Exciting news for visual learners with great imaginations: the public may soon get an eyeful of some expertly drawn nudie cartoons, courtesy of late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

WWD reports that Saint Laurent's business partner and long-time lover Pierre Bergé is alleging that a portfolio full of personal items (including a journal, a portrait of his mother he did as a teenager, an Andy Warhol painting of his dogs, and several "erotic drawings") was stolen from the designer's apartment several years ago.

Today, it's in the possession of a German businessman "who insists on remaining anonymous," and who claims to have received it from one of Saint Laurent's former lovers (and employees: a driver), Fabrice Thomas.

According to a representative for The Unknown German, Thomas transferred the portfolio to his client "part gift, part sold," after the German gave Thomas "a job, a car, and a new life" in a plotline we are not currently exploring.

The exact details of the alleged theft are hard to work out, because everyone involved is either anonymous (The German), disappeared (Thomas, whose whereabouts were disclosed neither by the German nor "others in Saint Laurent's circle"), or not outright accusing suspects. (Bergé on the culprit: "I suppose I know who he is, but I can't tell you his name.") Very secretive, very chic, very fashion.

But enough about mystery—let's get the details on those sexy cartoons.

If they're the same ones Patricia Frost, an international specialist in fashion for Christie's auction house, has seen twice in the past ten years, they're not only too hot for Christie's; they're too hot for Earth:

The erotic nature of the work was not "really open-auction material," Frost said. "It's just a question of what you want to put up onstage. Some were not quite pornographic, but they would have been difficult for us to publish. We publish [catalogues] in so many different countries internationally," noting that Christie's is respectful of the various cultures in each.

We're talking not only a butt in underwear, but possibly even a bare butt—or several. We're talking wahoos and ding-dongs; yabbos and tummies; dusky nipples of both sexes.

According to WWD, Saint Laurent was definitely aware that pornography and the sexual acts depicted therein existed – because Bianca Jagger asked him about it in a Q&A for Interview magazine in 1973.

Jagger said, "Pornography - does it excite you?" Saint-Laurent responded, "Pornography? I don't know what that is. Pornography, eroticism, love, it's all the same to me."

Assuming Pierre Bergé doesn't end up in possession of the portfolio, valued at $8.8 million, once all the legal wrangling is complete (if he does, he's vowed to never publish the images), we could very soon find ourselves appreciating with refined artistic sense some real hardcore, bareback, freaky-deaky pictures of love.

[WWD // Image via AP]