Chapter 1

I’m just a regular guy. There’s nothing at all special about me. I’m not handsome, just a typical suburban husband and dad.

I didn’t even have a single girlfriend in high school. My family was poor, and girls didn’t notice an average looking guy who wasn’t an athlete and wore clothes from K-Mart.

I went to work as an apprentice electrician as soon as I graduated from high school. My Uncle Louie had an in with the union, and was able to get me accepted. I like working with my hands, and getting wiring to be safe, neat, and logical really makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. Just doing the work makes me feel happy.

I worked hard, and got my Journeyman’s certificate. One of the bigger contractors hired me, and I worked on trouble calls, plus remodeling and renovation jobs for a couple of years.

The owner’s daughter worked in the office, doing the bookkeeping. She was kinda plain, a lot like me, just an average girl, so we had that in common.

When I got my Master Electrician certificate I got promoted to new construction. The boss’ daughter noticed me and we started going out. I was afraid I’d lose my job if I made her mad, so I never got out of line with her. After we went out for about two years we got married. We never had sex until our wedding night.

The only time I’d ever had sex was this one time on a trouble call; a bored housewife showed me what to do. She seemed to like it with me well enough, so I wasn’t too worried about the honeymoon.

Lisa, that’s my wife, was pretty nervous. I tried to go slow and be gentle. Eventually we did the deed. She smiled at me afterward, so I thought things were OK.

We fell into a routine, and usually had sex on Sunday afternoon and Wednesday night. It was never that great, for either of us, I guess, but we were used to being ordinary, so we never expected more. Lisa never complained or had phony headaches, so I thought she liked doing it well enough.

The boss decided to retire and take his wife to live in Florida. Lisa and I worked out a buyout deal with her dad, and suddenly we had our own company.

Right about that time, the condom broke when we were having sex one Sunday afternoon. Lisa got pregnant, and we had a daughter that we named Monica. She was a cute baby. I guess I was more affectionate with my daughter than I was with my wife. Lisa always seemed jealous of the time I spent with our daughter.

Lisa got so she didn’t want me to touch her after Monica was born. I didn’t know what to do, but the sex had never been wonderful, so I didn’t miss it that much. Even though we rarely had sex, Lisa insisted I get a vasectomy so she couldn’t get pregnant again.

She did try to be a good wife, and about once a month she let me have sex with her, but duty sex is about as satisfying as doing it with an ugly blowup sex doll; and I felt like I was just jacking off in my wife’s pussy.

Next Lisa decided she needed to go to college. The business was doing fine, so we could afford it. She started at the community college, and after two years, she transferred to a real university. She graduated with a degree in Public Administration. I never did understand why she did that program instead of accounting, which she already knew, at the Bookkeeper level, so it wouldn’t have been that difficult to bring her skills up to the Accountant level, which we could use in our business.

After that Lisa got involved with local politicians, and then she started working for civic committees to get different ballot measures and bond issues approved by the voters.

When Monica was fourteen, Lisa got offered a job in New York, working for a well-known non-profit organization. They wanted her to travel to places where they were trying to get ballot measures approved. I guess Lisa was successful at getting voters to approve stuff here, and they wanted her to teach people in other places how to get things approved. It made me kind of embarrassed to find out Lisa was so good at her job. I’d kind of ignored her work, and acted like it was a hobby. I felt bad that I hadn’t paid attention. Of course that knife cuts both directions. Lisa never was interested in my work besides what the profits could buy. Now a trade isn’t that interesting to someone who doesn’t do that kind of work, so I never really blamed her, but it always felt like she ignored me.

We never had been crazy in love, so it didn’t bother me all that much that she wanted to leave. Monica didn’t seem sad to see her mom go either. I had started working in the office, doing purchasing, and managing our jobs so they got done right and on time. I figured I could start going on some trouble calls and see if I could get lucky again. I’m not the kind of guy who does well trying to pick up a girl at a bar. I was raised to think all prostitutes were diseased, dangerous, and not worth the risk.

The most important person in my life had always been my daughter Monica. After Lisa left Monica seemed more interested in spending time with me. At home, she spent a lot less time in her room. She’d sit with me and watch TV or movies I had on video. She always wanted to go with me when I did errands or went to the store. She even started being interested in what I was looking at when I wandered the aisles at Home Depot, looking for any new tools that would make work more efficient.