Art, For Pete's Sake

The muffled sound of footsteps rapidly climbing the stairs came to me through a fog of tiredness, last night's hangover, a multiple cloak of blankets on my bed and the pillow under which my head lay as extra insurance.

"Get up, get up, get up! I need you... now!!"

"Go awa...can't... later, 'K?"

"No, no... get up I need you NOW!"

The pillow I was clinging onto with both hands was rudely ripped away and hoisted across the room, and the blankets were thrown off the foot of the bed. I lay there in just my boxers - well, only just in my boxers, I think they'd worked their way down my hips a bit during last night's dream about Jenny - oh Jenny, oh Jenny, oh - where the fuck are my blankets??

I raised my head and Mum came blurrily into focus.

"Hi Mum" my eyes closed again.

"Pete. Pete. Peter Amesbury..!! If you've not got yourself out of this bed and downstairs in five minutes I'm coming back up here with a bucket of water! I'll be waiting for you in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, now...up!" She thwacked me one on the ass.

Five minutes later in bare feet, with a hastily pulled-on T-shirt and shorts, and my tousled hair looking more like the mop-head in the kitchen corner, I slid into a chair and gulped down mum's coffee.

She was waiting impatiently, taking glances at her watch.

"Tell me when you're ready..?"

I got up, shuffled over to the sink, opened the cold tap and with both hands threw water into my face.

Aaah, Jeez..!! It was freezing...! Well, it was coming up to Christmas, after all...

"Hi Mum, you look nice. What brings you home at..." I glanced at the clock, "ten-past-twelve lunchtime?"

"Pete, listen to me, I've not got much time, I'm on my lunch-break." Ah, my mum, Mrs. Michelle Amesbury, the conservatively dressed teacher. So demure.

"Yes ma'am."

"I need a favour from you. I need you to come out with me tonight, to a pub."

"Can't. I'm bartending at the 'Twisted Wheel' again tonight, you remember? And anyway, the alcohol's probably better there..."

"I'll pay you double..."

"What?!? Mum, you serious?"

"Deadly. I'm in a fix."

"I'm all ears - well, now I am anyway..."

"Pete..."

"Yes?"

"No, not you, the other one..."

"Oh, you mean Peter Pick-Arse-Oh..."

"Will you just stop that? I know you don't get along with him, but I'm going out with him and I want to give it a chance..."

"OK, sorry..."

"Anyway, Pete..." She looked at me. I returned the look, blankly. "Pete went off with his mates to Scotland at the weekend, skiing and..."

A broad grin spread across my face.

"Are you going to say what I think you're going to say?"

"... and he fell and broke his leg in a couple of places..."

"I knew it! Priceless! That pompous twa..! I mean, that silly fellow! Oh, the bloke who's a genius at everything he turns his hand to...I'll bet it was on the nursery slopes as well...haha..!!"

"Now I've told you - stop that..." Pause. "Yes, he was a bit pompous about it, wasn't he?"

We both burst out laughing and I did my best impression of a skier losing his balance and dropping arse-over-tit into a cavern.

"Was probably pissed on the piste..."

We both laughed, but then Mum got serious, placing her hands over mine.

"The thing is this. Maureen and a couple of the others at work have been laying into me for weeks about how I should have got over your dad by now and should have got back into the saddle and found myself a new fella. Well, I kept telling them I'd found one, even before Pete came along, just so's they'd get off my back about it. Then when Pete DID come along, even though Pete's a bit, you know..."

"How many adjectives do you want to go with that?"

"Well, when he came along I was suddenly able to fill in a lot of details, about how he's an artist.."

"He says he's an artist..."

"...and how he's a bit younger than me..."

"Which is no surprise, you could knock the young women straight out the park..." She really could.

She smiled. "And how he's good-looking..."

"Eh...I'll give you that...in a non-homosexual way of course..."

"But now all the staff are meeting up tonight for pre- Christmas drinks, and they made me promise to bring Pete along. If I don't bring him I'll never hear the last of it, they'll think I've been lying to them..."

"But he's injured - legitimate excuse."

"No, they won't believe me. But if you came in his place and pretended to be him..."

"Oh no. Oh no no no NO!!"

"But it's ideal don't you see? You study art and drama, it's a cinch, this is a combination of both! Look at it as your end-of-term exam."

"I've already done those."

"And?"

"It was a doddle."

"See? You're a natural. You'll get extra credits too."

"Oh, how's that?"

"I'll cuddle you for a week."

We both laughed.

"Starting now..." She got up and came round the table, and from behind she put her arms around my chest and pressed herself into me, her breasts squishing into the back of my neck and her chin resting on my head.

Leaning my head back to fully enjoy the effect, I sighed, "In that case, how can I refuse?"

She pressed into me again.

"That one's on the house."

...

Later in the afternoon after Mum had returned from work, had a shower, changed into a loose skirt and put her feet up, I told her we had to do a bit of preparation if we were going to pull this off properly. So, what were her mates liable to ask us about?

Mum laughed at that and replied that the Spanish Inquisition paled in comparison to her workmates, and that dock-workers would blush at some of the things they came out with.

"But Mum, these are teachers...and I thought you wanted me to help you, not chase me away."

"First and foremost, love, they're women with women's needs. Much like me, in fact. Some of them are unmarried and looking full-on at a life of spinsterdom, so any juicy morsel we can toss them is fodder to their fantasies. Some of them have been married for years and are thinking, 'My God, is this all there is?' and when they see you, handsome scrumptious you, they're going to think, 'mmm, maybe not, after all...'. We all of us share our most intimate moments and our deepest fears, we talk candidly about everything through period pains, dildos, size of a partner's organ and most importantly how he makes use of it and we even manage to come up with suggestions for many additional positions not yet listed in the Kama Sutra. You still there? You look a bit pale...Anyway, the good news is that they won't ask you about kinky positions at a first meeting. They might, well, they probably will, corner me and ask me, but you won't be asked to corroborate. If you see them frequently smiling your way afterwards though, you'll know I've given you a good report."

"Thanks, I guess..."

"The bottom line is that a lot of them will be wanting to live vicariously through what they imagine we're up to behind the bedroom door, on the kitchen table and hanging from the chandelier. So, we still on?"

"Wow. And I mean, wow...and here was me thinking they'd be polite and ask noncommittal things like, how did we meet?"

"In the supermarket. He said I was gorgeous and wanted to paint me."

"I don't believe it. And you fell for that?"

"He said he had his own studio just round the corner and I could see it if I wanted to..."

"And then go upstairs and see his etchings? Mum, you're a sensible lady, but you fell for a line like that?"

"Look Pete, I've been alone for a long time now." I looked shocked. "I don't mean 'alone' alone, I mean I've got you and I don't know what I'd do without you, but, you know, at night..."

"I know Mum, I'm sorry..."

"Ah, and a cat, we've got a black and ginger cat. I don't know if it's a tomcat or not, called, um..."

"In that case I think we'll call it 'Oscar Wilde'. So... did he get round to painting you?"

Mum seemed to get a bit flustered at that point.

"A couple of times. I've not seen them yet. He said I'm a work in progress..."

I rolled my eyes at that one.

"But if he's laid up in Scotland, who's feeding Oscar?"

"Oh my God, I totally forgot! Come on, I've got the key to his studio so we can go round and feed him -her - it... "

"That's good, I can thereby inhale the charm of his studio and thus completely immerse myself in his character..."

Mum simply looked at me.

Out loud, "It's what actors do, mum..."

To myself: "Then I'll have to go for a shower..." Ah well...

We pulled up outside the house. It was one of those old Victorian things which had been sub-divided, and Pete apparently occupied the top floor and the loft which, I daresay, he called his 'garret' for greater effect. Mum climbed the stairs ahead of me, for which I was glad, because it gave me a chance to observe her legs in her swishy skirt which stopped short just above the knee. She had powerful, healthy legs - not muscly, but curvy and my appreciative eyes wished they could see even further up as they swelled out of sight into the inner depths of the material... maybe if I tripped on my way up the stairs? And the medium-high heels she was wearing gave a bounce to her bum which had me hypnotized until we finally stood outside his door and I've no idea how many floors we'd climbed...

As Mum was turning the key in the lock there was a scratching, and as the door opened a notch this whoosh of colour squeezed out and down the stairs.

"It'll come back soon, it'll be out in the back garden relieving itself..."

"So...Voila, Chez Pete..." Mum waved me inside.

"So, this is it then, our Pete's control tower? Aha..."

I looked around. It was a bachelor pad with all the attributes - the dimmer switches, discs by obscure musicians you hadn't heard of and probably weren't supposed to, giving him the air of a connoisseur; a nice variety of wines angled neck downwards so he could give them a professional twist in the presence of an appreciative female audience; kitchen implements that even professional chefs would scratch their heads over; and of course the bedroom; ah, low colours enhanced by indirect lighting subtly combined to set off the extra-large bed with its dark coffee-coloured satin sheets; and an unusually large number of mirrors. In short, a true Shag Shack.

"So his studio's upstairs then?" I was going out the door as Mum quickly put down Oscar's feeding bowl and rushed to overtake me. She squeezed past me in the doorway, her breasts pressing up against me as she did so.

"We can, ah, go in but he doesn't like his equipment messed around with." I thought, with his pad set up like that, that's probably the first thing he's looking forward to...

I followed her through the door into a room illuminated only by a shaft of the late-afternoon sun through the skylight. She flicked a switch to add the light from two bare bulbs. In the far corner was a raised section which served as a makeshift stage, on which was an armchair draped loosely with red cloth. Opposite this were several adjustable spotlights attached to two stands. I had a feeling my namesake was also into photography...

And there were canvasses, some stacked against the wall, a couple on stands, some hanging on the walls - none framed.

There was a sink with paintbrushes and there were pencils and there was charcoal; pots and tubes of paint - oils, acrylics, ink dyes. There were sheets of paper with rough sketches on them.

I began to peruse the works while Mum remained in place in front of one easel and canvas, swivelling on the one spot as she watched me navigate Pete's art. I turned to her.

"Mum, I've got to be honest with you. These are crap."

A cloud crossed her face. "No they're not. Look, I know you've got it in for him, but Pete says you've got to look beyond the superficial, and try to..."

"If I look beyond the superficial of these I'll only find the back of the canvas... Mum, just look at these - some dyslexic scribbler could do better and still get a 'fail' as a result. His sense of perspective, for example..."

"If you look at Picasso's stuff, he didn't have any perspective..."

"Mum, you look at Picasso's early Blue Period and you'll see that Picasso not only understood perspective, but he had a natural feel for that and for the subtle contours and texture of the human body. In his later works he CHOSE to ignore those things, not because he was incapable of rendering them..."

Mum was now getting agitated, and in so doing, had moved away slightly from the picture behind her.

"And what's that there?"

She made an effort to hide it but I'd already levered her to one side.

"It's not what you... it isn't..."

On the canvas was a basic outline of a nude woman sprawling in the red armchair, a black-and-ginger cat in her arms and her legs spread wide. Her hair was a similar colour to Mum's, the small birthmark on the inside of the woman's left leg also matched that of my mum - I was staring straight up into my own mother's cunt.

I don't know how long I stared at it. The cat and the cunt were the only two particulars the artist had taken time over and which were reproduced in glorious pinpoint shades. It flashed through my mind that Mum didn't need to change her hair colouring - it perfectly matched the triangle of hair adorning the top of her slit, which was being held open with one finger and exposing the pink lips inside.

I reached out and turned the picture over. On the back in pencil was scrawled a tentative title - 'Pussy and Pussy' - Oh ye gods...!

My mind was in a turmoil. I was beyond angry with Pete, and at the same time my eyes were being drawn back into the depths of Mum's cunt - maybe there was something in this 'beyond the superficial', after all...

I grabbed her by the elbow and almost frogmarched her out of the room.

"All bets are off, forget it - and when I catch that bastard I'm gonna rip his ass out through his mouth. Just the one leg broken? Wait 'til I catch him..."

She tore her arm away. Tears were welling up in her eyes.

"Please Pete, please don't get mad...it's not like that, he was so nice to me and persuasive and gentle when I posed for that, and I needed someone, please...!

"He's just a, a charlatan, a fraud, can't you see that?"

"Oh God, yes, OK, OK, maybe... I can see that now through your eyes - I'm sorry, I just needed someone..."

She broke down in a sea of tears and I cradled her in my arms, blubbering into my shoulder.

"Hey, it's not your fault, you understand? He was taking advantage of a vulnerable woman..."

"Is that how you see me? Vulnerable? Pathetic? Useless?"

"No. No, Mum. Look at me." I was trying vainly to repair the crack in the dam through which the water was pouring... "I don't see you as that. At all. I see you as the opposite. I see you as strong. You've had to put up with so much over the last couple of years, but you've kept us together, you and me, as a unit. We need each other, and I need you to remain strong, for me."

With that, I kissed her on the mouth and she tightened her grip around my back and pulled me into her. Then she released her hold and we stood gazing into each other's watery eyes. An embarrassed smile made an appearance at the edge of her mouth. I kissed her on the nose. Then we made our way downstairs, me guiding her with my one arm wrapped around her shoulder and my other hand in hers. We returned to the car and just sat for a while, me in the driver's seat this time.

"So, what now?" she asked.

"You mean the pub, tonight?"

"Well yeah, I guess it's off, right? I'll just tell them I had a big bust-up with my boyfriend. They won't believe me of course, but, what the hell... I can always drown my sorrows..."

I turned on the engine and sat staring at the steering-wheel. "No. We are going. And you're going to face, who is it? Maureen? And we're going to make her so jealous. You had an argument with your old boyfriend, but you'd already found a replacement, hadn't you?"

She threw herself across to me, her hands groping through my hair and clamped her hot open lips over my mouth. I reached across to pull her closer and felt the weight of her nearside breast fall into my hand. I caressed around the nipple with my thumb and pressed my palm into the spongy, giving mass. One of mum's hands extricated itself from the tangle that was my hair and reached beneath my shirt, and her open palm explored my chest, exiting the neck-hole to cup my chin and then down again to tease my apparently sensitive nipples. As she drew away from me then, a string of saliva still connected our mouths, and as she took out her hand to return to the passenger seat, that hand swept briefly across the crotch of my jeans.

I threw the lever into gear and we pulled sharply away from the kerb.

It was only a short drive home but I couldn't keep my eyes on the road, I kept glancing across at mum, at Michelle. Her hand covered mine on the gearstick. We changed gears together.

In no time at all we were back home, as message after message was being teleported between us through glances, by smiles and by pressure of hands. The messages didn't need deciphering. No words were needed at all.

The car had hardly come to a stop as we fairly leapt out of it. Mum's key jiggled in the lock as I pressed up behind her and the swell at the front of my pants found the depression between her butt cheeks which pressed urgently back into me. My arms around her waist, we pushed through the door as one being, in an odd quickstep. Once inside, I slammed the door shut with my heel and Mum was already turning round into me and my lips were at her neck and her lower body was thrusting up against mine. Kissing any bare flesh my lips could find, I pushed her backwards against the wall, dislodging the overcoat stand as we went. As we slid down to the floor, the stand came crashing down behind us.

We tried the impossible feat of relieving each other of blouse and shirt without releasing our mouths, then in a flurry, ripping off our own tops. I dove my nose down between the swells of her bra cups while my one hand traced the contours of her face and found its fingers being sucked into her mouth and her tongue curling round them like a snake. She didn't know what to do first, take her bra off or grapple with my belt, so I slid my arms round her back and jerked the clasp open while she used both hands to simultaneously stroke around my balls, pull at my belt, open the top button and rip my zip down. I flung her bra into the air and marveled at the beautiful pale globes now displayed and enclosed their warmth and weight in my hands. She for her part was tearing the pants down over my ass and taking my shorts with them. The only hold-up was that I was so excited that she had trouble pulling them over my dick until it was suddenly released and sprang back up like a diving-board.

We paused momentarily to admire one another before I started to pull at mum's skirt.

"Wait, wait..."

She lay back and flipped the side button and short zip, then lifted her bum. I reached for the waistband and pulled it down across the width of her hips along with her panties and tights. This I did surprisingly slowly as I wanted to savour the moment of her pussy coming into my view. She was watching my face and saw that this is what I wanted, and, bending her knees, lifted herself even further off the floor, knees together but then parting them as the bundle of clothes fell down towards her ankles. I was in awe. This was not the pussy Pete had attempted to capture so amateurishly; this was oh so much more succulent and alive and welcoming.

My kisses started somewhere around the inside of her thighs and made their way northwards, pausing only to lick into the damp groove surrounded by soft padded lips that was Michelle's cunt. Then over her mound and up in a straight line into the pool of her navel, circling it, delving inside. Her hands were pulling gently at my hair, urging me upwards. Then further, to where my hands had already been occupied fondling her nipples and appreciating the weight of each breast. I replaced them with my mouth and tongue and gave each the attention they deserved but I was still slithering northward, and by the time my tongue had passed her neck and chin and finally approached her waiting mouth, my dick which had been rubbing up to the top of her thighs was now poised at the entrance into her chasm. I gave one further heave upwards, and both my dick and tongue simultaneously thrust into her insides.