The joint had a hard packed dirt floor. No shit, real dirt!! And its inhabitants were eyeing me like a herd of nervous wildebeest - albeit a tad less intelligently. Still, the deer on the wall was the piece-de-resistance.

Deer heads aren’t rare in Wisconsin. I mean seriously! Besides the MMA, deer hunting might be our state sport. Nevertheless, this place was like the East Village of rustic avant-garde. Other bars put-up the antlers. This one had mounted the hindquarters. There was even an unlit cigarette stuck in the butthole. It was a truly awesome piece of redneck visual art.

I was sitting in that honky-tonk with a pitcher of Miller Lite and Skipper McPhee. Skipper was my girlfriend. Well actually ... that wasn’t precisely true. Skipper was a friend of sorts. But she’d put girlhood in the rearview mirror at least twenty years previously.

Skipper lived in the trailer park across the road, and she was divorced like I was. Except her divorce had been recent, which was no doubt why she’d been trying to fuck me into submission. Of course, you can never tell what motivates women.

I knew Skipper when she was married, and I could never understand what her husband saw in her. My post-divorce experience answered THAT question. She had big soft tits and fantastic long legs on a slim, hard body. She was passionate, physical, and up for anything. Plus, she would serve it up piping hot in twenty minutes, or less. It was like dialing Domino’s pizza.

Skipper’s face was the only part of her that wasn’t sheer perfection. The diplomatic term is “plain” but a more accurate one might be “equine.” She was also sort-of dumb, which didn’t get in her way carnally. But it limited the discussion afterward to the weighty matters she’d seen on TMZ.

Any divorced guy over the age of forty knows my life. You’ve got deep-seated habits and a job. So, you’re solitary but never achingly, crushingly despairingly lonely. You have places to go and people to hang with. You just don’t have the intimacy of a good marriage – not that I knew what THAT felt like.

Still, if you’re reasonably presentable and don’t have too many blatantly gay traits, post-divorce dating is a garden of earthly delight. The age-appropriate women are ALL starting to feel the bloom coming off the rose and the ones who haven’t written men off permanently are desperate to couple up.

Their problem is that males my age suffer from delusions of grandeur about twenty-something hotties, and it was their short-sighted youth obsession that gave me my pick of eager low-milage, one owner beauties, all with well-honed erotic skills. In fact, I was getting more first-class pussy at age forty-five than I had at any time prior to - and definitely during - my marriage.

The ironic part was that I was no great catch. I’m fairly presentable, and when you’re single you always have too much time on your hands. So, you stay in shape. But my job was my Achilles heel.

High achievers hit the ground running. They kick ass. They take names. People like me stay in school ... forever. I like to think that it was because of my love of learning. But that would be a lie. It was because I’d decided early-on that the best way to take my life off with-pay was to get into college teaching.

I mean seriously ... your employers expect you to show up for class. But that’s seven and a half hours a week, nine months a year. My old man put in more time than that volunteering AFTER he retired.

You DO have to write and publish. But that was no challenge for a guy as full of bullshit as me. And after you make tenure, the only way you can lose your job is if you’re discovered doing unspeakable things to livestock. But there’s always a catch to a deal that sweet.

Unless you’re at one of the big universities or teach in one of the professional schools you make the same base salary as a pipefitter. However, unlike those guys there’s no such thing as overtime.

I was in grad school when I met Lucy and I’m pretty sure she was thinking “tech billionaire,” not middle-class drone. She was never the same after the reality of my mediocre earning potential sank in.

Arrogant and oblivious are a bad combination. But that was me. I’d been vaguely aware that my wife wasn’t happy. Yet, I was naive enough to think that MY behavior didn’t have anything to do with it. Small children are like that. They’re always in the moment. They don’t think about what their actions, or the actions of others imply in the great scheme of things.

Well, I started thinking about it A LOT after she presented me with the papers. Ironically that was on our tenth wedding anniversary. I believe diamonds are the appropriate gift, not paper. And here I was five years later, sitting in a bar in the wilds of Wisconsin with Skipper McPhee and a pitcher of beer.

I should have been clued in by the fact that Lucy was on a date when I met her. She had the popular hippie-chick look back then, long silky blond hair, tall and flat chested with a fantastic ass and legs. Better yet, she clearly fancied me. So, we ignored her date and talked most of the night.

The very next day, I pounded on her door and proposed a picnic. She came out in a pair of white shorts that showcased her perfect buns and her long, well-muscled legs. I sprang something inappropriate, and we were a couple from that day forward.

We lived in a little apartment off the Madison campus, and from the beginning it was more like roomies with benefits. I was pretty selfish back then, and she dutifully went with the program. But it was obviously a chore for her. I don’t think she even knew what an orgasm felt like. In fact, I sometimes wondered whether she batted for the other team.

That was our life for the next ten years. I didn’t have a problem with humdrum sex because like a lot of immature nerds, I couldn’t tell the difference between what I was getting and the real deal. The mere fact that I was getting anything AT ALL was good enough for me. But there were warning signs from the start.

Both of us were young enough that the party scene of our teen years simply carried over into our day-to-day lives. Thus, it wasn’t odd that we were drinking at different places on a Friday.

Lucy was a secretary for one of the departments in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Which, of course, had plenty of students our age. But these were prospective MDs not nerds. She had told me that she was with a bunch of the med students at the Kollege Klub, which was right next to the library. So, I finished up and zipped down Langdon Street to Lake.

When I arrived, I found a couple of her clerical friends and the usual collection of students but no Lucy. I asked Phyllis, Lucy’s best pal, where my wife was. She said off-handedly, “Oh, she and Douchebag One and Douchebag Two were at Douchebag One’s apartment smoking weed. My wife might not like sex. But she loved cannabis.

I was acquainted with both douchebags. They were condescending pricks, being med students and all. But frankly the obvious never crossed my mind. So, I just settled in to bend an elbow at the Klub. Lucy was already home when I stumbled back three hours later.

She said mildly perturbed, “Where the fuck were you!!?” I said, “With your buddies at the Klub. They told me that you went off to do some grass with Jon and Will.” She said, “Oh!! And abruptly dropped the subject.”

Some of you might think I was pathetically clueless in my earlier incarnation. But that’s hindsight. You have to realize that I thought that my wife was whatever the opposite of a sensual woman was, at least to me. And second, I was such a pretentious tool that I couldn’t imagine any female wanting to stray from a stallion like moi!

Hence, time and life passed, and I picked up a teaching job at Marquette where I was mildly successful. I was also doing a little consulting and things settled into a comfortable middle-class rut. We had a house and neighbors, who we partied with. All-in-all it was a spectacularly dull existence - work ... party ... sober-up ... repeat ... You know what they say, “If you aren’t the lead dog the scenery never changes.”

Zach Oldendorf, or as the rest of us guys liked to refer to him “Olden-dork,” was a member of the group. Zach was an alpha male – at least in his own mind. He was a talented entrepreneur and he had built up a successful parts supply business. He was slim, handsome and with a salesman’s capacity for charm. But in any social group he was a loud-mouthed, arrogant asshole, and that was on his good days.

My dilemma was that he looked enough like me that people mistook us for brothers. He was slightly taller. So, he’d refer to me as his “little” brother. Of course, that trashed me. But that was Zach’s goal. The boy was always pushing boundaries.

The boundary that he pushed the furthest was with the wives. He was all hands and inappropriate comments when he was with a group of women. He was such a macho poser that the men would laughingly say, “That’s just Zach being Zach,” and the women avoided him like the plague. At least that’s what we all thought.

Zach was like a cat. You know what I mean ... Cats can sense that you don’t like them, so they just have to rub themselves all over you. That was the way Zach was with me. I was trying to avoid the shithead at one party by hanging out with Lucy’s group, which was only slightly less excruciating than listening to assface brag about himself.

The girls covered all the usual topics, their ailments, the fashion faux pauses of absent members and the inadequacies of their husbands. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I gestured that I was going outside. Lucy didn’t even look up as she launched into her latest exposé of the horrors of living on my meager salary - which was one of her favorite topics.

Zach was as pretentious as Nero when it came to flaunting his possessions. Thus, his back yard would’ve given the Garden of Versailles a run for its money. The weather was hot and muggy, and the chirping of crickets and the whirring of the katydids reminded me of happier summers in the Dells.

Then, I heard a soft sound from the direction of an ornamental gazebo. The gazebo itself was round and perhaps eight feet in diameter with a lot of ivy trained up its intricate wrought-iron sides. It provided some privacy. But the moon was nearly full, and you could easily see the two figures inside, sitting next to each other on a wide decorative bench.

It was curiosity, not perviness that caused me to walk over. But standing in the dark I could see Olden-dork fingering Bob Cooper’s wife, Jill. She had one hand over her mouth trying to hold down her ecstatic moans while she was jacking Zach’s impressive tool with the other. I should have turned and fled. But I was frozen to the spot out of sheer disbelief.

Jill was in a frenzy. She said in a guttural whisper, “fuck me” and in one smooth motion, Zach laid her down on the bench, climbed between her widely spread legs and inserted tab A into slot B. There was machine gun snorting, like a sprinter starting a race, and then the cawing “have mercy” cry of a woman having an intense orgasm.

That sound broke the spell and I fled silently into the darkness. Of course, by that point the two of them wouldn’t have noticed my presence if I’d been leading the Badger marching band in a mass rendition of seventy-six trombones.

The thing that shocked me the most was that Jill Cooper was your basic Milwaukee housewife, a mousy little thing, slightly chubby with huge tits and stumpy legs. Nonetheless, judging from the racket going on behind me, Zach must’ve found hidden depths to plumb. And of course, THAT made me wonder whether he had done the same thing with any of the other wives in the group.

So, I confronted him the next day. He actually had the balls to laugh and tell me that he got a special kick out of back-dooring the other husbands. Zach’s wife was by far the hottest woman on the street. So, this kink wasn’t due to any lack of attention at home.

I said angrily, “That’s godawful thing to do!!”

He laughed derisively and said, “Every one of those dumb cunts is just looking to get fucked.” Hmmm, maybe the Neanderthals hadn’t died out after all.

I said incredulous, “You mean you’ve done this with other guy’s wives?”

He laughed heartily and said, “I’ve done MOST of them.” Then he started fumbling for his wallet, “Want to see pictures?”

OH MY GOD NO!! It might have been egotistical boasting – like it normally was. But then again, what were those women thinking if it wasn’t!!?

I said, with my stomach churning, “Lucy wasn’t one of your conquests?”

He gave me a sneer and said, “Not yet.”

I said threateningly, “You’d better keep it that way if you want to stay healthy.” He just laughed. I couldn’t look Jill Cooper in the eye from that day forward.

I told Lucy that I wanted her to stay away from shithead. I couldn’t tell her why. Otherwise, I would have had to explain Zach’s little hobby, and I hadn’t decided what to do about THAT yet.

I knew that justice was required. But the means of obtaining it was something that I wanted to weigh carefully. Keeping my mouth shut would make me complicit. But I also knew that spreading the word too precipitously would destroy more than a few families.

Lucy said indignantly, “You don’t have to act so jealous, just because Zach’s more successful than you are.” That had been her attitude for some time. It didn’t hurt as much as it did at first.

I added, “ ... And we aren’t going to any more parties either.”

Well, that was like telling my wife that I was forbidding her to breath. She said angrily, “I’m not going to let your paranoid delusions spoil things for me. If you don’t want to hang around with our friends, then just go be a hermit. But I’m going to live my life and be happy.”

Hence, the following Saturday night she came flouncing downstairs in her standard party outfit, tight shorts, and a sleeveless top. I was reading a Dan Brown novel with the Brewers game in the background. She gave me a defiant stare and said, “I’ll be back by eleven o’clock and marched out the door.”

I was still reading when she arrived back at 10:45. She said casually, “I had fun and I’m no worse for wear.” I glanced up. She was standing there looking at me appraisingly.

She turned quickly and said, ‘I gotta take a shower. Are you coming to bed?”

I said, “I’ll be up in a minute, just gotta find out whether they eventually get to the Grail.” She was sawing logs when I slid under the covers.

I got lucky that morning, which was something of a rarity. Normally Lucy’s off fixing breakfast. I awoke to the feeling of a hand snaking down my stomach. She began to lightly stroke my favorite appendage and it sprang to attention like it was on titanium springs.

Lucy didn’t have much more than sippy cups with long sensitive nipples. In fact, they’re so sensitive that she wouldn’t normally let me touch them. But today she was rubbing them all over my chest, gasping with the sensation as she brought me to full mast.

I stretched, the way you do when you wake up and as I did so, she threw one beautifully muscled thigh over my hips and mounted me. I immediately slid into a vat of boiling lava. It was so unlike Lucy that I actually checked to see if she might have been replaced in the night by a succubus.

Lucy threw her head back, braced her hands on my chest and began to gallop at breakneck speeds. Her hips were almost a blur as she worked herself into a frenzy of moaning. Then suddenly, she grunted and went rigid, her mouth was wide open staring at the ceiling. She shrieked a couple of times and then she collapsed on my chest, panting. It was almost like she’d experienced an orgasm.

The whole thing lasted perhaps four minutes. During that time, I was more bewildered than engaged and I hadn’t come close to finishing. I was planning to roll her onto her back as soon as she caught her breath. But the instant she recovered she disengaged, saying frantically, “I have to pee.”

I just lay there shocked, contemplating her incredible round ass as it disappeared in the distance. There was an obstacle blocking my view. So, my next task was to knock that skyscraper down. I cleaned up and went downstairs to fix breakfast. I felt so used.

Lucy was perfectly normal when she appeared again. It was like whoever had been inhabiting her body had checked out. I waited for her to say something. But she just tucked into her granola and yogurt.

I said, “Not complaining, but what brought that on?”

She looked up and said perfectly blasé, “You didn’t like it?”

I was in a rock and a hard place. My wife hadn’t been that enthusiastic in the entire time I’d known her. So, I was pretty sure that this morning was inspired by something other than renewed passion for our marriage. But I couldn’t ask her what HAD motivated her. At least not yet. I needed more information.

Then it hit me, she was giving me a benediction!! I even had an idea why. But at that point it was just a suspicion. So, to buy time I said, “You’re kidding, right?”

The concept of true love has been kicked around for a few millennia and nobody can really define it. The best anybody can do is to tell you that you’ll know it when you experience it. But that’s a bait and switch because you’ll have to feel it to know it? Which leads me to the notion of marriage.

Alone is not a natural human state. Which is probably the reason why young people sign up for a lifetime commitment based on minimal experience and very little actual knowledge of each other. The decision might be motivated by what they think of as “love.” But it’s more likely just unbridled lust combined with peer pressure. Whatever the reason, it rarely involves a long-term plan.

That was our situation. Lucy was handy when my timer went off, and it seemed like the thing to do. Lucy knew what career I was preparing for, but she married me anyhow. Maybe she thought she could change me. If so, she chose unwisely.

Hence, it was evident throughout our time together that I wasn’t fulfilling Lucy’s hazy expectations and she eventually deemed that sufficient grounds for divorce. Of course, I had my own suspicions and those would have definitely put me on the moral high ground. But I never had time to prove it.

I came back from class that Monday, to discover her sitting at the dinner table with two glasses of wine and a big manilla envelope. She said matter of fact, “We need to talk.” Yikes!! The four little words that, when combined with the three at the front, bookend a broken marriage.”

Some of you might’ve experienced heartsickness, or anger, or gone through some sort of profound emotional trauma. I don’t know what species of weirdo I might be. But my only reaction was relief. She’d pulled the trigger first. So, the onus was on her.

Hence, it was with some satisfaction that I sat down opposite her and said, “I agree. All I want is as little blood shed as possible.”

When you have no kids and you are living week-to-week on two roughly comparable salaries, divorce is a reasonably painless process. Accordingly, for the low-low-price of twelve hundred bucks the two of us more-or-less shook hands and went our separate ways.

And coincidentally ... shortly thereafter Bob Cooper, who had started for the Badgers on the defensive line all four years at Wisconsin, beat the absolute living shit out of Zach Oldendork. You might speculate that I had something to do with that ... I couldn’t possibly comment.

Lucy married Douchebag Two MD and was divorced three years later. It was ironic really. Apparently, her husband had a problem with fidelity. Isn’t karma a bitch? I sent her a note of commiseration – Hell yeah!! I just LOVE sarcasm!!

But truthfully, I could have cared less about the woman. I knew I’d never loved her. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I liked her. That’s a hell of a thing to discover when you’ve wasted ten years on somebody.

Did the cratering of my marriage cause me to doubt myself? Fuck no!! I felt absolutely nothing, which might be the most telling reaction of all. I was probably subconsciously aware that marrying the woman was a mistake and any sensible person would just move on. The problem was that I didn’t have the imagination or guts to do what needed to be done ... at least, until she forced my hand.

Books, movies, and TV all push the hopelessly romantic notion that we deserve happiness. But the truth is life’s random. We ricochet off each other like so many cosmic billiard balls and satisfaction is just a scratch-off ticket in a karmic lottery. In Lucy’s case I was neither lucky, nor wise. But I DID have a fresh start and I was only forty.

That was what led me to that particular honkytonk in the wilds of Wisconsin.

Skipper had stumbled on her husband porking his secretary. As a result, her marriage had ended with a bang not a whimper. And predictably, financial Armageddon followed. So, the best Skipper could do was a trailer park in Paul Bunyan country. She fit in better out there anyhow.

We’d gotten together when I stopped by to express my condolences while she was moving out of her recently repossessed house. That led to the discovery – right there on the floor of her empty living room - that Skipper had hidden talents. She was an absolute beast and by the fifth-year post-divorce I was living proof that practice makes perfect. We both enjoyed the experience immensely.

I was astounded by Skipper’s body. I’d always thought of her as the skinny lady next door. But a naked Skipper was long limbed and lithe. I knew that she had a fine little ass in the tight jeans she lived in. But I had no idea that she was keeping a huge pair of wonderfully shaped titties under the cheap blouses that are de rigueur for lower middle-class women.

More importantly, absolutely nothing was off the table with Skipper. So, we spent an exhausting but highly productive Saturday afternoon getting to know each other - notwithstanding the serious rug burns. Afterward, we both lay on our backs panting. Then she flopped over, mashed one of her pillow tits on my chest, kissed me hard and said, “Let’s go get some dinner and we can do it again.”

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I had known a lot of women by that point. But I never knew one with a finer body, or a more fervent approach to sex. There were no kinks or tricks with Skipper, just power-fucking in any odd place - cars, restaurants, even a golf course there was nowhere off limits. All I had to do was ask.

I was pretty sure Skipper thought she was lining me up as husband number two and she might have had a shot, her body and sexual skills were superb. But like I said, she wasn’t that bright, and she told me far too many stories.

I mean, what would you think when a woman you’re with tells you that she met some guy at a party, and he wanted to take her to Miami for the weekend? STDs weren’t such an issue back then and Skipper had her advantages. But the thought never crossed my mind that she was anything but entertainment.

Most nights she would drive in to my place. But she was in retail sales, and she had been on her feet all day. I was feeling the need. So, I drove out to her trailer park and took her to the joint across the road. I mean, I’m a classy gent. I didn’t want to make it look like too blatant a booty call.

I had to admit that the place had decent bar burgers and the beer was cheap. Still, while I was sitting there admiring the sheer tackiness of mounted deer haunches, I was waiting for one of the locals to mosey over and ask me, “You ain’t from around these parts, are you stranger?”

Skipper was full of herself. She said, “My friend from the Truck Stop,” that was a novel name for a cheap diner, “Just got a divorce and I want you to fix her up with one of your friends.”

I thought, “Great, another slut’s on the market.” But I knew better than to say that out loud. So instead, I said, “I can probably find somebody. What’s she like?”

Skipper said, “She’s a little younger than we are but she’s really nice and very artistic.”

I don’t know how women think. So, I wasn’t sure whether Skipper was INTENTIONALLY using guy code to tell me that her friend was an ogre. But I DID know that I had just the right person for her.

I worked with a fellow who must have spent his entire childhood stuffed in a locker. His name was Marvin Finkbine, and he was a nebbish. Professionally, he was so far into the theoretical that he rarely made appearances in the real world. Socially, his only aim was to be as incomprehensible as possible. But he was from a rich Jewish family, and I thought he’d be a perfect match.

Hence, we arranged to double-date to a Beach Boys concert. Of course, by that stage in their career they should have been styling themselves as the Beach Geezers - but I digress. Anyhow, Marvin was the guy with the money, so I let him buy the tickets.

Marvin and I lived in the city, and the girls lived in the sticks. So, we arranged to meet them at a park-and-ride outside town and then drive them to the venue. Marvin and I drove separate, and the two girls came in Skipper’s friend’s car. Skipper planned to spend the night with me. Her ugly friend was going to drive her skanky ass back home by herself.

Marvin and I arrived at the appointed hour and of course the girls were late. So, we whiled away the time standing outside our cars. We didn’t talk. Marvin just stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring up at the darkening sky - probably searching for his home planet.

Then, I saw a battered F-150 swing onto the rest stop apron. That had to be them. I was dying to meet the poor little troll. Marvin was going to be her first post-divorce date. I almost felt sorry for her.

Maybe I’m self-centered. Or maybe I’m just an immature nerd. Whatever the reason, I’d laughed at the fools who are held hostage by women. Women make you vulnerable and I was too smart for that. Hell, I’d even skated on a first marriage. Which was probably the reason why the fates chose that particular point in time to teach me a brutal lesson about hubris.

The F-150 pulled to a stop, a woman got out, and all of my adolescent prattling about life and love blew up in my face. Like every cynic, I’d scorned the notion of love at first sight. I mean – it’s absurd, right? Nobody just sees another person and forms an instant deep-seated attraction. But there, was no denying what my heart already knew. This was the woman for me!!

Her thick auburn hair framed a face of lush beauty. She had high cheekbones, huge hazel eyes, and a wide full mouth. She was dressed in nothing revealing, a cheap woman’s coat with an oxford shirt and jeans. But I could see that she had a body to die for – round hips, tiny waist and did I mention her tits?!! I like big boobs and this woman was in an elite class rarely seen outside the pages of Playboy.

My first reaction was a pang of intense longing, followed shortly thereafter by a thunderbolt of agony as I realized that I had just fixed up the love of my life with Marvin fucking Finkbine!! The feeling of jealousy was so intense that it almost buckled my knees.

Skipper, of course, was totally oblivious to the firestorm raging in my heart. So, she sashayed up, and gave me a possessive hug and kiss, which almost got her shoved. She said, “I want to introduce Billie Starnes. Billie, this is my soon-to-be fiancé.”

Fiancé ... Where did THAT come from??!! I glanced at Billie, who was looking nervous as hell, eyes darting back and forth between me and Marvin. For his part, Marvin looked like a hunting dog, practically standing on point.

I wanted to drop to one knee and propose marriage. But I wasn’t QUITE that nuts. So, I summoned every ounce of strength and said in an astonishingly calm voice, “Happy to meet you, Billie. Skipper has told me a lot about you.” I didn’t add that most of it was misrepresentation.

Billie said, in a very sensual contra-alto voice, “Skipper has been bragging about her new man for weeks and I was looking forward to meeting you too.”

Really??!! Seriously??! Bragging about her new man!!?? Isn’t THAT interesting??!! I felt like somebody’d dropped one of those cartoon safes on my head. Even the woman’s voice gave me a stiffy.

At that point Marvin pushed himself forward. I didn’t blame him. I regrouped enough to say in a slightly choked voice, “This is Marvin. He’s your date for tonight.”

The way I said it might have implied, “For tonight and tonight only,” because all three of them looked at me funny. This was definitely not my finest hour.

I was still trying to get my balance back. So, I said maybe a bit too brightly, “Well ... don’t want to miss the show so we’d better get going.” They all looked at me again. Was I being that transparent?!!

I drove a Mustang. Of COURSE, I drove a Mustang, and Marvin drove a Corolla, which was actually a little sporty for his image. I knew the best way to the venue, so they followed me.

I could see them sitting together in the front seat chatting amiably. In fact, I spent so much time watching them in the rearview mirror that I nearly got us killed. Skipper was filling the car with her usual inane chatter, which usually never bothered me. But tonight, was like fingernails on a blackboard.