Chapter 8: Homecoming

“THIS IS REALLY OKAY?” Chris asked. She’d suggested I shorten her name instead of always using Christine. I rather liked the full name. “We aren’t like breaking and entering, are we?”

“No,” I laughed. “This is an honest-to-goodness key given to me by Mr. Barkley. I have my entire darkroom set up in here.” I opened the door and turned on the lights as Chris followed me into the room.

“Wow! Look at all this stuff! He just gave it all to you?”

“No. It’s not mine. He just said I could use it for props in a photo. For example, I might want to take a picture of a cute girl in a classic pose, so I grab a Greek pillar display stand and ... um ... a mannequin with an arm raised like Apollo. Then I’d ask her to just hop up on the pedestal and we’d work on poses.” I waved at the impromptu set and she went over and sat on the pedestal.

It took a little manipulating of the lamps to get light that would illuminate her without having shadows that were too dark. I got her into a decent pose and took a picture. She turned and put an arm around the mannequin, then laughed and started rubbing his chest.

“Poor guy doesn’t have any equipment. Must have been after all the prudes went around breaking the penises off the statuary.”

“Yeah, well, the way you’re treating him, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have one. We’d get raided or something by the porn police.”

“I feel silly dressed in shorts and a T-shirt trying to act like a classic statue. Weren’t they all nude?” She pulled her T-shirt up above her navel and popped the button on her shorts.

“Uh ... Chris ... um ... Don’t. Please.”

“I thought you’d be all over the idea of taking nude pictures. Don’t you want to see me naked?” she giggled.

“It’s not that. Believe me, I’d love to see you naked. But we can’t take nude shots right now. It just isn’t right.”

“Why? Not that I’m pressuring you, I was joking anyway. But what’s the problem?” she asked. I sat on the bench where Mom had lectured me a week ago.

“One thing I was warned about by Reverend Mother Superior is that when I bring a girl to the studio, things might not mean the same to both of us. We could have seriously different expectations or think it means different things. I don’t plan to do any photos like that until I know and am sure the girl knows what the expectations are,” I said.

“Like if I was modeling nude, you’d expect to have sex with me?”

“No. Not at all. That’s the thing, though. I don’t know if you’d expect it. And if we had the kind of relationship where sex was a possibility, I’d want it to be something we were both on the same page about.”

“Would you rape me?”

“Absolutely not! I haven’t had sex with anyone and I sure wouldn’t want my first time, or any other time, to be a rape. That’s disgusting. But would you think that if you got undressed and let me see you naked that it would mean we were boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“Not hardly,” she laughed. “I kind of like you, but it isn’t in any serious way. Would you?”

“No. When I’m up here, it’s my creative work space. I don’t want to think of it as an extension of my bedroom. There isn’t even a bed,” I said, grinning.

“Well, it sounds like our expectations would be about the same. So maybe sometime, we can talk about doing that kind of thing, but right now, I was just making a joke about my costume not being appropriate for the setting.”

“Hmm. You know Greek women back in the classic ages wore a kind of dress that was just a big square of fabric, tied or pinned at the shoulder and belted. There might be some fabric in here.”

“That would be cool.” We started hunting through the store room.

“There’s something else, Chris; just so you know the expectations. There was an article in Popular Photography magazine last year about a guy who was a legitimate photographer and all, but had taken some nude pictures of a high school girl. He was convicted of statutory rape because she was under age. I don’t think I’ll be taking any nude pictures of anyone under eighteen.”

“Eighteen? Wow. I thought sixteen was the age of consent. I guess we’ll have to stay friends for a year in order to take any nudes. What about this?” she asked, holding up a package that was marked ‘Flat Sheet’.

“That would work. Here’s a curtain tie that we could use as a belt. I like the tassels on it.” We went back to the pillar and opened the sheet. I worked on arranging it on her and had to go find something to pin the shoulder with. When I turned back to her, she had her T-shirt off and was standing in her shorts and bra. She’d kicked her shoes off, too. “I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to look.”

“Um ... I think you’ll have to in order to pin this on correctly. It’s really big. And the T-shirt looked stupid under it. Is this the way you’re thinking?” I disciplined myself to think about the sheet and making it look Greek instead of the simple white bra she was sporting. It ... she really looked nice. I had to experiment a little with how high to pin it so it didn’t fall under her breast. I finally got a safety pin in it and wrapped the cord around her waist with a simple knot. Then I worked on blousing it out over the cord and making it look kind of dress like.

“Wow! The ancient Greeks must not have cared much about showing a little side boob,” she said. “How about another pin here so it doesn’t gap open?” I grabbed another of the safety pins I’d found and worked on pinning the fabric together so it didn’t gap and the pin didn’t show. I had my hand right up against her side and the skin under her arm. I concentrated on the pin.

“There, that should do it,” I said. “Want to try sitting on the pedestal again?”

“Sure. Oh crap! You can still see my bra.” She deftly pulled her left arm out of the strap and tucked the strap down in the inside. This was all a lot more work getting set up than I’d ever imagined. She moved up on the pedestal again and tried to find a good position. Her right leg stuck out through the slit. Nice!

“Can you kind of tuck your left leg up under you and let your right leg dangle out? That’s really cool and sexy.”

In order to be balanced and sexy, she leaned over supporting herself on her left hand with the right crossed over in front of her. I fussed a little with her dress to cover her shorts and then took a light meter reading to get my lens settings. Working with the rather diffuse lighting of the lamps, I set the F-stop higher and slowed down the shutter speed to get maximum depth of field. I took half a dozen shots and then used a strobe light bounced off the ceiling to add more brightness.

We’d been working more than an hour when she jumped off the table.

“I have to get going! My folks think I was just going to go out and look at the grave. It’s almost dinner time. Help me get out of this.”

I fumbled around a bit trying to get the knot untied and then trying to remove the safety pin without sticking her. When the sheet was off, she stuck her arm back through her bra strap and grabbed her T-shirt.

“Thank you for coming up and letting me take some photos, Chris,” I said as she headed for the door.

“It was really a lot harder than I thought it would be, but it was fun. I can’t wait to see the pictures.”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” I said as she headed down the stairs.

I processed the film and printed a contact sheet before I went home.

School was all about homecoming week. I’d printed the photo of the line getting ready to charge and by the time I got to Hennessey’s class, it was already on his blackboard. When he gave it back to me, I took it to Miss Sullivan and she installed it on our new bulletin board outside the office.

The bulletin board wasn’t just for my photos. It had official notices, like the school lunch menu for the week, the schedule for the football games, and a copy of the newsletter. There was a list of rules about behavior at the Homecoming Dance and what would and would not be allowed. The gym had been refinished to get ready for basketball season and hard shoes weren’t allowed on it. So, the rule was that if you were on the part of the floor that was covered with canvas so tables could be set, you could wear shoes, but if you wanted to dance on the gym floor, you had to take them off. Of course, gym shoes were not allowed.

First, we had to get through Friday’s Homecoming Game against Webster’s B-Team. The game, on our rough field, was Friday afternoon while it was still light enough to play. The dance would be Saturday night because no one wanted to try to get dressed up between the game and the dance. But the homecoming court had to be introduced at half time and paraded before the parents who had come out for the game. It wasn’t a big deal because there were only about a hundred people camped out on the ground to watch the game, but I got some good pictures as the girls tried to walk on the soft ground in their high heels. It had rained during the week and while the ground wasn’t muddy and wet, it had definitely softened. I got a nice photo of a couple of the girls that wasn’t just embarrassing, and I finally got a photo of our quarterback as he ran for our team’s first touchdown of the season.

Anna and I went out for a sundae after the game again. We held hands all through it. When I got her home, I had to go over the plans for what time to pick her up on Saturday and tell her parents that my parents were driving and we’d definitely be straight home after the dance ended at eleven. I kept sniffing my hand as I walked home to see if I could smell a trace of Anna’s perfume from holding her hand.

I hadn’t had a lot of time in my darkroom during the week and hadn’t even printed any of the pictures of Christine. I processed the game film and printed proof sheets, then looked at the proofs of last Sunday’s outing. I was disappointed. The sheet we’d used had fold marks all across it. You could see the outline of her bra under it, and she just looked kind of precarious in her pose. On the other hand, one of the photos I took of her at the gravesite was really great. It had just the right feeling and I did a test strip to figure out the best settings for an enlargement. I was getting better at figuring out the best timing and used a number four filter on my second print. It really popped. It was like the whole world faded away and it was just Christine and her uncle Julius.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the photo. This was not a ‘school’ photo. I needed to get a model release from Christine. I’d give her a full set of pocket prints and see what she said.

I had to get the laundry and ironing done before I could consider getting ready for the dance. For that matter, I needed dinner with the family. There would be finger food at the dance, but not a meal. And it didn’t begin until eight o’clock. By seven-thirty, I was dressed and ready to go. Perhaps my suit wasn’t the most fashionable, but it looked decent and I had a crisp white shirt and one of Dad’s best ties on. At a quarter till eight, we pulled up to Anna’s house and I grabbed my flower and ran to the door. Of course, Mom, Dad, and Kat got out of the car and came up to the steps as well. Dad had grabbed my camera.

“Wow! You look beautiful!” I said when Anna came to the door. Her parents and little brother came out onto the porch, too. Everyone wanted to take a picture of us before we left. She wore a long blue satin skirt with a pale blue top and a bow at her throat. I had to go through the process of pinning her flower on without sticking her. It was the first time I’d ever given a corsage to a girl. I thought the pink looked a little brown at the edges.

By the time we’d satisfied the parents with photos it was already eight o’clock, so we piled into the car to get to the school. We didn’t say anything on the way there because Kat was talking a mile a minute about Anna’s dress and what she wanted for a dress when she went to a dance. She’d need to wait five or six years for that day to come.

I was thankful Dad had only taken half a dozen photos since this was a school roll of film. I had a second canister in my pocket in case I needed more than the remaining eighteen on the roll. I probably would.

“Um ... I want to just sit and hold your hand,” I said. “But you know I have to get a few photos for the yearbook.”

“Can I just walk beside you while you take pictures?” she asked.

“That would be great. Kind of like we do at the games,” I said. We began to circulate around and I got a few of the people to pose, but then I put the lens cap on and suggested we go out to dance. We found the table where Andy and Karen were and kicked off our shoes. I slung the camera around under my arm. It was a bit of a nuisance to have to carry it while dancing, but I wasn’t going to leave it on the table.

I hadn’t seen Judy and Janice much since school started. I mention that because they made an entrance about nine o’clock. Those girls know how to stop a show. They were both dressed in black gowns. Judy’s had a couple of layers of frill on it and was fitted tight to her chest but full from her waist down. Janice’s dress clung to her body all the way past her hips and was narrow even from there to the floor. It had a seriously plunging neckline, but she wore a black camisole under it so her cleavage wasn’t actually showing. They both wore black hats with veils.

“Wow! I need to get some pictures,” I said. I might have been a little abrupt in leaving Anna and rushing to Judy and Janice. She sat at the table with Andy and Karen.

“Hello, Nate,” Judy said. “Miss us?”

“No kidding. These are great outfits. Like The Addams Family. Let me get a couple of shots.”

“Not The Addams Family,” Janice corrected me. “Dark Shadows. It’s so spooky. Look. I even have a pair of fangs. Let me bite your neck.”

“Boy, it’s crappy light here. We should do some studio shots of this,” I suggested.

“You mean like we did at the train station? That would be cool.”

“Yeah, except inside where I can control the light a little better. I’ve got a place above the Center Marketplace.”

“Cool. We could do much better poses in private. I could get rid of this thing. Mrs. Hardesty in Home Ec said I had to wear something under the dress or the school wouldn’t let us into the dance.”

“Oh, um ... sure.” I looked at the plunging neckline of the dress and was sure it went all the way to her navel. Without the undergarment... Wow!

Just then it was time for me to hurry over and take pictures of the crowning of the Homecoming Queen. Hillary Bascom was crowned the queen and Principal Reichman placed the crown on her head. I got a pretty good photo since they did the ceremony on the stage and had lights turned on there. I had to speed up my shutter speed because I’d been using 400 ASA film for the low light conditions.

When I finally made it back to my table, Karen was there, but Andy and Anna were missing.

“Anna wanted to dance, so I let Andy take a turn with her. Come on, we’ll dance over to find them and switch,” Karen said. The music was slowing down a bit after the crowning and when we made it to where Anna and Andy were dancing, they were just shuffling around.

“May we cut in?” I asked. Andy looked relieved and quickly pulled Karen into a hug. Anna was a little peeved that I’d abandoned her. “I’m sorry I had to do all that work. Maybe we could go out sometime that isn’t a school event.”

“Really? Would you leave your camera at home?”

“Promise.”

She melted into my arms and I swept her around the dance floor. I wasn’t a grab and grope dancer. I watched all the dances on American Bandstand and even watched and practiced dances I saw on Lawrence Welk when my parents had it on. I moved Anna around the dance floor a bit more than most of the other couples were moving. Eventually, though, we ended up like the others and just held each other in a hug while we moved enough to say we were dancing.

That’s when the lights came up, of course, and the dance was over. We collected our things and headed for the door where my dad was waiting in the Falcon. Kat had gone to bed and Mom stayed home so she’d be rested before church in the morning.

We sat next to each other in the back seat, holding hands. I was trying to figure out how to go about kissing her goodnight, but I wasn’t going to do it in the car with Dad right there in the front seat. I walked her to her door but it seemed like her dad had put a 500-watt bulb in the porch light. We had to squint to even see each other.

“I had a really good time,” I said. “I’m glad you were my date. I’d ... um...”

“Yeah. Me too,” she said. “I’ll see you in school Monday.” Before I could do anything else, she’d opened the door and stepped inside. I waved and headed back to the car.

Trying to date in a small town when you depend on your parents for transportation sucks. It was a cinch that I’d never get Anna alone until I could drive.

Tuesday afternoon when school let out, Dad picked me up and drove into Huntertown to the license branch. The driving test wasn’t much because Dad had taken me out several times to learn how to handle the Falcon and I could even shift gears pretty smoothly. The examiner said I passed and took me into the office and started filling out the paperwork. It was a piece of heavy paper he put into the typewriter and started typing.

“Height?” he asked.

“Five-eleven-and-a-half,” I said, a little disgruntled that I hadn’t actually achieved six feet yet.