Photographs capture moments in time. I know that's true because the camera companies keep telling us so. But there's always the nagging questions about the context we don't see, the context we have to invent in our heads to fill in the blanks, whether the picture is implying something that really isn't there. And then there's those moments that maybe we really didn't want captured, those moments that show us things we wish we hadn't seen, or worse yet, that cause us to imagine contexts that we know deep down are more real than the reality we've been imagining.

Letting a magazine photographer into our lives seemed like such a good idea. It was of course a vain idea, and vanity will always get you in the end. I know that's true because I read a lot of ancient Greek philosophy in college. In retrospect I would have been better off listening to the ancient philosophers than the camera companies.

It didn't seem like vanity at first. I justified it as good publicity for the family business and opportunity to get some professional photographs done for free, to capture the family as the girls were growing up, in the last year before our oldest goes off to college and our youngest stops being a child.

But when the photographer arrived to spend a night and part of a day with us, to "capture us in our natural habitat" to sleep in our guest bedroom, to be young and buff and extremely cute, when he started focusing on me, watching me, paying attention to me, I became self-conscious, felt flattered and esthetically pleasing for the first time in many, many years. I'm not sure when my husband stopped paying attention to me. When it was just us he always did, but parenting changes people. It becomes all about the kids, became all about the girls, and as he focused more on them, he obviously focused less on me.

I knew the photographer wasn't there to take glamour pictures of me, that he was there to take pictures of our family, pictures of our design business, of our coastal lifestyle, to show the magazine's readers how the lifestyle the magazine was selling influenced our designs, all those things the editor had said when she was selling me on the idea. I know photographers are all about revealing truth as beauty and beauty as truth, finding that one perfect picture that sums up life as they see it and understand it and I wanted, so badly, from the moment he shook my hand and stared into my eyes and flashed me that cute little smile for my beauty to be the truth, not the products, or the house, or the company or the interactions and relationships and dynamics of my husband and daughters, but his interactions with me.

That was when I crossed the vanity line. When I started being more about beauty than truth, when I went upstairs to shower and change tbefore making dinner, which I never really do, when I stood in front of the mirror, naked, trying to decide what to wear to impress him while I casually played with my nipples and teased my clit and imagined him standing behind me, his arms wrapped around me, licking my neck and nibbling on my earlobes.

I flirted all through dinner, willing him to notice me, hoping my husband wouldn't notice me, knowing deep down that he wouldn't, being not at all surprised and not at all disappointed when he ignored, as usual, everyone but our oldest daughter. Knowing I had complete freedom, I felt shameless and giddy free in my short flowered dress as I leaned over and around the photographer winking, smiling, revealing, brushing.

He watched me. He smiled back. He even winked back once. He watched the rest of my family too, but I had gotten enough out of him at dinner that I vowed to try harder, to really get him to really notice me before he left. I don't really know what I was thinking. In eighteen years of marriage I'd never cheated on my husband, never gone further than a furtive kiss with another man, and only then when I'd been tipsy on my birthday, and felt entitled to a little affection.

Yes I do. I know what I wanted. I wanted him to stop watching my husband and my daughters completely, to watch me, me, and only me. To watch me until it hurt, until he had to have me, until he grabbed me in the kitchen and kissed me hard and rough and held me with those hands and looked into my eyes again while he fucked me, fucked me, fucked me, while my youngest daughter was upstairs finishing her homework and my husband and my oldest daughter sat in the dining room talking about whatever it was they talk about every night as they sit there ignoring me. That's what I wanted. I wanted him. I wanted him for me.

I waited for him in the kitchen as I washed the dishes, waited for him to come to me, and he did, clearing half the dishes for me, carrying them to the kitchen, smiling at me again. He put them on the counter and stood there watching, watching like maybe he wanted me, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Maybe he was just taking notes in his head, because he didn't touch me, didn't grab me, didn't kiss me, didn't fuck me, just smiled again, and went back to the dining room to watch my husband and my daughter and even the dog, to wander around the house, to look at the rooms, to take it all in, to decide what he was going to shoot the next day.

As I lay in bed late that night alone, waiting for my husband to come upstairs to bed, I thought about the photographer again as I touched myself, as I pictured myself going to him in the the guest bedroom in the middle of the night, slipping under the covers with him, taking my cock in his mouth and then mounting and riding him to orgasm as I stared into his beautiful eyes. I do not know when my husband came to bed. I fell asleep alone again, woke up around two or three with him snoring softly beside me, curled on his side, his back to me.

My mind at least temporarily made up I slipped out of bed, telling myself I was just checking on the girls, went to each of their rooms first, peeked inside, watched them sleeping, then finally to the guest room, to his room, outside the door, breathing heavily, wanting so badly, opening the door, seeing him there in the moonlight, asleep, naked, on a bed in my house. God he was beautiful. So beautiful. So young. Too young. I couldn't do it. I would have to live with the memory and only the memory. Almost ashamed I tiptoed back down the hall, slipped into bed next to my snoring husband and drifted fitfully back into dreamland.

The next morning I decided to get back to business, and so did the photographer. He was up early, taking pictures of the house, of the dunes around the house, of the interior, of the dog, of us in various rooms with the products we had designed. Around 11 he announced that he wanted to take pictures of us on the beach, at a picnic, frolicking in the waves and eating lunch with the products.

It sounded fun if a little out of the blue, and more work for me that I'd been anticipating, but I went back to the kitchen and began to make lunches for five people, packing food and one of our custom picnic blankets while my husband and daughters went off to change into their company outfits. My husband came back first, wearing swim trunks and a beach shirt and a hat. He looked great. Old, but trim and fit and handsome, and I felt so guilty for my silliness of the day before. My daughters soon followed in island print bikinis. My husband and the photographer grinned and whistled and I felt proud but old and a little forgotten. The lunch and blanket packed I went upstairs to change while the rest of them started out for the beach. I did not look at myself in the mirror as I changed into my still-slightly-hot-middle-aged-woman floral one-piece suit.

But my mood changed again when I got downstairs. The photographer was waiting for me, had let the other three and the dog go ahead. We walked in silence together toward the beach, him lugging his equipment and me lugging the basket and blanket. My husband and the girls and the dog were playing in the waves when we arrived, splashing each other and hooting and hollering. I set up the blanket and the food while the photographer got out his equipment, took a shot or two of me setting up, and then ran out to the water to take pictures of the frolicking.

Finally after several shouted invitations they returned to the blanket, dripping wet and laughing. I served the food and we ate heartily, the photographer walking around and around the blanket taking pictures of us as we ate, pausing infrequently to nibble on his own sandwich.

After lunch we returned to the house. He took a couple of more shots in us in various rooms in afternoon light before packing up his stuff to go. He shook hands with my husband. I gave him a hug. He looked surprised but hugged me back anyway. And then he was gone. Just like that.

But never forgotten.

Photographs capture moments in time. I know that's true because the camera companies keep telling us so. But there's always the nagging questions about the context we don't see, the context we have to invent in our heads to fill in the blanks, whether the picture is implying something that really isn't there. And then there's those moments that maybe we really didn't want captured, those moments that show us things we wish we hadn't seen, or worse yet, that cause us to imagine contexts that we know deep down are more real than the reality we've been imagining.

There's a magazine, there, across the room, on the floor, where I threw it. If you open it up you'll find pictures of a house on the beach full of products that reflect a certain lifestyle, flowered prints, bold designs, a feel of the ocean. You'll find pictures of happy, smiling, but somewhat wistful looking people. But most importantly you'll find one picture of a greying, handsome, trim, athletic looking man in dark blue swim trunks wrestling playfully in the waves with an excited, bouncy, buxom young blond woman in a flowered barely-covering-anything bikini, and another of the same man, the same young woman, a younger girl in a slightly less revealing bikini, a middle aged blond woman in a flowered one piece suit, all sitting on a Hawaiian-print blanket, about to eat lunch, on the beach. The middle-aged woman is pouring drinks, watched intensely by the younger girl and the dog, while the older man and the young woman, fresh from their romp in the waves, stare intently, soulfully, knowingly, playfully, and above all, lustfully, into each other's eyes.