Internet Belly

Internet Belly
After the clients had gone, I was wrapping the equipment for a still photo shoot of Pregnant lingerie for an online catalog, when a tight-faced woman returned to the main studio from my little dressing room, nodded brusquely, and left me alone with my equipment and the model, named Jenny something, who was back there changing to street clothes. She was a fresh, perky, very Young girl – the kind that women accept and many men don’t always notice. Today her belly was evidently pregnant but still too modest to offend delicate customers. After 20 minutes, I figured she was taking a lot of time, even for a fashion model, and I wanted to close up, so I went back and tapped on the dressing room door.
No answer. She was probably on her cell phone – models always were – so I put an ear to the door to check. I heard sobbing inside. A bit worried, I knocked louder.
After a long time, the door opened and she came out, dressed in anonymous sweats, knuckling under her red eyes and snuffling. When I asked what was the matter, she shook her head and started weeping again – with shudders and long, silent gasps and rivers of tears down her soft young cheeks.
When I put an arm around her shoulders, she didn’t shake it off, so I led her into the studio. “Come on, now, something big is wrong. Please tell me.” I walked her toward the loveseat in the clients’ area and sat down with her.
While she got control of her tears she studied my face: 27 years old, straight, not handsome, but women don’t scream when they see me either. Then, after two false starts checked by hiccups, she said, “That was my rep.”
“From the modeling agency.”
A nod. “She came to tell me there wouldn’t be any work for at least six months — maybe eight. And I’m not quite five months gone!” When I looked puzzled, she added, “She said my belly was getting too big…” she pulled her sweatshirt up and the pants down. Her sweet pink bulge looked luscious to me. “…and it’d take two-three months to get my body back after.”
Knowing what freelancing was like, I winced. “Ooh.”
“Yeah, ‘ooh.’ I had to give up my apartment today; now all I got’s a ten-year old Suburu filled with clothes and kitchen crap and no place to put it — or me.”
“Um, what about the father?”
Her lips compressed into a crooked line as she shook her head.
“Okay; it’s okay.”
“No it’s not.” She leaned into me and started sobbing again.
I held her for several minutes, noting the clean smell of her hair. I also noticed the two sizable hills of her breasts below and the obvious bulge of round belly below them. I told myself sternly that it didn’t matter that she was warm and soft. She was in a bind. After some thought I said, “Look: my apartment upstairs has an empty bedroom — only one bath, but we could work that out. I mean, if you’ll trust me.”
She studied me some more while sniffing and wiping her nose with an index finger. “Are you gay?” Surprised, I just shook my head. “Lots of photographers are, you know.”
I shrugged. “No, I’m straight. You think I might take advantage?”
She gave me a watery smile and shook her head. “Not this way, anyhow.” She placed a palm on her belly button, still recessed at this stage. “Well, maybe just for tonight and… a day or two – I hope.”
“The plain truth is, I do find pregnant women sexy, but that doesn’t change our situation.”
Suddenly shy, she covered her bulge again. Then she looked at me and something like a silly little smile broke through. “Okay… Roomie.”
An hour later, she was set up in the other bedroom of my airy, second floor flat. She inspected the place, noting the nice furnishings and décor. “Sure you’re not gay?”
That remark was insulting, whether to gay guys or me, but I only shook my head. “My girlfriend moved out six months ago.” I pointed at a big color nude of mine on the wall: a svelte woman with long hair and a slender shape.
“Ex?” I nodded. She deliberately looked away from the picture. “Nice views.” The 12-foot ceiling of the studio below raised my apartment higher than most two story buildings around me, so my big windows framed the ocean and sunset to the west and the last gasp of the Hollywood hills to the north.
* * * *
Jenny bustled cheerfully through the following week as if to pay rent by cooking and cleaning and re-arranging furniture and décor to make improvements a male couldn’t see (except that the nude of my old girl friend somehow retired to a closet). But then her good mood gave way to gloom again. At one of her very good suppers, she sighed and said, “I’m stuck, Jack. Even with you buying the food, I’m dead broke. I can’t pay my cell phone bill or credit card interest. Worse than ‘stuck,’ I’m screwed.”
I nodded. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that.” In the previous days, I’d found myself preoccupied with my new roommate. When not posing for a catalog, Jenny was no longer bland and ordinary. Her mobile face was beautiful, her brown eyes sparkled, and her smile had an impish, provocative quality. Her long-limbed body was way too curvy for fashion modeling, but she carried her round belly proudly, with a model’s grace. I often saw it because she was casual about clothes, traipsing to the bathroom in bra and skimpy bikini panties that rode beneath her swollen gut. The effect was hard to describe, but… well, try it this way: the Playboy 50th anniversary playmate collection had just been published – it was then 2004 – and I’d naturally studied the women (strictly as a professional, of course) all 600 of them. Though gorgeous, they had a sort of vacant, Barbie look to them – that is, all but maybe a dozen. These women had faces that showed individuality: brains and personality, and sometimes a wry look that said, “Go ahead and drool, but there’s more to me than just pussy.” That’s what Jenny’s face and body radiated. The girl was unique.
One morning, she waltzed topless to the breakfast table and asked me to do the hooks on the bra in her hand. Her breasts weren’t 44 JJ udders, but still impressive – at least 38D – thrusting upward and crowned with puffy nipples. (No wonder she couldn’t do high fashion jobs.) They swung enticingly as she bent over to drop them into her waiting bra cups, and this unthinking action was somehow as erotic as if she’d cupped her boobs and offered them to me. Though she was clearly making no attempt to come on to me, she was having the same effect, and I kept back as I did her hooks to keep the quick bulge in my pants away from her.
Then that night at the supper table, I told her my idea. “Ever done any glamor – nude work?”
Jenny grinned, “Like your girl friend?”
“Ex girl friend. No, sexier.”
She looked thoughtful. “You mean porn?”
“Well, erotic, but no hard-core.”
“Hm. Weeell, I could give it a shot,” she patted her belly, but not now.”
“I mean now: for the next four months.”
When she goggled at me, I rose from the table. “Let me show you.” Jenny followed.
In 2004, internet porn sites were well-established, but with maybe one-fifth of the number now. There was still room for a new one showcasing pregnant Jenny. At my desk, I pulled a few up and reviewed some pay sites with her. “See? Just like product shooting, but the product is you.”
She looked at the screen with one of her funny smiles. “Hm. What would I have to do?”
In short, she was up for it, so I explained my plan: four months of intensive shooting, mostly studio or here in my flat. A pay site that I could build, cheap hosting, and a PayPal account. We’d shoot enough stills and video in 16 weeks or so to get material for at least two years, maybe more. I figured several thousand dollars income eventually.
“But my belly’s growing every week.”
“The bigger the better, kiddo.”
A new idea: “But how long is ‘eventually,’ and what do I do ’til then?”
“You stay here. I’ll advance you enough for your outstanding bills and some walking around cash. By the time the baby comes you’ll have enough to pay me back and pay for it too. By the way, is ‘it’ a he or a she?”
She shrugged and looked guilty. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to a doctor.”
“At four months plus? We’ll fix that tomorrow.”
After more planning, Jenny wandered off to her room, looking dazed.
* * * *
It was a girl and Jenny was doing fine. From the four-month-plus size of her sexy belly, she could expect a big, big baby. On the way back from the doctor’s, we stopped at a good wig shop I knew of and fitted her with sensuous auburn curls to cover her pixie blond cut. Then, when we got back to my place, we started work in the studio. I began with a still session, talking her through a progressive strip to bare skin, then cupping her breasts, caressing her belly, holding big breaths to increase her bulge. After a brief rest, I set up my HD camcorder (still tape in those days) and had her reprise the same action in real time. This was going to be my pattern: first the stills that also rehearsed the movies, and finally video. Jenny was a natural actress, and her odd blend of erotic innocence was truly arousing. Later, when I had a six-minute cut of the video, I sat her down in front of my big reference monitor with a USB microphone hooked to audio software in my computer. Instead of a script, I jotted a topic outline and let her improvise with it: speaking her thoughts as she slowly stripped, examined and squeezed her breasts in a mirror, and rubbed the thrusting dome of her pregnant belly. At this four-month stage, my theme was pride at her new condition, regret that the father had walked out on her, and a growing horniness that no one was relieving. Jenny was a great natural actress, and when I cut the best takes together and added a touch of reverb, I could sync her recording to the video. It would seem like Jenny’s thoughts as she displayed herself for the viewer.
And that was the style we set – a style that would make us different from the other big-bellied pussy flashers then offered on pay sites. My lighting was better, more natural, than ho-hum studio glamour lighting, and Jenny was blessedly clear of that porn or almost-porn actress look. She resembled the girl next door — if the girl next door made you slobber on sight.
I took it slowly through the fifth month of Jenny’s pregnancy, shooting maybe three times a week.