Art Moves
Movement is the heart; the heart is movement. I will weave a narrative, not of objective reality, but of something much more real. I could think of no better place to drop down into the whirl of action than as close as a text allows to a young man of many favourable attributes in Paris, the city of love and excessive amounts of cream and butter.
It was close to midnight, it was as dark as Paris gets in the summer, and the man in question walked through the august halls of the Louvre. The tourist crowds in their ergonomic walking shoes had left with their prized selfies in front of the Mona Lisa, and the odours of stressed-out parents and geriatric tour groups had been extinguished from the bowels of the vast museum.
Thrown into the postmodern moment, Karl could not help but be ironically self-aware that some Dan Brown-style mystery plot might be unfolding elsewhere in the museum. Might Tom Hanks burst through a door, running around, rambling some gibberish about this or that artist or mystic? If so, Karl was determined to start throwing haymakers. This was a place to bury oneself in the mysteries of rock-solid Greek statues and penetrate the essence of scantily clad bodies of Baroque or Neoclassical paintings. Spare us your mass-market mysteries.
Karl was not alone in the great halls. Monsieur Dumont had, by all appearances, recruited a dozen or so students of the Sorbonne. Dumont had impeccable taste in all things. The all-male group moved with poise through the space, self-assured yet appropriately intrigued amongst the silent marble, and from their bodies emanated delicate cologne (or was it Axe body spray).
Monsieur Dumont stopped and turned to speak to his exclusive group of attentive young men as they reached one of the thousands of statues the French had hoarded within the old palace along the Seine.
“Gentlemen, consider the thigh of the man. Slightly angled forward, muscles tense, as if he is ready to move forward. The potential for motion captured in perfectly solid marble,” said Monsieur Dumont as he pointed to the sculpture.
“Tell me, who is he? What is he? Why was he brought into this world in this posture, ready, even eager, for forceful forward motion?” asked Dumont.
“Warrior, defender, protector of the city,” suggested one of the students.
“A good guess. Battle was central in his time. But where are his weapons? He carries neither a spear nor a helmet. No, the opposite is his eternal state; he wears nothing at all, butt naked, a most befitting label for our ready man, chiseled from the finest marble. And where is his scowl? His face is neither hostile nor downcast nor shy. Instead, he looks forward, inquisitive, with a probing gaze which makes us, with our clothing and comforts, feel flustered. Not the qualities we should expect of a man ready to inflict death on his enemies, or resigned to a fate of violent death?”
This is what I needed in my life, thought Karl. This is the manna I was born to imbibe. Born amongst mosquitoes and stale beer in the endless forest, known as northern Sweden, I had to sweat to get here. I sucked every trace amount of continental sophistication, history and culture out of the air I breathed as a teenager. I sucked a lot. Latin, French, Ancient Greek, suck, suck… Roman, Saxon, Frank, Visigoth, Ostrogoths, suck, suck… sculpture, painting, music, poetry, suck, suck.
Exactly what Karl’s sucking entailed, it got the job done. He had been accepted at the Sorbonne and reached success and acclaim. Monsieur Dumont had noticed him and encouraged him to take this class.
In the opening stanzas of an erotic story, Karl might therefore be suggestively introduced as a simple, pliable, impressionable young man on account of his background and his eager, perhaps naive, desire for a certain style and place. Karl snorted audibly. What about a package of unvarnished male sexual provocation, gorgeous face, perfect abs and pecs, and with an ass so firm and perky it sends the likes of Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust in an ambulance to their nerve doctors to regain composure? Keep it real.
“Karl, anything to add?” asked Dumont. “Please step forward. Come here, stand next to the man in marble, young man,” Dumont continued before waiting for Karl to justify his snort. A proper Frenchman should exude a certain confident arrogance. Dumont was a proper Frenchman, a relatively young professor, meaning in his 40s, with no shortage of smarts and snark to share. Thus, Karl was eager to step forward to see what the man at the helm had in mind.
“The logocentrism of our inherited knowing-how limits what we can see, what we can grasp. The word itself, a moat dug around us, which restrains knowledge and beauty, knowing and loving. As much as I ask you to verbalize what this statue is, its purpose and place in the universe, I have already, by the nature of the request, locked you within the moat. Your replies, for all their book-smarts and ornateness, will never rise above dry-humping the vast body of truths of the universe you are meant to become intimate with.”
“Cast aside that impotence. Leap out, leap forward, men. I selected you because I know you have what it takes to know, love and move,” said Dumont as he pointed around the group in the dim hall.
The exact meaning of the words was never entirely clear, but is that ever the case? Isn’t it all just a game, where substance is at best conjured from words? Karl nodded, he was even tempted to chin-stroke a bit, but he held back as he felt his dick stir a bit from the joy of insight. It is a fact that the quality of learning can be determined by which part of men’s bodies moves and how much. The very best learning should lead to hard-ons throughout. Depone fricatum, arripe virgam tuam ought to be the honest motto for some school of magnificence.
“Remove all your clothes, Karl,” said Dumont.
It was strange. At first, Karl reacted to the request in a manner consistent with modern sensibilities. But his shock disappeared quickly. An ordinary observer would point to the darkness of the space and the manly aroma in the air to explain the rapid change. Both wrong. Karl’s even foundations, whether he knew it or not, stemmed from that the man in marble already was butt naked and still superbly confident. The two men were joined in spirit across time. So, without further consternation or even a flirtatious blush, Karl dropped his clothing. The last piece of fabric flew along a parabola as Karl kicked his cotton briefs into the air.
For a moment, there was silence. Even the petty criminals and drunks of the city paused, such that no howls or sirens from outside were heard within the Louvre. Every last potent drop of the male senses and desires was therefore aimed at Karl’s nude body. As Karl already boasted about earlier, his body was not just any male body. He might bemoan the remote and desolate northern lands he was born into. Yet, Viking heritage plus years of forest hikes and swimming nude in solitary tarns had added rare and pleasant edges, hardness and protrusions to the body.
Dumont nodded and despite his nonchalance, he too had to adjust his posture to allow more room for a growing dick inside his trousers.
“Approach. Understand the art through the sensation of its complete embodiment. Grasp the unity, not just the parts. Words are not your tools. Warmth and pulse are on the path. Truth awaits,” said Dumont with poetic affect. With one hand, he pointed to the exposed sculpture, and with the other, he pointed at the naked Karl.
The fellow nocturnal mystics of the beautiful museum (not including the mass market ones) approached the two men on display. With fingers and palms at first, they began knowledge gathering. Form and firmness were carefully explored. Then they smelled the bodies, inhaled whatever qualities of manliness are transmitted through the atmosphere.
The tasting of the bodies began at the same time as the tugging and groping took on a more primal quality. The delicate engagement with knowledge of the non-ordinary kind followed a natural rhythm.
Karl had maintained his posture throughout. However, when he felt his dick locked between a pair of eagerly sucking lips, he had to look down to see which fellow student was the first to reach that point of the learning. The beautiful brown eyes of Alejandro looked up. Karl had imagined those beautiful Iberian lips wrapped around his dick before. Even the most studious individual will at times during lectures have to picture fellow students sucking and serving dick. Perhaps that was essential even to be studious. If we had the means to read thoughts, I bet the most common one in libraries and lecture halls is not about sociological trends or chemical synthesis; it is about good, slurping dick sucking.
For all the favourable attributes of Alejandro, and there are too many to enumerate here, he can not claim all the credit for Karl’s mounting arousal and grunting. Behind Karl stood the sizeable Hermann and groped and probed the butt cheeks with both intensity and urgency. Hermann wanted inside, simply put. However, he worked within given instructions and kept his dick behind his clothing and rather let his palms and fingers explore Karl’s muscular butt.
Close to Alejandro’s mouth and Hermann’s fingers was the right hand of Hugo. Hugo’s hands were delicate, the kind that belonged on a piano keyboard, leafing through ancient papyrus or massaging heavy balls with tender love. This was not some oafish mechanical act. Hugo was calm and astute, a man who moved in the world with excellent intuitions about truth and direction. A sane man can wish for nothing better for his scrotum and taint.
Martin’s nibbling was the final contribution to the mix. A man no stranger to speaking eloquently of nature’s mystical microcosm, moved his mouth between Karl’s nipples, neck, fingertips and ear lobes in rapid succession. If it protrudes, it can be tongued and nibbled upon, and thus Martin’s warm mouth and delicate tongue were there to leave their mark. Karl was therefore both tender and moistened at most places on his body.
No words were spoken, but Dumont pointed and pushed to direct his exclusive set of students to increased learning of the artful unit. The distinctive pops of lips detaching from firm and smooth marble and flesh buttocks were the loudest it got.
That is, until Monsieur Dumont, with a loud clap, commanded the men to return to a neat row in front of the statue. Karl was told to remain nude and in place. His dick was throbbing, just at the edge of release. A gust of wind at the tip of his penis would be sufficient to make him soil the floors. Dumont had no doubt timed his intervention accordingly, concluded Karl, who battled internally about what to do. But as a young man of superb stock, Karl could intuit that he was being tested. He decided to restrain his urge to wrestle someone to the ground for a quick and determined face fuck.
“If tonight was no more exalted than your average jerk-off session, and do not pretend you lack sufficient data to compare with on that account, well, then I am sorry, I have nothing more to offer. If, however, as I hoped when I selected you, something is stirring in your stout heart, a sense that for a moment your body and soul touched a different level of space, time, truth and beauty, then you have taken a first crucial step that only very few men ever has or ever will walk. Return home now. Make your judgment.”
Monsieur Dumont concluded his statement by moving his hand down Karl’s back and giving the thoroughly kissed and groped buttocks a firm tap.
Judgment made, thought Karl, before he even had fully tucked his dick into his trousers. He had felt something different, something mysterious, stir inside. It was a struggle to put words on it. Yet, this group of sweaty men were worth following despite the uncertainty and strangeness of the cause.
They moved silently through the dark halls towards a discreet exit. Only an invisible mist of youthful testosterone lingered in the air. Apart from that, the morning tourist groups would sense nothing of the intellectual and bodily exertions from the night before. However, it cannot be ruled out that when a visitor to the museum is moved by a mystical experience or is overwhelmed by something exalted, the trigger may not be entirely visual. Instead, it may be beauty transmitted by other earthly particles of man.
