In my letter to my former wife, I finished: "Raised Quaker, I cannot allow myself to be consumed by hate, but I am deeply disappointed by the you-that-is-now, who was and is a gang-banging corporate and private whore. I still love Miola, the you-that-maybe-used-to-be, who I stupidly believed was a loving wife, but those feelings will fade as time passes.
Goodbye. We'll never meet again.
Kenneth Jerome Hart".
Then I packed up my few belongings in a rented car and left the mid-west for the West Coast, to re-start my engineering career, away from charges of being a long-term cuckold with a serially cheating corporate-whore wife. Luckily, I had a modest separate stream of income, which I'd laid aside for a financial emergency. I tapped this to live on.
It took the usual year or so to get re-established, particularly with the onset of the Great Recession in late 2008, but being self-employed, with my expertise between my two ears and in my hands, I made money again. While I dated some and hooked-up other times, I never bought a house or condo again, having been 'burned' severely, nor did I ever permit myself to even think about marriage.
I had no long-term trust in women partners nor in men friends.
It turned out that, within the general Los Angeles and San Diego areas, there were several clusters of small and mid-sized robotic-using manufacturers and fulfillment groups and I determined that I could establish myself within some of those clusters. I looked for a block of apartments centered to these clusters and found a place to live, eat and just exist, about equidistant all the places where my engineering worth would be rewarded.
Here I lived from my marriage incineration in 2006, through the financial crash of the Great Recession in 2008 through to my present in 2012. I had hobbies, such as riding my motorbike (now a Suzuki Burgman motor-scooter), sailing a little sabot alone, now and then, plus learning to play the hurdy-gurdy (a musical instrument sounded by turning a crank and fingering a keyboard ... really weird sounds coming out) which I played at local festivals.
I joined the local tall club, which also provided me an entry into a discreet local swingers group, as well, for sterile but satisfying, no-strings sex.
I can't say that I was happy or content but I was comfortable in a large 1-bedroom apartment. Just lonely, as would be any long-married man, once deprived of his wife by divorce or death. Again, I had a few close friends but these were scattered around the LA/San Diego area.
Since I couldn't drink alcohol in any form, I had no 'drinking buddies.'
The last thing I expected early that evening in October, 2012, was a knock on my apartment door. I wore only a bathrobe and slippers (why bother to dress when one is completely alone). Opening the door, I saw my six-years older ex-wife standing there.
Holding the door open for what seemed a long time, she looked up at me and asked, "Can I come in, Ken?"
I gestured her inside my apartment, right now a bachelor messy/neat place, and motioned her to a chair, while I sat on the bed.
Yeah, I know, the bed should be in the bedroom. I was never one for social convention. The 'bedroom' was my 'home office', workroom and exercise area, while the actual bed was in the living area of the apartment. So sue me! I made it up each day, so it fitted in with my bachelor decor, what there was of it. Dinette around the corner. Two extra chairs, a table for walk-in things like wallets, cellphones, etc. Bookcases for books, DVDs, a large screen TV. Semi-pornographic picture—a couple of Miola, from her DVDs, being penetrated—as usual, wishing I was the one fucking her—on the wall. That sort of thing.
So Miola sat on a chair and I sat up on the made-up bed, quietly waiting for her to speak. She looked around the apartment—especially at the large pics of her fucking on the walls—but didn't say anything.
She was wearing a gauzy off-the-shoulders peasant top, almost sheer, that outlined her breasts and let me see the deep-brown, protruding nipples. The top was bare-midriff, almost a bandeau top. The same went for the long, pleated, flowing skirt, also gauzy and sheer, which let me see the outline of her woman's 'Y' between her legs, although her muff was no more (not that I missed it, as I came to like her bald pussy, before her final sexual betrayal). Again, as I could see, she wore long, thigh-high net stockings but low-heel sandals.
When nothing was said for a minute, I offered her a social drink. Unable to drink alcohol myself, I still had a small selection of items for my occasional visitors who did imbibe. So I offered her vodka-and lemon, rum-and-coke, white wine or a craft beer.
I was taken aback when my memories-of-drunken-orgies Miola said, "No, thanks, Ken. I can't drink any alcohol. I'm a recovering addict, an alcoholic. Do you have any soft drinks?"
Wordlessly, I handed her one of my specialty soft drinks, a sarsaparilla. Almost unknown in the USA now, it was THE soft drink of the late 1800's. I made it myself, from an extract and sugar, and a natural carbonation. She sipped it, tasted it, and spend several minutes drinking it down. Raising her eyebrow, she said, "What?"
I replied, saying, "It's sarsaparilla. I make it myself. Maybe 1/4% alcohol, but mostly natural yeast carbonation. Almost unknown, any more. Tastes good. What do you think, Miola?"
