Curiosity by davistrell@aol.com Curiosity killed the cat. Did for me too. We had free Disney channel last weekend and so I caught an English Import. Dickens' "Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe". Hadn't seen it since when I was a kid, but it kindled memories.Ones I'd kept on the back-burner. Like that time I walked into that little boutique in San Rafael, with the unusual merchandise:I'd recieved their flyer. Green flourescent paper, Ugly Black Type. Restrain your fears: Put a handle on it. Clamp on to our fine bargains! Get a Grip and come on down to yah-de-dah, I wont bore you with the details.Clip art was seventeenth century. There was a guillotine, an iron maiden, a poker, but the Dore-faux illustration showed an Edwardian women in pantaloons & hose who was tied, constrained in a perturbing sort of way. If the hair was shorter and the bosom less pronounced, and got a dick, maybe I could've become turned on. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and hell, I didn't want to work. The bell tinkled timorously as I entered. The place was deserted, apart from the bric-a-brac, jumble, assorted umbrella-stands, landscape paintings, mainly of rustic barns with obligatory wagon-wheels leaning against barndoors and phallic silos, erect against September skies. I looked closer at one. A farmboy carrying an empty wooden bucket, inviting the viewer to join him into the dark straw-covered interior inside. Sunlight from the window made the dust-motes phosphorescent, and the shop seemed filled with the smell of spiderwebs. I heard a throat-clearing cough. "Excuse me, can I help you?" came a voice from behind me. From the shadows a callow clerk emerged from a backroom, he was young, around twenty, his waist around thirty, and his approach tentative, dressed in an apron soiled with brass polish and antiquarian stains. He looked bored, but then, so was I. Dick Allbright, a name I'd not used before in a fiction, was that kind of guy, that women like but men prefer. He was friendly, if a little too friendly,too willing to please, and came on like salesman. They like you too much at first and then when push comes to shove, won't sleep with you. But at first, they wants your business. "Just browsing..." I said, to catch him off-guard, and turned away, though I could see him sizing me up in the reflection in the gilt ormolu wall-mirror. Three feet tall, two feet wide, would fit a small cornice, if your house carries cornices. A similar mirror, had shown up in a tv show recently, and this wasn't as expensive as theirs, but I won't show my interest, not at first. It was a little too good to be true. A rough, amongst all these diamonds? The frame, was atypical, but strong carved by strong hands, the touch of unvarnished tarnish. It was a popular style, and as I focussed on ephemera, I saw young Dick, take my measure and smile. I'd seen him before in a first-edition wet dream, and it was a little uncomfortable meeting him the flesh. The store was on Front Street, the corner of Third and South. Unless you're from around here the directions won't make a lot of sense, but trust me I know where I'm going. "Hmmm, I like this," I said, trying to sound like a connoisseur, as I fingered an alabaster copy of Bertouilli's goatherd,the young Athenian, nude, flaying a skin; which had attracted my attention. A perfect piece of porcelain, carved and molded by sensitive hands, and colored with a pearly-pastel glaze. You could tell the artist had enjoyed himself; the care taken gouging the cleft of the milk-white buttocks, and the detail in the carving of the exquisite genitalia. As a conceit, he'd made the youth stagger backward, as if drunk, and the center of gravity was precarious.Dick indicated that he was suitably impressed, but I should go examine, anything, I found of interest. "Do you now what's a Greek urn?" I asked "About forty-five drachmae..." said the peasant from Pleasanton. Standing in front of the Louisquatorze or quinze divan, with a Greuze painting of a Bacchanal, muted by old varnish, and the smell of old turpentine brought on feelings of libido; my hardwood was teak. "Do you carry copies, my budget won't stretch to originals," I asserted. "Well, what are you into,.. oh, the goatboy... you like that kind of thing.... you're obviously the type." Subtle. I am the type, but is it that obvious? He guessed I liked auctions, the prize awarded to the highest bidder, so I raised my right eyebrow, indicating bidding had begun. He was carrying a Greek vase, a medium-size amphora with a catamite soap opera emblazoned thereon, and he stopped to explain the true narrative, of the potter's invention. "This boy, he likes the Archean soldier, and wants him, but is too shy to say so, and acts coy, but he proffers his hand, which the military officer takes, an agreement is made, a solemn offering given, a white dove is sacrificed: the rest left to imagination; which of course runs away with me..." "And this Pompeiian etching? What perforce does it purvey?" "..See the youth behind the arras, he recognises the other, half-brothers since birth, jealous with rage, they'd been raised together, this is their first separation. A man comes between them. A story old in our time, but new to them...Greek soap opera, but they used oils to cleanse their bodies in those days...." Interrupting his tangent, I told him straight...my peculiar interest is in Sodom, as opposed to Gomorrah, an old biblical reference, but this kid knew what I meant, but wasn't going to admit until I'd embarrassed myself deeper. He rubbed up against me, it was no accident, and me I rubbed right back. But he moved away, and of course I followed. "Joshua, and the wall of Jericho.., the story totally apocrypal," he said. My God! He'd read a book! He didn't look the type. Now he had to convince me he knew aught about art... We moved into the antechamber, and some pun on aunties floated away... "Here we have something special..," said Dick Allbright, a name I'd not used in fiction before. Expecting a Willendorf Venus, but no, a Greek khouri,an Adriatic ho, slim slender young lad, vacant eyed, arms akimbo, thighs pressed together, a prayer to Osiris, penus somnabulant; unusual for the period. "Way too much for my wallet, but absolutely delightful." He was proud of his stuff, he had good cause, nothing here was cheap, they threw Art on the walls, (weird only the Pollock stuck in the public imagination), he knew it was good, knew that I knew too, and wanted to share. "How about a Rococco enamelled brooch?" as he thrust one look my way, and furtively searched through his collection. Out of the cabinet he pulled out a pristine cameo and offered it for my inspection. I recognised it at once, Antipholus' profile, lover to Imperator Hadrian, known through the Youcenar translation, the bee-stung lips, the crowded brow, eyelashes long, suitably effeminate, delineated with great care. "Too rich for my blood, but breathtakingly beautiful, tactile, a true objet d'art. But put it away and show me something that I can take back, to my place, something I can stick by the bed, a water-clock maybe, but its got to have digital numerals.." Curiosity part 2 of more of the same By davistrell@aol.com "How large a piece are you looking for? Something to be admired by friends? A sword, a lance or a teensy-weensy jeweled bossed dagger?" He paused for breath. "Furniture maybe? I think we have a Jacobean Futon, yes there, behind the Fontainbleu armoire, five hundred bucks, a steal at that price. And we'll throw in the Palestrina vase, it's on special." You can sell art, but you can't always buy it. "May I try it?" and I sat, and sprawled, and as a true test of the craftmanship, as the frame didn't creak. Beside lay a book, a very old book, bound in leather, and I opened the fly page, read the dedication there inscribed.Tssh! I was shocked. "This can't be real, must be a fake. Walt Whitman's autograph, this I can't believe." We looked together at the Civil war album. photogravures by Grant Morrison, wounded young men having their red badges of courage being tended by the old man. "This is a wonderful place, a trove of treasure, Saladin's cave, I almost believe you're a Djin." "And you request three wishes, mine to obey?" He still kept his street-Arab wit, though mine were clouded by these new spectacles, as my eyes are worn out by wear. He had read my thoughts like a clairvoyant, he knew what I wanted, and displayed more of the savoir-faire that normally you have to pay good money after bad, to find. "I have something here, I just have to show you, it's special, unseen by most of my customers, but something tells me, you're someone who would give it full admiration and treat it with justifiable cosideration.It looks a little tarnished, but with a little spit and polish, we can make it shine like new. All it needs is a little rubbing, a little tender homespun care." Back, way back of the Shop, Dick showed me his prized preciouss.I'd got as horny as Gollum had got with that ring-thing. I held it in my hand, this proud fine-veined flute-columned candelabrum, ornamented below with two gilded orbs, crowned with a gentle brunelleschi-type dome that sparkled as it shone. I had to move over, to gain better advantage, and said an involuntary prayer, something I learned, taught to Alexander by way of Sophocles, pat Aristophanes on the back, and Plato never listened anyway, that had been taught to me by a venerated sage, when I was Dick's age. He murmured with admiration, as I incanted the sacred mantra, till I was full of his wonderment, and I could no longer speak. I looked up at him, above, and my gaze was returned, and he pricked me on. His forehead, braceophalic, his nose aquiline like Caesar, but he had Jocasta's chin, (the dimple!). He opened his shirt, so I could delight in his torso, not as heavy as the Belvedere, but more homoerotic than the Venus de'Milo. His belly was flat, and the Iliac crests were pronounced and the inguinal ligament were shaped like a Illyrican vase, the base ending in curlicues of arabic swirls of pubic-hair, that wrote out the calligraphic secret message, revealing the name of the wise one, Priapus, the One, my favorite old god. Gripping the soft hardness with its icy heat of wet dryness between my lips, filing my cheeks, crowding my tongue I examined the fullness of his humanity.He was big, while my mouth was small, as the trojan Horse showed its true manifold dimension. You can breathe or gag, and I chose to gag on his boy-sweet cock.The sponge like tip, then the bronze harddness of his shaft. My mouth fastened on his cock like Venus fly-trap, sucking out his juices, sucking the life out of him. I worked hard like Ben-Hur, excited by Messala in the midst of the chariot race, gotta make him cum, so he'll feel obligated. So I can fuck 'im, tender fucking white-ass meat that gets no sun, nose stuck in a book when it should be stuck in a crotch, while I put my bookmark between his butt smooth pages, oh... it's in... It happened so quickly, he fell to the floor, his knees on the floor, his butt in the air. Library book, at time of renewal. Please loan me again. I had to push at first, then it went in, and he sighed, and then, we started panting, like an art lover at the breasts of his first lactating madonna.Raphael died young, but you know he did this, look at the self portrait. Look at Michaelangelo checking him out, and Leonardo pretending to ignore all that the secrets that the Scala del Scudio, hides. Well this Dick was like Caravaggio, street urchin, he spat as I impaled him, his eyes rolled like Munch's scream, the sex was naked full of electricity, but like Picasso, one minute the pain was mine and then his. He got Futurist on me, his belly strobed in orgasm as .....no, honey, dont go no postmodernist on me. I feel like a Rubensian nude afterward, woe is me. He had to turnover, I was too big in the front; from behind, my cock was more easily acceptable as I pushed, pulled back, rowing style, Eakins could've frozen the moment,...muybrige, don't tempt me.. He looked back at me, eyes screwed but pleading more, so I came...came. He was released, rolling on his back, squirming his elbows covering his eyes, his dick was hard, so I sucked hard, sucked soft, till he calmed, till he came, and we were silent, then the bell upstairs sounded.His sperm cooled in the jetblack of my pubic nest. "AwwwwwwwwwwHoney, just look! They got an actual fake Warhol! D'ye think we should've oughta? But it's so precious, look neat, against the bourganvilla" He smiled at me. "I'll be back." and terminated the loveliness. I can hear the voices upstairs, and I can hear voices, that are buying leather backed books by the pound, and a thousand pinpricks of philistinism, above as Dick goes through the ritual, of selling. It's worse than pornography. And you know how I hate that stuff. That does sound like a woman,upstairs, doesn't it? Dick? You There? Anybody out there? Just Curious.