God DAMN this was crazy! What the hell was I doing here?
I looked down at my bare naked body and prepared to open the grungy door in front of me. I watched nervously as my fingers closed around the cold brass knob and slowly twisted, my sweaty palm making it almost impossible.
The old door was wedged in place, requiring an additional push to get it free. The resulting
POP
from the frame releasing its snugly-hinged companion announced my nude arrival into the spacious studio much more conspicuously than I had hoped.
As the door swung wide I scanned the room for Penelope, dragging my gaze across the room full of colorful canvases and easels, painted bulbs and wispy scarves. My eyes settled on her head among the soaring skyline of blank and colored works of art. She was looking down, and seemed to be plotting a night full of wretched embarrassment for me on her evil pages of devious plans, or she was mixing up some paint. It could go either way.
My feet obeyed their forward instruction and propelled me into the room, and I could feel the dried dabs of paint under my toes as I padded across the floor in her direction. I could barely breathe, and the stress hormones coursing through my veins caused my entire body to tremble.
She spoke without looking up.
"Go ahead and lay face up on the table Ben," her soothing voice instructed me. Keeping her eyes down on her work allowed me some space to adjust, and I appreciated the shred of dignity this afforded me . . . for now anyway.
The massage table had been recently covered in a clean, white terry cloth, giving the lofty perch a relaxing and comfortable look. Too bad I wouldn't be enjoying it.
As I approached the table I pictured a naked man lying atop, Penelope's imminent view. How does she even do this? How do other people do this? Why the hell am I doing this??
I had no idea anymore. Penelope was so fascinating and charming that she could have asked me to eat my own foot and I would have started looking for a fork. I knew this was how she was able to craft her unique art form into a reality. A phallic artisan would need many subjects, and being able to charm a man out of his pants and up onto a table in the nude was an art form in itself. I was in awe, and my mind flashed back to how it started.
***
Sitting at a small table at The Trusty Café, I scanned the room for anyone I knew. It had been a while since I'd graduated college, so most of the students around were fresh-faced and unfamiliar.
June, an ex-girlfriend of mine, had called me the day before about an artist friend of hers who was looking for a volunteer to help with an extended project. This friend was exhibiting at a gallery showing in a couple months, and desperately needed a model to help complete the project.
Half joking I asked if it was some kind of nude modeling or something, to which she dryly replied it most certainly was. I asked, 'why me?' and she told me this friend of hers, Penelope, was looking for a good fit for a very specific type of model. It seemed I was the only person June could think of at the time, and had offered to give me a call to see if I'd be willing to consider it.
I didn't like the sounds of posing nude, although I've always been comfortable in my own skin. I mean, I don't go around showing it off or anything, but I don't have any hang-ups about my body either.
I agreed to meet with Penelope and talk it over, if only to see what she had in mind. Maybe a muscular pose with my legs crossed would be okay. Years of cycling had kept me in peak condition.
As I sat at the table, every person who walked through the door of that Café somewhat startled me, until finally it opened . . . and in strolled the most amazing life form to ever grace our planet.
To say she was angelic would have been an insult. You could have placed her sparkling green eyes and her enchanting smile on a rusty flagpole and still wanted to ask it on a date. The way she carried herself gave me the instant impression that she was a liver of life, a . . . life, liver . . . good god, I couldn't think. All I knew in that instant was that I would definitely be taking my clothes off for this woman.
Our eyes met, and hers widened upon realizing I was the man she was there to meet. She walked right over and asked, "Ben?"
I stood so fast my chair tipped back, and I clumsily lunged to catch it before it could crash to the ground. Her amused expression when I turned caused my face to flush. I smiled wanly, put my hand out and said, "Penelope?"
She graciously shook my nervous appendage and I motioned to the other chair. She thanked me and sat right down. I couldn't believe my luck; here was one of the most perfect forms of feminine precision I had ever laid eyes on, and she was here to talk me out of my clothes!
We chatted about ourselves for a few minutes, and I was fascinated by her background. Her art major had been cut short due an overwhelming demand for some of her work. She quickly set up a large studio, where she began teaching workshops in the morning and painting every night.
I told her about my engineering background and how I mainly design bicycle accessories, spending a lot of time riding and training for races. She seemed aloof about my job and hobbies, taking them in stride with polite comments; I could tell she was itching to get to the point.
"So how does this work?" I finally asked.
"Well," she began, "as you already know you will need to be in the nude to model for my project. Does that bother you?"
I tried to keep my eyes locked on hers as I said, "It might. What's the subject, besides the human body I mean?"
"The phallus," she said simply, letting the words hang there for me to try and desperately grab onto like a slippery bar of soap.
"The . . . ph-phallus," I stammered, "you m-mean like . . . only that?" I was immediately thinking she couldn't very well be sitting around creating portraits of naked penises all day!
"Well, yes, mainly that," she said as if we were talking about the rain, "for this project anyway."
"So, it's definitely a painting you're doing."
"Yes."
"Of a penis."
"On a penis," she corrected me, immediately short circuiting my thoughts and my speech mechanisms at the same time.
"You mean . . . you p-paint, on . . ." I struggled to put the pieces together.
"On a penis," she finished for me. "An erect penis, if I'm being blunt."
My eyelids and brows lifted high as my mind struggled to connect the dots. Not only did this little vixen want me out of my clothes, but she wanted me at attention, and to paint directly onto my naked manhood. What the heavenly fuck?
As my mind reeled and my pulse quickened, I watched Penelope reach into her colorful shoulder bag hanging on the chair. Out popped a tablet which she immediately swiped to life, running her dainty fingers across the face in quick horizontal blurs.
At once she set the device in the center of the table between us and swiveled it around to face me. I gazed upon a magnificent painting, one of a lush garden scene featuring a cloud of deep blue morning glories bursting from a roughly woven basket hanging on a hook. It was definitely not the graphic display I had braced myself for.
"Wow, Penelope," I whistled, "did you paint this?"
"I did," she said, "do you like it?"
"It's incredible," I admitted, my eyes popping from one intricate detail to the next, "You have a fantastic talent."
"Thanks Ben," she smiled with a genuinely expressive grin. "So you don't mind the fact that there's a large penis in the frame?"
I jerked my head a bit in surprise and looked at the image again. It was all flowers and leaves and completely innocent. She noticed my head shaking back and forth and said "Keep looking."
I furrowed my brow in concentration and tried to look more closely at the fine detail she had used. I noticed a slight shadow running from one flower to the next. It seemed like a trick of the camera which had taken the image, but then it all came together . . . and I almost fell out of my seat!
"Holy shit," I mouthed silently in the small Café. She smiled and sat back, allowing me room to fully grasp what I was seeing. Stretching from the bottom of the frame almost to the very top was the barely discernible shape of a large and erect penis. It was perfectly camouflaged within the rest of the image to all but completely disappear. I looked up.
Penelope's smile was wide as she looked into my eyes. Without a word she reached forward and swiped her finger across the screen again. This time a field of golden daffodils filled the screen, painted beneath a brilliant blue sky. This time I knew what to look for, and while it still took me a few seconds, I found the hidden penis. This time it was stretching lengthwise across the very bottom of the image. Blades of grass and elaborate flower petals were painted in fine detail along the taut skin.
"Oh my god," I finally managed to get out. "How do you do this?"
"Why don't you come over tomorrow night and find out?" she said to me with a hint of allure and mystery. I swallowed hard, trying not to seem shocked out of my skin by her proposal, but I most definitely was. Words escaped me.