Sometime in the last week, he had busted right through the frustration of not being able to get hard and arrived in a land of deep bliss that he usually only accessed after sex. Noah didn’t even need tobethere. All Benji had to do was step a certain way for the chastity cage to brush against his boxers, and he’d suddenly have a transcendent experience right there in the middle of the street.
It wasn’t anticipation—not quite. It was the knowledge that he was beinggoodfor him. Like when he was wearing a plug or not jerking off as instructed, but all the more intense. Not being able to get hard was a big leap from not being able to come. Benji had been worried it would get boring, but instead, it just honed everything down. Stripped it bare to its pure elements. It didn’t matter what was happening in the world as long as Benji had the chastity cage and Noah cupped him proudly at the end of every day.
“My sweet baby,” he would say sometimes, rubbing the metal ring around Benji’s balls.
And often—more often than not in the past few days—Benji would call him Daddy.
It still felt weird if he wasn’t out-of-his-mind horny and/or in subspace. So, he usually saved it until then. And when it happened, it filled him with such deep contentment that it made all the mortification worth it.
A knock on the door made Benji startle. He yanked his hand out of his boxers, making a face as he realized he was going to have to shake this poor old lady’s hand with sex-toy skin. It was clean enough… right? He’d sterilized it before he put it on after his shower this morning. And he’d only touched the outside.
He jogged over to his studio door and flung it open. “Mrs. Presley! Hi!”
“Hello, young man.” Mrs. Presley walked into his studio, mercifully without shaking his hand, and stared around the messy space. “You look like you’ve been busy!”
“I’ve been inspired,” Benji said, kicking a paint can out of the way and wincing at the stack of coffee cups in the corner. “Since we got back from the trip, and all. I’ve never been overseas. And with all the, uh, personal stuff happening.”
“Falling in love can be the most inspiring thing in the world,” Mrs. Presley agreed, clasping her shawl excitedly. “Sometimes. I’ve noticed that it will either send artists into a frenzy or make them so happy they won’t make any art at all. I always pitied those ones. They always insist that they can’t create art unless they’re depressed! So happy to see you’re not one of them. And thank you for showing me your studio, Noah said you were very protective of it!”
Benji laughed awkwardly. He doubted Noah used those exact words; he always made Benji sound better than he was. He wouldn’t have mentioned that Benji had barely let anyone intothe studio Noah had bought for him, including Max and Daphne, who had only been allowed in for minutes at a time before Benji shooed them out, filled with nameless anxiety.
But he wasmaturenow. He could let Mrs. Presley in for a visit, especially if she was offering another payment that made him open his bank account just to stare at it in shock and disbelief. He still hadn’t shaken the habit of counting how many months of rent he had before he went broke.
He had many,manymonths. More than he ever imagined. He still couldn’t fully wrap his head around it.
“So,” Mrs. Presley said, staring admiringly up at the huge windows that let in so much gorgeous light. “Where is this new piece you’ve been telling me about?”
“This way.” Benji led her through discarded hoodies and empty trail mix bags and tubes of paint to the canvas in the middle of the room. It had a sheet over it, since Benji had a fit of nerves when Mrs. Presley texted him to say she was almost at his building.
“Here we are,” Benji said. He gripped the sheet and reminded himself that she had assured him that she’d pay for the next one if she didn’t like this one, then pulled the sheet down.
It rippled to the floor. Benji watched it settle and waited.
Mrs. Presley let out a pleased hum. “I’ll take it.”
Benji’s breath whooshed out of him. “Yeah?”
“Yes!” Mrs. Presley beamed, patting him jovially on the arm. “I love it. You have this wonderful intimacy in your paintings. Oh, I’ve told you enough. I love it! Thesweetness, thedetail. And that is some lovely homoeroticism, I must say.”
Benji blinked at the painting. He thought he’d pared back the homoeroticism with this one.
It was a close-up of a pile of items on a nightstand: a watch, a sturdy ring, a pearl earring, and a glass of water beading withcondensation. A sunlit man was standing in the background, belt half out, undoing a leather collar from his neck. It was decidedly not Benji. He’d been careful to make the angles all wrong, given the man a stubble where Benji had none, put him in a shirt Benji would never wear.
“Homoerotic,” he repeated.
She nodded, humming. “Oh, you know me, I don’t have a technical mind for this kind of thing. It’s the way you drew his hands, the tenderness of the motion. And the way the collar is being pulled out of its buckle. How your man tilts his hips. Is that very judgy of me?”
“No,” said Benji consideringly. “I did make him hold his hips like that.”
“I do love it,” Mrs. Presley said admiringly. “And I love all your warm colors. Your work is always so warm, it makes so much sense that it would happen in here.”
She looked around the studio, which was full of golden afternoon light.
Benji looked around with her. Itdidlook like a painting sometimes. Benji had half a mind to paint a scene of the jumbled coffee cups in the corner.
“It’s a beautiful studio,” Mrs. Presley continued. “It must be lovely, having all this space just for your work. I remember when I got my first proper garden. It was always a pet hobby of mine, but I never had one big enough for my daydreams. Then I married my first husband, and suddenly the garden was so big it fit all my dreams in it.”
Benji held back a smile. Mrs. Presley might not be very technical about art, but shefeltit, and that was what counted. She was able to sum up huge topics better than any professor Benji had ever known.
