For readers who are confused by these stories, there is now a post with the title “Bridge.” It explains what this is, gives context and more, not just orientation but a deeper glimpse into the main and supporting characters.
Sorry for the many typos and other proofreading errors.
Mitchell thought of reading his writing aloud for our friends- about our sex- but chickened out, couldn’t go through with it. They were over for dinner and stayed.
Yesterday he said he had a new idea for photographing me going down on him. He’d sit on the side of the bed facing the window. This was new.
“What do you think?” he asked. “If you ever want to try..”
“I could do it now,” I said.
“Really?”
“Or do you want to wait for another time?”
We sat close, reading each other’s faces, in the bedroom, by the window, where the idea had struck Mitchell.
“Actually, this is perfect; the light is really good,” he said.
Late afternoon, deep but fading sunlight, a last glow about to burn off. We’d have to start immediately before that was gone.
Mitchell got his camera and prepared it. He wanted to make an adjustment. I came over to get ready.
“I’m just fixing this,” he said.
“Is there a problem?”
“No.” He says I always overreact- in this case it was because I didn’t know how the camera works.
He explained he wanted to choose the setting for taking pictures without stopping. By selecting that, he could press the button on top (shutter release) just once and the camera would keep shooting, capture many more images than if he had to press the button for each individually. A lot would come per second, in quick sequence, like a movie though stills.
“I almost forgot.” To change that setting. He was glad he’d remembered. He wanted a lot of photos.
Fiddling with a “function ring”- he said it was called- and reading the display menu. He talked to me to hold my interest, ensure that I not drift away- I wasn’t impatient but anyone might start thinking of other things if the delay lasted too long. Unable to find the function in a hurry he kept talking, said he’d forgotten the name of the one he wanted. “It’s slipped my mind.” Just at the wrong moment. I saw the frustration and some embarrassment on his face. He did an online search for the right word, typed, “single shot vs..” hoping the clue would bring an answer and it did. “Continuous shooting” was it. Then he could easily set the camera to do that.
Sitting on the side of the bed he could see through the window some buildings outside, close ones, but saw that none had a view of him. The windows of them all were just off to the side. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure they couldn’t see me. I was closer to the window (ours) and at a different angle to it than him.
I was ninety degrees to him rather than facing so I wouldn’t be in shadow but in the sun. The back lighting gave a halo effect, fiery contour lines, and the light that filtered around our shapes gave a muted color and made even the hardest surfaces look powdery.
He was chiefly interested in photographing my mouth up close and considered whether to keep the lens at wide angle or zoom in (still talking, still setting up the camera, postponing our contact). The telephoto setting would get closer, but, he said, what mattered more than that was focus. I understood (he didn’t have to say) he wanted to be sure it was on his penis and my lips, face. The automatic focus of the camera sometimes makes mistakes. He didn’t explain this now but had before. If it selected instead the background, the buildings outside our apartment, background beyond the window, would be clear but my head and his shaft blurred. Focus error would be “a disaster,” he said. What a waste, he thought. He wants the perfect picture, pictures.
And no more delays, wanted to shoot while the room remained light. Already the sunset was just a glimmer you saw flicking on the walls. If that finished we’d have to wait for another day, and what if there was rain? He really wanted it now. He was big already from just thinking about it, looking forward, without my even having touched him yet. He’d done this before and was excited, knew how good it was. Taking pictures was a real thrill for him.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked, worried because unlike him I wasn’t on the soft bed as usual but beside it on the floor, my knees against the hard wood.
I told him I was, and really was fine.
“That’s right. You’re light, flexible.” He’s always surprised, delighted at our different body types. He’s a western man, heavy. I’m an Asian woman. Different.
“So light,” he said and petted my head, looking at the glow of sun. He was thinking and looking at me like a photographer as well as husband. As a painter, I understand the joy of visual art and didn’t mind his petting my hair and appraising me as a subject, an object- not a thing, inanimate, though; I would soon be in motion.
“Light but a handful,” he said, his hand coming to rest on the curve of my breast poking between the glimmer from the window and shadow, brilliant last sun and deep dark of the bedroom, where everything looked powdery.
Appraising me.
“Tight,” he said, “but loose.”
He knows his talk makes me feel good, but not that yours does too.
He’d told his visiting friends he likes writing, is more creative than he seems on the job, and they’d asked him to read some of his journal and a sex passage was what he first came to.
His asking if I was comfortable and his decision not to read his writing about our sex to those friends friends reflect guilt he feels over using me the way he sometimes does. He thinks photographing me the way he does is wrong somehow even though he likes it. I told him it’s not, I’m really fine with it because this is art he’s making- I understand- but he still gets a bad conscience about pointing his camera at me then- but does it anyway. Maybe the sense that it’s wrong turns him on. Lol.
Anyway, he says he sometimes feels a little remorse afterward, a “hangover,” he calls it. I wonder if a rapist does too (though Mitchell isn’t one!)
As you know, we’ve been talking about rape and DV (domestic violence), a friend of mine who was raped and one of his who suffered “spectacular DV.”
As to his showing the images to anyone, I don’t worry. He is careful to protect my privacy and his own. The photographs of me going down on him are so close up you don’t see enough of my face to identify me, as in the one I showed you. Did you like it? I didn’t tell Mitchell I sent that, so I feel a little in the wrong too. Maybe that turns me on!
Are you going to write to him about Jeff? Please!
I was thinking that in the old silent movies about a “damsel in distress” where the woman is tied by a stereotype villain to train tracks the real suggestion is rape but they couldn’t show that. Isn’t the oncoming locomotive the same in power and speed as a charging erection?
My friend told me that the rapist mocked her English pronunciation, repeating “Please! Please!” after her and laughing. He was a real villain, a classic character, though I think he didn’t have a mustache to twirl as he toyed with her, relished her fear and his power over her.
But I consent and like you. My “please” has a different meaning.
You don’t even have to ask about Jeff, just say something about the description he wrote (which he still hasn’t shown me; can you?) or that’s he’s right, you also like Japanese women. Maybe he’ll send you the wife website. I sensed he wanted to and that he’s interested in your opinion of what he wrote. Every creator wants a reaction. That’s why he thought of reading it to his friends the other night- but that would have been too much; they were right there in the room.