herself naked, but she surprised me-that was exactly what she did.
She peeled off her stockings, gave me a smile, then stepped out of her panties. Then she bunched them up and tossed them carelessly at my face.
Just in case she thought that gesture was but a prelude to a screw, I made a point of quickly disabusing her. I turned off the air conditioner, pulled down a white background shade, placed her in front of it, then poured hot light on her-lots-of it-to make her sweat. I rolled up my big 8 x 10 Sinar to intimidate her. Then I grabbed my motor-driven Leica, stood before her and prayed for courage.
'Well?' she asked, with the same taunting smile she'd showed me in the morning. I was annoyed, but I had to admire her. Even standing naked, she had incredible poise.
'Let's see you move,' I said.
'Let's see you shoot.'
'I'll shoot when I'm ready to shoot. Do your stuff. Show me who you are.' She placed her hand on her hip and struck a pose.
'Phony,' I said. 'Try something else.'
She spread her legs, then wrapped her arms about herself as if to protect her breasts. I circled her, shook my head.
'I'm not used to this,' she said.
'Forget you're nude. I'm only looking at your face.'
'Can I sit down?'
'Not yet. Show me something real.' 'I don't know what you want exactly.'
'Speak to me with your body, Kimberly. Say: Here I am, with nothing to hide.'
She tried another stance, then shook her head.
'I can't do it. Help me, Geoffrey. Please.'
'You said you were an actress.' 'I am an actress!'
'Then take direction.'
'I can't!'
'What you're saying is you want to control the session, and if you can't control it, you aren't willing to work.'
When she looked to me again her expression was helpless.
'Okay,' she said.
'I give you control.'
'You're sure?'
She nodded. I raised my Leica. And then I started ordering her around.
'Stand straight. Arms at your side.' Whap! Whap! 'Now put your hands behind your head.' Whap! 'Wider. Now spread your legs. No! Too much. There-stay like that.' Whap! Whap! Whap! Six shots! A sixth of a roll! I'd started. At last!
'What's with all this physical-obedience crap?' she asked.
'I don't understand what you're doing at all.'
'Shut up! You don't have to understand. Now get down on the floor.'
She hesitated. Whap! 'You heard me-I want you down.' She got down.
'Now look up.' Whap! 'That's it, but not so angry. Yes. That's better.' Whap! Whap! Whap! Eleven shots! 'See, Kimberly our face looks different now.'
'Really? How?'
'Not so haughty, not so proud. You're loosening up. And there's lots more you're going to do for me.' I lowered the camera. 'Unless, of course, you want to quit.
' She looked outraged. 'I'm not a quitter.'
'You can always leave, you know. Any time.'
'No way,' she said.
'I'm seeing this through.'
'Good,' I said, shooting directly down.
'I like a girl who can stick it out. Now on your belly. That's right.'
Whap! Whap! Whap! Fourteen shots! 'Now writhe, and then look back at me… She writhed. I stood astride her continuing all the while to shoot. I felt like an animal trainer standing over a tigress. She was recalcitrant; my camera was my whip.
For a good twenty minutes I ordered her around. Do this. Do that. All the time firing away. Sweat began to nse on her body; it frosted her back, gave a sheen to her flesh. A heady aroma started to come off her too, perspiration mixed with her perfume. I liked it. The smell excited me. But I tried hard not to let on. For all my excitement I continued to treat her like a thing, acting bored with her, preoccupied with problems of technique.
I wanted, you see, to take her through a full spectrum of emotions, to get to know her face when she was cross, petulant, angry, unnerved. If there really was something in her, I wanted to bring it out. And I wanted to punish her too for her remark about my 'being afraid,' humiliate her, make her surrender and give up. Then, even if she did decide to quit on me, I could throw her panties back in her face and laugh as she stalked out.
She was tough. She resisted. And the more I pushed her, the more defiant she became.
'Used to being treated like this?' She grinned.
'Like what?'
'A piece of meat.'
'Oh, that.' She laughed.
'I've been through worse in acting class.'
'So maybe you like it.'
'So maybe I do.' She shrugged.
'That's okay,' I said.
'I can use that too.'
'Sure. Use it. Use everything. That's what I'm paying you for.'
I stood back from her, amazed: she actually thought I was in her employ.
'Think you can afford a session with me?'
'Is it really so hard to take a girl's picture?' she asked.
'The way you act, you'd think it was torture.'
I stopped then, ostensibly to reload, but really to gasp at what she'd said. Because I was shooting her, for twenty minutes I'd been taking pictures of her face. And I hadn't even thought about the implications of that; I'd been so angry, so wrapped up in my anger at her taunts, I'd banged away at her, and my hands hadn't even shaken. So-she'd won. She'd tricked me into a portrait session, forced me into breaking through my block. All the time I thought I'd been controlling her she'd been controlling me.
Suddenly I wasn't angry anymore. How could I be? She'd done what no shrink had been able to do: freed me, temporarily at least, from my three-year block against photographing the human face.
When I resumed shooting I was a lot less hostile, and she must have picked up on that, because she finally started to give me something back. It wasn't much. I burned a lot of film. But it was a beginning, a glimpse at who she was.
'At last,' I told her, 'you've dropped the mask. Get dressed and take a break.@' 'Then what?'
'We're going out. We're about at the point where we begin.
I burned two more rolls out on the street, posing her against pedestrian crowds, then telling her to stand sluttish but proud against a harshly sun-lit graffiti-scrawled brick wall. I liked the way she raised her arm to shield her eyes from the sun. Finally, I thought, we're getting somewhere. For one thing, she was cooling down.
'You say you're an actress. What have you done?' I asked.
'A few workshops. Some soap operas. Walk-ons mostly, but I've been up for a couple of decent parts.'
'How do you make a living?'
'I model a little. Waitress sometimes too.'
'You really want to make it, don't you?'
'Yes, I really do.'
