Turned out this tattoo artist became a maestro of his media. Even I knew his name.
My eyes settled on the unadorned flesh on her right butt cheek. Perfect skin indeed. “Well, that solves one.”
“One?” Her shoulder length hair hung free, still as Red Rocks.
“One mystery. Now tell me why you work at Ollie’s.”
“No mystery there. I love to work with my back. I like to lift things, use my muscles.”
“So go to a gym. It’s obvious you could get another job.”
“I don’t want another job. When I do, I’ll get one.”
The next position I had her hold was back on the chaise. It was a bit provocative, and gave me a perfect view of the vibrant red hair between her legs. Her vagina was particularly beautiful, with an inviting pucker that was wonderfully complex to paint. Her eyes locked on my crotch as I reached in my pants and lined my sudden hard-on up along the zipper, as if that might provide some camouflage. She opened her legs a bit more and rested her hand on the crease of her groin.
I’d only gone to bed with models twice before. Some artists claim not to be affected, but it had an undeniable Samson and Delilah effect on me. Perhaps it was the release of tension, succumbing to the inferior sense of touch, or simply a mutant synapse in my brain that sapped the creative flow.
Leeny grinned. “Ever paint in the nude?”
“What?
“You heard me.”
“Uh, yeah, on occasion.”
“With a model?”
“Well, no.” My chest throbbed and I took a deep breath.
“Go for it.” Her eyes were locked in mine. They drifted approvingly down my chest and took in the bulge. “Do it.”
I moved slowly at first, taking off my socks and shirt. I drew a deep breath then stripped off my jeans and underwear. She smiled as my boner popped free. I tried to cover, but I’ve always painted with both hands.
I fought my urge to join Leeny on the chaise. I continued to paint, my cock fitfully softened and hardened. I managed, somehow, to keep to my easel for the rest of the session.
At the next session, Leeny would not take off a garment until I had matched her, and again I painted her with artist and model in the nude. I finished the painting I was working on, and directed her to a new position on the chaise. For the first time, she just couldn’t seem to get it right.
I approached.
I touched her hip to turn her. She was like steel wrapped in silk. The almost cool blue tone of her flesh belied the radiant heat that poured from her. She smiled at me then let her mouth open just a little as she resisted my physical adjustment of her pose. I couldn’t help but taste. Her breath was laced with piquant, sweet cinnamon. She pushed her tongue deep inside my mouth, and the gold orb through her tongue plowed my taste buds. Leeny’s hot fingers squeezed my stiff rod almost too hard. I deluded myself that I might have some self-control left.
She spread her strong thighs. “Taste me.”
“Oh God, yes.” I knelt between her legs and traced up and down her opening slowly, then cradled her clit. Leeny’s moans grew as she anchored her arms to the top of the chaise and ground her hips to my face. I pushed my tongue in her. She was delectable inside. Not perfumed, real and a bit meaty. My voice was muffled in her crotch, a series of incoherent exclamations of the beauty while I combed her fiery pubic hair with my thumbs.
She waved insistently for me to climb her. I rushed my cash stash drawer and found a strip of rubbers and tore one packet open. Leeny made a wide O with her mouth and positioned the curled rubber on it. She slowly covered the tip then down the shaft. She retreated, tracing her steps with post in her tongue tracing the thick bottom vein.
She laid back and spread her body again. “Give it to me, Scott.”
Some cunts kiss. Some cunts stroke and some caress. Leeny’s swallowed greedily. I drew my fingers along the lines of the rose tattoo, then the jaguar as I savored her ripples. I focused on the artistry of her adornment to hold the floodwaters behind the feeble dam. Yes, they were tattoos, but the artist was a master.
I told myself that a sensation of this depth could only lead to even finer paintings of Leeny. She turned me over and straddled me. She read my responses masterfully and stopped the powerful swinging of her hips each time my orgasm came close to resolution.
She pulled off of me, then turned over on all fours and patted her pussy in an invitation. I entered her from behind and traced the colorful dragon with my index finger. Leeny’s girlish voice became louder. Choral gasps and moans reverberated through the cavernous room. She screamed an orgasm and her pussy gripped me. I exploded a desperate shot toward Leeny’s womb, only to be repelled by the rubber. I collapsed on to her back, as if an iron trying to affect transfer of her dragon tattoo.
Leeny’s strong limbs supported my weight like a suspension bridge.
Despite my rationalizations as we made love, we were never the same. I spent nine sheets of paper trying. I began to miss the smell of oil paints. For some reason I never could execute a good portrait with the brush.
Leeny and I became cordial, then quiet. There came a time when she simply stopped coming by, and I stopped going to Ollie’s.
On a late spring day, I could no longer resist the mysteries of my favorite store or a glimpse of my favorite model. I wandered the aisles taking in the new stock. I paused at strategic points to see if I could spot Leeny. I just needed to hear her voice, maybe smell her fading deodorant, honest sweat and cheap shampoo.
I finally took a couple of books and a bottle of Habanero sauce to the register. “Is Leeny off today?”
“Leeny?” The stale cigarette scented older woman said.
“Colleen.”
“No idea.” She rang up the next book.
The kid at the service desk called over his shoulder. “Little Leeny quit last month.”
“Where’d she go?”
He shrugged without looking back.
It became evident that my wheat period had passed its twilight. It was time to stop naming things. I resisted the urge to try to paint dragons, roses or jaguars, but there was no denying their shapes and colors infused themselves on the abstracted forms I now painted.
One late summer day the UPS truck showed up just in time. I was finishing my last canvas. My heart hammered when the edge of a woman’s tattooed thigh poked through the open door. A brightly colored Jaguar stalked in the grasses.
Leeny grinned as she easily hefted two large boxes to my door. “Hiya, Scott.”
“Let me help you,” I said.
“Got it covered, hon.” She set the boxes down inside the hot building. She tilted her head and looked at my right thigh. She wiped her brow on her wrist then reached for the cuff of my shorts. A strong women’s jaguar-adorned thigh came into view. Leeny pulled the fabric up further to expose a nude red-haired woman on a black stool. Her back displayed a dragon. Her arm, turned out slightly, hinted at the top of a rose. “I thought you hated tattoos.”
“I do, but I got a good deal. When I showed the artist the portrait I wanted him to work from, he said he’d do it free if he could keep the painting, even though he’s a big name in the business.”
She grinned. “Good stuff cheap.”
“Look, I feel bad, Leeny. I can’t have paid you all I owe you.”
“I’ve been the canvas and I’ve been the model. Now I’m the inspiration. Paid in full.” She stroked my stubble coated chin softly then gave my cheek a firm pat. She turned around and her daisy hair bounded as she trotted to the big brown van to drive to her next delivery.
The Witch of Jerome Avenue
Tsaurah Litzky
Yesterday morning I went off to art school at the Brooklyn Museum but our teacher felt sick and sent us home. I was disappointed. I loved drawing the magical objects in the museum’s collection, the kachina dolls and pharaohs’ crowns.
It was my mother’s idea that I go to art school. She signed me up when she saw me doodling in the ma
rgins of my school notebooks. She made me the pink brocade shoulder bag that I use to carry my art supplies.
When I got off the bus at our corner I realized I could still catch the Saturday matinée with free popcorn at the Valentino Cinema on Avenue L. It was East of Eden starring my heartthrob, James Dean. My mother and little brother Seymour weren’t home. They were at a science fair at Utrecht High School where my brother had won some kind of prize. His revolting interest in the earthworms he dug up from the swampy marshes near our house had paid off. Maybe my father was home and would go to the movies with me. I love going places with my handsome father.
Women were always looking at him and I wondered if sometimes they thought I was his date. When we go to the movies, he always buys two Hershey bars with almonds but gives me the almonds from his because he knows how much I like them. On the way home he likes to talk about my opinion of the movie. He tells me I have a very smart, insightful mind.
Our gray Plymouth Fury was in the driveway, an encouraging sign. I went in the side door that led to our finished basement. I thought he’d be down there reading the newspapers in his big leather chair.
My father was in the basement but he wasn’t reading newspapers and he was not alone. He was leaning over the studio couch, his pants down to his thighs. What happened to his underwear? There was a woman beneath him and she wasn’t wearing clothes. He was moving up and down on top of her and she was letting out silly little squeals like my brother’s pet hamster, Eisenhower.
I knew exactly what they were doing. My parents had a book, Love Without Fear, that they kept in the drawer of my father’s bedside table. I used to read it when I was alone in the house. I knew all the illustrations by heart.
The woman had such big boobs they spread out on either side of her like yeasty white dough. I could see my father’s scrotum, pink as a chicken neck, bouncing up and down below his ass as he moved. He bent his head; started to kiss her chest. Her nipple was exposed; a sloppy brown stain like a coffee spill, but that didn’t stop him from taking it into his mouth.
Then I saw her face. She had an ugly little snout for a nose. Bright orange lipstick was smeared all over her mouth and chin. She looked like a clown. My father started pounding into her harder and harder; I stood on the bottom step, as if rooted, unable to tear my eyes away from the horrid scene.
I felt a quickening between my legs where I was cleft. The tiny button that was there, which Love Without Fear called a clitoris, began to twitch. My insides were heaving and churning. I felt sick.
I made myself go back up the stairs and outside. A few doors down from our house a brand-new, pink and white Oldsmobile was parked. I’d never seen it on our block before. I knew this was the evil chariot that had brought the clown to our house.
I ran down to Seaview Avenue, the border between the development of split-level houses where we lived and the fields beyond. I went out through the bulrushes into the swamps, way beyond Canarsie Pier until I found the spot I was looking for. It was a deep dip in the sand surrounded by rocks and tall reeds a little distance from the Belt Parkway. I had gone here with Morty Rothman three times to make out. I crouched between the rocks crying and throwing up. After a while I went home.
The Oldsmobile was gone from its spot and our car was gone too. The door was locked so I let myself in with my key and went up to my bedroom. I lay down on my belly, unzipped my jeans and put my fingers inside the crotch of my panties. This was the position I liked best when I wanted to comfort myself. I put three fingers into my slit; my mother likes to call it a lily. I pretended I was wearing a pharaoh’s crown and Morty Rothman was my body slave. He was rubbing baby oil all over me and between my legs. He saved my clitoris for last. I came twice, then I dozed off.
I heard my mother and brother talking downstairs. I got up and found my mother in the kitchen washing dishes; my brother was watching the TV in the living room. When I told her what I saw in the basement, she staggered to the kitchen table and fell into one of the chairs still holding the soapy sponge in her hand.
She sat quiet for a long time. Her face was pale. I thought maybe I didn’t do the right thing but then she told me she loved me very much. She said I should go and watch The Gong Show with my brother. That evening, my father didn’t come home for supper.
In the middle of the night terrible yelling woke me up. My mother and father were having a big fight. I put my thumbs in my ears and my pillow over my head but I could still hear them.
This next morning when I woke up my mother told me we were going on an adventure, a visit to my Aunt Zippy in the Bronx. She sent my brother to spend the day at his friend Bruce’s house.
When we got on the train at Utica Avenue, my mother started to tell me about Aunt Zippy. I only knew her from weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. She was an old lady who wore velvet dresses and funny hats on special occasions. Even though she was bent over and had wrinkles on her face the men buzzed around her. She danced every dance.
My mother told me that Aunt Zippy’s full name was Zipporah. She was a witch, a real witch with potions and spells. She’d studied with the most famous witch in Lithuania, Hepzibah the Hebrew. Aunt Zippy came to America long, long ago before people were riding around in cars.
On the day she arrived in New York she was standing on a street corner trying to hail a livery carriage. She had the address of a Witches Association in Rego Park, Queens. A distinguished gentleman in an elegant carriage pulled by two snow white horses drove up and offered to take her anywhere she would like to go. It was Diamond Jim Brady. He was captivated by her ravishing looks and brilliant wit and helped her set up shop in the top floor of the Woolworth building. She was quickly successful, drawing her customers from the cream of New York society. The Great Houdini came to drink champagne with her after his magical feats. Boss Tweed, with whom she had a passionate affair, was among her many admirers. Powerful men among her acquaintances helped her make some good investments in real estate.
Then she fell in love with a musician, a saxophone player she met at a speakeasy named Slim Fats. I knew what a speakeasy was because I had seen Public Enemy Number One. She soon found out Slim Fats was already deeply in love with someone else: his sister. All Aunt Zippy’s spells and incantations were not strong enough to break that tie.
When Slim Fats left her, she went out of her mind and was sick for a long, long time. Boss Tweed arranged for a special maid to be with her night and day and bathe her in milk. Houdini visited and fed her creampuffs with his magician’s hands.
Eventually Zippy recovered, only to find she had lost her powers as witches do when they fall in love. After a miserable year of doing nothing but crossword puzzles, one of her powers came back, that of clairvoyance. She wanted to return to work right away and help women who like her had suffered disappointments in love.
She moved out of Manhattan to one of her properties, a tenement on Jerome Avenue high on top of a hill in the Bronx. Once again, Aunt Zippy took the top floor with its many windows because a witch must be able to see the nighttime sky, the moon and the stars. A few phone calls were all it took and soon she was back in business, women clients only. Gradually, Aunt Zippy regained the ability to do simple spells, but she knew that never again could she change herself into a tiny fairy the size of a thumb or fly through the night riding one of the hounds of hell.
Two huge, battered stone lions stood guard at the door to Aunt Zippy’s building. We ascended six flights of stairs to stand in front of a heavy steel door.
The door was flung open before my mother even had a chance to knock. There was Aunt Zippy. She was wearing a tall, black pointy hat and a long filmy red negligée. Beneath the flimsy fabric of her negligée I could make out the top of her low cut black brassiere. Aunt Zippy had amazing cleavage.
“Darlings,” she cried out. As she stood on tiptoe to embrace my mother who was only five feet two, I saw that Aunt Zippy’s eyes were yellow, smoldering like the eyes of the tigers in the zoo. She kissed me on both cheeks,
then took my head in her hands.
“You resemble your mother,” she said, “but you have a beauty of your own. You have the face of a poet.”
Did she know about the secret notebook I kept under my mattress already half-filled with poems?
A black dog the size of a collie but without a collie’s pointed muzzle stood behind her. I didn’t like dogs and drew back.
“He’s not a dog,” Aunt Zippy said. “He’s a cat, Morris, my long time companion. He will never harm you.” She led us down a long hallway, lined with photos of her with many different women. There was a picture of Aunt Zippy seated with Greta Garbo on a park bench. Another picture showed Aunt Zippy drinking cocktails with Mae West at a long bar and another showed her sitting in a rowboat with Eleanor Roosevelt on a calm lake. There was also a photo of Aunt Zippy shaking hands with Golda Meir.
We entered a light airy room with a high ceiling. Curtains of crystal beads hung in front of the high windows, sending shining reflections of sparkling light on the white walls. A modern white sofa stood in the center of the room, flanked by matching armchairs.
The only testament to Aunt Zippy’s profession was a gleaming skull on top of the pine coffee table in front of the sofa. The contemporary decor surprised me.
“Just because I’m a witch,” Aunt Zippy said, “is no reason for me to succumb to conventional thinking about my vocation. I’ve already lived a hundred and ten years. Maybe I’ll live a hundred more. Why should I spend my time in some dismal dump filled with bats? Like they say, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.”
My mother giggled. “Right,” she said, smiling.
Aunt Zippy snapped her fingers and three glasses filled with ruby liquid materialized on the coffee table. She picked up one of the glasses and handed it to me.
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