Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 ART APPRECIATION

   by Holly Rennick

   AUTHOR'S NOTES

   This story deals with expensive art, Venus and Cupid as you might see
them in a museum.  Art's about looking, not being told.  Looking's about
downloading, these days.

   ftp://authorftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Cranach.jpg

   ftp://authorftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Lotto.jpg

   ftp://authorftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Bouguereau.jpg

   ftp://authorftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Picasso.jpg

   ftp://authorftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Bronzino.jpg

   Each is in the 100KB range, not thumbnails, as you need to see tones and
detail.  You can Google the images in yet higher-resolution, if you like,
plus find many similar pieces.

   Cranach's, Lotto's, Bouguereau's, Picasso's and Bronzino's Venus and
Cupid are all different, but things different can be very much the same. 
As I'm hardly a legitimate art critic, however, do your own comparison.

   ART APPRECIATION 101

   I hate lecturing at 9:00 AM.  My only hope is in showing lots of slides.
Intro to Art Appreciation is about seeing meaning and they can't do that
with their eyes closed.

   Cranach the Elder, 1472-1553

   I showed the first slide, side-by-side paintings.  "Cranach the Elder
was contemporary with Michelangelo, but German.  He was the first in
Northern Europe to paint the goddess of love, Venus, naked.  Before that,
only Eve got to go nude.  Cranach mixes the influence of the Italian
Renaissance with the religious ethics of the Reformation.  Here are of two
of his showing Venus and Cupid, or as they were known to ancient Greeks,
Aphrodite and Eros, mother and son."

   I didn't bother my students with the artistic convolution of Venus
merging with Cupid's lover, Psyche.  What was once a Roman campfire tale of
gods and mortals reformulates into a more-primal manifestation of sexual
magnetism.  In an introductory course, I rely on paintings in museums. 
Those who carry on into upper-division coursework will come to see how the
art becomes more than what's painted.  It moves off the canvas and into the
viewer.

   "Cranach kept turning out more-or-less the same product as long has he
had a patron who didn't mind copies.  The left-hand picture, The Honey
Thief, is in the National Gallery in London," moving into my element.  I
projected the image long enough for the students to appreciate the
composition.  "The Brits probably like the 'Where's Waldo' symbology. 
Where are the hidden stag and doe?  Don't those apples look delicious?"
Art's about internalizing, not explaining.  But it's my job to explain
anyway.

   "Cranach lived at the end of the Middle Ages where women were evil, the
devil's tool to seduce good men's souls.  Cupid's arrow induces lust. 
Cranach's Cupid reaches into the honey pot and gets stung for his
exploits." Hopeful pause for chuckles.  You'd at least think the
African-American students would recognize to the honey pot analogy.  False
hope, but the dozing students began to stir.

   "Bee stings are gone in a day or two.  We know he'll reach in again." A
couple of laughs.

   "Cranach's painting on the right, Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb, is
in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.  Look at the shape of the tree's opening."
The better students were beginning to engage.

   "The Romans have Cranach's better version, it seems.  Note how lovingly
Venus reaches to stroke the tree's opening." A few of the co-eds looked
sideways at each other, hiding smiles.

   "Sexual revolution 400 years before the 1960's." More laughs.

   In the second row was a girl I'd not noticed before, busily taking notes
as if I'd ask to quote me for the final.  I'll ask what they see.

   Lorenzo Lotto, 1480-1556

   My second slide.  "Not much later.  Lorenzo Lotto, Venetian.  Cupid
Peeing, its popular title.  Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Venus is a little
dressed, as you can see, not that it serves any purpose.  Don't ask me for
further analysis." Actually, the myrtle wreath and suspended brazier are
accoutrements of the marriage chamber.  There are a million Cupid
paintings, but I've never seen another where he has an erection.  Where's
he aiming?  She's losing her rose petals, smiling.  Lotto was a master at
emblematic devices.  If viewers want to think he's peeing, fine.

   Maybe that girl in the second row wasn't just another freshman.  She
looked too old, too attentive.

   William Bouguereau, 1825-1905

   I advanced to my third slide.  "And here's my very favorite, Bouguereau,
French romantic.  Remove the arrow that will wound Venus' breast and erase
Cupid's silly little wings.  Remove the mythology and capture the soul of
youth.  Maybe Bouguereau's the greatest painter ever of human form."

   I didn't burden them with how Cupid mistakenly shoots Venus with the
arrow that causes mortals to fall in love.  Mortals that are too distracted
or too foolish fall in love themselves.  I can't teach them everything.

   The girl was staring at the Bouguereau.  When she realized I was looking
her way, she returned to her notes.  There was something almost familiar
about her.  I'm terrible with names and faces, but sometimes I see
something that relates to a painting.  Bouguereau painted Venus so
perfectly breasted.

   Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973

   "And what's this?" advancing the carousel once again.  "It's a 1957
Picasso lithograph copying old Cranach.  A veil and no bee hole, such
modest times, the 1950s." Got them all to laugh.  I wondered if any caught
how at last Venus has her pubic hair, Picasso the harsh modernist.

   "Due next Thursday: Picasso vs.  Cranach.  Five hundred words." I heard
the groan.  "I've posted prints.  And now let's look at how they used
shadowing." Five hundred words times the enrollment in 101 is a lot or
reading, but damned if I'd let them get by with multiple-choice.  Art's
about internalizing, not explaining, but they still have to explain
themselves.

   As the girl was still looking at the slide, I left Picasso projected for
a few extra seconds.

   ART APPRECIATION 102

   I was gathering up my notes.

   "Professor?"

   It was the girl from the second row, except she wasn't a girl.  When
you're an Assistant Professor, they can be as old as you.

   "Yes?"

   "That picture by the Frenchman?  Is it in some book?"

   "Fine Arts Library.  Let instinct lead you through the stacks, your best
training." I never tell them an exact reference.  "She's beautiful, isn't
she?" I admitted.  There's so little in modern art that's about beauty.

   "Thanks.  I'll find him." She turned to go, then stopped.  "I'm
Elizabeth McCarthy, just a freshman."

   "I hope you like the class, Ms.  McCarthy." I wished I knew them by
name, but what can you do in a 101?

   She looked at me.  "You grew up in Rockport?"

   How did she know that?

   "You don't remember me, do you?" she pursued.

   "I don't..." Then it hit me.  "I can't believe it!  Betty McCarthy!"

   She beamed, almost taking a step forward.  "I didn't even know you
taught at this place when I signed up, but I knew it was you when I walked
in."

   This was incredible!  Betty!  "What are you doing here?  It's been what?
Twenty years?"

   "Pretty near.  I decided I want a degree."

   "Good for you!  Are you...?  So tell me what you've been up to."

   "Am I married?  Not any more.  I'm a lesbian."

   We're postmodern, whether or not we want to be, I realized.

   "And you?" she returned the question.  "Kids?"

   I looked at her.  I thought the few of us wore big signboards: "Equal
Opportunity Compliant Institution.  We have homosexuals."

   She must have realized she'd inadvertently shot too close.  "You're a
professor and everything!"

   "Trying to be.  Tenure's no snap." I'd not teach Gay Art to make the
tenure committee appear homophobic.  I'd take my fall based on Leonardo and
Perspective, not Leonardo and his Lovers.  He didn't have many.

   Okay, she told me what she is.  Like the book says, just say it.  "I'm
gay."

   "You are?" She blushed.  "I just always thought..."

   I reached out and gave her my best limp-wrist handshake.  "See?"

   She paused in obvious confusion, then grinned.  "Oh, come on, Doug. 
You're whatever you say, but you don't wear nylons!"

   I looked down at her legs.  She did.

   She caught my glance.  "I went to the orientation at the Women's Center
and they sort of stared, too."

   "Tell them you're double liberated," I suggested and she agreed.

   After we laughed, she returned to her first question.  "Those Cupid
pictures.  The French one, especially.  She's Cupid's mother?"

   "In Greek times, anyway."

   "Oh.  Well, it's great to have run into you," her brightness fading.

   But this was my friend from Rockport, Betty.  "We should talk more
sometime," I ventured.

   The Betty I remembered looked at me.  "Is it okay?  The Women's Center
told us about student-faculty decorum."

   "Tell them we went to Rockport Elementary, for heaven's sake!  You're
older than me.  And anyway..."

   "We're of a minority orientation," she finished.  "We'll split the bill,
in case they spy."

   NINE YEARS OLD

   When I was nine, it seemed unnecessary to have a babysitter.  At
fourteen, Betty was the neighbor girl in that business.  We'd just play and
she'd get paid.  Not fair.

   At age nine, it's no big thing to take a bath with your babysitter
present.  If Betty helped me get dry, I supposed it to be her job.  The
first time I got an erection, hardly anything, I was surprised, but she
made nothing of it.

   It wasn't that many baths before she was sudsing me.  She'd keep doing
it until it felt good.

   Betty would arrange the bathroom precisely as it was before and warn me
not to tell I'd bathed so Dad wouldn't know I'd wasted water.  She'd give
me a kiss and I'd keep the secret.

   After that, she'd touch me even when I didn't bathe.  Maybe while we
were watching TV.

   ART APPRECIATION 103

   When I told my roommate Mark that I'd be out for dinner, his reaction
was, "Freshman hunk on the swim team?  Feels lonely, so far from home? 
Friendly professor."

   "Hardly," giving him a kiss so he'd not pout.  "Female neighbor from
back home.  Old enough to be my mother."

   Not that old, I realized, but definitely older.

   "Women that age know how to do their makeup," Mark judged.  He was
himself pretty informed on skin care.

   If I weren't gay myself, I'd have found parts of him a bit ludicrous. 
As it was, he was a pretty good roommate as long as I didn't have to join
him in all the pride events.  I've been to real rodeos.  Why would I want
to go to one where the cowboys were all, say, from hometowns that begin
with letters A to D?  Have all those so-called cowboys eye my curly hair,
call me "Red", ask if I'd like to ride a bronco?

   TEN YEARS OLD

   When I was ten, I came across Betty at the library where they shelve the
oversized volumes.  She'd pulled out a book on art.

   "Whacha looking at?"

   "Art."

   "How come?"

   "Homework."

   At that age, I didn't even have homework, so I sat down to watch her
copy the artists' names and facts about the illustrations.  I didn't know
anything about art, but some were dabs of color that, when I pulled back,
came together to show the inside of a train station or leaves on a pond. 
Pretty neat.

   She flipped the page and there was a naked woman lounging on a chair. 
(I can tell you now the artist and when he did it and where it's hanging,
but I didn't care about pedigree back then.) I could see the lady's breasts
and the dark place between her legs.

   I stared, forgetting that it was Betty's homework.  The lady was naked!

   Betty elbowed me in the ribs and flipped to another page showing another
lady.

   I looked, though I knew I shouldn't.

   "Pretty?" she asked like it was normal to talk about a naked lady.

   I suppose I nodded.

   Betty grinned, looked around our corner of the library and put her hand
over the picture.  Without words she parted a finger until we could see one
breast, then another finger until we could see the other.  As slowly as
could be, she slid her whole hand down until we could see where the lady's
legs came together.

   "Want me to?"

   I nodded for sure.

   "Scoot closer then."

   I scooted, trying to store the lady in my mind.  (It's still there, by
the way.) Betty hardly rubbed, just pressed her fingers.

   With her free hand, she turned to the pages nearer the front, the pages
that showed statues.  Her hand covered one, all but the head.  When she
spread her fingers, we saw his penis.

   No one was watching.  Crossing my arms on the table so a hand stuck out
on her side, I touched her breast while I climaxed under the library table
near where they shelve the oversize volumes.

   It's fun to share a secret where you might get caught.

   ART APPRECIATION 104

   "So Doug.  I can call you, Doug, right?  We're not on campus."

   "Just not Duggie." I'd ordered our pizza.  When it's just your old
friend, you don't need your PhD.

   She grinned the grin I remembered from Rockport.  "And I'm still Betty,
actually."

   "Why Art Appreciation?"

   "I like art.  But five hundred words worth?  Hello, Women's Center.  He
abuses us by making us write!"

   "Sorry, but I'm on their good list because I always include Georgia
O'Keeffe," picturing the flowers dripping with womanhood.  "So tell me
about yourself.  Once married, now lesbian -- It takes a while to find out,
right?"

   "He was dumping me and I didn't know enough to even pay attention."

   "I meant to find out about your orientation."

   "Oh, that.  I've a lover now, Willie, pretty dyke.  Not that much
different from me being straight.  She fixes the plumbing and things."

   "My lover's total femme," I noted.  "Everybody loves Mark, even straight
guys, he's so out."

   Betty slipped into gay/lesbian credentialing.  "When did you know?"

   "You were already off to college."

   "Oh."

   The pizza was here, Canadian bacon with pineapple.

   "That third Venus and Cupid picture, the French one, I mean," Betty
continued, back to art.

   "Bouguereau."

   "Yeah.  Sort of us, isn't it?" Something in how she asked it, I knew it
had been rolling in her head.

   "Us?" It's just a painting I know about from my library.  But maybe,
though, her question had been rolling in my mind as well, though I'd not
thought of it that way.  Rockport wasn't that long ago.

   "They're about how old we were back then.  You were always wiggly.  I
braided my hair those days, remember?  I'll bet some people think yours is
permed."

   Maybe because I wrinkled my forehead she clarified, "Lots of guys do
these days.  I just happen to know you were born that way.  I hardly had
her figure, though."

   "Pretty close," I offered before thinking.

   She smiled, then jolted back her chair.  "Hello, Women's Center.  My
professor just talked about my figure!"

   ELEVEN YEARS OLD

   When I was eleven, Betty had me lie on my bed because it's a better
place, she said.  Not why it's a better place or even what it's a better
place for.  The tone of her suggestion, however, gave me an erection even
before she pulled down my underpants.

   She liked it when I wiggled and said that's why it's a better place.

   When I was eleven, I first ejaculated, flat on my back and Betty sitting
beside.  I knew something was approaching, something I wanted to happen. 
It just squirted out while she rubbed up and down.  I think she was as
surprised as well, but maybe had a better sense of what it was.  She pulled
her hand back, but a little still got on her wrist.  I was worried, but she
just grinned and wiped it on the bedspread.

   Afterwards she told me that what I did was really good, but it would
prove that it was my fault if we got caught.  That was the last time she
bothered worrying that I might tell.  She knew me.

   ART APPRECIATION 105

   "So tell me, Professor, about that painting, second one, Cupid Peeing."

   "Lorenzo Lotto," I referenced.  "Sort of a joke for his day, I suppose."

   "C minus."

   "Okay," I admitted.  "There's stuff going on."

   "Like she's being deflowered.  Rose petals, get it?"

   "That one's hard to overlook," I agreed.

   "And it isn't quite pee that Cupid's squirting you-know-where with his
little you-know-what.  Hardly subtle for a college girl."

   "Maybe.  The conch..."

   "Who cares about a shell?  He's shooting through her wreath.  Wreath,
humm.  Of bay leaves, the book says.  Shape of, well, you know...  "

   "Supposedly," I concurred, rather impressed that she'd caught it.  "The
Delphi priestesses smoldered bay leaves to intoxicate the worshipper," so
I'd appear at least a little knowledgeable.

   "Before they you-know-whatted them, it says," Betty regained the podium.
"Venus is doing that 'pretend that I don't know what's happening' routine."

   "It's possible.  Actually, I don't call it Cupid Peeing", I admitted, "I
call it Cupid's Dream."

   "Or maybe Venus' Dream," Betty suggested.

   ELEVEN YEARS OLD

   When I was eleven, I liked earning her kisses a lot.  Unfortunately, I
didn't need a babysitter any more.

   Sometimes if we passed on the sidewalk and nobody was looking, she'd
give me a kiss for nothing.  Less often, if she thought it was really safe,
she'd stand me against a wall or tree and reach in my pants.  I never
objected.  I just wanted her hand to keep going.  It was funner to have a
pretty girl do it than to do it myself.

   ART APPRECIATION 106

   "Maybe if we'd had sex back then, just once," Betty wondered, "you'd be
married with 2.5 kids."

   "It's genetic."

   "You're a girl trapped in a male body?  Bullshit!"

   "Hard to say."

   "When it's about yourself, it is," weighing the implications.  "So how
come I'm a lesbian?"

   "How would I know?"

   "Ask me."

   "Okay."

   "Maybe because I went off to college thinking I could handle a guy.  My
lab partner was smarter and screwed me the first time he took me out.  I
still remember seeing his bed and knowing what he was going to do.  So
there I was.  I came the very first time," Betty granted.

   "I thought you were a lesbian" was all I could think to say.

   "Not yet.  I lied to you about having been married.  I quit school and
moved in with him, but then he got a better girlfriend."

   "He's an asshole," I told her.

   "Tell me about it!  I was working at Sears and this girl needed a
housemate.  I didn't even know that it was a one bedroom.  I guess she
assumed I knew, but said she we could put a bed in the living room, really
sweet about it.  But that was kind of stupid, I decided."

   "When she said she always slept the way she did, so what?  We were grown
up.  I liked peppermint schnapps.  Girls kiss, so it wasn't that big of
thing.  She just helped me come while we made out.  It wasn't as if she
told me that she went out with girls."

   I remembered how I used to like it when she kissed me.  How I'd come as
soon as I could.

   "So maybe it worked out," I decided.

   "We both got fucked, Doug, you and me."

   I was surprised she used that word.  We both had sex?  We both...?

   She pondered her own story.  "Do you love your Mark?"

   "Sure.  He's lots of fun."

   "That's not what I mean."

   "You can be gay and not do much stuff.  Just..."

   She helped me out.  "Masturbate each other?"

   She was as lesbian as I was gay.  Is this any big deal?  She and I went
way back together.  "I guess."

   Betty gave me the dearest look, like we still lived in the same
neighborhood.  "Me, too.  You got to do something.  Willie does other
things, too, but not with me.  I'm really cool about her dating around."

   I tried to make light.  "Must have been that Rockport water.  Some sort
of saltpeter experiment they did on us."

   She laughed her old laugh.  "Gulp.  Gulp.  Natural springs!" But after a
bit she declared, "At least we're not like Picasso."

   "No?" While I knew more about art than did she, what I knew were the
same things over and over.  Maybe she knew other things, even if she didn't
always remember who painted what.

   "We're not that abstract." She grinned.  "Though, of course, Picasso got
it right about women's, you know, hair."

   "Modernism's downhill," I admitted, "but it's probably best to see
ourselves as having it down there."

   She thought on that for a minute.  "Doug.  You tell me why the picture
by the French artist is your favorite and I'll tell you why it's mine." In
asking, she leaned toward me.  I could see the cup of her bra.

   "Fair enough.  Bouguereau, you mean.  It's not just because she's
beautiful.  It's because she sees the little rascal, really sees him. 
She's trying to hold him back, but not for much longer.  What's yours?"

   "Same thing," catching me staring, then leaning further over the
pizza-place table, this time to give me a kiss.

   The waitress brought us Styrofoam to package our remaining slices.  I
said for her to take it and she said I had to.

   Walking out, she took my arm.  I was of the vague impression that
lesbians didn't do that sort of thing, but I must have been wrong.  Her
blouse was soft against my arm.  Her breast, actually.

   TWELVE YEARS OLD

   When I was twelve, I thought her breasts were beautiful.  And she being
seventeen, she knew that I thought it.  I liked when her breast pushed
against me, She liked it as well, the way she'd brush against my arm when
we passed in the doorway.  Sometimes I'd see her bra.

   When I was twelve, accidentally touching Betty's blouse posed her little
problem, but when I poked on purpose, she'd slow me down.  For a
twelve-year-old to reach inside a sixteen-year-old's sweater is a big deal.
I didn't see her breasts that many times, just when she was positive that
nobody might see us.

   Once that summer at Rockport Pool, I saw her whole breast.  She knew I
saw and stuck out her tongue.  When she caught me walking by her yard a few
days later, she said I'd spied on purpose, which I hadn't.

   "Hey, Doug!" as I walked on.

   I turned and there she was, top lifted and bra pushed up.

   "Peek-a-boo!" and she pulled it down.  I knew that when next we were
together, she'd give me one giant orgasm.

   ART APPRECIATION 107

   We'd met the next night for another pizza.  When it's an old
neighborhood friend, you stick with a place where they know how to make the
crust.  Betty looked cute in a blue sweater that I bet she knitted.

   "I'm sorry," she said before we even looked at the menu.  We knew the
choices.

   "About what?"

   "What I did back then, abusing you."

   Something she'd picked up at the Women's Center orientation?  I'd a
darker meaning for the term, something involving a bad person, not someone
like Betty.  Anyway, it wasn't something that we could change.  "We were
just fooling around, just kids," I let it go.

   "But I was older.  I knew about sex."

   "You didn't make me.  I'd have figured it out anyway."

   "Okay.  Ego te absolvo.  So don't feel so guilty.  Nothing happened."

   "Except we came," making it explicit, "but it wasn't fair."

   She looked a bit more at ease, knowing I was okay about it.  But as
people are prone to do, thoughts linger on.

   "So here were are," bringing us to date, "all these years later, a
lesbian and a gay.  It's strange."

   "Life's strange," I agreed.

   "But we were more like the first painter, Cranach, right?" continued
Betty.

   "What?" I didn't think to affirm her getting the name right.

   "You just got bee stings."

   Only then did I realize to what she'd returned.

   TWELVE YEARS OF AGE

   When I was twelve, I met the bees that stung Cupid.  I realized that
while she was slipping one hand into my underpants, she was slipping her
other into hers.

   It wasn't until about twelve that I even realized that a girl could. 
They don't have a penis.  But at twelve, you start to find things in books,
and I saw Kinsey's book about females.  I hardly understood most of it, but
where it said more-or-less how they masturbate, I knew why Betty flushed.

   From then I paid more notice to Betty's other hand.  Maybe if I'd been
nearer her age, it might have worked for me to know.  But when she figured
out that just a little kid knew her secret, she'd deny it.  Sometimes,
though, I'd touch her arm when she was coming.  She could tell me not to,
but couldn't really stop me from feeling her muscles.

   A twelve-year-old's idea about the honey pot is a little vague, but you
know a girl has something.  Where I couldn't reach my hand downward, maybe
I could reach my eyes.  I had a pubic tuft, which I figured she thought was
good.  I'd not have known about hers, except for when her wrist pushed out
her waistband and revealed stray curls.  Knowing they were black was major!

   Where I couldn't reach my eyes, I could reach a boy's imagination.

   Always reaching, just like Cupid into the honey hole.  Just like Cupid's
bee stings, thwarted for pursuing what I knew to be forbidden.  But bees
were not enough to keep me from again going for the honey, though of course
I'd have been too confused to do anything if Betty surrendered the comb. 
Too inept and too little.

   Bee stings were part of her rules so I'd keep playing.

   ART APPRECIATION 108

   "We had to stop.  You know that, don't you?" Betty asked it in a way
that made it sound not that certain.

   "I guess."

   "I could have gotten pregnant if we didn't."

   "I wasn't old enough."

   "Just a matter of time and I'd have made you do it.  We had to stop."

   TWELVE YEARS OF AGE

   When I was twelve, my penis became bigger and she learned to teeter me,
making me almost come, then backing off.  A twelve-year-old who can put up
with that, egg it on, actually, makes a girl of seventeen pretty confident.

   But as I became stronger, it wasn't as hard to get to her breast, even
when she didn't want me to.  The thought of being masturbated between her
legs came on strong.

   Given another year, my being yet bigger and more informed about what
boys talk about on campouts, we'd be naked together.

   Fortunately for two kids from Rockport, one old enough to know better
and the other yet too young to make much happen, Betty went off to college.

   ART APPRECIATION 109

   "Venus teased you on and then some queer picked you off."

   "Andy was just my friend and he said he'd let me drive his car,"
defending my confused initiation.

   "Whatever.  He got you where nobody else was around, right?  Where you
couldn't walk home."

   "Maybe.  He said it would feel good."

   "Did it?"

   "Not really."

   THIRTEEN YEARS OF AGE

   Andy took up where Betty left me.  Erect with boyhood.

   I never thought of it as Andy taking advantage of me.  You're just
fooling around and then get really upset when it happens.  But he tells you
how you lead him on, how you were curious, how you got a boner, how he's
sorry he did it to you without asking.  Anyway, you must have liked it or
you wouldn't have come.  He shows you where on his jeans.

   You can't exactly go to someone else to process why it happened. 
Especially the fact that you climaxed.  It's not like we're queer or
anything, Andy assures.  It's just natural.  Nobody's going to know.

   The next time, it happens a little more as if you'd agreed to do it. 
When he drives his car to the landing, you don't ask why.  When he says
it's better if you pull down your pants, you undo your belt.  It's only
fair; he's doing the same.  "Even Steven, hey?" says Andy.

   After a while, you know the moves.  Andy shows you a gay magazine and
you figure you're one of them.

   From Andy to Mark, it's just looking for your place.

   ART APPRECIATION 110

   "Let's go," an order so direct, as if she'd turned a corner, saw the
future.

   "Where?"

   "My place for ice cream.  You still like chocolate sauce?"

   "Got any gelato?  It's more upscale."

   "Ours is called Hershey's."

   Walking out of the restaurant that night, the wool of her sweater
brushed my bicep as we crossed the parking lot.  She was telling me about
choosing a major.  It had been nursing because they earn good money, but
maybe being a physician?

   Was her voice breaking a little bit?  In the streetlight I couldn't
tell, but were her eyes watering?  We pulled closer.

   Nothing about Betty's place looked lesbian except a poster of an African
woman, and that wouldn't have looked lesbian had I not decided that I'd see
proof.

   "Where's Willie?"

   "A Holly Near concert."

   "Shoot!  I wanted to meet her."

   "Tough luck.  Everybody runs into everybody in the parking lot and they
go off to somebody's place and cuddle.  Want to watch a video?"

   "I thought you had some ice cream."

   "Seen 'The Name of the Rose'?"

   "Don't think so."

   "It's sort of arty about a monastery in Middle Ages."

   We sat on the couch.  Had she leaned on my shoulder or I'd thrown an arm
around her, it wouldn't have been particularly significant, but we didn't.
It's more okay to do things like that when you've grown up on the same
street, but it's also okay not to.

   Actually, the movie was quite good, a mystery in a setting that demanded
your attention.  All the medieval art was correct.  An American could never
have pulled off such a script because we lack the historical depth.  The
Italian who wrote it had medievalism in his bone marrow.

   We'd come to a scene where the young novice and a happenstantial
scullery maid are hiding in the dark as a mysterious cleric passes.  Not
scary like Hollywood script -- heart-stopping because you've become the
novice.

   As the threat of their discovery wanes, the novice and maid find
themselves compressed in a flurry of danger, desire and discovery.  No
lead-up sexual innuendo.  No testing the waters.  Just sudden and complete
erotic realization.  More torrid than you can do with filmed genitalia.

   As the unintentional lovers orgasmed in a swirl of flesh, I was holding
Betty.  How I'd lifted her sweater and undone her bra, I hadn't a clue. 
Her breast beat like a drum with the drumsticks played from inside.

   "Let's go to bed, Doug," her eyes still on the screen, her back arched
and nipple hard.

   "What?" not quite understanding why we were doing what we were doing.

   "Let's go to bed."

   "We can't do that!"

   "Who did that French Venus painting, the one where you stripped away the
mythology?"

   A strange question.  "Bouguereau."

   "She's going to bed with Cupid."

   "What if I...?"

   "You're already there," turning off the remote.  I'd not even registered
her hand on my lap.  I think maybe it had been there for some time,
reclaiming me.

   ART APPRECIATION 111

   As Betty was a Bouguereau, I shouldn't have been surprised when she
unabashedly stepped out of her clothes, naked as Venus in the picture. 
"Picasso, right?" she said when I looked.

   She seemed to have it thought out.  "Lie beside me." I did so, fully
dressed.

   I've been stripped before.  By Betty, when I was a kid.  By males since.
A grown woman is different.  No fumbling, no hurry.

   "Like we're still in Rockport?" she asked.

   I looked at her breasts, her hair, and knew that this wasn't Rockport.
Even still, I nodded.  I knew my part would happen.

   I touched her breast and she smiled.  I touched her belly and she drew
in her breath.  I touched down to her hair and she moved her knees.  I
touched her yet lower and she lifted to meet me.  I touched where she was
wet and she closed her thighs to trap, then release me.  I'd never done
this, but I touched in her inside and she kissed me.

   We were doing what had sometimes happened in Rockport, but here as
equals.

   My masturbating her was new, but I suppose not surprising, we being
adults.  What was truly different was our kiss, not that of an older girl
tossing a payoff, but as if it were part of our orgasm.  What my fingers
wanted to do below, my tongue wanted to do in her mouth.  What her hand
wanted to do below, her mouth wanted to do to my tongue.  We were
masturbating each other both ways.

   It wasn't as much that we stopped using our hands as it was that when
our arms ended up around each other, our bodies rubbed.  We knew that I
needed to be on top.

   It wasn't as much that her legs moved apart as it was that when I got
between them, we started pushing.  Everywhere she was wet.  Finding where
was natural.

   It wasn't as much that I pushed inside as it was that when I did, she
hooked her heels to keep me there.  It was like the movie, mixed up, flesh
seeking flesh.  A male body and a female body know how to fit.  To mate.

   When we orgasmed, her fingernails biting my shoulders, it wasn't
Rockport at all.

   I wasn't sure afterwards.  She'd been sort of married already, surely
had her expectations.  Her breathing made me think, though, that I'd done
okay.  For me, it was really different.  In all the times I'd ever climaxed
with boyfriends, I'd never done it where it felt like it belonged.

   We were in the midst of post-coital fondnesses when we heard Betty's
housemate return.

   "Don't worry, Doug," my lover whispered.  "She isn't going to come and
give me my goodnight kiss."

   "Good."

   "She knows you're here," Betty clarified.

   "She does?"

   "Willie thought you'd come.  Said it was about time," nosing my ear.

   Then she yelled out, "Night, Willie."

   "Night, night," from outside the door.  "I'm not listening."

   ART APPRECIATION 112

   I did meet Willie, the next morning before Betty was awake.  She had
already been out running when I emerged from the bedroom.  I'm never too
sure if a sports bra is underwear or a top, so I tried not to notice.

   "Ten k's every morning," she informed me.

   I felt a bit grimy in yesterday's socks.  Wondering what to talk about,
I almost asked her for advice on fixing my bathroom faucet.  Betty had told
me that she did plumbing, as I remembered.

   "You're her professor, the one she knew from home?" this attractive,
somewhat-assertive attorney-type asked me over the breakfast table.

   "Rockport," I supplied.

   "She's a keeper.  I'm just glad it's her friend, not some pig.  You
treat her right or I cut your balls off."

   I must have taken a step back.

   Willie grinned.  "Just an expression.  Says you played together as
kids."

   I wasn't sure what that meant, how much girls talk.

   "Just too many years between you," Willie continued, answering my
question.  They talk.  "And now you're teaching women about Venus."

   Was that some sort of challenge?

   Apparently not, just a statement of fact.  "She knows more about art
than I do and I'm the professor," I conceded.

   "That's why I never fucked her rough," Willie informed me, as if she'd
weighed Betty's art credentials.  "It's not about what you can get away
with, how guys score." She looked at me.  "Most guys, I mean."

   "Most guys," I conceded.  "I'm gay."

   "Bullshit!  Know what?"

   "What?"

   "You love her.  I can tell."

   "I don't know..."

   "Bullshit!  Know what?"

   "What?"

   "I'm just a butch, cut yours off if you waive it at me, that sort of
thing, but here's what.  Even somebody like me would like to kiss somebody
like you.  An okay male."

   "Me?  I don't think..."

   "Because you love her?"

   "Yeah." I did, it made me realize.  "I do."

   But Willie was already beside me.  "There's a knife around here
someplace for what I do to alpha males, but you're a smart beta." Her
nipples showed through whatever her top was supposed to be, but I expected
it had less to do with kissing than it had to do with playing Amazon.

   "I earned it," she declared.  "Picked the video in case you came back
with her.  The sex scene could be with two girls, the way I watch it.  Went
to see Holly Near for the zillionth time."

   And with that I got my kiss from a lesbian who really was one.  When I
kissed back, somewhat automatically, I could tell from the twist of her
lips that she smiled.  I didn't touch even the strap of her sports bra
because of Betty, not because she might have pulled out a knife.

   "You can tempt me, but you can't change me," she decided when we pulled
apart, as if it had been I that had demanded a kiss.  "You'll never match
the fuck I got after the concert.  Guys are always too early or too late,"
idly rubbing her own nipple.  "It was a really sweet kiss, though."

   If she's a lawyer, she shouldn't say, "fuck", but probably they say it
to each other.  I realized that she wasn't fondling herself for just the
friction.  She liked me knowing.

   The thing about gays and lesbians where it's mostly genetic, the Willies
and Marks, is they still know there's other stuff out there and they stay
with their own by choice.  I wouldn't have actually done it, but what if
I'd touched Willie's knee?  She doesn't need a man, but she might have let
me.  She doesn't need a penis; she just needs closeness, same as everybody.
Things different can be very much the same.

   "Know what?" She wasn't going to let me get away till she had her
information.

   "What?"

   "You ever been with a girl before last night?"

   "Not exactly." You don't lie to a person like Willie.

   "You wouldn't have wasted time thinking you're gay if you'd screwed
Betty back when."

   "I was about twelve."

   "Well you're not twelve any more.  Do okay?  I know a shrink who can..."

   "Betty liked it, I think," rather sure, a little proud, actually.  I'll
bet most guys feel good about now.

   "Good.  It's all about attitude," Willie the judge.  This Willie seemed
like someone who might understand.

   It occurred to me that I appreciated this woman, not the way I did
Betty, but as a common spirit.  "So I've decided," making myself as serious
as I could, "to hide your knife and change your attitude right here on the
kitchen table."

   It took her a second, then she started laughing and I did, too, so much
that we woke up the sleeper.

   "What are you two yuking it up about?" bleary-eyed, robe cinched up,
nothing underneath, as Betty shuffled in.

   "I kissed him and the ape tried to assault me on top of the kitchen
table!" complained Willie, "but I didn't use my knife for your children's
sake."

   Betty looked at me as if maybe I'd done something terrible, but then at
our faces.  Beaming in Willie's congratulation, Betty sat beside me and
ruffled my hair.  "Should we call him curly?" to Willie, who didn't get it,
as she hadn't seen the famous paintings.

   "You'd know more about that than I would, girl," retorted the soon-to-be
ex-housemate, pouring us all an orange juice.  "But know what?"

   "What?"

   "If I decide to have a baby, is he better than a basting tube?"

   "Absolutely," confirmed Betty.  "But borrowing him would fry your
credentials."

   I wasn't wondering any more about maybe being gay.  A gay guy wouldn't
be so proud of Betty's confirmation, her hand even affirming me under the
table.

   Grinning at the give-away flex of Betty's arm, Willie excused herself.
"Think I'll run a few more k's.  You two still got some catching up to do,"
as she patted the kitchen table and adjusted her sports bra.

   ART APPRECIATION 113

   I once thought I was gay, that Bouguereau's art was all about beauty. 
Homosexual men love to watch beautiful women because they're beautiful.

   But Betty made me appreciate the art, that the painters knew that Cupid
wants Venus and Venus wants Cupid.  Only Lotto, the one who drew Cupid
peeing, made consummation into a pipedream, a corruption of the myth.  The
other painters knew that Cupid was still too little, that Venus was still
too cautious.

   Agnolo Bronzino, 1503-72

   There's a Bronzino oil called Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.  Too
ambiguous, in my opinion, so it's not in my lecture.  In it are our
standard cherub and then a strapping naked adolescent Cupid cradling Venus'
head not to deny him her lingering kiss.  She's pleased, already having
picked the apple, her nipple delightedly erect between his tapered fingers.
Again we see the cherub's infantile penis, but the older Cupid twists
himself to shield his lap from our sight, hunching in the way of males to
mask their excitement.  As a High Renaissance Venus, we see her frontally.
The lines of composition draw us to her mons.  Venus herself holds ready
the arrow of Eros.  Little Cupid's poised to strew the flower petals.

   Betty isn't one to leave art on the canvas, or even in the hands of a
professor.  Art's about internalizing, not explaining.

   THE END

   AUTHOR'S END NOTES

   This story was more like a real class that you bargained for, perhaps,
but I hope you really looked.

   Feminine anatomical noun: "mons veneris", literally "the eminence of
Venus".  It keeps Cupid coming back.

   Myself, I can somewhat copy a cartoon if I proceed very slowly and am
allowed to erase.

   My friend Cindi can hardly paint by numbers.  She's taking a class at
the community college, but after the instructor saw her effort, he had the
model take the brush and Cindi be the model.  It's really cold, she says,
and you're not supposed to move, but it's very legitimate.  Had she known,
though, she'd have gone to one of those tanning salons first.  She thinks
it was her ancestor who posed for Cranach.  Breast size.

   To Cindi's disappointment, none of the male students asked her out
afterwards.  She figures that after they see you naked for free, why would
they shell out for a real date?  Fortunately, nobody in the class is much
of an artist, she hopes, so you can't really tell it's her.  No
middle-school teacher wants her students coming upon their teacher's
portrait.  "Doesn't that look a lot like Ms.  Barton?" "It is her!  It's
her necklace and that's how her tits look when she forgets her bra!"

   ***

   Holly on the Web

   Wherever you found this story on the web, thank you to the server.  My
problem is that I've no systematic way to update the various servers.  As
literary errors (or just lame word usages) are made known, I'll repair that
which is salvageable on /~Holly_Rennick.  If you take
the time to read me, don't wade through an early version.

   You can contact me via the site's message form.
   Holly