An Artistic Endeavour

A short burst of laughter erupted through the gallery at Chaz's pun.

"So without further ado, I am delighted to declare this exhibition open, and to reveal to you all my latest work, 'Woman Meets Man'."

And with that she turned and tugged gently on the velvet curtain. It fell away to reveal the finished painting that Sean and I had witnessed, and taken part in, its creation. Camera flashes illuminated the room as the image of Chaz's naked behind, the puckered lips of her vulva clearly visible between her slightly spread open legs, was revealed. The painting glistened slightly in the light, its unique sheen coming from its unusual component. I glanced across to Sean and could clearly see a tear in his eye.

"Well, what do you think?" I asked him.

"It's, well, it's beautiful," Sean replied. "If you look past the image itself, at the brazenness of it, and look at what it's actually saying, you can see the beauty in it."

"Such as?" I pressed him to clarify further.

"What I see is a picture of a woman's, er, private parts, which is clearly pornographic," Sean explained, or at least tried to - by his own admission he was no art expert. "But looking beyond that, it shows a woman confident in her own body, using it to express her femininity. But at the same time, using my, er, contribution, she is addressing and acknowledging the small part of her that is masculine - like the little piece of Yin that is Yang, if you know what I mean."

"I think I do," I replied, picturing the Chinese Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang in my head. "But that masculine element comes from you, not from her."

"Well, it definitely comes from me on this occasion," Sean smirked.

It took me a moment for his pun to dawn on me. I slapped him lightly on his arm once I'd figured it out and chided him for cracking such an awful gag.

"In all seriousness though," Sean continued after a moment. "Yes, the masculine part comes from me, so in a way my contribution is a conduit of sorts for her expressing her masculine side."

It was clear that as far as objectively critiquing contemporary modern art we were both in way over our heads and decided to leave it to the professionals. Instead we just kept drinking champagne and enjoyed this rare opportunity to mingle amongst the glitterati of London's contemporary art scene.

* * * * * *

A few weeks later, we received a letter - the postmark showed it had come from London. I recognised the handwriting on the envelope almost instantly - it was Chaz's. The envelope contained two things, a small note on which Chaz gleefully explained that 'Woman Meets Man' had been sold to an American art collector, the same woman who already owned the original painting, for the sum of £270,000, an eye-watering sum of money to a teacher like myself. She said she also enclosed a cheque to compensate Sean for his contribution "without which 'Woman Meets Man' would never have been possible." I looked at the cheque and my eyes almost popped out. I handed it to Sean, since it was made out in his name, and his expression of shock must've been the mirror image of my own.

"Fifty grand?" he exclaimed. "Fifty thousand pounds for basically having one of my all time sexual fantasies come true? I would have done it for free!"

"Well I say you've earned it," I told him, my heart still thumping in my chest at being given such a large sum of money. "What do you reckon we ought to do with it?"

"I'm sure we can think of something," he said with a glint in his eye.

He kissed me, right there in our hallway, and when our lips parted he looked at me and smiled.