Live From the Game

Another standalone story here. It was just something I felt compelled to write. I don't usually do BTB stories, but the whole premise came to me in one go and once that happens, well, you have to get it down, right?

This is a standalone story, and not one that fits into the Ingrams universe.

Thank you JonB1969 for editing this, even if he is a year younger than I am.

Chapter 1

I was in Madison, Wisconsin, when my friend Simon pinged me. He used text, which is unusual, since he's a chatty Cathy and likes to drone on and on about whatever it was that was currently consuming his attention.

Simon was one of those guys who fell in love with a new hobby or job, learned everything about it, bought all the gear and gadgets, read all the books, went to all the conventions and stuff, completely immersed himself in it, completely drops it a year down the line and then six months later, he'd find something else and start the cycle over again.

His garage was full of expensive equipment for making electronic music, radio controlled airplanes, fishing gear and podcasting, all of which hadn't been touched since he and his wife Polly moved in a few years back.

When he was in the throes of his current interest, he'd talk of nothing else, and would spend hours telling you all measure of esoterica about whatever his current spare time love affair was. Polly had learned to just say, "Yes dear, no dear. Really dear?" a lot and try and stay away from the receipts when he came home with items for his latest love.

Polly was long suffering, but she loved her husband with all her soul, and we all loved her because of it. I'd known the two of them since they were married, and Simon before that, when we met at college. We'd both moved to Chicago, and settled in Crystal Lake, a small suburb north and west of Chicago proper. It was a nice little city. A bit rustic, on the main commuter line and close enough to the city to be there in an hour and half and far enough away that it was its own independent town. We were happy there. Or I thought we were, anyway.

Anyway, so Simon called me and said... oh wait. Me. Right. I get into the story so fast I forgot to talk about myself.

I'm Ryan. Ryan Tomlinson. I live in Crystal Lake (did I mention that?) with my wife Deanna. Or I did, anyway. We'll see where that goes.

I work for a company that makes cabinetry. The company -- Dresdin Furniture -- has two lines. One was the standard high-end office furniture and the other was made-to-measure custom installations. So we did the high-end exec office furniture, all wood and leather and gloss, and we also did the fitted offices and homes. The top 10% pay us to install libraries and offices at home and do a unique job every time. We've built entertainment rooms, we've built game rooms, libraries, the whole deal. We even fitted out a bar in Milwaukee with a fact wall of books that opened out into the main bar if you knew which book was attached to the panel actuator. What was particularly clever about that job was that from the back, different books could be set, so each day the barman would pick a different book in the book case to act as the trigger, so the entire wall would open and the patrons get into the bar.

So yeah, I do that stuff. Well,

I

don't do it. I sell it -- the service that is. Well, to be honest, I don't even do that, most of the time. I run the three guys who do the selling for us. I used to sell it, but we've done well, even in this economy, and now I have a staff and I don't have to travel as much. I still do, on occasion -- there are some clients that demand my attention and it's generally worth it, but my traveling-every-week days are over now, thankfully. At age 39, I was happy about that. It was good to be home every day at a reasonable hour to see the kiddo's when they trooped in from school.

Deanna and I have three kids. Paula, the eldest, at 12. Then Saffron (Honestly, I lost the bet involving the TV Show Absolutely Fabulous and I've been paying ever since, as has she) comes next at 10 and lastly, my boy, Jamie, follows up at 8. Those kids are the light of my life. Jamie is adopted -- Deanna had complications with the birth of Saffron and can no longer carry to term and had her tubes tied to prevent it, so we went the adoption route with Jamie and we are just as happy with him as we are with the biological kids. I've learned that biology has nothing to do with how much you love your kids.

Deanna and I met in a bar in Chicago -- not necessarily the best place to meet your future wife, but it worked out for us. It was a nightclub called The Crobar. We go back once in a while for old times sake, but that lifestyle has passed us by now, I think.

When I met Deanna, she was in full-on goth regalia and I was dressed as a gladiator. It was Halloween, and I shall never forget her Elvira costume she was wearing that night. She still fits in it, too. I got her to put it on a year ago.

So Deanna is slim, well packaged, always nicely turned out, but never over the top. She's always restrained in her fashion sense. Nothing too daring, no plunging neck lines or high hems for her. She's not a fuddy duddy either, she's just...subtle. The only time she goes all out is for costume parties, and normally it's a costume that hides who she is. So she can be as slutty as Halle Berry as Cat woman, as long as she's wearing a mask. She LOVES costume parties -- it's such an expression of her that she keeps well hidden for the rest of the time, though.

Deanna is pretty. She has long brunette hair, hazel eyes, and a wide pouting mouth that is equally pursed when she's not thrilled about something, and widely smiling when she is. She has a very gentle twinkle in her eye, she's quick to laugh, and makes a lot of remarks that are deadly funny but go way over most people's heads. She's very on the ball and most of her jokes are references to in jokes and I love that, because only we will get it.

She's 5'6", 38 years old, 136 pounds (NOT 137. Trust me on this. I'll say that again. NOT 137 or above. Gentlemen, learn.) and she walks daily to keep her figure in the winter and swims daily in the summer, at the local YMCA.

Anyway, we met, it was good, I got her number, the usual deal. I won't go into details too much because, honestly, ours is pretty much the same story as everyone else's. We dated, we had fights, we made up, we were a couple, we moved in together, it worked, I proposed, we were married, blah blah blah. Wedding was good, honeymoon better, etc etc etc. You've heard it all before.

The thing is, even with the kids coming along relatively soon, we were happy. At least I thought we were -- I know

I

was. I'm pretty sure Deanna was too. I still don't know what happened to us. I guess that makes me unobservant or not paying attention or uncaring or something, but I just didn't see it. I didn't see the signs. There were no changes in behaviors, no sudden dropping off of the sex, apart from the fact that we were getting older and finding the time when we were both free and had the energy was harder. But that's every marriage with kids in it. Show me a family and I'll show you two people where the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, five days out of seven.

Our sex life was robust, when we actually got the time and energy for it. When we did have sex, fuck, make love or whatever you call it, we did with energy and passion. We tried new positions, we did different things. I never got to fuck her ass, but that was ok because it was only idle curiosity that I had anyway. It's not like I was desperate or anything -- I was just wondering if it felt any different. The only time I did try she knocked my hand away and moved so I couldn't get at her and said, "No. Not there." I wasn't that upset -- it's never really been important. I know other guys go on about getting access, but I've never really measured myself against how slutty my wife is. That doesn't seem like a valid comparison -- her sluttiness, or lack of it, is not a reflection on me but on her. And I am -- was -- quite happy in that area.

As for the rest of it, well, I got blowjobs if we were actually going for it -- so within an actual session, I'd get them, but I'd not get them as isolated incidents. Never while driving or anything like that. And she would swallow, but only on special occasions. Birthdays, anniversaries and the like. Again, not something I made a big deal about -- I got more than most of my contempories, at least as far as they were willing to be honest when we had a beer and talked about it, so I was ok.

We experimented with dressing up, a little bit of role playing, but neither one of us could be entirely serious about it. We'd try. We'd start out serious, the maid and the business man, and then crack up laughing after ten minutes because it was so silly. So nothing to write home about, but it kept us happy. And the frequency wasn't great, but when we did get it on, we went all out. Quality over quantity I'd have to say. It was good when it happened, but it didn't happen as often as I would have liked, but then I'm a man and unless we have a blowjob on tap, none of us would be one hundred percent happy. At least according to Deanna, anyway.

But wasn't everyone with children in the same boat? Having children is just tiring. Combine that with a working week, and all the minutiae bullshit of living in these times, and there just wasn't the time we'd like. We had to worry about making sure the insurance was paid, and get the pre-roasted chicken for dinner and helping Paula with her homework and making sure the laundry was done and that Jamie was done potty training and all the other crap that goes with life with children.

I just figured that was life, shrugged and made the best of it. And it

was

good. I loved our life together. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly making me happy.

There was only one thing I saw that ever gave me pause for thought and...no, I'll wait. It's part of the story.

Oh me? What do I look like? I'm always puzzled that anyone would care in stories like this. On the other hand, pride makes me want everyone to know that I'm not Quasimodo. Far from it. Brad Pitt and me, we could be brothers. I'd be the older one, obviously. Yes, the body of a Greek god and the visage to match, that's me.

Fine. Ok. So

not

a Greek god. Ok then. Honesty is the best policy, so I'm told; that hasn't really worked out too good for me recently but OK THEN! Yeah, I'm a little pudgy. I'm 6', I'm 210. I don't have man boobs -- NO I DON'T, OK? But, if I am honest, I could lose some weight. Lots of Girodano's pizza does that to man. Yeah, that's my kryptonite. LOVE it. And you can't eat that kind of pizza without a beer, amIright fellas? Of course I am.

I've recently come to the conclusion that I need to do something about the extra weight I was carrying, because when your kids hang off your love handles, then yeah, you realize Something Needs To Be Done. So I joined one of those cycling clubs. With Simon in fact, who was just on the upswing of whatever his new hobby was going to be. And it turned out that he imagined he was going to win next years Tour De France. Good luck with that. I'd just like the drugs, myself. I mean, I don't understand it -- Lance Armstrong won all those races when drugged. When I've smoked a joint, I can't move for falling about laughing. I think the guys deserved to win just because he could handle his ganja. Yeah, ok, weak joke. Welcome to my life.

I don't know quite why I am telling you all this; it's not really that relevant to the story, but oh well. Wordy me will have his day!

So right, yeah. I was in Madison Wisconsin on a job. No, wait, I didn't tell you what Deanna does for a living yet, have I? Yeah, that

is

relevant.

So to start with, Deanna was a stay at home mom. When we first got together she was studying interior design at college, but while she got that degree, she never actually used it. We were married, kids on the way, she wanted to experience it fully and I was doing ok as a salesman for Dresdin, so she just stayed home. She did that till Jamie hit first grade, and at that point, her days were her own again.

So she hooked up with one of our joint friends, Crystal Rigg, (who is married to Charley Rigg -- you might know him from drive time radio in Chicago? He's a big old talk radio personality. I knew him at college too and we keep in touch here and there.), who is in real estate. Crystal needed someone she could call on to help stage houses. She and Crystal would walk through a house that she was listing and decide where to move the furniture that existed in the house, what to remove, what to replace from her little store of wonders that she had in a small storage compartment we rented and so on. Basically to empty out a house as much as possible, but still allow potential buyers to see it as a furnished house.

She'd done a terrific job making our house a home, spending as little as possible and picking up tons of great furniture, pictures, things to put on walls (I have

no clue

what any of that is called, nor do I want to know), nick knacks and crap, sorry, awesome stuff and generally cycling it round our house. Every other week something would vanish and other things get moved around and something new would appear. Our house was always in flux, and with that, we ended up with lots of 'stuff' that had once been in our house but was now surplus to requirements. Deanna would never want to get rid of it, so we got a storage unit and slowly filled it.

Sometimes there were some bad moves -- coming home to find the picture above our bed of a photo I had taken when we were on honeymoon in Jamaica had been replaced by some picture of a French clown holding a bottle of champagne comes to mind. Didn't go down well.

Sometimes Deanna needed someone to point out that No, this looked stupid, but by and large she had a good eye for this kind of thing, so it was hardly surprising that she'd want to capitalize on both her skill set and all the things we'd collected over the years. I say we but in all honesty, I never even saw them come and go. I'd just come home, something would be 'different' and I'd have to run the gamut of "Did you get a new hair cut dear? Something is different" and face the narrowing of the eyes brows and pursing of the lips.

So she and Crystal were sort of partners, and they did well, doing a lot of work in both the suburbs and the city. Often they'd be gone all day together, or on a weekend if Crystal had an open house. Never too long, and we would be on the phone a lot and sometimes I'd even drive by wherever they were working and surprise them with Starbucks or something. Both were and are easy on the eyes and Crystal has a sort of easy charm where she can talk to anyone in an intimate way, but never overstep her bounds. She could talk to you about your sex life, but in way that never made you inquire about hers, or imagine the conversation was going to place where flirting would happen, if that makes sense. It was like she was just a friend who knew you well. It's weird now I come to think about it and explain it -- I've no idea why I -- and every one else for that matter -- would think that way, but it's just the way she had about her. Now I think about it and in view of the things that came to light, I think she probably did flirt a lot -- only just with other people. I think I must have gotten a very one sided view of her.

Oh and she was blond too. Very trim. I kept joking that all they'd need was a red head and then I could call them and give them orders and they could spend the days crime fighting. I was working on a name to give their little group -- Pussy power or something slightly less obvious -- but never really got it right. I got a lot of frowns in my direction though.

Right, so now you have the background. Me, Ryan, wife Deanna, friends Simon, I do sales, she works everywhere staging houses and apartments, we have kids, essentials covered I think.

So right, there I was in Madison. What was I doing there? Really? That's what you want to know? Jeez, of all the questions. I was there talking to a client at the University of Wisconsin about his house. He wanted an old fashioned library, complete with two levels and a wheel around ladder, and as he was both a tenured (and well published) professor there, as well as an

incredible

snob, he'd contacted our company, and used my name and insisted I had to come up. He'd apparently met another satisfied customer -- a video game company owner that was based there in Madison, the company was called Dead Head in a bag or something equally ridiculous -- and we'd done a bang up job putting an office into his 'murder room', as he called the basement of his house. He'd told this professor over dinner or drinks or murdering some poor hooker or something, and the professor then called us and the boss had taken the call and off I went to Wisconsin.

Oh yes, the boss. Paul. Paul Dresdin. So what should I say about Paul? Paul is...lovely. He's the son of the guy who started the company. Wallace died about eight years ago and left it to Paul. Paul is terrific. Heart in the right place, loves his company and employees and job. Nice fella, well meaning and a total idiot. And I mean idiot. He's so incompetent and yet he runs the company. Well, he thinks he does. I actually run it. I interface with him, he tells me what he wants to do, and I go and do what actually needs to be done. Paul is so ineffectual that he can't even remember what he asked me to do last week, and would never even check to see if I did it.

But we, as an employee group, love Paul. It's not a disrespect thing, or us running around having a good snigger behind our hands. It's literally us doing our best to keep the company going so we all have a place to come to work in the morning and to keep Paul going because god knows, if he weren't harmless in the corner office having expensive coffee and being gently ignored by his secretary, he might be out in the real world causing some well meaning disaster.

We keep that company going because we love working there and we love working for Paul, even if we don't ever do what he says. I'll give you an example. Three weeks ago, Paul decided we should be entering in the Ikea Market. His brainchild was to create a showroom, like Ikea, to compete with them, because, well, no one was on that scale, where they? Chink in the market.

Rather than sit there and explain the economics of Ikea to Paul, and how long it took them to get where they are, and how they are subsidized by other governments in other countries so they can offer the deals they do in the US -- something Paul would never grasp -- I just said, "Sure, Paul, great idea! I can't believe no one has spotted this missing market yet!"

Then I left the listings for a couple of warehouses on his desk, and never heard another thing about it. A week later he wanted to make portable desks for the military, so 'they could carry them in their packs and always have a surface at hand.' Sure thing, Paul. Let me get right on that.

It sounds callous that I ignored him in quite the way I did, but you have to understand. Paul is like the retarded son that everyone

knows

is retarded, but has to be treated as a regular guy. He was well meaning, he was

very

concerned for his staff -- we all got vitamins every morning -- and just generally a terrifically nice person. And in honor of that, and in memory of his father, who was as sharp as a tack, apart from true blindness about how dumb his son really was, we keep it together for him. It's not done because he's an idiot and we disrespect him for it. It's done because he's an idiot and we love him for it.