Chapter 1: How Did I Get Myself Into This Mess?

I’ve already heard all the insults, so don’t bother. It doesn’t bother me, because I know why I’m here and you don’t. You might, if you read this. If you do, I hope you enjoy it. If you don’t, then you have nothing to say to me anyway.

Some jump to the conclusion that I’m a “cuck, “ Most people who toss the term about don’t know what it means anyway, but whatever it means to them, it doesn’t apply to me. I don’t lack self esteem, or self respect. I’m not into humiliation. I’m not submissive. I don’t do self harm. I don’t even have a tattoo, for chrissake. I don’t do pain – I don’t want it, and I don’t seek to cause it. Whatever the name-callers think my relationship with Tethys consists of, they’re simply wrong. I’m actually proud of her, and I’m proud of myself, and everyone in our circle is caring, considerate, respectful, thoughtful, and big time fucking sexy. I’m honored to be a part of it, I’m proud of the role I’ve played in nurturing and developing this “tribe,” as Tethys refers to it, and I recognize that she’s the one who really brought it about.

I’ll admit to this much. She’s... unusual, and thus, so is our story.

I’m not unusual. Physically, I’m pretty average. Average height, average weight, average looks, average age for the stage of my career. I’m neither a villain nor a saint, but like I said, I do respect others, and try to think well of them. I’m not the jealous type, and I don’t hold grudges. I’m pretty live and let live. In a relationship like ours, that’s a positive quality to have.

There is one unusual aspect of my physical structure that comes into play here, but we’ll get into that later.

My name’s Taylor, by the way. Glad to meet you. I’m thirty-three years old, an application developer by trade. It’s not a bad job, it pays fairly well, and I enjoy it. I like my employer, I get along well with most of my colleagues, and we’re solving interesting problems. I like building things out of code. There’s more creativity involved in it than a lot of people realize. I create things in the same sense that an architect does. My products are functional rather than art for art’s sake, but I learned long ago that code beautifully written, apps well designed and aesthetic in their structure, tend to have fewer bugs and are easier to maintain. Spaghetti is great in the restaurant, but in software it’s a horror.

All that said, I do enjoy art, I like seeing it and contemplating it, and I admire those who throw their souls into the process of creating it. And that, in a nutshell, is how I got myself into this mess.

Ok, I’m lying. Just a little. It’s not really a mess. Well, maybe kind of a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess. Sorry to keep droning on.

It was Black Friday, 2017. Not a day that I would normally choose to remember, and not most people’s favorite day, but this one will stick with me. I was at a mall.

Now you’re already calling me out for a fake story. “Come on, man! You’re computer literate! Nobody goes to the mall anymore, we order our shit online!”

Well sure we do, when we know what it is we want. I didn’t have a clue. I have a bunch of nieces and nephews, from toddlers all the way up to almost-teens. I love them to death, but they’re kids! I don’t know anything about kids. I don’t remember ever being one. We play in the park, or in their back yards. I chase ‘em around, catch them, throw them up in the air and fling them about, and then they chase me, we wrestle and tumble around, then we all get tired and go find something to eat and drink. We have a great time. I’m good for that.

But then they want toys. Or their parents think they want toys. I don’t know what they want if it’s not running around getting wild. Every year I try to buy them age and gender appropriate stuff, and every year it’s a disaster. Everything I get them is either boring or incomprehensible or somehow dangerous. Sometimes it kind of works out. Something I buy for one of the nephews might actually be of more interest to his cousin, and if they’re lucky they can arrange a trade. I can’t count on that though.

The bottom line is that Christmas shopping for kids, on Black Friday, is exhausting, discouraging, soul-eating, and miserable. I’ve heard it said that nobody ever had written on his tombstone “I Wish I Had Spent More Time At The Office.” I was thinking about breaking that rule. Nobody mourns not spending more time at the mall, either.

I’d made the rounds of a couple of toy stores, a couple of clothing stores, and a so-called “Gift Shop.” Those things are the worst. I was ready for a break. With boxes and bags in tow, I headed over towards the food court on the upper level. Just before reaching it, I noticed something that seemed just a little out of place. Santa was already set up on the first floor, and there’s nothing unusual (or pleasant) about Santa in the mall on Black Friday. Here on the second floor, there’s an art gallery not too far from the food court. It’s not big, it’s not fancy, it’s not exclusive, but they do show some nice paintings and small sculptures, and every now and then they host shows for local artists out on the corridor in front of the store. My first thought was that Black Friday is NOT the most auspicious day for an artist to be trying to show their work to the public. But, on the other hand, this is a mall. About the only time it has a lot of visitors anymore is on Black Friday or similar consumer assault events.

There were a few booths scattered about nearby, and most of them had chairs and tables for the artist, or a representative, to sit while they made themselves available to anyone who might be interested. On the walls of the booths, on the tables, and leaning up against items on the floor, the artists had set up for display as many items as they could fit.

For a small show there was some nice variety – charcoal drawings, porcelain sculptures, watercolors, oils, acrylics, glass. One good-sized canvas caught my eye, almost at random. It was an oil painting, an interesting splay of dark and light, an idyllic woodland scene that hinted at being a landscape, but the trees blocked distant views. There were flowers, stones, fallen leaves and ferns on the forest foreground, and just at the point where the foreground began to fade into the shadows, a lone figure walked. A woman, caught in mid step, but her face was focused in a direction other than where she was walking. It struck me that there seemed to be a lot of detail in the woman’s light yet flowing gown, her hair the color of fall, but brighter than the dimness around her, and in the winsome expression on her face, attractive, distant, ambiguous as to whether she was lost or found within the scene.

I noticed a woman seated at the table by the booth. She was pretty, about my age, slender, a Mediterranean skin tone, a somewhat shaggy head of medium brown hair, and dressed a bit lightly for the local temperature. Her blouse was sleeveless, flowery, and somewhat loose over a slender figure. I liked her face, it was a bit rounder than average, with cute chubby cheeks that contrasted with the rest of her slim appearance. Her mouth was wide and naturally cheerful-looking, giving her an expression that made her look on the verge of laughter. What I especially liked was what appeared to be a complete absence of makeup. If she wore any at all it was too subtle for me to detect. I’ve always thought most women overuse makeup, they don’t need it, and it takes away from their natural attractiveness more than enhances it. This girl just looked wholesome.

“Is this yours?” I tried to nod at the painting and herself at the same time, rather awkwardly. My hands and arms were still overburdened with kid stuff.

“Yes,” she simply smiled politely.

I put my load down in front of the table so I could approach it more closely. I admired the delicate brushwork, and how it made use of the texture of the canvas to add to the fine details rather than blur them.

“This is good work,” I said, still facing the canvas. “I don’t usually see this much detail up close.”

“Yeah, I had to use a sewing needle for that part,” she acknowledged. “I don’t do it everywhere, though, just on critical details. It would have taken forever otherwise.”

She stood and approached me. My impression was in part that she wanted to be available to explain more of her approach and point out items of interest, and in part that she wanted to be able to protect it if I did something stupid. The first thing I noticed up close were her arms. Yes they were slender, almost skinny. But there was some good muscle definition there too. It was a wiry skinny rather than scrawny. I’m a runner, and I like that kind of build. She was below average in height, well into the petite portion of the spectrum, small breasted, slender waisted, and a nice butt that was not quite round, but still gave her form under her khaki shorts. On her feet there were only a pair of sandals. For late November, it was a nice summer outfit.

“You must be freezing!” I couldn’t help but observe.

“I will be once I leave tonight,” she sighed. “I was so busy loading everything up to make it here on time this morning that I forgot to lay out the right clothes for the day. It’s ok here in the mall for now,” she added.

“I’m Taylor,” I offered my hand, which felt much better now that it had been relieved of it’s shopping heap.

“Tethys,” she smiled as she gently took it.

I’d heard the word before, but I couldn’t place it at the moment. I’d certainly never heard it used as a name. “That’s an interesting name, what does it mean?”

“It’s Greek to me,” she shrugged with a chuckle. “I’ve been working on that one for years,” she said proudly, with an even bigger chuckle. “She’s the Greek goddess of fresh water, and also a moon of Saturn, and also an ancient ocean of which the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian are the last remnants.” I was pretty sure she’d practiced that response. Nobody ever asked me what my name meant.

I smiled back at her. I noticed that in addition to her lack of makeup, she wore no jewelry that I could see, no earrings, no necklace, bracelet, or ring. I thought that was unusual for an artist.

I checked the price tag on the painting. I expected it to be beyond my price range, and it was, but not by as much as I’d estimated. I thought it was worth more.

“You’re undervaluing your work,” I pointed out. “It’s a really good piece, and you should be able to get a few hundred dollars more than this for it.”

“I’ll take a few hundred more if you offer it,” she smiled again. “Honestly, I’m pretty bad at estimating value. My paintings sell pretty well, though, so at least I know I’m not overcharging.”

“Not at all. I wish I could afford it, really. I’d carry it out with me tonight.”

She laughed. I really liked her laugh. “You’d need to hire a porter to help with the rest of your shopping loot. That’s quite a haul you have there. Do you have a lot of kids?”

“Oh,” I suddenly felt awkward. “Nieces and nephews. I try to get their shopping done early because ... hell, I don’t have a good reason. I just don’t like drawing the whole season out. I’m mostly a ‘bah-humbug’ kind of guy.”

“I see,” she laughed again. I was noticing that she laughed a lot. “Taylor Scrooge, the art connoisseur.”

I laughed along with her. In practical terms, I was done here. I wasn’t going to buy the painting. I didn’t have the right to monopolize her time when she could be concentrating on real customers. I was still tired and hungry. But for some reason I didn’t want to leave.

“Have you had much business today?” I hoped for her sake that she’d had a good response, but for my sake that it was slow. My luck was better than hers, apparently.

“Hardly a nibble.” It was the first rueful expression I’d heard from her yet. It still sounded pleasant to me, though.

“I have an idea. I’m on my way over to the food court to grab a bite, I’m starving. If you’re hungry, and I hope you are, maybe we can both get something and bring it back over here to eat. I’d like to have some company other than a hostile group of shoppers. Toy stores are murder!”

She hesitated for a moment, then made her decision. “I’d like that. Ok!” She turned to the guy in the next booth over, an older gentleman with a Colonel Sanders bow tie and a rather grumpy expression. “Tony, we’re going to run to the food court for just a second. Would you mind just keeping a casual eye on the booth? Can I bring you anything?”

“Go ahead,” he grumbled. “No, I’m fine. I brought nuts.”

For some reason I expected that Tethys would go after Greek food, although it’s disputable that gyros and kebabs are all that genuine. Instead, she went for the pizza, and ordered a much larger choice than I would expect for someone of her small stature. I grabbed a Chinese meal, and we met back at the booth to eat and chat. It was a fun date, particularly considering how unexpectedly spontaneous it was. Her casual irreverence and appreciation of the absurd was as attractive to me as her cheerful face and fit body. Between enthusiastic evaluation of art history and painting techniques, cheerful snark regarding current politics and popular morality, and the soft crunching of Tony’s chewing on his nuts, we enjoyed some genuine insights and sincere laughter, and I was rather disappointed when the meal was over.

I felt better when she took her phone out and asked for my number, then called me to allow me to save it in my phone. Then she took a photo of me next to her, followed by a selfie which she immediately texted to me. “If you feel like doing this again, don’t be shy,” she said.

I felt nearly giddy when I got home that night. Having to figure out the disposition of the piles of kid’s junk almost brought me out of it, but not quite. What did send me back into my post-proposition dive was taking off my clothes for my bedtime shower. A look at my naked self in the mirror sobered me. Afterwards, I did something I already knew was a bad idea. As I crawled into bed, I called up a porn video. My usual poison is ‘guys with big dicks fucking horny petite girls.’ As I started stroking, and my cock rose and filled out, I had the predictable reaction. Disappointment, disillusionment, discouragement, and an overwhelming expectation of rejection.

It’s not that I have a small dick. Far from it. The big-dicked guys in the video are the closest analogues I can find to myself. Flaccid, I don’t stand out from the crowd. I’ve been called “generously endowed,” but not huge by any means. When fully extended, I’m probably a little longer than average. Thickness, I’m plenty respectable. Width ... there’s a bit of a problem there. My cock is probably wider than any non-freaky porn star’s. At the sides of my shaft, the edges bulge outward to extend well beyond my glans, giving the upper surface a flat profile that tapers on the underside to merge in the center. I guess the cross section would be that of a very wide inverted triangle with rounded edges. The sides could easily be interpreted as long cysts running down the length of my shaft, or even tumors. It’s disfiguring, and several women have told me so.

At least two have said that the appearance of my cock grossed them out, one called it “defective,” another “distorted.” A couple of others have mercifully not mentioned it at all, but relationships with them ended early and inexplicably. I’d been living with the idea of “why do I even bother to try?”

In the video, the girl goes crazy with desire over the dick of this guy who can plunge it into her throat from below. It might as well be going up into her cunt and out through her mouth. But she takes it, wants more, and cums (apparently) multiple times. I fantasized that it was my cock the girl was going crazy over, and ended up splattering copious volumes of semen all over my belly and chest, some of it splashing as far as my chin. As I came down from my arousal, I considered how all that cum was going to waste. I drifted into a troubled slumber.

Saturday I felt better. I had a local 10K race scheduled for the morning, from the Capitol area to Zilker Park. I finished top ten, and my family was there to watch and cheer. My mother, sisters, and brother all showed up and brought the kids. Some of the kids even payed close enough attention to watch me cross the finish line. The celebration was genuine, and went a long way to improve my mood. Running alone improves my mood – that’s why I do it. Sunday I spent packaging and wrapping all the kids gifts, and then I did some searching for something for my Mom, siblings, and in-laws. As I’d told Tethys, I’m a bah-humbug guy as far as my own Christmas spirit goes, but it means a lot more to the rest of my family, and they mean a lot to me.

Optimism ultimately won out over discouragement once more, and I called Tethys on Monday evening after work. It went to voice mail, and I left a non-committal greeting. “Why do I even try? I’m sure she’s rejected me already – and she hasn’t even seen my dick yet!” About an hour later, still in the midst of my personal pity party, a text came in.

“Call u back tomorrow evening, ok? See ya!” It of course had a smiley face.

My mood lifted immediately. I messaged back “OK!” and smiled for the next twenty four hours.

When she called, it was like our previous conversation never ended. It was comfortable and fun. Her voice was easy to listen to. I told her about my race on Saturday, and she cheered as enthusiastically as my family had. “I try to do a noontime run most days,” she added. “It’s only two or three miles, just in the neighborhood. I keep it around half an hour. Not as demanding as your racing.”

“You look like you exercise,” I responded, hoping it sounded like more than empty flattery. “It looks really good on you.”

“Thanks!” she laughed. “Actually most of my exercise is weight lifting. My friend has a home gym, and I train there three times a week. That’s where I was when you called last night. I’ve been doing it for about six months, and I can tell a big difference already. If you stick around you’ll see me as buff as Wonder Woman ... without the impressive bra size!”

Did she just invite me to stick around? My heart jumped to my throat. My mind also latched onto the “buff” reference – I’d love to see her in the buff.

“Would you like to have a nicer dinner next Friday than you had last Friday?” I asked, still too nervously.

“As long as neither one of us has to wear a tie,” she laughed. “I don’t have much in the way of formal wear.”

Friday night went well – casual, easy conversation, much laughter. She paid me a compliment that thrilled me in the extreme. “You have wonderful eyes,” she said. I took her home, and we kissed pleasantly on her doorstep. She didn’t invite me in, but she accepted another date offer. “She might be an old-fashioned girl,” I mused. That felt like probably a good thing, at least it allowed for a few more fun evenings before the big rejection.

We spoke on the phone a couple of times a week, and had a couple more Friday night dinner dates. On December 15, we made the local premier of The Last Jedi. We both enjoyed it, and I confessed as I drive her home.

“Tethys, you kind of remind me of Daisy Ridley.”

“Really? I wish! She’s a lot taller than me, I think. And my complexion is darker.”

“Yeah, but the smile is similar. And you have that same kind of lean athleticism. I bet you be killer in a light saber duel!”

Her smile was actually better than Daisy Ridley’s, and when she turned it to me I once more felt that flutter in my chest. She continued to fix that smile on me, and after a few minutes I began to wonder if something was up.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked, feeling nervous again.

“A lot,” she said. “Have I told you I like your eyes?”

This time, when we arrived at her house, she invited me in. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “This is going to be the make or break!”

It was a standard size two bedroom apartment, with the master bedroom set up as an art studio. Plastic covered the carpeted floor, I saw a couple of easels, several paintings in various states of completion, and shelves full of color tubes, oil jars, brushes, and all the other tools of the trade. It was bewildering to me, but the paintings were very good. She offered me some tea from the kitchen, and then motioned me to sit on the reclining chair in the living room. She sat across the room on the couch, facing me. The atmosphere was decidedly NOT romantic.

She leaned forward a little bit, the expression on her face pensive. Her head tilted a couple of times, first left, then right, she looked directly at me once more, and sighed.

“Taylor, it’s been fun.”

Uh oh, I knew it.

“You’re a good date. You’re nice looking, you’re a gentleman, you’re respectful, you’re patient. You have good taste in food and jokes, you’re laid back, you don’t seem to be the judgmental type. I like you a lot. And I love your eyes.”

But ... I was waiting for it.

“You’ve hinted that you like me. You like that I’m in shape, you like my art, and I remind you of Daisy Ridley, and that’s all good. But what do you really think of me?”

“What? Umm, well, yeah, I think you’re great. You’re beautiful, you’re nice, you’re funny, I’d like to ... I’d really like to get to know you better.” Damn, that was awkward.

“Good,” she was fidgeting a little now. “The thing is, in some ways you strike me as kind of an old fashioned guy. You believe in a gradual courtship, find the perfect girl, settle down, raise a family, that sort of thing, right?”

This was even more awkward. What I really wanted was a girl who would like me and be attracted to me in spite of my deformed dick. How the hell was I going to explain that to a woman I had barely even kissed?

“What I’m looking for,” I chose my words carefully as I could, but careful was not the same as skillful, “is someone who just likes me for me. I do want something long term, but it doesn’t have to be the whole suburban housewife thing. I’ve had too many short term flings that just ... were disappointing. That’s all. I just want someone I can trust, and where I don’t have to worry about being perfect all the time.”

“You want a woman who accepts your flaws?” she pressed.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“What if the woman has flaws? Does it work both ways?”

“Of course,” I nodded. “Everyone has flaws.” This mood was getting a little too much like an interrogation for me.