She sat in the first row of tables in the smoky basement room in the Village on both evenings I was reciting my poetry. I was a painter really—a portraitist mostly of real life, its sensuality. It didn’t matter if the subject was male or female, as long as it was alluring to me—and both could be alluring to me.

I was compared—or at least I compared myself when asked—to Whistler or Renoir in my use of rich colors and lush settings to set off the sensuality of the human body. But I wasn’t confined by the Victorian conventions that, I believe, had limited these artists’ works. Often when I looked at a Whistler or Renoir portrait—of perhaps a woman in a brightly painted kimono resting on a daybed—I looked into her face and divined that the artist had painted her right after he’d fucked her, his cum still floating in her eyes and her mouth puckered in the recent memory of the shape and movement of his cock.

I endeavored to capture this mood earlier in multiple art forms—while she—or he, if the mood struck me—was still being fucked. I once had painted a male in the same vein as a Renoir “in a kimono, resting on a daybed” setting. Few “got it,” but it had given me a little thrill in doing it, knowing I had fucked the male model before painting his postcoital pose for posterity. My art thus took on an even greater dimension, and I took it all very seriously indeed. I didn’t paint this way just to have frequent free fucks; I was developing a whole new art form. And that girl in the first row of tables had a face that was perfect for my art.

It was fortunate that she liked my poetry so well—that my poetry recitation in that smoky basement room in the Village aroused her to wanting to fuck me. I knew she wanted it because she put the moves on. I was content to go home to Jules and paint this young woman just from memory. She didn’t move me enough to ache for the full use of my technique. A memory portrait could suffice. But I could go either way with that. I wasn’t a fanatic about my art; it was comfort rather than an obsession for me.

I stood down from the stool in the center of the bare wooden stage to the sound of applause scattered around the room that was all the more satisfying because many present were too stoned to know they even were there, let alone that a poetry reading had ended. And those who were fully conscious were dulled by the clouds of marijuana smoke swirling about them. As I brushed past her table, she tugged on my arm and arrested my movement.

“That was simply marvelous,” she said. “That went straight to the center of me. I feel so open and wet. Wasn’t that simply wonderful and sensuous, Petey?”

Yes, I caught what she was saying about my poetry making her wet. I already made her wet and I hadn’t even fucked her yet.

While still clawing at my sleeve, she had turned to the young man sitting beside her—or, rather, who was slouched in the chair beside her. I could tell from his eyes that he wasn’t fully here. In any event, he didn’t respond. He probably wasn’t tuned in on her frequency anymore. He had likely brought her here because she told him she melted to poetry—which he otherwise wouldn’t be seen dead in association with—and he thought he might get lucky with her afterward on my preparation. I was amused by the thought that I was probably the one who would be reaping what I had sowed for him. Ah, well, his loss; he needed to learn how to use drugs rather than be used by them.

“How open? How wet?” I asked, leaning down toward her, giving her the smile of “you could have this handsome face and the cock as well.”

I saw no reason to be coy under the circumstances. I had already nearly passed by her chair, and the angle at which she had clutched one of my arms permitted my other arm to come around her shoulder. I slipped a hand under her arm pit and palmed a breast. She wasn’t wearing anything under her cotton blouse, and I verified her arousal from the feel of her hardened nipple. I squeezed her breast, and she shuddered appreciatively and pushed into my hand. I leaned farther down, lost in those flashing eyes of hers, already reaching in my mind for my paints, picking out the colors I wanted in the kimono she’d be wearing, flared to show her cunt, and she brought her lips up to mine and opened to my tongue. There was no doubt she was mine to fuck.

Petey didn’t seem to mind or even to notice.

“Do you live nearby?” she asked breathlessly when I released her lips. “My name is Juliet—I assume the program is accurate and your name is Jim. Do you want to make love to me, Jim? I mean for real? You have already made me melt with your poetry. It’s as if I’ve already given myself to you.”

I wanted to fuck her. If she wanted to phrase it as “making love,” I didn’t object. And, yes, of course, I did want to paint her. That obviously meant I wanted to fuck her as well. I wanted to fuck all of those I’d chosen to model for me, women and men alike. To want to paint them was to want to fuck them. To have painted them was to have fucked them. Jules would not be pleased that I was bringing another woman home to paint and fuck. But Jules had not been pleased many times before and yet he was still with me. Jules still posed for me; I still fucked Jules. And there was my art. Fucking went with my art.

“I’ll take you home and fuck you if you let me paint you,” I answered.

“You want to paint me?” Juliet said with a little gasp. I could tell that the idea of this was even more arousing to her than my poetry was.

“Yes, in every way,” I answered.

Juliet was quite surprised when she later learned what “in every way” meant, but she was so aroused and curious that she didn’t hesitate in the least. She merely rose from the table, without another glance at the semicomatose Petey, and preceded me up the stairs to the street. I guided her with a hand on her buttocks that made quite clear that she, at least temporarily, was mine.

She stripped for me in my studio loft apartment, under the skylight with a strong afternoon sunlight streaming onto my daybed. I wrapped her in an orange and purple kimono and arranged her on the daybed, supine, with the kimono open to reveal her ample breasts, nipples erect, and her naked, shaved cunt.

I then did a baseline sketch on the canvas, leaving the face blank, and set up the cameras, both video and still, and set the timer on the three still cameras set on high tripods at various angles around the daybed so that they would snap off photos at fifteen second intervals for an hour. I then brought my paints, pallet, and brushes together near the foot of the daybed and brought over a low easel and rested the canvas, with its basic sketching of the lines, scale, and perspective of Juliet’s partially draped body, on the easel.

I stripped and sat down on the edge of the daybed next to Juliet’s hip. She was still looking at me with curiosity and with a dreamy look that had deepened as she watched me strip and saw that I was more than adequate for the job. I leaned down and took her lips in mine again, while I moved a hand to her mound and ran a finger into her nether lips and found her clitoris. She sighed and reached for my cock and encircled it with a hand and began to stroke me.

“Fuck me,” she uttered in a husky voice.

“Yes, of course,” I answered.

It was at that point that Jules returned home from his practice on the dance line for a soon-to-open play up on Broadway. I could hear his grunt of disapproval and disappointment as he entered the loft and spied me at work. My art had been dormant for a couple of weeks—which made it all the harder for Jules to see that I was working again.

Jules knew of my art technique—what it entailed and what it required—and he didn’t seem to mind when I painted and fucked him. But he just could not help but be jealous and to look on my work with other models with disapproval. I normally went in two-week sprints with my models—and when they were willing, they lived with me during that time and we fucked constantly. It was all part of my inspiration process. Between my “other” model periods Jules was as happy and contented as he could be. At times like this, as I was beginning with Juliet, however, Jules was a real bore to be with. During these periods, he often threatened to leave me—and I told him to go ahead if he must because I had no control over my muse—but I must have fucked him so well in the intermediary periods that he never carried through on this threat.

As I started to prepare Juliet, Jules sat quietly in the shadows and glowered and sighed heavily.