The Love Model Sessions Pt. 02

1.

Carrie Sledge was, in her own endearingly erroneous words, an ideas man, and so proud of being independent of mind that she often coincidentally proved independent of organised thought. So confident was she in the pursuit of the focused mental picture of whatever it was that she sought to achieve, the simplest of organisational skills often fell by the wayside.

This is not denigration of the individual, by any means. The same can be said for almost all creatively minded people, though that's not to say that they are, by and large, messy, chaotic, or prone to disorder and dilemma.

But truthfully painters cannot be trusted around carpets. Magicians cannot be trusted around rabbits... or wallets. Thespians cannot be trusted around Twitter hashtags. Poets cannot be trusted around alcohol, drugs, or emotionally stable people... or emotionally unstable people either for that matter. And jazz musicians cannot be trusted around basic guitar chords.

You get the point!

Part of an artist's lot in life is the adequate possession of self-awareness for one's imperfections, what the self cannot be trusted with, and how to compensate for this where preventative measures just don't seem to cut it.

Some artists focus more on compensating for their lack of awareness or organisational skills by showing off an innate ability to learn new creative skills by focusing more on the hobbies that keep them sane throughout their chaotic lives. For instance Carrie Sledge could draw, paint, photograph, dance, act, play the piano, play the guitar, write poetry, write songs, sing, use photoshop, make animated films...

But she could not schedule or timetable art classes to save her life, and god forbid she were ever caught outside of her usually calm demeanour of deadpan indifference when reality came knocking, because she could be horrendously accident prone when caught out of "the zone."

No sooner it seemed than when Arthur and Jean-Luc left the studio that day did her first class of the day begin show up. Of course, she had uncharacteristically set up the photography session for a weekday morning when she could have used those hours to bring in money, rather than to purely dole it out.

The art studio was rigged up with lighting, reflectors, camera, and tripod. The next model for the day had not yet shown up. The chairs, tables, easels, and other accessories, had all been stored away for the session...

The horror drawn of her suspicions dawned too quickly on Miss Sledge, who - preoccupied by racing thoughts and realisations of the level of disorganisation and clutter on show - was not prepared to be let down by today's life model and psychically just knew it, therefore, that she would be let down.

Sod's Law!

Carrie seemed strangely jittery to oddball 53 year old art student Keith Gateley. Keith, who always psyched himself up for life drawing classes with a cup of tea and a biscuit and yet couldn't because yesterday's milk was now empty, had burning questions regarding the state of the room. Keith was a paying customer. So naturally he saw himself as the brains of the operation.

Dizzy, confused, and in sudden need of a hero, intended to rush out through the front door and to maybe snag Jean-Luc or Arthur before either disappeared. She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her to keep them around until the beginning of this session, at least to help clear the floor.

Carrie attempted to break into a measured dash from her stationary position, and in doing so, bulldozed one of her unjustifiably expensive studio lights right into the ground. She might also have bumped into something else obstructing her would-be escape as she made for the door.

But by the time she got there, Arthur's car was gone, and so was Jean-Luc. And again, behind her, as she stood in the porch frustrated and cursing herself, the echo of something else fragile and expensive coming crashing down rang in her ears.

Carrie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and uttered to herself a mantra that always seemed to see her through in trying times such as these. It went something along the lines of, "oh bollocks!"

The session would start fifteen minutes late. She would whittle it down by a few stealthy minutes, so she could go have herself a little cry before the next one. And rather than think to call either Arthur or Jean-Luc and ask one of them to come back and model for her, she had instead spent those precious moments picking up the pieces of that studio light, and her faithful old Nikon camera.

Last minute she vanished into the bathroom, a human cyclone of stress, and stripped bare to personally model for the class, after a cheeky whore bath over the sink. Because despite it all, her knickers had been plastered to her cunt by just how aroused that photoshoot had made her.

Only when sitting nude in a chair before her class did she realise that it would have been proper to dry off with a towel afterwards. Nobody knew where else to look, or what to think of Carrie Sledge's dripping wet bush or her strange mood. Keith would think long and hard about it though.

2.

Cafe du Rhone was not the busiest café in town that noon, considering that it sat smack bang in the middle of the city centre's financial district. Sandwiches sold by the truckload mid-morning. Du Rhone was a smart enough establishment to have garnered a few deals with local offices, taking orders and making deliveries, and so two vans zipped between them every day.

A silvery chilling light had developed from out of Storm Cherie, and a lazy drizzle now suggested the possibilty that her tantrum was now over. Arthur and Jean-Luc retired to a window seat deep at the back of the cafe.

There was a different barista today, a pretty young brunette woman who seemed much more lucid, though just as socially awkward. Arthur ordered chicken club sandwiches and two Americanos, which they decimated wolfishly in between enthusiastic discussion surrounding their chosen occupations.

"I want to know more about your music," Jean-Luc effused decidedly, hinting that, "my illustrations are always somewhat synaesthetic of the mental imagery of sound, if you know what I mean."

"I'm trying to get my head around the word synaesthesia," gawped Arthur, gushing, "You might be the brains between us."

"Not at all," excused Jean-Luc with easy humour, "I don't know the right words to explain. Synaesthesia is a brain disorder I think. Whereas we all relate certain sounds, sights, smells, sensations, etcetera... by association? The disorder causes them to bleed together like hallucinations."

"Wow," was all Arthur managed, gulping down a bite of his sandwich in a hurry. "I think I understand. So my music could be associated with a certain colour?"

"That's typical association for the rest of us," said Jean-Luc, nodding eagerly. And then he asked Arthur to hold out his hand palm-up. Arthur did as he was told without question. Jean-Luc took Arthur's hand then and spoke quietly.

"But imagine that such a simple action as this causes you to see the colour blue," he said, and stroked the palm of Arthur's hand with his fingers. It tickled. Arthur stifled a laugh, smiling, suddenly conscious of a piece of chewed up bread sticking between one canine and the lateral incisor beside it.

"Touch can cause people to see colours?" Arthur asked, awed.

"Yeah, so can smells and sounds."

"That's what I meant," Arthur said with a cheeky look.

"Told you I'm not that clever," Jean-Luc shot back. He watched as a close-lipped Arthur stroked his tongue across his upper teeth, trying to dislodge the lump of doughy bread from between his teeth. Still he didn't let go of Arthur's hand. "You get me now though?"

Arthur allowed Jean-Luc continued possession of his hand as he nodded. "Are you doing anything this afternoon?" Arthur asked.

Jean-Luc shrugged. Half-smiled.

"Would you like to come see for yourself what I do?" Arthur asked. "I'll happily drive you home after."

Jean-Luc smiled with nothing but his ocean-blue eyes as he sipped from his coffee cup. He really shouldn't, he knew. And god knew that he still wanted that cold shower. But who was he to deny the strong sense of friendship growing between Arthur and himself?

3.

"Darling, how are you?" Carrie began. The storm had passed. She was talking into her phone, eyes fixated, in intense concentration on something that simply was not there, between the cracks of the floorboards beneath her, which had been varnished into a near black laminate over the duration of maybe a century. From beneath those boards came a ghostly chill.

"I just wanted to check in on you and get your thoughts on the day." She halted, fell silent.

The night came once again sluicing its way against every window in town, rinsing away all hope of restful warmth without shivers and icy damp. She paced barefoot back and forth across the frigid living room floor of the first floor of her studo/home, wrapped up in a thick green woolen cardigan which casually refused to contrast or to compliment the pink cotton Peppa Pig pyjama bottoms she wore.

"Are you okay?" urged an uncannily attuned Jean-Luc. "You sound down," he said sympathetically.

"Alive-ish," Carrie's voice wavered. Six feet away sat a thick grey shag wool rug, which sat before an imitation fireplace - absurd really considering the number of radiators lining the walls all over the house, but she liked the gaudy aesthetic. "One of my models didn't turn up again today. Bloody women!"

The rug suddenly struck Carrie as a safe island before the thin ice of a frozen sea, especially as she became subconsciously drawn to the flames of the fire. She tiptoed over to the rug and began to scrunch up the shag between her toes.

"Oh no, sorry, I could have stuck around," Jean-Luc responded apologetically, though he sounded somehow preoccupied.

"It's fine," assured Carrie, who now close to the false flames of her hearth turned to stimulate her eyes elsewhere, and fixated on the screen of her laptop, beside which her now busted up Nikon was linked up via USB cable.

Miraculously it still functioned enough for Carrie to be able to download the day's photos. It was fine. Everything was fine. Daddy was going to pop into Costco tomorrow and fetch her an early Christmas present. Fine.

"Is now a good time to discuss work?" she asked wanly.

"Sure," Jean-Luc enthused. Taking the phone from his ear, he signalled to Arthur and touched the loudspeaker icon. "I'm actually with Arthur as we speak."

"Oh," Carrie reacted, not quite knowing how to. "Okay."

They were in his studio room, a living-room sized space in the intended second bedroom of Arthur's apartment. A miniature museum of ergonomic stringed wooden musical furnishings, stacks of electronic gadgetry with more lights and knobs than a spaceship, microphones, fairy lights, LEDs - a real dream scenario.

"Perfect actually!" Carrie corrected herself. Arthur greeted her. And now she was doubly at a loss for words as her eyes perused one single image from a distance, one of Arthur and Jean-Luc appearing very physically engaged.

"Okay, so we're fired," Arthur joked, "what's the good news?"

That chipped the ice. Carrie pinched her eyes shut momentarily and ran her fingernails through her scalp. "Oh you're not fired, Arthur, you're in this until the end even if it kills us, though I was wondering if anything existed for men these days along the lines of chastity belts."

"Ha!" came a harsh laugh. Definitely Arthur.

"No, no, you both performed brilliantly today and I'm glad that you're both getting along so... famously." A flat-toned innuendo. "But concerning the nature of the project, which I'm having to plan and rectify as we go, it's only fair that we cultivate a creative democracy. So I want your opinions."

Arthur and Jean-Luc smirked at each other as they listened. There was a pause that threatened to quickly become uncomfortable before Carrie took it upon herself to continue unabated. "Okay so I've looked at the stuff we got so far. I slogged through nearly a hundred and fifty images...

"I managed to whittle that down to twenty-one images which I thought were the best of the lot," she continued, now searching the floor for her fluffy slippers. "Since you're both in the same room right now, would it be appropriate for me to send a couple to you?"

4.

"Oh wow," remarked Jean-Luc as Arthur showed him the screen of his own phone. Neither knew how to react. Both knew, however, the nature of the feelings stirred up by the sight of them wrapped up in such an embrace.

"We did good," Arthur said, emboldened. But following a silence, "we did good, right?"

He could not help but admit to himself that he had been worried that he was getting himself into something more bawdy than artistic, something that he could later regret. Hence his initial reluctance all along in being photographed essentially going gay for pay. He did not voice these concerns now however, avoiding crassness entirely.

"It's a start," Carrie replied reservedly.

However the opportunity for criticism was upon him the moment Carrie asked their thoughts beyond the initial response. Beside him, Jean-Luc looked Arthur dead in the eye, containing a smirk, and silently mouthed the words, "send me that one."

Arthur turned beet red and froze. "Thoughts then, fellas," Carrie requested.

"I did actually originally imagine we were going for something with more of a classical vibe," Arthur was again first to respond. "Like with less balls and boners?"

There was a pause, and then childish laughter.

"Hahhhh," Carrie sighed. "I don't recall requesting boners, funnily enough."

"Yes, less boners next time, Arthur," Jean-Luc chided unconvincingly.

"Definitely something more reminiscent of the classical though, I agree," Carrie mused, seeming distracted. She was emailing Arthur more images. "And I think now that we're past breaking the ice," she hinted and then paused for effect, "we can blast through a bunch of them. But umm..."

"Ha! Go on," Jean-Luc now chuckled, knowing all too well that when Carrie sounded lost for words, it usually meant that she had something specific in mind and didn't know how to ask for it. Again and again his phone buzzed as Arthur's thumbs worked away.

Just a few days ago so reluctant to be photographed embracing and kissing another man. But he didn't seem ashamed or afraid of assigning them to Jean-Luc's possession. Jean-Luc wondered what that could mean.

"Well if I ask you for more kissing scenes, it's not going to end up a repeat of today is it?" Carrie scrutinised. "My studio stunk of filthy man muck after that." Now the indignation was real.

Both men suppressed their laughter. "You could ask us to keep pants on and paint our arses however you please at a later date, Carrie," Arthur interjected quickly.

"Hmm, we'll see on the day, shall we?" she asked. And, "speaking of which, how does this Sunday morning suit you both?"

Just short of perfect, only because Sunday couldn't have come soon enough.

5.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Arthur asked.

The night was growing late. He had one last thing to show Jean-Luc before he would drive him back home. They were sat in Arthur's bedroom, which doubled for his living room.

Bed shoved up against the chimney breast, sofa - into which they both now comfortably sank - shoved up against the foot of the bed, and at the wall opposite hung a flat-screen TV, and underneath that a glass shelf sporting some of the typical things you might find in a modern man-cave - dynamic sound system, gaming console, a stack of games, comics, and a cigar box that admittedly did not contain cigars.

"Sorry," replied Jean-Luc, quickly swiping the heavily suggestive photographic image from the screen of his phone with a sheepish smirk. Arthur blushed, shook his head, and hit play on the YouTube video he had pulled up.

The site was full of its kind now. Content creators were exploiting it in their droves, to such extent that it had been hard to find anything with genuine creative originality. Arthur had saved a number of them to his favourites list.

"Okay just sit back and listen," he requested, raising the volume on his sound system with another remote. And for the next five minutes they watched and listened as a girl whispered into the camera and made a series of sounds with her hands, first rubbing her fingers together and then introducing the use of sponges and brushes.

The name for the sensations both men began to experience was better known by its acronym, which in full stood for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response; a term used to describe sensations of tinglng, static, or goosebumps, as a trigger response to certain amplified sounds. At first the sensations would begin around the crown of the skull.

Jean-Luc sat silently, reduced to open-mouthed awe as the sensations began to cascade down the back of his neck, and suddenly he could not contain himself as that led to uncontrollable shivers down his spine.

They continued to watch and listen, giggling like kids again, remarking at the sensations and how they made Arthur and Jean-Luc feel. Notably not everyone responded to ASMR, but also whereas some who it did work for found it therapeutic, others were naturally repulsed by it, so Arthur explained.

But there was another kind of ASMR that he was more than just fascinated by, and one that gave him ideas. And Arthur wondered, devilishly, what kind of reaction it would get from Jean-Luc. He asked, "are you ready for this?" sliding into his saved playlists and finding the intended clip in a matter of moments.

The album cover to 'Dreams of Pleasure and Ecstasy' was suggestive enough. The titled track, Kamasutra, and the ones that followed, contained sounds that not only caused Jean-Luc to tingle and shiver.

By the time Arthur offered to give him a ride, Jean-Luc was nearly as deep a shade red as the image splayed across the TV screen before them.

6.

A little at a time he summoned the will to prise apart his eyelids, aware all at once of the coldness of his skin, the discomfort of his position, and the dryness and godawful taste of his mouth. Little by little he let in the light, the dreary grey of a heavily overcast October morning, defenseless before his own rude awakening.

Jean-Luc's thoughts drifted lazily, hazily, back to home. Sometimes he awoke momentarily unaware of where he was, thinking he was back home. Sometimes he awoke wishing that he was. Wishing that he could be. A certain somebody was making him beg to differ with those inner voices though.

Jean-Luc's mouth forced itself open and into a prolonged yawn so strong that it gripped him and seemed to take control of his whole body. With a start, as if breaking free of the sleep fatigue gripping him, he bounced out of bed to empty his bladder, brush his teeth, and give his face a cold splash of shock.

Returning to the bedroom moments later he picked up the pillows that had found their way onto the floor in the night and ruffled them back into a more useful state, piling them up at the head of the mattress. The duvet was a mess too, also having been kicked off in the seemingly very enthusiastic act of sleep.

Content enough with that, although still blurry eyed and tired, Jean-Luc lay back down on the bed, let out another yawn, and had a good hard stretch. He reached for his phone on the small desk beside the bed, unplugging it from its charger, and logged in.

Some miles away, Arthur had also awoken and was stretching out and sucking in deep lungfuls of air. He looked to his own phone and peered sensitively at the time.

07:13.

What a time to come alive.

Arthur, unlike Jean-Luc, always slept naked. And most mornings as he swept off the duvet to draw out the process of waking up, he was engorged and easily pleased. Sometimes he might start a morning with a gentle fondle. Sometimes he might light a cigarette first. Today was the latter kind of day. He did that and then went for a warm shower and to brush his teeth.