"I probably made a fool of myself," Roxanne Walter said to the empty kitchen as she leaned back against the door she had just closed behind herself. "There's no fool like an old fool - and I'm an old fool that talks to herself more and more all the time."
In fact there had been no one around to talk to at the old farmhouse for several years. Her husband had left many years ago for someone else - someone younger, despite Roxanne doing everything in her power to keep her man, even agreeing to his demand that she have sex with the very woman he had been screwing while he watched. It hadn't worked.
Now Roxanne was looking out the back window at the broad back of the man who was stacking the firewood he had delivered, and while she couldn't really afford the extra cost of having it stacked instead of just dumped in the yard, it was worth it to be around a man again for more than a brief minute.
It was quite obvious that it had been quite a while since she had interacted with a man because even as she was doing it Roxanne had realized that her flirting was awkward and obvious. She winced when she thought about how many times she had mentioned to him that she was all alone out here and didn't have many friends. The man had been pleasant enough though and at least hadn't laughed at her efforts to act younger than her 58 years.
"Why did you just tell him to come in and have his way with you?" Roxanne said while she watched the man coming around with the wheelbarrow full of wood. "Throwing yourself at a stranger like that. Who knows what kind of a man he is?"
A black man for one thing, and while Roxanne hadn't known the color of the man she had ordered the wood from since then he was just a name - Ray - and a phone number in the Pennysaver ad, the pigmentation didn't really matter to Roxanne.
After all her first time had been with a black man back when she had been very young, not even understanding what sex was all about. She had learned plenty that day alright and Roxanne smiled when she thought about the unlikely possibility that her first and last lovers ever would be black given the fact that folks of color were as rare as hen's teeth in these parts.
"Your sex life would be like an Oreo if you had sex with him," Roxanne said to the window, with nothing but white in between the two black men that would serve as bookends to her sex life in the unlikely event that what she was thinking would actually take place anywhere but in her mind.
"He probably doesn't even want you, but I can still imagine it," Roxanne mumbled as she looked at the barrel chested man who was probably about ten years her junior and had no idea of what was going on through her mind.
He wasn't particularly handsome and when Roxanne first saw him get out of the truck he had looked downright scary in a way from a distance. Now having met the man, she thought that maybe he looked a little like a darker toned version of Morgan Freeman, and as she watched him wipe his brow on the uncommonly warm September day her eyes took in the sweat-stained denim work shirt.
It was the end of the day and it looked like Ray had spent most of it busting his butt. A shiver went down her spine as she recalled his manly aroma when he had been walking around her outside, his pungent scent making her legs a little wobbly as she thought about what it would be like to wrap her arms around a sweaty man again.
"Thank you Ray," Roxanne whispered as if he had been reading her mind, he took off the light blue shirt and set it aside.
Burly, Roxanne noted as she looked as the broad chest and big arms of the man now clad in a wife beater t-shirt, the cotton drenched with perspiration and discolored a bit around the neck.
"I'll wash it for you after I rip it off you," Roxanne said softly, and as she spoke Ray looked up at her almost as if he had heard her through the glass from out there.
Startled, Roxanne managed a weak smile and a timid wave. Ray nodded an acknowledgement before disappearing again around the corner to get more wood, something he would probably have to do at least a couple of dozen more times before the cords were all stacked.
"Talk about sweat," Roxanne told herself, since she noticed that she herself was wringing wet, having perspired right through her best house-dress that she had worn for the occasion, a bland red and white one that was only a couple years old.
Roxanne hurried to the bathroom, shedding her clothes fast and ducking into the shower to rinse herself off quickly. She shook her head as she fantasied about the wood man charging into the house and savaging her in the shower, her hand scrubbing the dense bush between her legs as she daydreamed.
After she rinsed off the lather she stepped out and grabbed a towel, and while Roxanne dried herself she looked at her reflection in the mirror, cringing when she saw what 58 years had done.
"Not bad for your age," Roxanne told the mirror. "Not good either."
Her eyes went to her breasts, the once perky titties having gotten a lot bigger over the years and now were bell-shaped and no longer stood straight out but hung down to her waist with fat nipples that were swollen from being scrubbed.
Lower, Roxanne dried the jungle, and that was the only word to describe the untrimmed thicket that not only filled the delta but had started to creep onto her inner thighs. Henry had liked her hairy pussy back then, but back again he had also like the woman the fur was attached to as well.
"Do you like a hairy pussy, Ray?" Roxanne asked the mirror and realized that these days all these girls shaved down there. "You're a century out of date Roxanne."
The legs? Well, they aren't bad she concluded as she dried them, although when she saw the way her hips and butt had filled out a bit over the years it made her wince.
"You used to be 34-24-36," Roxanne said as she remembered when her newlywed husband had measured her on their honeymoon, so proud of his hot young bride's body. "Now what? 44-34-46?"
"Oh geez!" Roxanne muttered after she started brushing her hair and noticed her armpits, which hadn't been shaved in at least a year and looked it.
She went to the towel closet and grabbed at the yellow bag with the Bic razors in them, but when she pulled it out she saw that it was empty except for one of the little yellow shields that covered the blade.
After looking on the shelf in the shower and checking the medicine cabinet, she saw that there were no razors in there either.
"Aha!" Roxanne trumpeted when she saw a safety razor on the very top shelf, apparently left by Henry as a parting gift, but it had been there so long it was stuck to the shelf and when she pulled it off she wasn't surprised to see the blade inside was rusted and worthless.
"Oh brother," Roxanne said as she dried the thick tufts of dark brown hair before rolling a little deodorant into the thatches. "Hope you're open minded Ray."
That first man decades ago hadn't minded she didn't shave under her arms, Roxanne reflected, although there was not all that much there back then. She didn't even have a razor back then but that man didn't mind. What was his name? Oscar? Oliver?
"Your memory is going like the rest of you," Roxanne declared before admonishing herself to stop having conversations like this. "If Ray hears you talking to yourself he'll think you're nuts instead of just lonely - and desperate - and won't want you."
Roxanne shook her head at being so presumptuous enough to think that this man wanted her. He probably had a woman and wanted to go home and relax, have dinner and screw all night. Probably.
This wasn't the first time she had planned something like this. Her life had become full of these fantasies regarding men; the mailman, passersby or guys in the grocery store. None had ever happened or even come close, but her daydreams were better than watching soap operas.
There had been that one time when she had hoped the guy that brought the propane was being more than just friendly when he made his deliveries, but he had been in a hurry when he refused her offer to join her for a cup of coffee, or maybe just wasn't interested.
She picked up her clothes from the floor and after a moment of thought she tossed the things in the hamper and put on her worn bathrobe before going back to the window where Ray was still working, still sweating and blissfully unaware of what was going through her head.
How long had it been since she had been with a man? At least three years. That time two winters ago didn't count when around the holidays she summoned up the courage to go into that dive bar in a nearby town.
The place was a dump and the clientele wasn't much better, a mix of sad old men and young punks. After batting her eyes at the more human looking guys while nursing 50 cent drafts, at last some kid that looked like Alfred E. Newman spent fifty cents on her.
Better than nothing, Roxanne had thought at the time but she was wrong. Two beers later she was outside with this guy and although she wasn't crazy about him she was so hurting that she found herself telling him she didn't live that far away if he was interested in keeping the night going.
"No time," he had said while bringing her into the the alley next to the bar, and the next thing she knew she was kneeling in the snow while the kid took his cock out and told her to suck it.
She had. That was the level of her despair two days before Christmas, to be reduced to giving head to somebody she had never seen before and would hopefully never see again. She had sucked the skinny dick until he came in her mouth, not even stopping when she heard snickers from people staggering out of the bar out on the sidewalk, and then he was gone without even helping her up.
"Later," was his parting word.
That was all he had said and that was the last time Roxanne had ventured into the bar scene. Then there was the time that she tried to meet people down at the church and a guy about her age engaged her in conversation, saying that maybe he could stop by her house and chat with her. Who would have thought all he really did want to just sit there and pray? And that look on his face when she had put her hand on his thigh?
Roxanne jumped when she heard the screen door slam out in the kitchen, and then she heard Ray calling out to tell her he was done. In a minute he would be gone.
"Left your receipt on the table, Mrs. Walter," his bass voice announced as she heard him walking through the house looking for her. "There was five dollars too much in the envelope you gave me, so I left it there with the receipt."
"Mrs. Walter, are you..." was what Ray said as he came to the bedroom doorway while pulling his work gloves off, and when he saw the woman standing in the middle of the bedroom utterly naked with her bathrobe on the floor, he took a step back and apologized.
"No," Roxanne said, wanting to tell him to stay but unable to get out any more than that.
