Art Is My Favorite Class

Dear Readers,

I hope you have had a happy holiday season! I am sorry I didn't get this out in time for Christmas, but better late than never! A big thanks to Pandamonium for her help in editing this. It has been a pleasure working with her. For those coming on this later, I hope you are still enjoying the story and that this chapter does not disappoint. Readers new and old, I hope you are excited for this chapter and all the fun it brings.

~NaughtyPaladin

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It had been two days since I'd proven my "competence" in front of Erica. I had responded to her email application, officially offered her a spot and asked to schedule a time for her first "Photo shoot". I had to admit, the more I looked at her application photos, the more I wanted to do this, the more I wanted her. It had gotten to the point where the last time I had been balls deep in Sarah, all I could think about was Erica. I really didn't like that. When I was fucking Sarah, I wanted to be thinking about Sarah. If I was going to think about fucking Erica, I wanted to do it while I was fucking Erica.

"Bruh, you are so out of it. Were you even paying attention?" Jacob asked me as class wrapped.

"I... I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure this is the right choice for me." I admitted.

"Oh, got FOMO about your major?" He laughed.

"You could check out a few others." Frank suggested. "I have a cousin over in the Chemistry Department. I could get a tour... they are always recruiting."

"I don't have anyone here except my sister... a fucking art major." James sighed. "Like anyone really makes a decent living off an art degree... you should stick with Computer Science."

My ears actually perked up with that. Art? Like... photography?

"I don't know. I mean, I could become a Cinematographer... or a photographer. Plus, every video game needs an art guy. Graphic design is big too..." I countered.

"Ugh... sure, maybe." James sighed. "My sister seems to think she'll be rolling in it with just painting portraits. I told her there was this thing, called a camera, that was invented not long ago and people would rather just get their picture taken... she insists that there is a market for personal painted portraits..."

"Can you get me some tours then?" I asked him.

"Sure, I'll text my cousin." Frank jumped on it. I hadn't really meant to ask him, but it couldn't hurt, so I didn't say anything.

"If you want the tours before the add/drop deadline, we'll have to jump on it fast." Hiro noted. "You only have a few days left."

"My cousin says he can get you a tour today... like, in an hour." Frank laughed. "Boom. The Chemistry department must be desperate for new blood."

"My sister hasn't texted back... but she's probably with her friends... God, half of them want to be the artist and half of them are convinced they were born to be models." James sighed.

Fuck. More models sounded fabulous! But then again, if they were actually in the modeling scene, they probably knew a cervix massage from my dick was not part of the normal package.

"Sure, I can do the tour in an hour." I noted.

"We should all go!" Emmanuel laughed. "Who knows, I'm looking at the due dates on all those programming projects and wondering if I might be making a mistake myself."

"But... Chemistry has so much fucking math..." Jacob lamented.

"Is that a problem?" Hiro asked, curiously.

"You wouldn't understand." Jacob sighed.

"Right, because all Asians are good at math..." Hiro sniffed.

"I'm sorry... I didn't mean it that way." Jacob scrambled.

"But Hiro... didn't you say you do like math and you were disappointed that most of the math we'll be doing looks pretty simple?" James piped up.

"I do. But it's still a hurtful stereotype. He should do better." Hiro retorted.

So, an hour later we were walking through the Chemistry Building on campus. The classrooms were pretty generic, but the labs looked... fancy, I guess.

"So these are the young inquiring minds?" a jolly seeming professor asked, stroking his beard.

"Yes, Professor Stevenson!" Frank's cousin, I think his name was Diego but I hadn't really cared so much about this tour. I was way more interested in the Art Department, since if there were photography or cinematography classes at this school, then that was where they were gonna be.

"Ah, well, let me tell you," Professor Stevenson laughed. "A lot of people think Chemistry is just a path to working in petroleum fields, which I will admit are lucrative careers, but here on this campus, we have so many other options!"

"Like what?" James wondered.

"Well," Professor Stevenson gloated, "I myself assist with our undergrad program in Chemistry, but my focus is running the Pharmacology Program. Also hosted in this building is our Medical Chemistry program and the Biochemical Engineering program! We have some great projects underway, in fact... if you're lucky, some of our grad students may still be here and we can talk to them about their work!"

Oh lord, I thought, this is gonna be the lamest hour of my life.

Regardless, we followed him into a lab... that honestly I wondered if we should even be going into. He had to scan his ID card to open the door, then held it open for us.

"Chemistry can be hard, but it leads to all sorts of exciting careers!" Professor Stevenson launched into his speech about the projects. I hardly listened, looking at the other tables.

"And Susan here is working on a new potential antiviral compound! It could be an amazing breakthrough, a cure for the common cold, or other current plagues on humanity!" Professor Stevenson continued. "Not a vaccine, which must be given before the infection occurs, but an actual cure that can be taken to end an active infection!"

"Really!" Hiro asked. "That seems unlikely. Isn't that medically considered an impossibility?"

"Well, there have been no previous successes, and her project is in its early stages, but the possibility is exciting!" Professor Stevenson pointed out.

So, she's doing a project that isn't going anywhere and won't do anything. Exciting...

"Oh, and that's where Jonas is working on his project... nothing groundbreaking, just a new aphrodisiac." Professor Stevenson dismissed, noticing which desk I was looking at.

"Wait, aphrodisiac?" I asked.

"Yeah, he's trying to make a faster acting one, but... there isn't a whole lot of demand. There are enough products out there, and the need just isn't there. Besides, he's having problems with dosing and some weird side effects." Professor Stevenson dismissed. "Now Jordan over here, she is working on more potentially groundbreaking work, cancer medications!"

He took us over to the desk of the next girl working on stuff that just wasn't going to go anywhere, but my brain was stuck on the aphrodisiac...

Erica had sent in the application, and I had accepted her, but even after seeing how much Sarah enjoyed our "photoshoots" she was still seeming to be reluctant... Maybe an aphrodisiac was just what I needed.

I didn't want to do anything in the moment, but waited for my chance, which didn't take long. One of the girls was trying to look cool or something, and wasn't paying attention, and her burner, boiling some clear liquid, and her sleeve slipped between the beaker and the burner, catching her lab coat on fire.

In the resulting chaos, I stepped back to this "Jonas's" space, snapped a few pictures of the papers he had on his desk, and swiped two of the sample baggies of a white powder, labeled "batch 4.7a" and "batch 4.7b". I saw something about both those batches on the pages I photographed, but would have to read them later. I pocketed them then was back over with the others before the panic died down and Professor Stevenson finished giving his "labs are a dangerous place and constant vigilance is required" speech.

My heart raced as I felt the bags of powder in my pocket... Oh fuck, this was dumb! If I was caught swiping chemical compounds from the lab, who knows what could happen to me... this was dumb, dumb, dumb, DUMB!

"Well, I hate to do this to you, gentlemen, but as your guide here, I must insist we head out." Professor Stevenson admitted, "I have a lecture coming up, but I hope you have learned a lot and are excited for the options a chemistry major opens for your futures!"

We filed out, and I tried not to rub the baggies of white powder in my pockets. Hell, I wasn't even sure what I grabbed, but I hoped it was good...

The rest of the day couldn't go by fast enough. We heard back from James's sister, and got a tour of the Art Department. Unfortunately, there were only a few classes on photography, and the videography or cinematography was only a small portion of one of the classes. The only good news was that they were classes I could take, even as a freshman. I could drop my Econ or Math class for one of them, but if I did decide to stick with Computer Science that would seriously push my graduation back, by like a year. So I had to drop one of my Computer Science courses. Intro to Databases with SQL was offered both fall and winter semesters, so I could just move it back and it wouldn't really affect things, so I did that. Other than that, the Art Department disappointed me.

"So which classes have nude models?" Emmanuel asked laughing, making James punch him.

"Of course you would ask that." James's sister sighed. "Yes, there are nude models for the figure drawing classes, but that isn't until winter of your Sophomore year. So if you just want to see some boobs, it'll take you about two years to get there... and the models usually aren't hot, so if that's why you're going into Art, you are going to be seriously disappointed. Hot girls don't get naked for free. You have to at least buy them dinner first."

James looked like he wanted to murder Emmanual.

"I'd buy you dinner." Emmanual laughed, fighting James off.

"And my boyfriend would eat your portion." She replied.

"Well, he isn't here-" Emmanuel tried to push, but a deep voice behind him interrupted him.

"Hey babe." An enormous bearded dude, who reminded me of a viking and looked like he could pick any of us up and tie us into a knot, called as he walked over and bent over to kiss James's sister lightly before putting an arm around her.

"Well, I have a class coming up. Thanks for the tour, gotta go!" Emmanuel called, already fleeing.

We all laughed.

"Did you not tell them I was dating Trevor?" James's sister asked.

"I didn't think any of them would be dumb enough to try anything. You two are seniors and we're fucking freshmen." James shook his head.

"Well, you guys are cute, little freshmen... if you have more questions, let me know." She offered, and the two walked off arm in arm.

"Damn, what does he do?" Hiro gasped. "He looks like a mountain!"

"He did hammer throw in track and field and is a power lifter." James explained. "He tried wrestling, but hated keeping his weight down. He would roll with the guys when he could, but chose power lifting over wrestling. From what I hear, he was a beast on the mat though."

Not a man I wanted to tangle with if he caught me trying to take nudes of his girl. That and I wasn't sure I was willing to go after my friend's sister... but then again, Sarah was almost as close as family... either way, that mountain of muscle was all the deterrent I needed ... nope, not going after that.

Classes done, tours done, I finally got to go home. I said hello to Sarah and headed up to my room, where I finally pulled the bags of white powder out of my pockets and pulled up those pictures to see what the hell I had risked my college career for. I moved the pictures from my phone to my encrypted hard drive alongside my folders of pictures and videos.

I'd only gotten pictures of four pages of notes left on the table, and a good portion of that was... chemistry. Might as well have been Greek to me. There were only a few things that caught my notice and I could actually understand. Luckily, before talking about any of the compounds, which apparently there were 10 variations on his formula, he talked about some of his methodology. Apparently, since the base of the formula was already FDA approved, he was able to go straight to something like clinical trials. He had 20 couples trying out his formulas, and he recorded their self reporting. There apparently was only so much you could record on the effects of aphrodisiacs.

The first compound, "4.7a" showed "High female arousal, and response, as reported by males. Females report gaps in memory. Males report no effects." Which was interesting. In the summary, he noted, "Not sure why the men report no effects. Should hit the receptors in both sexes, but only women are showing effects. Could still be marketable. Men can just take zinc, selenium and vitamin C and E and improve their performance."

I made a note to get those supplements.

"The reported gaps in the female participant's memories are concerning. The male participants report that the females become very aroused and 'freaky' but the females report no memory of this occurrence."

I sat back looking at the baggies. This was golden for my videos... but I did generally like the idea of them remembering what was going on. I liked how Sarah sang the praises of my work with her and that was the only real reason I was getting a chance with her friends... Did I want them to forget?

I looked at the notes to see how much he was giving out. It looked like the current dose he was giving was... 20 milligrams. I tried to see how much that was, and realized... that was a tiny speck! The baggies were small, but if that was the dosage, it could last a while. I'd want to be smart about it, because there was no way I was going to be deciphering this mess to try and replace this stuff, but it was a good amount and should last a while.

Then I reached the summary of compound "4.7b" it said, "Swapping out the"... I couldn't even read that chemical name... "with" ... another chemical name... "seems to have fixed the memory gaps. That is worth looking into. Males still report no effect, but I don't want to increase the dosage. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Females report arousal is slow to set in, but the arousal gets to be very intense. Since the desired outcome is a rapid onset arousal, round 4.7 is a failure. Arousal intensity appears to be increased, reports indicate beyond that of even round 3.8, but the desire is still to increase rate of onset."

I sat back and wondered what I was going to do...

I hid the baggies and went downstairs to see what Sarah was up to.

"What are you making?" I asked.

"I'm trying this recipe for cookies!" She explained, carefully measuring something on a scale.

"Umm... what's with the scale?" I asked.

"Well, I'm making a recipe that was posted by someone from France, so I'm measuring out ingredients to make sure I'm doing it right. They asked for grams of sugar, so I measure it instead of doing cups... Though I think a half cup of sugar is about one hundred grams." Sarah explained.

"How small of a measurement can your scale measure?" I asked.

"Like, a tenth of a gram... like this...." She laughed and put a tiny sprinkle from a teaspoon of sugar on the scale, and the digital scale responded that it was 0.2 grams. Then Sarah spun up her mixer and started humming as she mixed up her cookies.

Okay, wow... it was going to be like... a few specks of that powder, tiny bits of dust... to get the dosage Jonas had been doing.

"Oh, and Erica said she was going to come over and talk to you about something..." Sarah noted, turning off the mixer. "She'll be by-"

A knock at the door interrupted her.

"Oh, is it that time already?" Sarah asked. "Sorry, that's probably her. Would you go let her in?"

Nice. Way to give me warning and take note of WHAT Erica wanted to talk about. I mean, it wasn't hard to guess but... still would have been nice.

Also, why did Erica knock? She hadn't bothered before... of course, that had gotten her an eyeful and maybe that's why she was knocking now. Either way, I needed to let her in, so I walked over, twisted the knob and opened the door.

"Hey, Eri-..." I stopped when I realized it was not, in fact, Erica at the door.

Instead, was what Erica would look like if she took MILF pills. A few inches taller, probably about 5' 4", the asian woman standing on the porch had Erica's face and eyes, but her breasts were significantly bigger, and her hips flared oh so nicely. Her legs looked great in the black leggings she was wearing and the v-neck white blouse exposed just enough cleavage to give me an immediate erection. Not that that was hard, I had learned.

"Hello, I'm Mrs. Sasaki." She introduced herself. "Is this Ms. Sarah Taylor's house?"

"Oh, hi Mrs. Sasaki!" Sarah called from the kitchen, "Come on in."

"Thank you." Mrs. Sasaki accepted and stepped in, brushing past me as I stepped aside, and her bosom brushed against me, making me swallow.

"What's up?" Sarah asked.

"Well, I understand you have a photographer friend who is looking at doing a photoshoot with my Erica." Mrs. Sasaki began, and I felt my guts clench.

"Yep, That would be Pete here." Sarah volunteered.

God damn it, I swore inside, why can't you keep your mouth closed?

"I see." Mrs. Sasaki noted, eyeing me up and down. "You are the one who wants to take pictures of my Erica?"

No point in denying it.

"Yes, I was looking for models, and she applied." I explained. "She seemed like a good fit for a shoot I wanted to do, so I reached out to schedule the shoot. Is that a problem?"

"You seem a bit young to be a photographer." She noted. "Photography is a serious field. Once a picture is taken, you never know where it's going to go and it may come back to haunt you years later. I also have to confess, with a young man like you asking to take pictures of my daughter... I just have to admit I fear you may have untoward intentions toward my daughter and I have to object to her working with you. "

I blinked. That was blunt. Also she "feared" I might have untoward intentions, I'd have to google that later, but it probably meant she knew I wanted to fuck her daughter. If Erica had told her anything, she wouldn't fear it, she would know it. That made me wonder... could I still make this work?

"Thank you for just coming out and saying it." I began. "Just out of curiosity, what all have you heard about me and my work?"

"Not very much, to be honest." Mrs. Sasaki admitted. "Erica just came to me and told me about an opportunity she had to model and, I told you I'm protective, so I came over. Seeing you, I just can't let her work with you in good conscience. You're too young, and I know young men."

Well, she wasn't wrong. I admit, I was wondering what she looked like under that full outfit... and that's when I had an idea.

"Well, Erica is an adult and can make her own decisions." I began, and I saw Mrs. Sasaki stiffen, so I hurried and continued. "But I'd hate to cause a conflict between you and your daughter, so I have a proposition for you."

I saw the curiosity in her eyes.

"I'm still young, as you said, and establishing my reputation." I explained. "I wanted to do a couple of photoshoots with Erica, but before then, perhaps it would ease your mind if I did a photoshoot with you first?"

"Me?" She asked, in clear confusion. "I thought you worked with models. I'm a nearly forty-year-old mother of three... I'm hardly a model."

"I think you could be if you wanted to." I assured her, my mind racing. "Though I wasn't planning on doing photos with you that would be sold to my buyers in Europe, like the ones I was planning for Erica." It wasn't entirely a lie, I saw some of the purchases on the site come in initially in Euros, though it was immediately converted to US dollars before it came to me. "I was thinking perhaps I could do a shoot with you that, at most, would be used for my website for advertising. That way, I can justify not charging you, do the photoshoot, provide you with the final product and, hopefully, help you feel better about the whole situation."