Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain ©2018 Elder Road Books, Serialized edition ISBN 978-1-939275-83-7
Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain
42
Alien
I CUT MY PROTEIN CLASS Friday morning and went straight to the store. I had four large pre-orders for Easter to prepare and then I needed to get smaller dishes ready for the people who would wait until today and tomorrow to start planning Easter dinner. I don’t know who figures out what food is appropriate for what holiday. Some of it I understand—like butterflying thick rib steaks to put in special heart-shaped grilling tins for Valentine’s Day. We’d sold a lot of those. But who decided that Easter should be a ham day? Although it seemed that lamb was a big seller for the weekend, too.
Of course, not everyone can either afford or use a full ham. If you go down to Walmart, you can buy about three cuts of ham. A ham steak is a center cut of a whole ham. It’s the best, tenderest, and meatiest piece of the ham and has just one center bone. It’s usually half an inch to an inch thick, but commercial processors try to maximize the sale by cutting it into quarter-inch slices. That means that the butt and shank halves of the ham that are sold are labeled ‘butt portion’ and ‘shank portion.’ Neither one has the best slice included. The butt is meatier and fattier and is difficult to carve because it includes not only the leg bone, but also part of the pelvic bone and joint. The shank portion is a bit more popular just because it is easier to slice. It’s also not as fatty and tastes a little sweeter.
We didn’t deal with smoked hams behind the butcher case. Mostly, they come from one of the big processors completely tied and shrink wrapped. Some things you just can’t compete with locally. But all day Friday, I deboned, sliced, tied, and stuffed hams and pork legs.
The bones that we didn’t package for sale in the freezer case for soup, I took home with me—with Grandpa’s blessing. I set our largest soup kettle on the stove and dumped all the bones in to simmer overnight. Saturday, I would pick the meat, strain the stock, cool it so I could skim the fat. I also put a big pan of navy beans to soak. By Saturday evening, I had ham and bean soup slow cooking for Sunday dinner. A little cornbread and some greens and we’d be all set.
In the meantime, I still had to cook dinner Friday night, after which Jas and Sarah Lynn decided to make a Jett sandwich between them.
Ah woe is me. I have such a hard life.
THE RESPITE WAS BRIEF. After work on Saturday, I had to head to the airport. Mary joined me and we filled the wall with clouds, birds, and airplanes. The big weekend paint performance was just three weeks away.
That also meant that finals were just two weeks away. I went to classes Monday morning filled with dread. Proteins just kept chugging along like normal, though we were told that our final would include both a written and a practical exam. The written would include recipes, seasonal questions, and marketing terms. The practical would include identifying cuts, listing practical uses, and being given a recipe to prepare for sale.
My 3D class was as unpleasant as usual and the exam promised to be a narrow escape for me. We’d studied sculpture all term and had been given different assignments with modeling clay, foam board, wood, and found objects. Only one or two people in the class were actually studio artists in sculpture. The rest of us limped along with lame projects like making a face out of found objects.
Current Directions in Art was a jack-off class as far as I was concerned. We were supposed to learn to look at and analyze various artworks. What was the artist’s motivation, intention, and process? What was their relationship to the development of contemporary art? To me, it was a lot like the discussions of Liberty and Death in my Lit class. Everybody had their own passionately argued position about what the piece meant. ‘The exposed breasts were a classic invitation to suckle at the nurturing mother after the birth of her nation.’ Get real. Rania had awesome breasts. I wanted to show them off.
Blankenship was out on Monday. That was so unusual that we just stood around in the classroom waiting for twenty minutes. I hoped he would be in for my review of The Garden of Earthly Delights on Tuesday. I’d reached a point with it that I doubted everything. I kept trying to think of what he would criticize next. Every time I passed the piece, I found something else to touch up a bit. Frankly, I’d had no idea that drawing could be so complicated. All my drawings up to this time had been pretty much as a basis for paint. This was the first time I was considering the drawing to be the end product instead of a step in the process.
Merck gave us the info for our last project. It was the first one I’d need to worry about because his three-hour exam slot was on Monday. That’s when I’d get to present Andi. She’d agreed to do a few test passes, but didn’t want me to use the acrylic paints on her. She wanted to be able to take a shower afterward and have it gone. That meant that I’d have to paint her in the morning before our exam. Unlike Beatitude that was presented only as a painting on canvas, Princess would be presented only as body art. The early 1900s were really when Modernism took hold. Part of that was the cubist movement in art and the rise of science fiction in literature. Picasso and Edgar Rice Burroughs. A painting on the Princess of Mars as if she were rendered by Picasso.
I ENTERED BLANKENSHIP’S OFFICE at exactly five-thirty Tuesday afternoon. I’d been coming for these private reviews all term now. I couldn’t remember having ever spoken since the first one. I didn’t need to knock. Blankenship ran by a clock in his head. If my appointment was at five-thirty, I was simply expected to enter at exactly that time and listen until he dismissed me.
I set my drawing on his review easel and sat across from him to listen to his scathing critique again.
He sat at his desk with his arms folded and looked at the drawing. He pursed his lips as his attention was caught by one thing or another. He squinted one eye then the other. He stood and walked toward the drawing, going so far as to pull out a magnifying glass at one point and examine a cluster of flowers growing from Ariel’s pussy. He scanned the whole picture from up close again and then paced back to the other side of his desk and looked at it again.
I was getting frustrated. Usually by this time he would be ranting about one thing or another. He’d jump up and draw a section on the whiteboard in a better rendition than I had on the paper and then tell me why mine was inadequate. He was driving me crazy with his silence.
He nodded once and sat at his desk. He started going through papers and picked up a stack to start reading. That was an accepted sign that our session was over. I packed the drawing in my portfolio and turned to leave, still expecting him to snarl some derogatory comment at me. Nothing.
I left his office.
I guess his version of the Thumperian principle was ‘If you can’t say something nasty, don’t say nothing at all.’
Ariel had dinner ready and we all sat when I got home. We ate and there was the usual chitchat about our day. It was a little strained because Rania had joined us and no one was exactly sure how to treat her. She just didn’t seem like someone trying to take our girlfriend away from us. Until after dinner. Once dishes were cleared up, Ariel left with her.
I went into my studio. Sarah Lynn and Jas were studying in the living room. Kelly had her Tuesday night chatroom show at eight o’clock. I was still in shock a little, I think. I put the drawing of The Garden of Earthly Delights on my easel and lifted the tissue covering that kept it from getting smudged. I picked up a pencil to correct something and then laid it back down. If something still needed work, Blankety would have screamed it out at me. I pulled out a can of permanent spray fixative and carefully treated the drawing. What was it Jesus said on the cross?
It is finished.
“THAT STUFF STINKS,” Char said from behind me. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me from behind as she looked past my shoulder at the drawing. “I loved the painting, but it wasn’t as… I don’t know… special?... without Ariel all painted up in front of it. The drawing is complete. I love it.” She squeezed me tightly and I could hear her breath shudder as she drew it in. “Are we losing her, Jett?”
I turned and pulled Char to me. She was just wearing a T-shirt and I stroked her soft back as I hugged her. “I don’t know, honey. Do you think… Was it really good for her to be our sex doll? I think we’ve been seeing a little of the manic side of Ariel’s emo persona the past few weeks. Since Christmas. Maybe Rania will help bring some balance to her.”
“I know it’s almost impossible to keep a group like we have together,” Char said. “I really love all our lovers. I’ll be so sad if she is never with us.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Kelly’s show has started. Let’s go watch it in bed and make love.”
That’s an idea I could get with.
“TWO WEEKS. Your final project is due here on the eighth. Your task is to create a composition and draw it. Subject matter is open, but I strongly suggest you not do a figure drawing. We have not studied the unique aspects of figure drawing and you would just be guessing. Still life is yet beyond the reach of most of you. Your drawing is to be a finished work of art. It is not a drafting nor a sketch for a painting or future work. It is to be thirty by twenty, portrait or landscape and should be ready to mount for exhibition. You will show in this work of art that you have learned the principles and application of composition, illusional space, perspective, proportion, and form.”
We were just a minute from the end of class and no one would have time for a question before he walked out the door. At least I understood the assignment, but I was exhausted just thinking about it. Blankety stopped in front of me on his way to the door.
“You have passed your final,” he said, pointing at me. “You needn’t return.”
And then he was gone.
Fuck!
“I HAVE TO SEE your final,” Andi said urgently as we walked out of class with Mary. Everyone was looking at me suspiciously. “If you’ve already passed, seeing what you did will show me what I have to do. I’ll strip and you can smear paint on my body. With your hands if you want to. Just let me see what you have drawn.”
“I’d like to see it, too, Jett,” Mary said. “I’m not sure it will tell me anything about what I have to do, but I’d like to celebrate with you. You are the only one in our class who knows he passed.”
“Well, come on home with me. You know Blankenship once criticized me by saying I took advantage of you and that you were the one in our class with real talent. I just kept enduring what he said and trying to learn from it.” I wrapped an arm around Mary. I couldn’t wrap an arm around Andi, too, because I had my portfolio and supplies in that hand. She solved it by putting her arm across my shoulders as we headed home.
TRUE TO HER WORD, Andi stripped and asked me questions about the drawing while Mary and I applied paint to her body. Sometimes with our fingers.
“I don’t think I have time to do a drawing like this for the final,” Andi sighed. That might have been because I was drawing circles around her nipples and reaching in to pinch them occasionally. Or it might have been because of my drawing.
“I agree,” Mary said as she painted Martian antennae on Andi’s cheeks. “I’m glad he didn’t show this to the class as an example. Everyone would have quit.”
“I nearly did quit,” I said. “I don’t think he’s expecting this from anyone. It’s taken me all term to put this together. And I endured private humiliation from him every two weeks to get here.”
“I see what he means about all the dimensions of the drawing, though,” Andi continued. “It really looks almost three dimensional. I wouldn’t expect that from a drawing that is all smaller drawings. Especially one that’s all pussies and cocks.”
“He said he wanted to be able to feel her breasts and tell her weight in his hands as he picked her up,” I said. “I think he meant by looking at the drawing. Or maybe he’s just a perv. I’m glad I’m not doing that drawing now, though. I was trying to make flat art look three dimensional. Here I’m trying to make a very three-dimensional girl into flat art.” I’d whited out Andi’s entire right side and was drawing a profile view of her breast in place of the straight on view I covered. It was kind of hard to keep my hands focused on painting instead of just playing with her tits. And pussy. I was putting a huge painted gash on her pussy lips similar to what I’d done with Ariel before Christmas. Somehow, I kept having to push her pussy lips around with my fingers in order to get the paint in the right places. Sometimes I sort of brushed her wet folds and along her clit. All in the name of art. I was sure Andi was going to recite this activity as her #MeToo.
“All right. That’s all I have time for tonight,” she declared, stepping away from me. “Take some pictures and then get me showered and clean.” This was a practice session and Mary and I had both been pretty playful. I snapped a couple dozen pix from different angles, including one up between her legs. I was surprised but willing when she grabbed my hand and took me into my bathroom with her. That has the smallest shower stall. “Come in here and scrub all this icky paint off me, you lech.” That was all the encouragement I needed to strip and let my hard cock lead me into the shower with her.
I scrubbed her, making sure I got the paint out of every little nook and cranny. I think cranny is another word for pussy. When she was rinsed, she leaned back against me and pulled my hand back down to her dripping core.
“You’ve been making me sloppy for the past hour and a half. Now use those fingers and get me off.” Your wish and all that. In this position it was easy to reach into her twat and diddle an incredibly hard little nub, alternating between that and shoving my fingers into her hot box. My other hand wrapped around her to continue playing with her sensitive nips. She wasn’t interested in kissing but stretched her neck to the side while I nibbled on it. My cock was tight in her ass crack as she came and slumped back against me.
“That was great,” she said as she opened the shower door and stepped out. She grabbed a towel and glanced back at my cock waving in the air.
“Isn’t it polite to return the favor?” I asked.
“My boyfriend is five hundred miles away. I needed help. You’ve got girlfriends in the next room. You don’t need me.”
Well, fuck!
WE MADE IT to finals week and I painted Andi in the morning to take her to the Literature and the Arts final in the afternoon. The girl was proving to be a real tease and wanted me to get her off each time I painted her but didn’t want to do anything with me. So, I’m going to turn down the opportunity to finger a hot girl’s pussy to orgasm just because I can’t put my cock in it? Really? I assumed I’d have to take her home and shower her again when class was over.
When we left the room, a big guy stepped out in front of us in the hall. I mean big! He was about six-six and probably weighed two-fifty. He had blond wispy hair that was already thinning and a light beard. For as big as he was, he wasn’t particularly threatening. He was kind of soft and round. He grinned and I had to think he was a big teddy bear.
That was confirmed when Andi shrieked and threw herself at him. He easily lifted her up by her butt cheeks and started a messy kiss.
“Dennis! You got here in time to see me! I’m so happy you’re here.”
“I couldn’t get out of Bloomington until about midnight and drove straight through. You look amazing!”
“Jett, this is my boyfriend, Dennis Witt. He’s going to wash all the paint off every part of my body and find exactly where you stuck all your sprays and brushes.”
“Hi. Glad to…”
“Can we have sex while you still have all the paint on? It would be like sex with an alien,” Dennis said, ignoring me.
“Yes! Getting painted was a real turn-on. I got off every time I got painted and every time I cleaned up. I want you. I want you so much!” They were already ten steps in front of me and moving fast toward the exit. Dennis obviously knew where he was going and didn’t set Andi down as she kept slobbering kisses all over him.
To each his own.
THURSDAY NIGHT we were all finished with our finals and gathered in the living room. The bong was out and we were feeling pretty mellow. Even Rania had come to join us. Andi and Dennis had taken off the previous day, right after Blankety’s final presentation. She did okay, I’m happy to say. Jas was leaning against my left side with Mary curled up in my lap. Rania was leaning against my right side with Ariel curled up in her lap. Friday, everyone was headed to the airport to start the three-day performance of Flight. The basic background was laid in but all the detail still had to be done. Eva, of course, would be part of the performance and part of the art as I painted her into the wall. She also planned to help paint along with Mary. Ariel was going to furnish music periodically on her keyboard.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Kelly asked Eva. They’d experimented with several ways to get comfortable on a bunch of cushions on the floor and ended up with Char and Sarah Lynn as a backrest. Kelly was taking the night off from her Thursday bath show.
“Yeah, but no,” Eva responded. “I think excited is more like it. Jett has painted me twice and tons of people saw the results. Granted, I didn’t do live performances like Ariel and Rania, but we’ve been getting ready for this all year. I can’t wait.”
“What are you doing this summer?”
“Flying. I’ll be working at the airport all summer. Jett negotiated ten hours of free flight time for my participation this week and I work for lessons. Once this weekend is over, I’ll be a fixture out there—in more ways than one.”
“And you’re sure you want to do the full acrylic paint job?” I asked. I could change to water paints if she really wasn’t comfortable.
“The only part I was worried about was my hair. The wig was a great idea. I don’t want anything else to be smeared over the next week or two. Even my face.”
We passed the bong around again, all relieved to have the school year over and done with. Rania was wiggling next to me and I turned toward her. She was in a deep kiss with Ariel but Ariel was squirming to get closer to me.
“What’s up, you two?” I asked as Ariel’s hand slipped between Mary and me to press against my chest.
“Guys, um… Rania asked me to move in with her. And um… I said yes.” We’d all gotten accustomed to Ariel running off to spend nights with Rania over the past few weeks. The announcement wasn’t a surprise but it was still a little sad. There were shouts of encouragement and congratulations and ‘We’ll miss you.’
“Wait!” Rania said. “Wait. That’s not all. Ariel, you went right to the hard part first.”
“What is it, Rania?”
“I don’t want to take Ariel away from you. I’ve fallen deeply in love with her and a little bit with all of you. But I’m not cut out for life in a… household like this. I’m not body shy. I can run around naked with you. Jett, I’d like you to paint me again. Maybe paint Ariel and me together. But when it comes to going to bed at night or being intimate, Ariel’s the only one I’m interested in. We talked about it a lot and she was willing to ask you all if I could move in here, but that just wouldn’t work for me. But Ariel is in love with you all and I can’t ask her to give up the special feelings she has with you. That includes the way she feels between your legs when she’s licking, sucking, and fucking.” We all kind of laughed at that but I wasn’t sure what she was saying.
“What are you asking, Rania?” Sarah Lynn said for all of us.
“We’d like to be sort of an extended family. You know, have our own place to live but be able to come here, either together or separately, to be with you and connect. And for Ariel that really means to connect. I’m monogamous. I don’t want to be intimate with anyone else, but hugs and kisses of a family are what make the world go round. And I’m not really a jealous person. Ariel is polyamorous. She wants us all and I want her to be happy.”
“What she’s saying or asking,” Ariel said, “is if I can still come over and make stir fry sometimes and get my pussy licked and fucked by my wonderful boyfriend and girlfriends. Can I still be part of the family?”
There was a bit of a love fest as Ariel got passed around to all the members of the family to receive their affirmation of her welcome. I put an arm around Rania and gave her a little hug.
“You’re really something special, Rania.”
“Thank you, Jett. But it’s not me that’s special. It’s her. I’m just in love.”
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