This story contains explicit sexual activity between men. Please read no further if you are offended by such or if you are a minor. Any resemblance to actual persons or activities depicted is purely coincidental, but actual places and events are mentioned to add a sense of reality to the story.
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SAM CALDWELL'S FURTHER ADVENTURES
by Macout Mann
Chapter 2
The Seminar
All of the speakers are staying at Glidden House, so several have breakfast together. As usual at this sort of meeting most all of the aspects of the vocation being discussed are represented. So Sam is the illustrator, then there is an oil painter, a watercolorist, a portrait painter, a print maker, a sketch artist, even a cartoonist. All the speakers are famous, and people from all over are attending. Four lecturers are scheduled to talk today and three tomorrow. Then there is to be a free-for-all discussion and question period featuring all of them.
One of Sam's breakfast companions is Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side. He is remarkably entertaining, and Sam resolves to attend his lecture, which will be tomorrow morning. His own is at two this afternoon. He picks one to attend this morning. On oil painting. It is considered impolite not to attend at least a sampling of the other presenters' talks.
Sam's lecture is very well attended. He stresses the importance of native talent, being well taught, and loving what you are doing. As an illustrator he talked about the necessity of having a good agent, if you hope to work with publishers. But unlike many of the other speakers, he emphasizes luck as a key factor in an artist's success.
"I was a puny, underprivileged kid from nowhere who wound up in a great college, where some faculty members happened to take a special interest in me. They guided me mentally and physically and emotionally. Through the good offices of my advisor, whose mother—a famous artist herself--showed my work to an influential gallery owner, I was able to get great exposure, good press, and was able to sell many of my early prints and paintings even while I was in school. It's not likely that any of those things would have happened, if I had wound up at another school."
He ends by saying that along with ability, taking advantage of every opportunity was key to a successful career.
In the question period he is asked how he goes about selecting the settings and the models for his illustrations.
"The key is in the word `illustrate,'" he says. "Read and completely understand the text that you are going to portray visually. You have to have a gut feeling about what the picture is really supposed to communicate, not just superficially, but ideogrammically and emotionally. The reader must feel as well as see.
"I don't always use models, but when I do, I've got to feel that he or she would be completely at home in the scene being depicted."
The audience kept Sam busy answering questions for the full ninety minutes allotted for his presentation.
After most of the audience has drifted out of the meeting room, Sam is approached by a young man with beautifully regular features. He's about twenty five, tall and tanned with a five o'clock shadow at three thirty in the afternoon.
"Mr. Caldwell," he says, "I am Roger Clark. I'm a PhD candidate at Indiana U., and I'm a great fan of your work. I know you have a full schedule, but I was wondering if we might get together for a few minutes. I have some specific questions about some of your pieces."
Sam is often approached like this and he usually kisses the person off with some lame excuse, but somehow he finds this guy intriguing. "I was planning to have a drink at the Glidden House bar about five-thirty," he replies. "Why don't you join me?"
"It would be an honor," Clark says.
Two hours later they are in a corner booth sipping Beefeater Martinis straight up. Now they are on a first name basis, and Sam has learned that Roger is originally from Margate, a small city on the Jersey Shore. He is a painter, but hopes to join a university faculty when he receives his doctorate. He says he is fascinated by Sam's ability to depict the feelings of his subjects, the joy of a teen swimming or playing ball, the lust in the eyes of a sailor on the prowl.
"There's a story about a rich man with a pedigreed dog that he's been unable to train," Sam explains. He comes upon a waif with a mongrel that does anything the boy tells him to do. Roll over. Somersault. Fetch. `How is it that you can get your dog to do all those things, and I can't?' the man asks.
"Mister,' says the boy, I can teach him, 'cause I can do all those things myself. I guess you can't.'
"Like I was trying to say this afternoon. You've really got to have felt what the subject is feeling before you can depict what is really happening."
"I have seen your oil, "Pirates in a Storm," at the Whitney," Roger exclaims. "I even bought a photolithograph of it. Even in the copy although the helmsman looks half-panicked, he also seems virile enough and confident enough to overcome any adversity. And if you'll pardon my saying so, sexy as hell."
Sam laughs heartily and says, "The model is a good friend of mine, Jim Hart. He was a construction worker. Had been in some dangerous situations, so he could visualize what being in a storm at sea might be like. And you described him perfectly, virile and sexy. So he was the perfect model for the scene. I painted him on a blank canvass and added the background later."
"He'd be perfect for any scene." Roger is almost drooling. "Not musclebound but with great biceps, great pectorals, great abdominals."
"Seems like you've spent a lot of time studying him," Sam laughs. Even in the dim light of the bar Sam can see Roger's blush. "I didn't mean that like it sounded," Sam adds. "I'm a great admirer of the male anatomy too."
He changes the subject to ease Roger's discomfort, but he also senses that Roger might be interested in more than just art. They chat about a wide range of subjects as they down a second Martini, then Sam invites Roger to have dinner with him in the hotel's dining room.
During dinner Roger returns to the subject of Pirate Jim. "You said the pirate helmsman is a friend of yours. Do you know him well?" he asks.
"I met him when I was a freshman at Sparta. He used to bring his kids to a park where I went for walks. I met him and his boys there," Sam only half lied. "Later he became one of the mentors I mentioned in my talk this afternoon. He's really like family. Closer than family really."
"God, I'd love to meet the guy."
"He's great to be with." Sam is loving the innuendo.
Roger insists on taking care of the dinner check, since Sam had paid the bar bill.
"Well," Sam said, "since you're being so generous—I'm not the sketch artist on the program—but if you want to come up to my room, I'll give you a sketch to remember this evening by."
"Would you?" Roger answers.
Up in Sam's room he tells Roger to sit next to the lamp so the light will be right.
"Would you do me shitless, like the pirate?" Roger asks.
"Why not?" Sam responds.
Fifteen minutes later the sketch is completed. As he passed the completed sketch to Roger, Sam said, "I did substitute a beltless jean top for your dress pants' belt, since you were bare chested," Roger wasn't the specimen that Vernon or even Sam was, but he had a nice build.
"That's so wonderful," Roger says. "Thank you." Then he adds, "You've obviously got a nice looking bod too. Why don't you take off your shirt?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Sam laughs.
Soon their chests are pressed together. Not long after that they are naked in Sam's bed. They stimulate each other's bodies with hands and tongues, climaxing in a passionate sixty-nine that culminates when each pours his baby batter down the other's throat.
As they lie together in the afterglow, Roger whispers, "I'll bet you seduce all your visitors with sexy sketches."
"Not that I'm a big celebrity, but I very rarely agree to meet with people who ask for private talks," Sam answers. "But something about you intrigued me. Now I know what it was."
The night's activities continue with more sucking and fucking. Roger finally leaves Sam's room with his drawing at five in the morning. Important to keep up appearances.
Sam attends Gary Larson's presentation, the obligatory luncheon, and the final discussion. The moderator does call on Roger for a question.
"One subject has not come up at all, but I'm sure all the members of the panel have had to deal with it at one time or another," he says. "How do each of you deal with sex in your work?"
It is all Sam could do not to become convulsed in laughter.
An hour later he is on his way to Chicago.