"Now please expose your left breast."

        My camera clicking is the only sound occupying the silence as I direct this girl on the standard poses found in your average pornographic photo shoot. My guess is she's never really seen porn, never surfed the internet for three continuous hours in search of the perfect pose, model, and exposed anatomy (or the lack thereof, depending on the night).

        I'd estimate she's three years into college, a few grand in debt, with no job prospects at the moment as she wonders where tuition money will come from in a few months. Doesn't matter, really. In two days, she'll be eighteen to anyone curious and in a month when I calculate the earnings, her tuition worries will be nonexistent and maybe even have a few extra dollars to throw a party. The source of this money, of course, will never be told to her friends. They never tell.

        "Okay, take a break. We need to give your skin time to lose the panty seem marks."

        She steps into the hall for her break. I watch as she walks off. She has a killer ass. It will be her feature asset when I put the previews up. For nothing more than two compact lumps of whatever it's made out of, I've never quite figured out why men love those things as much as we do. It's not like we can't look at one whenever we feel like (whenever I feel like). Just drop our pants in front of a mirror and hey look, there's the same thing. But a female wears it better.

        I run a pornography website. Some might say I have a dream job. Maybe for some it is, but it's an easy job to acquire. Just own a camera, a computer, and run some ads in the local paper. It's really that easy. I admit, it's a lot easier if you live next to a college, where tomorrow's leaders learn today. Either that, or next to a slummy area, full of those that never even took the next step and became the lower class of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. They always need money, even during the summers when colleges lose half their students.

        I was one of those students lost, though after five years I think they've given up the search. I wasn't lost, really. I knew exactly where I was the whole time. But when you can't pay for college, they tend to close the doors on you, so to speak. I couldn't pay for college because I was unemployed. I was unemployed because, well, damn it, because I was fired. But I wasn't fired because of something I did wrong. How could I have done something wrong, when I could no longer show up to even clock in?

        I'm not sure when it set in, really. The depression, that is. Probably after the anxiety wouldn't leave.

        "How much longer will it be, Frank?"

        She comes back smelling like cigarettes. Typical of the new ones. Nerves, I think. Putrid things, those cigarettes. It'd probably help me, honestly, if I picked up the habit. But I have too many habits already. In fact, one landed me this job.

        "We'll take pictures of your lower half, then a couple of your whole body and we should be done."

        "Okay. Not to rush you. But I have class in an hour."

        I always wondered what the girls in my classes, back when I could go to classes, were doing before and after they assumed the role of students. If she were in my class, at least I'd know. Except if she were in my class, I wouldn't be here right now so I actually wouldn't know.

        I have to take a knee in order to hide my erection.

        I ask her to bend over for a few pictures. The slight waving of her ass cheeks provides a visible symbol of her shaking legs.

        I tried cigarettes, a few years back. But I only done it when I, too, found myself to be nervous. The cigarette smoke that rose in a contorted pattern always gave away my shaking hands. I had to quit before I even started. I was too afraid of the addiction. That, and I had no money to buy them.

        People never seem to be nervous with allowing a nose, arm, foot, or shoulder to be visible to anyone passing by. But a vagina? It's just as natural, yet so different from a sunburned nose. But from her shave job, it appears she isn't too ashamed or nervous to show it, to at least someone other than me.

        I would shave my pubic hair, but I don't want to chafe my hand.

        We finish with some photos of her standing. Her nerves seem to have calmed. Maybe she won't become arrogant if her sets rack up the subscriptions. Those who gather a fan base tend to stop shaking, but they also tend to go to other, more prolific photographers in the area for future work. Those assholes who have light studios, not the extra room in their apartment, for their photography that they pass off as artistic. More people wank it to my photos, I think, than to theirs, so what's the point?

        Still, they make more money. But I get by, and thanks to rising tuition fees, there's always a new girl in need.

        I turn my head as she puts her clothes back on. I don't know why I do this, but it seems polite to turn my head while someone changes. Yes, I do realize that I could now tell you of any perineum birthmark she might have. But I must set standards. If I stand here and watch her put her clothes on, she might think weird of me.

        Not that she would sleep with me, anyway.

        As she leaves, she tells me she enjoyed it and I thank her. If next week, I were to run into her while buying a soda, she'll act as though she doesn't know me.

        I hate to admit that I always masturbate within ten minutes of their exit, but it's true. But I'm not ashamed to admit that if it weren't for the two times I do it before they arrive, I would have to set the camera on timer and depart halfway through the shoot.

        This only applies to the new ones. The ones who have taken many photo sessions and are regulars on the website don't elicit the same reaction. Not that they become less attractive, but because I've already spent so many nights in my head with them, while my hands fill in the physical aspects, that I admit it becomes a little boring when they're naked in front of me again.

        I like the fact that I get a free membership to my website.

        Two years ago, before I had this website, I ran up a rather large credit bill due to memberships on other websites. It didn't start out with memberships, of course. I always browsed the free galleries and found the unprotected directories full of the pay material. But webmasters became wiser. I needed passwords to see the complete sets of certain models I became comfortable with.

        That's the hook. It caught me, but luckily I know the secrets to get others to repeat my mistakes. Not only am I the president, I'm also a member. The sullen outcasts. The frat boys looking for entertainment. The husbands grown bored. The guy who can't face the public. We're all the same when in front of the screen and on the never-ending hunt for the perfect photo.

        That was what started it. After losing my job at the bank due to "the loss of ability to function in public," I began to stay in more. Boredom began to set in. When bored, it's easy to pass the time with some self-gratification. But when you have all fucking day to perform this, it doesn't make sense to waste the moment with the first thing you come across.

        I never buy magazines because I know they end on the last page. I can always turn the page on the Internet by clicking another photo.

        I tried to work for the garbage company. It felt safe. I rode the back of a garbage truck and collected America's trash for disposal. Interesting enough, now I help create it.

        That job lasted three weeks, plus one week as I waited for my second paycheck. I felt like I was heading somewhere quicker unemployed rather than earning an income, as a garbage man, but fearing this could be all life would be. At least when you're unemployed, anything is possible. When a job starts, the reality that this could be what you do forever sets in and the anxiety comes back.

        Someone at the bank who must remain nameless felt sorry for my situation, what with getting fired and all and then not being able to handle the next job. He/she granted me a credit card and mailed/handed it to me. I had to call under a false name because I'm no longer allowed to walk in there.

        That credit card, more than being fired, was the fuel I needed after running on fumes for the previous year. I'd have to pay eventually, but when you have a credit limit, you don't have to start paying until you can't pay for it with that or another credit card. I found that when I received one credit card, other companies wanted my business, too.

        My first credit card had a limit of one thousand dollars. The first seven hundred went towards the usual food items. But the last three hundred quickly disappeared in the porn. My vice.

        My second credit card had a limit of one thousand and five hundred dollars. The first thousand of that paid off my first credit card, and then I split the remaining difference on food and memberships. It wasn't until the third card before I finally became productive.