Note: The first part of this story is a true event which I experienced in the circumstances described. Some of the rest is a fantasy that I indulged over the years.

At the time of my tale, I was married, forty-four, with a four-year-old son. I was a blind programmer working on a database conversion. This was the late 80’s. My PC was a compatible, turbo XT, running DOS 2.0, a few years before the first Windows OS started making computer work a real challenge. An internal speech synthesizer and software allowed me to “read” the PC’s screen memory, making my desk-top a “talking terminal”.

The job was on a six month Canada Employment contract, the government subsidizing my salary, providing the new PC and adaptive technology, along with paying for a qualified instructor. The contract involved learning about and building a VAX database, sometimes, along with commuting, requiring a twelve hour day...

What made life difficult was my wife. She was obese, repressed, and inhibited by the memories of her first husband, along with her intermediate affair with a married man. Her first husband was a physiotherapist. Unfortunately, his wandering hands created problems. After being terminated by an American hospital, they moved back to Canada where he opened an in-home clinic. When my wife’s thirteen-year-old daughter caught him fucking a patient in his basement office. The bubble burst. Divorce, health complications, travel. She met me on Vancouver Island while visiting her children.

My problem was the fallout. I’d been seduced, believing the woman loved me. Within a few months, I got married, but to damaged goods, as is often the case. The sex produced a baby in the second year of marriage, locking me in to the relationship.

My work was intense. Since I was blind, everything was new to me. Though I’d been to university in the 70’s, working with a talking PC was a novelty-a dream come true. The regional government DEC Micro-VAX system slowed down between eleven and two pm, saturated with engineering tasks. So, during those times when access was all but impossible, I worked on rewriting a science fiction novel I’d first completed on a Commodore 64. As a result, I was gone from our Burnaby apartment from six in the morning until six at night. Then, my wife’s depression drove her to leave, taking our son on the ferry to Vancouver Island. She was gone for two weeks, then I learned she had gone four-wheeling with some older guy. I was shocked, then hurt, and finally, livid, finding it hard to believe she could be so indiscrete, even if she kept insisting that nothing improper happened. Subsequent outbreaks of herpes on her vulva folds gave the lie to that.

One afternoon, as I tested the programming, my supervisor, Elaine, came into the small inside office I’d been given. I heard the door shut, not giving that a thought.

Elaine pulled up another swivel chair, leaning in close behind me, looking over my shoulder at the computer monitor. At first, I thought she was checking my work and how far I’d progressed in reformatting old files I’d transferred into the new database. After a minute, she moved, shifting forward, crossing her legs, pressing one against mine. Right away, I could tell she was wearing a long skirt. Even totally blind, it wasn’t a difficult deduction.

Her long skirt kept swishing, that leg brushing against mine over and over. For a the first few seconds, I was certain it was innocent and accidental, but then my concentration fractured. Her leg kept swinging in a slow rhythm, her dress material swishing, the pressure of her brushing contact becoming definite.

Soon, there was no doubt in my mind that Elaine was being flirtatious, her closeness deliberately provocative. My groin stirred, and in moments, I was getting an erection. More, I could feel blood rushing hot to my ears.

That was when she leaned forward, asking if I could increase the width of a particular data column. I was in a short-sleeved shirt. The touch of material followed by the pressure of a breast against my bare left arm was almost paralyzing. My mind blanked. I couldn’t recall how to change the display format in the way she requested. Immediately, I felt my cheeks flaming.

We had been working on the data base conversion project for months, and almost every day I’d come into Elaine’s office to consult on formats or show her test printouts. Often, we chatted, exchanging social niceties. At first, she quizzed me about my blindness and learned I’d gone to university but never graduated, that I’d been married for seven years and had a little boy. While she extracted details of my accident and past, I also learned a lot about her.

Elaine was from the States and had a college degree. She was divorced, six years younger, well-off, and living with a corporate lawyer old enough to be her father. She was sweet and friendly, and whenever she guided me around the complex of offices, I could tell she was fairly petite and trim. The back of my hand trapped close by her arm gave a wealth of tactical data about the shape and size of her right breast.

To my surprise, I learned that she was legally blind, though able to read text, and wearing contacts with glasses gave her enough sight to drive a car. Though we came from different worlds in various ways, I suppose we had that one factor of visual impairment in common.