We met through a camera lens. He made me nervous when he took my column’s mug shot, crawling toward me with his black Nikon monstrosity. His face was obscured as he scrunched it behind the viewfinder, and I stared back into its glassy depths. I sweated in my black longsleeves. I knew then I had to find out about the man behind the lens.

I had been hired as the newest sex columnist, and that job was hot property. Another section of the newspaper–the blog–recruited me a month after. And I met my photographer again. We would take up our roles as model and voyeur, it was decided, as a way to introduce the sex columnist to the blog readers. Or, in his words: “Christine, nothing is more important to me than bringing sexy back.”

And that’s when the email tease began, a full week before our next scheduled shoot. We planned to cover my body in newspaper flower cut-outs, a la American Beauty, and take it from there. He asked if I was ready for that sort of intensity.

“‘Intense’ is my middle name,” I wrote. “Actually, my middle name is Renee, which I think might mean ‘intense’ in French.”

“Je suis né avec l’intensité,” he replied. “J’espère qu’il n’y aura pas trop vendredi.”

At the time, I couldn’t understand much French, but he was obviously cultured enough to make my panties wet. And I told him so.