Lux and I met at a party. I was wearing red boots; she had on black knee socks. I was drinking vodka tonics and smoking someone else's cigarettes. She didn't drink or smoke. We talked for a while, and then Lux said: "I've been working on my website a lot lately: "ThatStrangeGirl.com."
     I knew this. I had already logged on, curious as to what a porn site run by a twenty-year-old girl looked like. Well, it looked like a porn site run by a twenty-year-old girl who took pictures of her eager, slightly shy friends, a site intent on something I didn't quite understand. I mean, the distinction between sexual imagery and nonsexual imagery is futile, right? Little kids like to masturbate for the same reason they like to eat Corn Pops. It's good. Corn Pops are good, and biting-your-lip-until-it-bleeds orgasms are good. It's just a matter of naming the different feelings you have when you see something you want, or something you want to be.
     "I have an idea, Lux," I told her at the bar. "Um, I think that . . . if you wanted, I could . . . " It's like asking someone out: you try to say the thing because it's too late not to, and you get closer and closer but you fight it and fight it and then: "I could pose for your site, right? It would be the first time I had done anything like that, and . . . well . . . yeah."
     I finished my cigarette and bummed another. I remembered buying them when I was fifteen: "How old are you?" the convenience-store clerk asked me. "Nineteen," I said. He gave me a look up and down. "You're not nineteen," he smirked. "But you've got a pretty little body." A hand reached for my breast. I dodged it and ran out without paying. Fuck, I forgot to ask for matches.
     "Are you serious?" Lux looked pleased. "That would be great. I mean, if you're serious. You don't have to. And no one gets more naked than they want to. One of the girls kept a G-string on the whole time."
     "No," I said, trying to be cavalier. "I think it would be a lot of fun, and it would make a good story." To tell the grandkids.
     "It is fun. I can't wait. I knew you'd be cool." Uh huh. I was cool, or so I thought: I mean, you have to be cool to volunteer yourself for pomo porn. There's nothing wrong with being naked, and there's nothing wrong with being naked and cute, and there's nothing wrong with freezing an image of your naked cuteness and presenting it to the huddled masses as an emblem of their own possible naked cuteness.
     Except what if the huddled masses are all cigarette guys?


By the time I left the party, I was definitely vodka tonic-ed. Everywhere I looked, buildings seemed to sigh and ask, What the hell are you thinking? Well, I was thinking I'd build a monument to my capacity for self-arousal, to the way I sometimes tell my friends "I'll be right back," then lock myself in a bar bathroom and get off. I wanted to help lay bare the framework of sexuality that everything is built on.
     I called my mom the next day and told her. We don't have many secrets. Since the day she found my cigarettes when I was fifteen, I've thought, Fuck it, I don't want to have two lives. That night, I got an e-mail.

I am sorry I was not more receptive, but I still have a problem with pornography. I understand it is interesting to dip toes into degradation — I am not stupid — but eventually it does become degradation. How do we feel about the homeless men on their cardboards on the street? All they have left is their sexual desires and they sleep in the masturbation position, etc. It is interesting to play with, but you can't entirely just be playful about it, it does have a grotesque side that can take over. Sorry to be a trip. I just feel anxious about my child in the midst of cool-seekers. Love, mom

     I can try to dismiss the mom-feminism by saying, "Listen, we're enjoying the freedoms you got for us, but you didn't leave enough room for hot sex. Maybe it's fine to get tied up every now and then. Sometimes when you're objectified, you're playing a game and winning it." But she's not wrong, either. It's self-serving to package up my inclination to wear high-heeled boots, flirt with professors and make Internet porn and label it "power-assertion" when I'm just desperately doing whatever comes into my head.
     I called my cousin Vivi. She was out in California working for Ms. magazine and driving a Buick LeSabre. "I appreciate the distinctive pleasure of seeing you naked, but jeez," she said. "You should give it more thought."
     "Why? It's not a big deal. Not even really porn, just naked photos."
     "You don't know how you're going to feel about it. It's putting your body out there. There's not a lot else one has."
     "I'm not slutting. It's tasteful . . . " I think that anything is "tasteful" if it's called that. Conversely, labeling something "porn" helps it to be so. I've started a game, called Allthingsareporn: I look at stuff, like falafel or envelopes, and I think, "Wow, that's some nice porn." So I do have something besides my body.
     "Well, I love you, and your privacy," Vivi said.
     "Love you too," I told her.

I was supposed to be at Lux's at three on Sunday. Her apartment was on the third floor of a West Side walk-up. She opened the door with flattery: "Hey Carrie! You look great." A girl with glasses and shaggy bangs was sitting on Lux's bed, fiddling with a laptop. Her name was Catt; she was in from Canada.
     We decided to shoot in front of the brick fireplace in the living room. We took the family photos off the mantle. "Okay, I want a few of you clothed," Lux said. The lights were really bright. "Shoulders back," she instructed. I put my shoulders back. Lux moved around me with the camera.
     "Don't forget to smile," Catt added. "It's never good if you look scared." I screwed my lips into an expression that I hoped was a smile. My hands were shaking a little.
     "This'll be fun. Don't worry," Lux soothed, adjusting a lamp and looking at me kindly.
     "No, I'm fine." I wasn't particularly ashamed or nervous — I just didn't know what I was doing. I had come into this situation reveling in my control and self-awareness, but when confronted with instructions to be sexy, I suddenly didn't know what sexy was.
     "Smile!" Lux urged. My skirt, filmy blue-and-silver cotton, wearing thin in spots, dropped to the floor. I stood there in my purple thong and cropped wifebeater. "Okay, hold the mantelpiece and arch your back. You want to keep your back arched. You look really good like that." I'm flexible, so throwing my spine into a deep curve was natural. "Perfect," Lux said. I blushed at the compliment. "Smile!" she said again. Hanes undershirt, gone. I knelt on the floor, arched my back, leaned against the wall and smiled a waxen half-smile. "I really like your bra. That's cute." I liked it too: six bucks, dark blue mesh with lighter blue lace — my date bra. Now, I guess, my porn bra, too. I smiled, unhooked it, slid it off one arm and then the other, pausing at each stage while Lux and Catt adjusted the lights and debated the merits of different shots. "See, in profile like that, with the breasts lit from above? That's good." Snap, snap. My skin was hot. "Now," Lux said casually, "do you mind taking the bottom off?"
     "No, that's fine," I said. Nothing to fuss over. We did a couple of tease shots, as I slowly pulled off the dark purple thong (they werenot my date panties). One leg at a time. Gone.
     "Yes! Pubic hair! You're the first model on the site to have any! Sweet!" Sweet. And there I was, naked, a tattoo of a snowflake on the inside of my left thigh and a silver ring in my navel. My arms and face were beginning to sweat, but the rest of me, newer to the searing light, was dry and cool. I sat on the floor, my arms in front of me. Lux and Catt adjusted the position of my back with gentle hands. "Smile!" they said. I smile. Cross, uncross, stand up, brush the bits of dust and loose strands of hair from my legs. "Now . . . did you want to do any spread shots or anything?"
     "Spread shots?" I asked. "No, I think I'd rather not."
     I got dressed and stepped out on the fire escape to have a cigarette. Lux poked her head out. "Are you okay?"
     "Oh, yeah, I'm totally fine," I replied. And I was, more or less. I finished my cig, went back in and fell asleep on Lux's bed. Being under those lights had worn me out.


When I woke up, a second photographer, Auryn, had arrived. She and Lux were lacing Catt into a red satin corset for her shoot. It brought to mind Little Women, the sisters crowding around Meg conspiratorially, getting her ready for some fête. Except someone's saying: "Oh, God, the corset's doing that thing where it makes her nipples point down."
     After a few minutes, Catt was cased and sealed, her lips painted red, her glasses gone. They decided to shoot her against a deep blue drape, and the bright lights turned her skin white. Catt was a stripper, and she knew what she was doing: bending at impossible angles, pulling her skirt up over smooth haunches, batting her lashes coyly and showing just the right amount of white tooth in her smile. Earlier, she had said to me: "I feel like most kids our age are sex workers. I mean, if they're not stripping, they're erotic artists, and so forth. You know?"
     I didn't. "I guess we kind of run in different circles," I mumbled. (She must have known that. I'd never say, "You know, I think everyone our age actively supports, say, prison reform," unless I wanted to assert myself to someone whom I knew didn't.) I felt my sexual legitimacy being challenged. Suddenly, I was a high school sophomore again, cutting class in the bathroom with all the senior girls, who were talking about birth control and effective blowjob techniques more matter-of-factly than they might have, had it not been for my virginal presence.
     And then it struck me: this whole porn shtick amounted to nothing more than girls'-bathroom bragging rights. Except now, the girls' bathroom was my Ivy League university, so I felt compelled to toss in bit of revolution here and a bit of deconstruction there. Everything has to be an intellectual experiment, because only Luanne Ginger from Tempe, Arizona, does porn because "it's just so fu-un to fuck!"
     This take on alternaporn made me a huge alternahypocrite. I had convinced myself that posing nude was some sort of statement, but in reality, I just thought, "Well, it doesn't sound un-fun, and I trust Lux not to drug me."
     I got off the bed and walked back into Lux's living room, where Auryn was now shooting Catt. "Gorgeous!" Auryn cooed. "Are those your undies? I like how you can see your piercings through the lace a little."
     "This isn't coming to me," said Catt, a little exasperated. "I need some creative direction."
     "Okay. Carrie, you hold the light and go there," Auryn instructed. "Lux, get the curtain out of the way."
     "Can't. I need to photocopy Carrie's ID."
     What a female-friendly little porn factory. What a lovely, downy sense of support, like we were some splinter group in Paris '68, putting the truth out there. But so close to parody.      "Never mind that, Lux," said Auryn patiently. "Catt, hand on the wall. Right . . . right . . . a little more, okay. And with the other, just start taking the undies off. That's great." Aside, to me: "I liked what I saw of your shoot. My first shoot, I was just completely spastic."
     "Thanks. Yeah, I didn't even try to think about looking sophisticated."
     "Nah, you looked good."
     Just then, I glanced up. Catt was facing away from us, bending over, and her extraordinary cooch was maybe a foot away from me. It was hairless, as white as Catt's white legs and lined with rows of silver rings, so many rings that it looked like she might zip open. It was so . . . show. Like having a second face.
     I had this doll as a kid, a princess in a red dress. When you turned her upside down, her skirt flipped over her head and revealed a peasant girl. One girl's skirt became the other's as you flipped it back and forth until it was no longer novel. Catt played off this same sort of dichotomy: It would take me a while to reconcile the corseted, shaved and pierced porn pro with the soft-spoken girl in glasses who, only minutes earlier, had been annoyed because something was wrong with her Linux OS. I think to myself, She likes computers and she likes to strip, she likes computers and she likes to strip, until it stops seeming peculiar.
     But it never quite does — at least, it hasn't for me. The fact that Catt changed personalities, wore different things, made different kinds of gestures, and cast different kinds of glances when she was in sex mode made me acutely aware of my own uncharacteristic facial convulsions and attempts at coyness. I saw myself as a pretender, even though that was the last thing I wanted to be.


Nine days later, I got an e-mail from Lux. "They're up!!!," it read. "Yay!!!" I clicked the link she sent me, entered my username and password, and waited for the page to load. There were about thirty tiny thumbnails on the first page, each of them a stick figure with my dark hair. I clicked on one. It filled half my computer screen, and there I was. Clothed still, hair in my face, pulling my skirt down on one side.
     I clicked on another. There I was, in my underwear, head turned away, bra sliding off one breast.
     I called Becky, my roommate, over to the computer screen. She only looked for a moment. "So are men going to be masturbating to this?," she asked flatly.
     "I dunno. I guess. I mean, sure, I guess. It's not a crime."
     "Yeah, but doesn't that make you feel kind of permanently semen-covered?"
     "It didn't until you said that."
     And then I thought of all the splayed legs and moist palms and balled-up Kleenex and shallow breathing of cigarette men and creeps who sidle up to you on subways and use a sudden stop as an excuse to pin you against the door with their groin, who sit next to you on park benches and unzip their pants and start stroking themselves, who count on you being too terrified to do anything about it (which, when you're fourteen, is often the case), who do things that keep you up at night the first time they happen and after years of the same bullshit become stories you laugh about with your girlfriends: "I mean, this guy pushing up on me on the escalator was so short, I didn't even realize he had a hard-on, because it was against the back of my knee!" Ha ha, good one.
     How awful that they might think I was offering myself to them. What a failure.
     Becky left the room to read Edith Wharton. She turned off the light on her way out, forgetting, I guess, that it wasn't her room, and that I was still in it.
     There were only a few photos on the last page, and the stick figure in them was naked, drenched in an ethereal orange light. I clicked, and there I was. My smile was either impish or panicked. I was blurry and exposed. Maybe I was pretty, and maybe I had long legs, and maybe my stomach looked funny — I couldn't say. All I can tell you is that my newly groomed bikini line and the odd angle of the shot had conspired to expose my clitoris. That unremarkable pencil eraser, just a speck in the photo, might as well have been a life-sized, glow-in-the-dark lawn flamingo, because I hardly saw anything else.
     Thus fixated, I dissolved into me, a self-nourishing erotic ecosystem. I was profoundly aroused by my own potential for profound arousal. There we were, me of nine days ago and me tonight, watching each other in flushed anticipation.
     Around two o'clock, I got into bed. My flannel sheets were so soft that, in my sensory delirium, I licked them. The dark smelled like the cup of coffee I drank after dinner. I stroked my hair until I fell asleep.

The next morning: nothing. My sheets were soft, but I wasn't inspired to weld them to my every cell. The light didn't smell like anything. The whole thing was already an anecdote. No great trauma suffered, no great revelations experienced.
     People ask me if I'd do it again, and I never have a good answer. Usually, I just offer a noncommittal shrug and an "I don't know." There was so much self-doubt involved; it seems like too much to go through for an experience that faded so quickly. At the same time, there was the incredible sense of self-possession I felt, the feeling that I was the last human on earth, and that was wonderful. But I'm not sure I could recapture it.
     Fine. An answer. Would I do it again? Yes, I would, because I think I missed my mark the first time. I'd do it without making third-rate seductress faces. I would be Carrie getting naked in front of a camera and nothing else. If I was terrified, I would look terrified, and if I thought the whole thing was ridiculous and I burst out laughing, the camera would capture me laughing. When those pictures exist, when I've shown the world not a dork acting sexy, but a sexy dork, then I'll be done. n°