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Synopsis: A woman of society learns unexpected lessons in a life drawing class.
Watching her stick of charcoal crawl across the sheet of drawing paper was the visual equivalent of a fingernail on chalkboard. Every one of her lines or smudges looked jarring, or out of place, or lost. Which exactly mirrored her state of mind.
She had expected some kind of direction, at least a word or two about the materials or what they were trying to accomplish with this first drawing. Instead, the instructor gave no preliminary lecture, no instruction of any kind. They were asked to set their drawing pads upon one of the many freestanding easels in the room, then take out a stick of vine charcoal. The next thing she knew she was staring at a lovely young woman casually disrobing on a model stand. They had fifteen minutes to draw the model as accurately as they could.
Accurately? Catherine glanced at the deformed representation of a human being on her sheet of paper and then back at the model, who was a knock-out. The model sat almost demurely on a simple wooden chair, her back straight, her legs together. In Catherine’s drawing, every joint on the poor girl was misaligned and somehow flattened, as though the model had been hastily reassembled after dueling with the front of an oncoming bus. Maybe a figure drawing class had been a bad idea. Her level of natural talent was probably too small to be measured, and she could already see that she had no beginner’s luck.
A quick scan of the room told her that she wasn’t the only one having trouble. A diverse class, as she had expected on a weekday afternoon. There were an even dozen students, more women than men, the youngest looked to be nineteen and the oldest, a tall frail-looking man, had to be pushing eighty. Getting his geezer kicks by staring at the naked model? He was scowling, though — in fact, most of the students were scowling as they drew. She couldn’t see the other students’ first efforts, but she didn’t need to. Hers would not be the only drawing that was a mess.
Catherine’s eyes wandered to their teacher, Pierce West. He was tall and lean with greenish eyes and a wonderfully chiseled jaw. Thirty years old, tops, but he projected a quiet sort of maturity and confidence just by the way he moved around the room. Fairly new to the city, Catherine had learned from one of the other students, and well credentialed, with a BFA from Cranbrook and an MFA from Yale. He showed his work at a gallery in Chelsea and his paintings fetched prices approaching six figures.
Catherine returned to her hopeless drawing, trying to perform some sort of miracle surgery by lengthening one charcoal leg while shortening the other. She blew out a puff of air in frustration, as every correction just made matters worse.
At the end of their fifteen minutes of drawing shame, the students were gathered together with their pale efforts on their laps. At Pierce’ instigation, they discussed what they had learned.
“I learned that I can’t draw at all!” a young woman offered.
“I was afraid to make mistakes,” another woman followed. “But there were nothing but mistakes — it was unnerving!”
“I learned that I still like to look at the ladies,” the old man proclaimed, and everyone had a good laugh.
“What you all confronted was uncertainty and maybe even some fear,” their teacher suggested. “How many of you had anxiety about what the others would think of your drawing?”
All hands raised.
“How many of you felt the need to get things ‘right’, even though you knew you couldn’t?”
Most hands raised.
“How many of you felt discomfort at seeing the model disrobe?”
A few hands raised, and Catherine noted that her own hand was among them.
Pierce gave them an outline of the course and what he hoped they would accomplish in the short time allowed: Five sessions in all — after this introductory class, they would meet three times the following week, working intensively with the model every time. A short break would follow, to allow them to draw outside of the classroom environment, and then a final class the following week.
And what were they trying to achieve? A sense of exploration as opposed to striving for perfection, a willingness to find their own creative “voices” over trying to draw like some artist they admired. Interpretation over emulation — the goal was not to copy what they saw in front of them, but to reach inside both the model and themselves, to arrive at something authentic. Making mistakes was okay and even necessary, because drawing was primarily a deep search, a search for freedom and truth.
Catherine liked the teacher and the atmosphere he was trying to create. She especially loved his voice — its tones were rich and soothing, with a natural singsong lilt that brought back memories of fairy tales being read to her as a child. She began to feel a bit sleepy and was almost thankful when Pierce asked them to close their eyes for what he described as “a kind of guided meditation”, to relax them and focus their concentration. It was more New Age-y than she had expected in a figure drawing class, but Pierce obviously had a plan, a favored method of teaching.
She shut her eyes and listened to her teacher’s voice, steady yet melodic, telling them to relax, to breathe normally yet with attention on the breath. Catherine felt a little silly at first. Whatever you called these sorts of things — meditation or contemplation or relaxation techniques — they smelled of wishful thinking. Soon, however, she sensed the air entering and leaving her lungs, felt Pierce’ words calmly slipping into her ears, and her skepticism seemed to slide right off of her body, puddling invisibly beneath her chair. She breathed in the voice, and breathed out all tensions, in and out, in and out.... It was such a full voice, so round and compelling. And she did feel unusually relaxed, and open, almost embracing every word, every pause, falling into every silence…
No, she wouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes. And yes, they were all there to do more than draw, they were there to learn about themselves, going beyond what they thought they already knew. The human body was beautiful, and all that she was, all of her creative energy, was already known to the body, was known to her body. The hand and the charcoal in the hand was an extension of the body, and the body was the container of all the creative energy they had within themselves. The body’s knowledge is fluid, slipping between the cracks in the walls that the mind erects.
Yes, drawing could be hard, it could be very hard. Sometimes you could go right at something, but with drawing it was different. More often than not you had to submit to unseen currents that carried you along. It was all about flowing, and if she submitted to these steady currents, she could work indirectly to get what she wanted, teasing things out, stimulating them until everything came together. You never knew when you might be flooded with creative energy, might even be poised to explode with creative energy. She had to allow her ordinary mind to stay out of the way, giving in to the creative juices so that everything could flow.
She needed to trust her body. Her vision would gradually become more focused, her hands more intuitive. Her eyes and her hands would lead the way, revealing new truths while guiding her forward. She would establish a new relationship between her eyes and her mind’s eye. And yes, her ordinary mind would forget most of these words, even though her body would remember, following the instructions just as she had followed the breath. Trust the body, follow the hands, focus the vision and long to hear this voice again…
Now, write three words on the back of your drawing that best describe who you are, she heard, and her hand that was an extension of her beautiful body fulfilled the assignment.
She felt as though she was floating for several unconnected moments, and then a tugging sensation in her hands told her that her drawing was being taken from her. Upon opening her eyes, she found the others already up and moving. Pierce held her drawing and looked down at her with interest.
“You seemed to go very deep during the meditation, Catherine,” he smiled. “Extremely deep.”
“So deep,” she whispered. Wow, what a head-melting, er... heart-melting voice. She could barely remember a word he’d said during the meditation, but the effects lingered with a delicious aftertaste, quickening her pulse.
“Now, back to your easels,” Pierce commanded. “Let’s start drawing!”
Catherine returned to her easel and got a new sheet of paper ready as the model once again stepped out of her robe.
“Drawing the model is a study in relationships,” Pierce addressed them. “You focus on the parts as you go, but always in relation to the whole. We need to see the model as an accumulation of related shapes, not an assemblage of words. Yes, an arm is an arm, but the word has no value while drawing, it has no specificity. What sort of relationship between various shapes do you see that comprise what your mind calls ‘the arm’? Even the space between things, such as the space between two spread fingers, or the space between the thighs, can be seen in this way, as having its own shape.”
The brief lecture completed, the model took a standing pose with her legs somewhat spread and her hands clasped behind her head. It wasn’t a conscious plan, but Catherine approached this next drawing quite differently than before, laying in several long, sweeping strokes that mimicked the model’s verticality and curviness, even though they did little to describe the particulars of the body. She tried to make her brain see shapes instead of body parts, but it was hard. She felt a part of her mind thinking the regular things, like “that girl has such lovely dimples above her rear”, or “that’s a really toned abdomen, she obviously works out”. Still, she could ignore that voice to some degree as she tried to see shapes, keeping her mind on the whole.
And things were definitely going better than before, which gave her confidence. She swept in a series of oval curves to fix the position of the head and then moved down, giving an indication of the neck and shoulders.
What about the breasts? She hesitated, feeling a bit... perplexed. The model had gorgeous breasts, full but not too full, with nicely shaped nipples. With her body angled somewhat towards Catherine, each breast presented a very different shape to work with. The left breast was almost pointing right at her; it was essentially a milky circle with a darker circle in the middle. The right breast was defined in space with a more volumetric shape, somewhat conical with a nipple that was... that was...
The nipple was erect. As in hard and, um, excited. Actually, both nipples looked excited.
Catherine wiped her brow. Wow. Even the expression on the model’s face looked sort of... well, hot and bothered. Either the model was a million miles away, remembering the touch of some lover, or the girl really, really enjoyed modeling.
“Hold still,” Catherine heard in her left ear.
Pierce, licking his thumb, then wiping something away from right above her eyes.
“Charcoal on your face,” her teacher whispered. “It’s easy to see where you’ve been touching yourself in a drawing class. Beautiful form, by the way. I very rarely see shapes captured with this degree of understanding. Keep the juices flowing and try to go even deeper. Focus on the whole, don’t let the details interrupt your sense of freedom.”
Pierce moved on, and for some reason Catherine just felt... moved. Her body trembled as a leaf trembles in a barely-there breeze, although she couldn’t say why.
And when Pierce stood next to the model to point out a few particulars of female anatomy, the trembling intensified. Drawing attention to specific areas that the students were having trouble with, Pierce’ hands drew sensual curves in the air that echoed the model’s lovely form. He never touched the girl, but his gestures were so... so... suggestive. The model, completely trusting, closed her eyes, her lips full and slightly parted. Something about her expression made Catherine shift her weight back and forth on restless legs.
Pierce lectured about anatomy for several minutes, his fine hands almost touching the areas in question. Words like “clavicle” and “fibula” and “pelvis” slipped into Catherine’s ears, and every time the teacher’s hands moved near the model’s flesh, a little echoing chill of excitement seemed to fire inside of her own body. Oh no, she thought, all of her focus drawn to the area between her legs. She felt all alive down there and sensed that she was becoming moist. Oh my. Her first experience of studying a nude model and she was getting kind of excited. How inappropriate. Embarrassing, too, if anyone noticed.
“Many of you are having trouble with the breasts,” Pierce announced. “Yes, breasts, there’s no need to feel nervous about them or about having them pointed out. Now, pay close attention to the shaping of the breasts, their curvature and weight. Even Michelangelo, genius that he was, failed to understand that breasts are not cones or globes added onto the body — their shaping extends from the body. You must remember the interior of all that you draw, as the surface is always informed by the interior. Try to feel the inside of a thigh, for instance, as you draw a thigh. Feel your own thighs as you draw a thigh, to tap the inner knowledge there, to let it flow.
And play with different ways of making marks with your charcoal, different line-weights. Vary your strokes by changing both the speed and the length of the strokes. Vary the pressure of the stroke, sometimes soft and light, sometimes hard, with more pressure. The harder the pressure, the more weight the line conveys. Be delicate where you see delicacy. Be hard where you see hardness. Draw with relaxation where you see relaxation, draw excitedly where you see excitement...”
Hardness, excitement, flowing thighs and strokes and pointy breasts... Catherine felt light-headed, her teacher’s voice seeming to echo throughout her body. Her eyes had closed somewhere during the lecture and she felt like she could really use some hot sex... er, hot coffee. And speaking of heat, it really was hot in the room. For the nude model’s benefit, no doubt, otherwise the girl would catch a cold.
Shaking herself awake, she smudged out the breasts she had started to draw, and tried to be in touch with her own breasts as she moved her stick of charcoal. Damn, that model’s nipples were so erect. She pressed down on the paper as she drew the bottom of the right nipple and felt a corresponding tingle or... something, within her body. Both of her nipples felt like they were standing on end, at full attention. Wow. Was this something like the inner knowledge that Pierce had spoken about?
By the end of class she had four more drawings. Pierce handed back their first effort and Catherine had a hard time gathering her things, her hands were shaking so badly. A series of sharp chills permeated her body and her breathing was off. Maybe she was going down... er, coming down with something.
She had errands to run on the way home. Charles was flying in for the weekend and she wanted to cook for him rather than go out. She stopped by Kate’s Paperié to check on the wedding announcements, and put in an hour’s workout at the health club.
One of the doormen at her building, Giuseppe, carried her things into the elevator and all the way to the entryway of her loft. It was an informal rule in Dorchester Towers, that one of the two doormen on duty would assist the building’s female residents if there were things to be carried up. She tipped Giuseppe, as always, although she knew the pleasure had been all his. She had figured out long ago that Giuseppe gave her tons of extra attention whenever she wore a short skirt. He was obviously a leg man.
After hanging up her coat and removing her shoes, Catherine spread her five drawings on the living room carpet and assessed her progress. The last drawing was much better than the first, which was something, at least. They all looked a bit awkward, though. Her hand had a way of making several hesitant, jerky lines when her eyes craved something more sustained and fluid, making parts of her drawings look sort of... constipated.
Rhythm, that’s what it was. There didn’t seem to be a sufficient sense of flowing rhythm in the lines. That had been her strength in ballet — creating strong, flowing lines with her body. Funny, then, that it showed so negatively in these drawings.
She gathered the drawings together to put them away, and it was then that she first saw the three words she had written on the back of her initial effort: “Graceful”, “Repressed”, “Struggling”.
Catherine stared at the words, searching for a memory that wasn’t there. For the life of her she couldn’t remember choosing those three words to describe herself. The handwriting was hers and she remembered her hand moving across the back of the paper... But why those three words? How did she come to choose them?
“Graceful” was certainly accurate. She had done some modeling herself, three years of high-end advertising work before reorienting her interest towards the publishing side of fashion. Her face was well poised between cute and lovely, set off by fine auburn hair and an elegant neck. Catherine’s parents pushed her into ballet classes at an early age, and she had gained obvious physical benefits from her many years of dance. She was svelte and well formed everywhere, especially in her legs. She had killer legs, absolutely killer. Fashion photographers had gone crazy for all of her assets, but they clamored most loudly for her shapely stems, finding them ideal for animating hosiery and shoes and lingerie of all kinds.
And she wasn’t naïve —a man like Charles Hightower would never have proposed to her if she wasn’t so beautiful. She remembered their first meeting, with Charles almost swooning over her at a ballet fundraiser. She had been all dolled-up in a little black dress and heels, and Mr. Old-Money Surgeon Man hadn’t been able to remove his eyeballs from her legs all night long. He looked stricken, as though beset by a disease from which he would never recover. And maybe he never had.
So graceful, definitely. But what about “Repressed”? Some people might think that she sounded repressed, because of her accent. Eight formative years in Johannesburg, South Africa had indelibly grafted an accent onto her English that people sometimes mistook for something out of a Merchant Ivory film. And her life had been a tiny bit like that — all the right schools, with so much deportment crammed into her brain and body that it had long ago become first-nature. So okay, she could certainly be more... well, unrepressed, who couldn’t? But her training was a good thing — without a proper sense of decorum and restraint, people could become lost to all sorts of undesirable behaviors. It was more than money and family lines that separated the well-bred from the undisciplined riff-raff — it was manners, carriage, a clear sense of right and wrong.
Maybe the question of repression had come from her nervousness about her upcoming marriage to Charles. The wedding preparations, the life they would lead together in another city... It was all very programmed. She would be his trophy wife, the adoring bright face at his side as he continued to turn his medical practice into a career in politics. Charles was laying the groundwork for a run at the state senate, but his ambitions went much higher. He would parlay his medical expertise into a stone-stepping crusade to reform health care, perhaps on the national stage some day. And she would become a Hightower, an official member of one of Pennsylvania’s most prestigious families.
Hightower. Catherine Tinnell, soon to be Catherine Hightower. The name brought an image into her mind, of herself locked away in a tall, stone tower, lowering her gorgeous tresses down so that some adoring prince could rescue her. Except that the Hightowers never let their hair down.
Repressed. Did Charles think she was repressed? He wished that she would be more adventurous when it came to sex, although he had never used the R-word, and he didn’t push too hard. Charles definitely wanted more oral sex, and he wanted her to swallow when he… he... Ugh, she didn’t even like to think about it. There, repression? But she wasn’t alone, lots of women must not like it when sex became too... juicy. In the end, Charles mostly wanted her to look great on his arm out in public, and that she could do with flying colors. But swallowing his semen or dressing her fine body in naughty outfits like he kept asking for… Well, she just wasn’t that kind of girl. But that didn’t make her repressed. Shy in bed, maybe, but not repressed.
And so, what about “Struggling”? Struggling with what? She drew a blank on that one. She had her own money, good health, good looks, an ambitious and important fiancé and a bright future. Struggling? Ridiculous. Maybe it had been one of her teacher’s words, unconsciously remembered and flowing out through her hand.
Catherine wasn’t even sure why she had enrolled in the class. She had seen a flyer on the health club bulletin board, and had been captivated by the grainy photo of Pierce West, his eyes almost reaching out from the sheet of paper. Revolutionary Approach To Drawing From Life! the flyer advertised. Develop a finer appreciation for the human body while unlocking your powers of observation and concentration. Acclaimed artist and teacher Pierce West will guide you on a journey of self-discovery and aesthetic achievement, using his breakthrough methods that unite the mind and body towards a single purpose. Nude models provided in every class. No previous art experience necessary. Guaranteed results.
Catherine had plenty of appreciation for the human body from her dance training, and definitely no experience with drawing. She made the phone call. On a whim, or because she was bored? She had quit her Elle Magazine position at the end of a yearlong project, to plan the wedding and begin packing her life into boxes for the move to Philadelphia. The timing had been a little off — there was plenty to do but it hardly filled the days, so she felt that she needed something... extra. She had always loved to look at art in The Metropolitan Museum, especially Degas’ pencil and pastel drawings of ballet dancers, so what the hell? The class lasted less than two weeks, and it was a nice walk from her building to Pierce West’s Chelsea studio. Why not dive in and see what she could or couldn’t accomplish? And then the April wedding and a honeymoon in Thailand, followed by a manicured life in Philadelphia or even Washington, D.C. one day, making babies and attending fund-raisers during her husband’s rise to power. No big deal.
The weekend with Charles was fairly uneventful. They had dinner and sex on Friday night, a roast duck with wild rice in the dining room and missionary position with condom in the bedroom. Saturday morning consisted of the Times and croissants, then an afternoon of uptown shopping and the symphony at night.
She awakened early on Sunday, and slipped into the shower while Charles slept. Ten minutes later, wrapped in a towel while rummaging through her underwear drawer, she heard him whisper, “Come back to bed.” He was hard — just the sight of her bare legs never failed to make him hard — and he really wanted oral sex. There was just enough time before church, so she kind-of sort-of complied, licking his penis until she could feel him getting close, at which time she pulled away and switched to more of a hand-job to complete the act. He spurted two good-sized gobs of semen into the air and she shuddered, not really liking to see the stuff moving around like that.
Catherine handed her fiancé a wet washcloth and he looked at her without speaking, his eyes a little dreamy and sad.
“I sure wish you’d go further,” he finally sighed, and she smiled, although inside the words hurt. She’d like to make him happy that way, she really would. But she wouldn’t. Did he really think that she’d kneel and sing and pray in church with the taste of his stuff lingering in her mouth?
Sleep was elusive on Sunday night. Odd thoughts kept tickling at her brain and she tried to dampen them by reading in bed. It didn’t work. At one point she realized that she was reading without comprehension, because thoughts just below her radar kept bubbling up, sabotaging her concentration.
Catherine set her book aside and closed her eyes, and almost immediately a dream-like vision surfaced, of her standing naked in front of a class of drawing students.
“Oh!” she started, her body jerking from a sudden feeling of falling. But she wasn’t falling, and she wasn’t a nude model. Crazy thought and unusually vivid, but not real. She had a fabulous body, sure, but...
Her legs shifted beneath the covers. They were restless, she couldn’t seem to find a position that felt comfortable. What was going on with…
Oh. That. It was her vagina, feeling kind of... needy. She placed her right hand there, and felt all of her focus migrate to her hole. Wow. She allowed her middle finger drop down, resting lightly upon her clitoris.
Ohhhhhh well, yes, there was the cause of her restlessness. Funny that it would hit her out of nowhere like this. And too bad for Charles that she hadn’t felt this way before his train. If she had him here right now, she would want him to... to...
She pictured Charles’ head between her legs. Exciting thought, but Charles didn’t like to do that. Her mouth on him, yes, he wanted that and more — but the other way around? He said it made his nose itch, but she suspected that Charles didn’t like sex to get too juicy, either.
You’d expect a heart specialist to be completely comfortable with the human body and its various fluids, but Charles’ medical knowledge seemed to feed a certain anal-retentive aspect of his personality. He practically worshipped her body, yet he insisted on wearing a condom during sex, even though she was on the pill. He probably thought of it as a sterile mask for his penis or something. Sometimes you’d even think that he thought… well, that vaginas had cooties.
Still, in a fantasy, her fiancé could be anything she wanted him to be. Catherine shut her eyes and lightly stroked herself, imagining that it was a tongue doing the stimulating. She moaned out loud, her hand quickening the rubbing and flicking between her legs. She didn’t play with herself often and never like this, feeling so needy and ready, her fingers teasing at her clitoris with such precision.
It’s easy to see where you’ve been touching yourself, a voice spoke from inside of her somewhere. Oh God, yes, touching myself, imagining my man’s tongue working indirectly, getting my juices flowing, setting me up to explode with energy, oh yes, oh yesss...
In the fantasy playing on the movie screen of her inner eyelids, her lover responded to her encouraging moans, raising his eyes to gaze longingly at her, his green pupils...
“Oh!” she screamed out loud, momentarily feeling like she was falling again. It hadn’t been Charles’ face in her fantasy — it was Pierce West!
She threw herself out of bed, panting, her entire body shaking. Wrapping a silk robe around herself with quivering hands, she staggered to the kitchen to brew some hot chamomile tea to calm her nerves.
“Oh, God!” she yelled at the ceiling, chills running all over her body. It had just been a thought, a random firing, but it was still there in the form of little goosebumps raised all over her forearms. Bad thought, it had been a bad thought and it bothered her. She didn’t like bad thoughts, they were... well, bad.
Still, her nipples were erect and her legs were disturbingly restless. They kept moving around whenever she didn’t consciously work to keep them still, because... Fuck. She was positively drenched between her legs, all “itchy” as she preferred to call it. Dammit, she didn’t crave sex often, so why couldn’t Charles be here when she did?
She dreamed that night, with a clarity rare in her experience. She saw herself in a canoe, her lovely legs smooth and tanned, filtered sunlight beaming through the edges of billowing clouds. She felt so relaxed, the easy current of a lovely river carrying her forward. Her hands unsnapped the clasp of her short shorts and her hips wiggled free. She was wearing nothing underneath and reveled in the feeling of the warm air on her damp vagina. She was itchy, very itchy, and like the canoe being carried forward in the water, she felt a current pulling at her fingertips, inexorably drawing them towards her pulsing clitoris.
No, she shouldn’t do that. Everybody masturbated every now and then, but masturbation was bad. She would need to resist the force pulling at her fingers, even with her hand resting on the top of her thigh, so close, so ready… No, I don’t do that, she thought. But the current was strong, tranquil on the surface yet constantly pulling underneath, trying to wear her down. She brought her hand away from the temptation, but then, almost as though drawn by a magnet, her fingers sought out her left breast, her nipple demanding to be teased, and tweaked… Oh God, I need to stop this, she thought, but her fingers refused to obey. Stop that!, she ordered, closing her eyes and exerting her will.
When she reopened her eyes, her hand was poised in front of her face, as though to confront her. What do you want? she asked, and her hand silently answered, informing her that she should lick her fingers. She parted her lips, sucking on each and every fingertip until they were all slick and warm. And then her hand journeyed down, determined to visit the terribly itchy zone between her thighs.
No, she demanded, but her voice was no match for the currents, stronger now. Oh God, she thought, as her wet fingers sought out her clitoris and the hot folds of her vagina. No! I shouldn’t! I mustn’t! It’s bad and I… I…
Her wet fingertips dabbed, flicked, working their will, working their way inside, and oh yes, oh my God, this is what I really wanted. I’m flowing, and excited, going someplace I’ve never been before. Oh God, oh yes, yes, yes…
On Monday morning, Catherine had coffee with Cheryl Whitestone, an old Vassar friend. Cheryl and her husband, Philip, were having marital “issues” and were jointly seeing a therapist in hopes of salvaging their relationship.
“Our therapist says that we can make it if we have enough determination and trust. I’m not so sure, though.”
“Why not?”
“The sex. It isn’t... Well, it isn’t good. Philip is a great lawyer, but it’s awful when he brings that interrogating attitude into the bedroom. I want his cock to fuck my cunt, not cross-examine it!”
Catherine shifted in her seat, the tone and the language making her uncomfortable. She wondered whether her friend ever had wet dreams the way she had last night. She had awakened with her fingers all sticky and smelling of sex, as though she had played with herself for hours.
“I hardly ever have an orgasm,” Cheryl continued. “Although I’ve learned to fake them really well.”
“W...why...”
“We just don’t click, I guess. Philip is a great provider and I know he wants to please me, but... I don’t know. I can trust him to try to better himself, but I can’t really trust him, do you know what I mean? In the end I think that Philip is too repressed to follow through with anything we come to in therapy. He’ll love me, but he’ll never really know how to excite me.”
“Do you think I’m repressed?” Catherine suddenly asked her friend, point-blank.
“Why, do you feel like you are?”
She didn’t now how to answer, and quickly directed their conversation elsewhere. Stupid of her, to have broached a subject that she was hardly ready to discuss.
An hour later, Catherine found herself walking rather aimlessly in Soho. The conversation with Cheryl had left a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, a bad aftertaste. Sex with Charles had never been all that exciting, either, and she was already falling into the habit of faking more lust and fulfillment than she ever felt with him, just to smooth things over. Could the current trends grow over time into a marriage-threatening train wreck? Sex was an important component in a relationship, but was it the most important? No, that was silly, no different than the inflated idea of romance in cheap novels and old movies. There might not be fireworks between them, and certainly none in bed — but there were other things that they had in abundance, like shared values and goals, simple companionship and friendship, and family plans. Everything was fine, just fine.
She had two hours before her second drawing class, not really enough time to do anything useful at home. And so she wandered, feeling oddly pensive. On Prince Street she caught a glimpse of old pin-up art through a gallery window, and for some reason she stopped and regarded the two displayed paintings for at least a full minute. She had passed this gallery every other day for over a year without paying the least attention, but today her eyes were caught by the artworks, as though really seeing them for the first time. Intrigued, she couldn’t resist going in for a closer look.
The gallery carried signed prints and even a few originals, extremely high-priced works by artists like Alberto Vargas and Gil Elvgren. Catherine had never cared for the stuff before — it was “low” art, well executed but commercial and somewhat crass. Even so, she had a sales rep pull several pieces out for closer inspection, and she couldn’t help thinking that she looked so much like these idealized cheesecake women. Her legs were much better, but really — overall, did she look all that much different? She had the right facial structure with the wide eyes and the high cheekbones, the captivating breasts and the tiny waist. Different styling, sure, her hair would need fluffing and she would have to apply brighter lipstick and some blush to her cheeks. Then she’d need to find some sort of retro negligee or swimming attire, and a bra that made her breasts more pointy…
She shifted her weight, suddenly feeling itchy between her legs again. What was it about this art that made the women look so sexy? It was more than their hourglass figures, more than the revealing clothing. There was something about the look in their eyes, the utter embracing of their femininity and sexuality. Their attitude, that’s what it was. A teasing attitude, but you couldn’t help imagining that these women could back up the teasing, that they really knew how to enjoy sex. They stared out at you like they’d just been waiting for your arrival, with their bodies all tingly in anticipation of a good roll in the hay.
Catherine was almost mesmerized by one particular painting by an artist named Martin Williamson, with a redheaded girl bending over to pick a wet sponge out of a metal pail. Her sleek legs were locked straight with her butt cheeks tantalizingly displayed by the tiniest pair of cut-offs. The girl peeked back at the viewer, her head almost upside-down, well aware that her gorgeous body was being scrutinized and admired. What was she going to do with that wet sponge? She was wholesome on the outside and a nasty little whore on the inside, her eyes seemed to say — you know what this sponge is for. Had that element of sexual mischief actually been present in the model, or had the artist placed it there? Could that be the gift of these pin-up artists, not so much the refinement of the illustrations themselves as the intense sexuality that they managed to insert into these women?
Catherine wondered what it would have been like to model for the artists she most admired, masters like Degas and Manet, or even Rembrandt. How often did artists end up inserting something hard and thick into their models? Her head swirled at the thought and she started to fall into some kind of strange modeling daydream, detailed images bubbling up that got her nipples all hard. She bit her lower lip to keep from sighing out loud and felt her hands squeezing at her thighs. Only the presence of the sales clerk kept her from touching herself between her legs.
This is wrong, she thought, feeling like she was falling apart. Or going a little bit crazy. And maybe she was crazy, because she ended up putting a deposit on the sponge painting, which cost almost as much as a luxury car. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t buy many new things before the big move, and Charles would probably gag at the thought of displaying something like this in their mansion. Buying the painting was a mistake and she knew it, but the way her body responded every time she gazed at the piece...
She strolled deeper into Soho after that, feeling discombobulated, like she was searching for something while having no clue what she was looking for. Her feet stopped in front of a cute little clothing boutique, and she just had to go in and look. Her lips were tight as she picked through the racks. Boring, predictable, too much like something she already had...
Her shoes practically propelled her towards a selection of daringly short skirts. “You definitely have the body for these,” an attractive sales girl commented, and it was true. But the skirts were just too tiny. Catherine had an excellent sense of which styles were allowed among her social set, and these skirts were definitely out of bounds. Maybe if she were sixteen again, not twenty-four. She should ignore these flirty little skirts, and she tried to ignore them. But somehow she kept coming back for another look, her breath quickening every time her fingers caressed the forbidden fabric.
Twenty minutes later, she regarded herself in a full-length dressing room mirror, her fine body set off by a black synthetic vinyl skirt several inches shorter than anything else in her wardrobe, and a clingy violet top with a deep, scooping neckline. Her breasts had a prominence that almost took her breath away, and she loved how the shape between her thighs could be followed almost to the point where her legs converged. The addition of black tights was the only thing keeping the skirt from being pornographic, and she did look fabulous in tights — always had.
Her shoes were all wrong for the ensemble, though. The short skirt seemed to call for the addition of “fuck-me” heels, and she didn’t have any shoes like that. She had plenty of heels back at home, but they were of modest height, stylish but built for New York comfort. “Fuck-me” shoes were impractical in the city, they were...
Her mind was saying no but her hands were already lifting a sleek pair of heels that would accentuate her shapely calves so beautifully. Oh hell, how much trouble would it be to pack up one more pair of shoes? She wanted to wear this new outfit to today’s drawing class and she had legs to die for, why not show them off just right? It was about time that she wore something that stretched her boundaries a bit.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or kick herself as she hit the sidewalk again, her new heels clicking below. A mistake — buying a sexy outfit like this had to be a terrible mistake. And it was, definitely. But somehow she didn’t mind, just this once.