A Creative Challenge

"These aren't as good as the earlier ones, are they?"

I couldn't argue. She was right. In her typically blunt way, Amy had stated no more than the simple truth. She was looking at the drawings I had been doing in the last week or so and they didn't have the same energy, the erotic edge that they had when we first threw caution to the winds. When we first became lovers, right here in the studio.

Greta hadn't complained. She was still selling everything we delivered to the gallery, but what Amy said while she drank her coffee during her modelling break was what I had been thinking for a while. My work was starting to get a little stale and repetitive, and although someone seeing it for the first time wouldn't know that, Amy could see it, and so could I.

"I think your technique is still getting better, but I don't think these are as exciting as the first porno ones you did of me."

Amy and I had talked a lot about the difference between art and pornography, and we still hadn't come up with a definition that we couldn't immediately shoot holes in. We were both comfortable that just because an image was sexually explicit it wasn't automatically pornographic, and even if it was pornography, that didn't automatically stop it from being art. Ironically, because we couldn't define what pornography was, we had started calling the recent work I had been doing, my 'porno period', just to separate it from the more conventional nudes I had been producing before.

"What's missing, then?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure. I was going to say a certain sense of urgency, you know that 'fuck me quick' feeling, but I remember that some of your early pictures were very gentle and relaxed but still had this wicked sexual electricity oozing out of them."

"Perhaps you are just more familiar with them now. They aren't so unusual, and the novelty has worn off, which makes them seem a bit ho-hum?"

"Do you think that's it?"

"No, Amy, I think you're right. The spark isn't there – at least not as much. Maybe subconsciously this approach doesn't feel so new and daring to me and it shows in the end results."

"You know I have to ask the obvious question, don't you, Sam?"

"What question?" I asked, because it wasn't obvious to me what she was going to say.

"Is it that you are tired of me?"

"NO!" I said immediately. I didn't have to think about the answer, it just came out as a gut response. Yet, when I started to reflect on the question half a second later, I wondered if my response was really true, or was it just what I wanted Amy to hear, or maybe it was simply what I wanted to tell myself? In another half second I had realised that my response was from my heart and that my feelings for her hadn't diminished, but then it occurred to me that I wasn't even sure what her question actually meant.

Amy hadn't said "Do you no longer think I'm attractive?" or "Are you tired of drawing the same model all the time?", or "Do I no longer inspire you artistically like I did?". All of these were valid interpretations of her words, and all were quite different in meaning, and I was now sure that there would be many other possible interpretations if I stopped and thought about it for long enough. But I wasn't in the mood to play 'guess what's in my head' with this naked woman. The distracting beauty of her body had a tendency to blur rational thought.

"No, I'm definitely not tired of you, but I'm not entirely sure what you meant when you said that."

"I know. That's one of the good things about being a woman. It's really easy to confuse men sometimes."

She was standing almost under the skylight behind my easel, side on to me. The light left her face in shadow, but picked out the shape of her shoulders and highlighted the tips of both breasts. I noticed her nipples were a little puckered and I made a mental note to turn the heater up a notch of two because it must have been chillier than it should be in the studio.

"Hello? I said it's easy to confuse men sometimes."

"I'm not confused. In fact, I am quite sure that those are the sweetest tits I have ever seen."

"Sam, sometimes I'm not sure if I'm talking to you, or having a conversation with your dick." She was smiling, even though she was trying to sound serious

"I know, it's one of the good things about being a man. You can always switch off and let your dick do the talking. And right now, mine wants to say 'hello kitty," I said, reaching out my hand and gently stroking down one cheek of her buttocks, letting my fingers slide down her asscrack towards her pussy. As my fingers closed in on their target, Amy put down her cup of coffee and walked back towards the dais.

"You're in a rut, Sam", she said

"Well, I was hoping to be in the next few minutes."

"Ha, ha, funny. I wasn't talking about 'rutting'. I meant you're stuck in a groove, and we need to find a way to get you out of it."

"I've an idea," I said.

"So have I," said Amy

"It couldn't be better than the one I was just starting to have."

"Sam, do you ever think of anything but sex?"

"Do you?"

"Yes, I think you need another model."

This was what I was afraid of. I had been looking for the signs that Amy was beginning to move on, and not modelling for me anymore was what I was expecting would be her first step away from me.

"Amy, I meant it. I'm not tired of you as a person, or tired of you as a model. I don't want anyone else."

"I didn't mean INSTEAD of me. I think we should get someone else to model WITH me."

I was a little relieved but not immediately comforted by that idea. The intense eroticism of our art would certainly crank up a notch or two if the subject of the work was no longer Amy on her own, but I didn't much like the idea of drawing her with another man. Amy read the expression on my face and with her typical almost telepathic intuition realised what was going through my mind.

"Sam, I was thinking of asking Tracey, one of my college friends, to come and model with me. I wasn't suggesting getting another man in here. At least not yet."

"A woman?" I said, somewhat stupidly, wondering about the significance of 'not yet'.

"I think most people called Tracey are women, Sam. Of course she's a woman."

I don't know why that wasn't the first thing I had imagined when Amy suggested getting someone else in as well. Why did I automatically think it would have to be a man? Was I becoming possessive and a little jealous? Maybe I was.

"OK. Fine." I said. "Have you already asked her? Will she do it?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure she will. I can be quite persuasive."

"Amy, what we do is not what most models expect to have to do for $25 an hour. She would have to be prepared to be very intimate with you... with us. Does she model for other artists?"

"Not as far as I know. She's in my dance and drama class, so I think she would be good."

"What makes you think she would cope with the sort of things we would want her to do?"

"Sam, Tracey's a lesbian. She's let me know a few times she would like to get into my pants, and I admit I've been tempted to let her. Here's her opportunity. I think she would jump at the chance, even with you in the room at the same time."

"I didn't know you were bisexual."

"I'm not. At least, I haven't been up till now. But I might be. Would it bother you?"

"Only if you started to prefer women."

"Mmmm... soft breasts and warm wet pussies. Sounds attractive. But no more men? No more stiff cock, ever? I don't think that's likely."

When Amy has been fucking, or even when she masturbates to an orgasm, the lips of her pussy swell, and flush bright red. Twenty minutes later, when we finally got around to drawing again, we finished our morning session with a close up drawing of her swollen and fiery and now dribbling pussy. It was a ferocious drawing in swirling black charcoal and red ink and it had all of the original intensity of the ones in the first exhibition, and I was pleased that I hadn't lost the ability to be inspired by the moment. On the other hand, it highlighted how stale some of my work had become, and Amy's suggestion of getting another model in was as good a way as any of adding some more excitement. How long we could keep raising the level, I didn't know, but it was going to be fun finding out. Amy was right, it was time to get out of the rut.