For Bob Boland, getting used to being single again after 24 years of marriage wasn't easy at first but he was starting to get the hang of it after he realized that he could now look at other women without being subtle, and that while he was 51 he was in decent shape and not all that bad looking.
After he had caught her cheating with another and they came to an agreement, Bob's wife had pretty much kept up with her end of the bargain, having waited until their son Gary was through high school before pulling the plug on their union, although the boy probably hadn't even arrived at his college last fall when Elaine started moving her things out.
Gary seemed to have taken the news well when he learned her parents were divorcing, likely having seen the writing on the wall along the way, and when he came home for the summer after his freshman year he was his jovial self for the most part when he visited his Dad.
"Oh no," Gary had said to his father the night he got home when the phone rang. "If that's Mary Ann, tell her I'm not here."
"Mary Ann Panza?" I asked, recalling quite fondly his son's old girlfriend who had been a fixture around the house for most of their high school years. "I know you two broke up, but why the hostility?"
"She won't take no for an answer. She was okay but I've moved on," Gary told his Dad as the phone answered itself and the neighbor girl's voice left a message. "Besides, she's like a cow now."
Bob shrugged at hearing that, because while he had noticed when seeing the teen around town Mary Ann had put on a few pounds but she wasn't morbidly obese by any stretch of the imagination and much of the extra weight seemed to be in the right places.
"If she comes by, tell her I've got a girlfriend at school," Gary asked. "Tell her anything."
"I won't lie for you, especially to a nice girl like Mary Ann," Bob cautioned his boy, who would be spending the next week at his mother's new place with her new partner, a woman she worked with.
"It's not a lie. I do have a girlfriend and it's pretty serious. I told Mary Ann that."
"Well then, I'll tell her that too I guess," his father replied, although he suspected he would be a lot more tactful than his brash son was.
***
That night before turning in Bob happened to overhear his son talking to a friend on the phone, although Gary talked so loud it didn't take much to listen in to his son's half of the conversation, and since the topic was sex Bob was all ears.
"She's called here a half dozen times since I got home," Gary told his friend, and that made it easy to figure out who the "she" was. "Yeah, I did hear that she's gained a lot of weight. I don't even pick up but the messages are pitiful. 'Oh Gary, why don't we get together one night?' or 'Gee Gary, we had such a great thing together and I'll do anything to make it good for you. Didn't I always do whatever you wanted?' - how desperate can you get?"
"No, because if I give in and fuck her, I'll have to break up with her all over again," Gary contended. "Anyway, while I was gone Mark Goodman said he got Mary Ann drunk one night and did her in the woods. Said her pussy was so hairy that he had trouble finding the hole."
"Yeah, I used to have to tell her to shave that thing, or at least trim it," Gary told his friend after hearing the half of the chat his father wasn't privy to. "One time I told her she had to trim that frigging jungle and she went, 'I just did!'" Who wants that? This broad I'm seeing at college gets waxed from the neck down. Smooth as a billiard ball. Now that's what I'm talking about!"
Gary's father winced upon hearing that and mercifully the topic of the conversation changed, but as Bob Boland went back to reading the paper he couldn't help to think that the acorn couldn't have fallen farther from the tree.
Not only did the prospect of having sex with a female without body hair repulse the middle-aged man - his wife had herself began heading that way in recent years - trimming and trimming a glorious bush until it became just a little patch of fur - but the way his son derided the poor dumped girl to others disappointed him. He wasn't a kid any more but nearly 20, and that was a childish way to behave.
Besides, Bob mused to himself, if his son was that bothered by women with body hair, he had better hope he didn't get a glimpse of his mother's girlfriend during the time he was over there.
Bob himself had seen his ex-wife's partner Martha Woods as naked as a jaybird the day he accidentally caught them together, and that woman had obviously not only never taken a razor anywhere near her pubic forest but she didn't seem to groom her body hair anywhere else if that brief glimpse was any indication.
Funny thing was, Bob recalled, was that despite his ex's flame having a face like a bulldog, he had thought Martha was a lot more erotic looking than his wife had become to him.
***
"Just like usual," Bob Boland said to himself after his son had left to spend a week of his summer with his mother and her girlfriend, and then he comically broke into a bit of the old Eric Carmen song, "All by myself, don't want to be all by myself anymore."
"Well there's no need to stay home and pout," Bob scolded himself, the idea that he was talking to himself a lot since Elaine departed more amusing than troublesome.
So after showering and getting dressed Bob tried to decide what to do later that evening, and having been unfettered for almost a year he knew the handful of choices where cougars hung out. While while at 51 Bob knew he wasn't cougar bait, a couple times when the middle-aged gals got desperate as closing time approached he had gotten lucky.
Just last week he had moved in on a tipsy gal and after buying her a drink, ended up having the woman sucking his cock out behind the bar. What made it more memorable was after the fact when she gave him her name and number before departing, he remembered why she looked familiar. Somehow the idea that the wife of the first boss he had at his company - a real miserable SOB - was on her knees giving him head with her wedding ring on had an element of schadenfreude attached.
As Bob was puttering around he happened to glance out the window, and who by chance was strolling past looking up hopefully towards his house but the girl from down the road, the infamously jilted Mary Ann Panza, and as he watched the chubby chick walk by he thought his son was a fool.
Chunky? No doubt about that. While she was never a svelte girl Mary Ann had definitely gained some weight and might be packing 150 or so pounds on her 5'4" frame, and the short bowl-like haircut did nothing to make her face look thinner either. Still, there was no ignoring Mary Ann was busty, although the ill-fitting bra she had on under her top was no help, and while her backside was plump as well it was nice to look at in those shorts and her legs were still shapely.
After Mary Ann disappeared Bob sighed and was prepared to go find something to watch on TV until Mary Ann came walking past the house again, this time pausing out front as she seemed to be debating with herself what to do.
"Come on up and visit," Bob urged from behind the curtains, the idea of getting to talk to a female much preferred to reruns of Family Guy, and as if he had influenced the teen, Mary Ann walked up the driveway to the door.
Bob took his time after the girl rang the bell, not wanting her to think he was aware of her being outside, and in a way she seemed relieved when the elder Boland answered the bell.
"Hi Mr. Boland," the cherubic teen said cheerfully.
"Hello yourself Mary Ann Panza! You're a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you that," Bob replied, trying to control his enthusiasm.
"Is - uh - Gary here?" Mary Ann asked tentatively, holding up a Blink 182 CD in her hand. "I heard he came home yesterday and I just wanted to give him this back and - uh - say hi."
"Gary is back but he's spending a week with his mother," Bob explained. "We're sharing the lad."
