Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage

by Altbridge, Tanya

  For the first time in my life, I was enjoying a feeling of stability. Paul had become a constant in my life. Like me, he wasn’t prone to sentimentality, and he never spoke to me about love, or about how lonely he was without me. With every gesture and every glance, though, he let me know how dear I was to him, how much he needed me. His face shone with a special light when he saw me. He even told me directly, a few times – which was very unlike him – that he couldn’t imagine a future without me. That was bigger than a declaration of love. For me, anyway. I understood very well what I meant to him, because he meant absolutely everything to me, too: security, stability, someone to take care of me, affection, even a family. We really did become each other’s family, right from the start.

  Keeping to my covenant with my grandmother, I studied art and even did a pretty good job of it. But I never did learn to sell my paintings for any sort of decent money. For this reason when I graduated from college, I had to compromise, and declare myself not just an artist, but an art teacher. I found a job teaching high school. The school where I ended up was a good one, an expensive private school for girls. All the girls who signed up for my class really wanted to learn. There were no discipline problems, no afterschool activities to supervise, and, after work, I still had the energy to draw for myself all the things I could never stop drawing.

  Paul also worked hard. He found a job teaching English and literature at a local college. His real dream, though, was to write a screenplay. He had been working on one for a long time. It was a cross between an action film about bank robbers and a comedy. It seemed to me that the main problem with his writing was that ambiguity between genres. If he could have just decided which one he was writing – an action film or a comedy – he would have had an easier time, and finished the writing without a hitch... but he couldn’t decide. So, every evening, before going to bed he sat up till late at his computer in the kitchen typing, and then erasing, almost everything he had written.

  Chapter 2. Family life

  That is how our life was. I worked at the school, and then painted in the attic. There was a tiny closet that Paul converted into a studio for me. Paul worked at the college and wrote. Even books or television were a luxury for us. We were both permanently exhausted. Our sex life was not what you would call fulfilling or varied. Paul was always very gentle and sweet with me, though. He never rushed me, and never insisted when I wasn’t in the mood. And I found it hard to deny him anything. He was so tall, thin and quiet. He blushed so beautifully. One glance from him, and immediately something inside me, in my stomach, constricted. I wanted to hold his head tight and stroke it. And feed him so that he’d put on at least a little weight.

  But all my efforts were futile. Paul never gained an ounce. He was a hardcore tennis player. At least once a week, usually on the weekends, he made the trip to his tennis club. His regular partner was a Mexican guy named Juan. Paul talked about Juan a lot at home, so much that I started to feel like I knew him, even though I never actually met him. From what Paul said, Juan was good at tennis and had played for a long time, but he never had any real success because of his explosive temper. Mistakes and points lost threw Juan off kilter and interfered with his concentration. He’d then make even more mistakes and completely lose control over himself. He was the kind of tennis player who swears on the court and could break his racket in a fit of rage. That would have been fine if they only ever played against each other. However, when they played doubles against another pair, things were different. Then Juan’s anger was directed at Paul and Paul alone. All Juan’s mistakes and lost points were Paul’s fault. Paul put up bravely with Juan’s outbursts because they still won more often than they lost, and also because, with his busy work schedule, it wouldn’t be easy to find another regular partner at the club.

  Sometimes I wondered whether our life could be called a happy one. We were young, and got along well together. We never talked about love, but for the two of us it was kind of understood. Otherwise, why would we have gotten married? We didn’t have much of a wedding, just a short civil ceremony. No fancy dress, celebration, or honeymoon. We just sat in a restaurant and drank some champagne.

  Did I mind? Had I wanted something else, something more elegant and romantic? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t think so. My grandmother had taught me to be suspicious of romantic declarations, flowers, and other sentimental nonsense. I had never cared much for dresses. My wardrobe consists mostly of jeans and shorts in various stages of disintegration, which I wear with t-shirts and sneakers. When I work, the paint always ends up on my clothes eventually, by some mysterious manner, so I didn’t want to spend the little extra money we had on expensive things that I’d just ruin with paint. Life with my grandmother had taught me practicality and thrift. True, when I started working at the private school, I couldn’t teach in jeans and had to beef up my wardrobe a little. Even there, I spent most of my time in my artist’s smock, anyway. Nobody could see what I was wearing under that smock. Paul had also had limited funds his whole life, and was used to living modestly and making do with not very much. We weren’t all that interested in clothes, cars and other status symbols. They just didn’t seem necessary to us.

  My husband was the first person in my life who I could talk with honestly – literally about everything. Before I met him, I didn’t even know how much I had missed that. With Steve, if we talked, it was never for long – we never had much time. He didn’t burden me with his problems and he always tried to make me laugh, but we never got to the point where we’d have a serious conversation. With Paul, though, talking was always fascinating. He was smart, well-read, and educated, and he knew how to listen. At least he always listened to me very attentively, even when he was tired, sick, or in a bad mood. He could spend hours discussing with me any sort of stupid incident at the gas station or the store, or problems at work.

  Other parts of our life tended to be difficult and dull – to the point that I even stopped perceiving it in color. For the last year, I’d been painting in monochrome. Black, gray, and a little bit of white, like black-and-white photography. As if somebody had switched off the colors in the world around me. Then they turned off smells and loud sounds. Everything was stale and lackluster, as if it were reaching me through a smoky haze. I even seemed dull and boring to myself. And sometimes a nasty thought loomed in my head: Is this really what happily ever after is like?

  Chapter 3. Love and Drama

  My office at the school was next to the film and theater classroom. A big-breasted blond woman named Diana ran it. Diana had always loved artists, so she wanted to make friends from the start. I may not have been a typical bohemian, but you know what they say about any port in a storm. Plus, I adored really good movies, not just dumb comedies and sappy dramas. Diana realized that I would be an appreciative audience, and she started introducing me to the classics. Maybe that was the reason I began painting in black and white, thanks to all the black and white movies Diana served up to me.

  Diana was married to our history teacher, Pete. Pete was older than her, a shortish, stocky guy with a mane of uncut, unkempt hair and a permanent smattering of gray stubble on his chin. He was the perfect image of an eccentric old professor and really did know a lot.

  Diana told me once that she had married him out of desperation. Her love affairs always ended badly. Diana loved drama, which is why she taught it, and she couldn’t imagine a life without passion, tears and farewells. After her last unhappy and very public romance (her young man that time had been our gym teacher), when she had been left alone and sad, Pete had taken her out to dinner and proposed marriage. It turned out that he had been in love with her for a long time, but had been afraid to speak up because she had a boyfriend. Once they broke up, Pete thought he ought to seize the opportunity, strike the iron while it was hot, and so on. Anyway, Diana thought it over (for one night) and decided that she was sick and tired of the dating scene, of all the hellos and goodbyes. She was already 35 and she was done livin
g over her parents’ garage. It was high time she had her own home and her own family.

  Unfortunately, Diana’s wedding didn’t put an end to her love for drama. Now it just smoldered within her, in secret. I’m not sure why Diana picked me as her confidante. Probably the reasons were purely geographical. My office was right next door to hers, and we talked every day during lunch. And my husband didn’t work at the same school. Diana thought that Paul and I had the ideal relationship, and I didn’t try to convince her otherwise. I talked about myself as little as possible and didn’t really have anything special to talk about. There wasn’t any drama in my life. Plus, Diana was very sophisticated when it came to sex. I, on the other hand, remained thoroughly unsophisticated and learned a lot from her.

  Diana was not satisfied by her sex life with Pete. Sex with him was boring, uninteresting. Yes, he tried to please her, but he never took the initiative and he was not inventive. And when a furious Diana would banish him from their marital bed after another scandal (and she loved scandals, the kind with screaming, tears, swearing and threats of divorce), he would obediently totter off to sleep on the couch in his study, where he would quietly masturbate, alone.

  Diana divulged all of this to me with no sign of embarrassment, never worried that I might say something to Pete. In that, she was correct – I never could have said a word to Pete, even if I had wanted to. I didn’t even know how to talk about such things. Soon I started to see him differently, with Diana’s eyes, rather than just with mine. That made it agonizingly uncomfortable for me to see him at all, and so I tried to avoid him at school.

  Diana, meanwhile, started to take lovers, and she experimented with them. They were her route to uninhibited passion and drama lacking in her family life. During lunch, she would tell me everything, in detail. Those details were too much for my active imagination. Her stories and her approach to sex made me start thinking about my life with Paul. No, I certainly had no need for drama. Definitely not screaming, scandals and divorce. Since I had met Paul, I had never even looked at other men, and I hadn’t wanted anyone but him. It had never once occurred to me that Paul might cheat on me with another woman. But now, hearing Diana’s adventure stories, I started to think about it.

  If Diana was right, men share one characteristic: an insatiable sexual appetite. They need sex pretty much constantly, 24 hours a day. At least that was the case for the men Diana dated.

  I remembered how, when we first got together, Paul had also wanted to have sex all the time. And I remembered how later, bit by bit, we started doing it less and less frequently. I never took the initiative myself. Gradually we worked out a certain mechanical order of movements, which we could use to fairly quickly come to a conclusion beneficial to both parties. “Quickly” was the key word here. We both had to get up early, we went to bed late, and we never got enough sleep, so we were always tired.

  By this point, Paul was writing a new screenplay, about an athlete and his coach. The athlete works hard and overcomes various obstacles in his life, while the coach helps him out and, in the end, guides him to victory. The interactions between the young, inexperienced athlete laboring through all the difficulties and the coach, who has learned through experience and been hardened by life, were the central intrigue in the story. Paul had me read parts of his script. Generally I like the way Paul writes. His characters always come across as very real, lifelike, but at the same time I could almost physically sense that some very important element was missing.

  Sometimes I wanted to tell Paul about Diana and her lovers, to add a certain dramatic flair to Paul’s story, but I had no idea what role Diana could possibly play in the story of the athlete and his coach. I decided to keep Diana’s revelations to myself, to avoid giving Paul any dangerous ideas. Still, after a lot of thought, I decided for myself that if Paul ever betrayed me with some other woman, someone like Diana, not for love but simply out of curiosity, I would be able to forgive him – because I was too attached to him, and I could never live without him. And really, when I compared my relationship with my husband to Diana’s relationships with her lovers, I had to conclude that, in my life with Paul, sex was nowhere near the top priority. Something much more meaningful and important than sex connected us.

  Chapter 4. Paul’s New Partner

  One day Paul returned from the tennis club in a fantastic mood. Juan hadn’t been there, and Paul found himself paired up with a new member named John. John turned out to be Juan’s polar opposite. Paul spoke for so long, and in such great detail, about what it was like to play (and win!) with John, how great a tennis player John was, and how well he intuited Paul’s moves as his partner, that I wished I could meet this amazing John myself.

  Soon, I had the chance. Paul and John were supposed to be playing doubles against some really good players, champions in one league or another, who had beat all the other doubles teams at the club. It was the mini-match of the century, more or less. I went to the club to cheer Paul on, and, of course, to offer support if, or when, he lost. I knew that I could help him out just by being there.

  John immediately impressed me with his size. He wasn’t a whole lot taller than Paul, but his shoulders were much broader. He was maybe a touch over forty years old, with dark hair and dark eyes, tanned and muscular. He had long arms and legs, and triggered a feeling in me that was unfamiliar and incomprehensible. Before I knew it, I found myself wondering if his dick was longer than average, too. I blushed just thinking about it.

  The most surprising thing of all was that John and Paul won their match. It took three sets and a tiebreaker, but they won. After the match I ran up to Paul to congratulate him and give him a hug. He led me right over to meet John. “This is my wife, Emmy,” he announced.

  “Nice to meet you,” said John, extending one large hand to shake. He had the firm handshake of a strong, confident man. I looked him in the eye, and again felt that strange fluttering in my stomach. John released my hand, but he was still looking at me. I could feel his gaze physically, as if he were running a hand over my body.

  Later, at school, during lunch, I tried to find out from Diana what it means if you feel that way when you meet someone new for the first time. Diana’s eyes lit up immediately, and she wanted to know who had gotten under my skin that way.

  “You just wanted to sleep with him, because you liked him. And he probably liked you too. Most likely you’d be absolutely amazing together. But who was it? Do I know him?”

  I disappointed Diana by telling her that she didn’t know him, and that in fact I didn’t, either. He was just a random guy standing behind me in line for coffee. I lied, and I didn’t even blush. There was no way I could discuss something with Diana that I was afraid to tell Paul about. I tell him everything... But actually, lately, there hadn’t been that much to tell.

  Over the next month, Paul got to play several more matches with John. After one of them, they stopped for a drink and got to talking, and it turned out that John was a fairly big-time film producer. Paul couldn’t believe his luck. He was still slaving away on his screenplay about the athlete and the coach, and here, right under his nose, was a producer who might be able to provide Paul with some valuable insights and some good advice. Strangely enough, John agreed to help. And he invited both of us to his place for dinner. Paul must be a pretty good tennis player after all!

  Chapter 5. John and Rachel

  As we pulled up to John’s house, I suddenly felt shy. I had never expected such an enormous, fancy home, even though Paul had warned me that he was a producer, and a successful one.

  John opened the door for us himself. Again, just like the first time we met, his shoulders caught my eye first. No man’s shoulders had ever had such an effect on me before. They were so broad, and so muscular. It also occurred to me how great it would be to draw John naked. All his muscles would be visible… There I go again. Why do I start undressing him in my mind as soon as I catch sight of him? Honestly, this has never happened to me before.

&n
bsp; As we walked inside, the aroma of food reached out to meet us. I could smell freshly baked bread, something sweet and spicy, and fish. The scents were emanating from the kitchen, where John’s wife, Rachel, was running the show. She moved gracefully between the oven, the fridge and the sink, not rushing too much, and simultaneously she issued orders to John. “Offer our guests something to drink! Show them the house! Let these two have a seat! Why are they standing there, poor things?”

  Seeing the house was a simple matter. The whole first floor was an enormous living room with windows looking out over the ocean, plus the kitchen and dining room. There were no walls dividing them, so the whole space was visible from anywhere, and we could gaze out over the ocean, sip the wine that John quickly suggested we try, and watch how easily and confidently Rachel moved about the kitchen.

  As I watched her, it occurred to me that she was the kind of woman I wanted to be when I grew up. I was seized by admiration – the pure kind, without any jealousy mixed in. Rachel was tall, almost as tall as John, with a nice figure, thin waist and endless legs. Her long, thick, auburn hair was drawn back in a tight bun at the back of her neck. Rachel’s face was dazzling. Enormous brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a heart-shaped mouth. I didn’t know whether the shape of her lips was the work of some unknown virtuoso plastic surgeon or if they were an inheritance left to Rachel by her parents, but in any case, those lips, a little puffy as if they had just been kissed, immediately drew the gaze, and made her face unusually sensuous.

  Rachel made us paella. I had never eaten anything like it before. I really don’t care much about food. I eat when I have to, and sometimes I even forget to eat, when I’m working. And I can’t really cook. I can boil noodles, I guess, or warm up a pizza in the microwave. Paul is no gourmet, either. But when we found ourselves in that house, in that kitchen, it was as if we had both grown some kind of new, sixth sense, or maybe a seventh sense. I have no idea what Rachel put in her food, but I had never eaten anything so delicious. It wasn’t just dinner, it was a sensuous feast. Everything on my plate was so unbelievably beautiful that it was hard to tear my eyes away. The colors seemed brighter. The interplay between light and shadows – Rachel had lit some candles – gave off more contrast. The music – John plugged in an iPod for some jazz – was sweeter on the ears.