Abuse by the Muse

Abuse by the Muse, Chapter 2

Thanks to the insightful and prolific MikePaulWrites for editing assistance.

Once again, this series contains infuriating incidents of infidelity but no--ZERO!!--misogynisitc acts of "BTB" revenge.

Please be forewarned: if that's what you're looking for, you won't find it here.

Chapter 2: Drew is not Amused

Although it appeared to be a moderately large town, more than half of Cutler's 40,000 population consisted of students at the state university. The rest of the place was fairly insular. It was classic small-town America, and many of our families had shared history going back several generations.

My own family's roots there could be traced back for a hundred years. My grandparents owned a nearby farm. My father was the town's optometrist. My mom was the town's librarian. I fantasized, for a time, of moving to a big city like New York, maybe sharing a little apartment with Tippi somewhere like Brooklyn or Greenwich Village. But the undeniable pull of the familiar and my strong family ties led me to accept that Cutler would be the place where I would settle and raise a family. When Tippi moved back to Cutler after her own explorations, I put my big city dreams away and settled in for what I thought would be the long haul.

Tippi's father was a relative newcomer to our town. He'd arrived in Cutler from Sweden 30 years earlier as a research fellow in microbiology at the university, stuck around as an adjunct professor and then made the big leap to a tenured professor position. His wife, Marjorie, owned the real estate brokerage where Tippi now worked as a part-time assistant. She thought of it as her "day job," something she suffered through simply so she could contribute a little something to our household budget, augmenting the substantial and growing income my design work was bringing in. Tippi had always yearned for a career in art but after spending a year or so in New York immediately after college, chasing gallery owners and trying to get her foot inside those very cliquish doors, she came home to lick her wounds and grudgingly accepted that she'd be painting and showing her work in a more provincial setting.

She was fortunate to be working in a family business, since she gave her mother's office the bare minimum of her time and attention. I'd tease her from time to time: "If you were my employee, I'd fire you." She never argued the point.

Before college, Tippi and Tyler had been a couple through most of high school. He was the town's rich kid--his father owned the Chevy car dealership--and Tippi was the school's Nordic goddess. They broke up for reasons that she always left vague. "I don't want to talk about it," she insisted one day after we'd had a marathon lovemaking session. "Things are good the way they are. We both know we had relationships before we got together, but there's no point in re-hashing them and making each other jealous."

All the history I knew for sure was that, after high school, Tyler left town and went off to the University of Southern California, where he studied business, joined a fraternity, played Lacrosse and drove around L.A. in the shiny new Corvette convertible his father gave him. Tippi and I remained in town and began dating during our junior year at Cutler State. I was studying design. Tippi was a fine arts major. We shared classes in art history. I was surprised at first when she accepted my nervously extended invitation to join me for a cup of coffee. I'd always thought she was out of my league. My friends loved to point out the obvious: that I was punching above my weight with Tippi. I couldn't really argue the point. When I asked her to marry me, not long after she returned from New York, I was mildly shocked when she said yes.

Although she had a "day job," Tippi's dedication to her painting and drawing never wavered. Although her drafting skills were top notch and she could effortlessly sketch lifelike figures, her work during our school years drifted to abstract expressionism, heavily influenced by such modern masters as De Kooning and Diebenkorn. She did a complete flip after she attended an exhibit of the works of Lucian Freud. Deeply impressed by Freud's approach to portraiture and the depiction of the human figure, she switched to a more figurative style of work, ultimately evolving into her own style of magical photorealism. It was derivative at first, but eventually, her work evolved to become highly personal.

In portraits and in scenes she recreated from dream images, her depictions of people, both real and wholly fictional, always became reflections of the subject's most human characteristics, as if she were meditating on exactly what humans all have in common. She was seeking to capture the soul of her subject through a depiction of their flesh by revealing their deepest vulnerabilities, and many of her paintings featured varying measures of erotica. "Our moments of eroticism reveal us at our most vulnerable, our most true," she wrote in an artist's statement accompanying one of her exhibitions. "We shouldn't be ashamed of it. It's central to who we really are. The pussy and the penis tell our stories as eloquently as our hearts and souls."

After we were married, one corner of our apartment would always be occupied by Tippi's easel. During those early days, she switched from oils to acrylics to save us from the fumes. About three years after our marriage, we bought this first home in Millport. She converted our garage into her art studio, switched back to oils and painted whenever she could. The turpentine smell sometimes seeped into our living room, but I didn't mind. I admired Tippi's dedication to her art. Though she hadn't yet become a star in the rarefied world of New York's art scene, she was gradually becoming a good-sized fish in the small pond of Cutler and had begun to develop a regional following.

I accommodated her when she requested my services as a model, sometimes posing in the nude on a shabby antique couch she found at an estate sale and kept in one corner of our garage. Posing for her could be tedious. The couch was uncomfortable, and she often twisted me into pretzel-like positions. I sometimes had a difficult time remaining still and she'd scold me if I shifted my body. But on more than a few occasions, she'd reward me afterward, setting herself beside me on that couch and burrowing beneath me as I stripped off her painter's smock, rolled down her jeans and slid her panties past her knees. I began to associate the studio's turpentine smell with sex.

To say our sex life was vigorous would be an understatement.

Tippi loved sex, and she approached it with the same sense of exploration and creativity with which she approached her artwork. It was Tippi who suggested we watch porn clips together, and when we would, her face would register an intense concentration. Afterwards, we'd sometimes enact some of the scenes we'd just watched, often twisting ourselves into a Kama Sutra like sequence of positions. We gradually established our limits. Nothing too extreme. We both enjoyed playing with toys. Tippi was OK with a little light spanking, but anal, she decided, was off the table. A finger up her butt was all right, but not, to my disappointment, my penis or even my tongue. She giggled, squirmed and wriggled away one night when I squatted behind her and attempted light analingus."Gross!" she said. Still, sex was an adventure and felt like a creative process.

As Tippi's reputation as an artist spread into a more regional sphere, her paintings--mostly, the tamer ones, the still-lifes and abstracts--were hanging on the walls of Cutler's most prestigious gallery and were also shown in a larger gallery in the state capital. At the opening of a group show that featured her work, the art critic in the capital's newspaper had written a glowing review, and though Tippi received the praise modestly, I knew she basked in that recognition.

Lately, she had accepted some commission work and sales of her paintings provided a nice supplement to our family income. It wasn't a fortune, but it was validating, and I admired her talent and her dedication to her art.

The nature of my business allowed me to work from home at least two days a week. Our second bedroom served as the home office for both of us, with two desks and two computers on opposite sides of the room. Tippi didn't spend too much time there: she had a desk in her family's real estate office and much of her work, in those days when she couldn't avoid it, took place over there in Cutler.

We were sipping our morning coffee together on the Thursday of the following week, about ten days after Tippi's return from her adulterous reunion. The radio, tuned into our local NPR station, predicted a storm with heavy rain moving into our area.

"Damn, I promised I'd go into the office this afternoon" said Tippi. "There's a ton of paperwork on my desk."

"I'd hate to have you driving home in a rainstorm, Tippi. Could you put it off today?"

"No. I promised my mom I'd get this work done. I have to go in. If the storm gets too crazy, suppose I sleep over at Darcy's house?"

Darcy was one of Tippi's oldest friends. She, her husband Denny and their toddler son lived in Cutler just a few blocks from Tippi's office on Main Street.

"Okay, I think that's a good idea," I said.

I was working from home that day, working late into the evening, so engrossed in my WordPress program thatI wasn't aware of the rain coming in until, at around 7pm, it began to really pound on our house. Our dog, Sita, came into my office, whining and lying at my feet. She looked balefully up at the ceiling as the storm played percussion on our roof. It was a heavy, soaking rain, and I worried about our aging roof sprouting leaks. I should have had it inspected last summer. I got up and began walking around the house to check.

All was good until I got into Tippi's garage/studio. As I opened the door and stepped inside, I was greeted by the smell of the medium she liked to use to thin out her paints, the pungent smell of turpentine, damask varnish and linseed oil. There was water everywhere. I sloshed through the room and saw the rain coming through two visible holes in the roof and splashing over the easels and canvases stacked around the room. I began to frantically evacuate the artwork, ferrying stretched canvases into the living room, scooping up her tubes of paint and tossing them in plastic trash bags. It took about a half-hour to get the most important things out of the rain-soaked garage.

A large canvas drew my attention. I'd never seen it before. It was larger than her usual work, maybe seven feet wide, four feet high, so big that I couldn't figure out how she had stretched it. It was a figure reclining on that couch I knew so well. Most of the details hadn't yet been painted in. The face was just an oval shape. But she had clearly been depicting the figure's genitals with sharp definition. The man's cock was huge, distended, proportionately resembling an elephant's trunk, and it was pointing directly at the viewer. It was deeply disturbing, and I stared at it for a few minutes, wondering...

I tried ringing Tippi's cell phone. No answer. I tried the office. Ditto. And then I called Darcy's number.

"Hey, Darcy, how are you folks holding up in this storm," I asked when she picked up.

"Wow, Drew, it's really coming down hard over here. Same with you?"

"Yeah, and there's a leak in Tippi's studio. I've had to move all her stuff into our living room. It's really a mess. Is she there? Can I talk to her?"

There was a pause.

"I'm sorry, Drew. Tippi asked if she could stay tonight, but we haven't seen her yet. Have you tried the office?" There was a hesitancy in Darcy's voice, a hesitant tone that did not inspire trust and confidence. Something was wrong.

"The office phone isn't answering. And Tippi's not picking up her cell." I was getting more anxious as I spoke.

"I'm sure she's okay, Drew. I'll have her call you as soon as she gets in."

Two hours passed without a word from Tippi.

I called Darcy again, but she didn't even try to come up with a story. "I haven't heard from her yet," Drew. "Maybe she stopped for a bite or a drink somewhere." It was the best that Darcy could muster.

I was starting to panic. I called our local hospital. Nothing. I called the county sheriff to ask if anyone had been hurt in an accident. The officer on duty was sympathetic, but no, nobody answering Tippi's description had been involved in a mishap.

And then the premonition began to crystalize. In a flash of realization, I knew with telepathic certainty where Tippi was; I knew what she was doing. There was a churning in my guts; a hollow feeling as if my insides had morphed into a helium balloon. I stayed awake through most of the night, texting her, calling her every hour. There was no response.

It was 2:00 a.m. before I finally slipped into a restless sleep and I woke up just five hours later when our dog lapped at my finger to tell me it was time for her morning walk.

Outside, the storm had passed, and the morning chill had ebbed. I slipped on a sweatshirt and a pair of gym shorts and, hooking Sita to a long leash, we stepped outside for a morning run.

Sita was a great running dog, staying just a few feet ahead of me on her eight-foot leash and stopping only two or three times to do her business. We ran a mile out and back, returning to the house before 8:30. I fed the dog, poured myself a cup of coffee and settled on our living room couch, surrounded by Tippi's paintings.

At 9:30 am, Tippi's car pulled into our driveway. I was seated on the couch when she came in. She was wearing that same blue top she'd been wearing two weeks earlier, but now it was torn around the collar. She looked at me sheepishly, almost fearfully, but didn't say a word.

We stared at each other for at least two minutes, neither of us speaking. She took a few steps into the room, moving tentatively toward me. Her face looked stricken, wide-eyed with nervousness.

Finally, "You didn't make it over to Darcy's, did you?" It wasn't really a question.

"No, sweetie," her voice came out so softly I could barely hear it. It was a small voice, like that of a child. I could see that she wore no bra under her torn top. Unencumbered by a bra, Tippi's nipples, those nipples I loved so much, poked through the tight cotton of her top. Seeing them caused my gonads to stir despite myself.

"Were you with him?"

There was a long pause. Tippi looked away, then turned her face down as if she were looking at her shoes.

"I am so sorry, honey. Oh God, I am so very sorry. I feel like such a slut."

She had been inching into the center of our living room, and was now surrounded by her art and supplies. She looked around and turned to me, bewildered by the chaos in the room.

"What happened here?" she asked.

"There was a flood in the garage. I brought your artwork in here to keep it safe."

"Oh God, thank you. That was so nice of you...." She sank to her knees and began to cry.

Her story came out between sobs. "I don't know why. I can't explain it. He knew I was in town, he must have called my mom's office looking for me, and he demanded that I get over to his house right away. If I didn't, there'd be no more modeling, he said. He told me to bring my sketchbook, that we could do another study for a painting I'm working on. And I did it. Drew, I know I should have told him to just go fuck himself. I'm so sorry. Please don't hate me. I know how wrong this is. I know that however I try to understand it and explain it--this muse thing-- it's still adultery." Tears were streaming from Tippi's eyes as she spoke, her eyes gazing up, searching for mine.

"I know I'm hurting you. I know how angry and upset you must be. If the shoe were on the other foot, I'd be absolutely devastated. If you want to divorce me, I'd understand. You'd be perfectly justified in dumping me and walking away from this craziness. But I'm asking, begging, for your understanding and patience. I swear I will make this up to you. Please don't leave me."

I looked down at her. Still on her knees, she had crawled directly in front of me. Just beside her was one of her canvases, a nude self-portrait with almost surrealistically fluid, sensual lines. It was a highly stylized painting, and unless you knew it was a self-portrait, you might not have recognized it as a picture of Tippi, except for the freakishly bright blue eyes, the flowing golden hair and those nipples, those long, erected nipples. And right beside that canvas was the portrait of the man with the enormous cock.

"Is this a painting of Tyler? Is this the painting he was talking about?" I asked, pointing at the arge, unfinished canvas.

"Yes, I painted it from memory," she answered, sounding abashed. "Mostly from memory. And, ummm, also from a photograph he sent. I was hoping I could flesh out more detail, really capture some truth about him. Sounds strange, I know. He's not a deep person, but somehow that makes it all the more intriguing. How do I find the depth, the truth about an essentially superficial person, something that speaks to what makes all of us, even the worst of us, human?"

I purposely ignored her artist's theorizing. "Is he sexting with you?" I asked, stupidly, as if the answer to that question wasn't perfectly obvious.

Tippi just nodded her head. Still on her knees, she crawled over to the couch and wrapped her arms around my legs. She pushed her face against my thighs. She cried, and despite my anger and confusion, I cradled her head in my hands and tried to soothe her.

We stayed that way for what seemed like a long time before she looked up at my face. She shifted on her knees, and I saw her face wince with pain, and her hand reached for her hip.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"He was a little rough with me, Drew. I let him do a lot of stuff to me. God help me, Drew. I hate myself for letting him do that."

"Did he force you, Tippi?"

"No. No, it wasn't like that. I don't know why, but I never said `no.' The worst part is I gave my consent."

"What did he do? "

"Do you really want to know the details?"

"Some of them, yeah. If you don't tell me at least some of it, my imagination will make it much worse than it probably is."

Tippi thought about it before answering, haltingly.

"At one point he grabbed me and pushed me back onto his dining room table, forced my legs open and fucked me there while he was still standing. There was something on the table, a salt shaker, I think, and it dug into my hip. I asked him to stop for a moment, but he kept right on going for like ten minutes. I felt such a mixture of pleasure and pain; it's hard to describe."

"God, what an asshole! I don't understand why you let him do that. So, you told him to stop and he didn't?" A feeling of rage began to boil inside my gut. "Tell me what else happened."

She paused before answering. "I don't know why, but after a few seconds I was telling him to fuck me harder. I didn't care about the pain."

"Did he come inside you again?" I asked. Of course, I knew the answer.

Tippi looked up and nodded her head without speaking.

"Did he come in your mouth?"

She rose from the floor and sat beside me on the couch. She nodded her head.

"Did he fuck you in the ass?

Tippi looked at the floor. She didn't answer.

"That really pisses me off, Tippi. It's fucking infuriating! You never let me do either of those things," I said, realizing, as soon as I said it, how trivial that complaint seemed in light of the whole scope of this marital catastrophe.

"You're right, honey. You have every right to be furious with me," she said, and she looked me straight in my eyes for the first time since she'd walked in the door. Tears flowed down her face but she stared at me without flinching as she wept. Her hands went to my waist, and she reached slowly for my belt buckle.