Lost Wax

Page 7

THE GALA WAS COOL. Of course, the focus of the whole thing was some big-assed mural that Tony Ames was painting on the side of a building at SCU. Gloria and I stood and stared at it for a minute when we finally got to the front of the crowd. People were tossing donations in a box for the homeless. The mural was good.

“What are you thinking?” Gloria asked me.

“I like it,” I said. “But it’s so… two-dimensional. And big. I’m sure at this scale we’re not getting the impact of how huge the people are on the side of the building. Not that I’m knocking big. A lot of sculpture is super-sized. It’s just… flat.”

“Well, that was concise,” she laughed. “See them over there? That’s Tony Ames and I hear that both the women with him are his girlfriends. Well, two of the women. Geez, there’s like eight of them standing around him.”

“Yeah, well women are…” What was I going to say? Sluts? Hadn’t I learned anything from being with Gloria? “. . . unpredictable.” I finished lamely.

“I don’t know. I predict there is going to be one sleeping with you tonight.”

I froze. Did she really mean…?

“Just sleep, but I don’t want to be apart from you tonight, if you’re okay with that. I’m not… We’re not ready for that next step yet.” She turned and stroked my face and I lost myself in her eyes. “But soon,” she whispered.

We wandered into the freshman exhibit and I was pleased to see several people standing around my sculpture. An older couple was looking at it closely. I stood behind them and listened.

“Look at the lips, Bob. I’m not into women, but even I want to kiss them.”

“Clarice, this artist has passion I haven’t seen in bronze in a long time. You need to sign him. He’s definitely in the review. What did you say his name was?”

“He just goes by the name Jerome. I don’t know if that’s an assumed name or if that is all his legal name actually is.”

“It’s actually Jerome Z,” I said from behind them. “But the Z is silent.”

“And are you Jerome?” the guy asked.

“Yeah. This is my girlfriend and model, Gloria Edmonds.”

They both stared at Gloria for longer than I thought an introduction should take. After he’d scanned her from head to toe, the guy turned and did the same scan of my bronze. He didn’t stop at the torso that was sculpted. I saw him close his eyes and follow the shape the rest of the way down, nodding. Finally, he turned back to me.

“I’m Bob Bowers, syndicated art critic. This is Clarice Bortelli, an artist’s agent. She represents two of your fellow students.”

“And if this is an example of what you can do, I’d like to discuss representing you as well,” Ms. Bortelli said. “This is a gala and I’ve no intention of harrassing you with questions and a sales pitch. Here’s my card and if you think you might be able to produce more work like this in the future, please give me a call. I’d like to see more.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Sir.” They turned and moved away.

We slept together. We kept our shorts on—well, my briefs and her panties, but the rest of our naked bodies were pressed together. We didn’t grind ourselves into each other or try to come. We just held on to each other. Sometime during the night, I woke up and found my cheek was wet where it was touching hers. I looked at her, thinking she was crying. Then I realized the tears were coming from my own eyes. I wiped them on a corner of my sheet, but I lay there awake, staring at the ceiling for a long time before I fell back to sleep.

What if I wasn’t perfect for her?

The gala is the last event of the school year except graduation, and I had no reason to attend that. I was satisfied to know I was no longer a freshman.

Gloria and I spent the day talking about the future.

That was scary. We’d avoided that topic ever since the first time she’d pulled her shirt off in front of me in the hall. We’d just lived in the moment. The more Gloria talked about her hopes and dreams, the more I realized that not only was I not perfect, I wasn’t even appropriate. When she asked me about my future I just laughed and said I wanted to be Michelangelo. She didn’t laugh.

“Who hurt you so much, Jerome? Do I ever stand a chance of winning you?”

“Um… winning me?”

“I keep thinking that I’ll prove myself to you and you’ll really love me, but you pull away at the last minute. What else do I need to do? I… I love you.”

The tears I’d shed while we slept the night before came rushing back. I couldn’t help it. I sobbed. She held me against her naked bosom while I cried. When I could speak, I couldn’t look up at her. I guess I said just about everything to the nipple that was right in front of my face.

“I hated women because of what she did. I decided that if she was a woman that all women must be like her and I wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Then I got here to PCAD and my advisor is a woman who doesn’t even have an advanced degree. But she’s forced me to comply with the system and has taught me more about being an artist than any art teacher I’ve ever had. Then you came along. It was all an accident. I didn’t mean to come to the door naked. I had no idea you’d just take off your shirt in front of me. And I certainly had no intention of sculpting your breasts. Then you posed. I did your hands and your face. Everything about you came out perfect.” I was barely coherent. Tears were still pouring out of my eyes and I didn’t care. This is where I was going to lose her. This was where she would realize what a total asshole I was and dump me flat.

“Everything about you is perfect and I’m not. Just a guy who models with clay and wax. You put me in a tux last night so I would be worthy of you. Well, I’m not. I want to model the rest of you. I want to explore your body and cast it in bronze, but I know that when I do it will be too good—too perfect for the likes of me.”

She held me, rocking for a while and shifted just enough that her left nipple was against my lips. The little baby I felt like started sucking. She sighed. I fell asleep with my lips on her tit and tears still in my eyes.

“Go get a shower, sweetheart,” she said when I woke up. “I’m going next door to shower and I’ll be back in a little while. Jerome. Wait for me. Don’t leave.” I sat up and she grabbed a t-shirt to pull over her head before she went out into the hall. I stumbled into the shower and just stood under the water forever. I finally managed to shampoo and wash, then grab my towel. I could hear the shower next door still running.

I flopped in my desk chair with the towel on my lap and stared at my bowl of clay. I heard the door open and Gloria came back in. She stripped the shirt off and there was nothing else on her body. Her pubes were smoothly shaved. Her legs glistened and I thought she must have used some oil on her body. She turned and arranged the pillows on my bed while I watched her butt. I realized I only had a towel draping me.

“Get your clay out, Jerome,” she said as she lay in the position that I’d used for the previous pieces. “I want you to keep modeling me. Only please don’t make me perfect. Just make me perfect for you. Please.” I could see her eyes misting. I smiled. Perfect for me.

I stood up and let the towel fall. It wasn’t the first time Gloria had seen me in my altogether. She glanced, but brought her eyes back up to mine. I sat on the edge of the bed and reached my hand out to touch her. I closed my eyes and let my hand trail down her side and over her hip. I slipped along her leg all the way to her foot. I heard her sigh and felt her shudder as I drew my hand back up the inside of her lower leg and slowly across her sex. I’d never felt a girl’s sex before—not skin to skin. I thought about it. I thought about how it would feel if it were not my fingers exploring. I still had my eyes closed when I stood and took a step toward my desk. I knew my cock was standing out rigid, but I didn’t care. She turned me on and I wasn’t going to hide the fact from her.

I grabbed my lump of clay and started shaping it. When I opened my eyes, I looked straight into hers.

“This is going to take a while, and I’m going to need more clay.” She smiled.

“I don’t have any other plans. Do you think you could finish sometime in the next fifty or sixty years?” We laughed.

What I realized when I had touched her, let my fingers explore her legs, feet, and sex, even going back up to her left elbow tucked against her side and across her breasts, was that I knew what was perfect for me. I’d listened to her talk about her plans and desires. What was perfect for me was what was perfect for her.

It did take a long time. Not fifty or sixty years, but all summer. My grant provided for housing and meals and studio use all summer, so after a brief trip home to see the folks, I was back in my room. Gloria continued to have the room next door over the summer, though she was never in it. The single bed was a little crowded, but I didn’t mind having her sleep partly on top of me. I didn’t mind at all. I’m not sure when it was that we just fell into bed without having bothered to put underwear on after a modeling session, but I woke up the next morning with a very hard cock sandwiched between her thighs.

We still didn’t make love. I think we were both having too much fun just pretending to act naturally while we were walking around nude most of the time. I was walking around with an erection. And there was a certain smell in the air that I’d learned to recognize as Gloria’s arousal.

There’s something different about the way a flat artist sees a model and the way a dimensional artist sees her. I mean… This is hard to explain. A flat artist has a real connection with his model; there’s no doubt about that. But the connection goes through a pencil or a paintbrush onto the medium. If you think of the difference, I was molding clay with my fingers. Yes, I had some ribs and scrappers, and even a fettling knife for some detail work. But most of what I do is with my fingers. So, think of having your fingers in warm moist clay while you shape it like a girl’s breast, or hip, or… pussy. I’m sitting there looking at the model and my fingers are working to get the same shape and feel and my cock is getting hard.

That was the piece I was working on the first time. I had the clay in my hands molding—sculpting Gloria’s pussy. I was hard as a rock and finally had to set the clay down and close my eyes for a minute. While I was sitting there in my chair, I felt Gloria’s hand on my erection. I opened my eyes in time to see her tongue come out to lick me, then her mouth opened and I watched my cock disappear as I felt her tongue and lips sliding over its surface. She never looked at me during that first blow job. She was totally focused on my cock. She’d lick and then look at it. Suck and then check to see if it had changed. She stroked my length and then stuck out her tongue to trace the same path her hand had taken. Besides being so turned on I knew I would come in seconds, I was fascinated just to watch her learning about my cock. It was almost like seeing it for the first time myself.

I warned her I was coming and she sat back with her hand on me and watched as the cum fountained out of me.

“Wow,” she whispered. She went into the bathroom and brought back a washcloth to clean things up. “Thank you,” she said when she was finished. “That was so… Thank you.” She thanked me? We kissed and she settled on my lap for a long time before my sticky, clay-coated fingers started to irritate her. She led me to the shower and after we washed each other thoroughly, we went to bed.

The next day as we settled in for another session, I sat on the edge of the bed where she was posed and ran my hands around her body like I did every time. When I reached her sex I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. Her thighs relaxed and parted as my hand moved inside her hidden zone for the first time. I held her cradled in my right arm as we kissed and I stroked her sex with my left hand.

I’d been around the outside of her lower lips with my fingers, but I’d never delved between the folds. The instant moistness reminded me of the clay, but this was much warmer—much slipperier. And she was much more responsive. I didn’t have time to go down on her that first time. Before I could get away from our kiss, her thighs clasped together, trapping my hand, and she screamed into my mouth. It wasn’t like a life-threatening scream, but I bet that if anyone had been outside our door they’d have wondered if it was an emergency. Thank God, she didn’t yell ‘fire!’

The modeling of her pussy went better after that, but I didn’t finish it until I’d tasted her and felt that glorious feeling of a girl coming on my tongue. And I had double work to do cleaning up. I’d come at the same time, all over the side of the bed.

I know what it sounds like, but we didn’t spend the entire summer naked in my room. We’d have never survived if we had. Sometimes we’d take two or three days between posing sessions. Gloria had a job to go to and the terms of my grant indicated that I had to do work in the studio to get it ready for fall classes. I had to check supplies, clean crap off the floors, and do a lot of other menial jobs that were made much more pleasant by the fact that I’d sleep that night with a naked angel in my arms.

I also met with the Bortelli lady. What a pushy bitch. I caught myself responding heatedly to her when she was pushing for more pieces to see. I stood up from the table I was going to tell her to just shove it when she cut me off.

“Mr. Silent Z, you may be too much trouble for me to work with. I understand temperamental artists, but I have two who had spectacular debut showings in Seattle this spring and are working on their New York and San Francisco Christmas shows. I really don’t have time to babysit. When you are ready to work, please let me know. If you’d like a referral to a ‘man,’ I know a couple who will swat your ass for you and make sure you toe the line. Your choice.”

I was a little miffed and left in a huff, but the more I got to thinking about it, the more her requests seemed more reasonable. I called Tony Ames and asked him what he thought.

“Oh yeah. Hi, Jerome. Clarice told me you might call. How’s it going?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I… uh… haven’t signed a contract with her yet. I don’t know if I can work with a woman.”

“Why not?” He sounded like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Well, I know you’ve got like a gazillion girlfriends and don’t have any problem working with women, but I just respond to them in a negative way.”

“You’re gay?”

“No. It’s not that. Believe me, I’ve got a girlfriend and we’re making progress… slowly. But relating to women is hard for me.”

“I don’t know of any man who relates to women easily. For example, my wife Lissa…”

“You’re married?”

“Well, not legally. We do have a legal partnership agreement, though. Anyway, Lissa about blew through the roof when her ex, Jack, suggested Clarice represent me. I didn’t have a clue, but it turned out there was some bad blood from way back when Lissa was a young teen. The thing is that when Lissa settled down a little, she agreed that Clarice was the best choice for representation and they could play on the same team. To this day, I don’t have a clue what happened and how they worked it out.”

“But you work okay with Ms. Bortelli?”

“Oh yeah. She tells me what to do and I do it. Just like with any woman.”

“Gee, thanks, Tony.”

“Not a problem. Seriously. Think about what you want in life. What are your goals with your sculpture? Then take that to Clarice and ask her if she can help you reach those goals. Think about it carefully, because she will hold those up to you every time you fuck up and tell you if you aren’t keeping up your end of the bargain. It’s called accountability. To some degree or another we all have to accept it.”

“How’d you get so smart about women, Tony?”

“Um… four girlfriends. Good luck, Jerome.” Four? Fuck!

My next meeting with Clarice Bortelli was more successful and when she saw the clay models for the next phase of the suite, she agreed that I was on the right track and then proceeded to tell me that as soon as that batch was in production I should be thinking of what I would do next. She didn’t want to go to a first showing with only one suite. I signed a contract and found that I was an artist with representation.

I took the clay models for seven more sections to the studio and began the process of making ceramic molds. The hardest part for both Gloria and me was working on the back views. I had her face, breast, and one hand. I added a foot, thigh, navel and sex. Then I sculpted her ass and one shoulder as seen from the back. She had to lie facing the wall with no support against her back while I did those. And while I was working on them, I decided I needed to do the back of her knee as well.

Have you ever really looked at the back of a woman’s knee when it’s slightly bent? It’s like a thousand times more interesting than the front of her knee. When you are looking at the front of a woman’s knee, you see it as just the pathway up to her pussy. But looking at the back, the two tendons that form that hollow behind the knee, the way it flows into the calf and up into the thigh—that was a real revelation to me. I had to sculpt it.

It took most of first semester in the fall to get the new pieces ready for casting. I had classes, too. Gloria came with me to visit my mother at Christmas. Gloria said her family was out of her life and we were not to consider a holiday visit. Mom liked Gloria and exclaimed about how beautiful she was at every opportunity.

“Jerome brings the best out in me,” she told Mom. It was the only hint I’d had in months that she was aware of the changes that had occurred. When I had the opportunity to observe her interacting with other friends, like in the cafeteria, she seemed to stand taller, erect and confident. She was excelling in her pottery class and was preparing for an exhibition in the summer. She smiled at people and looked them directly in the eye. She was everything I admired in a woman. Perfect.

I had the shell ceramics done and was ready to wax them when Gloria and I passed the point of no return. She maintained the fiction of rooming with Joyce, next door to me. She never slept there, but used the room for her clothes and for times when she needed to study alone. Otherwise, we slept together every night. That night, we’d been petting a lot, including oral sex for both of us when we turned toward each other in the middle of the night and I felt her hand guide my cock to the opening of her sex. We’d both come a couple times already, but neither of us was ready to quit. I stopped as I felt the warmth of her fluids against the head of my cock.

“Are you sure, love?” I asked. “There isn’t any going back.”

“Do you love me, Jerome?”

“Gloria, I don’t even have words to describe the way I love you. You are the most important thing in the world to me. You are the most beautiful and perfect woman I’ve ever known. Am I good enough for you?”

“You’re a little on the dense side, but I think I can deal with that. Push into me, darling. I want you to be my first, last, and only.”

That did it for me. It was like the magic words. Beverly wanted me to be her first, but then to have Phillip do her immediately after. Gloria only wanted me. I pushed and there was a little twinge as Gloria’s maidenhead gave way. She caught her breath and held me in a death grip for a few seconds, then encouraged me to keep going. We had both come recently, so we weren’t frantic to pump away. When I was deep inside her, we just held each other and reveled in the closeness.

It was so perfect.

I finished the casting of the originals and made rubber molds up in Bellingham with Gil. Ms. Brock came in to the studio to help with mounting the remaining pieces of the suite for our sophomore gala. When they were finished, the display was over five feet wide and two feet tall. It weighed about three hundred pounds. There were eleven pieces in the finished suite that made up the single original. I asked Gloria to come to the studio and see it before we took it to the gallery, so she and I were both there with Ms. Brock when Clarice and that Bob Bowers guy showed up. I was so proud to stand there with Gloria—my lover and my friend and my model. I know that there were some changes that had gradually occurred as I found out more about Gloria’s body. She’d slimmed down a little in her waist and hips. I wasn’t sure but what she’d grown maybe an inch taller since I met her but maybe she was just standing straighter. Everything fit together so well it was amazing.

They did a lot of nodding and wrote a lot of notes. They talked to Ms. Brock and pretty much ignored me. I was beginning to get a little pissed, but with Gloria there to calm me, I didn’t say anything.

“This is good,” Clarice said. “I think an edition of eight would be very good. We’ll offer the original only as a complete set and reserve the first edition as a complete set. The other seven we can sell piecemeal.”

I kept what Tony said in mind. “Let Clarice set the sales strategy and pricing. Your job is the artwork.” Well, I hadn’t made any money off this project yet, but my grant had at least paid for the casting of the originals.

“We’ll do a presale with pictures from the original,” Clarice continued. “That will give us commitments that we can borrow against to do the castings. But it would be good if you had a few other pieces ready to go at the same time. They don’t have to be part of this suite, or any suite for that matter. We just need to show people that you aren’t going away after this piece. The first one is going to increase in value over time.”

“I especially like the baby,” Mr. Bowers said.

I caught my breath. Baby? The little doll-face that I’d included cradled in her arm? I saw Gloria reflexively grasp her stomach. Mr. Bowers looked at us then looked down Gloria’s body slowly like he had the first time they met. He looked back at the bronze. Gloria still had one hand over her stomach. Could…? Shit! All spring, neither one of us had thought once about birth control. I just assumed… Oh God!

Mr. Bowers had a soft smile on his face when he turned back to Gloria.

“Galatea,” he whispered.

The End

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