Celeste:
Naked in My Bedroom in Thirty Minutes

Here is a picture of a woman named Celeste. I met her in Baltimore, MD, in the Autumn of 1969, around the time I started my written journals. I had skipped the start of my second year as a photography major at RIT.

I was in a bar with a neighbor. He went there several times a week, and it was my first visit. He pointed to a woman at a table with her friends, and said that he'd had his eye on her for weeks, but hadn't had a chance to "make a move".

After a few drinks he admitted that the real problem was her boy-friend - word on the street was that he ran the street, and that he was very territorial. I told him you had to take some initiative as well as risk, and that I could probably talk her back to my apartment and out of her clothes on the spot. He dared me, and I accepted the challenge.

I walked over, introduced myself, and gave her the line. She said, "Hello, my name is Celeste, and you wouldn't want me for nude modelling because I have a really ugly Ceaserian scar on my abdomen." (Frank and direct ... thanks for the compliment, but get lost.)

"Che-less-tay!", I exclaimed, using the Italian pronunciation, "A heavenly body if ever I beheld one." And I started to sing Celeste Aida from Act One of Verdi's opera ... just enough to impress without being annoying to others.

"Oh, that doesn't matter - I'm more interested in your face, and I can hide the scar in the pose." She looked at me with a new regard. "You can't do that!" Ah, a second challenge.

"Tell you what ... my apartment is a few blocks away, and I guarantee that in two hours you can have a nice 11x14 inch full-torso nude of yourself that your boyfriend would be proud to hang in his bedroom, and not be ashamed if his own mother saw it."

Thirty minutes later, she was nude in my studio apartment, and the guy who had taken me to the bar was pounding on the door. She told him he couldn't come in because she was not dressed. He never talked to me again. She left an hour later with a half-dry contact sheet and I dropped off the large prints at her apartment the next day. I never saw her again after that, but this face has been on my photography business cards since 1973.