Dealing with Change

My husband and I live in a comfortable suburb of a major West Coast city. We have an older home in a 1950's subdivision, one of the first ones built in our part of California. Rich and I inherited it from his late parents about the time our kids started school. They had expanded it considerably, so it was perfect for raising our family. It has a big yard where we supplemented Rich's income with the vast array of fruits and vegetables you can grow in California's Central Valley. Aside from our early years, I have been a stay-at-home mom, raising two children and tending the big garden. Rich is in sales and travels almost continuously. Our life together has been a stable one, busy but consistent and predictable with no sharp changes in direction—up until now.

We are in our mid-forties now with the kids graduated from college and living their own lives on the East Coast. Rich is still traveling, enthused as always about his job. In reality, it is his life. My life revolved around the kids and our garden. Now that the kids are gone I find myself rattling around the big house. The gardening helps, but . . . my life is no longer full. To put it bluntly, I am a little bored. It has taken me awhile to realize that, but it's a fact I've recently acknowledged. Rich suggested I look for a part time job, but I had no enthusiasm. What was I going to do, become a Wall Mart Greeter? He pointed out that there were lots of other jobs and with the money he is making now as his company's VP of Sales, I could afford to do volunteer work for a charity if I wished. But somehow . . . nothing appeals.

Another thing changed shortly after the last child graduated from college—our long-time neighbors, the Smithsons, moved to a retirement home. We hadn't been terribly close but Alena was still someone I could walk next door and have a chat with when I felt the need and I did the same for her. The house stood empty for a couple of months before a sold sign appeared and shortly thereafter a moving van pulled up and filled the Smithsons' place with the new owner's furniture. I waited a day or two, to give them time to settle in, and then walked next door with a plate full of cookies. It was early on a Tuesday afternoon and I assumed (because we all assume everyone lives in the same bubble as us) that the door would be answered by a woman who would be fulfilling the same role in the house that Alena had fulfilled there and that I did in our house. I was surprised when the door was answered by a man about the same age as Rich and me. He had a neatly trimmed beard, sparkling blue eyes, a dark tan, easily six feet tall or perhaps a bit more. Just like Rich and me, he carried a bit more weight than he probably had at age 20 but he was really very attractive. He wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt advertising a rock band I had never heard of.

"Oh," I said, just a bit surprised. I quickly recovered and held out the cookies. "I'm Sharon Jameson. My husband Rich and I live next door and I just wanted to . . . to introduce myself."

"Sure. Hi. I'm Carl Falwell. Those cookies look good."

"Is there a Mrs. Falwell?" I asked.

He smiled and said, "Yes, but she goes by Moore, 'Christina Moore. She didn't like Falwell. Sounded too much like a Baptist preacher. Crissy's not here right now. She has an office downtown and often travels with her job."

"Oh, my husband Rich has a job like that. He's gone all the time."

Carl was looking fidgety as I talked finally saying, "I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of a Zoom call just now. I work from home. I'd love to chat, but I need to get back on the call."

"Oh, certainly" I said, stepping back away from the door. "I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm sure we will have more opportunities to talk."

"Yes, I'm sure we will," he said as he closed the door.

I shrugged a little as I walked down the steps, thinking a bit about change and how we all have to live with it. I also was thinking about how handsome my new neighbor was. That was a thought I hadn't had in some time, maybe years. Oh sure, the movie and TV stars were handsome and this guy was no George Clooney, but he was good looking and he lived right next door to me, not just a flicker on the TV screen. He was a big change from old Mr. Smithson who had lived there so long. I felt a vague stir in my groin that I hadn't felt a stranger cause in years. "Nonsense," I told myself. "You're 44 years old and he probably is too. The only thing he saw were the cookies if that. Besides you have a great husband that you are deeply in love with." Still I thought, he was handsome.

I changed into my yard work clothes and set out to tend to a few tasks in our vegetable garden. As I worked my mind rolled back to my earlier thoughts. Not the part about my handsome next-door neighbor, but the part about having a loving marital relationship. Of course we do, I repeated to myself, trying to push negative thoughts away. But the fact of the matter, which I wasn't ready to admit to myself, was that we were more like roommates with occasional privileges than a loving couple. He was gone five days a week and when he was home on the weekend, he would spend most of one day in the office and a goodly part of the remaining day on the golf course. Even over meals we had little to say to each other beyond a brief recap of how the week had gone and after dinner with a bottle of wine one or both of us would fall asleep watching TV. Once the kids left home the prohibition against reading at the meal table had disappeared

.

And sex? Well yes we still had occasional sex but it was only a couple of times a month if that. When was the last time we had anything beyond a quick role in the sack before we fell asleep? I paused as I tugged at a particularly tenacious weed and thought about it. At first, I couldn't remember. I laughed when I recalled an effort to celebrate when the last kid left for college. It had been unsatisfactory for both of us. But it hadn't always been that way. My god I thought, when we first married it had been like we were training for the sexual Olympics. We fucked in every position we could imagine. We even bought a book of Kama Sutra illustrations and tried to see how many positions we could get through in one weekend. I couldn't remember if we got through the whole book but I did remember that we were both exhausted and sore as hell when Rich had to leave for work on Monday morning. For years Rich and I used to laugh about the Kama Sutra weekend. But the arrival of kids put paid to that lifestyle. Oh sure we still fooled around when we could. We even snuck out once leaving the kids with a babysitter while we went to a dirty picture show where we got each other off in the last row. But growing kids, jobs (I worked as an English teacher when we were young) and life in general has a way or reorienting your priorities. Sex seemed to slip down the list over time.

I sat back on my haunches and thought for a moment: "What's the matter with you Sharon," I scolded myself. "You have this beautiful home and no need to worry about where the next meal is coming from or even retirement. Rich treats you kindly. Lots of women are far worse off than you. And besides 44-year-old broads aren't supposed to have a great sex life, no matter what Cosmo says."

Having pushed away the negative, my mind drifted back to the handsome stranger next door. He really did look like a movie star. Trying to push that thought aside, I told myself, "His wife is probably drop dead gorgeous."

I met Shannon a few days later at our mailboxes. The neighborhood had mailboxes that stood on posts at the street, two to a post for the convenience of the carrier I suppose. Ours and the Smithsons' (now Falwell-Moore's, I reminded myself) shared a post. Shannon was about my age with long dark hair matched with a smooth olive complexion, dark eyes, and a pretty face. She was about my height, 5-6, and like me probably carried a bit of middle-aged weight that hadn't been there more than a few years back. Nice legs though. We chatted a bit, before she excused herself. I stood unable to tear my eyes off her attractive legs and her plump round butt that was just barely covered by the skimpy shorts she wore. "Wait until Rich sees that," I told myself. "Nonsense, he has no interest in women and sex. He gave it up years ago to focus on making money and golf. Besides, I've got bigger breasts than her (but not much bigger, I admitted)."

Life went on pretty much as it had for a couple of weeks after that. I saw our neighbors once or twice, just a 'hi how are you' greeting. Spring was turning into summer and the California sun was getting good and hot. The weeds in my garden were thriving and I was focusing on rooting them out. I was down on my hands and knees working along the fence between ourselves, and our neighbors when I heard their patio door. I looked up. The fence between the two lots was an old one and the boards had split and twisted so there were some pretty good cracks between them. I could see Carl on their patio, maybe thirty feet from where I was. He moved a chez lounge around so it was facing the sun, set up a little table next to it with a book and his coffee. He certainly is easy on the eyes I thought as I sat back on my haunches indulging myself in watching my handsome neighbor through the crack in our fence.

I chuckled to myself. Nothing wrong with spying on my neighbor a bit. Oops. That was before he stripped all his clothes off and stretched out on the chez lounge, sunning himself in the nude while he read his book and sipped his coffee. This wasn't his first rodeo I thought. His dark tan ran from head to foot. Oh my, I thought. He is nice to look at. And his equipment. Well I didn't notice—and if you believe that bullshit, I've got a bridge I'll sell you. I very much noticed his penis and the balls which hung behind and below it. He didn't look huge, but I had learned in college before I met Rich that some men grew a lot and some didn't. Yeah okay, I had fooled around a bit in college. So had Rich. Just a couple of horny young kids in those days.

That was when my cell phone rang. I rose quickly and fled to the house where I spent the next forty-five minutes chatting with my sister-in-law from Baltimore. Needless to say, I didn't tell her about the naked Grecian God living next door. My sister-in-law can talk incessantly, but it is not strictly necessary to pay attention to what she is saying. Rich says she can carry on a conversation with herself as long as someone else is present (in person or on the phone). It is totally unnecessary for anyone to be paying any attention to her. I was actually trying to listen, but much of the time my mind was focused on the naked god I had been watching next door and speculating about how big that penis I had seen could grow. Eventually Jenell seemed to wind down and I managed to get enough words in edgewise to explain that I needed to go to the market to get something for dinner because Rich was coming home from a trip this afternoon.

That was of course a lie. On two counts. Rich wasn't coming home tonight. He never got home until Friday and this was only Wednesday. And I still had leftovers in the fridge that I intended to eat tonight. What I needed to do was to get back out to the hole in the fence to see if the Grecian God who lived next door was still sunbathing in the nude. Okay Grecian God might have been a significant upgrade from my initial assessment of him but seeing him naked and lusting after his equipment had changed my point of view a bit. I hustled back out to the place where I had been pulling weeds. The weeds were still there and so were my tools, but the Grecian God was not. When would I learn not to answer my needy sister-in-law's calls? Sigh. I messed about with the weeds a bit, but my enthusiasm was gone and it was getting hot. I could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down between my breasts. I put my tools away in the shed and went into the house deciding that I did in fact need to go to the market—for a bottle of wine to go with dinner. I didn't usually drink when Rich was away, but I decided I was entitled to something to make up for my sister-in-law's interruption of my voyeurism.

I walked up stairs where I stripped off my dirty gardening clothes to shower. I stood briefly before the full-length mirror in our bedroom. Okay, I thought. I didn't look too bad for barely on the safe side of forty-five. My complexion was still good, not lined. My brown hair was still thick and lush, although it could use a trim I noticed. My blue eyes still had the twinkle in them that landed Rich oh so many years ago. My breasts, which I had thought woefully small in college had grown thanks to age and childbearing to two full, rounded orbs on my chest, with mercifully little middle-aged sag. They had large soft brown areolas and dark nipples that grew when I was aroused (which I seemed to be at the moment, I noted). My hips were full and round, but my still reasonably narrow waist set them off nicely. There was a modest baby tummy, but what the hell, I'm 44 I thought. Altogether not too bad and certainly a match for Shannon. "Why should I feel competitive with Shannon?" I asked myself. "Could it have anything to do with watching her naked husband through a crack in the fence like a peeping tom?" I laughed. Yup the new neighbors were a change from the Smthsons. I smiled and stepped naked into a lukewarm shower. Not all change is bad, I thought.

As I stood letting the warm water wash over me my mind kept returning to the naked man next door, or more specifically to his genitals. His was far from the first naked cock I had ever seen, but it was the first one I had seen other than my husband's since we married. I stood there in the shower lathering my body with soap while I imagined what that cock would look like fully erect and sticking out from his waist. Naturally my imagination made it a big, stiff cock. No point in fantasizing about a little one or a limp one. I quickly moved from lathering my whole body to focusing my hands on my tits and then on my pussy. I was incredibly aroused. It didn't take long to realize I needed to give myself the relief my body was craving. I put one foot up on the built-in seat in the shower and alternated between masturbating my tits and my sex. The whole time my mind was spinning out a fantasy of watching the neighbors cock grow and rise so it was a raging hardon sticking out from his groin twitching as he watched me masturbate. Within a few minutes I felt an orgasm grab control of me. My cunt clenched my fingers and my knees weakened. My body shook all over as that mind bending relief that comes with an orgasm surged through my consciousness. I was left standing weak-kneed with the shower water cascading over my head as I gasped for air.

WTF I thought as I toweled myself down? Masturbating about the new next-door neighbor. Who does that?

I chuckled. "Well apparently I do," I told myself as I walked naked into the bedroom. It was the first time I had gotten off in a couple of months (yeah that is how bad my sex life was). "Fuck it," I told myself. "Nothing wrong here. If he wants to lay about naked in the yard, I can get off on him in my shower." Guilt was never a significant part of my sex life. Not Catholic I guess.

As I began to pull clothes out of my drawer I found an item buried beneath my underwear that I hadn't used in quite a while—a big, nasty, day glow orange, vibrator. Rich had bought it for me as a joke—oh god I don't know how many years ago. We laughed about it at the time. But it wasn't as much of a joke as I let him think. I put it away and never mentioned it to him again, but every year or two, or okay, maybe a little more often than that, I get it out, put new batteries in it, lie back on our bed and fuck myself silly with it. It isn't a regular thing, but every once in a while I use it to bring myself to a screaming orgasm. Keeping a supply of the D batteries (yeah it is that big) is a challenge because we've never had a flashlight that big, which means I don't have a good excuse for keeping a pack of D batteries with the other batteries we keep on hand. Solution: I keep a battery supply hidden with the vibrator. You never want to be without fresh batteries when you are in desperate need of relief from your vibrator.

Oh fuck yes, I thought. Now is the time to get out The Beast, a name Rich and I had given the vibrator when he gave it to me. He had never seen me use it and I assumed he had totally forgotten it by now. But I hadn't, and right now it was just what I needed. I had given myself a nice little orgasm in the shower but I could feel an itch in my groin that told me I wanted more. I spent the next half an hour lying on my back, my knees bent, my legs spread and my hands busily shoving the vibrating dildo in and out of my cunt while my fingers played with my clit. Meanwhile my brain, the ultimate sexual organ, spun fantasies about my new neighbor. I didn't limit my mental masturbation to just replaying my voyeuristic viewing of his naked body. As the vibrator and my fingers kept my sex boiling I imagined all manner of erotic activity with Carl, including fucking him in any number of the Kama Sutra positions I recalled from the weekend Rich and I had spent with the book so many years before. By the time my libido finally wound down I had had three more orgasms and soaked the sheets beneath me.

I slept for an hour or so after the last of my orgasms and when I awoke my mind glowed with orgiastic bliss. I dressed, washed my vibrator, and put it away, stripped the sex-stained sheets from the bed, started a load of laundry, and went to the market for the bottle of wine I had promised myself earlier. As I drove up to the house returning from the market I saw Carl out at his mailbox. I slowed down just a bit as I watched him walk up his driveway to his front door. His jeans fit his hips snugly. "My god he's got a cute butt," I told myself. An image flashed briefly through my mind of me lying on my back, my legs spread and knees bent with Carl between them and my hands on those rock-hard butt muscles holding him inside me. I could feel my motor starting to purr.

Later that evening, after I had eaten my leftovers and consumed half a bottle of wine, Rich called. We talked for half an hour, a good deal longer than most of his evening calls, Mostly he told me about the important new prospective customer he had taken to lunch today and how much business he anticipated from her. Rich didn't give me any details about the woman he had had lunch with and I didn't tell him about watching Carl through a hole in the fence. Still it was a nice conversation. When I went to bed that night I masturbated again to fantasies about Carl and slept very well.

The next morning I puttered about in the garden, pausing a couple of times an hour to drop to my knees next to the hole in the fence to look for Carl. I was wearing a baggy pair of shorts and an old loose T-shirt. I'm not a person who goes about without customary under garments but today I had dispensed with both bra and panties. Why? I guess because my mind was still in the gutter after yesterday's personal debauchery. My big tits were wobbling deliciously as I puttered around the yard. When I was younger I had thought my breasts were woefully under sized but birthing and raising two children and gaining a bit of middle-aged weight had cured that problem. When we did make love, Rich seemed to love playing with them. The pants were baggy enough so that I could feel the cool morning air on my naked pussy. Just being nearly naked like that was creating a mild arousal in my groin.

About 10:00 o'clock, I heard the neighbor's patio door open and close. I walked as quickly and quietly as I could over to the hole in the fence and dropped to my knees. The sprinklers had run early in the morning so I was kneeling in dark squishy mud already warming from the morning's sun. It felt sensuous, so you can imagine what my state of mind was. I looked through the hole and saw Carl wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants, cut off high on his thighs and a T-shirt. He sat down in a deck chair before a small table, opened a laptop, and began to type. His typing was fast but intermittent. He would pause and think for long periods before resuming his typing at a furious rate until he had written out whatever his thought of the moment was. I watched him for quite a while, but to my disappointment he remained fully dressed and focused on his keyboard. I was about to give up on him when he stopped and leaned back, his long muscular legs stretched out before him. I heard him mumble, "Let's see how this new material fits with the rest of the story?" As I watched him read I realized that he was rubbing his rapidly growing cock through the soft cloth of his baggy shorts. He kept it up until the engorged head was poking out from the bottom of one leg of the shorts. That's got to be uncomfortable, I thought. Carl apparently agreed as he raised his hips and pushed his shorts down over his naked legs and feet. He was now stroking his cock with one hand while the other hand appeared to be scrolling the computer file down.