Chapter 10: The Goddess

I PROCESSED THE FILM from the photoshoot with Patricia. I could tell from the contact sheet that we had some great photos that deserved time for me to do test strips and make really good prints. But for tonight, I printed an 8x10 of her leaning back with her tits pointing toward the sky—the same shot I was sure Tony would want. It was just a basic print with no particular enhancements and it still looked incredible. I still made it home in time for ice cream and TV with the family. After everyone had gone to bed and the house was quiet, I pulled the print of Patricia’s tits out of my personal collection and started remembering what they’d looked like in the flesh. The memory was still fresh in my mind and it didn’t take long for me to start getting close to a major climax.

Then I started thinking about what she’d said. That she was going to ‘diddle the fiddle’ and ‘let her fingers do the walking.’ It suddenly dawned on me that she was masturbating, the same as I was. I’d read the facts of life book cover to cover. Those descriptions led to some of my first orgasms. It had diagrammed the parts of the anatomy, including the clitoris. In the text, the book had said simply that ‘some women derive pleasure from stimulating the clitoris.’ I’d never associated that statement with the idea that girls could masturbate. I wondered what Patricia felt with her fingers in that light brown thatch between her legs and what I’d feel if I put my fingers there.

The climax almost knocked me out. I thought about Patricia stimulating her clitoris while she was thinking about the lump in my pants. My cock! She was touching herself between the legs thinking about my cock! Just like I was thinking about touching her between her legs as my cock mounted to a second earthshaking come.

It was a moment of revelation to me. As I cleaned up the mess on my chest and stomach and searched around for glops that had spattered onto my sheets or pillow, I considered my new bit of information. Girls got pleasure from sex ... at least if it was done right. I’d never considered anything beyond the idea that they had a place designed to make my cock feel great. I resolved to find out everything I could about how girls got pleasure from sex. I figured my chances would be a whole lot better if a girl was enjoying herself as much as I was.

I didn’t see Tony’s motorcycle Monday morning and then remembered that he and his gang were blowing off school Monday to apply for jobs at the new club in Wisconsin. In first period English, I found my place between Patricia and Chris—two of the women who had come to be very important in my mind.

“Well?” Patricia whispered when I sat down.

“Um ... I didn’t get much more than proofs printed. We got some great shots.”

“Nothing more?”

“I printed one.”

“And?” She made a subtle gesture with her hand in an open fist.

“Bitchin’,” I whispered.

“Hey, did you guys take photos this weekend?” Chris asked. I nodded and class started. During class, while we were supposed to be reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Chris nudged me and handed me a note.

“I finished the costume. Sunday at 2:00?”

I looked at her and smiled. I nodded my agreement.

Anna met me at lunch and pulled me out into the hall in front of the mugshot board. A miserable-looking freshman girl was standing there holding a little sign that said, “L. Monroe. Bad Hair Day.”

It sure was. It really looked like she’d gone to bed with it wet and hadn’t had time to brush it this morning. I laughed and took the mugshot. Then, my sweet Anna pulled out a brush and brushed out the girl’s hair. It really looked nice when she was done and I wondered if they’d just messed it up like that for fun. I had her stand back up in front of the sign and took another shot with her smiling broadly and showing a whole mouth full of braces.

School was pretty chaotic all week as people were coordinating their time to be in line for school pictures with their desire to dress in Halloween costumes. Anna and I got a free period when Miss Kellogg was out sick one day and we got permission to visit elementary school classrooms to take pictures. Anna was brilliant at posing the big classes and had her portable chalk board that she wrote the name of the teacher, grade, and date on. Sometimes the teacher held it, sometimes it was on the floor in front of the group, and sometimes one or more of the kids held it. Regardless, the pictures were cute.

In one fourth grade class, Anna moved a couple of desks so they were face to face and had two girls sit on top of them with their backs to each other and their arms folded. The rest of the class clustered around them looking variously like they were egging them on to fight or trying to get them to reconcile. I stood up on the teacher’s desk to take the photo and he was in the back of the kids scratching his head.

Fun stuff like that.

I saw Tony with Patricia Tuesday after school and he was steaming. I was afraid he was mad that I’d taken pictures of his girlfriend’s breasts. I hadn’t seen them this morning. It turned out it wasn’t about me at all.

“That bastard didn’t buy that I was out of town until I showed him a receipt from the café we ate at Monday morning,” Tony growled.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Somebody sprayed an obscene image on the old concrete railroad trestle over the river,” Patricia said. “Constable Warren took Tony in to his office this morning and questioned him about where he was Sunday night. And when Tony finally convinced him he was in Wisconsin, he started pressuring him for names of people in ‘his gang’ who might have done it.”

“Damn pig!” Tony spat. Then he turned his attitude around as if it had never happened. “Patricia says you got some really good photos Sunday. When can we see them?”

“It’s easiest if we do it on Saturday. That will give me an opportunity to print up a couple of the best ones. I’m going to talk to Mr. Grossman in Huntertown tomorrow to find out about some additional processing techniques I might use,” I said. Patricia looked alarmed. “Don’t worry. I’m not showing him any of the photos.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

Wednesday after school, I borrowed the car and went to Huntertown to visit Mr. Grossman. I took a selection of photos, including a couple of the new ones with Patricia. It was a ghost photo that was pretty low contrast and as a result, her nipples and bush didn’t pop out too much in the print.

“Well, how are your projects coming?” he asked. I was pretty pleased with most and had taken several of my prints from the school bulletin board with me to show him. He laughed at the print of a guy in front of the mugshot frame and the FFA with their tractor and cow.

“I’m working on getting some more exciting pictures for the yearbook than what the school is used to.” I showed him a copy of the school yearbook I’d borrowed from Miss Sullivan. They called our yearbook the Oracle. I wasn’t sure anyone understood what Oracle stood for. It just sounded Trojan, I guess.

He looked at the rows of people staring at the camera and then back at the pictures I had taken.

“Your pictures are great. The whole concept will make for a far more interesting yearbook. I’d say that when you do the 5x7 prints to submit for the yearbook, you should probably filter as much as a four to increase the contrast. The printing process will cut the contrast in an image because of the halftone dot size. The printing company uses a 120-line screen for the photos, which yields pretty good results except when you get to the pages printed on colored paper. That really washes out the print. They could have cut it to a 75-line screen or even 60-line screen like they use in newsprint to get better image quality. The dot spread on this paper is really intense.”

I showed him the photos of Judy and Janice in their Dark Shadows costumes and he really liked them.

“Contrary to intuition, shooting this with lower speed film and a slower shutter speed might have added even more to the subtle shadows created by the candle. The light is a nice effect, but some of the drama is lost because it fades too quickly. These, however, are still fine photographs.”

Then I showed him my ghost picture of Patricia and explained I hadn’t really worked with the photo much because I wanted his advice. He looked at it and smiled.

“This is the other young woman you photographed on the motorcycle, isn’t it? You certainly got lucky with this model. She’s not only beautiful, she photographs naturally.”

“She’s a pleasure to work with. She always seems to know the right expression and posture to bring out what we want in the photo. What I really want to do with this one is somehow make her look more ghostly. Maybe transparent. Any advice?”

Mr. Grossman told me several things I could do with masks and filters. It was going to be a tricky process and I’d be in the darkroom for a long time to get just one print. We finally got down to my last question.

“My drapes make a decent backdrop for most of the sparse scenes I’m shooting at the moment, but I’m afraid everything I shoot in my studio is going to start looking the same. Is there anything I can do to change it up?”

“Oh, yes. You are finding the bane of the studio photographer. It’s why most only do portraits and the background is non-existent. I can help you a little here. I have a couple of older backdrops I’ve used and replaced. These are only six feet wide, but there are four different colors, including one white and one black. You can hang them in the background and as you get more lights, you’ll be able to control the look of the neutral backdrop you want. I have a catalog here for a company that does stock backdrops for studio photography. These might be a little out of your range at the moment, but if you check with them, sometimes they have some that are discontinued and they are trying to sell out. Many of them are paper, like the plain ones I’m giving you. Some of the better ones are hand painted on muslin. With enough of them, you can just about make your studio look like you are on location anywhere in the world.”

“That’s great! Thank you, Mr. Grossman.”

“Come back again and bring me more of both your school prints and your studio work. This glamor shot you did, for example, is almost a category of photograph in itself. I know some studio photographers who would envy the print, as well as the model.”

“I’m doing some more work with Chris Sunday afternoon. She’s been working on an ancient Greek costume and I’m trying to fix up a classical setting for her,” I said.

“I’ll look forward to seeing prints,” he said. I carried the four rolls of background paper out to the Falcon and headed home, happy that the wagon would accommodate the six-foot length of each roll.

I finally managed to walk hand-in-hand with Anna on Friday after school to Sweet Treats for a sundae. Then I walked her home and she told me to have fun at the party and she’d see me Monday.

She didn’t seem to be upset about it, but I’d asked Mom if there was anything weird between the churches.

“You know there is a Council of Churches,” Mom explained.

I knew because I’d been indoctrinated with the idea that the Methodists and EUB were planning to unite and it was part of an ecumenical movement that started after WWII. I guess Pope John XXIII was big into reform and reconciliation of Christians everywhere until he died in 1963.

“Well, not everyone believes Protestants and Catholics should be involved in an ecumenical movement together. The Lutheran Church in town was divided by the issue. It became so contentious that a group separated themselves and started a new church, right across the street.”

I’d seen the two Lutheran Churches on opposite sides of the highway when I was out riding my bike. I thought it was pretty strange, but there were lots of different kinds of Lutherans. Synods, I think they called them.

“If you went to either church on Sunday morning, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. Same hymnal, same liturgy, same colors and vestments, same prayers. But the St. Thomas Lutheran Church on the north side of the street will have nothing at all to do with the Tenbrook Council of Churches or the Catholics in general. Trinity Lutheran on the South side of the street is a member of the council and their youth, for example, participate in all the joint events, like this Saturday’s party.”

What a strange place this was. So, because of that, Anna wouldn’t go to the party at Holy Family Catholic Church. And apparently, the St. Thomas Lutheran Church youth group was having a lock-in party for their kids that would last all night, including a prayer service at midnight.

Okay. I was going to the party and enjoy myself. Just like Anna said to.

Saturday afternoon, Tony and Patricia came to the studio to look at the prints I had. I was still a little nervous about Tony knowing that I’d seen his girlfriend naked here in the studio. It turned out that I didn’t need to worry. He was enthusiastic. Of course, I’d rightly guessed that he’d want the picture of Patricia leaning back with her tits up. I’d done what I considered was a fine job of enlarging it and getting just the right tone and texture. It looked almost like you could reach out and touch them.

“Aren’t these the most fantastic tits you’ve ever seen?” Tony asked. “This girl beside me is a work of art, I tell you. Oh, Babe, you are so beautiful. This picture could go straight into the magazine.” Patricia blushed and hugged him as he praised her. I was happy. Then they got to the photo of her ghost scene.

“How’d you do this?” Patricia asked. “You can see right through me! And my face looks like it’s glowing!”

“I took a couple pictures of the background before I started taking your picture. When I enlarged it, I started with a short exposure of the background with a mask for your face and head and arm with the candle. Then I lined up the image with you in it exactly the same as the one with the background. The longer exposure for that one made the set props and your face and arm really stand out, but the rest of you is over printed on the background.”

“This boy’s a genius with that camera and darkroom,” Tony said. “Babe, you should have this on a billboard or something. It should hang in a museum!”

“Tony, you know I can’t send these photos anyplace. I’m not eighteen. But I want you to enjoy them and know the girl in the picture is your girl. Everybody else in the world can look at her, but she’s all yours,” Patricia said. There was such an intense look in their eyes that I could see that they were really committed to each other. It went both ways. I’d take any pictures of Patricia she wanted.

And that brought me to the matter of a costume for the party. I had no idea what the typical costumes were like at a party out here. Clowns? Pirates? Hobos? What did kids dress up as for a teen youth group party?

The youth group included seventh through twelfth grade. Of course, Kat was upset that she wasn’t old enough for MYF yet, but Mom reminded her that she’d been invited to the home of a new friend for dinner and to go trick or treating. That seemed to please her. I was still getting dressed when Mom and Dad took Kat to her friend’s house.

The store room had come through for me again. Back in the very back, I found a suit hanging in a cleaning bag. It was really old fashioned looking. And way too big around for me. But it was about right in height. There was a bowler hat that I could wear and a cane. This stuff was apparently left over from the glory days of the store when it carried men’s clothes. When I took the stuff home and showed Mom, she said she thought it was from the twenties or maybe earlier.

I had to use one of my own shirts, but the big task was padding myself out to look like I weighed about fifty pounds more than I did. My dad had ties that he’d collected for years. I found one that was about six inches wide and covered with flowers.

When Mom and Dad got back, I showed them what I had, but the pants kept sliding down. Dad dug in a drawer and came up with a pair of red fireman’s suspenders and I found buttons on the trousers to fasten them to. No one would be able to see the suspenders under the vest and jacket. Mom got an eyebrow pencil and penciled on a thin little mustache. She even called it a ‘pencil-thin’ mustache and said I looked a little like William Powell in The Thin Man. Only I wasn’t thin.

I donned my hat and took off, stopping at the studio. I quickly set up my camera on the tripod and set the timer on it. Then I got in front of it and took my own photo in front of the plain white backdrop. I had no idea how it would look when I developed it, but it was worth a try. I took the camera and headed to the Catholic Church.

I was right about there being a selection of Pirates, Indians, and Hobos, but mostly among the junior high kids. There were about thirty of us all told, and it was pretty evenly split between junior and senior high. I guess kids start thinking church youth group and parties like this are for younger kids and quit going to events like this eventually. But the level of costuming among the high school kids was stellar. I think everyone knew Judy and Janice would be dressed in their stunning Dark Shadows costumes and felt they had to up their game a little, too.

Andy and Karen were dressed up like they were a farmer and his wife and actually looked like that painting called American Gothic or something like that. I took a picture of them and it was pretty cool. There were two kids dressed up like Wednesday and Pugsly from The Addams Family. It was really funny to find out their last name was Adams. There was a hand on Pugsly’s shoulder. Just the hand. He said it was Thing.

Judy and Janice were as stunning as when I photographed them. Of course, Father Emory had insisted that Janice wear an undergarment with the outfit. She’d kept the letter of the law but not the spirit by wearing a flesh-colored leotard under it. Really, from anywhere in the room, it looked like she was naked under it.

Then I saw Chris. She was wearing the Greek outfit and I went to talk to her.

“Hi! I told you I figured out how this thing was supposed to work. There were actually pictures in the encyclopedia at the library. Most of them are fastened on both shoulders like this, and the tunic was optional. Of course, as far as a church party goes, the tunic wasn’t optional tonight.”

“You did some cool things with that sheet! Did you embroider the border?”

“It’s a setting on one of the sewing machines in the Home Ec room. It has little things you insert in the wheel that do the entire pattern automatically. I thought it would dress it up a little.”

“It certainly does. And these pins. Great!”

“I got a bunch of my grandmother’s jewelry when we were out in Virginia. These are brooches that were in the box. You can take my picture now, too,” she said striking a very classical looking pose as if she were a Greek statue of a goddess or something. I thought I remembered a water pitcher and basin in the store room somewhere. I’d check that out. It seemed like the kind of thing that would be in a Greek scene. I don’t know why.

We played some typical games. The younger kids bobbed for apples. None of the high schoolers wanted to get wet and a lot of the costumes depended on makeup instead of masks. We all enjoyed games like passing an apple down a row of people without using our hands. Mostly, that involved holding the apple against your chest with your chin and trying to get it from there. Somehow, when it got to the girl next to me, she let it slip and had to bend over backwards to keep it from falling past her boobs as I tried to lift it from there with my chin. That was pretty fun.