Other Colors -- Ch. 15 (part 1) - Sex Stories

Other Colors -- Ch. 15 (part 1)

... Jupiter and Thetis ; the high Olympian impervious to the little nymph’s pathetic supplications. Perhaps he’d think of me throughout the day. Perhaps he wouldn’t. I, however, had not the liberty to ignore him. In the weeks that were to follow, I would spend much of the time he was gone simply wondering when he would return. At its worst, I would ruminate, and pine, and pace the floor. I couldn’t help it. My surroundings, my work, my entire daily existence hinged upon him. Over time, that lonesomeness evolved into a linear function, and I felt his absence more and more acutely the longer he stayed away. There were times when Lacoste itself—in all its opulent emptiness—became its own subtle and stinging sort of torture to me. I suppose that’s why I never once dreaded his homecomings. I looked forward to them, because no matter what new and ingenious torments might await me in his arms, he was home. He was with me. And that was enough to numb the sting. But that venom was insidious, and the first tincture touched my veins the moment I stood up from the table. I wiped my eyes, and got myself lost for a while; wandering wraith-like amid the many rooms and corridors, and taking in the obscene array of paintings that comprised Dmitri’s collection. His possessions were far more precious than I’d realized on my first two whirlwind visits to Lacoste. I was stunned. What I found on his walls rivaled most museums, and half a dozen times at least, I stopped cold before something that I ...

... would have sworn on my soul he’d stolen from the d’Orsay, the Uffizi, or the Met. I lingered in front of the Susannah and the Sensuality of Franz von Stuck. He had them hanging side-by-side. I stood even longer with a little lithographic study for the infamous Puberty of Edvard Munch . But it was Schiele’s Danaë that caught, and kept me. I spent easily a quarter hour staring at it, my arms crossed and lips parted, recalling Madame’s ridiculous story about his porcelain palette. Perhaps it’s true. Danaë is one of those paradigmatic damsels of the Western canon. Everyone paints her once. Titian did an entire series of her. But Egon Schiele’s was an oddity. Compositionally, it echoed Rodin’s depiction as much as Klimt’s—maybe more so. I stepped back, and let my eyes lose focus. I think it was Ovid. He always seemed to handle the more ‘messed up’ of the myths. He wrote that Danaë , to safeguard her virginity, was locked away in a sumptuous, bronze dungeon. She was safe there. She had everything she could possibly want. Until one day, predictably, Zeus climbed down from his mountain and deflowered her. I frowned. The story was not in the least unique, but I think what the Masters have always been most taken with is the way that he took her—as a golden shower of glittering coins. I shook my head. It never seemed especially sensuous me. Frankly, I’d always found the story of Danaë a bit venal. But that morning, I felt strangely inclined to defend the poor princess, having found myself ...