Love Monologues

Every Man needs a Muse. To A-Muse, B-Muse

Some women too. Generally those that can’t or won’t, don’t see; miss the power of being able to hold a man’s gaze with the end of your big toe.

Those are the women that prefer domination over the art of feminine prowess. Foolish! Foolish and silly girls they are, trolling around with whips and cuffs. You only truly posses a man’s soul when you keep him not by dominance, not by force.

Think of them: The muses. Let me see, there was Dora. Dora Maar, Picassos second wife, her slender nose, deep dark eyes, looking at you from behind the camera lens, willing you to reveal something of yourself.

Then, Helga Testorf: A mere house keeper, a stern rough grubby looking thing whose hair likely felt the texture of straw. And yet in her, Andrew Wyeth saw something that went undetected through the eyes of others. She, his most painted model, his most studied nude, must have slept ghost like between him and his wife. Oh how she must have burned within him, day and night. And when she posed for him she must have been soaked in his desire; seen it flow from the end of his brush, heard it when he adjusted his stool, his foot, his easel. Oh the power!

Perhaps the most inspirational of all is Gala Diakonova. She couldn’t help herself.

She did help herself to three prominent artists.

Stern with deep set dark eyes and the kind of thin lips that appear too angry to reveal themselves with full bloom. She ended up married to the surrealist Salvador Dali but when younger had started up with Max Earnst whilst already married to Paul Elvard. Her skin and soul apparently so possessing that it led the three to live happily together for three years; presumably making art and love and human origami.

He arrived late. I heard his footsteps, his muted greeting; my face turned from him, I only heard him at first. The unbuckling of his artists’ case and the scrape of his easel as he drew it across the floor.

My favourite class; a bunch of rag-tag students assembled in an old warehouse come studio space. Taught by a kind, awkward, aging man who was a fine artist of little note and whose habit it had become to play 1940s Jazz during the class.

I came here on Thursdays. He came late each time.

I was careful. I paid attention to how I presented to him. Subconsciously at first because I had never before consciously cared what men thought.

The ART of it is not in the confidence of removing your clothes nor is it simply being comfortable naked. It is finding a pose that is both accessible and challenging for the artists. That is daring yet modest and it is holding that pose, minding your thoughts. Allowing your vulnerability to be seen and yet keeping yourself hidden.

I’ve had lovers. Men and women, it mattered not because my heart was never involved. Love mattered not in love making and art and I never sought it only allowed it to follow me. It wasn’t out of cold-heartedness or conceit, I wasn’t deigning myself through some act of personal protection. I simply never felt it. I loved the art and the sex and that was all, well… and the adoration. I adored the person they made me, in oils or charcoal or pastel. Pastel especially.

He drew me in blue. Sublimely reclined lifting off the page in sky blue

I loved their awkwardness and their confidence. I loved their dejected faces when they realised they could not posses me, not truly, not wholly.

And then one wild afternoon when rain pelted like bullets and thunder shook the warehouse windows and Ella sang ‘Summertime’ it all changed.

Nicholas Bird.

I had never been touched like that before, never been enjoyed so softly. He left little blue smudged fingerprints on my body, the curve where my buttocks meets my hip, where knee turns to thigh. Long smudged lines from my jaw down my neck to my chest.

He revealed in me an intelligence I hadn’t known was there as he asked my opinion on art, theatre, and politics. We spoke of family, mine and of course, his.

Married? He had been. Children? Three, two boys and a girl. She, thank god was younger than I but not by much. Did that give me a thrill? A little.

I know what you’re all thinking. What a bloody cliché an artist and a model and I guess you’re right in some ways.

We walked though gardens arm in arm, the warm autumn light making shadows through the trees. We ate, and drank fine wine in obscure , out-of-the-way restaurants on the verge of fame.

I modelled less for others as I spent more time posing for Nicholas and eventually I left my little Thursday class behind. He painted other models but he remained removed from them in a way that made me feel angelic and he never painted them in blue.

I saw less of the few friends I had and he always found excuses for me not to meet his children. I told myself it was because he didn't want to share me.

We made love for hours at time, entwined in each other as if there were no world, no –one other than us and nothing other than a roaring fire, blankets on the floor, paints and brushes. I felt my life was bliss and I wanted nothing more.

At the beginning of our third winter together something changed. He wanted to make love less and paint me more. His pictures of me grew deeper as if he were painting not just my form but capturing my soul. I went from Sky blue to cobalt, royal blue to darkest blue. My figure continued to fall through shades until finally I became little more than a silhouette.

One dreary afternoon whilst sitting for him perched in the window sill he said. ‘Of course, I am much too old. How ridiculous we must look in the street. Probably time you let me go.’

I didn’t reply. It seemed so absurd. Perhaps, if I had been able to respond...

His studio was on the second floor overlooking the bustle of the street. You entered through a little side door in the lane. He had started living there a few weeks before, returning home occasionally for some clean underpants and a shower. I stayed with him, mostly. When I didn’t have to work, I barely left his side; I felt he was on the verge of something big, as he painted continuously. His work had become...so, free. So full of expression and yet he hardly seemed to know. He moved from one canvas to the next without a thought and it wasn’t just his nudes, his landscapes too were so alive.

I shouted out as I came up the stairs. ‘The baguette are still warm Mr. Bird, just the way you like’.

But he couldn’t have heard me. Louis Armstrong was crying out about what a wonderful world it was. And as my feet hit the top of the stairs, my mind full with the joy of love, my whole world was destroyed in an instant.

The bagettes and coffee hit the floor and formed an abstracted mess. I sunk into it, the hot coffee scorching my legs.

Hours later, after Nicholas' body had been taken away I noticed it. It stood propped up against the wall. His last painting. A figure in blue, sat on the ground, surrounded by a mess of colour.