Firbank: Art for Artist's Sake 
by davistrell@aol.com

	Now nineteen, the delicate, erstwhile retiring, shy schoolboy was
blossoming into a fashionable, over-sophisticated, yet eager young
swan. The chrysalis of puberty over, the butterfly of manhood
emergent. Under his arm he carried the portfolio portmanteau of erotic
drawings, and in his hand, he clutched the envelope with letter of
introduction to Sir Ronald Firbank, the famous artist, the aesthete
non-pareil, one; if not the one, most influential member of London's Royal
Art Academy.

	Grahame Pirpond, the young man in question, unhesitatingly rang the
bell, with politely pointing index finger, and thumb, connecting, pulling
on the chain, that performed the bellish tinkle, he could hear therein, and
when the door was opened, placed his invitation on the silver platter held
by the tall gray-templed, widow-peaked butler, who stood inquiringly, as
Grahame pushed back the cascading bang of hair.
	"I'll see if the master will see you, young man."

	The manservant brought the youth into the vestibule, showed the
seat where the visitor would wait. With a military bearing of one born to
subservience, the butler floated away, leaving Grahame alone, in marbled
hall, soaking in the spectacle of the interior of the Georgian town-houseof
Eaton Square, SW1. A mere stone's throw from the palace, but of course, it
would be so gauche to attempt such a thing.
	At the foot of the gleaming staircase, spiraling away upward, stood
an immaculate copy in ivory-white marble, of a goat-boy, quaffing from a
wine cup, leaning slightly backward, eyes glazed as if intoxicated,
supported by an over-zealous satyr, nibbling grapes.  Michaelangesque,
crossbred with Biagnini, a copy, but well done, if not exactly circumspect.
	Grahame's eyes skimmed the surface of the wainscotting, the
interleafed rosebuds and clinging thorn vines, with a less familiar flora,
a long stemmed mushroom with elongated shaft, emerging from twin unshelled
walnuts. Then he smiled, as he realized what the unsubtle motif really
represented. He crossed his legs while he waited. By the flagon-size
amphora, with its glazed terracotta, the greek sinopia still detectable, of
athletes, scraping off sweat, and doing what athletes did after the Games
were over, and the games began.

	Grahame's Aunt, the second cousin of a second cousin of the Duchess
of Compagne had wheedled the introduction, knowing that her nephew needed
guidance, in a world where influence was negotiable.
	It was unquestioned that Grahame had talent; it was in what
direction, that talent lay.
	He had not been good at sports at school, had not excelled at
mathematics. Biology had made him faint; but put a pencil in his hand, and
he would be happy for hours, stroking the thin black lead over pearlescent
white paper, conjuring up images heretofore only glimpsed by an old, older
generation.  So he'd been sent out, into the world, and if his 'art' passed
muster, he would, well, that would be for art-history to say.

 	So, now, young Pirpond, now to be ensconced inside the very halls
of a leading artist of the Royal Acadamey; such an honor. If Grahame's art
met with the requisite approval, he would perchance be given patronage,
commissions and would mayhap realise the ambition, as had been his boyhood
dream, of being a painter. Naturally in the Decadent style, currently
prevalent. Peacocks and hermaphroditic ignudi, as in the example, on the
wall, a beautiful Byrne-Jones, King Ethelred giving Unction to the young
Scion of Wales, Aldebran.

	The butler, one Yeats, reappeared at the top of the stairs, and
with a white gloved finger, with a come-hither gesture, indicated that
Grahame should come up.
	A bead of nervous perspiration broke on Grahame's forehead, and
thrusting the precious portfolio under his arm, the youth took strides,
scampered up, with the elegance of a quick-limbed gazelle, mounting the
stairs, two at a time.
	Yeats, covering his mouth, gave a little fractious cough. And
patting the boy's buttocks, ushered him into the Master's bedroom; mayhap
moreso a studio/cum atelier. Sir Ronald was at an easel with a three
foot-long, filbert paintbrush in his hand, touching paint-dabs gingerly on
a life-size canvas. He took, or seemed not to, pay the least attention to
the quiet, shy youth, who tip-toed in. The painting as Grahame neared, was
a David, holding a long dagger and a bleeding head of he who was once
Goliath. The David's face showed a sneer of contempt as he gazed down at
the dead-eyed decapitated head.

	Not knowing quite what to do, not knowing if he should speak, not
knowing quite what to say, Grahame surreptitiously, surveyed the
room. Chairs verdantly draped with red silk, bespeckled with gold
cartouches, velveteen drapes and a humidity of incense hung heavy on the
air. Two decadent modern pictures, tres outre, masses of flowers mostly out
of season, coloured dissonantly; headily perfumed. A broken statuette of
homoerotic subject matter lay in disarray, a broken man, no longer
clutching a broken boy. The small row of paint tubes, their caps firmly
screwed on, the small palette with its ordered array of flesh-tints,
cadmium rose, and raw sienna, celanese green, yellow ochre, and the
obligatory dollop of titanium white.
	A small decanter, of linseed oil, the chosen medium, which would
thin the delicate colors, glazing on a transparent velatura glaze, stood
precariously on the corner of the small taboret. The inebriating, slightly
acrid perfume of a cobra-lilies wilting in a vase, in desparate need of
resuscitation.

	"You like, m'boy?" Sir Ronald ventured.
	Grahame looked around, not sure it was indeed he who was being
spoken to, but managed to mumble, an stuttering unintelligible reply to the
older man.
	Grahame's eyes, big, wide full of childlike wonder, set off by
arched brunette brows that in the crepuscular light looked almost
phosphorescent. His eyes, two almonds. His apple-hard, but pear-ripe body,
the almost indiscernible roundness at the midriff, the stocky legs, and the
slouching shoulders, that would make any adult benefactor want to correct
the boy's stance.
		"You would never believe this desirable creature was a
dockside ragamuffin, would you? But look what he gives. The broad arms,
muscled by work, the chest still undeveloped, the hands gnarled, the hips,
slender like a princess'. And a penis as large as a belaying pin.  Of
course the Goliath head is mine own, a self-portrait, that needs no
explanation or codification."
	"The Goliath has a most handsome head sir, though your beard is not
so unkempt, nor your eyes...your eyes, sir, ...are so searching.....," his
voice trailed off, as Sir Ronald looked Grahame up and down. Mostly down.
	"Harumph," he coughed, "let me see your doodles."
	Grahame undid the slip-cover and his precious leaves were out, on
display for the old man's perusal. Forty if a day, and fortified by wine,
fortutiously present, and the Master, fortunately important.

	Grahame took the cardboarded, leather-covered folio, with
marbellised endpapers, undid the silken string that kept his precious
drawings safe within.
	"Sit down, yes, next to me. My, my, what do we have here?"
	"Student excersises, acadamies, copies from antique statuary and a
few fantasies of my own invention..."
	"In the nouveau school style, I see, the influence of Mantegna,
grabbings of an immature Raphael, Corregio's limpid softness, and even a
plagiarism of one of most popular decadent symbolists...Oh my, this is
rather interesting...."
	"Copied from a greek vase. The old man proffers the rooster, to the
young man, a gift, so to speak...for the return of...favors..."
	"Pernicious in its abbreviated calligraphy..., but its intent, that
of one speaking to another, in impressionistic arousal...you have hidden
depths beneath your obvious charms, young man...."

	Grahame crossed his ankles, as he turned over the parchment leaves,
as Sir Ronald sat closer. He had a viridian green cummerbund, a Slovakian
peasant billowy shirt, wore a whimsical goatee, his mustaches curling
upward in delight at his mouth corners. His hair, mops, bunches of
sienna-umber; elfin, bushy eyebrows and his bagged pants, the folds moving
with an growing tenebristic mystery.
	They sat together on an immense bed, more like a seraglio tent of
purple and rose silk. An immense parasol above, a large divan of cushions
and well-tempered animal skins, below. A luxuriant eiderdown,
feather-filled, resilient to the touch, soft and giving to his weight;
Grahame seem to sink into, like a pearl, ready to be plucked from a giant
clam.

	"The act of fellatio, steel-engraved in the hard-style of
Durer...observed from life, for versimilitude...what, what?"
	"Just an excersise in plastic values, sir....."
	He let Sir Ronald take the pictures, and watched as the knight
d'art adjusted the monocle through which he could stare more closely.

	"M'boy they are devastating, the ennui, the aplomb...the je ne sais
quoi...the fleeting glimpses of muscle, burgeoning under svelte flesh, the
distorted proportion betwixt head-size and limb...the flatterning
curvaceous sinuosity of trenchant extensions..."
	Grahame's skin curdled. To be flattered thus, by He so High. He
crossed his legs. He watched as the older man overleafed more pages.
	"Ah, a Sickert touch. Most becoming. The haze of chiaoscuro as they
perform the unmentionable act. Effortlessy executed. The sheen of skin, the
humidity of the noctural erogeoia...mi congratuliziones!"

	Grahame trembled as the visigoth of the Arts shuntered near. But as
he uncrossed his legs, to extricate the uncomfortable one, wanting to be
free. Grahame felt a primordial urge. But resisted.

	"Tracings of the one Greek touching another, I detect your
influences, I see a debilitating sense of draughtsmanship, a
Sargeant-Singer-Watteau, what ho, full come to flower. These are,
undoubtedly poesies, dark thoughts in the post-pubescent mind... or are
you, mayhap... experienced?"

	Yeats enters. With the jerky gait of the butler's crane-like legs,
bows; and delivers once more, a fractious cough.
	"The boy, will he do..?"
	"Oh I must paint him " said the artist.

	"With candied confection or Oils...?"
	"You want to paint me..?" said Grahame increduously.
	"With paint; wattle, spit and daub."
	It was circumspect under the circumstances. Grahame unhooked the
clasp of his suspender, unloosening his trousers, a weskit was thrown to
the wind and like Susannah was naked before his elders. A careÐworn toss
of the hair and he lay back on the milk-white albino bear-skin rug. He
parted his legs, and his phallic adumbration lay silently over his
peach-cream thigh.

	Painted first was the giaconda-vermillion out-line, in marzipan,
tracing the Leda's swan, goose-necked in erection on the boy's chest, then
the dove-white wings applied to his haunches, with a baking accessory, a
bag with nozzle, squeezing out the pale icing. Held taut was the flesh of
the inner thighs as butterflies, in Peppermint and Butterscotch were
thereon adorned. A racoon mask, over the eyes with falcon's wings were
next. Black-licorice zebra stripes encircling his legs; but the penis left
unpainted. Cranberry-Chocolate was the rib-cage.Sprinklings of Black-Forest
gateau, sprinled on, tossed carelessly. In the valley of the barely nascent
pectorals, a rasberry ripple.
	"Will that be all, sir....?"
	"Get out, get out, leave me with my...creation..."
	Yeats left. Mantis-like, closing the door behind.

	The Artist bent over. A libidinous tongue, hungry for sugar.
	A lick, dessicated coconut, at the armpits. The chest
macamadamia-nut cream. Two cherry sworled bon-bons on macaroon chest, angel
hair fronds of cob-web thin ginger cotton-filaments, with glazed mint
leaves surmounted the pubis and at the belly, a hollow of montelimar. The
boy was wet from spittle, dissolving the sugary coating.

	Grahame's head flopped sidewise as the Master covered him with
genuflecting worship, the boy's body a felicitous altar on which the elder
statesman of peinture wallowed in idolatrous devotion.
	Grahame's pointed sword, stood forth, and the old Artist kissed it
before engulfing the, oh, too sweet confection. Grahame writhed. He was
licked, in the way he'd only before felt in imagination, moaning like a
bride on a walpurgis-nacht wedding night.
	The blood redness of the sky, the white of hoar-frost, the yellow
of daffodil, the blue of vein, the pinkness of a tempest-tossed youth.

	The heavy draping curtain, plush-velvet, lush, but pierced by a
large moth-hole that leaked in a a thin stream, a rivulet of shafted light,
cone-like, enlarging, letting every visible twittering dust-mote to be
revealed, shining down like a lecherous spotlight splashing onto the
sheets, silky, curving with little wavelet folds, embracing the golden pink
skin of the youth being lied to, in return for the aquiescence of mutual
congress.
	"Your eyes are like sea-anenomes," said Sir Ronald, his mouth full
of sugar.
	The Master's tongue danced with the rhythm of firelight, dancing
tonges of flame that awakened every nerve ending in the young man's
anatomy, exhorting the penis lying mere inches above his sphincter, which
sighed, in expectation. Sir Ronald's mouth rode jauntily on the boy's
equine phallus. From behind, in a mirrored reflection of the ensuing
activity, in a gilt ormulu framed glass, Grahame could see all, and raised
his legs high in a religious ovation. With a clear view, his flesh
imploring, watched the Sensei, his head rocking, nay bobbing, fro and back,
steadfastly, unrelentingly.
	Grahame, writhing vehemently, as his boyhood swallowed, kept him
hooked, like a fighting sea-creature. Such a pretty butt, such ripe white
cheeks, such a wanton star. The tongue scooped in, delights reserved
usually only to the Turkish.
	"M'boy.." the older man sighed in understatement.

	With Yeats no longer present, Grahame had to play the part of
servant and took down the Artist's trousers. A red, maybe too purple,
pinnacle of flesh. Engorged with blood, every vein and knotty fiber showed
the utmost strain.
	Grahame gave the tip a carefree lick to moisten it. Vinegary with a
overtone of Pineapple. He took the bait, and swallowed hard. Now caught,
hooked, escape impossible. Ready to be filleted by Sir Ronald's whale-hook
harpoon. A veritable Moby Dick.
	"Sir Ronald," a moist voice, behind a fractious cough, "'Tis time
for your three o' clock appointment.."
	"Damn you sirrah, I am in no position to be interrupted. Send
whomever away, say I have a cold, a dripping nose, my eyes are full of
phlegm..."
	Yeates demurred. "But it's Thomas Abalone, the beach-drift with
whom you told, had permission to be allowed entrance, at any time..."

	"Tom, you say! Ha! The young wallop! Let him in, by all means.And
leave his clothes in the doorway, you can scoop them up..."

	A blond, with a nudity that would have made Praxiteles, take out
his tape measure, ambled in. A touch of horse in the face, a bullfrog
chest, and more horse than boy between his legs, approached. Yeates left
silently, the door closing in a whispering squeak.

	Grahame perplexed, folded his body into itself, and sank into
cushiony softness, ostrich-like, looking for concealment.

	"Hey, Firbank, you old bumbershoot, you getting a bit of the
naughty, without me? Got 'im to gobble you down yet? Looks a tad
inexperienced..."
	His ribbed torso rippled as he guffawed, and Grahame peeked out.

	This Thomas, a lioncub fully on the way to lionheart, hair long,
down behind his shoulders, where skin should be pink, his was brown-gold,
and as he walked forward, each Greacian God, would have blushed in envy, as
the youth, came forward, and passed, The trembling Firbank, pulled back the
sheet where quivering, tremulous Grahame lay, a tulip bulb, wanting so much
to be an opened rose.

	Sailor Tom, pushed out his hand. Fingernails bitten, and black.
	The dock-side brat of a youth, standing like a dirty Apollo,
grimaced a laugh, while Sir Ronald blustered.

	"He was to be Isaac, on which, I, Abraham, would put the knife to
his throat, and God would interfere...eventually..."
	"Divine interference? Always fancied being an angel, you was goin'
to use me, as model, sent from heaven, weren't you? I do good angel, don't
I? The kid, it got a name?"
	Tom stood, by the two, in a mocking Donatello stance, with more
than a touch of dockyard braggadacio.

	Sir Ronald Firbank, pushing Grahame, aside, as if embarrassed,
said. "His name? I've forgotten."

	He tried to hide Grahame behind his stocky frame, but the candy
coated youth reached out to touch Tom's extended hand.
	Grahame took the proffered hand of the blond sailor, who could not
have been been more than three years older. But a distance would have to be
crossed. Touching, a first necessary step.
	"Grahame, huh? First time around the block? Don't worry about the
old man. Basically he's a watcher, not a doer."
	And as the two stood up, face to face, Sir Ronald stuck up a thumb,
as if measuring. But the thumb down as he compared the displayed
gentitalia. The thumb moved clockwise, upward, as the youths became
aroused.

	"Without all this paint, you're probably cute. Like the small cock:
I'll make it long and hard," said Tom with a Cheshire-cat smile.

	Tom laughed as Grahame got even shyer; Grahame coyed away. But he
stared at the magnificence hanging between the thighs of his new found
friend. He reached out to hold it, and felt it groan in his hand. He
slipped down, his back on the divan, and took it in his mouth, feeling it
grow.
	"Hey, Ronnie,you got a classical reference for this?"
	Sir Ronald sketched rapidly, with silverpoint, trying to catch the
gesture as the youths before him, congressed.


	"Ouch, Grahame; no teeth..."
	Tom's hips slinked back and forth as his cock glided in Grahame's
open, lotus-flowered mouth. The young sailor devil-no-care's arm reached
down, to the buttocks of the youth below, investigating, with a nest of
fingers.
	"Alexander and Hephastion, Antoninus and Hadrian..." said Sir
Ronald as the figures mimicked poses only seen on Ancient Greek
sarcophogai, as Tom rolled on, over the smeared Grahame, limb, locked by
limb, as in the iconography of Satsayanu's Indian carved temples far off in
the Hindustan.

	"Don't lump us with those old guys," said Tom with a leer, as two
fingers, entered Grahame's painted butt.
	"I'm a blackhearted pirate, a'doin of the cabin boy."
	Grahame raised his legs so more finger could go in.
	"Shiver me timbers! Aharr, this is a virgin territory! Who knows
what wonders too which it will succumb!"
	 Grahame had to grab Tom's cock, point it to his ass, and exhaled,
and hoped thet Tom would follow as dicktip, slipped in to the end of
eternity.
	"Feel that, boy, feel the breadth , the length..."
	"I can feel the breadth, but not the length, it does not impress me
as yet..." and immediately regretted his words.

	If Yeates were not a gentleman, he would have covered his eyes, and
not observed, with gonad-wrenching intensity, the butt whumping on the
other side of the tapestry curtain.
	He would of seen exertion, as legs braced back, as hip, drove into
pelvis, the thick moving rope of flesh that conjoined the two youths,
wrestling with exhilaration, as flesh stuck flesh, and inter-conjoined
again.
	Mirth was met with merriment and exertive noises of exalation,
ejaculation and exuberance. Pleasure of laughter, the pain of sweat, met
with strenous noises, the carnality of the Paeolithic, rude paintings in
bison-blood daubed on the walls.
	Sir Ronald was exhausted as the two youths wrested, fought, loved,
sexed each other, giving neither quarter. And none taken.
	"Yeates! I need... I need.."
	And the splooch spurted out, trickling on his varicosed thigh.
	"A napkin, m'lord?"

	And like the good butler, Yeates cleaned up his master, saw the
boys through to the coup de grace, saw all resume to a calming
normality. Turned off the light, went upstairs to his room, got under the
covers, made himself comfortable and settled down with his latest dirty
novellette, a parody of Dickens and Trollope.
	Till Billy Bottom, the bootboy, came up from the servant quarters,
up from downstairs.
	He closed his book, lifted up the covers and let the boy in.
	He turned out the light, as Billy got all comfortable.

	Sir Ronald coasted the stairways all night, lonely as a ghost, felt
as Job had felt. Listened in at keyholes, listened to toilet bowls flush,
listened as beds squeaked, listened as voices, first tremulous, became
emphatic, listened for listless sighs. All came, each vocal utterance, and
decided that his next picture ought be, a visitation, an annunciation, or
just a plain good old Sodom and Gommarah.  But with him, this time, as
participant.