She sat in the first row of tables in the smoky basement room in the Village on both evenings I was reciting my poetry. I was a painter really—a portraitist mostly of real life, its sensuality. I was compared—or at least I compared myself when asked—to Whistler or Renoir in my use of rich colors and lush settings to set off the sensuality of the human body. But I wasn't confined by the Victorian conventions that, I believe, had limited these artists' works. Often when I looked at a Whistler or Renoir portrait—of perhaps a woman in a brightly painted kimono resting on a daybed—I looked into her face and divined that the artist had painted her right after he'd fucked her, his semen still floating in her eyes and her mouth puckered in the recent memory of the shape and movement of his cock.
I endeavored to capture this mood earlier in multiple art forms—while she—or he, if the mood struck me—was still being fucked. My art thus took on an even greater dimension, and I took it all very seriously indeed. I didn't paint this way just to have frequent free fucks; I was developing a whole new art form. And that girl in the first row of tables had a face that was perfect for my art.
It was fortunate that she liked my poetry so well—that my poetry recitation in that smoky basement room in the Village aroused her to wanting to fuck me. I knew she wanted it because she put the moves on. I was content to go home to Jules and paint this young woman just from memory. She didn't move me enough to ache for the full use of my technique. A memory portrait could suffice. But I could go either way with that. I wasn't a fanatic about my art; it was comfort rather than an obsession for me.
I stood down from the stool in the center of the bare wooden stage to the sound of applause scattered around the room that was all the more satisfying because many present were too stoned to know they even were there, let alone that a poetry reading had ended. And those who were fully conscious were dulled by the clouds of marijuana smoke swirling about them. As I brushed past her table, she tugged on my arm and arrested my movement.
"That was simply marvelous," she said. "That went straight to the center of me. I feel so open and wet. Wasn't that simply wonderful and sensuous, Petey?" While still clawing at my sleeve, she had turned to the young man sitting beside her—or, rather, who was slouched in the chair beside her. I could tell from his eyes that he wasn't fully here. In any event, he didn't respond. He probably wasn't tuned in on her frequency anymore. He had likely brought her here because she told him she melted to poetry—which he otherwise wouldn't be seen dead in association with—and he thought he might get lucky with her afterward on my preparation. I was amused by the thought that I was probably the one who would be reaping what I had sowed for him. Ah, well, his loss; he needed to learn how to use drugs rather than be used by them.
"How open? How wet?" I asked, leaning down toward her. I saw no reason to be coy under the circumstances. I had already nearly passed by her chair, and the angle at which she had clutched one of my arms permitted my other arm to come around her shoulder. I slipped a hand under her arm pit and palmed a breast. She wasn't wearing anything under her cotton blouse, and I verified her arousal from the feel of her hardened nipple. I squeezed her breast, and she shuddered appreciatively and pushed into my hand. I leaned farther down, lost in those flashing eyes of hers, already reaching in my mind for my paints, and she brought her lips up to mine and opened to my tongue. There was no doubt she was mine to fuck.
Petey didn't seem to mind or even to notice.
"Do you live nearby?" she asked breathlessly when I released her lips. "My name is Juliet—I assume the program is accurate and your name is Jim. Do you want to make love to me, Jim? I mean for real? You have already made me melt with your poetry. It's as if I've already given myself to you."
I did want to paint her, and I guess that meant I wanted to fuck her as well. Jules would not be pleased. But Jules had not been pleased many times before and yet he was still with me. And there was my art. Fucking went with my art.
"I'll take you home and fuck you if you let me paint you," I answered.
"You want to paint me?" Juliet said with a little gasp. I could tell that the idea of this was even more arousing to her than my poetry was.
"Yes, in every way," I answered.
Juliet was quite surprised when she later learned what "in every way" meant, but she was so aroused and curious that she didn't hesitate in the least. She merely rose from the table, without another glance at the semicomatose Petey, and preceded me up the stairs to the street. I guided her with a hand on her buttocks that made quite clear that she at least temporarily was mine.
She stripped for me in my studio loft apartment, under the skylight with a strong afternoon sunlight streaming onto my daybed. I wrapped her in an orange and purple kimono and arranged her on the daybed, supine, with the kimono open to reveal her ample breasts, nipples erect, and her naked, shaved cunt.
I then did a baseline sketch on the canvas, leaving the face blank, and set up the cameras, both video and still, and set the timer on the three still cameras set on high tripods at various angles around the daybed so that they would snap off photos at fifteen second intervals for an hour. I then brought my paints, pallet, and brushes together near the foot of the daybed and brought over a low easel and rested the canvas, with its basic sketching of the lines, scale, and perspective of Juliet's partially draped body, on the easel.