Chapter 3

During Christmas break, Freddy proved to be Joe’s muse. That break seemed to open the floodgates of creativity, and Joe completed Dreamscape, his series of dreamlike sketches. They would read his dialogues fresh off the typewriter. And she would sketch what would become backgrounds for the scenes. And the collaboration helped excuse them being in his bedroom together, for her parents and his father. His mother knew what would go on, either at the beginning or the end, and often both, during the collaborations, done quietly when his father was around. And when he wasn’t, which had become three evenings, including the late time at the clinic on Wednesdays, and an extra night away from his mother, they could be as loud as they wanted.

Those nights when his father was absent, presumably fucking his lover, Harriet, now Belle joined them. And not always literally. At least not right away. She spent a lot of the time with his mother. A strange friendship, what with the vast age difference, it helped that Belle had prodigious intelligence and a maturity partly borne of a cynical awareness of reality. It also helped that both Belle and his mom needed it. Belle to have a relationship exclusively with a female. His mom to have a chance to revisit her wild youth.

Each time, after being with his mother, Belle came to his room horny. That would signal the end of collaborative work. She would pull away whatever covered Freddy’s pussy and suck it. Joe would pull off her coverings, suck her for a little while until she moaned her need, cover his hard cock, and fuck her doggy style. She usually came a couple times by the time he came, and if Freddy hadn’t cum, or even when she had, they would double team getting her to climax, working in tandem on her pussy, or trading kisses and nipple sucking with cunnilingus until they got her off. By then he’d get hard again, and entered his girlfriend various ways, the favorite being her riding him while Belle rode his mouth, the two kissing and playing with tits and clits above him.

The third night of this situation became the most obvious that his mother and Belle did more than talk. Both Freddy and Joe noticed a shininess around Belle’s mouth. It took Freddy to suggest Belle might want to wash her face before she realized its presence. Belle tended to give them kisses before they moved to fucking and sucking. Belle blushed and nodded, or her blush intensified.

Joe didn’t even need to prepare her way. She came out of the bathroom naked. Freddy and Joe had gotten naked too. Freddy sucked him and rolled on the condom. “Fuck me,” Belle demanded before slurping up Freddy’s wetness.

Joe shoved deep and fucked hard without preliminaries. She didn’t need any. She came intensely seconds later. He kept at it, just as hard and fast until she had another. She slid off him and embraced his girlfriend. Pulling on one side of Freddy, she’d make room for her to turn over. Unshucking his cock, he pushed inside Freddy’s tightness, slowly this time. Belle worked her from below. Kisses moved from mouth to tit. Fingers working nipples. The hand relieved of pleasuring one tit slid down to replace his fingers rubbing her clit. He used both to hold and squeeze Freddy’s taut round ass, eventually pushing a finger into her anus. Things quickened because Joe needed them to.

“I’m going to cum,” he announced.

“I’m close,” Freddy moaned.

Joe’s thrusts got faster. It brought forth his climax. Hers as well. So he kept still, with some undulations, letting him feel the throbs of his cock echo throughout his body and her throbs surround his. It felt even more exquisite than usual.

Sometimes Freddy and Joe would nap after the later session of sex. Or pass out. If Belle joined them, she would be the one to wake them so Freddy could head home. If she wasn’t there, it would be his mother. After Freddy left, he inevitably began writing again as if the nap or passing out had given him a second wind. It seemed all he did that vacation was write and fuck. With occasional gaps of sleep. His favorite vacation.

A different kind of obsessive creative focus occurred during spring break, the physical manifestation of his earlier mental focus, with him directing his little troupe of actors, dancers and stage techs to get Dreamscape performance ready the Friday after the school came back from its break.

Joe actually got permission to use the school gymnasium/auditorium during the break. Which required a teacher to be present. That teacher being Miss Shlansky, a cute blonde who taught English and usually directed the school play, nearing thirty years old, made for a very permissive overseer. They tested that permissiveness early on.

Joe wanted to use the vacation time as much as possible, creating a long rehearsal that went from afternoon into evening, with an hour break for dinner, at home if some wanted, or others could bring bag lunches or dinners actually. After the first day rehearsal, during the dinner break, Joe’s friend Simon being in charge of AV for the high school and for his play (lighting and sound), having access to storage of multi-media equipment found out the closet also had access to the science lab, let them into that room. Eddie pulled out a joint, and he and Joe and the twins and Belle and her girlfriend shared it. Simon didn’t like getting high. His mind already lived in the stratosphere.

A knock on the door, the regular one to the lab, froze them. It became insistent, so Joe opened it. Miss Shlansky, all five and a quarter feet of her, stood adorably in front of him, her wrist resting on her hip in an attempt at a commanding presence. He held back his amusement while swallowing his fear.

“Joseph,” she muttered. She tended to use the entire name.

“Miss Shlansky,” he returned.

She shook her head and smiled. Smiled! “Any more left?”

“I got another,” Eddie offered.

“Follow me, all of you.”

They did. She led them outside and into a wooded area on the edge of a marsh. A small trail through some bushes. A clearing, crunchy with pebbles and covered in reeds, protecting footing from what would be mud. A totem stood at the farthest place from water in the clearing. What looked like rodent type faces: mouse, rat, beaver. Crowned by a wolf like head.

“Some sort of ceremonial place?” Joe asked her.

“A friend made that in art class,” Miss Shlansky told them. “Coyote,” she said, pointing at its head. “So, you said you had another joint.”

“Sorry, Miss Shlansky,” said Eddie, pulling out the joint.

“Mary,” the teacher insisted. “At least during rehearsal.” She took the joint and Belle’s lighter and lit up. Once she breathed out the smoke several seconds later, she said, “No smoking in school, okay?”

They nodded.

“So you used to get high here?” asked Belle after she released her smoke.

“Me and the supposed good girls after school.”

“No boys?” asked Belle’s friend.

“We were supposedly the good girls,” she giggled. Then sighing, she said, “I really did want to get away from this place.”

“So what brought you back?” Joe asked. “Not that we mind. You are the coolest teacher in school.”

“Thanks, Joseph,” she grinned. “That’s sweet. I did have a boyfriend my senior year. I decided to break it off when I went to college, even if it was the U of M. I wanted to look outwards, not back here. None of the boys I ... well ... fucked, took my breath away like he had, and he must have felt the same, because he told me about this job, and I took it. He became my fiancé.”

“Is he still?” Joe asked her.

She shook her head. “Couldn’t keep it in his pants. I guess he’d been fucking one of the Haas sisters. Since high school. When she left to get an MRS at some swanky Ivy League school, he went after a much younger one.”

“Rachel?” Joe guessed.

She nodded.

“How did you find out?” Freddy asked her.

“Came home late reeking of sex. Tried to sneak a shower, but I smelled her on him. He confessed everything. I think he’d gotten too used to me or something, or used Rachel to remind him of his glory days in high school. And of course, she’s not just young, but beautiful and stacked. I kicked him out. Having nowhere else to go, and between jobs, the lazy fuck, he split town.”

“Didn’t want to stay at his folks?” asked Freddy.

“Neither his nor mine remained in town when the Haas family bought out our farms. Both sets of parents headed to warmer climes seeking employment. Mine live in Denver, my dad working service while my mom learned the secretarial trade and actually brings in more money. As far as I know, his have done worse. Moved to Dallas last I heard. I doubt they have room for him. But I don’t fucking care.”

“That must be uncomfortable having Rachel in your class,” said Sam.

“It takes all I have not to throttle the bitch,” Mary agreed. “And lose my job in the process. Her smug look when I glare at her. Grading her papers is almost worse. I’m tempted to punish her, being hypercritical, but I end up giving her better grades then she probably deserves to make up for it.”

“That must have surprised her,” Joe said.

“I think it did,” she giggled. “Or confused her. Maybe my glaring has tapered off, but I get less smugness and more ... interest?”

“Rachel likes girls sucking her off,” Belle muttered, “but doesn’t really enjoy returning the favor.”

“Cunt,” her friend grumbled.

Her friend. Her girlfriend. Claire Jacobson.

Joe always had a sense Freddy had an agenda beyond the chance of dancing on stage. When they discussed it, her encouraging him to work with members of her modern dance class, if Belle was there, Freddy would often glance at her and smirk.

This class, mostly girls in their early to mid-teens, along with a couple boys, with the twins sort of graduating a year or so earlier, ended up being unique and wonderful and weird. All attributable to the character of the woman who ran it.

Constance Townshend had been a dancer and choreographer of some renown. Not just locally, her company being based in Minneapolis, but nationally in the esoteric world of modern dance. During the company’s first tour of Europe, she’d had a complete mental breakdown. Combining the pressures of performing and managing and traveling brought exhaustion and worse. It broke her. According to her husband, Jonathon (never Jon and only Jonny for her) Swenson, she’d always been strange. Obsessive compulsive. Requiring a whole string of things to do before meeting the world, even more when the world watched her on stage. Her illness kept her mostly in bed for a year, and in their house for longer. Luckily they had a huge house.

Jonathon Swenson came from money to say the least. His father invented and patented a better hospital bed, and being from Rochester Minnesota, had the Mayo Clinic there to test and purchase them. From that came everything involving medical equipment, a huge industry. Jonathon’s brothers and sister supplied the next generation of running the business: a corporate lawyer, an accountant and investment expert, a manager and future CEO. Jonathon’s path led to a lot less specific involvement, much more indirect, but in a way just as important in a more insidious way. Politics. Public interest. Running a think tank that developed greater interest and influence for Upper Midwest businesses to the rest of the country and the world. And not a coincidence, in the sense of it not being happenstance, a pooling of money from the same group benefitting from the think tank to essentially bribe politicians to vote their way. Even if this PAC had a liberal agenda towards social policy, probably more substantially, self-interest remained its abiding purpose. How else would Jonathon sustain and increase its coffers?

Being married to money had its advantages of course for keeping a most unprofitable company of dancers going. Jonathon, through his father’s company, gave it its largest donations, and his involvement in other local corporations brought more money to match his.

After her illness ended her dance company, and she finally got somewhat better, but not enough to start things up again—the idea of performing and managing such a thing still made her feel ill—she realized, sitting alone in the huge house, she missed one aspect of dance. Pedagogy. Training dancers to dance her choreography. And she had always been fascinated by young girls just starting to learn to dance. Girls agog at her shows with a thousand questions. She ended up visiting classes with these young creatures, the teacher more than happy to let this legendary dancer and choreographer be a guest. It wasn’t perverse. For a woman without children created in her womb, it became a maternal need. (One of her obsessions was her body. Tall, slender torso and hips, small breasts, she wanted nothing to change that.) She only wanted to help shape young bodies and minds to become her several children. Her husband built her a space to do so in the huge basement.

The house had been built as a sort of family resort. A retreat. Sitting on a small lake essentially by itself, the Swenson’s essentially owning it, with three small cabins on the shore serving as houses for the staff and for a more private place for a visiting Swenson. The lake had trout, bass, croppy and walleye. The woods and clearings had small critters and deer. The small critters, especially the chipmunks, were for the enjoyment of the children or those with young hearts to enjoy their skittering about. The deer were for enjoyment and for hunting, at least in the beginning. The family would gather there in summer. Some smaller portions would visit in winter for cross-country skiing and hunting. Corporate clients would be rewarded with free reign of the place for a week or so. All these things still happened. But both Jonathon and Constance tending towards the reclusive, Constance especially, it became their home. And hunting no longer happened there, because of Constance’s sensitivities.

They had a house in Kenwood, an upscale neighborhood in Minneapolis near downtown, close to what had been Constance’s studio and the place her company performed, and close to where Jonathon did business most of the time. During and after Constance’s illness, it had become exclusively Jonathon’s. And his mistress’s. And their two young children.

Weirdly, wife and mistress liked each other, even though they had never met, at least eye to eye. Joanne, the mistress would call the rustic house to talk to Jonathon about the children mostly, and Constance would answer. The first time for Joanne had been awkward, but not for Constance. By the end of the conversation, when Constance finally called her husband to the phone, neither was it for Joanne. They talked fairly often, with Constance calling the Kenwood house at times. Every time they called, it had to do with talking to their lover. Nevertheless, chatting ensued before the intended person came to the phone.

Joanne found Constance wonderfully eccentric. No more so when she learned a tone from her supposed rival, an excitability which signaled sexual need. It seemed like Constance would go in heat once every month like an animal and need to be fucked. Joanne actually found it admirable that Jonathon always seemed able to quell that need. Her older female friends often complained of their husbands’ lack of interest in them sexually, that more and more time happened between fucks. But it had been her rather than him since their second child had been born who had the lowered libido. But when she needed him, he always seemed game.

Perhaps weirdest of all, Joanne could be the much younger sister of Constance. Less tall and less slim, especially after two pregnancies, they had similar dirty blonde hair, intelligent and expressive blue eyes, oblong, cherubic faces, small rounded noses, with Joanne’s thicker, broader lips probably the only significant difference to Constance’s thin, tight lips. It made Joe wonder if Jonathon chose Joanne as substitute for Constance giving him children. And it would have proved to Constance that giving birth changed a body like hers if they’d ever seen each other. And if he thought he and Constance would create beautiful offspring, Joanne as substitute revealed how correct he was. The two tow headed children, two years apart, the girl, the oldest, four and a half then, as she loved to tell everyone, could easily be featured babies in some old Gerber commercial (newer ones had already begun having more racial diversity).

Joe got to know of this strange relationship because he got to know Constance through Dreamscape. And both Eddie and Joe got to know Joanne as well.

The first friendship from meeting Constance, hinted at with smirks from Freddy towards his lesbian best friend, began one cold Saturday morning when Freddy drove Joe and her twin sister to Constance’s rustic palace, with Belle accompanying them at Freddy’s insistence, bringing her viola. It took them twenty minutes to get to the house in the middle of nowhere. It would have been longer if his hometown wasn’t itself on nowhere’s edge and in the southwestern direction from somewhere, or the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Wide and tall, at three stories and a gabled attic, even though built in the early sixties, the house had little modernist flair, or any flair at all. It looked like an inflated clapboard house. It even had a plain front door and a mudroom beyond it, practical in snowy climes. It had huge rooms beyond the mudroom: a gathering/party room much too large to be called a family or living room; and beyond that a dining room with a ridiculously dark wood table with plasticized placemats with rubbery bottoms protecting the fragile surface of the wood in front of every occupant of the table, who sat on comfortably padded matching dark wood chairs; and truncating the dining room in relationship to the gathering room, an oversized kitchen with a large, heavy rustic wood table for more casual dining or for the servants, doors going to both the gathering room and the dining room; and finally the play room with a large overstuffed coach and three overstuffed armchairs and a huge television set used mostly for electronic games or for the large collection of VHS tapes, because, even with the huge, ugly antenna attached to the roof, broadcast television, reception could be uneven, the room accessed by doors from the gathering room and the dining room, the former door placed near the base of the stairs that curved slightly as it ascended to the second floor. Beneath the heavy oak stairs hid closets available for both the gathering room and the game room, and at the back corner of that space, where the stairs curved away from the side wall, an elevator with two doors, for entering from the gathering room and the game room, brought people from the basement up to the third floor. The gathering room door only also opened to the basement, and the gaming room door opened to the floors above. Perhaps the oddest feature of these large rooms and the house itself, is that each had its own fireplace and thus its own chimney except the kitchen, which had ducts and piping to vent the heat and smoke of cooking.

When the others followed Freddy to the unimpressive screen door, parking amongst several cars in a plain gravel parking lot, making no attempt whatsoever to beautify the front yard, they heard a deep gong after she pressed the white button set into the white wall of the white house. A soft, plain looking blond man of indeterminate middle age in casual clothing opened the door. A servant. Butler and chauffeur it turned out, though butling certainly wasn’t his forte. His face lit up when he saw Freddy.

“Hi Tom,” she said as if to a schoolmate.

“Frederica! It’s been a while. Samantha,” he finished less enthusiastically, and she only nodded. “Come in.”

When they entered, Freddy held back fully entering, and Joe did because she did. “How’s Martha?” she asked him.

“Good,” he smiled. “Still drawing?”

“Of course.”

“We framed the drawings of my wife and I and our children.”

“They weren’t that good.”

“We love them, Frederica.”

“Thanks,” she blushed. “How are your children?”

“They’re both at college. Jonathon has been most generous helping us pay their tuition.”

“Very nice of him.”

“I agree.”

“This is Joe, my boyfriend.”

“Please to meet you, Mr...” Joe said offering his hand for a shake.

He smiled and shook it, saying, “Just call me Tom.”

Having never called a man his age by his first name made for a tentative, “Okay.”

Tom chuckled.

“Where is everyone?” Freddy asked him.

“The parents are in the dining room,” he told her.

She frowned. “You know who I mean.”

“Your fellow graduates are in the gaming room.”

“Of course,” she smiled.

Joe had walked into the huge room, amazed by the huge rustic fireplace, and even more by the large canvases that covered the walls, each lit by a spotlight hung on a high ceiling. At the center of the room, lighting the space, hung a large and completely unique chandelier. Tiered like most crystal chandeliers, but with a curving asymmetrical shape, and some sort of stained glass, like gels used to filter lighting stage plays, in front of the bulbs casting shades of red, blue and green and abstract amorphous forms where the transparent glass attached to opaque metal, but those shapes, and the colors, seemed to dissolve into white light while somehow having a subtle presence.

“Mr. Swenson held a contest,” Freddy explained, “for a chandelier to replace the busy crystal one too hard to clean. He paid fifty thousand to the winner.”

“Wow,” Joe said.

“He’s a patron,” she shrugged.

“But is it any easier to clean?”

“The glass is removable and replaceable. The artist made a bunch of extra tiles.”

“Do you want to join your friends?” Joe asked, moving his eyes to the walls and the abstract landscapes. Impressionism. Fauvism. Cubism. Abstract Expressionism. It felt like the history of modern art done in landscapes. At least up to the mid-fifties. He didn’t recognize any specific artist’s style. He figured none of these artist had become famous. Nevertheless, all showed power, beauty, and exceptional talent.

“I’d rather watch your reaction to this room,” she giggled. She knew how much Joe loved going to museums, especially the Walker Art Center, a world renowned modern art museum. They had cool posters for exhibitions, which Joe bought, but kept rolled up. Someday he would display them. At a dorm or an apartment. But he felt printed versions of great art never did the original justice.

“I thought there’d be stag heads or at least antlers,” he said.

“Constance isn’t into anyone hunting around here. Except for Tom, not much fishing either in their lake. He catches dinner,” she shrugged.

He nodded, continuing to study the paintings as if in a museum.

“You have to see the dining room,” she said. “It’s the portrait room.”

He followed her there. He immediately saw a painting on the back wall by an artist he did recognize. “Is that... ?” he gulped.

“Oskar Kokoschka,” she giggled.

“Wow. I just...”

“I know. I couldn’t wait to surprise you.”

He pulled his eyes away from the expressive, darkly colorful portrait to look at the other paintings. Freddy was more social, meeting the gathering of mothers of children dancing downstairs, at least a couple she knew. Again, like the landscapes, more excellent art done by unknowns in diverse modern styles, none more contemporary than the fifties. Except one. Superrealistic. Pop. Conceptual. Funny. A portrait of a lovely and interesting looking blonde woman. Not nearly as expertly done as the others. Not having nearly the experience. But made great by the concept. Or gimmick. Areas had plain canvas. Others had been done in realistic color and shading. The areas unpainted had numbers. “Paint by Numbers,” Joe chuckled aloud.

“The concept pissed me off,” Freddy told him.

“Yours?” he asked.

“Yeah. Pretty amateurish.”

“It’s brilliant!”

“But...”

“How long had you been painting before this?”

“About a year maybe? This was my first oil, at least the first I kept.”

“And after?” he asked, feeling the rawness had been explained.

“I guess I’m not patient enough.”

“You don’t paint?”

“Just at school. I only really got into it when I was here. She insisted.”

“She?”

“Miss Townshend. That’s her portrait. She sits there,” Freddy pointed at the chair closest to the painting. “Doesn’t like looking at herself when she eats.” She must have noticed his questioning look, and the rudeness the question might contain. “Her husband likes it for some reason.”

“It’s funny,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s why,” she told him quietly. “I think he thinks it expresses her ... absences. She’s a little crazy and ... spacy,” she giggled.

“So he found it symbolic.”

“I didn’t think so at first. Just a silly idea coming out of being pissed off. But I’ve come to agree with him.”

“So you painted here?”

She nodded. “After dance class. With another student who’s a talented pianist. We ... Sometimes Claire and I would sleep over. She’s ... the one I wanted Belle to meet.”

He nodded. “She came on to you?”

She whispered, “I tried. We made out. I was like practice for her, you know? Didn’t work for me.”

“Like Belle, you need a distraction.”

“True,” she sighed. “But I’m worse than Rachel not returning the favor.”

“First, no one’s worse than Rachel. Second, that’s what I’m for.”

“Having two pussies to train on,” she giggled, “you’ve learned well.” Hearing the grand piano being played in the great room, her smile broadened and her giggle gained volume. “Come on. My matchmaking begins.”

Returning to the grand space, he saw a group of girls and a couple boys, aged 17 to 19, wearing leotards. They stretched while Claire, a tall sturdy blonde with full breasts, though a couple cups less than Belle’s, a plainish face bordering on pretty with sad eyes, also dressed in leotards, played, and Belle removed her viola from her case along with the bow, closing her eyes and listening before beginning to accompany the girl in their improvisation.

Freddy stripped beside Joe, revealing her mauve leotard beneath her slacks and blouse. Tom took the clothes from her. She continued talking to Joe quietly. “Claire lives not far from us in an even smaller town. Her chances of finding a playmate are even direr than Belle’s.”

“Where?”

“Near Lakeville.”

“So, between here and home. Maybe Belle can drop her off with a kiss.”

“Doubtful. That’s her mother.”

Joe saw a much thicker version of her daughter stand with the other mothers who had followed the sound of the piano like he had.

“Maybe we can convince her they need to practice together. Stay the night.”

Freddy giggled. “I love the way you think.” After a quick kiss, she hopped over to her fellow dancers. They gathered around her, obviously seeing her as leader.

When the meeting ended, the girls formed a line in front of the piano while the two boys moved two heavy looking Adirondack chairs out of a space that had already been substantial.

One boy returned to the group while the other, the prettier and taller of the two, closed his eyes and began to dance, improvising to the slow improvisation from Belle and Claire. At first somewhat sedentary, when he opened his eyes, he began sweeping around the space, defining it. He had a profound grace and a masculine power.

Within the quiet music Joe heard floorboards complain about weight on them, and looked up to see a tall, handsome blonde man in his early forties carefully descend the stairs. The two musicians must have heard it as well, as they took it for their rhythm. His look of concern turned into an amused smile. Like the rest of the audience, he focused on the dancer. He looked almost predatorily happy to see the young man.

Once he made it to the ground floor, he joined the audience of mothers and Joe. Freddy leaned over and spoke to Claire, who created music of a greater force and pace. Her twin joined the boy’s improvisation, and soon after, Freddy brought the other boy into it, creating two sensuous pas de deux. The mating dances became more and more energetic, following the music. The other girls conferred quietly, and formed a modern corps to ballet around and between the two couples, the lead girl doing a movement that the girl behind her followed, and so forth, creating a ripple pattern.

After sustaining a loud fast rhythm for a few minutes, the improvising musicians began slowing and quieting down, bringing the dance to a conclusion the dancers could follow.

A tall elegant blonde with a disturbed brow, a cute tow headed girl two thirds her size beside her, commented just low enough over the applause, “Lovely.” Joe recognized her from Freddy’s portrait. Freddy had the skill to depict her subjects with enough verisimilitude or expression of specific character to make them recognizable. All the dancers looked at her, smiling at her compliment. Freddy emerged from them, took his hand and brought him to the woman.