She's Gonna Be A Star Ch. 05

That weekend, I took Ali to Central Park to meet the photographer. His name was Alexi, and he ran a special-interest website that featured candid "girl on the street" shots of pretty women he found in New York. He had wanted to bump up his traffic and get some real photo galleries, to make his website less hobby-ish.

He was a tall, unassuming guy about Ali's age. He shook her hand, eyeing her up and down. That morning, she was in a formless mu-mu, nothing tight or strappy that would leave "imprints on the skin" as he put it. Still, it was exceedingly short, coming to just below her ass, and it featured a low-cut square over her breasts. It was a warm, windy day in New York, and the fabric billowed away from her legs as she moved.

"You're just right," Alexi told her.

"Thanks! You know, we have a name in common? My real name is Alexis."

"That's cool," he said.

I said, "Okay, guys. The theme for Ali's early career is this: Owned by the world. The music, the singer, belongs to the world. She must seem accessible, open, without any boundaries. Her songs are about how she's giving everything. Her attitude is that she doesn't give a fuck about anything but the music. At the same time, she has to be interestingly sexy, so peoplecare who the hell she is."

"That goes withmy theme pretty well," said Alexi.

"What's that?" Ali asked.

"Getting naked in public."

She laughed suddenly. "Well, if there's one thing Ican do it's that."

I said, "We need a few different sets today. Next weekend, we'll do more. The deal is for ten themed galleries."

"I'm sort of nervous," Ali confessed suddenly.

"We'll take it slow." Alexi passed me a canvas bag. I noted that it was full of clothes.

"I mean," she continued. "You're a real, honest-to-gosh photographer. What if I mess up?"

Alexi stared at her for a long moment. I was smiling and nodding behind her head. I'd told him that Ali didn't think like other girls. "I have forty rolls of film. If you mess up, we'll keep shooting until you get it right."

"Just tell me what to do," she said.

"Put on the first outfit. The cut-off t-shirt, the shorts. This is for the 'frolic in the park' gallery."

I started to look around for a place for Ali to change. A bathroom, something. Ali simply pulled the two pieces of clothing from the bag on my arm, and turned her back on us. We watched as she pulled the shorts up her legs, and then tossed off the mu-mu. Her breasts appeared, curving around her ribcage, as she shrugged into the t-shirt.

It was a Saturday morning in Central Park -- the place wasn't unpopulated. Still, there was nobody nearby, and she'd only been topless for a moment. (Also, women are allowed to go topless in New York.) I shrugged at Alexi, who smiled back at me.

Ali turned to us, holding her arms out. "Good enough?"

"Wow," I said. "Good enough!"

"Yeah," added Alexi.

The jeans shorts were low and loose on her, missing buttons on the fly. They hung off her hips, highlighting her tight little belly and her rounded ass.

The t-shirt was the best. It was a half-shirt, cut short, to a few inches below her chest. The best thing about it was a vertical cut, running from the bottom up between her breasts. From the front, the shirt hung naturally, and the vertical cut was an upside-down U, pulled open by the size of her breasts. From the side, you could see the bottom curves of her breasts. The wind was moving the fabric of her shirt.

"Keep that position," said Alexi. He raised his camera and quickly snapped a few shots. "No, it's okay to smile. Shift to the right. We need some shadows on your stomach, and to see up the shirt."

She did as requested.

(These sets appeared online the next day. Ali and I visited the website together, me on the chair and her naked in my lap, marveling at how good she looked in the photos. Well, I did the marveling, she had other things on her mind. She giggled every time we loaded the large-size version of the thumbnails, saying she looked silly. Half the time, she was groaning with embarassment, pointing out the people in the background checking her out. The other half of the time, she was, fantastically, turned on. She made her "Mnn-mnn-mnn" noise, curling and uncurling her toes against my feet, her little hands clawing at my thighs.

The website said: "This is my friend Ali Katz. Yeah -- dumb name, but she's a sweetie. She's an up-and-coming singer in a New York band. We were hanging out in the park one day, and she said it would be okay if I snapped some pictures of her. As you can see, she has no clue she's a hottie. She said she had fun pretending to be a model. The first 20 pictures are free, but for the last 40 from this series, you must pay to be a member.")

We strolled along the walkway in the park, moving towards the more crowded sections. Alexi stopped her frequently, to pose next to statues and fences. Shortly, he had her walking ahead of us, or behind us, as he snapped pictures of her. She strolled along by herself, with either an uncritical open expression on her face or a vapid half-smile, not seeming to notice the heads turning as she passed.

She looked natural, like a normal hot young woman, dressed down to enjoy the sun. Not like she was posing for some voyeur porn site. Still, as her shorts rolled with each step, and her thighs flexed, she was mesmerizing. Her breasts lifted the half-shirt away from her torso. The slit up the shirt revealed the delicious curves under her chest. What I liked best, however, was how the muscles in her stomach rolled with each move, the cuts flexing sequentially as they narrowed down her waist.

(The website said: "I was totally happy about Ali's outfit. And so was everybody else. As you can tell from the pictures, she had a few admirers who stuck close to her. She didn't notice -- I guess pretty young women are used to the attention.")

After we told her to act more naturally, she started to enjoy herself. She squatted to pet a puppy dog, to the delight of the man walking it. The puppy stood on its hind legs to lick her chin, and Alexi snapped away as the bottoms of her breasts emerged from the bottom of her shirt. Her shorts were cut high, and there was only a thin strap of fabric between her legs -- the muscle down each inner thigh flexed as she kept her balance, and the sun shown on the delicate, shaved skin next to her sex.

(The website said: "Whenever she bent over, the back of her shorts slid down her ass, showing the top of her crack to anybody who looked. And she didn't seem to know how short her shirt was.")

She stopped to watch a street band playing salsa music, clapping her hands over her head and wiggling her hips. She bought an ice cream from a vendor. She delved to the front of the crowd watching the roller-bladers dancing in loops around a boom-box.

Alexi kept his camera busy, and nobody really noticed. At any given location in New York, there are photographers taking pictures of street scenes and street life. We blended in with the others picture takers. I noticed a few taking snaps of Ali. I'd been seeing that more often, especially since I'd changed her wardrobe. When she noticed, once, I told her they were papparazzi.

In the crowd by a fountain, Alexi motioned her into the water. She took off her clogs and held them in hand as she stepped over the edge, wading into the water. It was her and a few kids splashing around, with a sun-dazed crowd of onlookers sitting nearby.

She stepped to the middle of the fountain, reaching up to touch the statue in the middle. Her body, stretched and taut, soaked up the sun. She put her hand into the streams of water, splashing it around, speckling her shirt. Alexi kept shooting.

Later, she sat on the edge of the fountain to dry off. Her knees were gathered in her arms, her ankles crossed. She had a dreamy expression, her cheek on her knee. Beneath her chin, her breasts hanged out below the bottom of her shirt.

"This is good," I breathed.

"Yeah," said Alexi. From forty feet away, he mimed pulling her legs up. She noticed, and slid her legs up, hugging her knees and straightening her back. Now her breasts hanged out more, the shirt bunched on her chest. He kept her like that as people passed by, trying for reaction shots, he told me. She had no clue: looking down from above, she seemed covered. From the side, Alexi and I, as well as her admiring audience, could see the dark point of a nipple pressing against her thigh. The nipple was hard, cold from the water, and to the world she seemed like a normal young woman, carelessly and unknowingly on display.

When he got enough pictures of people passing and scoping her, he pointed over to an empty park bench. Ali joined us as he was changing his film.

"Time to switch outfits," he said.

"That was all?" she was surprised. "What about the whole being sexy thing?"

"You were," I said. "You just have no clue how sexy you are, do you?"

"I guess I don't," she said. "Because the whole time, I was waiting for the work to begin. If it'sall as easy as walking through a park, I feel like I'm taking advantage of you."

"This time, change in the bathroom. It's too crowded here." I was pulling out her next outfit -- it was a baggy, durable pair of overalls, cut into a miniskirt high on the leg, and a sports bra.

When Ali came out of the bathroom by the merry-go-round, my heart was in my throat. I swear -- women have it so easy. They get away with so much.

The sports bra was little more than a thin white bandeau across her breasts, with the straps cut off. When the sun hit her from above, a little square of light filtered past the bottom of the bra down below her sternum: the bottom edge of the bra was physically pushed away from her ribcage by her breasts. There was cleavage from the bottom of her chest.

Not that this was too obvious. She was partially covered by the other piece of clothing -- the overalls, which were clearly sized for a big man, not a petite woman.

The straps of the overalls dangled loosely over her shoulders, attached to a bib in front that nominally covered her stomach. The overalls left her sides completely bare to her hips -- and the buttons on the hips were missing, leaving two vertical slits down to her thighs. When she stepped, the slits yawned apart, showing (in brief glimpses, from the side) the exact area her torso attached to her legs.

The pant legs had used to be long -- but they were cut off at the crotch. Ali was effectively wearing an "overalls skirt" that ended at the top of her thighs, but it was so baggy and open that it hardly qualified as a covering at all. The wind didn't move the fabric, which was too heavy, but when Ali moved, it bulged out stiffly and shifted wholly over her body. It was like she was wearing a wooden barrel, but with a few critical planks missing on each side.

(For the next set, the website said: "I'd had such fun taking pictures of Ali in the park, that I practically begged for another photo shoot. She wondered why anybody would followher with a camera as she did her errands. She thought I was crazy, but said okay. You'll see why I was so anxious to for another photo session.")

She came up to us and struck a pose. Legs out, pulling the "skirt" part tight. One hip forward. Arms out, and her shoulders twisted. Alexi and I ogled the clear line of flesh down her side, from her sports bra to her upper thigh.

"I didn't think this would be so comfortable," she said. Behind her, a group of guys passing by turned their heads.

I had expected the outfit to be frumpy, formless. But if anything, the baggy overalls made her look fit and sporty. It was as if she'd emerged into the street for supplies, after a morning of painting her apartment.

"Let's go a few blocks into the city," said Alexi. "The idea is, you're window shopping. At the end, we'll stop you at a bodega so you can buy something."

"Fine, but I don't have any money on me," she warned.

That gave me a flash of inspiration. I took a wad of 5s and 1s from my pocket, and gingerly shoved them into her bra. The edge of the wad peeked above her left breast, next to her armpit. It looked charming.

"Perfect," said Alexi. "A woman who puts money there is a woman who knows her outfit is too shabby to have pockets. That's a woman who chooses to keep her money in her underwear."

Ali looked confusedly from me to Alexi, and then shrugged. "You want me to walk ahead of you again?"

"Yeah, why not," said Alexi, winding up his camera.

"Should I look casual again? Or just walk?"

He laughed at her. "Just walk casually. If you can manage."

"I'll see," she said seriously.

She turned away and we let her get about fifty feet in front of us. Alexi and I trailed along behind her, ignoring the rest of the world. We even ignored the other beautiful women who had dressed down for a hot day in the park. We just followed, snickering like two schoolboys, making observations about Ali, with Alexi intermittently snapping pictures.

The sports bra narrowed to a 3-inch band in back, and clearly wasn't offering Ali much support. Her breasts shifted (we could see even from behind) as she walked, and every half-block or so she had to pull it higher on her chest.

The straps of the overalls crossed behind her back -- like the suspenders she'd started her new life with -- and fastened to the overalls at the beltline over her ass. The overalls had been constructed for a much larger man, so the beltline was low enough for us to see the dimples at the top of her buttocks. With each step, they indented on the side of the leg she pushed off from.

Moreover, the overalls were cut shorter in back than in front. It was ingenious, and I complimented Alexi on that.

He said, "From your description of her, I had a general idea of her height and proportions. You said she was built like Angelina Jolie. But I didn't have measurements, so all the clothes are loose. Too loose, sometimes, it looks like. But I hate tight clothing anyway."

"Me too."

"So every time I took the scissors to a piece of clothing, I was freaking out. Is this too much? Is this not enough? It was a new experience for me."

"For me too," I agreed, thinking of how I'd gone over Ali's wardrobe. By the time I was done with something, small holes were larger, and thin fabric had holes. Seams were split. Cuts were frayed. Buttons and snaps were wrenched off. Straps were of uneven length. Tight stretches were tighter, loose stretches were looser. Of course, it helped having Ali there as an actual model.

"I think all men want a barbie doll girl they can pose. Forget about fucking. Testosterone makes you want to play dress-up."

"That's my theory too."

Unless Ali specifically checked the length of her hem, she would think that the back was as long as the front (not that the front was very long). But in back, the cut curved up at about 10 degrees, which worked out to be quite high on her thighs. From the rear, you could see the gap between her thighs narrowing quickly as the eyes traced up, narrowing to almost nothing before the hem interrupted the natural flow up her legs.

It was the kind of error a woman could make while making cut-offs, but not so erroneous that she would toss out all her work. A woman would say to herself, "I'll just have to remember that I cut it a little too short in back." And then she'd forget.

As Ali moved out of the park and into the open sun and wind of the city streets, the uneven hem created all sorts of interesting suggestive shadows, but the shadows were never dark enough to be impenetrable. To the dedicated watcher -- and she passed by more than a few -- the height of her skirt was a maddening challenge.

Alexi had reaction shots galore as Ali walked down the street, or waited at intersections. Men spun on their heels, slowed their paces. All heads turned towards her. Nearby conversations stopped when she readjusted her sports bra.

When we were close to her, the camera helped explain things to the public. She had a sort of fashion model reality field running for her. If you have a camera-man, a staff, then everything about a showy outfit is excused. Excused, but still enjoyed.

Later, Alexi moved us across the street so we could shoot her from the side with his telephoto lense. The pictures are magnificent -- Ali in perfect focus, with the half-blurred forms of people all around her, their white smudged faces staring at her. The gap left by the slits down the sides of the overalls made it possible for Alexi to shootinto her clothes. Into the opening, around her stomach, sometimes out the other side.

I mention all the people watching because I like that sort of stuff. But Ali looked mostly like a normal young woman, out running an errand before she went home to wax her floors. Most of the people passing by didn't even notice her. Ali herself seemed bored by the whole procedure.

But what showed up in the pictures was another story entirely. A selective interpretation of events, the specific reality that, for some of the lucky men who noticed, she was a wet dream in action.

With Ali distant from us, the three of us fell into a form of nonverbal communication. Alexi had thought his method through quite thoroughly. He had me standing beside him. He told me what pose to take, and I (with no little embarassment) would casually change positions. Thirty to forty feet away, Ali mimicked my poses, exaggerating everything I did.

- In front of a subway exit: arms up, hands fluffing her hair -- she presented a stunning profile to the streams of people climbing the stairs.

- At the edge of the sidewalk: a modest squat and twist, to fiddle with her clogs -- her overalls gaped and left her whole upper body open in the sunlight.

- At an intersection -- legs spread, hand idly rubbing her stomach under the overalls, as a businessman stared with an expression of pained desire from five feet away.

- Waiting for a telephone booth while unknowingly surrounded by a clan of street kids: lifting her sports bra higher (her breasts peaking out underneath) and then flapping it to let the air in, her firm breasts barely moving as she fiddled with her top.

Finally, at a deli, Ali bought us all apples, paying with the cash tucked in her bra. We caught the counter-guy's reaction, as well as some side-long glances from the man beside her in line. He was staring down the slit in her overalls, staring at her stomach, and how it curved down, down, and disappeared under and between her legs. He was getting an unobstructed view of little Ali's lower torso, and he only didn't see her sex because he was above her, and her vagina was below her. The guy beside her couldn't help himself -- he reached over to her.

I was heavily turned on by all this. "We have to get some more guys touching her."

Alexi gave me a greedy grin. "That's what I was thinking too. But it's not covered in our agreement."

"Forget the agreement. As long as we get our pictures, let your imagination run wild."

"You should know, I have a wild imagination," he said, and then gestured her over.

The third and last photo shoot of that day was conceptual. We jumped the subway downtown to Washington Square Park. Alexi's office had a clear view overlooking the park -- he had a real job, it turned out. The website was supporting itself but not him. Any office with a park view meant that any red-blooded male would spend a portion of each day staring down at the co-eds enjoying NYU's only outdoor space. NYU wasn't a campus, just a collection of buildings, and the park is what passes for a grassy area. This explained how Alexi got his idea for his website.

In the office, Ali turned her back on us and changed, not seeming to notice how we both stared at her in dead silence.