© 2025, All rights reserved -- mimaster
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"Comfortably Numb", written by Roger Waters and David Gilmore. Performed by Pink Floyd, 'The Wall", 1979.
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It was a restless night. More because I'd slept so much the day before after Paula had left the room than anything else. When you sleep from morning until the afternoon, it makes it hard to go back to sleep when you're really supposed to. What Ann had said about having to fend off Nancy at work just before hanging up didn't help, but I eventually drifted off to sleep.
I stood in the shower, trying to wash myself awake, and my mind was racing. In just one week, I'd gone from a miserable man who was recently divorced, to a happy go lucky one who seemed to have a sexual conquest available at every turn. But at the end, I turned into a man about to be married a second time; to a woman I loved more than anything else on the planet.
Yet even though I was deeply in love with Ann, I hadn't quite figured her out yet.
As the water rained over my skin, I had an image of Dawn enter my mind. She was the woman who rescued me, and without her, none of what happened afterward would have happened at all. I still likely would have seen Ann at Matt's house. But the dark cloud of my failed marriage hanging above my head would have remained, ready to pour over me like the shower I was standing in.
Dawn came to mind, mainly because I was thinking about sex. I seemed to always think about sex. Not just because I'm a man and that's the way men think all the time. That was part of it, but with the number of sexual encounters I'd had in the previous week, it seemed to be in the forefront of my brain even more than usual.
The shower brought the images of her; one after another a mental picture would flash in my head. Her tits getting sprayed, or her long legs with water flowing down them, or even her wet hair would flood my mind. We'd spent a lot of time showering together, and as that thought hit me, it slammed into another one that sprang up almost simultaneously. I hadn't showered with Ann. It was a stray thought, and it didn't bother me that we hadn't. We came close, and it actually turned out better that we didn't.
But it made me think of Ann, doing all the things Dawn and I shared in the shower. And that made me miss Ann all the more. It was going to be a very long day, starting a very long week, leading into a very long couple of months. And it was only day one. The first task was to go to work and avoid Nancy. Dragging myself out of the shower, I sighed and trudged methodically into my Monday. I was about to go not so bravely forward, into my first day without Ann.
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I was in a pretty good mood when I drove home from work on Tuesday afternoon. First of all, I'd gotten a lot accomplished at work, which always made me feel better. I'd been able to keep my mind off obsessing about Ann during both of the days while I was at work. I still thought of her throughout the day, but it would bring a smile, and I found a way to refocus quickly. That was good because I had a lot of things on my pile. The most important of which was a lead on a new customer that would be a huge boon to the department.
I'd spent Monday evening catching up on some much needed sleep. As much as I slept on Sunday, I was still going through a serious bout of sleep deprivation. By Tuesday morning, I felt almost back to normal.
However the best part of my Tuesday, not to mention my Monday, was that I had successfully dodged any encounters with Nancy, including any phone conversations. That surprised me, but not enough to want to figure out why. I was going with the
let a sleeping slut lie
theory, and didn't push it. Walking out to the parking lot to head home, I had a confidence come over me about how things were going. It was a small sample size, but I was two for two.
It was a picture perfect afternoon, and I celebrated my release from the prison that was the plant by driving home with the windows down and the cassette deck blaring. Unbeknownst to me, I was to have one of those personal soundtrack moments, where the song that was being played at the time, or near the time in this case, earmarked the event for the rest of my life.
I had many of them, a good many involving incredible encounters with girls or women. Like how every time I would hear,
Jungle Love
by the Steve Miller Band, I would immediately be taken to a parking lot of a church in northern Virginia on a sultry July weeknight, where I felt up Jeannie Foster's bare breasts underneath her shirt as she kissed me... my first time getting that far.
Or how anytime I heard
Get Down Tonight
by KC and the Sunshine Band, my mind would take me to the back seat of my mother's pale yellow Chevy Caprice in the parking lot of a golf course outside that same town, losing my virginity to Donna Talbot during a wedding reception we were supposed to be attending inside the banquet room of the club house.
I pulled into my parents driveway as David Gilmore was in the middle of his epic guitar solo on a live version of Pink Floyd's
Comfortably Numb
, when I saw my mom's new car in the open garage. It was hard to imagine recreating a magical moment in the back of it, as she'd finally gotten the car wanted instead of a family sedan. It was a blue two-door Pontiac Grand Prix that was loaded. It was stylish, and sexy, and it was home, which was very unusual. I couldn't recall the last time she'd gotten there before me on a workday, particularly in the middle of the week.
She was waiting for me in the living room, with a very familiar look on her face; one that I'd seen many times. I knew she was either really mad at me, or extremely disappointed. Either way, my good mood was about to vanish right before my eyes, and my mind raced to think of what it was she could be so upset about.
Getting straight to the point as always, she stared into my eyes, her brow lowered, making her look more menacing. "Is there something you want to tell me?" she demanded more than she asked.
It was a question I'd heard almost as many times as I'd seen that look on her beautiful face, and it always brought with it a sense of dread. Once again it was perfectly executed, its very existence designed to go on the offensive and take control by putting one on the spot. And she was letting me know she already knew something, and she wasn't happy about it. It was much easier to answer my dad's classic
'Do you want me to get my belt?'
from when I'd get in trouble as a youngster. That response was always a quick, emphatic no. But Mom's question was psychological in its cunning brilliance. It left you off guard and spinning out of control. I rarely handled it well, and I was lightyears better than my brother ever had been. The woman could have been an interrogator.
My blank expression hit a nerve, and I knew that wasn't good. She was going to wait me out, and I had little choice but to do the same, because I needed to get a read on what was going on. I
was relieved when her demeanor tilted to the disappointed side. I'd much rather have her disappointed in me than mad, because I could usually talk my way out of that. When she was mad, there was absolutely no reasoning with her. And usually for good reason, because she rarely used that particular tactic unless she was standing on solid ground.
I quickly did a mental inventory, going over all the things I was supposed to do around the house. My room was clean, my laundry was done, and I'd even put away the dishes out of the dishwasher the night before. All of the mundane household tasks I would normally take care of to help her out around the house were done. I even wiped down the shower walls and hung up the wet towel, which was a new rule implemented after I'd moved back in with them. That meant it was something else.
I broke into a panic when Paula crossed my mind. They were close friends, going back all the way to college. Did she find out about what I'd done with Paula? In the living room of her own house? Had I inadvertently crossed the secret Sorority Sister code they held as so sacred?
Or was it Nancy? Had she somehow learned of the sexual risks I'd taken with the incredible redheaded receptionist, while I was actually in the plant at work? Not once, but twice, the second time in an open hallway?
Or, God forbid, did she know about both Paula and Nancy? And how I was seemingly having sex with any hot woman that was closer to my mom's age than my own that caught my eye? And I was doing it with them in a reckless manner, apparently wherever the mood struck me?
