Chapter 40: Liberty and Death

It looked like spring break was going to kill us all. I worked every day, but only a five-hour shift. Grandpa had me putting what I was learning in my Proteins class to work by preparing ‘ready to cook’ meats for the butcher case. I did kebobs, seasoned roasts, stuffed chicken breasts and pork chops. You name it. I even got a couple special orders. Easter was very late this year—only two weeks before the end of school—but people were already planning their meals. Two customers who tried my stuffed porkchops asked if I could prepare a larger stuffed piece, like a leg of pork or lamb, to cook for their Easter dinners. We took the order and Grandpa said he was proud of my progress.

Then I had Dostoevsky to read. Fortunately, The Idiot is one of his ‘shorter’ works at only 650 pages. I was a month away from the project for that in Merck’s class, but I knew I’d never finish the book if I waited to start it. Mary really surprised me, though, when she suggested a final project for that unit.

“Would you, really?” I asked. Wow! We’d talked about it once months ago, much to my embarrassment.

“Yeah. Either you’d need to use your imagination a little or maybe I could borrow Kelly’s double-dildo. But, you did those sketches last fall. I think you could develop it nicely in relation to the book.”

“You know it still goes,” I said. She looked at me curiously. “If you were trans, I’d still be just as much in love with you.”

“I have my own little issues you need to cope with. We’ll just imagine that one.”

And then there was the airport. I spent about three hours a day prepping the wall where I’d paint Eva in May. The painting would be fifteen feet wide and ten feet high. I needed to get all the background in before we could ever do the live performance of the painting.

I wished I could say ‘finally’ when it came to drawing the larger version of The Garden of Earthly Delights, but I still needed to work on my next project for Merck. I’d planned to use Mary’s and my drawing classmate, Andi, as the model for that painting, but she took off for spring break in Florida. I discovered Rania was local, though, having gone to a different high school than we did. She agreed to do the Age of Reason portrait of the Statue of Liberty after I explained what I wanted.

In order to get the full portrait of my nude Statue of Liberty, I needed a canvas eight feet tall and three feet wide. I’d never transport that to school, so I used the time-honored method of doing two canvases four feet tall and three feet wide. I would have to cheat the background image a little and her torch would probably stick up above the canvas, but I wasn’t going to go any bigger than that. This was an instance in which I had to do a background painting of Rania in one pose and then hide it with her body paint portrait in front. It was kind of a shame that I’d be hiding her beautiful skin tone in gray paint. It was going to take all week.

We started Saturday right after classes were out for the week. Everyone liked Eva’s Earthbound drawing earlier in the week and I was relieved that I hadn’t really been slinging paint that week. Sometimes you just need a break. But Saturday afternoon, I was going to work with Rania for the first time.

“I’m a little nervous,” she said as soon as she was inside the front door.

“Oh, Rania! You are so beautiful,” Sarah Lynn jumped right in. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Sarah Lynn. Come in and relax for a bit. There’s no need to be nervous. We won’t bite.”

“I’m a little relieved already. I mean, I’ve walked across campus with Jett a few times and he’s told me about ... um ... your family here. I was afraid I might be ... I don’t know. That people might not like me coming here to pose.”

“Hi, Rania. I’m Char. We’re used to Jett needing models. We’ve all done it, so we know how much hard work you have to put in and how embarrassing it can be. Would you like tea? I have my own Chai recipe that is sure to relax you.”

“Thank you, Char. You’re so sweet. You were the Medea monster, weren’t you?”

“That’s me. Dear Jett let the monster out and I’m almost a normal girl now.” Char left to get tea and Ariel came bouncing into the room. She isn’t real big up top, but she sure knows how to bounce. And, of course, she was stark naked as usual.

“Hi, Rania! I’m Ariel. I get to show you that you aren’t the only one likely to be nude today. Any of us might forget our clothes at any time. We’re pretty relaxed around here. Jett won’t get naked unless you encourage him to. He works in white briefs that Kelly collects.”

“You! You were The Garden of Earthly Delights! And the Sex Dreams Book! You are the inspiration that got me to volunteer for this. I absolutely adored your pieces.” Rania hugged Ariel in her enthusiasm.

“You probably remember Mary, too,” Ariel said as Mary walked into the room bringing some cookies as Char brought the tea. So far, I hadn’t said a word to my model. The girls had taken charge of getting her comfortable.

“Oh! Hi, Mary. I’m Rania. You were the girl exploding into the universe, weren’t you? I feel like I’m walking among legends.”

“I prefer to think of it as coalescing from the universe into the person I am,” Mary laughed. “These little butter cookies are my favorites. Help yourself.”

“Are there others of you?”

“Kelly and Eva are upstairs finishing up a project. They’ll be down soon,” Sarah Lynn said. “Eva was Athena and Earthbound. You probably won’t recognize Kelly because her project was for a different class. Jett painted her underwear while she was wearing it.”

“Oooh. That sounds as interesting as the body paint. Um ... What about the wild ones who were in Bacchanal? There were guys in that, too.”

“Yes, but they aren’t part of our family group. Like you, they just came in to work on a single project,” Sarah Lynn explained.

“They looked like ... Well, like maybe we only saw part of the video. They were so ready to have sex it was a little scary.”

“That’s not really our normal mode,” Sarah Lynn continued. “It was a special project that they wanted to do that went a lot further than Jett’s classroom rendition. Maybe someday you’ll want to see it, but it’s not the kind of thing that will get you comfortable for posing. Just be assured that the girls were all with guys they knew and trusted and none of us were involved except in painting them and videoing. We can get wild but it’s for our own consumption, not the public.”

“So, what do we do today?” Rania asked turning to me.

“Oh, hi, Rania. I didn’t realize you were here,” I laughed. “Welcome to our home.”

“Have we been ignoring you, love?” Ariel asked as she planted a kiss on my cheek. I patted her butt and she wiggled it in my hand.

“No. It’s been just right. I wanted to make sure you were comfortable with the environment and the family before I started in on you, Rania. I hope you aren’t too overwhelmed.”

“Not at all. This is exciting. What’s first?”

“Well, there are two parts to the project as I explained. You’ll just pose for the first part and I’ll sketch and then paint. But before I can do that, I need to have your outline in the second pose on the canvas. So, I’ll get you right up against the canvas in the pose that we’ll do when I body paint you and I’ll spray your outline. I’m going to give you safety goggles to make sure the paint doesn’t get in your eyes. When I do the body paint, I’ll be doing your face with a brush and makeup instead of spray. I think that is all we’ll be able to do today other than a few poses and reference shots to make sure we know what we’re doing for the rest of the week. As soon as we’re done, of course, you can shower and get freshened up. We have all the right shampoos and things that will take the paint right out of your hair and off your body.”

“Whoo. I ... guess ... It sounds like a lot of work. I think ... I’m ready to get started,” she said. “I assume this is um ... when I undress?”

“Why don’t you go into the studio to get started? Any of us ... I mean the girls ... will help you if you want or we’ll leave you alone. I’m not going to watch you undress, Rania. I’ll come in when you are ready to pose.”

“Yeah. Um ... Ariel? You were such an inspiration. Would you come in with me?”

It took about two and a half hours to get the poses set and recorded and to do the spray work on the canvas that would show me exactly where to paint the background image. When we did the final, of course, the spray would be repeated since I’d be painting all the background over it. It took another hour for Rania to emerge from the shower. If she had taken someone in with her, she could have gotten scrubbed faster. Then again, the shower might have taken longer. Rania was truly a lovely woman.

And she had a subtle ethnic quality that made her perfect for a Statue of Liberty. She might be mistaken for any number of different heritages like European, Native American, Latino, Mediterranean, or even Hawaiian. In truth, her mother was Lebanese and her father was of German descent. It had been a good genetic mix to bring about this beauty.

We had dinner and talked about the project and whether Rania needed to shave her pubes. Personally, I liked the fluffy dark bush between her legs. But, as I’d mentioned to Andi when I sketched her, for the painting it is just easier to paint skin than hair.

“Um ... I’ve never done that. I’ve trimmed up for a bikini, but ... Maybe I’ll go to a salon to have it done,” Rania said.

“If it’s just help you want, I’ll help,” Ariel said. I bet she would! “I’ve had mine all waxed at a salon every six weeks for the past nine months. It’s a little raw the first few days after and hurts like hell. I’m thinking I might have my hair lasered this summer. But I help all the girls here who shave,” she said brightly. Now that was something I didn’t know. In fact, most of what happened in the girls’ bath upstairs was a mystery to me. I was only occasionally invited in to share a bath.

“Really? Um ... Let’s talk about it later. That’s really sweet of you, but it seems so intimate.”

“You’d rather have a stranger be intimate with you than one of your new friends?” Ariel responded.