A Progression of Fantasies

Ponder. For lack of a better word, ponder works for me, at least for now. I'm sitting at my desk at work pondering what to do next. You see, I asked my wife of sixteen years to edit a few stories that I'd written and by the time she was done, she'd come up with more questions than corrections.

Let me regress for a minute so you'll understand my dilemma a little bit better. For my entire life, I've always needed an outlet to express myself. When I was a teenager and all the way through my twenties I made an attempt at drawing. I wasn't bad and even considered going to art school for a while, that's when reality bit. I was taking a few night classes at the school just to see if I'd like it. They were pretty general and covered a bunch of mediums I'd never tried like ink and charcoal. It was a Thursday night and we were scheduled to do a pencil sketch that evening of a model. When she came in, there wasn't anything spectacular about her. She looked average, maybe about twenty-five with kind of light brown hair that was pulled back into some kind of bun I guess. We were sitting at our easels and I was sharpening a couple of my pencils, getting ready when my life changed; she took off her robe and sat down in a tall wooden chair.

All right, no big deal right? Wrong! I was just sixteen and if my hormones weren't racing before, they sure as hell were now. Screw it; they were now in hyper drive. I must have stared at her for five minutes before I even thought of picking up a pencil. This was the first totally naked female I'd seen in my entire short life. Like every other teenage boy I'd seen pictures in magazines but here, right in front of me, was a real naked woman. Like the lead in my pencil I was hard as a rock.

"Is there a problem?" my instructor asked as he stopped behind me while he looked at my blank sheet of paper.

I couldn't talk as I just sat there numb.

"Just draw what you see, forget about what she is," he whispered into my ear as I felt my face start to get really hot and I know it had to be beet red.

I picked up my pencil and took his advice and started to sketch. I started with her outline and worked from there. After a couple of minutes he was right, I didn't look at what she was, more so as just something or I should say, someone to draw. After what seemed like hours, she took a cigarette break and then went back to her chair. We drew totally for about two hours. I was just doing some minor touch ups when she came up behind me.

"Nice," was the first word I heard her speak behind my back. "My hips look that big to you?" she asked looking at my finished work.

"What the hell do I say to that?" I thought, trying to come back with something, anything at this moment.

"Just screwing with you," she said with a laugh, as I got red all over again as she walked around the room looking at everyone work.

The instructor looked at everyone's drawings, made a few notes and class ended. I had mixed feeling driving home that night. I'd seen my first naked woman and although it was wonderful, she didn't look like any one the pictures I'd drooled over for the past couple of years. Her breast weren't as big, she was heavier and her hair wasn't styled just so like the ones in the magazines. I guess she wasn't a Playboy caliber model. I found out that students and others were paid twenty-five dollars and hour to pose for the art classes. I was on pins and needles after that, until the next model turned out to be a guy.

When I walked into the house almost everyone was still up watching something on the television. Dad was in his 'chair' as my brothers and sisters all sat on the floor in front of our black and white TV. My mom, like always was on the couch with the newspaper reading it from cover to cover.

"Hi honey," she said greeting me as I past from the kitchen into the living room. "How was class tonight?"

"Pretty good I guess," I told her hoping to get my drawings up to my room before the next question that I knew was coming.

"Let me see what you drew tonight."

"Oh God, please just strike me dead," I thought to myself when I heard those words.

"Come on honey, let's see what you drew tonight," she asked again.

"Mom, I'm not sure ..." I started to say looking at my brothers and sisters lying on the floor.

"Come here, let me look," she said motioning me over to the couch.

I wanted to die. I wanted to fucking die as I walked over to her. I opened up my folder and handed my drawing over to her. No one, especially a teenage boy should ever have to be put in the position of showing your mother a picture of a naked woman you just spent two hours drawing.

"Oh my, this is very good," is all she said.

My mom was cool; she was the one who started me drawing years ago. I used to watch her sketch and paint when I was little. Why she stopped I haven't a clue, except maybe life and the additions of my brothers and sisters had a lot to do with it. I guess being straddled with a ton of babies' kind of takes priority over drawing, but she still was my inspiration.

"Show this to your father," she said handing it back to me as all my brothers and sisters now just had to see what I'd done.

I walked over and handed it to him as the rest of the brood looked on.

"She's naked," one of my sisters said out loud.

"Didn't she have any clothes on?" I think one of my brothers asked. By now I was three foot tall and shrinking fast as I tried my best to make this nightmare end.

"Kids, that's art. Your brother's going to be an artist when he grows up," she would always tell everyone but life isn't so kind sometimes.

I sat in the room as the panel of three looked at my portfolio. I had samples of the four mediums they required, and made sure everything I submitted was perfect. After about twenty-five minutes the instructor in the center spoke.

"Steve, you've done some excellent work here and no doubt about it you have talent but," there's always a but isn't there. "But, there are many more talented than you here. We will accept you into the school, if that's what you want. However, if there is anything else that you've been looking at or considering, it is my suggestion you look at that avenue also." In other words, I was good enough to get in, but I'd never make a living at it.

The school tuition was about seven thousand dollars a year plus supplies and neither my family nor I had that kind of money. Sometimes life really sucks. I still drew now and then but the wind had been taken out of my sail. Years later I passed onto my son what I'd learned, hoping that he'd go further than I had; but that also wasn't meant to be.

It took another twenty years before I finally found something I could sink my teeth into.

I received an invitation to fly on the Goodyear blimp. One of the chemical companies I was dealing with gave my boss four tickets and I was lucky enough to be one of the four picked. What a rush. I took my wife's Canon AE-1 camera and took the whole roll of thirty-six pictures concentrating on the blimp itself and all the others while we were sailing over the coastal area near Daytona Beach. I had the time of my life and was even given the opportunity to actually steer it for about two minutes. I was more than beaming when I got home and took the roll of film to the photo lab. Two days later I looked at my works of art. Crap, nothing but crap or that's what I called them. Out of focus, too far away, too close, about ninety percent got tossed into the garbage.

"Hon, I set the camera just like you showed me," I almost cried trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. Son of a bitch, I had two stinking pictures of my once in a lifetime experience and I wasn't happy. "Maybe there's something wrong with your camera?"

My bride shot a roll of film over the next couple of days and got it processed. Every stinking picture was in focus, clean and sharp; I was pissed at myself. She tried to explain to me what I could have done wrong but I didn't want to hear it at this point; I wanted my own answers, so I enrolled the next day into a beginners photography class.

It was class called Black and White 101. I needed a manual camera, developing paper, mats and a bunch of other things I didn't have a clue what they were used for. I learned about photography by learning how the camera operated, the techniques of taking a good picture and how to develop and mat a black and white photographs. I was hooked from the first night.

I spent years developing my own style and even built my own dark room in the back of our garage. Not to be tooting my own horn, I was good; I was damn good, good enough to sell more than a few pictures at an art show. However, it was an expensive hobby. Paper, chemicals and equipment all were crazily expensive, as I got in deeper and deeper involved. When I framed my ten of my best pictures it cost me almost a thousand dollars. We weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination so I'd probably spent monies that could have been used other places a lot more.

As technology advanced I stuck to my old school ideas until I was forced to upgrade to digital. I sold my darkroom, or should I say I gave my equipment away, lock, stock and barrel to a photography student who wanted to get into black and white printing. At this point it was basically worthless, as everyone else had moved into the digital age; including me. "At least someone would still get some use out of it." I reasoned as it had just been sitting there for the last two years gathering dust.

A digital camera, an Apple Computer and a couple of software programs and I was turning out the best work of my life. I took every available class at the art school in Orlando and even experimented with different types of medium that could be developed with additional software.

When I took two portrait classes and bought an upgraded software package for fixing flaws everyone marveled at my work. I could make anyone look like a model in no time at all, but the pictures weren't real. Don't get me wrong, they were better than good, but they weren't real anymore and now anyone could do it. With the new technology it was getting harder and harder to take a bad picture but something else changed, no one printed them anymore.

I had a thousand pictures on my computer but only occasionally printed any. I finally printed out my best work and put then in a folder just in case my computer crashed and I lost everything. However, there was little chance of that happening since I had cd's of everything that was on my Apple, even my earlier black and white pictures I'd had scanned into a cd years earlier.

I think I got to the point where I became bored with it. I still took pictures but they were few and far between. Now when I took a picture it was something specific I really wanted to shoot. Forget the sunrises and sunsets; been there done that. Forget the animals and birds; I had a million of each. The last thing I remember that I really wanted to shoot was a black woman with big lips, wearing a yellow hat, holding and kissing a red rose. I was going to take it in black and white and add color only to the pale yellow hat and her bright red lips. Where her lips were touching the rose, I would start to add color, red, so it looked like she was transferring the red color from her lips to the rose. I never put that picture together and still may before I give up on photography completely.

I remembered hating English ever since high school. I couldn't spell for shit and carried a dictionary around with me for all four years of college. I'll never forget my English Composition final in my first year of college. I was expecting to have to write a short story but to my horror, she gave us a spelling test. I had a 'B' going into the final exam but failed it miserably. Of the hundred or so words, I think I got maybe twenty right; as I said, spelling wasn't my strong suit. I complained but got nowhere and got a 'D' for a final grade. I thought about flattening all four of her tires but back then I was still a chicken shit.

I guess I could have retaken that class, with a different instructor, but never did and made sure that was my last English class. I went into the service the following year and started toying with writing in the evening when there wasn't a thing to do.

I'd always had a vivid imagination and could figure out about ninety percent of the who done its on the television or in the movies. I was a stickler for details and always said I should have been a writer or a C.S.I. person. It was when I started reading some real crap on line that I told myself that anyone could do better than what I was reading. I jotted down a few paragraphs, then a few pages and finally put together my first short story. On line I found a slew of editors that would take a look and then realized I wasn't smarter than a fifth grader, but I had my new creative outlet.

Most lunch hours I pour out my ideas, my past experiences and fantasies into story after story as I sought to put a little of myself into each. I'd had a very full life and with using those experiences as a basis I always had more than enough material for my next story line. The one thing I made sure though, was that I didn't let onto my wife what I was up to. This was very personal, highly sexual and I felt that she really wouldn't understand what I was doing, so I only did it at work.

My first attempts were piss poor at best but I got progressively better. Instead of just trying to churn out one right after another, I made it my goal to improve with each one. Some story lines jelled and others bombed miserably, but I kept writing. My grammar improved, my spelling, with the help of spell check, came along and my storylines became more realistic. Instead of taking two days and one edited draft, it was taking me a week and at least three drafts. I was pouring out my soul in every story and living every guys dream through them. It was them I made my first mistake; I e-mailed the one I was working on to my house. I figured I had some extra time over the weekend and I could finish my first draft.

"What's this?" my wife asked Saturday morning as she checked our e-mail.

"A story I'm working on," I replied hoping she'd let it drop, but she didn't.

"Can I read it?"

"Not unit it's done."

"What's it about then?" she asked getting more curious.

"About a cheating wife," I told her.

"I guess that's one thing you know a lot about," she said letting it go knowing my first wife had cheated on me with a good friend of mine.

"I'll let you read it after I get it back from my editor?"

"You have an editor?"

"Just someone who reads it and makes suggestions along with catching all my spelling errors," I replied.

"That must be a full time job for him, remember I saw your resume. If you'd sent it out like you originally had it no one would have ever hired you, it was pathetic at best," and she was right.

"When I get it back I'll let you read it, I promise."

I got the story back about a week later and made all the corrections she had suggested. I re-read it once more and thought it sounded pretty good. I left it on my desktop and waited. After about a week I asked her what she thought of my story.

"You told me not to read it until it was done and corrected."

Babes, it's finished and I left it on the desktop for you. When you get a chance, read it and tell me what you think."

Two days later I got my first feedback.

"I read your story today, and there sure was a lot of graphic sex in it," she started. "Your editor missed a few things which I corrected, but all in all I guess it was ok."

"Ok? Just ok?" I asked. "What didn't you like?"

For the next twenty minutes she went on and on about what she liked or didn't like. Too much graphic sex, she though the husband sounded like a total idiot and I cut the ending off too fast.

"Babes, besides that, was it a good read? Did it flow well and most of all, was it believable?" I asked.

"No one does it four times in one night, hell, I'm raw after just twice," she said laughing.

"Besides that?"

"I guess, beside that it wasn't too bad." This was feedback from not only from my wife but also an ex-teacher who taught gifted students. After that, I ran each one by her.

Some got a little more elaborate, some more graphic but I tried to make each a little different and more realistic. I drew on personal experiences and threw in every guy's fantasies whenever I thought it was appropriate. Hell, what guy wouldn't want to have a three-way with two tight Orientals; I sure as hell would.

Then something changed. She no longer wanted to read my stories. I thought they were getting better and asked if she'd correct my mistakes but that was about all she did.

"You don't like my stories anymore?" I asked one night before bed.

"Steve, they're all basically the same. Some slut wife screwing around on her husband or the guys not getting enough sex and he gets into it with his wife, giving her an ultimatum that he gets more or else."

"Not all of them are that way, I've mixed it up quite a bit in the last couple of months," I replied.

"Like the guy who dumped his girlfriend because she wouldn't give him a blowjob and then made it with the next three girls he met? Get real. No one does it five times a week and for two hours at a crack. And, why does every woman have to have big nipples and a long clit? My nipples aren't large and as you've told me numerous times, I've got the smallest clit you ever saw," she said as things started to get a little tense. "Why can't they just go to bed and just have normal sex for let's say thirty minutes? I don't need an hour of foreplay, get me hot, put it in and let's get it on; that's the way I like it."

"Babes, isn't that the way we do it most times? A little foreplay, some oral sex and a great orgasm, isn't that what it's all about?"

"Yes, but why all the rest?"

Let me try and explain it to you from a male prospective. When a guy sees a hot woman two things immediately go through his mind. First of all, we wonder what she'd look like totally naked, and secondly, how she would be in bed. Do you think women are any different? Honestly, how often have you and your friends wondered how this or that guy would be in bed and do you think Brad Pitt is making it on his acting talent alone? Please, let's not go there.

"But we don't do it all the time," she added.

"And neither do all men. Granted, we probably think about sex a lot more often but women are dogs just like men. They just won't admit it. Everyone has fantasies whether they want to admit it or not. How about your friends Carry and Toni who like to use their vibrators when their husbands aren't around. As they say, they're just taking the edge off, right? And do you really believe their thinking about their husbands when they're doing it?"

"Well, we're not taking about them right now."

"But that's the point, fantasies aren't real or should they be. They're something most guys dream about experiencing. A smoking hot woman coming on to them and dropping down on her knees and giving him a blowjob that lasts for a half hour, fully knowing that they probably would only last at the most three to five minutes in real life. Or making it with a woman who on a scale of one to ten is a fourteen. It's something like a dream come true so to speak, but it's not reality for ninety-nine percent of the men unless they've got a lot of money to spend on an elite escort, and they're out there believe me.

"But all the stories you're writing, I'll never be like any one of them. I'll never be a five foot ten Amazon, with breast out to here, with a shaved pussy who can go on and on until the wee hours of the morning. And I'll never be able to keep up with your sex drive. You're getting older but you've got the sex drive of a twenty year old. I'm just afraid you're not going to be satisfied with me and one day start looking elsewhere," she said looking at me.