Chapter 1

I guess it all started the first time the gang’s card party rotated to Zack’s after he met Dawn. Monday nights, we rotated the location among the four of us — Zack, Tom, Mort, and me — for a friendly game of either Spades or Pinochle, depending upon whose place we were using — the host got to pick the game. We were all bachelors — not necessarily by choice — so it was something to do when football wasn’t on and we’d screwed another weekend up ‘dear hunting’ without success. The occasional one-night-stand, executed on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night, didn’t interfere with this, as the girls were all gone by sometime Sunday, as a rule.

But Zack had hit the lottery or something three weeks before, so, as we trooped in with our beer and pretzels and whatever under our arms, we got to meet the new ‘girlfriend,’ Dawn.

Why am I putting quote marks around ‘girlfriend,’ you ask? Because that night, when Zack waved his hand at her and said, “Dawn, this is Greg — Greg, this is my girlfriend, Dawn,” it was the first time I’d ever hear him call her that. When Zack regaled us with his tales of their sexual antics and his incredible sexual prowess, she was, ‘My slut,’ or ‘My bitch,’ or ‘My cunt,’ or ‘My cum-dumpster,’ or any one of a dozen other appellations, none of them nice. Frankly, I expected a bottle-blonde with fourteen tattoos and at least eight piercings, straight from a trailer-park — and since ‘fat sow’ had been bandied about as a descriptive, I expected big dugs hanging braless and rolls. Dawn was brunette, thick enough to be curvy without being seriously porky, had a nice, big, soft-looking rack that I’m sure sagged a bit without support but was certainly all her and nothing ugly, and seemed generally intelligent and pleasant. She had this smooth flow to her, just enough padding and not too much, in my opinion, and that little turned up finger and toe thing you see in garden gnomes. Her nose had it, too, which made her just a wee bit hog-nosed, but, yeah, I’d do her — I decided THAT right there!

Of course, she was Zack’s, so doing her was unthinkable — but I was taken by surprise by her looks... “Um, Zack’s told us so much about you,” I stammered, while I held her long, soft fingers in mine and wondered whether Zack needed eyeglasses or what? I mean, her picture wasn’t going to have ‘swimsuit model’ as a caption, but it might have ‘MILF.’ I would for damned sure look at her in a bikini and drool ... Dazed and confused, I let go of her hand and shuffled toward the kitchen.

“Oh, no, let me take that!” she said in a soft contralto and smiled as she took my twelve-pack and swayed off to the kitchen with it. She wasn’t ‘working it,’ either - everything just seemed to move in some cycle. She was wearing a skirt, but I thought about how that ass would look in a pair of lounge pants...

“Damn, Zack!” I erupted, “From the way you talk about her, I expected something totally different!”

Zack looked at me blankly and said, “I told you she was a porker...”

I shut my mouth and staggered on into the living room, thinking, ‘Your standards sure differ from mine, buddy!’

There had never been a female present for one of our gatherings, so we started out a little hung-up, since one of the usual subjects of conversation was females and/or how we had or hadn’t done the weekend before in the war of the sexes. But Zack declared, “Go for it! Dawn doesn’t mind — do you, Dawn? So, Tom, did you put the meat to anything this weekend?” Eventually, a toned-down version of the events of the previous weekend surfaced — and it wasn’t that exciting, anyway, just a series of near-misses.

Dawn waited on all four of us hand and foot that night — and she was as sweet as she could be. Tom and I had a winning streak, and one of the house rules was that the winner had to drink a beer or a shot for every winning hand, thereby getting loose and sloppy so the losers could catch up, so by the time we were seriously close to closing out the second game, I was blotto and had to crash on Zack’s couch rather than drive home. Tom was undoubtedly legally drunk, but Dawn presented a similar issue for him to what she did for me so he braved the roads. I lay on the couch, drifting, for a while — one of those deals where you put one foot on the floor to keep the couch from tilting you onto it — then I had to get up and take a piss.

So I’m headed up the hallway — VERY CAREFULLY — hands on both walls, and I hear, “Okay, Baby, you’ve been waiting all night, so here it comes!” I stuck my head around the door just as Zack crawls between Dawn’s legs. From the way he did it, I had the distinct impression that there had been zero foreplay — he just crawled up and poked her pussy and started to pump!

Dawn went, “Oof!” — but almost instantly followed it with, “Yes! Yes!” and started caressing him and urging him on.

I stood there watching the whole thing; that probably sounds bad, but if it lasted thirty seconds, I would be surprised! I think it was more like twenty! Zack pumped a VERY few times while Dawn cheered him on and I watched her little toes curl, and then he went, “YAAAHHH! TAKE IT!” Then he flopped forward and went boneless while Dawn purred and cooed and told him how wonderful he was ... I shook my head and made my way on down to the bathroom, where I had to sit to piss or I’d probably have fallen into the toilet and drowned. After that, I had to pass the bedroom again on the way back; Dawn was awake and saw me and I pretended that I didn’t see her, even though Zack was draped over the juicy parts, snoring. I got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and re-hydrated myself, then used it to chase down three ibuprofens so I could get a jump on the hangover, and fell back on the couch.

... And I was STILL sicker than a dog Tuesday! Zack messed with me unmercifully, but Dawn brought me more pain pills and a Virgin Mary and acted like she was an ER nurse and I had come in with something terrible. I wanted to insert myself under her short robe and let her cushion my pounding head between those sweet titties so bad! Fortunately, I could only look at her with one eye at a time, so it wasn’t obvious at all...

Zack kicked Dawn out before dragging me to work against my feeble protests — and you’d have thought he was putting the dog out! “Go on, git!” he ordered, pushing her out the door. “I’ll call you in a couple of days.” It was pretty rude, in my humble opinion. Of course, what he did to me wasn’t much better. I thought I was going to die all day at work.

The next time I saw Dawn was in the grocery store about two weeks later. We picked up each other in the soda aisle and she came right over, smiling her winning smile and said, “Hi Greg!” She ended up ‘helping me shop’ — wandering up and down the aisles with me and prattling on about how wonderful Zack was and I tried to hold up my end, thinking all the while about how he talked about her like she was a collection of holes he led around on a leash. Now, I’ll be honest with you — Dawn wasn’t the brightest bulb in the circuit, but she was AWFUL sweet — it kind of just gushed out all over you, you know? She wasn’t an idiot, either, but she was apparently pretty naive.

I felt like a bum. The whole thing started preying on me. Dawn was in love and Zack was using her as a cum-dumpster and calling her names behind her back and generally treating her like shit — and she had no clue ... I kept remembering that night and the look on her face while she got her joy just from being with Zack while he got his jollies and to Hell with her...

So for the next three months or so, basically the same thing went on — meaning that Zack would come to work bragging about his sexual exploits and talking about Dawn like she was something he’d picked up at the zoo and was going to take on Jerry Springer and embarrass on national television before he dumped her, and we would go to his place once a month and she would be there, looking nice and waiting on everyone hand and foot, happy as a clam. She had a lot of fashion sense, and dressed very nicely — not putting it out there like the slut Zack insisted she was, but wearing the kind of stuff that puts on a nice display without being gauche — she could have gone to work in the outfits I saw her in for card night, while we would stagger in wearing holey jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirts or whatever.

I didn’t stay over for the next three months — I didn’t want to be exposed to a repeat of that night. Dawn and I would run into each other about once a month in the grocery store, usually on Wednesdays, and she was always just so sweet ... Zack was my friend, but I hated his guts at those times, because I had to support his sorry ass and not hit on his woman, knowing full well what a shit he was.

Mort DID take to hitting on her at parties — and given what Zack said about her at work, I couldn’t blame him, even though I knew better. One Monday in March, I pulled him aside and called him on it, “Man, that’s Zack’s woman...”

“He doesn’t give a shit,” Mort replied. “I think he wants her to hook up so he can kick her out. I’m kind of surprised that he hasn’t lent her out...”

I shook my head. “Do you REALLY think she’s the way he says she is? Did you ever think that she might put up with his shit because she loves him?”

“She’d have to be a fucking idiot,” was Mort’s response — and he went right back to embarrassing her with his come-ons. And Zack didn’t say a damned thing. I didn’t press, because there is only so far you can go without the appearance of poaching, and I couldn’t do that to Zack.

There came a Monday, though, when I had taken the week off from work — and Zack encouraged me to let go and live on the wild side. “Hey, you haven’t crashed at my place for months! Is old Hog-face making you nervous? I’ll tie her to the bedpost — how’s that?” He cackled and Mort grinned and Tom rolled his eyes. Eventually, Zack made it a matter of principle, so I planned on it, knowing that he wanted me lit so he and Mort could win at Spades, because Tom and I made a team that they couldn’t beat without alcohol-induced mistakes.

So we played — and I soaked up a prodigious amount of alcohol, and Dawn was concerned that I’d poison myself, but Zack just laughed. Tom pulled me aside and asked what was up, and I told him, “Last time I was here, I accidentally managed to watch Super Stud fuck — and he’s a regular rabbit, man, but she puts up with it because she’s hooked on him. I don’t want to be awake this time, because it bothers the shit out of me how he treats her.”

Tom grunted. “Yeah. She’s pretty sweet and he’s an asshole when it comes to her, for some reason. I’m surprised he hasn’t offered somebody a piece.”

“He isn’t doing anything about Mort — except maybe egging him on,” I observed.

Tom shrugged. “I don’t mind losing — I just wanted to know why. That’s a pretty good reason.”

We didn’t lose, though, despite the fact that I nearly had to be carried from the table to the couch. Dawn put sheets on it and everything, and the last thing I saw was her leaning over me, saying, “Now, Greg, if you need anything, just yell...” I remember grinning stupidly up at her and talking to her cleavage while I mumbled “Okay.”

I didn’t see them, but I was lying there, half-awake, thinking about getting up to piss, and I heard them. I put my watch up to my face and watched the sweep second hand — thirty-seven seconds! That’s it! Hell, I couldn’t get a nut in thirty-seven seconds if I tried, and Dawn didn’t, for DAMNED sure! But Zack did — and he was asleep right after. I waited with my bladder screaming at me until he started snoring, then staggered up to piss. I wasn’t as quiet as the first time, and I sneaked a look on the way back, and Dawn was lying there with Zack on top of her, playing with his hair fondly while he snored. I think she knew I was there, but she didn’t look up. Something about it just infuriated me, and it took me an hour to get to sleep.

The next morning, Zack shook me roughly, saying “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!” I opened one bloodshot eye and used it to eye Zack as he stuffed things into his laptop case. “Kick old Buffalo-Butt out the door before you lock up,” he directed. “I don’t want her putting down roots.”

“Damn, Man!” I croaked, “How come you got to be so nasty to her? She’s your woman...”

Zack gave me a look. “She’s a fuck, Man. The only people who think she’s my woman are her and you, apparently. I’m outta here.” He headed for the door — and when he did, he unmasked Dawn, who was standing in the kitchen door looking startled with a tray carrying a Virgin Mary and some pills for me in her hands. Zack never saw her.

The door closed and we eyed one another. Finally, she came forward and put the tray down, murmuring, “He didn’t mean that — he’s just showing off.”

I shook my head, saddened. “Oh, he meant it all right. You should HEAR the shit he says about you at work! That wasn’t even a patch on it!” With shaking hands, I dispensed four ibuprofens and sucked them down with a bottle of water.

“Really?” Dawn looked crestfallen.