A Spot of Music

Author's note: The following incidents are probably mostly fictional. All sexual participants are living humans aged 18+. Ideas espressed are not necessarily the author's. Your constructive comments are always welcome.

*** A Spot of Music ***

a Rhapsody with my brother

(or at least a Mazurka)

The day sped by. My mind slogged, and spun in slow circles. What to do, what to do? My imagination was flat-lined. Not like my curvy body.

"Come on Bonnie, think of something!" Yelling at myself just didn't work.

I followed my old habits and dug through a pile of neglected books.

I pulled out a copy of MUSICDOTES by opera singer, actor, DJ, and Imperial Stormtrooper voice Scott Beach. This slim book with elegant cartoons is a collection of classical music anecdotes, mostly humorous. (Musicdotes. Musical anecdotes. Get it? Good on you!) It begins with this passage:

"Next time you hear Chopin's 'Mazurka in G-Major (Op.67, #1), listen carefully to the main theme. It's a bunch of freckles. Chopin had a long and torrid love affair with George Sand (pseudonym of Baronne Dudevant). She had freckles. All over. During an afternoon of dalliance, Chopin became fascinated with all those dots, blots, and splotches. He drew a five-line staff and a treble clef on one of Sand's dunes. (I'll bet it tickled.) Letting the freckles fall where they may, he copied the resulting notes and used them for the main theme of his mazurka. George Sand's freckles are thus forever enshrined in Chopin's Opus 67, #1."

I thought to myself, "Hey self, that sounds like a good idea for composition!"

I was up against writer's block, or composer's block, or dead ear, or whatever. Sure, I could reprogram my classic MiniMoog synth to make all sorts of sounds. But I was running on empty as far as fresh ideas for musical themes. I would never win a MacArthur genius grant unless I came up with something novel.

I tried many tricks. I played old arias reversed and inverted, like fugue themes. I tried randomization and threw

I Ching

yarrow stalks as John Cage suggested. (Wait, have you ever heard Cage's music? It is much more interesting ro read about than to listen to.) I toyed with Harry Partch's fortythree-microtone scale. (Almost as fried as Cage.) I studied birdsong. I plagiarized, like all creators.

Nothing worked. I was doomed.

But Chopin's trick -- well hell, that just might help. I merely needed to find a warm freckled body to notate. And it need not even be warm, just spotty, and pliable.

I had a perfect candidate at hand. My little brother Jerry was back home this Easter week, taking refuge from his arid zone xerophytic botany studies at UA/Tucson. How he ever managed to stand being out in the Sonoran desert sun, crawling for plants, I did not quite get. I mean, he is just as pale as me. He is another cream-skinned natural redhead with a sharp nose and freckles all the way down. And little tolerance for actinic rays and sunburn.

Well, maybe he

did

have sufficient motivation. Lauren, who ran the Botanical Garden there as assistant to the nominal director, was a stone fox, and bilingual, and bisexual. Jerry said he was was pretty close to her. I really should meet her.

He also loved to study and sample hallucinogenic plants, locally and globally. I asked him about that.

"Wow Bonnie, there's, like, peyote cacti and jimson weed and mescal beans, not to mention wild cannabis and sacred Indian tobacco and ephedra, all this hot stuff. And those are just the local psychotropics. Good shit's all over Central America, and even more in the Andes and the Amazon basin. Dick Schultes said that the Old World had, like, six stoner plant species, total, that people used, and the New World has maybe 600. We got more mushrooms here, too. Fucking corn-u-copia, babe!"

Jerry's major should have been called High Times Botany.

I found Jerry stretched in his wide hand-knotted Campeche hammock on the screened-in back porch. It was a soft day here in Portland, with Pacific rains drizzling down and the sun a dim intruder -- cool enough that he had switched on the infrared heater.

Jerry lay on his back wearing Speedos and nothing else. He absorbed Oregon's life-giving moisture into his pallid skin, like reconstituting a dried

fly agaric

mushroom. He may have been dozing.

I stopped in the doorway to quietly consider and admire his lean, muscular body.

Was I sensually aroused? Well, maybe a little, sure. But I tried to look at him from a musical viewpoint, as if his skin was a score without staffs. I mentally applied staff lines at various angles. Hmmm...

I tried to ignore his bulging Speedos. Sure, when we were little rug-rats skinny-dipping in the wading pool out back, I yanked his wank a little, because it was there, you know? But we are adults now, and I am a serious musician, and I need to concentrate, really.

So I took a professional look. Dots. Splotches. Notes. Ties. Cadenzas. Phrases. Counterpoint. I tried visualizing scores.

But I was back where I started, almost. My mind still slogged, still spun in slow circles, still could not put it all together. I needed more. I needed help.

I had an idea. I searched my gear shelves and found my Pentax digital SLR and its lenses. Let's see, maybe the 16-50mm f/2.8 zoom -- not quite as superb as one of the Limited series, but I did not need obsessive image quality, just good clear shots.

I returned to the back porch doorway, and inside. I considered the situation. I set ISO to 1200 for the fairly low light (I did not want to disturb him with a flash) and to let me stop-down the aperture a little for better depth-of-field. I dialed-up noise reduction so I'd have clean detail. I started snapping.

The camera is quiet but not silent. That SLR swinging mirror makes a little noise. After a few shots, Jerry dragged his eyelids open.

"Hey babe, whatcha doing? Shooting me for PLAYGIRL or something, heh heh?"

"No, I'm on a music project. I just need pictures of your skin. Go back to sleep."

"Yeah, sure. Quit clicking that damn thing. Can't you use a phone or something?"

"Sorry 'bout that, bro. Don't mind me. I'm gone."

I tiptoed back to my studio and slipped the SDHC memory card into my ThinkPad laptop. I ran the GIMP editor to process my images. Heighten contrast; reduce grain and tonal range; clean up digital artifacts. I sent both color and black-and-white versions to my printer.

Now I had paper to work on. I set up another print job, writing different width score lines onto clear plastic sheets. Scored transparencies! I laid these down over the freckle-print papers and looked for musical themes.

I lost track of time as I pored over the imagery and copied theme fragments onto fresh music paper. Hmmm,

this

pattern makes a nice little riff, and

that

pattern (including a sunburn line) is almost an harmonic sequence, and

those

...

I did not hear Jerry pad up behind me as I worked. His hand on my shoulder startled me. I quivered inside my loose light sweats, my usual working clothes. I looked back and saw he had thrown a thin terry wrap over his torso and Speedos. Nice legs!

"Hey babe, looks technical! Or are you drawing maps of mental illness?"

"No, you shit, it's just an idea I got, a brainstorming tool really. I read about this..." and I handed the Scott Beach book to him with the passage highlighted. He scanned the text and laughed.

"Well hell! You obviously need a living canvas, not dead paper. Got a friend you can use? And abuse?"

I sighed. "Umm, my last relationships didn't go too well. They all wanted more than I had to give them, like my time and energy and money. And they weren't freckled."

I inherited our old family home when our parents died in a tour-bus crash in Peru a few years ago. The refurbished century-old bungalow was in the Sellwood district, just above the Willamette River and west of Reed College. This was a nice quiet neighborhood of trees and food culture and ubiquitous brewpubs. And Portland was a good place for us soft-skinned North Atlantic genepool people to live. Why couldn't I hook up with more freckled Celts around here?

"For a smart girl, sis, you sure are a luzer. You've got yourself all wrapped-up in preconceptions and rules. You oughta expand your mind some. Maybe some peyote or psilocybin, yeah, those would do the trick!"

I was almost tempted. Maybe I

did

need new visions. I muddled indecisively.

"Well, let me know if I can help. Y'know where I'll be." He leaned over to kiss my cheek and then wandered away.

I tried to return to my fitting of freckles onto staffs meaningfully. Alas, my mood was broken, my concentration fluttering like kelp in undertow. My pulse rate was up a bit. Was I reacting to Jerry's pheromones? My little brother?

I needed a break or maybe a cure. I saddled-up Dad's old BikeE semi-recumbent and pedaled my ass to the Oak Bottom brewpub for my favorite medicine, a draft pint of Proletariat Red stout, great stuff. And a two-quart growler to take home.

Hmmm, better make that two take-out growlers. This could be a long night.

I was in no mood to cook. I swung by the Russian deli for some

piroshkis

and a

zakouski

sampler, like a Slavic antipasto. I already had vodka on ice at home. We would do this right.

Jerry was up and dressed and puffing on his hash pipe when I returned home. I dragged him to the breakfast-nook table. We ate and drank and talked and drank and talked and laughed and drank and laughed some more. I might have puffed once or twice. We only finished one of the growlers.

Somehow we ended together in his wide Campeche Yucatan hammock, warmed by the infrared lamp. We both wore light sweats. I snuggled into his armpit and snored.

Somehow, sometime during the night, we both wormed out of our sweats without waking, I think. Jerry wore black briefs and I was in my purple thong, so we were decent, right? Well, close enough.

I woke sometime before first light. Jerry did not wake, even when I crawled over him and fell from the hammock, desperate to dump excess fluids from my body.

Usually, when I get out of bed (or hammock) to pee, I cannot go back to sleep. That happened now. No use trying to doze again. I threw on a loose wrap and staggered to the kitchen. I brewed a pot of

té maté

, strong Argentine tea, the gauchos' drink. I like mine hot and green-black and evil and thick as muddy espresso.

The

maté

punched-up my energy level. I paced around the kitchen, thinking. Maybe Jerry was right that I needed "a living canvas, not dead paper." Well, he was still dead to the world. I could use him, right now!

I decided to start with his upper chest. Lots of freckles there, and not a lot of hair, just some pale strands across those well-exercised deltoids. And little flat nipples. Wait! Do not think about nipples! I felt my own buds stiffening. I told myself to calm down, calm down, he is just my little brother, calm down...

I had thin-tip magic markers and a flexible straightedge in my hands. I looked at Jerry's chest and applied them. Very lightly. Draw a black line along the floppy ruler's edge; reposition; draw the next line; continue till I had a five-line staff. Let's see, bass or treble clef? Treble.

My big 'little' brother twitched. He did not awaken. He was pretty stoned.

I looked closely at the freckles contained within the staff lines, and beyond. I started embellishing them. I fattened-out some with red markers, circled some with blue markers, drew bars and flags and ties and repeats.

This looked promising. I went for my Pentax again and snapped some photos.

Jerry's hash pipe and lighter and iPad were on a raised stand next to the hammock. Why did he have to use that Apple crap? Android is much better. Anyway, I felt a need for more inspiration, so I lit up a couple tokes.

I drew more staves across his flat belly and repeated my notation process. Then, more photos. Then, more tokes.

And then I started feeling silly. I thought, "Why not?" I drew big whole-notes around Jerry's nipples and navel and some little warts just outside his armpits. I doubled the lines around his nipples. Oops, the ink smeared a little. I decided to clean him up.

I took another toke and leaned into my brother's chest. I stuck out my tongue. I licked around his right nipple. Did I remove any ink? I did not know. I moved to the other side and licked there too. He tasted salty, not inky. I liked the flavor.

I licked again. Maybe I got a little too close to his buttons. Maybe I nibbled a niblet. But he moved, and groaned, and moved again. And opened his eyes. And saw me.

"Hey babe, you having fun there? I think

*I*

am."

I blushed a little and giggled. "Oh, don't mind me. I'm just..." I could not think of what to say next.

Jerry raised his head and looked down his body.

"You been doing art on me? Oh, it's that music stuff. Well hey, if you need a live worksheet, I'll be glad to serve. Especiallly if you clean me up good." He grinned.

My head swirled from the hash. I thought, why not? I slurped his nipple thoroughly.

"Oh yeah, that's sweet." His hand brushed my hair.

I switched sides, slurping one nipple while tweaking his other wet bud.

"Mmmm, yeah." He was rubbing my shoulder now.

"Okay, enough of that." I backed off. "I'm trying to work here. I think I've done your front for now. Roll over. I want to notate your back. And put that bulge away, hey?"

Jerry snorted and rolled like a beached seal -- if that seal was Celtic, and buff. He rested his head on his interlaced hands. He pushed his crotch into the hammock. Yeah, like that helped any...

I studied his back. I started high, drew staves and added notation, wet my fingertip to erase some mistakes. Jerry only wriggled a little. I guess he was not too ticklish there. I would try elsewhere later. I took another toke.

Another "why not?" moment came. I drew staves and notes up his left leg, then the right. And it still was not enough. I toked and sighed.

"What, you run out of freckles or something? Y'know I still have a few more." He humped up and down obscenely in the hammock and twitched his muscular buns.

"Yeah, why not? Okay, get'em off," I instructed him woozily.

Off came the briefs. Damn, what an ass! I guess desert-stomping and rock-scrambling kept him tight. I could not resist giving each bun a kiss.

"That's right, show proper appreciation. I worked damn hard to get my butt in shape. Climb every

montaña

, ford every

arroyo

, schlepp every goddam gallon of

agua pura

to camp. The desert ain't for wimps."

I gave each cheek a sharp ringing slap, and laughed.

"Hey, that's not nice! Be better to me or I won't roll over."

"Is that a promise?" I cackled. I gave each glute another good thwack.

"You're a real piece of work, Bonnie. You'll get yours," he threatened.

"Yeah yeah, more promises. Now shut up and let me fucking CREATE, okay?"

Jerry's desert-toned derriere was nicely rounded. The flexible straitedge was not quite flexible enough. I had to draw the staves freehand. That tickled. Jerry twitched. The drawn line wavered. I licked up the ink and started over. Jerry moaned.

"What the fuck, sis..."

"Stop moving."

"Why?"

"So I don't keep drawing the lines wrong, and having to clean up."

"Like I said, why? You can kiss my ass all night. I won't mind."

"Jerk!" I thwacked his buns again. Oh fuck, that smeared more ink. Which required more cleanup. Which necessitated more licking. Which generated more moaning. A goddam vicious cycle.

But it was fun.

"You done there yet? Or are you just gonna keep slurping my butt?"

"Yeah, I'm done. Your arse ain't musical. Percussive, maybe, but that's about it."

Jerry rolled over,

sans

briefs. Did I notice his skin flute? Well, yes. Not quite so long as a soprano recorder but about as thick and bulbous. He had a very inviting mouthpiece there.

I was stoned on hashish. I was wired on

té maté

. I'd had a couple shots of vodka this early morning, too. It had been a few weeks since my last break-up, so I was horny, DAMN was I horny. And my brother was such a hunk! I licked my lips.

Jerry looked at me. "You okay, Bonnie?"

"Yes," I whispered, "I've always loved you -- jerk."

I looked into Jerry's eyes, so much like my own eyes. "You probably won't mind..."

"No, I probably won't," he agreed. "You sure you want to do this?"

I nodded. "Yes," I said. I nodded again, all the way down.

I held his cock, stroked it, looked closely in the dim light of dawn. Looked pretty good! I bent closer, sniffed and licked gently. Tasted pretty damn good too!

I held Jerry's little head in my mouth while I jerked his steely shaft, lubricated by my saliva. I took him in deep. I worked him, inch by inch, and soon pushed my face all the way down to his pelvis. I came back up, gasped, and did it again, and again.

I had not done a lot of deep-throating before, but my brother's penis seemed to call for it. He seemed to like my ministrations. I continued a while, then changed approaches. I kneaded his shaft while strongly licking the underside of his head. Nobody ever complained about this technique. And it worked this time too!

Jerry groaned loudly. His body spasmed. His cock throbbed. Multiple shots of thick hot semen filled my mouth. Mmmm, good tasting stuff! I swallowed it all, of course.

Jerry caught his breath. "That was great, babe! We should have done this long time ago. You want your turn now?"

He did not wait for my reply. He just grabbed my body with his oh-so-strong arms and hands, and flipped me, and flopped me down on top of him. My face was at his cock and his face was between my legs. He reached to my butt and shoved me down. His tongue impaled my pussy. I gasped and writhed.

I normally do not proceed this fast. I usually like a lot of sweet foreplay: kissing of my neck and ears and breasts and arms and thighs, as well as using my own mouth in various places. Oooh, I love licking and sucking and being suckled! But I was already aroused. I did not struggle.

He slowed. His tongue circled my labia in a gentle rhythm, then up and down my slit, from taint to clitoris. I felt his tongue slide between the folds of flesh separating my cunt and clit. I could feel him tasting me, savoring me.

Jerry pulled my ass closer again and slid his long tongue inside me. Oh fuck, almost as good as a trained cock! He licked the inside of my cunt, hitting every accessible corner. I moaned as he pulled out, then pushed in again, then finally out.

His tongue laved my labia again. He licked around, then upward, circling my clit, teasing me mercilessly. I knew the old technique of "writing an alphabet around the clitoris" and so did my brother. I think his tongue inscribed an italic script, with boldface and underlines.

Jerry's tongue brushed against my clit, then darted away, and back. He teased my clit evilly before making solid contact once again. I pushed myself into his face. He squeezed my ass HARD as he licked frantically. His nose settled between my labial folds. Could he breathe? He did not seem bothered by inhaling my juices.

I had not ignored my brother's cock in my face. I sucked him enthusiastically while he mouthed me to paradise. His post-climax softening was no more. His hardness recovered. I slurped-down as much as I could.

His lips and tongue concentrated on my engorged clit. I felt my orgasm approach. I could not hold his cock in my mouth any longer. I opened wide, and screamed.

"Oh fuck Jerry, oh yes. Yes. Yes. Ah... ahh... AHHHHHHH!!!"

I lost track of time. I just knew that I climaxed forever. With stars and bars and flashes, and hot-and-cold surges. Oh fuck oh fuck...