A 40-something-year-old man finds love with a 20-something-year-old woman.
*
I met Gwen at the restaurant, where I went for breakfast every morning, before work, after my wife, Linda, left me for a younger man. Just as I had no idea she had a lover, I didn't know my wife was unhappy enough to leave me. I mean, now that I think about it, she was pretty miserable, but what wife isn't? With everything, including sex so routine and predictable, the romance fizzles, after being married for a while. Still, totally clueless, I thought everything was the routine same, until it wasn't and until she was no longer there to cook breakfast. Now, I'm one of the regulars at Joe's Bacon and Egg. Honestly, I just come here for the coffee, a side of toast, sometimes a donut, but mostly to see and to talk to Gwen.
"Gwen, Gwen, oh, my God, Gwen. I love Gwen. I dream of Gwen. I masturbate over Gwen, while fantasizing about her in bed with me naked."
She reminds me of the daughter I never had. Now, I'm not one of those guys, who'd have sex with his daughter. I don't even have a daughter. I can just see us doing things and going places together. Definitely, if I had a daughter, she'd be just like Gwen. Linda couldn't have kids and that was okay in the beginning, but it became more of an issue with her, as she got older and after all of her friends and sisters had children.
We had the idea that we'd adopt, until it was painfully obvious that we couldn't afford the adoption fees and all the other bullshit that they wanted to put us through with impromptu home visits and background checks just to love a baby that someone else didn't want. They were talking two years of waiting with more meeting, when we just wanted a baby now. Now that I look back on the past, when our hope to adopt a baby ended was when Linda started drinking.
Sometimes, she wouldn't be home, when I got home. Sometimes, I'd have to go looking for her. Always, I'd find her in a bar or on her knees in a back alley with some drunk hanging all over her and feeling her tits, ass, and pussy. With her short skirt up to here and her blouse unbuttoned down to there, God only knows what she did, before I arrived, for someone to buy her a drink. She didn't have any money of her own.
At the very least, I know she had some guy touching her, where only I should touch my wife. Having caught her more than once, I knew she was giving strange men blowjobs for a double shot of gin. With some husbands wanting to witness their wives having sex with another man, I'm not one of those men. The vision of Linda on her knees with her tits out, while sucking someone's cock in a dirty alley is something that I'll never forget.
Her reason for drinking, so she said, was when she realized, she confessed to me one day, out of the blue, that she feared that I'd die before her. Then, after I was gone, she'd be alone, in the way she's always been alone having grown up an orphan. What could I say to that? How could I not excuse her bad, drunken behavior, even if she did have sex with men for drinks? It's not all her fault that she's a lush and a slut. I felt bad and I consoled her, as best as I could, but she dumped that on me, just as I was going out the door to work.
"I don't want to be alone, Bob. I hate being alone. I'm frightened to be alone. I can't be alone. Please don't go. Don't leave me alone. Take the day off from work and stay with me, Bob, please."
Ten years older than Linda, when I met her, maybe her not wanting to be alone is why she left me for a younger man. I don't know. Maybe because she didn't want to be alone is why she got with me in the first place. I don't know. She wasn't there for me to ask her, when I came home from work that day. Maybe it was all preplanned and she was leaving me that day. Maybe she figured I'd die soon, but with plenty of life left to live, it's apparent to me, especially with all the drinking and running around she did, that Linda had issues. Yet, just as she left me for a younger man, he'll leave her too, no doubt, for a younger woman, one day, once she doesn't look as good as she does now.
"...And so it goes, tweet, tweet," said Kurt Vonnegut. "...and so it goes."
"You're not alone, Linda. I'm here with you. I gotta go," I said looking at my watch. "I'm late for work. We'll talk all about your feelings of aloneness, when I get home. Okay?"
I kissed her good-bye and that was the last time I saw her. A blessing in disguise, now that I met Gwen, she wasn't there when I came home from work. She shocked the shit out of me, when I came home to a dark and empty house. She didn't even lock the front door. Her keys to the house were on the kitchen table with a note.
"Bye."
Bye? After fifteen years of marriage, one word with one syllable and three letters is all that I get for supporting her. Bye? I say bye to my grocer, my barber, and my banker. I'd never think that my wife would just pack up, leave, and just write bye to me. Because of that note, never again will I say bye to anyone. Instead, perhaps, I'll say, "I'll see you later, or so long, or in Roy Rogers and Dale Evens old lingo, happy trails, until we meet again."
As if she pulled a moving van up to the front door, all of her stuff was gone, clothes, furniture, and household items, anything that belong to her, except for my car, a '69 Camaro, the car I had, when we first met. She took that with her. I couldn't believe it. She always liked that car. I figured, if she took anything, she'd take the appliances, the 'fridge, the stove, and the washer dryer, but she didn't cook and wash clothes. I did all of that. Yet, fifteen years of marriage didn't mean as much to her, as it did to me. Apparently, fifteen years of marriage didn't mean as much to her, as did my car mean to her. Bye and good riddance to her, but I really miss my car.
Yet, in honestly, I loved her, I really did. Only, I'm not sure why I did. I miss her, I really do. Again, I'm not sure why I still miss her, but I do. She was a real knockout, when I met her, but was a real handful, when drinking. She'd tear off all her clothes and walk around the house and even outside in her bra and panty, topless, and naked even. She didn't care who saw her without her clothes. She turned into a real slut, when she was drinking. No doubt, she'd do anything and anybody for a double shot of gin.