real competition. Maybe this session in Syracuse would give me some shots to add to my portfolio. I needed to give it a try.
I had no idea what the photographer looked like as we had only been exchanging emails. Joel and I walked around the wedding hall in search of him. The hall looked like a palace – all white on the outside and all wood on the inside. Joel made small talk about the architecture but I just wished he would shut the fuck up, I was so nervous.
Then, I saw the photographer. He was taking the trash out and he had a lot of it. Joel rushed to help him. He was dressed comfortably in jeans and a nice tucked-in light blue shirt. I noticed that he smelled like a fireplace.
‘I usually shoot the bride on this stairway.’ He winked at me.
While he was setting up for the shoot, it hit me. Someone might see me and question what I was doing. My aunt and uncle lived only a few miles away. In high school I ran track against many students who lived in the area. I prayed Joel wouldn’t know anyone who could recognize me. Fortunately, he was in a daze, interested, consumed. He looked amused and stared at the artwork and vintage tables as if he were witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The photographer and I hadn’t discussed payment in our emails, but he had promised to give me a CD of images a week after the shoot. We had already agreed that the shoot would involve lingerie. I didn’t care; I needed photos for my profile on Onemodelplace.com and felt safe knowing a friend was with me. Besides, I wanted to feel what being a model was all about. I wanted the experience.
I went into the bathroom to get ready; I didn’t know what to do with myself. My heart was racing. I put on some more mascara and lipstick. Stupidly, I had forgotten my hairbrush but used my fingers to weed through the knots in my hair the best I could. I splashed some water on my hands to calm down the flyaway strands by my forehead.
I had no idea what Joel was doing while I was in there, but I could hear the two of them talking and it made me nervous. I hoped to God Joel wouldn’t mention that I was a track runner or that we only lived in the next town over. I wanted this whole thing to be as anonymous as possible.
When I thought I looked the best I possibly could, or what I thought a model should look like, I came out. The photographer had Joel wait downstairs.
I stood by the railing of the stairs, where he normally photographed brides, trying to exude a confidence I did not feel. I wore a pair of denim shorts, a gold necklace with a heart pendant on it, gold hoop earrings, and a sheer Calvin Klein bra. Next we went into a bedroom and I sat, and then lay down, on the yellow bedspread and smiled awkwardly towards him and his huge lens. The camera clicked, startling me as he captured a picture of my skin for a ‘test shot.’ He was using all these words I never heard before, and he was trying to hold the camera steady as he mumbled how he wished he had his tripod. I felt a little weird sitting there waiting for my photo to be taken. The silence went right through me. I could hear my heart beat. I looked down and around the room, avoiding direct contact with the photographer’s eyes as he fumbled with the lights again.
He said, ‘Are you comfortable posing without a bra?’
I couldn’t say no. That would let him know this was my first photo shoot ever and I wanted to seem professional. Plus, he had already given us the tour of his huge wedding reception mansion so we sort of knew each other. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I thought getting naked was supposed to make me nervous, but I wasn’t that scared.
‘Yes, that’s fine.’ Speaking shyly but acting fast, I peeled off my clothing and with it any last grip on innocence. With a delicate whisk of the hand I threw the garments on the floor. I think I startled the photographer when he turned around and I was bare naked already but covering myself with the bed sheet.
The photographer said, ‘I have some white lace cloth in a storage closet.’ Then he went to fetch it as if he had a beautiful present for me. To my disappointment, it looked like a tablecloth used for someone’s wedding reception, and I didn’t know whether to say, ‘Thank you,’ or ‘No thank you.’
He said that with my tan skin color, I would look pretty if I wore it around my head like a veil and used it to cover my body. Only then did I wonder whether I’d shaved or not and if I should go and put lotion on my legs. I was so focused on him, his movements, and the quiet between us, that I forgot I had on my gold necklace, earrings and angel ring, but he said it was OK.
Since it felt like his shoot, I had followed and played along till now but I started to feel more like his afternoon whore as I picked up the material and wrapped it around me the best I could to cover all of my private parts. The white fabric did look really pretty against my skin. I felt sexy. I wanted Danny to see me like this, I wanted to be touched and caressed while I wore the fabric around me. I could feel myself getting excited and the triangle I had shaved felt itchy and moist. I wondered if the photographer was married. If he had children. When he last had sex.
We took a few shots of me looking down and some from a side profile. I felt like a Middle Eastern Princess about to lose my virginity.
After the fabric shot I stayed without a bra, but put my shorts back on and went downstairs. I put on a sheer tan top that still showed my nipples and we took some shots near an ethnic-inspired cloth mural on the wall. Then we went to the dining area, where I changed again, and sat on a pink and cream carpet that looked like a quilted blanket. I faced the mirror and wore only a lace black thong and a little lace tank top, the most clothing I had worn at the shoot.
By the time we were finished, Joel still had noticed nothing. In the car he said, ‘That guy was really cool. I bet it’s expensive to have a place like that.’ He didn’t know about the nude shots. He didn’t say one word about the shoot; he just kept talking. ‘I want my own company one day.’
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I tried to think of each shot and imagine what the picture would look like.
I could have asked Danny to drive me to the shoot – he had a car – but we had just started dating and I didn’t want to scare him off with my modeling adventures just yet. We had dinner together that night and I wanted to burst from holding in all the excitement of my first naked modeling experience. A few days later, I did tell Danny of my modeling dream but he was less than enthusiastic. He liked me the way I was when he first met me – a boring waitress, not a sexy model.
But I was planning on modeling all summer and he would just have to accept it. I let Danny drive me back to pick up my photos, but I made him promise not to say anything to my mother or my sister about it. Then I asked him to take a couple of photos of me by the lake; he didn’t know if he wanted to. In the end, I forced him, telling him how to hold the camera, how to click it. I got pissed when he didn’t know how to zoom.
I tried to lead a normal life: dinner with my mother, watching MTV, hanging out with friends at the mall or sitting by their pools talking about boys. But before too long, I wanted to be back in front of my computer admiring my profile and checking for emails. I told no one of my new project. I wasn’t confident enough to tell my friends, in case nothing came from it. At the time, finding a modeling agency hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t understand what it meant to be with an agency or how to get with one. Besides, they all had height requirements and I knew I would be too short for them. I was fine with the Internet. It was making me a model.
I wasn’t in a hurry to look at the shots of myself from the wedding hall. It wasn’t the photos that enticed me, it was the feeling of being photographed, the feeling of being in front of a lens. Only when I was alone in my bedroom did I examine them closely.
My nipples were very perky and could be seen even in the bra shots, but I was too embarrassed to show anyone. I took the 4″ × 6″ prints that screamed ‘nipple’ and hid them in a folder, putting the ones where I was wearing the black lace lingerie in my ‘portfolio’, a cheap Wal-Mart photo album. When Joel called to see them I changed the topic right away and told him