Thursday, April 06, 2006

HOW I AVOIDED CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AT THE VENDOME: I WAS GIVEN A CHOICE

As a child, even before I moved into the Vendome, I had been photographed more times than I can remember, though there is that one with me lifting my shirt with no diaper on, at about 2, that I'll never forget... LOL! My father was an amateur photographer, and my mother had a freind who was a professional photographer. Between them, we had a ton of family photos by the time I was 8 years old.

Around this time, this friend of mom's asked her if I would pose for nude pictures, and she asked me if I wanted to pose nude for his "artistic" photography. I was pre-pubescent, but still realized the sexual aspect of this. I knew he was gay, wanting to look at me in a sexual way, not an "artistic" one. I liked girls, even before I reached puberty, and knew this wasn't for me.


I told mom that I wasn't comfortable posing nude, and that was the end of that story. As much as I might fault my mom for even asking me if I wanted to pose nude for a probable pedophile, I'm proud that she never let that happen against my wishes, and protected me from worse predators. She was a consummate liberal, open to all ideas. I was exposed to more in my childhood than many adults have seen in their whole life.


There's a flip side to this coin: I wanted to see one of my babysitters nude, and she never babysat me again. That's for another post, but she was also a freind of mom's; one with morals.