As I walked back to class, I realized how quick that rush of sexual release had been, and the truth of the notion that sometimes when it comes to sex, you want a big dinner and sometimes you need to just eat and run.
I still got back before the rest of the class was done with lunch and was able to get myself all situated my newly front row spot. When the class returned, the Tri Delt co-ed who'd been there all morning started to have a snit fit because I'd taken her seat, but I just ignored her and the rest of her friends told her to get over it, that this was just a fag model anyway, and it wouldn't do her any good to sit up close anyway (Gee, I thought I was the only one who knew!)
This was about the time that a lot of the frat and sorority types who were hoping for an easy "A" started to drift out of class anyway - it WAS a long, hard day, and by the late afternoon, the beach and the weekend seem to be calling them. So by the time the afternoon "warm up" short gesture poses were over, a lot of the "Greek" (fraternity and sorority types) were sneaking out during breaks. This was fine with the rest of us, as it left a smaller more dedicated group of students - either the slow and determined ones, or the whiz kids who could never get enough.
There was always one or two lunks from the football team who signed up for life drawing classes, thinking they could get their GPA up with an art class, and stare at naked girls at the same time. The ones who were left after the first couple of weeks had discovered that this class drawing naked people was one of the hardest classes you could take and the teacher didn't allow any gawking -- especially with the female models. Being gay himself, he was tolerant of my morning reverie today, I'm sure, as he was the academic advisor for the gay students league, a novelty for the time after Stonewall) so everyone knew all about him but he didn't flaunt it and was very professional in class.
The other students who were left on this particular day tended to be the more "serious" ones, art majors, very good, and very competitive. We all got to know each other fairly well during the course of the semester as none of us seemed to ever leave the studio, drawing and painting all the time. These kids were my competition and inspiration and I'm still friendly with several of them many, many years later. There was a sort of camaraderie that set in amongst us as finals approached and we saw each other more and more in the painting studios.
One of these was a hot red-head who I'd lusted after since I first set eyes on him, and while he seemed nice enough, and cool, in a sort of "whatever turns you on" hippy sort of way, I didn't think he was gay, and he was always in the company of one or another of the "serious" female art students, usually deep in conversation or something.
A couple of older guys were also there - by "older" I mean by a couple of years, due to the draft, and a stint in Viet Nam. One was black and one white, and they looked to be best of friends, seeming to share something from their army experience and admitted to feeling a little out of place as they were a couple of years "behind" their peers who'd gotten out of the draft because of their student deferments. Both were attractive, age and experience having matured them but they didn't seem the kind who sucked cock, but you never know.
They were both very masculine and hot, especially the black guy who was also in my French class - which should have been a clue, but I was admittedly pretty dumb about such things back then. This guy's name was Carl and he was always suggesting that we practice conjugating irregular verbs or something, little did I know what kind of conjugating he had in mind. His friend was named Donald, and was rather quiet and reserved. He drew extremely well, and had a whole graphics arts career planned out for himself, Carl said. He never missed a class and listened carefully to everything the teacher and the better students in class had to say. He was always the last one to stop drawing after the model broke the pose. It was like he was trying to make up for lost time.
With sandy hair, he was very bulky around the chest and shoulders with a lot of reddish=blonde chest hair peeking out of the neck of his shirt. He had great legs, which he showed off by wearing shorts whatever the weather, (another very SoCal trait). His thighs and calves were very powerful and covered with the same light fur you could see on his chest. Responding to a comment about how hairy his legs and chest were, he joked with the giggling co-ed who'd called him a "Bear" he smiled, saying"How right you are." Going on to joke that the body hair made up for all the hair he was losing on top, and he was beginning to show signs of "male pattern baldness" which I find quite sexy, I must admit. Don also wore a full but trimmed beard and moustache which he would stroke from time to time when he wanted to look pensive. Donald was quiet and soft-spoken, but often droll when he did have something to say.
There were two other ethnic types in class who were always arguing politics, which was also par for the coarse back then. Erik was a tall New Yorker, who was always complaining about how shallow everyone was in California, which was annoying of course, but pretty much ignored by everyone but Julio, a local La Raza type who always argued with him, calling him an elitist snob, which would make Erik mad and they'd be off to the races about politics and sociology eventually getting heated about some fine point of revolutionary activist strategy, that left the rest of us in the dust. At the end of the day, it seemed that they actually liked each other quite a bit, and I never saw any girls around either of them.
The New Yorker was tall and lean, with black curly hair, while Julio did his best to look like some modern day Poncho Villa, skinny drooping mustache and all. Both of them did artwork of an "engaged" activist, or "social realist" sort and joined a group of muralists who put up big paintings along the sides of freeways and buildings that would let them. They both painted well, but were more interested in message than technique. As far as their social lives were concerned, it seemed to be either Trotsky and the SDS or Cesar Chavez who ruled the day, one alternating with the other.
As I said already, this afternoon seemed especially stifling as the day wore on, and more so because the teacher had always shown great respect for the model by keeping the doors and windows closed to prevent prying eyes -- especially when we had some sultry female model posing. It seemed like when that happened there would somehow always be a wandering UPS driver or some school employee who would stick his head in asking for directions to the office, which was on another floor of another building, but then the intruder would find a reason to linger and leer. One particular beautiful female model was the favorite of our former custodian, Gus, who always seemed to find a burning need to change a light bulb or refill the paper towel dispenser whenever she was scheduled to model.
Stephen Stern, our teacher, found all this rather annoying but as long as the model didn't get upset he tended to ignore these occasionally humorous interruptions. He was good at finding ways to herd the intruders towards the door and giving the model an unscheduled break, which generally got the intruder out of the room at last, though Gus could be a problem at times, given as he was to drooling embarrassingly. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem much longer as the elderly janitor was also an uncontrolled diabetic who was currently laid up in the hospital in danger of losing one of his feet to the chronic bad circulation common with this disease.
Gus wouldn't have been in today anyway, as all there was was dick in the class as he'd say, a sentiment shared with the other straight students who were too hot to stay when the beach was so close. By the middle of the afternoon the students had dwindled down to what might be considered the "hard core, " all male, who I've just described above.
Stephen took the time to lower the lights and lock the door after the last female student left and turned to address the remaining class members. "Well, guys, I guess it's just going to be us for the rest of the day, Hope you don't mind if I join you drawing this fine model, David. He's been so inspiring earlier in the day, I'd like to see if I can capture some of his fine and sensuous features along with you all."
There was a general murmur of approval as we didn't often get a chance to see Mr. Stern work in class. He usually spent most of each class wandering around looking at everyone's work and making comments as the students worked - stingy with compliments, his criticism were usually right on target, yet he avoided the harsh sort of ridicule that could be found in other classes in this very competitive art school. He preferred to talk about art history, and had a wealth of anecdotes
from artists of the past, as well as apropos observations drawn from his own experience in the contemporary art world.
We had started out the second half of the class by putting up a few selections of our better efforts for an informal class "critique," and we were relieved to not have to deal with the annoying Tri Delts who so easily got their feelings hurt if their often blatant technical shortcomings were even mentioned. Stephen wasn't like some other life drawing teachers who could be tyrannical, becoming angry and insulting when confronted with bad artwork from students. One teacher in particular was famous for tearing up work that didn't meet his standards, and sending students running from the classroom in tears. I'd seen him take one particularly bad drawing and throw it on the ground, stomping on it, and crumpling it up afterwards and sending it flying out the second story class window to the shocked assembled students. We never addressed this teacher by his first name, but always Mr. L... and even the best draftsmen approached his classroom with a bit of anxious trepidation.
Mr. Stern, on the other hand was the opposite, very kind and encouraging. While he didn't let the poor students think they were heirs to Raphael or Picasso, certainly, neither did he make them wish they'd never been born.
Today, there seemed to be something else on his mind however. He began by telling us that there were going to be a number of changes in the school, and particularly in the studio classrooms, which were usually open 24 hrs. when Gus was around. We knew that there had been some structural changes in the classroom too, as well as to Mr. Stern's office which was adjacent to the classroom which had happened over the summer break, but we didn't know the details of that yet.
Mr. Stern did share the welcome news that we were going to be getting another custodian, to replace Gus, our ailing janitor, and that we might be surprised to find out who it was going to be.
It was to be a former male model that all of us knew quite well from his years of standing motionless in front of us in life drawing classes - Thaddeus, or the "Standing Hercules" as some wit nicknamed him, since his spectacular physique was a carbon copy of the famous Hellenistic sculpture of the musclebound hero from ancient times. There was one major difference with this hunk however. Unlike antique Greek sculpture which minimized the size of even the grandest masculan hero's genital endowment - our modern Hercules had a cock to match his bulging muscles. In fact this model's cock was the talk of the department -- not only because of its famous and prodigious size, but because of the way it seemed to take on a life of its own during long poses in life classes.
In its flaccid state Thad's penis was long and thick, but during long poses it seemed to grow and extend as his mind wandered onto subjects other than standing still. Just as it looked like it was going to rise into an heroic erection of almost frightening proportions he seemed to will his dick to back off and return to its unaroused state - just in time before it scared off the giggling undergraduate girls.
I had experienced this performance on more than one occasion. I remember one afternoon when the rise and fall of Thad's barometer seemed connected with whether or not I was staring at his cock. After rising and falling I looked up from the hypnotizing sight to catch a slight smile on his face as he looked at me and winked. I remember blushing bright red with embarrassment at the time, but Thad acted as though nothing had happened that was at all unusual. No one ever mentioned this disconcerting skill the huge bodybuilder indulged in while class was in session, but outside class it was the source of endless amusement, and for some of the male students, there was a parallel sense resembling awe as we admired this Tantric display of bodily control.
Mr. Stern alluded to this trait as he described the model's new job, suggesting that would sadly find him mostly clothed throughout the evening and nighttime hours. Though, he slyly suggested, Thad might be talked into reprising his performances in the later evening if given the right incentive and setting. Mr. Stern was now talking about Thaddeus with a new and surprising familiarity. While Thad's genital thermometer skills couldn't have eluded our teacher's notice, our teacher had always been a paragon of propriety inside and out of class and would never mention the obvious.
Just the same, there were stories one heard once in awhile that suggested our quiet and reserved instructor had another side not usually seen at school. He seemed to feature in rumors around the Gay Students Union about parties that he hosted for a select and rather secretive group of young men, called the "8 Plus Club." But from Mr. Stern himself there was never any hint of such extracurricular activities.
Well, this afternoon, that reticence was soon to change for me. And the change, it seems, was a direct result of my earlier encounter with the enthusiastic mouth in the campus glory hole during lunch.
As the afternoon had gotten hotter and hotter, Stephen began to loosen the buttons on his shirt and since there were no other female students around, he eventually took off his shirt and draped it over the back of a chair. Wearing a sweat-soaked tank top "wife beater" he showed off a rather surprisingly sturdy set of shoulders and upper arms.
As he began tugging the T shirt out of his tightly fitted jeans Julio showed I wasn't the only person paying attention to this slow strip-tease calling out, "Jess Mon, teach's letting his hair down for a minute. Getting hot in here, right Erik?"
"Far out man, " his friend agreed, "wicked."
"Hope it's just the beginning," said our model, David, "I'm getting tired of being the only one up here on this pedestal."
"You look like you've been visiting the gym, Mr. S" said Carl admiringly, "I don't remember you showing tickets like those before."
"Tickets!" Donald snorted. "Can you use the word Bicep in a sentence, Carl? Tickets!"
Still laughing he stretched his back and stripped off his own t-shirt to show a lovely flaxen landscape of blond chest hair, spread out in a pattern that followed the studly contours of the veteran's torso. Turning to face the admiring class, he flexed both his arms in a good natured parody of a "muscle beach" pose, invited his friend Carl to do the same.
"Man I came here to draw," his black friend observed, "there's plenty of time for that later on, but if you must share your every urge with everyone here, be my guest."
"Share and share alike," said our East Coast transplant, Eric, who had yet to loosen any of his own tightly buttoned shirt and overalls.
"Ju wanna see it all, but don' wanna show nuttin' Mon, " sneered Julio, who'd also started wriggling out of his tie-die shirt.
"What's the rush?" Erik asked, sharpening up his colored pencils then beginning to quickly sketch out a few notations, plotting out the locations of each of the male figures in the room in their new and changing configurations.
"Besides, it's so great to have all you guys to draw as a group, you know?"
We suddenly became aware of what he meant, noticing where everyone was standing or sitting in relation to each other, and all of us began drawing our model within the larger context of the all male room. Eric in particular, who was a whiz at rapid visualization had sketched the whole room with amazing rapidity, murmuring, "We could pose for a male version of Ingres' "Turkish Bath" you know? You know, that round painting where are all those naked ladies lying around for no reason except to get straight men to sit up and get hard."
"I know" Julio chimed in. "This set up is so hot, man. I'd love to get all you guys to pose for some bitchin' mural of you all, like some mythic scene from the Iliad or something, some heroics outside the walls of Troy or some Aztec sacrifice or something. It would be so cool, what you think Eric?
"Yeah, sort of like the cholo heaven mural youre always talking about doing, where everybodys relaxed and getting stoned, tired out after some wicked gangland bust up, all tired and shit."
"So who you 'sposed to be, Erik? Crazy Achilles?" Julio, asked, leering at him sideways.
"If you'd be my Patroclos, Julio, " said Eric softly, "if you'd be my Patroclos."
But then Julio got his back up, asking, "But doesn't that dude 'eat it' early on, way before the battle even gets started?"
"You're right my friend," said Mr. Stern who we all knew was an aficionado of all things Classical, as one might expect a gay art teacher to be, whatever the era.
"It is the tragic death of Patroclos that sets Homer's tragedy into motion, the heartbreaking loss of his lover that provokes Achilles to join the fray. Achilles loses his mind when he loses his great love, Patroclos, and this grief set off his famous rage - "The Wrath of Achilles" it is the change that sends Achilles into battle and sets the story in motion, catching all the other players in its inexorable downward spiral of revenge, death and glory. Homer's great, grim love song to the Havoc and Heroism of War itself."
"Wow, man," whispered Eric, "far out."
"I've only read the Cliff's Notes myself," I ventured, hoping to lighten the mood some, but Mr. Stern was just warming to his subject.
"It all ends with Paris' arrow, guided by the gods directly to the one spot where Achilles was vulnerable, his heel. Paris spikes him like a helpless butterfly - pinned and mounted in some naturalist's display case. Transfixed, catalogued and shut away in the prime of life, labeled in the drawer of mythic legend."
"Alexander idolized Achilles too you know, " the teacher continued, "not only did he sleep with the Iliad under his pillow, but he had his own Patroclos in his lover Hephastion. They even poured out libations to Achilles and Patroclos when they roared through Troy on their way to conquer the world. Such is the glory and pathos of Homer's song of the Fall of Troy."
"Hey man, "Carl said, "That doesn't sound anything like the war I saw, man." The veteran's observation brought everyone back to the present, and burst the Classical bubble, sorry to say, I guess. There were suppressed titters all around the room and Mr. Stern smiled, blushing, "You're right, my friend, these stories of heroes lead whole armies into the meat grinder of modern wars like we see on the news every night on TV." (The body counts from Viet Nam was still on the nightly news, and Carl had a good point).
"I don't want to hear no more war songs, man. Don and I have heard enough of those to last a lifetime. Enough's enough, right man?" Donald nodded silently. "No more blood and guts and glory, " Carl went on, "What was it Whitman said about the Body Electric? Like Jimi Henricks Electric Lady Land, I want to sing about the body electric, like old Walt."
"Right on, man, " said his friend Donald, "'Scuse me as I kiss this guy." And he did. Catching his friend and lover in his arms, Don planted a lingering kiss full on Carl's mouth, and we all just stared. It was a startling moment of erotic energy that had us all quivering with excitement and full of suppressed pleasure and anticipation.
"Wasn't that "Scuse me while I kiss the sky?"
Eric's observation was only slightly sarcastic, honoring the moment.
"Lets all kiss and make up, " I said.