But is it art...?

[captain sensible]

I've really enjoyed reading the recent contributions to this bit of the forum, so I decided to dust off a story I wrote a while ago and post it here for its first public exposure. It's messy at the beginning and then mucky in other ways as it goes on (I'm apologising in advance in case people think it's not quite messy enough for Splosh!), and I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it:



Jemima
In which an artist’s bid for the Turner Prize gets the approval of a newspaper’s Arts Correspondent

Jemima Clutterbuck was quite a famous artist, in a limited sort of way. Her art, for which she filmed herself from strange angles being deluged with various substances and played the resulting footage back in extreme slow motion, or covered herself in paint and made full-body prints of herself in various poses, was hailed by critics as daring, original and innovative, and as a result attracted a great deal of tabloid resentment. Okay, they said, so maybe she’s not bisecting farmyard animals or showing off her horrible stained bedding, but it’s not Proper Painting is it? Not like those nice pictures you can buy in Athena...
She also produced charcoal drawings of close-ups of the architecture of her studio, but they weren’t very controversial and were therefore roundly ignored.
My editor had commissioned me to interview her. I’d met her a few times at gallery openings and awards ceremonies, and despite her reputation for being surly and difficult I’d always found her to be perfectly pleasant, if reserved to the point of being almost monosyllabic on occasion. I’d always found her sexy too, in a tomboyish, trying-a-bit-too-hard-to-be-alternative sort of way. So it was a job which, even if it wasn’t exactly going to be the highlight of my year, I was quite happy to do.
I arrived at her studio in Whitechapel. I didn’t have a photographer with me - the editor had deemed it a waste of resources. “She’s that skinny, scruffy little piece with the funny-coloured hair isn’t she?” he’d said. “What’s the point? If she’s put on fifteen stone or turned into Claudia Schiffer or something, tell us about it and we’ll send a smudger round. Otherwise we can just use library shots. Nobody’ll know the difference.”
Jemima answered her entryphone with a cautious voice, but sounded pleased when she realised it was me. “I’m right in the middle of something,” she said. “But come on up anyway.”
Abuzzer buzzed, and I pushed open the door and clumped up the bare wooden stairs.
The door to Jemima Clutterbuck’s studio was on the latch, and I pushed it open and went through to be greeted by a sight which, if not exactly shocking, was certainly startling. I closed the door hastily behind me and flipped the latch on so it was secured shut.
The first thing that came to mind was that if there was ever a James Bond film called Paintfinger, Jemima would be perfect for the Shirley Eaton rôle. She was entirely covered in paint, and she was lying on her front in the middle of a big sheet of paper which she’d taped to the floor. There was a trail of painty footprints across the floor, and paint on the entryphone. I had the feeling she was hardly aware that there was somebody in the room with her. I took my jacket off and hung it up on a hook on the back of the door, hopefully out of range of flying spatters. I cleared my throat and said, “Hello, Jemima.”
“Hi,” she said. She peeled herself off the paper and stood at the side of it, looking appraisingly at the print she had left. It looked like a Blue Peter version of the Turin Shroud. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s very you,”I said. I was standing next to a not unattractive girl who was very obviously wearing nothing at all under the paint, and it was difficult to think of anything apart from that. “You’re naked,” I said.
“Of course I’m naked,” Jemima retorted, as if I’d pointed out that she had a head. “I didn’t want this to be a print of my clothes, I wanted it to be a print of me.”
“I thought you might have worn a bikini.”
“That would still get in the way. Why are you so coy about it, anyway?You’re a bloke, aren’t you?. I wouldn’t have thought you’d mind seeing a nudie girl once in a while.”
“It just wasn’t what I was expecting, I suppose. What if I’d had somebody else with me?”
“Then they would have seen me naked as well,” said Jemima. “I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. If you saw this painting you’d know I did it without anything on, wouldn’t you? So why is it shocking for you to actually see me do it?”
“It isn’t shocking,” I said. “It was just a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t expecting you to lay yourself so bare before me.”
“Ha ha,” said Jemima. “Very funny.” She squinted at the paper, her hands on her hips. She put her head on one side thoughtfully, and nodded to herself. “That’ll do,” she said. Then she carefully peeled the strips of gaffer tape around the edges of the paper away from the floor, leaving them attached to the paper. I came forward to help her as she lifted the paper, and we carried it across to the far side of the studio and draped it over a drying rack.
“I think I might do another one,” she said. “What do you reckon?”
“Go ahead,”I said. “It’s always best to do these things while you’ve got the urge.”
“I’m not sure what colour to use, though.”
“I always liked purple, although turquoise is nice too. Not that I’m employed for my colour sense.”
“Turquoise...,” she murmured. “Right.” She trotted decisively across the studio to a cluster of bottles containing child’s poster paints. “Blue,” she said to herself, grabbing a few bottles out of the group. “Green. A touch of yellow. A little bit of white. Okay.”
She popped the tops from the bottles and squeezed a generous dollop of each into a big tray that looked like it had once seen service at the bottom of a shower cubicle. She began to stir the paint together with her hand, and then looked up at me. “I’m not sure how to ask you this,” she said, her hand stirring the paint on automatic. She sounded apprehensive, which was unlike her.
“Try me,” I said. I had no idea what she was going to say, but so long as it wasn’t a demand for a donation of blood for the paint-mixing process I felt I would probably go along with it.
“How would you feel about being immortalised in paint?”
“In what way?” I asked carefully, thinking I probably knew what she meant but wanting her to spell it out to me just in case I was completely misreading the situation.
“I’d like to try a print of two people,” said Jemima. “But I’d like it to be two people at once rather than me twice on the same sheet.”
“Haven’t you done that before?”
“No. I was waiting for the right person to ask.”
“And you’re asking me now?”
“Yeah. I’d really like you to do it.”
“You’re asking me to strip off, cover myself in paint and roll around with you on a big sheet of paper,”I said.
“Seeing as you put it so directly, yeah,” Jemima said, sounding a little sheepish.
“Okay.” I didn’t need to think about it for long. “Sounds like fun.”
“It is fun,” she said. “You can leave your clothes in my bedroom. It’s through the door over there, and first on the right.”

I came back into the studio flushed, self-conscious and semi-erect. I didn’t know exactly what sort of ‘rolling around with her’ Jemima was going to want me to do, but my subconscious seemed to have decided already.
The floor was coated with martial arts matting which moved slightly under my bare feet. While I was undressing, Jemima had fetched another great sheet of thick frieze paper and taped it down in the place where the other one had been. She smiled approvingly at me. “Nice,” she said. “You’ll make a great print.”
“I could be in better shape.” I sucked my stomach in to demonstrate.
“If you’re too firm you don’t make such good contact with the paper. That’s my trouble, really. I’m too thin.”
“I think you look fine,” I said, and then wasn’t sure I should have because I suspected she wasn’t fishing for compliments. But it was true - she did look fine. More then merely ‘fine’, in fact.
“I’m too thin,” Jemima repeated. “I’ve got no tits. And my hip bones stick out. Look, even on the painting you can tell. There’s just this big hard line where there ought to be a curve. It’s just not sexy.”
“People who think it’s not sexy didn’t see the way you painted it.”
She reached out and rubbed the underside of my penis gently with a knuckle. “I can see you like it,” she grinned.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “It’s an automatic reaction.”
“Don’t apologise.”
It wasn’t easy to read her face; partly because it was covered with drying poster paint, partly because I didn’t know her very well, and partly because I still wasn’t sure what her agenda was. I felt off-balance and on guard. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just wondering what’s going to happen next.”
“Don’t you know?”
“I want you to tell me,” Jemima said, her voice softening, the smile on her face less ambiguous. “I want you to tell me what you think might happen. Then maybe it will.”
“Well, presumably you’re going to cover me with paint,”I said.
She nodded. “Right,” she said.
“And I might have to put a bit more paint on you. It’s nearly rubbed off you in a few places.”
“Which places?”
“Your bottom,” I said. “There’s not a lot of paint left on your bottom.”
“No, there isn’t,” said Jemima. She was facing me, her weight on one leg, her hands on her hips. Her eyes flicked down to my erection and lingered there for just long enough for me to be sure that was what she was looking at, and then back to my face. She was still wearing her amused expression. I felt very self-conscious, and horny as hell at the same time.
“I think your breasts need a new coat as well,” I said, feeling very daring.
“And how will you put the paint on me?”
“Well, I can’t see a brush I can use.”
“Can’t you?”
“No. I suppose I’ll have to use my hands.”
“I suppose you will.”
There was a very exciting pause.
“So what do you think is going to happen,” Jemima said, “when we’re both covered in paint?”
We looked at each other, and I felt we both did have the same agenda.
“What would you like to happen next?” I asked, just to make sure.
“You could kiss me, if you like,” said Jemima.
So I did.
Soon I was standing behind Jemima in the tray of paint with my hands on her hips, and my erection pressed into the small of her back. She wriggled back against me, her freshly coated buttocks squidging against the tops of my thighs. I ran my hands up her flanks, feeling her ribs beneath taut skin, up to her armpits and then forward to cup her small breasts. Her nipples were firm beneath my fingers. I felt her own hands over mine, clasping them to her. She guided my hands as I squeezed and tweaked and fondled.
I kissed the top of her head and tasted paint. There was purple paint in her hair, which looked like a paintbrush that hadn’t been washed out properly. She reached back, clasped my buttocks in her hands and pulled herself against me in a reverse hug. I moved my right hand down, slithering across her flat stomach and nestling into her dense, paint-clagged pubic hair. I burrowed into Jemima’s sex, nudging against her clitoris with my thumb as my fingers eased her labia apart. She made a long, contented noise and insinuated a hand between our bodies. She grasped my erection and squeezed and rubbed it. It was my turn to make noises.
“Let’s paint,” she said.
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
We edged onto the big sheet of paper like competitors in some erotic novelty parents’ race at a school sports day, my fingers still in Jemima, her hand still grasping my cock.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” I confirmed.
We knelt down. Jemima made a little disappointed noise as my fingers slipped out of her sex, but kept her fingers tight around me. She pivoted around and faced me. “Alright?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said, and kissed her. For quite a long time...

“I’m going to come,” I managed.
“Do it on the paper,” Jemima urged as she masturbated me. “Right here, between us. Shower your cum on the paper.”
There was quite a lot of it. Most of it spattered onto the paper, although the first spurt hit Jemima on the thigh. She smiled at it, and then at me. “Perfect,” she said. “I’ll just add a little something of my own.” She squelched her fingers around in her sex and dabbled them on the paper, just below the print of her pubic hair.
“All finished?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Jemima. “That’s the painting done, though.”
We stood up on stiff legs and looked down at the imprint on the paper; two indistinct but recognisable human shapes, blurs and smudges around the edge like cartoon motion lines, some very noticeable genitals on my side, and the spatters of something between us. I draped my arm around Jemima’s shoulder. “So you’ve never done a painting like that before?” I asked, feeling a little breathless.
“No,” she said with a smile, sliding her own arm around my waist.
“What do you think?”
“I like it,” she said.
“The method, or the results?”
“Both.”
“If you ever want to do another one, or make a series of them, let me know,” I said.
Jemima kissed me. “I’ll have to prepare some more paint first,” she said. “But we could practice our wriggling techniques now so we’re good and ready for the next one.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere tonight.”
“Good,” said Jemima, giving my bottom a squeeze and then an affectionate but surprisingly hard slap. “Let’s stay in and fuck.”

We showered the paint off, helping each other get at those hard-to-reach places. And some other places which are easy enough to reach yourself, but which it’s more fun having somebody else reach for you. It took a while, because when you try to wash off water-based paint with water the first thing that happens is that you get more paint. But there are some things you never mind taking your time over.
And so to bed. The room was lit yellow from the glow of street lights shining through muslin screens drawn across the Velux windows in the roof, and pink from the lava lamp glooping away on top of a vividly-painted chest of drawers. Jemima sat naked in the middle of her futon with her legs crossed, gently glowing from the shower and looking rather more pink and scrubbed than I was used to seeing her. Her pubic hair was dense and very dark in the shadows between her legs.
The futon creaked woodenly as I put my weight on it and came towards her on all fours.
I crouched in front of her. “Hello, Jemima,” I said.
“Hello yourself,” she grinned, and we kissed. She reached out for my cock and closed her fingers around it. I reached out to stroke her breast. Her nipple was hard against my palm. I lost my balance and went forward onto my knees almost as if paying homage to her, which I immediately decided I wanted to do. I was unable to reach her feet which otherwise I would have kissed; instead I kissed my way slowly up the insides of her thighs to her sex.
Jemima sighed happily and pressed herself into my face as I kissed, tongued and slurped. Her wetness tasted strong and gamey. I located the nub of her clitoris with my tongue. She unfolded her legs and lay back, propped up on her elbows and watching me.
At last I kissed my way up her to her mouth. She returned my kisses very deeply and then announced, “You taste of me.”
“And how would you know what you taste like?”I smiled.
“Because when I masturbate I like to suck my fingers clean,” Jemima said in a quiet, confessional voice. “It’s much nicer than just wiping them on a tissue. And I’ve tasted a few other girls in my time, too... Did you know I was bisexual?”
“I know there are rumours that you are, but I never thought it was any of my business... I just knew I fancied you, that was all. But I’m not surprised other women would feel the same way about you.”
“I’m just surprised the tabloids haven’t picked that one up yet.”
“Don’t look at me,”I said. “I write for a broadsheet. We’re not interested in gossip.”
“Good,” Jemima smiled. “So how about you? Have you ever tasted cum?”
“Sometimes, when I masturbate...”
“And have you ever tasted anybody else’s?”
“Another man’s, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
There didn’t seem to be any reason to deny it. “Yes, I have,”I said.
Jemima nodded, smiling. “Good for you. I like the idea that we’re both bi.” She put her arms around me and rolled us over so that she was on top, and kissed me. “I love to see two men together. It makes me go all gooey just to think about it. Have you ever fucked a man?”
My heart was pounding at the memory. It was something I’d told very few people; not because I was ashamed or embarrassed about it, but because I simply didn’t think it was anybody’s business who I’d slept with.
“Yes,” I said. “I had a bit of a fling once. We weren’t together very long, but it was pretty intense. Lots of sex. Well, you know what men are like. We’re obsessed with it.”
“That goes for some women, too,” said Jemima.
“Really?”
“Oh yes.” She kissed my whole face, my ears, my neck, the hollow at the base of my throat. She nuzzled into me, nibbling my collarbones. She sucked, nipped and tongued my nipples into aroused hyper-sensitivity. Then she turned herself around and knelt astride me, her bottom just inches from my face and filling my whole field of vision. I felt her squeeze my sex firmly with her fingers, and then the hot, enveloping wetness of her mouth.
I could reach her with fingers and thumbs and did so. She felt wonderfully squelchy. I smeared her secretions around her sex, my touch slithering wetly across her labia, and then her buttocks. By craning my neck I was able to lick her sex as my nose pressed into the pucker of her anus. She made an indistinct but appreciative noise through her mouthful of penis. Bending over me with her knees apart her buttocks were as parted as they could be, her anus open and vulnerable above me. She made a long, slow sigh and let me slip out of her mouth. “I love having my bum played with,” she breathed, nuzzling my cock and wiping it all over her face, and then taking it back into her mouth.
I teased her anus with a lubricated finger, crossing and circling it and seeing it move and ease open a fraction. I slid a finger up her, and then eased another alongside it as she sucked me anew. She lowered her bottom towards my face. It was as easy to reach her with my mouth as it was with my hands, so that’s what I did. I pulsed the tip of my tongue inside her and kissed and sucked and licked. She tasted earthy and organic, and very moreish.
Eventually Jemima sat up and shuffled forward on her knees. She reached down between her legs for my cock, and rolled a condom into it. I held her hips, gazing at her slender back as she lowered herself towards me.
She sat down on me so that I slipped easily inside her. An involuntary noise of delight came from me at the same time as Jemima’s long, gasping moan as she caught her breath. She ground her bottom into my crotch and rotated her hips. I tried to thrust back up into her, but it wasn’t really possible the way she was sitting on my hips. She squeezed her internal muscles against my erection, and hugged my arms to her.
I lay back with her lying on top of me, her back against my chest, my cock embedded deep inside her, my fingers delving where I entered her and feeling complex folds and squelchy wetness. She tweaked and pinched her own nipples until I took the hint and did it for her. She shuddered delightedly, making little mewling noises. I realised she had come but as yet I hadn’t, which was somethng of a first.
“You know what I’d love now?” she said.
“What?”
“Fuck me up the bum.”
How could I refuse? Jemima had a very nice, very fuckable bottom.
She sat up and then went forward onto all fours. My cock slid out of her and bounced heavily over my groin, trailing silver mucus from deep within her. She looked around her arm and smiled a yearning smile at me as I raised myself up on my elbows. Her hair, still a little damp from the shower, fell across her face. We seemed to have got all the paint out; the vivid magenta and bleached blonde combination was her usual hair colour.
I crouched over her small frame on all fours, my penis poised between her buttocks. “Do you need some KY?”
“I’m so wet it’s running down my legs. It would be a shame to waste all that.”
My fingers slid and glided up the insides of her thighs, over her sex, across her anus.
“Do that with your cock.”
I guided it with my hand as I smeared her considerable wetness between her spread buttocks.
“Do you want to pretend I’m a boy?” she breathed.
“I prefer girls,”I told her.
“Good.”
I positioned myself, still guiding my cock with my hand, and pushed into her. She gave a low moan, pressing herself back at me.I smoothed more of her wetness on the shaft of my cock and around her anus, drawing appreciative noises from her throat. I pushed carefully but firmly into her again, again, again, each time moving deeper inside her. It was a snug but comfortable fit... comfortable for me, anyway.
“Okay down there?” I asked softly.
She made a long, affirmative noise, pushing back so my balls were almost against her buttocks. “You’re in me. Now fuck me.”
So I fucked her slowly, implacably, rhythmically, feeling her pressing back against my thrusts, listening to her gasps and moans and inarticulate words of pleasure and encouragement and approval, fucking her harder and faster now, and using my fingers on her and feeling her fingers already there, and coming at last, and hearing and feeling her coming too, and collapsing with her in a sweaty, giggly, satisfied, shagged-out tangle of limbs...

Next morning, and my mobile rings. It’s my editor.
“How did you get on with that Jemima?” he says.
“Pretty well. She seems to appreciate that I want to get to know the real her.” She’s being very appreciative at this exact moment, which is making it hard for me to concentrate on the conversation.
“Don’t forget, the deadline for the piece is Friday. So I need you to probe her in depth. Explore every opening. Find out what really makes her tick. Get whatever you can out of her.”
“She’s giving me everything,”I assured him. “Hang on, got to go, something’s just come up.”

[Richard]

Mmmm, nice one captain I think I'm almost as keen on art as you obviously are

[Squelch]

Nice one captain

Enjoyed reading that. Wonder if our local paper needs an art critic?

[shredder]

Oh, I am quite sure it is messy enough for Splosh! Thanks for sharing.

My only question was - who is this Art? The writer?