Submission to My Desire: Iris

I took Katrina’s words to heart: they sank right into me with the feeling of a beautiful truth; of a commitment I was willing to explore. I knew I had the perfect way to do that, with my photo project.

There’s rarely been a Book of Blue model I didn’t want to embrace: to taste and penetrate and let go with. Apart from women who were already my lovers, this was rare to happen. Unlike the many photographers I’ve heard of who fuck every model, Book of Blue was already a study in who I would not fuck and thus a study in desire for its own sake. With Katrina’s suggestion — do it less, you don’t need to, you want to but you don’t need to — I consciously brought that into my photos.

My models seemed to understand this. Perhaps I was projecting, maybe they had no idea, but soon after an intuitive connection seemed to form around the idea that I needed to desire them yet not fuck them. Iris, the Belgian model in the photo, not only grasped this but danced with the feeling. She expressed no need or desire to fuck me, though she was palpably aware of my desire for her. Yet there was no denial in how she related to me: everything was a gift, including teasing me out to the edge of madness, and including her no.

She was my last model in Europe; I met her about two months before I was about to leave. I don’t know how our relationship would have evolved, had I stayed: we had some beautiful chemistry, both artistic and erotic. Playfully she would come into my space and strip down to her lingerie as I watched and as I photographed her. If I was sitting she would walk right past me such that her hips went by my face, and my craving of her scent and my thirst for her would surge with the palpitation of my heart.

She would search for herself in all of my mirrors, gaze into her eyes, and put her vanity on open display. She would not reveal her vulva: I never saw it. Once she slipped her fingers in and sniffed her scent, but I never saw the delicate lips that I so dearly wanted to suck and lick and drink from. Women will tell you they don’t always know when they’re wanted, but Iris and I had a clear understanding about this. I had no need to hide my desire and we both understood that nothing more than photos was going to happen.

This created a safe zone, where we could both go into our respective experiences: she of being yearned for, and me of yearning. I could see, as she did this, that she was exploring her power. She trusted me and we liked one another a lot. She came for many sessions and I always welcomed her lovingly. I understood how this was the perfect environment for us to explore our polarities in a space of not just safety but freedom. I grasped that in the life of a beautiful young woman there are not many places she could expose her sexual power and not be perceived to owe someone something, or not raise anyone’s anger, to no have her power used against her.

We had balanced that somehow. She knew she was giving me what I needed, and I was giving her what she needed. We were in authentic harmony.

When she left after each session, it was always with a little wink: I know what you’re gonna do now. Have fun.

And she was right. No sooner would she leave than I would strip naked in the space where we had just worked, and open up to myself in front of a mirror where she had just done so, giving me permission by her actions, and bring my simmer to a deep boil and watch myself let out my passion, fresh with the feeling of her presence. I would indulge my frantic craving for her scent and my thirst for her water and turn it right onto myself.

Because of where she worked, I knew that I could have her, in some way, any time I wanted. I never did; and this emphasized the feeling of choice, the sensation that I was personally choosing what happened between us. No matter how much I wanted to suck her cunt or smell her ass or merely let her see my face letting go to her, I was choosing not to: as part of an agreement, yet no less a choice.

Iris became the symbol of finding fulfillment right in the core of unrequited desire, and then of finding choice inside of ‘unrequited’. When I returned to the United States a few months after meeting her, I began to call her the Celibacy Goddess. Her face and also something about her breasts gave me permission to want and not have, and to ease any desperation that I may have felt, and to let go into my deep and solitary orgasm.

The more I wanted her the better the experience was, so I indulged in desiring her. I placed her photo on my mirror altar, where it is to this day.

I was surprised to hear other men openly admit that something about her — this photo in particular — made them want to masturbate. I secretly understood the way she was giving them permission to do so.

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