June was giggling on the phone in the next room. 'She must be talking to Betty, ' I thought.

Betty is my wife's best friend. They make a rather odd pair, actually; in many ways they are about as unlike each other as you could imagine. My June is quiet, almost mousy, while Betty is outgoing and loud. June is a number of years on the far side of fifty (she won't let me say how many), and Betty is probably about the same number of years in front of that milestone (though that's just a guess on my part). But June has taken very good care of herself, while Betty has let herself go.

To put it politely, Betty is more than a bit plump. No, I take that back. I'm going to tell it like it is here. Betty is grossly overweight. She has huge rolls of fat that bounce up and down as she waddles across a room. I swear her waist line must be at least 80 inches. June's waistline has swelled a bit over the years, but at 29 inches it still sets off her large (36-D) breasts very nicely. Betty's breasts, such as they are, are hardly detectable among all the other fatty bulges on her body.

Their husbands (that's Tom and me) are also quite a contrast. I've worked at a desk all my life, while Tom has worked outdoors with his hands. That difference in lifestyles is reflected in our bodies. My pale skin is wrapped around a body that weighs more than twice June's 135 pounds, while it's a safe guess that Tom's tanned muscular frame weighs less than half his wife's. I try to tell myself I'm not really fat, and it's true that I'm much trimmer than someone like Betty, but I have to admit my waistline is an unseemly 50 inches. Tom's is probably somewhere around 32 inches.

But back to that phone conversation...

I usually don't pay much attention to June's phone calls, but it was nice to hear her laugh, and I was curious as to what might have tickled her so much. I didn't find out, though, because at that point her voice turned more serious.

"You mean to say he just sat there? After you explained nicely what you needed?"

...

"Bob's the same way. Maybe all men are like that. Or did we just pick the wrong ones?"

...

"Well, yes, once in a while Bob does a few things, too, but usually only at his mother's house. He hasn't really done anything around here for years."

...

"OK, OK, you're right. I agree, he did a great job on our deck, but that was two years ago. Betty, do you know that he started rebuilding our back fence last fall? That was, what, nine months ago, and he still hasn't finished it!"

...

"Yeah, I think you're right, that's the only way it'll ever get finished. What was that ad I saw a while back? 'Rent a husband, ' I think it was. Maybe that's what I need."

...

"Betty! Shame on you! I didn't mean that way. 'Rent a husband' was just a handyman that would do all the things around the house that your husband should do, but never seems to get around to."

...

"That's crazy! I don't know about Tom, but do you think Bob would work any harder at your house than he does here?"

...

"Well, yes, you've got a point. They do both seem to get things done at someone else's house. I guess maybe we could try it and see if it works." June giggled again. "I know, we could call it 'Swap a husband.'"

Me and my dirty mind. That was enough to push me off into my own fantasies, and I have no idea what they said after that. True, I don't consider Betty a bit attractive, with all that blubber, but hell, I hadn't had any sex for ages, and even Betty would be better than nothing.

I guess I should explain. When I say "no sex for ages" I mean literally not for several years. It seems that June finds my weight even more repulsive than I find Betty's. She usually won't even let me touch her, let alone get intimate. And I'm not talking about intimate touches, either. If I try to reach out and touch her arm, she'll cringe and move away.

So, you ask, why haven't I gone somewhere else to get some nookie? To tell you the truth, I ask myself that question all the time, and I don't know the answer. Call it an overdose of commitment, or maybe a fear that anybody else I turned to would be as repelled as June is, or maybe I'm just afraid of hurting June. Whatever the reason is, I've been faithful all this time, unless you count the nearly daily fantasies I have as I get myself off.

I've fantasized about nearly every woman I know, and now, much to my surprise, I found myself starting to fantasize about Betty. Hell, with her weight it's a good bet that Tom finds her very repulsive. It could very well be that they're not getting any more sex together than June and I are. And while Tom may be going elsewhere, Betty would probably have at least as much trouble as I would in finding an extramarital partner.

So in my fantasy she is dying to have sex with someone, anyone. She's so horny that if we were to be alone together at her house she would be climbing all over me and ripping my clothes off! What man could resist a fantasy like that?

It took June a couple of days to work up the courage to mention their scheme to me. Naturally, she had no idea that I had overheard their conversation, so I tried to look puzzled and then incredulous.

I finally shrugged and said, "Whatever."

It's a good thing she couldn't read my mind, or sense the tension in my belly, not to mention other parts of my anatomy.

After some calls between the two friends, interspersed with checks back with their husbands, it was finally all arranged. I would drive over to Betty's house at 10 AM a week from Saturday, and at the same time Tom would drive over to our house. We'd stay until 3. The only pay we'd get would be lunch and the knowledge that our own honey-do lists would be shorter when we got home.

June was quite adamant on that "only" point. "No fringe benefits," she said, glaring at me.

Finally the day arrived, and I drove over to see what Betty had planned for me. No, she didn't rip my clothes off. Instead she started in the kitchen with a cabinet door that was sticking, and another that wouldn't stay closed. Then there was a window that was hard to lock, and several windows that needed washing.

You may remember that I hinted earlier that I weigh well over 250 pounds. When I add that I'm only 5' 7" and remind you that I have a very sedentary job, you can appreciate that by this time I was pooped, and my legs and feet were killing me. I kept going as long as I could, but then told Betty I needed a break.

She allowed as how it was about lunch time, anyway, and suggested that I lie down on the sofa while she fixed me a sandwich. I told her that at the moment all I wanted was a big glass of water and a chance to put my feet up.

She went for the water and I went for the sofa, and when she brought the glass she found me flat on my back with my shoes kicked off and my feet up on the sofa's arm rest.

"I hope you don't mind," I said.

"No," she giggled. (She giggles a lot; I guess that's why June ends up giggling when they talk on the phone.) "I sometimes get mad at Tom when he does that, but he never takes his shoes off first."

"Oh, no, I didn't think. Do my socks stink?"

"No, no, I'm glad you took your shoes off. With Tom I'm always wondering what he may have stepped on, and imagining that it's going to end up on the sofa."

After a pause she added, "You know, June is always putting you down, but I'm getting the feeling that you're really ... what's the word I'm looking for? ... thoughtful, that's what."

I sat up so I could drink the water, and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Do you wanna know the truth? I really feel like I have to walk on eggshells all the time around her. It's like I spend half my time trying not to make her mad at me."

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, her hand going to her mouth. "That's exactly the way I feel with Tom."

She watched while I drank the whole glass of water, then said a bit tentatively, "Bob ... I know how you must feel when you spend a lot of time on your feet, because ... I know how standing makes me feel. And I also realize you've done a lot of work this morning. Would you ... I mean, I could, you know, like, rub your feet a bit, if you'd like that."

"I'd love it," I sighed.

I lay back down with my head at the right end of the sofa, then pulled my knees up so she could sit where my legs had been. I dropped my calves onto her ample lap, and she began stroking and squeezing one leg.

"Ooh! My muscle's so tight. Push my pants leg up so you can work on it better. Ouch! No, don't stop. It hurts a bit, but it hurts so good. You know what I mean? Yes! Like that."

She spent several minutes on each of my calf muscles, then slipped my socks off and started working on my feet. It was fantastic! After five minutes of that I felt like a new man.

"Betty, you were on your feet almost as much as I was this morning. Wouldn't you like me to return the favor?"

"Would you? Oh, yes, I'd love to have you do it!"

I sat up, and Betty kicked her slippers off, pivoted around, and dropped her feet in my lap. She sighed with satisfaction as she lay back and was enveloped by the soft sofa cushions.

I started with the ball of her left foot and the tendons leading to her toes; then gradually worked my way back to her arch and her heel.

When I started massaging her Achilles tendon she groaned and said, "Oh yeah! I needed that!"

I applied some real pressure there, which kept her moaning and asking for more. I finally decided it was time to repeat the process with the other foot, and she was equally appreciative of my efforts there.

Next I started squeezing one of her puffy swollen ankles with each hand. That quickly had her writhing and moaning in pleasure/pain. She was wearing a calf-length house dress, but by now her gyrations had shifted the hem up to her knees, giving me plenty of room to work without appearing to invade her privacy. So I slipped my hands around her shins and started kneading the bottom end of her calf muscles.

"Oh, god, YES!!" she screamed, and kept on with a mixture of whimpers and quiet screams as I tried to work the knots out of her hot, tight, muscles.

"Oh, please," she begged, "do what you're doing to the rest of my calf!"

So I kept moving my hands farther up. By now she had pulled her knees up and spread them a bit, so I could look right up inside her dress. But I first looked at her face to see if she was watching me. Nope, she had her eyes squeezed tight shut and her mouth open as she panted and squeaked and moaned. So I chanced a quick peek to satisfy my curiosity. Not much to see, actually. Her thighs were so heavily larded that even with her knees apart I couldn't see anywhere close to where her panties presumably were.

That should have been a real turnoff, but the combination of her moans and the fantasies I'd been having about her conspired to give me a prominent bulge in my pants that extended from my lap to my belly button. They also conspired to move my hands, without me even willing it, up to the backs of her knees.

That popped her eyes open, dropped her knees, and caused her to try to smooth her dress back down where it belonged.

"I think that's enough of that," she said.

"Though," she added after a pause, "you could give me a little back rub if you really wanted to."

"Sure," I said, wriggling out from under her feet, and moving down to a kneeling position on the floor in front of the sofa. "Just roll over."

That turned out to be a much harder job than you would suspect, due to the amount of blubber that had to be repositioned and the relatively narrow space available for maneuvering, since at the same time she had to avoid falling off the sofa and squashing me. But at last there she was, with her huge ass pushed high in the air by that monstrous accretion of fat around her belly.

I decided to start with her shoulders, and maybe in time work my way up that ski slope toward her ass. As I started stroking and prodding and squeezing the muscles around her neck and above her shoulder blades, her moans (muffled now by her face poked deep into the sofa cushion) told me she was enjoying this as much as she had the action at the other end.

I tried hard not to overplay my hand this time. I worked my way very slowly down (or should I say up?) her back, massaging every inch thoroughly. But every inch I successfully navigated seemed to raise my sexual tension a bit higher and make my hard-on a bit harder.

About the time I got to the small of her back, or at least where the "small" should have been, she picked up her head and turned her face toward me. I glanced away from my work area and saw her eyes widen. It suddenly hit me -- she was staring directly at my crotch. I think I turned as red as a beet, but I'm not sure, because she wasn't looking at my face, and I sure as hell wasn't looking at my face either.

I froze. My hands stopped moving; my eyes were locked on her face. She froze too, with her mouth slightly open and her eyes like saucers, apparently unable to turn her gaze away from that terribly prominent bulge in my pants. Neither of us said a word for a very long time.

Finally, in a strangled voice, she croaked, "There's a sash tied at the back of my dress. Untie it."

She was wearing one of those wraparound dresses. Very practical, I suppose, for someone whose huge waistline probably varied quite significantly over time. I forced my hands to the bow, and pulled. Nothing much happened immediately, but then she heaved her back up, and the overlapping material across her back started to fall away.

"Now," she said with a bit of a quaver in her voice, "you can give me a real back rub. Let me feel your fingers instead of all that cloth scraping against me."

The dress had pulled away enough to expose a deep vee of skin, pointing away from her neck. I started there, and gradually worked my way towards her now partly exposed bra strap. As I progressed I pushed the material of her dress away in front of me, gradually widening and deepening the vee.

Just as my fingers were approaching the bra strap, and I was starting to think about jumping over it to continue my journey of exploration, she said, "Stop, Bob."

My heart sank. I figured this was the end of the line.

But then she said, "In the bathroom, above the toilet, there's some lotion on the counter. Get it and bring it here."

I jumped to comply, my heart fluttering.

When I got back she was still lying in the same position, but there was one obvious change. Her dress was now pulled apart so far that I could almost see where the top of her panties should be, but that wasn't the obvious part. What I noticed immediately was what I didn't see -- her entire back was bared, with no sign of the bra strap.

"Get some of that lotion on your hands and start rubbing it into me," she ordered.

My thought exactly. I started where I had left off, rubbing lotion into the skin where her bra strap had been. At first I kept both hands moving in little circles close to her backbone, but I gradually made the circles larger and moved them out, until my hands slipped under the dress material and around the curve of her rib cage. Still her eyes kept staring at my pants. I was so horny by now that my cock was jerking in its cloth prison, and still she watched.

I slid my hands around farther, searching for her breasts, but she said, "No, don't."

So I brought them back up, applied some more lotion, and began working my way farther down her spine. I kept pushing her dress out of the way as I went, until I reached the point where the two sashes that wrapped around her were sewn to the main part of the dress. Did I dare? I tugged gently on one sash, and it slipped out from under her. I tossed it aside, and began tugging on the other. It too was soon freed and discarded. At that point her dress fell away to both sides, and she was naked except for a huge pair of white panties.

As I was debating my next step, she croaked, "Put some lotion on my legs.

I began working at her knees, slathering the backs of them, and then the lower part of the backs of her thighs, with lotion.

"Oh, YES!" she moaned, and pulled her knees apart a ways.

I moved my hands to the upper part of her thighs, and started spreading the lotion there.

"YES! YES!" she grunted, and the knees spread several inches farther apart.

I slid my lotion-slimed hands down the outsides of her thighs. She responded by spreading her knees as far apart as possible and pulling them up under her.

Then she demanded, "I want lotion ALL over my legs."

I got the point, and started working my way up her left thigh, with my left hand covering the outside and part of the front, while my right hand explored her inner thigh.

"Ah! Ah! OHH! OHH! AHH! AHH!" Her ass was bucking in time with her exclamations.

Meanwhile my hands kept moving higher and higher up her thigh. My right hand was encountering some resistance now, from the flab of her right thigh pressed against that of her left, despite her spread knees. But still I kept squirming my hand higher and higher, and the bucking and noise became more and more violent.

Finally my thumbs reached the edge of her panties, and the side of my finger touched her steaming crotch. I nearly jerked it away. The sensation was like dipping it into very hot water. I had never known any woman to be so hot or so wet.

But my reaction was nothing compared with hers. She let out a primal scream that I'm sure all the neighbors heard, and started jerking all over. I could actually feel her pussy lips pulsing through the fabric of her panties. I stopped moving my hands and just held my finger against her pussy while she screamed and jerked.

She finally calmed down, and I started planning my next step, which was going to be to worm my finger inside her panties. But before I had a chance to put my plan into action, she suddenly pushed herself up into a sitting position, sitting on her haunches with her back to me. That forced my finger up to her ass, which I promptly started stroking with my whole hand.

"Oh my god, what have I done?"

Her hand reached behind her to try to pull her dress into a more modest position and push my hand away from her panties.

"Oh, Bob, I'm so ashamed of myself."

So that was that. There obviously wasn't going to be any more fun today. I pushed myself away and got to my feet.

"Excuse me a minute," I mumbled, starting to walk away. "I need to go to the bathroom."

I closed the door, unzipped myself, and started pumping as I headed for the toilet. I barely got the lid up before I was squirting like crazy.

'Oh, shit, ' I thought, 'I got it all over the toilet seat.'

I cleaned up the mess as best I could with toilet paper and hoped she wouldn't notice. Then I waited while my pecker slowly went down so I could pee. I knew if I didn't I'd be leaking so badly that I'd soon have a large and very obvious wet spot in the front of my pants.

She was in the kitchen by the time I came out. Her dress was properly fastened again, and she was making me a sandwich.

"Do you like ham, and what kind of cheese would you like with it, if any?"

I came over close to see what she was doing. The smell from her sex was quite noticeable, but I tried to concentrate on the sandwich.

'White bread, ' I thought, 'I never eat that, but I won't complain.'

"Yeah, ham is great. What kind of cheese do you have?"

"Velveta," (yuck!) "or Monterey Jack."

"I'll take Jack."

I wasn't sure how long we'd spent on the sofa, but my stomach was definitely telling me it was time to eat. By the time she put the sandwich, piled high with ham and cheese and produce, in front of me I no longer cared about the white bread. She had an even thicker one for herself, that included at least half a dozen slices of Velveta. She also had a huge portion of potato salad for each of us. She obviously had a giant appetite, and realized that I probably did too. She offered me a beer, but we ended up with two tall glasses of milk.

As she turned to take the dishes to the sink, I finally snuck a look at my watch. It was nearly two o'clock.

"So what else do you have on your list for me to do today?"

"There's a picnic table in the back yard, and its legs are loose. Would you mind?"

"No problem," I assured her.

Rather than just nailing it, I drilled holes and cinched it up with screws. That took longer, but I had the job done and the tools put away a bit before three.

"Betty, can we talk for a minute before I leave?"

She flushed, but said, "Yes, I guess we should."

"I'm going to ask you a question."

I had this all planned out. I'd been putting the words together while I worked on the picnic table.

"This is a very personal question, but I don't want you to answer it right now. The question is, how long has it been since the last time you and Tom made love? Don't answer that, but I'll tell you how long it's been for June and me. It's been eight long years.

"I'm telling you this, and asking, because I know both of us are having some strange feelings about what happened a while ago. But if it's also been a long time for you, as I suspect it may have been, then we really shouldn't blame ourselves so much. I mean, the desires have just been building and building inside of us, whether we realized it or not.

"And another thing. From the way you reacted today, I'm going to guess that if it has been a long time for you, then you aren't the one that called a halt to sex with Tom. And I know that I'm not the one that called a halt to sex with June. So if I'm right, and if you think about it, what we were doing wasn't really cheating at all. Because we weren't cheating them out of anything they wanted.

"So don't say anything right now. Just think about what I've said. And I hope we'll see each other again sometime."

With that I walked out of the door, climbed into my car, and drove home.

I started wondering, on the way home, if Tom and June might have had an interlude like Betty's and mine on the sofa. June is pretty prudish, so it wasn't likely. On the other hand, however, they are both very attractive, and both have rather unattractive spouses, and they did just spend five hours together by themselves in the privacy of our home, so who knows? I decided to keep an eye out for any clues.

There was no unfamiliar car in the driveway or in front of our house when I drove up, so I assumed Tom and I must have crossed paths going home.

I opened the door with a cheery, "Hi, hon, I'm home," but got no response.

I found her in the kitchen washing dishes. I felt like sneaking up behind her and giving her a hug, but I had learned in recent years to suppress such urges. Any time I tried that kind of thing she would just twist away with an accusatory, "What are you doing?"