Glamour: A True Story from the Seventies

By Lisabet Sarai

I wonder, sometimes, if I imagined it all. But then there's the evidence: the photographs, bound in a loose leaf notebook with my name in gold ink on the cover. Each print is lovingly mounted on heavy paper of a color that compliments its hues. There are no captions; these pictures speak for themselves.

My heart quickens when I leaf through the album. The woman in these photos is glamorous, sophisticated, utterly desirable. She gazes at the camera from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Her scarlet-painted lips are parted. Her expressions are languid, sensual, mysterious. She does not smile. She is dressed as though for a nightclub: patent-leather high heels, a red satin jumpsuit that highlights her curves, a black silk blouse dusted with sequins, a stretchy jersey showing off her cleavage.

In the images further on, she is nude. She reclines on burgundy velvet, the curve from hip to shoulder simple and perfect. She kneels on a window seat, illumined by winter sun, hands clasped behind her head, face turned away from the camera. The arch of her back, the swell of her elevated breasts, the graceful line of her neck flowing downward from her upswept hair: I cannot look for long at this particular image without tears gathering.

The photos remind me of who I was: young, experimental, hungry and open. At the same time, I have to smile, recalling that in those days I never wore make-up, and was more likely to be shod in sandals than stiletto heels. The woman in the album is an artistic creation, a work of imagination and passion. These photos grew out of an intimate collaboration between my younger self and a man with remarkable vision.

His name was Ron. We were introduced by my lover, Pavel, who always enjoyed tempting me and egging me on to outrageous adventures. Pavel told me that Ron enjoyed photographing women in sexy clothes. Apparently, Ron had suffered a heart attack a few years earlier, and had to live a quiet life. Pavel implied that Ron's hobby was a surrogate for sexual activity made impossible by his health.

I was intrigued, as Pavel knew I would be. Motivated equally by perverse curiosity and sympathy, I agreed to a photo session with his friend. At ten A.M on a February Saturday, I showed up at Ron's apartment, nervous and excited.

I guess I was expecting someone frail and infirm. Ron was a small, trim man with graying hair and a mustache, who seemed perfectly healthy to me. His quiet manner and obvious intelligence won me over immediately.

"Let's start with make-up," he said with a quirky smile. From his bedroom, he retrieved a cosmetic kit worthy of a movie star. It didn't strike me as odd, at the time. Already I was caught in a kind of sensual trance, accepting whatever happened.

He tied a sheet over my blouse and jeans and set to work. His fingers were deft and gentle. It felt perfectly natural to have him touching me. For half an hour he labored over me with lipstick and eyeliner, blush and mascara, implements and products that I couldn't even name. He hummed to himself as he worked. I tried to remain still, a canvas for his art. It started then, my delicious transformation into a passive object of desire. I did not understand at the time why I found his attentions so arousing. My nipples were taut under my clothes, and my sex ached. Yet I felt no urgency.

I surrendered myself to him, gave him my face and my body to fashion into his image of beauty. I basked in the light of his focused attention. I wanted only to be worthy of his efforts.

I know now that this need for surrender is something fundamental to my nature. I require mastery, crave discipline, find my deepest satisfaction in submission. Then, I was innocent. And Ron was no master, not in the sense that I now understand. Nevertheless, I reacted instinctively, eager to bend myself to his will.

At last he put down his pencils and brushes and brought me a mirror. "What do you think?," he asked, clearly pleased himself.

A shock ran through me as I gazed at the face reflected back at me. My face, my features, and yet strangely altered and enhanced. My brows arched elegantly over dark-fringed eyes that seemed emerald rather than their usual dull hazel. My lips were fuller, my cheekbones higher. My whole countenance had a sculpted quality that made me think of dusky marble.

I was speechless. Ron just grinned. "Costumes, now," he said. I had brought a few things of my own, but he had an entire closet of slinky, suggestive garments." They belonged to my old girlfriend," he told me then, and I believed him. I wonder, now, whether this was the whole story. But what does it matter?

He had jewelry, too, heavy gold-colored chains, long strands of faux pearls, hoop earrings and bangles. I felt paralyzed, incapable of choice. "Try on the red jumpsuit," he suggested, "while I get the camera and lights set up."

The jumpsuit fit perfectly, just tight enough. All of the costumes fit. I was not surprised by this; I accepted it all, moving serenely through the day in total trust.

Back in living room, Ron posed me. Hand on my hip, my face in profile. Curled in an armchair with my ankles crossed. Back to camera, spine arched, looking over my shoulder. Sometimes he would give verbal directions. Often he would come over, adjust my limbs, raise my chin a bit to catch the light. The shutter clicked and the film whirred, again and again.

His face was flushed and his breathing was ragged; clearly he was excited. However, he never deviated from his calm, professional manner. His fingers never brushed the nipples that poked eagerly through the spandex top. Unbuttoning the silk blouse so that it could fall open slightly, he may have glanced into the shadows that opening revealed, but that was all.

I found his manner simultaneously frustrating and comforting. I wanted more. He progressed to increasingly provocative poses. I opened myself to his lens.

When he asked me whether I would model naked, it was simply the next logical step. I felt no embarrassment as I stripped in front of him, only exultation. I saw my desirability mirrored in his eyes.

Morning flowed into afternoon. The session took on an endless, dream-like quality. Our interactions seemed a stately kind of dance. The time between successive poses lengthened. He would position me and require me to be still. Then he would gaze at me for long minutes before finally triggering the shutter. My muscles cramped and goosebumps peppered my bare skin, but I didn't mind. We were lost together in a convergence of fantasy.

Finally, I noticed how tired he looked. His complexion was ashen, and his breathing was shallow. "Let's stop, Ron," I invited him. "You need a rest."

I donned the silk kimono he handed me. We sat at his kitchen table, drinking Portuguese rosé and talking as though we had known each other for years. But the spell was still on us; in the midst of conversation he would suddenly fall silent, staring at me. I would blush and then straighten my back proudly, allowing the robe to fall open. After a few minutes, we'd smile sheepishly and go back to our discussion.

Of course we made love. It was a natural extension of intimacy we had already shared. Yet in a sense, it was an anti-climax. I was preoccupied, worried silly that he might collapse in my arms. And Ron - Ron was grateful in a way that made me understand how great a gift he had given me. A gift much finer than the seething orgasm he wrung from me with his gentle fingers and nimble tongue.

I kissed Ron goodbye in the early winter dusk and headed home. I never saw him again. About a week later, Pavel dropped by my place and handed me a package. Inside I found the album.

"Did you look at them?" I asked my lover. He grinned in that mischievous way of his and nodded. Then he took me in his arms and wrestled me to the carpet. He was a wild one, Pavel was.

I don't show these photographs to many people. When I do, reactions vary. My husband simply shrugged. "Nice," he said, "but they don't look at all like you." My fundamentalist mother claimed that they were the work of the Devil. My feminist brother was concerned about my being a sex object.

Occasionally, though, someone will leaf through the pages and see the truth. They'll see my parted lips, my lowered gaze, and understand that I was enchanted that day, held still and willing as a stranger molded me into his ideal of beauty. Totally open, free of fear, surrendered to the moment with a purity that I've been seeking ever since.