Five Things I Love About Vegas

K D Grace

I never thought I’d like Vegas. I expected to hate the place, and I totally fell in love. The March before I wrote Fulfilling the Contract, I left rainy, grey England for five glorious days in the desert sunshine and Vegas lights specifically to dream and scheme and get inspired for what would become the second novel in The Mount series, which The Initiation of Ms Hollyinadvertently inspired a few years before. During that time, I fell even more in love with the city and the desert that surrounds it. So what I’d like to do is share with you five things that totally intrigue me about Las Vegas.

Contrast 

Las Vegas juts up out of the Mojave Desert like so many gigantic glass and concrete erections. It's just so brazen, sky scrapers and lights and swimming pools in the most desolate place one can imagine all surrounded by high mountains and desert. It has OTT written all over it. Bright lights and decadence are all thrust up right smack dab in the middle of exquisite emptiness.  

Views

Vegas and the surrounding area is a visual feast second to none. From my hotel room on the 22^ndfloor of the Elara, I could see mountains and desert beyond the compact city. I never knew there were so many shades of kaki and gold and beige all hemmed in by the blue of the mountains. And then there were the Vegas lights. All night long, there’s always a riot of colour and sparkle, glass and steel, neon and fountains. A simple walk on the Strip – even in daylight is a people-watcher’s paradise. I never wanted to blink, never wanted to look away, and often found myself wishing my vision was 360 degrees. 

Anonymity 

As an introvert, you’d think Vegas would be the last place I’d want to hang out, but the thing about Vegas is that it’s a place where everyone is friendly and yet everyone is anonymous. One of the things I loved most was walking the streets amid the crowd and feeling exactly like one of the voyeurs I planned to write about in FTC. Because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, it was easy to be anonymous in a crowd of people who were all anonymous, which leads me to my next observation. 

Recreation

When I say recreation, I don’t mean gambling, swimming, hooking up. Yes all of those things are happening. It’s all happening in Vegas. What I mean is more RE-creation, because in Vegas there’s a sense that anyone can be whoever they want to be for the time they’re playing tourist, and no one, no matter how bizarre, seems out of place. There’s something almost magical about being able to go somewhere and be someone else for a few days. For a writer, being able to go someplace and watch everyone being someone else and wonder who they are when they’re not in Vegas is like a gift from the Muse.

The Feeling of Permission Granted

Strangely, though prostitution is legal in the state of Nevada, it’s not in the city of Vegas, and yet Vegas feels, at its very core, like a city waiting to give permission for almost anything. I suppose to some degree any time one goes on holiday and does the touristy-thing, one is set apart, out of one’s own context, able to act differently, feel differently, breathe differently. But Vegas has with it that extra adrenaline boost of permission. Go ahead, be naughty, gamble, drink, have sex with strangers, dance naked in the fountains, and in the morning, no one will be the wiser. At the core of the city, the Strip, the casinos, the hotels, there’s a libertine feeling, and yet one only has to walk a few blocks in any direction to discover ordinary Las Vegans simply going on with their lives. 

All of those feelings, those observations, those experiences helped to inspire and shape Fulfilling the Contractand made the voyeuristic and BDSM play feel somehow a little more set a part to me, a little more secretive and naughty, and of course, outrageously fun.

Fulfilling the ContractBlurb:

Limo driver, NICK CHASE’s bad night gets worse when he picks up TANYA POVIC at a bar only to discover the explosive sex they share lands her in breach of her very strange contract. Blaming himself that Tanya will lose the large completion bonus earmarked for her mother’s surgery, Nick negotiates with her boss, the tough and mysterious ELSA CRANE, to allow him to fulfill Tanya’s contract and secure her bonus. 

          

Elsa runs Mount Vegas, which offers voyeuristic pleasures for a price. Nick’s job, with Elsa and her quirky team, is to give clients something worth watching through the plate glass windows of Vegas’s luxury hotels and beyond. The learning curve is steep and kinky. As Nick and Elsa’s relationship sizzles and ignites more than hotel room rendezvouses are exposed. In this sequel to The Initiation of Ms Holly things get positively dangerous as Rita Holly and her team are called in from London to lend a helping hand. Bets are being placed. Will Nick fulfill the contract? Will he and Elsa take the gamble? And will they find a way to win at the high stakes, double or nothing, game of hearts?   

Fulfilling the ContractExcerpt:

‘Surely you can give Tanya one more chance,’ Nick said. ‘And really, it was my fault. I’d had a bad day and I wasn’t on my best behaviour.’

Elsa tossed the headset back onto the dressing table and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Mr Chase, unless you want to fulfil Tanya’s contract for her, this conversation is over. It’s been a long day, and I’ve had enough. Pagan will escort the two of you back downstairs and since Tanya no longer works for me, I don’t care if you fuck her brains out. Now if you’d –’

‘Alright,’ Nick interrupted. ‘I will.’

Suddenly all eyes were on him. ‘Tell me what to do and I’ll fulfil the contract for her.

After all, it’s my fault she’s in breach.’

Tanya gave a little yelp that sounded like a kitten in distress and Elsa laughed out loud. ‘Mr Chase, you don’t even know what Tanya’s contract involves.’

‘I assume it has something to do with what’s going on in room 2031. It’s not prostitution is it?’

‘No! No, is not prostitution,’ Tanya said, the excitement nearly vibration through her voice. ‘Is nothing like that.’

‘Well actually it’s something like that,’ Elsa corrected. ‘My people get paid for sex.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Nick said.’

She nodded him over to one of the scopes set up at the bedroom window. When he balked, she nodded again. ‘Go ahead; check out what’s going on in room 2031.’

Nick nearly knocked the scope out of focus at his first view of the naked ass of a man pistoning his cock into a woman bent over a big bed. Her head was buried between the legs of another woman, who was pinching her own nipples for all she was worth and writhing beneath the serious tongue action.

‘Then they are prostitutes.’ Nick’s voice was suddenly a whisper, as though he feared he might disturb the people he viewed through the scope.

‘No.’ Elsa leaned close to him as though she could see over his shoulder. ‘They all work for me, and they get paid a lot of money to have sex with each other while someone else watches.’

With difficulty, Nick took his eyes off what was going on in the scope. He suddenly felt dizzy. ‘Let me get this straight, these people –’ he nodded around the room ‘– All of these people and those –’ he pointed to the scope ‘—have sex with each other and people pay money to watch.’

Elsa nodded ‘A lot of money.’

‘And that’s what Tanya was doing? That’s what the contract’s about, having sex and letting people watch?’

‘That’s what the contract’s about,’ Elsa said. With a smirk, she pulled Tanya’s red panties out of Nick’s pocket where he’d forgotten he’d stuffed after he’d picked them up from the parking lot at the Mango. She handed them back to Tanya and replaced them with a black business card, briskly patting his pocket as she did so. ‘I know how much you loath your job, Mr Chase, and I can almost guarantee you’d find what Tanya does a lot more satisfying. But –’ she ran a hand down and gave his crotch a quick grope ‘– It takes some serious balls.’

He elbowed her away and shoved past Tanya and Pagan. ‘You people are all crazy if you think I would … if you think I might …’

Elsa offered him a smile that he felt, much to his discomfort, right down between his legs. Then she lifted an eyebrow and gave a shrug that made the dark gloss of her hair shimmer in the subdued lighting. ‘You asked.’

Kiss, Suspended, Witnessed ( #BDSM #Rope #Suspension )

by Annabeth Leong

I once watched a woman get tied up for a low suspension. Her lover pulled her in close, stripped her slowly, and led her to lie facedown under the frame. Softly, touching her with the rope as gently as he did with his fingers, he tied her hands, feet, torso, hips. Then he lifted her, just a little, so she hung, spread-eagled, only a few inches off the ground.

He settled below her, still fully clothed, and began to make her swing, using light pushes on her shoulders or her hips. As she swung, her body brushed against his. He reached up sometimes to tease her nipples or caress her side. He lifted his head to kiss her, then pushed her away to swing again.

It was one of the most erotic scenes I’ve ever witnessed, intimate rather than virtuosic, executed with skill but not for skill’s sake. I still think sometimes about that gentle, sexy swinging, the low light, the music of the party.

I’ve had only one experience with being suspended myself. Suspension wasn’t something I particularly sought out. I’d heard for such a long time about “flying” on the ropes, though, that when I found myself at a bondage party with a woman I trusted to hoist me up that way, I agreed to give it a shot.

We had only just started dating, and I was so hungry for her touch that the main thing I remember was the way I shivered every time her fingers brushed me. I stripped down to a camisole and tights, and she gradually assembled a variety of harnesses (which are used to distribute weight more evenly).

The actual experience of being suspended, however, was anticlimactic for me. She spun me around a bit—which I didn’t like for the same reason I don’t like the tilt-a-whirl. She tried hanging me upside down for a little while, but pretty much as soon as the blood rushed to my head I wanted to come down.

I might have different feelings if pain had been involved in that scene. If the idea of it had been to suspend me like a fly in a spider’s web and hit me with stinging evil sticks while I well and surely couldn’t get away, I’d probably have been more turned on. But if you add pain to just about anything, I’m interested, so that’s not a very strong argument for suspension. I’ve seen plenty of people, though, who chase suspension for its own sake, and I’ll leave it to them.

Though, if they let me, I do like to watch them swing.

Webcam Amateur

by Giselle Renarde

It was a simple curiosity that grew into a fascination, and then a fascination that became an obsession.

I'm talking about girls who get off in front of their webcams and post it on amateur porn sites. As I said, I tuned in solely out of curiosity. I knew how I got myself off, but I wondered how other women played with their bodies when they were home alone. Maybe I wanted to see if I was "normal." Who knows?

So I watched an amateur webcam video of a slim young woman using her fingers and then her toys to bring herself to orgasm. It all looked very familiar. I had to watch another to make sure it wasn't just a one-off.

The same sequence of events repeated in the next webcam masturbation session. This girl was plump with big boobs. To see her on the street, she would have seemed perfectly plain, but her arousal made her sexy.

Just like the first girl, she started with her clit. She played with it over her panties while she squeezed her tits, and then she stripped to get down and dirty with her pussy. She stroked her clit until her need to be filled was visible in her eyes. Then she sunk her plump fingers inside and fucked herself fast.

Patterns repeated, video after video. There were endless variations, but every woman—young, old, curvy, thin—seemed to start with her clit and her tits and then move on to fucking herself with her fingers or her toys. The pitch and intonation of her pleasured cries were so familiar they could have been my own. It was affirming, watching all this. It made me feel like, yes, I am one of them. I bring myself to orgasm the same way they do. We all are one.

Maybe it's strange to find webcam masturbation sessions cosmic, but watching one after another after another, I did.

That's why I decided to make my own.

My intention wasn't to satisfy the male gaze or feed the desires of the voyeuristic masses, even though I knew my clip would end up doing that too. I honestly don't feel like it was the exhibitionist in me that wanted to make this video. Well, maybe a little... but mainly, I figured I wasn't the only woman out there who got curious about how other women pleasured themselves. I wanted to be one of the average, everyday girls showing the world a woman is perfectly capable of satisfying herself. It was a feminist endeavour.

That said, I didn't want my video to one day end up in my mother's inbox with a note attached like, "Look what your daughter's been up to!" Unashamed though I am of my pussy and my will to pleasure, I wanted to make my video anonymously.

After a shower and shave, I set up my webcam so the only part of my body it captured was my cunt. Maybe it seems like a strangely intimate body part to share with the world, but the way I figure, only me, my doctor and my lovers would recognize it. Filming it segregated from the rest of my body made me feel like it was somehow separate from me as a person.

I lined up my toys so I wouldn’t have to get up and fetch them mid-shoot. Then I got into position and pressed record. I watched my pussy convulse on my computer screen before I’d even touched it, and I wondered if I should say anything to the viewing public. Ultimately, I decided against sharing my voice. Just my pussy. And my fingers.

Reaching down, I tapped my naked clit to wake it up. I rubbed my pussy lips with my whole hand. I did that slowly and repeated the action until I could feel the juices flowing inside my body. As soon as I sensed the gush of my natural lube, I slathered it all over my clit. I was surprised how it glistened, even on the cheap webcam video, like there was no disguising the blessedness of a cunt.

Setting a finger on either side of my clit, I rubbed back and forth. My whole body reacted—I nearly jumped out of the shot! I had to force myself to sit still while I rubbed my bud so the viewing public would get a good look at my self-inflicted sex. I thought about watching other women doing this, and of other women watching me. Out of curiosity.

When my clit wanted more than my fingers could offer, I turned on my cock-shaped vibe. It was a big one, and a powerful machine. It brought me to orgasm in less than a minute of pressing its smooth head close to my clit. I tried to stifle the sounds of my passion, but ultimately decided I wanted the watchers to hear what my orgasms sounded like.

I wore my clit out with the vibe, but I wasn’t finished yet. That’s when I pushed the fake cock inside myself with one well-lubricated thrust. It felt so good to pound my pussy with the big vibe that I came all over again. When I finished with the toy, I stroked my pussy lips with my fingers to calm myself down. After my body stopped jumping and my breathing returned to normal, I clicked stop on the video.

I think I watched it sixteen times before uploading it to the amateur porn site, each time asking myself, “Do I really want to put this out into the world?”

Despite my silly apprehensions, the answer was obvious. Yes!

"Webcam Amateur" appears in the anthology Secret Confessions, published by eXcessica.

No naughty encounter is ever complete until you tell somebody about it. And who doesn’t feel a tingle while reading a naughty story and wondering, “Is this true? Did that really happen?”

In this collection, you’ll find a whopping 36 erotic stories, as explicit as they are wicked! These confessions involve lesbian encounters, exhibitionism, porn appreciation, voyeurism, masturbation and self-love, cheating and deception, threesomes, group sex, sploshing, ice play, public sex, fisting, sex with a loving partner, female fantasies, rimming, anal play, stranger sex, double penetration, spanking, insertions, bondage, and so much more!

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

by Jean Roberta





“Aren’t you curious?”

Paul shifts and twitches and gazes beyond my ear before looking down at his feet. “Uh, no. I know what guys are like. I’m a guy. I don’t have to – I mean, you know, touch some other guy’s junk to know how it works.”

“You have to if you want to watch me with my girlfriend.”

“That’s different! Every guy wants to see two chicks get it on. Show me a guy who wouldn’t!”

“Okay, well, then, you can’t blame me for wanting to watch two guys. You’d be helping me with my research. I can’t be sure my M/M scenes are true to life unless I take a close look.”

“Then watch some of your gay friends!”

“I hope to watch one of them, anyway. I hear someone coming up the front walk. Dustin always makes a point of being punctual.”

The sound of the doorbell changes Paul’s expression to one of anxiety mixed with doubt.

I move swiftly from the front room to the hallway, and peep through the peephole in the door. Sure enough.

“Dustin!” I sing out as I swing the door open. He really is one of my favourite people, but I exaggerate my welcome for Paul. “We were just talking about you. I’m so glad you could make it.”

Dustin has glossy dark hair, a chiselled face, and well-defined chest and arm muscles. He worked as a male model and held some shadier jobs in his youth, but he has reached a certain plateau of respectability, and is now known as a Hunk. This is not why I chose him for Paul. Dustin is also known as a Cherry-Buster. He flirts constantly with women, including me, but he prefers men.

I hope Dustin won’t refer to himself as the Black Widow. It’s his way of coping with the grief of losing his boyfriend to a cruel disease, but it makes all his friends wince. It might make Paul jump through a window.

“Paul, Dustin has been looking forward to meeting you.”

Paul is now pasty-faced, but he extends a clammy hand to shake with Dustin. “No offense,” babbles Paul, “but I’m not—I’m sure you’re a good guy, Dustin, but Cheryl doesn’t understand, I mean, not everyone can just, you know.”

The winning smile never leaves Dustin’s face. Without warning, he wraps his arms around Paul’s chest and raises him up on tiptoes as he presses his lips to Paul’s.

Incoherent sounds leak out of Paul’s trapped mouth.

I know my ex-husband. Paul wants this, and I want him to stop fighting himself. He is still breathing hard as Dustin holds him at arm’s length to study him better.

“I don’t want it to hurt,” mumbles Paul, looking up into Dustin’s eyes.

“I’ll stop whenever you want me to, honey,” assures the Cherry-Buster.

Paul has a misty gaze. “Not yet,” he tells us both, almost whispering. Then he kisses Dustin the way he used to kiss me.

The Color of Flesh

by Kristina Wright




Half my lifetime ago, I worked in photo finishing. I worked my way up in the retail world of one hour photo labs from an hourly employee to a salaried manager. Which basically translated to working 40 hours on a good week and 75 on a bad week, all for the same money. Retail sucks. But I learned a lot working in photo labs. More than you might think.

I learned everything there is to know about color in photo finishing. How to take a negative and print a perfect replica of the original scene. How to add or subtract magenta, yellow and cyan to balance the tones of a photo. How to darken or lighten an image to take the edge off a bright flash or bring a face out of the shadows. I could hold a strip of negatives up to the fluorescent lights and tell you if it was going to be a bitch to print. Outdoor scenes-- bright, sunny days with a clear blue sky-- were the hardest to print. A cloudless blue sky rarely looks the same in a picture as it does in real life. And dust specks-- tiny little things that you hardly notice when they're on the tip of your fingers-- look like giant snakes on a picture of sky.

I loathed summer because the beach parties and air shows would drive me around the bend, trying to get all the dust off every negative, trying to make the sky look the same as it did that sunny day. We always added cyan to sky pictures, making them bluer than they were in real life. People like their memories enhanced and no one never complained. If there were trees or sand (or people) in those pictures, they would sometimes take on a blue hue as well, and we'd have to go back and reprint the photo, subtracting some of the cyan. +3, -1, wasting time and paper on a picture someone was going to shove in a drawer and never look at again. You become a perfectionist in photo finishing-- or you find a new job.

I worked at three labs in South Florida over the four or so years I worked in photo finishing and I saw a lot of pictures. A lot. Personal pictures, things I had never seen before then. Some things I haven't seen since and would have to search for on the internet, if I were so inclined. The photo lab in the upper middle class neighborhood in South Florida was different than the photo lab near Fort Lauderdale beach. The neighborhood customers took pictures of birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, graduations and retirements. The beach customers were usually on vacation and their pictures reflected all of their vacation activities. And I do mean all. People on vacation get... wild. Luckily, I worked in the neighborhood lab before I worked at the beach location, so I had already had my eyes opened by people's photographic proclivities.

With the neighborhood customers, there would occasionally be a few nude shots in between a baby christening and a pool party-- the wife in the shower or wearing lingerie, looking embarrassed and flushed, smiling if she was posing for the shot, eyes wide if she's been caught by surprise. There were fewer photos of solo nude men, but they were there. Or at least their penises were. For some reason, the cock shots were often the last two or three pictures on a roll. I guess they didn't want to waste the film? The men would come from work in their suit or scrubs (there was a hospital nearby) to pick up their pictures, apparently oblivious that I had seen them in all their naked glory, assuming (I guess) that the machines did all the work. Or maybe they liked the idea of the young women behind the counter seeing their pictures, and those of their wives/girlfriends. I don't know. I never asked. These were men with money who drove BMWs and Mercedes and took two-week Hawaiian vacations. I was just the photo girl thumbing through pictures of their golf tournament to make sure the green was enough to impress a leprechaun and catching a glimpse of a green-tinted penis waving goodbye.

Generally speaking, people on a beach vacation take wilder pictures than those who live in the 'burbs. The beach customers would have entire rolls-- 24 or 36 shots-- of nude photos, with and without sex acts. I once counted five different bodies in a series of photos taken in a cheap motel on the Fort Lauderdale strip. The negatives were a jumble of limbs and creases and shadows and the final prints were a blur of pink and beige and brown. Close ups of sex acts are intriguing rather than erotic-- impressionistic images that highlight every flaw, every stray hair, every tan line or ashy patch, every dimple of cellulite and shiny puckered scar, every mole, wrinkle and freckle. I saw natural breasts and enhanced breasts and reduced breasts and breastfeeding breasts. I printed pictures of wild pubic hair and shaved pubic hair and--once-- pubic hair dyed hot pink. I discovered vulvas come in as many shapes and sizes as breasts and penises.

I hadn't even had sex when I started working in photo finishing, but I saw a lot of penises in photos before I saw one up close and personal. All sizes and shapes and colors and angles. I was fascinated and slightly repulsed by them, mostly because they were often disembodied appendages floating in a sea of pubic hair. Once I got used to the shock of seeing some guy's junk hanging out from the leg of his shorts, I was less disturbed. They'd still catch me off guard once in awhile-- those runaway penises are wily creatures-- but six months into my photo finishing job I was as jaded as a porn star saying, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all" when a wide-eyed new employee would show me what had just come out of the processor. And I still hadn't even had sex.

We weren't supposed to print nude pictures, but we did. I took over managing a lab where one of my employees kept a copy of every naked picture he printed. "Just in case," he said. In case of what, I never asked. He was older than me and resented working for a younger woman (or just a woman, period), and was-- do I even need to say it?-- a little bit creepy. He kept those naked pictures tucked in his lab coat pocket. I finally told him he couldn't keep a customer's picture even if it was an extra copy. He just grinned at me and went back to printing pictures. That was his only response. (So if you had nude photos of yourself developed in the late 80s in South Florida, there's a good chance a guy named Reid has your picture.) There was only one picture I was ever tempted to make a copy of and it was a stunning image of a bright yellow canary... that just happened to be perched on an erect penis. It was so weird and bizarre that I still laugh to think about it.

Despite my virgin status, I'd been exploring my sexuality from a young age and had read about plenty of sex, from Judy Blume to the trashy drugstore novels of the late 70s and early 80s with their foil-embossed covers and elaborately scripted titles. Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz-- they taught me about sex. Penises were referred to as phalluses and female characters were called bitch and whore a lot, as I recall. (Thought that might have only been Harold Robbins.) Working at the photo labs was my introduction to amateur porn. Hell, it was my introduction to porn, period. The only sex I'd seen at that point were the simulated sex acts in glossy magazines-- the airbrushed bodies of beautiful women contorted in pretend ecstasy while men with large but flaccid penises loomed over them-- and I hadn't even seen all that many of those.

The pictures I developed were of real people having real sex. It was more than a job, it was an education. I'd never realized how many different colors of flesh existed until I saw those varied colors entwined on glossy paper. It was ugly, it was weird, it was embarrassing, it was interesting. And it was exciting. This was the visual to go along with the words I'd been reading for years. This was the proof that all kinds of people have sex. Not just perfect looking people, but fat people and old people and pregnant women and hairy men and men who wore suits and talked in clipped, condescending tones because I worked in retail and women who were perfectly coiffed and manicured and made up. I learned to appreciate the aesthetics of the human body in all of its variations. I learned that penises and vulvas come in colors from alabaster to eggplant. That's not news in the age of internet porn, but it was news to me, the girl who had only read about sex up until that point.

I could hold a strip of negatives up and tell whether I was looking at a naked person just by how much of the negative was the same dark tone. Flesh in a negative isn't sexy or erotic, it just is. I learned to gauge by the negative just how much color I'd need to add or subtract. We had our own formulas for this stuff, based on the machine and the chemistry, though that knowledge is long gone from my mind. Perfectly colored sex acts of every kind cruised down the conveyer belts of those photo processors I operated. I saw everything I had ever read about, and then some. And my imagination ran wild.

We didn't those kinds of pictures every day (except at the beach location-- I swear, people are freaks on vacation), but Mondays were popular sex photo days (people get wild on the weekends) and summertime brought in a larger than usual number of naked photos and al fresco sex. A glimpse of nipple in a bikini top or an erection peeking out over the top of a pair of swim trunks would turn into full on doggy style sex by the pool. I slid curled rolls of negatives through the photo processor, watching the progression with a catch in my breath, debating which photos to refuse to give to customers. There weren't many. The few times I didn't print certain photos (or shredded them once I did print them), customers would argue with me. "Those are my pictures!" ""How do I know you didn't keep them for yourself?" "Is it illegal?" It wasn't illegal, it was just against company policy. And so, more often than not, I'd go against policy and print the pictures and hand them over to the customer at 33¢ a print. I wanted to avoid a confrontation, yes, but I also thought it was a ridiculous rule myself. If it wasn't illegal to do, it shouldn't be illegal to make a photo of it. Corporate would not have approved.

Not surprisingly, I became something of a voyeur during my time working in photo labs. Recognizing naked flesh on a strip of negatives held up to the light would make my pulse jump. Finally, the words I'd read in dozens of books were brought to life in color on 4 by 6 prints. For a few years, everything about my job was about color. Getting it right, duplicating reality. Printing art, printing memories. By the time I quit working for the photo finishing company I was 23 and getting ready to move to Virginia and get married. I'd had a few lovers and done some of the things I had only seen in the pictures I had developed. I would never have even contemplated photographing myself naked if not for all those anonymous strangers who bared their bodies, but I found myself wondering what I would look like with my far-from-model-perfect body.

Eventually, when I was brave enough, I found out. I was beautiful in the flesh.