But Honey, I Can Explain! Page 4

  "What I want is an answer," Jeff said firmly. He looked at his watch. "And I want it in one minute flat, or we kick this up to the next level."

  Uh oh. I laughed, but the laugh sounded a little thin, even to me. I was very afraid that I knew what he meant. "You’re not still harping on that? That dumbass idea you had about spanking me? You can’t be serious!"

  Once again, Jeff didn’t smile. "Try me." He delivered these words in what I have come to think of as his "Clint Eastwood" voice.

  In the sixty seconds that followed, I reviewed my somewhat limited options. More than a month ago, Jeff and I had agreed, (over way too much wine, apparently,) that what I needed most to jump-start my obviously flagging art career was an "incentive." Jeff’s unique take on the word "incentive" was a tad different than mine, of course. My suggestion had been to take a few weeks (months?) off, go to Italy, and relive in precise detail some of the extremely nice moments from our honeymoon. Jeff’s suggestion, while admittedly less expensive, was a whole lot less appealing.

  Jeff proposed, and I am not making this up, to start spanking me! Definition: To inflict, with a variety of unpleasant flagellation implements, a very long (Jeff assured me of this part) and astonishingly painful (another promise) to my dainty behind. (Okay, that "dainty" part is probably not completely accurate. Insert "winsome," instead.)

  The truth was that I had begun to invent increasingly lame excuses to avoid working lately, and I hadn’t turned out one decent canvas in all that time. I’d started at least a dozen, and these nameless orphans were now gathering dust in a cluttered corner, incomplete but remarkably handy as TV trays. I had an important show coming up in three months, in New Jersey (important in that it was my first and only show ever, in New Jersey or anywhere else) and I didn’t have even one thing remotely close to ready.

  Enter Jeff and his comic hairbrush. In anticipation of my failure to produce, Jeff had done some shopping at a local thrift shop and returned home with an old wooden hairbrush, which he left propped on the dresser as a thoughtful reminder to me to work harder and to get my butt in gear. It had started as a kind of joke, but after a few weeks with nothing finished, the joke had gotten pretty old.

  "Two weeks, Karen," he announced one night. "If you haven’t finished something in two weeks, that hairbrush gets used."

  I sneered. "Sure," I growled. "You and what three professional wrestlers?"

  "Nope," he said, tapping the brush against the table. "It’s all going to be one hundred percent voluntary. Consensual. It has to be, to work the way it's supposed to. We make a deal. If you don’t show some real movement in getting ready for that show in the next two weeks, you get your bare ass paddled, by me, as hard as I can do it. Sort of a harbinger of things to come. Hey, I know! We’ll call it the Alpha Spanking. After that, when I come through that door every night, there’s going to be visible progress in the painting department. If there isn’t, you get spanked again—longer, harder, and maybe even in a few novel places."

  "That’s not fair!" I sputtered. "And bizarre! Do you really think I’m going to let you, or anyone else, actually spank me, for God’s sake?"

  Jeff shook his head, a little sadly. "That's up to you, but that’s the deal, and you have to agree to it. Otherwise, we sublet this place and move back to suburbia. I’m tired of driving an hour and a half to work and paying this kind of ridiculous rent an for empty, unused space, just because the light is good. If you’re not going to take this seriously, you can go back to puttering in the garage in Connecticut, and call it a hobby."

  I tried tears. Jeff watched, handed me a wad of Kleenex—and held his ground. I had never seen my wonderful, sweet-natured husband so unsympathetic and so determined. When we didn’t talk about it any further that night, I hoped that my lack of enthusiasm, let alone my lack of agreement, had called his bluff.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work because I did. Really. Over the last year, I had started a lot of canvases, some of them pretty good, too. But, now, the best one, begun so eagerly, was covering a big tear in the back screen, and several more had been relegated to the studio’s only closet, serving as dividers for all the rest of the unwanted clutter. My own analysis of my present "artist’s block" was that I didn’t need a creative incentive so much as I needed a really creative excuse. Who needed this kind of pressure, I reasoned. It was no wonder artists went around cutting off ears and things. What I needed was understanding, and sympathy. Even Jeff wouldn’t have the heart to use a monster hairbrush on a one-eared cripple.

  Then again, he might.

  Money was no incentive, not the way it had been four years ago, before I met and married Jeff. At that point in my life, garbage dumpsters were beginning to look a lot like fine dining, and I lived in a third-floor walk-up that had reminded me of the set of "Cats." I shared these squalid accommodations with not one, but two roommates, both of whom were named Tiffany. The Two Tiffanies, though reputedly of opposite genders, had in common the same vocation, a vocation they pursued noisily on a rollaway bed in the kitchen because of its proximity to the fire escape. It seemed that a fair percentage of The Tiffanies’ clientele preferred to arrive and depart "incognito."

  Tiffany One was actually the first adult person I’d ever known who got spanked, although in Tiffany One’s case, the spanking was professional as opposed to punitive or recreational.

  "You would adore Tiffany One," I explained to Jeff, who was lobbying at that time to get me out of my shared apartment and into his. "She dresses from head to toe in black leather and keeps a closet full of whips and dog collars. I have to use ear-plugs when she has a ‘date,’ and she can NEVER sit down when she eats. When I asked her about it, she told me it was ‘uh, like, uh, a’ occupational hazard.’"

  "Is this the girl Tiffany, or the boy?" Jeff asked.

  I shrugged. "Who knows? One of them is much prettier, but the other one has bigger boobs. I get them all mixed up, because they’re always sharing clothes—and clients."

  A month later, Jeff’s arguments won me over, and I agreed to move to Connecticut with him, despite the creative sacrifices I would have to make (like cockroaches and finding drug paraphernalia and used condoms in the hall every morning). Jeff was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I could finally face my mother when she asked about my love life. I had battled my last surly landlord! Jeff introduced me to a clean house, decent hours, healthy meals, and multiple orgasms, (only one of which I am still pursuing with enthusiasm.) Despite his encouragement and his endless support, though, I began to find myself plagued again by fears of failure, and of the almost certain rejection that comes to any beginner in the arts. At least living the way I used to, no one ever expected anything of me, and I had obliged them—in spades.

  When Jeff saw I was bored, he concluded that a change of environment would help, and that's when we moved to the city and leased the loft. We moved from the small Cape Cod in Connecticut that Jeff had bought while still in college, to this grimy, "artistic," overpriced neighborhood in Soho, and I started to work. But it didn’t take long before I slipped back into the old pattern of watching TV, reading, sleeping, and pretending to work at what I had once loved so much but now regarded as drudgery.

  That’s approximately where things stood on the evening my beloved promised me a spectacular spanking every night for the foreseeable future—unless I started back to work. An incentive, he said. And for some reason, maybe in my sleep or dead drunk, I had accepted the deal.

  As things were turning out, it looked like I had made an extremely poor deal.

  * * * *

  As Jeff finished his coffee the following morning, he looked up and pointed to the kitchen clock. "It’s seven-fifteen. I’ll be home around six-thirty. Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll pick up something on the way home. Eleven hours should give you a pretty good start. I wasn’t kidding last night, Karen. I want to see some progress—by tonight. No more screwing around!" He grabbed his jacket and briefcase, kissed me goodbye
, and was out the door.

  He didn’t mean it, of course. I was still fairly sure of that. Jeff and I had both cut our teeth on ERA rallies. Jeff’s law firm specialized in civil rights and labor cases. Every day, he defended the rights of women deprived of equal opportunities on the job, in the marketplace, in the courts. Surely, he wouldn’t….

  I dawdled around the studio the way I usually did each morning, idly dusting this chair and plumping that pillow, then wandered into the bedroom alcove to pick up the wooden hairbrush from the dresser. Out of curiosity, I smacked the thing against my palm, really hard. OUCH! What the hell, I thought. I went to the back of the studio, uncovered my easel, and looked around for my brushes. Why not do a little painting today? I had nothing better to do, right?

  The thought of the hairbrush smacking into my quivering, naked backside was nasty, but not quite nasty enough to sustain the brief creative upswing, and after an hour, my feet got tired. When I sat down and turned on the TV, "Roman Holiday" was just starting. Three hours, one frozen lasagna and a brief nap later, I woke up, refreshed and ready to try again. Which was when the phone rang. An hour of pleasant chit-chat with Jeff’s sister and the clock read two thirty. Still four hours to work, and if I was good at anything in this world, it was faking work.

  I spent an hour on the New York Times crossword, gave up in abject defeat, and glanced through the TV guide.

  Things would have probably turned out better if "Three Coins in The Fountain" hadn’t shown up at four o’clock on American Movie Classics. I was definitely in an Italian mode. I dragged a half-finished canvas from the pile, set up a workspace on the coffee table in front of the TV, and made myself comfortable on the couch, curled up with the canvas in my lap. Comfort and practicality.

  The problem with old movies is that they’re sometimes just not as enthralling as you remember them. Somewhere between the new secretary’s arrival in the Eternal City, and where she sets her sights on Louis Jordan, I dozed off, and woke up just in time to hear the front door open.

  * * * **

  For several golden minutes, it seemed that Jeff had forgotten his nasty little threat. He had brought Chinese from the place at the corner and a bottle of white wine. Lovely. We ate on our tiny balcony/fire-escape that overlooked the Armenian bakery, where we could watch the usual floor-show— a pair of sewer rats making love on the wall in the empty lot across the street. You have to love New York, sometimes.

  Finally, Jeff stretched, and picked up the plates to take them inside.

  "Come on in and show me what you got done today," he said cheerfully. "I saw the canvas you were working on. It looks good."

  I groaned to myself. Time was running out, and my sins were about to overtake me. I had one last chance—that Jeff wouldn’t know the difference between old canvas and new! Which might have worked if my medium of choice had been watercolor or acrylic, but even Jeff knows that oil paints don’t dry in one day—or a week. By the time I got inside, he was studying the painting, with a noticeable frown on his handsome face. It probably didn’t help that the damned canvas had a scum of dust on it so thick I could have signed it with a fingernail.

  "This had better not be the day’s work product," he said grimly.

  "Of course it isn’t!" I cried, snatching the canvas from his hands. "This is an old one, silly!"

  Jeff nodded, but he was still frowning. "Okay, let’s see what you did today."

  "You can’t!" I explained, the bald-faced lie forming on my lips before his request was even finished. "It’s a surprise. For your birthday!" I watched him very carefully, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. No one, but no one would believe such a dumb lie. I was really slipping. "I’ll give you one hint," I babbled on, trying to stall the inevitable. "It’s a life-sized self portrait of yours truly, absolutely naked, doing something disgusting and impossibly athletic on your work-out bench." To complete my humiliating act, I added a sly wink.

  When it appeared that Jeff was not going to laugh, I looked around for a plausible avenue of escape. The window was open, but since we were on the eighth floor, I rejected that as a bit too theatrical. I thought about throwing up, which I definitely felt like doing about now, but from the look on hubby’s face, I doubted that would stop him. Being spanked, barfing my guts out and howling my head off at the same time would not make a pretty picture.

  On the other hand, maybe Jeff wasn’t serious after all.

  Wrong again. Jeff walked to the small bedroom area, removed the hairbrush from its resting place, and returned, then took my hand and led me very calmly into the loft’s "living room." He moved my scattered art materials aside and sat down on the long wooden coffee table.

  I smiled nervously. "Did you want to talk about something, dear?"

  Jeff shook his head. "Nope. No more talk."

  "Tell me about your day," I asked, my artificial cheerfulness so nauseating it nearly gagged even me. "What’s on your busy schedule for the rest of the week?"

  Jeff thought for a moment. "Me? Well, now that you ask, I’m planning on getting home early every night this week, in time to devote a full hour to blistering my lovely wife’s adorable ass and watching her stand in the corner with her butt glowing like a night light."

  I giggled. (Yes, giggled! The devices some women will resort to in a pinch.) "Sounds fascinating, but you’ll miss the six-thirty news, you know."

  He smiled like a bloodthirsty spider about to pounce on a helpless fly. “No news is good news— for some of us, anyway.” He knew that I was trapped, and the son of a bitch was enjoying every moment of it!

  Suddenly, Jeff yawned. "Enough stalling. Take down your jeans and panties and get over here. The longer you stall, the harder you’re going to get it. In a second or two, I may even lose my sunny mood."

  I stared at the man I had married, shocked and disbelieving. "Don’t be ridiculous, you idiot! If you think I’m going to actually do this, you’ve lost your tiny little mind!"

  Jeff smiled again. "New rule, sweetheart. Every time you stall, you get an additional ten really good swats, and every time you insult me, you get another ten. How’s that?"

  "How’s this, asshole?" I snickered. I took a really big chance, and walked away. "Go screw yourself!"

  Before I had taken my second step, Jeff had grabbed me and pulled me down and across his lap.

  Laughing nervously, I tried to get up, but he had a really good grip and held me tightly while he "arranged" the appropriate parts of my anatomy across his knee, with my behind in the air and my head hanging down. I felt the blood rush to my brain, and then, despite my discomfort, I began to notice a certain telltale dampness between my legs. A new possibility dawned. I might just enjoy this spanking business more than expected! Before I could work out how I felt about this development, though, things began to go from bad to worse.

  Jeff raised one knee higher than the other, raising my denim-covered butt even higher. The situation was becoming less romantic by the second.

  "Cut it out, Jeff," I whined. "This isn’t funny, anymore. I’ll bet I could have you arrested for something like this, and have you tossed in prison. And then, some tattooed hulk named Rocco or Bubba will make you his love cookie. How’d you like that, macho man?"

  Jeff answered with a hard smack on the seat of my jeans with the dreaded hairbrush, which made me wince and yelp out loud, but didn’t hurt as much as I had thought it would. He pulled my arm behind my back and held it there, then locked my legs beneath his, while I began to struggle a little, not quite believing that he really meant to go further with this nonsense. And then, with his free hand, the son of a bitch reached beneath me, and began to undo my pants.

  "You rotten bastard! "I shouted as I felt my jeans sliding down over my rear end, and then down to my knees. "Stop this!"

  "That’s another ten," Jeff said affably, “for my mom.” Then, he yanked down my panties. “You know what? I’m losing track, here. Maybe we’d better just make it a flat hundred. How’s that sound?
" He slapped each cheek of my now totally bare ass, apparently experimentally. "Damn!” he said. “I’ll bet that hurt like hell, didn’t it? The good news is you’ve got just ninety eight to go, if you shut your mouth and take what you’ve got coming like a lady.”

  "If you hit me again," I warned grimly, "I’m going to scream bloody murder."

  Jeff only laughed— cackled, actually. "Oh, I can promise that you’re going to scream," he said pleasantly. "And if you don’t mind the neighbors hearing, it’s okay with me. In this neighborhood, who’ll notice?"

  And then he began. He raised his hand above his head and brought it down really hard on my bare butt. The smack made a gigantic CRACK and was followed, of course, by my wail of pain and outrage. I simply didn’t believe he was doing this! I writhed and strained and did everything I could to get up, with no luck. All that work-out stuff must actually work, because Jeff held me down as easily as if I were a rag doll, and rained maybe a dozen rapid-fire slaps on my ass so fast and hard I couldn’t catch my breath.

  It had begun to occur to me that he might be serious about this spanking crap.

  The problem, from hubby’s point of view, was that his wrist was already beginning to hurt as much as my butt did. (This, by the way, is Jeff’s opinion, not my own.) The obvious solution to such a problem would have been to discontinue the stupid spanking, but Jeff had a slightly different solution. He stood up and draped me, still kicking and squirming, across the arm of the couch, and then held me there while he unbuckled his belt, whipped it off, and doubled it in his grip. It was going to be a very long evening.

  "If you don’t stop this," I threatened between clenched teeth, "I am going to…."