Totally a work of fiction. If you want reality, try another website. Thanks to Drbob80 for editing this story. This is my first fiction submission anywhere, so wish me luck as you start the read.
High Society Beckons Her with a Slick Finger
I read recently that when men and women are looking for a mate, they instinctively size each other up with regard to desirable features. Some important attributes include education, age, general appearance, social status, and wealth. No doubt lots of other criteria enter into it as well, for example, children from a previous marriage, generosity, humor, brains, vegetarian, likes to drink a lot, or not. It all depends on the individual.
One general assumption is that a guy making $40,000 a year might be OK as a fuck friend for a woman making $120,000, but is not husband material. Despite what you see in Hollywood movies, the wealthy don't marry the hired help, they marry their own.
We all know roughly our level of desirability. Taking all into consideration, a man probably won't expect a woman he sees as far above his level of desirability to do more than hook up with him, if that. Maybe we are all sub-consciously thinking that somewhere along the path of courtship and marriage, sooner of later they will decide it was a mistake, and that they can do better.
Whether this is true or not, it got me thinking that my wife and I are well matched. We married a bit later than our folks did (in our thirties) and now after three years, we are beginning to talk about starting a family, maybe this fall.
We're both decent looking, very clever people, from New England upper working/lower middle class families, if there is such a category. My family made more money than hers. My dad is a successful contactor from Springfield, but my wife's family had more status. She was an 'oops', born to a mother at the end of her child bearing years, married to an older man. Her dad was president of a small bank in town Southwick, Mass. Those were the days when bankers made a decent living, but didn't earn a lot of money. Her dad wore a suit every day and everybody in town knew that sooner or later, they might need to go to him for a loan. He controlled money and people's access to it and because of that, he had status.
In our adulthood, we each graduated from college, her from a prestigious private college with no scholarship aid; her mother worked for years to pay the tuition. I graduated from the local state college which I put myself through with a little help from my Dad. Karen majored in art history, with a minor in political science. An interesting field of expertise to be sure, but a tough one to earn enough money to raise a family on.
On the other hand, I had the brains to get into a private school and dad certainly had the money, and urged me to do so. From observing my family, I realized that your success in life at our level in the world was more a result of your own initiative and brains, than education. I learned the basics of running a business, and how to think, speak, and write in more or less that order. The local state college suited me fine, especially as I could attend courses at Amherst, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke Colleges more or less at will. I majored in history with a minor in business and took overloads every semester. After two years, I abandoned the liberal arts to get a degree in engineering. I loved learning. I reveled in poetry, literature, and history for my soul, while balancing them with economics and engineering courses to challenge the practical part of my mind. I ignored students whose focus was the party life, and among the serious students, I made several fast friends that I still have to this day.
During school, I worked for my dad during summers, and learned the hard work and sweat side of the contracting business. After graduation, I learned the business side. I discovered that while good at it, I didn't enjoy management and new work. (New work means new construction.) I liked old historic buildings, the craftsmen on site, the thrill of discovery as you remove layers of renovation. The sense of accomplishment you feel when you restore them to their former glory. You are honoring architects and craftsman dead 50 years or more by giving new life to their life's work. I also liked to have an active hand in the work. I met an old man who specialized in decorative plaster work, and was seduced by the craft, and his way of working. I spent three years as an apprentice to him, and went on to develop very nice business as a small firm specializing in restoration plaster This included everything from the structural support of the plaster work to decorative painting, gilding and other ornamental work. I knew I wouldn't get rich at what I was doing, but it would provide a very good living. At 32 years of age, I carry on my payroll, my former master, Anthony, his apprentice, a sectary/office manager and one laborer. I hire sub contractors and a host of the best restoration artists and professionals in the business as needed. As a side note, I am nearly through writing a book on restoring decorative plaster work, with Anthony as my co author.
Oddly enough, while Karen went to school seven miles away from my school, with three years of overlap, I never met her during those years. Five years after I graduated, I met her in a bar when we were both back visiting our respective folks. Her father had died, and her mom moved to Southampton. Karen had been married and divorced in the interim. She refused to say much about it, other than her husband became abusive which is all one has to say.
In getting to know her, we talked about our common experience in and around Northampton. As it happened, she was a bit of a party girl in college. No thought to earning a living, no over loads and no challenging classes. Having said this, you would make a mistake to assume she had a second class mind. She was a smart girl, but lazy. She never learned the pleasure of working on a difficult intellectual puzzle. I now realize this was the curriculum of choice for many of the persons who imagined themselves to be in the upper class. Not much work, lots of fun, and a prestige diploma. The real world comes as a surprise to people like that.
She was surprised and a bit jealous to find I had taken courses from some of the same professors she did, although she tended to have taken introductory courses, and I talked my way out of those for the more focused and rigorous upper level ones. It also irked her that I had spent some considerable time at some of these professor's homes, eating at their tables, meeting their wives (or husbands) and discussing art, science and life well into the night. Some of them regularly assist me now when I run into issues of conservation, and don't know exactly what is I am seeing emerge from under the paint I have to remove, or what I have in front of me.
The economic upbringing, educational, and regional connection created a bond, but I thought it was our intellect that deepened our relationship into love and finely marriage. The decision as to where we would live was easy. I mentioned at work that Karen was living in Philadelphia, and Anthony announced that as he had family in Philadelphia, we all might as well move there. It was closer to the bigger jobs, and property costs weren't as high, so we did.
When I bought our house, the neighborhood was somewhat undesirable. Ours is a lovely Victorian Romanesque style house, faced with cut serpentine stone, a soft stone found locally with a greenish cast. The inside was complete with all of the original stained glass windows and custom woodwork. I re-plastered half of the house, copying the original moldings and plasterwork decoration. You may have seen it as it's been written up in several magazines. Lately, the neighborhood's gentrification has been accelerating, which is good for our investment. The house is worth three or four times what we have in it. Now, however, we are surrounded by folks who earn, or at least make a lot more money than us.
Most of my work is for the wealthy, institutions, or the government, so my wife and I have to be socially active. She's got a part time job with the local Democratic Party, and our social life has changed from a dinner and movie, to a dinner and a play, or the symphony. I've had to buy a black suit, and a couple of $50 ties. Now, I cannot reliably pronounce the names of the French Impressionist painters with the proper accent, but one of the growing differences between us is that Wifey can, and looks down on those who cannot.
I am always clean and well dressed, but prefer an understated look. Actually I admire the way the relatively few wealthy ones who come from old money dress. Superb quality, but never wear the brand names added onto cheaply made clothing from China. No logos showing, my casual cloths are worn, but not worn out. Our neighbors are similar to most people who are doing well for them selves. In my opinion they are over groomed, diet to the point of becoming scrawny, and show their class insecurity by wearing outrageously expensive designer clothing, with the labels on the outside so they can impress their peers. Jan, our neighbor's wife is very proud of a hugely expensive watch that looks like a Chihuahua's collar. No taste.
Despite my enjoyment of physical work, my business has shifting from me doing it myself, to me undertaking the business end of restoration. I still work with my hands and body as much as possible. I figured out that if my back goes out I can't work, so I work out three times a week to ensure that I stay flexible and my muscle tone is good enough to keep me from getting hurt. However, I also like to eat, and while the weight lifting maintains muscle mass, it doesn't do so much about calories. My weight has been edging up a bit, and my business down a bit, thanks to the recession.
Last February, I noticed that shirts marked large didn't fit so well when I sat down. While not obese, I do have a belly that I have to admit is larger than is convenient. By contrast, Wifey has, as they use to say "kept her shape."
It also occurred to me that my very desirable wife is surrounded with high earning, good looking, trim males, and I don't look too good by comparison. Further, I rationalized that you do have to call a stop to waist line creep somewhere, or you risk becoming a circus attraction.
So when my daughter dumped her 125 pound, two year old mutt named Prince Caspian on us (Cas for short), I used him to make a change in my life. Since I work out of our home much of the time, I got the job of primary caregiver to the dog, taking him for walks, while my Karen does the brushing, and the occasional bath. After a bit, she decided to rename the dog, and Wifey settled on Hubris. I wondered if she might have been thinking of Cerberus, the big three headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. She sometimes uses one word when she means another, but the words were a bit too different for that. Or maybe she liked the nickname Hubie, and didn't realize it was short for Hubert. I didn't much care for the name, but what the hell, Hubris it was, except when I had to holler it on the street. Then, I shortened it to Bris. The dog doesn't seem to mind us calling him different names
One of the jobs of dog ownership is walking the dog, which should certainly be more than short defecatory rambles. Hubris is a remarkably good looking fellow. People stop us to admire him. Well formerly a 'he.' There are a few essential bits missing now. Hubris isn't satisfied with a quick stroll around the block, unless the weather is rotten. He likes to get a good, long walk. I started walking the dog several miles a day, and discovered I really liked to walk. In no time, I had lined up my days' phone calls, and we did a walk and call. We would spend an hour, walking three miles every morning while I got my calling in. From there it was a short hop to jogging half a mile, walking a half mile, jogging half, so we were covering four miles in an hour. I pushed it to five miles an hour, but the dog was struggling, so we settled on 4 miles an hour. At the same time, I shifted my diet as well, reducing the helpings of meat and eating more vegetables and a salad (No prepared salad dressing, home dressings made balsamic vinegar, a bit of olive oil, and cheese).
I use to joke that you couldn't neglect a belly like mine, you had to feed it three times a day, or it would shrivel up to nothing. Although it began to shrivel I really didn't feel I was culinarily deprived, just eating right. I had dropped from 225 to 200 pounds before Wifey remarked:
"Have you lost weight, or something? Those pants are a bit too big."
"Nah hon, I probably was never as fat as you remember me to be. Seriously, these pants were always a little big."
We support two of the local charity resale shops and since I wear kind of generic men's cloths, it was easy to donate my big chinos and jeans and buy smaller ones that fit. All of the cloths are slightly worn, and all look pretty much the same as the clothes I've always worn.
Wifey has a few quirks, one that she inherited from her mother, who was an out and out hippy flower child (who married a banker? Go figure!). Neither woman liked perfume, or scented deodorants, and didn't use anything but clear nail polish. Her natural smell is quite pleasant, but you have to have your nose close to notice it. It was remarkable, then, when she came home one Thursday with some perfume on. Thinking she was perhaps advertising her availability for loving, I gave her a hug, followed by a nuzzle and kiss in expectation, but no, apparently tonight was not the night. She went upstairs to shower before supper, which was another unusual event.
