my mind, until I couldn’t look at her without thinking about a vulture, or a hawk, or an eagle tearing great hunks of flesh out of its prey…
“Ellen helped with that realization, I firmly believe. As soon as we got back from the honey moon and I’d settled back down to trying to paint, she immediately leaped into a social whirl of art life, and my own life became a living hell. I’ve never been especially fond of parties and gadding about from this townhouse to that penthouse, the way some people do, though for a few weeks it was an amusing change of pace. It didn’t take long, however, for me to see that most of these people were not interested in art. They were only interested in being seen in company with each other. They didn’t care about each other, only in being seen with each other. That’s an important distinction, I believe.
“I remember one evening, as we were dressing to go out to some place where Ellen had wangled us an invitation I became very tired and disillusioned with the whole business. I was tying my tie and suddenly I just stopped and looked at her in the mirror.
“What’s the point of all this?” I asked. “Why must we go out tonight and meet these people?” 'Darling, it’s necessary if you’re to become a famous artist,” she told me.
“Some of the people there are very important in the art world and we must cultivate them.’ “I happened to know that the people we were going to meet that night were the same people we’d been seeing almost constantly. I also knew that none of them knew anything about painting, except what they told each other and that was only a half-understood mishmash of something they’d read in a newspaper. I said as much and Ellen just blew up! She ranted and raved, accused me of trying to short change her, of trying to disrupt her life and upset all her plans. She was really ticked off in a way that I’d never seen her before, never even suspected her of being capable of. That gave me something to think about, and I began doing some heavy thinking from that night onward.
“You know, Ellen, really believed that she could do it. I mean, that she could make me into a famous painter just by hanging around that kind of people, going along with them and catering to them. I tried to suggest to her a few ‘times that it might help if I were to be left alone long enough to do some painting, but she wouldn’t hear of that.
“‘Look at — ,” she’d say. “He’s the talk of the town and does he matter? Does he know anything about color or space?”
“She had me there. The guy she named, along with three or four others were indeed famous- well, talked about a lot-and none of them knew very much about what they were doing. Of course they weren’t talked about by people who knew anything about painting but, when I pointed this out to Ellen, she just got madder.
“Him? He’s nothing but ‘a broken-down old faggot,” she said, when I mentioned one man who wasn’t at all impressed by her new idols. “Who pays any attention to him?”
“I could have told her that just about every body that cared or knew very much about painting paid a lot of attention to him, but she wasn’t interested, as I soon discovered. Ellen wanted herself a front-page painter, somebody who would help make her famous too. It took me several months to realize this and the truth only penetrated gradually. By that time we were really pretty far into this new social scene, and were finding that there was a lot of between4he-sheets activity going on all the time. You can’t imagine some of the grubby, filthy scenes taking place at some of the parties we attended! People grabbing at one another, tumbling into bed with the first person they could find. It was really vulgar and simpleminded.
“Ellen loved it, even down to the orgy-type affairs. I suppose it gave her a boost, thinking that she was living as artists lived; though precious few real artists ever lived like that! It wasn’t quite so surprising to me, finding that we were getting into that scene, because I’d already discovered that Ellen had all the moral fiber of, a common alley cat! She came in several times after a day out on the town, and was quite open about what she’d been doing. I mean, when your own wife opens up her purse and has to take her panties out to find her cigarettes; you begin to suspect that she hasn’t been out trying on hats!
Her adventures didn’t do anything to stultify her appetite for me, however, and more than once she made love to me when her pussy was still wet with another man’s come! “I confronted her with the fact, to be sure. She never even bothered denying it. Her explanation was that everybody else was doing it, so why shouldn’t she?
Furthermore, she would have me know, she believed that by being ‘nice’ to some of these people she would be able to build up my name and make me more of a well-known painter! As if fucking had anything to do with color and space and line! She really believed it, though, and there was simply nothing I could do to disabuse her of the silly idea.
“It was at one of these sex parties that I made my big break and first discovered that there was something to life besides lying between Ellen’s merciless thighs and having her claw at me with that vicious ‘little snatch of hers. Not that I was all that interested in making it with any of her women acquaintances-they were all at least as self-centered and callous as she.
Hardly any of them were even as physically attractive as Ellen. “She had a way of concealing her essential hardness under a soft covering so that it wasn’t apparent immediately. Mostly, at these affairs, I would screw Ellen and then sit back and drink while the others went at each other. Occasionally a woman would come by and suck me. A few of them, rather liked kneeling between my legs and eating my cock as I sipped at a Scotch and water.
“On this particular occasion, Ellen and I had been in a bedroom, stark naked and going through our usual routine. By this stage of our ‘marriage, I was frankly rather bored with her, the marriage, and the entire crowd. I showed it by just lying on her and allowing her to do whatever she would. It was rather a nice way of getting back at her, holding off on my orgasm, and she didn’t like it a bit. Probably because it told her that she wasn’t totally in control of my physical responses! “She fucked away at me until she got tired and then made me get off. Just as I rolled off her, another fellow ‘wandered into the room and began stroking his prick as he watched us. I was lying beside Ellen, about half-erect, and she was fuming with rage. She watched this fellow jerk off for a minute or two- he was exceptionally well hung, perhaps eight or nine inches and very thick-and then she conceived this desire to have him.
“‘Why don’t you let me do that for you?” she muttered, licking her lips and devouring him with her eyes. “Let me work my cunt’ around you — I’ll bring you off!”
“He got on her and they went at it for a minute or two, but then he decided he wanted her on top. Ellen agreed and they rolled over. I was sitting in a position that allowed me to see his cock going into her cunt and I watched with a great deal of interest. That big thing, so hard and round, exerted a strange power on me and I began wondering what it would be like to bold it in my hand.
Ellen kept grinding herself against him in an effort to bring him off, but she couldn’t. Twice in a row she had failed to convert a man into a gushing tool for her own use! She got off him after a while and stamped out of the room, leaving us there.
“I was glad that she had left and I said as much. The fellow agreed with me. I couldn’t take my eyes off his cock-it was positively hypnotic. Even though it was covered with that slimy, fishy oil a woman generates, I couldn’t help but think about sucking him,” or perhaps working him off with my hand. He saw my interest and smiled. “
“Why don’t you suck it?” he asked. “1 was really more interested in you anyway.
That bitch, she only uses men!”
“I couldn’t resist and so I did. I’d never done it to a man before but Ellen had sucked me often enough that I knew exactly how to make it good. I leaned over him and took his cock into my mouth. I wrapped my tongue around his prick and began lapping up and down the thick, hot shaft. Even though I detested the taste of cunt, I didn’t mind it so much that time because of.the way his cock felt. So warm, so filling! I began working my head up and down until I was actually flicking him with my mouth.
“He seized my head in his hands’ and began working his cock in and out. I kept on sucking and before very long, became a long, gushing, powerful shoot that overwhelmed me with joy. I felt my own cock leaping out of control and I came too. I never knew such pleasure as I felt at that moment. From that day on, I became more and more interested in men.”
An old saying has it that “some men are born queer and others become that way.”
The case of Freddie F. would appear to be an example of that aphorism being made real. Freddie, a tall and rough-hewn man in his middle thirties, was an artist, but also the personal secretary of a man who owned and managed one of the cities most prominent and successful art galleries. His employer had dealt in paintings all his adult life and had built up a reputation for knowledge and judgment that made his name a powerful force in the world of ‘art. Clearly, Freddie’s employer was not one of those celebrity-struck art buffs whom his wife adored.
