Cinderella

Randi's topic is falling in love. So, here's a simple story right from the heart. The plot's age-old. I just put it in a contemporary context. I hope you enjoy it - and as always, thanks, my friend... DT

*

The joint had a hardpacked dirt floor. No shit, real dirt!! And its inhabitants were eyeing me like a herd of nervous wildebeest - albeit slightly less intelligently. Still, the deer was the piece-de-resistance.

Deer heads aren't rare in Wisconsin. I mean seriously!! Besides the MMA, deer hunting's probably our state sport. Even so, this place was like the East Village of rustic avant-garde. Other bars put up the antlers. This one had mounted the hindquarters. There was even an unlit cigarette stuck in the butthole. It was a truly awesome example of redneck visual art.

I was sitting in that epitome of hillbilly savoir-faire with a pitcher of Miller Lite and Skipper McPhee. Skipper was my girlfriend. Well actually... that wasn't precisely true. Skipper was a friend of sorts. But she'd put girlhood in her rearview mirror at least twenty years previously.

Skipper lived in the trailer park across the road, and she was divorced like I was. Except her divorce had been recent, which was no doubt why she'd been trying to fuck me into submission. Of course, you can never tell what motivates women.

I'd known Skipper when she was married, and I could never understand what her husband saw in her. My post-divorce experience answered THAT question. She had big soft tits and fantastic long legs on a slim, hard body. She was passionate, physical, and up for anything. Plus, she would serve it up piping hot in twenty minutes or less. It was like dialing Domino's pizza.

Skipper's face was the only part of her that wasn't sheer perfection. The diplomatic term is "plain." But in truth, the poor girl was kind of a double-bagger. She was also sort of dumb, which didn't get in her way carnally. But it limited the discussion afterward to the weighty matters that she'd seen on TMZ.

Any divorced guy over the age of forty knows my life. You've got deep-seated habits and a job. So, you're solitary but never achingly, crushingly despairingly lonely. You have places to go and people to hang with. You just don't have the intimacy of a good marriage -- not that I knew what THAT felt like.

Still, if you're reasonably presentable and don't have too many blatantly gay traits, post-divorce dating is a garden of earthly delight. The age-appropriate women are ALL starting to feel the bloom coming off the rose and the ones who haven't written men off permanently are desperate to couple up.

Their problem is that males my age suffer from delusions of grandeur about twenty-something hotties, and it was their short-sighted youth obsession that gave me my pick of eager low-mileage, one-owner beauties, all with well-honed erotic skills. In fact, I was getting more first-class pussy at age forty-five than I had at any time prior to - and definitely during - my marriage.

The ironic part was that I was no great catch. I'm fairly presentable, and when you're single you always have too much time on your hands. So, you stay in shape. But my job was my Achilles heel.

High achievers hit the ground running. They kick ass. They take names. People like me stay in school... forever. I like to think that it was because of my love of learning. But that would be a lie. It was because I'd decided early on that the best way to take my life off with pay was to get into college teaching.

I mean seriously... your employers expect you to show up for class. But that's seven and a half hours a week, thirty weeks a year. My old man put in more time than that volunteering AFTER he retired.

You DO have to write and publish. But that was no challenge for someone as full of bullshit as me. And after you make tenure, the only way you can lose your job is if you're caught doing unspeakable things to farm animals. But there's always a catch to a deal that sweet.

Unless you're at one of the big universities or teach in one of the professional schools you make the same base salary as a pipefitter - but unlike those guys, there's no such thing as overtime.

I was in grad school when I met Lucy and I'm pretty sure she was thinking "tech billionaire," not a middle-class drone. She was never the same after the reality of my mediocre earning potential sank in.

Arrogant and oblivious are a bad combination. But that was me. I'd been vaguely aware that my wife wasn't happy. Yet, I was still naive enough to think that MY behavior didn't have anything to do with it. Small children are like that. They're always in the moment. They don't think about what their actions or the actions of others imply in the great scheme of things.

Well, I started thinking about it A LOT after she presented me with the papers. Ironically that was on our tenth wedding anniversary. I believe diamonds are the appropriate gift, not paper. And here I was five years later, sitting in a bar in the wilds of Wisconsin with Skipper McPhee and a pitcher of beer.

*****

I should have been clued in by the fact that Lucy was on a date when I met her. She had the popular hippie-chick look back then, long silky blond hair, tall and flat-chested with a fantastic ass and legs. Better yet, she clearly fancied me. So, we ignored her date and talked most of the night.

The very next day, I pounded on her door and proposed a picnic. She came out in a pair of white shorts that showcased her perfect buns and her long, well-muscled legs. I sprang something inappropriate, and we were a couple from that day forward.

We lived in a little apartment off the Madison campus, and from the beginning, it was more like roomies with benefits. I was pretty selfish back then, and she dutifully went with the program. But it was obviously a chore for her. I don't think she even knew what an orgasm felt like. In fact, I sometimes wondered whether she batted for the other team.

That was our life for the next ten years. I didn't have a problem with humdrum sex because like a lot of immature nerds, I didn't know the difference between what I was getting and the real deal. The mere fact that I was getting anything AT ALL was good enough for me. But there were warning signs from the start.

Both of us were young enough that the party scene of our teen years simply carried over into our day-to-day lives. Thus, it wasn't odd that we were drinking at different places on a Friday.

Lucy was a secretary for one of the departments in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Which, of course, had plenty of students our age. But these were prospective MDs, not nerds.

She had told me that she was with a bunch of the med students at the Kollege Klub, which was right next to the library. So, I finished up and zipped down Langdon Street to Lake.

When I arrived, I found a couple of her clerical friends and the usual collection of students but no Lucy. I asked Phyllis, Lucy's best pal, where my wife was. She said off-handedly, "Oh, she and Douchebag One and Douchebag Two were at Douchebag One's apartment smoking weed. My wife might not like sex. But she loved cannabis.

I was acquainted with both douchebags. They were condescending pricks, being med students and all. But frankly the obvious never crossed my mind. So, I just settled in to bend an elbow at the Klub. Lucy was already home when I stumbled in three hours later.

She said mildly perturbed, "Where the fuck were you!!?" I said, "With your buddies at the Klub. They told me that you went off to do some grass with Jon and Will." She said, "Oh!! And abruptly dropped the subject."

Some of you might think I was pathetically clueless in my earlier incarnation. But that's hindsight. You have to realize that I thought that my wife was whatever the opposite of a sensual woman was, at least to me. And second, I was such a pretentious tool that I couldn't imagine any female wanting to stray from a stallion like Moi!

Hence, time and life passed, and I picked up a teaching job at Marquette where I was mildly successful. I was also doing a little consulting and things settled into a comfortable middle-class rut. We had a house and neighbors, who we partied with. All-in-all it was a spectacularly dull existence - work... party... sober-up... repeat... You know what they say, "If you aren't the lead dog the scenery never changes."

Zach Oldendorf, or as the rest of us guys liked to refer to him "Olden-dork," was a member of the group. Zach was an alpha male -- at least in his own mind. He was a talented entrepreneur and he had built up a successful parts supply business. He was slim, handsome, and with a salesman's capacity for charm. But in any social group, he was a loud-mouthed, arrogant asshole, and that was on his good days.

My dilemma was that he looked enough like me that people mistook us for brothers. He was slightly taller. So, he'd refer to me as his "little" brother. Of course, that trashed me. But that was Zach's goal. The boy was always pushing boundaries.

The boundary that he pushed the furthest was with the wives. He was all hands and inappropriate comments when he was with a group of women. He was such a macho poser that the guys would laughingly say, "That's just Zach being Zach," and the women avoided him like the plague. At least that's what we all thought.

Zach was like a cat. You know what I mean... Cats can sense that you don't like them, so they just have to rub themselves all over you. That was the way that Zach was with me. I was trying to avoid the shithead at one party by hanging out with Lucy's group, which was only slightly less excruciating than listening to assface brag about himself.

The girls covered all the usual topics, their ailments, the fashion faux pauses of absent members, and the inadequacies of their husbands. I couldn't stand it any longer, so I gestured that I was going outside. Lucy didn't even look up as she launched into her latest exposé of the horrors of living on my meager salary - which was one of her favorite topics.

Zach was as pretentious as Nero when it came to flaunting his possessions. Hence, his backyard would've given the Garden of Versailles a run for its money. The weather was hot and muggy, and the chirping of crickets and the whirring of the katydids reminded me of happier summers in the Dells.

Then, I heard a soft sound from the direction of an ornamental gazebo. The gazebo itself was round and perhaps eight feet in diameter with a lot of ivy trained up its intricate wrought-iron sides. It provided some privacy. But the moon was nearly full, and you could easily see the two figures inside, sitting next to each other on a wide decorative bench.

It was curiosity, not perviness that caused me to walk over. But standing in the dark I could see our host fingering Bob Cooper's wife, Jill. She had one hand over her mouth trying to hold down her ecstatic moans while she was jacking Zach's impressive tool with the other. I should have turned and fled. But I was frozen to the spot out of sheer disbelief.

Jill was in a frenzy. She said in a guttural whisper, "fuck me" and in one smooth motion, Zach laid her down on the bench, climbed between her widely spread legs and inserted tab A into slot B. There was machine gun snorting, like a sprinter starting a race, and then the cawing "have mercy" cry of a woman having an intense orgasm.

That sound broke the spell and I fled silently into the darkness. Of course, by that point, the two of them wouldn't have noticed my presence if I'd been leading the Badger marching band in a mass rendition of seventy-six trombones.

The thing that shocked me the most was that Jill Cooper was your basic Milwaukee housewife, a mousy little thing, slightly chubby with huge tits and stumpy legs. Nonetheless, judging from the racket going on behind me, Zach must've found hidden depths to plumb. And of course, THAT made me wonder whether he had done the same thing with any of the other wives in the group.

So, I confronted him the next day. He actually had the balls to laugh and tell me that he got a special kick out of back-dooring the other husbands. Zach's wife was by far the hottest woman on the street. So, this kink wasn't due to any lack of attention at home.

I said angrily, "That's a godawful thing to do!!"

He laughed derisively and said, "Every one of those dumb cunts is just looking to get fucked." Hmmm, maybe the Neanderthals hadn't died out after all.

I said incredulous, "You mean you've done this with other guys' wives?"

He started fumbling for his wallet, "Want to see pictures."

OH MY GOD NO!! It might have been egotistical boasting -- like it normally was. But otherwise, what were those women thinking!!?

I said, with my stomach churning, "Lucy wasn't one of your conquests?"

He gave me a sneer and said, "Not yet."

I said threateningly, "You'd better keep it that way if you want to stay healthy." He just laughed. I couldn't look Jill Cooper in the eye from that day forward.

I told Lucy that I wanted her to stay away from Shithead. I couldn't tell her why. Otherwise, I would have had to explain Zach's little hobby, and I hadn't decided what to do about that yet. I knew that justice was required. But the means of obtaining it was something that I wanted to weigh carefully.

I'd be complicit if I kept my mouth shut. But I also knew that spreading the word too precipitously would destroy more than a few families.

Lucy said indignantly, "You don't have to be so jealous, just because Zach's more successful than you are." That had been her attitude for some time. It didn't hurt as much as it did at first.

I added, "... And we aren't going to any more parties either."

Well, that was like telling my wife that I was forbidding her to breathe. She said angrily, "I'm not going to let your paranoid delusions spoil things for me. If you don't want to hang around with our friends, then just go be a hermit. But I'm going to live my life and be happy."

Hence, the following Saturday night she came flouncing downstairs in her standard outfit, tight shorts, and a t-shirt that proclaimed, "PAR-TAY!!" I was reading a Dan Brown novel with the Brewers game in the background. She gave me a defiant stare and said, "I'll be back by eleven o'clock and marched out the door."

I was still reading when she arrived back at 10:45. She said casually, "I had fun and I'm no worse for wear." I glanced up. She was standing there looking at me appraisingly.

She turned quickly and said, 'I gotta take a shower. Are you coming to bed?"

I said, "I'll be up in a minute, just gotta find out whether they eventually get to the Grail." She was sawing logs when I slid under the covers.

I got lucky that morning, which was something of a rarity. Normally Lucy's off fixing breakfast.

I awoke to the feeling of a hand snaking down my stomach. Lucy's boobs weren't even a-cups. They were more like sippy cups, with long sensitive nipples that she'd normally not let me touch. But today she was rubbing them all over my chest, gasping with sensation as she brought me to full mast.

I stretched, the way that you do when you wake up. As soon as I did, she cocked one beautifully muscled thigh over me and mounted up. I slid into a vat of boiling lava. It was so unlike Lucy that I actually checked to see if she might have been replaced in the night by a succubus.

Then, she threw her head back, braced her hands on my chest, and was off to the races. Her hips were almost a blur as she worked herself into a frenzy of moaning. Then suddenly, she grunted and went rigid, her mouth was wide open staring at the ceiling. She shrieked a couple of times and then she collapsed on my chest, panting. It was almost like she'd experienced an orgasm.

The whole thing lasted perhaps four minutes. During that time, I was more bewildered than engaged and I hadn't come close to finishing. I was planning to roll her onto her back as soon as she caught her breath. But the instant she recovered she disengaged, saying frantically, "I have to pee."

I just lay there shocked, contemplating her incredible round ass as it disappeared in the distance. There was an obstacle blocking my view. So, my next task was to knock that skyscraper down. I cleaned up and went downstairs to fix breakfast. I felt so used.

Lucy was perfectly normal when she appeared again. It was like whoever had been inhabiting her body had checked out. I waited for her to say something. But she just tucked into her granola and yogurt.

I said, "Not complaining, but what brought that on?"

She looked up and said perfectly blasé, "You didn't like it?"

I was in a rock and a hard place. Lucy hadn't been that enthusiastic in the entire time that I'd known her. So, I was pretty sure that the sex was inspired by something other than a renewed passion for our marriage.

Still, I couldn't just ask her what HAD motivated her. That would have tipped her off about my suspicions. Then it hit me, she was giving us a benediction!! I even had an idea why. But at that point, it was just conjecture. So, to buy some time I said, "You're kidding, right?"

The concept of true love has been kicked around for a few millennia and nobody can really define it. The best anybody can do is to tell you that you'll know it when you experience it. But that's a bait and switch because you'll have to feel it to know it? That leads to the notion of marriage.

Being alone is not a natural human state. Which is probably the reason why young people sign up for a lifetime commitment based on minimal life experience and very little actual knowledge of each other. The decision might be motivated by what they think of as "love." But it's more likely just unbridled lust combined with peer pressure. Whatever the reason, it rarely involves a long-term plan.

That was our situation. Lucy was handy when my timer went off, and it seemed like the thing to do. Lucy knew the career I was planning, but she married me anyhow. Maybe she thought she could change me. If so, she chose unwisely.

Therefore, it was evident throughout our marriage that I wasn't fulfilling Lucy's hazy expectations and she eventually deemed that sufficient grounds for divorce. Of course, I had my own suspicions and those would have definitely put me on the moral high ground. But I never had time to prove it.

I came back from class that Monday, to discover my wife sitting at the dinner table with two glasses of wine and a big manilla envelope. She said matter of fact, "We need to talk." Yikes!! The four little words that, when combined with the three at the front, bookend a broken marriage."

Some of you might've experienced heartsickness, or anger, or gone through some sort of profound emotional trauma. I don't know what species of weirdo I might be. But my only reaction was relief. She'd pulled the trigger first. So, the onus was on her.

Hence, it was with some satisfaction that I sat down opposite and said, "I agree. All I want is as little bloodshed as possible."

Divorce is a relatively painless process when you have no kids and you are living week-to-week on two roughly comparable salaries. Accordingly, for the low-low price of twelve hundred bucks, the two of us more-or-less shook hands and went our separate ways.

And coincidentally... shortly thereafter Bob Cooper, who had started all four years on the defensive line for the Badgers, beat the absolute living shit out of Zach Oldendork. You might speculate that I had something to do with that... I couldn't possibly comment.

Lucy married Douchebag Two MD and was divorced three years later. It was ironic really. Apparently, her husband had a problem with fidelity. Isn't karma a bitch? I sent her a note of commiseration. Hell yeah!! I just LOVE sarcasm!!