Robert Lubrican - A Model Mother

I arrived at the studio the next Friday night. It was in the basement of Ferrel Hall, a big two-story building, and you had to go down a long, empty hallway to get there. It was a little spooky because it was so quiet. And some the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered too. I only saw one other person in the hallway. I would find out that the veterans got there early, because Mrs. Gaskill provided donuts and coffee. She said you should never paint hungry. I found out you should never try to paint with sticky fingers from eating donuts, either, but that’s another story.

If I had any doubts, they disappeared when I got my first look at Maureen Gaskill, who owned the Gaskill gallery in town. I’d seen it before. It had a giant stylized G as a logo. You couldn’t really tell it was an art gallery from the outside, but of course that mysterious, huge "G" made everybody ask what it was.

Mrs. Gaskill was hot as a pistol. She exuded a raw, but controlled sexuality that made me want to be around her, even though I knew she was married and there was no possibility in the universe that I had any chance with her. She was kind of a real, live Playboy bunny sort, who was good for uncounted fantasies, but that was all. She examined me when I came in, but I knew better than to stare at her. My mother had taught me better than that. She was practically obsessed about me being a gentleman and treating women with respect.

The atmosphere was different than the regular classroom. There were maybe fifteen other students there, and easels set up all over the room, arranged in a semi-circle around a raised dais that had a love seat on it, upholstered in what looked like red velvet. The easels all had blank canvases on them. There were some half-finished works propped against the legs of a couple of them, and some more leaning against the wall. Apparently last semester’s project was drawing a machine of some sort. It looked like maybe an espresso machine, tall and shiny, with lots of other stuff around it, like maybe you’d see in a coffee shop. Also, apparently, lots of people hadn’t finished the project before breaking for the holidays.

I was a newbie, but nobody treated me like it. Maybe we were all newbies. I didn’t know. Everybody seemed friendly and relaxed, which puzzled me a little, because I was worried that people would look at my work and laugh, or something like that. Then again, maybe they were all worried I’d laugh at their work. It turns out artists, at least beginning artists, aren’t judgmental at all. Or maybe they’re just polite about it. If they think something’s awful, they just don’t comment on it.

When it was time to start, Mrs. Gaskill called for silence. She folded her arms under her breasts. I knew better than to stare at them, too. That didn’t mean however, that I wasn’t interested.

"We’re doing a figure study this semester. Our model will be posing nude, to give us an opportunity to work on skin tone, shading, and so on. You do not have to try for realism, but let’s not do any cartoons, okay? It’s your choice of media, but don’t get too adventurous. If you’re not already experienced with paint, then stick to pencil or charcoal, something a little more forgiving and easier to handle. This is going to be special, this semester. I’ll tell you more about that, later."

I knew from regular class that most art is done in stages. In the case of doing bodies, whether human or other animals, the first step is getting the basics down while looking at the model; basic pose, form, proportions, and all that. That is done by making circles, ovals, squares and such like. Then you turn those shapes into body parts, adding details. After that you can either fill in additional components on your own, or finish the fine detail by looking at the model again. That’s when you do things like create creases in the skin, wrinkles in the clothing, shading, and that sort of thing. I wondered if the model would be male or female, but I didn’t ask. I’d find out soon enough.

So there I was, also relaxed and ready to get my first extended look at a naked body. I really hoped it would be a female body. I was ready for that.

It turned out the model was female.

What I wasn’t ready for, when she came out of the dressing room, dropped her robe, and took up her position on the love seat … was that it would be my mother.

There are events that you have no control over, which sort of crash into you like a tsunami, and change the face of your life forever. I had never thought of my mother as a sexual being. She didn’t go out on dates, and never had while I was growing up. I hadn’t thought that was odd. None of my friends' moms went out on dates either. I was aware there was a category of woman labeled MILF, but I’d never met one in person (with the possible exception of Maureen Gaskill) and I certainly never thought of my mother as being in that category. I knew she had breasts, because they pushed out her shirts and dresses and all that, but I hadn’t seen them since I got nourishment from them. My mother didn’t prance around the house naked, or semi-naked. Neither did I. And she was my … mom. I know most of you get what I’m trying to say, here, because most of you out there in reader land have never thought of your mother as a sexual being either. Or at least tried not to.

The problem was that, in those few seconds after I realized who the model was, that tsunami washed over me and everything changed. She had my mother’s face, but I was suddenly unable to think of her as being my mother at all. Remember that raw sexuality I mentioned that Mrs. Gaskill has? This model had it too. She wasn’t trying to be sexual. It was just unavoidable. First off, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her body. I knew she was thirty-four years old, but she had the body of a twenty-two-year-old gymnast. You couldn’t quite see her ribs, but it was close. Her thighs were firm and full, but not heavy. There was no extra flesh on her upper arms, or neck. That neck looked long and thin, perhaps because her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. I’d seen her with a ponytail before, but usually only when she was doing yard work, or something like that. Most of the time her honey-blond hair was down. She kept it long, about at her shoulder blades, because she said it helped her sell houses.

Then there was … the rest of her.

Her breasts didn’t look as big as I would have expected them to, had I ever thought I’d see them like this. I don’t know anything about cup sizes or all that. All I can say is that they were in perfect proportion to the rest of her. They were distinctly round on the bottoms, but the tops sloped gently down until they suddenly tried to defeat gravity. It actually looked like her nipples might be trying to help pull the tips of her breasts upward. Those nipples looked stiff … erect, based on pictures I’d seen of other breasts. They were a sort of maroon hue, set on little circles of the same color. Oddly, I was reminded of a ski jump when I looked at them. I’d seen pictures of saggy breasts. These were definitely not saggy breasts.

Her pussy - I guess vulva is the polite term - was the most shocking of all. It was shaved clean of any trace of pubic hair, and the lips looked like some kind of odd fruit that was split open, with the soft, inner-flesh bulging out through the split. Moms don’t have shaved pussies. They just don’t. Ask any kid if his mother’s pussy is shaved and, after he tries to beat you up, he’ll say, "No, you fucking pervert!" But this model’s pussy was shaved. You understand how it was difficult to perceive her as my mom, right?

Except she obviously was.

All this was easily visible as her position, when she finally settled into it, showed it all off. She lay down on the love seat on her side, with her head supported on one hand, held up by her elbow. An odd cylindrical pillow was under her armpit to take up some of her torso’s weight. She kept her lower leg mostly straight, but bent the knee of her top leg, lifting it to open herself to our view. The foot of that leg rested right behind the knee of the straight one. Her top arm was bent, with her wrist lying on her hip and her fingers dangling downwards, as if pointing at her sex. Her eyes seemed to be looking right at us … me. The look on her face was along the lines of, "Finally! I’ve been waiting so long. Don’t you love me enough to come to me when I really need you?"