Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage (4 page)

Late that night, at home, in bed, I toss and turn for a long time. I can’t fall asleep. Paul turns toward me, embraces me, kisses me, strokes my head and whispers something into my hair. Eventually, I do fall asleep. I dream about Rachel, naked. The wind tousles her auburn hair. John bows his head and looks me in the eye.

“Close your eyes and don’t be afraid,” he says.

I close my eyes, and disappear down into sleep.

Monday evening, Rachel takes me to yoga. The studio is dimly lit and there are mirrors. Soft, calming music is playing. I settle myself in quietly in the back row. I try not to look at myself in the mirror, so I don’t lose my nerve and sneak away. Rachel, on the other hand, is standing in the first row, right in front of the instructor. I can’t take my eyes off of her. I am simply spellbound by the way this woman moves. The class is full of people who are obviously not beginners. I start to get ideas about how I could draw them all as bendy trees, in some sort of pre-dawn haze. I don’t care that I can’t manage half the poses. The esthetic pleasure far exceeds my physical discomfort. And in the end, when we’re lying in corpse pose and meditating, a feel of complete ease and well-being comes over me.

After class, Rachel and I go to the café in the gym. Rachel says that they make excellent smoothies.

“Paul said you paint professionally. Would you show me some of your work?” Rachel asks, unexpectedly.

“Yes. I always wanted to be an artist. Just now, at yoga, what I wanted most was not to exercise, but to paint the people who were exercising. It could turn out to be really interesting.”

“Did you know that I own a gallery in the city? We show young artists quite often,” Rachel says. The news astonishes me. My face must have given me away, because she smiles. “Don’t worry. I have absolutely no suspicion that you’re trying to get to know me out of your own pecuniary interests. I invited you here myself, right?”

“Right. When it comes to pecuniary interests, I’m in bad shape. That’s why I have to teach. I can’t sell my work,” I admit.

“So come in and see me. We’ll take a look. Maybe I can help. And I like your idea about the yoga paintings.”

I must look completely shocked, because Rachel starts to laugh. I relax and start to laugh with her.

“Have you and Paul been together long?” she asks suddenly.

“Five years. We’ve been married for two. What about you and John?”

“About fifteen. John is an amazing man, one of a kind.” Rachel even closes her eyes on that last pronouncement, to emphasize just how unique her husband is. Out of the blue I remember the photographs on the wall in their house. And my conversation with John.

“How so?” The question bursts out of me. What does Rachel see in him that’s so one-of-a-kind? I mean, she must have had lots of experience with men before John, unlike me.

“Well, to be honest...” Rachel starts. She is looking at me closely, as if asking for permission to speak openly. I nod almost unnoticeably, giving that permission.

“For me, all men fall into one of two categories. Those who most of all seek pleasure for themselves when they’re intimate with a woman, and those who actually get turned on by a woman obtaining pleasure from being intimate with them. John is a champion in that second category. He has some sort of sixth sense with respect to women. He always knows what we need, and he can even guess how to give us pleasure before we figure it out ourselves.”

Rachel has a dreamy expression on her face. She must be remembering receiving all of that pleasure she’s talking about with such relish. It’s strange how she is using the plural. Why isn’t she saying “give ME pleasure”?

“What about Paul?” Now she was talking to me. “Which category is he in? He’s so wonderful, but also so shy. I like him very much.”

“Honestly, it’s hard for me to judge. I don’t really have anyone to compare him to,” I admit, for some reason. The words fly out under their own power. I don’t even have time to think twice or be embarrassed. “And I like him very much, too.”

I find that I simply have to add that last phrase. To stake my claim on Paul.

“But what about pleasure? Do you have orgasms with him?” she asks bluntly.

I’m thrown off track by this sudden lack of ceremony. Even with Paul I don’t talk about things like this. Of course I have orgasms, the quiet, gentle kind. My physical sensations and my feelings for Paul are located in different planes. I try to explain, get confused, and start to stammer and blush.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Rachel interrupts me. “I’m terribly tactless sometimes, really.”

Immediately, I feel better. I’m so glad she said it herself! Like any quiet introvert, I feel totally awkward when people ask questions that are too personal, or want to know more about me than I’m willing to say. I always have a hard time getting myself out of situations like that. And as a rule, I try to avoid the people who put me in those situations. I like Rachel, and deep inside, I am flattered by her attention and her interest. Only why was this interest of hers so concentrated on my sex life? Somewhere in my gut, that inexplicable feeling of approaching danger appears again. Meanwhile, Rachel is still talking about sex, but I only catch the end of what she’s saying.

“I prefer a powerful, explosive orgasm, when you forget everything in the world except for that minute. It’s a little like yoga, with a great deal more satisfaction. Of course, everyone is different, and we need different things from intimacy. Forgive me, please, for starting into this topic. I can see you’re uncomfortable with this kind of conversation, but we girls just need to talk things over sometimes, don’t you think?” I nod silently. I don’t want to make any excuses, but I’m just not ready yet to discuss the intimate details of my life with her.

“Anyway, why don’t you stop by my gallery this week?” Rachel suddenly changes the subject. “You show me your work, we’ll have some coffee, and I’ll introduce you to Tom. He’s my assistant. A fascinating person. I know you’ll like him.”

The whole way home, I think about what a strange, erotic effect this couple has on me. John definitely physically arouses me, and Rachel does, too. Looking at her, you understand that sex is a central part of her life, and that she enjoys it enormously.

When I get home, the only light on is in the kitchen. Paul must be working, I think, trying to walk down the hall as quietly as possible. A female moan sounds out from the kitchen. What could that be? Carefully, I sneak up behind the door, and I freeze. Paul is sitting before the computer. His head is bent. He is biting his lower lip. His eyes are half closed. And I suddenly realize that he is masturbating, watching his computer screen. That’s where the woman’s moans are coming from. I’m scared to go further in to get a glimpse of the screen. I want to watch Paul without him noticing me. His arousal suddenly transfers over to me. I slip my hand inside my pants and start to caress myself. Paul is already close to finishing. He is breathing hard and moaning. I watch him, and I am also quickly coming to a peak. We come at almost the same time. I slide down the wall in the hallway and crouch there for a while, catching my breath. Then I sneak over to the front door and start to make some noise, as if I had just come in.

Much later that night, when Paul had long since fallen asleep, I go into the kitchen and open the laptop. I really want to know what turned Paul on so much (and me, too, at a remove). Maybe I should also be downloading those sorts of movies and watching them once in a while, especially when I wanted to beat back my lust for other people’s husbands. I open the file that Paul had been watching. Rachel is there on the screen. She’s very young, but it’s definitely her. Two men are pleasuring her at once, and Rachel comes, and comes, and comes. I manage to come a couple of times myself while I watch.

This is all very strange, hard to understand, and it’s not at all like me. I don’t like porn and normally, I don’t watch it. No, I don’t judge people who do. It just never turned me on before. I even thought it was a little disgusting to watch these naked strangers, pretending, for the money, that they like each other so much. All their moaning and shouting had always seemed unnatural to me. And the situation itself, in which the woman is just an object used to scratch an itch and satisfy lust, seemed degrading to me, offensive to my womanly honor.

In this video, though, Rachel doesn’t look like an object for satisfying lust. Instead, she’s the center of everything that is happening. For her partners, her satisfaction is paramount. And judging from her response, they are able to provide her absolutely unbelievable amounts of pleasure. Rachel, in her long minutes of passion, is even more beautiful than she is in ordinary times. Her whole body shines, radiating happiness. You wouldn’t call her a sex slave so much as a sex priestess. Her orgasm really is powerful and explosive.

Diana had told me long ago that all men watch porn these days. And it’s a good thing they do, she thinks, because otherwise there’d be no living with them. But I had never before seen that expression on Paul’s face. I hadn’t even known that he watched things like that, though I probably should have guessed. And that was what had so seriously turned me on. The fact that I had watched the video without Paul knowing, on the sly, like something illegal and forbidden, only heightened my sensations, I think. At the same time I was incredibly ashamed about what I was doing. I hardly ever get myself off. I don’t like to do it. There’s something wrong about it, something perverse, though I can’t say exactly what. I know for sure that my grandmother wouldn’t have approved if she had ever caught me doing it. Not to mention watching porn.

At the end of the week I go right from school to Rachel’s gallery downtown. A few of my recent paintings, the ones I like the best, are in the trunk of my car, along with a folder of watercolors and some sketches inspired by yoga. I had decided to bring them because Rachel is in them. They show her the way I saw her at yoga and in the video: free, uninhibited, graceful, and feminine. I’m curious about how she will respond.

At the gallery, I am met by Tom, the “aid of all trades,” as he introduces himself. Tom is about my age. He has a fairly exotic look: hair in two shades of pink contrasting with his almost black, bushy eyebrows and big green eyes behind the round lenses of thick glasses. He is wearing a little makeup and many, many small earrings. There are skinny jeans stretched over his long, lank legs, and a white dress shirt neatly tucked in. A brightly colored tie makes his outfit complete. And he is wearing a pair of Converses. Tom reminds me of some sort of fairy-tale bird. He is very sweet, polite, and quite the dandy. It would be practically impossible to make the wrong guess about his sexual orientation.

The gallery is decorated in the same minimalist way as Rachel and John’s home. Rachel obviously prefers that sort of style. The place itself is not large, but it seems bigger thanks to the windows covering one entire wall, the light-colored wooden floors and light, almost white, walls, all hung with pictures.

Rachel has not arrived yet, and Tom offers me some coffee. We talk about this and that. Tom, it turns out, is a computer expert and a professional graphic designer. Right now he is working on a website for Rachel’s gallery.

I hear footsteps behind me, and Rachel walks in. She looks as impressive as ever. Today she is wearing a narrow brick-colored dress, sleeveless, which emphasizes every curve of her body, and just the right amount of makeup. She moves with almost feline grace. Simply looking at her is a treat. I don’t want to be like Rachel, myself, and that’s not possible anyway. Wrong height, wrong size breasts, hair too short, dark and curly. I have a narrow face, and slanting but bright-colored eyes, which especially stand out against my dark hair and eyebrows. My nose turns up at the end and it is covered with freckles that spread on my cheekbones. And my mouth is completely unlike Rachel’s – not so large or generous. The main differences are not external, though.  Rachel moves through life with pleasure, confidence, and relish. I can’t explain it in words, but there is a fire inside her, an internal light, the kind I’ve read about in books but I’ve never had the luck to see in real life. But wait… I saw that fire reflected in Paul’s face, when I caught him at the computer.

I show her my work, without saying much. Explaining paintings is not my forte. If a picture of mine needs a long explanation, that means I haven’t managed to get across what I wanted to with the paint.

Tom comes to join Rachel. They look over the paintings. Then the watercolors. Then the sketches. When she sees herself, Rachel smiles.

“I like them. And I think I have a buyer for you. Leave this landscape here, if you can. One of my clients actually just called and asked about a landscape.”

“Do you have anything else like this?” asks Tom, pointing at what is probably the most monochromatic of my paintings.

“Yes, but they’re bigger, already on stretchers, so they wouldn’t fit in my car. I can bring them later in the truck.” 

Tom and Rachel exchange glances.

“We’re having a big exhibition of young artists in a couple of months. We could use your work,” Rachel tells me.

Tom is excited. “Remember our collector from Seattle? He’s a regular customer. He just happens to be extremely interested in monochromatic work right now. He’s buying absolutely everything. Bring us all you have. I’ll take some pictures and put them up online. Then we’ll see.”