The Sculptor & His Sis

Preamble:

My other story, "The Sculptor & His Mum" explored the tension arising when a son used his mature mum as a model. This story explores the tension arising when a mature brother uses his sister as a model. The two stories share some overarching thematic threads, with significant detail differences. They are independent stories which can be read separately.

There is taut nudity, exhibitionism, voyeurism and sibling taboo frisson tension in this story. Its raison d'être is to tease, and this, it does relentlessly. If you are looking for flailing, wailing and caterwauling sex, this is not for you.

Matt, an artist and sculptor, lives alone in an idyllic cliffside cottage. School chum, Zack is visiting. Matt wins a commission to produce artworks for a study on the female form. A celebration of mature femininity. He has difficulty sourcing a suitable and willing model. Matt enlists the help of his sister, Muriel. Zack observes the sibling interactions. Is there more than meets the eye?

***

Chapter 1: Chums

Chapter 2: The Commission

Chapter 3: A Model Sister

Chapter 4: Webcam Audition

Chapter 5: Arrival

Chapter 6: Photoshoot

Chapter 7: Film

Chapter 8: Draw

Chapter 9: Dream Come True?

Chapter 10: Sculpt

Chapter 11: Exhibition

***

Chapter 1: Chums

Zack is six nautical miles from his destination, a cove in the English south coast. He trims his sail as he skims the brilliant skin of sea, striding the deep. He is as intimately close to the wind as he can be. He stares down the eye of the wind. This moves him, and his 38-foot yacht. Here he is again, romanticising the laws of physics.

The sky is a drifting canvas of sun and clouds. Of brilliant and filtered light. Zack thinks of the Joni Mitchell song. A fave of Matt and him. A folk anthem of an era. He thinks of Matt whom he will see again at landfall after twenty years.

"Rows and floes of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all"

And that is Matt on song. A cloud illusion as Zack recalls. He doesn't know Matt at all. An enigma. Enigmas are necessarily annoying or charming. Matt is the latter.

Zack first met Matt in university. Zack was pursuing a degree in Literature. He had a burning ambition to be a creative writer. Matt was pursuing a degree in Fine Arts. He nursed mild ambitions to be an artist and sculptor.

Aside from their being invested in the Humanities, they are a study of contrasts. Chalk and cheese.

Zack has short light brown hair. Dark eyes, bearing nuances of Mediterranean, mystified with hints of Levantine. He sports a little arrow tail of hair at his nape of neck. This is the only outward badge hint of his artistic bent. Medium shoulders. Nearly 6 feet tall. He bears the hallmarks of a competitive sailor, even though he is a recreational one. Bronzed toned arms and legs. He runs and workouts whenever he can, to compensate for the hours of physical inactivity as a writer. Age has added its final touches to his being. His form is softened and mellowed by his contoured vintage torso. Not a strapping lad for sure. A mature hunk.

Matt is the polar antithesis of Zack.

Five feet eight inches to Zack's sixer. He can shear a few choice rotund pounds off his critical mass. Where Zack is cryptically Levantine, Matt is Germanic in his face, in your face. The genetic works. Blindingly blonde. Ashen complexion bordering on anaemic. Corpse white. No genetic code to decrypt here. Clear as morning birdsong at the first break of spring. Careless mop of longish hair bunching into an irreverent ponytail. Scruffy beard. Matt is not handsome in the socially classic sense, but appealing in a brooding insouciant way.

Matt has the demeanor of modest aristocracy. Manners as opposed to etiquette. And confident, blasé, outrageous manners at that, which only the privileged gets away with without having to get away with. Matt offers an alternative subspecies mutation of the male beast from Zack's. Both are beasts with brains. Although Matt embodies that extra masculine bit of devilish monstrosity in his mien. This profile appeals to women who are longing for something more, but don't know it.

Zack is the curious, effervescent, communicative humanist. He is in his element in a sea of words. He is convinced that Art follows Life.

Matt is intense, ponderous, often brooding. He recasts the world on canvas and rock as only he sees it. Art leads the way. Art challenges, mocks and revalues Life. Life necessarily follows Art. If not, why have Art? An artistically arrogant dick.

Socioeconomically, Zack is new money minted upper middle class, still wondrously figuring out the possibilities of money. It affords him a platform to pursue creativity without the overhang of economic pressure. But, his craft has to deliver at some point to feed economic reality.

Matt coasts along on an income stream legacy. A life annuity. Old money modest aristocracy. Annoyances like mortgages are not in his lexicon. He can follow his artistic impulses to his heart's desire without the inconvenient distraction of economic reality.

Zack was married, and divorced five years ago. No children. He has no desire to remarry. He spends time between verdant Hampstead Heath in outer London, and Penzance at the jackboot tip of Cornwall. He relishes the romance of sailing in its struggle against the laws of nature. He fashions himself as a kind of ethical pirate of Penzance. He lives a writer's hermit life someplace in the far countryside whenever he is working on a novel. He has published with moderate success. At this time, he is in between novels, seeking inspiration for his elusive magnum opus. Maybe Matt will be the fountainhead?

Matt lives alone in a remote cliffside cottage, soaring above a cove, in the English south coast. A sort of wuthering heights staring down on a moor of sea. This is the cove that Zack is sailing to.

Matt's cottage is in the quintessential classic English style. Its interior has the cosy cottage ambience, but updated tastefully with modern amenities while retaining the rustic charm. The cottage comprises a living room, which spills out seamlessly to a patio, a garden extending all the way to the cliff edge, overlooking the sea. There is an open kitchenette, a dining area, three bedrooms, and a studio where Matt does his drawing, sculpting and photoshoots. The nearest home from the cottage is a mile away. A world unto itself, which is Matt's world of all possible worlds.

Matt has a bevy of girlfriends, but remains single. His independent eccentric artistic streak is at odds with the institution of marriage. His solitude lifestyle does not appeal to his girlfriends. They are initially enamoured of the austere romance of the Emily Brontësque isolation, but after a week or two of quietude, they ache for more animated stimulation.

Zack drops his sail. He motors gently into the cove. Chug, chug, chug. He moors his yacht at the ramshackle jetty. Will it hold his yacht in a tempest, he wonders?

Zack puts on his aviator sunshades. His spirit soars. He lugs his sausage of baggage up the dizzy winding cliff path to Matt's cottage. He feels invigorated. The air is so sharp, he can kiss it.

And there he is, perched precariously at the cliff edge overhang of his garden, ascertaining the far horizon, forehead wrinkled, eyes squinted sagely, hand gripping his paint brush with a vengeance, attacking his canvas.

***

Chapter 2: The Commission

Zack and Matt reconnect over the week.

They were both nineteen when they first met in uni. They last met when they were forty-two. They are now sixty-two.

They fall into an idyllic routine. Zack is in between novels. Matt is in between work commissions. It is summer. Matt doesn't say much. They have a cosmic connection that transcends perfunctory words.

There is a system to their idyll. They are both night people. They muse, philosophise, wine and weed deep into the night.

They rise at the crack of high noon. A ploughman's brunch.

They ride Matt's Harley, meandering the giddy corniche, to the village 3 miles away for their espresso fix. The village houses a minor tourist attraction which Matt has yet to figure out what.

They parse and ascertain the sprinkling of subconforming visitors and organised tourists milling at the village. Loud Americans. Impossibly nice Canadians. Zesty Latin Americans. Polite Japanese. Animated Chinese. Contemplative continentals. They have been tempted to pickup sweet young backpacked strays, but they think better of it.

They ride back. In the late afternoon, they sail in Zack's yacht, closing in on the wind, tacking to the far cape yonder. Then round back on a run, wind pressing on their backs.

Matt receives a commission notice from a renowned art museum. A study of mature femininity, in three art forms: Photography, Drawing and Sculpture. It feeds into an upcoming major international art exhibition, a marquee event, at the museum.

Matt reads the commission brief.

The same mature model across the three art forms. The model is to be in the fifty-five to sixty-five age range. She is to reflect the average mature woman in the age range who is relatable to the target audience at large. And at a more sublime level, the model epitomises her zeitgeist, the spirit of the era. Thus, a professional model is not a requirement, even though the museum will defer to the artist to choose the model as artist-model chemistry is key to the project.

The model's identity is to be artfully obscured. Her face in the photos is to be subtly obscured, darkened or shadowed. Being an international exhibition, the museum desires to universalise the mature femininity study across cultural divides.

The artworks are to be sensual, just short of erotic, but not lusty or lewd.

The artist is invited to envision an exhibition museum pathway that starts with the overarching aim and theme of the project, photography, meandering onto drawing, and then culminating in a compelling dramatic sculpture piece.

The identity of the artist will be published. The intellectual property rights belong to the artist.

Matt proceeds to source the model. He has five days to do this. The modeling work will be done in his home, in his studio, over a week.

Matt faces challenges. Models in that age range are typically married women who are wives and mothers. They have family responsibilities. They can't be away from their homes. The few who do not have family commitments feel uncomfortable with nude modeling, working and staying-in in a remote countryside location, in a cottage with a single male artist stranger. A lady with grown-up children offers to have her husband accompany her for the assignment, staying-in with her at Matt's cottage. Matt does not feel comfortable with the arrangement. The presence of her husband will inadvertently affect the modeling dynamics, potentially cramping the style of the model and the artist.

***

Chapter 3: A Model Sister

On the fourth day of the model sourcing, at wits end, Matt has a minor epiphany.

Why not consider his sister, Muriel? She is aged sixty, two years his junior, within the requisite age range. Her two children are grown up, and have flown the nest. Her entrepreneur husband is on business travel close to seventy percent of the time, so her being away for a week will not be missed.

Most pertinently, she fits the bill of the quintessential mature woman who is relatable to the audience. Her identity will not be publicly disclosed, so nobody will know it is she.

The snag is that she will be posing nude in front of her brother. The last time Matt saw his little sister nude was when she was ten, and he, twelve, when they were changing at the beach. Fast forward some. The last time Matt saw his sister in anything remotely revealing was when she was in a swimsuit poolside. She was twenty then, a good forty years ago. Muriel was straitjacketed, if not mummified, in a sensible one-piece, leaving everything and then some, to the imagination.

How will his sister react to the modeling request? And what will her husband, Matt's brother-in-law, think about this artistic enterprise?

Matt bounces his idea off Zack. Zack appreciates his chum's challenges and desperation. This commission, if it pans out successfully, will launch Matt bigtime in the international museum circuit. And yet, there is the perturbing dissonance of sister posing nude for brother, even if it is for art. High art at that.

Zack met Muriel once, at Matt's family manor, during his university days. Muriel was 20'ish then. He fondly remembers a hussy who is pretty, just short of alluring, in a plain sort of way. She had a body that hinted at a forward promise of buxom in the fullness of time. The trio had some jolly blissful times at the sprawling family estate. Salad days. Zack remembers all this in a Brideshead Revisited-esque sort of flashback. Again, he is romanticising the trivial remembrance of things past.

Zack knows that Matt is asking a rhetorical question.

"Seems like a good idea if Muriel and you are comfy with the nudity-for-art bit. Why don't you call Muriel now, and sound her out?"

Zack ponders where he will fit in the scheme of things if Muriel agrees to the project. He is scheduled to stay with Matt for two months. Will it be awkward?

"Time is of the essence. I will call Muriel now."

Zack, wine glass cradled in hand, lazes languidly on the sofa in the living room, facing the patio, the garden, and beyond, the cliff and sea.

***

Chapter 4: Webcam Audition

Matt gets up to fetch his laptop PC to make a webcam call to his sister. He returns to the living room. He fires up his PC on the coffee table, sitting across Zack.

Zack gets up to go to his bedroom to give Matt the privacy for his sibling tête-à-tête.

"Don't go. You're enjoying your wine just now. You're family. Just stay. A short chat with Muriel. It'll be over in a jiffy. The webcam is not facing you anyway."

"OK, if you're cool. I'll just move to the patio for some air."

Zack brings his wine and e-book reader, and steps out to the adjoining patio. He hears Matt tapping his keyboard in earnest. He immerses in his e-book.

Matt: Hi Muriel!

Muriel: Hi Matt! Hmmm... To what do I owe the pleasure of this unseasonal brotherly call?

Matt: Is Bill in? Say hello to him.

Muriel (sighs): He is in another zone. I mean, time zone. Again!

Matt (perfunctorily): I have a commission. I need your help.

Muriel (jocularly): To spend it? How much is the largesse?

Matt: No, silly! I've been awarded a job for artwork.

Matt outlines his commission, and the challenges he faced in sourcing a model. He stressed the anonymity of the model to allay Muriel's privacy concerns.

Matt: Will you do it?

Muriel: Hmmm... naked in front of my bro? We'll be crossing a thick red line. I believe it's called taboo in popular culture.

Zack is getting increasingly distracted from his reading. He can't help but be piqued by the unfolding sibling conversation. It is not everyday custom that a brother discusses his sister's naked body with his sister. The breezy banter belies a simmering sibling tension.

Matt: It's for Art. High-minded Art at that.

Muriel (sheepishly): I don't know about revealing my venerable body, my flabs and sags, cellulite, warts and all, to the world. I'm a granny three times over, for goodness sake!

Matt (matter-of-factly): This is a study of the mature feminine form. A celebration of mature womanhood. Your earthy body form is exactly right. If your body is that of the plasticky sculpted machinery of a sweet young nubile, it wouldn't be fit for the aesthetic purpose. And your identity will be anonymous. Your face will be artfully obscured in the photos. Your drawn and sculpted face will be artistically rendered. Nobody will be able to associate your body form with you.

Muriel: Hmmm... Do you even know what you're getting into? I can see that this commission is important to you. I wouldn't want to be the one to mess it up for you. You need a professional model.

Matt (emphatically): I am the artist. Let me be the judge.

Muriel: What's there to judge?

Matt (reiterating): I am the artist. Let me be the judge.

Muriel: Huh?

Matt (matter-of-factly): Show me.

Zack instinctively cocks his ears. He twitches. He wonders where this conversation is leading to.

Muriel stands up sheepishly in front of the webcam. She is in a summery pastel home casual dress. She steps back. She twirls in slo-mo.

Matt: Show me.

Muriel: What?

Matt: Show me.

Muriel is processing her brother's words. It dawns on her the private nature of her brother's request. She hesitates momentarily as she gazes into her brother's eyes to confirm her understanding. Matt nods mutedly.

Muriel (gasps): Oh my god!

Matt nods again. In an instinctive demonstration of socially conditioned modesty, Muriel turns her back to the webcam. She drops her dress into a puddle at her feet. Matt sees the back of her black bra strap. Drifting south, her matching black panty. The black garments in sharp contrast to her creamy white. Her sacral dimples peek over her curve of panty hemline like a classic smiley face.

Muriel turns around to face the webcam. Her right arm drapes modestly across her straining bra. Her left hand coyly over her panty crotch.

Matt: Hands by your sides.

Muriel looks bashfully away from the webcam as if fixated on a distant distraction. She wonders why she is complying to her brother's commands. He is going way too far. But, she drops her hands.

Matt: Show me.

Muriel looks conflicted. After a full ten seconds, she again turns away from the webcam. She unfastens her bra. It drops. She peels her panty down. She lifts one dainty foot, then the other. She is native for her brother's appraisal.

Muriel turns around to face the webcam. Her right arm drapes across her breasts. Her minimized left hand over her thatch of crotch.

Matt: Show me...

Muriel (breaking the spell): That's enough!

Matt (decisively): You fit the job to a T. When can you start?

Muriel (dissonant): Alot to process... I will message you my decision tonight.

Muriel absentmindedly drops her hands to approach her PC to close the webcam session.

Zack hears a sharp intake of male breath. This is uncharacteristic of Matt. What's up?

***

That night...

Matt's cellphone chimes.

"Day after tomorrow. Half 5."

***

Chapter 5: Arrival

Zack is out sailing all day. Matt does not join him as he is expecting Muriel.

Tack to Smuggler's Point. A run to and round Mersea Isle. Beetle back to the cove.

***

Zack trudges wearily up the cliff path. As he nears the cottage, he hears light musical laughter. He passes a window.

A woman is sitting on the sofa. This must be Muriel.

She is in a casual pastel loose summer dress. Her dress is carelessly hiked up to her thighs. Her legs are splayed open. Not the most ladylike of postures. It is not clear what else she has on.

Matt sits cross-legged on the floor in front of his sister, facing her. Her feet rest flat on each of his thighs.

He dips a tiny brush tip into the nail varnish bottle. He meticulously paints a toenail. He looks up a notch, pauses, as if ascertaining a captivating aesthetic detail. This he executes methodically for each toenail. Is that a smirk on her face?

Zack feels that he should move on. But an inexplicable force field holds him there.