Chapter 41: Beatitude

Ariel went home with Rania ‘to help clean her up and get the paint off.’ We didn’t see her for two days.

“Aagh! You’re hopeless!” Blankenship screamed when he saw my thirty-inch rendering of The Garden of Earthly Delights. “How can you create something with such detail that is so flat? Don’t you listen in class? The whole point of perspective is to create depth and direction. Stop thinking of the horizon as a point out in the distance. The eye creates the horizon. If the world was truly flat, it would still fade in the distance and cut off at the point where your eye focused. Just because you have chosen to look down at your subject doesn’t mean there is no horizon or vanishing point.”

He scratched out a drawing of Ariel on the whiteboard so quickly I was amazed at how much it looked like her. Then he drew a line in red across the drawing and right between her eyes. He drew a second that cut between her breasts, and a third right through her pussy.

“Decide. Which is the focus? Where do you want the viewer’s eye to begin? This drawing looks like a wallpaper print. There is no depth. No illusion of space. One, perspective. Two, overlap. The shapes you’ve created are all complete, interlinked like the pieces of a picture puzzle. Nothing is behind anything else. Three, size. You have objects of different sizes, but none of the sizes seem related to how far away they are. They are merely different sizes, not different distances. Four, placement. The eye works from a foreground at the bottom to background at the top. It is simply the way humans see. There is no differentiation of closeness or farness as you move from bottom to top or top to bottom. Five, value. You are back to drawing precise even objects without shading or color differentiation. Six, detail. Everything in the drawing is done with the same level of detail. Objects that are farther away are seen with less detail than those that are close. Everything in this drawing is just as precisely drawn and detailed. Flat. Flat. Flat!”

Fuck!

“Two weeks. Same size. Bring it back showing illusional space.”

I picked up my drawing and shoved it in the portfolio. We scowled at each other a couple of seconds before I turned on my heel to leave. I didn’t say anything. Sessions with Blankety, like his class, weren’t discussions.

The Literature and the Arts discussion group, however, comprised small groups of a dozen out of the class of nearly a hundred that met together to talk about the topic being covered in class and respond to each other’s representative projects. Wednesday was beat on Jett day. Fuck! My project is over already.

“You liberals are all alike. Everything is about gun control. Well, the second amendment guarantees us the right to bear arms. It’s not about murdering. It’s about protecting ourselves from a government that becomes a tyranny. If you take the guns away from Lady Liberty, only the tyrants and criminals will have guns!” declared one of the guys in the group.

I hadn’t realized there was anything about gun control in my painting. I owned a rifle. Granddad made sure I knew how to use it out on the farm. It was a moderately low-power .22 caliber lever action rifle, but it was still a rifle I used to shoot at squirrels and gophers out in the fields. I painted the picture with the most popular mass-shooting weapon in the country because that’s the most popular mass-shooting weapon in the country. Even if I thought there should be a ban on their manufacture and sale, it didn’t mean I was unarmed.

I didn’t get a chance to say anything.

“You and your rights,” a heavyset girl next to me spat at him. “All you have is rights and no reasons. This discussion was supposed to be about the Age of Reason and instead we’re talking about a pornographic portrayal of one of the most sacred symbols of American freedom, desecrating the most precious document of the Revolutionary War. Was it really necessary to have her breasts bared? To show a view up her crotch as she fell back when shot? This stuff is indecent and your model should probably file charges against you for molesting her. She’s one more #MeToo exploited by a man in the name of his creativity.”

Molesting Rania? You’ve got to be kidding. The closest contact I had with her was one hug. The rest was all at the end of a brush or a spray of paint. She’d been a collaborator on the piece. That expression of death on her face was her orgasm instituted at her suggestion without my help. Still no chance to answer.

“I’d trade freedom for security,” a quiet girl with a bandana on her head said. “As a woman, I’m constantly afraid. I looked at the painting and felt that was my life. I expect the bullet, figurative or literal, at any time. It could be a rape, a closed door, a fanatic preacher, an offended brother, or a US Congressman. In the name of freedom, we’ve lost all form of being secure in our lives.”

“You’re an immigrant,” another said. “You came here for freedom. But that isn’t what you really want. You just want someone else to take care of you. The painting is a clear message that the Statue of Liberty is no longer an unguarded invitation to plunder our country in the name of Freedom. We’ve closed the gates.”

What the fuck? I didn’t say anything for the whole class time. It was just too much. Did I mean anything they were saying? I had only one message that I thought I was giving. Liberty equals death; death equals liberty. It’s personal. I never thought it would affect so many others in different ways.

Left, Right. Conservative, Liberal. What’s the difference? We have the vicious on one side and the humorless on the other. They both want to control our lives. Fuck ‘em.

“What are you making, Jett?”

“Stuffed chicken breasts for dinner. Friday’s my night now. Um ... you kind of missed yours Tuesday.”

“Oh, shit. I forgot,” Ariel mourned. There was something of her old emo self in that expression. I set my knives aside and washed my hands.

“This will wait a few minutes. Tell me about it,” I said as I led her to the living room. It was only noon and I was getting a head start on things for the evening meal using one of the prep techniques I’d learned in my Proteins class.

Ariel hesitated a moment when I sat on the couch and then cuddled up on my lap. She pressed her face against my chest and I had to struggle to hear her whisper, “I’m in love.”

I somehow had a feeling she didn’t mean with me. Or with any of the girls in our family.

“You and Rania really hit it off, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Oh, Jett, she’s wonderful! So gentle and loving and dominant. I want to be with her and obey her and be anything she wants,” Ariel said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I never imagined Rania was bi,” I mused. “Well I should have realized that when she brought you into the studio to lick her out.”

“She’s not bi. She’s a lesbian. Pure, gold star, lesbian. She has no interest in men at all.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed. She doesn’t seem ... well, when we worked together we really got along well. She didn’t seem to have anything against men.”

“Why would she? Being homosexual isn’t equivalent of being either misogynist or misandrist. Far more straight people fit in those categories than gay people. You automatically jump to the conclusion that if she isn’t interested in you then she must hate men.” Ariel scowled at me and started to pull away. I held on.

“Please don’t think that of me, Ariel. I’m sorry about my reaction. You’re springing a lot on me at once and I don’t know how to respond. We all love you, too. Telling us you’ve fallen in love with someone else hurts and I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”

“And I love you! That’s why I don’t know what to do. Rania is not only lesbian, she’s very monogamous. She’d never fit in among our family like Mary does. She couldn’t even be tolerant of multiple relationships like Eva is. What am I going to do?” Ariel started crying in earnest and I rocked her back and forth on my lap.

“It sounds like you are leaving us,” I whispered. “I’m sad, Ariel, but I only want what makes you happy.”

“But I’m happy with you, too. I don’t want to give up seven sex partners for one, even if she knows, like, ten times the number of ways to satisfy a woman.”

“Really?”

“You would not believe how she can make me feel!”

“I guess you need to choose.”

“Why? Why can’t I have both? We’ve never objected to you bringing home a potential or actual new lover. The girls all assumed at first that Rania was just interested in you and we’d never get a lick at her. The reality was she was interested in just one of us ... but it wasn’t you. But if you can have an outside lover and it’s okay with us, why can’t I have an outside lover?”

“Will Rania be satisfied with that?”

“I don’t know! But I haven’t made any commitments to her. I still love you, Jett. I still love Sarah Lynn, Jasmine, Char, Kelly, Mary, and Eva. Do you still love me? Am I still your little sex doll?”

“I love you, Ariel.”

“Then let’s put your hens away and let your cock out to play.”

I barely made it back to the kitchen in time to get dinner ready. Ariel was voracious. Rania might have been loving on her and had techniques that were far superior, but apparently, she didn’t have a cock. And Ariel produced enough juice from her pussy that I was nearly drowned by the second time she came and my cock slid effortlessly into her tight little pussy when she mounted me. I just love to watch her bounce!

“Jett, you’ve come in my mouth and in my pussy. Why haven’t you ever taken my ass?”

“What? I would never hurt you like that!”

“But I want it. I’ve wanted it since the first time you pushed your thumb into my little hole.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that unless you were prepared,” I said. “Char is the only one I’ve done that with and she always prepares first.”

“Char is always prepared. She told me that if I wanted that, I needed to always be prepared. I push my butt plug in every day before I leave for school and wear it inside me, stretching me to receive your cock, all day long. I always keep myself clean and cleaned out before we go to bed. Even this afternoon. I wasn’t just peeing when I went to the bathroom. I’m always ready and you never take me. I’m your sex doll, Jett. I have three holes.”

“I ... You ... Really? Now?” I wasn’t making much sense to myself, but my cock had hardened in Ariel’s hand as she talked to me and I was definitely ready. She nodded and started to turn over. I held her on her back as I crawled between her legs and shoved my cock in her pussy.