A Classic Pose

My mate Kevin and I were in the front room going over each other's efforts to represent on paper a gorgeous and naked twenty-five year old who'd been the latest life model to sit for us – actually, contort herself into all kinds of positions for us – and were getting particularly enthusiastic about one of my sketches where Jane had sat opposite me, leaning backwards with legs slightly apart and looking me straight in the eye, almost daring me to lick my lips at the sight. I'd taken the dare and stared back into her face, not drawing, just taking in her beauty as if considering it, until a small smile had crept into the corners of her mouth. Then with a self-satisfied smile of my own, I'd settled back to begin the drawing. I think it's called 'rapport' with the model. She really was lovely, and it was my good fortune that she'd chosen this one as the last pose for the afternoon, a thirty-minuter where I could go into great detail, as opposed to the other shorter and rougher sketches. Maybe it was an optical illusion because I hadn't seen her move that whole time, but I certainly had a good view of her pussy lips by the end of the session which I was sure I hadn't been able to see before. Luckily too, as well as depicting her smile, that had been the last facet of her that I'd concentrated on. Kevin leaned over my shoulder and exclaimed,

"Phew! Kenny, you horny dog, you...!"

He took the paper in both hands, brought it up to his nose and sniffed...

"Jeez, I can almost smell her pussy...!"

Then he brought it down to his waist and started humping himself into it, making lewd, groaning noises...

"Ooh, yeah, that's it baby, c'mon, c'mon...!"

Laughing, I grabbed it away from him.

"Stop that, you'll smudge it...if not even worse..."

"Yeah, let me do worse, I wanna leave her a tribute. It'll be a new thing we've invented. We can call it 'Interactive Art', or something. People will go wild for it..."

"I think there's already something by that name – but I do admire your enthusiasm."

We were both standing there in appreciation of her two-dimensional wantonness when the front door abruptly slammed and I knew we had only a couple of seconds before Mum popped her head round into the front room to greet us. We were quickly throwing the sketches back into their folders and turning back round with innocent looks on our faces when she entered. She stopped. There was a bemused look on her face.

"Alright, you two, what have you been up to?" She crossed her arms. "Gawd, the last time I saw expressions like that was when Kenny was caught with his crayons as a kid, trying to improve the look of his granny's living-room wall. Come on, own up."

She cast a glance at the table behind us where part of one of my sketches was still peeking out – a representation of a smoothly contoured female leg with a cutely defined ankle.

She'd let out an 'Aha...!' before we'd managed to close ranks and conceal the goods. She prised us apart and reached for the folders. She opened them up and cast casual glances across our efforts.

"So this is what I'm supporting with my hard-earned cash then, is it?" She tutted and threw them back down on the table. "I'll bet she was good-looking before your artistic efforts got to work on her... Kenny, be a love and make me a cup of coffee would you? I've been on my feet all day. Not like this lucky bitch..."

And she flung herself down onto the couch, flicked off her heels and lifted her feet up onto the coffee table, wiggling her stocking-clad toes. As I went out into the kitchen, she was already asking Kevin, whose eyes were fixed on the amount of leg she was exposing, which folder was his, and was asking if maybe she could have a closer look? He must have agreed, I mean, he'd have agreed to anything my mum had asked him, because when I came back in with her steaming mug, she had already become involved and was pointing to something in his work.

"...you see, you're concentrating too hard on one or two of the elements where you should be looking at the creation as a whole...then when you get to this bit, you see? You've got no space left on the page and you've had to twist it unnaturally to fit it all in...this part is good...this part is excellent, but the whole thing doesn't gel because you didn't consider how they relate to one another..."

Kevin was looking at her appreciatively, and I didn't know if this was because he fancied her, which I knew he did, or whether he really found what she was telling him to be important.

"Doesn't your teacher teach you the basics...you know, the geometry of the composition?"

"Uh, no, not really, he just tells us to, like, go with the flow, express our individuality, enjoy the process...uh, that's crap, isn't it?"

"Kind of. Look, give me a piece of paper..." She reached into Kevin's folder and took out a clean sheet. "Pencil." She held out her hand and Kevin promptly placed a pencil into it. "You've got another one as well, a softer one? Maybe a 4B or something?" She took the second pencil as well. "Alright then, Kenny, love, go sit over there." I did so. "Don't just sit, lounge about like a slob, like you usually do." Then, hooking up her skirt, crossing her legs and using the folder itself as a support, she started to sketch me. While Kevin peered over her shoulder, either at the work or to try to get a better glimpse down her blouse, I got to see from my low angle that Mum was wearing thigh-high stockings, that a pale fleshy band of her upper thigh was making itself evident between stocking-top and skirt, and that she was wearing white panties. Her eyes flicked rapidly between me and the sheet of paper. I gave my own face a vacant look so she couldn't tell I was ogling her legs. It worked.

"Look, forget you're drawing a person, he's just another object."

"Thanks, Mum."

"My pleasure. Alright his head's here, his feet are there, which makes his left arm approximately... here, and his right one... there. Palm here, elbow there, crotch there...right?"

"Right..."

"Wrong. I told you. Look at it geometrically. If his crotch is there, then his left elbow should be approximately just above, not below his waist and out at this kind of angle between head and toe. So let's adjust that a bit. That's why we're using the hard pencil, so we can easily correct mistakes before we get to the finished article where it's too late. I told you, you've got to look at all the bits in relation to one another. You see? I've barely been sketching for a minute and we already know how his extremities are going to sit inside the rectangle. Not too small, not too large. Now more detail..."

I think she was unaware that the rocking of her leg with the folder as she explained to Kevin was edging her skirt up even more. I was sure by now that I could detect the darker shade of her pussy enclosed inside the daintily patterned cotton of her workaday knickers. Apparently oblivious to my gaze because she was looking at all parts of me except my eyes, her hand fairly flew across the sheet, darting backwards and forwards as it roughed in the different elements.

"Now the softer pencil, no details yet, just to place the shading..." I think she was talking to herself, she was so engrossed in what she was doing.

"Wow, Mrs. B., that's amazing...there's practically no detail at all but I can already see Kenny there...you're a whiz...!"

"Thanks, Kevin. So you've got the idea?"

"Yeah, I think so. I think I've just learned more from you in the last few minutes than I've learned all this term in class...How come you know all this stuff?"

"Well..." She hesitated, took a sip from her coffee and, "...well, okay then, let's tell the truth shall we?" She took another sip and placed the cup back on the table. "I was actually an artist's model myself, way back in my giddy youth..."

In unison we spluttered, "What?!?" "You what???"

That was sufficient to draw my eyes from her pussy up to her lovely face

"I thought you said you were studying Mediaeval History or something, you know, before Dad, you know...?"

"Knocked me up?"

I squirmed slightly. "Umm...yeah."

"I think that's probably why he was so intent on knocking me up. He'd eyeballed some of the pictures my famous artist painted of me and it kind of, umm, lit a spark haha..."

"A famous artist?"

"It's a bit complicated. He wasn't a famous artist at the time. He is now, though."

Our looks and open mouths were egging her on.

"Actually you can see a couple of his pictures of me, the ones that gave your dad the hots so much, hanging in the City Art Gallery, and, before you ask, no, I'm not telling you who the artist is or which ones are of me, so you can get that pornographic vision out of your little heads straightaway."

"But how did this fellow get you to pose? Were you hard-up for cash?"

"What, are you two looking for chat-up lines to get girls to strip off or something?"

"No, no, of course not (ha...!). We were just wondering..."

"Actually if I remember rightly he did have a good line. I was in one of the art galleries standing looking at a mediaeval picture depicting the Muses, each of them topless of course. He was standing next to me and casually said he had this theory that this kind of art was the original version of the Playboy magazine. Because at the time there was very little access to printed material, he reckoned that people in the Church, and royalty and stuff, they got their jollies by commissioning soft-porn works of art like that one. And that it was all accepted as above-board because in theory they were representations of important historical scenes whereas in fact they were just saucy pictures of the neighbor's daughter who worked in the greengrocer's round the corner."

"The original Photoshop. Can I write that one down?"

"Be my guest, but don't forget you've got to deliver the line with a lot of charm..." She smiled.

"Like he did?"

"Well, let's just say I'd started to pose for him by the time the sun went down."

Mum was laughing at the memory while we were trying in our own minds to picture the scene. She was craning round in her seat while speaking to Kevin, and this was serving to make the buttons strain at the front of her blouse and her crossed legs to unconsciously loll open even further. I was still lounging in my pose, and my cock was, quite independently, having its own reaction to this and to the thought of Mum strutting her stuff to a perfect stranger. She then resumed her sketching and her glance swept across my crotch, pausing momentarily.

"You see, Kevin," she turned to him and pointed towards my crotch with her pencil, "that's why you should always start with a hard-lead. Sometimes you're forced to make a few alterations in the middle of things..."

Kevin looked across at me and grinned. He knew just what she was referring to.

They laughed together and she continued to sketch for a couple of minutes more before turning the finished piece to show me. Kevin was laughing his head off. She'd given me a cartoon boner.

"Mum...!!"

"What? I work in a hospital, you think I haven't seen one of those before? Besides, it's called 'artistic license'..."

With that, she put the sketch to one side and downed the rest of her coffee. She then stood up and straightened her skirt.

"Okay, I'm going for a shower now. Kenny, set the table. You want to stay and eat with us, Kevin?"

"No thanks, Mrs. B., I'm off to practise some of those tips you've given me before I forget. Thanks again!"

"Alright then. Kenny, you put your sketches away as well. I don't know what happened with that detailed one, but it's a bit smudged. Is that 'artistic license' as well?" She raised one eyebrow with the hint of a smile crossing her lips.

Kevin quickly made good his exit.

So yeah, Mum worked in admin at the hospital. Getting pregnant with me had derailed all thoughts of academic achievement, but she was sufficiently grounded to take it all in her stride. My Dad. Had he done anything other than impregnate Mum that I should give him that name? Because he seemed to flee the scene as soon as it went up the chute, and he never became a significant player in our domestic life after that.

I now realized, after watching Mum sketching away with a smile on her face, that maybe I'd inherited some of her artistic leanings, and I think perhaps with this graphics course I was doing I might be vicariously fulfilling some of her own ambitions. Whatever the case, she certainly didn't stint when it came to helping me out with my studies. Money was tight but she never made me feel as though I owed her. If anything, she seemed to be proud of me and I wasn't going to disappoint her.

As we settled down to our tea, I was obviously still intrigued by the revelations of her past, and I kept probing as to who this famous artist might be.

"Wait a minute...Oh no, you didn't used to weigh around two hundred and eighty pounds and go by the name of 'Big Sue' did you?"

She burst out laughing at that one and said that, no, she wasn't 'Big Sue', and anyway that picture was now in private hands and not in a gallery. One of those new Russian oligarchs had bought it and put it up in his bedroom. The perv.

"Well maybe in that case you should tell them that you're the model from one of those other pictures, and some Russian or Sheik with all his barrels of oil will come and buy you, or rent you, and you can live in luxury the rest of your life? You do deserve it..."

"Oh, I deserve to be hired out like a cheap whore, do I?"

"No, no... I mean you'd be so expensive that..."

"You should think well before finishing that sentence, buster..."

I blushed and took the hint. I closed my mouth.

"Not that I don't think I couldn't still impress a few oligarchs..." and she thrust out her expansive bosom and put a dainty hand up to her neck. "You think I've still got it?"

" 'Still got it'?? Mum, you crazy? You've got it in spades! Everyone I know...ah, er, maybe that one's the sentence I shouldn't finish..."

"Everyone? Does that include Kevin as well? Mmm, I thought he was trying to get an eyeful over my shoulder..." But she didn't sound angry at all. "Well he's good-looking, so I'll take that as a compliment then..."

"Just so you know, Kevin worships the ground you walk on. If ever you need your shoes shined, Kevin'll be round to lick them for you. Don't tell him I told you."

She laughed generously and pushed her chair back from the table.

"Come on, we're going out."

"Where to?"

"You'll see. I know you won't rest until your curiosity's been satisfied, so..."

"The art gallery?"

I was instantly on my feet and clearing the pots from the table.

"Just leave 'em, the gallery'll be closed soon."

So it was that, half an hour later, we found ourselves strolling in through the grand sweeping doors to the Gallery of Modern Art, an imposing edifice in itself, though looking rather confusingly dated, having been built during Victorian times with a Neo-Gothic façade. While I was getting my bearings, Mum took a hold of my hand and pulled me straight on ahead. She was holding it very tightly, perhaps in apprehension as to how I would react, and she led the two of us, leaning in, shoulder to shoulder, like boyfriend and girlfriend, down a wide corridor towards the Millennial European Artists section.

"I'm just a bit nervous." She said.

"Oh. Why's that?"

"Why do you think? Because I'm voluntarily taking you to see a couple of pictures of me naked, that's why."

"Oh. Well that's okay, I mean I've seen you naked before."

She stopped. "When?"

"You remember, that time I was dying for a pee and I rushed into the bathroom, not realizing you were having a shower?"

"Oh yes. But I thought you looked away? And anyway I drew the shower curtain across."

"Yeah, well, not quickly enough. And I've got this great photographic memory. I seem to remember you needed to shave your armpits..."

I winked at her and smiled, nudging her shoulder. She nudged me back, smiling as well, "You dirty beast. Anyway, I got a good look at you as well."

"What??"

"Well you were in such a hurry you already had it out while rushing through the door. You've not got the patent on photographic memories, you know."

I stopped on the spot, before she pulled me forward again with a "Don't worry, I was really quite impressed." It was her turn to smile, and she pulled her tongue out at me.

We made a few lefts, then a couple of rights, and then in the middle of a large white room she brought me to an abrupt halt.

"Close your eyes."

I did so. She turned me ninety degrees.

"Open them."

I did so.

My mum was gazing back at me. Naked. And so much larger than life.

A lot younger, but those piercing blue eyes and the way she cocked her head were unmistakable to me. The artist had caught her in a moment of dressing or undressing, and one arm was up and adjusting the hair at the nape of her neck.

"Well?"

I gave it a few seconds before answering.

"You really do have a thing with armpit hair, you know?"

"You!!" She thumped me on the shoulder, then grabbed me by the elbow and slid her other arm around my waist and drew me close. She rested her head on my shoulder and let me continue my appreciation of the work. It was an exquisite piece. You had no choice but to wonder at such a body, but her eyes seemed to follow you as you were doing so, they seemed to know exactly where you were looking and what you were thinking. So you couldn't disassociate the body from those eyes. It was a weird feeling. If you wanted to try and get to know the woman in this painting, it would have to be on her own terms.

"Mum, it's magnificent," she squeezed my waist, "but you made it easy for the artist."

"How?"

"Well you handed him all the raw materials on a plate." She squeezed again.

She said, "You know he painted the Queen as well later on, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know. But she's almost ninety. Did he make her look like a wrinkly version of you?"

Mum burst out laughing at the thought and turned to kiss me on the cheek just as I turned my head in order to land a kiss in her scented hair, and our lips and eyes momentarily met. There was an additional moment of silence, and then,

"I don't know if I should show you the other one."

I raised one eyebrow. It was her call.

The other one was only a few frames away, and I stopped in shock when I saw it. The pose was almost identical to that of the model, Jane, that last pose which I'd pored over so diligently just this afternoon. That pose that had made Kevin almost cum in his pants. This one was pre-pussy lips display though, but you sensed that if the painter had just thought to finish his work around the groin area, and hadn't painted it from the very start, the final picture might have been significantly different. But that would have put it distinctly into the porn category and would never have come to be displayed so proudly in this gallery.

"Phew."

"Yeah, you're right. Yours was better."

"What do you mean?"

"That sketch in your folder this afternoon, I know it looks so much like this one, but in my opinion you found things in the model which he didn't. I mean, he's good...but you're special."

I looked at her.

"You don't believe me?"

"I... I..."

We'd turned towards one another and I was holding both her hands in mine.

Then, at the same time, "Can I paint you?" "Will you paint me?"

Confusion reigned for a split second before we fell into a close, laughing hug. Her whole body pressed up against mine and we exchanged kisses in each other's hair, on our cheeks and, after a pause, upon each other's lips.

To one side, someone emitted a short, respectful cough. A uniformed gallery guard was observing us.

"Yes, that picture does seem to have a certain effect on some people. I suppose it must mean the artist was very successful. But can I suggest, you, umm, find another place to celebrate it?"