This part of the country isn’t known for its marked seasons. A native angeleno can tell what month it is by examining a layer of smog over the mountains, but most people are astonished by the queer passage of time here. Christmas seems no different from Easter, especially to a heathen like myself. The combination of consistently mild weather and my bad memory has made time in Los Angeles for me a long blurred line on a wide yellowed page.

Enter Fall, 2006. As if desperate to personify climate change, I dove head first into a deep dark hole for winter. I hibernated through December and January, locked in my little room with only my cold hard thoughts for company. I needed no one, I wanted nothing. I nearly died from the chill before spring surprised me with its inevitability. Impossibly, I left my den of damnation, determined to turn the soil. Once I had discovered a fertile patch, I threw down a handful of seeds and patted them down with my toes.

Summer followed, as it always does, but this one was different.

I decided to go pro with my photography. I wanted to take pictures for people who were interested in unusual perspectives. I wanted to connect with strangers, happily and without judgment. I had no agenda, no great big stupid ideal to live up to. I wanted to be happy, to experience pleasure, excitement, and embrace the unexpected in full bloom.

My first assignment was taking pictures of a man with a fetish for wearing women’s lingerie. He described it as a liberating experience, which excited me. I didn’t know what or who to expect so I thought I would be prepared for anything, but when I saw the face of the man I was going to shoot, I caught my breath. I didn’t imagine being attracted to my subject. Truthfully, I was surprised to have those feelings at all, being single-mindedly focused on my path to lucrative creativity. The long winter had frozen off any desire I had for the warmth of another body. But this was obviously a windfall. I’d heard them described before and I had no doubt that this warm, attractive, cautiously bold man was presenting me with an opportunity for growth in the middle of the dry hot summer.

I remember feeling dowdy in my ill-fitted jeans, combat boots, and bra-less top. I looked at his long stocking’d legs, tight slender calves and hard muscular quads, and I wanted to touch them. Feel the impossible smoothness of those masculine legs. At times he towered over me in his heels and tanned broad shoulders, and I could imagine what great strength he had. His arms were strong, his stomach flat and smooth. It was a relief when he put on his wig and mask because I could look at him however I wished from behind my lens. Those times when he removed his mask and wig and sat discussing a shot with me, or looking through his clothes, I felt a hot rush pump through my body. I could see the head of his cock outside the edge of his panties while looking at the chiseled line of his jaw, his piercing eyes. A part of me screamed to kneel before him and take him in my mouth like drinking water from a faucet, but instead I made sure to remain aloof. To assure him that he can do as he pleases in front of me and I would capture it as best I could.

Going home that night, I laughed remembering what I’d just done. I met a strange man on a rooftop in Hollywood for an erotic photo shoot. I’d seen every part of his body, been close enough to touch it, taste it. I’d watched water trickle off the head of his cock and imagined him releasing himself in orgasm, stroking himself harder and harder before unable to hold back.

The fantasies that came in the days that followed were painful in their detail. All I knew about this man was that he was passionate, strong, creative, intelligent, and had a body I wanted to taste all over. I agonized at work, in the car, falling asleep, imagining him grabbing me forcefully, pinning me against a wall and penetrating me so deeply I couldn’t breathe. I saw him seizing my pussy in his mouth and devouring me. Again and again, I returned to pulling his hard cock out of his panties, licking and sucking it and taking all of it in my mouth until he exploded in convulsions of pleasure.

I began to feel a little shameful for seeing my subject, my paying customer, as an object of desire. What eased the guilt was imagining that he, too, was fantasizing about me. Thinking about holding his cock out to me on my knees while I tremblingly took pictures, getting down on all fours and spreading his ass cheeks for me—and me leaning forward and licking his asshole with my hot wet tongue. Him tearing my pants down and licking my pussy clean.

When he said he wanted to shoot again, I felt that rush run through me. The thought of seeing him and going further in our pictures thrilled me artistically and sexually. My pussy was in a perpetual state of desiring to be touched—wet, hot, pulsing, flushed. We met to discuss the shoot and I was turned on even more by our conversation, by his smart observations and trust in me. By our commonalities and differences. A part of me felt he rode his motorcycle to our meeting because he knew how badly I wanted him to thrust himself into me and he was subconsciously presenting me with the symbol of that desire. So I held him to taking me for a ride sometime. Whether it was fantasy fodder or reality, I believe I knew then that we would make love.

Driving to his house for our second shoot, I was hot and expectant and excited. I was nearly giddy with the thought of seeing him again. I tried not looking at him when I arrived because I thought he’d see right away how I felt, and I desperately wanted to maintain my professional demeanor. When I thought we’d shot enough for a respectable session, we’d shoot more, and again more. Even once we’d finished and stood talking, it was obvious neither one of us wanted the evening to end. So he took me on my promised ride.

I sat nervously behind him, unsure how familiar to become, where and how tightly to hold him. I wanted to reach around and caress his cock through his pants, both of us unable to say anything about it from underneath our helmets. To press myself against him, grab his hips and pull myself closer to him—silently and without explanation. Like a snapshot. I left as innocently as I’d arrived, with the addition of a few sinful drinks and more fuel for my fantasies. Fantasies which would drive me to risky ventures, delicious initiations, and desert mirages.

THE END