Chapter 28: Happy Holidays

WE SPENT FRIDAY and Saturday going from house to house, having more Thanksgiving with Anna’s parents, Ronda’s parents, and Patricia’s parents and in-laws. I was just a little uncomfortable with Tony’s parents because their son was dead and I was basically married to his wife. They were really nice though and even asked Patricia if she was going to give them more grandchildren. Wow! It sounded like they accepted that I’d be the father.

Kat came to Tenbrook with us that day since I’d been going back to Sage every morning anyway. Toni wanted to see her gamma and gampa Hart as much as either Patricia’s parents or Tony’s, but when she found out Kat was coming to Tenbrook, she was pleased. Of course, once we got to Tenbrook, Kat disappeared with Julie and scarcely had time to say hi to Vanessa Kowalski—once her best friend. It seemed they were on good terms now. Vanessa and Brian had broken up and Brian was off with another classmate. I guess he’d resigned any relationship with Kat to Julie.

Interestingly, neither Kat nor Julie had given up entirely on the idea of having a boy in their lives. They were, however, picky and not interested in any of the boys in their schools. Julie was eighteen and a senior now. She’d been accepted at the University of Minnesota to study art history. I guess all that looking at famous artworks in order to find poses got her interested in actually studying it. The girls were ready to move to Minneapolis in August and move in with Rachel and her parents. They were holding weekly conversations with the family and were getting more enthused every day.

Julie took Kat home that evening, so my family stayed right there in the hotel Saturday night. On Sunday morning, we just drove back to Chicago to get ready for the last spurt of classes to the winter break. Ronda had two more weeks and would be cramming for her finals this week. Anna and I had three weeks until our winter break, but they were packed. I was ten days from the opening of A Man for All Seasons and I had to put in my extra ten hours of costuming work for the semester in order to get the show ready for dress rehearsal on December seventh.

Any time I wasn’t in the costume shop, I was in the studio working with Leslie and Margot on our display. That was going to be pretty interesting, in my opinion. I was transferring images from all three of us to use in a slide show. Creating positive slides out of black and white negatives wasn’t necessarily difficult, but it was time consuming and I was working in the dark most of the time. I had to take an unexposed roll of black and white film, and do a contact print on it from the negative. There was a lot of lining things up and making sure the negative was in contact with the new film, then processing and mounting the results. Like I said, not difficult, but time consuming.

We also found a print shop in town that would do halftones of Margot’s photos and print them on newsprint. So, we all had a ‘product-based’ display next to a slide show. It would work pretty well.

First, though, I had to watch In Cold Blood, a 1967 film based on Truman Capote’s book. It was definitely a spooky movie. The two guys who played the murderers were absolutely cold. The biggest difference between the movie and the book was the creation of a character named Jensen who was a reporter. He kind of functioned like a Greek chorus, filling in the stuff in the movie that couldn’t be shown. They set the movie as a flashback as the murderers are awaiting execution.

What I thought was most fascinating about the whole thing was that Truman Capote was a neighbor and childhood friend of Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. She went with him to Holcomb, Kansas to do the research for the book before the murderers were actually apprehended. I wondered if she was a kind of front for him so people wouldn’t be upset about being interviewed by a homosexual author.

The show was pretty good. I mean A Man for All Seasons. It opened on Thursday night, but we didn’t go until Friday night, after Ronda had taken her last exam and was officially on winter break. I still had finals the next week, which included my final projects.

Over the weekend, we installed our exhibit in the space we were allotted for the Body, Space, and Image class. It was a performance based final and we each had a model we were working with as well as the slide show. It wasn’t difficult for Leslie and me to get Carrie and Dora to be our models. Margot had a boyfriend who agreed to model as well and we did a photo session on Sunday afternoon in our space to get the last slides for our show taken.

Monday morning, we watched Fahrenheit 451. It was an hour and fifty minutes long, leaving us an hour of class time to write our analysis of the differences between the film and the book. Fortunately, it’s a short book, so I’d managed to get it read over Thanksgiving. What I really missed, though, was the opportunity to talk it over with my breakout group. It was definitely an interesting commentary on the role of media and society. The books were being burned because the government had decided reading led to rebellion and unrest. I could see it happening.

The costume construction final amounted to going over all the costumes from the show to inspect them for damage and have them cleaned and put away in appropriate storage. I did a lot of ironing—a task I excelled at.

Wednesday, we presented our installation. There were only a dozen people in this class, so there were four installations. We all had photos of our work displayed around the room, as well as the slide show playing. We got Carrie and Dora in settings we’d created and Leslie and I started taking photos. Then Margot’s boyfriend came stumbling in, holding his bloody chest as if he’d just been shot. Margot came rushing in with her camera and took pictures of the scene.

I guess the cool part was that, having rehearsed on Sunday and taken the photos of our models to get them processed, our slide show included slides of the scenes we were supposedly photographing live. We definitely got a good grade out of the class.

My Thursday class was pretty laid back because we had to have our papers finished and handed in the previous week. The paper was to be about our career strategy. Dr. Nader had assured us all that we would pass the class with a good grade, but he would review each paper extensively and return them to our mailboxes over the break. During the Thursday ‘final,’ we each gave an overview of the highlights of our strategy. It had to include our career goal and ten steps we would take to achieve it. It really made me think about what I wanted to do and whether I wanted to continue doing Attic Allure photography or if I wanted to branch out in some way.

I’d be spending my Intersession in England, working with a professional photographer there conducting a special session on Location Portraiture. It would be a good way to test myself by getting out of the studio and seeing if I could maintain the Attic Allure style in a more natural setting.

At last, my semester came to an end. I was ready for a break.

Except I had one more client in the studio on Friday.

Lani Dorsett had been one of my three assistants when we created IDs for the symposium and for the freshman class. She was a marketing and merchandising major and was pretty damn beautiful. But our association last fall had not prepared me for the vision that walked into the studio Friday afternoon. Lani had done some work this semester.

She’d also been out for a professional makeover and hairstyling. Her light brown hair was streaked with blonde. She had cherry red lips and a metallic bronze eye shadow that really brought out her dark blue-green eyes. She wore a sea-green sweater that hugged her curves with a mid-thigh miniskirt that showed a promising expanse of leg.

“Lani, welcome to Attic Allure. You look spectacular!” I said greeting her.

“Thank you, Nate. When I decided to have an Attic Allure photo done, I really started focusing on my body condition and looks. It hasn’t hurt me at all in my job search,” she said. “I realize I’ve left my photo for the very last of the semester. Thank you for agreeing to meet me at such a late date.”

“Oh, not to worry. We have another semester. There’s plenty of time to get exactly what you want.”

“Well, not exactly. I’m graduating mid-term. The official mid-term commencement is Sunday. Then I’m off to New York.”

“Congratulations! Let’s get you set just as you are for a portrait and we’ll move right into the Attic Allure shots you want. Are you headed to New York for your new job?”

“Yes. I got a job with a big advertising agency in New York and start the Monday after Christmas.”

I got her seated on the stool for a portrait and adjusted the lighting. Her sweater was soft, but pretty much skin tight. She was wearing a bra that made her breasts really stick out. I took a couple of shots and then used my light meter to check readings again. It wasn’t going to work.

“Lani, I hate to do this so early in the session, but we have to talk about it. I believe we’re going to see your bra in the photo. The fabric of your sweater is pulled tightly over it and the contrast of the bright white of your bra against your skin and beneath the sweater is going to make it stand out.”

“I never even thought about that! Does it happen often?”

“Surprisingly, yes. Skin has a different ... I’ll call it reflectancy ... than the fabric of underwear. Especially if the underwear is a shiny material. The bra does great things for the shape of your breasts under the sweater, but it’s definitely going to show.”

“Okay. So ... um ... how about we get a few shots for the shape and then I’ll take it off. I might decide it’s worth it to see my underwear. I already figured it would be coming off eventually. I just want a nice professional photo that doesn’t show my um ... nipples.”

“We will definitely get both for you.”

I finished up the roll of black and white film and even took a color frame on the 4x5. There was certainly nothing wrong with her poses or shape. She slipped behind the privacy screen to take off her bra and returned a minute later as I finished putting a new roll of black and white in the Hasselblad.

“It’s weird. I’ve always felt exposed when I don’t wear a bra. Is this really better?”

“I think the only way I’ll be able to convince you is to develop these two rolls and print a proof sheet,” I said. “I assure you, though, your shape is still very nice and when you hold still, I can’t tell you aren’t wearing a bra.”

“Oh. Now I’m really self-conscious. You can tell I’m not wearing it when I move.”

“Things do move differently,” I sighed. “Don’t worry. The movement can’t be seen in a photograph.”

We went through the poses again and I took the pictures, including a color frame. She was still undecided, so I went ahead and processed the two rolls so I could print a proof sheet of each.

“Why do you put the film in a black bag when you load it in the whatever that tank thing is.”

“It’s the developing tank,” I supplied.

“I thought you just did that in the darkroom.”

“Even though it’s black and white film, it’s panchromatic. That means it’s sensitive to all ranges of light. I can’t even use the red safety light in the darkroom while I get it loaded. Once it’s in the tank, then it’s sealed from light. I use the safety light in the darkroom when I’m making prints because the black and white photo paper is orthochromatic. It isn’t sensitive to red light. One of the most important things I’ve learned in college is the correct use of filters. And how to call them by the right name.”

“May I watch in the darkroom?”

“Of course.” I was certain her question was one of curiosity and not of invitation. We wouldn’t be doing any making out in the darkroom while I printed the proof sheets.

In addition to printing the contact print, I enlarged a photo from each of the sets. I don’t know why the extra work didn’t irritate me like it would have a few weeks ago. I guess it was because with classes out, I was feeling more relaxed and willing to just educate an interested person. It took a little over half an hour to print the four sheets and get them developed and rinsed.

During that time, I found out Lani was a driven professional—maybe exactly what you’d expect from a marketing person. She’d finished her four-year degree in three and a half years, had a job with a major advertising agency lined up a month before she graduated, and had done the work to reshape her already good-looking body into a real model’s body.

“I’m starting at the bottom and will probably do more fetching coffee than writing advertising copy. The agency made no secret that they wanted me partly for my looks. I guess they often do rush jobs and concept pieces that they don’t hire a model for. They just put people from the office in the studio and shoot the concept. I have to say, all the people I met there were pretty much beautiful. I worked like crazy this fall to take off five pounds and tone up all my muscles. I spent a fortune on my hair.”

“You’re extremely beautiful,” I said. “It doesn’t bother you to be kind of used like that for your looks? Do you think you might have a modeling career?”

“It bothered me at first. How dare they suggest that they wanted me pretty and not just because I’m an advertising genius. But one of the facts of life in advertising is that sex sells. Do people buy a Mustang because it is a great car, or because there’s a beautiful girl in a bikini leaning over the hood? If I’m selling myself for a job, I had to adopt much the same principle. I’m not sleeping with anyone in the company to get this job, but if they like to look at me, that’s a weapon in my arsenal.”

“Let’s take a look at these now and see what you think,” I said. “Understand, I didn’t spend any time testing and changing settings in the enlargement, so both photos should actually be better when I print a release print.”

“Oh, wow! It’s like my bra is in one of those black light posters. It just glows under my sweater.”

“Notice that in this one—and I intentionally chose one where your nipples would be toward the camera—you really can’t see the color shift because they are a shade darker than your skin and not brighter.”

“Okay. I’m convinced. Everybody I talked to told me to trust you. It’s just hard for me. From now on, your word goes. But I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“The people you talked to should have told you that I have a firm rule against sex in the studio. And I don’t date models.”

“Yeah. Well, get me great pictures and I might not care.”

We started working much more fluidly from that point on. The energy picked up and I started seeing what Lani could bring to an advertising agency. She had some great ideas. And she ended up very naked. I draped her with some satin fabric we had and the result was terrific.

We did some awesome product shots, some open shirt front shots, and at one point I grabbed a damp washcloth and wiped her down when she was getting sweaty. She stood calmly as I washed her pits and under her breasts. Then she very deliberately spread her legs apart and I wiped through her pussy.

It might sound strange, but even when I was wiping down her breasts and through her pussy, it wasn’t particularly sexual. Sure, I think we were both aware of what I was touching, but we didn’t dwell on it. Still the touches became more intimate as we progressed and Lani seemed to be looking for opportunities for me to touch her.

I finished the last shot I thought we’d take and scooped her up in my arms to carry behind the privacy screen so she could dress. I set her down on the couch and she pulled me down next to her.

“So, no sex in the studio, thank heavens,” she said. “But I’m naked in your arms. We could at least make out a little.”

So much for it not being sexual. This time when I caressed her breasts and dragged my fingers through her pussy, she was kissing me with fervor. I finally pulled away and said I thought we’d better stop now.

“Yeah. Sorry for using you like that, but it’s been a long time since I had a boyfriend and being naked with a guy who would touch me and wash me and take care of me was a real turn-on. Really, it’s a good thing there’s no sex in the studio. I was about thirty seconds from ripping your clothes off.”

“Lani, I really like you and I think we got some great photos. But save the rest for when you have a boyfriend in New York.”

I got film ready to process and a package of 4x5 color transparencies ready to take down to Pro Color while Lani dressed. She stepped out from behind the privacy screen, wearing the same sweater and miniskirt she’d arrived in. She came right up to me for another kiss.

“You didn’t put the bra back on,” I said as I caressed her once more.

“I liked the feeling of having it off. Thank you, Nate. I’ll see you next week to go through the proofs and choose my portfolio.”

She left and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I got a look at myself in the mirror and decided I’d better wash all the lipstick off my face before I left for the day.

The girls had a spa day on Friday while I was with Lani. Anna had been in finals on her twenty-second birthday Wednesday. That meant that I would get to take her out on Saturday to celebrate. We went to the studio so she could help develop and print the pictures of Lani’s photo session. We had a lot of fun in the darkroom—most of it naked.

Then I took her to dinner at the club. She wanted to see it and I figured this would be a good time. We only had dinner, though. There was a big concert at the Auditorium. I didn’t know much about the first artist. Of course, we got there on time, so saw the warmup act. It was a folk rock singer named Eric Andersen. Kind of a raspy voice. Reminded me a little of Bob Dylan.

The second group was Mott the Hoople. They were a little more hard driving rock with a touch of country. They really rocked out with “Honky Tonk Woman.”

But then the headliner show was ready to start. The place was packed by that time. It was a screaming madhouse when the New Riders of the Purple Sage, mostly a country rock and blues rock band, came on stage and started with “I don’t know you.” By the third number, we were ready to rock with “Hello Mary Lou.”

“She’s No Angel” was more twangy, but by the time they hit “Truck Drivin’ Man” we didn’t care if it had a country beat or not. We were still rocking when they got to “Take a letter, Maria.” None of us were really ready for the concert to end, even though it was close to one o’clock by the time they finished with “Glendale Train.”

We didn’t bother to go home. I’d taken a room at the Blackstone and Anna and I continued to rock each other for a couple of hours before we dropped off to sleep.