Chapter 1: One Naked Neighbor

John:

How many unmarried ladies closing in on forty would answer the door and not call the cops when she found a naked man standing there? You can take it to the bank this is how Julie got introduced to me. From our oddball introduction on to the present, everything about our relationship was strange and unusual, to say the least. The last thing I was looking for was romance or anything else that might disturb my dull and boring life. Back then, I thought dull and boring was great. No one could imagine how far out things got out of this world crazy after our first oddball meeting.

Hell, the way we met. That was was pretty funny by itself and kind of set the tone for how our relationship has gone ever since. No matter how you figure it things got real crazy. I didn't realize it at first, but the day Julie Roberts moved in next door to me was the best day of my life. No, I don't mean the famous movie star Julia Roberts who seems to be a real fine lady and all, from what I have heard of her. However I mean my Julie Roberts who is the finest of them all...

Okay, first about me, my name is John Strait. I am a mechanic and I have my own little garage. It's nothing fancy. I repair cars. My guys and I do good work and charge fair prices people can afford and make our few mistakes good at no charge. Strait Automotive Services is well known and respected all over our end of the state.

When all this started I had just begun to close in on my forty-fifth birthday and didn't like the idea even a little bit. Anything that causes me to slow down is the enemy and growing old slows people down the most. I like to fish and to hunt and get out in the woods by myself and enjoy just being an alive male who loves to use his body. There is something about making your muscles stretch and strain all the money and deep thoughts in the world can't even come a close second to. However I find, as I grow older, I can't do these things with the ease I once did, so I hate what the politically correct bastards call "the aging process." That calls up a mental image of a bunch of people standing in a line and a horse faced nurse walks down that line handing our "aging shots" with a big needle. Every day people get their aging shots with a big square needle and ... Well you get the idea. I got a screwy mind.

It all began on a Saturday morning. As usual, I sat in my apartment naked and watched television. I alternately watched the usual Saturday morning fare, CNN or ABC for comedy relief and feel good political correctness and Fox or News Max for a biased coverage of the conservative side of the news. All TV news groups are full of shit except the one you agree with. That's my observation, anyway.

I had the morning paper spread out all over the floor in front of me. This was the way I spent almost all my Saturdays and Sundays, naked, alone and not too miserable about the way things were. If there were any reason for me to be down at my garage, one of my guys would call me. They liked to run the place without me breathing down their necks and I liked my weekends off.

The ex and me got a mutually appreciated divorce ten years before and I moved in to my not too shabby apartment before the final decree had been granted. I sleep naked because I prefer it to getting choked up with pajamas. I don't like to sleep in my underwear all night, not after wearing it all day. I'm fussy, I guess. So, anyway, on Sundays I would just dangle and flop around the apartment, thankful I didn't have anybody nag at me to do otherwise.

If I farted while I watched the TV and the air got too bad, I would go to the kitchen for a beer and a wait for a minute for the air conditioner to do its job. I don't know about other guys, but this is how I lived after I split up with the one big mistake of my life. You know the old joke, "Question: How do you get a woman to stop wanting sex? Answer: Marry her." Then, there is the second part, "Question: How do you get her to start having sex again? Answer: Get a divorce." Now you know the story of my married life up to the divorce. The only thing was, when we married she didn't stop having sex, she just stopped having sex with me.

I married Rena Perkins right after we graduated from high school. On our first date she played hard to get and I got pissed and told her, "We screw or we go home, your choice." She screwed. After that, we had no arguments. Some times we went one way and some times we went the other for the two years until we graduated and got married.

Then I joined the US Navy and ended up in the seals. Rena stayed home and kept the cobwebs our of her plumbing by doing half the guys in town, as I found out some time later later, after the divorce. While serving God, my country and Corporate America, I went to far off places and had exciting adventures and came home with a ruptured ear drum that washed me out of the service.

Oh yes, I also brought home a pile of cash that I found in a terrorist training camp we took out in Afghanistan. We, the guys in my team and I, found the money when we ransacked the place, divided it up and forgot to report it. We made our pick up point, lugged the money along with us, in addition to a bunch of other intel and buried it deep in our lockers.

When we returned to San Diego we banked some of the money and stashed the rest in different places. Big old Chip Henderson bought a bait shop in Texas and settled down to the quiet life. Clete Hampton, our verifiable hillbilly marksman opened a taxi service in his home town and Billy Joe Johnson started a string of dojos that taught free style martial arts, mainly Krav Lev, as opposed to the formal bowing and scraping Oriental styles. Me? I went home, did not tell Rena about the "nest egg" I brought home and got a job as a mechanic.

From the time we got married sex became an occasional thing between us. Right after the "I do," she told me, "I don't want to do it all the time, it's nasty." What is it with some women?

So I asked her, "What about all the times we did it before we were married? Don't they count for anything?"

"No," she said, "We weren't married then." From then on we had sex only once in a while. I still liked it and I did my best to please her. I can honestly say I am very considerate that way and I never once tried to get off until after she did. However it was not the most fulfilling part of my life. So I pretty much devoted myself to my work and when the man I worked for retired, I bought the garage from him and never told Rena a thing about it.

We were married for five years when one day out of the blue she said to me, "I been messing around on you with someone else."

"Yeah," I told her, "I know." I didn't know, not really. But there had been something different for the past year about her and I had a hunch she had been shopping around. Looking back on the whole sad affair, what I remember most was I plain didn't care. You know, it is so sad when two people vow to love and honor and all that stuff, and one starts cheating while the other one just doesn't care enough to give a damn. Whenever I look back on the day she told me I feel a sadness because how futile it all was. But there are many other people in the same boat, so I know I'm not all all that unique. I think that is a very sad state of affairs too. But then, after Julie and me got together, I became aware of a whole lot of things I had never even thought of before.

Anyway, my soon to be ex started bawling because I didn't give a good god damn she was putting out for someone else and we got a divorce. When we met in the lawyer's office, she said, "John you don't know how cheap makes me feel."

I answered her, "I bet it's about half as cheap as you really are." She took the hint and didn't try to talk to me any more.

Then I moved into my apartment and eventually met Julie. Rena got the house and I got the shaft, like always. She moved the great love of her life in with her and he beat the hell out of her and ran off with everything not nailed down. I didn't even care enough to feel anything at all when she told me the news. I just wrote her a check for a thousand dollars and told her not to come back ever again for anything. I never saw her after that and I don't really care, not even a little bit, if I ever do.

I moved into my new apartment and slept naked and farted in the living room and drank beer at eight in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays and sometimes ate cold pizza instead of a regular breakfast. In other words, I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. I brought a woman home from time to time, but no one was ever all very special. Then I started to go home with them so I didn't have to stay around after the sex was over. There never were any commitments implied or otherwise. Of course, they all mostly got the idea I was not husband material and never went out with me again after the first time or second time. Rarely was there a third time for some reason. I really didn't care all that much. I guess you could call it sexual apathy.

Over the next five years the women got to be fewer and fewer because, let's face it, unless she's a whore screwing for money, the average woman who meets you in a bar and takes you home with her for the evening and has sex with you is pretty pathetic. The guy who goes through this lonely and sad bar room mating ritual is not very much of a winner either. Besides, with all these new designer diseases cropping up all the time, getting laid was a risky and dangerous business. I pretty much lost interest in the true love of bar room romances and tended to my growing business.

As was inevitable, when I began to pay more attention to business and less to getting a little, the business began to grow fast. Then I hired a mechanic to take up the slack and a high school kid followed soon after to do lubes and clean the place out every evening after school. Business got so good I finally had to hire another mechanic.

Even though it was a sort of lonely existence, it was not what you would call a real bad life. I took care of my little business, banked the money as it came in and gave my three employees generous Christmas bonuses and birthday checks and made do with my life.

I led the ideal life of the happy bachelor and was not too satisfied with the way things were. First I felt guilty because I had so much and was not grateful. Then I'll be god dammed if I wouldn't turn around and feel guilty because I felt guilty. I also went home alone all the time. This was the way things were until they changed one Saturday morning while I was naked and alone as usual. I was in the middle of an old Bogart movie when I heard a knock on my front door. I padded barefoot over to the door and opened it a crack and asked in a not too friendly voice, "Yeah, what do you want?"

It turned out he was a bill collector. There is another guy in town with the same name as me. He is a dead beat and every now and then I get called on to pay his bills. It's a real pain in the butt. Any way, this character came pushing in and I grabbed him by the shirt and started to shove him out. He grabbed at me and we ended up in a tangle. I stumbled forward and all at once we were both outside on the landing that led to my apartment and the one next door. Naked, I landed flat on top of him and he screamed, "Nooo!" His eyes got big as he looked up at me.

He started shoving at me and yelling "No! No! No!" as he tried to get away from my naked body and me. I finally shoved myself off him and drew back my fist. I intended hit him in the face as hard as I could. The guy was so scared he was hysterical. He looked once more at my face, down at my naked goodies and shoved and rolled away from me. Then he took off running back down the stairs as fast as he could. He got the idea I was very pissed off. Then just as I tried to go back inside my front door slammed shut. The damned thing closed with a bang as a gust of wind blew through the apartment.