Two Irish Girls Pt. 01: The Studio

So this is how I ended up sitting in a rented artist's space in Somerville, outside of Boston. discussing the angle of my erection with my cousin Liz and a girl from Ireland.

Phone call on a Saturday afternoon.

Lizzie. First cousin on my mother's side. Tall, pretty, way crazier than anyone in my own family. Grew up with her. Had a just-shy-of-incest crush on her since I was twelve. That's thirteen years of low-grade, unrequited lust.

Typical Lizzie phone call. No hello. Just, "Fuck, Tommy. Total screaming fuck up."

"Love you too, Liz. And hello. That's what they say, y'know. Polite society, etc."

"OK. Hello."

"Hello."

"Shit, Tommy, don't be a dick. I gotta problem."

I look out my window to the streets of Allston. BU kids walking by. I was two years away from that and still without a steady job. Then love and years of history win out over the desire to give shit. I've known this girl since before she had tits.

"Ok, babe," I tell the phone. "What's the problem? What can I do?"

"You're not gonna like it."

"I dunno. Tell me and we'll see."

I hear the sound of an indrawn breath at the far end of the phone.

Then: "OK, coz, how'd you like to get naked in front of me?".

*

Which is how I met Tess Riordan.

Two girls. Mass College of Art. Rented space in a warehouse split down the middle. Where Lizzie painted, Tess sculpted. Both under deadline to produce something for their respective Senior projects the following Monday. One model who didn't show. Calls to half a dozen other models, half a dozen friends from school. Nobody available. Finally, Lizzie calling in the family chit, no matter how weird.

*

Quick subway ride. Green Line to Red. Quick walk from the station to a long row of former factories along the Mystic River. And finally to the second floor. I never could say no to Lizzie.

I walk in through a heavy oak door with a clouded window.

A large, messy room washed in light from high, long windows. Smell of oil paint, clay, water, stone. Lizzie, in a sleeveless t-shirt and overall shorts, a pale Irish-American girl, her thick mane of jet-black hair caught in a kerchief. At twenty-two, just short of three years younger than me.

And, I always suspected, infinitely older.

And beside her

Tess Riordan.

Though I didn't know her name as I walked into the door.

That would come, politely, a minute later.

What she looked like: unlike my sister, she is tall, five nine or so, thin hipped and boyish, with small breasts that move loosely under a vintage Doors t-shirt as she moves around a lump of clay on a table, dampening it with water A full lipped, freckle-sprayed red head. Just to look at her you know she is an Irish girl through and through. Though she wears her obligatory red hair buzz cut down to almost nothing. She is not, it will turn out shortly, a dyke, but, because she is a twenty-first century woman, she cultivates a dykey, aggressively asexual look. Later, that night, or early the next morning, when the Brookline traffic has quieted down outside the studio windows and Lizzie has curled up sleeping in a corner, and she and I are sitting against the wall, sharing a cigarette and a joint, and I am coming down off an experience of a lifetime, she will tell me that the hair is because she works with clay and stone and is a nuisance to maintain and wash. I watch her as she talks. Her small breasts moving loose beneath her t-shirt. Her arms, bare feet, the delicate skin of her neck all an Irish alabaster. And I beside her, modest in blue jeans, shirtless, spent. But also, she will tell me, the whole look works to just keep unwanted men's eyes off her. "You're a distraction, all of you," she'll say to me. "You either try to fuck me when I don't want you to, which is a great, bloody bother; or you don't want to fuck me when I want to get fucked coz I'm a skinny pale bitch. And none of you willing to take me serious as a fookin' artist, which is way worse than just not wantin' to fuck me, I can tell you that. You're a pathetic race, all of yeh."

Patting my leg. Looking down at my recently unruly lap. Putting her hand onto my zipper, saying, "Present company excluded, o'course, boyo." Laughing as I stir again beneath her hand.

But that'll be later. For the moment, she looks up at me from her clay-laden table and says, "Hullo, Lizzie's cousin. What'd you say your name was? You ready?"

*

"Weird," I say to Lizzie, as I stand inside the studio doorway. "Weirdest goddamn thing you ever asked me."

Liz was a Murphy. And the Murphy's -- all eight of them -- were risk takers, drunks, artists and occasional whack jobs. And she, the youngest, was by far the ballsiest of them all -- as if, a late and possibly accidental child, she was always anxious to prove she belonged to their wild tribe. When we were kids, she was the one who climbed trees all the way to their thin-branched tops. I was the studious only child of her mother's older sister. So, of course I took orders from her; I spent a childhood, in our tight knit Irish-American neighborhood in a Massachusetts mill town, standing at the base of trees, watching Lizzie as she climbed them. Of course she'd called me for this. And of course, as always, I'd obeyed her.

There was nothing Lizzie couldn't get me to do.

She was a bulldozer in a tiny body.

At least as far I'm concerned.

Says: "C'mon, Tom, I've seen you naked."

"What, when I was sixteen you walked in on me in the bathroom, you mean."

"No, last summer. Ned's place, Vermont. We went skinny dipping."

"That was with a bunch of other people. Doesn't count."

"Yeah but, hey, my tits. Your dick."

Tess, from her table: "I've seen me brothers naked. Little wankers never wore a fookin' towel on the way back from the loo. They embarrassed me when I was little. Then one day I told them, I seen bigger on a pigeon. I was ten. That shut them up. Thing was, it turned out true. When I started having sex, I found out me family was the worst hung in Dublin"

Lizzie: "Oh great, Tess, now he'll think you're sizing him up."

"I won't. But hey, cousin d'ye got little hands? Like yer President?"

I hold my hands up for her. Deciding I kinda like this woman.

Liz, of course, I've always half-loved.

"Looks normal," Tess opines.

"I'm glad you think so."

Lizzie: "Oh come on, you two. Can we just do this? I really need to get started and fuckin' Tony's no-show's cost us two hours already."

Tess: "We can work the night, though can't we? Tommy, you got plans tonight?"

"Other than this insanity? Nope."

"Then, let's go, it's all artists for chrissake. Get up out of your knickers and let's get to work, eh?

To my cousin: "I don't know how you talk me into this shit, Liz. It's like incest or something. Is there such a thing as artistic incest?"

"Between first cousins?" Liz asks innocently.

"Well if there is," Tess pipes up. "I'll be your chaperone. You'll need me permission if you decide to fuck."

*

Turns out, as Tess would say, I didn't need a chaperone for Lizzie. Tess was another matter.

I got undressed.

Lizzie and Tess moving toward canvas and clay, respectively.

Me asking: "How do you want me?"

Tess: "Aaah, stand up, face right. Two o'clock or so. Contrapposto (meaning a model's stance where your hips are turned and your legs are nearly perpendicular to a line between your shoulders); That okay with you, Lizzie?"

And, after Lizzie's murmured assent, says to me: "Good definition there, cousin. Nice muscles in your legs." She walks across the floor to where I'm standing, circles me appraisingly. "Yeah, the muscles go up through your arse decent. Back and shoulders good. Too bad about the wee gut there though. Drink a bit of beer, d'yeh? It's your core, man. Have you never heard of Pilates?"

Then pausing directly in front of me. Looking down. To where I hang, slightly but not excessively distended.

"And you'll be pleased to know you're entirely normal down there, boyo. Put me little pigeon-dick brothers to shame, yeh would." And suddenly moves her right hand from her side to flick out and snap a middle finger onto the end of it, stinging, surprising.

"Hey," I yell, involuntarily jumping away from her.

But she's already walking away, back to her table of damp, formless clay.

Saying over one narrow shoulder:

"Sure, don't complain. Ain't it every man's wish to have a girl's fingers on his dick?"

Across the room, my cousin guffaws.

*

Time slows. I stand, breathe.

The women looking, glancing at me, at clay and canvas, at me again.

Twenty minutes, break. Twenty more, break.

Tess's sculpture taking shape slowly: a male form, strong legs, ass, my soft, un-Pilates'd belly. Something shapeless between the thighs.

By the third session, my mind begins to wander.

I amuse myself by listing what porn categories this whole scenario falls into: clothed women, naked man; voyeur, naked in public, a soupçon of incest porn, where the guy gets naked in front of someone who shares a quarter of his gene pool.

Then drifting to two summers ago in Vermont, the two of us and a mess of Murphy's at one cousin's house on Conway Lake near Manchester in Vermont. An every-couple year event for some newly-minted adults who grew up together. And one drunken Murphy-crazy night, the bunch of us stripping down and jumping off a low dock into the water. Lizzie in moonlight: her skin the color of moonlight, the round perfection of her breasts, a sweet bisected pear of an ass. Running along the dock to launch out into the night air, a seal, a porpoise, an otter, a fish. Then surfacing, pulling herself onto the dock to rest on her elbows, water cascading off her berry nipples, saying, "Come on, you. The water's fuckin' fabulous!"

And from there, thoughts of what Tess might look like under her jeans and t-shirt. Pale, pink nipples, I supposed. Trimmed, I guessed, not shaven. A patch of autumn between her legs.

"Ho," Tess's voice cuts through the sunlight of my reverie, "What are you thinkin' about, big boy? You got a bit of reaction going on."

And I, back in the room, am suddenly aware of a fullness at the bottom of my body. I look down and see my dick standing half at attention.

"Now there's something," Liz says, and guffaws again at me, "There's something of you I haven't seen before."

*

"Aaaww," Tess says, "is that for me?"

Embarrassed, I try to cover my offending member with my hands. "Sorry," I mutter.

She shrugs towards my hands. Beneath which my dick continues its upward trajectory. At her easel, Lizzie has stopped painting and is looking at me, half smiling, amused at my embarrassment and trying (kindly but not successfully) to not make it worse.

"Nah, don't," Tess says to me. She picks up a lump of clay, sprays water on it from a bottle and walks over to me. With her free hand moves my hands away. "Y'know, I've never modelled one of these. Least not in its angry state. Lizzy, yeh don't mind if I take advantage of what's come up, do yeh?"

My cousin answers with an ironic little tilt of her head.

And Tess -- sweet fuck! -- just plops down on the floor to sit cross legged in front of me. Her face not six inches from the end of my hard-on. Which quickly finishes its journey upward, leaving me fully erect in front of her. And in front of Lizzie half a room behind her. I've got one girl practically breathing on my dick, and my cousin watching. The kink factor on this is going off the charts. You better believe I was hard. My penis strained forward and bobbed uncontrollably toward Tess's face.

Her hands move quickly, surely around the clay, forming a likeness of me, my throbbing, utterly embarrassed dick. Behind her, Lizzie has pulled up a stool and sits. She has a sketch pad in her lap but isn't drawing anything.

"Hey, Tommy," she calls to me. "You okay with this? I mean ..."

"Of course he is," Tess says back at her. She is cocking her head to one side as she molds her clay, trying a new angle. "Ain't you, Tom?"

Then, before I can answer, she reaches out and takes me between two fingers (thumb, forefinger!) and lifts me further up toward my stomach, stretching my balls. Holding me there, she studies my sack and then calls back to Lizzie (whom I haven't answered yet), "Liz, darlin', d'yeh know what's the one sentence nobody's ever said in the history of the world and nobody ever will?"

"No, what?" Liz asks.

"It's 'You know, sir, that's a very attractive scrotum you got there.'"

I can't help myself. I laugh. So does Lizzie. Tess lets go of my penis and quickly forms my scrotum out of clay. At the base of my clay penis.

"Tommy," Lizzie asks me at last, "you want to take a break?"

"Yeah," I tell the two women. "I think I do."

*

I break my pose, stretch, bend over. My dick, still hard, sticks into my belly. It flat out refuses to go down.

Tess, still sitting on the floor, looks at it, at me.

Says to Lizzie, who has gotten up and is back at her easel, doing some unseen touch up, "Lizzie, would I be a terrible whore if I put a feller out of his misery?"

"Oh, Jesus, Tess..."

"Well, I'm sittin' here while his dick's doin' a tarantella in my face. Poor guy's all undressed and no place to go. So, Tommy, d'you want me t' wank you off or what?"

Liz from across the room, "Jesus, I think I'm going to go and have a cigarette. Like, outside. Like, seriously outside."

"Hey," I find myself saying to her before she can turn her back on me and my hard-on. This whole thing is feeling kinky, hot, edging toward something transgressive. And I realize that for once, I can be the one climbing the tree. And I have always crushed on her. The thought of water running down her wet hair across her breasts, silvered by moonlight. And I take the risk, I feel thin branches bending under my feet. "I mean, hey," I say to my cousin Liz, who I've always half-loved, while Tess Riordan sits beside me, smiling, almost laughing at my ridiculous, persistent hard-on. "Don't you wanna watch?"

*

Liz looks at me, at Tess, at me.

No longer trying to spare me embarrassment. Looking right at my ridiculous boner.

Asks me, "Is that a dare, Tommy?"

"Dunno, Liz. You wanna take it?"

"Dunno, Tommy. You want me to?"

"Jesus, Liz," Tess calls over to her. "Maybe, you wanna wank him?"

"No," Liz answers. She grabs her stool and drags it across the floor halfway to where I'm standing. "Tommy invited me. I think I'll just watch."

"Well," Tess says. "If we're all agreed. So, Tommy, come over to yer mother here."

Amazed, I walk over to her, led by my hard-on, acutely aware of Liz a few feet away. Her eyes taking in the dare.

"Here," Tess tells me, pointing toward the model's platform. "Sit down, get comfy."

I do.

"May I?" she asks mock-politely.

I lean back onto my elbows, giving her unimpeded access.

But it's Liz who answers.

"Sure," she tells us. "Go ahead."

And to me: "Tommy, this is so fucked up."

"Yeah," I tell her. "But tell me it's not hot."

"It's hot." Liz says. "Ridiculous. But hot."

"Well I'm glad I could be of service," Tess breathes. And reaches down to take me in her hand.

The feeling's electric. She's wrapped four fingers on the upper side of my shaft while her thumb starts moving in slow, tight circles over the sweet spot at the bottom of my glans; and then slides up and down my underside, pressing on the raised vesicle just below my skin. She all but pulls the breath out of me. I didn't know I could get any harder but I swell, straining at her touch. There's a wild fullness in my balls and I sigh under her ministrations, "Whoa, Tess, that's awesome."

I lean up to watch her hand on and around me. And see beyond Tess's shoulders, my cousin sitting atop her stool, bare legs crossed at the ankles. Watching Tess. Watching me. Watching Tess wanking me.

Tess's hand, pale and blue-veined, moving now, sliding up, down my shaft. Not gripping hard, just gliding, letting the soft skin of her palm do all the work.

This is not, I think, gonna take a long time.

"So, Tommy," Liz says. By now, I've squeezed my eyes closed. Liz is a voice. Tess is a hand, moving. I am all sensation. "Back at Ned's place, did you get a kick out of seeing me naked? I got a kick outa you."

"Yeah," I tell the pleasuring dark. "Dream come true. You were pretty, you've got fabulous tits."

"Thank you," Liz says demurely.

"And I don't?" Tess interrupts. "Jesus, I'm the one with me hand on yer knob. Yeh ingrate."

"You're pretty too," I tell her.

"Oh, fookin' 'too.' I oughta pull the fookin' thing clear off ya, throw it in the river and be done with yeh." But still her hand moving, pleasuring, sliding along my shaft.

"Not conducive," I tell her.

And to Liz: "God, and in case you don't know it, your ass is like this perfect pear."

"Well, what about her fanny?" Tess pipes in. "that's pussy on this side of the ocean."

"Didn't see it. Too dark."

"So tell me what you think her pussy looks like."

I fall back a little, gasp as Tess tightens her grip. Maybe she feels me throbbing in her palm, coming closer. Says, "Not yet, boyo and moves her hand -- first downward to squeeze the base of my shaft until the urgency inside me fades a little (enough); then up, slowly, slowly still until she leaves my shaft and with her soft-skinned palm cups and caresses the rich uncircumcised end of me.

And looking at Liz, breathless, tell her: "Beautiful. Whatever it looks like, your pussy would be beautiful."

"Sweet," Tess whispers. "How you doin' boyo?"

"Almost," I tell her. "Almost."

On her stool, Liz seems flushed to me, the pale Irish skin of her neck has gone from ivory to a pale, excited (and exciting) pink. She uncrosses her ankle, sits, suddenly immodest, her knees apart. Her jeans shorts just a piece of fabric covering things. She asks, "You think I have a beautiful pussy, Tommy?"

"Just guessing," I say. Indrawn breath as Tess begins to stroke me again. "But yeah."

"Jaysus, you two," Tess says, "Get a room willya?"

Instead Liz smiles, stands up. Walks over to where Tess is rubbing me off. This close, I see that the flush has spread up into her cheeks. Faint, but there. My cousin is turned on by watching me, naked, hard, squirming under Tess Riordan's soft, insistent hand. I'm close, I'm close, I'm all a coil of energy waiting to explode.

And then, surprisingly, Liz leans over and puts a splay-fingered hand on my chest, pushes me down onto my back.

Asks: "What color are my pubes?"

"Black," I say. "What else?"

"I shave," she tells me.

"Oh, I don't know," Tess Riordan says to both of us. "I keep myself more or less the way god made me."

Her fingers find my own trimmed hair.

I feel myself building.

"Oh fuck," I whisper. My penis throbbing in Tess's hand.

Now Liz sits beside me on the platform, her clothed hip touching my bare hip.

Whispers, "You gonna come, Tommy?"

Tess refuses to speed up, the slow rhythm of her hand is driving me nuts.

I am moving my hips up into her hand. I am thrusting into the pussy of Tess's moving hand .

"Soon," I tell her. "Oh fuck, soon."

"How 'bout now, older cousin?' she asks me. And unexpectedly -- amazingly - touches me below my balls. And, oh god, the heel of Liz's hand is pressing against the bottom of my body, her fingers moving lightly at the soft edge of my asshole.

Tess. Still. Slow. Caressing.

Says, "I think we're about finished here, boyo."

And Liz, her hand pressing into me, leans down so her mouth is beside my face, my ear, I feel her breath on my skin as she whispers:

"Yeah, Tommy. Go ahead and think of my pussy while you come, it's alright, I want you to. Come inside me, little cousin."