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I had known Jeanette since third grade at St. Joseph’s school. Her family was Irish Catholic, accounting for her red hair and eight siblings. Not only did I see her in school every day but also on Sundays at church. Her family sat in the entire third pew on the right side. My family took the back pew in the left-front section, near the entrance because we frequently arrived late.
I hadn’t noticed that she had blossomed into a fine young lass (as her father would say) until I saw her at a party, sitting on some guy’s lap kissing him. I was full of envy and revulsion. Here was a girl whose birthday parties I had attended and whose mother taught both of us to bake cookies in her avocado green kitchen. To think of her as a sexual being caused me to have a hard-on that gave me guilt only a thorough Catholic upbringing instilled.
So, how does a clueless high school student get a stunning, buxom, natural redhead to pose nude in front of a camera? It was easier than I thought it would be. I asked her. She said yes.
On a warm spring day, I was taking pictures for my photo school admissions portfolio of her posing in a decaying wooden farm shed window. I joked that my application would certainly be accepted if I had some nudes in my artwork. She looked at me for a minute, and I could see her mind concluding I had no ulterior motive for her to bare herself in front of me. I didn’t. I needed the pictures, and I wasn’t about to lose a willing photography model by having sex with a longtime friend. Off came her blouse and out popped her beautiful breasts.
Those breasts featured prominently in my artistic collection. I had pictures of her standing topless in a farm-shed window with both breasts exposed, one breast covered and both covered by her crossed hands. She posed topless once on a half-sunken, wooden boat on the mud flats of San Pablo Bay.
I had her standing unabashed naked in the middle of an orange poppy field or leaning against a stately oak tree contrasting her smooth white skin with the dark textured bark. We did water studies. I photographed the natural pattern where the waterline met her exposed buttocks or breasts. My favorite series was where I photographed her as she stood on top of the largest grassy hill in Briones Valley at dusk. Her buttocks were featured prominently in the upper side of the photo overlooking the town. I called the artwork Moon over Briones Valley, California as a farcical tribute to Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.
I tried to create the same Adams effect in the photos by increasing the black parts in the sky around her white buttocks to give it a contrasting intensity between light and dark that was characteristic of Adams’s operatic style.
I was awakened from my thoughts by the sound of my father and mother arguing upstairs in their bedroom. I couldn’t hear what was said. I hoped my mother was winning. If anyone could understand me, it had to be her.
A few minutes later, my parents knocked on my bedroom door. My mother entered carrying my birthday present I had left on the kitchen counter. She handed it to me. Behind her was my father. They had decided and despite the disagreement, the yelling, the raised voices, and feigned crying that accompanied their intense arguments, they were united in the outcome.
“Your father and I met at college,” she said in a wistful tone.
“And it’s your life,” father said. “Don’t screw it up.” I’m sure he meant it literally. “You’ll have to get a part-time job to pay for your housing. But we agree you should live on campus.”
“Go ahead, open your present,” mother said. “It’ll also be a going-away gift.”
I untied the ribbon and ripped open the package. It was a new camera. A Minolta SRT-102 single lenses reflex 35mm camera with a 35-105 millimeter-macro zoom lens, the latest model that had replaced the SRT-101.
”We know you wanted to be a photographer and attend that trade school, but attending Berkeley and graduating will be better in the long run,” father said. “But we didn’t want you to think we didn’t care. I’m sure you’ll find a good use for the camera in Berkeley.”
I hugged them for the longest time. I loved my family. My life was beginning. I was leaving the nest, but it didn’t hurt to leave open the possibility of returning home in case my initial flight from infancy crashed and burned.
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This episode is based on a true story.
Although seventy-five percent of this memoir is factual, liberties were taken with the other twenty-five percent for plot purposes. That is where scenes were recreated from memory when they were not clearly defined in the journals written by the author from 1976 to 1980.
Individual characters are composites of several people and do not represent any one person, and the names have been changed to protect innocent people that may be guilty of indiscretions in their youth.
