Naked Portraits Pt. 09

"Yeah," I said and cringed as I realized that I've been painting nothing but nudes of myself lately.

"If Beaumont only knew," Meka said.

"You can tell Beaumont to take a flying fuck," Sally chimed in.

Beaumont's contempt for the people down in 3D was no secret. At every budget meeting, she tried to channel funding away from the 3D department claiming that they are way over funded. Fortunately for everyone in ceramics, sculpture and glass blowing, Erma Beaumont didn't control the purse strings of the art department. That power is in the hands of Adrian Makai the galley coordinator. And as much as I wanted to take Sally's advise to tell Beaumont where to get off, I knew I never would. Erma Beaumont terrified me. I think the woman is in league with the dreaded SJMS, the Stern Japanese Mothers Society.

Meka climbed down the ladder and walked to a large, flat, object wrapped in brown paper leaning nearby. She tore away the paper to reveal a big glossy abstract photo in black and florescent green mounted on thick, black gator board. Then I saw that it wasn't an abstract at all.

"Holy fuck!" I exclaimed.

"Now what artist wouldn't be pleased with that emotional reaction," Meka said with a laugh.

"It's that carved statue in Iao Valley on Maui," I said pointing in disbelief at the large photo.

"I'm impressed," Meka said as she climbed up the ladder again. "I'm from Maui and I only discovered her two years ago. I stumbled across her on a nature photo hike. She's been there for years I've been told."

"I met her one night a few months ago," I whispered with my chest tight with emotion. "If it weren't for the glow in the dark paint, I would never have found her."

"You hiked the haunted Iao Valley at night? Lolo!" Meka said.

Sally handed Meka the mounted photo to hang.

"I'm assuming that lolo means foolish," Sally said.

"Down right stupid," Meka said.

"It's was Hawk idea, not mine," I added quickly. "How did you get this shot?"

"The old fashion way. I used my old 35mm with very sensitive film. Left the lens open forever. And it felt like forever. Believe me, I couldn't wait to get out of there. Nothing spookier then the Iao Valley at night. I had Deirdre with me. The chick is fearless and made me stay longer to get this." Meka climbed down the ladder and dragged it away.

Sally tacked on the title card near the piece. I bent to read it.

"Wahine Lani," I read aloud.

"What does that mean?" Sally asked.

"Woman of Heaven," I translated and looked at the dark but obvious female shape defined by glowing tendrils of green.

Last time I stumbled across her, my life took an interesting turn. I looked at Sally's bronzes all in a row. I thought of the little fertility bronzes they were based on ... in particular the missing one from the dig. And then I thought of my glass float and Li, goddess of the sea ... and don't forget redheaded Venus from Betty's painting I reminded myself.

"My life seems to be chocked full of goddesses," I whisper.

"Our part is done here," Sally said, "To the Volcano for beer. I'm buying!"

"I'm for that," Meka said.

"You coming?" Sally asked me.

"Okay."

I helped them clean up and then the three of us left the gallery and walked the few blocks in the warm Honolulu night to the Volcano. Sally's friend, Oleander Wong, was already there with Iceland Erickson and Paul Gleason. Iceland — I can't recall what the guy's actual first name even though I've known him for over two years — is very handsome but as dumb as they come. Paul found my eyes and we smiled. I sat heavily next to him in a bent back wood chair.

"You look like someone killed your dog," Paul said.

"You have to forgiver her," Meka said, "She's shedding her Beaumont abstract expressionist skin."

Sally, Oleander and Paul nodded in understanding but Iceland Erickson just looked confused. For Iceland's, benefit Meka said, "She's giving up her abstract nonrepresentational style for the postmodern figurative."

"I saw that comin' Paul said knowingly. "Too bad, I liked your abstract stuff it was tough and edgy like early Motherwell and that local Japanese painter Tadashi Sato."

I beamed at the unexpected depth of Paul's compliment.

"You now hate abstract art?" Iceland asked.

"I don't hate it," I said, "Just lately, it's been kind of lacking and unsatisfying." A potent wave of nostalgia for simpler times blanketed me triggering a deep longing for Betty. She was the first person I'd go to with my troubles about art and men. Speaking of men ... my anger at Hawk bubbled to the surface and wished I hadn't come. I wanted private time with Meka not a party.

Sally ordered a round of tequila shots for the table. The shots arrived.

Sally stood and toasted, "To rich Japanese patrons!"

We knocked it back.

"What is wrong with having two opposing styles?" Iceland asked in his thick accent. "Do both and more people will love you."

"You are a bag of hammers," Paul said to him. Iceland frowned unable to decipher the insult. At that instant the music started up.

"Hey Thor," Oleander said to Iceland, "It's Hammer time. let's dance." The guy frowned even more as the hammer references piled up on him. But the man wasn't a total fool; he got up and followed beautiful, shapely, raven-haired Oleander Wong to the dance floor.

"Those big fuckin' blond dopes always get to dace with the hot chicks," Paul complained.

"I'm a hot chick," Sally said, "ll dance with you."

"Fuckin' charity dance," Paul grumbled, "...but I'll take it." They got up leaving Meka and I alone at the table.

"Real bad day?" Meka asked.

"Yeah," I said and told her about Hawk's weird wave experience and Alyson Reese."

"I've seen Reese, the chick's hot and taller than me," Meka said. "Because of all that height, the blond hair looks perfect on her even though she's Asian."

Her observations didn't help my mood one bit. "Gotta be a dye job," I said miserably.

"To be honest, I don't know what to say to you," Meka said. "The things you do are way outside of my experience."

"Meka," I said looking at her dumfounded, "you make private porno movies for rich people. The film you did with the Kahakalohas and Harry was totally wild."

"I'm just an observer sitting in a corner as the world wanders by, but you are at the center of the real baby girl." Meka said giving me a surprising look of envy. "You have two men at your beck and call. You wife swap with hot Japanese swingers. You stumbling across a mysterious forest goddess in the dark of the night. I'm assuming you were naked at the time. And not to mention making out with famous sports lesbian Li Hong."

"For the record, I was fully dressed when we found Wahine Lani," I said.

"And?" Meka asked sure there was more to it.

"Hawk did make love to me in at her feet." I added demurely.

"Oh my God!" Meka said, dramatically shaking her hands at me. "Right there, on your back in the dirt?"

I had to laugh at her reaction and then promptly added, "No, I was on my hands and knees as he took me from behind ... and then I let him come in my mouth."

"Christ girl! Compared to you, I 'm a fucking nun!"

I laughed some more. My head buzzed from the tequila and I pushed my near finished beer away. "I shouldn't drink too much," I said. "Not a good idea in my current state. I'm need to find Hawk and talk this out. But I don't wanna be rude to Sally. She's been so nice to me tonight."

"Go, I'll tell Sally you had a a family thing," Meka said. I leaned over and hugged her.

I left the pub. As I ambled back toward campus, I dialed Hawk cell but was sent to a recorded message. I called Matt next but got the same. I wondered if they had gotten together and were talking about me or more to the point, Alyson Reese. With jumbled thoughts, I found myself standing outside the Common's gallery looking in at Meka and Sally's goddesses. Meka's large photograph reflected the dim corridor lights from outside the gallery and it was hard to make out the image in the weak light. Sally's four bronzes looked like stoney shadowy lumps.

"Time for another offering," I said aloud.

I walked into the thicket of live bamboo growing around the main gallery to a patch of ti plants near the back entrance. After liberating two paddle shaped leaves, I headed in the direction of the staircase leading to the upper floors. As I climbed the stairs, a hot excitement gripped me and I sprinted up the last few flights. I tuned the corner that led to my studio door at a clip but slid to a halt when I saw a woman standing in front of my door. She wore sexy black tights, a black loose, long sleeve shirt and expensive laced, leather boots, and strangely, a 49ers baseball cap.

Betty owned boots just like that and for a second I thought it might be her. But as I advanced at a slow walk I saw that it wasn't Betty. "Can I help you?" I asked.

The woman yelped and turned to face me. She had long dark hair tied in a ponytail. Even with the baseball cap and sunglasses she wore, I could tell she was Asian and very pretty. She looked totally flustered though.

"I'm in the wrong part of the building, sorry," she said in an accent that sounded vaguely European ... and a little bit phony. She turned and walked in the opposite direction away from me.

I got all goose bumpy as I got out my keys. I opened the my studio door, stepped in quickly and closed the door behind me. Something about that woman creeped me out. Breathing a little hard from sprinting up the stairs, I stood in the dark to gather myself. My little studio has three ventilation windows up high and enough light from the hall got in to define the edges of things. Something in the darkness seemed desperate to get my attention. I strained to make it out. Whatever it was seemed foreign, totally out of place. I clicked on the lights and burst out laughing when I saw it was the abstract painting with the red hand in a black circle at the center. I had forgotten that I had pulled it out earlier to gesso over it.

Anger at the painting flushed through me. "You look better in the dark," I said. The anger was misplaced, it was Erma Beaumont and her sterile, modernest regime that I was pissed off at. I wasted years of my life following her. Should have listened to Betty. I banged open my desk drawer and pulled out a snap off box cutter and extended the gleaming blade to its fullest. Like a madman in a slasher film, I plunged the blade through the painting and was rewarded with a satisfying ripping hiss. I cut out a rough square around the hand at the center, the only part of the painting I thought worth keeping. I haphazardly cast the damaged canvas aside and put the cutout hand on my work table.

"I'm gonna offer you to the gods," I said.

I searched my desk and came across an unopened wooden box of compressed drawing charcoal. The charcoal was an Italian brand, very expensive, something I never would have bought. It was a hand me down from Betty. Badgering, from her evil mother made Betty quit art for business school and she gave me all of her art supplies.

"Spineless bitch," I whispered seemingly pissed at every thing in my life lately. I slid the lid off the box and unceremoniously dumped the individually wrapped sticks of charcoal onto my worktable. I folded the cutout hand into the little box and set it on my desk. With a jolt of contempt, I spat onto the box.

"Out with the old," I said.

Although I was raised a Shinto, I'm very failure with tales from the Bible and remembered the story of Adam's sons Cain and Able. Both sons had made offerings to God. Able, a sheepherder, gave his best lamb. Cain, the farmer, offered up his leavings and held back the good stuff for himself. God of course, shunned Cain and praised Able.

"One of my best lambs," I said aloud and went to my painting rack to sort through my art. I came upon the sixteen by twenty portrait of short hair me from my dreams. "I love this painting," I said aloud.

I picked up the box knife, it clicked ominously as I extended the blade to its fullest again. With a lump in my throat, I pierced the canvas. This time I got no satisfaction from the tearing sound. Slowly, I cut a rough rectangle around both eyes. Reverently, I put the detached eyes in the box on top of the scrap of the abstract hand.

"In with the new," I said.

I looked around for anything else that might fit into the offering box and my eyes rested on my coffee can full of brushes. My favorite fan brush, an old worrier that I've relied on for years stood out. It was an expensive tool, the only hundred dollar brush I owned, and of course it was another hand me down from Betty. A pang of loneliness gripped my chest, followed by impotent anger.

"Why aren't you here?" I grumbled at my missing friend

I plucked the fan brush from the coffee can and with the box knife, shaved the beautiful thing bald and put the leavings into the charcoal box with the cut strips of canvas. Brutally, I snapped the handle several times, and shoved the pieces in the box too. As I wrapped my makeshift offering with a ti leaf, I recalled that Cain had murdered his brother Able in a jealous rage thus creating Christian-Judas's first domestic violence case.

"I'm right there with you Cain. Being shunned sucks sweaty balls."

With my neat green bundle in hand, I went downstairs and stood outside the common's gallery looking in at the art. Of the goddesses in the gallery I felt that Wahine Lani, Meka's photo of the wooden forest goddess, was the ringleader.

I walked to the door and shook it proving to myself it was locked.

My plan was to leave the offering at the door but quickly realized that would be dumb. It would just get thrown away by the first janitor that saw it. "The master criminal strikes," I said aloud and had to laugh at my poorly conceived plan. Running on emotion, I never thought beyond creating my offering. I'll have to come back tomorrow to sneak the thing in and that would be tricky in broad daylight I knew. Odds are I'd never do it.

"Hey Gwen," came a male voice from behind me. I spun and screamed. As the echoes of my scream faded in the empty open air hall, I found myself looking at a wide-eyed Paul Gleason standing a few feet away with his bike at his side, theatrically clutching his chest.

"You scared the shit out of me woman!" he barked.

"What the fuck are you doing sneaking up on me like that?" I asked with my heart slamming away.

"I saw you try the door," he said. "You need to get in for something?" He eyed the green bundle in my hand.

Seeing no sense in hiding it, I held it out to him. "I wanted to put this in there."

"What is it?"

"A religious offering," I said simply and waited for a barrage of questions. None came though, and all he did was pull out a set of keys and jingled them.

"I sit the gallery on Monday mornings." he said as he parked his bike against the front window. He stepped passed me and turned the lock of the commons gallery door.

"My hero," I said with a small appreciative smile and stepped into the shadowy space. I put the offering on the parquet floor at the foot of Meka's photo of Wahine Lani.

"The floor ain't no place for a religious offering," Paul said. I agreed and picked the thing up. Paul grabbed the visitor's sign in book off its pedestal near the door and put it on the tiny reception desk. He moved the pedestal under Meka's photo. He stepped aside and I placed my offering on the pedestal, it was at a perfect height just a couple of inches below the photo.

Seal it with a kiss! a voice in my head said. I've gotten to know that voice all too well lately, it came from the part of my brain in charge of all things sexually inappropriate. I've taken to calling the voice my lizard brain.

I picked up the bundle and pecked a kiss on it. Paul gave me a curious look. A spike of hot sexual intensity enveloped me. I looked at Paul and thoughts of him from months ago sitting outside the main gallery in the dark, smoking a cigarette, watching me make love to Matt, filled my head.

You know what to do, lizard brain told me.

I handed Paul the bundle and said, "Hold this." He took it and before he could say a thing, I stepped up to him and covered his mouth with a kiss. He tasted of beer and tobacco. His arms enveloped me pulling me in close. I shimmied in closer too, enjoying the feel of his slim wiry body against me. He smelled of Old Spice cologne, cigarettes and a sweaty day in the sculpture yard, all of it adding up to a heady manliness. I slipped a hand down low to explore his full blown erection. He returned the favor and pawed at my tits. Then I rudely broke the kiss, grabbed the bundle from his hand, stepped away from him.

"That was just a part of the offering," I said. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"I can't see how I could misinterpret that in anyway," he said, in a cartoon squeaky voice. I had clearly rattled him. I did my best to hold back a smile.

I put the my offering on the pedestal and we left the gallery. He locked the door and then turned to face me.

"Goodnight," I said firmly.

He gave a small bow, turned and walked away.

"Paul?" I said softly at his retreating back.

He stopped and looked back at me with desperate hope.

Before my lizard brain could take charge, I said, "You forgot your bike," and pointed at it.

"Oh that," he said with a laugh and went to retrieve the bike leaning against the gallery's front window. "So much for a dignified manly exit," he said sheepishly. As he mounted his bike he asked, "How goes the dream therapy?" like it was the only thing on his mind.

"I went just that one time. Don't think I'm going back," I said honestly.

Paul nodded then rolled away with that distinct clicking sound that ten speed bikes make. The clicking echoed in the empty hall fading with distance. I turned to look back into the shadowy interior of the commons gallery and at my makeshift offering on the pedestal and wondered if I was losing my mind.

"Probably," I whispered. "Now it's time to track down Hawk and have a serious talk about Alyson Reese."

*********

Hawk's warm mouth covered my right nipple, his teeth slowly clamping down staying—just barely—on the pleasurable side of pain. Jolts of sensual electricity raced through my body starting at my gently abused nipple. Matt watched, sitting on the edge of the bed cross-legged dressed in jeans and a t-shirt wearing a 49ers baseball cap, which was odd because he was a Cleveland Browns fan. Hawk was dressed too, in a red silk aloha shirt and jeans. I on the other hand, was gloriously naked and Edouard Manet's 'Lunched on the Grass' flashed through my head.

Alyson Reese, tall blonde and Asian, stood in the doorway of Hawk's master bedroom watching too. She looked more little like a pale Jessica Alba than Marilyn Monroe I thought. She had just come from the biology department and still wore her white lab coat over a light blue top and snug white slacks. Hawk released my nipple from his gentle vice and peppered my chest and neck with kisses.

I have to admit that I was turned on to no end with Alyson watching. With no pretense at hiding my state of arousal I said, "Fuck me Matt."

Matt stood up. From the bed. "Help him get naked," I said to Alyson. Alyson Reese officially entered the room and helped Matt undress. "You okay with this?" I asked her.

"It's cool, I'm a scientist," she said ... like it made total sense but of course it didn't.

When Matt was fully naked, Alyson studied his taunt erection, delicately running her fingers along the pale velvety shaft. I could tell that she was impressed by his size.

"I believe that is meant for me?" I said with a lover's confidence.

She stepped aside allowing Matt to drop to the bed and crawl on top of me. He gripped his erection and guided it to my moist opening. He entered me with one smooth efficient thrust. I gasped at his sweet invasion.