"Could you help me with my camera?" she asked.

I was trying to pull the fog-shrouded pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge into focus on the ground glass of my old view-camera. As if by magic, Jillian's lithe silhouette emerged from the swirling fog. Even in the inverted image on the camera’s focusing screen, she was most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

"Umm… I guess. Sure." I stammered, climbing out from under the camera’s dark cloth. Back then, I was a quintessential San Francisco kid. Skinny, confident, and street-smart.

One smile from Jillian turned me into a blathering idiot.

Only in mid-1960s San Francisco could Jillian's Belle-Epoche wardrobe with its full-length skirts over crinoline petticoats and a narrow-waisted bodice go unremarked.

Looking back, the Autumn of 1965 was one of those profound cultural turning points. Beat generation hipsters and their turtlenecks, goatees and berets, were fading. Flower-power hippies with a fascination for vintage Victorian fashions and psychedelic drugs were just taking hold.

Jillian’s imperturbable demeanor, ageless beauty, and fondness for all things pre-modern seemed a perfect fit in this brave new world of shoulder length hair, antique clothing and blissful smiles.

I could easily envision Jillian cheering for the San Francisco Mime Troupe at one of the Happenings in Golden Gate Park. Or in the audience at the Coffee Gallery a few blocks from my house in North Beach. A singer named Grace Slick and her band, the Great Society, were playing a strange new music there. Word on the street had it that the Great Society was best appreciated while smoking weed, or even better, dropping LSD.

As I was about to discover, Jillian’s world was far stranger than any LSD trip. But that morning, as she held a Battenburg-lace parasol in one hand and a Leica M1 camera in the other, she looked to me like the most perfect creature in all of God’s great creation.

Even without psychedelics, the sex-centric mentality of my late teen mind was envisioning the erotic possibilities. Jillian and I lying on the beach, her skirts and petticoats askew, my fingers probing the moist, pleated folds beneath her panties.

Groping in the backseat of my Dad’s ’57 Chevy, her tiny hands peeling back the fabric of my jeans. Making love on the mossy bed of the Muir Woods, soft white flesh gleaming with sweat in the dappled sunlight, the germ of an explosive orgasm building between our thighs.

She passed me her camera. The cold metal against my fingertips brought the reverie to a crashing end, save for the involuntary swelling between my legs.

"I don't see anything wrong," I told her after inspecting the film advance, shutter release and focusing ring.

"It must be me," she apologized. "I guess I don't understand how it works."

Then I noticed the telephoto lens. The Leica is a range finder design, and needs parallax adjustment to properly focus with long lenses.

I reset the parallax adapter and handed it back. “Don’t use the regular view finder with this lens,” I told her. “Frame your photos by looking through this little thing on top,” I said, pointing to the bulbous parallax adapter.

Jillian thanked me, asked my name, and wanted to know about my life in San Francisco. Most of all, she was fascinated by the old wooden view-camera with its red-leather bellows, polished brass lens and panoply of shinny metal fittings. It was a family heirloom that to me at the ripe old age of 17 seemed older than time itself.

It wasn't until after I had my driver's license about six months, that I was allowed to take the camera out of the house. Even then, my Dad warned, "Don't let it out of your sight. Don't even think about lending it. "

"Not to anyone," he added ominously.

Jillian asked where it came from, and I told her the family legend.

Before the Great Earthquake, my great-grandfather had brought the camera from Philadelphia, and opened a portrait studio in the Tenderloin.

He fancied himself a ladies’ man and his studio catered to women–society matrons, teachers, maids, saloon dancers, stage actresses, even bordello girls. Of his surviving glass-plate negatives, some were formal portraits, but there were also many informal nudes and boudoir scenes.

My Dad would sometimes wink and say that, "One day you'll wish that you've seen half the things that this old camera has."

I always dismissed that as one of his corny jokes. But watching Jillian's reverence for the camera made me wonder. When she caressed its wooden frame with an almost erotic intensity, I felt an irrational pang jealousy.

"There's magic in an old camera like this, don't you think, Davey?" she asked, lightly touching my arm, as if she sensed my envy. "Think of those girls. Gone now, but so vibrant and beautiful in their day.

“How wonderful it must have been to capture the fleeting essence of their youth," she said wistfully. "It's almost a kind of immortality, isn't it? Like holding back the hands of time forever."

"I guess," I said, not following her at all.

I was merely grateful that this beautiful woman had noticed me. More than that, she accepted me in a way no adult ever had before. Jillian offered no advice or life lessons. Just sincere questions that probed my thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

"Davey?" she asked. "Can you show me how this old thing works?"

I did, explaining all the dials and knobs. I was showing her how to use the bellows rails to focus an image on the ground-glass screen, when an idea dawned on me.

"I could take your portrait with it," I suggested.

"Oh, Davey!" she exclaimed. "I would love that!"

"If we moved down the beach, we can get the Bridge in the background."

"I have a better idea," she said with a look in her eye that I hadn't seen before. "Let's go to my place."

While I packed up, Jillian took a few photos of the bridge with her Leica, then turned the lens on me. Photographers seldom make good subjects. Stiff and self-conscious, I was no exception.

But Jillian had a way of putting me at ease. She praised the color of my eyes, the luster of my unruly brown hair, my slim physique. When I finally settled into a pose that pleased her, she rewarded me with a smile that burned brighter than the mid-day sun.

As I walked behind her on the beach, Jillian's narrow hips and buttocks swayed with a rhythm that once again ignited my endless supply of sexual fantasies. I followed her though the sea figs and shrubby willows to the impossibly steep trail that ends at Lincoln Boulevard. A Hackney horse and carriage was sitting in the paved turnout. I'd seen carriages like this from time to time weaving through traffic in The Haight or clattering along Golden Gate Park.

"You don't mind my old buggy, do you?" Jillian asked. "It's a kind of… of a fetish I have."

"No way!" I exclaimed. "I mean, I never actually been in one. But I've always wanted to."

The driver helped us into the cab, then stowed my camera gear beneath the empty seat. With his mutton-chop sideburns, morning coat and top hat, he looked straight out of central casting.

"Home, Miss?" he asked.

Jillian nodded, and as we rolled onto the boulevard accompanied by the hoof beat of the high-stepping Hackney, I felt as if I were being swept back to the Nineteenth Century.

I tried to follow our location as we emerged from the Presidio into that warren of short, winding roads around Sea Cliff and China Beach. But in the confines of the cab, Jillian's plunging neckline, and the way her breasts bounced with the movement of the carriage, proved so distracting that by the time we halted in the driveway of a rambling gingerbread Victorian house, I had completely lost my bearings.

I followed Jillian through a rear pantry and up a creaky, narrow staircase that opened onto a large sitting area lined with bookshelves. To my astonishment, the shelves held cameras, hundreds and hundreds of them. Some I recognized immediately: Kodak Brownies, Graflex Press Cameras, Leicas and Rolleiflexes. Others were more obscure, like the Beirettes, Werras, Contessas, Retinettes, and even a triple lens Russian Sputnik.

"Wow!" was all I could say.

"I thought you'd like it." It's difficult to describe the way Jillian smiled at me just then. There was such sincerity and fondness in that one smile, it made me feel as if I'd never seen a real smile before.

"They belong to my landlord, an old man who has been collecting cameras all his life.”

"Is it some kind of museum or something?"

"Yes. I suppose in a way you could say that," she said, searching my eyes. "He calls it 'The House of Forgotten Cameras.'"

"Oh, that's cool," I said, not really processing the full importance of the name. Jillian waited patiently while I explored the shelves.

"Come, Davey," she said when my enthusiasm finally waned. "I have other things to show you."

Jillian's room was a museum of a different sort with high ceilings and large mullioned window bays. Perhaps because I have no sisters, a girl's room is a thing of mystery and whispered erotic potential.

In the case of Jillian's room, Eros didn't whisper, he bellowed.

The walls were decorated in a sea of nude photos. There were all sizes and kinds, from postage-stamp sized daguerreotypes to 16x20-inch glossy prints. There were males and females. Some were artistic. Some were erotic. Some were lascivious. Many were famous.

I recognized iconic photos by Edward Weston, Henri Cartier Bresson and Horst P. Horst. Over the mantlepiece in a gold leaf frame was Alfred Stieglitz's photo of "Georgia O'Keefe, Hand and Breasts" and a pair of E.J. Bellocq's brothel-portraits taken in the Storyville red-light district of New Orleans.

Beyond Jillian's bed was a small alcove and the portraits I saw there pulled me in like a magnet. They were of Jillian.

A few were contemporary. But in most, her hair and makeup were done in remarkably convincing imitations of historical styles like '40s Rosie the Riveter, '20s flapper, and even several with a late Victorian-era Gibson Girl look.

Most stunning, and surely the reason that I overlooked exactly how remarkably convincing the historical prints appeared, was Jillian herself.

Except for a light dusting of freckles across her upper chest and crescent-shaped birthmark on her inner thigh, Jillian's skin had the flawless translucence of a porcelain doll.

I guessed her age to be about 30.

Jillian's breasts had the ripe pertness of a teenager with nipples lilting skyward as if on the verge of taking flight. Her waist was impossibly thin, lending her an hourglass shape even though her hips were narrow enough to be called boyish.

In her photos, as in real life, Jillian's legs seemed to go on forever with perfectly turned calves and delicate thighs. Her stomach was flat and smooth and her public hair so thin and pale blonde as to be almost unnoticeable.

There was no point, I realized, in wasting an exposure on a conventional portrait.

"How many plates do have?" she asked, as if reading my mind.

I was impressed that Jillian realized my view-camera dated from before the invention of film and, indeed, used glass-plate negatives that I had to make in the darkroom by first pouring an ether-rich pyroxylin syrup over a sheet of glass and then bathing it in a silver nitrate bath. It was difficult, time-consuming and error prone. From a dozen attempts, I was lucky to get a couple of useful negatives.

"Just four," I told her.

While I unpacked my gear, she walked to her canopy bed and lowered the muslim side-curtains, in effect, creating a “soft light box” from the curtain on the window side of the room and reflector from the other. I positioned the tripod at the foot of the bed and mounted the camera.

As soon as I had inserted the first glass-plate negative, Jillian walked up and looked me in the eye. "Well, Mr. Photographer, are you ready?"

I had barely replied, when she began releasing the buttons down the front of her bodice. Beneath she was wearing a silky camisole with no bra.

"Help me, Davey," she said, turning her back and pointing to a long row of buttons that ran down the rear of her overskirt.

"How could you possibly do this on your own?" I asked, fumbling with the buttons as best I could.

"There is a secret technique," she said in mock seriousness. "But nothing beats a handsome helper."

After the overskirt tumbled to the floor, I unhooked layers of crinoline petticoats. Finally, she stood before me in white lace panties and a camisole.

"Your turn," she said with a very naughty smile.

"Me?" This was something I hadn't anticipated.

"I've never posed for a clothed photographer before and I'm not about to start now. Fair is fair."

I could name half a dozen girls who’d already seen me naked. But not one possessed a tiny fraction of Jillian's undiluted sexuality.

"This is going to be embarrassing," I told her, pulling my shirt over my head and releasing my belt buckle.

Had I been inclined to seek medical attention for an erection lasting more than four hours, I would have been in the emergency room long ago. I'd been sporting hard wood since the moment I first fantasized about Jillian.

"Davey," she smiled, and once again, the room seemed four-thousand watts brighter. "You think I haven't noticed?"

"My Boner?"

"As you so elegantly put it. Yes!" She said with a teasing laugh. "I'm not made of stone you know. Don't you think watching the outline of your hard cock hasn't piqued my curiosity?"

"Seriously," I said, lowering my zipper. "I had no idea."

"It's an acquired skill, Davey," she said, her eyes following my fingers. "Women are much better at concealing sexual interest. I've been a good girl all morning. The least you can do now is show it to me now."

With that, my jeans slid down my legs to the floor. I was wearing white cotton briefs that left little to the imagination.

"Your turn," I managed to say in a confident tone that was complete fakery.

She gave me a shy smile and lifted the camisole over her head.

You might think that having just examined the goods, so to speak, in some very good photographs, that the real thing would be an anticlimax.

Bullshit!

The photo's of Jillian's naked breasts did not begin to do justice to the real things, and my heart, already throbbing in my chest, began pounding with the emphatic beat of a marching band.

"Ready?" she teased, nodding to my briefs.

Together, we hooked our thumbs in our waist bands and on the count of three lowered them. Although clearly no stranger to the male physique, Jillian's reaction, a sudden widening of the eyes accompanied by a little low-pitched whistle, did wonders for my self-confidence.

My hands were trembling, and once it popped over the waistband, my cock was bobbing up and down like Big Bird dunking for apples. Jillian had a smile in her eyes, but she never took her eyes off me and had even begun to unconsciously bite down on her lower lip in what even a dense 17-year-old could recognize as a sign of sexual arousal.

"What now?" she asked, tossing her panties onto a chair with a flick or her ankle.

I think I genuinely surprised her by walking to the alcove, contemplating the photos for several minutes, then pulling four images off the wall and setting them next to the cosmetics on her vanity.

"These four," I said, motioning to the images.

"But they've been done already."

"And now we're going to make them better," I replied.

"Well, then," she said. "Let's get started!"

With a lot of teasing and flirting and blatant exhibitionism, we worked our way through the four poses and, I think, improved a little on each of them. It wasn't brilliantly creative, but it left us with a sense of accomplishment.

"Davey," she said as I was putting the last glass-plate negative away. "Let's fuck!"

That was all the invitation I needed. I took a half step and literally leaped onto her bed, pulling Jillian along with me.

Our lips locked, my fingers found her stiff nipples and her fingers wrapped around my insanely hard cock. Later when I would visit her, we'd sometimes spend hours in delicate foreplay. Not this first time.

The photography had been anticipation enough. Almost as soon as Jillian's fingers found my cock, she guided it between her legs and her lower lips parted to accept it. With one long stroke, I slipped effortlessly inside.

We fell into a lover's dance that was part thrusting hips, part gentle undulation. We began slowly and the pace gradually increased without ever really pausing. Soon, Jillian was whimpering and my hip thrusts were jackhammering against her hot, grinding sex.

My cock recoiled and fired off its first ejaculation, accompanied by a squeal from Jillian and a rolling contraction of her uterus. My now hyper-sensitive cock responded with another pulsing squirt, and once again the walls of her canal contracted around me with a muscular grip, pulling me deeper inside. The cycle continued until I literally felt as if I had been milked of my last drop.

My lips found Jillian's nipple and as I sucked her breast into my mouth, I could feel the pounding of her heart and the rise and fall of her breathing. Her body seemed fragile and delicate as I pulled her tight against me.

I awoke to Jillian's soft caresses. For a moment all that registered were her fathomless blue eyes gazing down upon me with a look of infinite fondness.

"You've been asleep for hours," she said softly. She was wearing a thin silk robe that did little to conceal her wonderful contours. I was still naked.

"The Collector asked if you could visit him before you leave," she continued. "There's something he would like to ask you."

That last sentence set off a mental alarm, and I looked to the foot of the bed where I had left the view-camera. It was gone.

"It's safe," Jillian said in her tone of voice that would never fail to put me instantly at ease. "Get dressed, I'll take you to the Collector… and your camera."

We walked through the sitting room with its hundreds of old cameras and passed into the main hallway. While the initial collection had amazed me, what I now saw left me speechless.

Thousands and thousands of cameras sat upon shelves for as far as I could see. The dim light reflected off lenses that seemed to be winking at me as if in acknowledgment of some cosmic secret.

Nor was it just one level of cameras.

We descended a circular stair that passed through the first floor, to the basement, and even a sub-basement below that. Each floor contained more shelving with more cameras, like some vast Noah's Arc devoted not to the preservation of a male and female of each species, but examples of what seemed to be every model of camera constructed since the dawn of photography.

At the base of the staircase, Jillian pushed open an airtight door. "Climate controlled," she said, holding the door open for me. "Only handmade cameras and the rarest and most delicate assembly-line models are down here."

Another long corridor. More winking lenses and, exactly as Jillian had suggested, row after row of elegant and elaborate vintage view-cameras that made my battered old model look like a poor cousin.

Finally, another airtight door and we entered a room with thick oriental rugs, Chesterfield leather sofas and dark oak paneled walls.

In the middle of it all was the Collector, his hand resting lightly on the frame of my camera.

"Custom built by the American Optical Company in New York City, sometime in the late 1860s." he said. There was something youthful about his eyes. But they gazed out from a ruined face. Only in graphic novels had I seen a human body so twisted and wrinkled.

"Rare. But hardly unique," he said, gasping slightly for breath. "What sets this camera apart from all others, is its provenance, the places is been and, most importantly, the things it has seen. The images it has captured."

"Yes," I agreed without much conviction. My battered old view-camera honestly didn't seem all that impressive compared to so many other cameras in his collection.

"Have you ever thought about the possibility that a camera could be a gateway to immortality?"

"Not really. I mean, I guess an old photo is a certain kind of immortality," I said.

"Metaphorical immortality," he said, almost with a sneer. "I'm talking about the real thing. Living beyond your years. A wishful notion, I suppose."

"I guess," I replied, unsure what this was about or where it was headed.

"The camera is yours by birthright, isn't it?"

"Well, It belonged to my great-grandfather."

"Then, I won't insult you by offering you money for it," he said, watching me carefully.

"But if you'd consent to loan it to me, perhaps for a few weeks," he paused again and seemed to look to Jillian for her consent. "I will arrange for you to come here, to the House of Forgotten Cameras, whenever you want, as often as you want."

"For just a few weeks?" I asked. I looked at Jillian, who was smiling at me with encouragement.

"Yes," he said.

I convinced myself that the view-camera was better off in this climate-controlled environment than in the dank corner of my attic bedroom. And more importantly, there was Jillian. I had a sinking feeling that if I took the camera, I might never see her again.

"I can come anytime? Take the camera whenever I want?"

He agreed with a nod.

"Well," I paused, sneaking a look at Jillian. With her smile, all doubts evaporated.

"OK," I said.

He took a sheet of stationary and with a magnificent old Mont Blanc fountain pen, wrote out a short receipt in the kind of flourished cursive script that even back then was rapidly becoming a lost art:

Sept. 17, 1965

The House of Forgotten Cameras acknowledges the temporary loan of a view-finder camera that was custom made in the late 1860s by American Optical Co., New York, NY, and equipped with a 4" back-focusing Peerless lens and accessory rangefinder. The House of Forgotten Cameras is responsible for the good care of said view-finder camera and agrees to return said camera to its owner immediately upon the verbal or written request of of said owner.

Later, as I gathered up the dry-glass plates, Jillian handed me a phone number. "Whenever you want to visit, call this. The carriage will meet you by the turn out on Lincoln Boulevard."

Jillian accompanied me to the driveway. On the return trip, I tried to make out some streets signs or other landmarks, but it was a dark, moonless night and I didn't see anything familiar until we turned onto El Camino del Mar.

For the next week, I went to The House of Forgotten Cameras every day as soon as school was out, and usually stayed past midnight. On the weekend, I arrived by early afternoon.

I never saw the Collector again, but Jillian was always waiting and even now, I blush at some of the things we did.

On the first Saturday, she gave me a hand-job in the carriage and a blow-job under the table of an Irish pub on The Haight. After that, we made love on the lawn behind the colonnaded bandshell in Golden Gate Park. And that was just an appetizer.

Ironically, Jillian did have one phobia. She hated cars and most other modern devices except, of course, cameras. When we went somewhere, it was always by carriage. Ironically, she was also no fan of the electric-guitar driven style of psychedelic music that was starting to boom from the bars and clubs around the Haight and North Beach.

Jillian initiated me into the art of making love as the carriage swayed and shuddered and the landscape rolled past the the curtained windows. Not one to restrain her passion, she would gasp and moan and cry out in joy. I marveled at the impassivity of old Mutton Chop, until Jillian clued me in that he was deaf, "but a very accomplished lip reader."

She loved being outrageous. One evening she failed to meet me when the carriage arrived in the driveway and I raced to her room in concern. She was on her bed, eyes closed and hands pressed tightly between her legs. While I looked on, she fingered herself to orgasm after orgasm. She thought nothing of plunging her fingers down the front of my jeans and bringing me to a messy climax in public places. Or lifting her skirts and urging me to take her in locations where privacy was far from assured.

It goes without saying that I had fallen hopelessly in love with Jillian and in the arrogance of youth, it never occurred to me to wonder why a woman of her intelligence and beauty had made herself available to me at any time and every way imaginable.

For that first week, I checked on the camera daily. I suppose it was just the result of a good cleaning and polishing cloth, but its wooden frame, cracked leather bellows and brass fittings seemed aglow with contentment, if such a thing were possible.

I also tried to determine the exact location of the House. During that first week it was too foggy in the afternoons and too dark at night. On the one afternoon without fog, I fell asleep. Another time, I glimpsed a street sign, but then forget the name before I reached my car.

Eventually, I gave up trying. All that really mattered was that whenever I dialed that number, Jillian would be waiting for me. I suppose, at some level I realized that The House of Forgotten Cameras did not want itself fixed in time and space, and that it might not be the wisest thing for me to keep trying.

Midway through the second week, I slipped into my room well past midnight and found my Dad waiting.

"The camera." he said as my heart sank. "It's not here. I haven't seen for over a week."

"I know. I know," I said. "But it's safe. I promise."

I expected him to be angry, but he merely looked at me a long time and a great sadness seemed to come over him.

"You've met him, haven't you. The Collector?"

"You know him?" I couldn't believe my Dad knew the Collector and had never told me.

"Yes. I met him once," my Dad said. "Where is The House of Forgotten Cameras these days?"

"I'm not really sure. Somewhere south of the Presidio," I told him.

"And the… " he started to ask something, but his words were choked back by a sudden surge of emotion. "The woman?"

"Jillian?" I asked, wondering how my Dad could possibly know about her.

He didn't seem to recognize the name, but he pointed to the inside of his thigh, and we both knew what he meant. It was the exact location of Jillian's birthmark.

"Yes…" I stammered. "I know her."

I had never seen my father cry before. He collapsed on my desk, put his head on his arms and sobbed. Eventually, he wiped his face and regarded me with a lost, pitiful look that shook me to my core. Then he turned without another word and disappeared down the dark corridor to his bedroom.

If the circumstances had been different, perhaps the consequences might have been different too.

I often wonder that had it come out in course of some alcohol-fueled bragging session that my Father and I had fucked the same woman, that perhaps the revelation might have become the foundation of some secret male bond that cemented our relationship.

Instead, what passed between us that night became a toxic secret that poisoned everything.

I rarely saw my Father after that, and when I did, we had little to say to each other.

I did continue visiting Jillian for another month.

But something in me had shifted, and she sensed it immediately.

The last time I saw Jillian was at the head of the Sand Ladder Trail off Lincoln Boulevard. The carriage was waiting for me as usual. But so was Jillian. She was holding the old view camera.

I watched her waving to me in the rear view mirror as I drove away. Even before I reached Golden Gate Park I started crying. I’ve really never stopped.

Half-a-century later, I sometimes still prowl the Presidio on foggy afternoons, praying for one last invitation to the House of Forgotten Cameras. For one last glimpse of immortality.

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