his
is a true story. It's called "Indecent Exposure."
The locker room was very old. One of those ultra old ones, tiled in the fake pebbled-stone style, and about the green-gray-tan color of the background on this page. You've seen this substance before, and if you know a lot about architecture you probably know the brand name that was popular with university locker-room architects at the time. It probably had some old-fashioned modernist ring to it, like Art Stone or Deco Pebble. Depressing, by today's standards, but advanced for its time.
I was a graduate student. It was the lower-floor locker room of a very large, indoor athletic building at a prestigious university on the east coast. You must have heard of this university, but it's probably not the one you're thinking of right now. Or maybe it is; I can't read your mind.
I had come out four years earlier, in my early twenties, and thought I was pretty together about being gay. A year before I had picked up a camera for the first time (seriously), and taken it on a trip to Europe. I brought back a dozen rolls of the Boys of Europe -- "boys" being loosely defined as any good-looking male between the ages of 18 and 25. Even though it was a cheap, point-and-shoot camera, people liked what they saw and told me I took good pictures. So that Christmas, when I didn't get anything I wanted, I gave myself a 35-millimeter camera and started snapping.
t
seemed as if by accident, but within weeks I was taking nude photos
of undergraduates and friends, encouraged by my photography teacher,
a woman of medium renown in the world of art photography.
Black-and-whites. She thought everything I did was "WUUUUNderful." I
took my first nudes almost by chance, and when I breathlessly printed
them in the dorm darkroom for the first time I knew I was hooked. I
started visiting gay galleries in New York when I passed through
there, read books about serious male nude photography, and found how
easy -- and how difficult -- it was to find models.
Once I figured it out, I found that the strategy is simple. You take good photos. You put them in an album. You include photographs of yourself nude. You show them around. Not everyone wants to pose for you, but by being serious about your previous work, by pointing out the composition or the lighting or the whatever -- and studiously avoiding comments like "look at the dick on that one!" -- you gain respect from your viewers. Those who want to pose will then approach you. Usually later, privately, sometimes indirectly. But they'll come to you. No direct sales pitch need be made.
It was a major life lesson to learn that it never, ever works to put pressure on people to pose for you. Maybe you're really clever and really convincing, with good salesmanship, and you convince someone to take their clothes off even though they're reluctant. But unless they really, really wanted to do this already, they'll sabotage it. They won't sign the model release. They'll add clauses to it that make it worthless. They'll spread nasty stories about you behind your back. They'll get their due, sooner or later, somehow.
And that is as it should be. Your penis is a very important possession. In our society, pictures of it cannot be freely stolen. Even if you disagree with that proposition, that's the way it is.
ut
this is a true story about one time when I got away with it. I stole
some photons which had bounced off a cute guy's dick in that locker
room, captured them in my camera, and developed the results. I got
about a dozen usable photos that way, of about 10 different guys.
Cute guys. Student age, nice bodies, just my type.
It's not all that difficult. I'll tell you how to do it, even though you can probably figure it out without my help. And then I'll tell you why you should never, ever follow my example.
My new camera was extremely quiet. Unlike most good 35-mm cameras, it was not an SLR (single-lens reflex). SLRs can be very quiet, but not quiet enough for surreptitious use. The mirror has to pop up, the shutter curtains have to travel -- one at a time -- across the film plane, and then the mirror pops down. Pop, slide, slide, pop. Mine was quieter because it had a leaf shutter: a little iris that opens and closes. No mirror movement, no sliding curtains. Even with your ear next to it you could barely hear it operate. And of course back then you wound the film by hand, so there was no telltale whirr after the picture, either.
So I found a convenient table in the locker room a few feet away from the scales, just outside the room with the showers. I'd carry the camera with me through my workout, and pretend to take a couple of pictures. Then it was back to the locker room, where I would treat my possession completely casually, as if by being so open I couldn't possibly be using it in any malevolent way. I'd wind the film and pop up the camera lens (it was one of those collapsing, compact jobbies). I'd casually toss the towel down on the table, then disarmingly place the cocked camera on the table to my left, pointing back toward the doorway, looking past the scales. I'd wait for a hunky guy to stand on the scales and move the weights. Then...
Press. The button was very small.
Click. Essentially noiseless.
Ignore the camera as if nothing had just happened. A simple lie, told by my body and its actions.
Pick everything up, walk to the lockers, wind the film when no one was watching.
Repeat to taste. Variation: put the camera on the end of a bench in front of a row of lockers. That tended to cut off the heads, but it got the rest. You don't have to look through a viewfinder to take a picture, eh?
Developing the film would give me an adrenaline rush. Printing it, too. I thought I wasn't really doing anything bad, because of course I'd already seen their dicks. They let me see them naked, like guys typically do in a locker room. Photons had bounced off their dicks into my eyes. What difference did it make if some other photons bounced off their dicks, into my camera, onto my film, and then -- after development -- into my eyes? I was just saving what I had seen. No one else would ever know. No one else would ever see the results. They were mine.
nd
then, there was Him. He was perfect. Just exactly my type.
Dark brown hair, slim, hairless chest, swimmer's bod. I don't
remember what color eyes; I don't care about that.
He walked out the doorway and stopped right before the scales. I turned my back and stepped out of the way.
Click.
He stepped on the scales, and later turned to give me a weird look -- very briefly.
I was already on my way out of the room -- heart pounding at my latest conquest.
I had no idea if He was gay or straight or bi. No idea if He was a student or the son of a professor or a guest from out of town. Probably about 20, but who knows? He looked like an angel, placed on earth to give me a moment's pleasure.
I think He saw my camera, and that weird look made me wonder if He had figured me out. I doubted it. I didn't care. How would He ever find out?
But I am almost 100% certain that I accidentally ran into Him once, about two years later. It was completely by chance. I was going somewhere in somebody's car, and He was another passenger -- already inside as I got in. At least I'm pretty sure it was Him. You don't forget a perfect face like that.
I'm sure I was introduced at that time, but I've forgotten His name. I wasn't sure, in the car, if He recognized me -- assuming that it really, really was Him. But that's why I know He's probably gay. Small world, eh?
few days after that, it all got to me. I destroyed all those
negatives. Cut them in half horizontally and threw the two halves
away in widely separated wastebaskets. Threw out the one set of
prints I had made -- in a place where I'm sure they'd never be found.
They're sitting in a landfill somewhere on the east coast, or maybe
the town burned them along with all the other trash. Should they be
found, a few centuries from now by some future archaeologists,
they'll wonder why only half were discarded, or why half are
missing.
I hope you'd understand why. I think you would understand, if you had seen what I saw. That wonderful fulfillment of my fantasy was indeed captured on my film, in all His angelic glory. Nice dick that boy had; very pretty. Not very big; just the right size. Nice, nice tummy: flat and smooth. Wonderful dark brown hair.
And the expression on His face was frozen by the silent shutter. I didn't see it the moment he had it; my back was turned. I only saw it on paper. It was a look of horror, almost exactly like the famous shrieking guy by that Old Master. He was looking exactly -- directly -- at the camera. His mouth was open, but mostly covered by His hand and towel. It was as if, in an instant, He had guessed what was going on. In his shock He covered not His face, not His dick -- but His mouth. How odd, when you think about it, to cover that part of the body when embarrassed. Bare-assed. It was openmouthed astonishment, complete with raised eyebrows and wide-spread eyes -- and His wonderful, wonderful dick hanging there naturally for all my lens to see.
Did I print that photo? Of course. Did I jerk off looking at it? Sure, at least 4 or 5 times. Did I ever show it to anyone else?
No. And you're the first person I've told.
But meeting Him in the flesh -- or someone who looked enough like Him to be His brother -- destroyed the fantasy. This was a real person with real shock captured on real celluloid. A nonconsenting adult with an accusatory stare. He wasn't an angel sent to give me pleasure; he was sent to teach me a lesson.
o
as I said, it's all been destroyed. But those photons -- the ones
from His face, the ones that drove home to me what I'd done -- burned
my retinas and scar them still.
I
now believe, more firmly than ever, that there's nothing shameful
about a penis or about nudity. I now have the attitude that having
one's dick on film is no big deal, that being naked is no big deal.
I'm a nudist now, and being a nudist is about dealing with the truth:
with the way things really are. Nothing hidden. Nothing fake. My body
is fatter than I'd like it to be, but that's the way it is. (Here's a
photo; judge for yourself.) Deal with it, whether you like it or not
-- whether I like it or not.
My dick isn't all that big, either. Sorry to destroy a fantasy you may have had, but it's the truth. Deal with it. Vanity requires me to point out that it's not abnormally small, and it fucks very well with the right partner. But no exaggeration: I'm a nudist, here's my dick, deal with it.
But that's not the way it was back then. Back then, I stole some photons from You, and I have to make restitution because those photons were very valuable to You. Since I don't know who You are, I don't know how to do it. Since I don't know if I caused You any serious worry, I don't know how much I owe You. A hundred bucks? Two hundred? A thousand?
Maybe You shrugged it off and I owe you twenty cents. Or nothing. Maybe You were raised in a nudist family and never gave it a second thought. Probably not. Only You know how much I owe.
Write to me at phdtop@phdtop.com. Tell me the name of the university, and the name of the athletic building. Tell me the sport that almost everyone who used that locker room used it for. Explain why most people who've used that building recently won't be able to identify it from this story. Tell me what color towel You were carrying. Careful! Any of these might be trick questions. I may need to see a photo of Your face.
ut
then the money will be Yours. Well, almost. It'll go to Your favorite
charity -- even if it's one I hate.
Well, no, I changed my mind -- it'll go to You or Your favorite charity, whichever You prefer. Hey, You might have needed years of psychotherapy, eh? I hope not, but obviously I don't know.
And let this be a lesson to the rest of you. Wait until they come to you. Don't cajole; don't convince; don't manipulate. Waiting is hell, but it's the only way to live with yourself afterwards.
Now it's time for me to go dig out those negatives and prints. Cut them in half. Throw half of them away. Save the other halves to give to You as proof. Because nothing has been burned yet, nothing is sitting in a landfill. I was lying. I was only a Catholic for one year, growing up, but I still remember what to say next.
less
me Father, for I have sinned.