After his soldier lover goes off to war, an artist’s devotion to the study of the male physique leads him to Italy and its men.
A titled member of the English aristocracy is not supposed to embarrass his family by becoming a professional artist. Nor is he supposed to take a soldier as a lover after painting him in the nude. But the free-thinking viscount does all this, and more. When his lover goes off to war and urges him to feel free to be with other men, the viscount travels to sunny Italy in search of new subject matter to paint—and new erotic adventures. What he hadn’t anticipated was meeting and falling in love with an American who has chosen to live in Italy. Is it possible to love two men at once, but in different ways? Or must one always made a choice between two equally seductive alternatives?
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The Blue Cat
Copyright © 2014 Roland Graeme
ISBN: 978-1-77111-850-9
Cover art by Carmen Waters
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The Blue Cat
By
Roland Graeme
Chapter One
In Which I Brush Up Some Neglected Skills
Someone once said that all science may come from the north, but surely all beauty originates in the south.
That’s a generalization, and the man who made it confined his comparison to Europe. Nevertheless, this is the twentieth-first century, and it’s only fair to acknowledge that other parts of the world have made great contributions to both technology and culture.
Still, I grew up in cold, damp England, and although I love my native land, I must admit that the warmth and sun of the Mediterranean attracts me like a magnet. It isn’t a question only of the landscape and the climate. The men who inhabit the Mediterranean shores are in a class by themselves, as far as I’m concerned.
In jotting down these reminiscences and offering them for your perusal, Dear Reader, I had better confess right from the start that I come from an aristocratic family. Try not to hold that fact against me. Mine is an old family and a respectable one, but not of the highest rank. It is true that back in the eighteenth century one of my ancestors, a woman famous for her beauty, intelligence and charm, became the mistress of a member of the royal family and bore him no fewer than four illegitimate children—whom her indulgently uxorious husband accepted as his own. Since their biological father could not acknowledge them officially, this must have simplified matters considerably. Unfortunately, I’m not a direct descendant of one of those royal bastards. If I were, it would make for good dinner table conversation. No, my lineage can be traced to some of the more conventional and hidebound members of my family, who confined their reproductive efforts within the bonds of matrimony.
This might also be the appropriate moment in which to dispel another persistent rumour. I have never had an affair, or even a one-night stand, with any member of the current royal family. The closest I have ever got to that was a fling with a member of the royal household’s staff, a strapping young footman, to be precise. Nevertheless, I’m flattered that people assume I must take after my notorious ancestress and am a sort of male courtesan. Perhaps that should be my aspiration.
I’m not certain how that rumour got started. Maybe it resulted from the fact that in my younger days, after I discarded my virginity while still at university, I was rather wild. I never drank or took recreational drugs to excess, and gambling has never held any interest for me. I became a convert to sex, however, from the moment I first played around with another man’s body, and I have worshipped at the altar of Priapus ever since. Let’s face it—his rites are a lot more interesting than anything the Church of England has to offer.
My worst debaucheries took place while I was still a feckless youth, in my early twenties. Now that I’m a mature man, I have developed a little more restraint. Quality, not quantity, is the goal I strive for, in my relationships as well as in the other good things in life.
The truth is that I now lead a quiet and generally uneventful life. I stay out of trouble, which is more than I can say for some of my peers, who possess more money than discretion or brains. For some reason, I have always been frugal. I have an income that allows me to live comfortably, so long as I don’t indulge in too many extravagances. I do not need to work for a living, which sometimes embarrasses me, whenever I meet an attractive working-class man and become intimate with him. I don’t want money or class to be an issue and to come between my friends and me—or between my casual sexual acquaintances and me, for that matter.
It’s curious and may tell you something about me that most of my friends—and most of my sex partners, for that matter—have not been members of my own privileged class. I’d like to be able to say that this is a result of firmly rooted democratic principles on my part, but in fact, I don’t have any. I tend to be apolitical at the best of times. It’s simply that I find people who work for their living, whatever their profession, more interesting than the idle rich. My relatives like to accuse me of slumming, which is a terrible slur on working-class men. A man can have callouses on his fingertips and dirt under his fingernails and still be intelligent, well rounded in his interests and a lively companion.
On the other hand, all cats are grey in the dark, as the expression goes. If a bloke is good in bed, I could care less whether he’s a butcher’s boy during the daytime hours or the kind of prissy aristocrat twit with whom I am forced to socialize all too often at family gatherings and other such occasions. Let me just say that, all else being equal, I’d place my money on the butcher’s boy, sight unseen, as likely to be the better fuck of the two.
However, I digress. My intention, when I began to write, was to provide a succinct background, to tell you just enough about me to place my erotic adventures in some sort of perspective. I promise you that the eroticism will come along shortly and will no doubt assume a prominent position in my narrative.
As I’ve mentioned, I had a university education, but I did not particularly distinguish myself as a scholar. I did, however, in that eloquent American slang phrase, come out while I was at school—quickly, decisively and irrevocably. Not to put too fine a point on it, but for those first few years after I discovered my homosexuality, I was a bit of a tart. Now, at the ripe old age of thirty-two, I flatter myself that I’ve settled down a bit.
Along the way, I inherited the family title. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. Ask me in ten years, when I will presumably be even more conservative and respectful of tradition than I am now, unless I suffer a midlife crisis and go the opposite way!
I’ve never enjoyed being idle. One must do something to justify one’s existence on this earth, after all. One of my uncles was an amateur artist. He did landscapes en plein air in watercolour or in oils, often as souv
enirs of his travels and at home, in his studio, he painted elegant still lifes. He was good enough to have his work exhibited, although he was reluctant to sell it, which he thought was vulgar for a man of his social station. Therefore, he donated his pictures to for auction to raise money for charity or he gave them away as gifts. Much of his oeuvre remains in the possession of my family and I myself own many fine examples. When one of his works does appear for sale on the market, it commands a good price.
Starting when I was a boy, my uncle gave me a few lessons. I think I was a quick learner, and he said I had a knack for drawing and, as he put it, for splashing bits of colour about with the brush, so I drew and painted as a hobby. It wasn’t until my last year at university that I became serious about it. I decided with the impulsiveness and stubbornness of youth that I would go to art school and try to become good enough to sell my work.
My family was appalled. Our people, which were the phrase one of my relatives used, did not go out into the world and earn money. Furthermore, art school would expose me to—well, to artists, who would no doubt be a bunch of grubby bohemians with poor personal hygiene and highly suspect morals. If I had announced my intention to become a male prostitute or a performer in gay porno films, they could scarcely have been more shocked.
Petty vindictiveness is not an attractive trait. So let me say only that, despite some initial struggles and reverses, I persevered. I became an artist—whether I am a good, bad or indifferent one…is not for me to judge—and my work is not only exhibited, but also sold. As for my family, they have had to accept the fruits of my waywardness. Two or three of my people have even gone so far as to take a grudging pride in my success.
While I was working so hard to learn my craft and to establish myself as an artist, I had little time to indulge in romance. Sex, for me, became a combination of quick physical release and harmless, fleeting mutual pleasure with my partner of the moment. Once or twice, I thought I was in love, but these were mere infatuations.
I was lonely much of the time, but I told myself that I was basically a serious, introspective person, and as a result, I was best suited to my own company. The myth of the solitary, misunderstood artist still held some appeal for me, but I met the man who changed my way of thinking and made me want more from life.
My friend Sergei was having an exhibition of his new work at a small gallery that specialized in sculptures.
Sergei was the son of Russian immigrants. He made beautiful small bronze sculptures, usually no more than two feet high, using the lost wax casting process. The opening of his exhibition was a typical wine and cheese event and I felt obligated to make an appearance. I did enjoy seeing his latest pieces on display. Among some abstract objects were quite realistic renderings of animals and birds. Because Sergei was a bit of a ladies’ man…who had an eye for full-figured women, the exhibition featured a number of voluptuous female bronze nudes.
However, another bronze statuette caught my eye. This was a male nude, captured in a dynamic pose with the arms raised above the head, as though in a gesture of triumph. The figure, beautifully rendered in bronze, had an unusually dark, chocolate colour to it, with lighter coppery-gold highlights here and there. The man was muscular, but perfectly proportioned—truly, a throwback to the sculptures of the ancient Greeks. Sergei had depicted him, as the expression goes, anatomically correct, in all the unabashed glory of full frontal exposure.
“This is beautiful, Sergei,” I told my friend, as we stood there beside the sculpture, sipping our wine. “But it’s not very realistic, is it? I mean, no one in real life has a body like that.”
“I beg to differ with you,” Sergei said, in his lightly accented English, “Geoff certainly has just such a body.”
“Who’s Geoff?”
“The young man who modelled for me. He sat for me while I was working on the wax model. He’s a professional model…and very good at it.”
“Is he?”
“Yes, he’s a military man, some sort of a soldier, who poses to make some extra money in his spare time.”
I encouraged Sergei to tell me more about this guy named Geoff. The young man worked through a modelling agency that specialized in providing models for live drawing for either classes or private sessions. Sergei found Geoff very engaging and easy to work with. He was unable, however, to speculate about whether Geoff was straight, gay, bisexual or potentially gay for pay, but Sergei had been clueless about my own sexual orientation when he and I had first met. He’d gone so far as to suggest that we try to pick up a couple of girls to double date! Now, I may be reasonably masculine in my appearance and behaviour. I am certainly no mincing queen, but I do know that when I’m in the company of an attractive man, I send out certain signals. Sergei, at that early stage in our acquaintance, was oblivious to them.
At least he seemed oblivious to them, until I told him that I would not mind dating him. The revelation dumbfounded him, but to his credit, my homosexuality didn’t prevent us from soon becoming fast friends. I had the advantage, Sergei pointed out to me, of not being a competitor with him when it came to chasing women. He even tried to set me up with some of the other gay men he knew!
I tucked away Geoff’s name and the name of the agency he worked for in one of my mental filing drawers, for future reference.
However, a thought took up residence in my head. At home in the days that followed, I found myself making some quick sketches in pencil and in charcoal of male nudes. I thought of these as mere exercises, to keep myself occupied and amused during the breaks I took from my more ambitious current painting projects. I drew these male bodies from my memories of recent erotic encounters or used my imagination to try to come up with some image of an idealized man.
I soon realized that my anatomical skills had grown rusty and were in need of polishing and honing. The naked men I drew were misshapen and lumpy and looked like hardcore gym enthusiasts on steroids. It had been some time since I’d done any drawing from a live model. I now knew that I needed that discipline to regain my skill.
I telephoned the agency and requested Geoff by name, using Sergei as a reference. The person I spoke to told me Geoff was one of the agency’s most popular models and was heavily booked in the evenings, which was when he ordinarily worked. He, however, would be free for a session on an afternoon two days hence. I booked him.
At the appointed day and time, Geoff arrived on my doorstep punctually, which I appreciated. He was dressed in casual but scrupulously clean and neat clothes—another mark in his favour—and he had a small square canvas bag slung over one of his impressively well-rounded shoulders. I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention to the details of his attire, because his physique garnered my attention immediately.
He was handsome—not in a bland, pretty-boy way, but with a decidedly masculine edge to his features. He had close-cropped hair and a pencil moustache which at first I found oddly anachronistic—it made him look like a soldier, all right, but one from a previous era—although I eventually grew to like it.
Like so many military men, he carried himself like one, even when he was off duty. It wasn’t so much a question of rigidity as a sense of alertness, as though his body stayed coiled and ready for action at all times.
“You must be Geoff,” I said—hardly the most sparkling conversational gambit, but then I’ve never pretended to be much of a raconteur.
“Yes. Am I early?”
“No, you’re right on time. Come on inside.”
In the entryway, he glanced around. “Is there some place where I can change?”
“Upstairs, second door on the left.” This was my guest bedroom, where I put up my actual guests, as opposed to the kind of overnight visitors whom I invited to sleep in my own bed with me. “You can hang up your things in the closet or just put them on top of the bed. I was about to put the kettle on, if you’d like a cup of tea before we get started?”
“That would be fine.” Geoff was already mount
ing the staircase. His trousers were loose fitting and looked as though they were comfortable, but they weren’t loose-fitting enough to disguise the fact that the seat of them was filled by what promised to be an exceptionally large, firm ass. He no doubt needed a generously sized butt to balance his solid torso and sturdy legs.
I got busy in the kitchen, which didn’t take long because I’d already set out the tea things in anticipation of my visitor. About all I had to do was to fill the electric kettle and switch it on.
I heard his footfalls coming down the stairs. “Where are you?” he called.
“In here.”
He joined me in the kitchen. He was draped in a good-quality thin cotton bathrobe, blue and white striped, with the sash tied carefully around the waist to preserve modesty—at least for the time being. His bare feet, thrust into rubber flip-flops, were large and shapely.
“The water will be boiling in a minute,” I said. And it might not be the only thing, I couldn’t help thinking. I could feel my own internal heat rising a degree or two.
Now he was taking in my kitchen. “This is a very nice house you’ve got here.”
“Thanks, although I can’t take much in the way of personal credit for it. I lease this place, so I haven’t done any remodelling. Most of the furniture and knick-knacks are old family things that were stored away for years, gathering dust. It seemed foolish to buy new things when these were going to waste, so I rescued them and put them to use. They do make the place look a bit old-fashioned, but I like that.”
“So do I. It all looks very comfortable. Not hard and glaring, like some people’s flats. Sergei told me you’re some sort of a knight. If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem awfully young to have been made one.”
I smiled. “I’m a viscount, as a matter of fact. Unlike a knighthood, that’s a hereditary title, so age has nothing to do with it.”
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