Odalisque
Thirteen
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, my anatomy team returned to the med school to watch the other side of Ralph opened and analyzed. It was a different group of students, the first group now watching from the amphitheater. I had three more pads of paper and Bree kept handing me whatever supplies I needed. Justin and Amanda had switched places on my right so that she was standing next to me, often watching what I was drawing more closely than the actual dissection.
It was much harder.
It’s not that the subject was more difficult to draw, but… I could see the guy’s face. I tried to ignore it and just focus on the cutting and exposure of the guy’s chest. But even that was more intense than the examination of the back. There are fewer muscles in the chest and abdomen than in the back, dominated by the pecs and abs. But unlike the back, Doctor Smith did not leave the ribcage intact. He proceeded to cut through the breastbone and lay the organs bare. I hope to god I never have heart surgery!
I didn’t draw as many pictures. I took my time and didn’t rush through any of them. I tried to focus, but my eyes kept being pulled up toward his face.
He was young.
All the time we were working on his back last week, I kept thinking that this was an old guy who donated his body to science, but the face that I saw was not old. It was relaxed in a way that I guess only death will show—almost, but not quite smiling. The flaccid muscles and skin pulled the features down slightly. When rigor mortis sets in on a dead body, all the muscles stiffen within four to six hours. But in two to three days, they all relax again. I didn’t know how long Ralph had been dead, but it had been a week since we cut his back and I had a feeling cadavers weren’t always cut as soon as they were available.
It wasn’t like I looked at his face and expected him to wake up. You could tell just by looking that he was dead. There was no life in this body. And he hadn’t been made up like a body in a funeral parlor. I still remembered my great aunt’s body at her funeral when I was thirteen. She wore more makeup in death than she ever would have alive. With no blood in his veins and capillaries, Ralph was pale, slightly gray. His lips barely had a color difference from the rest of his face.
At the end of the class, they were covering the body again when I looked up.
“Doctor Smith, may I have five more minutes?” I asked.
He looked at me a little strangely, but pulled the sheet back down to the waist and motioned everyone back away from the table. It didn’t make any difference to me where the sheet was. I drew Ralph’s face.
I left my anatomy team and went directly to the library. As much as I wanted to go paint in my studio, I was really worried about my critical reading paper. I called home before I got to the library and told them I’d probably be there until it closed at one a.m. The library had extended hours during the last three weeks of the term. How nice.
“I worry about you driving after such a long day, Tony,” Lissa said.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Wait a minute.” There was silence on the phone, then Kate came on.
“Hi, Tony. Melody was just about to drive me home. Why don’t you just walk over to the dorm tonight. I’ll be up and you don’t have to drive that way.”
“Um… I’ll need a shower and fresh clothes,” I said. “These clothes… well… they smell like a hospital.”
“I’ll bring clothes and I’ll wait to take my shower until you get there. Please say you’ll be there,” Kate pled. It was a pretty easy decision.
“Okay, Kitten. Let everybody know for me, will you? I’ve got to get to work on this paper.”
“Mel and Lissa are right here and they’re nodding their heads. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
It was legal to have coffee in a covered cup in the library when you were using a carrel. It even had a cup holder. I had the two references that I wanted to use. Professor Strait had provided a selection of topics for our final papers from which each student was to choose one. There was an analytical paper on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) that I think she provided specifically for me, so I felt obligated to do my ten-page analysis on that article. It was a subject that I knew about from last year’s art history course, so I grabbed some of the resources that I’d used then and set about the analysis process. It would take me most of the time before Thanksgiving to get the paper done, but I didn’t want it hanging over my head when company started arriving on Sunday.
The most exhausting part about writing papers for this class was making sure my research was documented, my bibliography was complete, and each point taken from the source was appropriately footnoted. Last year, I’d made the mistake of writing my papers for art history and then going back to try to fill in the references. What a disaster! This year I was keeping meticulous track of my sources, and was footnoting as I worked. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to write research papers before computers!
The library flashed the lights three times and a soft voice came over the intercom announcing that it would close in fifteen minutes. I closed things up and left the building, texting Kate to let her know I was on my way. She met me at the front door of the dorm.
I pretty much collapsed into Kate’s arms in the shower and let her soap me up. I was thankful for the fresh scent and the meticulous attention Kate paid to every part of my body. I reciprocated and rubbed her beautiful breasts with my soapy hands before I shampooed her hair. It was the first time I’d washed her hair since she got it cut and it was a different experience. In order to get it to stand up in spikes, she used some kind of mousse that was sticky and stubborn to get out of her hair. Once it was gone, though, the strands were just as silky as I remembered—just shorter.
“How does Melody get this down her throat?” Kate asked as she fondled my soapy cock. “It just seems so long!”
“Mmm. I think she did a lot of practice before she tried it. Lissa has a dildo,” I said sleepily.
“I love you, Tony,” Kate said as we got into bed. “Maybe sometime I can catch you when you aren’t hard and just hold you in my mouth and let you grow into me. That might work, too.”
“Kitten, how am I ever going to not be hard when you are in the same room with me?”
I cuddled up spooned behind my lover and we went to sleep.
I heard Kate’s roommate, Amber, leave in the morning, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t want to wake up.
When Kate stirred and headed for the bathroom, I let myself drift back into the half-waking zone of consciousness. I’d have to get up and go to class soon.
I felt Kate’s warm lips and tongue engulf my little cock and came fully awake. I must have been really exhausted because I wasn’t erect when I woke up. Kate didn’t try to do a lot, just keeping my cock in her mouth as I became aroused. She’d caught me and was trying her little experiment. For my part, I tried not to get aroused too quickly, practicing some of the deep breathing exercises I’d learned in Pilates. It was only the motion of my breathing and the rush of blood to my penis that provided movement in her mouth. I slowed my breathing so I didn’t move too much.
It took about five minutes before I was definitely a mouthful. I could feel Kate swallowing and was reminded of the last time I visited a dentist—you know the way you have your mouth propped open and still reflexively swallow. Kate’s position at least didn’t have a risk of drowning herself as I could feel her saliva running down my balls. It tickled a little as it trickled out of her mouth.
I wondered idly if that was her uvula I was feeling against the end of my cock and how similar that word was to vulva. Maybe that kept my growth to a full erection at a slower pace. I could feel Kate’s breathing getting deeper and deeper as she kept swallowing.
Finally, she popped off my cock with a gasp.
“That is so cool,” she panted. “I can’t do more right now. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Kate,” I said. “I’ve never felt anything like just getting hard in your mouth. It was amazing.” I kissed her deeply.
“Mmm,” she responded. “I’m… um… kind of drippy… you know… down there. Will you make love to me?”
“Of course, Kitten. I’d make love to you anytime.” I pulled her down to me and started to move my hips around, but she rolled off of me and returned to our spoon position. She bent her left leg slightly and reached through her legs to guide my cock into her from behind.
“Like you do with Lissa?” she asked. “We never do it this way.”
“I’m still finding out what you like, sweetheart,” I answered. “Lissa likes to wake up this way. Melody doesn’t. I didn’t know if you’d like it.”
“Neither do I. I’ve only been making love for less than two months and I just don’t know what else is available. Is this so special with you and Lissa that you don’t want to do it with me?”
“Oh no. It’s not like that. I think we all want to do everything, but we don’t know if we like something unless we try it.”
“I remember when we were like this over Labor Day and I felt you poking at me. I kept thinking how easy it would be to just open my legs and let you in. I wanted to so much.”
“We both wanted it, but we had the good sense to wait until it was right,” I said. My hands caressed her breasts and I dipped a finger into her slit to press against her nubbin.
“Don’t rub. I just want the feeling of your cock. There’s something about this angle that really feels good. You could still touch my nipples.”
“I’m getting awfully close, Kitten,” I said. “After that incredible blow job, being in you doesn’t leave me with much self-control.”
“Don’t control too much,” she answered. “Remember the way we were on edge a couple of weeks ago? Just keep up the same pressure and speed and let’s see what happens.”
What happened was that I heard Kate suck in her breath and that high-pitched whine that she emits during orgasm. She struggled to keep her pussy from clamping down during her orgasm, but her butt cheeks were quivering against my abdomen. On the next stroke, the semen flew from my cock. I thought I was going to die. It seemed to last so long that I couldn’t stand the rub against my frenulum any longer and just froze. I just held my precious jewel against me as we drifted back into half-sleep while we were still connected to each other.
I ended up missing anatomy class.
Friday morning, I met Clarice for my weekly agent appointment at Carmine’s. The coffee bar at the restaurant is open with pastries available until the lunch crowd starts in at about eleven. I glanced around, but Wendy doesn’t usually come in on Friday mornings in time for me to see her. It’s all counter service for breakfast.
Clarice looked at my painting of Tent City and was very pleased.
“See, this is what people will want more of when they see what you do with simple shapes. I love it. What else do you have for me?”
“Well, I’m working on a series of sketches and would like to turn at least one of them into a painting, but Doc warned me I should talk to you about it first. Or at least to decide if I should exhibit it.”
“I’m not sure what subject you could paint that would be offensive,” Clarice said, “but let me see. Not pornographic is it?”
I handed the open body sketch to her.
Clarice has been a fan of my work from the first piece she saw and has also been a willing critic if she thinks something won’t sell or that I need to move to a new subject. I’d never seen her just stare at a piece and then get up and leave the table.
In the drawing, the right side of the figure shows all the back muscles as they appear after the skin is laid back. On the left side, the muscles have been carefully pulled away so the skeletal structure of the back is visible. It was my favorite drawing of the first night’s work. If Clarice couldn’t stand to look at it, then it was unlikely that she was going to be impressed with the frontal view or the sketch of the man’s face that I’d done Wednesday night.
“Please put it away, Tony,” Clarice said. I returned the drawing to my portfolio. “There are more, I presume.” I nodded. “Don’t get them out. What I’m going to tell you now is strictly as a friend. As an agent, I want everything you can produce with the biggest controversial splash that we can make. I can sell it. You’ll become famous. But that’s just it. I can sell anything and you will become famous regardless. Your fame doesn’t hinge on that painting. But people’s opinion of you as a person will. Even though it was obvious to me that this drawing was made with respect and deep emotion, our society would punish you for it.”
“That’s roughly what Doc said might happen,” I said. “He told me to talk to you.”
“Doc Henredon is a smart man as well as a talented artist. Did he talk to you about vaulting some of your paintings?”
“No. I’m not familiar with the term.”
“There are facilities that have specialized services for storing artwork. At one time, the surviving members of an artist’s family might stumble upon a few dozen canvasses in the studio that no one knew about. They might be pristine, but were often just piled against each other. They might be old rejects or new material the artist simply hadn’t shown yet. Rarely, there would be a piece identifiable as from a specific period of an artist that was previously unknown and would be worth millions. Over the past twenty-five years, the concept of putting something away for a rainy day has taken hold.”
“You mean saving some art for my estate?” I asked. I’m only twenty!
“Yes, but more than that. The world is an uncertain place. We don’t know which of your artistic periods will be the famous one yet. We don’t know how people’s tastes will change. And we don’t know how life will treat you in the future. Putting select paintings in a vault on a regular basis is simply a good backup plan, and it keeps the paintings safe. In twenty years, that drawing could be the centerpiece of a new movement where today it would only be a controversy. So paint it. Pour your soul into it. Name it. Write about it. Whatever is necessary. Then when it is cured and you’ve shown it to your closest friends and family, we’ll crate it and put it in the vault. In the future, you should vault half a dozen pieces a year.”
I reached for my Coke and saw it was empty.
“Where is Wendy when you need her?” Clarice asked. She grabbed my glass and her coffee cup and set them on the counter to be refilled. The barista handed them back.
“Um… speaking of Wendy,” I said. Clarice focused on me.
“Yes?” I wasn’t sure if I should broach the subject with her or not, but Clarice had a unique perspective on things and I knew she genuinely liked Wendy.
“Do you know about her current living arrangement?” I asked.
“She says she has a temporary place of her own and will be moving to a new room after the first of the year,” Clarice said. “That girl has had a difficult time of things. She hasn’t moved back with the so-called boyfriend, has she?”
“No. Nothing like that. I can’t really tell you where she’s living. I know she’s sensitive about it. But I worry about her. She’s safe as far as I can tell. I try to talk to her every week and I know Kate sees her more often. But we’ve got a room in our house with a semi-private bath that we could give her. I mean rent to her. I’d just like to know she’s safe. I don’t know what it is, but she makes me feel like a mother hen.”
“You’ve got a big heart, Tony. I’ll do some investigating to see what rooms cost these days. It would be good for Wendy to live among people who respect her and care for her. If she asks my opinion, I’ll be inclined to agree that you have a good alternative.”
“Thanks, Clarice.”
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