Chapter 12
Peggy awoke slowly from a deep and oddly dreamless sleep, feeling slightly cheated. She had gone to bed the night before fully determined to dream her way through a complete summer re-run of the posing at Jim's studio. She mollified herself by running instant replays of the more delectable sections on the ceiling of her room, her eyes wide open, but not to the blotched and cracked ceiling.
Fucking was a very delightful pastime, if it was only for posing. There were things about it that Peggy would like to change but they were probably as immutable as the past Grandma was always begging to have changed. She would like, for instance, to have Jim's prick stay permanently hard and to shoot off his juices into her at intervals. These intervals varied with each day dream but their net effect was to prolong the fu-posing indefinitely. Peggy recognized, with one side of her very practical little nature, that such changes were not likely to be brought about and, if they could be, might not be entirely satisfactory. And, thinking practically, she recalled that she had slipped out of Jim's studio without collecting her model's fee. Now that could be arranged.
She puzzled for a moment over why, even in her day-dreaming, she recognized that indefinitely prolonged fu-posing might not be practical. And then came up with her own rather original but eminently satisfactory explanation. If fu-posing were indefinitely prolonged, she would miss a great deal of the fun, which was in the build-up, where her body responded to Jim's hands, the demands of his prick against her little cunt, his mouth against her titties, tongue teasing her nipples. All that delicious and constantly increasing excitement would be missed.
Peggy nodded. She would leave Nature's arrangement alone. And pose in snatches, accepting all the excitement of several build-ups and the glorious Fourth-of-July-Macy's-Parade- St. Patrick's-day excitement of climax for each. Peggy had carefully avoided putting Christmas on her list of excitements. Christmas, as far back as she could remember, had been a stomach-churning disappointment, what with Grandma forgetting completely promises made weeks before during her occasionally lucid moments. No, for Peggy, Christmas did not add up to excitement. Rather to tears absorbed in her pillow, sobs muffled with the edge of the blanket.
Those bleak, barren Christmases were one of the elements that had driven Peggy to thinking about fu-posing, that had prompted her to seek, anywhere she could, some evidence of interest in her as a person. She didn't really ask for love. Nor expect it. She didn't know enough even to consider it, never having had any.
The excitement of the use of her body was enough. It made up for so many other lacks. Not that Peggy really identified any of these lacks -there were just-gaps-where she felt something was missing, just dull, empty pains in her chest from time to time, from-wanting. She couldn't have recognized these lacks as a mother's love, a little crooning attention to a hurt knee, a warm, quieting hand in the dark of night when strange things menaced little girls, a happy, laughing response to a good report card, frowning-but not too formidable-disapproval of bad marks, even an occasional spanking, and plenty of hugs and kisses in between.
These were a child's rightful heritage, the unlimited magical gold with which to buy the future.
Peggy had for substitute a drunken grandmother with a grievance against the world and an insatiable thirst for gin. Plus a bitter resentment that Peggy even existed.
So Peggy lay in her bed and projected re-runs of yesterday's sex and caressed her own body languidly in anticipation of today's fu-posing. She meant to look through that sample book more carefully. There had been quick glimpses of some quite extraordinary performances, some of them involving a number of people in quite improbable poses. Except as curiosa, she could discard those. She wanted her body used, her emotions caught and impressed on film-not a mob scene. Still, there was something about... well, at least she could satisfy her curiosity today when she went to pose for Jim Atwood.
And she wouldn't have to try anything so childish as the self-opening sweater of the panties with high visibility. Jim Atwood knew what she looked like-and liked it.
Peggy swung her slim, rounded legs over the side of the bed and sat for a moment contemplating them, mentally comparing them with other legs. They weren't as full as the young whore's and certainly not as baggy and droopy and blue-veined as the old bag's. They weren't as long and thinly tapering as the fashion models' and fashion sketches. But they compared well with those she recalled seeing in the sample book. In fact, now that she thought about it, those models were quite ordinary and in a few instances just a bit lumpy. But what they were doing made you forget little deficiencies.
And between her legs-her little cunt. It ached a bit this morning. Not unpleasantly. Just enough to sort of remind her that there had been a prick rammed through it... She had almost no criterion for making cunt comparisons. Cunts, it seemed to her, were cunts. Some had hair, a soft muff covering them, others-though this was only an assumption, except in a few instances at school where she had seen other girls in her gym class naked or practically so-had no hair.
Peggy considered the aesthetics of that, and concluded she preferred her own version, with no hair. Without hair she had unobstructed view of what went on down there. And that, she felt, was part of the build-up of excitement.
Her bubbies-Peggy had to stretch her neck backward and peer down her nose and even then the view was limited-were admittedly small. But they were nicely rounded out. Peggy ran her hands over them, touching her nipples and triggering a ripple of excitement all the way down to her cunt.
The blotched and smokey-looking mirror in the cramped bathroom would give a better view but the glass itself seemed to distort, so she couldn't be sure. Well, she could wait until she got to the dressing room at Jim's and see herself in her entirety-naked, of course-in the well-lighted pier glass.
There had been no definite time set for her second session with Jim and the cameras and Peggy pondered the problem, eventually setting her mental alarm clock at noon as the earliest practical hour.
And then put her mind to the problem of clothes-every woman's permanent dilemma. Not that the choice was wide. There was a silk dress of a color Peggy privately called dishwater green and felt made her look diseased, as if marked by the plague. And a middy blouse outfit that made her look like a child. And the blue rayon with sort of neon orange piping that Grandma had snatched up at a rummage sale for 50 cents and didn't fit too well.
Jeans-her three pair-she discarded immediately as covering too much of what she had to display and being too difficult to get out of rapidly.
So it came down to the middy blouse outfit, in spite of its childishness. And a pair of cotton panties with only minor holes and reasonably taut elastic. And long dark blue stockings. The only pair that didn't have a run. And patent leather slippers-her best but still scuffed and peeling in spots.
It was an outfit Miss Carmenita Welsh, the social worker, had approved and issued the necessary vouchers to obtain. And there had once been a hat that went with it, as Peggy recalled. And, still naked, not having yet fully determined her outfit for the day, Peggy climbed on a chair and rummaged in the back of her closet shelf, eventually, and in triumph, turning up the broad-brimmed sailor.
It was dusty and a little crumpled but this didn't bother Peggy. She could dust it off and a few wrinkles might make it more intriguing. In sponging it off with a damp rag Peggy inadvertently smoothed out some of the wrinkles so that I looked quite respectable again. Almost too respectable.
Grandma came up behind her while she was sponging the hat, still naked. Her little rump was working in her intent occupation with cleaning the hat. And Grandma stung it sharply, her old, homey hands almost clacking with the slap.
"Slut! Tramp! Whore!..."
For an instant Peggy thought Grandma, by some vast mischance, had seen the photographs and then recognized it as only Grandma's usual tirade.
"... running naked through the house, inciting men to lewdness..."
There was no need to point out to Grandma that she was not running through the house but was enclosed in the smallest room of the apartment, cleaning a hat. And besides, there were no men around to incite.
"Fornicator!" Grandma could snort out the old biblical word with alcoholic resonance. And seemed to enjoy it, for she repeated, "Fornicator! Fornicator!" and went wandering off, looking for the second bottle of gin, developing a hazy idea she had hidden in under a tombstone, one bearing her daughter's name.
Peggy recovered from her momentary panic about Grandma and the photographs, stuck out her tongue at the old woman's back and started dressing, savoring her body as she covered each of her delightfully useable parts.
And then stood up, shaking herself into the middy blouse, smoothing down the blue skirt and twitching her rump to settle it more firmly around her. She clapped the hat on the back of her head and stared at herself-what she could see in the mirror. And was unhappy. It did look childish.
It not only looked childish, it was the epitome of childishness, of young girl. And she was heart-breakingly beautiful and didn't know it.