We slipped as quietly as possible into my apartment with both our heads bowed. I headed to the kitchen and poured us each a drink, my mind blank as I intentionally avoided thinking about the events I had just bore witness to. I walked into the living room where, as before, Elio was cutting four lines on the same sketchbook I had left lying haphazardly on the coffee table. I placed his drink beside him and slid over to the stereo, where I attached my phone and began scrolling through the multitude of songs that comprised my private music collection.

After a moment of cold silence, I snapped, “Any requests?”

He took a rolled-up twenty-dollar bill and snorted a line up each nostril. After a continued series of snorts that revealed his struggle to fully ingest the drug, he let out a violent cough, loudly swallowed what I assumed was the coke drip, and declared, in a voice that carried an almost unearthly tone, “I realize you’re probably a bigger fan of the Rolling Stones than the Beatles, but it would be really cool if you could play some Beatles music. Please!”

I was caught off-guard by the accuracy of this statement, as I was indeed a bigger fan of the Rolling Stones than the Beatles. Therefore, I struggled for several minutes before I was able to organize a playlist comprised of primarily Beatles’ songs. 

As I turned to face him, Elio reached out to offer me the bill he still clasped in his hand. “You want these?” he asked as he gestured his head towards the remaining two lines of coke resting on the cover of my sketchbook.

“Of course!” I replied as I eagerly inhaled the two perfectly exact lines of drugs.

I plopped myself on the couch next to Elio, shaking as I stretched my arms across his shoulders and pulled his body tight against my own. Elio abruptly pushed himself away and proceeded to light a cigarette. He took a few quick puffs and handed the cigarette to me. Ignoring the confusion that immediately overwhelmed me, I took the cigarette from Elio’s hand and began angrily puffing away at it.

Though he did everything he could to avoid looking me in the face, I could still tell that his gaze was fixed on the large-scale sketch I had done of him, which dominated our immediate line of sight.

“You like drawing me?” he asked in a voice that sounded distant and almost robotic.

“Of course!” I replied enthusiastically. “You’re beautiful!”

“You don’t mean that!” he said as his eyes pivoted up and down the incomplete canvas.

“Yeah!” I replied as I nervously ran my left hand through my hair. “I really do!”

“Well,” he said as the volume of his voice suddenly became lower, “I think the same thing about you!”

I convulsed with excitement, though I struggled to keep an expressionless expression on my face. Did he really mean this, or was he just saying it because I said it? And even if that was the case, so what? He still said I was beautiful, and he can’t take it back! Well, he could, I suppose, but not without coming across as a huge dick!

Impulsively, I thrust myself onto him. Surprisingly, he offered no resistance. Instead, he allowed our bodies and lips to entwine together as though we were a living version of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture The Kiss.

“I have an art show coming up,” I stated as I pulled my lips away from his and looked him half-lidded in the eye. “It’s about the figure. The male figure, to be exact.” I tilted my head, blinked twice, and calmly but rapidly blurted out, “Can I use you as the inspiration for my work?”

His face betrayed a moment of confusion before quickly composing itself for him to nonchalantly ask, “Why?”

“I told you already, dumbass!” I replied as I slapped his chest in a gesture of playful affection. “You’re fucking gorgeous and your gorgeousness inspires me!” I placed my right hand on the back of his head and pulled it close to my own. I looked him straight in the eye with a seriousness that could only be born of a dangerous over-consumption of drugs and alcohol, and I said, “You’re my muse, man!”

He snorted out a disbelieving laugh and turned to look back at the charcoal covered canvas that depicted himself. He squinted and let a single tear slip from each eye. Without ever looking away from the drawing, Elio clumsily slid his hands up my loose-fitting shirt and began rubbing my protruding ribcage. I gasped, flung myself against him, and began running my tongue along his neck, striving to taste every drop of sweat that dripped from his perfect body.

He giggled as he convulsed with ticklishness. And in what I can only describe as a reflexive reaction, he grabbed me by the hips and threw me onto the cushions of the couch. I curled up my legs, pressed my feet against his chest, and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Precisely what I think you want me to do!” he declared as he cupped his right hand around my quivering jaw.

I guffawed and bit into his hand. He screeched in pain, grasped my assault mark, and looked at me with anger in his eyes. I looked at him with lustful defiance, my eyes half open, my nostrils flared, and my mouth stretched into a smirk. He snorted as he realized my flirtatious joke. "Come here you!" he said as he pulled me upright, ripped off my shirt, and began squeezing my stomach between his fingers. I was instantly embarrassed. What if he thought I was fat? What if he was disgusted by me? Would he hate me? Would he walk out the door and never talk to me again?

He ran his fingertips gently along my bare torso. “Beautiful!” he muttered, as though he were utterly entranced by my body. “Beautiful!”

I shook with pleasure and blushed fiercely as I realized that he was genuinely complimenting me. I immediately grew nervous and pushed Elio away. I excused myself and rushed to the bathroom, where I splashed my face with water to restore some semblance of order to my scattered thinking.

“Am I beautiful?” I wondered. Elio thought so. And, ultimately, wasn’t that all that really mattered?

I exited the bathroom and found that Elio had moved to my bedroom, where he laid naked on my bed. I stood in the doorway, staring at his radiating skin and his sensually elongated body that reminded me of the figure from Ingres’ painting La Grande Odalisque. He had propped his back against the pillows and coyly cupped his crotch with his hand in a pose reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia. “Strip for me!” he said as he slowly began to rub his hand along his covered genitals.

I looked at him with fear in my eyes. He looked back at me with an expression of pure longing, devoid of any sense of judgement. This filled me with an instant sense of confidence. I felt like the heroine of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. And just as she marched forward, bare-chested into battle, so too would I step forward into this sexual encounter, baring it all for Elio to see.

I slowly stripped off the rest of my clothes, never averting my gaze from Elio, who watched my every gesture with the focus of a figurative painter studying his model. I was glad I had shaved my chest, stomach, armpits, and crotch only a few days earlier. I would have felt disgusting and ugly if I hadn’t. And besides, the less hair I have on my body means the less I’ll weigh overall, right?

I sauntered up to him, letting him absorb every inch of my physique with his inquisitive eyes. As I stood directly in front of him, he stared at me with a glassy expression and said, “You look like Donatello’s statue of David.”

I flared my eyebrows twice, then lifted my leg and placed my foot on his stomach in imitation of the sculpture’s pose. I slowly slid the edge of my big toe along his well-defined abs as my eyes pursed shut and the edges of my mouth curled into a mischievous smile. Before I could breach the lower end of his hips, he grabbed my ankle with his left hand, effectively halting my foot’s physical pursuit. His eyes were bulging at me, his breath was heavy, and he was sweating profusely. He raised his right hand and grasped my knee. I gasped with exhilaration as I had done the first night Elio and I hung out together. Only this time, I knew we were both willing to give in to our mutual temptations.

I leaned forward and began kissing him, my body progressively sidling itself on top of his. Our arousal for each other rapidly increased, causing Elio to grab me by the hips and flip me onto the bed so that he was faced with my bare, awaiting ass. He placed his hands along my ribcage and dug in his fingers as entered me. I swirled my hips in a series of concentric circles. He thrust his crotch forward and backward in an increasingly quicker and less-controlled motion until his liquid warmth exploded from him and was soaked into me.