November 2014

"But that's not art, that's porn!" The girl in the front row was ready to stamp her foot, and there was part of Jo that agreed. Koons' Made In Heaven series was made to be deliberately pornographic. It was certainly made to titillate, but mostly to challenge norms, which made it art. Before Jo could say any of this someone spoke up.

"That's the point." Harry's lazy drawl tumbled out. She didn't look at him, though he had continued to sit front and center in her class. Jo did her best not to, she knew her eyes would linger and the distance she nearly crossed in her studio and had worked hard to reassert would be gone entirely. Today's class on eroticism in art, which she had taught matter of factly for three years, felt like a mine field. Jo kept her eyes off Harry though she usually liked to look at the speaker, she could not put her eyes on him without remembering all the other things she wanted to spread over him. Everybody else was looking at him, anyway. Maybe because he was relatively quiet in class. Harry responded when called upon, but Jo avoided that too. He still always caused a stir and Jo had found out from eavesdropping on her students, his art was known, and his eclectic style and perceived mysterious ways added to his mystique. Jo who had known him when, knew he wasn't being deliberately aloof, but was shy and introverted, and occasionally self conscious, saw his choices for what they were. He dressed the way he did, as armor, a display to appear braver than he was. Based on everybodies' obvious interest in him, it was working.

The girl who had spoken, Lara, Jo recalled, and her friend, Cecilia, loved to chat about Harry, and tried to catch his eye whenever they could. He didn't notice of course. Jo wondered if he was aware of what he looked like, the pull of his gravitas, and power of his presence. She'd think it was just her because of her 'feelings' if she didn't see everybody and hear some of the responses to him.

Lara looked completely confused. She was miffed that Harry had disagreed with her but Jo could see the excitement simmering that he was paying attention to her at all, that his eyes were on her as he participated in the discussion that she initiated.

"It's meant to be provocative, and you're lookin at it with today's eyes, which is anachronistic. This was 1990 or something. Seeing graphic sex was totally counter-cultural and pornography was a lightening rod. Like gay rights now- or trans issues.It would be like someone using a trans couple now."

Lara's face twisted a bit and Jo watched Harry bow up. "That would be porn too!" She said with barely concealed disgust.

Harry looked red in the face and Jo realized that the discussion had wondered into activist territory for him. She wanted to hear what he had to say, but didn't want him to blow.

"Harry is right," She interrupted with her professor hat on. "Though Koons is a controversial figure- it is a huge part of his schtick, the context of a piece can be what defines it as art. For instance, why is a collection of neon soup cans or spattered paint art?" Jo was trying to steer the conversation.

Harry's shoulders were heaving a little and she saw him shoot a not so nice look at Lara and pick up his iced coffee violently. She was actually glad for the turn of the conversation. Jo and Harry had a meeting today and the vibe of earlier was not how she wanted to go into office hours with him after their last time alone. Without a break in the tension, she knew she would be saying his name. But that crisis seemed to be averted. As was her very tiny, largely ignored fear that Harry may have noticed or liked Lara. She was lovely, he should like her, respond to her interest. Her little green eyed monster cheered when Lara again chimed in response to her question and put another nail in the coffin.

"Well, I'm not sure they are art!" Jo shamefully cheered inside at Harry's huff at Lara's statement.

His face twisted and it was clear he wanted to engage in the conversation again, but then another student started talking about abstraction and automatic art theory and the class had totally moved of the original topic but it was great. She was enjoying the ping ponging opinions in the classroom. She sat of her desk and smiled when by a crazy turn of events Lara was defending Warhol. Somehow Jo's eyes caught Harry's. He still looked frustrated but he lit up a little at whatever he saw on her face and she nodded.

She was wondering if he'd want to talk about his frustration in their meeting- she wanted to. But it had little to do with his work or his final project that they were still trying to determine and everything to do with curiosity. Jo wanted to know things like that about Harry. When he was younger and would watch her, he would ask questions and she would answer, but they didn't talk about much beyond art.

They had reversed places, in office hours, he talked and responded to her questions and she listened. Harry had been an actively creating artist for years whereas Jo had been simply dabbling. The role reversal was exciting. But Jo found that when he talked about his process she wanted to hear about his influences and his influences made her want to hear about him.

She wanted to talk about exactly why the Lara interaction had soured his mood so. Though the acidic tingle of the conversation meant Jo would be able to hear it rather than watching his lips curls and pout while he talked. That was helpful.
Jo glanced at her watch, the smart one that yelled at her for sitting to paint for more than one hour at a time. Class was over technically and Jo would have let them continue talking about whether art could be high culture and pop culture at the same time. They had just gotten into Lady Gaga and Jo was living. And that was bringing them back to whether art could be low culture as well she could feel that they would get back to porn and erotic art and she was sad she was going to have to put an end to it.

There was another class who needed the space, but Jo was loving the class. Even Harry seemed to have perked up and was talking about Gaga and her relation to Warhol and she had to call time, because she could see the grumpy old lass who taught first year art history at the window. She, Victoria McStruppins, was not Jo's biggest fan, apparently she had an eye on Jo's work space and was happy to be the only female art faculty member, until Jo. She had especially side eyed Jo once she had started dating another faculty member and had a baby. How dare she! Jo wanted to roll her eyes at her displeased face. But instead.

"Sorry, guys, that is our time for today-though I could listen to you all go on all night!" She smiled huge at everybody, and they all smiled back, including Lara, but especially Harry. Jo had caught his eye when she scanned through the first time and she wanted to stay and look at his giant dimples. She made eye contact with everybody, but her eyes went right back to Harry and even when the rest of the student had moved on to looking at each other and packing up, a few even sprinting from class, he was still waiting for her gaze. Harry's eyes were glowing and she wanted to measure his asymmetry, the difference in his dimples. She loved that one was so much bigger than the other. It would make for a really cool cubist imitation, like the sides of his face could be pronated in. And she was still staring at him, and Harry her.

She packed up quick then. He came to stand by her desk while Professor Victoria, long may she reign, shouldered her way into the same area.
Victoria was giving them a suspicious glance. Jo didn't like that one bit. There was a student waiting on Professor Persuppins too, a male one. It pissed Jo off that her age, and she would admit, looks, or maybe Harry's, made this bitch immediately look for impropriety. There had been none. Not for a year and he had been nowhere near her professionally then.

Jo looked up with a squished brow when Harry said "Professor Smith, our meeting?" and he looked like he was afraid of her. It's an act. "I'd really like to retake the test, please." He's laying it on thick, but bitchfessor looked impressed and Jo wondered how he knew that would work.

She played along, "I have office hours, and I need a real reason I should give you another chance, not just because you need me to, Mr. Styles. Everybody had the same opportunity and time to study." And Victoria nodded at her, and her mind was blown.

They got a safe distance down the hall and Jo looked at Harry and they both burst out laughing, startling the student sat outside another office waiting.

"Sorry!" Harry stage whispered, and gave her a boyish giggle as he opened the door to her office. She fell in and Harry closed the door behind her and pressed his wiggling nose into her back and the shift in mood was sudden like the earth had tilted on its axis. For just a second, she stayed there and pressed back into his nose, and he coasted it up her spine. The shiver that he caused, and neither of them can pretend it didn't happen, because he was basically against her from ass to shoulder, and it's not chilly, was like biting into ice cream. Her teeth hurt. Jo breathed one breath and smelled her office smells, the old books and wood, and remembered her office, and the look on her colleagues face and her umbrage at Victoria's assumption. Jo took a step forward and put the desk between them.

To break them both out of it, and to remind herself of what just happened and how it can't happen again. "What was that? Didn't know you were also an actor." And she forced a giggle to glance over the fact that he just touched her and she let him, loved it.

"Oh," he let out a breath and pursed his lips. Jo saw a quick shake of his head, and he sat in the chair across from her and she copied him and tried not to shift around to much. Harry was fixing his skinny jeans, and she busied herself putting papers she had collected away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pull the crotch of his pants down. Fuck. "Oh," He started again, "I had her my first semester, and I was totally a fuck up for the first couple weeks. I'd just discovered girls--"

"What do you mean, just discovered girls?" Ethan was well aware of girls for ages before university.

"What I said. Most of college, I was kinda confused, because like I noticed earlier, when all the boys started talking about girls, that I thought they were nice, like the nicest to look at, but I really liked a boy." He was looking at her dead in the eye. Like he was daring her to respond to him, but he was gripping the sides of his chair, so Jo knew he was afraid of it to. "But I wasn't the best student in Professor Mcstruppin's class, she doesn't seem to believe in second chances. Got the lowest grade I ever got in her class. Thought I'd just play on her perception of me." He still looked worried about Jo's perception of him now. She was still going over his revelation.

"Oh!" Jo thought and it escaped through her mouth too. "Oh!" She said again. His cheeks pinked up, and Jo reached across the desk for his hand. He pried it from where it lay and she got herself together to speak, while she took it. "Sorry, I was just putting two and two together to make four. That's why Ethan never had to stop bringing you round, cuz you weren't attracted to me." She boggled at that, all evidence to the contrary now.

"Well, I thought you were very pretty and the nicest, but when I really like someone, I, like, can't seem to see anybody else when I'm feeling that. And it's why I was so crazy first year, this whole new world of flavors and shapes had opened up, and I wasn't hung up on anybody anymore. I really liked it, sampled a lot. Did that most of that year until it was normal and not so revelatory and exciting. Dated but hadn't really been hugely attracted until," he looked at their joined hands. "But I'm still me, and when I find one person who is compelling, that's where my attention or whatever fixates." And he made long eye contact, and Jo heard what he wasn't saying clear as a bell.

"So you had a boyfriend?"

"Not really, He didn't like me the way I liked him. But it went on for me for ages. I was just finally over it when I got to uni, and I got a bit drunk during freshers and this gorgeous girl kissed me, and I, just really liked the feel of her in my hands." Jo slowly released his hand at that. Because they had wandered into dangerous territory and she needed a break. Also, the thought of his hands on anybody else made her feel like Tinkerbell, only able to feel one thing at a time, and this one matched the fairy's outfit. Harry turned his mouth down and made a face like the displeased one in class, without the anger.

"Oh!" Jo said again, like an idiot. "That's why you got mad in class, at Lara."

"Yeah, Lara!" he said with loathing. And Jo was sure that even it he thought she was the prettiest girl in class, in all of the school, he wouldn't go for her. "She's a prig, and maybe a little homophobic. Saw that enough in college! At first, it was confusing for me. It seemed totally normal to me, to be attracted to boys, and then I realized I was the odd man out and that I was supposed to hide it. And I'm horrible at hiding things, especially my feeling. I have a glass face. I wanted to tell everybody, especially when the attraction seemed returned, but you can't do that around most people and it fucked everything up.... It's why," and he shut himself like a door slam. "Anyway, I can't stand it. The idiocy just makes me crazy, and I am around it less so have no tolerance. And how do you get to third year of an art degree with such a tiny mind? Arts always attract the outsiders and especially lgbt folk." He looked genuinely offended and curious.

But Jo knew enough about not being what people expected and narrow minds in every place from her own life to no longer be surprised, "I dunno, she seemed to be opening up at the end. Martha's explanation of automatic art was really good, and Lara seemed to be on board, at least with Expressionism. And she bought into pop art thanks to Gaga." And Jo is laughing at his face.

"That is supposed to be the other way around!" Harry looked offended.

"Oi, now you are a being a snob!" She was laughing in earnest now.

"Me a snob!" He gave her chicken neck, "And did you just Oi me, Jo?"

"I did, I definitely did!" She was giggling into her hand and he was grinning and his hand was still on the desk and he reached for her fingers and pulled them from her mouth.

"Why do you do that? Cover your mouth when you really laugh." His face was like a child looking at a magician's handkerchief, trying to see the secret.

Why did she do that? Her mother telling her that she laughed like a donkey brayed stuck out, and a comment Ethan's dad had made about her teeth. But she said, "I dunno. Habit really."

"You shouldn't! I remember that was the first thing that made me love your house, the way you and Ethan laughed together. Always thought he had such a fun laugh. I realized, like last year, it was yours. Shouldn't cover your joy."

Her heart was pounding. It felt like he hadn't blinked while he complimented what she perceived as a flaw. Jo was certain she hadn't blinked. She knew that she had crossed from attraction to infatuation, but was digging in her heels like a horse at a cliff side to stop from going farther. She had been discovering more and more between them, shared interest, and likes, and influences, and it was getting harder and harder to hold her horses.

The subject needed to be changed. "What did you need to meet with me about?"

"Oh, I wanted to set up for you to come see what happened with my amber lady in grains. And I started something new and she's in it too. That one, I may be able to manage to come in with. But it would be great if you could come see them." He looked really hopeful.

She was gonna dash those against those cliff side rocks to avoid going over. "I really can't, not for a long time, we have department meetings and a function before finals."

"Oh," his face popped like a helium balloon. "One is a final. You sure you can't give it a look?"

Jo could not go to his studio, full stop. "Not till after finals Harry, sorry! Can you send me pictures?"

"Yeah, but I don't think the flesh in the new one will translate." He was pulling on his bottom lip worriedly.

"I can try to imagine." Jo was absolutely not going back to the red room to discuss flesh. Talk about no trespassing. That was a big huge glowing danger sign.

"Alright." He gave in, his hopes deflated. Harry stood and Jo followed him to let him out. He closed the door when she opened it, not hard but definitively.

"Har-" She started then switched to "H!" Jo did not want to have to rebuff him. She didn't want to rebuff him.

"No." He said, "I need to say this!" And he hugged her tightly with affection instead of passion, "Thank you! For not freaking out."

"Oh!" Jo said dully again. Her vocabulary elluding her. "Well, if you are amazed that Lara has gotten this far into a art degree and can be a homophobe, how do you think I could get a professorship?" Because she was old, way older than him, she reminded herself, wrote it on the inside of her forehead.

"I knew I could trust you, it's just always scary. You made it not scary." He looked like he wanted to do something, his hand came up and hung in the air like a spider's web. Jo was definitely caught. But instead, he smoothed her hair behind her ear and gave her an open grin before leaving. She closed the door behind him and leaned against it with her head pointed up and eyes closed.

Jo was sorry that she wasn't able to go home and put Zoe to bed so she could paint his smile, those asymmetrical perfect dimples. Instead, she called Audrey and checked in, getting herself together for her department meetings, and talk3: as much as you could on the phone to a three year old before bed. Thank god for video chat, or she would not hold that firecrackers attention long enough to say goodnight.

When Jo came out of her department meeting actually smiling, Victoria was way nicer to her, even called her by her name instead of professor. She hated that is was because Harry laid himself out like Isaac on the altar, but she was thankful to him.

Speaking of him, when she looked at her phone, she had loads of texts from him and a desperate message to please come to the studio. Harry was frenzied like the last time she daydreamed about him filling his mouth with her quim. Jo knew she should not go, that that room and his creativity was her very own hamartia. But she pointed her car there anyway. Rationalizing as she drove, she was his advisor. It was her job, her job where she had earned more respect. She was a professional.

When Harry answered the door, his eyes glowed so bright they were nearly teal, they were definitely a turquoise, and he was in jeans with a blue and red plaid with only one button done. Jo was feeling less professional. He didn't greet her, but turned as soon as the door was open knowing she would follow. He might as well have been playing a flute for all she was able to turn away, and she slithered after him.

The backbeat was even her favorite Tori Amos song and she recalled him singing along long ago in her studio. When she had asked about his knowledge of Lilith Fair rock, he had shrugged and said his mum liked it at one point and he had continued to like it much longer. It seemed an odd interest for a 17 year old boy at the time. But now it just seemed like another thing they had in common.

Like the other day when he had gone off in office hours about his frustration with figure drawing. "My favorite artist is Frida Kahlo, and it makes me crazy, because if I can't paint anybody, I'll never be able to
draw myself. Ya know, like, I love landscapes and what they can say, evoke, but people are where you can really explore emotion. And yourself. If I can't draw myself, do I know myself?"

Jo almost swallowed her tongue. She went through an entire phase in art school, a lingering obsession with Frida and her own frustration with not being able to really draw herself. She could only draw the 'her' her parents wanted and the one that Ethan's dad wished for. Now, she painted women, but couldn't find their faces. She'd never connected the two until that moment.

At the time, because she was already trying to untie all the threads knotting themselves between them whenever they talked, she had simply said, "I love Frida too. She's probably my favorite. 20th century anyway." Of all time, in truth, but Jo didn't reveal that, couldn't present him another string to connect knot.

He'd smiled and kept talking about their fave and she stayed enraptured. Like she was now.

"She's part of the landscape, but not, like she is rising from it, and I just love the way the skin looks, Jo!" No title. "It looks real, and like its moving so it has emotion. I feel like I've found something. Something that is mine. I just need you to tell me though if it isn't good. If I'm just in a frenzy. Ok, Ok?"

He looked back at her then, but her eyes had just found the new one. She had looked at his defined woman in Amber and was impressed by how she turned out.

But then she saw the other one, and Jo was rising from the plain too. Jo was levitating. It was so good. She could see all the emotion and movement of life in the painting.

That wasn't what had her off the ground, not just his growth. The woman, her body, it looked just like Jo's, the body Harry had never seen. It was there. The strands of the earth she came out of even looked like the stretch marks on her lower belly. And the jut of her breast, she saw them daily in the shower, covered them when she crossed the mirrored wall in the bathroom. But her reflection in the painting, through Harry's imagination, did not cover herself, she had no reason to. It was the most beautiful thing Jo had ever seen.

"Har-Harry!" She got out. And he froze. She knew what she was saying. And he knew too. Harry looked up to be sure she meant it.

He crossed the room like a barrelling patrol car at a clear green light and wrapped his huge hands around her face, cupping her ears and kissed her. There was no hesitation. No sweet lip lock to test out the waters. They were boiling, and they both plunged in.

His mouth slanted right immediately and she fit him in counterpoint and opened her mouth to his tongue when it slid in against hers. The lick, tangle, and taste of him, of the hazelnut coffee he had been drinking, was a jolt of caffeine to her veins. Her skin was alight, like it was in the painting. Like she was on canvas. She thought he set her skin to dancing with his eyes and the smile on his mouth, but it was nothing compared to his kiss.

Jo kept going, pressed her pedal to the floor and him to the wall behind them. She was kissing the hell out of him and her hands were inside his plaid, her fingers trailing his chest. Her nails found his nipples and she scratched him. She'd never done that before.

Harry moaned and shifted, it brought his leg forward a bit, and Jo pressed her mons to his thigh. He flexed in response and Jo gasped. Harry pulled back and was about to reverse them when a canvas fell like hollowed skin to the floor. That stopped Jo, because they needed to be careful with his creations. It was just a blank one, could be wiped clean.
She looked up at his blown pupils and his wide open shirt, and the red lines from her nails. Jesus, had she caused all that?

"Professor?" Harry said and it was a dunk in a glacial pool. Jo turned and was just about to run for the door but she had to tell him one thing. He needed to know. Had to know.

She couldn't look at him, over her shoulder, with as much force as she could, she said. "They're good Harry. NO! They are fucking great!" and she made her escape.