"Why are you watching that shit?"
That was my wife, Megan, bitching at me for watching
Seeking Sister Wife
on TLC. "It's just a show, Megan, and just because it's a 'reality' show doesn't mean that it's real life."
"No? You aren't there fantasizing about what it would be like to have two wives, two women you got to fuck? I know a lot of guys fantasize about that stupid shit."
"Have you looked at this, Megan? Those wives aren't exactly gorgeous, you know."
"Well, maybe not, but you aren't exactly Brad Pitt, either."
Ouch, that one hurt.
Of course, it was true enough: other than being a bit taller, I was very distinctly average. I wasn't the guy the chicks in high school swooned over, mediocre in sports, and while I managed to get a girlfriend back then, the hotter girls had already been taken, several times if the stories were close to true. Pam and I had half-dated, half just hung out, and if we did take each other's innocence, it was hardly spectacular. The nerds and losers who couldn't get girls at all might have envied me, but they'd have been the only ones.
In college, my luck was little better. I hooked up with Martha, but it was more of an we were thrown together type of thing, two very average-looking people left over at a party where everyone who didn't come as part of a couple was quickly coupling up. Martha and I were together, sort of, for three years, neither of us really expecting it to go anywhere, mostly due to inertia; neither of us had any other options.
With Megan, I had lucked out. If I was a 5,
maybe
a 6 - and that was if you reserved 1 and 2 for the deformed and the obese - Megan was an 8.
How'd I wind up with an 8? Pure dumb luck! It was at a party just before Christmas break our senior year at Georgetown College - the one in Kentucky, not Georgetown University in DC - and Megan had just dumped her boyfriend for cheating on her. She was on a mission to find a new guy, while her ex was watching, and I was available. She saw me, and saw her ex maybe ten feet behind me, and then deliberately parked herself under the mistletoe. I spotted it, and, unable to believe my luck, moved up to kiss her.
It turned out to be more than a quick peck, as she ground herself into me and practically tickled my uvula with her tongue. I didn't know it at the time, but she was putting on a show for her ex.
Thing is, I was near the top of my class, with a double major in business and civil engineering, and had already been recruited. This was 2004, the economy was going great guns, and I'd lucked into a very well-paying job for entry-level.
Megan? She was certainly pretty, but she hadn't chosen a very lucrative field: she was an elementary education major, which meant, at least around here, maybe $35,000 to start, if she could get a teaching job at all. My 5 to 6 rating, multiplied by my $80,000 starting salary, yielded an attractiveness factor of 440K, where hers was 280K. Lame calculation, I know, but I am enough of a math geek to do that stupid stuff.
Thing is, while Megan was no math geek, she understood the math anyway: if I wasn't a head-turner, I was at least not embarrassing to be seen with.
And she certainly wasn't! Megan had long, sleekly dark hair, brunette really, but not far away from being black, and a slightly darker complexion, one that made he look like she might have some Indian - India Indian, not feather Indian - background. Her features were pure Midwest, but she looked just slightly on the exotic side. Her figure was nice, with some womanly curves rather than college-girl skinny. Yeah, for an average guy like me, she was some real arm candy!
Maybe if I'd seen her mother back then, her size 22 mother, I'd have been a bit more leery, but fuck, I was smitten.
Well, like I said, that was 2004, when we were both 22. It's 2019 now, and at going on 37, I had replaced 50% of my hair with six extra inches on my waist. Working mostly in an office, with my field trips putting me in a hard hat but still just holding paper plans rather than a hammer, didn't do a lot to keep me in shape.
Megan? She hadn't ballooned up to her mother's size, but she was a solid size 12 now, though still pretty. She had a few streaks of prematurely grey hair, brought on, I suppose, by three kids in fairly rapid succession.
Economically, we'd been fortunate. While my initial salary was a great start, the recession put a huge crimp in my upward advancement. I'd managed to keep my job, but there had been no advancement and no raises until 2014. Even after that, as the economy started picking up again, companies were being tight-fisted on raises, and I was at just $115,000. Back in 2004, when I first hired on, I figured that I'd be making $200,000 by this time. Megan, on the other hand, despite three maternity leaves, was making $67,000 as a teacher with her masters and 14 years seniority, and she had public school system benefits. Her health care benefits were better than mine, so my company was paying me an extra $1,000 a quarter to not take their health insurance, as I was on Megan's.
All in all, we were pulling down $186,000 a year, with good benefits, and that isn't bad at all in Lexington.
We were what we appeared to be: a middle-middle class family, in a middle-middle class neighborhood, with a 'standard' number of children.
So, if I wasn't Brad Pitt, she wasn't exactly Angelina Jolie. But I was smart enough not to tell her that!
"Maybe I'm not exactly Brad Pitt, but I'm as good looking as the guys on that show."
