The year my dad's brother came to live with us was the best year of my life. It was the year I was just beginning to understand my own sexuality. I'd known the biological functions for a long time but I was just beginning to explore the complex longings of my body and those fantasies that fogged my head both night and day.
I'd had a few boyfriends whom I'd fooled around with but I was so confused about it all. My friends made such a big deal out of sex, but the times I'd done it hadn't left me satisfied. I felt there had to be more than the hurried, sweaty groping I'd endured at parties, but I wasn't sure what that something could be.
My uncle was a fashion photographer living in France and had been offered a great job in the city where we lived. He traveled to stay with us and, upon accepting the job, my parents gladly invited him to stay for as long as he needed. We had plenty of room and they looked forward to spending time with him.
He was older than my dad, single, and very handsome, but the most compelling thing about him was how utterly cool he was. He was worldly and smooth, charismatic and funny. He made jokes I didn't fully understand but I could sense there was a double meaning to them, something risqué or sexual. He treated me like another adult and I found that incredibly exciting. The way he dressed and the way he spoke, and just about everything else about him made my heart beat faster, left me unable to speak or think. And the more attention he paid me, however innocent it was, the more aroused I felt.
I tried to push those feelings away or at least not think of them in terms of my uncle. He was 30 years older than me and he was my uncle for God's sake, but sometimes when I crawled in bed at night I'd close my eyes and see the tan, lined face of my uncle and feel a surge of excitement like I'd never felt before. I couldn't stop touching myself and if I'd been perfectly honest, I didn't really want to stop.
It became immediately apparent that he had this effect on all the women he encountered. While he was living with us, he had dates several nights a week with different women, occasionally staying out all night and returning rumpled but happy the next morning. He'd drink his coffee at the breakfast table with us, laughing easily as if he'd just had a long, restful sleep.
He made sketchy jokes over the orange juice and waffles, jokes that made something stir inside me as I stole peeks at him over my cereal bowl. When he caught my eye, he'd wink a dark brown eye, sending a shiver through my body and a blush creeping up my face.
I would have expected my parents to disapprove of his obvious sexual appetite and easy joking manner (especially in front of me), but not long after he moved in I noticed a change in my parents as well. They seemed friskier with each other, their morning kisses goodbye lasting longer, my father's hand roaming my mom's back in an obviously affectionate way.
And more than once I was woken in the middle of the night by the sounds of their lovemaking, soft moans that grew louder and louder as the springs on their bed squeaked in a frantic rhythm. I couldn't help but feel aroused by the sounds of their passion even if they were my parents. And the knowledge that my handsome uncle slept in the room right next to mine heightened my sense of arousal, leading me to entertain explicit fantasies of being made love to by him.
On Saturdays he worked in a darkroom studio in the city and with my parents away on various errands I often had the house to myself. That's how I managed to sneak into his bedroom and see his photos without him knowing.
It started innocently enough, I just wondered what his room looked like and I meant to only peek inside, but once I opened the door my curiosity grew. The room smelled vaguely of cologne, of the smell I'd come to associate with my uncle and the feeling being around him gave me and I was surprised to feel a sense of excitement building in me, not just general excitement but sexual excitement, deep down in my belly. I stepped into the darkened room and felt my heart beat faster.
His bed was neatly made and the rest of the room was tidy. On the top of the dresser was a small novel with a French title I couldn't read, a bottle of aspirin, and a dish that held coins and a couple of keys. I felt a slight sinking feeling of disappointment and realised I'd expected to find something more personal, more revealing. I was about to sneak back out of the room when I spotted a lightbox. It held a dark contact sheet on a cluttered worktable with scattered negatives, lenses and other photographic equipment. I tiptoed over, switched it on, and leaned closer to examine it.
The light revealed many poses of two naked women with long, dark hair. The lighting was strong, the shadows deep, and as I compared the tiny images I found myself growing more and more aroused. In some of the poses the women’s' bodies were just pressed against each other, or their limbs were tangled so that it wasn't always immediately clear where one woman ended and the other began. In others their tongues entwined or their fingers disappeared between their white thighs. Whether they were explicitly sexual or not, they were all certainly sexy.
One picture in particular excited me. The strong light threw the shadow of one woman's breasts across the belly of the other woman. Just below the shadow of the breasts you could see her curly, dark pubic hair and the beginning of a darker line I assumed must be the slit of her cunt, though it was hard to tell since the image was so small. Why it excited me so, I couldn't say, but I felt the familiar stirring in my stomach, an ache inside that made me warm.
Just then, I heard the front door close and in a panic fled back to my room. My heart was hammering and I could feel the wetness between my legs. In my mind I couldn't stop seeing the women’s' breasts and faces, their mouths locked and their legs and arms all tangled. It was a world of sensuality I'd never contemplated and I was a little surprised to find it so exciting. Or maybe it was the knowledge that these were the sorts of photos my uncle was taking, that he was the one who captured the images in the first place. That was undeniably arousing.
I started to sneak into his room every chance I got and every time I did I went straight to the lightbox and stared. For a while it was that same contact sheet of the two dark haired women and then a man joined the images and it began to grow more and more explicit each time I went in to spy.
They were all very artistic but I began to see more open legs, swollen, spread labia, then a hard cock, grasping fingers, and finally explicit close-ups of intercourse with strong, dark shadows turning the shapes into abstract patterns. It was dizzying to me, the mystery of it all, these tiny images in strong black and white, and the knowledge that it was my uncle who'd taken the photos.
My uncle started spending more time in the darkroom studio, which gave me many opportunities to sneak into his room. I thought at the time this was just lucky but I learned later he knew all along I'd been sneaking in and looking at the pictures. He knew and he started baiting me with more and more erotic images so I'd be sure to come back.
Around the same time I caught him looking at me in a very different way and making jokes with me that bordered on inappropriate. A casual chat with him had always left me slightly breathless but now I was aware of his sly smiles and his eyes that lingered on my breasts. All of this left me in a state of almost constant arousal. I touched myself every night and thought about sex almost exclusively, indulging in fantasies of being photographed, stroked, and fucked by my uncle.
I can only guess that the intoxicating effect the images had on my head was what kept me from hearing the front door close and the sound of my uncle's footsteps down the hall. That, or it's possible he was extra quiet and had hoped to find me there. Whatever happened, that's where he found me, very aroused, my nose close to the glowing light, my fingers tracing circles on my nipples through the fabric of my shirt, my breathing getting quicker.
I did hear the bedroom door close. I turned suddenly to find him standing with his back against it, cool as can be, smiling slightly, one finger to his lips in an unmistakable gesture of quiet. I said nothing, my heart stuck in my throat, as I watched him slowly cross the room toward me. He touched my upper arm in a way that seemed almost parental, and whispered, soothingly, "It's ok."
I stiffened but didn't move. His eyes moved across my face but I couldn't name the expression in them. He was calm and composed as his hand dropped from my arm and his eyes dropped to my breasts, sweeping down the length of my body. I tried to swallow or breathe but I couldn't. I just waited and watched him looking me over.
He stepped back a bit, meeting my eyes again, then moved just past me, leaning toward the lightbox. His eyes skipped from square to square, and a slight smile played on his lips. I felt myself blush. As he studied the images I felt as if he was looking at me, at my nudity on display for him. I felt even more revealed than I had when he first walked in.
"These are a few months old." he said, still staring at the contact sheet. "Would you like to see my more recent work?"
He turned to face me, completely calm, as if he was simply sharing his portfolio with me. As if these were holiday snaps of his trip to Venice and not at all pornographic. The slight smile was there, playing on his lips, but his face was benevolent, open and kind. I heard myself try to speak but I don't know if I said yes or no, if I said anything at all.
He pulled an envelope from the top of the worktable and replaced the contact sheet with another. He stepped back and indicated that I should look. I hesitated, not sure what to do, but his hand on my shoulder moved me gently forward and I felt myself drawn in, my heart beating hard as I leaned closer to the images, slowly letting them come into focus.
A dark-haired woman sat in a chair in the first shot. And as I viewed each photo in sequence, she gradually undressed herself, her legs spread and her black skirt crept up and up. Her painted nails were dark against her thighs. Her skin seemed impossibly smooth. She parted the darkness of her pubic hair to show plump and glistening labia as the camera moved closer, framing her in different ways.
"She's lovely, isn't she?" I heard him ask, his voice just at my shoulder. "She's usually very shy but she loves to be watched like this." His fingers slid above the surface of the lightbox, following the progress of the shots, the progress of her hands as they moved down between her legs.
"She comes alive in front of the camera." he murmured and I felt a sudden faintness at the closeness of his body, the power of my arousal.
His finger stopped on one shot, the woman's hands on either side of her pussy, the light just catching the curve of her pussy lips, the rest in blackest shadow. There was much more hidden than shown in that shot but it was undeniably erotic, showing her shyness and desire all at once.
