Naked Portraits Pt. 04

"A book on the history of the Cleveland Indians," He said. I made a face not particularly enthusiastic about a sports book. "You find anything?" he asked back.

"Nothing," I said as I tried to put the Van Gogh book back on the upper shelf but it resisted sliding back into place and threatened to topple on me. Hawk came to my aid but he too couldn't push it back into place either.

"There's a smaller book jammed back there I think," Hawk said. He handed Van Gogh back to me, felt for the smaller book and pulled it out. The book was old and frayed with a black cover made of real leather. I read the faded title in silver letters on the weathered spine aloud. "The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe." I smiled, Poe was one of Matt's favorite writers.

"Looks like Matt's gift has found us," Hawk said smiling too.

"Quote the Raven ... you can say that again." I opened the book to the first page.

"Look at that," Hawk said in wonder.

On the inside cover of the book was an intricate drawing of a raven done in black ballpoint pen. Written below the drawing in block letters was an odd single sentence:

'She is the night.'

"The title page is torn out," I said as I ran a finger along the jagged edge of the missing page. I leafed through the thin book to the end but found no more drawings. "This is perfect," I said.

On impulse, Hawk bought me the Van Gogh book too.

*********

On top of working as a TA in the drawing class, I earned work study money as an art installer for the campus gallery. The gallery was heating up for the up coming undergraduate show, physically, the biggest and toughest show of the year to hang. I corralled Matt into the project as a volunteer by shamelessly lying about how much fun it would be. Despite my ball ass lies, Matt ended up having fun, probably because the work was new to him.

The gallery space was brilliantly designed with portable walls that can be arranged in any fashion. The arrangement of the walls alone took a week to do. Then came the volume of work: paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, ceramics pots, and even a few audio-visual installations. The technique for setting the show up was simple, get an army of people to pin, nail, tack, tape and in some cases, glue art to the walls.

A certain amount of art went into displaying art. Ideally, every team of hangers had at lease one person with some sense of composition and design. Adrian Akai, the gallery director had final vito power if he didn't like how a wall looked. I was teamed up with Paul Gleason and since he had no artistic sense to speak of, I was in charge.

As Paul's muscle a bronze sculpture onto a one-foot tall white pedestal, I speculated on his total lack of artistic talent and wondered what drugs the grad selection comity was on when they selected him. With a manly grunt, Paul hefted the bronze sculpture onto the pedestal. At least he has a strong back.

"This thing is near a hundred pounds and fuckin' dangerous," he complained. The piece was a reasonable copy of a Degas bronze ballerina. The dangerous part was the tutu made of razor wire.

I laughed and said, "I saw a painting that would make a good background for spiky here." I wandered off to look for the painting in mind and passed by Matt and his group of hangers consisting of Adrian Akai the gallery coordinator and Sally Higgins from sculpture. Matt said something to Sally that made her laugh, and as she laughed, she casually push at her long blonde hair. My mood darkened, the girl was overtly flirting with him. Sally had a classic curvy buxom figure and a perfect oval face with high Germanic cheekbones. My right hand itched to slap the haole bitch, but because of my ingrained nature to not make a public skeptical of myself, I chose inaction. Besides, Sally was a sculpture chick and could take out a skinny painter like me without breaking a sweat.

I located the painting I was looking for, and then went out of my way I pass in front of Matt and Sally. I caught Matt's eye and he beamed me a smile, but I didn't return it gaving him a cold stare, cruelly causing his smile to turn into a frown.

Paul had muscled spiky ballerina into place to the left side of a long wall. Then he and I hung the painting behind her.

"That's a lot of squares," I said as Paul dragged the ladder aside.

The painting behind our razor wire ballerina was six feet wide and four feet tall consisting of a grid of two-inch squares, thirty-six one way and twenty four the other adding up to 864 squares total.

"I saw the chick working on this off and on," Paul said. "She painted each square like it was the Sistine Chapel or somethin'."

Close up I could see the complex under painting of each square creating an overall shimmering effect fading from red on the left to blue on the right. I found the effect strangely soothing.

"In art history class we studied Mondrian and his movement of painters," I told Paul. "Those guys painted nothing but grids of colored squares. The instructor said it was a response to the chaos caused by world war one. The grid represented reestablishing order after the madness of that horrendous war."

Quietly, Paul and I stared at the painting for a long minute. Paul spoke first.

"The chick's name was blue in Chinese, she insisted we called her Blue in English. She had a strange accent, said she was from Laos."

Neither of us talked for another whole minute as all the horror stories of the Khmer Rouge filtered through our minds. For the next hour Blue's painting stuck with me as we worked.

A half-hour before lunch I encouraged Paul to work with Sally for a while so that I could have some time with Matt.

"You sweet on the guy?" Paul asked.

"Maybe?" I said.

Paul gave me a look, and then shrugged in that way only a person from New York could that said, 'ain't none of my business' and went off to work with Sally.

Sally gave me a desperate look and I mouthed, your turn.

"You mad at me about something?" Matt asked as we worked on pinning up a stack of nudes from the life drawing classes to a long stretch of blank wall.

"No," I said automatically then a beat later added, "Sally's nice isn't she."

"She's okay if you like voluptuous tallish blondes," he said obviously mocking my jealousy.

His little ploy worked and I laughed. I elbowed him in the ribs, but not so hard. Lucky for him my jealousy was tempered by Blue's ominous field of squares.

"She's gorgeous," Matt said.

I frowned, although I had forgiven him for flirting with Sally, I thought it unwise of him to keep harping on the girl's apparent good looks. But before I could open my mouth with a retort, Matt handed me a detailed pencil sketch of a beautiful light haired female.

"Oh, that's Dorothy. She is gorgeous," I agreed. "The chick's the most popular nude model with the heterosexual males and the lesbians. It's more than her sexy body too. There's a kind of sadness, a melancholy about her that people are drawn to." I went to the big stack of figure drawings on the floor, sifted through them. I smiled when I saw the one I was looking for. It was a large charcoal of Dorothy. I had been there at its creation on one of the days I had sat in a figure drawing class. I held it up for Matt to see. "This artist caught that better see?"

In the charcoal, Dorothy sat on a bent back chair naked with her body in profile, her head turned looking straight out. I could almost hear a crackling in the air from the sexual tension created by Dorothy's drawing. Matt casually bumped against me. I put a gratuitous swing in my hips as I stepped forward and pinned the charcoal a bare white wall. Other nudes followed but the charcoal of Dorthy was the center of our arrangement.

Lunch was called, but Matt and I chose to stay to finish our wall. Driven by sexual heat, we frittered around the gallery in search of three-dimensional art to compliment our nook of nude drawings. I found a shallow relief carving in dark waxed wood of a delicate nude female. Matt dragged over a bronze of a well-endowed satyr with a blackish brown patina.

"Fully erect that, dude would be twelve inches easy, " I commented, as Matt hefted the satyr onto a circular white pedestal.

Alone in the gallery space with no one to see us, we touched, bumped and brushed against each other with unguarded frequency. I couldn't explain why, but I enjoyed the clandestine nature of the relationship with Matt.

"You can kiss me now," I informed him.

"Finally!" he said dramatically throwing his arms over his head. He pulled me into his arms, and covered my mouth suppressing a burst of laughter on my part. Like a double shot of tequila, his kiss flowed through me heating me up.

"Do me right here," I demanded.

Matt looked around at the large windows surrounding the gallery on all sides.

"It would be like making love in a fish bowl," he said concerned.

"The glass is smoky, Even with the lights on it's hard to see inside especially in the daytime. And it's Saturday, hardly anyone is about."

I led him by the hand to the front counter and flipped open a panel near the door and loudly clacked off all of the work lights plunging the large space into a dull, warm, orange-gray gloom.

"That should make us absolutely invisible," I said with confidence.

After making sure that the front doors were locked, I fumbled under the front counter and pulled out a rolled up blue workout mat and tucked it under my arm.

"What's that?" Matt asked as he followed me back to the center of the darkened gallery.

"It a yoga mat," I said. "We artists like to fuck in the gallery all the time. It comes in very handy."

"Really?" Matt asked.

I laughed, surprised that he believed me.

"No stupid head. Sometimes we have to handle large delicate works of art that require a little bit of padding."

At the foot of the large charcoal of Dorothy, in a pool of defused light from the windows, I spread out the yoga mat. After the briefest of pauses, we frantically started undressing, laughing as we did. When fully naked, we dropped to our knees on the yoga mat and kissed. Flushed with excitement and the need for speed, I ended the kiss, dropped on my back on the mat and on the way down, I grabbed a hold of Matt's convenient handle, namely his erection and pulled him down on top of me. Expediently, he entered me in one slow delicious thrust.

"How much time do we have?" he asked as he stated to move inside of me.

"We usually ... break for an hour ... and since most the crew are artists ... that translates into one and a half."

"That's more then enough time since you pop so easy," Matt said thinking he was being clever.

"Don't ... use the word ... pop ... it's offensive," I managed to say. Seconds later an orgasm swept through me. "Oh shit!" I hissed out through clenched teeth.

Matt smiled down at me.

"Shut up! You smug bastard," I said in a breathy whisper that echoed in the vast gallery space.

Still quivering from my orgasm, I coxed him out of me, got on all fours, and had him enter me from behind. Knowing that we were pressed for time, he gripped my slim hips and moved in and out of me fast, hard and slick. I suddenly reached behind me and seized his balls in one hand and said, "Don't move! Stay right there!" Seconds later, gasping out breaths shallow and quick, I came. When my orgasm passed, I released my grip on his balls gently patted them. "Too rough?" I asked.

"I'll let you know when my testosterone levels are normal again."

I gasped out a laugh. He pulled out of me and flopped onto my back on the blue padded rug. "Times three," I said.

He entered me again. His eyes dropped to my heaving chest as he quickly worked up to speed again. I closed my eyes as the sweet familiar tension between my legs built. Then the unmistakable sound of the gallery's back door opening echoed through the space. Matt froze with his erection deep inside me.

Chapter 28 Watch me

"Fuck I'm coming!" I said in a panicked whisper.

In his own panic, Matt covered my mouth to suppress my vocalizations. After three seconds of enforced quiet bliss, I pushed him off me.

Fortunately, the area we were in was shielded from the back entrance by one of the many portable walls. We scrambled to our feet, grabbed our clothes and the yoga mat and slipped nearer the front entrance were we dressed hurriedly. Paul Gleason's unmistakable New York accent filled the place.

"Yo! Who turned off the fuckin' lights?"

"I got it," I said and clacked on all the florescent work lights at the breaker panel. Fully dressed, I looked at Matt and covered my mouth to suppress a laugh as his conspicuous erection filling his shorts. "You should fix that," I said and laughed some more as he pointlessly pushed at his nine inches trying several different positions with no effect. "Stay here 'till your presentable." I advised, and then went towards the back door.

"You worked through lunch?" Paul asked meeting me next to the painting by Blue.

"Uh yeah," I said, "Matt and I put up all the nudes come see."

"Hey lookin' good," Paul said of the wall of nudes and accompanying statuary. It never occur to him to ask why the lights were out. A minute later, Matt joined us. I noted that he still had a semi going in his shorts pushed off to one side.

"What's that?" Paul asked. He walked up to the well hung bronze satyr and hanging off an extended back hoof was my bra. He bent and plucked it off the satyr's hoof.

"Must have fallen off an art piece," I said lamely and made to take it from him.

Paul swung the bra out of my reach. "I'll check around to see what art piece is missing a bra," he said. He held it up for close inspection. "Looks like an A-cup," he said as he walked away.

"A-cup indeed," I grumbled under my breath.

The rest of the crew filtered in and my bra become the subject of a fruitless hunt. Eventually, we all returned to the task of hanging art. Matt and Paul teamed up. Sadly, Matt showed more skill at hanging art than Paul the declared art major. Dinner rolled around; Matt and Paul were drafted to go and pick up Chinese take out for the crew. Before dinner arrived, Hawk called me on my cell.

"What's up painter girl?"

I told him about my lunch love secession with Matt.

"Right there? Surrounded by nude art?" Hawk asked.

There was a pause and I wondered for the millionth time what was going through his head. I wanted to ask if he was jealous of Matt, but mostly I wanted to ask how he felt about me. I closed my eyes and covered them with my free hand. I knew I was obsessing and if I didn't get it under control I would lose Hawk, maybe even Matt too.

"I can't wait to see the show and those Dorothy drawings," Hawk finally said.

"I'll give you a midnight tour," I promised.

"Great, see ya."

"Yeah, see ya," I returned and he hung up. "I love you," I said two beats later, and then shut my phone.

My eyes fell on the painting of colored squares. I stepped closer to inspect the paint application, still amazed that each of the two-inch squares was a mini independent abstract. The edges of each square were sharp and clean. I traced the fringe of a single vibrant blue square, darker patches hinted at other colors just beneath. 864 individual squares painted with loving obsession.

Wow.

The title tags weren't printed yet but each piece had a temporary, hand written, identifying tag taped to it and I read it aloud, "Kippler's defeat at Denver." What a weird title.

After dinner, the work continued late into the night, everything had to be finished because the show opened with the gallery doors on Monday two days from now. All of Sunday was put aside for what we called the paper chase, when the near thousand title tags had to be matched and displayed to each piece of art.

Adrian Akai, the gallery coordinator, Matt and Paul were the light focusing crew. Paul stood in the basket of a cherry picker ladder on wheels; Matt pushed the ladder about as Adrian instructed to where the lights should be pointed. At nearly the stroke of midnight, the last light was focused on a piece of art. Paul, Matt and I volunteered for final clean up allowing Adrian and the rest of the crew to go home and rest up for the paper chase come Sunday morning.

It took most of an hour to move the cherry picker back into storage, round up all the remaining tools, and then sweep up. At 1: 30 AM we were done. Paul and I were alone in gallery storage tucking away the brooms and dust mops. For no reason, a spike of sexual adrenaline rippled through me and I gave Paul a critical sidewards glance. He wasn't anywhere near handsome but had a goofy boyishness that worked for him. His hair was too short for my taste and the early signs of balding threatened his hairline. His body was thin yet strangely muscular, the word wiry fit him well. I knew he had a thing for me, because he had confessed it to Matt over a couple of beers at the Manoa Gardens, and Matt of course me told all.

"Follow me," I told Paul as we exited gallery storage. Instead of going back into the main gallery via the back entrance, I led Paul around outside to a bench near the art administration office and the Gallery's front entrance. With the total darkness outside and the lights on inside the gallery, we watched Matt moving around pushing a dust mop for one final cleaning. "When you leave tonight, I want you to sit here and look into the gallery," I instructed Paul.

"Will it take long? I got a date." he asked with a frown.

"You'll see," I said, "Wait? You got a date at two in the morning?"

"She a grad in the psych department works late studying sleeping students volunteers," he said. "She's a part time exotic dancer, too. Her name is Trixie." He wore a big grin, apparently Trixie the psych grad slash exotic dancer was a big score. "Oh by the way," he said and pulled my bra out of the pouch of his cloth work apron, "I think this is yours."

"I'm a b-cup, asshole," I said claiming my property.

"Why you want me to sit here?" he asked.

"Do it and you'll see," I said.

We walked back to the rear entrance of the gallery.

A few minutes later, Paul said his adieu. On his way out I gave him a look, and then I went to the light panel and turned off the florescent work lights. All that remained were the spots and floods on the art.

It always impressed me how Adrian managed to turn this clamor of half-baked works of art into a cohesive ensemble. The pools of warm light transformed the place and Matt and took a leisurely walk inside the very heart and soul of the art department. Everywhere we turned we saw art work smoldering with raw emotion. Some gave off smoke, a few, like the colored squares painted by a chick named Blue, burst into artistic flames.

Eventually, we found ourselves standing in front of the charcoal of sad, beautiful, naked Dorothy. I turned my head briefly at the tinted window glass. I couldn't see out through its obsidian depths and wondered if Paul was out there. I must be crazy for doing this, I thought.

With my eyes on Dorothy again I said, "You know, my view of the nude has changed since I've been with you and Hawk?"

"It has?" Matt asked as he held me from behind pressing his erection against my ass.

I smiled and continued. "Yeah, like every other western trained artist on the planet, I saw the nude in the classic aesthetic mode. You know ... the beauty of line, shape, form and all that? But what I see now is sex. Take my shirt off."

"Someone may see?" Matt whispered.

"Can't see in," I lied. "And it's almost two. No one's out there." Matt's hands found the bottom of my black t-shirt and pulled it up over my head.

"Paul still has your bra?" he asked.

"He gave it back."

"Didn't think we fooled him," Matt said. He squeezed me from behind and his hands explored my naked breasts as we both looked at the drawing of naked Dorothy.