Chapter 2: Fantasy

IT HAD GOTTEN so that I looked forward to every fourth Friday as much as for any day on the calendar. That was the night that I went to Christine’s house and sat on the couch with her, just holding her bare tummy in my hand. She confessed that she didn’t really need that any longer since the pill was helping to reduce her cramping, but we both liked it so much that I tried to never miss our special evening together.

“Has anything special happened this week while I was gone?” I asked.

“As if you didn’t know. The studio is full of costumes. We’ve all been called upon to model tomorrow. I’ve been sitting in the library with Miss Ludwig trying to match Judy’s costumes from the past ten years with possible plays, musicals, dances, or movies they could have been used in.”

“Ten years? She can’t possibly be going back that far, can she?”

“Not quite, but she even has one costume she convinced Kat to model. Kat is thrilled.”

“It’s really a big deal for her, isn’t it?”

“She’s going to St. Louis in two weeks to interview and needs her portfolio ready,” Chris giggled. “Oh, and we had visitors from Chicago on Wednesday. Anna handled most of the interaction, but your supplier from Chicago, Levi Levinson, came to tour the gallery and studio. He had three other men with him, but they declined to be introduced. Everyone was in the studio anyway, so we each got a chance to talk about what our experience had meant to us. We got to talk about our own photos in the gallery and what it was like to work with you. I have no idea who those other guys were, but one of them handed Anna a wad of hundred-dollar bills and told her to work it into her accounting a little at a time.”

“Holy shit! He must have been one of my patrons, but putting a wad of hundred-dollar bills in Anna’s hand was a little uncalled for.”

“Oh, don’t worry. He didn’t put it in her hand. He stuffed it in her bra.”

“What?” I practically screamed it and looked over my shoulder to see if Chris’s parents were coming to investigate.

“I’m kidding. She locked it in the file cabinet and said she’d discuss it with you.”

“I’m sure she has some ideas,” I sighed.

“I think you are going to sell some very expensive prints,” Chris giggled. She was pleased to have gotten me so thoroughly.

Saturday was definitely Judy’s day. She didn’t really need photos of every one of her and Janice’s costumes, but it wasn’t a bad idea either. We had a regular production line and as soon as I finished a roll of film, I’d set it up in developer and one of the girls would take it to the darkroom to agitate for eight minutes and then rinse. Each time we took a break, I went in and printed a proof sheet. If she needed her portfolio within two weeks, I needed to make sure we had selections made as quickly as possible.

Everyone was so exhausted by the time we finished that they begged off doing anything in the evening, so I decided to just stay in the darkroom and print more pictures.

With Judy.

She was so excited about seeing her collection come together that she didn’t want to leave. She helped with moving the prints from fixative to rinse when that time came. I turned around to ask her a question and found her completely naked in the red light. It was a nice vision.

“I’ve heard that some people consider the darkroom to not be part of the studio,” she whispered as she reached for me and started pulling my clothes off. “And I didn’t model today, so I’m not a model now.” My shirt was off and she was working on my belt and zipper. I couldn’t help because my hands were full of her boobs. “So, if your naked body happened to slip and fall right into my naked body, we wouldn’t be breaking any rules while you pump my pussy full with your cock.”

I couldn’t find a flaw with her reasoning. I still had to move things from one developer tray to another, but I quickly discovered that I could do that while still pumping Judy’s pussy from behind. It worked so well that we did it three times. When I wasn’t moving paper from tray to tray, I had my hands filled with her tits or her clit. Judy considered it a suitable climax to her day.

Patricia needed a little extra loving care the next week. I gave her almost daily massages to relieve her back pain. Miss Ludwig to the rescue again. She just happened to have a new book she got from Sweden on massage during pregnancy. It was written in English, interspersed with Swedish terms, but there were a lot of diagrams that showed how to relieve back strain while the mother was lying on her side. It also emphasized the importance of massaging the legs.

The big thing, though, was that Thursday was her first anniversary with Tony. I supported her, but stayed out of the way after she spread a blanket at Tony’s grave and sat there to talk to him about their coming child. I stayed back at the bus, but I put the 105mm lens on the Nikon and carefully steadied myself as I shot pictures of her. They might not be prize-winning photos, but one day, she’d want to show those pictures to Little Tony, just like the photos of her pregnancy.

“A month from now and I’ll be free!” Christine said beside me as we crossed the Mississippi into Dubuque to head north for our summer camping trip together. She sounded so gleeful that I had to wonder what she was going to be free of. Me? She was sitting close to me with the gearshift between her legs. She was wearing short shorts and when I wasn’t actively shifting, my hand was on her bare leg. I loved touching her skin.

“Um ... What will you be free of?” I finally asked.

“All the expectations and preconceived notions of what a girl in Tenbrook will be like,” she said. “I’m moving down to Peoria August first. Student housing opens even though classes don’t start until the middle of the month. I won’t know a single soul there and it is so exciting. Can Chris Evans survive without all the expectations and support structure a small town girl is used to? Will she be disciplined enough to chart her own life? Will she fall to the wiles of a big city lothario? Oh, wait. She’s already done that!” she giggled and I had to smile at her declarations.

“Has everything been so bad in Tenbrook?” I asked.

“No! I’ve had a good life and excellent upbringing. I have a wonderful boyfriend and an incredibly beautiful and tasty girlfriend. When they’re mixed together, they’re really tasty! I got a good education and have a lot of friends. That’s not what it’s about at all.”

“Tell me, honey. Why are you so excited about being ‘free,’ as you say?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” she said. I shifted gears as we headed north out of Dubuque and ran my fingers up the inside of her leg, causing her to involuntarily thrust her hips forward. “I don’t know who I really am. I’ve never really taken the time or effort to find out. I’ve just been a good girl—most of the time—and I’ve done what I’m told. I studied hard, got good grades, got a boyfriend—and a girlfriend—and even being sexually active with them was pretty much part of the expectation for our community. The part where I foiled them was not getting pregnant. Did you know the doctor isn’t supposed to give birth control pills to an unmarried woman? Stupid! So, he prescribes them to relieve cramps and regulate menses. That’s how I got mine.”

“It’s expected that all the girls will get pregnant?”

“There are twenty-eight girls in our graduating class. We all know Patricia is pregnant and about to pop. Of course, she was married. Did you notice that Lauren has left town already? Probably not, because you’ve been busy and running to Chicago and all. She’s three months pregnant and managed to keep it a secret through the end of the school year. Her boyfriend nailed her during spring break and she’s gone off to be with him in Springfield. She’s been wearing the rock since Christmas and I’m sure they’ll be married before summer is over.”

“I had no idea, but Lauren was one of the girls who didn’t come to the studio for an Attic Allure photo.”

“Her boyfriend would have killed her. He’s very possessive. She didn’t even go out with other girls this year. And six other girls wore engagement rings at commencement. I know for sure two of them are trying to get pregnant and all but one will be married before Christmas.”

“Who won’t be?”

“Karen. She’s insisted that Andy go to college at Illinois State. No one expects him to last the semester before he’s back here, but she wants him to be sure she’s the one before they take the plunge. Speaking of which, I’d bet that as soon as he gets back, they will take the plunge and she’ll be married and pregnant by next summer. Then there’s Janice who received her engagement ring from Pete while you were in Chicago. They’re planning to wait until he finishes his tech school program in architectural drafting. I’m pretty sure they’ll get married at the same time he graduates and she’ll be pregnant right away. Of course, if Judy succeeds in heading off to St. Louis and Janice is alone here, she might just leave and move in with Pete this fall.”

“So, it sounds like there’s about a 20% expectation that girls in town will get married and/or have a baby within a year or two at most, right?”

“Yes. I defied that expectation by not getting pregnant and marrying you. We fuck like little bunnies but don’t make any,” she laughed.

“Since you aren’t following that path, you’re trying to figure out what path you should follow, right?”

“Right. I need to find out who I am. I have no idea!”

“I don’t think anyone really has an idea at our age, do they?”

“Says the guy with a thriving photography business and studios in Tenbrook and Chicago with a college education in the offing and a desire to have a long career behind a camera lens.”

“Well, yeah. I guess so.”

“And Ronda has known what she wanted to do forever. She’s been going to that college prep school in Colorado in the summer for four years. Anna has been raised to follow in her father’s footsteps as a tax accountant and is already handling the management of your business accounting and bookkeeping.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without her,” I admitted.

“Exactly. You need Anna. I have fun in the studio, but you don’t really need me. Ronda, Patricia, I’ll bet even Beth could do what I do without missing a step. Am I going to take a semester in business school and decide it’s all wrong and I should go to beauty school instead? The girls in our class who don’t have a college in mind to expand their hunting grounds for a husband are all looking at beauty school or jobs as secretaries.”

“Expand their hunting grounds?”

“You know very well that Donna is going up to Madison because there will be more men there with good prospects at a high-paying job and security than all the boys who are competing for jobs in the county as mechanics. Or the boys are looking for apprenticeships in carpentry and construction. None of them want to leave Tenbrook. They want to stay here and take over the farm or start a business selling insurance. There might be a dozen or fifteen boys in our class, out of twenty-eight, who are going to college. I’m guessing of the rest, five or more will be in the army by this time next year. A girl needs a richer hunting ground if she wants a husband who will keep her secure.”

“Wow. That all seems so mercenary.”

“Isn’t everything? Other than Ronda, Anna, Donna, and me, I think all the other girls who are going to college plan to become teachers or nurses. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s really just a path out of town. That’s why I’m excited to go to Peoria and find out who I really am. Am I going to be happy in business school? Will I want to become a librarian like Miss Ludwig? Is beauty school really the best option? Should I go into research of some kind? Maybe I should try to learn more about space travel and rockets. I could learn to program a Univac computer. Or I could be a data punch operator. Perhaps my little paragraphs on the back of your photos indicate a career in creative writing. I just don’t know who I really am. I need to be somewhere I can focus on me without being distracted by expectations and relationships and the status quo. I need to find me.”

We rode on in silence for a while. I wasn’t sure how this conversation was going to affect our week camping with each other at a state park overlooking the Mississippi. It suddenly seemed to have a lot more significance to me than just getting a week to fuck my girlfriend. Though I was still fairly certain it was going to include that.

“Remember prom a year ago?” I asked.

“Nate! How could I ever forget that night? I made love to you! I made love to Ronda! I had the happiest night of my entire life so far!”

“That’s really how I remember it, too. Waking up with two of the most beautiful and loving girls I’d ever known and making love to them again before we went to church and surprised my mother. And then the two of you even joined my family for Sunday dinner and I felt like I’d just brought the loves of my life home with me.”

“We were so brazen, just claiming you as our lover.”

“Later, Mom walked with me to the studio and had a talk with me. She didn’t want to know specifics about what we did. But I’ll never forget what she said to me. And it applies to the way I feel about you going to Peoria to find yourself. I’ll say to you what she said to me. You still have a ways to go before you’re an adult and independent, but you have matured more than I ever expected you to so soon. It makes me very proud of you, Christine. I’m very proud of you, and still so very sad.”

“Um ... Chris? I’d like to take your picture this week. I mean ... not just a picture, but a lot of pictures. I want to take pictures of you in every way I can. And not as a model. I want to take girlfriend pictures. Just for me. I just want to pick up my special album of Christine at any time while I’m in Chicago and we’re parted from each other and look through it at the girl I love. I guess I’m asking. May I take your picture this week?”

I managed to get that all out in one breath as soon as we got our camp set up, but before we just got naked or went for a hike or something.

“Anna warned me you’d want that,” Christine grinned.

“How did Anna know? Did I tell her?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just psychic. She said you were taking each of us camping this summer and you were going to want pictures of us. She said she’d like some, too. So, in addition to hiking and sightseeing and making love, I came prepared to have my picture taken. You can take any picture of me you want, Nate. Any time you see a scene you want, clothed or naked, you can take all the pictures you want. Just one thing, though.”

“What? I’ll do anything you want.”

“Don’t let taking pictures interrupt us having fun. Or making love. And take pictures of the two of us together so I can have some, too. And let me take some pictures of you. I think I’d like my own special album.”

I waited.

“Anything else?” I finally asked.

“I guess that could have been considered more than one, huh. Is it okay? Can we take a lot of pictures of our big vacation together and not interrupt having fun?”

“I think we can make that work,” I said, pulling her into my arms and kissing her.

“Maybe we could start having fun right after we make love,” she whispered.

We did have fun, and a lot of the fun was in bed. Or in the tent. Or on a secluded part of the trail down to the river. Or under the stars in a meadow we found that no one was near. And I took pictures of her. I wasn’t carrying the Hasselblad. That was just too much to cart around when hiking and playing. The Nikon did fine and Chris could focus and shoot it, too, so she got pictures of me. I set the self-timer and propped the camera in a crook of a tree or on a rock, or on a picnic table, and took pictures of the two of us together. I used a small beanbag I carried in my pocket to level and steady it—a handy tip I’d gotten from Levi.

“Um ... Nate? One more thing,” she said as I snapped a picture of her looking freshly fucked on our bed. “Try not to get pictures of come running down my legs, okay? I mean unless you’d really like a picture of that. Which is a little perverted, but I kind of like the idea. But if you want that picture, since it’s just for the two of us, you should get a really good angle between my legs and make sure you’ve left a big enough deposit that it really runs out and down around my asshole.”

I hadn’t really considered doing that, but once Chris mentioned it, the idea really appealed to me and obviously to her as well. I think I fulfilled all the criteria.

And she held the camera up over her head while she was lying on her back and I was pumping into her and took a picture down between us. We’d have to see how that came out.

She sucked me until I was about to come, and then jumped back to take a picture of my glistening cock. My girlfriend was definitely perverted.

By the end of our five-day camping trip, we’d explored all the park and all of each other. We were exhausted and more in love than ever as we drove back to Tenbrook.

I only had the weekend to make sure I got laundry done and loved Anna, Ronda, and Patricia. Monday morning, I was off to Chicago again. This would be my last trip for a few weeks—until I moved there at the end of August. In addition to clients, I had photo orders to print and Levi wanted a consultation.

“We can’t just keep moving junk in up here,” he said as he sprawled on a maroon mohair sofa that hadn’t been there three weeks ago. “Some of it needs to be circulated out to make room for other stuff.”

“I agree,” I said. “There are areas back there I haven’t even looked at yet. There’s so much I get confused by it.”

“I can’t believe you use as much as you do. On the other hand, having so many different things available is keeping your settings fresh. You aren’t getting a bunch of repeat scenes for your models. Each one is unique.”

“The biggest problem is working without an assistant. I love that couch you’re sitting on, but I bet it weighs a ton. How am I ever going to get it in front of a backdrop to use it?”

“Okay. So, we understand there’s a problem,” Levi said. “Back in Tenbrook you have a bunch of high school girls who will run around naked, move stuff, clean things, and model for you. There would be a different dynamic if you had boys doing this stuff ... even the heavy lifting. And I have to tell you, we were impressed with your exhibition and with the girls who hosted us. We didn’t actually see them running around naked, but we saw the pictures and listened to their stories.”

“It all grew out of wandering around taking pictures. I went to school with all those girls. They just like me to take their pictures. I wouldn’t even know how to recruit help like that,” I said.

“Chicago has 10,000 times the number of crazy girls in that age bracket that Tenbrook has. All we need to do is invite them in and give them the kind of safe space your girls out there claim you’ve always provided,” Levi explained.

“There’s a dynamic out there that will take time to build in Chicago,” I sighed. “Maybe I’ll find some girls in college who want to be part of it all.”

“We’ve arranged a few candidates for you to photograph this week,” Levi continued. “Not all the models, but some of them have been chosen by your patrons because they think they would work well with you. And your girlfriend Starr has agreed to help a little, mostly in guiding the girls you choose. We’re not out there recruiting girlfriends or whores for you. The guys see this as a reasonable way for some girls who are low on prospects to improve their lives.”

“How much will I need to pay a crew like that?” I asked. “If you want to improve their prospects, they need to be earning something besides pictures of themselves. I intend to keep paying Anna to do my bookkeeping. I’ve always paid Chris when she assists on a shoot with models. The other girls have received a fee when I have a specific job I want to do, like the calendar girl in Henry’s garage. The budget doesn’t stretch very far, though. I’m not making millions.”

“This space is part of Camera Warehouse. Camera Warehouse needs to get it cleaned up and functioning to support a visiting artist. Camera Warehouse needs to hire half a dozen girls part time who will be available when the artist is in town and will make sure his operation flows smoothly.”

“Levi, are you saying you’ll pay for the girls to work here?”

“Oh, Camera Warehouse will pay with funds supplied by a few investors. It won’t affect our bottom line at all. And it won’t appear on yours. The girls are hired by the space, not by Attic Allure.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I mean, if it all works it would be great. I just want to know that I can work with the girls and not get caught up in a lot of ... um ... catfights. You know, that’s one of the things about the girls in Tenbrook. They all get along with each other. Girls we knew wouldn’t get along with the others were just never invited to join us.”

“Well, consider this week to be auditions. If we come out of the week with a no-go, we’ll consider it a good idea we couldn’t make happen. If you come out of it with even one or two girls who will work for the next month to get your studio in shape before you move out here, so much the better.”

“I guess I’m game for that. The girls in Tenbrook pretty much arranged and organized the props in the entire attic and now just walking through it will give me an inspiration sometimes.”

“Well, get inspired. Your first client is in twenty minutes. I’d suggest that with the number of people you have coming through this week, you only develop film and print proof sheets so we can get them out. You’ll have some weeks back home to print orders. Once we get the place cleaned up, we’ll consider putting in some more backdrops like you have at the western studio. I’d like to make it so you still keep that studio active for at least a little while. See how the transition to the city suits you. I’m sure there are still some cuties in Tenbrook who would like to have you around. Like that pregnant girl, Patricia. You need to set it up so you can record her baby the way you’ve recorded her pregnancy. That’s been very impressive.”

“I agree. My family will still be there for another couple of years.”

Leora Capel was my first client Monday afternoon. She was fun to work with. She had some ideas and after her portrait, she started losing her clothes. She was one of those girls who was just plain comfortable in her skin. She didn’t strut around trying to show me her body or tease me. She just worked as naturally nude as she did with clothes on.