Art Critic
5
Emerging
THAT WASN’T THE END of our problems. It wasn’t the end of the blackness or depression or anxiety or panic. It didn’t heal the rift between Annette and Morgan. It didn’t bring us all back to the same bed.
It gave us a ray of hope to hang onto.
Annette continued to live with her parents and Morgan continued to sleep in the guestroom downstairs. Annette returned to our group at lunch and took me home each evening. On the weekend, she returned to the studio to do her reading and writing. Morgan returned her laptop to her desk in the studio and worked there.
Working together—sharing the space—was a step in our recovery. And we were not alone. Kendra returned with clay and sat at her workstation. The first weekend we were all together, we hardly spoke, each absorbed in our own projects. Les came to the studio and worked with Morgan on evaluating potential outlets for our art and writing. I painted. Kendra sculpted. Annette wrote.
Mavis stayed away. I’d heard her whisper to Kendra that she was afraid she would widen the rift between Morgan, Annette, and me instead of helping heal it.
“Do you mind if I bring a model to the studio tomorrow?” Kendra asked Annette and me. I shrugged my agreement. Annette said ‘okay’ and we left it at that.
Saturday morning, Susan rang our doorbell and immediately went to the studio and undressed. Kendra positioned her in the seated pose she wanted and they settled in to work. Susan seemed to glance my direction repeatedly, but she didn’t say anything to anyone but Kendra. I considered switching projects and trying to paint from a live model for a minute. But I was working on a particularly intense dreamscape that I’d sketched months before. I’d remembered the sketch that I called simply, ‘Need.’ It was when I’d first discovered I was needed. I still didn’t understand it. I returned my focus to my painting and didn’t even realize when everyone else left.
It was nearing the end of our semester when Kendra carted in a huge plaster model of her premier work, Mavis and me. Mavis came in behind her.
“Arthur, we need you to pose with Mavis again so Morgan and I can capture the aura interaction,” Kendra said. “You said you’d do it and I’m almost finished with welding the bronze casting. I want to start on the glass work as soon as the patina is finished.”
I was a little irritated because I was painting one of my own renditions of Mavis. It was difficult because I didn’t like seeing her black like that. It was the same reason I never painted Annette or Morgan. I thought that if I used one of the early reclining nude sketches I’d done, I could possibly train myself to see past the blackness to the radiance I knew was there. Then I would be able to paint my lovers.
At least I thought they were still my lovers. We had only shared a bed once since mid-October and that was painful for all of us. Still, I felt my heart and soul were connected to Morgan and Annette. I still couldn’t define the connection I felt to Mavis.
The object of my fantasies, and model for the painting I was working on, gave Morgan and Annette each a hug and then approached me. I kept my eyes closed behind the dark glasses. I’d only seen her in class since the darkness settled in and I’d treated her remotely, never saying anything. I was pretty sure I’d destroyed whatever relationship we might have had.
She stood beside me looking at the painting I was working on. She was quiet and I felt the other three women gather behind us. Mavis moved up against me and turned to hug me to her. Her head rested on my chest and I could feel her tears as they soaked into my T-shirt.
“I’m so sorry, Artie,” she whispered. “I never intended to do this to you. I’m so sorry.”
“Um… uh… Lowen… Lowenstein,” I managed to get out. How did Mavis figure any of this was her fault? It was Lowenstein calling me the Kinkade of draped nudes. Telling me he was disappointed. Me, knowing that my happiness had destroyed my art and then sacrificing my happiness to paint again. Me. It was all about how I responded.
“You can take criticism, Artie. You know that not everyone sees the same things you do. You know people’s tastes differ,” she said.
Well, yes, I guess so. I know that I responded differently when Ms. Clayborn had told me that all my seventeen years of accumulated artwork was just rough sketches that I should start painting. I’d taken detention for over six months in her classroom and produced work that got me accepted to the university. What was different about her criticism than about Dr. Lowenstein’s?
“What you can’t take is ambiguity,” Mavis continued. “Uncertainty. Tension. Not trusting the people around you. Not trusting me.”
“I trust you,” I said. My arms went around her and I held her close.
“Do you trust me enough to look into my eyes?” she asked. She led me over to the daybed that Kendra had arranged in our setting. She began undressing her perfect black body with its sleek black lines and perfect black breasts. Black on black. Morgan came to me and helped me out of my T-shirt and jeans. She reached for my briefs and I caught her hand.
“It’s okay, Pen,” she whispered. “We agreed. We just want you healed. Whatever happens, it’s okay.” I released her hand and she lowered my briefs. She hugged me and led me to my position next to where Mavis already lay stretched out on the daybed. I settled next to her and leaned in to put my hand on her side. Her hand slid up my arm. I leaned in the way I remembered. Only my flaccid cock was different than the last time we had embraced on this bed. Mavis pulled my dark glasses off and handed them to Annette. My eyes were still closed as her hand touched my cheek and pulled me toward her.
“There,” Kendra said. “That’s the right position.”
“Open your eyes, lover,” Mavis said. “Open them and see how much I love you.”
My breath caught. She’d said that? In front of my lovers.
I slowly raised my eyelids—just slits at first. Everything black on black. Perfectly visible, perfectly shaped, perfectly normal black.
And then I met her eyes. The perfect black orbs of her irises beneath her perfect black brows and forehead. Her look bored into me. Someplace in the back of her eyes a flame started and grew from a black ember to a red flame to a white-hot glow. The black began to recede and I saw the depth of her blue eyes and the love shining there. A ray of hope was offered and I accepted it.
“I love you,” I said.
I heard a soft gasp from Annette, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Mavis. Her eyes were the only spot of color in my black and black world. They transfixed me.
“There! Yes!” my sister cried. She started mumbling to Kendra about the tendrils and the focus and other stuff I couldn’t understand and I knew that Kendra was busy molding clay between her fingers and applying it to the plaster cast. I could still hear Annette sniffling quietly from her writing corner but I couldn’t go to her. It wasn’t that Kendra and Morgan would be upset about interrupting the pose while I comforted my lover, but it was like being fixed with Medusa’s eyes. I was frozen in place and could not look away.
And in that look… there was so much love that it was painful. Such heat that it was thawing my own emotions and opening me to an even wider world than I had ever known. As bleak and black as my world had been in the past months, the contrast was like looking at one of those fantasy movies with a vivid fairyland of color.
But I could only see that world through the gateway of Mavis’s eyes. I wondered if what I was seeing through that opening was what Morgan and Mom and Gramma saw all the time. I wasn’t prepared for this. I was sure that if that was what I saw all the time, I’d never be able to paint again. Pigments have never been a match for the brilliance of light.
I fell forward onto Mavis, drawn by her insistent tugging. We’d been posing over two hours without a break, lost in our own world. We’d hugged before, our naked bodies pressed tightly in our embrace. We’d kissed each other on the cheek when we met or parted, but never anything like the deep passionate kiss we indulged in now.
I’d never caressed her breasts. Never opened my mouth to her tongue. Never felt the dampness of her sex.
“I guess I’m not needed anymore,” Annette said. “Have a nice life.”
I looked up to see her gathering her books and writing. What? My Lady is leaving? No!
“No!” I croaked. “Don’t leave!”
“You’ve found your voice?” Annette scoffed. She glowed softly as I looked at her. The blackness had not entirely receded, but I could see the glow around her breast. No. The glow from her heart.
“You don’t understand, sweetheart,” Morgan said. “He’s healing. Whatever has had him encapsulated the past two months is dissolving. Mavis breached the gap.”
“Why?” Annette demanded. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Why couldn’t you have done that with me? Why couldn’t you have looked into my eyes and shown that kind of love? I can’t see auras like you can, Morgan, but I can see what’s right in front of my eyes. They’re in love. I haven’t seen a look like that from Art in months. I haven’t even seen it from you.”
Annette was sobbing and pushed Morgan away from her. Kendra had shrunk back against the wall where she was sealing up her supplies. Mavis pushed me away and stood in all her regal beauty. She stalked toward Annette and my lover shrank before her gaze.
“Undress,” Mavis commanded. She didn’t wait for Annette to obey her. She began pulling clothes off her, and none too gently. Morgan seemed to sense the importance of what was happening and rushed to help Mavis undress Annette as the two girls stared at each other. Kendra was sealing up her last container when I walked up to her. I was still naked and erect when I turned her to face me and pulled her into my arms. She gasped as I kissed her deeply.
“Clay,” I said. “Sculpt it.” We turned toward the three girls. Morgan had not hesitated to undress as well. Annette was lying back in Morgan’s arms on the daybed and Mavis hovered over her. Her thigh was pressed between Annette’s legs. Their eyes were locked on each other and I could barely detect Annette breathing. Kendra immediately opened the clay bucket and began pressing a small lump into the shapes she saw in front of her.
I skipped my sketchpad and put a canvas board on my easel.
Black paint went onto my canvas in globs that I began to work and shape into the intense and erotic scene before me.
As the shapes came to life in front of me, I began to see a new dimension. Something was pushing at the darkness. Light and color. I stumbled as I rushed to get other paints from my drawer. I hadn’t used a tube of color in over two months, but now I needed to scrape away some of the blackness and make room for brilliant dabs of yellow and red. It illuminated the faces of the three girls as they connected in the blackness.
Light—pushing away at the blackness. Light—illuminating faces and souls. Light—warming the desolate landscape of my mind, my heart.
I don’t know how Mavis could stand to hold the pose for so long. She’d posed with me for two hours without a break and went directly to this pose with Annette and Morgan. What I saw, after an hour of working as quickly as I could, was the pose gradually morph to something else. It was the hand position first. Morgan’s hand sliding around to cup Annette’s breast. Annette’s fingers resting gently against Mavis’s nipple. Mavis’s hand moving slowly up the inside of Annette’s thigh.
I abandoned my painting, having captured the essence of the scene and moved to my black pastel pad. I used a black crayon to capture the positions and then filled in the bright spots with intense colored pastels. All three of the faces were closer together than I’d captured in the painting. The glow I’d first seen around Annette’s heart intensified, as did a new glow that seemed to illuminate Mavis’s hand as it moved toward Annette’s pussy. Morgan’s right hand left Annette’s breast and moved to Mavis’s cheek. Annette’s hand trailed down Mavis’s torso to the glow of her pussy.
I don’t know how they could manage it, but the three girls were making love in something like slow motion. Annette had one hand behind her and I knew it was creeping toward Morgan’s sex with the same inexorable snail-pace I witnessed between Mavis and Annette. I laid down my pastels and pushed my rolling stool back to where Kendra was working. Her clay rested, the shape of the lovers in front of us hewn into the soft material. I reached for her hand and discovered that Kendra had stripped her own clothes off as we watched the scene before us unfold. She rolled closer to me and guided my hand to her inner thigh as hers crept toward my still-erect cock. We were caught in the unhurried orgy before us.
When the climax came, it hit us all. There may have been an order to the gasps and cries, but I couldn’t define it. Kendra’s hand wrapped around my cock and the eruption was so strong I nearly passed out. I don’t think I’d come since the darkness took me. At the same time, my hand was flooded with Kendra’s juices as my fingers steeped deeply in her clutching pussy. Somehow, Annette, Morgan, and Mavis had managed to have all their lips and tongues together as they cried out their orgasms to each other.
“I love you!” Annette cried out. “Oh god! How could I not love you?” Annette shifted out of the entanglement with Mavis and Morgan, leaving them to kiss each other. She reached Kendra and me in three steps. Kendra still had her hand wrapped around my unflagging but very messy cock. Annette straddled me and Kendra held me erect so she could sink down on me. Annette kissed me. “I love you.” She turned to Kendra, who had not completely removed her hand and held her fingers against Annette’s pussy where we were connected. Annette caressed Kendra’s breast and let her hand drift down to join mine as they kissed. “I love you,” Annette repeated, looking into Kendra’s eyes.
Kendra’s fingers turned to stimulate Annette’s clit as Annette returned the favor, my fingers still fucking deeply into Kendra. It took us all a little longer in terms of the time we were touching before I felt my cock swelling inside my Lady as she and Kendra stiffened. I could feel each spurt as it splashed back against me from deep inside my lover. We heard Morgan and Mavis both cry out again, but were too caught up in the kiss and caress we were in to turn our heads.
“Are we better now?” Fay asked as she cuddled Lady and me in our bed. Mavis and Kendra had long since left and the three of us went straight to bed. I felt so incredibly fulfilled when I entered my sister and made love to her as Annette kissed and petted us both.
“I’m still ashamed of how I reacted,” my Lady said. “And how I’ve acted the past couple of months. I love you both so much! I felt like everything had come unraveled and my world was ending. I’m so sorry.” I reached for her as I slid out of Fay. I just held her in my arms and Fay pressed against her from the other side.
“Sorry. Me. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh, my love, it’s not your fault,” Annette said.
“I’m so glad Mavis was able to break through what you were feeling,” Morgan added. I snorted. “What?”
“You both made love. To her. But I didn’t.”
“Are you kidding? You’ve been making love to her ever since Kendra started her project,” Morgan laughed. “I could see it last summer. But if you mean letting your hard cock slide into her hot wet pussy, I don’t think you’ll have to wait that much longer.”
“Don’t need to,” I said. “I love you.”
“You love her, too,” Annette said. “We can all see it. Including her.”
“But… I… I treasure you,” I said, pressing my lips firmly against hers. In a moment, her lips parted and we lost ourselves in the sheer pleasure of reunion of our bodies and spirits.
I thought about it. My treasures. The darkness. Light. I could still only focus on their faces. They were luminous. But everything else was still black. Unless they were aroused. Then I could see the heat emanating from their vaginas and their breasts. When my face was there, I could see the hot pink flesh that opened to invite my invading tongue. But everything else was still black. It wasn’t only their faces that I could see. Kendra glowed as well. And not just her face. Sometimes the heat from her sex outshone everything else. I could see Mom’s face and Dad’s. It was a relief. Gramma’s face glowed, but it was duller than the others. I thought that might be because I had less contact with her than the others. Or maybe it was just because she was old.
In school, there were hints of color with certain classmates and professors the last few days of class. Not everyone, though. Most of what I saw was still black on black. On the last day before break, Mavis caught up with me and took my hand as I crossed campus. I hadn’t seen her since our posing a week before. I was heading somewhere, but forgot where when she held my hand. We just wandered around the campus together. She talked about plans for the winter break—heading to the mountains in Colorado with her family to ski. She asked if I was painting. Finally, she pulled me to a stop at the corner of a building. The campus was quiet with snow about three inches deep around us. Most students had already left for the break. She pulled my face to her and took off the sunglasses that I continued to wear.
“Look at me, Artie,” she whispered. I was caught again in the blue depths of her eyes. My vision expanded and I could see her pale red lips as they approached mine and we kissed. “I want you to know that it’s real, Artie. I love you. I don’t know what that will mean to us in the future. I’m never going to take you away from Morgan and Annette. Or Kendra. I love each of them in their own way. But it’s important for you to remember this spark between us and keep it alive. It’s important to keep healing. When I look into your eyes, I see more than the lover I dream of. I see your genius shining through. I see your love, compassion, passion, creativity, intelligence, and artistry. Your seed is just beginning to germinate. Let it grow.” She kissed me again and I was lost in her love. I wasn’t whole, but I was healing.
I took that feeling with me as I went Christmas shopping. I needed to let it grow.
“Is the darkness gone now, Pen?” Fay whispered to me as we lay in bed on Christmas Eve. Annette lifted on one elbow to look at me as I shook my head.
“Better. Not gone.”
“I listened to Mom and Gramma talk about it while we were in the kitchen today,” Fay continued. “I just don’t understand. I know that if I no longer saw auras, I would miss it. Life would seem somehow flatter. But I would still see. You went around with a blindfold on—like you were afraid to see. It’s good to see your eyes again.”
“Black,” I said so softly that Morgan and Annette moved closer to hear. It had taken me so long to speak that they might have thought I’d gone to sleep. “Everything is black. I couldn’t bear to look at you and only see black on black.”
“Oh my god!”
“I could still see every detail. I could see the shape of your face and every stray wisp of hair. But it was all black.”
“Like your paintings,” Morgan whispered. I nodded. Annette sat straight up in bed.
“Show me!” she whisper-shouted. “I can’t believe what a terrible girlfriend I’ve been. To both of you. I glanced and saw you with black paint and it broke my heart. But I never looked at the painting you did. Show me.”
“It’s just black,” Morgan said as she moved more slowly out of bed than Annette and me.
Annette turned on the lights as I put the first black painting I’d done of Susan on the easel. I stood back and Morgan stood beside me contemplating the painting as she usually did. Annette looked at it closely and turned her back on it. She paced around the room ignoring the painting and then spun to stare at it from a different angle. She even crept behind the easel and put her head around it to look closely at the painting from the side.
“Brilliant,” she whispered.
“It’s black,” Morgan responded. “I know there were artists a few years ago who painted a whole canvas one color and people fawned over it, but I don’t think I can sell a black canvas in today’s market.”
“You can’t see it?” Annette exclaimed. “Oh, Fay! Don’t make me doubt what I see. The canvas isn’t flat black. I can see the entire scene. As you shift perspective it changes and I can see the folds of the draperies. I can see every goose bump on Susan’s skin.”
“Susan?”
“That’s what this is. Pen painted a portrait of Susan standing at the window draped in satin. I can see it clearly.” I nodded at Annette and Morgan started examining the painting more closely. She scrunched up her nose and squinted her eyes.
“I can see the different textures, I guess,” she said. “But I can’t quite see the image. It gets overwhelmed by the blackness.” She paused and then spun to look at me. “That’s what you meant! Overwhelmed by the blackness. The details, shapes, textures are all there, but they are overwhelmed by the blackness! Oh, Pen! I’m so sorry. I’m sure the reason I can’t see the scene Annette sees is because I’m overwhelmed by the blackness. It is like half my senses are missing when I look at it. Oh my god! I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Not your fault,” I said. “I love you.”
“And I love you,” she said, hugging herself to me. Annette embraced the two of us together. “Not sorry because I did something, but sorry because I didn’t understand what you were going through. I couldn’t see it. I should have seen it.”
“We’ll be okay,” Annette whispered, comforting us both. “Are they all black on black, Pen?” I released my lovers and uncovered the painting I did the day of our silent orgy, as I’d started calling it. It, too, was black on black, but the darkness had been pushed away by the glowing faces and sex of the three women. Annette continued her catlike approach to viewing the artwork, but Morgan sagged against me.
“You saw it! You saw the aura. That is what Kendra and I have been trying to capture in 3-D. That is what I see.”
“It’s just your normal faces,” I said. “Not auras. I just couldn’t see anything else. Except your sex and love. I could see that.”
“That’s what I mean,” Morgan said. “This must be much closer to the way Mom sees the world. I see the physical, surrounded by the aura. Mom can’t see the physical unless it’s inanimate. Anything living, she sees just the aura. I don’t know why you only see the illumination of the aura in faces and passion, but what you are thinking of as physical is the aura illuminating it.”
“I’m going to be like Mom? I don’t think I can do that. I’m not going to live that way!” Thinking that I might never see the real world again had my heart racing and I was on the verge of full-blown panic.
“Shh. Lover, be patient. We don’t know that. You have faced the blackness and are emerging. We will help you face what comes next,” Annette whispered.
“I don’t know what comes next, but Gramma might. We need to talk to her tomorrow. She saw her brother face the darkness. I wish they’d warned us.”
“But my art…” I started.
“I don’t know how I’ll market it, but I’ll find a way,” Morgan said.
“It’s post-digital,” Annette said. “You were close to it when we were in detention in high school. Here you’ve broken through. This can’t be reproduced either in print or digitally.”
“Why not?” Morgan asked.
“The whole painting outside the glowing portions is the same color black. When you stand in front of it, you can see the shapes and textures that make up the painting. In fact, it is amazingly three-dimensional. But you can’t layer black on black in print and see anything. It would be what you initially saw, Morgan. Just black. And digitally it is worse. Televisions and computer monitors can’t display black. Even when the monitor is turned off, it isn’t black. The only reason we think we see black is by contrast to lighter areas around it. Digitally, not only is there no way to show simple black, but it would be more impossible, if that’s a thing, to show black on black. I’m sure someone will invent a technique that creates an optical illusion that mimics the effect. But there is no way to reproduce what Pen has done in paint. I doubt that Mavis would even be able to photograph it.”
“Is this what we look like to you now?” Morgan asked. “Do you see the glow of our auras in our faces?” I nodded. “Then take me to bed and love me again. And remind me when she gets back to make love to Mavis again. All of us.”
Our little family gathered together on Christmas morning with hot chocolate and mimosas to exchange our gifts with each other. Our tradition was that we gave each person in the family one gift. Our operating rule was that no matter how much the gift cost, it needed to mean something special between the giver and receiver. We really had to give a lot of thought to it and I was glad that I had recovered enough that I could shop for my loved ones.
My mother loved photographs because when she looked at them, she felt like she saw the world like other people saw it. It was inanimate. We’d only recently begun to discover the world that Mom saw when Kendra began sculpting it. I convinced Morgan and Annette to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall while I leaned over his shoulder for a picture. I took it to a framer and presented it to my mother on Christmas morning. She hugged me.
Dad was surprised to receive a basketball. The hoop and backboard were in the garage. He looked at me a little puzzled. Neither one of us was very athletic and in all my growing up years, we’d never done any sports.
“Um… Dad, maybe we’re too old to do little kid stuff, but would you teach me to shoot hoops?” My dad cried.
Of course, buying something for my two girlfriends was always tricky. I didn’t always get them the same thing, but tried to make sure it was something they each wanted and that showed our special connection. I wasn’t rich, but I had money from a couple of big sales.
When Annette and Morgan opened their gifts, they both gasped at the simple necklaces. I had found matching teardrop onyxes and had them hung from silver chains.
“So beautiful, my love!” Annette said. “And I love the heart! Black on black.”
“What heart?” Morgan said. She looked at both sides of the gemstone.
“For you… I made it so you could feel it. Touch,” I said. She ran her thumb across the smooth surface of the stone.
“It’s engraved! I feel it! It is a heart!” While Annette kissed me, Morgan ran to show Mom and had her feel the engraving on the stone. Then she returned and kissed me.
“So, you know how I see,” I said. “Maybe we should sell my art to blind people and they can just touch it.”
Morgan snorted so suddenly snot shot out of her nose. We got cleaned up quickly and set about getting ready for Christmas dinner with the family.
“It took nearly two years for my brother to return to what he then called normal vision,” Gramma said at the dinner table. There was a large enough gathering that the table naturally broke into small conversation groups rather than attempting to include the entire table in everything. At one end, Mom presided with Gramma and Grampa to her right. Morgan, Annette, and I were on her left. Next to Annette were her mother and father and then Dad at the head of the table. Across sat her grandparents. I occasionally caught a flash of color as Grampa leaned to his right and spoke softly to Annette’s grandmother. Gramma continued.
“My mother was still alive and he lived with her. I think one of the reasons it took so long for him to recover is that he didn’t have anyone else in his life. Gerald and I had moved away so he could start his legal practice. John never had a girlfriend and seemed unable to relate to women at all except Mother and me. Mother knew about the darkness, but there hadn’t been a male child in the previous generation, so she had no direct experience. We’d all experienced a period of darkness, though. I believe if he had had a love in his life like you three have, he would have recovered much more quickly. That’s certainly what helped both your mother and me through our darkness.”
“When do the women go through the darkness?” Morgan asked. She was frightened.
“Well, three generations of us went through it during childbirth,” Gramma said. Morgan shivered. “With you, we don’t know since your gift is slightly different. Just know we are here to support you and that you will recover.”
“So… I’ll see again?” I suppose there was more pleading in my voice than I intended. Both Annette and Morgan reached out to squeeze my thighs.
“I think you already see,” Gramma said. “You’ve just yet to open your eyes.”
“I bought necklaces for Mavis and Kendra,” I said in one breath after I’d rehearsed it a dozen times. “Important.”
“Like ours?” Morgan whispered as we lay in bed. Neither of them had taken their new jewelry off since the gifts were opened in the morning. I shook my head.
“Not exactly. But… they are important. Kendra and Mavis. Maybe Susan, too.” I hadn’t wrapped the necklaces for the other two because I wanted Annette and Morgan to know exactly what I’d decided to give our friends. The stones were the same teardrop shape as theirs. To me, they all looked pretty much the same. The jeweler selected the stones the way I described them. Kendra’s was green jasper. Morgan grinned.
“Dark greenish-brown—just like her aura.”
The stone I picked for Mavis in the same shape was carnelian.
“This is like her aura, too, isn’t it, Morgan? The red almost glows.” Annette asked. Morgan nodded. She ran her fingers over the stones.
“Why aren’t they engraved?” she asked.
“Um… Not like you,” I managed.
“No. But you do love them,” Annette breathed. “We all do. I think they should have a part of your heart, too.” I knew it took a lot for Annette to say that. She was still a little jealous that Mavis had awakened some of my color vision when she hadn’t. At the same time, Annette was as in love with our blonde friend as I was.
“Yes,” Morgan agreed. “Can you have them engraved like you did the onyx, Pen? We’ll help pay for it so the necklaces would be from all three of us. If you’d like.” I nodded and took my lovers back to bed for Christmas loving.
Two days after Christmas I got a surprise call from Susan. I hadn’t seen her since she posed for Kendra just after Thanksgiving. And I hadn’t really paid attention to her then. I’d been focused on a dreamscape all in black.
“’Lo?”
“Art, I’m bored and frustrated. Can I come and pose for you? Please?”
“Um… Yeah, I guess.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour. Thanks.”
I turned to my lovers. They were sitting on Annette’s reading couch looking at me.
“That was a short conversation,” Annette said. I looked at my phone.
“Susan is coming over to pose,” I said. I was still looking at my phone like it had just betrayed me. Susan hadn’t posed for me since she and Zen actually broke up. I wondered if I would see any color when Susan posed or if I would only see black. I didn’t know how Morgan and Annette would react. They whispered together for a moment.
“What a great idea, lover,” Morgan said. “You need to start working with other models again. I wonder if that cute redhead Casey would come to model again.”
“I think we should go shopping today,” Annette said. “We could take the pendants for Mavis and Kendra to the jeweler and have them engraved. Maybe we’ll spot something nice for Susan.”
“Don’t um…” What were they talking about? They never left when I had a model. It was something about chaperoning so no one could make claims against me. And Morgan always wanted to see the interaction of auras.
“We won’t buy anything until we find out more about her,” Morgan said. “It will be exciting to see what color springs out from her to you and from where.”
“But you always stay,” I said. This was a change and I don’t like change. I don’t think I’d ever been alone with Susan. She seemed to enjoy having other people around when she posed. In fact, the only models I’d ever been alone with were Annette, Morgan, Kendra, and Mavis. Annette came to me and held me tightly.
“My love,” she sighed. “We’ve learned a lot in the past three months. We almost broke up because none of us knew how to be individuals or couples. When you were… remote… Morgan and I fought. We want to spend time together when we know we’ll be back.”
“Have you noticed that Annette and I each spent time with you as just a couple this month?” Morgan asked. “We want to develop our ‘couple’ relationship with you in addition to our ‘triple’ relationship. We want to do that with each other, too.”
“One thing we learned in developing couples was that we had to develop ‘single’ relationships with ourselves. We’ve all defined ourselves in terms of our relationship as a group. We haven’t taken time to figure out who we are as individuals,” Annette said. “That includes you. During the time of complete darkness, you couldn’t even look at us. And by the looks of your beard, I’d guess you haven’t shaved now in three months.” My hand reflexively went to my face to feel the rather weak and wispy beard I’d grown. “You haven’t looked in a mirror in all that time, have you, Pen?” I tried to remember. I showered every day. I brushed my long hair straight back. I brushed my teeth. But I couldn’t remember looking in the mirror.
“I used to believe that when you were upset or anxious, you locked yourself inside so you only had to deal with you,” Morgan said. “I’ve come to believe that you lock yourself out instead. Believe me, neither my Lady nor I are telling you to fuck Susan. But if you do, we’re not worried or upset. It might even be comforting if you do it with Susan before you make love to Mavis. Then we’ll know that you’ll come back to us.”
“The important thing, my love, is that you simply enjoy your experience with posing Susan this afternoon. Pose, paint, play. Maybe it will open some more color for you,” Annette said.
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