This story is a fantasy based very loosely on actual events and real people. As always, any similarities to any persons, places, or things, or anything you have heard before is a complete accident.
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As I turned 40, the future looked, well, bleak. My marriage was over; a ten year ordeal that started out well and went slowly downhill. I realized far too late that my wife was a spendaholic, amongst her many other flaws. She had no concept of saving up for a rainy day. Late in our marriage she lost her job and refused to change her spending habits. By the time she divorced me because I couldn't support her anymore we were broke. I was a paralegal, and although I was paid well for what I did it was in essence a dead-end job. I mean, it's not like you can get promoted to attorney, you know what I mean? And I certainly wasn't going to go to law school at this point in my life. I know that people did it, but I couldn't imagine taking on that kind of challenge (and that much debt) at this point in my life.
So there I was, freshly divorced and looking for a place to live. With the alimony I had to pay so that my poor ex-wife could maintain her lifestyle, I had very little left over for myself. I found that the only places I could safely afford were one bedroom apartments. I was horrified. I loved homeownership, and the thought of having to sell my house and go back to renting after almost ten years was too depressing to think about. I thought about the types of people I used to live near when I last rented, mostly the younger wild crowd that would be outside partying half the night. I had no interest in living near that kind of racket, not at this point in my life.
I connected with an agent who pointed me towards a development of garden apartments close to work that catered to "working professionals." They had a strict policy of no noise between 11pm and 7am. I scoffed. So did the dorms in college, I thought to myself, remembering the nights I was kept up by drunken frat boys running around the halls at 3am. But still, sadly, I didn't have any other options, so I swallowed what little pride I had left and signed a lease. I was lucky that I was able to get a second floor apartment right at the end of a building, so there would be nobody above me, and only one adjoining neighbor, so there would be much less of a chance of being annoyed by noisy neighbors. And so there I was, a week shy of 40, moving into a one-bedroom apartment where the average tenant was fresh out of college.
One thing I did have going for me was that I didn't look my age. I was 5'11, 165 pounds, with wavy brown hair that was only just starting to become sprinkled with gray. My face had a few lines around the eyes but for the most part I looked almost exactly the way I did when I was 25. There were still people I'd meet here and there who based on my appearance thought that I was just out of college, not pushing 40. It was flattering, to say the least.
Still, I wasn't thinking about lying about my age to my new neighbors to try to fit in. Frankly I didn't give them much thought, except to hope that they were good, quiet people who would stay the hell out of my way.
I moved in with my few belongings. When my ex wife and I bought our house and moved in together, she decided that we would keep all of her furniture and get rid of mine, so of course with the divorce she kept almost all of the furniture, except for a recliner that was my choice to buy, and eventually the place I slept when things got bad. I had that, a dresser, and an old TV/VCR combo that outlived my marriage. All that and my clothes was all I had. I didn't have a kitchen table, dishes, silverware, linen, ugh! I got anxious just thinking about it. Luckily my family donated some second-hand house wares and I blew up my credit cards buying a cheap single bed and getting anything else I needed.
It turned out to be better than I thought. No, there weren't any wild parties, or crazy people running around screaming all night. There were noises to get used to, like doors slamming and people talking as they roamed up and down the halls. I cranked up the volume on my TV or my stereo and tried to ignore it.
After a week I saw my next door neighbor for the first time. It was the day before my birthday, and I had dinner plans with a friend. I had stopped off after work to change my shirt. I left my apartment and was heading back down the hall, and she was walking in. She was, well, a girl, medium height and build, with long auburn hair. She looked to be about 25. That was about as much as I cared to notice about her. All I knew was that I hadn't heard a peep from her, and that was the way I wanted it.
I was going to give her a pleasant smile as I passed her. She had other ideas, moving until she was blocking my path in the hall. "You must be my new neighbor!" She all but shouted. "Hi, I'm Jamie," she said, extending her hand to me as she closed the distance. I took it and shook it warily. Her hand was feminine, her grip was dainty. She was probably a girly girl. She probably liked shopping and would spend all of my money like my ex-wife did, I remember thinking. No, I wasn't over my divorce yet, and I wouldn't be until I stopped thinking like that.
I realized that she was waiting for me to say something. "Hi, I'm Rick," I all but mumbled.
"Nice to meet you Rick!" Jamie said. "How do you like it here so far?"
"Oh, umm," I said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, "It's okay, I guess."
"Well, if you need anything, I'm right next door," Jamie said, "I always have coffee."
I made a face. I didn't like coffee.
Jamie noticed my reaction. "Tea?" She asked helpfully. My expression didn't change. "A cup of sugar?"
I fought the urge to look at my wrist. I didn't wear a watch and I hadn't for years. I did have a friend waiting for me, but I didn't want to be rude to... Jamie was it? I took another moment to look her over. She wasn't a bad-looking girl. She wasn't gorgeous, and I took a moment to try to figure out why. Her nose may have been a little too big, or her eyes were too close together, or too far apart. She might have been just a little too heavy, even for a man like me who didn't mind a woman with some meat on her bones. Whatever it was she was missing that perfect symmetry that attractive people had and the rest of us lamented. What she did have going for her was her vivacious personality, and the fact that she was, well, young. Still, I didn't have any real interest in a girl that was probably born when I was already in high school. We would have nothing in common. I still needed to not act like an asshole though. I decided to be charming Rick. I gave her my best smile, "Sounds great," I said.
"Good," Jamie beamed at me. I judged her to be 5'7, maybe 5'8, but I didn't know how much her shoes were adding to her height. Her clothes, well I typically don't notice things like that, so... sorry. I thought the conversation was over, and I made a move to start moving around her to continue walking down the hall. "Well, if you need anything, just let me know," she added.
I paused to look at her again. Was she trying to be neighborly or was she really this needy for human contact? "I will," I said, hoping again that the conversation was over, but she looked like she was going to say something else, so I quickly added, "I'm late meeting a friend for dinner."
"Oh. Oh!" She exclaimed. "Hot date?" She winked at me.
Now I was getting downright irritated. "No, an old friend," I said. I could feel myself start to fidget. I scratched my head with one hand and shoved the other one into my pants pocket. How rude would it be to just start walking away?
"Oh!" She said again, "And I'm holding you up! How rude of me. Well, it was nice meeting you, Rick, and good luck. If you need anything, let me know," she extended her hand again, and I reflexively grabbed it and shook it awkwardly. She finally moved out of my way, and I felt relieved as I passed her and continued down the hall, wondering how easy it would be to simply avoid her for however long we'd be living next to each other.
A couple of weeks passed. My 40th came and went. I settled into my new life. I didn't see Jamie again, although I could hear her voice through the wall every once in a while. One thing I did discover about being newly single was, well, freedom. My ex wife was controlling, and if she saw me sitting around trying to relax she would come up with chores around the house for me to do. She herself did little except for ordering me around. It was so refreshing to be able to sit down and do nothing without the fear that I would hear that annoying voice say, "Rick, would you mind taking out the garbage?"
One thing that came back to me quickly was my libido. My ex wife was an attractive woman, but as our marriage fell apart and my love for her faded and was replaced first by indifference and then by outright hostility, my desire to sleep with her dwindled. We had sex about once a week, then about once every other week, then about once a month if I could stand to be in the same room with her for an hour. At the end she was always around, cloying and nagging, and it became impossible to even find a quiet moment to jerk off when I wanted to.
So there I was, 40 years old, jerking off two, even three times a day. I thought that when I turned 40 my sex drive would be waning, or nonexistent. That I would be more interested in watching a ballgame and napping on the recliner than seeing what pornos were free on demand or surfing the internet for free porn or erotic stories to read. I felt like I was 16 again, left alone for a weekend with nothing else to do but get myself off. I would jerk off in the morning before my shower; I would jerk off in the evening before bed. Sometimes I would jerk off right when I got home from work, images of one of the hot secretaries in my office fresh in my mind. Some nights I would wake up at 2 or 3 am and not be able to get back to sleep until I turned on the TV and looked for whatever dirty movie would invariably be on one of the Showtime channels.
I know what you're thinking. You're young looking, single, and horny. Go out there and find some girl and get laid. The truth is my ex wife screwed me up so badly I couldn't even see myself with another woman. I went on one date shortly after I turned 40. I was set up by a friend who was convinced I needed to get right back out there. I quickly realized that all I was doing was comparing her with my ex, searching for similar flaws so that I could write this woman off. I had this lofty ideal of a perfect woman in my head now, an ideal that nobody was ever going to live up to.
One night I fell asleep in my recliner watching television and woke up around 11pm. I got up groggily, intent on stumbling off to bed when I heard a sound through the wall. My first thought was oh, great. That noisy girl next door is making a racket. But then I heard it again. It was a moan. Then there was another moan. Wait, was she having sex in there? I was instantly awake and growing hard. I found myself creeping towards the wall we shared. I was listening for the telltale signs she was having sex, other voices, bedsprings creaking, but there was none.
Another moan came through the wall. I decided she was masturbating. What was her name, Jamie? I hadn't seen her since that first day in the hallway, and I tried to remember her appearance, putting a picture of her in my mind's eye, imagining her as she must be right then, lying with her legs spread on her bed. Was she in some kind of sexy lingerie or was she naked? Was she using a vibrator or a dildo, or just her hands? I didn't hear any buzzing. I pulled down the shorts I was wearing and took hold of myself, stroking as I heard a louder moan through the wall.
