Pornographer - A Love Story

She was one of the three great loves of my life. Many of you have read at least parts of her story. A very few have read most of it. In our current age of massive data and digital media, it seems to almost beggar the imagination that such fire could be maintained with a few hours together now and again and sporadic pen and paper communications and one-of-a-kind pictures. But it was.

Ah, the pictures. Polaroids, for any of you too young to remember; set up the clumsy camera, shoot, yank a sheet out, and after a minute or so, pull the transfer sheet up off of it, and there's your moment for good or bad trapped as it happened. No editing, no filters, no "take-a-thousand-shots-and-pick-the-one-you-like" do-over deception — Polaroid was as true a capture of real life as it happens as has ever been.

I bought a Colorpack II at the military exchange one week and brought it with me the next run of perfect days that I was with her. It took us roughly 30 seconds to figure out that the thing could be used for more than pictures of us just hanging out with friends, swimming in the river, posing with family, or drinking an illegal beer(!) at a bonfire.

But even with that thought so immediately present, she was a 60s girl, and wouldn't let me shoot her completely nude. Flirty, a flash of panties, a pantomime-jokey sexiness, yeah, all that, and enough to run through several packs of film. But no nudes. Out in real life back in those days, you just didn't do things like that much and no matter Free Love, hippies, or whatever the hell they were doing down in San Francisco.

That Sunday, we went up on the river to a private beach we'd found to sun and swim and indulge ourselves in each other. Yeah, there was pleasantly desultory sex, but mostly we were just playing. After a couple of hours, we were on the beach, relaxing and letting the sun bake the river out of us. She rolled over on the blanket and laid there on her side with her head propped up on her hand, watching me watching her. She was shyly topless, getting used to it the longer we went without being caught, but I'd long since gotten over aggravating her to let me take her picture with less than a full bikini. It was one step too far and made her uncomfortable. Probably me, too, if it got to that. We were children.  At any rate, it wasn't worth starting a fight over nor ruining an otherwise perfect weekend.

Sitting there next to that motionless river, the sun high, and we two the only people on earth, I leaned to her and kissed her, ran my hand with pleasure down her side and over the fabric of the swimsuit bottom, and then I leaned back to look at her, revel in her, and she said:

"Now."

"What?" I goggled stupidly.

"Take my picture while you're looking at me like that."

I had no clue what she was on about, but wasn't going to argue. I snatched the camera up from where it had been lying near forgotten in the sand, and in a single motion, captured the sweep and flow of her in the viewfinder, the expression on her face; eyes wide, biting her lip, a nervous little girl being naughty and acting on a dare…

"Beautiful," I whispered to myself, and hearing me she smiled, and I pushed the button.

And in 60 seconds, there she was, brilliant smile, mussed hair blowing just a bit in the breeze, perfect curves, perfect breasts, all against the suspended flow of the summertime Columbia River.

She had her arms wrapped around me, pressing into my back with her chin on my shoulder as I pulled the transfer sheet away and the picture appeared.

"Wow," I said wholeheartedly.

"I don't like the way I look in pictures," she said, her voice in my ear. I started to tell her that was all in her head, and how beautiful she really was, but she interrupted.

"What I MEAN is…" she said, waiting for me to shut up, "that I don't like the way I look in pictures, but I like what you see when you look at me, and this is my favorite picture of me ever."

She reached around me and took it from my hand and, unwrapping herself from me, moved over to her beach bag. She sat there within reaching distance of me, but some instinct told me to be still, to wait for her. She sat there looking at her picture for a long time, glancing up at me now and then. Finally, she moved to me and kissed me, long and hard, and as she sat back, she stroked my face tenderly — probably the first time in my life that I'd ever understood that word — then carefully put the picture in her bag.

"I love you, too," she said.

I've often wondered where that instant frozen on glossy paper has gone, or whether it still exists at all. Probably like most moments, it's just a vanished small swirl in the roiling river of time, and my memory is the last repository for it.

She never again objected to taking pictures. Heh — I'm smiling now because I remember that she often as not was the instigator; once, during a particularly intense time in which it hadn't even crossed my mind, she whispered, "do you think we can get a picture of this?"

"I don't think so," I gasped, trying to process the question and simultaneously being a dumbass who'd apparently never seen a mirror, "it won't focus this close."

"No," she said, "if you hold the camera like this and I…" She leaned back as far as she could, bracing her hands on my shins. I pushed the button. When the transfer sheet was removed, it was pretty clear that no one had been sighting through the viewfinder. The composition was — problematic. But it got what she was interested in.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, fascinated and astonished. "Is THAT what it looks like when we…WOW! That's so COOL!" I let out a strangled laugh and she changed over to mock outrage:

"Well, I can't see anything from up here, how was I supposed to know? Don't you DARE laugh at me!" and she started laughing and slapping me with the picture, which got us both laughing till we were out of breath — it was a good weekend.

I gotta say that "selfies" these days are a completely different concept then back then. Little girls in high school weren't sending naked pictures of themselves to everyone on their contact lists, Spring Break wasn't all wet tshirt contests and challenge-grade fuckathons. I'm not being all "Get off my lawn" here. Some girl wants to get greased up and show me her tits or blatantly try to get me to fuck, or at least think about fucking her whether she intends to give it up or not, (shrug), OK, I'll be entertained, to about the same depth I'm entertained by a clever beer commercial, and probably the physiological response will still trigger. But that's mistaken these days for the real thing, and I get the distinct impression that fewer and fewer can even grasp the difference.

Flirting, teasing, doing something special, private, unique, specifically for or with someone you love and can trust with your life, your love — your fear — is nearly a dead art, has been since the advent of the digital age. Not completely, of course, or at least not yet. Even when they're making a present from pixels via email and not one-of-a-kind Polaroids sent in triple-taped envelopes with purple, girly writing with the word "PRIVATE!" written on it about ten times, they are still around. (Yeah, I let her keep the camera.) A few are. I know that's true, because It's been my profound pleasure and honor to say that my shy Columbia River girl is not the only one I've known.

But I'm glad I lived a time when it was the norm; a time that when a girl seemed this pleased to see you it meant something.

In Our Next Episode:  Yeah, yeah, I know. But you're just gonna have to hear about her once in awhile. Tough. She's probably fictional anyway, you know.