Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Aug 30, 2005
Getting a woman to pose nude for you is a lot like getting a woman to tumble under the sheets with you. The same rules of attraction apply. To succeed you must seduce.
And cash payments help.
You’d think that with money on the line and the rent coming due women would be eager to seal the deal in as professional a manner as possible. You would, of course, be wrong. As in the dating world, women flake at the most inopportune moments, and for the most mysterious of reasons.
Natalie was the first woman to contact me and the only one I would meet. The rest appeared eager enough at first but ultimately failed to grasp the nuances of the dance. They would send face shots, or body shots, but not both. They would let days lapse between emails. Ah, but Natalie was the one. Inexperienced at nude modeling yet experienced at modeling in general, eager yet sensibly cautious, sufficiently motivated by money yet not desperate, she would make the ideal partner. And so I seduced her:
I want to take pictures that expose you, and the person you are, rather than just your body parts. I won’t shy away from any part of your body but I have no interest in the typical pornographic spread-legged closeup. I want you to feel comfortable and strike whatever poses come naturally.
The night before I was scheduled to meet Natalie over coffee, Les and I attended Cassius’ art opening. The gallery showcased his clever Trompe L’Oeil canvasses, a mixture of genuine and simulated photographs set against colorful and meticulously detailed backgrounds. Looking over his masterworks, I suffered a momentary crisis of conscience. “I was hoping to shoot someone older, and thicker, and, well, less white,” I was telling Les.
My girlfriend sipped at her rosé and rolled her eyes. “So don’t do it then.”
“It’s just that the idea of shooting her is anathema to my sexual politics—we’re already constantly reminded that being truly beautiful in this fucking stupid country means being young and skinny and fair-skinned.” The wine was already giving me a head of steam. “But then again she really is the best subject.”
“What? Are you in love with her now or something?”
I sighed. It was seduction after all—to do this right I’d need to peer at my young subject through bedroom eyes. Still, Les put me on the defensive. “Bitch, please! I’m not going to fuck her; I need this to be professional.” I paused, examining my own motives. “In a way, that’s the kink of it.”
Touring the city’s nightspots that evening, I looked at women differently, wondering how my photographic lens might transform them. Les and I went to dinner with a large group and argued over the bill with a few Frenchies who had, of course, ordered 5,000 bottles of wine. At Lotus I watched Simone as she stood next to an acquaintance of hers—Simone blonde, curvaceous and robust, the other girl dark-haired and lithe and impossibly long-legged. I don’t have a “type.” I never have, really. There are so many beautiful women in the world. When the tall girl sat next to me she leaned into me, her ass rising from the seat cushions, and slurred unintelligible nonsense into my ear. Her elbow missed my junk by a few centimeters. Drunkenness is not terribly attractive.
The next day I began my walk to Evilbucks in the oppressive heat, checking out the neighborhood talent along my route. I looked at my watch and decided I’d be late if I kept walking, so I hopped the train and emerged minutes later, still sweating. Bought a soda and took a seat upstairs in the Evilbucks lounge. Pulled out a novel and half-heartedly scanned the pages, wondering whether I’d be stood up. Sometimes my life is too strange for words.
My phone rang, breaking the library-like silence of the lounge. “Hullo?”
A pleasant female voice greeted me on the other end. “Hullo? Lex?” The voice echoed. I looked to my left. There she was, sitting with a harmless-looking male friend. The friend left, evidently satisfied that I didn’t appear to be a Patrick Bateman in training. I shook Natalie’s hand and joined her at a table against the wall. She was at once more beautiful and more ordinary than her pictures had led me to believe. Her dark, piercing eyes seemed to expose me as the dilettante that I am. Her face bore a slight but nonetheless unsettling resemblance to my cousin’s. The cheap, rigid Evilbucks chair exacerbated my discomfort.
Now what, Lex? I have a game-plan for dates and boardroom meetings, but not for this. My mind wandered. An ordinary man spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.
Snapping out of my reverie with a shudder, I called the meeting to order. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
“No, not at all.” Somehow I’d gotten the impression that Natalie’s English would be accented. It was not. She sounded like any other precocious New York college girl. She asked about my project. I talked about Naked Loft Party, supplied the url, and reiterated what I’d mentioned in my email, carefully dropping in the word “pussy” to see if it would provoke a negative reaction. It did not. “I’ve never done this before,” she interjected, matter-of-factly.
I knew this already, but upon hearing it reaffirmed I visibly relaxed. “Well neither have I, so we’ll have to figure it out together. The real question I have for you is why, exactly, do you want to do this?”
“I’m not a prude or anything,” she said. “I’m comfortable with my body.” She held her gaze. I believed her. “And getting paid for it is nice,” she added with a wry smile.
We discussed regulation 2257 and the logistics of the shoot and our meeting drew to a close. It had only been about fifteen minutes. As Natalie rose from her seat I briefly inspected her slender frame and it finally sank in that she’s eighteen and gorgeous. And yet she still carried herself with a certain innocence, unaware, I imagined, that her beauty has a devastating effect upon dirty old men like me; unaware of the multitudinous assholes who would gladly use and abuse her; unaware of the imminent heartbreak of her twenties and—if she’s truly unlucky—of her thirties and beyond. In this moment I felt the awesome weight of being the pimp who offers her naked young flesh to the world. I almost felt guilty.
“I have to ask you before you go—where are you from, y’know, originally?”
“The Ukraine,” she answered. The only other Ukrainian woman I’ve ever met was a nun.
This concluded our meeting. My misgivings from the previous evening had evaporated in the summer heat. Natalie was exotic enough, I reasoned, and so naturally beautiful that I would surely regret taking a pass. I told her I’d reflect on our conversation and give her an answer over the weekend.
Later on I’d find it almost comically strange that such a brief encounter would lead to her being naked in my bed, and to my owning her image in perpetuity.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Aug 28, 2005
So she’s coming.
That’s right—the girl is coming. No, the girl is coming. Or rather, the girl is coming.
To New York.
There’s going to be trouble.
I still don’t know her name.
I am afraid.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Opinions | Aug 26, 2005
I’m a purveyor of spirits, dope included, and when chance affords, a thief, but I ain’t no fucking hypocrite.
Al Swearengen
I was going to post on another topic today but awoke to discover the internet has something to say about the way I sling HTML. Hiram protests:
NLP was fun while it lasted. Now, as a porn link site, it’s just plain lame, which is why I removed the NLP atom feed from my syndication client.
Hiram presumably objects to the gallery since I’ve had some form of advertising on the main page since, like, late 2003. Perhaps he missed these two posts, which explain my reasoning clearly. Perhaps he overlooked the journal-only feed. Perhaps he simply didn’t notice I’ve been using some of this money to shoot nudes and post them here for fucking free (I know, I know, the rest of the Natalie series is coming—I’m still making some back-end tweaks).
The artists and writers of old had their rich patrons and their promoters. I have my wankers.
Most people come here looking for visual depictions of sex acts—this is the inevitable side effect of running what’s essentially a publicly available, conveniently indexed repository of my sexual history. Though I call them wankers, the ones who do go ahead and sign up for a porn site, thereby making me money, are near and dear to my heart—nearer and dearer, at any rate, than freeloading critics.
And I’ve made a decent compromise, I think. Unlike GM or Dell or even Google Adsense, my advertisers have precisely zero to say about the nature of my content (indeed I’m openly critical of the jizz biz). Unlike a book or magazine, NLP affords me complete editorial autonomy and freedom from the pressure to make my writing conform to mainstream expectations. The more money I make here the more I can fund whatever off-the-wall projects come to mind. As I said a long time ago:
Natalia asked what I want out of life. “I want to have sex with beautiful women,†I said, “make a decent living, and completely change the way people think. In any order you like.â€
In a world full of phonies and hypocrites, I’ve been refreshingly honest about what I’m doing here.
Last but certainly not least, let’s just say the political climate in my home country isn’t exactly conducive to this project. How many bloggers/writers/artists/whatever in the Divided States risk time in a federal penitentiary?
So Hiram, be fucked. And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Aug 24, 2005
Hi there-
I am so glad you responded to my ad !! I have not had much luck finding anyone on Adultfriendfinder, so I am hoping that I have found my Prince Charming :) hee hee. I just got back from working out and I am so tired….where are you to give me a massage :) I’d like to hear more about you and get a picture as well, and if you want to know me better, here is a good place to start:
[redacted]
These are usually a good way to start a conversation. Feel free to ask me anything…you know I am open since you answered my ad. Hopefully you can leave your number and we can talk later, if not, email me and I will write you back….my emails can get very FUN….and quite creative :) I am pretty bummed that it is only Tuesday…..that means 3 more days of work still…..yuck :( Do you have any plans for this week? Maybe we could get together? Or, what are you up to tomorrow night? Maybe we could get together…it is Hump Day ya know ;) Hee hee…I am so naughty. Ok, I am rambling now :) I better get going….if you are free tonight, give me a call…my phone number is on my personal page.
Love Ya,
Lisa :)
I mentioned a little while back that we’d be checking out some of the “adult” dating sites. As you can probably infer from the spam above, the results have been universally disappointing thus far. Amusingly enough Les hadn’t even responded to the ad in question.
It’s still too early to call the race, but in the last week or so alone our old standbys craigslist and Nerve have outperformed all the rest by a margin of five to zero. That is, five serious responses that either have led to a date or are in the process of leading to a date, to a big fat fucking bagel. All the more pathetic when you factor price into the equation.
And the gross-out factor—at times my poor girlfriend will scream in horror upon receiving a barrage of genitalia portraits. Why, oh why, do people think close-ups of their cunts and cocks are interesting to anyone? H.P. Lovecraft himself would have had great difficulty coming up with anything more terrifying than the Internet. Anyway, this is why I placed scare quotes around the word “adult,” because there really doesn’t seem to be anything adult about this process at all.
OMG !!! SOMEONE SAVE US FROM TEH INTERNETS!
In case you didn’t already realize this, Leslie is the best girlfriend in the world. She’s done most of the legwork on the project. Thanks dear! Hee hee… OMG !! Sign up for my pornsite and we’ll totally do teh naughtay together ;)
Love Ya,
Lexi :)
Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Aug 21, 2005
You and me are floating on a tidal wave…
Together
You and me are drifting into outer space…
Coldplay, X&Y
There’s a storm gathering in your mind, a tidal wave rolling through your skull, an idea forming that maybe, just maybe, tonight’s gonna be a complete pain in the ass. You try not to think about it, you try not to talk about it, but you just know the notion’s gonna fester, gonna color everything you do. Ideas are dangerous things. To wit: try not to think of elephants.
Oh but you just did, didn’t you?
When Jimmy comes over offer him a drink. Put on some music. Wait for the girls. Your girlfriend bitches about bitches but all you can do is admire the way her ass looks in that little blue dress. She’s self-conscious of her muscular legs but you wouldn’t have them any other way. Smile when Emma arrives with her out-of-town friend in tow. The friend is a sassy little bitch who challenges you at every turn. “That’s a nice racket you have going with Leslie and Emma,” she tells you. She’ll be like this all night.
Smoke a rip but go easy. You don’t want to end up like Jimmy, his eyes now wide as saucers. Told you so, dude. Tumble out onto the streets of the Barrio, scoot past the opened fire hydrants and the old folks playing cards on neighborhood stoops. Half a block and you’re already drowning in sweat. You girlfriend wants you to be careful crossing the street. “Don’t worry,” you tell her. “Nothing can harm us in the Barrio.” Mi barrio mi mundo.
And it’s a Barrio party you wind up at, inside a sweat box apartment laden with heavy exhalations of marriage-a-wanna smoke. Grab a beer and try to cool down. Watch as Emma, ever full of surprises, sticks the lit end of a joint into her yap and locks lips with the hostess. Shotgun. The boys whoop and holler. Jimmy waits for Lisa to show up. She never does. It’s time to go, so you make your way out and walk over a block and try to hail a cab but no one will take your party of five. Salvation appears in the form of a minivan—a gypsy cab. Take it. You’ll thank yourself later on, when you’re rolling down Fifth Ave and Emma’s wrapped in your arms and she’s squeezing the crotch of your jeans and old school Michael Jackson is blasting out of the stereo.
You feel like an idiot standing on West Street waiting, and waiting, for the doorman to get his act together. Emma’s getting upset. Tell the bitch to chill, because soon enough Leslie will make her way in to summon B. The hostess emerges. The girls hug. You get your comps. Put the troubles at the door behind you. Try not to think of elephants, remember? At least it’s cool inside.
“It’s just that these girls are all so fucking predictable,” you’re telling Emma’s friend. Well what do you want? “Say anything, do anything original.”
Grin sarcastically at the porno playing on the big screen upstairs because it stands in such marked contrast to the restrained proceedings. You watch the women dance in small clusters, chiefly for the benefit of the assembled boyfriends and husbands. Sexual tourists in abundance, voyeurs, practitioners of the dark art of swinging-lite, now with 25% less substance. Sitting next to a woman now who’s thin and small-titted and hot in that seen it a million times way, you choke back tears of boredom. The leg of her jeans reveals a floral print set upon a fishnet weave that further reveals patches of her soft skin. Dispense with the chitchat and explore her real reasons for being here. Work your fingers under the fishnet. Get her to acknowledge that she has a cunt and you have a cock.
“I don’t want to have sex with anyone,” she disclaims, presumptuously.
The sentence begins to form in your mind, a tidal wave rolling through your skull: Listen bitch, I’ve heard it all before… You are, however, distracted by something else and the moment passes.
“She would have gotten wet if you’d said that,” Emma’s friend tells you later on. Oh, but you know. You know.
Listen bitch: the bad news is the after-party’s a bust. The good news is there’s now more weed for you. Morning comes and the soft light that streams in through the bedroom window is an unwelcome reminder that you’re up all night a little too often these days. Jimmy leaves. Emma and Les lie on the couch like spoons and you lie on the bed with Emma’s friend, smoking and drinking and talking. And when your girlfriend enters the bedroom you must have her now, consideration for your guests be damned—she’s been tempting you all night with a jiggle here and a swish there. Fuck her as your guests gather their things. Continue fucking her as they return to the bedroom to say their goodbyes. Continue even as you plant a kiss upon Emma’s cheek and give her a spanking for the road.
Listen bitch, you think. And then you come.
