The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

The End of Term

Glasgow, June 1993

It was only fair to warn them in advance. Ridiculous, really, that he still hadn't told them he was gay. But how did you have that conversation?

When Kippy thought about it, he didn't remember his mum and dad making homophobic comments as he had been growing up. But his dad was a silent fellow, who didn't talk that much anyway, and he doubted his mother ever thought that there was any such thing as people who weren't heterosexual.

The end of term show was about to open, a glitzy, showy-offy evening that students invited their proud parents to, and showed them the results of their hard-working efforts throughout the year. It was a good job a lot of parents were vague about how art students worked. Otherwise, they might think the expense of university was hardly justified, given the sum total of hours that went into the final exhibits.

He and Lillian stood in front of his final painting of Gaynor, mounted on the temporary stands in the Reid Gallery where the exhibition was taking place.

"Does it look awfy gay to you?" he asked. "You've met my ma. You know what she's like. What she's gonnae think?"

Lillian screwed her face up, trying to view the picture through a stranger's eyes. "Er, well if it was me. I'd probably guess straight away. I think your mum and dad will just be shocked, but think that as you're a trendy art student, painting such things is normal."

Gaynor had screeched when she'd eventually seen the finished effort. Kippy had done his best not to let her peep until he'd almost completed it. Like most people, she'd probably expected something glamorous and flattering—for the picture to be portrait like, the kind of thing a wealthy landowner would commission to immortalise his new and beautiful wife.

Ahem.

The conventional touches were there, the chaise longue, the velvet drapes. But Gaynor's pose spoke of suppressed desire and want. Kippy still wasn't sure if it was directed at him, but Lillian reckoned Gaynor appeared to be begging him to let her give him a blow job.

Disturbing.

He'd worked it up in oils as only oil paints could do justice to the colourfulness of Gaynor. He'd needed so many different mixes to capture the skin, the make-up on her face, the surface of her throat, and the way everything changed colour and texture as you moved your gaze up and down her body.

And no matter how beautifully and delicately done the face, the eye was drawn downwards to the puzzle of Gaynor, flat-chested, and the cock tucked between her legs, but visible none the less.

"They'll put it down to the city being sophisticated," Lillian said. "Or corrupting. And shouldn't you just tell them you're gay?"

It was an argument she'd regularly been raising in the last few months, fearful that not telling your parents something so key was damaging in the long term. He zoned out when she said it. The thought of that conversation made him squirm. Anyway, guys didn't talk to their parents about their love lives in general, not where he came from. They just introduced a significant other at some point.

He wasnae introducing them to Jordan, so what was the point?

In the end, his mother was the only one who came. His dad, who worked at the local creamery processing dairy products made from the milk that came in from the surrounding farms, she said, had to cover someone else being off sick.

Disappointment or relief, mostly relief Kippy decided, prodding carefully at his feelings to work out what he thought. A picture of a half-naked transvestite was probably easier to show to her than him.