Living Works of Art Ch. 03

This story can be read independently of Chapters 1 and 2, but of course it's better read after them. I hope you enjoy it! -- JB

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I've always thought a woman is at her most beautiful when she is happy and shows it. She is at her most fetching when she is nervous and insecure. She is at her sexiest when she is full of guilt or shame due to some secret and perhaps wanton activity.

When Susan met me for brunch that Sunday, at a lovely place near Grammercy Park on the East Side of Manhattan, she combined all three: beautiful, fetching, and sexy. When your lover greets you like that it can be overwhelming. I was overwhelmed.

The brunch place only seats you when your entire party is present. I was outside on the sidewalk and in the queue hoping Susan would show up before it came my turn and in typical Susan style, her timing was perfect. Three minutes after she had kissed me hello our table was ready. I love the way Susan kisses me hello. Even on a sidewalk in New York in the middle of a line of people she does not kiss my cheek or give me a little peck of a kiss. With Susan if she's going to kiss a man, the man knows he's been kissed. It's like that.

I was on a high from having enjoyed her kiss from heaven as we followed the hostess with her tight skirt and wiggling hips upstairs to a table within the cacophonous din of the second floor of the brunch place. As Susan took her seat she leaned forward giving me a wonderful view down her blouse. Even though I see her naked body almost every day and I have stenciled its image into my mind, I still love the 'inadvertent' looks down her blouse that Susan donates to the cause from time to time.

I donate to the many and varied charities of New York City. I consider myself to be a generous donor, given my income. Susan in contrast donates to my sexual ego. Susan too is a generous donor. She kicked her shoes off soon after taking her place across from me and her stocking clad feet were caressing my calves under the table as we thought about which omelet we each would choose for brunch.

"You look radiantly happy today, Susan," I said. Susan had to lean forward to hear me and I enjoyed the view of her cleavage once again.

"I'm glad. I know you think I'm at my best when I'm happy," Susan said.

"Success with business?" I asked. This opened the door to allow her to share her excitement.

"Oh Harry, it's amazing! You know that ten-million-dollar apartment I've spent half my life showing to potential buyers?" I nodded. "One of them bid on it and his bid was accepted! I can't believe it! Want a new car? Kitchen renovation? A trip to God knows where? I'll soon be rolling in dough!"

"That's wonderful, Susan! That explains too why you look so sexy," I said, and Susan fell silent, studying her tableware as if it had just been unearthed from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Was the fork from homo habilis, or homo erectus, I could imagine her wondering? Maybe though she knew that the fork was invented in the Eastern Roman Empire?

Susan's usual chatterbox character had been zombified, and now she was looking hopelessly fetching. The woman was scared. She was scared for what I would think; scared of what I was thinking, in fact. It was, you see, all about what she might have felt she had to do to make the sale. Real estate is a cruel world and the competition is ferocious. What she might have had to do is not something a girl wants to discuss with her lover over brunch in a noisy, crowded restaurant. I let it go.

Well, actually no, I didn't let it go. I wish I had. I wish I could have been the amazing modern man who would not ask, and Susan would not tell. But I wasn't. I was a small, petty, jealous little man. Sue me.

"Was he good in bed, the buyer of the apartment?" I asked.

I knew Susan was annoyed. She never lost her dazzling smile but I could see annoyance in her eyes.

"Probably he is excellent in bed. I wouldn't know for sure," she said in a singsong voice while smiling, but glaring at me with her eyes. "You should ask his wife or a woman from his stable of mistresses if you really want to know."

"That's a strange reply," I said.

Susan was thoughtful. I saw something click in her expression. She had never lost her smile but her eyes became evil, taunting even.

"Well, he's good on the floor, on the stairs -- it's a two-floor apartment -- and also standing with me bent over the kitchen counter, so it seems reasonable to think he's good in bed, too. I cannot tell you with certainty, though," she said, "because we did not use a bed," she said.

"Unfurnished apartment?" I asked. I suspect now my eyes were twinkling.

The glare was gone. Susan was reading my face. She was relieved. She nodded, dazzling me with her smile, using both her mouth and this time her eyes as well. Her smile gets me every time. She is impossible to resist.

Susan paused, musing to herself. She added, "He probably would have been good in the building's elevator, too. Even though the ride between the first and the forty-first floor takes a bit of time, it was not enough to really get a rhythm going, you know?" I think she enjoyed the surprise on my face.

"Don't they have security cameras in the elevators these days?" I asked. Susan gave me an enigmatic smile in reply.

"How was the funeral?" Susan asked, changing the subject and now putting me on the defensive. The mother of my ex-wife Carol had died, and Carol had flown out for the funeral, bringing our daughter Samantha with her. I have always been unable to resist the siren allure Carol has over me. It's like a conditioned Palovian reaction. I see her and I lose my free will. Or so it seems.

"Tasteful in that way Protestants of the Upper East Side seem to have," I replied. "It was tasteful to a fault, actually. You could have come you know."

"I thought about it, but I figured Carol needed you at her side and not to have you torn between the two of us. Is Carol still good in bed?" Susan asked, being catty. I hate it when she's jealous, but I have to admit jealousy looks good on her pretty face. Somehow, she knew what we had been up to, Carol and I. Well, I hide it poorly, I guess.

"Damn good," I said. She knew anyway; I might as well have been honest.

"It's okay, Harry. I know you're over her," Susan said with false confidence. Then in a revealing moment she asked, "Aren't you?"

"I'm sworn to secrecy but my daughter Samantha came secretly to me and told me Carol needs me and that Carol has never truly recovered from our divorce. I told Samantha that I love you now. Samantha's sixteen and you know, I hope, how headstrong girls can be at that age," I said.

"At any age, Harry. When we're older we just hide it better," Susan said. "I'm sworn to secrecy, too, you know."

"Samantha met with you, too?" I asked, a bit incredulous. Susan nodded, smiling maternally at the memory of it, or so it seemed to me.

"Really? How? When?" I asked.

"She called me out of the blue. Maybe she was curious what I was like, I don't know. We hit it off as it turns out, in a kind of godmother/goddaughter way. She confessed to me that she had told you how I had put myself through college, and that she gave you one of my porno flicks to watch," Susan said. She was fetching again. Her lower lip was trembling which is her tell that she is nervous. "I held her as she cried at how evil she had been. I don't know how she ferreted out all that information. I had buried it well, I thought. She's a good kid, your daughter."

I was silent. I think I was a little stunned.

"Well?" Susan asked. There was import in her tone of voice.

"Well what?" I asked, in feigned innocence.

"What do you think about your lover being a former porn star?" Susan asked. There was heavy lip quivering. Susan asked the question with an even voice, but I knew she was terrified, waiting for my answer. Our omelets were getting cold.

"Susan, I don't care," I lied. The truth was that it turned me on, twisted pervert that I am, but I could not admit that to Susan nor even to myself. "I love who you are now, not who you were back then. That history is part of you. You can't change a person's history without changing the person. If your licentious past helps to make you the amazing woman I'm in love with now, then I would not change a thing," I said.

"Oh, Harry," Susan gushed, and then she leaned across the table and she kissed me. She had never kissed me like that before. She always poured emotion into her kisses, but this kiss, well, it was special. It was unique. The kiss had so much emotion, such complex emotion, love, desire, fear, relief, admiration, it was all there in that one kiss. I was blown away.

"Does egg look good on my blouse?" Susan asked as she giggled. The tips of her prominent boobs had touched her omelet as she had leaned across the table to kiss me. The egg stains looked to be right on top of her two nipples. "At least it's not on my face."

"It's a good look for you," I said, chuckling softly. "Your place or mine?"

"Let's eat a little brunch first, you rake," Susan said.

"That was fun," Susan said, lying naked next to me in bed later that afternoon. "Want to do it again, lover?"

"How about after you tell me the story of how you got into porn. Remember, no detail is too little to leave out," I said. I was almost drooling at the prospect. "I get off on stories like that, especially if they're true."

"I do, too," Susan said, not to be outdone and revealing her inner perv to accompany mine. On her, though, it was sexy. On me, I imagine, it was creepy.

"There's something more important to discuss, however. How are we going to handle this three-way relationship? You, me, and Carol?"

"Does that really bother you, Susan? You're fucking men all over the place to sell apartments. Does an occasional romp with my ex-wife really bother you? Carol lives in California for Pete's sake, so how often is it going to happen, anyway?"

"My indiscretions come from my work, just like the porn sex did twenty years ago. It's fun, recreational sex, but that's all it is. I could care less about these rich jerks who sexploit me for their misogynist jollies. With you, your sex with Carol is due to love, to deep affection and a shared history. It's apples and oranges, Harry, and you know it."

"Well, it won't happen often, her being in California and all," I said.

"Don't hang your hat on your gorgeous cock with that one, Harry my boy. Samantha tells me Carol is being transferred to Google in Manhattan. She'll live on the same island as do both of us. Samantha is excited about moving to New York. Watch out when that sexpot turns 18, Harry. I've seen the way her face looks when she talks about you," Susan said.

"Nobody told me that. When did you learn? When are they moving here? Where will they live?" I asked.

"You're a bit too interested for my taste, Harry. Maybe you want Samantha and Carol to move in with you? It would break my heart, but I'll survive. I have Gloria Gaynor on every single playlist on my iTunes," Susan said.

"What are you going to do? Think before you reply. Here, let me help you reach a decision," Susan said and as she finished speaking she leaned over and took my cock inside her mouth and gave me the most amazing blow job of the twenty-first century, I'm sure. I ended up blowing a serious load right into her mouth. She wantonly took some of my cum from her mouth and spread it over her boobs.

"It's good for my breast flesh. I read it in Cosmo so it must be true," she said.

"It's working," I said, now feeling spent having donated so much cum to my lover Susan. "You have the best boobs this side of the Mississippi."

"Will I still, once Carol moves to New York? Do you know who she engaged to help her buy a place here?" Susan asked.

"No. I'm not in touch with her. You seem to know everything via my daughter Samantha, anyway. Who..." and then it dawned on me. Sometimes I am so slow! "It's you, isn't it? You're her real estate agent?"

"It's cute to see your mind work even when it does not involve your cock," Susan said. "Or maybe it does? Anyway, don't worry, I'll show her apartments far from yours. It's in my own interest, isn't it?"

"At least you won't want have to fuck her like you did that asshole who bought the ten-million-dollar apartment... Why are you laughing?"

"You know Harry, for such a fabulous lover you have trouble thinking out of the box. Maybe if your cock would leave my box for a while you could think outside of the box? You are so bleeping heteronormative," Susan said. She could not stop giggling.

"You and Carol? Are you serious?" I asked, knowing the answer in advance by her face. I now knew Susan's smug smile. It was a powerful one. All her smiles were.

"I'm sure your daughter Samantha would love to make it into a ladies' threesome, too, Daddy. Too bad she's only sixteen," Susan said.

"Would that really stop you?" I asked.

"Why, yes, of course. Yes, it would. I'm many things, I know, but a child molester is not one of them. Watch out in two years though, Daddy. She's coming after you, I predict," Susan said.

"You've told me that before, Susan," I said, enjoying scoring at least one point.

"Let's get back to the issue at hand. You're going to have to decide what you're going to do, lover. Is it me or is it her? Neither one of us will let you have both. You know that, don't you?"

I looked at her. "You're going to fuck her, but I can't. Is that it?"

"Yep. You got that right. For me, it's business. I'm a slut who fucks as a tactic in selling apartments. For Carol it's complicated I imagine. There's the pure lust of course. The forbidden dimension of lesbian sex. Mostly though I think it's to get at you; to mess with your head."

"Sometimes it works, too, in the sense of making a sale. Usually I don't even like the men and women who get it on with me. It's just business. In the case of your ex-wife Carol, I admit there's an extra dimension of torturing you, both for her and for me. Win-win. For you, though, and for Carol with you, it's love. I can't handle that. Fuck all the floozies you want to, Harry, but Carol is off limits. Got it?"

Susan thought for a minute. She added, "And I'll know if you fuck Carol. Your face is an open book, Harry. I'll know. I guarantee it. If you fuck her, I'll destroy her, and then I'll destroy you. On the other hand," Susan said, her voice suddenly getting softer and her eyes getting loving, "if you fuck me and not Carol I'll make you the happiest man this side of the Mississippi."

"We're good, Susan. I'm over Carol and hopelessly in love with you. Please try to temper your jealousy. There's no cause," I said. "Now let me take you to dinner, okay? Italian or Japanese tonight?"

"I'm in the mood for Japanese, but I want Italian wine more. Let's go for Italian with a great wine list, lover," Susan said.

In Manhattan that was like shooting fish in a barrel, and Susan and I got rip roaring drunk. I kept reminding Susan of her success with the ten-million-dollar apartment and she kept giggling. She was so drunk I managed to get her to tell me things she had always resisted telling me previously. I wanted the story of how she got into porn, her freshman year of college, twenty-five long years earlier.

Susan began. She began at the beginning.

"Did you know that I came from a broken family? My father beat my mother rather badly and she finally divorced him. She got a court order keeping him away from us. We had no money," Susan said. "He was the worst when he was drunk."

"Was he drunk a lot of the time?" I asked.

"Not all the time. But when he was, he was a holy terror. One time he knocked my Mom unconscious and then he came after me. I was pretty young. I was only 15. I was always small but back then I was both small and weak. I was athletic though, and good at gymnastics. It was around then I began learning the martial arts."

"Were you scared?" I asked.

"Yes and no. I knew what was coming. He had done it before. He never beat me if I didn't resist too much. My only fear was pregnancy. I got lucky, though, at least in the baby making department, if nothing else," Susan said.

"My God, Susan, that's horrible! What a way to grow up!" I said.

"Yes. It wasn't pretty... I was, though. Everyone said I was pretty. I felt acting was my way out. I had a natural talent for being someone else. It was an escape. Not a real escape, but an escape in my head."

"I could take a character in a play and become that person. Becoming a character in a play was in and of itself an escape. I was running away in my mind from my father and my horrific life. I was pretty and I was talented. All I needed was a break. I needed a good agent," she said.

"Did you find one?" I asked.

"I had this friend, Mary. Her Dad was an agent. I now know he had no real ability as an agent. He dealt with sleaze. I did not know that then. He told me I had to wait until I was 18. This is nonsense of course unless I had known his plans for me. I didn't," Susan said.

I could figure out where this was going, but I wanted to hear Susan tell it. "Go on," I said.

"Well, I tried out for every play in high school and I got the parts. Often, I got the lead role. I also tried out for everything in the local theaters in our small town on Long Island. I got parts as fairy godmothers, as a romantic lead, as the Amazonian queen Hippolyta and wife of Theseus in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and finally a part as a teenage prostitute in a play about the mean streets of New York City in the 1980s," Susan said.

"For the prostitute part I had to wear revealing clothes. That's when I realized I enjoyed having people look at my body and lust over it. All my friend's fathers devoured me with their eyes as I pranced about on stage. It was a blast. In the final performance I arranged an 'accidental' nipple slip of my outfit. That was a hoot! I got tons of complements over the aplomb with which I handled it. It was all I could do to keep from laughing."

"I'll bet you laughed with your eyes," I said. "I'm sure I would have known."

"Yes, you would have. But you've been fucking me, Harry, and you know me inside and out. Back then I was a virgin and I was not even a gleam in your lecherous eyes," Susan replied.

"Tell me about the romantic lead role," I said.

"Good choice, Harry. I thought you might choose that one. We were just kids, teenagers really, so the acting and costumes were PG, but the male lead had a crush on me. He was a bit dishy himself, so when we had to kiss romantically during one of the play's scenes, we really went at it. He pulled me up flush against him and I put my arms around his neck, and he ground his hard cock into my stomach. That kiss was definitely R rated and had we not been fully clothed in fairly asexual costumes, it might have been X rated. The boy's name was Ronnie and he thought we should practice the kiss. We practiced a lot, every chance we got," she said.

"What else did you practice?" I asked.

Susan smiled her light up the night smile. I was into this and she was enjoying telling me the story. "I got totally into my character. I could have cared less about Ronnie, but I was in love with the character in the play he was playing. If you're young and in love and the boy wants you that way, and if you're me, then he gets you, you know what I mean?"

"I wanted sex. I wanted sex with a man who was not my father. I wanted to be cleansed," Susan said.

I nodded. "What kind of sex did Ronnie get?"

"You really want the details? Well, okay, he did not get that much, actually, by adult standards. He got to get me naked, and he got hand jobs galore and he especially liked squirting all over my boobs. I refused to blow him and of course I was much too young to let him fuck me. Anyway, after my father I hated fucking."