Chapter 1: The Transformation
I live in a midwestern university town, and there are plenty of internationally renowned experts in this and that. When a famous artist Marcelo asked my wife Sierra to model for him, she asked me what I thought. She was asking for feedback, but I gave her permission. I wasn't comfortable with it, but the "man in charge" inside me hadn't yet come out of his shell, and I let the decision slip into her hands. Sierra also hadn't yet come out of her shell. She wasn't ready to turn over all control to me or any other man. And so she sat for the artist as a model, and things never were the same again. From the experience, we all got to know ourselves better. It's funny, looking back I see us both as having been timid and tentative. Both "being in charge" and "being in submission" require absolute confidence. Later, we would learn the mutual pleasures of one person committing fully to another. Later, Sierra would devote herself to my every wish, and I would devote myself to caring for my most cherished possession. Later, our life together would grow to reflect a reality conjured up by the artist. Later, the dance of dominance and submission would echo back and forth between sex and the rest of life. But at that moment, I was a powerful fish caught in a net, unable to take control of my present and future.
I didn't feel great about the modelling idea. My wife knew Marcelo through our mutual friend John, who had introduced my wife and I only six years earlier. We had been married within a year of meeting, and John was one of our few friends in common. John was a high-income doctor, and he bought Marcel's pieces as a collector. Marcelo had been complaining at John's holiday party that he needed more models. Marcelo had already asked John's new girlfriend, a cello player from Brazil, if she would model, but John said no. John told me there was something seedy about Marcel's relationships with his models and that he just wasn't comfortable with it. But when Marcelo suggested that he'd love it if my wife would model, I recognized the look on her face immediately. She had been teased as ugly as a child, with braces, wild hair, and an athlete's body.
She had refused to wear girl's clothes until age 16, and still had self image issues. She had honed a hot body, and learned to adorn it in clothing that drew men's gaze whenever we went out downtown. The sheer dresses fit tightly, with the curves of her ass nicely outlined and the insides of her thighs silhouetted through the fabric. She worked out twice a day and had an impossibly trim and firm figure for a 35-year old, with C breasts that she wanted to be assured were big. She is a geology professor, and her male colleagues sometimes let her know they found her attractive. She liked the attention and thought I was being silly if I objected to it as inappropriate. Being asked to model for an artist with a national reputation, she was over-joyed with flattery. I knew she would bristle if I tried to rein her in.
That night, I let her know I wasn't that comfortable with the idea, which did in fact irritate her. "It's fine!" she said, "don't be ridiculous."
When he followed up the first week of January with a phone call asking to schedule a modeling session, she was sitting in the passenger seat as I drove on the highway. She covered the phone and said, "Marcelo wants me to model on Saturday," I didn't realize she was asking if I were free as well on Saturday. I wasn't available, but I said, "It's fine with me."
As Saturday approached, I found myself increasingly irritable, like a horse feeling a storm approaching. I kept imagining Marcelo fantasizing about fucking my wife, planning his session with her and stroking his dick thinking about how he might be able to put it inside her. When Saturday rolled around, she was still anticipating I would go with her. My schedule that day was full, so I couldn't go along. As the miscommunication became evident, she was upset that I would have agreed to let her go on her own. She was loathe to cancel with him, and she pleaded for me to go with her. "You can do your work later. Just come with me. It'll be fun." My job let me work from home, but I had a videoconference scheduled with some teachers I was training. I was about to be late for showing up on camera and urged her to leave or cancel but to quit debating with me. She decided she was comfortable with it and understood that I hadn't intended to surprise with being unwilling to go.
I shooed her out the door and got to my meeting just in time. If she were uncomfortable modeling alone, I thought, it served her right, as I had in fact said that I preferred that she not model for him. But, I did say that she could do what she wanted, and she did. My meeting ended 30 minutes after she left, and I waited anxiously for her to return. She was home minutes after the one-hour session was supposed to end. Not surprising, given that his work studio was blocks from our house, but I guess I was bracing for the worst and was surprised to have her home so punctually.
When she got home, of course, I asked how it went. She blushed and twittered, appearing for a moment like an adolescent who had been caught, but then began to tell the story. "I knew I'd be naked," she said, "but I didn't anticipate that he'd have costumes for me to wear." She admitted to a thrill when Marcelo asked her to pick out lingerie to wear from a drawer, "for inspiration." There were various colors and moods available, she said. All her size. She told me that she had picked a long robe of 2-inch square holes in a mesh of cotton twine.
