All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories Of Queer Teens Throughout The Ages. Saundra Mitchell

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СКАЧАТЬ Good evening. Morning. It’s morning.”

      He wipes the charcoal off his palms, leaving black smears on his cassock. “How are you faring? I saw you at the docks last week.”

      “Did you?”

      “You looked occupied or I would have come over.”

      “Oh. I was fetching the plasters.”

      “The what?”

      “We were doing a study...” Halfway through this sentence I realize I had been at the docks retrieving the plaster casts van der Loos had made of naked male torsos and I go so light-headed with embarrassment I think I might faint.

      Joost raises an eyebrow. “A study?”

      “For painting.”

      “Ah.”

      His eyes drift over my shoulder, like he’s tiring of this conversation and looking for someone else to speak to, and my mind becomes so overwhelmed by desperation to keep him here that it latches on to the word I have been so careful to skirt for this entire conversation and spits it out. “Penises.”

      Which gets his attention back on me, but at what cost!? “What?”

      “We were painting... We’ve been talking about the musculature of...” I do a mime of something oblong shaped with the unfortunate placement of right in front of my crotch. “It was just for the painting. We didn’t do anything with them. Not the penises. The casts. The plasters.”

      “Oh. Well. I suppose you have to start somewhere.”

      A wild little giggle escapes me. Joost raises his eyebrows, and I look around for some sort of pallet knife on which I could fall on and impale myself. “Are you making a delivery?”

      “No, not many ships of late—the snow’s kept them from docking. Hard to make a living.”

      “Yes, hard.”

      “What?”

      Don’t say it again, I think, but of course I do. “Hard,” I repeat, louder, and, Jesus, take me now. Scoop me from this earth; I shall never recover. I tug at the front of my smock, which I have somehow sweat through, and force myself to keep my eyes on Joost’s face and not the pale dip of skin visible between his kerchief and collar, sprinkled in freckles the same color as his hair. “So are you, um... What are you doing here?”

      “Take your seats, please,” van der Loos calls. “Hendrickszoon, if you’ll come with me.” Joost ducks out from between the easels to follow van der Loos, and I collapse into a swoon upon my stool, so light-headed I almost tip backward. I plant my feet on the floor and try to breathe and not look around for Joost, though just knowing he’s near makes me feel set aflame. I hear the scrape as van der Loos drags the sofa into the center of our circle. All I catch of his words is “return to life drawing today.” I peer out from behind my easel just as he slaps the sofa cushion once, raising a mushroom of dust. “Hendrickszoon,” he calls. “If you’re ready.”

      And then Joost steps out from behind the partition, wearing the thin dressing gown, same as every woman we’ve drawn. My heart starts to pound its fists against my rib cage like it’s trying to burst out and lay itself dramatically at Joost’s feet.

      Van der Loos presents the couch with an extended hand. “If you please.”

      It seems to take a thousand years for the robe to come off. It slides like slick oil off his shoulders, and if I thought they were a thing of beauty beneath a shirt, they’re miraculous unsheathed, whorls of thick muscle coiled beneath his skin. His whole body is taut as he unfastens the sash, the studied concentration of a beautiful man who knows he’s being watched but chooses to pretend he’s unaware because it makes for better planes of his face. As the robe falls open, I wonder if it will be possible for me to complete this entire study without once looking any lower than the dip of his hip bones, so sharp and precise they look as though someone chiseled them.

      This, I think, as I keep my eyes determinedly focused on his face while the robes thumps softly to the floor, is entirely not my fault, and entirely his, for being so pretty.

      Joost nudges the robe beneath the sofa, then gives van der Loos a smile. His hands twitch at his sides, like he’s trying not to cover himself. “Shall I...?”

      “Prone, please, to begin. And your boots.”

      “Oh.” Joost laughs as he looks down at his feet. “I forgot.” He kicks off his boots, and they bounce across the floor, landing in a rumpled heap before Augustus.

      I duck behind my easel, close my eyes, try to take a breath, fail, try to take another, nearly pass out, give my cheeks a stern talking to about being a little less red or they’re going to give us both away. Another breath, another failure. Peer out from behind the easel.

      Joost stretches out on the sofa slowly, like a thing unthawing. Braam whistles, and there are a few laughs, though of an entirely different variety of those that accompanied the bare-breasted women who have previously draped themselves over this sofa.

      “Quiet please,” van der Loos says, then, to Joost, “You might begin with your arms above your head please.” Joost obliges, stretching himself out to his full length. He’s so tall that his feet hang off the edge of the sofa, and the muscles in his chest coil, his skin gilded by the sunlight curling in through the windows, brighter than usual as it reflects off the new snow piled along the sills.

      Van der Loos adjusts the drapes, letting in more light, then turns to us. “Gentlemen, observe particularly the musculature here, in the torso, how it connects differently than on the female form.”

      Look somewhere else, I think, as van der Loos strokes a hand through the air over the ladder of Joost’s abdominal muscles. Look at his boots.

      I stare at the material in a muddy heap on the floor, the way the folds drape, the leather sole, the hole along the heel where the stitching has come loose and he hasn’t yet taken it to the cobbler.

      “Constantijn, are you paying attention?”

      I raise my eyes from their determined study of the boots. Van der Loos is staring at me with a frown. So is Joost, less frowny. So are all the other apprentices. Braam’s mouth is quivering with trying not to laugh.

      “Yes, sir.”

      “What are we discussing?”

      “His...torso, sir.”

      “We’ve moved lower.” He points straight between Joost’s legs. “Follow along, please.”

      And, because everyone is watching me, I look.

      As Joost lounges upon the sofa like some god ripped from mythology, the entirety of his front side on display, I have a stern talking to with my own bits about calming down and they staunchly refuse to listen.

      I try threats. If you don’t go soft, you’ll have no supper, though my body seems far more interested in sex than food.

      BUT LOOK AT HIS CHEST, it seems to scream in response.

      I try bargaining. СКАЧАТЬ