Painting in Color

"Part of the real beauty in that is he doesn't know it either. Jake would never just go up and ask some girl to fuck, he's not that kind of a man. He just doesn't know that he could, and most women would. He's not being modest, he just doesn't know anything about that part of himself."

"He's like that really beautiful woman who never believes she is, and when anyone tells her she is. She thinks that they're making fun of her. Even if she won the Miss America Pageant, she'd think that the judges all marked the wrong ballot, or the computers all counted votes for a different girl as votes for her."

As she's saying this, Cat comes back to our table.

"So now that Cat's back I owe you my 'in love' with an older man story. But mine is not as pretty and clean as Cat's. I guess because maybe I'm not as smart as Cat. Or I'm more aggressive or blunt. Like Cat's was, mine was a neighborhood married man."

"I think that there's a lot to be said about young girls and that scenario. The easy availability of being already in the neighborhood. The perceived safety of being an older married man. Makes it seem easier for us to be 'in love' from afar. But not seeing the farts and beer breath, early morning stagger in white briefs. Of being able to see them frequently from a safe distance. Out in the bright sunlight, so to speak."

"Like I said, mine wasn't as pretty. Because I went up to him and professed my undying teenage love. He went from a nice married man to a predator almost before the end of my first sentence. He'd just gotten the green light to get some 18 year old teenage pussy, and he was going to get it right then and there. With all the tact and romance of a bulldozer with a hard on."

"The only good thing in my story is that I got away, and I ran. I ran far away and fast, and I got called prick tease and cunt all the way. Remember that easy neighborhood availability, I got called that until I left for college."

"Our stories of being young and in love with older men don't have very good endings. So in all fairness I have to tell you of my friend Elizabeth's story. Beth did the same thing, fell 'in love' with an older man from the neighborhood. The only difference was that he wasn't married."

"She did like I did and told him of her love. He didn't believe her and discounted it, there was just short of twenty years difference in their ages. He felt that was too extreme a difference and all she had was a school girl crush. She didn't and she pursued him, and pursued him, and told everyone how she felt about him. She finally caught him, and now they have three children. She's still 'in love' with him, and when he dies it will be holding the hand of a wife whose still 'in love' with him."

"So how does all this fit in what we're talking to you about. Both the being 'in love' and belonging to the 'in love with Jake club'."

That drew a sharp bark of a laugh from Cat, then her hand flew to cover the giggle.

"Oh...Julie, can I belong to that club?" still giggling, "I didn't know that there was a club for that."

"You already do Cat, there's only three charter members. That's the point I'm trying to make to Dani. Those three charter members need to meet a special requirement."

"You Cat are the President, the CEO, the Prime Minister, and the Grand Pooba. Most of all your wife. You Dani are the Vice President, Second in Command. Most of all, beloved daughter. His Mother is Grand Dame, and Queen Mother. Most of all Mom."

"The special requirement for charter membership is Jake's love."

"Not you loving Jake, but his loving you. All the rest of us club members are out in the cold peeking in through the windows. Wishing we were inside too."

"You see Dani, part of being 'in love' is getting 'in love' in return. Either Cat or I did from Robert Shelton or my asshole, and we fell out of 'in love' fairly quickly. Plus we both realized very quickly that we weren't really 'in love'. Beth had love returned and never fell out of 'in love'."

"It's almost impossible to remain 'in love' without getting love in return. Unrequited love is fine for love sonnets and fairy tales, but it carries little meat in real life."

"Plus the love returned to someone 'in love' needs to be the same kind of love. We all know that there's several kinds of love. The platonic love one might feel for a special friend. The parental love one feels toward a parent or a child. Or the sexual love one feels toward a lover or a mate, a wife."

"If your Aunt Julie's two cents of advice is worth that to you. What you need to do is understand what type Jake's love toward you is. Then knowing that, what do you really love him like, which type of love. When you understand that, what are you going to do with that knowledge?"

"You fooled us, we thought you were immune to Jake's charisma, because you were so young and basically have grown up around him. I think it's been more like the slow growth of sapling to tree, then immunity. Where you've grown up watching that sapling grow each and every day. Then suddenly it's a tree full grown."

"You've just been real good at hiding it. Cat and I've both seen you've been unhappy lately. Now I can see that maybe some of that might be guilt, and that's needless. You feel how you feel, and love where you will, and you're the only one who knows which it is."

"Cat may have an idea what things are, I know that I do too. But our votes are irrelevant, yours is the only one that counts. Cat, I think that she needs to see the painting that Jake's been hiding."

Then they just sat and looked that each other. For maybe 10-15 seconds.

"OK...Julie. You might be right, that's what we'll do. Are you going to come with us?"

"No, I've got to get back to work. But you were right, this was important. I'll call you later."

The ride in the car back was quiet, I think that we both had too much to think about. I know that I did, my nightmare had come true. Just not in a way that I'd ever imagined. She hugged me, she loves me. She found out my secret, and she still loves me, and she's not going to throw me out of their lives. I'm off balance, amazed and so confused...

Right inside the door she's already yelling for Jake.

"JAKE...Jake where are you at...JAKE."

"You don't have to yell, I'm here in the studio."

He's lowering the lift to the floor when we get there.

"Jake...Julie and I think that Dani needs to see the painting that you've been hiding. Is it done?"

Then they do that thing that Julie and Cat did. Just look at each other, for maybe 30 seconds.

"OK Cat, if you really think so, I was kind of waiting for sometime special. But it's done and I guess now is as good a time as any. But I'll have to set it up and that might take a little while. You'll have to promise no peeking, either of you. Promise neither one of you will peek until I call for you. I forgot to eat, so go into the kitchen and make something for me. Stay there until I call you, promise?"

"Yeah we promise...OK." Jake makes shooing motions. "OK, OK, OK, we're going."

I'm making Jake a sandwich and Cat was heating up some soup. Rattling around in the freezer:

"Dani, what should I take out for dinner?"

"Weren't we going to use that leftover lasagna up, before it has a chance to go bad?"

"Oh yeah, that's right. Now I remember, so I won't take anything out right now."

"Jake's been hiding a painting?"

"Yeah, sometimes he can't stay sleeping all night long, well actually most nights he can't. So he gets up and paints. One night I woke up very early in the morning and caught him painting on this one. I'd never seen it before either, it was suppose to be a surprise. But I caught him."

"What kind of a surprise?"

"You'll see in just a little bit. You'll love it too. It's a very special painting, I think it could be one of his best works yet. It's very special to Jake personally too, he's worked a long time on it. Almost a whole year of middle of the night and early mornings, then he hides it."

"Wow, that's a lot of time and work invested into one painting."

But Jake fooled us again, because after his call of 'ladies come and get it', it's not one painting it's three. He's pushed the commissioned one he was working on to the back of the studio. Brought out three presentation easels and stood them in a shallow arc. With three covered canvas' on them.

The center one's square about five foot a side. The right is tall and narrow like Dennis was, about two and a half feet by six feet. The left is a rectangle, about four feet wide by five feet tall. Seeing three of them there Cat bursts out into laughter.

"Jakie, Jakie, Jakie you've been a very bad boy. You've been hiding things on me, haven't you?"

Of course he just grins.

"OK ladies, get ready the show's about to start. Here at center stage is..."

As he pulls the cover off the canvas in the middle. Cat and I both gasp, because it's us. The two of us cuddled together on the couch in our front room. Black and blue, that's the colors dominant in most of it. At first blush that's what strikes your eyes, black and blue. The entire outer perimeter is all black, jet night black. That fades into the center of Cat and I.

Technique wise it's a very hard painting to do. Yet it's very beautifully done. Because the blue is the glow of a television . You can see that in half an instant, the blue and black. But you can't see the TV. But you can also see the fire of Cat's hair and the gold of mine, also the green of our eyes. Just everything shaded in that black and blue.

Then it starts creeping up on you, and you see all the other colors too. Just where they're suppose to be. Red of Cat's hair the green of our eyes the blue, white and green of the tattered old plaid blanket that's on our laps. The satin cream of the chemise that I was wearing. The dove gray tank that Cat sometimes wore. You can see that clear skin tone of Cat's and that slightly more tan of mine.

Your eyes blink and it's back to black and blue. Then all the rest of the colors of the rainbow come crawling gradually out to greet you. Blink, black and blue then floating out into colors. You don't even have to blink, as I look from my face, in the painting, to Cat's everything flashed black and blue. Then all the colors of Cat's face flowed back into life and brilliance as my eye watches. Blink, black and blue then the slide into color. Blink, black and blue.

He's playing hide and seek with color. In solid paint and canvas. And I don't know how he's doing it. But it's just fuckin amazing. I agree with the awe in Cat's voice.

"I know that if I stared at this painting for a long time my eyes would start to hurt. Because it's impossible, but the colors just seem to flicker back and forth. If my eyes just moves the colors change and then come back...but that's impossible."

But the color is not the only beauty of this painting. Like Dennis the rest is here too. I can understand how those Amazonian Indians felt about their souls. Because it's kind of spooky looking at a little bit of mine right in front of me. You can feel the love and comfort that's right there too.

My Mother, sister, friend has wrapped me up in her love and safety. I'm cuddled into that comfort and warmth, returning that parental love. As I say, at first blush the image says...home.

The image is about quartered away to the right. As if you're standing alongside the TV, looking at us. Large enough that you can't see from about Cat's knees down. I'm tucked under Cat's arm, with my face resting on the front of her shoulder. Her face is tipped so that it's laying on top of my head.

My one arm is around her waist and the other must be behind her. Her one arm is over my shoulders with its hand playing in my hair, and the other is laying on top of the one arm of mine that's wrapped around her waist. That hand is holding my bicep.

Cat's mostly sitting upright, just slid down and slouched back into the couch. I'm half laying on my side, half sitting up, half laying onto Cat.

The painting peacefully whispers; companionship, love, safety, ease, warmth and the peace of...

Home.

Jake is the soul painter, and that's there. Just like it was in Dennis...but there's something more in this one. It's emotive and subtle and I can't quite put my finger on it...

"OK ladies, ready for the next reveal. Boy is it a big reveal too!"

With that warning he jerks the covering off the canvas at the right of center, the tall narrow one, and laughs and laughs.

"JAKE!"

Cat follows her panicked exclamation, with her fingers to her mouth and a wide eyed stare. I just HAVE to join Jake in laughing, it's just too funny.

Cat is standing in front of a full size, full frontal nude figure of...herself.

As I can't stop laughing, then I spot it. The pose, the setting, the hands and arms, the half shell. It's a classic, and a classical painting.

"Oh Jake, that's just too funny. Cat as the birth of Venus, rising on the half shell from the sea. Cat the goddess of love at her mythical birth."

It is too, it's Sandro Botticelli's birth of Venus painted in about 1482-1485. It's partly famous as the first large scale painting on canvas. It hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Jake's painting is highly recognizable as an imitation of Botticelli's famous pose.

He's just sectioned out the central figure and shell, and just done it in Jake's own way and style, with Cat as the goddess. Botticelli's painting is somewhat stylized in its execution and rendering. The figure and scene are just three steps back from realistic. In Jake's painting they're realistic, almost photo-realistic.

Oh god are they realistic. That's what is making Cat stare and blush. In Jake's painting the sea is rougher than in Botticelli's. You can see the swells and whitecaps in the steel gray and the aqua green slate of the water. The clouds and sky are realistic and show a cloudy gray, white, and blue sky of a stormy day. The shell is also smaller to fit it on the narrow canvas.

The figure and it's pose in both Jake's and Botticelli's works are virtually identical. The head and face with the same right facing, downward tilt. The right shoulder high, figure curved in an arc toward the left. Weight all balanced on the left foot, with the right knee slightly bent, toe of that foot just resting on the half shell she's standing in.

The hand and arm placement is virtually identical too. Right forearm bent up and covering the middle of the right breast in Botticelli's painting. The left breast in Botticelli's painting is completely bare. In Jake's painting the right hand extends a little farther to where the fingers lay over the nipple of her left breast. It's just that the fingers are lightly spread and showing a small hint of nipple that's got Cat blushing.

Jake's painted Cat's hair as longer in his painting than it is in real life. Because he's followed Botticelli's pose exactly. In that in both paintings, the left hand and a tail of her long hair covers the groin and sex of the figure. That long hair in Botticelli's Venus is an almost washed out, orange ginger color. Cat's of course is that brilliant fire flame. In all told the colors in Jake's painting are brighter and more vivid. Of course it's not 530 years old either.

After that Jake's and Botticelli's painting start to radically differ. Botticelli's Venus has an demure, disinterested blank expression on her face, and her body's stance is a very casual disdain.

Cat is realistic...oh yeah she's realistic. She's naughty mischief, a coy sexy vixen. That in a heartbeat is going to drop those coy bashful hands. Strut up and take a big bite out of her lover. She's hot, horny and aggressive and not waiting for her love. She's in heat, and she's absolutely magnificent.

"OH...Jake, Jake, Jake. You're a naughty, naughty man. Our daughter should NEVER see me looking like that. You're a bad, bad boy. Why I've half a mind to take that painting right over to our bedroom and never let it see the light of day again."

"But it's so beautiful...I don't look like that. Nobody could look like that. Is that how you see me Jake?"

"Yes my love, sometimes I do."

"Oh...God Jake, what have you done? I want to take it and hide it away forever, and in that same breath I want to show it off to the world. What have you done Jake...?"

He has done it, the painting is absolutely totally magnificent. Yeah it's funny, wanton, naughty mischief. It's a joyful joking play off an old masterpiece. Yet at the same time it's intimate, sexy, full of heat and desire.

There's a feel in it like what people have talked about in relation to the centerfolds in some men's magazines. That airbrush quest for perfection. Cat's body in the painting has that too, that polished shiny glow of perfection. Jake's shown just how much he cherishes her beauty.

How much he desires her...his...wife. In that instant, those thoughts lead me to what I couldn't put my finger on in the first painting. Jake...he's in both of these paintings. No, there's not a picture of Jake hidden on the canvas somewhere. But he's emoted HIS feelings about the subjects and the setting of both paintings INTO both paintings.

Portraiture and figure painting and drawing have long had the goal of faithful representation of the subject. Sometime accurate, sometimes stylized, sometimes abstract, but always with the goal of being able to recognize something of the subject. Hey, that's my friend Joe, type of thing.

As you get to the better portrait painters and old master's work they start showing the expressions or the emotions of the subject. When you get to the masters then they show the person with all their character, personality, emotions and sometimes a bit more.

What Jake's done here is more yet. He's passed that; this' my friend Joe phase. He's passed showing that Joe's happy. He's passed showing that Joe's a gentle and caring man. He's passed showing Joe's shining soul.

What he's showing now is he, the artist Jake, knows that Joe's happy because he just bought a new truck. AND Jake likes the new truck too. But neither Jake or the new truck are in the painting. But it's there...in the painting.

How is he doing that? I don't know, but Jake does, because it's in the first painting too. Jake's love for his family; for his home, for the peace and comfort in his home. But most of all for Cat and I and the love and life we bring into his home...his home.

In the painting of Cat it's his absolute love for her, his wife. It's his awe of her beauty and his lust for her desire. Each painting's message is wrote in two foot high neon letters, in paint and canvas, for the whole world to see.

Jake not only puts his subjects soul onto canvas, now he's put his own there too!

It's so very quiet, that's what brings me aware, so very quiet. Out of the very corner of my eye I can see Jake watching me. With the barest twitch of eye movement, I can see Cat watching me from the other side. But I turn and look to Jake.

He's at the last covered canvas with his hand on the covering.

"Ready Dani?"

I turn my head to look at Cat, but she's just standing, watching...me. They're both just watching...waiting. My heart jumps and starts a heavy beat, thump, thump, thump, that I can hear in my ears. I force myself to turn and look at Jake, and chin high give a nod. He gives a tug...

Standing still I stagger, my hand reaches out to touch something to steady my balance. My feet feel the need to spread, to take a wider stance, for balance. Because part of my perception has dropped INTO the painting.

Because in my mind I KNOW which way that swing will move next!

I know it so vividly that my body's instincts want to adjust to that next movement. But I can't, my feet want to move but they're rooted into place. My hand reached out, but I can't move it now. My fingers won't wiggle. But they're touching nothing. They want a touch point, something on which to steady myself. But all I feel is air.