Double Time
Chapter 92
“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”
—Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red
I TALKED TO JOAN about the blank wall in my bedroom and the concept I had for it. I’d been afraid to touch it for fear I’d ruin it. I tried drawing it out on paper and could not find whatever talent it was V2 had that created the graffiti painting I’d blanked out with Kilz. When she heard what I had in mind, she kissed me.
“I could help,” she said. “If you’d like. I have about twenty variations of it in my sketchbooks. It wouldn’t have to be identical to the patches we have.”
“Would you? I’m so afraid I’d just mess it up and I want it right.”
“I could… um… come over this evening and work on it a while. Then when we get up in the morning, I could just paint behind you while you play,” she said.
“That would be… Joan? Did you just invite yourself to spend the night with me?” She blushed. “I’d like that a lot.”
She wanted more colors than in the original artwork and said she’d stop by Home Depot on the way over. We told the rest of the girlfriends what we had in mind and both of us got kissed soundly. Nanette lingered with her lips near my ear.
“She’s less sure of herself than any of us. Treat her well, Jacob, and listen to what she wants. She’s very vulnerable.”
By the time Joan got to my house, I had the tarp spread and all the painting gear I could muster laid out. I went out to her car and brought in half a dozen quart-size cans of paint. Joan was in a pair of shorts and T-shirt that had definitely seen paint projects before.
“Oh. I like your red better than the one I bought,” she said. “Let’s lay in the sketch first and we can adjust it according to what we see. I haven’t done a rendering this big before.”
One of the features of the logo she’d developed for our pod was sweeping curved lines. That was what I was most worried about creating. There’s an old joke about not being able to draw a straight line with a ruler, but curved lines are even harder. I’d been at the point of drafting an oversized French curve so I could trace the lines.
I understood the functions of a Euler spiral and had used them in mechanical specifications years ago. By the time I retired as a mechanical engineer, computer-aided drawing programs had become common and the standard was to use Bézier curves, which could be plotted and scaled correctly. My efforts to measure and reproduce the curves in Joan’s original drawing with a French curve on smaller paper had come out looking mechanical instead of the free-flowing lines of the original.
I watched, fascinated, as Joan simply made sweeping arcs on the wall with a soft pencil or charcoal, occasionally erasing a portion that displeased her and redrawing it. It was that free-flowing movement of the lines that my mechanical drawings had lacked.
When she was pleased with the general outline, we started painting them. It was nearly eleven when Dad stuck his head in my room to see our progress.
“That’s impressive,” he said simply. “Don’t forget to get some sleep tonight before you get up to play in the morning.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”
“Good night,” he answered.
His little interruption was all it took to remind me that I had a perfectly beautiful lover in my bedroom and was spending all my time with her working on a painting. We stepped back to look at the painting and I slid a hand around Joan’s waist. She turned toward me and we kissed.
“How about if we clean up now and start again in the morning?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Let’s do that.”
It was another of those moments when I realized the importance of doing interesting things with my girlfriends and not just having sex with them.
I knew that, of course. I’d been married. V1 had a household and children. A lot of my time together with Rebecca or Renie had been spent engaged in the mundane. We cleaned house. We took the children on adventures. We cooked. We tended the yard and garden. How was it those things had seemed like they were tedious chores instead of time we could share together? Joan and I had talked a lot while we were painting. We told jokes and laughed. And continued to do that as we cleaned our brushes and went to take a shower together.
It was so easy to forget to connect with my girlfriends like this when our time together was so limited and we wanted to show each other our love in a physical way. I was thankful again that Nanette had reminded me of the many ways people could connect. That was something V1 and his Sharon Long never figured out. As the Eagles put it, ‘They had one thing in common. They were good in bed.’ Joan and I weren’t sublimating our sex drive into the project. We were sharing on a different level.
That didn’t mean we weren’t interested in sex, too.
We lay in bed about one in the morning, satisfied sexually as well as emotionally. I traced the pattern of the pod symbol on her left butt cheek. She hadn’t had the tattoo done but put it there with henna ‘to see if it was the right place and size.’
“I’m scared to do it,” Joan said. “I’m afraid I’ll be like one of those soldiers who had a girlfriend’s name tattooed on their arm before they went to war. Then they spent the next fifty years with the name of an ex tattooed in their flesh as an eternal reminder of their foolishness.”
“Do you plan to become our ex,” I whispered. She pressed her face against my shoulder as she shook her head.
“But I’ll be the only one with a tattoo. I’m the only one old enough.”
“That’s not true. Emily is old enough. Nanette. Sophie doesn’t dare get a tattoo because it would end her dancing career. The thing is, I think it’s a personal decision. I don’t think we can decree that everyone in the pod is going to have a tattoo,” I said.
“It was my idea. I’ll look like a chicken-shit if I don’t have it done,” she said.
“I think I need to talk to my sister about it when we go out to San Diego over spring break,” I said. “She sounded all enthusiastic but I don’t think she’s done it yet, either.” Joan looked up at me and caught her lower lip between her teeth—that adorable look that girls have.
“Can I go with you?” she asked. “To see Emily?”
“Um… I don’t know. We’re planning to drive and it’s a long trip to be stuck in the back seat with my little sister. We’ll have to ask my parents. And Emily. I mean…”
“I wouldn’t have to go for all of it. I could fly out for a couple of days. I feel like… you know… Emily is where I’ll be in a year. I want to know how she’s handling it.”
“Let’s talk to her tomorrow before I talk to my parents. K?”
“Yeah. I love you, Jacob.”
“I love you, Joan.”
The camera setup Sunday morning was a lot like I’d arranged when Sophie danced behind me. I framed it carefully so the wall and Joan would be visible, but they’d be in the background. I’d be far enough forward to give her room to work and she’d just paint while I was playing. The focus would still be on me and my guitar, but she would be a dancer painting behind me. I chose a program of Segovia pieces and just lost myself in playing, paying no more attention to the monitor than I did when a girlfriend was curled up next to me.
When I was finished with the thirty-five minutes of music, I turned and saw Joan was still painting, swaying as if she were dancing to the music that still rang in her ears. I was caught in her simple beauty and started playing again. What I was seeing was not sexy clothes or carefully applied makeup. I was seeing a woman caught up in something she loved, drawing me into her circle.
I didn’t face the camera to play, I played facing Joan, often just improvising rather than playing from my list. This was more akin to playing face-to-face with Cindy than to having a girlfriend sitting beside me. I could tell we responded to each other and both the painting and the music were affected.
I saw Joan heave a deep breath and lay down her brush. I strummed a closing chord and silenced the strings as she turned toward me. I clicked off the recorder just before Joan landed on my lap while I held my guitar out to the side.
“I feel so much better now,” she said. I held her as we both looked at the wall. It was subtler than the original artwork she’d made for her tattoo. It had more colors and depth with shadows of the figures reappearing in the background. “I’ll get the brushes and paint cleaned up while you edit your music video. Then, let’s make love again.”
The last thing I did before uploading the video was to turn the camera back on and focus on the wall painting. I faded to that as my last musical chords faded.
“Mr. Hopkins?” Ms. Levy said as Brittany and I started to leave class Monday morning. I turned to her. “Wednesday?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. She was smiling so I was hopeful that she was okay with what I’d written. I hadn’t turned in many things in a red folder of late, but this story… I kind of got lost in describing the folds of a girl’s sex, her flavor, and scent. The story didn’t really go anyplace. I just tried to capture what it meant to me… what I felt when I made love to one of my girlfriends. The non-private description of the girl in my story was probably recognizable as Ms. Levy if she looked for that. I had no idea how the descriptions of her privates matched.
But it didn’t look like she was mad or upset, so I’d find out at lunch Wednesday.
“That was intense,” Beca said as we gathered for lunch.
“And long,” Livy added. “You don’t usually play for an hour.”
“I was going to cut it down, but it just seemed right to leave it uncut. Until Joan attacked me,” I laughed.
“I love the artwork!” Desi said. “Joan, that is the best representation of us ever. I wasn’t sure about a tattoo before, but I think I could handle something as beautiful as that on my butt.”
“I hope you treated our girlfriend really well after the camera was turned off,” Brittany said. “I mean really well.”
“It was nice,” Joan said.
“Nice? Nice is all it was?” Rachel smacked me on the arm. “Couldn’t you have put forth a little more effort to make it better than ‘nice’?”
“Don’t, Rachel. Don’t,” Joan pled. “It was… I don’t have words for it. I fell in love with Jacob all over again.”
“That’s more like it,” Rachel said, petting the spot where she’d smacked me. “I know that feeling.”
“Is there any chance we could get a good enough photo of it to get a big print made?” Brittany asked. “I’d like to hang it on my wall.”
“What a good idea. Me, too,” Livy said. “I want to live with that painting and it doesn’t seem likely that I could just move into Jacob’s room with him. Not without all the rest of you, and the room isn’t that big.”
“I think having a photo of it for each of us would be really good. Can we try?” Beca asked.
I had no idea how to go about that. I had a good quality video camera and my cellphone. I didn’t think either of those were sufficient quality to make a poster from a photo.
“I’ll take care of it,” Joan said.
“Sit down, Jacob, and lean in. I don’t want to speak very loudly,” Ms. Levy said. I pulled the chair up next to her desk and leaned over as if I was looking at her notes.
“Is this okay, Ms. Levy? Was it too much?”
“It was beautiful,” she said. “I’m hoping you will be able to bring such passion to your other, non-erotic writing.” She opened the folder and I saw a print of the picture from my wall slide out. She picked it up. “I captured this from your Sunday video. It is really beautiful. I watched your program three times Sunday, once while I was reading this story.” There was a little flush creeping up Ms. Levy’s cheeks.
“We’re going to have a professional quality poster made of it,” I said. “I’m glad you like it. It means a lot to us.”
“By us, I detect that you mean to more than you and the young lady who painted it. If I had not had the story a week before the concert, I would have thought it must describe what occurred immediately following. In women’s writing, it is unusual to find a graphic description of sex as in this story. Our society has termed all such portrayals as pornographic. I doubt Amazon would allow you to sell it there. That’s too bad. It is not possible for a woman to truly know what a man feels during sex but your story shines a soft light on it. Women want to think of the romance, the deep gazes, and the gentle touch. They tend to relegate what comes after to a sigh, a scream, or a vague reference to the joining of souls and bodies. Men, I take it, want words that will let them feel the heat and lubrication of the vagina while the penis is invading.”
Wow! Ms. Levy had never spoken explicitly about my descriptions. Just hearing her use the words vagina and penis was enough to start my arousal. I was no longer looking at my story, on which I saw no marks, but rather stared into Ms. Levy’s deep blue eyes.
“Um… Ms. Levy…”
“Jacob, save that for class and for when others are around. When we are discussing matters this intimate, please call me Donna,” she said. The blush in her cheeks heightened.
“Thank you, Donna. I’ll treasure that permission.”
“You do, don’t you? I believe it is one of the things you put into your writing—a genuine belief in the romance and arousal you write about. A genuine respect for your woman, even when you are describing her most intimate parts.” She paused and grinned at me. “You would find some differences in the shape if you were face-to-face with it, by the way, but we’ll save that for another time.” She was definitely blushing now. I shifted my hand enough to touch hers. Just my little finger resting on the back of her hand.
“I’ll look forward to that.” She continued to look at me and I saw her lips twitch slightly. I was ready to lean in and kiss her when she sat up straighter and closed the folder.
“I’ve decided to try putting notes on a page,” she said. She reached in a drawer and withdrew a sheet of staff paper with careful notes written on it. I could tell right away she didn’t have a strong music theory background. Ms. Devine would never accept this kind of work. There was no key signature, time, nor measures marked on the sheet. “I know this doesn’t look like much but see if you can make sense of it, please? I’d prefer you didn’t share this with anyone… um… outside your most intimate circle of friends.”
“Thank you, Ms. um… Donna. I’ll spend some time with this. And thank you for… everything.”
“It’s nothing. Yet.”
5 March 2020
“It’s nothing. Yet.” What did she mean by that? I have to admit, though: Before I headed for track practice Wednesday afternoon, I had to stop in the bathroom and relieve some pressure. I hadn’t been able to think of anything but Donna Levy’s blue eyes and the twitch of her lips as we talked at lunch. I wouldn’t be able to run a foot with the log between my legs.
She did nothing extraordinary to be sexy with me during the review of my story. Except lean in close so we could speak, scarcely above a whisper. I’m going to have to take care of things again before I go to school this morning and see her in class.
And this music. I can read music pretty well now and hear it in my head. This doesn’t make any sense at all. There is no clef marking, no measure breaks, no key signature. Just notes. I can’t even say they are all just quarter notes. Some are tied together like eighths. Some are hollow like a half note. Some have no stem like a whole note. There are a lot of eighth note rests, several quarter note rests, and a few whole note rests.
I have to study this and make sense of it. Do you suppose it is something she wants me to play in my concerts?
I wonder what it would be like to have her sit beside me on a cushion like Nanette did, with her head leaning against my thigh and my hand occasionally reaching down to stroke that long blonde hair. Or stroke other things farther down.
‘Yet.’ What did she mean by ‘Yet’?
The second meet of the season was Saturday at The Plex. It was another indoor meet so we had fewer events than an outdoor meet and a 200-meter track. Coach Daniels was experimenting with different relay configurations and I was sent back to JV. Since we didn’t have a 4x800 relay on JV, the only race I ran was the 3200. I ran a personal best of 12:20.2 but in the Metro area that was only good enough for third. The girls’ team was back down at Wesleyan for another meet so the events went faster and we were done by 12:30.
I got showered and dressed and met my girlfriends at Joan’s for our usual Saturday study group. It was cool that Nanette was joining us and greeted me with a very nice kiss. She was doing some studying, too. It seemed she needed a certain amount of continuing education credits in her profession. Laws had changed about the same time National Service went into effect and a dPT degree—doctor of physical therapy—was now considered ‘entry-level.’ Nanette had entered a post-professional degree program that would allow her to get a transitional degree without the three years plus the full degree would require.
Every time another person arrived Saturday afternoon, that person got a round of kisses from everyone else. When Rachel hugged me and raised her lips, I let my hands find her pretty ass and squeeze, remembering how it had felt when I held it naked last night.
“Hey, everybody,” Beca called attention at nearly dinner time. “I found something out in a little private conversation with Jacob this week. We rode over to Brittany’s house together for Thursday night study and had a few intimate words.” There were some ‘oohs’ at that news but the truth was, we’d only had words. And a little kiss. “What I found out is that Jacob got a story back from Ms. Levy with no red marks and edits. He promised us. When he got a paper back with no edits, he’d read it to us. Now here we are, waiting, Jacob.”
I groaned. There was no way I could get out of this. Beca warned me and I brought the story with me. I thought about substituting a different story but it wouldn’t be fair. This was what I promised them and I was going to read it, even if they thought it meant I was gross.
Beca, Joan, Rachel, Livy, Nanette, Desi, Brittany. Seven girlfriends sat on the floor with me, cushions grabbed from all the furniture like story time in kindergarten. I tried not to meet anyone’s eyes while I was reading but it wasn’t difficult to feel their attention focused on me. And I didn’t read it in a bland mechanical voice. One of the things Donna had said was that she could hear the passion. I felt it. I released it in my voice as I read. And then, as I finished, I closed my eyes and tried to relax.
Okay, here’s a secret no one wanted to know. When I read erotica I’ve written, it isn’t unusual for me to get aroused. Even when I’m writing the first draft, I sometimes stop in the middle of a sex scene and visualize everything that is happening. What they look like. What position they are in. Where their hands and lips go next. And, yes, it’s not particularly unusual for that visualization to end in an orgasm. Reading it aloud to seven beautiful girls who were my lovers and girlfriends, left me in a physical state of anticipation.
It didn’t take long for the girls to respond. Rachel occupied my lips while the surprising combination of Brittany and Nanette unfastened my jeans and pulled them down so I was waving like a flagpole.
“Look,” Livy whispered. “I had no idea how long the path was. I figured it somehow came straight from the testicles to the penis. There’s like ten inches of tubes before it ever gets to the penis.”
“And the thing up here is what spurts. It has to get the semen all the way out here. With enough force to propel the sperm to the cervix,” Desi added.
“My orgasms are intense,” Rachel said, leaving my lips unattended. Joan leaned in to capture them. “But when you think about it, they are all located in the clitoris and the vaginal canal. Mostly up front. I can’t even imagine an orgasm that traveled eighteen inches through my body.” Joan pulled away and I saw that all seven girls had lost their pants and were examining themselves and each other.
“May I?” I heard Desi ask. A moment later, I felt her hot pussy descend on my cock as my other girlfriends watched intensely.
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