Have you ever just disliked someone for no sound reason? That was Paul, or how I felt about Paul. I didn't like him at first, despised him would be more accurate. He seemed quietly arrogant, like he knew something that everybody else didn't, maybe something they were incapable of knowing, since to him they existed several steps below his razor-sharp intellect. He appeared to be very self-centered, too, like he didn't give a shit if anyone thought he was haughty, since he was who he was, spoke perfect English with a foreign phrase thrown in here and there, you know the type.
The kicker was when he basically slammed the door in my face as I trudged around the neighborhood with my daughter, selling Girl Scout cookies. He didn't know me at the time even though our houses backed to each other, but would it have killed him to be polite? A terse "yes" was followed by a dismissive "no thanks," as the door was shut in our faces mid-sentence, much to my consternation and my daughter's bewilderment and disappointment. Consternation? Hell no, I was pissed, and I would have rung the doorbell and given him a piece of my mind if I hadn't been with Megan and had two more blocks of doorbells to ring. He was on my shit list as of that moment.
Later though, I got to know his wife Karen as a fellow room parent for the third grade, and she seemed to be quite nice, around my age, 39, and bright, but without the smug baggage of her asshole of a husband. Our daughters began requesting play dates, so we grew to be neighborly acquaintances over coffee and swing-sets, phone calls and predictable third-grade catastrophes. Over the course of a year or so I ran into Paul a couple of times, first with Karen and then other times in a rush whenever he picked up his daughter after school and once where we made small talk at the winter pageant.
But on one December day near to Christmas and shortly after the pageant everything unexpectedly changed for me. He climbed the stairs from his family room when I stopped by to collect money for a holiday gift for our kids' homeroom teacher. This was the first time I had seen him in any way disheveled or wearing anything other than jeans and a leather jacket, both of which I hated to admit he looked good in. He's not classically good-looking, like a model or a celebrity, but he knew how to dress to his advantage, and being sexy is more of a state of mind anyway. It hit me that day for the first time that his parts added up to more than the isolated impressions I had gotten of his overall appearance.
He's 6' tall and probably weighs around 190lbs, an inch shorter and a few pounds lighter than my husband; he has sparkling blue eyes and thinning brunette hair that he wears in a short ponytail. In short he has that "I'm an artist who used to smoke a lot of pot" look about him. But seeing him in his workout clothes made me aware of his long, muscular legs and, as he bent into his refrigerator, his nice tight buns (just the way I like them, but come to think of it, who doesn't like them nice and tight?), like he had played soccer or run track for years and had stamina to spare. And judging from the random folds and lopsided bulge in his sweat-soaked, gray athletic shorts, he appeared to be amply endowed in other ways as well as I stole a glance at what my girlfriends and I used to call simply "the package" in our college-girl code.
But damned if he didn't catch my eye that one second when I checked him out. He held my gaze when I looked up and discovered that I had been caught, but gracefully he looked away before either of us became uncomfortable. I guess he was flattered, I don't know, but it was a polite gesture on his part I must admit since I expected a smirk or the like. He was drenched from a strenuous workout and smelled faintly musky and very masculine as he moved aside me, drinking his iced tea, chatting pleasantly and making his wife and I laugh about one of our neighbors. For some reason I never imagined that he had a sense of humor, but he had a silly and observant one, and I am a sucker for humorous guys. Not a clown, but someone who appreciates life's absurdities. And rather than conceited, now for some reason he seemed to be entertaining and funny in a chiding and acerbic way. When I eventually left there that day I would have gone so far as to describe him as charming and confident.
Karen was baking cupcakes for a school function, and as we chatted her eyes were fixed on the mixer and a recipe. He excused himself to shower and change. I became aware of my heart pounding as I watched him walk down the hall to their bedroom, feeling like a high school girl with a horny crush on another girl's guy, only this one came as a shock to me when I realized that this guy was turning me on in a big way, the guy who I seemed to dislike just moments ago. I felt the familiar tingle of warmth in my belly that preceded my nipples tightening into sensitive little buds and my clit asking me to pull the seam of my jeans tightly against it. So I self-consciously crossed my arms to cover the evidence, ridiculously assuming that his wife would somehow know exactly why my nips were all-of-a-sudden rigid.
I shook it off; I had to shake it off for my own self-preservation, for all kinds of common sense reasons. He was happily married I assumed; they were one of the royal couples in the neighborhood as my husband called them with a touch of jealousy: perfect kids, highly educated academics both, and income to spare, in two words, off limits.
As I walked home I cringed as I imagined humiliating myself were I to be alone with him, making a subtle pass and being rejected with a dismissive snort and a condescending glance over the rims of his glasses that framed eyes, I must admit, that respectfully never seemed to wander below mine. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to talk with a guy and have him look you in the eye rather than stare at your chest, but when you want him to notice you that's a different story. Guys often see that contradiction as irrational, but it's not.
But irrationality does describe part of my life; maybe timidity is a better description of why I married Steven. He wasn't flashy or dangerously sexy, and our once-passable sex-life had eroded to bi-yearly trysts, but he was my husband and a good father; he was safe. My friends quietly questioned why "the blond with a brain" as they once called me had settled for him out of many choices, but sometimes practicality and foresight trumps excitement.
Steven was a figure out of the nineteenth century; missionary position exclusively, awkward oral sex only if he was drunk and I was fresh out of the shower (where I usually pretended to cum to avoid hurting his feelings). And blowjobs, well, they were "demeaning" to me, he decided, so even though they made me horny as hell and I loved the feeling of hot skin plugged into my throat, he wouldn't let me give him one. Steven could count his lovers on one hand; I ran out of digits even barefoot.
