Nadrea and Vincent arrived in Lower Manhattan looking like they were dressed for an edgy photo shoot just add some black grease, saturating light and props. Nadrea was in her skirt and black heels off set by a dark sleeveless blouse and neckline that plunged beyond her breasts nearly to her navel. Vincent’s muscles and lean waist were obviously straining parts of his shirt. Dinner was salads and a few more drinks which kept the couple buzzing nicely in a semi intoxicated state as they arrived at the gallery. The rooms were dark with models set in staged scenes throughout. Upon entering there was a roped off area with the first set of models bathed in warm red and hazy green light, each of them and their pale skin and undernourished bodies were more reminiscent of heroin addicts than of models. The night wasn’t about still art and beauty but it was about the expression of nontraditional beauty, images that were all to real, depicted not by professional models but the wretched and pierced tattooed youth of the underground club scenes, the audience was a depraved mixture of the Manhattan elite and the Goth and punk rock underground. A mixture of soft blonde haired patrons in dresses and suits were meandering through the make shift gallery next to girls with pink and blue hair, worn out combat boots and suicide heels. Their ripped opera hose and tawdry attire typically failing to cover their abundant piercings, in direct contrast to the well manicured art crowd set. Moving past the opening display next to the bar against a worn exposed brick wall is the next display an haunting image titled one last time. The model on the floor legs spread and pierced breasts exposed her dark fire engine red hair cut into a short bob her nose piercing hanging ominously downward just above her blood red lips. Her head thrown back held there as if in the throws of passion a hand reaching between her spread legs, at first glance it looks like nothing more than an alley way masturbation image but on closer inspection her wrists looked split and she was sitting in a pool of blood drops set in place as if frozen in time droplets hanging paused on the tips of her fingers motionless as the headed toward the floor. Other props floating seemingly motionless, suspended horrifically in the air. The models face twisted in a mixture that’s contours alluded to exquisite erotic pain, the point of release and resolution of tension.

The next stage was set as a club scene Vincent aloofly noticing the participants and white string sectioning off the entrance in its single pathetic strand. The setting was a club scene with lights flashing through the small dark 3 sided room. A single chair and small bistro table littered with an assortment of beverages was crowded into the corner. The people consisted of three males and two almost underage girls, (if not legitimately under age) danced away in the room to the overhead sound track. Each lost in their own worlds and moving in an unrhtymic and unsynchronized mass casting shadows through out the space much like the well dressed patron who typically spent their time casting dispersions as carelessly. It was odd to Vincent to celebrate this modern difference and adaptation of beauty. Years ago, not so many years ago, black pant and boots wearing punks sporting Vandals or clash T-shirt were not celebrated, they were not adored, and certainly by the main stream they were not lusted after. Not as images or objects by the main stream yet here were the elite admiring these Lolita’s like beauty queens or horses. These very people were once considered losers, the misfits of the counter culture’s own counter culture. Now the lost souls were celebrated, sadly as living art, and exploited for arts sake. He wondered why the genuine articles which could be admired, daily in coming and goings, ignored by most shunned by many were here on display. Had they some how become safe because they were on display and contained by a magical piece of white string. Gawked at like circus freaks and zoo animals but Vincent wondered if their spirit had been broken like wild animals now on display in the zoo.

“They’re like caged lions” he stated.

“They are nothing like caged lions, Vin. What they fuck are you smoking?” Nadrea shot back but only half heartedly, she was interested them as meat and as objects not people. Vincent added.

“You’re wrong they are like caged lions, this is not their natural habitat. No matter how hard they try to make the zoo a savannah it’s not. It loses its edge and these sets have made them lose theirs.”

Nadrea listened and wondered why he cared as he continued. “They are like a faded shirt not nearly as brilliant as it originally was, but in the wild they were magnificent, seen as they intended to be seen, tight knit communities form to share common interests and protect themselves from the uncertainty that is the world, their fate or the own doubtful security from rivals.”

Now though they were just models, the views, some moved by quickly many however would linger longer. Vincent wondered that once these models were put back into their own proverbial wild would fade into oblivion, into the main stream of society, most would in the end eventually lose their edge, their zest for life and their freedom of choice and expression and the began to blend in. They would become another bland face in the mass of an average existence. Nadrea saw things differently, she saw them as unique objects, she still couldn’t seem them as people, there was no purpose in humanizing them, they were on display as objects. Each object was ripe with its own erotic possibility.

Soon Nadrea found herself at the bar ordering a Typhoon Martini consisting of Kettle One Vodka, Coconut rum, tropical punch and Coconut milk. Vincent chose a bottle of “Liquid Salvation”. It was nothing more than a flask shaped bottle of purified water sporting a sultry devil woman and a statement who’s font that looked eerily like Nadrea’s own hand writing boasting “Pure Water for an Impure World” .

The next scene was set with a girl, perhaps barley in her late teens posed in at first glance a sexual interlude occurring in the bedroom section of the of the girl next store suburban décor catalog. Her stockings tattered and torn dress draped off of her shoulders and her breasts concealed with an almost juvenile bra, intertwined with a woman who looked like an accountant in her mid 50’s at first conjured a series of disturbing images. The scene titled “Mercy Lost” made one wonder who was the girl and who was the woman? A relative, A whore? Which was the one whoring herself? Was it a view into an incestuous act all too familiar for a tragic victim or was it mere a passing act of love or lust between two willing and consenting individuals who found their own needs fulfilled in the other? Was it for love or for money until further study and inspection one couldn’t be sure. At first Vincent spotted a picture, it was of the woman in the bedroom and a young girl, a fair skinned freckled little red head sporting a pastel flowered dress and white jeweled sandals. The woman many years younger than now was holding the child lovingly in her arms. Both of them couldn’t have looked any happier. The next picture he saw was taken maybe four years later, the pair in shorts an sneakers standing in front of Cinderella’s castle in the early morning Florida sunshine. The girl perhaps ten and slightly disheveled standing side by side with her glowing mother, life had yet begun to take its toll on her. Then next photo was of the girl maybe 14 with all the awkwardness that that age brings, her hair longer than ever and flowing in dark curly streams of red, the mother dressed in her conservative church going woman’s attire it might as well been a picture from a mother and daughter magazine. The mother looked older, more corporate, almost detached. A chillingly cold vision compared to her earlier expressions of joy. Something had changed beyond their ages which inevitably march on relentlessly with the cruel passing of each second of our own existence. Glancing across the dress to the far end stood a lone 5×7 the girl’s beautiful long red locks had been died the blackest black, not a natural brunette but a horrific shade of the dark color. The length shortened the long curls now looked bent and wiry. Her pale complexion offset by blood red lipstick, bondage pants and a misfits t-shirt that looked old enough and big enough to have been worn by Glen Danzig years before she was even a lust filled action of her parents. Soon many of the viewers who took more than a few passing seconds concluded that it was not lovers embrace but a physical confrontation between a mother an daughter. Perhaps over her life’s choices, her apparel or the emotional distance that had come between them.

Moving to the next set contain four young men, one dressed as a scruffy bike messenger sporting long dark greasy locks, his knee length shorts were most certainly once pants, pants that more than likely had been acquired at a second hand store. He stood with a ghost like presence next to his Italian bike frame, purple and green. The next young man with bushy black hair, an unassuming stance and his rotund belly ballooning out his D&G, baggy jeans and red converse chucks, draped in a soaking wet and grease gilled apron holding a bus boy’s container and rubber gloves straining to reach the middle of his forearm. His fingers stubby and short, stretching the fingers of the gloves like over stuffed sausages about to split their casing. Then next man was more a boy of 18 dressed in a body that was so under nourished that Vincent couldn’t tell if he was dying of some wretched disease, a hopeless addict or simple hadn’t taken the time or cared enough to eat. Her would have looked at home in jeans and a t shirt on a farm except for the fact he wore only olive boxer shorts and boots while sporting a Mohawk. It made him different, it put the edge on who he had become. The final male looked like the all American male, short neatly groomed haircut, toned muscular body holding a sign that read “DEAD”. The skin on his face made to look decayed and shredded, his attire that of a soldier, his hands soaked in blood but other wise he was perfect. Was he the one who was dead, was the blood his or the blood of others that he had spilled? Did he go about his ominous tasks with willing fervor of simply as part of what he needed to do to survive.

Before long Nadrea had begun making her way around the room, Vincent left to his own devices as she flitted from conversation to conversation. A litany of old friends, lovers, acquaintances and total strangers milled about to fill the nearly overcrowded room even more. The music buzzing through the makeshift gallery went silent. The buzz of conversation filled the air, echoing mercilessly off the hard brick walls before being absorbed in part by all the warm flowing flesh that made up the audience. The noise of conversation continued to crescendo as conversations multiplied and mutated, people straining more and more against the noise in the room to be heard by those next to them. Ten minutes pass and the display light went dark, shadows were now being cast from the main gallery lights, causing shadow to overlay shadow with a warm yellow glowing haze, not the crisp clear light one often associates with art on display, not the stoic cold white light that offices use, a fluorescent mixture of well lit and completely cold. No the lights were a warm hazy yellow. The models shaded in appearance then waited a few minutes later as the house lights began to dim floor lighting came up in the set, the figures became more ominous, darker and haunted, illuminated with varying shades of green and reds. “hey” rang out over head. A drum and bass rhythm began then it was punctuated with electronic bursts and melodies that resolved in to devils third after devils third. Notes feared in medieval time, sounds that when combined were thought to bring Satan to the world, slow and dark were the sounds. “hey, hey, hey!” words called. The din of the room dies down as two men take the until then empty main stage next to the DJ’s set up. It was a small stage with a basic black stage curtain behind it. One man a tall thin Arian type, short blonde hair and ice blue eyes, a poster boy for the mid 20’s Nazi’s if there ever was one, his utilitarian dress, the second man short and sloppily dressed not at all primped and pressed stood holding the microphone. As most people focused their attention on him a small pyrotechnics explosion went off “Now you are the art!” he screamed with a maniacal hoarseness into the mic. Flames shot up on both sides of him lingering for a few seconds as the curtain opened. Fog escaped as it spread to its width and more models began to emerge, walking across the stage, and down the stair in the front. Old men dressed as Goth and punks, old women many well into the 60’s or even 70’s moved forward dressed as out casts and freaks as the single electronic tones and a loud crescendo occurred of Feuer Frei by Rammstien. Dozens of bodies walked off the hazy fog filled stage the older models were joined by the younger tattooed, pierced and dyed hair youth clad in wing tips and conservative apparel, they mingle with the crowd while those on display came away from their sets crossing the previous un-crossable little white rope line that had separated the art from the gallery patrons. The models moved like zombies in a George Romero movie, accosting the viewers and dragging them back to pose with them in their scenes. Hoards of photographers shot digital image after digital image of the exchanges and interactions as well as the posing. The pace was frenetic and the energy grew more and more palpable with each passing second.

Some of the crowd joined without hesitation, others while not necessarily defined by wealth or social status declined becoming uncomfortable with the interactions. A few patrons even displayed genuine panic when they were pulled into a scene. Nadrea was never one to be shy as she eyed her choice of a pale girl wearing a silky electric red wig and a nose piecing that dangled in a heavy U shape consisting of thick metal protruding from the cartilage and skin that separates ones nostrils, hanging precariously above her blood red lips. Nadrea took her by the hand not waiting for another to approach her. A third joined in, she had dark nearly waist length hair, bodacious hips and ample breasts in contrast to the other two, yet she was still lean yet some how Botticelli esque appearance. If cherubs were part of the minions of hell yet found a way to retain their doughy skin and cheerful expressions she would have been the embodiment. As the triad walked with sinister intent toward a display that was set with stacks of old tires, a few dented and rusted 55 gallon drums and a 1955 Cadillac. The car’s paint much like those surrounding it was not so new, not so clean, and any hint of remaining innocence and virtue were drowning in an act quite to the contrary. A muscular Wall Street type and a man who was a dead ringer for Travis Barker also crossed the magical white line separated gallery from display.

Nadrea and red moved toward the car, the others merely watched, taking in the sight of the young Goth reclined across the hood, her body contorting to closely hug every curve of the car’s rolling body type. Moving her legs upward, arching the small of her tiny back she then rested a heel on each of Nadrea’s shoulders. A photographer snapped away taking pictures of the moment attempting to capture the building tension of the pair and the shock the others as Nadrea and Red drew closer together. The men who had crossed the magical white line, into the display stood stunned. They were living in a sense in a early pubescent dear penthouse type fantasy as the cherub moved in. Pressing herself against Nadrea hands placed squarely on Nadrea’s hips. As the tension built there was no consideration given that his was to be art, for those three this was something much more primal. Their electricity could be felt by those watching, it was not actions and poses but genuine intent that made the exchanges great. The urges they expressed danced through the air, they could be felt but not quite touched by those watching.

Red repositioned herself as the men faded into nothing more than the tires off to the side. Nadrea intertwined her body with red’s, the dark sexuality that was her eyes flowed uncontrollably. She focused with out wavering, like a tiger on its prey. They prey was willing, succumbing to what ever fate the predator has chosen, with no regard for the outcome, without concern for self preservation or anything that would distract from those strangely alluring and completely uncontrollable moments.

A crowd began to gather in front of the spectacle of a display, watching in unrelenting voyeuristic fascination as the tension built. Tentative caresses as limb became more intertwined with each other as the three continued to enjoy each other as the three posed together on the hood of the car, making their way onto the windshield and up onto the roof, sprawled out displaying a genuine lack of modesty for the angles that they were being viewed and photographed from. Other photographers raced to the corners of the display, feverishly snapping photo after photo catching each subtle nuance, every single caress and kiss involved in the seduction from every imaginable angle. The crowd grew with others soon joining in and those watching feasted on an orgy of visual images, the body language of the participants only slightly less intriguing to the photographers than the voyeurs who were watching with perverse curiosity as touches became embraces, embraces that were followed by kisses. Nadrea focused on her two original companions with out interest or intent to share her focus with the others around her. Her caress gentle and leading in what were typically non offensive area’s, a hand on an arm, brushing precariously close up her inner thigh then rotating outward before it drew too near to what everyone watching thought to be inevitable. Vincent stood back lurking in the shadows watching and smiling his wide and wicked smile. He himself was engaged in otherwise inappropriate touching and fornication with a more than willing lavender haired participant. Her modest breasts and slender hips swaying gently as Vincent stood to the side watching Nadrea frolic off in the distance as his hand moved from the small of his new friends exposed back to almost between her legs beneath her short skirt and then up her hips and back to the soft skin of her lower back. His touch bordering on light and almost non existent, every time she began to drive her self into his caress to increase the pressure and friction her would immediately and maddeningly lighten his caress again teasing her further and further into a place she had not imagined a man capable of doing, resisting the obvious with cold intent only heighten her arousal as she lost herself inside his touch and her own fantasies.

Others began to make their way into Nadrea’s little scene, each adding their own contrast and posing to the backdrop the three had created. The Wall Street type who had resolved himself to being a wall flower ogling the ladies was joined by three blatantly gay men and an old woman who looked like the perfect house wife from a late 1950’s TV show. Nadrea slowly turned herself toward her underworld cherub and whispered in her ear. Soon after the young nyph began to untangle her self from the wretched tangled mass of limbs eventually slithering her body off the car, removing her self from the scene and the voyeurs and making her way to Vincent and his current lavender hair diversion.

The Cherub kissed the lavender haired one and then turned to Vincent “She would like you to join us.”

“Let her have fun with these festivities, I’m quite content here.”

The cherub stood stunned, disbelief washed over her face. “She said to insist that you join us.” The cherub stated in not quite firm tone but one that was clear that the request was not hers.

“Tell her I said no!” Vincent’s voice firm and cold.

The cherub smiled at him knowingly and said, “ If you insist, but she won’t be happy.” Vincent laughed all the while his rhythmic teasing of his new friend continued as the Cherub disappeared back into the crowd and then back into the scene that was now swarming with dozens of people posing locked in embraces while other stood like statues and models at a fashion shoot stoically adding their presence to the back drop.

Next Chapter Self Doubt

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