Gwen & Robert Old Guy Young Gal

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.

Nonetheless, having been with her for so long, she was the only woman that I really loved. She was the only woman that I thought I really knew and who I thought knew me. I miss her voice. I miss her laugh. I miss watching television with her and making fun of people, that is, when she wasn't drinking. I miss sleeping in bed with her, even if we didn't have sex. Just to have her there was comforting. I miss having coffee and breakfast with her every morning. I miss our Sunday morning routine reading the newspaper and having donuts and coffee. I miss having her there to complain to and to tease her with my bathroom humor.

Instantly, all of that changed, when she's the one who left me alone. For someone who didn't want to be alone, I don't understand how she could have left me alone. With her never calling or writing, it's as if she died. Only, always thinking she'd come home, I never mourned her loss and grieved her death in the way I would have had she died, instead of having just packed up and left me for her hairdresser. Apparently, not all male hairdressers are gay men. I don't know, maybe she was just tired of paying to have her hair done.

Having always been attached at the hip to her for as long as I can remember, going steady, her thing, engaged, when I just wanted to get married in Vegas, and married in a big church wedding, instead, I'm a fish out of water trying to find love in the modern dating world. With my wife being the only woman I've known, since I was twenty-nine-years-old, with the Internet, texting, and Twitter, I have no idea where to begin to look for another woman to love. It isn't as if I have a switch in my brain and can turn off the feelings that I still have for her, just because she shut me out of her life. I just can't stop loving Linda, just because she left me, that is, until I met Gwen.

Now, with Gwen in the picture, I could fall in love with her, if given the chance. She's such a sweet woman. I'd live a much happier life, if only Gwen took Linda's place in my heart and in my bed. If only I was a bit younger and she was a bit older, I'd ask her out on a date. Only, feeling so lonely, I know that by having my feelings transferred to her that I'm just going through something, in the way of rebound love.

Then, when I see myself in all the other men, who go to Joe's Bacon and Egg, just to see Gwen, I feel like such a fool. Feeling pathetic sitting at a restaurant counter with all the other drooling men like me hoping for Gwen to give them some attention, I'm a 40-something-year-old man lusting over a 20-something-year-old waitress. What's wrong with me? Maybe I'm going through my mid-life crisis early. Next, I'll be driving a classic Corvette convertible soon and mourning the loss of the past and the 'good old days, instead of living my life now and in the present.

For sure, if Gwen was my daughter and I was her Daddy, I wouldn't want some 40-something-year-old man leering at my baby girl. There's just something wrong with that. Men should know better that, unless they are rich, a young woman doesn't want them, would never want them, in the same way that, unless she was rich, a young man would never want an older woman.

To be honest, even I get the creeps, when I imagine how she must feel being a targeted star of so many older men's sexual fantasy. If only she knew what I was thinking, she'd slap my face and call the police to have me arrested for the mere sexual content of my perverse thoughts. If only she was thinking what I was feeling, I'd be a happy man. Yet, just as I want her, I know she doesn't want me. She'd never want someone like me. Too tired and too crotchety, I'm just too damn old to start over again with another woman, never mind a woman so much younger than me.

No matter. There's just something about her that makes me stare at her. There's just something about her that makes me want to talk to her all day, which most times is impossible. She always has other customers and seeing myself in other men, there are plenty of regulars, younger and older than me, who'd love to take Gwen home with them to their bed.

Then, looking deeper than her blonde hair and shapely figure, looking all around the place, instead of looking just at her, I wondered what's a good looking woman doing in a dump like this? She's so beautiful. Surely, she can find a better job than this. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, with big tits and a shapely figure, she's every man's dream woman. I swear, if every woman looked like Gwen, there's be no more extra marital affairs. Every man would finally have his dream woman.

There are blondes and there are blondes, but Gwen is a real blonde. I can always tell a natural blonde from dyed blonde by her eyebrows and complexion and Gwen is all natural. Always having the internal habit of comparing people in my life to celebrities, just as Linda was my Tiffani Thiessen, she looked just like her. If I was to compare Gwen to someone, she'd be a cross between a modern day version of Angie Dickerson and Tuesday Weld, two of my Dad's all-time favorite women and, now that I see Gwen, I see why. If I told my Dad about Gwen and if he lived closer, he'd be a regular diner here, too. Doing my best to remove the physical attraction, already friends, despite our huge differences in age, I wondered what her story was. Then, one day, after the breakfast crowd left and before the lunch crowd took all the good seats, I asked her.

"What's your story, Gwen?" As if I was a barfly in a bar sipping a beer, instead of a customer in a diner drinking coffee, I gazed up at her big, blue eyes from my regular stool at the end of the counter.

Accustomed to sitting at third base, when playing Blackjack, I purposely picked that stool because it gives me more elbow room. Now, instead of counting cards, I watch people and I see how the other men look at Gwen in the same way that I look at her. It's funny how the small things in middle age life become so monumentally important. When I was younger, I'd pee out my beer in a trough at a Red Sox baseball game at Fenway Park, now I prefer the privacy of a closed door bathroom stall. Next, I'll be soaking my teeth in a glassful of water, my feet in a basin of Epsom salts, wearing white socks, driving a Buick, and sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons in Boston Common, while wondering what happened to the last twenty years of my life. How in the Hell did I get so old, when it seems that I just finished my stint in the Army?

"My story?"

Leaning down to melt my brown eyes and flutter butterflies in my stomach with her beautiful face, she rested her elbows on the counter. She was so close to me that I just wanted to reach out and touch her to see if she was real and to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. I always loved when she did that, when she made the conversation more intimately personal and exclusively private, by leaning down to talk to me in that way. Only, whenever she did that, I couldn't help but imagine what it would feel like to be standing behind her, humping her from behind and fucking her, really fucking her, while feeling her big, hanging breasts and fingering her hard, erect nipples.

"Kiss me," I imagined her saying. "Feel my tits. Make love to me."

Unlike any other woman in my life, even Linda, maybe just for a bigger tip, Gwen made me feel so important, as if I was the only man in the restaurant and the only man in her life. Moreover, hoping she didn't catch me looking, staring, gazing, and leering, actually, when she leaned down to me like that, her blouse always opened enough for me to see her long line of cleavage, the top of her white bra, and to see that she was naturally blessed with a set of C cup breasts. I like tits and Gwen had big ones. To me, a woman isn't a woman, unless she has tits and I could tell from her side profile that she had a set of beautiful knockers on her.

With the counter stool being higher than she was lower, did she know that I could see down her blouse? Did she know that I could see her bra and cleavage? Did she care? Or was she purposely flashing me her tits. Was she teasing me? Did she want me to see all that I was seeing?

"Do you like what you see? Do you like my tits? Would you like to feel my tits and finger my nipples. I bet you'd love to suck my tits, fuck my tits, and cum all over my big tits."

Whenever she flashed me her bra and cleavage, I always imagined her saying all of that, only she never said anything like that. She never talked to me in that way. It's only in my dreams and sexual fantasies that I imagined Gwen saying and doing all that I wished she'd do.

"Yeah, Gwen, tell me your story. I'm interested to know."

"Well, Robert," she said giving me a smile.

Whenever she smiled at me like that, I knew something good was coming. She was the only person, except for my mother, who called me Robert. Everyone else, my friends, my co-workers, and Linda called me Bob. No one called me Rob or Bobby, but Gwen, my Gwen, always called me Robert. Coming from her, I liked hearing her call me that. She made me feel as if I was someone else, someone named Robert, and someone more distinguished.

"Go on, don't be shy. Tell me your story. I'd really like to know more about you."

"I can't," she said eying the customers just entering the restaurant, after looking around her to see who else was listening and, whenever Gwen talked, they were all listening. "Not here and not now. I have customers," she said standing upright and slapping the counter with the palm of her hand, as if that was her signal to get to work or her signal to get up the courage to do something or say something. Then, when she reached in her apron pocket to pull out her book of receipts, she surprised me with what she said next. "But," she said putting her pen to her lips and looking at me, as if having second thoughts. "If you pick me up at my house," she said leaning down to whisper in my ear, "17 Glendale at 8 o'clock and take me out to buy me dinner, I'll tell you my story."

"Okay." One word, one syllable with four letters was all that I could say. Shocked that she'd want to have dinner with me, I suddenly felt foolish and less of a man that I didn't have the balls to ask her out first.

When she leaned down to whisper in my ear, so close that I could smell her body wash, imagining her leaning down to kiss me, I just wanted to turn my head and kiss her. I just wanted to stick my tongue in her mouth, while feeling her big tits and fingering her nipples through her white, starched blouse, and white satin bra. Then, she pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen from her other pocket and wrote something. Imagining she was writing me a secret love note, imagining she was writing me a dirty note of all the sexual things she wanted to do to my middle aged body and all the things that she wanted me to do to her oh, so young and perfect body, she surprised me by what she wrote.

"Here's my number. Call me, if you can't make it. Otherwise, I'll see you at eight," she said giving me a big smile. I never thought Gwen could be any prettier than she was, but she was so much prettier, when she smiled. To be so rewarded with her smile, if I was her man, I'd shower her with gifts, just to see her smile.

Wait? Back up. Hello? What just happened here? Pick her up at her house? Did she just say that? Buy her dinner? Did I just dream that? Did Gwen, the woman of my sexual fantasies just give me her telephone number? Did Gwen just ask me out on a date? Oh, my God.

"Sure," I said still stunned by all that transpired so quickly that all I could answer her with was a four letter, one syllable, word. Thus far, I could write my entire conversation with her on a postage stamp. "Only, I hope you don't mind riding in an old pickup truck," I said embarrassed suddenly and missing my classic '69 Camaro even more, the only hot car I ever had. "Linda took my car."

"You can leave your truck at my house, Robert. We'll take my car. I love to drive."

"Okay," I said finishing my toast and coffee and leaving, when Gwen was busy with another customer.

I left her a five dollar tip, instead of my usual two dollars, but as soon as I did, I felt guilty. I felt as if I was leaving a hooker a tip on a nightstand, not that I've ever been with a hooker. I hoped that she didn't get the wrong impression.

She turned and waved, as I was leaving. It was when she gave me a look that her eyes confessed that we'd be doing more than eating and talking, if you know what I mean. Yet, as soon as I thought that, I scolded myself for thinking that. There's no way someone like her would be interested in someone like me. Things like that never happen. Yet, that's how it all happened with Linda. She was beautiful and ten years younger than me, but fifteen years makes a whole lot of difference in the aging process and I was getting a little too ripe to be trying to harvest such a fine Georgia peach.

"Bye, Robert," she said turning to warm my heart and harden my cock with her smile again. Different than when Linda wrote bye to me, even though Gwen said, 'Bye', just in the way she said it with her big smile and solid eye contact, her saying bye was as if she said hello.

"Bye, Gwen. I'll see you tonight," I said louder than necessary and sorry that I had said that, as soon as I said it.

Still, when I saw the looks of the other men, I was glad that I said that. As if their heads were attached to my words, half a dozen heads turned to look at me, before turning to look at Gwen. Yeah, that's right suckers. I have a date with Gwen. How do you like them apples? She even gave me her telephone number, you losers.