What should I paint? The fat icicle on my upstairs window, set against the deep blue sky, sun streaming through it, a gleaming droplet of pure sunlight welling at the tip? The woman’s tongue barely touching the tip of the man’s erect phallus the moment before it spurts?

Two years ago I bought this small brush in Whitewater, Wisconsin in the art supply section of the college bookstore where I was browsing between recruiting sessions. ‘Grumbacher #8, sable,’ the handle said. The teardrop bush of auburn hairs felt so soft on the center of my palm. Shy of bringing the brush to the register, I dawdled, again and again testing the wispy tickle. I feared the pretty college girl would know my purposes weren’t art. “Hi,” she said, and I blushed and she smiled. Middle-aged men like me must buy these brushes all the time.

Two weeks later, home at last, I tried it out on Laura’s little clitoris, on the tender skin to either side of that shy stem, on the upturned hood, and after dipping into the nearly clear beads of moisture which gathered and oozed underneath, upon the tip itself, until her delicate lips curled and tightened and turned the mauve of a storm-bruised sky. So gently did I paint, touching touching touching the sable tip to Laura’s secret skin, that when Laura’s tightened belly rippled and her body leapt up like a fish catching the fly, like a dog snapping the mailman’s bottom, like a mouse trap springing into the air, the bundle of soft gray mouse body caught and crushed in the greedy clamp, I was surprised and almost didn’t get out of the way.

‘Errands, back at five, enjoy the grapes,’ said Laura’s message, and here it is 6:30. Errands, appointments, assignations. I see everything. The kiss she bestows upon her lover’s lower lip turning into a sweet slow sucking, turning into more. “I’ve got to go,” she says, even as she lifts lovely hips so he can pull down her panties once again. I work the brush rapidly against my palm. What should I paint?