Forbidden Photos, Part Three – Diana & Peg

by Anastas

Note: This chapter is a case of ‘more talk, less sex’ as I’m trying to grapple with the characters’ thoughts, feelings and opinions more than their sexual encounters. I’d love to know what people think of this approach. Boring? Refreshing? Any comments welcome.

I also thought it would be interesting to continue switching between the two separate ongoing narratives, so we’ll be back with Arina, Lena and Katya next time.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Peggy, I’d like to do something for you. It’s another very special thing that girls can do for each other to make ourselves feel happy. Would you like to know what it is?”

The little girl nodded. Peggy Orton always liked her big sister’s surprises. A few months ago Julie had shown Peg how to masturbate by using her hands to rub her cunt and she had been making herself feel happy every day since then. Now, for Peg’s seventh birthday, Julie had another surprise to show her.

Peggy was a smart girl, advanced for her age in most ways and her precociousness included her sexuality. Her family was very broad-minded as her parents were old anarchists. She’d had plenty of encouragement to be open about everything and never felt awkward or ashamed discussing sex with her parents or sister. When Julie showed her how to masturbate Peg told mum and dad, who took it in their stride, being those rare parents who accepted the reality of their children’s sexuality and nurtured it by not interfering with it or trying to control it. If Julie hadn’t told her when she did, their mother would have gotten around to showing her quite soon.

“It’s called cunnilingus. It’s when a girl uses her tongue instead of you using your hands.”

“Like when you kiss someone?”

“Yes. But she’s kissing you on your cunt.”

Julie always tried to be matter-of-fact when explaining things to her younger sister, no matter what it was. She’d use the same level tone and straightforward words to describe a maths problem as she would explaining how to have an orgasm. She was trying to demystify the experience. Julie knew from her own upbringing that arming children with knowledge is the best way to protect them. Ignorance helps nothing. At the same time she was able to satisfy her own loving desire for her little sister.

“You know how good it feels when you use your fingers to rub your cunt and you have an orgasm? Well, when another girl uses her tongue it feels even better. Would you like me to show you how to do it?” Peg nodded expectantly. Something could feel even better than her own hand on her cunt? She didn’t need any more persuasion.

“Okay then. First we have to get undressed.” Julie quickly pulled her flimsy blue summer cotton dress up and over her head and tossed it aside. She had nothing on underneath. Peg looked up at her big sister’s teenage body in awe. She loved seeing her naked, especially her petite breasts, which sharply jutted out of her otherwise flat chest. Although she was fifteen now, Julie still mostly had the modest proportions of a pubescent, with only the tell-tale pubic hair and maturation in her face to give away that she’d reached the midpoint into adolescence. Her breasts still had the small budding look of a girl of about ten or eleven.

Peg slid off her jeans and took off her top until she too was naked. Julie looked down at her beautiful Peggy. She loved her little sister’s tiny body so much. Peg was very small even for a seven-year-old. Small but tough. She wasn’t a delicate flower, rather a tiny dervish, but she was so unbearably cute it made Julie swoon when she saw her naked. “I just want to eat you up!” she’d say to her as a toddler. Now she’d be able to make that a reality.

Julie had been waiting to introduce her little sister to the endless pleasures of lesbian sex ever since she was born and after seven years she was moments away from fulfilling her dream of sliding her tongue all over her tiny sister’s lovely little cunt. Julie had told Peg about her cunt very early on, just as their mother had told her when she was a little girl. Julie made sure she used that word and told Peg that that’s what it was called: her cunt. Not ‘down there’, ‘special place’ or ‘personal area’. Yeuck! Being the radical well-read teenage lesbian that she was, Julie hated those kind of euphemisms. She even disliked ‘vagina’. For Julie, only the word ‘cunt’ had the right forcefulness to express the power of female sexuality. She hated how that word still had more stigma attached to it than any other, how so many women were still afraid to use it. Another symptom of female oppression by the patriarchy – the most frank and honest noun that describes both the female genitals and women’s sexual power just happens to be the most taboo swear word in English. Fuck that, thought Julie. Bring back ‘cunt’! She wanted her little sister to feel proud of her cunt, and to proudly call it that. Julie encouraged Peg to chant things like “I love my cunt!” when she was little. It made everyone in the family laugh.

“Okay Peg. Lie down on the bed. Now lift your legs up and spread them as far apart as you can.” Dutiful Peggy did as she was told as Julie climbed onto the bed and lay down on her stomach with her head right in front of Peg’s open slit. She looked up at her sister.

“Now, I’m going to give you a little lick, okay?” Peg nodded, an irrepressible grin stuck to her face. She couldn’t wait to feel her sister’s mouth. Julie gave Peg a long lick, sliding her tongue all the way along her smooth sex, going from her little winking anus to all the way up past her minute clitoris. Peg shuddered and her eyes widened as she made a loud frantic shriek at this incredible new feeling. Her short spindly legs flayed about uncontrollably for a second, almost hitting Julie in the head. Her sister wasn’t joking when she said it would feel better than using her hands.

“Do you like that?” Peg was still recovering from that first single lick. She’d never felt anything like it. Sliding her fingers over her cunt felt amazing, but this was something else entirely.

“Uh…yes… It’s like when I rub my cunt, but it’s different… It’s a hundred times better…” Peg still didn’t have the vocabulary to describe these sensations, despite her sister’s patient lectures about sex and desire. She knew the happy feeling she got when she rubbed her cunt was called an orgasm, but she’d so far only known one way to make that happen, and that was by herself. Julie was introducing her to a whole new sexual repertoire. Her sister was teaching her something new and wonderful and she didn’t want her to stop now.

“Can you do it again please?” Peg asked, clear desperation in her voice.

“Of course, silly. I’m only getting started.”

*****

Peggy grew up confident in her desires. She never knew a time when she didn’t feel attracted to her own sex, but she was curious about how boys masturbated. Not long after Julie’s initial teachings, Peg asked her father to show her his penis and to let her touch it and for him to masturbate for her. He readily showed her, knowing that his daughter was only curious. Peg was fascinated by the feel of the dangly organ and it’s odd shape and how it grew when he began pulling on it. She was startled when her father ejaculated and sperm shot out the end of his dick and onto his chest. Dad joked at the time, ‘That’s another whole civilisation gone’, which Peg didn’t get until dad explained about the numbers involved, as he turned his onanistic display into a more traditional biology lesson. Peg felt no arousal at her father’s demonstration, only the sense of a curiosity being satisfied. For her, males beheld no further sexual mysteries worth exploring.

Peg and Julie continued to share themselves lovingly with each other through Peg’s onset of puberty, until Julie left home at twenty to be an aid worker in Africa. “There are a lot of little girls all over the world who need help. I want to do something for them,” she explained to Peg. Peg tried to get her to stay by saying, “There are lots of girls in Australia who need your help too!” Julie agreed, but wasn’t changing her mind. She was going to help girls who had been raped, had HIV, suffered from female genital mutilation, who were war orphans – all the unspeakable horrors that are inflicted on girls throughout the world. Peg cried for weeks after Julie left, but she was happy that she was doing something so selfless and important. Her sister’s loving guidance had meant so much, but now she’d have to learn to be without her.

When Peg started high school at age twelve she saw it as a wonderful new opportunity to meet and make love with as many girls as possible, to start practising what Julie had taught her. One of the girls Peggy singled out for that purpose in her first year was a tall chubby girl called Diana Taylor.

Diana was a shy, unassuming and angry girl who was born with a searing political and social conscience, despite her parents’ efforts to limit her understanding to their own narrow religious world view. Diana tolerated their attempts at indoctrinating her as a prepubescent – what choice did she have? – but utterly rejected it when she reached puberty. The surge of adolescent hormones only exacerbated her outrages, yet she remained shy and quiet and vented her indignation via creative outlets, her favourite of which was drawing. She wanted to become a cartoonist. She kept well away from the cliques and wanted nothing to do with whatever was ‘in’ or popular. As far as she was concerned all of that was a distraction, propaganda for brainwashed morons.

Peggy was immediately attracted to what she and Diana had in common and they quickly became friends. Peggy told Diana that she was a lesbian one minute into their first conversation. Diana simply said at the time, “That’s cool.” Soon after Diana admitted to Peg that she thought she was a lesbian, although she had yet to have sex of any kind and had only started having conscious sexual thoughts and masturbating about a year earlier, when she was twelve. She felt attracted to girls but still wasn’t sure. Peg, blunt as ever, asked Diana, “Do you want to have sex with me and see how you like it?” After timidly accepting her friends’ brazen offer, Diana had no more doubts about her sexual identity. She and Peg didn’t continue their sexual relationship, but their friendship endured after high school. Peg’s anarchistic upbringing mixed with Diana’s teenage rebellion against her conservative upbringing and they proved to be a perfect match. Two fiercely intelligent, political, feminist, tough-minded young dykes.

Throughout her teens Peg had many wonderful experiences with numerous girls her own age and older women, but she noticed a gradual change in her sexual urges over those years. She became increasingly attracted to very young girls and she felt extremely insecure about it. Even with the memory of her own positive childhood experiences with her older sister, Peg now felt that these feelings were wrong and that she must keep them to herself. No one, not even Diana, could know about it. Because as everyone knew, there was no worse thing to be: a paedophile. The lowest of the low.

She never mistook her attraction to little girls for a supposedly natural asexual feminine maternal affection. It was unmistakably sexual. Nothing made her wetter than having sexual fantasies about little girls, and nothing made her hate herself more. She was even looking at girls as young as two and fantasising about licking their tiny bodies and rubbing herself against them. She imagined herself lying down with her legs open and holding a little naked two-year-old girl in her hands and sliding the toddler’s soft chubby body back and forth over her soaked pussy, then lifting the girl up to her face, holding her legs apart and then burying her mouth right in her sweet tiny cunt.

Once she turned eighteen Peg tried to convince herself that she shouldn’t be looking at little girls like that anymore. Now that she was approaching adulthood, her sexual desires should reflect her maturity and thus she should only set her eyes on women above a certain age.

Peggy, although she was more broad-minded than most people, still had to learn that desire cannot be contained or directed. It will go where it wants to. All you can do is follow it…

*****

It had only been a week since I had discovered the photos on Peg’s computer and already I felt like I was having withdrawals. I needed to see them again. Plus I had to tell Peg that I saw them. If she has such pictures she must be getting off on them, so I shouldn’t be too worried about telling her. I’m hardly going to dob her in. She’ll understand. She’s never said anything to me before to indicate that she had any paedophilic attractions. Well jeez, Diana, think about it. Why would she? You don’t just go around telling people that you’re sexually attracted to kids. Just imagine how many people feel this way but never tell anyone.

I’ll just go to Peg’s and tell her straight out. Yes. That’s the only thing to do. This isn’t that big a deal. I’m overreacting. Calm down. Oh god I want to see those girls again. How could this be? How could I be feeling this way? I couldn’t get those images out of my head. Having witnessed such radiance, how could I pretend that it didn’t exist?

Since I found those pictures I’d been having about ten orgasms a day, all of them brought about by thoughts of my two sweet angels. I’d never been so horny. I somehow managed to concentrate long enough to finish three cartoons and send them to my publishers and to finish editing Peg’s tedious essay, all 20 000 words of it. The challenge of correcting grammar in sentences I didn’t understand must have helped to occupy my mind. But I didn’t really want it to be occupied, except by the lovely naked bodies of two eight year old girls. Every time I was doing something menial around the house, like the dishes or bringing my clothes in off the line, and my mind wandered back to those girls I instantly flooded myself. Oh god. Ring Peg up now and tell her you need to see her.

*****

“Hey you. Haven’t heard from you all week. What’s going on?”

“Oh, just my deadlines. I had to have three cartoons done by Monday. And don’t forget I had to do your goddamn essay. I couldn’t be wasting time talking to you when I had to finish that.” I handed over the corrected copy of her thesis. “I’m never doing this again Peg. Next time get someone else to fix your egregious messes,” I good-naturedly chided her. So far, so forced. Could she tell how much I was trying to cover up? She could. I wasn’t being my usual self. She can tell. Or I am being too paranoid?

“Di, I have to ask you something. When you were here last week did you have a look at anything on my computer while I was out?”

Fuck! What did I do? What did I forget to do? How did she know? I don’t use computers much. I hate the bloody things. They make me feel like my life is slowing down and I’m missing out on something. I know how to use them when I have to and that’s it. Christ, what do I do now? Stop. This is Peggy, not a vice cop. You trust her. You know her. You lost your virginity with her for god’s sake. Be honest. Just say it. Be as deadpan as possible.

“Yes. I saw some nude pictures of two little girls.” Peg didn’t flinch or even change expression.

“Oh, you had a look at those? What did you think? Aren’t they wonderful?” Not the explanation I expected.

“What? Peg, what the hell are those pictures? What are you doing with pictures like that?” Peg looked thoughtful for a moment.

“What am I doing? I’m admiring the beauty of two very special young girls. Is that wrong?” My mind was darting about again, trying to align everything in a nice logical order, like Peggy always does. But I could never do that as well as she could, so I jumped back into more familiar accusatory hectoring.

“Aren’t you worried about being found out?”

“Found out for what? Those pictures? Look, I know that some people have a very unfortunate misconception that any nude image of a child is automatically evidence of some form of sexual abuse, but people who think like that are screwed up in ways that I can’t even comprehend. I totally resent them forcing every single person to change their attitude to child nudity to the point where parents can’t even take pictures of their kids in the bath because they’re afraid of being busted for producing child porn. How does that help children who are genuinely being abused? You and I both know what real child abuse is, we know women who were sexually abused as children, my sister sees it every day in her job and she’s told me about the most horrific things, things that made me cry all night. But those pictures you saw are so unlike real child abuse that it is an insult to abused children to call it that.”

Peggy paused, confident that her obviously oft-repeated spiel was sinking in to me. Which it was, but I wasn’t ready to abandon my moral panic brainwashing yet.

“But those pictures are pornographic. They’re deliberately sexualising those girls.”

“You know what I say to that? Yeah? And? So? What?”

“You don’t think that it’s wrong?”

“If they were being abused or forced, it would be wrong, but tell me what it is about those pictures that is doing those girls harm?” I was surprised at Peg’s attitude. She always said she felt as strongly as I did about the terrible exploitation of young girls by the pornographic modern media.

I was about to launch into my own much practised angry spiel about how girls are still, in the fucking 21st century for god’s sake, still made to see themselves as sex objects whose only purpose in life is to please men, how they’re conditioned to think only in terms of the male gaze and that they’ll grow up thinking their only option is to use their bodies and if their bodies don’t fit some ludicrous ideal then they’re worthless and how girls are the most abused and mistreated members in every society and that young girls are the most vulnerable, disenfranchised set of individuals in the whole goddamn world and on and on I would have gone. My feminist political theorising knew no limits when allowed free reign. And I would have meant every word. I’ll argue passionately with anyone over those issues. But before I started ranting, I realised what a hypocrite it would have made me, because the pictures I was trying to argue were wrong had inspired me to more orgasms in a week than I’d had all year. Besides, I didn’t really believe they were wrong, but I had so much socio-cultural baggage that had built up over the years that had been trying to convince me they were.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t sit right with me. I can’t help feeling that those photos were only made to appeal to male paedophiles and to be sold on child porn websites. But it’s not even really about that. It’s not who it was made for, it’s the welfare of the girls that’s important.”

“Di, do you remember the looks on those girls faces? Have you ever seen a child look like that who didn’t feel happy? Who wasn’t having the best time of their life? How could that be fake or coerced? Those girls knew what they were doing and loved it.” I knew Peg was right. That’s exactly how I felt.

“If those pictures were made for men to use as porn, does that therefore make the images wrong if you look at them away from that context? I’m not going to pretend that something that might have been intended to be used by men cannot also arouse me. I’m a woman and my desires are what they are.” Peg stopped and looked pensive, looking like she was trying to decide whether or not to say what she ended up saying. “I love little girls. I’m a girl lover. I love them more than anything and I love to masturbate while looking at pictures of little girls posing naked and showing off their young little bodies. I’m being completely honest with you Di.”

Peg paused, but since I didn’t say anything, she continued. “I’ve felt this way for years. It took a long time to accept it, but when I did I actually became less obsessed. I didn’t let it consume me as much because I let go of the guilt.” Another pause, designed to allow me time to think. “What did you think of those photos? Honestly?” …Oh, what the hell? Stick with being honest. It’s harder to lie.

“I thought they were beautiful. I loved them.”

“Tell me, have you thought about anything else in the last week except the girls in those pictures and how you felt about them?” Bloody psychic Peggy.

“No.” Peggy looked away from me for a moment and smiled craftily.

“I know what you were doing while I was out last week. I could tell when I walked up the driveway. Did you somehow forget how strong your smell is when you get turned on? I smelled it as soon as I got out of the car.” Alright. Out with everything.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I could tell you were flustered and panicking about what you were feeling. I knew I had to give you some time. I know what you’re feeling and it’s okay. You’re not a monster.” Oh Peg, thank you. Instead of saying that aloud, I started crying, a lot. Peg came over and hugged me and I squeezed her tightly in return, sobbing. Peg ran her hand over my back and soothed me with lots of ‘It’s okay, you’re going to be alright.’ We held each other for a long time. I didn’t want to be the one to halt our embrace. Peg eventually let go and pushed me up and we sat looking at each other. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s just that I was so shocked when I first saw those pictures I didn’t know what to think. But I felt so strongly that it was a good thing, that it was wonderful, that the girls were happy and that they were enjoying themselves. I just wish I knew that for sure.” Peg looked at me, a sly gleam returning to her eyes.

“Where do you think I got those photos?”

“Well, I assumed you got them off the internet.”

“I can understand why you’d think that, but I didn’t. They were a gift from a friend. They were posted to me in a large package as photographic prints. The only reason they were on the computer is because I’ve been scanning them in. I was going to burn them onto a CD, so I could have copies. I wasn’t planning to leave them sitting there for very long.” I could believe that, but I also had a tiny inkling that maybe Peg wanted me to see them but didn’t have the courage to do it more directly.

“Who sent them to you?”

“The woman who took the pictures.” Peg stood up. “Wait here for a second.” Peg walked out of the lounge and into her bedroom where I could hear her rummaging about. She came back holding a couple of sealed folders and two imposingly large luxurious photo albums.

“Have a look at this.”

Peg handed me one of the albums. I opened it and the very first photo was one of the pictures I saw on the computer. It was the redheaded girl with the long pigtails standing naked in front of a large tree, with her hands on her hips and a strong commanding expression on her face, one that projected a total assurance in herself.

“Her name is Lena Kropotska. She lives outside a town called Serpukhov, near Moscow.” I looked intently at the photo. Lena. A beautiful name. Of course her name was Lena. Of course she was Russian.

“The other girl’s name is Katya Svenkalovich. She lives in the same township as Lena. They’re both eight years old. These pictures were all taken over the course of about six months, the last one is dated only two months ago.”

Each morsel of information made me float a little higher. No longer anonymous, now these girls had real names, identities. A voice. Personhood. Now every time I looked at one of their photos I could say the girls name. This was important to me. Even though the proud content of their personalities was leaping out of every sumptuously composed image, I still couldn’t stand not knowing at least something about who they really were. I was about to invent my own names for them, to confer upon them an explicit identity. This was part of my problem with commercial pornography – how it dehumanised women (and men, but mostly women), stripping them of names and voices, leaving only interchangeable empty vessels to be callously fucked by indifferent penises. That wasn’t erotic or sexy, that was pitiful and poisonous. There is no future in that kind of ‘entertainment’ except a corrosion of the soul.

Far away from such depressing sleaze, the images in front of me were like a balm, they were restoring a faith that I thought I’d lost years ago. Far from being exploitative or damaging, these photos were kindling a beautiful fire. It was like seeing inside joy. Looking at the photo in front of me, of Lena – god she was beautiful! – I felt elated. This was wonderful. She was so perfect and innocent, but aware of herself at the same time. I was still amazed how one single photograph could conjure up so many diverse and overlapping emotions and responses. I flipped through the album and rejoiced at seeing these lovely images again, this time on proper photographic paper. They were all rather expensive looking prints, all 10 x 8 mattes, each one framed in thick purple card. Someone put a lot of work into this. I managed to tear my eyes away for long enough to ask Peg again that very important question.

“So come on. Tell me. Who’s the photographer and how do you know her?” Peg picked up one of the folders she had brought with her from her bedroom and pulled out a small photograph and handed it to me.

“Do you remember this?” It was a photo taken at the Victorian Art Gallery over three years ago. In it were three people: Peg, myself and—

“I know her! That’s that Russian woman. The photographer with all the pictures of little girls. That’s right, she was visiting Australia for a couple of months for an exhibition and we went to see it. What was her name?”

“Arina Movosh.”

“That’s right. Arina. Wow. That’s amazing.” I chuckled at this revelation. “That was the only time I met her though, wasn’t it? I left you there at the gallery because I had to go to my sister’s. What happened with you and her? You never told me much about that.”

“No. I didn’t want to tell anyone, but we got to be very close. After you left the gallery she asked me to go back to her hotel room.”

“No she didn’t, you lying bitch. Come on.”

“Yes really. I wasn’t going to turn down an offer like that.” We were both relaxed again, thankfully, back to being ourselves.

“She showed me some samples of her unpublished work – lots of pictures of little girls in the nude, which were more…um, risqué than what was showing in the exhibition – I thought that she must have some of the same feelings as I did, but I couldn’t imagine how I could come right out and ask her. I didn’t have to worry though because she asked me. She just asked me straight out, ‘Do you like little girls?’ I think we could sense our common desires in each other and… well, that only made us want each other. One of those fiery and passionate affairs. It was fantastic. But a month later she went back to Russia….” Peg trailed off wistfully. “But, anyway, that’s her. Arina Movosh. She took all the pictures of Lena and Katya. After she left she gave me her address in Russia and we’ve been writing to each other since. In her last letter she said she would send me a very special present.”

I looked over the albums. What a wonderful gift. I wanted to ask Peg if I could borrow them. Again she stole my thunder.

“You can borrow them if you want.”

“Really?”

“Come on, Di. If I didn’t give them to you, you’d break in here and steal them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Peg picked up the other folder in her lap and held it up to me.

“Can I ask you to borrow this as well? My diaries and letters are in here. A lot of my fantasies and just random thoughts. I’ve never shown these to anyone. I’d love it if you could read through these and tell me what you think.”

“Peg, I don’t…are you sure you want me to read those?” I desperately wanted to, but didn’t want to seem too eager.

“Please. It would really mean a lot to me. You and I trust each other enough to not have to say that we trust each other.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“All of the letters that Arina and I have written to each other are in there as well. She wouldn’t mind if I showed them to you. If you want to know more about the photos of Lena and Katya, she explains a lot in her letters.”

Even better. That’s what I wanted to know. But Peg was openly offering her most personal thoughts and fantasies to me to read, things she couldn’t tell anyone about before. I knew how much it meant for her to be able to finally express herself honestly to someone else, someone who wouldn’t judge her or think she was automatically a ‘danger to children’ because she had such fantasies. I’d only been feeling this way for a week but Peg has had this with her for years. I felt sorry for her for that, having to hold it in and suppress it for so long.

“Just to let you know, there’s some very graphic and explicit content in there. Things that I’m a bit shocked at myself for even thinking. Just remember that it’s only my fantasies. I’ve never actually done any of those things.”

“Well I’m a big girl now. I think I can handle it.” I held the gorgeous albums in my hands, ready to take my leave and go home and enjoy them. Then I remembered a question that still hadn’t been answered.

“Peg, how did you know that I’d looked at these pictures?” She looked at me smugly.

“‘Recently Viewed Documents’ Di. Every time you look at something on the computer it remembers what you looked at. As soon as you left I checked the computer. That’s how I knew.”

“Okay. I’ll remember that next time.” Peg laughed. I really didn’t know about those things. Oh well. Peg reached out and held my hand.

“If you want to talk to me about this some more, any time, you know you can—”

“I know. And I will. Thank you so much.” I gave Peg a long hug and kissed her sweetly on her lips, something we hadn’t really done since we were teenagers. When our mouths parted Peg looked like she wanted to say something else but she kept silent. I wondered if she wanted me to stay with her. I almost felt like that’s what I wanted too. But I was so desperate to go through those photo albums privately, that I put it out of my mind. Maybe another time.

I said goodbye to my darling Peggy and went quickly home with my beautiful prize, feeling a new exhilaration, a feeling of freedom.

*****

To be continued…