There's an old adage; "never say never." I, Jim Sickles, never believed in that. By the time that I was eighteen I had a strong sense of right and wrong. Everything was black and white to me; I didn't see much gray.
My parents always preached that "honesty is the best policy." Probably because of their influence, and the punishment I got when I lied, and the positive reinforcement when I told the truth even if it did not reflect positively on me, even as a child I was particularly attuned to trustworthiness and considered it the most admirable quality that a person could have. In addition to my parents' influence, perhaps it was a number of different instances of the consequences of the lack of honesty by others that shaped me the way that I was. Just some of the more memorable ones were:
-When my friend Billy Thorsness lied about seeing one of our High School teachers smoking pot because she had given Billy a D. He ended up expelled and a civil suit was filed against him and his parents.
-When I was a freshman in college when my fraternity brother John Riggle submitted a term paper that someone from an online paper factory wrote for him. He ended up with an "F" and was suspended for a semester.
-When my mother's co-worker and my home city's most prolific forensic lab tech, Juliet Probst, lied on her resume about having a masters in Forensics when she only had a bachelor's, and in Economics to boot. Dozens of criminal cases had to be re-opened, almost breaking the city's budget and turning a number of criminals back on the street, and she got fired.
-When I was home for the summer between my junior and senior years in college when Mr. Watson, our next door neighbor, literally threw Mrs. Watson, his wife of twenty-something years, out of the house loudly calling her a whore and slut for cheating on him, and when she picked up a garden tool and did a number on his face. They ended up divorced, she ended up in jail, and their son had to drop out of college because they used up their money fighting each other and there was nothing left for him to pay tuition with.
Given my penchant for honesty and my belief that disastrous results would necessarily befall anyone who lied or cheated, in looking for relationships I was interested only in trustworthy women. Being decent looking and always in good physical condition I was often flirted with; but if the woman was a known liar or slut, or if I caught her in fabrications when we were dating, I wasn't interested and either avoided, or terminated, the relationship. I vowed both to myself and in discussions with friends and relatives that I was going to do my best to be honest and direct my entire life, and especially that "I will never cheat on a steady girlfriend or spouse."
I became a machine design engineer, graduating college at the age of twenty one. Two years after graduation I found a woman, Irene James, who really rang my chimes and who had the same outlook on honesty that I did. She had an MBA and worked as a freelance trouble-shooter for small businesses. Our focus on trustworthiness sometimes had almost comical results since we often bent over backwards to admit our smallest faults. We eventually learned not to divulge minor transgression and married when I was twenty five and she was twenty six.
When I was thirty one we started discussing the possibility of children. She first needed to get through a busy summer where she had to do lots of travelling, and I had just come off working on a difficult and energy-sapping project. We decided to rent a summer lake house for ten weeks since my next project I could do primarily from home, and the clients that she needed to service over the summer were closer to the lake house than our city apartment was. Once the summer was over we'd get into baby making mode.
The community that we rented the lake house in was a very friendly one, populated by half year round residents and half summer ones. We were the only renters but were accepted with open arms.
One very noticeable feature of the community was that almost without exception the female residents, regardless of age (the ages ranged from twenty two to sixty one), were very attractive. The active lifestyle at the lake and their above-average wealth meant that they were in good physical condition, and most also had from pleasant to beautiful faces. Three were provocative, although in an apparent fun-loving way. Becky, Samantha and Colleen loved to be bawdy in front of their husbands, who – except for Colleen's – would be just as ribald in return. Their reputation as party animals was solidified when they went skinny dipping together at midnight one Saturday as a party was winding down.
While Becky and Samantha impressed me as average fun-loving housewives, Colleen was different. She had a degree in biochemistry from Cal Berkley, which has the highest rated biochemistry program in the country according to U S News & World Report. At age thirty one she was already the top technical person at a local profitable biochemistry firm; one of the chemists who worked for her also lived in the neighborhood. She seemed to spend half of her work time working from home, and the other half at the company only ten miles away. Her free time seemed to be consumed with exercise and partying.
Colleen was very unusual because I had never before seen her combination of technical brilliance and sexiness in the same woman. We didn't have any engineering students that looked like her at the University of Illinois where I got my degree. She is about five feet seven, maybe 125 pounds, with a perfectly proportioned body including nice sized tits, a round ass, and muscular thighs – not that I noticed. The auburn highlights in her shoulder length silky brown hair provide the perfect complement to her intense green eyes and "Celestial" nose – again, not that I noticed.
Colleen and I seemed to get along as well as any other mixed gender friends in our neighborhood, perhaps because we were the only two with technical backgrounds. I found her husband, Jake, who was about ten years older than she was, to be a little weird. He had less of a sense of humor than almost anyone else in the neighborhood and to me acted aloof. He seemed to talk about money and material possessions more than anyone else, including his prized red Lamborghini which he tooled around in on weekends.
We had attended a raucous party on Saturday night. Colleen seemed slightly buzzed on Pina Coladas, and was bawdier than I had ever seen her, bordering on libidinous. One other time when she was buzzed she and I had had what seemed to me to be a heart-felt discussion about fidelity, during which I expressed my strong views on the subject, concluding with "I'd never cheat on Irene." She seemed to concur that she would never cheat either.
I didn't have any "heart-to-heart" talks with her that Saturday night, but did sniff her armpit. Yeah, that's right. As part of her lewd act that night, she walked around asking all of the guys at the party to smell her armpit, and then stared at their crotches when they did. Because Colleen is so sexy, all the guys there except the two oldest accommodated her, including me. Unfortunately my cock twitched significantly when I sniffed her pit – I sure didn't know why. She smiled broadly, and then went on to the next victim.
By the way her pit did not smell bad – strong, but not an unpleasant odor.
Jake left early, after Colleen asked about the fifth guy to sniff her pit, apparently in a huff. After the party Irene and I walked Colleen home since it was on our way and we wanted to make sure that she made it OK. She did do a bit of weaving as we hoofed it, enough so that at one point in time both Irene and I had to steady her.
Irene had to leave for a week of business travel Sunday early afternoon. When I returned from dropping Irene off at the airport I went paddle boarding, and ran across Colleen doing the same thing. We paddled side-by-side for at least a one mile loop. I had a little trouble concentrating because her body really did justice to the skimpy bikini that she wore, even to the point that several boat wakes knocked me off my paddleboard; much to her amusement as she remained upright.
While we talked about many subjects she didn't hide the fact that Jake was pissed at her. "Was I really that bad at the party?" Colleen inquired.
I laughed then responded "In my humble opinion you went up to the vulgar line, but didn't cross it. I thought that you were funny."
She looked at me carefully as I made my reply. "Bullshitter,"she chortled, and I chuckled with her.
"But, say, Colleen; what was that armpit sniffing deal?"
She broke into a big grin. "Scientific research, dude; an important investigation."
"What research?" I asked.
"You may find out this week – maybe," she chuckled, and then changed the subject.
***********
That Sunday night my life took a dramatic turn. It was about 11:00 p. m. when there was a pounding at the door of my rental house. I was already in bed, in my typical summer bed clothing – only boxers. I put on a pair of shorts but no shirt and answered. It was Colleen. She was wearing only a T-shirt, cutoffs, and sandals, with what looked like a tube of sunscreen in a pocket. She had a distraught look on her face.
"Hey Jim; I'm really sorry to bother you, but could I use your phone?"
