Chapter 9: Political Activist

IT SEEMED LIKE my birthday weekend was over in a flash. Saturday night, I took Patricia out while Anna got to sit with the baby. It was nice just to sit with Patricia at dinner and catch up on everything that was happening in Tenbrook. Then it was nice to go park with Patricia and make love.

“I’m really your girlfriend,” she whispered as we moved together in the back of the microbus.

“Have you been doubting it?” I asked. “I know I’ll never be what Tony was to you. There’s just too much there, and I can’t treat you like he did. I have other ... responsibilities. But, Patricia, I love you and I love that little sprout who is growing so fast I can’t keep up with her. You are my girlfriend.”

“Sometimes while you’re gone, I can’t imagine that anyone loves me and that I’m not all alone. I mean, my parents and Tony’s parents are wonderful. They don’t let me get away with being lazy, but they’re always there when I need someone,” she said. “And if they aren’t, your parents are as much grandparents to Little Toni as mine are. But the studio is a lonely place to hang out now. You aren’t there. Anna isn’t there. Ronda isn’t there. Sometimes Janice comes over to hang out. And, of course, Kat occasionally has a model that she works with.”

“I’m glad you’re monitoring that. I mean, I’m also glad Kat is seriously working on her art, but I worry about her with models. Someone could get the wrong idea.”

“Well, so far, we’ve all been girls. Julie, me, and Vanessa. I’ll suggest that when she’s ready for a male model, she not have him go fully nude. I think I can explain the problem. Maybe you should model for her when she’s ready,” she laughed. Her laughter did wonderful things to my cock, sheathed to the hilt in her pussy.

“I’d have to be on drugs to do that,” I said. “I don’t think either of us should model for the other.”

“Probably right. I was just trying to think of a boy I’d be comfortable that she was safe with.”

“Do you hear from Judy, too?” I asked.

“Janice hears occasionally. Janice is about as lonely as I am. I think she and Pete might up their wedding date. Either that or she’ll just go down and shack up with him,” Patricia said. “Pris stops by sometimes. She’s in a tech school course to become an electrician, believe it or not.”

“That’s amazing. What inspired her?”

“Her whole family are electricians. They have a contracting business that is pretty good, I guess. So, she’s planning to go to work in the family business.”

“Patricia, honey, I’m getting close.”

“Oh, good. I’ve been talking just to hold off. Show me. Show me how much you love me.”

I accelerated my pace and Patricia rose right along with me. When I filled the condom with come, she clamped on me in the throes of her own orgasm. It was hard to believe that I was making love to this incredibly beautiful woman—the mother of my goddaughter. I was a little worried, though. Patricia had always been slim with that incredible rack on her chest, but she was looking too thin these days. I’d talk to her about it after we finished making love.

“Did you have fun back home?” Anna asked as we drove east out of Tenbrook toward her stop in Rockford.

“Yeah. Seemed like it went awfully fast, though. You?” I asked.

“Well, aside from the fact that my boyfriend only had time to make love to me once on the day he picked me up, it wasn’t too bad.”

“Did I neglect you, honey?”

“You did the best you could. I had to talk to Miss Sullivan about the schedule for Christmas. That first week is going to be a tough one with all the seniors at school, but the next two weeks will be pretty packed, too, I’ll bet. There’s already a buzz among the juniors about having an Attic Allure portrait done. They saw what they are like in your exhibition in June. I think Lisa has been promoting something, too.”

“I don’t want to mess around with a bunch of younger girls,” I said. “I feel guilty about the ones I’ve photographed already.”

“Well, only two of those posed nude, and they got exactly what they wanted. I’ll try to monitor the schedule so we don’t get jammed,” Anna said.

“Thank you for once again riding into the breach. I wish Christine were here to help pose them. I ... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t complain to you about not having Chris. You have always done a great job with helping to get people posed. It seems unfair that you should do that and manage the schedule and billing and orders as well,” I said.

“Honey, I know you miss Chris. And I know it’s not just for the photos. I wish growing up didn’t include heartbreaks. You know, after I broke up with you ... That’s still a painful memory for me. I caused it. I forced you to choose and you chose right. But I cried. I cried all that night and almost every time I saw you with Chris and Ronda. Getting back together with you ... becoming your girlfriend again ... making love to you ... It all is better than I could have imagined. But when I think of that day, it still breaks my heart. Don’t be ashamed of having a broken heart over Chris, just because you have other girlfriends who adore you,” she giggled.

I put my arm around her and hugged her to me, even though the road was rough and I was bouncing down it.

“Turn left at the next corner,” she instructed.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Did you want to take me to Wisconsin again?”

“I don’t think we need to go that far this time. I think it’s just another mile up here.”

We reached the entrance of another state park and drove in, finding a place where we didn’t think we’d be disturbed for a while. It was ‘after the season’ and few people were around. As soon as I parked, we tumbled out of the front seat and ran to the doors into the back. And soon thereafter, we were naked and making love.

“Hi. I’m Carrie Lockhart,” the dark-haired girl said in the hall outside class.

“Oh. Hi. I’m ... uh ... Nate Hart. English comp, right?”

“You do pay attention. Except, they want us to call it Writing and Rhetoric,” she said.

“Yeah, whatever. It’s basically learning to write like a collegian, right?” I said.

“I suppose so. Some of us have to write whole sentences. We can’t just show pretty pictures. This is Devon Young.”

I looked at the guy next to her and for the life of me couldn’t place him in any of my classes. I shook my head and held out my hand.

“Nate Hart,” I said.

“Your roommate,” he answered. His handshake was kind of soft.

“Oh! I think I only saw you once briefly when you first arrived. You kind of dove into your room and never came out,” I said. I did remember him showing up, but I’d never seen him in the room or in any of our classes.

“You were pretty scary,” Devon said.

“I guess I was still kind of banged up.”

“You were really out there, weren’t you? In the battle,” Carrie said. She seemed excited about that.

“I was on my way to the dormitory and stopped to take pictures. Some stupid cop decided I didn’t have a right to be there and started beating on me. It was nothing I did. I wasn’t part of the protest. Lost a good camera lens.”

“It was probably because of this,” she said, tapping the peace symbol I wore. I’d only taken it off to shower since Patricia gave it to me. I hardly remembered I was wearing it.

“Shit! That never even occurred to me. Another cop who helped me escape said that if I enter a war zone, I should expect to get shot at. I didn’t get it at the time.”

“Marked you as an enemy combatant,” Devon said.

“Damn!”

“We’re trying to start a chapter of SDS. We’d like you to join,” Carrie said.

I just looked at her. Then I looked at Devon. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open.

“You thought I was scary?!” I said.

I hadn’t really hung out that much with other students. It seemed my time was taken up with either study, studio, or Elizabeth. I agreed to go out for coffee with Carrie and Devon after my last class on Friday. We ended up at a café on State Street and since I had to eat dinner anyway, I decided to order my meal. Carrie and Devon did likewise.

“Don’t you usually have a girlfriend with you on Friday nights?” Carrie asked.

“Elizabeth. Her sister is home this weekend and she went home to celebrate her birthday. Um ... Elizabeth went home to celebrate her sister Valerie’s birthday,” I explained.

“Hah! Professor Dickens has you sorting out antecedents!” Carrie laughed.

“Yeah, well, it’s easy to get things confused. Probably didn’t make any difference this time,” I said.

“It did,” Devon nodded. “I thought it was your girlfriend’s birthday and was going to ask why you weren’t celebrating with her.”

“Okay. But I corrected myself. Let’s forget about it.” My French dip arrived with the rest of the food and I dunked it into the au jus and savored the first bite.

“So, we’ve got no real choices for president this year unless you’re a war hawk or a racist. We need to launch a huge protest and get people to say no to any of the three,” Carrie said.

“And vote for who?” I asked. “As if we could vote. I’m not going to trade in my anti-war philosophy for a racist. That’s stupid.”

“We campaign for Fred Halstead.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party,” Carrie said as if it solved everything.

“To quote my favorite poets, ‘But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.’ I’m probably a good ways left of center, but I’m not that far. Why don’t we just support Pat Paulsen? If you’re going to encourage protest votes, make them mean something. Vote for a man who admits he’s a comedian,” I said.

“We just want a little help. You say you’re a pacifist. You have to be concerned with this election,” Devon said.

“I am. As it stands today, Hubert Humphrey sucks. But he sucks less than Richard Nixon or George Wallace. Half the time, Nixon agrees with Wallace. The other half, he agrees with Johnson. Humphrey has finally come out in favor of stopping the bombing as a condition of peace talks. I think he wanted that all along, but Johnson has had him under his thumb,” I said.

“Okay. So, we’re all against the war and in favor of civil rights,” Carrie said. “That’s common ground, right? Will you help us?”

“What do you want me to do? I’m about as apolitical as you can get. I hate all the parties and all the candidates. And I’m just as impotent as every other nineteen-year-old in America. We. Have. No. Voice.”

“We can get a voice,” Carrie insisted. “We want everyone to contribute his or her strengths to the cause. What do you do? We’ll take your photography.”

“I take glamour photos of naked girls,” I said. “How can I help?”

I was getting a little fed up with the whole high-pressure sales job Carrie was pulling. If she showed me any kind of a plan to help end the war, I’d listen. But so far, all she’d come up with was to protest. As if that would do any good. She just looked at me with her mouth open and shook her head.

“You’re really an ass, Hart.” She gathered up her food and left, stopping at the cash register to pay and get a bag. Devon stayed and took a bite of his sandwich.

“You aren’t fleeing with Carrie?” I asked.

“Um ... No. I guess I was right the first time. You’re scarier than she is. I think it’s safer to be in your shadow.”

“Devon! Damn! I’m not scary. I’m such a dove, I can’t walk in the park because people throw breadcrumbs at me.”

“Yeah. I get that. I’m glad. But you’re the first person I’ve ever seen who got the best of Carrie. She usually just keeps brow-beating people until they nod and say yes,” Devon said.

“Well, let’s keep that between us. I kind of like her, but she could get on a guy’s nerves, you know?” I laughed.

“Oh, yeah. And don’t worry about me if you’re interested in her. I’m not. Um ... You really take glamour pictures of naked girls?” he asked.

“Yeah. But please understand, I don’t allow observers. I have four women who work with me and they are the only ones I allow in the studio during a shoot,” I said. Unless you’re one of my patrons, I added silently to myself.

“I wasn’t going to suggest that! I’m really not interested in seeing naked girls. I was going to ask if you did guys, too.”

I let that sink in before I responded. I don’t do guys, but I’d photographed them before. Which was he asking?

“I photograph just about anyone who wants to pay for a portrait. I try not to discriminate regarding who is sitting. But as one of my girlfriends pointed out to me, I have a preference for people with boobs.”

He laughed out loud at that.

“I wasn’t actually suggesting that you’d date me. But ... I could use some really good publicity shots. If you’re really good at glamour shots, you might be just what I need,” he said.

“Well, I have a style that seems to be popular with a lot of models and with a few agencies,” I said. “I call it Attic Allure. I have a studio with a gazillion props and costumes at hand. I try to set a scene for my models and then photograph them in a way that will make their glamour shot be something more than a pretty face. What do you need publicity for?”

“I’m a drag queen.”

I had an assignment for photo journalism to cover a controversial event in the city. We could choose just about anything. There was no shortage of controversy in Chicago. A strike was threatening to close down the docks. The mayor was holding a press conference to talk up the Humphrey-Muskie ticket. Cicero was dealing with a power outage that had been fluctuating for nearly a week. But what was I going to find that had an interesting photo angle?

As it happened, Cassie pulled me aside before our studio appointment Saturday morning. I had a new agency make an appointment for a model to get an Attic Allure sitting. It would be interesting to see how it developed.

“I talked to yo girlfriend Nancy other night,” Cassie started.

“Nancy isn’t my girlfriend,” I started to protest.

“She said she wished they was a photographer up on the roof of Harrison Technical High School this comin’ Thursday. They’d get some fine pictures,” Cassie continued.

That gave me pause. Nancy was passing on information from the hood to give me a shot at some photos. Harrison had been in the news a month ago when a thousand black students walked out of class in protest. It was pretty short-lived. I wondered if they were planning a strike again.

“Hmm. I wonder how I could get up on the roof of Harrison High,” I said. “I might have to do some scouting. Thursday, you say?”

“Well, Nancy was just laughing about how if a photographer only knew a fella named Hammer would be at 24th and California at six in the morning, he’d probably be able to follow him up to the roof.”

Harrison was a little far out of Hammer’s hood, but who knew what he was doing. Maybe he was just going to observe.

“Remind me to give my girlfriend Nancy a kiss,” I said.

“You could start by giving your assistant Cassie a kiss, don’t you think?”

“Cassie...?” She just turned her lips up to me and I kissed her. It was just a little kiss, but Cassie smiled.

“See? Tha’s a start.”

I ran downstairs to find Levi.

“Levi, I need a telephoto lens for the Nikon,” I said as soon as I found him in the repair shop.

“What do you need a telephoto for? Trying to look through the windows in the girls’ dormitory?” he laughed, as he worked on a large format bellows camera.

“Ah, no. That never occurred to me. I want something I can take pictures with that keeps me out of the range of a billy club,” I said. Levi’s head came up at that.

“I think I have something. Nikkor 200mm that came in last week. It’s an f/4 lens, but I’m told it functions best around f/5.6 to f/11. Closest focal range is ten feet, so you won’t be taking pictures of anyone beating on you. Not too heavy. How far away do you plan to be?”

“I expect I’ll be fifty to a hundred yards. Could be a little more, but I’ll want to get a decent focus on faces,” I said.

“Try this out. Bring it back when you’ve tried it and if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else. I’ve got a 300mm pro lens coming in, but I think it’s too much.”

“Thanks, Levi. Anna will be here next weekend. She’ll cover the payments and get the insurance straightened around,” I said. I ran back upstairs to get ready for my client.

I had Leora and Cassie as my assistants and Georgia Livingston as my client. She was tall and graceful—what I imagined the elves in Lord of the Rings to be like. I almost called her Galadriel. She was taller than I was and I looked up into her bright silver-blue eyes when we shook hands. Her straight and silky blonde hair hung nearly to her waist in back. She was angelic in her movement.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Georgia. Welcome to Attic Allure.”

“I’m charmed,” she drawled in a southern accent.

“I take it you are not from Chicago,” I laughed.

“No. Georgia is my stage name and is taken from my home in Savannah.”

“We have a release from you that allows us to use your photos in exchange for your sitting and initial photos. Are you here of your own free will, without being coerced? And can you tell me a little about what you would like?” I asked. I think both Leora and Cassie were staring open-mouthed at the beauty. I was disciplining myself not to.

“I have discussed it with my agent and would like a good range of portfolio shots. I agreed that this would be a good place to get them. The Attic Allure photos have made a bit of a stir in the business. You will note that the release specifically excludes nude photos, by which I mean any photo that shows my nipples or my pudenda. I will gladly pose nude as long as that privacy is maintained.”

“We can work with that. Do you have any fantasies that you see yourself in for a photo?”

“Yes, but you don’t have a horse.”

“Um ... What?”

“Lady Godiva.”

“Oh! A horse does make an appearance there. Perhaps the Peter and Gordon version?”

“There’s a thought! Let’s just start to work and see where it goes.”

It went everywhere I hoped it would. Georgia was enthusiastic about posing and reminded me a lot of Patricia. We started with portrait poses so I could see a range of her expressions. In addition to being beautiful, she had a face that could do just about anything. Leora and Cassie got right into the rhythm. They brought costumes and props that Georgia and I turned into scenes. And, of course, Georgia progressively wore less and less. As her clothes fell away, our touches increased. And it was not simply me touching her to put her in position, but she seemed just as free in touching me.

I smoothed her hair over her beautiful breasts, gliding my hands across the sensitive nipples. Georgia’s hands came up to my chest and found my nipples as she leaned forward and kissed me.

“If you happened to get a couple photos that showed more intimate parts of me—like what you are handling—I wouldn’t make you destroy them, as long as you were the only one who had a copy,” she whispered.

The next sequence had the veil of her hair parting just enough to expose her nipples to my lens.

“Beautiful,” I said, as we finished after close to three hours of work. “I know we have a dozen portfolio-worthy shots. Now, I want to take it one level further.”

“If you take it any further, you’ll need to get undressed, too,” Georgia giggled.

“Ahmmm ... Perhaps I wasn’t clear about no sex in the studio and about not dating models,” I said.

“I wasn’t really thinking about doing it in the studio,” she said. “And we don’t need to date. I’d just really like to fuck you once. Or twice. However many times you can get it up. But for now, we can just go with the level you were implying.”

“Oh, Georgia. You may be more than I can resist. For now, though, I’d like to put you on a pedestal.”

The girls brought our little pillar and pulled the black drape down. We lit it as tightly and dramatically as we could and I moved Georgia to it. Cassie rushed forward with a cushion for the pillar and I lifted Georgia up to sit on it. We used the classic pose of her leaning slightly forward, her hair falling across her breasts. Her far leg was stretched out to the ground while the near leg was bent and pulled up toward her chest. The arc of her bottom was absolutely delectable. I took a couple of pictures and went to put my arm around her shoulders and shift her slightly so I could get her looking straight at me.