Quantify the effects of the experiment.

1. Jesse

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Continuing my assimilation into California culture, I joined a yoga class. It was a very Hollywood affair. Behind me was Garry Shandling. In front of me was Jennifer Beals. Neither was a slouch at yoga. To my left was a woman so beautiful and flexible that I had to chat her up after class. Apparently, pretending to be a photographer gave me brass balls. I think I might visualize a Canon every time I talk to a girl from now on.

"You look very . . . strong," I stammered.

"Thank you," she said, efficiently rolling up her yoga mat. Once vertical, she was much taller than me.

"Listen," I said, hoping that the morning's stretches had afforded me an extra inch or so in height. "I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you have a great-looking body. I'd really rather like to take pictures of it . . . and you, of course. Um, you could pose alongside it."

By the way she started laughing and playing with her hair, I figured I had correctly injected the optimum amount of "bumbling British idiot" into my shtick. I'm always trying to channel Hugh Grant, but more often than not, it comes out more like Mr. Bean. But not this time.

"Hmmmm. You're a photographer? Well, let me think about that for a little while," she said, dramatically furrowing her brow. "Why don't you give me your number." Swell. Instead of telling me "no" outright, she would just neglect to call me. I admired both her tact and cowardice.

To my astonishment, Jesse phoned within an hour.

"Hey Grant!" she said in a particularly sunny tone. "I'll do it, but you can't use any shots of my face, okay?"

"Deal!" I cried, jubilant.

With a shocking lack of hesitation, Jesse invited me over to her place in the Hollywood hills. I rang the bell at nine sharp. Disconcertingly, I was greeted by a robust man in his late fifties who had a salt 'n' pepper ponytail and beard. "Well! Hello there!" he boomed.

Was Santa Claus on the Atkins diet? "Um, I'm looking for Jesse," I stuttered, fighting the urge to bolt. Thankfully, she appeared behind him, still glowing from yoga, barefoot in an asymmetrical black dress with a loose pink leather belt. Her left hand lazed around a glass of wine. There seemed to be a party in her apartment.

"Grant!" she said, throwing her arms around me as if we were old friends. "Come this way!"

Jesse grabbed my hand and led me through the party, a fairly diverse crowd of ten. Among the men, beards were a popular theme. Jesse guided me to the master bedroom, which she quickly decided was too messy and ushered me into a smaller, even messier room. I started clearing some of the clutter from the bed, trying to look like I knew what I was doing.

"How do you want me?" she chirped.

Truth be told, I hadn't really thought about what would happen once I got Jesse naked. Proactivity is not my strong suit. "Uh," I stalled. "How about we take some pictures of . . . some of the postures . . . from yoga class?"

"Excellent idea!" she said. With one hand, she pulled her belt off; with the other, she brushed her dress to the floor. She wasn't wearing a bra or panties, and went from fully clothed to totally naked within a half-second. It was like that scene in Naked Gun where Lt. Drebin pulls his entire suit off with one hand.

"Er . . . would you mind getting on the bed for me?" I stammered. This was intimidating. Not only did Jesse have a good ten years and five inches on me, but was also completely blasé about getting her kit off for a random nimrod with a camera. In the midst of a party she was hosting no less. Fierce. Like Anthony Michael Hall in Weird Science, I had masterminded a scenario where I was in a room with an older, smarter, cultured, naked woman, and I could only imagine tossing off in the bathroom. I think I've been clothed in the presence of naked women for about twenty-five seconds in my entire life.

Perched confidently on the duvet, Jesse had the physique of a high-school track star with the boobs of a homecoming queen. I was turned on, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor until I had the pictures. I moved in for a few close shots of her breasts. "They're real!" she said, then gave them a curious squeeze, as if she could hardly believe that herself.

The thing with yoga is that without clothes on, it can get gynecological at the drop of a hat. Jesse was sitting pretzel-style then flipped on to her back, her legs in the same position. Outside of the orgy I attended, I can't think of a time I'd seen labia minora without at least buying its owner a drink first.

I asked Jesse if her body was the result of practicing yoga. "To an extent," she said. "But genetically, I had a great head start." I tucked my boner under the waistline of my pants and pulled my shirt down over it. "You're very lucky," I replied.

Then she started breathing at a near window-rattling volume and said something Indian, akin to "Om." I couldn‚t bring myself to interrupt. I walked around her, snapping about sixty pictures of fifteen postures. As Jesse pulled off another emergency-room defying pose, I started to wonder if she had me here only to serve as a conversation piece for her party. Sorry I was late with the crudité dip everyone: a novice photographer with a pronounced erection had his grubby little camera all up in my business! Aren't I the mostest?

"Do you have everything you need?" Jesse asked. Wanting to quit while I was ahead, I said yes. Still naked, she sat close to me on the bed and we examined the pictures on the digital camera's LED screen. "Ugh! I really need to work on that one," she grimaced as we flipped through some of her postures. As Jesse sat beside me, I could smell something pleasantly vanillaesque about her that almost sent me hurtling over the edge. Her internal aesthete sated, Jesse rose from the bed. "I like your pictures, Grant," she said, giving me a congratulatory pat on the head before reacquainting herself with her clothes.

"Would you like to stay for a while?" Jesse offered, letting the dress fall over her shapely shoulders. I declined, suddenly afraid of being talked into something odd by those beardy men. I surmised that they were a shaggy chapter of the Church of Christ or Amway. Like a two-pump chump at an Eighth Avenue peep show, I was in and out of Jesse's life in an embarrassingly puny amount of time. She was the one who bared all for my camera, but I left feeling like the one who got turned over.

2. Monica

click here for Monika's pics

On the way home, I got a call from Jennifer, a friend of a friend, who said she had another friend who was "totally up for posing." Rad. I inspected the Friendster profile of Monica, a petite twenty-five-year-old Latina. She looked great. We set up a shoot for the next day.

I didn't have my own apartment yet, so I decided to shoot at the only private space available to me, a friend's office on Melrose Boulevard. Given the setting, I designed a fantasy narrative whereby a secretary decides to stop working, surf Internet porn and masturbate on the sofa. Just another Tuesday afternoon at IBM's Cleveland offices.

Monica's only demand was that Jennifer be present the entire time. The girls turned up a little after 2 p.m. on Sunday, toting garment bags and looking slightly strung out. Monica had apparently decided to bring almost her entire wardrobe along. We selected a fantasy outfit consisting of a nearly-sheer shirt, black push-up bra, stockings and big hoop earrings. Jennifer, hung over from a hard night of partying, was content to slump semi-consciously in the corner.

"Okay, honey, let's go," said Monica. I grew fond of the way Monica addressed me as "sweetie," "cutie," "honey." In the nicest of ways, she was exerting her dominance over the situation. She was going to be in the driver's seat of the shoot. Jennifer was in the passenger's seat. I think that made me the squeegee guy at the traffic lights.

Unlike Jesse, Monica wanted — and awaited — my instructions. I asked Jennifer to put on some music. She selected Pat Benatar's Greatest Hits. Great. To the tune of "Heartbreaker" — the epic tale of an Angry Spandex Queen Seeking Vengeance on the Slimeball Who Hath Wronged Her — our shoot began.

"Okay, Jennifer!" I said with the tremulous enthusiasm of a cracked-out cheerleader. "Put your glasses in your mouth!"

HEARTBREAKER! Pat interjected. DREAMTAKER! DONCHAMESSAROUNDWITHME!

"Now, um, dangle your shoe off your big toe," I instructed. "Magic! Now lick your lips and show that keyboard who's boss." (Okay, so it was Saucy Secretary Poses 101, but I figured that when people called me on it, I'd liberally sprinkle words like "irony," "pastiche," "parody" and "role reversal" into the conversation.) Monica seemed awfully quiet. "Are you nervous?" I asked. She shook her head and eyed me suspiciously.

Actually, I was nervous and projecting. I almost lost my cool when Monica started slowly pulling her skirt over the curve of her bum. Gradually, I talked Monica into just her underwear, a procedure that seemed roughly akin to landing a wounded plane over the Everglades. "You look really hot," I said encouragingly.

"Really?" Monica said, putting a hand over her heart.

"Totally! Really . . . y'know . . . sexy."

The more compliments I gave Monica, the more she seemed to open up. This must be what they call establishing "rapport." After a few minutes, she started to pose like someone on top of her game. So I asked her to slip a hand into her panties. It just seemed right.

Instantly, the shoot assumed a Penthouse vibe. Monica spread her legs, showed me her butt, grew more excited and vocal: "Do you like this?" "Can you see my ass?" "Do you need me to make my nipples hard?" etc. etc.

I thought I'd up the ante. "Do you have any red lipstick in your make-up bag?" I asked her.

"Yes, do you want me to put some on?"

"No, I'd like you to put some on me, " I said. "Then I'm going to kiss parts of you and take pictures of the lipstick prints." True, touched-by-the-hand-of-God inspiration.

"Cool," Monica said. Wearing her faux-fur coat and little else, she applied a thick layer of red to my lips. "Perfect! What do you want to kiss?" I dropped to my knees, pressed my mouth into Monica's inner thigh and took a photograph.

"Can I join in?" said Jennifer, who had magically revived.

Did she even need to ask? "Sure!" Monica and I said in unison. Jennifer knelt beside me on the floor. Together, we took turns kissing around Monica's crotch and photographing the results.

"Why are you doing this exactly?" asked Monica after I placed a lingering smacker about two inches from her bits.

"Um, we're appreciating different parts of you and showing it," I said. "The piece is called 'Appreciation.'"

I thought that lent things a certain gravity. Jennifer and I planted a few more kisses onto Monica's chest, bum and legs before we simultaneously ran out of battery power, disk space, energy and interesting body parts.

It was all very fun, but much to my chagrin, the vibe never got overtly sexual. The girls were either too cool, too L.A. or too partied out from the night before to give a shit. On a couple of occasions, I almost gave Monica a direct hit, but I figured that if she wasn't into it she wouldn't sign the model release. Note to self: have them sign the release before you inappropriately nuzzle their vulva.

By the time I remembered that small bureaucratic detail, Monica was dressed.

"Make sure that you email these to me. 'kay?" said Monica before she and Jennifer got in her car.

"Yeah," I stammered. "Perhaps we could hang out some time."

"Sure, baby," she said, rolling up the window, leaving me there with red lips and three hundred pictures of her crotch. I felt oddly used.

3. Samantha

click here for Samantha's pics

After photographing the porn spectrum — from anatomical to gynecological — I wanted to try something similar in mood to my favorite Nerve photo galleries: hot girls hanging out naked, drinking red wine and smoking in their messy bedrooms.

Unfortunately, finding models was impossible. As deadline encroached, I grew desperate. I resolved to break into the small amount of cash I had reserved in case my charm and persuasiveness failed me. My friend David from New York suggested that I call his ex-girlfriend Samantha. She had been in L.A. for two years and, like almost everyone else in town, was trying to find regular acting work. "She could probably use the cash," he explained. "And she's wicked hot."

I propositioned Sam over email. She said that she would love to pose for me. We agreed on $100 for the session. A little later that night, I drove to her apartment in Silver Lake, the West Coast version of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When I arrived, Sam looked sheepish.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I was thinking about the photo thing," she said.

This wasn't going to be good.

"I'm like, really on the fence about it."

This meant that I had to be persuasive. When you're trying to cajole somebody into taking their clothes off for your camera, you feel like a living embodiment of the OED definition of scumbag. "Maybe we should get a drink," I said. We went to a couple of bars to talk. After two beers and some gentle persuasion that went something like, "Oh, Sam, think about when you're sixty years old, and you think back about the body you had at twenty-two but have nothing to show for it," she smiled. As I encouraged Sam to chug her second beer, I could hear the phantom voice of Andrew Einhorn going "Uh-uh . . . not cool" and wagging his finger. "Seriously . . . you look great," I said. "So let's go home and take some pretty pictures."

What was I saying? I was one drink away from whipping out a dirty rag and bottle of ether. "Listen, if you don't want to — "

Then without saying a word, Sam handed me my jacket and hustled me out of the bar. Once we got back to her place, she grabbed her bowl, a bottle of red wine and led me into her bedroom.

Unlike the other girls, Sam had some pretty set ideas about what she wanted to do during the session. Actually, it was more like what she didn't want to do. "The good news," she said, "is that I have some really cute underwear to wear for you. The bad news is, they're staying on."

A little high and a tad buzzed, Sam patiently awaited instruction. Without incorporating someone else's ideas I realized that I don't have very original ideas for posing models. It's mostly, "Bum in the air, love. Smashing!"

Without any prompting, Sam danced around, flinging pouts at me as I snapped away. I started to feel very Austin Powers: "Look to the left, grab the boobs — magic!" (I figured that, having the accent, I might as well run with it.) After almost twenty minutes, Sam was still alarmingly dressed. "Can you start taking your clothes off now?" I asked, noticing that I only had a half-hour of battery power left. Sam eventually shucked herself out of her jeans as slow as she could. She was a little shy about losing her T-shirt, and when it finally did come off she cupped her boobs and didn't let go. I really had to work to make her relax. The experience was akin to getting a deer to come out from the woods and eat from your hand. It has to be done slowly and steadily.

Unlike the other two girls, Samantha's primary motivation was the money. This made this shoot very different from the others. When I wasn't taking pictures I was coaxing Sam to give up just a little bit more. I could almost feel my molester moustache growing in. I started using the mirror as a prop and took pictures of both her, and her reflection, which I thought looked pretty cool. As promised, the underwear managed to stay on, although after some persuasion (read: begging) she did give up a little crack.

Nothing's more fun than taking pictures of happy girls stripping off and enjoying it. That's a far cry from watching someone mentally deliberate whether baring all is worth the extra rent money.

Between the wine and the weed, Sam was starting to flag. She had to prop herself up on her elbows to stop from nodding off. I told her to relax; I'd take pictures of her resting, then see myself out. Sam closed her eyes. It made for some neat-looking pictures. I finished up at around two-thirty, kissed Sam on the forehead and quietly crept out.




Summarize your findings. Don't forget to attempt to identify possible variables that could result in different findings for others trying to recreate your test results.

I suppose I was expecting — or at least hoping for — more of a hubba-hubba vibe between the models and myself, but it never really materialized. With Jesse, I was too overwhelmed, with Monica, I felt emasculated, and with Samantha, I just felt too sleazy. Plus, Sam's ex-boyfriend threatened to kill me if I did anything other than take pictures of her, so I didn't even entertain the thought of that. (Well, I entertained it a little. But that's all.)

In baseball, during your first season, you're called a rookie. By your third, you're called a veteran. Baseball players can have careers spanning twenty years or even more. It seems funny that in a relatively short period of time, they are thought to have traversed from one end of the experience spectrum to another. I think I experienced something similar with my photographs. When Jesse first disrobed for me, I was nothing short of stunned. The direction I gave felt stilted and unnatural. I was awkward with the camera but was learning as I went. By the third time around, I felt like a jaded pro. Now I think I could approach prospective models with ease. However, I'm not as awed as I once was by the prospect — and that might be a bad sign.  n°

Do you have an idea for Grant's next I Did It for Science? Let him know here.