The Art and Science of Love
1
Archetypes
I FELL ON MY ASS when the weed finally came loose from the rock-hard ground I call a garden. Dirt scattered everywhere, including on me. I don’t know why I can’t grow anything safe for human consumption, or even pleasing to the eye.
Rita drove in next door as I stood swearing at weeds, rose thorns, and the dirt in my eye. I waved as she got out of her car. I’d known Rita since she was little. Now in her mid-twenties, she was the very picture of loveliness, even dressed in a track suit boasting the name of a color across her ass.
She was a beautiful girl who had often been at my house during the summer months years ago—along with her little sister and all the rest of the neighborhood kids. They seemed to migrate from house to house, eating indiscriminately from everyone’s pantry. She’d never been more to me than the neighbor kid until my sudden awakening her senior year in high school. She was a cheerleader and one day the squad went door-to-door selling candy bars to raise money for new pompoms or some such. She showed up at my front door in a pair of hot pants that showed her butt ledge and a tube top about as wide as an elastic bandage with her headlights on high beam.
“Want to support our cheer squad by buying some candy?” she asked. I hadn’t realized what a sexy and provocative young woman she’d become. I nearly told her I’d like two handfuls, but I settled for buying a candy bar and then went inside for a waking wet dream. What a fresh bit of candy was living next door.
In spite of that little episode, I managed to rein in my libido and maintained a pleasant and platonic relationship with my neighbors. Rita left for college, graduated, and got a good job as a research assistant in a science lab of some sort. She’d moved back home with her grandmother this summer to plan her fall wedding.
I called cheerfully to her as she got out of the car and she smiled and waved back.
“How’s the job going?” I asked.
“Fine,” she answered.
“And the wedding plans?”
I was not prepared for the sudden outburst and rush at me.
“It’s been postponed… indefinitely,” she said as she burst into tears.
She fell on my shoulder crying, tears soaking through my gardening shirt. She had a softness about her I couldn’t help but notice as she pressed into me—a girl in sweats and, if I had to guess, nothing else. I gently led her into the house, grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes as she sank into the living room sofa.
“Let’s get you a cup of tea and you can tell old Doc all about it,” I said. I went to the kitchen to set water on the stove to boil.
“It’s awful, Doc,” she whimpered behind me. “It’s like I don’t even know him. He’s being so mean.”
I’m not really a doctor, by the way—or old. Dimitri Rafael Petrovich according to my birth certificate, but I changed the last name to Peters as soon as I turned 16. I went by my initials, D.R., and kids had been calling me Doc since grade school. Like the famous Dr. Science, I’m not a real doctor. I have a master’s degree… in art. That’s why I make a living selling real estate.
I set the freshly brewed tea on the breakfast bar where she’d moved as soon as I went into the kitchen. Apparently, she didn’t want to be alone, even in the next room. She took a sip of the tea and I waited without prompting her. Her lower lip quivered and she spoke to the teacup and not to me.
“He said I couldn’t suck water from a firehose,” she whimpered. “He said I just don’t turn him on.”
No matter what my fantasies, I certainly never expected to be privy to this kind of information. Instead of speaking, I just reached over and patted her hand. This wasn’t a subject that would benefit from me prying into what she didn’t want to say. It turned out, she wanted to say a lot.
“I don’t know what he’s complaining about. He can’t say I don’t turn him on. He’s hard every time he walks into the room. He shoves it in my mouth and then wants to fuck. He finishes and goes to sleep, or jerks off until he’s ready to fuck again. How can he say things like that? Aren’t I pretty enough?”
She was steaming. Now it was time to reach in with the reassurance.
“Rita,” I said gently. “You are beautiful and sexy. The guy must be an idiot.”
“But why would he say I don’t turn him on? I do anything he wants me to.”
“Hmm. Well, let’s get some things straight,” I said. “It’s not your problem. It’s his. I hate to say it, but he’s a typical mid-twenties asshole. He’s got an income, a beautiful girlfriend, and he can’t figure out why he’s not happy. All he thinks with is his dick.” I’d only met the guy once at a backyard barbecue and had an instant dislike for him. Rita was better off without him.
“He’s not always like that,” she said becoming defensive.
“Of course not,” I said, backing off from my disgust. “No one is ever all one thing or another. But there is a development cycle for young men that gets in the way of knowing what they are looking for. Their lower animal functions rule over all the higher level reasoning.”
“What do you mean?”
I opened the refrigerator and took out two grapefruits. I set them on the counter.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“I see two grapefruits,” Rita responded.
“Exactly. Now if we brought Alex in here, what do you think he would see?”
“He’d have to see two grapefruits, wouldn’t he?”
“He would,” I answered. “He’d see two grapefruits and he’d get a hard-on.” She laughed. It was good to see a break in the teary demeanor.
“Now,” I said, deciding to continue the lesson. “Do grapefruits turn him on?” I only waited a couple beats before I continued. “No. It’s a response to archetypal stimuli that he can’t help. A guy like Alex will get a hard-on while he’s shaving if his cock happens to bump against the bathroom sink.”
“I’ve seen that happen,” Rita said. Then she blushed crimson. “I thought it was because I was there.” I looked at her with a real feeling of tenderness. Males were all sluts—especially young males. It was a hard lesson that every young woman should learn, even though it isn’t pleasant. But how much happier they would be if they recognized the difference between synaptic response and real feeling.
“Sweetheart,” I said, reaching up to stoke her cheek gently, “you are capable of turning on any man you desire. It’s when a man responds to your desire that you connect; not when he responds to your shape. You just need to learn to recognize what you want and not assume that just being there is enough to get it.”
“Do I turn you on?” she asked softly. Great. Now I was on the spot. I didn’t want to offend her, but I had to be honest with her.
“Rita, it takes more than being in the presence of a beautiful woman to turn me on,” I said. “When you want to turn me on, you will.”
She looked at me and held my eyes with hers. I was afraid I’d gone to far, but she smiled shyly at me.
“I’d better get going before the neighbors start talking,” she said, slipping off the bar stool. “Thank you for the tea and sympathy, Doc.” She stood on tip-toe and kissed my cheek with a lingering tenderness, then turned toward the door. “Mind if I stop in to talk again some time?”
“Any time,” I responded. Then she was gone.
I’m not sexually deprived. I’d just never found the right combination of sex, love, and interest it took to become committed. Most of what I told Rita was just blowing smoke up her ass—which I’d dearly love to do. It was a week before I saw her again. I let her play an active role in my fantasies during that time, but I had a lot of work to do. I had open houses and showings.
I also managed to squeeze in a portrait sitting with a wealthy and good-looking woman named Sheila. I earned a living selling real estate. I spent my off hours painting in my studio. Sheila had heard I was discreet and would give her exactly what she wanted. I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d heard. She wanted ‘a sexy portrait’ to give to her husband for their tenth anniversary. We finally agreed on a time and she came to my basement studio for a posing session.
After several sketches in different poses, she gradually started to relax her grip on the drape I’d given her. Sessions always start that way. ‘Just in my bra and panties,’ they’d say. ‘Artfully draped.’ ‘Like an old master.’ If they’d studied old masters like I had, they’d be naked on a pedestal when we started. I didn’t treat my models that way. Eventually, the drape had slipped until her right breast was fully exposed. She liked the sketches and we worked on the pose a bit until we had her with her head tilted slightly away with eyes glancing toward the distance and the drape restored, so her nipple barely peeked out. I snapped a digital photo of the pose as well as the sketch and promised I would have the painting available in two weeks. She looked over my shoulder at the easel and let the drape fall to the floor.
It wasn’t unusual to have a model lose her inhibitions as we worked, and more than one had completely lost control. I wasn’t above taking advantage of the situation when it happened. I watched her (and her breasts) as she examined the sketch. I could see exactly what she was seeing as she looked at the sketch. Her hand rose to her cheek and tried to trace the line of her jaw in the way I’d drawn it. She explored the sketch by tracing her own body. She let her hand trace the position of the drape in the drawing, gliding across her chest to lightly touch her nipple. It was delicately shaped and the way it rose as she caressed it let me know that she had probably not breast-fed her two children. Nipples tend to lose some of their sensitivity after an infant has sucked them dry day and night. Hers were obviously sensitive. She gasped at her own touch. She stood rigidly there for a moment without moving.
“May I come back to sit for the actual painting?” she asked with a quaver in her voice. My nostrils flared. Doing an oil or acrylic painting is a much longer process than doing the preliminary sketches. That’s why I snap digital photos of the pose so I can use it for reference as I paint from the sketch. Sitting and holding one position for two or three hours (with occasional breaks to relax the muscles) is much different than the ten to fifteen minutes it takes to sketch a pose. But frankly, I’d much rather be referring to her fleshly presence as I painted than to the photo.
I agreed and we set a time. I would lay in the background and base. I’d be ready to focus on her when she came back. She dressed in front of me instead of going behind the changing screen, putting on her lacy bra and nearly sheer blouse, then arranging her hair. She would spend the week between now and our next appointment developing a strategy to seduce me. It wasn’t the first time. I would spend the week developing a strategy to let her.
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