Naked Portraits Pt. 02

I handed him the chopstick box to hold then took his penis in my hands and smiled as I watched him go from semi-erect to fully hard within seconds.

"I want some of your semen for the offering," I explained.

"And why pray tell? " He asked.

"Hair, blood and semen should make for a powerful offering," I said, as I started to stroke his erection. I had no idea if that were true or not but it sounded reasonable. Hawk shone his flashlight down on me to illuminate my actions. As I stroked his eager erection, twinges of doubt surfaced in my head and I said, "Perhaps this is kind of ... you know ... disrespectful?"

"I wouldn't worry," he said.

"You just don't want me to stop," I said with a light laugh.

My eyes rolled up to the glow in the dark statue that seem to be looking down at me. Fresh desire flushed through me and my eyes went to Hawk's face. I said, "Don't hold back. Come in my mouth." I engulfed him and my passion grew as I worked him with my mouth and hands. I stopped and stood up.

"Change your mind?" Hawk asked, clearly disappointed.

"No, just my tactics."

I unsnapped my jeans then pulled them down along with my panties to my ankles. I picked a clear spot in front of the statue and got on all fours on the soft damp leaf strewn ground. Hawk didn't say a thing as he pushed his cargos to mid-thigh, knelt behind me and entered me.

"I want you to still come in my mouth though," I said.

"You the boss," He returned cheerfully.

"That I am," I agreed, "The pussy, not the lion, rules in this jungle."

As Hawk moved in and out of me, I looked up to the voluptuous carving in front of me. A trick of the light (or lack of it) made it look as if the statue was bending slightly to watch the mortals at her feet perform the age old activity. "Oh shit this is good!" I expressed loudly as my pleasure built. Making love with Hawk always took me to the edge of perfection. Before Hawk, I was a quiet lover, but now I loved to make noise, scream out, cuss and swear. I closed my eyes to noisily greet the coming orgasm ...

... then I was under water, literally it seemed. In slow motion I turned and found myself face to face with a short haired Asian girl, blue and beautiful like a mermaid but with legs, no fishtail. Bizarrely she pointed a camera at me. With a frantic look around, I saw I was in large swimming pool and the bluish glow came from underwater lights along the edge of the pool. Suddenly, the camera fell from the blue girl's hands. Watching the camera slowly drop to the pool floor filled me with dismay so I made a move to catch it. But blue girl grabbed me and pulled me toward her. Oh-my-God she's going to kiss me I thought with panic ... and anticipation.

My orgasm arrived and my eyes flew open, I was in the dark clearing again with the glow in the dark goddess looking down at me. My eyes rolled up to her and I was sure she had something to do with the weird hallucination.

I screamed out a single word, "Goddess!"

"Here it comes!" Hawk announced with urgency.

Lost in the throes of my orgasm, not to mention my watery hallucination, I barely heard him speak as he rudely pulled out of me. Confused, I sat on the leafy ground on my naked butt. Hawk gripped his hard on and touched the tip to my closed mouth. Why the hell is he doing that? I wondered. Then I remembered the offering just as a wet jet of moisture sprayed my closed lips.

"Shit!" I barked with a crazed laugh then covered Hawk's spewing organ to contain the rest of his emissions. The stuff filled my mouth, some oozed out to mingle with the mess already on my chin. I motioned frantically. Hawk handed me the chopstick box then clicked on his flashlight to illuminate me drooling my full mouth over the hair and blood.

He moved the focus of his flashlight from the box to my face. He liked seeing the mess he had created there. I allowed him a few more seconds of dirty male joy then I wiping my mouth and neck clean with the handkerchief tied to my hand then I slid the chopstick box lid shut and handed it back to him.

He pulled me to my feet with a gentleman's hand. I dusted leaves and dirt from my knees; he took it upon himself to dust off my ass. I pulled my pants and panties back into place. Hawk dressed too. Then I held the flashlight for him as he deftly wrap and tied the chopstick box in one of the ti leaves.

"You do that like a shaman," I said, impressed.

"It's amazing the things one learns out in the field," He said as he handed me the neat little green package. He placed the other paddle shaped ti leaf on the ground before the carving for me to place my offering on.

"Now what?" Hawk asked.

"We go home, but first I need to find out who is the artist that did the carving," I said, as I turned my flashlight on. The one thing that I understand most in the world is an artist's vanity and no artist worth his or her spit would leave this gorgeous work of art unsigned. After a minute of searching, I found what I was looking for. painted around the belly button was an odd symbol, a circle with a hand at its center. I smiled at the find. Then a strange feeling enveloped me and I quickly pointed my flashlight into the surrounding darkness.

"What?" Hawk asked, with alarm as he too, scanned the darkness with his flashlight.

"Someone's watching us," I whispered.

A sudden shrilling sound cut through the darkness and I let out a scream before I realized it was my cell phone in my my pocket.

"Shit!" Hawk barked then followed with a tension-releasing laugh.

"Sorry," I said and quickly dug my phone out. I frowned for I didn't recognize the Honolulu number. "Hello?" I said answering the call.

After a short pause a soft female voice in a strange flat accent that sounded foreign said. "Is this Miss Takahashi?"

"Who?" I asked.

The line went dead.

"Wrong number," I told Hawk and noted the time on my phone at 7:37. Way too late to be wandering the Iao rainforest.

"We better get going," Hawk said.

I nodded for the weird feeling of being watched from the darkness made me want to move too. I took one last look at the forest goddess then followed Hawk out of the clearing.

***

Hawk drove us to the Kihei condo that belonged to his surfer friend Professor Piedmont. He steered with his left hand as his left arm gripped me around my shoulders pulling me in close. He seem to know that I needed the comfort of his touch. I considered telling him about my strange visions back in the valley, but with the electric lights of civilization around me, and with each passing minute, the details become fuzzy and indistinct like a dream. I didn't say a thing keeping it all to myself.

Chapter 14

Figuratively Speaking

The still life set up in the middle of the room gleamed with its many mirrored surfaces. At the center was a silver tea set complete with teapot, teacups and saucers. An old style square toaster and an even older beaten up percolator coffee pot flanked the tea set on the right side. A particularly ugly chrome punch bowl dominated the left.

I felt sorry for the beginners drawing class at having to endure such an uninspiring still life. The students didn't seem to see it that way though and went at it with rookie enthusiasm. How I longed for those simple times when drawing a still life was enough to appease the artistic gods.

Gods ... goddess ... That random little thought made me thing about my odd encounter with the forest goddess back on Maui.

I forced myself back to the real world for it was Thursday, and I was earning my work study paycheck as an assistant to the instructor for the beginners drawing class. Along with the instructor, I walked around the room checking student progress. One student had started in with the reflections on the tea set. He was doing a credible job but unfortunately, his perspective was way off.

"You have to remember the perspective ellipse assignment, "I said to him. "If you don't, all your hard work with the shadows and reflections will be a waste." I took the piece of soft vine charcoal from his hand and corrected the upper ellipses of one of the teacups in the guy's drawing. "Check all your ellipses in relation to the horizon line before getting lost in details." I handed the charcoal back to him and our hands touched and something akin to a static electric shock made me pull my hand back. Along with the spark came a sudden and powerful sexual attraction to the guy. I looked in the guy's face. He must have felt it too for he looked a bit bewildered too.

Frowning, I walked away a little shaken.

For the rest of the class, I kept checking the guy out. He was as tall as Hawk but skinny with longish greasy brown hair. A thin scruffy beard darkened his cheeks, chin and upper lip. He wore a long-sleeved cotton flannel shirt, desert camouflaged cargo shorts and dirty socks and sneakers. His overall appearance screamed mainland grunge. He looked like a skinny Silent Bob from the movie Clerks.

After class, I put my unexplained attraction for grunge rejects aside and went to my studio to focus on some serious painting. The moment I opened my grad studio door, my mood darkened. For the life of me I couldn't recall what inspired the piece of shit sitting on my easel. I closed the door and stared at a painting of crisscrossing cool gray bands, a third in a serious of them. I Grunted my dissatisfaction and spent the next hour applying red vertical stripes among the gray with a force of will but all I had at the end was a pointless drab painting with red vertical lines.

"Fuck you," I barked and flung a paint rag at the canvas causing it to topple forward off the easel. I put a hand out, caught it and pushed it back into place leaving a smeared red hand print at its center. I snorted a laugh at the hand print because it was the most interesting thing to happen to one of my paintings all week. In defiance, I slapped my hand over the smudged impression and traced it with a brush full of black. I added more red to the hand print to solidify the shape and then painted a black circle around the red hand.

As I cleaned paint from my hand with a rag, I looked at my watch; it was almost one o'clock. I had burned two hours of my precious personal studio time and all I had to show was a black outlined hand print. And it was time for Hawaiian art History. Oh joy of joys. A root canal sounded more appealing. I don't mind the subject, it was the instructor Mr. Jenkins that bored me to tears. Why was some old boring haole guy teaching a class on Hawaiian art history anyway? I groused not for the first time.

After making sure that my studio door was locked, I pulled out my nude self-portrait painting.

"Hey Shelly," I said aloud.

Weirdly, raw emotion bubbled in my chest and I found myself close to tears.

What's that all about? I wondered.

I wanted to paint but not in my cramped little studio. I threw together some basic painting supplies, grabbed a blank 24 x 36 primed sheet of chip board and headed to the painting department to the life painting class that was just starting.

I peeped in and asked the nearest student, a chubby local girl, "Who is the model today?"

"Don't know, today starts a new pose," the girl answered.

I nodded and stepped in. A new pose meant that I wouldn't be stealing a claimed spot. As I entered the room, my paint encrusted jeans told all that I was a grad and people parted to allow me to setup where I pleased. We painter grads are the rock stars of the painting department and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the reputation.

The life painting instructor, Den Kang, a diminutive, elderly Asian man entered the room. We grads dubbed him Emperor Kang calling his reign here at the university the Kang Dynasty. Professor Kang was respected and feared in the art department. Even my mentor, Erma Beaumont, the head of the painting department kept out of Kang's path. Beaumont and Kang were artistic opposites. Beaumont is old guard abstract expressionist, Kang a sixties figurative painter in love with the female nude. The naturally hated each other and the animosity between the two painting instructors is legend in the halls of 2D representation.

Kang's intense brown eyes immediately fell on me. "You're Beaumont's girl," He said, not as a question but a statement, or more like an accusation.

I nodded, positive that he was going to embarrass me in front of everyone by demanding that I give up the prime spot I had claimed or even worst, leave. He didn't though, and went to instruct the model who had just entered the room for the day's pose.

Relieved, I finished setting up my painting station. When I next looked up, the model stood on the posing platform fully naked. The guy was blond, classically cut, achingly beautifully and impressively hung to boot. His flaccid pale circumcised penis swayed left to right hypnotically as he moved into place following Professor Kangs's instructions.

I wondered if I were the only one imagining how big he'd be fully erect. The booming voice of Emperor Kang popped me out of my crass meanderings.

"Everyone get to work!"

The pose was a simple standing contrapposto; weight on one foot, arms to the side. The pose made me think of the forest goddess on Maui. I set up quickly and painted at a furious pace because I knew that this would probably be the only day I could come. On top of my urgency, raw emotion frothed just under the skin added to my artistic attack. I didn't come up for air until the model's first break one hour later.

As I sipped a soda admiring my work, I heard a soft laugh behind me. I turned to see a beautiful Asian woman dressed in black slacks and a black top seated at a drawing bench behind me. It took me a second but I found her name, Meka Okuda, an art history graduate known for her photography skills.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"I think I'm copying your painting more than working from the model." Meka said.

She got up from her drawing bench to stretch. I marveled at her height at 5'10, maybe more. Although her face looked pure Japanese, the height and spectacular curvy figure certainly spoke of other ancestry. None of the Japanese girls I knew had an amazing body like Meka. Well, at least the ones in my family didn't anyway.

Meka casually fiddled with a handful of her long, glossy wavy hair (another thing enviable about her) as she looked at my painting. I walked over to peep at her drawing.

"You're channeling Michelangelo's David." I said.

"Apparently so are you, but your David has a bigger dick than Mike's," she said.

I frowned and looked at my painting and immediately saw that she was right. The pose, the model's pale skin, and blond curly hair led me right to the famous Michelangelo carving. I blushed a little at the loving detail I had put into painting the models substantial phallus.

"You taking this class?" I asked her.

"Nah. Just slumming. It's nice to get down and dirty with primitive burnt sticks." She held up an absolutely filthy blackened hand to prove her point. She had a smudge of charcoal on her forehead and the side of her nose too.

The model returned and disrobed. Instructor Kang clapped his hands and everyone got back to work. I squeezed out an excessive amount of titanium white onto my palette and spent the next hour making the figure look more like a carved statue.

"Jesus girl, you possessed or what?" Meka asked in awe at the next scheduled break.

I turned to look at her, surprised she was still there.

"You paint like each stroke is your last," she said. "I took some pictures. You okay with that?"

I noted the camera around her neck and gave an indifferent shrug. Meka stepped in close to the painting and snapped a few more shots.

"The face is all wrong," Meka said.

"I was thinking of my boyfriend, he's blond too," I said.

"That his dick too?" Meka asked taking an obvious close up of my figure's big penis.

Yes I thought but kept that to myself.

Professor Kang appeared beside Meka and looked at my painting with a sneer. He waved at it and said, "This is very good," then walked away.

"That was interesting," Meka said.

I nodded for we both knew that I had received a huge compliment. Kang is infamous in the painting department for hardly ever giving out compliments to his students.

"Sounded like he's courting you away from Beaumont," Meka said.

I assumed that she had heard Kang tagging me as a Beaumont minion. "No fucking way. Changing horses half way through my grad studies would be portfolio suicide," I said seriously.

"Then you better stop haunting the life painting class," Meka said. "Erma Beaumont has ears everywhere." She shouldered her bag and grabbed her drawing board. "Gotta go. My grad studio is three ninety eight. Look me up if you want to see the photos of you at work."

I watched her leave and then I looked back at my David.

"No fucking way, abstraction is my calling," I whispered.

I packed up my art stuff, racked my painting and went to my late afternoon class on French post-modernism. As the lecture dragged on, I longed to see David again. A new painting that I'm happy with is like a fresh love affair. The moment the class let out, I retrieved David from the figure painting class, took him to my studio and swapped him out for the gray useless mess with the red hand print outlined in black then pulled naked Shelly out from her secret corner and put her on the floor near David so I could see both.

"David, Shelly. Shelly, David," I said in introduction.

You are one surfboard short of being Hawk, I thought as I studied David.

A smile widened on my face as an idea formed. I left my studio and made a beeline to anthropology and entered the building where Hawk's office was. I knew he taught an anthropology 101 class at this hour and wouldn't be in. I also knew he never locked his office door so I slipped in, went straight to his desk and pulled out the spare keys to his Bronco then I went out to the anthropology's loading dock where the Bronco was parked and liberated Hawk's surfboard.

I got a lot of interested stares as I trotted back to the art department with the surfboard under my arm. In the stairwell up to my studio I ran into Erma Beaumont my chief adviser and the head of the painting department.

"Surf's up?" She asked, amused.

I laughed. "No just inspiration for a painting."

"Yes I've heard about your adventures in the figurative," Erma said casually.

I moaned internally wondering who ratted on me. I suspect that Paul Gleason had let slip to the wrong person about Shelly's New Dance. Or maybe it was Meka Okuda how had ratted me out. Panic gripped my chest as I thought of Shelly and David sitting out in the open in my studio one floor up. What if Erma asked to go to my studio? It was stupid to think that of course because she has never made such a request in all my years with her. But still I panicked for there was no way I could justify two figure paintings not to mention the fact that Shelly was clearly a life size nude of me.

"I overheard Kang praising your work today," Beaumont said.

I found my rat and made a mental apology to Paul and the Okuda girl. Professor Kang's contempt for modernists like Beaumont held no bounds and he must have gone out of his way to let her know that one of her star pupils was breaking her rules. With a smile that came nowhere near her eyes, the 69 year-old Erma Beaumont walked passed me as she continued her decent down the stairwell.

Chapter 15

Hardly Studying

Because of his four year contract with the university, Hawk was allotted an apartment in faculty housing but he gave it up to a fellow guest instructor with a wife and child. He resides in the top floor of one of the dorm towers reserved for advanced grad students. I was glad for his chivalry because it was less awkward spending the night here in the dorm towers than it would have been at faculty housing. It worried me that he would get into trouble for dating a student but he assured me that no one would turn a head. He says that students and instructors have been getting it on from the beginning of time, plus we were close in age and I was a graduate student from a wholly different department.