FLASHBACK

You have to understand that before the digital cameras and the internet and cel phones, taking nude photos was totally different. First, it cost money for film and developing, and then, when you dropped off your film for processing, you'd have to wait a week. If the lab decided the film was lewd, it could confiscate it. You never knew if a prude got your print and destroyed it, or if some geeky part-time employee found it and took it for his own onerous purpose. In any case, Polaroids were teh only way one could be sure the pictures were kept private. Sending them, was another story. They couldn't be emailed or texted like today, but had to be mailed.

In college, my girlfriend and I attended different schools. Before cel phones, long distance was ridiculously expensive. Before emails, our only contact was letters. We'd see each other on breaks and fuck like bunnies, trying to pack in all the sex to last us another few months. This only served to make the breaks even more unbearable. Our letters became the primary outlet of our pent up sexual frustration. I was an English major and would pen detailed erotica for her. She was an art major and would sent sketches of us in various positions.

This is a side note, but before the 1990s, women did not shave their public hair. Sure most trimmed up the bikini lines, but bushes were thick and full. Once the '90s hit, shaving not only became the trend, it became the norm. This last generation has not grown up with bushes. But my generation did. They had big bushes as did each generation before them, and so the idea of shaving off one's pubic hair was so radical and so totally uncommon, that it became for many boyfriends, the ultimate sexual fantasy.

So, to wait weeks between letters, to get an occasional sketch or even better a polaroid, was how we had a sex life back in college. It was a thrill to see a new letter in the mail box, to save it all day in my book bag, waiting through class to go back to the dorm room to open it in private. How shocked, overwhelmed, and turned on I was to find a new polaroid enclosed. This latest one showed my girlfriend on her dorm room bed, leaning back on her pillows, her legs spread. My eyes went immediately there, and instead of seeing her tuft of sandy blonde curls, I saw bare, freshly shaved skin. It was the first time I'd ever seen a woman shaved bare. It would remain for the rest of my life, the most indelible and most erotic, and most romantic gesture.

Of course, at the time, I masturbated so often and so hard to that photo, it never crossed my mind that Polaroids don't have self-timers. When we were together it never occurred to me someone must have taken the photo. Was it her roommate? Another guy? College was a time of sexual experimentation and awakening. Clearly my girlfriend was making more strides forward, faster, than I'd even realized.