There was a sequel to 'Mergin,' for not many days after the newly un-virginal Jennifer and rejoicing Dulcinda had left, hand in hand, a newcomer came into the gallery and hovered just inside the door.
A woman, holding under her arm a large, newspaper-wrapped rectangular bundle, probably containing pictures to show me. Dressed in a loose black tracksuit, she was about my height but much bulkier, and she seemed nervous, eyes darting round the walls, feet shifting about restlessly, I thought she might even be suffering some emotional crisis.
To try and set her at ease I left my desk and walked over, offering my hand, with 'Can I help you? Perhaps you want to show me some work?'
Avoiding my eyes, she gave my hand a powerful squeeze and asked in a husky voice, 'Are you Norma Jane? OK, well, yes, I'd like to show you some...I think they're the kind of thing...' Was the ' kind of thing' implying disapproval or was the tone from the nerves?
She stripped the paper and dumped a stretchered canvas onto the easel I keep available. Then turned away from it, and from me, as if ashamed to acknowledge the picture. Which I at once admired as much for its treatment as its subject. For the outer areas were deliberately fuzzy, and, as the gaze progressed inwards, the focus became sharper. Round the edges, outlines of bedroom furniture were merely sketched, and hardly coloured-in. The next inward zone showed two women's heads at either side, their features indistinct. And as the scrutiny travelled towards the centre, down their bodies, first their breasts were less impressionistic, and, at the centre, their pudenda were finely detailed.
The women were lying back towards each end of a bed, propped on their elbows. The legs of the smaller were open over the open legs of the larger, so that their genitalia were evidently in contact above bottoms pressed together. Their heads were thrown back, suggesting extreme excitement or satisfaction. The pubic hair was abundant, but did not conceal the clitorises peeping from the upper end of the vulvae.
More elements became visible as one continued to look. For instance, the right-hand woman was pale skinned, light-haired, her fuzz pale brown. Her breasts were little cones with large nipples. The other, swarthy, woman was much larger in every way. Her breasts were huge and rather floppy, her bottom so much bigger that her lover was having to lift her hips to keep the vulval contact.
A suspicion was growing that these two were drawn from life, especially as the artist was a large, very dark woman, with an expansive bosom.
Without waiting for any comment, she banged the next canvass onto the easel and stood aside. Now the scene was a close-up, from a viewpoint above and slightly aside from the pudenda. The detail of these was reminiscent of Courbet's Origin of the World or Clement Freud's nudes. But it was verging on fantasy, for the inner lips were clamped in a passionate kiss. That is the only way to describe it. The labia were glued together, apparently sucking each other's nectar. There was even of liquid along the join, and thin streams of it were running down the outer lips and into the bum-cleavage.
This description cannot convey the overall impression that the couple's whole beings were fused in that vulval osculation. It made me think of the mating of birds, their openings touched together as the sperm transfers. But in this labial copulation the transfer of amatory fluid was mutual. You could sense how each pussy-mouth was imbibing elixir from the other.
The erect clitorises were touching, also kissing in effect, lapped in a glistening glaze, reminding me of another natural mating, two snails exchanging sperm in a froth of slime.
Despite years of viewing erotic art, I was aroused by these works, moved by the obvious passion and by a subtly conveyed sense that the smaller woman was paying tribute to, or obliging, the larger. She, the swarthy woman, appeared tenser, ecstatic but desperate, already anticipating the orgasm's end and inevitable separation.
Now convinced that I was seeing a semi-abstracted reality, I waited for the artist to speak, but she remained silent, while, at last, looking into my face, with such intensity, even misery, that I was hard put not to flinch. My encouraging comment died on my lips, as she said, in her husky voice, but in a challenging tone, 'Well, what d'you think, then?'
I said, 'I think your name is Tracy and you're showing the end of the affair. And what you feel about it.'
Her whole body drooped and she said quietly, 'Yeah. I'm poor old Trace, the disgrace, fallen from grace. The dyke women don't like, every bloke's bike.'
'Your paintings are brilliant,' I said, 'But the mixing of joy and pain is so intense I can hardly bear it.'
'But will you buy them?' she demanded abruptly. 'I really need the money.'
'Yes, I will, and any more you can do, though I suggest you use other subjects.'
'OK. Womansex all right? There's this little one here.' And she drew a last, small, item from the newspaper and passed it to me.
About a foot square, divided diagonally, it showed an enormous, purple-headed clitoris about to enter a tiny, pale pink vulva. In the other half, the clitoris has buried itself in the frilly folds, and a long thin, pale, rigid clitoris is emerging from the crease below them.
'I'm a clitty kitty,' Tracy said, and aggressively, 'But you know that, don't you?'
'I think you blame me for losing Jennifer, Tracy,' I said.
'Well, yeah. After coming here, she didn't want to fuck any more. She was all into that teacher she was shagging.'
'That was always going to happen, you know.'
