A Totally Unromantic Love Story

We spend our life careening around like so many Dodge' Em cars. Sometimes you run into other folks. And sometimes you get run into yourself. The essence of success is to avoid getting too banged up in the process. Nonetheless, there will be times when you get blindsided. That's because everybody plays by their own - often selfish - rules. We explore that here. As usual, thank you for reading me.

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The little tousle-headed woman sleeping next to me is smart, funny, accomplished, and smoking hot gorgeous. I met her at a gangbang. She was the star. Perhaps you can understand why I am a little concerned?

We bonded over the weirdest weekend imaginable. She went from being a slut on Friday, to being an extraordinary life companion by Sunday night. In those 48 hours she made my little boy happier than he has been in his life. And she almost killed his daddy.

Maddie is by far the hottest fuck I have ever known. There are no boundaries, or limits with her. She is always willing to tell you what she wants, often in terms that are urgent and very explicit. She is generous and at the same time utterly consumed by her own hungers. Her body is superb. Her technique is refined. Her stamina is endless.

You don't have to say it. I know what her world-class sexuality implies. I am not QUITE that naive. And I am definitely not a believer in inexplicable good luck.

But unfortunately, you can't have it both ways.

Women like Maddie are the ultimate guy paradox. We want a super-hot woman. Then it occurs to us what all of that hotness does for the rest of the male population. Which in turn causes a modicum of angst in the fellow who is lucky enough to be her man.

It isn't that Maddie and I don't look right together. She leaves the impression that we met when I pulled her pigtails in the third grade. The actual fact is that I met her a half year ago while she was expertly fucking five very slick yuppies.

Truth be told, I am an unremarkable nerd. Especially when it comes to savoir-faire. Those guys were way out of my area code based on the coolness factor. Nevertheless, in the 8 months since we have been a couple I have never had the slightest indication that Maddie was looking to trade up.

She called it love at first sight. All I know is that on the Monday after we met, she simply appeared on my doorstep, with all of her things. She never went back.

She was snuggled next to me right now, with a look of utter contentment on her face. She said that she wanted an unpretentious lifestyle. If that is truly the case then I can understand why she is with me. I am the king of ordinary.

But I wish I could really believe her about her motives. She has told me over-and-over that it was my utter absence of style that made her want to be with me. I wasn't flattered by her assessment. But I DID have to agree. I am totally deficient in personal awesomeness.

The one ace that I DO have up my sleeve is her love of children. I know for sure that her commitment to my kid is genuine. Nobody could act as consistently loving as she has, for as LONG as she has, without letting THAT cat out of the bag.

She only thinks about what is best for Billy. She made his life full and interesting. With Maddie's help Billy has grown from a shy little boy to a strong and self-confident four year old. Needless to say he worships her in ways that only a child can love his mother.

Which is more than a little ironic, since Billy doesn't KNOW his real mother. She left us to marry some DC policy wonk when he was eight months old and she has never looked back.

Needless to say, if Maddie was moving in with us we had to consolidate our housekeeping. I owned my place outright and Maddie seemed to have more money than she could possibly spend. So we did a lot of planning to find the best long-term living arrangement.

Neither Maddie nor I wanted to change Billy's life, or at least until he had adjusted to her presence. That was probably an unnecessary precaution. Billy would have been happy living in a yurt on the steppes of Outer Mongolia as long as Maddie was with him.

We debated and shopped. Billy came with us on every real-estate visit. He had ultimate veto power. Maddie saw to that.

We finally settled on a beautiful little place in Georgetown. It was on the palisades just west of the University and it had easy access to everything nearby.

I sold my condo. I bought it for cash during the downturn and I got a lot of money out of the subsequent sale. So I had a very hefty downpayment for a new place. I took sole responsibility for the purchase. Maddie was clearly so far above me socially that I wanted to show her that I could do a few "big boy" things myself.

Maddie leased her place to some pompous dude at the State Department. She said that she was making a fortune on the rent. Being a high powered Harvard lawyer probably helped with the negotiations.

Commuting was not an issue. I mostly work at home and Maddie quit her job the day she moved in. She said that she was just doing the FDA thing because she had nothing better to do.

Now that she had Billy to haul to every cool kid place in the DC area she said that was doing what she REALLY wanted to do. We went everywhere from the museums to the shops to the playgrounds. I have never seen a woman so fulfilled. It was eerily disturbing.

I have learned to live with the enigma that is Maddie. But I have never come close to figuring her out.

Every time I try to dig into what motivates her I am confronted by a "what kind of moron are you?" attitude. That backs me off. It's like the answer ought to be obvious. It might be to her. But the happenings in that labyrinthine she calls her mind is definitely not clear to me.

If she wasn't such a high achiever I would understand why she would dump everything and turn to motherhood like it was a "calling". But she walked away from a fast-moving legal career like it had no value to her whatsoever.

She must have set the case for female attorneys back a half century by doing that. High powered female lawyers are supposed to want to kick ass and take names, not haul kids around.

I was listening in when she told her boss she was quitting. Her boss was Charlie Schneider. I thought with horror, "She was banging her boss??!"

That led to an even more hair raising thought, "I wonder if any of the other four guys on that train were co-workers?" Those are the sorts of things that are better left uncontemplated. That is, if you want to keep your sanity.

I heard, "Hi Charlie, this is Maddie - no, it's okay - I got home fine - no, seriously - there's no problem...

"Hey look. I am going to send you a digitally signed message with my resignation effective today.

"What? Don't shout - what's the matter with you? No! It has nothing to do with you and me, or last weekend. I just want to go another direction in my life.

"I don't care how that will affect my legal career! You KNOW that I don't need the money.

"Seriously?!! You are being an asshole!! If you try THAT you are going to find out just how much BETTER a lawyer I am than you!!"

Then she slammed down the phone and muttered under her breath, "Whatever possessed me??!!"

We had been together two and a half months when she announced that she was pregnant.

Maddie's pregnancy was one of the most sublime and shocking experiences imaginable.

First, she was happier than any woman has a right to be. She just glowed.

She and Billy would talk to his sister every evening. We knew by then that she would be a girl. Billy would tell her about his day and then kiss her baby bump good-night.

Of course since the countdown was still "T" minus five months the "sister" might have been a bit of an abstraction for Billy.

But Maddie insisted that little Chelsea, we had already picked out her name, was somebody Billy had to get to know and love.

That turned out to be very wise. Billy approached the impending birth like he was getting a new puppy.

I was flabbergasted when she announced that she was expecting.

It might be forgivable to not ask the woman about birth control once. Making the same mistake twice qualified me for Guinness.

So I "manned up" and offered to marry her . She laughed at me.

I said, "What? Don't you want her to have a father?"

She said, "That's not it. It's just that the 19th Century called and left you a message. They said that you don't have to do the honorable thing anymore."

I said, "What if I WANT to marry you."

That seemed to bother her.

She always just radiates happiness. The "disturbance in the force" was obvious. My little voice turned its back, threw up its hands and said, "I KNEW it!"

She said, "I love you with all of my heart and we have a perfect life together. I don't want anything to change that. So, YES, I am afraid to marry you. I am worried that we will go the route of all married couples and I don't want that. I want things to always be fresh and open between us."

It was such a clichéd response that I had to throw the "bullshit" flag. I said with more bitterness in my voice than I intended, "Are you sure your hesitation isn't because you are waiting for a better offer?"

Her eyes flashed. She said, "What the fuck do you mean by that?"

I said, "What I just said. I know that you can trade up with a phone call. Is that the reason why you don't want to marry me?"

She said with cold anger in her voice, "That's absolutely ridiculous. I am unequivocally content for the first time in my life, at least since I left home for Harvard. I am happy to live with you and bear your children but I don't want the way we are together to ever change.

"I have spent a lifetime interacting with men and frankly it all starts to fall apart when we begin to talk commitment. I know what you are thinking and YES I can get any man and NO you are not Mr. Perfect. But neither am I.

"I will be thirty years old next February and at the point where I met you I was sick to death of man-woman politics. No man has ever treated me with the respect that you have. Their only aim is to fuck me, or use me to further their own career. You treat me like a confidante and best friend. You give me real happiness and you are a perfect dad.

"So where we stand on the social ladder is totally immaterial to me. I have proven to myself that I can make it in a man's world and I might want to go back someday, just to keep my hand in. But I have never wanted anything more than a family and a happy home. That is what I get with you."

Another cliché, my little voice wondered, "Is this woman for real???"

"Keeping the special intimate bond that I have with you and Billy is my most important priority. When I am around you I feel right about myself. I am accepted for who I am and I am satisfied living that life. I would be insane to want to change anything about my present state of affairs.

"Nonetheless, if you can promise me that the easy, intimate friendship that we have right now will never go away I will marry you in a heartbeat.

"My one condition though, is that we always trust each other. If you can't do that I want to cut my losses right here and now. I have way too much of myself invested in what we have together and I can't stand the thought that it was all just my personal fantasy. "

I hadn't thought about any of what she had just said.

As usual, my male ego had blinded me. You tend to forget that a beautiful woman like Maddie has just as many human foibles as you do. And that she has her own set of fears and insecurities.

The fact is that I didn't know anything about her life prior to our meeting. And it never dawned on me that a woman as stunningly attractive as Maddie might suffer from a sense of insecurity.

Of course, only a truly simple-minded fellow like myself would miss the possibility that Maddie had faced her own problems. She is such a strong independent soul that I couldn't imagine how anything bad could have EVER happened to her in her past.

I can always invoke the male exemption in her case. We are not exactly the most sensitive creatures; dogs, yes, men no.

A lot of things fell into place at that instant.

I said, "I can learn to live with the fact that every male head turns when you walk in the room. I can learn to live with all of the latent yearning that you inspire in our species. I guess I can also learn to live with the fact that you are higher up the social ladder than I am. But I can't stop asking myself, Why me? Why do I deserve such a wonderful woman?

"I know that I'm insecure. Any guy would be with a woman like you. You have to be realistic. You are a trophy in the male world, a prize.

"If I was a rich and famous movie star I might understand why you are with me. But since I am not, I carry around a lot of insecurity about our long-term prospects.

"I know that insecurity is a sign of weakness but I never claimed to be a cowboy.

"I even get that your attraction to me is the simple, fulfilling life that I offer. But I am afraid that somebody cooler and more high-profile will take you away from me. Won't there be a time when you will want some of the old excitement; booze, endless parties, new men?"

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. It was the first time I saw real concern in her eyes. She appeared almost frightened.

From the moment I had met her she had treated me like there were givens in our relationship that I just hadn't tuned into yet. It was like she saw things that I didn't

Now she was looking at me like maybe SHE had gotten it wrong, that there really WAS nothing there. I did not understand her odd reaction.

To allay her fears I said, "I know what you're thinking. And yes, I feel the same profound connection between us. All I was saying was that I just didn't know why."

She looked relieved, laughed and said, "You think way too much. Someday you'll get it."

THEN I met her family. That event brought a lot of things into focus.

She was born and raised in a little Michigan town and she wanted her wedding to be there. It didn't matter to me where we got hitched. I would have married her in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Accordingly, the following week Billy, Maddie and I flew into Detroit Metro Airport, rented a car and drove the 25 miles to her parent's house in Ann Arbor.

The wedding was going to be civil. But we still needed a three day wait after the license.

Maddie has a number of useful personas; besides loving mother, superb companion, and world's hottest piece of ass. One of those is hardball Harvard educated lawyer. That one got us the license.

Her mom was a professor at the University of Michigan, which is located there. Her dad was some high mucky-muck in the research community. Two of her sisters still lived in their house which was as close to a chateau as any place I have ever visited.

It was on a ridge overlooking the Huron River and it featured actual "grounds" not just a lawn. I was scratching my head in amazement wondering if Robin Hood and his Merry Band of Men might be lurking in the extensive woods. She told me to stop gawking. It was embarrassing.

I should have guessed that she came from those kinds of roots .My dad owns a hardware store and my mom raised kids. I was intimidated to say the least.

Her household just enveloped her in love. The pervasive atmosphere of happy and peaceful domesticity filled in a lot of the gaps and answered most of the questions about why she had such a family oriented sense of values.

At that point she changed again, from self-confident woman of the world, to eldest daughter.

In many respects the actions associated with that role were the same ones that she had been playing with me, loving and dutiful. But, her parents made it a possession move.

Their interrogation didn't include waterboarding; BARELY. But it was clear that they were holding an alternative script.

In their script Maddie progressed through several layers of achievement in the field of the Law until the judgeship and then the Supreme Court.

Now she was standing in front of them telling them that she wanted to change the narrative.

What she really wanted to do was to settle down with me and raise babies.

It was an interesting reversal from my blue collar universe. In MY world the normal plot with daughters is to push marriage and kids.

But these were high achieving WASPS, both with PhDs. Naturally, their attitude toward that idea reeked of contempt.

I could see that Maddie's parents were so against her marrying that our appearance on their doorstep almost got me and Billy exorcised.

The fact that their daughter was visibly pregnant and I was the only culprit in sight only made matters worse. Needless to say they were not pleased.

Being me I had to wave the red cape in front of the bull.

We had the usual pleasantries. Then she and I and her parents sat down over lunch to talk turkey.

The fact that there were caterers, or servants, or whatever, SERVING us lunch was not lost on me.

Her father said with hearty, fake bonhomie, "So how did you and Maddie meet?"

The honest answer to that question would have stopped the conversation right then and there. And it would have probably gotten my soon-to-be wife shipped off to a convent. Instead I said, "We met at a party in Falls Church. I gave her a ride home afterward. The people she came with had abandoned her."

I left the cause of the abandonment up to their imagination, being certain that they would never come up with the ACTUAL reason.

I added, "We bonded over the weekend. She is wonderful with my son and it just seemed so right."

Both parents looked like they didn't believe a word of it. Their demeanor was more like our getting-together had involved a non-descript white van, drugs and a head-bag. And that Maddie hadn't been able to get her phone out fast enough to stop the kidnapping.

The problem is that explanation ALSO seemed A LOT more plausible to me.

Her mother said, continuing the fake sociability, "So what do you do. Anybody who has captured Maddie's heart must be a star in the DC firmament."

I said, "I'm a freelance pen-tester. I break into people's computers and tell them how I did it."

I was aware that as far as they were concerned I had just announced that I was a borderline criminal. I was getting a little tired of all of the judgment.

Her father said with more gruffness in his voice than he had probably intended, "That doesn't sound like much of a career. Where did you go to school to learn THAT?"

Truth be told no responsible school would teach what I know. So instead I off-handedly said, "Oh I didn't go to college."

That was because before I had reached drinking age I was making over six figures annually. But then again, Mr. and Mrs. Big-Shot PhD didn't need to know that.

I also didn't bother to tell him that I was on the speed-dial of most of the CISOs of the big corporations and on a first name basis with the top cyber-guys at the Agency and the Farm. That would have made it too easy for them.

Maddie was looking at me like she wanted to take me outside and beat the shit out of me for being a butt with her parents. She knew exactly what I was up to and why.

As far as I was concerned they were not giving her due respect. She was an intelligent and levelheaded woman who had made a choice about what she wanted in life. Her folks needed to give her the proper credit.

She was the one I loved, not them. Surprisingly I found that I had used the word "love". In my mind's eye. She might ultimately break my heart but she was the only person besides Billy who I had EVER allowed in there.

The interrogation ground to a halt at that point. Her mother said brightly, like she was just about to lose it, "When is the baby due Maddie?"