Chapter 4

Because of a whole series of totally unexpected events, that winter marked the end of my childhood and the onset of, uh, lets say early adulthood. The morning after our last class, I got a call from Aaron asking me if I'd be interested in earning a little extra money for the holidays. He owned the Radio Shack franchise in town and they were keeping late hours to accommodate the heavy-duty holiday shopping going on. He asked if I could work after school until Christmas vacation and then full time through the rest of the holiday season. I checked with Mom and she said it was OK with her so I said yes and told him I'd be in that morning since it was a Saturday. I'd just turned sixteen so I was legally out from under the child labor laws.

When I got to the store, Aaron introduced me to his sales clerk, an old guy who looked like he should have retired years ago. He may have looked ancient but he was sharp as a tack and really funny. He couldn't get through a sentence without cracking a joke or bombing you with a pun. Turns out he was a retired lawyer and only worked to keep his brain from going soft. He showed me around the store and then gave me some lessons on how to run charge cards and operate the register.

By six that evening when I headed home, I was doing well enough that Marvin, the old guy, didn't have to look over my shoulder for every transaction. We hadn't seen much of Aaron all day because he stayed back in his office doing whatever.

Monday, I was scheduled to work from five in the afternoon until nine when they closed. Marvin got me started stocking shelves then went home, leaving just Aaron and me to take care of business.

I guess I should have figured something was up when he couldn't stop complimenting me on my talent as an artist and said about a dozen times that, of all the students, I was his favorite model. On top of that, every time he was within arm's length, he had his hand on my shoulder or on my lower back – make that my upper butt – to guide me to somewhere in the store to show me something. I didn't want to make a big deal of it but I thought it was kind of weird.

That night after we locked up, he asked me to come back to the office. We sat across the little desk from each other and just made small talk for a few minutes. I could see he was trying to get to something but I didn't have any idea what. After a few minutes, I looked at my watch and said, "Um, I need to get home now, Aaron. Mom and Dad will be expecting me."

"Oh, sure! I'm sorry for holding you up, Terry." He stood up and came around the desk and put his arm over my shoulder. "Look, Terry, I was wondering if you'd be interested in doing some private modeling for me. I got so much out of Coretta's class and I feel like I need to keep practicing what she taught me. I could pay you, say, twenty-five an hour for your time. What do you think?"

"Gee, I don't know, Aaron. I'm pretty busy now with school and working here and all. I'm not sure when I could find the time."

"Yeah, I thought about that. Look, Wednesday's your last day of school before the holidays, isn't it?"

"Yeah.'

"Well, after that, I've got you scheduled to work from one 'til closing. My apartment is right above the store so I thought you could model from noon 'til one then go right to work. I've got a room set up for my artwork. Marvin can handle the store by himself so it's not like we'd be missed."

I guess he could read my skepticism and added, "Twenty-five an hour is pretty good money for a kid your age."

I thought about it for a while and decided, in spite of my suspicions, I could really use the extra cash. "Yeah, well I guess maybe we could try it and see how it works out."

He didn't give me a chance to reconsider. "Great! It's a deal then. Come in at noon on Thursday and we'll get started."

My instincts told me that all wasn't quite right, especially when he told me to use the back entrance to his apartment accessed from an outside stairway. But naivety pretty much defines most sixteen year-old boys, doesn't it? The thought of an extra hundred bucks a week is pretty powerful incentive to suppress a little unease.

So around eleven-forty on a cold, snowy Thursday morning, I stood at his back door and rang the buzzer. He must have been waiting for me because the door opened almost immediately. "Terry! You're a little early, guy but that's just great! Come on in, I'm all set up and ready to go."

It was a nice apartment with obviously expensive furnishings. I stepped out of my wet boots and he showed me through the kitchen and down a hallway to a small room that was set up with an easel and a stool and not much else. I looked around and shrugged, saying, "OK, how do you want me to pose?"

"Well, it's the details of the human body I want to work on so nude is probably the way to go, don't you think? I'll have you sitting on that bar stool there with your arms crossed for the first pose. Shall we get started?"

Of course I'd been naked in front of Aaron before but this felt different, probably because there was nobody else there. I went ahead and shucked my jacket and clothes, dropping everything on the floor since there weren't any hooks or hangers in sight. I sat on the stool and he positioned me with one foot on a rung, the other on the floor, turned me about a quarter turn to the left and had me cross my arms and look down.

Since I was posing nude, he had the room toasty warm. He was wearing loose-fitting khaki shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. In my peripheral vision, I caught a flurry of movement behind the easel as he began roughing out the sketch. I sat as still as I could but my eyes drifted around the place. When I looked toward him from under my eyebrows, my focus zeroed in on a clearly defined tent in the front of his shorts. I think that cleared up any suspicions I had about his sexual orientation but I didn't know what to do about it, if anything. I remembered the first time it had happened to me when I was sketching Mrs. James and decided that it was just something he'd have to work through like I did.

After about twenty minutes, he flipped the page on the big sketchpad and came over to arrange me into a different pose. That's when things started to happen. He took my shoulders in his hands and turned them square with the rest of my body. Then he tilted my head back so I was looking at the ceiling and placed my hands on my hips. In that position, I couldn't see what he was doing when he got on his knees to position my legs but I could sure feel what he was doing. He put both my feet on a rung and spread my knees apart. I could actually hear his breath getting ragged as he said, "You know, Terry, you have such a nice body. I'll bet you lost your virginity a long time ago, didn't you?"