The Not-so-super Model

by Lubrican

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Chapter Two

Hannah did call me, about two minutes after I got home. She knew how long it would take me, apparently. I'd had ten minutes to think about things, which is to say I'd had ten minutes for my mind to run rampant as I drove down quiet streets. It was good they were quiet. I really had no business driving at that point in time. You know how sometimes you drive from point A to point B and when you get there you don't remember anything about the trip? It was like that.

"You don't have to pose for her, Bob," she said.

"I know," I said.

"She shouldn't have asked you."

"I guess," I said.

"Of course she's right. You are the only man she could have asked."

"I guess," I said again.

"But it was ridiculous of her to do that."

For some reason what I thought of at that moment in time was that Hannah thought I'd be a poor model. And since all a model has to do is sit there, that meant she thought the end product would be ugly. A desire to believe otherwise and defend myself caused me to speak before I thought things through completely. That was the real problem in this situation. I hadn't had time to process the whole idea or think about it in any kind of dispassionate manner.

"Come on," I said. "I'm not that ugly."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," she said, her voice level.

I did? Who says I did? Well ... Hannah, for one. That was ... something. Not weird, exactly. But not expected, either. Of course we'd never sat around and had a discussion about either one of us in terms of how we looked aesthetically. Who does that?

"I guess I don't know what you mean, then," I said. I was tired and it was hard to think.

"I meant that of course you'd be uncomfortable being naked in front of Harper," said Harper's mother.

"I guess," I said, going back to what was apparently my standard response that evening.

"You guess? Don't you know?"

"I don't think I know anything," I said. "I think she just caught me by surprise."

"Gee, you think that might not surprise somebody?"

"Did it surprise you?"

"That's different. I'm her mother. She sees me naked all the time."

Talk about offering a jug of water to a man dying of thirst. My fantasies being the man, of course, and her comment being the water.

"I'm tired," I said. "I'm going to bed."

"Okay," she said. "I don't feel like we've finished discussing this, though."

"Fine. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"Okay. Good. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable, Bob. You're not obligated. You mean too much to us for something like this to poke a stick in your spokes."

I blinked. I hadn't heard that phrase in years and years and years.

"I'm fine," I said. "I just need sleep."

"Okay. 'Night."

I hung up and headed for bed. About eight hours of unconsciousness right now sounded pretty good.

Turns out sleep probably wasn't what I needed. That's because I don't think there was all that much of it that was actually unconscious.

I'm referring to dreams, of course, which don't feel unconscious at all. I read somewhere that the average dream only takes a few seconds to play out in the sleeper's mind. A dream that "lasts" for several hours in the dreamer's mind might take only the time required to blink one's eyes a few times. That would suggest that our brains can "think" at speeds suitable for space travel, while we're not cluttering them up with conscious thoughts.

I had several dreams that night and, while they might only have taken a total of ten or fifteen seconds of my sleep time, when I woke up I felt like I'd pulled another all-nighter cramming for final exams in college. Let's just say I didn't feel rested.

One of those dreams was about me answering the phone and Hannah saying , "She shouldn't have asked you." Then, magically, I was transported to her living room and we were sitting on the couch. Hannah stood up suddenly and said, "Does my butt look fat? I think this outfit makes my butt look fat." And I answered, "No, I don't think so. Actually, your ass is perfectly symmetrical when compared to your waist and luscious titties." For some reason calling them "luscious titties" didn't faze either of us and felt completely appropriate in this dream.

Then I stood up and said, "But I have a question for you. Does my cock bulge out too much in these shorts?" For some reason I was wearing silk boxers in this dream, and nothing else. She looked at me critically and said, "Well those shorts certainly show it off." To which I answered, "Well I don't want to advertise or anything." Hannah walked around me once, looking me up and down and said, "No, she'll love it. Just make sure you don't take them off. Nobody gets to see that big boy except me!"

In another dream I was standing in a big, airy room with my back to Harper. I was naked and she kept saying, "Turn around, Bob. I can't draw you that way!" But I couldn't turn around because I was masturbating, trying to get my erection to be soft.

Then there was one in which I was standing in that same bright room and Harper turned the easel around to show me what she'd finished. "What do you think?" she asked. The picture showed me standing regally with my hands on my hips. She'd drawn me with a heavily muscled torso and legs. I was gorgeous. Except that my penis looked like a peanut lying on a ball of cat fur.

There was one more that I remembered vaguely. It involved Harper being the naked one, while I was fully clothed. I was lying down on a couch with my leg raised in much the same pose as I'd imagined Hannah in - the porn pose - and Harper was frowning, saying, "It isn't supposed to be this way!"

I'm sure a psychologist or shrink would have a field day explaining these dreams, but all they did was make me frustrated. Obviously this whole pose-for-Harper-naked thing was bothering me. The problem was that I didn't have a clear understanding of why it bothered me. I mean obviously nothing would happen, except she'd draw me. I had fantasies about women all the time, so that wasn't a big deal. I hadn't had one of those fantasies about Harper. I'd looked her over and appreciated her budding womanhood, but all that resulted in was thinking about what a heartbreaker she was turning out to be. By that I mean there would be one winner and a whole bunch of guys with broken hearts, once she was claimed. As for Hannah, I'd had a few errant X-rated fantasies about her when Denny was still alive, but not since he'd died. I started to have one, once, but in that fantasy she was crying and that pretty well put the kibosh on that.

Of course there had been that erection, the night before, when the whole subject came up. And my mind hadn't been disciplined enough to manage things, but I blamed that on the unexpectedness of the whole thing. That's the thing about X-rated fantasies. They can happen at dream speeds, before your conscious mind can do anything about them.

As I think back on it now, I think the whole situation changed on me without warning. I had, for various reasons, put Hannah and her daughter in a box marked "No trespassing". Then Harper popped out of that box like a demented clown, pulling her mother with her, and I couldn't stop myself from thinking about them in ways that, before this, had been off limits.

The problem is, you can't put the djinn back in the bottle once he's been released. I know the story says you can, but it's more complicated than that. In my case once I started thinking about Harper and Hannah and me and nakedness ... I couldn't banish those thoughts from my mind completely. Either asleep or awake.

And the next time I went over there, it got even worse.

It took me almost a week to get up the courage to go back and see them. That was a long time, relatively speaking, at least based on my past behavior. But it wasn't unheard of for me to get busy and "neglect" them for a while. Hannah left me alone, probably to let me work things out in my mind. She knew me well enough to know how my mind worked. And there really was no big rush. Harper still had plenty of time to turn in a portfolio. She was only a junior, for pity's sake.

Neither of them acted any different, in fact, when I tapped on the door and then walked in, as I usually did.

"It's just me," I called out.

"Doing laundry," I heard Hannah's faint voice come back.

I was almost bowled over as Harper fairly tackled me. That wasn't unusual, either.

"Come with me!" she said, excitedly. "I just have to show you what I did!"

She pulled me upstairs to her "studio", which is what she'd started calling the guest bedroom. There were two easels set up. One of them had a partially finished oil painting of a landscape on it. The other was covered by a drape. I was used to the clutter of art stuff in the room. All I did was sleep there, occasionally, and didn't spend a lot of time in that room.

"Stand over there," she said, pointing to a spot about seven or eight feet from the draped easel. I did and, with a "Ta da!" she dragged the sheet off of the portrait she'd drawn of her mother.

Harper might have all the time in the world to finish her figure studies, but that didn't mean she wasn't eager to get them done. That was obvious, because this one was almost finished.

That it was Hannah was not in doubt. It looked almost like a black and white photograph, so detailed was it, except it was too soft to have been taken by a camera, at least without a special effect filter. I stepped closer but there were two of me when that happened. One of them was the art critic, examining what turned out to be a combination of chalk and pencil that had been masterfully applied to thick, pebbled paper to create shadows in patterns that produced the illusion of Hannah's form. Up close you could see the strokes and places where chalk or graphite had been lifted slowly from the paper such that it got lighter and lighter until, at one point, one bump on the pebbled surface of the paper was stained and at the next bump wasn't.

I stepped back again, which was required by the "other" me. That wasn't the art critic at all. That was the horndog male who wanted to gaze lustfully on the stunning rendering of a gorgeous woman who didn't have a single stitch of clothing on her voluptuous body.

As I said, the woman on the paper was obviously Hannah. Her facial features were unmistakable, and yet there were subtle differences that made her look like, perhaps, Hannah's sister. I later found out Hannah had insisted on that. This drawing was only supposed to be used for Harper's portfolio, but it if ever found its way into the public eye, she didn't want people recognizing the model. And to her, the finished product didn't look like "her". I think this is the same phenomenon that happens when one hears one's recorded voice. It doesn't sound like "you" when you hear it, not to you. It actually sounds exactly like you to everybody else, but not to you. So what looked exactly like Hannah Hooker to me looked like someone different to her.

I mention their last name here, because the piece was signed in the lower right hand corner. A stylized "Hooker" was done calligraphy style. I'd seen that on other finished pieces and I knew she only signed the things she was proud of.

The irony was that, in this context, it looked (to me) more like the title of the piece, instead of the artist's signature.

That's because the pose Hannah had put her mother in was reclining, with a bolster under her armpit. Her head was supported by her hand, which was in turn supported by her elbow on the bed. Her upper knee was bent just enough to bring that heel to the calf of her lower leg, which created a bit of shadow just below what were obvious wisps of pubic hair. That she'd been lying on the bed in the room was obvious, because Harper had included two pictures hanging on the wall above the bed in the drawing. Hannah's breasts had been rendered full and heavy, with large erect nipples on them. The look on the model's face was straight out of the Playboy playbook, communicating that this woman had no problem offering herself to the observer.

In other words, she looked like a high-priced call girl who was reclining, resting, as she watched her man get dressed to leave her. Her face communicated unhappiness that he was leaving, but a relaxed joy at what he had just given her.

To put it crassly, she looked very well-fucked.

I realized I was standing there with my mouth hanging open, quite possibly drooling, again. My penis announced it was in dire need of sexual attention, having attained a state of erection that was almost painful.

"Well?" Harper's voice held hope. Before I could answer Hannah chose that time to come into the room.

"Harper! You weren't supposed to show him that!" She stopped as if frozen by Professor Ice's freeze ray. All that came out of her immobile body then was a soft, "Shit."

"Don't be that way, Mom," said Harper. "You know people are going to see this."

"Yes, but not Bob," said Hannah, unfreezing.

"It's not a photograph, Mother," said Harper, pragmatically.

"It's close," I sighed. I blinked. I hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"Great," muttered Hannah. "I told you not to show it to him, Harper!"

"I just thought if he saw how beautifully yours came out, he might decide to pose for me himself," complained Harper.

My mind went into overdrive. My eyes were still staring at Hannah's portrait, but in my brain her form was replaced by my body, in the same pose as hers had been. The fact that she had actually been on the bed I slept in when I stayed over, and that she'd obviously been lying there naked - I didn't believe for a second that what Harper had drawn had been from her imagination - didn't help any. And, since Harper's figure studies obviously meant nothing could be covered, that meant my rampant boner was on clear display.

Do not mistake me, I didn't see myself in that imaginary portrait as "waiting for my lover" or anything so tasteful(?) as that. It just looked like a horny old goat to me, slavering while waiting for some poor woman to stumble into his bed to be ravished.

I was saved, quite possibly in a literal sense, by Hannah covering her portrait back up with the sheet that had been over it, originally.

"Mom, you are so pitiful," said Harper.

"Oh yeah? How about you show him you, looking like that," snapped her mother. She blinked and frowned. "No. That didn't come out right."

"I wouldn't mind," said Harper, breezily. "Not if I were as beautiful as you."

Even I recognized that as a blatant attempt to ingratiate herself with her mother, who proved she was just as perceptive when she groaned, "Oh pu-leeez." It actually helped me get some control over myself.

The first thing I did was cover my boner with both hands. That seemed a little obvious, though, so I turned away from both women and went to examine the half-finished landscape on the other easel. I made sure I was facing away from both women.

"You do good work, Harper," I said, as casually as I could.

"Thank you," she said, primly. "So, will you pose for me?"

"Harper!" snapped her mother. "We talked about this!"

"I don't see why he'd object," argued Harper, as if I wasn't standing four feet away from her. "It's not like we're strangers. And you know I can't afford to hire somebody, who, I might point out, would be a stranger. Do you want me looking at a strange, naked man?"

"Harper," said her mother, also as if I weren't there. "I've lived with you all your life and even I felt embarrassed to be that way in front of you. I won't let you put Bob through something like that."

"Well!" I said, explosively. "I guess I'd better get going."

"What?" complained Harper. "Why? You just got here."

I glanced down and realized there was no way I could get out of there with my pride intact unless I sidled out of the room facing away from them. That would look decidedly odd. I reached to do an adjustment, pushing my cock upright. The tip dug uncomfortably into where my belt held my pants up, but it looked better.

"Oh, you know," I said, lamely. "Places to go. People to meet, things to do."

"I thought you were staying for supper," said Harper. "Isn't that why you came over?"

"Harper, Honey, could I have a private moment with Bob?" Hannah's voice was calm.

"What? Why?"

"Please?" said her mother sternly.

"Adults are so ... frustrating!" snapped Harper, but she stalked to the door and stomped down the stairs toward the living room.

It was quiet in the room. I was still facing away from her, though I'd forgotten to make it look like I was "engaged" in examining any other art in the room.

"I'm sorry, Bob," said Hannah, softly.

I was still too rattled to examine her apology. I didn't even know what it was for.

"She wasn't supposed to show it to you," Hannah continued.

I forced myself to say something.

"It's okay."

"I probably shouldn't say this, but in a way I'm glad she did," said Hannah.

That got my attention. I turned around before I could stop myself.

"Why?"

She wasn't looking at me. She was blushing, but her eyes were darting around.

"I shouldn't have said anything. Forget it."

"Forget what?" I was confused.

Finally she brought her eyes to me. To my horror they dropped and fixed on the lump in my pants. I was busted, plain and simple. I couldn't help it. Both hands came to cover my shame again.

"I'm sorry," said Hannah again. Her cheeks flamed even brighter.

This didn't make sense. If anything I was the one who should be sorry. I'd been unable to view her portrait without having inappropriate thoughts. Unwelcome thoughts. I was supposed to be Hannah's friend, not some guy who wanted to mount her silky body and bang the living shit out of her. I had betrayed her trust.

Maybe that was what she was sorry for ... the loss of trust between us.

"I couldn't help it," I rasped. "It just happened. I mean the drawing was so ... lifelike."

She looked surprised.

"I'm not angry, Bob," she said. "I just didn't expect you to respond that way."

"I know. I'm supposed to be your friend," I groaned.

"You are my friend," she said.

"You know what I mean. I shouldn't have ... reacted."

She tilted her head, examining me.

"Bob, for some time, now, I thought you might be in the closet," she said.

I froze for a few seconds, trying to make any kind of sense of that.

"What?" I gasped.

"I'm sorry!" she moaned. "It's just that you almost never ask a woman out. You haven't formed any long-term relationships with women since Denny died. I guess I thought you'd been trying to look normal when he was still here, and when we lost him you stopped doing that. I shouldn't have made assumptions. I just thought ..."

"I am not gay!" I yipped.

"I can see that now," she said. "I'm sorry for staring. I was just relieved that you reacted ... um ... normally?"

"You stared?" I looked down to see both hands securely covering my groin. I jerked them away reflexively, only to reveal there was still a bulge there. My hands went back but I pulled them up again. I didn't know what to do. I turned sideways and suddenly felt foolish.

"Sorry," she said, shrugging. "I'm a woman. What can I say?"

"I think that's supposed to be my line," I said. I blinked. "I mean I'm a man. Not that I'm trying to excuse my ... uh ... behavior."

"You don't need to excuse your behavior," she said, softly. "I know what that drawing looks like. I don't understand why, but my daughter obviously wanted to make me look like a trollop. I know what most men would think if they saw it."

"Funny story," I said, as relief rushed over me and made me almost giddy. "She signed it."

"What?" Hannah looked confused.

"She signed the portrait," I said.

"Okay." She still didn't get it.

I went to the easel and pulled the sheet off of it. It was instinctive because one needed to see the whole thing before I pointed to the name in the lower right hand corner.

"Hooker," I said.

Her cheeks had lost their glow, but it came right back.

"Oh my," she sighed. "I didn't think of that at all."

"Neither did she," I said. "But that's good. She's still innocent enough not to draw the inference."

Hannah put her hand up and rested it on the edge of the frame on the easel.

"This does not suggest innocence on the part of the artist," said the model, calmly.

"She's a teenager," I said. "Her bloodstream is chock full of hormones. I think she drew you as she wanted to see you."

"I don't want you to think I'm uncomfortable talking about this," said Hannah, taking the sheet from me and re-covering her portrait, "but a lot has happened and I'm not quite ready to confront the fact that my daughter sees me as a woman who wants ... needs ... to get laid. I mean that's what I see when I look at that. Is that what you saw, too?"

That relief I mentioned, when I realized she wasn't angry with me (and no longer assumed I was gay), combined with the relative ease of our conversation in the last few minutes, gave me the confidence to answer her question honestly.

"Actually, it looked more to me like you'd just been laid ... and happily so."

"I should be so lucky," said Hannah, adopting a snarky smile. She held up a hand to keep me from commenting. "Enough of this. Let's go get supper on the table. We can talk about this later." She frowned. "If we need to, I mean. This has all been a bit ... much ... for me, and I suspect you feel that way, too."

"What you said," I quipped.

"I'll try to keep Harper off your back," said Hannah.

I almost groaned as unwanted images flitted through my mind of me on my back, with one of the Hooker women on top of me, followed by both of the Hooker women on their backs, with me ... well ... you know.

Yes, the djinn was definitely out of the bottle.

And he was swirling all around the Hooker house, making changes in the world.

Just to recap, and set the scene for things to come, here's the assessment of the changes that had taken place in my relationship with my best friend's widow and daughter.

The way things had been was me, hanging around, being helpful after cruel fate took Denny away from his family. There had already been a friendship, and it simply deepened. My relationship with Hannah had been platonic. To Harper I was a buddy, confidante , and source of information from a trustworthy male. That had been the status quo for the last five or so years.

Then, suddenly, within a week, I had become a man who lusted after Hannah, who didn't seem to mind that I lusted after her. Not that there was any invitation there for anything more than the deeply satisfying platonic relationship we had been enjoying, but it was suddenly okay that I got an erection for her. Or her portrait, as it were. Not only that, but my innocent angel of a "niece" had the capacity to draw her mother in full triple X mode and wanted to do the same with me! Not that I thought she'd assume I'd have a boner while she was drawing me. I hadn't crossed that line, yet. But I got the feeling that, were I to accede to her request, and become her model, and should an erection ensue, her reaction wouldn't be as innocent as I'd always perceived her to be.

Basically, both women had suddenly become sexual beings in my mind, and it was obvious I was perverted enough to enjoy that fact.

It was a rather big change to what I had become both used to and comfortable with.

Of course I knew Harper was growing up ... would grow up ... would become a fully sexual being. I just didn't dwell on that, or picture it in my mind. In fact I think I avoided thinking about that. The idea of some boy on top of her made my fists clench, so I blocked that kind of thing out.

Now, however, I couldn't block it out anymore. The way in which she'd rendered her mother's face made it crystal clear that she was fully cognizant of female sexuality. Only the fact she wasn't allowed to date yet gave me any confidence that she wasn't ... experienced ... in the ways of love already.

That leads us back to Hannah, who didn't need to be innocent. I'd often thought, over the years, that she was wasting herself. She had a lot to offer a man. But I also understood the concept of not being interested in seeking a new mate. It wasn't exactly the same for me, but I felt like it was close. I had yet to meet a woman who made me feel that if I didn't snare her I'd be sorry for the rest of my life. I had even tried a couple of internet dating sites, but the results had been ridiculously unsatisfying. Hannah didn't know about that. I'd been too embarrassed to mention it. It wasn't that I'd given up looking, but the whole process seemed like it was doomed to failure from the beginning and it was a lot of work to try when I just didn't expect anything to happen. In a way, it's how I feel about fishing. I don't mind going out and enjoying the day, being in nature, but I don't actually expect to catch any fish. I'm just not good at that like other fishermen are.

The thing I kept thinking about was how relieved Hannah was that I wasn't gay. What did that mean? I knew how she felt about finding a "replacement" for Denny, but what did that have to do with my dating life? Why did she care whether I was gay or not? The only reason I could think of was that she was interested in me, but that was ludicrous. We'd seen each other regularly for years and she hadn't shown a single indication of interest in me as anything other than a friend. In fact, to find out she wasn't disappointed or offended when I horned out looking at her portrait pretty much astonished me.

Things were a little confused and I didn't want to read things in error. So basically I just closed the book and did something other than reading for a while.

Harper, of course, wasn't going to give up on trying to get me to pose for her. She needed a male model, for one thing , and I had to admit I was the logical choice. It was the naked-with-an-erection thing that was bothering me. I knew that if I did this, I'd get an erection.

So, to keep the peace between mother and daughter, I decided to negotiate. I did so at supper that night. I probably shouldn't have, because my mind was still whirling. But I did. It went like this:

"So, is there any law that says this male model you need for your other figure study has to be completely nude?"

"Not law," said Harper. "If the body is covered by clothes, though, it's not really a figure study. The point of a figure study is to exhibit anatomy and display how well the artist renders that."

"What if the model was wearing shorts?" I asked.

"You mean you'll do it if you can wear shorts?"

"Harper!" warned Hannah.

I was trying to keep the peace so I raised a hand to stop Hannah.

"I guess we could try that," I said.

Harper was happy.

She was so happy, in fact, that it should have made me wonder about that. I mean what was the big deal? I was going to sit there wearing shorts and she was going to draw me or paint me or whatever. It was just a step towards getting her portfolio in order, right?

So why was she practically overjoyed about my offer?

Except I didn't think about that then.

Which is how I ended up on a slippery slope that would change things even more.

Sort of like how Mt. Vesuvius changed the landscape 'a little' back in A.D. 79.

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