Literary Erotica
Naked, a sexy story
by Tom Lassiter
She stood her back to me looking down at the desk, arms crossed and pressed to her chest, hands clasped to shoulders. I leaned to the camera’s viewfinder. There the long line of back, gentle curve of hips and bottom, the reach of legs down to a dressing gown lying at her feet. She looked back over her shoulder, and I saw in her expression what I had come that day to capture.
“What do you want me to do?” she said.
“Like we talked about, sit at your desk.”
She sat, arms still pressed to chest covering herself. I had the tripod at a right angle to the desk. Earlier I had considered a 28 mm wide-angle lens but chose a 50; it would capture her with the least distortion.
I looked up from the camera. “Comfortable?”
“Right.” She dismissed me with a backhand flip of her hand.
I leaned to the viewfinder. She held her back unnaturally straight, feet flat and unmoving on the wood floor, the keyboard and monitor before her. Nearby a window brimmed with that singular orange light that sometimes follows late afternoon rain in Miami, glossing all in its preternatural glow.
“Do you want your dressing gown?”
“You said the point was—”
“I want you comfortable.” Truthfully, I didn’t.
“Writing’s not comfortable. For me, anyway.”
“Or is it revealing yourself?”
“Same thing. Don’t you need a flash or something?”
“Light’s fine.”
She looked away, out the half-open window.
“How do you sit there when you’re stuck? Or thinking? When you’re wondering if a piece is whole?”
She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms about them, resting her feet on the seat of the scarred oak chair. She set her chin against her knees
“Look this way, at the camera.”
“What kind of camera is that? It looks old.”
“It is. And dependable.”
She looked down and set one hand on the keys and drew her fingertips along their length as if conjuring words. Just beneath the taut bicep of her extended left arm, the barest curve of a small breast. I snapped a frame, cranked the advance, and clicked off another.
“Look here, into the camera. Anything on the book from your publisher?”
She shook her head. “Just waiting for the cover photo.” She ran her fingers back along the keyboard. She seemed always thinking in deep reds, words scraped bleeding from bone and muscle. “And more rejections. Some new poems I sent out back awhile.”
“Do they still bother you, the rejections?”
Her hand left the keyboard, and she scratched her thigh just below the hip.
“Look this way.”
She turned back to me. “I’m getting goddamned goose bumps.”
“I’m sorry. Are you—?”
“Why are you always apologizing lately? It’s irritating.”
I reset the shutter speed, opened the aperture to f-4 to take in more light, and snapped two shots. “Life seems to irritate you.” I had known her ten years, first as an undergraduate in one of my classes, later as graduate student, and four years since then. “And quit fidgeting.”
She turned away again, looking to the window. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
I looked up from the viewfinder.
“I think you’re the hard, uncooked kernels left rattling about the bottom of a popcorn box.” I chuckled and put my eye back to the viewfinder.
“God that seems a long time ago.”
“The last kid picked at recess?”
She laughed. “My first published poem.”
I snapped a frame. “Disclaimer to My Future Lovers. Why apologize for yourself?”
“Warn, not apologize.”
“Of your shortcomings?”
She again dismissed me with a terse flip of hand. “Read it as you like.”
At that moment I would have shouldered her every disappointment, all the purple-yellow hurt, released her to the sky, watched her flutter free of gravity. But if I had, would she be who she is? “You’re incredibly talented. Just work hard and you—”
“Why do you always make me feel I need to work harder?”
She glanced at the keyboard, and I snapped a frame and looked up. “I said you’re very talented.” She looked at me. “The rest is hard work.”
“You never answered,” she said.
“What?”
“Do you find me pretty?” She raised her chin, smiling, pressing for an answer. She moved in the chair as if to turn toward me.
I bent to the viewfinder. Her playfulness stood in sharp focus. But I wanted something less guarded, raw. I snapped a frame, advanced the film, and took another shot. I stood upright and stretched my lower back.
8M by Tryste
“You’re getting old.”
“Easier to get women to take their clothes off.”
She laughed. “I hope you don’t mind shooting this, but I couldn’t sit naked for a stranger.”
“Should you for me?” I regretted suggesting she consider me in that way.
“Hmmmm.”
I put my eye to the viewfinder. “Older and less and less sure of everything. Even what to have for dinner. And forgetful?”
She laughed. “Remember the conference in Key West, the night we snuck into the old city cemetery, drank a whole bottle of tequila?”
I looked up. “I remember the worst hangover of my life.”
“You need another adventure. To get your bearings. Lately you’ve seemed—”
“Shush.”
She pursed her lips and cocked her head in a display of mock pouting.
I bent to the camera and my eye wandered across the image. I loosened the mounting screw and turned the camera on end for a vertical shot.
She looked toward the window. “Why won’t you answer me?”
“Look here, into the camera.”
Until that day I’d always felt an insulating distance behind the camera. I once shot a paramedic freeing a bloodied, dying boy from a crumpled car, and the enormity of the tragedy didn’t fall on me until I ran out of film and lowered the camera.
“Libby, look this way.”
She turned to the camera, laying her cheek against her knees. Naked, beautifully defiant to all convention, and yet so often she measures herself unfavorably against it.
“Do you like my body?”
I lifted my eye from the viewfinder.
“It’s a reasonable question, sitting here naked,” she said.
I lifted the camera and tripod, moved one step closer, checked the viewfinder and re-focused. I edged closer still until she nearly filled the frame. She looked down at the keyboard and tightened hold of her legs, the muscles in her left bicep flexing. She relaxed forward and turned to me.
“Well?” She raised her chin, pressing me again.
I snapped another frame. “Naked, the title of your book? A provocative photo for a provocative young poet?”
“And so this is art?” She laughed. “And will you write the dust jacket blurb, too?”
“Libby Bart grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, attended Brown—”
“You don’t find me desirable?”
“Recipient of numerous honors and accolades—”
“Well?”
“I find you troublesome.”
“I’m sure I heard you gasp a few minutes ago. I think you find me—”
“Be quiet.”
“Don’t tell me to be quiet. Why have you been so edgy lately?”
“I’m old enough to be your father.”
“Not quite.”
“Close enough.”
She smiled and tossed her head, posing the coquette as she turned in the chair toward me. “But you’re not my father.”
I put my eye to the viewfinder. “I’m your teacher.”
“Years ago.” She released hold of her legs. “Now you’re more, what? Editor? Mentor? Personal photographer?”
I raised one hand, motioning to her. “Turn, back the way you were.”
She laughed and jumped to her feet, and turning away, she draped her right arm back over her shoulder.
“Quit fooling around.” I looked up from the camera. “Sit the way you said you do when—”
“You’re angry. What’s wrong?”
I put my eye to the viewfinder. “We need to get this done before the light goes.”
She sat, drew up her legs and folded back into position. “Why do you use black and white?”
“A child of digital.”
“What?”
“It has a stark, a stripped down feel to it.”
“Me or the image?” She laughed, and I snapped a frame and then another.
“Same thing, aren’t they?”
She looked away and ran the fingers of her right hand through her short black hair and down the back of her neck.
She turned to the camera. “What if I said I have imagined you and I—?”
“I doubt it, and I wouldn’t anyway.”
I admit having imagined being with her. Not fucking her, just lying beside her, holding her. But it had felt as if I were feasting greedily upon her youth, a vampire desperate to sustain the memory of his first life.
“I think you’ve thought about it,” she said. “I’ve wondered if—”
“Shush. And please—”
“The longer we’ve known each other, the less you’ve talked about your wife.”
I stepped back from the camera.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Do you want to talk about her?”
“No.”
“Maybe talk about, what’s his name?”
“Over. He’s too damn serious, and I don’t want, whatever.”
There had been several lovers over the years but with the arrival of her last I had begun growing angry, resentful each time I thought of her with him. “Anyway, I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“You know. I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, that.” She smiled. “Not here, now?”
“You’re strung way too tight for that.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re about control, not spur of the moment.”
“And you’re—”
“Except there, at your desk writing. You’re wide open, unpredictable, reckless.”
At its best, her poetry fanned across the page like red paint flung from a brush against a white wall. And other times the words enticed like exuberant grapes bursting sweet and wet on the tongue. I put my eye to the viewfinder.
“Are you going to charge for the photo?” She laughed.
I clicked off a frame. “A huge sum.”
“How much?”
“A small credit.”
“Nothing more?” She giggled.
“Stop it.” The light was fading; I had perhaps no more than 10 minutes to get the shot.
She looked down at the keyboard. “Why did you stop writing?”
“Why do you always suggest I should work harder?”
“Ha, ha, ha. OK.”
I snapped two frames. “I teach. I take photos, very good ones. Thought about it for a career.”
“I think of you when I’m writing.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like you’re standing behind me, reading as I write.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Why can’t you be honest?”
I looked up. “I mean it. I’m flattered.”
“No, do you find me desirable?”
“Fuck, what’s with all the suggestive talk?”
She stared back, a tightening at the corners of her eyes.
I bent to the camera. “Now you seem like you’re straining to see something. Not a good look.”
“What’s wrong? You seem off.”
“You’re sure on.” I clicked a frame and advanced the film. “Maybe a bit too on.” I thought how I had teetered in recent months between desire for her and shame at my feelings, other times between joy at the rise of her talent and sadness at the twilight of mine.
I looked up from the camera. “I saw something before, just when you dropped the robe. What were you thinking, feeling at that moment?”
“You’re upset about something. I’ve seen it for awhile.”
“Now you read minds, too?” I bent to the viewfinder and brought the lense out of focus and back in, rechecking the sharpness of the image. “I just want you to show me—”
“What’s left? My—?”
“Never mind, screw it.” I stepped back from the camera.
She dropped her feet to the floor and sat upright, arms crossed against her chest. “What?”
“Can we just get this done?”
She looked at me, head cocked in puzzlement, a state she rarely revealed.
“Please?”
“Whatever.”
I stepped to the camera. “Pull your feet up again, like before.”
She did so. “Is it some matter with your wife?” She turned her head but kept her eyes fixed on the camera.
“Before, right when you dropped the robe. What were you feeling at that moment? Not thin enough, pretty enough? Not desirable?”
She began to speak but paused. She wrapped her arms about her legs and set her chin on her knees. “I’m not a child. I see how you look at me.”
“I think you’re scared sometimes you’re not good enough.” She seemed to be peering through the lens, past the camera at me. “Every time you write something special, you worry it will be the last.”
“What the hell is this about?” She looked away, again dismissing me with a flip of her hand.
“At night alone, do you worry your talent will slip away?”
She turned to me. “You never wrote a damn thing worth reading.”
I didn’t come that day to capture her anger, or for that matter her earlier charm or playfulness or provocations. I wanted that moment at the start when the robe slipped away and her defiance and vulnerability teetered together in her eyes.
She raised her left arm and flipped me off. I snapped a frame and another.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not deserving, maybe you’ll never hear yes again.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “And you’re dancing around something.” A spasm rippled through the muscles of her leg, and she lowered her left arm, draping it over the arm of the chair.
“You worry your success is a fluke. Is that direct enough?”
“Why wouldn’t you answer before?” Despite the angry tone, her eyes began to cloud. She seemed about to cry but I wanted her to hold the emotion within. I snapped a frame. She opened her mouth to speak but turned and looked to the window, her other arm dropping away.
“Look at me. Libby, look at me.”
She turned to the camera. “Are you angry at me, or yourself?” She raised her chin.
I snapped two frames. “I know what you fear. You wonder who you’ll be when you can’t be what you’ve always thought yourself to be, a writer.”
Her chin rose further and the line of her back straightened. “I know who I am. What I am.” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her drawn up legs. “I’m honest, for one thing.”
I set the aperture one f-stop short of wide open to capture every lumen of her natural light and erase all depth of field. So that nothing behind or before her remained in focus, only her in that moment.
She held the camera’s hard stare. “Are you—?”
“Shush.” I took the shot and clicked off two more, adjusting shutter speed and f-stop a notch up and down for each to bracket the first shot, hoping for one spot-on exposure. Alone at the keyboard, for a few blinks of a lash, what I had come to capture.
“You’re falling for me, aren’t you?”
I stepped away from the camera feeling as if I’d just run up the four flights to her apartment. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and rested her chin on her shoulder. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
I turned my head from side to side trying to push the tension from my neck. “That’s what?”
She looked down where the dressing gown lay. “Say it.”
“How sure I am of your talent? How brave you are?”
She looked up. “You’re afraid to say it.”
“How much I love your sparse, naked poetry?”
She looked away, toward the window.
I went to her side and ran my fingers through her hair. “That I love how you question your talent but always press ahead?”
She pressed her head against my hand. “You’re afraid, and so am I.”
I moved my hand to the back of the chair and looked down at the keyboard. “You’re the most fearless, honest person I know. And too young to sound so old.”
She brushed the fingertips of one hand along the length of the keys. Outside the light had softened and even more so in her writing room.
She looked up at me. “You push me at things that scare me. I’m brave because you’re there to catch me. I can’t imagine losing that, losing you.”
“Hey, I’m sorry about pushing you like that, I just got frustrated and wanted—”
She looked up. “To break me? As if sitting here naked isn’t vulnerable enough?”
“I love how your vulnerability and defiance seesaw, balanced on some razor thin fulcrum, honesty, I think.”
“And what is it I’ve seen teetering in your eyes lately?” Again she seemed near tears and sat back, her arms dropping to her lap. “It’s putting distance between us.”
I looked away. “I don’t know what—”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course, you know how fond I am of you.” I mussed her hair, but she pulled back, rejecting my touch.
“Who the fuck is talking about fond?”
“I’d never hurt you.”
She drew back her shoulders. “Lying to me, that doesn’t hurt me?”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“A truth can become a lie if you have to conceal it, afraid to speak it.”
I looked to the window. Soon the light would drain from the room. I thought to turn on the lamp atop her desk, to do anything but talk more. I reached for the lamp, but she grabbed my wrist and squeezed. “I trust you. I give you the most intimate thing I have; I bare my imagination to you. Why can’t you trust me with the truth?”
I pulled free and moved to the window. I raised it further, and a light breeze cooled by the earlier rain came in. Below the early evening traffic crawled along Biscayne Boulevard through the thinning light.
“Turn around, look at me,” she said.
Below a pair of motorbikes reared and leapt into a high pitched, whining dance in and out of traffic. “It’s like you start writing a story in your head. And you try it this way and that way and you know it’s going nowhere. A dead end but you can’t quit trying to make it work.”
“Please, come here,” she said.
“Are you pretty? What a colorless word for what I see when I look at you.”
“Come here.”
“Sometimes it feels so real, so possible, and I imagine telling you.” I turned from the window and looked at her. “I’ve never been able to imagine yes. Only how I’d lose you if I spoke, hurt you, and I can’t—”
She held out her hand. “Come here.”
“A stupid infatuation, I know.”
“Infatuation?” She tossed her head and exhaled sharply. “Ha! I’d hate to try and make that story fly.” She laughed.
“Not confessional enough, brave enough for your standards?”
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms about her legs. “Not bleeding enough.”
“Good enough to make you smile again.” I walked to her.
She took my hand. “I’m sorry but I don’t—”
I put a finger to her lips. “Thank you.”
I looked back at the camera, and she began laughing and poked me in the leg. “All my flaunting today, I feel like an idiot.”
“You never fail to surprise.”
“You never answer questions directly.” In a single motion she took my hand and flipped it back at me. “Naked? Jesus fucking Christ, you can get me to do anything.”
“Forget all this?”
“Forget someone fell in love with me?” She smiled. “What kind of poet would I be?”
I looked back at the camera and went to it. “Not the one I know.” I set the self timer and returned to her, the sound of the spring drive unwinding in the still air.
She looked down at the dressing gown lying on the floor and began twisting a strand of her hair. She looked up at me. “No way am I bending down to get that.”
I took up the garment and held it open. She paused and smiled and stood, and I covered her. She touched my face, and we turned to the camera as the shutter fluttered a final time, capturing us as we teetered between our need and desire, the real and imagined, holding fast to what we most feared losing.
Originally published February 2011