Driving home, I practiced what I’d write. I left the shoot with the magazine photo editor’s email address. A centerfold was the apex of our careers, not only for the achievement itself but for everything it could lead to. The other nude models I knew aspired to be in adult magazines. The author enjoyed pinup modeling and all the fun costumes. A centerfold was glamorous and important, two things I believed would somehow transform me. I knew I was a statistic before I knew what the word meant. The centerfold was an impossible dream come to life for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. I was scraping by, but it was better than the drudgery of minimum wage jobs I was qualified for. “A centerfold - I never thought - oh wow, I mean - wow, this is huge!”Īmateur modeling was my primary source of income. “Oh, my God, what does this mean?” I didn’t let him answer. He pressed the shutter again, capturing my only genuine smile of the afternoon. I shifted my hips and reframed my face into the open-lipped pout you get when you utter the word oh. I reclined on a chaise lounge in his basement. I was in my 20s, gorgeous and nude save for a pair of sky-high heels. “I sent your photo to Easyriders Magazine,” another photographer said, referring to the motorcycle culture magazine that featured babes along with bikes. As naive as I was, I somehow knew which ads not to call. There were few “casting couch” incidents and fewer predators. However, as a model, men paid me for little more than looking into their lens and saying yes with my eyes. In foster care, I wasn’t allowed to date. I basked in the attention, seeing myself as a sexual being with power for the first time. I would take my clothes off, smile or pout for a few hours, and leave with cash. Then I’d arrive at another stranger’s house or hotel room. I combed the ads for new modeling gigs every week. When I aged out of the system, my aspirations included becoming a writer, which I was aware of, and being loved, which I wasn’t. I spent my teens in foster care as an escape from domestic violence. I put in my two weeks’ notice the following week. I had been working part time at a dry cleaner and earned minimum wage. It was $50, more money than I’d ever had at once. I waited until I got into the car to look. Two hours later, he folded cash into my palm as I walked out the door.
He asked me to mimic the poses in the paintings. I took it off and folded it over a chair. I undressed on autopilot and came out of the bathroom wearing his oversized robe. “There’s a robe on the back of the door.” That soon out of foster care, adults were authority figures. “The bathroom, I guess,” I said, looking at the floor. Nude women with abstract faces posed against the muted backdrop of his furniture. I only remember the canvases propped against the walls of his sparsely furnished house. “Would you like to undress here or in the bathroom?” I don’t remember what the photographer looked like. I didn’t consider that it could be dangerous, nor did I tell anyone where I was going.
#Easy rider magazine centerfolds free
I circled an intriguing ad in the back of a free weekly paper: Nude model wanted.
I did my first nude photo shoot a month after I turned 18 and aged out of the foster care system. Modeling took the author to exotic locations.
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