Strange Art 1: Art Something

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First eBook Edition

ISBN 978-1-939275-61-5

1 Art Something

That’s me. Art. People point at me and say, “That’s Art Something.” Nobody knows my last name, I guess. Nobody cares.

But Art is the important part. Art is my name. Art is my life.

“Art! You have to get ready for school! Come on, honey. The bus will be here in ten minutes.”

“In a minute. I’m almost done.”

It was a normal exchange between my mother and me. Most mornings. It’s been that way for years. When I wake up in the morning, I get out my sketchbook and draw. I often go straight to the easel and paint and then it’s even harder to get to school. I used colored pencils to capture my latest dream. Lately, I’d been using a lot of red and my pencil was just a stub. I needed to go to the art supply store this weekend.

I paint dreamscapes.

“Hey, Pen. We’ve really got to go. I’ll drive. Mom’s got food for you that you can eat in the car,” my sister said over my shoulder. I sighed and laid my supplies down. I wasn’t allowed to take art supplies to school. All I’d do all day is draw and for some reason the teachers didn’t like that. We’d had some serious negotiations when I was a freshman.

“Thanks, Fay,” I said. “Sorry I’m such a pain.”

“Not to me. Don’t worry, we’ll get to class on time.”

Fay had only had a car for a few days—since her eighteenth birthday. I got a new easel. Not for my eighteenth. For my seventeenth. I was exactly a year younger than my sweet sister. We went downstairs and I took the sack breakfast from Mom and dutifully kissed her on the cheek. I opened the bag in the car and wolfed down the scrambled egg sandwich with crisp bacon. She’d packed a thermos cup of spicy vegetable juice cocktail. My favorite.

“What are you going to do when I go to college next year?” Fay asked.

“Flunk out.”

“Pen, you can’t just give up. You need to keep your grades up so you can go to school. It will be better in college, I promise.”

Oh. My nickname. Only my sister uses it and I’m the only one who calls her Fay. That’s only when it’s just the two of us. Arthur and Morgan. Pendragon and le Fay. Our dad teaches English literature at the University. He sneaked the names in on Mom without telling her where they came from.

“It’s getting worse, Fay,” I whispered.

“I’m here for you, Pen. I’ll always be here for you.”

You see, art —painting dreamscapes—isn’t about making pretty pictures for me. It’s about staying sane.

I have very vivid dreams. But I’ve never been able to describe one. My language skills aren’t the greatest. I didn’t talk at all until I was four. And I’m not that brilliant kid who started talking in whole sentences out of the encyclopedia when I did start to talk. It was the normal gaga dada kind of talk that most kids start with. Gaga, for me, was the best imitation I could do of ‘Morgan’. I said it the day we left her at her first day of kindergarten.

I screamed it most of the day.

I couldn’t tell my mother and father what was wrong, but I sat for hours with crayons and paper trying to express the heart-rending loneliness I felt when my sister left for school.

The good part was that crayons and paper settled me down. I got used to Morgan leaving me and going to school each day. And each afternoon when Morgan returned, she brought me treasures.

“Look what I did today, Arder. I made letters. Soon I be able to read books!” We both liked books and being read to. The idea that my sister would be able to read the mysterious things to me was exciting enough to forgive her absence during the day. As soon as she’d shown me her letters, I pulled out my crayon scribbles. She looked at them like they were serious art. “Oh, Arder. You were scared I wouldn’t come back,” she said as she ran a finger over a particularly angry purple line. “Don’t worry, Arder. I won’t ever leave you. But I have to go to school. Next year, Arder go to school. We’ll always come home together.” And we have.

But that was when the dreams started, too. And like every other time in my life, when I needed her, Morgan was there. When I woke up crying, it was Morgan who was first in my room to crawl in bed with me and comfort me.

“Arder had a bad dream,” Morgan said to our mother and father. “I help.”

“You can tell us about it in the morning, son,” Dad said. “Both of you go to sleep now.”

I asked Morgan if I should call this next part a caveat and she said it sounded more like a disclaimer. So, I’ll go with that.

1. I’m not mentally challenged. I get good grades in school. I know stuff. I know words, but I have a hard time saying things.

2. Dreamscapes are not quite the same as fantasy art. Sometimes I don’t recognize anything in them. There are no dragons or bare-breasted damsels in distress in them. I’d like there to be bare-breasted damsels. I’m seventeen.

3. I don’t always have nightmares. Sometimes the dreams are funny or happy or sexy. The first time I woke up covered in my own semen, I just had to go paint right away. There still weren’t any bare-breasted damsels.

4. This isn’t a high fantasy story. Neither my art nor my dreams are a gateway into some alternate reality. I don’t foretell the future. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing special about my dreams at all. Which seems to be the only problem: I can’t tell them. Words just don’t form around my dreams. All I can do is paint them and because they don’t have words, they are just that much more intense.

5. My sister doesn’t sleep with me every night. But she always seems to know when I need her and will hold me until I settle down.

End disclaimer. Unless I think of something else later on.

When I told Fay the dreams were getting worse, I didn’t mean the dreams were all bad. Dammit! It’s the words. I meant that I couldn’t control them and they were getting more intense. If I didn’t get to a place where I could draw or paint as soon as I woke up, I couldn’t think all day long. That night, the dream would be back twice as powerful as it was the night before.

The drawings—and paintings—were getting more and more complex. They were taking longer for me to put in details. When I was little, all I could do was throw color and scribbles at the page. Gradually, actual images had taken shape, and then people. My teachers said I had artistic talent and needed to develop it. But it was so painful. I think that for a good night’s dreamless sleep, I’d gladly give up being an artist.

That night, I struggled against a bleak nightmare, begging for it to be something better. It improved. It was beautiful. I bathed in its images of joy and pleasure and knew that when I woke up, I would paint the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was in heaven.

Until I woke up.

Fay moaned beside me. I clutched at her warmth and softness, joining her moan in my moment of ecstasy. Her eyes flicked open and stared into mine. Deep blue, like my own. Like my father’s. Like my mother’s. Shivers were running through my body.

“You know, Pen, this is why I don’t sleep with you as often as I used to. I just couldn’t stand the way you were struggling last night. And look at the mess you made. You’d better clean up quick before you paint.” She kissed my nose. “And don’t worry, Pen. I’m still here for you.” I dropped my eyes. It had happened twice before when Fay was in bed with me. Just as I awoke with that glorious feeling, I sprayed semen all over our pajamas. I tucked myself in and rushed to the bathroom.

I pulled my shirt off and started on the bottoms when I realized I hadn’t brought any clean underwear in with me and ran back to my bedroom. I just walked in to go to the bureau when Fay’s moan brought me up short. I looked and saw her arch her back as her hand moved rapidly in her shorts. She whined out loud and then dropped back onto the mattress. I was stunned. She was so beautiful. Her eyes flicked open and she saw me.

“What?” she asked. “I have dreams, too, you know.” I grabbed my underwear and ran back to the shower. When I returned my room, she was gone.

I went immediately to my easel and started preparing a palette.

If I only painted one picture a week, that would be fifty-two paintings a year. One on each Saturday and another on Sunday and I would have 104 more. Add in the days of summer when there was no school to rush off to and I’d be up to 200. Vacations, holidays, sick days—well over 250 paintings a year. My family wasn’t poor, but we didn’t have that kind of money, or enough storage room for hundreds of oil paintings. And the truth was I created a painting or two a day, plus drawings and sketches. Five or six hundred a year.

That’s why I still used finger paints and paper.

I’d progressed from my childhood. There were times I still painted with my fingers because I liked the texture and personal contact. But after filling page after page of those paintings, I’d gradually moved to tempera poster paints and sturdier paper. Now I painted with casein tempera and gouache. It was water-based, cleaned up easily, used a heavy paper substrate, and had good color density. My teacher at school wanted me to use acrylics, and I was still learning the application and control. We were given all sorts of subjects to paint in art class, but painting something from life was more difficult than painting from my dreams. Still, it was getting better.

I set about painting the dreamscape I’d just emerged from.

“I know. I know. I love you, too, Pen,” Fay said as she hugged me from behind. “This is really intense. I don’t think you should show it to Mom and Dad.”

I looked at the sheet of Bristol in front of me and nodded. It was the most real of any dreamscape I’d painted. She lay back with a look of ecstasy on her face, her breasts lifted to the heavens. There was a decided lack of detail where her hand was between her legs, but I’d never really seen any of that, so I didn’t know what it looked like. There were splashes of color all around the area as if fireworks were going off.

“Did you dream this? Or is this what you saw when you came into the room?”

“Um… what I saw influenced it, but it was what I was dreaming about. About a girl I was pleasuring,” I said. “It looks too much like you, doesn’t it?”

“Well, my face is certainly recognizable. Um… I don’t actually look like the rest of it. I mean, it’s pretty. I love it. But it’s not me,” she said.

“I just imagine things,” I sighed. “When a dream like that catches up with me, I just can’t quite capture it. It’s better than what the dream started out as.” Fay looked a question at me and I pointed to where I’d clipped another painting on a line to dry. Fay went to look at it.

“Wow!” Fay breathed. She threw her head back to squint at it over her shoulder. “I’m glad I came to hold you. It was eating you. Your soul. Is this what you mean by getting worse?”

“Um… not exactly. Yes, in the intensity and depth, but this one is just as frightening,” I said pointing at the image of my sister in her orgasm. “When you say ‘eating my soul’, you have it right. Even the good dreams devour me.”

“I’ll be here, Pen. If you need me, I’ll be here.”

“You always seem to know when they are worst,” I whispered.

“Yeah. I’m your psychic sister,” she laughed. “You’ll be all right tonight, won’t you? I’m going out.”

“Big date?”

“Yeah, right. A bunch of us are going to see a movie. One guys would never be caught dead at.”

“Fay?” I asked. “Have you ever been on a date?”

“Sure. We go out all the time. A bunch of us hang out together. But the guys won’t want to see this movie.”

“I mean a date, Fay. Like you and a guy?” She looked at me and shifted around a little.

“Well, once Brett met me at the theater and no one else showed up. Turned out that he told me the wrong time and everyone else was coming to the second show. We sat together in the theater and he tried to hold my hand.”

“Tried?”

“I handed him the popcorn and left.”

“Do you want me to come with you to the movie tonight?”

“No!” Fay’s eyes popped wide open. “Trust me, Pen. If you went to this movie, all the girls would think you were gay. I don’t want them to write you off.”

“I don’t mind.”

“What? Why?”

“I’ve never been on a date, either. Girls… They interest me in a general way. I’m curious. I want to know… what it’s like, you know? But I can’t put a face to any of the feelings. That part of them doesn’t interest me,” I explained. Poorly.

“Um… If you go with us, you have to sit between two of the other girls,” she said. I cocked my head to the side. Huh? “And you have to make a pass at one of them. Or both of them. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find out what some of it’s like.” She giggled. Well, if she said so. I pulled out the hair dryer and blew warm air across my painting so I could box it without showing Mom and Dad. The dark image on the line would suffice for their review.

2 A Night at the Movies

I sat in the dark theater between Linda and Annette while a silly rom-com played on the big screen. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had to decide who to do it to first. Linda had a lot to offer. She was a smart girl, trim, with big boobs. She must have used a forklift to get them up as high as they were displayed under her sweater. It was tempting, but I had a feeling she was wearing a steel reinforced brassiere. Annette wasn’t as stacked, but she was insanely cute. Her face was sweet and she had dimples that showed almost all the time because she was usually smiling. Her sweater was looser and things didn’t look as pronounced as torpedo-tits on the other side of me. She was friendly and didn’t mind at all being shoved to the seat between Fay and me.

I took a deep breath and stretched like I needed to yawn only I didn’t pull my arm back. I let it rest along the back of our chairs, which was a task because they are so high and my arm slipped down onto her shoulders. She looked at me and her dimples got deeper as she smiled. She leaned toward me but then pulled back again. She fidgeted around and pushed the arm of the seat that was between us up. Then she leaned against me and pulled my arm around her. I wasn’t going to go any further. She kept hold of my hand. It was nice. I could feel her sigh as the movie reached a love scene and the guy pledged his eternal love to the girl before they got in the backseat of his car. Then it cut to a school scene.

I felt movement from the other side and Linda was pushing the armrest between us up so she could lean into me from that side.

“I want cuddles, too,” she whispered. I put my arm around her and, like Annette, she held my hand. I wasn’t sure what I should do now. Not that I could really do anything. My arms were stretched out like I was being crucified, only I had a girl under each one.

The girl onscreen was with her other boyfriend now. Apparently, she was trying to decide between the two but didn’t want to give either of them up. There was a make-out scene on the sofa and Linda pulled my arm under hers, pressing my hand against her ironclad breast. Only it wasn’t quite ironclad. It was packed into a sturdy bra, but for the first time in my life, I was holding a girl’s breast in my hand.

I mean a girl other than my sister. I don’t think she knew. Or maybe she just didn’t know that I knew. I’d woken from a pretty nasty dream a few weeks ago, just as Fay got into bed with me. She petted my hair and kissed my forehead, like she always does. I started to drift back to sleep and Fay settled down beside me. She turned her back to me and my hand sort of fell onto her breast. I was awake enough to know that it shouldn’t be there, but not enough to move it. Except a little squeeze. Very soft. Fay trapped my arm under hers so I couldn’t easily free myself and eventually I went to sleep with my hand still cupping her breast. When I woke up in the morning, we’d changed positions. My back was to her and her arm was wrapped around me.

There was no question that Linda knew where my hand was. There were moans from the screen and from all over the theater as she squeezed my hand against her breast. I could tell it was soft under the armor and squeezed a bit on my own. I guess my right hand reflexively squeezed Annette’s hand, too and she lifted her face toward me. Her lips brushed mine and she rubbed her face against my shoulder as we continued to watch the movie.

I was in overload. I was squeezing the ginormous tit of the girl on my left and had just kissed the sweet pretty girl on my right. Neither one of them was making any moves to my middle. I was thankful when the movie ended. I didn’t know what to do with either of the girls, and as soon as the credits started to roll, they both sat up and released my hands. Feeling started to return to my tingling arms.

We stopped at the soda shop and I slid into the booth next to Fay. Annette slipped in beside me just as Linda arrived. Linda sat across from us with the other two girls who saw the movie with us. We had burgers and fries. I agreed to a three-way split of a chocolate shake with Fay and Annette. We rehashed huge sections of the move while we ate and the girls seemed to forget I was there as they talked about which of the two lovers they would have chosen and why and who they each reminded them of at school. I just sat back and listened. Annette slipped her hand back into mine.

I didn’t understand the signals, but apparently, some sign was passed. When we left the booth, Annette kept hold of my left hand and Fay attached herself to my right arm. Linda went off with the other two after a little huff.

“I told Annette we’d give her a lift home,” Fay said.

“You’re so nice, Morgan,” Annette said. “Arthur, do you mind?”

“Of course not,” I said. I still had hold of her hand. “Um… here. You sit in front. I don’t mind crawling into the back.” Fay’s little car had bucket seats and only two doors, so I pushed the seat forward and got into the back. I was turning to pull the seat back when Annette tumbled in behind me. Fay was smirking as she closed the door behind us and ran around to the driver’s side.

“Does she always set you up on dates?” Annette laughed.

“I… um… never had a date,” I said.

“Oh. Then I’m sorry about everything tonight, Arthur,” she said.

“What? Why?” I was thoroughly confused. “It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed holding your hand.”

“Or Linda’s boob,” my sister cracked from the front seat.

“I was… I couldn’t… It…”

“That’s what I meant,” Annette said. “Sometimes Linda and I get a little competitive and it came out in the movie theater. I held your hand. She had to let you feel her up.”

“Why would you compete?” I asked.

“You’re a nice guy, Arthur. Morgan, don’t you ever tell him he’s a nice guy?” Annette demanded.

“Yeah, but what boy listens to his sister?”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I always listen to you.”

“Hey!” Annette said. “No fighting. Anybody can see that your relationship with your sister is better than any other siblings we know. We’ve been around a long time, Arthur. We’ve all seen how Morgan takes care of you and defends you. It’s cool. It’s been that way since first grade. When she offered to let me sit next to you, I jumped at the chance. Then boobalicious jumped in on the other side.”

“Did you like squeezing her tit, brother?”

“Morgan! I… It was sort of like squeezing a big rubber ball,” I sighed. “I mean, her bra must be made of flex steel.”

“To be fair, she’s got a lot to haul around,” Annette sighed. “She’s talked about having reduction surgery. Her back kills her most of the time.”

“Gosh, I never even thought about that.” I reflexively glanced over at Annette’s modest bumps.

“You have to kiss me first,” she said.

“What?”

“Before you touch my boobs, you have to kiss me. Like you mean it.” I looked up at my sister and saw her grinning in the rearview mirror.

“I, uh… don’t know much about kissing, Annette. But I promise I’ll mean it.” I bent to lightly brush her lips like she had in the theater. She pulled me back and held our lips together, then touched my lips with her tongue. I had quaking chills all down my spine. I touched her tongue with mine. We didn’t try to explore each other’s mouths or anything, but we let just the tips of our tongues play together. She pulled back.

“I wouldn’t normally do this on a first date. Especially, a pick-up date at the theater. But I promised.” Annette pulled my hand toward her breast and hesitated. I started to pull back, but she took a deep breath. “Who am I kidding?” she whispered. She pulled my hand down and slid it up under her sweater and camisole until my hand was cupping her soft bare boob. I was frozen. She shuddered a little and then pressed her lips back against mine, opening her mouth to receive my tongue as I caressed the bare breast under my hand.

When we parted, she pulled my hand out from under her sweater and looked into my eyes.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’d like to go out with you again. You were going to ask, weren’t you?”

“Um… Sure. I just didn’t know how to ask.”

“That’s why I helped. This time. You’ll have to do the work of deciding what we’re going to do, though.” She straightened herself up and turned toward the front of the car. “Morgan? Whatever it is he decides we should do next weekend, you’re invited, too. And not just as a chauffeur. I don’t think I can handle his intensity alone. I’d just try to sneak him up to my room.”

“Such a slut, Annette,” Morgan laughed. “I’ll ride shotgun and protect you. I mean, Arthur. Yeah. I’ll protect Arthur. You’re on your own.”

“Why’d you do that, Fay?”

“Do what? You wanted to come along with the girls tonight. What did I do?”

“Arrange for Annette and me to get together. I know what happened was stuff that we chose to happen, but you put it together. What did you tell her?”

“Oh, Pen, I’m worried about you. School’s out next week. I’ll be here for the summer and then I’m off to college. Granted, the University is only fifteen miles away, but Mom and Dad both insist that I should live on campus the first year.”

“I know. I’m going to miss you. You always… I know I’m a pain in the butt and I wouldn’t get out of the house in the morning without you some days. I’ll try to do better, honest. But why push me to date Annette?” I asked.

“You need someone to look after you,” Fay whispered. “The other choice is that I delay going to college a year and we can go to school together the next year. Mom and Dad would object and I just want to see what the so-called ‘normal’ life is. Am I asking too much of you, Pen?”

“No. Oh, no, Fay. I love you and I want you to have a real life. I don’t want you to have to look after me. But…”

“You don’t have to date her if you don’t want to.”

“She’s nice.”

“She’s also known you for twelve years. She’s kind of had a crush on you for five of them. She’s in the same grade you are. She’s nice. But you don’t have to date her if it doesn’t appeal to you. It was just an option that I thought I’d throw out there,” Fay sighed. It seemed like there was more to it than that. Fay wouldn’t choose someone random.

“I doubt she’ll be much help if I’m having a nightmare. Nobody’s going to crawl in bed with me and change the direction of my dreams.”

“Well… I wouldn’t be too sure of that. It would probably be more interesting if she crawled in bed with you instead of me,” my sister laughed.

“There will never be anyone I’d rather crawl in bed with me than you,” I said.

“Pen… Oh, god, I love you.” Fay started to cry and I opened my arms. She clutched me as I held her. “You need to try a normal relationship, just like I need to try normal. I’m not saying you have to sleep with her or anything. I’m not saying that I’m going to go out and find a boyfriend and all that. We just need to look around and make sure. Pen, if we ever cross that line, it will be forever.”

“I don’t know what to say, Fay. I love you. I only started feeling things about, like, sex a few months ago. I guess I’m as slow there as I was at talking. I just want you to know that loving you has never been based on that. It’s already forever,” I said.

“Then listen to your big sister,” she said. “It’s time for you to go to bed. When you are in bed, think about what kissing Annette was like. Think about what it was like to hold her naked breast in your hand while you kissed. That was so hot! She didn’t do that for me. She did it for you. I left a box of tissues by your bed so you can clean up afterword.” She giggled and I pecked her on the cheek.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bed and think about holding her bare breast while I kiss her,” Fay laughed. “I’ve got my own box of tissues.”

I knew she was right. Brothers and sisters aren’t supposed to be as close as we are, I guess. I don’t care. I’d marry her right now if I could. I wouldn’t care about sex. On the other hand, I’d held Annette’s bare breast in my hand and she’d kissed me. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to feel that charge as my fluid raced out of my cock into her.

I was glad Fay left me a box of tissues.

3 My Girlfriend

The summer seemed to race by. Every day brought us one day closer to Fay leaving for college. There was a dark intensity to my dreamscapes each morning. They were desolate and barren. Except on the mornings after a date with Annette.

We didn’t date every week during the summer. We did some fun things, though. I loved going into the city to the Museum of Modern Art. She seemed to like it, too. She chose to go to a baseball game in July.

“I didn’t know you were a baseball fan,” I said. Fay had begged off this one, so Annette and I took the bus.

“I don’t know if I am,” she said. “I’ve never been to a game. How can I know if I’ll like something unless I go see it?”

“You mean you don’t watch games on TV?”

“I don’t watch TV, Arthur. Why watch a picture of other people having fun?”

“I don’t know. I don’t watch much TV either. I… My dreams are more real.”

“Will you share one with me?” she asked.

“I, um… You see… I mean…”

“It’s okay. It was just a suggestion. If they’re private, you don’t have to talk about them. For sure, some of my dreams would be embarrassing to talk to my boyfriend about. I still dream about our first real kiss when you had your hand… you know.”

“I know. I dream about that, too. But that’s not what I mean. I can’t talk about my dreams. Not that I don’t want to, but there aren’t words. I stumble all over and get frustrated. I… I… can’t…” Damnit! My throat was closing up on me and words were like balloons that were all let go at the same time and I was running back and forth trying to catch one.

“Shh. Arthur, look at me.” I focused on her eyes. They were a pretty blue. Lighter than Fay’s and mine. I could make that color in paint. Maybe I should do that. I should paint her. “You don’t have to put it in words for me. Is that where your art comes from?” I nodded. “Then you shouldn’t even try to put it in words. Maybe sometime you could show me. If you’d like to.”

I had a date with Annette on Saturday night. We went to a concert and danced. She danced. I kind of shuffled my feet and bobbed my head from side to side. I guess the music was good. I was surprised, I guess, that we were taking things so slowly. We hadn’t dated every week during the summer. My family took a vacation. Her family took a vacation. We just didn’t always connect. But in the four or five dates that we’d had, the most intimate we’d been was holding hands and a gentle good night kiss. Sometimes that little brush of her lips against mine was enough for me to need tissues later that night.

But this Saturday, I was a little antsy. We left the concert early.

“I need to get you home,” Annette said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I understand. I’m feeling a little unsettled, myself. You only have this weekend. Spend all the time you can with Morgan.” She dropped me at my house and gave me the sweetest kiss I could imagine.

Morgan looked up from the television when I came in and smiled.

“Have a good time?”

“Yeah. I can’t dance for shit.”

“I’m a failure as a sister. I should have taught you!”

“You can dance?”

“No.” We looked at each other and spluttered our laughter. I sat beside her on the sofa and watched a few minutes of the late-night talk show.

“Fay…”

“Pen…” we started at the same time. She nodded at me. I took a deep breath.

“I’m having a terrible nightmare. Will you come to bed and hold me?”

“Yes. Yes, my baby. I’ll hold you. Let’s go brush our teeth.”

“Fay?” I said as she crawled into bed.

“What is it, Pen?” she asked innocently. She cuddled up against me and tugged at my pajama shirt. “Take this off. It’s scratchy.” My heart raced as I pulled off my shirt. It had never scratched before. But Fay had always worn a shirt before. Her skin felt hot against mine. My heart started racing.

“You’re… naked,” I breathed.

“Just topless,” she said. “But how did Annette put it? Before you touch my boobs, you have to kiss me. Like you mean it.” Fay raised her lips to mine and I touched them.

It’s not like Fay and I have never kissed. She often kissed me when she came to bed to comfort me. She kissed me when we left for school. She kissed me when we got home. She kissed me before bed. Sometimes a cheek. Sometimes my forehead. Sometimes I kissed her ear because it made her giggle. But to kiss as I held her naked breasts against my chest and as she parted her lips to let my tongue touch hers… We’d never done that.

“Now, Pen,” she said softly. “Now you can touch.” We returned to our kiss and my hand glided up her smooth skin until I cupped her breast and she moaned into my mouth. We stayed like that for an eternity, our lips and tongues touching as I gently squeezed the soft flesh of her breast and felt the nub of her nipple harden against my palm.

“I love you, Fay,” I whispered as I sprinkled little kisses on her eyes and nose. “I’m so afraid I’ll lose you.”

“No more than I am,” she sighed. “Hold me, Pen. Hold me all night long and in the morning, paint me.”

I held her. We changed positions and occasionally during the night, we kissed some more. It was the touch of her skin against mine that kept the fire smoldering through the night. In the morning, I painted her. She sleepily opened her eyes as I got up and arranged the easel. Then she kicked off the covers, threw an arm over her eyes so the light didn’t bother her, and went back to sleep. One arm above her head, one over her eyes. Her breasts standing out in contrast to the slim profile of her stomach and the flare of her hips. Her pink panties. Her left leg bent with the foot against her right knee.

I could see at once why she had said months ago, that she didn’t look like what I’d painted. I’d shaped her breasts wrong. The nipples more taut against the upturned areolae. The rise and fall of her chest cast me into a hypnotic trance from which I painted this impossibly real dreamscape.

Mom and Dad didn’t come in to see my painting Sunday morning. Nor Monday after Fay had slept with me again.

“Pen, in a year—maybe less—we’ll know. We’ll stand at this door and either we will live with each other, or we will go our separate ways. Don’t hold back this year. Don’t think about what I might do without you and I won’t think about what you might do without me. All I ask is paintings that I can read, like I read you stories when we were little.”

“I’ll miss you every day, Fay. I don’t know if I can be with anyone else like I am with you,” I said.

“Annette will take care of you and guide you,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of her. There is no prize for us being each other’s first. Just paint the story for me, my sweet baby boy. Let me read it in the colors on the page.”

And so, Fay left for college and I prepared to enter my senior year in high school. Alone.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. Except in my head. Annette called me and informed me that we were going to the first football game of the season, which was the Friday night before school started on Monday. The only sporting event we’d been to was the baseball game in July. This was different. It was the high school varsity, most of whom I’d never liked. But Annette said it was good for us.

She held my hand as we showed our student ID and went to find a place in the bleachers. Several people said hello to Annette and some turned to say, “Oh. Hi, Art.” But she never let go of my hand. I was glad, because I was shaking.

“You aren’t usually so nervous, Arthur,” she said. “What has you upset?”

“Um… We’ll… These are all people we’ll see in school. Don’t you… They’ll all think that I’m your boyfriend,” I said. Annette might not be one of the elite in school, but she was pretty and well-liked. I just faded into the woodwork if I could. Being seen with me like this couldn’t do her reputation much good. I didn’t want her to suffer because she was seen with me. Most of our classmates didn’t even know my last name. I was just Art Something.

“You are my boyfriend, Arthur,” Annette whispered. “Unless you don’t want to be. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

That was a preview of Strange Art 1: Art Something. To read the rest purchase the book.

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