(of the writer as a naked man)
Copyright 2022 by Alexandra Y. Caluen. All Rights Reserved.
Midsummer 2019
Geoffrey Anand was half-expecting Reggie to be his usual flirty self at the sitting. It was mildly surprising, and no end of a relief, to find him focused, businesslike, and impersonal. Well, as impersonal as the man probably ever was. No need to mention it; clearly the manner was meant to put Geoffrey at ease. Flirting was one thing over the phone when a hemisphere apart, quite another between artist and model in the same room.
Clad only in a comfortable Turkish robe, Geoffrey indicated the camera on its tripod in front of a bare wall. “Have you a particular scenario in mind?”
Reggie finished adjusting the tripod and looked up. “Well, I read all your books -”
“All of them?!”
“I didn’t mean to.” It almost sounded like a complaint. “But I liked the first one so I got the next one, and then,” he flailed a little. “Any road. The one where your bloke’s just finished some beastly perilous expedition in Anatolia and he’s returned to his ancient stone hut.”
“Ah. Pulled up water from the well, et cetera?” An affirmative sound. This would be why Reggie had asked him to let his hair grow out a bit, and not to shave for a week or so. Geoffrey looked around the sparsely-furnished flat. Clearly the artist would be relying on his imagination for the scenery. “Standing?”
“We’ll start with a few standing shots, then try a few seated and reclining.”
“Hence the drapery.” The couch and one of Reggie’s kitchen chairs were covered with sheets of canvas.
“Indeed. Here.” Reggie pulled something out of his pocket, letting it swing free so Geoffrey could see: a knotted leather cord with a sizable black stone pendant.
Geoffrey took the necklace and inspected it. The stone was, he thought, onyx; he’d seen it on his travels. The finish was nearly matte, the design two panthers in profile. Standing rampant, back to back, jaws open, front claws deployed. The detail was remarkable. “This looks ancient. Is it?”
Reggie shook his head, smiling. “Friend of mine makes these carvings.” Geoffrey looped the leather over his head. The pendant rested just above his modest patch of chest hair. Reggie nodded approval. “It’s the right length then, good. Now, if you hadn’t already had the artist’s model experience this year, I’d ask if you’ve any questions. But since you wrote this scene I’ll simply invite you to return to it. If you want to get your hair wet, there’s the kitchen tap.”
That sounded like a request, so Geoffrey went to run some water over his head. Rubbed it through his hair, let it drip, and returned to stand on the X marked with masking tape. He untied the robe’s belt and let it hang open. Reggie made an approving sound and began taking pictures.
He gave a bit of direction from time to time, asking for changes of position and, eventually, for Geoffrey to doff the robe altogether.
Then he brought the draped chair over and said, “Now to the throne.” He fussed over Geoffrey’s position for a moment, then went to an old-fashioned trunk and pulled out a few props. A battered canvas rucksack with leather straps; an equally-battered tin canteen; a long ivory linen scarf; an antique hunting knife and an oiled sharpening stone. Geoffrey entered wholeheartedly into the scene. Putting the rucksack on his naked lap, eyes and hands engaged with it as if rummaging for something. Stroking the blade across the stone. Wiping the canteen with the hem of his robe. Making a turban with the scarf.
“Done that before, have you?” Reggie was smiling.
“A scarf is one of the most useful garments a man can have in the wilderness. Use it for everything from sun protection to a pillow to a bandage.” He unwound the turban after a few more shots. “Over to the couch?”
“If you would.”
Geoffrey was having a fine time. He hadn’t expected to be given leave to imagine himself in one of his own scenes. All Reggie had said, once they’d agreed he could paint Geoffrey, was that he’d let his subject review the shots. The implication being that he wouldn’t do a painting based on an image Geoffrey flatly disliked. But this painting was for Reggie’s business, the fine-art branch of a gay porn site, so Geoffrey fully expected the chosen image to be one in which he was completely bare. It made this play-acting all the more enjoyable, knowing it was because Reggie simply wanted the pictures. “Once we’ve a chance to review these, might you want to do a photo essay?”
“For Christ’s sake, man. D’you mean to say you’d allow it?”
“It’s not pornography,” Geoffrey said mildly. “I’ve seen countless nudes in galleries.” He draped the robe on the couch, then arranged himself artfully on top of it. The scarf beckoned from the chair. “We might use that again.”
“Oh, might we.” Reggie smiled. “Thought you said this isn’t pornography.”
Geoffrey laughed. “Why, what did you have in mind?”
* * *
Reggie Galant closed the door behind his model (his mouthwatering, out-of-bounds, happily-married model) and sighed. Going through all those images tonight would only lead to a bitter, envious wank. Instead he located his phone and sent a text to his mate Vivian: Done for the day?
A reply came promptly: Just cleaning my brushes. How’d yours go? It was that writer, wasn’t it?
Reggie: It was indeed. He’s a smashing model. I might be persuaded to let you see the shoot.
Vivian: I might be interested. Fancy a pint?
Reggie: When don’t I? Will Thomas join us?
Vivan: No he’s bound to his sister’s for dinner. Going through the motions before he’s off on the next cruise.
Reggie half-laughed. Vivian’s husband, retired from the RAF, now traveled as a close-up magician. His sister reportedly thought this part-time job embarrassing, and Vivian a disgrace. Reggie’s own wish for company this night was well-timed. He texted back: Meet you at my local. You can tell Thomas you had a walk and speak the truth for a change
Vivian: Sod off. See you there in forty min
Reggie: See you. He put down the phone and went to the computer. Half an hour would give him a head start on the day’s business messages.
An hour later, pints in hand, fish and chips anticipated, the two artists were finished gossiping about their various acquaintances. Vivian thumped his chest and belched. “Ah, Guinness. Tell me about this portrait.”
“The shoot today? This was for the nude he’s letting me do for At Your Service. In payment for a wedding portrait he and his husband want. I showed you the picture from last December, didn’t I?”
Vivian consulted his memory, made a dubious sound, shook his head. “Remind me.”
“This chap married jazz singer Janis Vaughn’s tour manager. On arrival in the States, Geoffrey was pulled out by DHS. Profiled. Fuck knows what they’d do if I stepped off a plane. Any road, Ms. Vaughn posted a photo of them cuddling on the next flight, and later on one of them dancing tango.” He gazed at his friend with exasperated affection. “Surely you remember that one.”
“Eh?”
“Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif in white dinner jackets.”
“Oh! Those two!”
“Right. They want the Oxford platform, morning coats, at dawn.”
“Shit, Reggie, that’s a proper job.”
“Yeah. But it’ll be my first wedding portrait, and I’m getting the nude out of it, plus they’re letting me put the double portrait in my gallery on the site. So people know I can do it.”
“You’re a devil of a painter, curse you.” Vivian drank half his remaining stout. “Ah, sustenance.” He waited for the plate of fish and chips to land, then set the pint glass down. “Plans for the weekend?”
Of course Reggie didn’t have plans. His last attempt at dating had been a frustrating failure. “None to speak of.”
“Come to mine, then. We’ll get a takeaway from that curry shop, open a bottle of champers, get trolleyed and watch the Great British Pottery Throwdown.”
A moment to be grateful for friends, and for timely delivery of fish and chips, so he could pretend he was swallowing fried potato instead of too many years alone. “I’ll bring the Bollinger.”
Back home, Reggie found a movie to watch instead of returning to his computer. It wasn’t till the next day - after dealing with all the necessary business for the porn site - that he opened up the working folder for Geoffrey’s shoot. If the subject (and his husband, and their employer) was truly open to a photo essay, Reggie was all for it. Most of the photographic material on the site was explicit, but there’d been some that could fairly be described as erotica. The distinction lay in the intent. A photograph of a man fully erect, and/or with a hand on himself in a sexually-titillating manner: porn. None of Geoffrey’s pictures were like that. They’d played around with the scarf a bit at the end, winding it around Geoffrey’s wrists as he lay prone on the couch. Suggestive, certainly, but you couldn’t even see his cock. Therefore: not porn. It was pure pleasure selecting a series of shots. He’d ask Geoffrey to bring his husband over to see them and render judgement. Reggie could link the essay to the page he’d built for Geoffrey’s delightfully filthy ‘letters from the road.’ His book sales would doubtless skyrocket. Hell, maybe he’d like one of these images to replace his currently rather pedestrian author photo.
Choosing one to paint was much more difficult. In the end Reggie gave himself four options. He’d sketch them, draw in backgrounds, and see which composition he liked better. It had to be commercially appealing, as well as something the subject might like in his own home (the odds favored husband or employer wanting a print, if not the original painting).
The subject was an adventurer. That, Reggie thought, was the key. The painting should speak to his toughness, competence, and courage as well as his sheer masculine beauty. “That one,” he told himself out loud, gazing at the image. Geoffrey seated, upright with legs apart, wearing the unbelted robe, which hung open to frame his athletic brown body. Artfully-angled light falling on his face, his chest (the pendant would look even more ancient once Reggie got done with it), and the knife. He was testing the edge against his thumb. One almost didn’t notice that below his hands the light fell on his groin. On the half-hard cock in its nest of shiny black hair. Yes, this was the one to paint.
He'd draw the others anyway. Spending a bit more time with this subject, one who reminded Reggie of possibilities, would be no hardship. Maybe he’d work up his own courage, and try again. God knew if Vivian could find someone willing to marry him, it shouldn’t be beyond Reggie.
Maybe he’d follow Geoffrey and Niall’s prescription: ‘First of all you must have a set of requirements it is absolutely impossible for a single person to meet, and second of all you must walk into the least likely possible place at the most random possible time. Having done that, should the one other person there be willing to walk out with you, you must simply allow yourself to fall.’
“I could fall,” Reggie said to the computer screen. “I could.”
THE END
Find out how Reggie falls in TRIPLE X!