Body Art

Body Art (by Mystral and Animal)

She had run away from home, throwing a few things into an overnight bag, barely thinking of what she’d flung into the dark recesses of canvas. Driving as far as the tank held, she pulled into a gas station and asked for directions to the nearest motel. The cashier probably thought she was nuts. Her thick wool sweater for warmth dwarfing the cotton shorts she’d worn earlier that night. Her legs beneath her shorts, clad in thick socks and her gardening clogs were chilled, her hair hastily woven into a thick braid. She’d incoherently babbled her request, her words punctuated by staccato stabs of intonation, tired but still livid.

No one could make her more furious than he could, no one could push her beyond all her boundaries the way he did when they argued. Their arguments were both frequent and drawn-out; they were both strong and had opinions on everything, most of which were diametrically opposed. Any time they spent together was liable at some point to rise into disagreements over almost any topic, from politics to housework.

And yet, they sought each other like rain to parched earth. Their relationship was like a gravitational force, drawing them together to drink deeply of each other. It was as if they had to explore everything, nothing had bars, nothing could be held back. It created an unusual dynamic for each of them, to test their own limitations, both good and bad. Their relationship was fiery, tempestuous, and easily ignited into arguments that eventually melted into a cauterizing, healing passion which they could neither deny or escape. They knew that while they were angry they couldn’t see that they were at the same place but with different ways of achieving their viewpoints. Their opposing thought patterns were consistent in their inconsistencies. What they did know was that they wound up with intense and insatiable longings, she for him and he for her. So close, they couldn’t see how alike they were, yet realizing their differences without understanding them. It would be a small thing for them to be on the same page, if they could ever allow themselves to see each other for who they were.

With each mile she put between them that night, she missed him more, becoming acutely aware of the distance, knowing he felt the same way. The evening had started out calmly enough. They’d each finished long work weeks, and were looking forward to what promised to be a quiet, romantic evening. Things had been (for them) almost placid, and she wondered how long it would last. The first stirrings of their emotional volcano began rumbled as they sipped a particularly good white wine after dinner. They’d been discussing the rising cost of providing health care for employees. Their comments began to veer to the conservative and liberal views on subsidized health care. Inwardly, she sighed, knowing where they were heading, yet feeling her anger sparked by his lack of compassion for those who had no health care. And so it had began.

She knew the intensity he felt by the grip his large hand had on the wine glass’ stem, the tightening of his jaw, and felt the same surge of anticipation to debate her views, even as she longed to avoid it and snuggle deep into his massive arms. “Ah, well,” she thought as the conversation heated even more, “time enough for that later.” But their tempers flared, then boiled over with a suddenness that startled her. This fight was different, more intense, more personal. There were no pauses, no backing away to be playful as a reassurance, before each scuffled into the issue again.

Finally, she’d had enough and realized it had gone too far this time. Neither seemed able to pull back and she felt herself becoming panicked to just get away from their words—and from him. As she got up, her wine glass banged jarringly on the table, and he reached out for her meaning to grab her and pull her to him, knowing that even for them, it had gone beyond what was acceptable. But his hand closed over thin air, and she didn’t see the reconciliatory gesture as she headed for the bedroom. He picked up the wine glasses, taking them to the kitchen to rinse them out and give him time to think. As he turned off the water, he intended to go to her when he heard the door slam, and by the time he got to the door, he heard the car’s engine rounding the corner.

As she pulled into the motel parking lot, tired and feeling defeated, yet still hurt and harshly angry, she regretted leaving. But there she was, and at the thought of their argument, she felt her own raw anger burning hot again, and checked in for the weekend. She called him from the room, and despite the hours that had passed and the regret they both felt, their tempers again flared. She finally told him where she was and that she’d be there for the weekend before she got off the line in case the whole thing erupted again, leaving him to his own thoughts.

That night, she slept fitfully, waking in an unfamiliar place to reach for him, but his scent was nowhere in the room. Finally, she got up, taking her bag to the shower, grimacing as she realized that she’d be stuck with the shorts she’d worn the night before. After a shower, she changed what clothes she could, and set out in search of breakfast.

Later, sustained with a large bottle of water and a map added to her large canvas bag, she headed out to the nearby lake. As she neared the end of town, she noticed a small art supply shop and stopped, buying a sketch book, some watercolors, and charcoal, along with an artist’s sketch pencil, settling them on the seat, glancing with a vague awareness that it had been too long since she’d had time to paint. The last painting was of him as he slept, in muted shades of blue and gray, the colors playing around his features in repose. The sky emerged through the long night behind her, bright and warm for late spring, with no hint of clouds. Following directions to the lake, she began try to understand their relationship. Sitting by the water, she pulled the sketchpad onto her knees, testing the pencils with her thumbs. She pictured his face, brushing her fingertips over the paper, feeling her way across the page with the touch of one accustomed to feeling for roughness and gauge, porosity and give. It suddenly reminded her of his cheek, just before he shaved.

As he worked in the yard, peering down the street, his eyes seeking her car as if looking for a ship on the horizon, and he suddenly had the feeling of her fingers on his cheek, and then it was gone. Moments later, the sensation returned again, as if she were softly stroking his face. He closed his eyes with an ache, before brushing the feeling aside with a shrug of irritation, returning to weeding the flower beds. By the lake, she pulled her sweater off, catching her T-shirt in her fingers as it rode up with the sweater. His face fixated in her mind, and she began to sketch an outline of his features, roughly hewn and tender. She recalled his face from memory, from touch, from scent and taste and everything between, his eyes slightly smiling, watchful. She drew his eyes first, in such a way that they seemed to gaze back at her as she worked, craggy eyebrows that could lift sardonically, for emphasis.

She smoothed her fingers down the image of his nose, slowly smudging the lead to form a shadow, as if seen by the dim light of the reading lamp on her side of the bed. As she drew with the artist’s pencil, the images somehow reversed, transposed, and he began to think in degrees of color, remembering past times, the smell of her, the texture of her skin. As she began to apply washes with the soft wash brush, layering color one coat at a time, he began to focus more in black and white, the things that are concrete, thoughts he could handle thinking about, the things he knew for sure, his love for her, his admiration, his need for her.

At first, he thought a trickle of sweat was running down his nose, absently brushing his fingers over his skin before returning to weeding the flowerbed. “It’s just sweat,” he thought to himself, mid-weed-tug paused. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and a sensation of the familiar feel of her fingertips brushed over his lower lip. He closed his eyes to shake the uneasy feeling of dependence, adamantly refusing to admit even the word into his consciousness.

As the weather warmed up, she peeled off her thick socks, burying her toes in the grass as she sketched his mouth. On the paper, full lips emerged, smooth, slightly darker than his face, rubbing a touch of charcoal over her fingertip, and she began to create the rounded sensuality of his lower lip, having the sudden sensation that she was touching his lips, and found herself slowing her movements. Short, sure rubs, the paper feeling more and more like his skin, a sense of three-dimensional breath.

As he worked in the yard, he looked down the street again, thinking he’d heard something. Unsure he returned to work, wiping the sweat off a dry cheek for the third time, frustrating himself. Then he remembered her touch, briefly, wistfully, and tried to brush it off, thinking crossly, “I have work to do, no time for this.” Yet, in that fleeting moment, he saw her form in the moon light as she removed her silk, her fragrance was the same as his lilacs blooming in the garden. Suddenly, his mind’s eye held an image of her removing her sweater by a lake.

This isn’t sweat, he thought to himself, mid-weed-tug paused. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and a sensation of the familiar feel of her fingertips brushed over his lower lip, the touch of a lover. Sitting back on his haunches, he welcomed the feeling, lips slightly parted in a silent sigh. He missed her, no matter how infuriating she was to him. The feel of her finger slowed, becoming more firm, more deliberate, more exploratory. Dropping the weed in his hands, he concentrated on her touch, and knew something impossible, yet very real was happening. Yard work forgotten, he went into the house, lying on the bed to focus on her, just as the sensation stopped. Breathing deeply, after a long night without her and the warm sun beating over his shoulders while he worked in the garden, he drifted fitfully off.

She shifted her hands from the paper, startled. She could swear that the charcoal-smudged lips on the paper had moved beneath her fingertips. She found it much easier than he did to suspend disbelief, and she gazed intently into the eyes of the image before her. They seemed alive, watching her to see what she would do next. A small spider crawled over one crimson toenail. The sun grew a little more intense. Small children squealed in the water. An old woman, at the water’s edge, stopped and smiled, an ancient and knowing smile, before continuing her shuffling gait. All this was lost on the woman, who gazed at her lover’s eyes on the paper before her.

Just as she realized the connection, he awoke, bathed in sweat, listening to the same eerie chuckle that she’d heard from the old woman, at once not of this world, yet so serene as to calm him. A dawning awareness swept over her as she realized that he could feel her sketching, that he could feel it on his own skin. She felt him waiting. Touching the charcoal image, it felt alive. The old woman’s laugh drew her back to awareness with a start. Shuffling slowly towards her, the woman said with a sandpaper voice, with eyes both vividly alive and timelessly old, “You know what to do. All things are possible in a reality with no boundaries.” She looked down at the image of him on her lap, then back up to the old woman, who had somehow moved a quarter of a mile down the water’s edge, her thin laughter sounding faintly back to her. She stood up and headed back to the motel, the shadows of evening long in the distance.

In their bed, he waited. His hands stretched behind his head, eyes searching the dim coolness of the room, as if he’d see her somewhere in the shadows that played in the corner. Somewhere outside, he heard an old woman’s laughter, full of knowing mirth. Once in the room, she quickly pulled her clothes off, dropping them where they fell. She got the water glasses and the white plastic ice bucket and filled them with water. Pulling the bed table to face the bed, she sat on the bed, one leg straddling each side of the table and quickly began to sketch. Sketching each large sheet, revealing his body to her, charcoal in her fingers, switching to soft lead for watercolors.

His hands emerged as he lay on the bed, feeling pencils softly rubbing and her fingers. He held very still, his hands folded over his chest, fingers laced. He focused his attention on his hands, stroking the sides of her breasts in his mind, “Let’s see if she feels this,” deeply chuckling the words to no one in particular, knowing somehow that she did feel it. As the stroking on the backs of his hands slowed, he whispered, “don’t stop, wench,” closing his eyes again.

Tipping his back, he felt her at his throat, totally trusting as she created contours and hollows. She’d stopped using the pencils, rubbing the charcoal over her fingers, creating their connection with fingers blackened, in sure movements, his body vivid in her mind. Their sensuality deepened into eroticism, each naked, miles apart and utterly together, the aroused and the arouser interchangeable.

As she worked, she felt his hands stroking her back with all the love and slow gentleness she knew he felt, but struggled to say. Tension and their argument forgotten by both as they reached out to soothe and comfort, excite and tease. Breathing quickened as she suddenly got a fresh sheet of paper and began to mix paints, creating a palette of colors that matched his swarthy skin, darker for shades and shadows.

In stark contrast to the white paper, her paintbrush created the image of his thighs. He gasped as she used the thick sable wash brush, slowly tracing the inside of his thighs, fingers splayed, not daring to breathe as the detail brush created shadows between his legs, going over his thighs, high up, near his balls with a dark sienna brown; the pleasure he felt was exquisite, painfully stiff as he was. He pictured her nakedness before him as he loved to have her, lying on the bed, his head between her thighs. With single-minded determination, he saw her, legs spread, her pussy swollen, lips parted enough to see her glisten, reddened, warm flesh that was his secret to enjoy. With his tongue, he licked her slowly, tracing up the length of her slit, sucking at her inner labia before continuing up to leisurely lap at her clit, feeling it stiffen, sucking at it, the small budding tip moving beneath his tongue in response.

With a cry, she felt his mouth, her breathing coming in staccato gasps. She fought to keep her eyes open, wanting to fall back on the bed as she felt his fingers spreading her open to enjoy. Dipping the brush into pools of watercolors with trembling fingers, she began with a fresh sheet of paper, long brushstrokes creating and lapping at him simultaneously, his cock turgid, the soft sable wetly painting his shape, his size, the veins and dips, the shadow beneath his head. She took the small detail brush and darkened the ridge between his head and shaft slowly, surely, knowing he felt it.

The brushes were an agony for him, and he renewed his tongue movements, holding her open and taut, his thumb pushing her clitoral hood back to suck her clit into his mouth. Raising his head briefly, feeling his balls tightening beneath the soft pressure of her paintbrush, he growled, “go where you want, you can’t change the fact that you’re min.” before lowering his head again to her twat with a new onslaught on her clit, beginning to thrust his fingers in and out of her, curling his fingertips to rub against her G-spot.

A red haze filled her being, and she knew she’d cum soon. Dipping her fingers in a soft pink wash, with her other hand gathering her juices a bit at a time, mixing slick pussy juices into the paint with her fingers. Stroking them over his cock on the paper, creating a third dimension, her mind wrapping her hand around his cock with fragrant, slightly salty and slightly sweet nectar-thickened paint.

At the feel of her fingers, instead of her paintbrush, he began to involuntarily buck his hips up, pulling her up to him, forcing her over his hips, hands guiding his aching cock inside her pussy with a low noise at the back of his throat. Her paint and charcoal covered fingers splayed on his chest to balance herself as he held her by the hips, pulling her hard onto his cock, howling as she clenched against him, squeezing hard with the muscles she held him fast inside her. He howled, the quintessential beast, as she clenched against him, squeezing hard around him, thrusting hard and evenly, impaled on his cock.

They toppled over the edge together, cumming long and hard, miles apart and inseparable, howls and groans interchangeable. In the midst of their orgasms, he grabbed her hands and she felt her fingers interlace with his. Spent, she fell on the bed and he began to emerge from the other side of intensity, each taking in great gulps of air.

Coming back awareness, each suddenly knew the ache of loneliness that they felt whenever they were apart, punctuated by deep, resonant sighs as their yearning for each other again began to build and resonate toward the other. With the remainder of her strength, she tried to tell him, “I’m on my way back, baby.” Simultaneously, knowing her as he did, he tried to tell her to sleep, rest before coming home. As they each fell asleep, aching for the other, neither heard the other’s message, yet they both knew they’d said it, sent unerringly across the miles. And somewhere, an old woman laughed in delight.