. “But it’s going to be crowded and hot. I’m just warning you.”
We all filed into the darkroom and I closed the door, setting up the Cibachrome chemicals and hoping we didn’t all suffocate.
“Last chance to go out before I turn out the light.”
Nobody moved, so I hit the switch. In the light, I had put the transparency in a carrier to slide into the enlarger and focused everything for the size enlargement I wanted. I had the paper, still in the box, next to the enlarger and ready to slide into place on the easel. I anticipated that this would ultimately require a few prints before I arrived at a perfect one, but I knew the first one would be good, regardless.
Once the light was out, I slid the paper out of the box onto the easel, made sure it was aligned, and turned on the enlarger. This was the first light in the room. I’d lied about being able to see under the red light. I couldn’t use red light with Cibachrome. It would print. I could hear Leslie telling our team about the process and how many steps there were. When I judged I had the right initial exposure, I turned off the enlarger and very carefully slid the print into the developer bath, which was basically the same as the developer I use for black and white.
The paper is slightly less fragile than the uncoated paper I use for archival black and white prints, but it was still a delicate process. While the print was in the developer, I felt hands on my back. I turned and was immediately pulled into a kiss by a nearly naked girl. She was topless, anyway. She worked on the buttons on my shirt while we kissed. I helped myself to a handful of her bare breasts.
My timer rang and I had to take the print out of the developer and rinse it. This took a minute and then I slipped the print into the bleach tank. Cibachrome is a dye destruction process. The bleach destroys the silver that hasn’t been exposed to the color for its layer. There were ten layers of light sensitive silver halide that were exposed on the enlarger.
I no more than had the paper in the bleach when another set of arms wrapped around me and another pair of bare breasts were pressed against my chest and into my welcoming hands. My timer rang and I moved the print from the bleach to the fixer.
Another girl pressed her boobs against me and for four minutes, I got lost in the sensation of a great kiss and beautiful breasts in my hands and against my chest. The timer rang and I moved the print to a rinsing screen. Leslie took it from me to put under gently running water for the final rinse.
I knew it was coming, but it was dark and I decided to close my eyes and just go with it. The lips were soft and welcoming. The breasts were just incredible.
“Why does your top half have to be so damned exquisite?” I breathed as I pushed Dora away from me. Damn those tits were nice!
I turned and flipped the light switch as Leslie gently squeegeed the print and handed it to me.
“Let’s go take a look,” I said, trying not to fixate on the four pairs of bare breasts in the darkroom. I went out of the room and took the print to the table where I started drying it with a hair dryer. The girls had all retrieved their tops before they came out of the darkroom.
The print was good. I could see areas where I’d do some additional work on a final print, but this was definitely good enough to hang in the gallery. For that matter, it could be the copy I gave Rita and she would love it.
Carrie was cuddled up to me as tightly as she could get and had a hand on my chest the whole time we were critiquing the print.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked. “You’re awfully cuddly.”
“You said my top half was exquisite,” she sighed. “Do you want to examine the bottom half, too?”
“I said…” What? If I’d been kissing Carrie when I thought I was kissing Dora, that meant one of the others I’d kissed had been Dora and I didn’t know the difference! Fuck!
“I think we should do some studying, since that’s what we’re here for,” I said.
Ronda and Patricia loved the print, but the real test was when Anna got home Thursday night. She managed the relationship with Hal Zefford. She would surely know best if this photo would fly with him.
“This wouldn’t be the one I send over to him,” I said. “I need to test some other settings and this area should be dodged a little more, it got too dark. It will take a couple of tests.”
“Yes,” she said. “If Hal said he’d accept a color print, this is exactly up his alley. And this is the girl you had last Saturday?”
“Yes. You know, I hired her to work as an assistant and I’ll probably have her model again. Leslie says I landed the top fashion maven in the department and she wants to do joint photoshoots of her.”
“Is she working tomorrow?”
“Leanne has the morning shift and Rita has the afternoon client. She’ll work all day on Saturday.”
“I need to come over and meet her,” Anna said.
“Isn’t it okay?” I asked, feeling a little affronted that she felt she needed to approve my hiring choice.
“It’s fine. I just want to thank her for the spectacular night I had Saturday. Anytime she can inspire sex like that, she’s welcome to!”
Over the next five weeks, I had fifteen new clients on Fridays and Saturdays. Apparently, photographs had become an in thing for girls to give for Christmas. And from what they said, they weren’t just giving them to parents. They were going to boyfriends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and best friends from high school.
Most of the sessions were portrait and Attic Allure sessions that stayed clothed—or at least mostly so. I had a couple of girls who wanted what they referred to as boudoir photos. I’d heard the term before and even used it on occasion, but suddenly Attic Allure became known as a place where young women could safely have a boudoir photo taken.
Carrie had written an essay about the correlation of boudoir photography and feminism, including photos of herself and of Leva Harmon. Leslie and Leanne both gave her permission to include their photos. The women who came to me for photos during October and early November were not just beautiful models. I had a couple of kind of fat girls who came and were bolder in what they wanted than some of the classically pretty girls ever would be. I did my best to take alluring photos of each woman, no matter what I had to work with.
And my eyes were opened, as well.
I started to see all women as beautiful. I’d already made that connection in high school and remembered photographing Mary Simpson, for example, a girl in my class who was overweight and left our session with a new feeling of beauty and self worth. She’d started dating Rod McVey soon after that and I’d heard they were engaged. Then there was Brenda Bell, a girl in the class of ’69 with a rather homely face but a killer body. She could curl up like she had scarcely a bone in her body, and when I gave her a pair of cat ears, she just came alive.
I’d definitely spent too much time photographing Las Vegas showgirls, Hollywood movie stars, and Stratford theatre actresses. These new girls were just as beautiful, I realized, even if in a different way. I’d once chided Amy about her true beauty not being in her looks but in what was inside. It was high time I figured that out for myself, too.
Of course, that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate a truly beautiful woman as well. On Saturday the fourteenth of November, I had the best. I spent the entire day in the studio with Patricia, celebrating her twenty-first birthday. It wasn’t for three more days, but I still had a bottle of chilled champagne in the studio and had lunch delivered for us.
I took all black and white photos of her and returned to the mode of photography I truly loved. We experimented with different props from the closet, costumes, backdrops and drapery. A lot of our experiments would help me with the kind of photography that was being requested more often. I experimented with different filters and lighting. And we took frequent breaks to go to the darkroom together and develop and print a picture. And make love. I was so in love with this incredibly beautiful woman and mother of my goddaughter.
“I so wish I could take you to Australia with me,” I sighed. “You are such an inspiration.”
“Think about it, though,” she said. “How many people will be in your class? And you’d want to share me with all of them? Posing me naked? Touching me?”
“Oh, God no! You know I wouldn’t want that.”
“Did you talk to Adrienne?”
“Yes, but we had a conference call in Professor Hyatt’s office with Josh Logan a couple of weeks ago. It was the middle of the night for him, but he was happy to give me a briefing. He suggested that bringing anyone with me would tend to inhibit the experience he was planning.”
“Just with you? I mean and the professor. Are you the only one going?” she asked.
“I’m the only one from Columbia. I didn’t realize it was kind of a competition and he only accepted four applicants for the session. We come from four different programs around the world!”
“I am so proud of you, Nate. You are really getting to be internationally known. You have to arrange to see Adrienne over the Christmas break, though.”
“I’m scheduled to go the week after Christmas. It means I’ll be there over New Year’s Eve, but that was the only time I could arrange. Then I’ll be back for, like, three days before I leave for Australia. I feel like I’m going to be missing my family a lot,” I said.
I pulled my naked girlfriend into my arms and we made love on the bed we’d been using for photos. So much for no sex in the studio.
I think one of the things that hold families together is traditions. Uncle Nate was often at Mom’s for holidays or vice versa. Anna’s family went to midnight Christmas Eve candlelight services at their church. Patricia’s family—who weren’t really religious at all—had an advent calendar with a little door and a chocolate that was opened for each day of December. Ronda’s family often went skiing over the holidays.
Maybe it was selfish of us, but we decided in a family meeting of Ronda, Patricia, Anna, and me, to make this a year of establishing our own family traditions. We were starting by having our own Thanksgiving and not going back to Tenbrook for the break.
We each spent a long time on the phone explaining our decision to our parents. I guess in traditional families, a lot of couples decide if they are spending Thanksgiving with her parents and Christmas with his, or the other way around. With our family, we’d been trying to make the rounds of all four or five families on every holiday. It was really stressful and once we’d even taken both cars in order to make things work.
And all our families had come to Stratford the past summer, which was absolute chaos trying to have dinners and shows and time with the grandbaby and one-on-one conversations with parents and sibs and still get work done in the store and the studio. We needed to set a boundary and establish our own family tradition. Just having made the decision relieved a lot of stress we were feeling over classes and exams and getting our various families taken care of.
That meant we had to decide what our family tradition would be.
Patricia suggested that we have a family photo at Thanksgiving that we could send to all our families for Christmas. I thought that was a little self-indulgent because I always seemed to give my family photographs, but the girls all thought it was a good idea, so we put that on our list of things we wanted to do.
Then there was the matter of a Christmas tree and decorating. Wow! Did we even have any decorations? Anna, Patricia, and Toni drove back to Tenbrook the weekend before Thanksgiving ‘to raid the family decorations.’ Mom promised to have a box of decorations for us, as did Dr. and Mrs. May. The reality of the situation was that it helped all the families feel less left out because they all got to see Toni and spend a little while with her. Even Ronda’s rather staid doctor father loved to get down on the floor and play with Toni for a while.
We decided we would get a Christmas tree on Thanksgiving weekend and decorate the apartment for the holidays. There would be no studio hours over that weekend.
And that brought us to Thanksgiving Dinner. I had visions of my father getting up at four in the morning to get a twenty-five-pound turkey stuffed and in the oven. We ate turkey most of the way to Christmas and then he turned around and did the same thing with a huge ham. Turkey was ingrained in all our psyches, but we decided a small bird of maybe eight pounds would be more than adequate for our five-person family.
While they were in Tenbrook, Anna and Patricia collected recipes from all the families. We could just about make our own cookbook. We divided up the responsibilities for Thanksgiving dinner and each had a dish we were going to prepare. I was in charge of the turkey and dressing. Patricia had a recipe for mashed potatoes and cabbage that she promised was delicious, no matter how it sounded to say it. Anna was preparing vegetables, but hadn’t decided exactly what yet. She also volunteered to make gravy after the turkey drippings could be separated. And Ronda was the designated pie baker. Fortunately, all we had to do with the cranberry sauce was open the can.
And you know what?
Even though we didn’t manage to eat our Thanksgiving Dinner until five o’clock, it was good and we all held hands around the table and prayed a little prayer of thanksgiving for having each other and our little family.
On Friday, we all got dressed up and went to the studio. I set up the camera and a little setting with a nice holiday backdrop, a couple of chairs, and a braided rug. I set the timer on the camera and we took a dozen pictures with us all in different positions or with different expressions. I set the film aside to develop later.
We walked over to State Street in the crisp air and toured the holiday decorations, including the windows at Marshall Field’s. After we’d seen the windows, we went up to the eighth floor to see the huge Christmas tree. We stood in line for half an hour in the toy department so Toni could sit on Santa’s lap. She was in such awe of the white beard that she couldn’t say anything, but they took a picture and we agreed to buy copies of it. Once again, that purchase was times six so we’d have one for ourselves, one for each set of parents, and one for Patricia’s in-laws.
On Saturday, we all bundled up and went to a Christmas tree lot to choose our tree. It wasn’t huge, but we took it home with the top sticking up out of the sunroof of the microbus, and Toni singing Jingle Bells. Once we got it home and carted up to our apartment, there was the whole rigmarole of getting it in a stand and watered, putting a skirt around the base—literally, a Christmas skirt that Ronda had worn a few years ago—and stringing the lights.
All through that process, Toni was scarcely able to contain herself and as soon as the lights were lit, she began throwing tinsel at the tree. I picked her up and walked around the tree so all the tinsel didn’t end up in a two-foot section at the bottom. We’d bought a Christmas angel and I placed it at the top of the tree while we listened to Christmas music on the radio. Of course, I danced with Toni to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and other popular Christmas songs. She got really good at singing out ‘Five Golden Rings!’ and ‘Pah rumpa pump um.’
And when our exhausted little girl was finally tucked in bed, I sat on the couch with my three lovers sipping hot chocolate and just basking in the glow of our family.
It was a wonderful Thanksgiving and we had so much to be thankful for.
Monday, of course, Patricia was back to work, Toni to daycare, and Anna, Ronda and I were back in classes. I think one of the things that made the whole remaining Christmas season so stressful was that we had final exams the last week before school was out for the winter holidays. Everyone was tense.
Most of my courses were practical pieces and didn’t technically have a final exam. We had final projects and papers, instead. In Image Strategies, I presented what I’d done in convincing Mr. Zefford to exhibit a color photo where most of the photos in the gallery were black and white. I’d produced a little slide show complete with photos of the gallery, Mr. Zefford, and some from the photoshoot with Rita. It was successful, but all my classmates wanted to know if I’d introduce them to Zefford and help them get in his gallery. I gave them Anna’s name, then told her to charge a commission.
In my Experimental Photography course, I’d learned some interesting techniques. The class was focused on alternate uses for photography, especially in graphic presentation. I’d taken a series of black and white photo prints and used a permanent marker on them to trace around the outlines of the people in the photos. Then I bleached them, using the same solution I used for bleaching Cibachrome. The result was a series of cartoons that I completed with bubble captions. Pretty cool.
In the makeup techniques class, we were given two assignments. In one, we were to apply glamor makeup to our partner. In the other, we turned our partner into a jungle beast. We got to be both artists and models.
Bonnie Gardner was my partner. She complained a little about doing glamor makeup on a boy with a beard, but when she really got into it, she did a bang-up job. She started by barbering my beard so it was kind of pointy under the chin and shaved back to a thin line on the jaw. She darkened it and then worked on subtly shading my cheeks and eyes, capped off with thicker, darker eyebrows. I hardly recognized myself in the mirror. I took a picture of myself and then went to work on applying makeup to her. That was fun and she said she’d definitely come into the studio after the break to get an Attic Allure portrait done. I looked forward to that.
For the Chicago Fashion Tribes, we had a slightly more academic approach. We had to write a paper documenting the fashion style of a particular ‘tribe’ of Chicagoans. The paper was documented with photos, news stories, and advertising. It was pretty cool to see how people tended to adopt a particular style based on socio-economic status, religion, ideologies, and even neighborhoods. I went down to the old neighborhood and found Hammer. He agreed that I could take pictures of him and the gang.
While I was there, I saw Officer Macalister. Only he wasn’t an officer anymore. He was dressed all in black and I realized he had a white panel in the front of the collar. He’d become a preacher! I wasn’t sure what religion could get a police officer into a clerical collar in six months, but he was working in a soup kitchen and greeted me warmly when I saw him. He was wearing a peace symbol hung around his neck where most preachers hung a cross. I had to be happy for him.
I had a final paper due for Urban Images in Media and Film. I’d thought this would be easy since I had direct film experience to use for my research. It was a lot more difficult than it sounded, though. How was urban life portrayed in Over Exposure? How did it deal with issues of representation, history, politics, economics, culture, ethnicity, and migration related to the urban environment. Since the movie wasn’t released yet, I made up a whole lot of detail. I did have a copy of the script, though it was a couple of generations old. I thought I knew what the movie was about. Just making all that fit into the rubric for the final paper was a challenge.
Rita was working out well in the studio, too. I’d used her for two shoots a week most weeks, with one on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday afternoon. Of the other two shoots, Cassie covered Friday morning and Leanne covered Saturday morning. The studio was looking a lot better and the props closet was more organized since Rita joined us. She’d spent some time among the costumes, examining, repairing, and discarding pieces.
“Can I watch you in the darkroom?” she asked after the last client left on the Saturday before Christmas. We were both breathing a sigh of relief that we’d finished exams and were ready for the break.
“Sure. You can process the next roll of film while I print the first proof sheet.”
She followed me into the darkroom and I set up the next roll in the canister for processing. When I turned to her, she was completely naked. That almost stopped all remaining work for the day. She was in my arms and kissing me as I fondled her breasts and beautiful ass.
“Merry Christmas, boss,” she said.
“Merry Christmas to you. I have to get the crank turning on the film, though. I don’t feel I can fully appreciate this little gift.”
“That’s okay. We have all the time between processes and while prints are drying for you to enjoy your present. I plan to give you a little more than the last time you held me naked. I kind of left you hanging. This time, I want you in my mouth. The rest of me is available for your fingers.”
“I will certainly enjoy playing with you.”
I rinsed the film from the developer and cut it into strips so I could print a contact sheet. Rita busied herself getting my trousers open and my cock out. When I turned toward her, she was on her knees making sure I knew how much she appreciated having the job. The girl could really suck cock! And the bonus of being able to play with her boobs and stroke through her swampy pussy made it possible for her to swallow a second load before we were out of the darkroom.
Anna had final exams that same week and didn’t come home for her birthday on Tuesday. We celebrated as soon as she got home Thursday night. Ronda still had a final on Friday morning, but Anna and I were done for the semester. On Sunday, I took her to the studio for a daylong photoshoot, like I’d done with Patricia.
“Wow! Look at all this!” Anna said as she wandered around the studio when we got there. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been there frequently. I wasn’t sure what she was playing at. “It’s just like Hollywood!” She ran to the stage area where I was turning on lights. “Is this where you want me to take off my clothes so you can take pictures of my little boobies?”
What? Oh! Anna had a scenario built up, just as Patricia often did. I needed to get in the swing of what she was playing. I went to her and put my hands on her shoulders. As much as we’d taken pictures before, I’d never actually taken photos of Anna’s bare breasts.
“Now Anna, love. Let’s not be too hasty. I’m sure we’ll get to that point later on, but don’t you want a nice picture to send home to Mommy and Daddy? They’ll want to know what you were doing in the studio all day,” I said.
“Oh, yeah! They wouldn’t want to see pictures of my boobies! Or my hair… you know… down there if I take my panties off.”
“No. Those pictures will be just for you and me.”
“Yeah. And that man in France you send them to.”
That what? Wow!
“He does like to see your little boobies and your patch of hair. Almost as much as I like to see them.”
“Are you going to touch my boobies?”
“Well, I might need to touch them a little to make sure they’re in the right position.”
“Do they go someplace besides on my chest? If they do, you grab hold of them and make sure they don’t escape!”
That definitely set the tone for our day in the studio. I had a feeling Anna and Patricia had discussed the whole scenario and I was just a player in their little drama. I played along gladly and during the course of the day, I got to see Anna’s not so little boobies, and the patch of hair. In fact, I examined both very closely—with my tongue. And then, after I’d set the bed and got pictures of her in various stages of nudity, I laid her back on the bed and slid my cock into her wet and willing pussy.
“Happy birthday, my twenty-one-year-old lover.”
With Christmas on Friday, we were having difficulty figuring out how to get together with our families in Tenbrook. Finally, we decided to go to Tenbrook on Monday and all spend time with our parental families, including circulating around so they all saw a little of each of us. But we let them all know that we’d be returning to Chicago on Christmas Eve so Toni would be home when Santa arrived. It seemed that each of the grandparents had some little gift they wanted Toni to open while she was visiting and we had a great time. She thought this was like having another birthday party, only it went on for several days. The microbus would be full on the way home.
It would have a bunch of packages that had not been unwrapped, as well. We were going to have a very crowded Christmas tree!
I thought it was especially cute that Kat gave Toni her own set of finger paints and then put an old shirt of Dad’s on her as an artist smock and sat with her to paint for most of the afternoon. Then she took a bath with Toni because they were both covered with paint.
I often showered with Toni and Patricia and it was hard not to imagine my sister in the bathtub with the little girl. Kat was really turning out to be a beautiful young woman.
“When we come to visit next summer, Julie and I want you to take our picture together,” she said. “You’ll do that for us, won’t you, Nate?”
“Um… Well… I…”
“Oh, don’t hem-haw around about it,” she said exasperatedly. “You are the only photographer I would ever trust to take our picture together and know you wouldn’t try anything with either of us. I know it will be embarrassing for all three of us, but please?”
“Of course, Kat. Just so you know how hard… er… difficult it will be. Let’s keep it professional.”
She just smiled at me.
On Christmas Eve morning, after we’d made the round to all the families one more time, we headed back to Chicago. It was fun. We sang Christmas carols all the way home. We got in about two o’clock and spent a lot of time unloading the car. Toni had all her new things in her sunroom bedroom. She had a regular big girl bed now, which was really just a mattress on the floor, but we figured if she jumped on the bed she wouldn’t have far to fall. And other than that, we couldn’t think of any reason she couldn’t jump on the bed if she wanted to. It was fun.
Of course, she wanted to fingerpaint—an activity we relegated to the kitchen. Anna volunteered to be the supervising artist, and since we were all nude anyway, she skipped the smocks that Kat had thoughtfully provided. By the time they were done, I was thinking I should have Anna model as one of Leanne’s body paint projects. She had finger paint in interesting places.
We had a simple dinner and looked out the window as the snow started falling. I read the Christmas story and then “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” from a big storybook Tor and Elaine had given Toni. We selected a present for each of us to open in the tradition of Patricia’s and my family opening gifts on Christmas Eve. Anna and Ronda both thought that was peculiar, but we had plenty of gifts for Christmas morning.
I got cookies and milk ready for Toni to leave out for Santa. She looked up the chimney in our non-functioning fireplace and determined that Santa must be really skinny. It was much later than she usually stayed up, so she hung up her stocking and we danced into her bedroom to put her to bed. She was very sleepy, but all keyed up and ready to fight off sleep until the last minute. Patricia finally laid down with her and before long they were sound asleep.
We stuffed stockings and Ronda and Anna went to bed. In the quiet approaching midnight, I grabbed my boots and sprinkled a little flour on the floor. I left footprints in it, ate most of a cookie, and drank the milk. Then I reached into my winter coat pocket and pulled out an item I’d kept secret. I found it at Mrs. Wilson’s when I stopped there to say ‘Merry Christmas.’
As softly as possible, I jingled the sleigh bells, paused, then jingled them again. I slipped them back into my coat pocket and headed for the bathroom to brush my teeth. Warm hands slipped around my body and stroked up and down my chest as a pair of breasts pressed into my back. I spit out the toothpaste and turned in Patricia’s arms to kiss my lover.
“I heard sleighbells,” she whispered. “Did Santa come already, or do I have a chance to help him along?”
She rubbed herself up and down my cock and I picked her up to carry to bed. Once there, it took very little effort to slip into my lover and wish her a very merry Christmas.
In the morning, Patricia and Anna got up early to wait for Toni to wake up, leaving Ronda and me cuddled in bed.
“I think I heard Santa coming last night,” she giggled. “There were sleighbells and then I felt the bed rocking. He wasn’t rocking in me, so I can’t verify that he came.”
“Maybe we should leave some evidence,” I suggested.
We started kissing and before long we, too, had coupled for our Christmas treat.
We heard Toni running through the apartment and knew it was time for this boy and girl to get up and join the family for our Christmas morning.
“Mommy! Daddy! Auntie! Look! Santa got snow on the floor. And he ate cookies!”
Christmas with a little one’s wonder and excitement just couldn’t be compared to anything else. We sat in the living room with coffee Anna had brewed and all opened the little gifts in our stockings. It was enough to keep Toni happy while we got breakfast ready. Patricia had made scones and the smell from the oven was delightful. I opened a bottle of champagne and poured mimosas for the adults and orange juice for our little one.
That very notion was eye-opening. I’d poured champagne for the adults. Four of us, raising our little girl. We were still six weeks from Ronda’s twenty-first birthday, but we didn’t really count that as a sign of adulthood. We were the grown-ups responsible for our family.
After breakfast, we settled in the living room again and Toni suddenly realized there were presents under the tree for her. We each had a couple of presents from parents, but had agreed not to get presents for each other because that got to be silly and expensive when we really had all we wanted, just being together. Of course, none of us had resisted the urge to get Toni presents. And there were still presents for her from all the grandparents. It was real chaos as we tried to keep track and write down who got what from whom so we could write thank you notes. Then we had to gather up all the wrapping paper, salvage what we could for next year, and clean up the living room.
Toni’s bedroom was fuller than ever. We discussed moving her into the second bedroom instead of the sunroom since we never used the second bedroom anymore. The four of us were quite happy sharing the big bed in the master bedroom.
I’d gotten a picnic ham and put it in the oven with baking potatoes and sweet potatoes. About one o’clock, we all sat down for Christmas dinner.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
