Peanut Butter and Sour Herring

Several anecdotes about photography and modelling. Warning: there is hardly any sexual content. Sometimes a reader has to bite through it. This is story #6 in the Romance & Rick saga, but each story stands on its own.

It had been a good night. I had asked Rick to tie my hands behind my back, and I told him to do whatever he wanted to do. Obviously, he took advantage of the situation to fuck me in the bum, not once, but twice, and that was, to use a Star Trek quote, highly irregular. I've always been opposed to anal, but once in a while, a girl has to fulfil her man's perverted wishes. To be honest, Rick isn't all that bad, and last night I even enjoyed it, but I won't tell him that. Luckily, he was interested in a few other holes as well, and I fell asleep a happy girl, some orgasms later. He's a real fucklord, my Rick.

In the morning, I got out of bed and hobbled to the living room after the obligatory pee. Rick was sitting at the table, wearing some blue boxers and nothing else, munching a slice of bread with peanut butter. I refused to kiss him as I hate peanut butter, which makes me something of a subversive enemy of the state in this country. He knows that, so no harm done. I was in one of his oversized orange soccer t-shirts, with the big number eight. No need to hide my hairy bush, he's seen it all before.

(May I mention how beautiful he looked? Uncombed, unwashed, and with the sun in his back, he looked like a shoddy messiah. I had to restrain myself from jumping him right then and there. My motherly clock has been ticking wild these last few months. Hormones in overdrive.)

I yawned loudly, scratching my arse. He looked at my muff as interested as a cow watching a train passing by. I went to the kitchen, adding that extra twitch to my bottom cheeks that normally makes him uncontrollably wild, but this morning it had no effect at all.

I frequently walk around bottomless, so if I want his attention, I'd better put on some sexy undies. I poured myself a cup of coffee and looked inside the fridge for some sour herring. You can't get more Dutch than that. I took a postcard that had been lying on the kitchen counter since yesterday and showed it to him.

"Have you seen this card we got from Charlotte?" I asked. "She's staying with her millionaire daddy friend on the Côte d'Azur."

Charlotte is a friend of mine, I guess I can call her my friend, although we probably will never see each other again. We had a threesome once. It was my birthday present to Rick, but we decided not to repeat it as it made me feel emotionally uncomfortable. (You can read that story in Cha Cha Cha with Charlotte.)

"Antique Forum Jullii fut fondé par César en quarante-neuf avant Jésus Christ," I read aloud in my best French accent. I handed over the card to Rick, who glanced at it for a quarter of a second and threw it on the table. Rick is often grumpy in the morning, so I didn't care.

I sat down and buttered a loaf of bread. Rick looked at me and started grinning. I found something in his behaviour slightly weird. I mean, weirder than he normally is. Perhaps he was thinking of Charlotte and the wild night we all had together. I slowly slid my cup of coffee in front of the plate with the herrings.

"What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing," he answered with a twinkle in his eyes.

"I know that look," I said, pointing a finger at him. "Are you horny again?"

Rick assured me that was not the case.

"Are you going to tell me or what?"

Rick coughed, looking like a Secretary of State preparing for an official statement. He can be a bit square sometimes.

"I had a weird encounter yesterday afternoon. Well, a pleasant encounter."

I looked at him from the other side of the table.

"This better be good," I warned him. "I haven't had my breakfast yet."

Rick is a freelance photographer. He works for the city council a lot, and when there is a BBQ, dance, or gathering, he takes pictures, hoping he can sell some to the politicians or the local press. I call myself a weekend widow because that's when he is mostly away. With the twenty or so political parties in our country, there's always something to do at the weekends. Then you still have the many religious, social, and cultural societies. My man visits them all.

He started taking pictures of apples and oranges at the local supermarket, dreaming he was going to be the next Anton Corbijn one day. Mobile phones with cameras have made his profession a dying breed, but sometimes someone still wants a talented photographer. And he is talented alright. Very.

The day before, so Rick told me, he did a boudoir session for a lady who was going to be married soon and who wanted to surprise her future husband like in the good old days. She had seen our nude pictures, at the local photo exhibition, and remembered his name (see the story: Circle of Light). She wanted the set to be analogue, and asked for a photo album with prints, developed in a dark room.

Not only did Rick feel like a real art photographer again, but he also liked the subject. The lady was in her early sixties and had wrinkles, some fat rolls, and all characteristics that come with the ageing process. It was more refreshing than the current trend where models have to be photo-shopped before their pictures can be published.

She wanted him to show the beauty of an elderly woman. As the widow of a local portrait painter, she had been in artistic circles for most of her life and had posed before.

Rick couldn't stop talking about the session. Usually, he has to win over the model to make her pose as he wants, but this was the opposite. The woman asked him to be adventurous. The more he talked to me about her, the more his adrenaline levels were rising. He didn't know yet how the pictures would turn out. It was, in his own words, exciting, frustrating, and slightly crazy.

I wanted to know if he would show me the pictures, but he rejected that. The shots were for the woman and her future husband alone, and no one else. He had his professional ethics to obey. The session had been great, with the woman directing the poses she wanted her future husband to see, but giving some input to Rick as well.

She wanted the session to be old skool vintage. It started with her sitting at the coiffeuse, an antique cabinet with a mirror, where she pretended to comb her hair, dressed in a red see-through negligée. Underneath, she had the traditional seductive lingerie set with a bra, undies, a garter belt and stockings. Enough clothing to simulate (and stimulate) a slow striptease that my boyfriend had to document.

In the end, she was naked, and Rick assured me that the pictures he had in mind were going to be phenomenal. Nude and confronting, but not pornographic. I was convinced he could manage that.

At that point, they were talking like old friends, and then she asked him if she could go one step further. The boudoir album was shot, but she wanted to add some extra pictures, not for the album, but sealed in an envelope. And these were, so he said while he swallowed a chunk of bread, pretty explicit, like the ones he sometimes takes from me, for private consumption only.

I told Rick, "Quite a story. Did you get excited by it all?"

"Of course not," he replied. "You wouldn't want your gynaecologist to be excited when he examines you. I do a job and I do it seriously. It's all about the diaphragm, shutter speed, and framing."

"She didn't want more from you, I hope?" I added with a sudden streak of joyous jealousy.

Rick assured me that was not the case, it had been entirely professional. I wanted to know if he had ever crossed the line with a model, and to my amazement, he had, once.

One day, early in his career, he was contacted by a shady talent manager. You know, the proverbial guy with a big cigar in his mouth and black sunglasses on his nose, representing so-called top models and singers but with only subclass ranking material in his stable. For a new girl, who was going to be a star, he wanted a portfolio. It had to be done cheaply, but it had to be done professionally. Once the girl hit the jackpot, he -- the photographer -- would be recognised as one of the leading characters behind her success and money would come rolling in.

Rick was a rookie, but this doesn't mean he was stupid. He immediately sensed the bullshit the agent was trying to sell him, but he didn't mind. Usually, Rick had to pay to get a model, but this time one was offered for free. He managed to get a repetition room at the local cultural centre and used his charms to get some props from the amateur theatre society. A bed, a chair, a sofa.

The model, with the ridiculous stage name Debby Decca (name changed for privacy reasons), was a very cute fake blonde with big boobs. She didn't know yet if she wanted to be a film star or the next Madonna, basically because she couldn't act, nor sing. But what she missed in talent, she made up for in bodily features. Rick learned that she was a farmer's daughter, a virgin who went to the big city to find fame and fortune. She had lost that virginity pretty fast but was still on the lookout for the fame and fortune side of things.

They had some cheap Aldi champagne, and by the time the bottle was empty, Rick had become much more than her photographer. He was her confidant, her best friend, and, for one night and morning, her lover.

"I hope you used a condom." I remarked.

"More than one." my man said with a chuckle.

I had to know everything there was to know about her. Rick said that he looked her up on the internet one day. He learned that Debby had recorded two Euro-dance singles and had lip-synched those in discos all over the country. When her act dried out she recorded a bawdy Dutch carnival schlager and joined the many carnival shows in Holland for a season. To give her dwindling career a boost, she even had some pictures published in the Dutch Playboy.

"What!" I said. "You fucked a playmate?"

"Hardly a playmate," replied Rick. "Not even a page 3 girl, more of a page 103 girl."

"Did they use your pictures for the magazine?" I wanted to know.

"No, they weren't mine. She had quite a few photo shoots and some were pretty explicit."

"What became of her?" I inquired.

Rick told me that on a Dutch music forum, different theories had been put forward, but no one knew for sure. It was rumoured she starred in a couple of low-budget adult movies. He only hoped she escaped relatively unharmed from her failed modelling, singing, and acting career.

"This was before you met Gwen then?"

Gwendolyn is Rick's ex. I stole him from her. Rick explained that he met Debby Decca very early in his career, years before he met Gwen. He took another bite from his foul-smelling loaf of bread. I decided to profit from this sudden talkative mood and asked if he had ever cheated on his ex.

Rick nodded and confessed that he had cheated on her, before I came into the picture. I wouldn't call my attempt cheating though, it was more of a blue-helmet rescue mission if you ask me. He was soooo unhappy. Gwen wasn't aware of Rick's adventures, and he wanted to keep it that way.

I needed to get something off my chest.

"Promise me," I begged him, "if you ever cheat on me, to tell me. We'll work it out, you and me."

It was a rather heavy declaration, even with a mouthful of herring.

"Why would I ever cheat on you?" Rick asked. "I see no reason why?"

"Things happen," I added. "One never knows. Just promise me."

Rick gave one of his there-she-goes-again sighs and told me he promised to tell me if he would ever cheat on me.

"See, that was not that difficult." I smiled.

I put down my cup of coffee and removed the shirt I was wearing. I walked over to him and pushed my boobs in his face. I stuck a finger in the jar of peanut butter and smeared some over my pubic hair.

"Be a good boy and eat your breakfast now."