Chapter 1

I've been married for the last five years to my one and only girlfriend, the proverbial girl next door. We'd both known each other since we were in middle school and with that amount of familiarity we both should have known exactly what we were getting in each other. Perhaps it would have been better if we had both dated other people back in high school or even college, but we didn't. We were both each other's first and only sexual partners, as far as I know, and sometimes this causes some minor issues.

Carla is adventurous, a 'type-A' go-getter who was determined to rise to the top of her career ladder at her company in record time. Instead, allegedly due to the weak economy, her company just recently laid her off ... but kept the other six people in her department with less seniority that weren't any direct threat to her boss. She loves to argue and just has to be 'right' and win every debate no matter how petty. Her boss at work finally got tired of her attitude but I don't think she understood the message and instead she took her layoff extremely personally. Now she's stuck at home and drawing unemployment and hates every minute of it.

As for myself, I'm usually the quiet mouse, both at home and at work, and I'm absolutely no threat whatsoever to take over my boss's position ... and I like it that way. The pay isn't great, but the ability to loaf off while at work for at least six hours a day more than makes up for it. I'm usually very happy with the status quo ... both at work and at home, and sometimes that's a disappointment to Carla, to say the least. She likes to start fights just to keep the relationship 'interesting' and she gets increasingly mad when I won't play. I only argue with her over things I consider to be important, or if she's pushed me too far, but even with right on my side I hardly ever win a fight with her. When she starts to lose, she either takes it personally and escalates our argument to heights I don't want to follow, or else she unilaterally declares herself to be the winner and changes the subject, or else gives me the silent treatment ... as if the entire fight had been my fault in the first place! When it comes to arguments or disagreements, she has a very selective and edited memory of the facts.

One of the areas of our life that my wife would especially like to spice up is our sex life. Now don't get me wrong, I love sex ... but Carla would be happier if there was more of it – and it was more exotic and kinkier ... way kinkier. She's always the one that asks about putting in a DVD porn movie to watch in the evening, if she's in the mood to get frisky. Usually because watching it together quickly turns into other more vigorous activities!

Over the years I've learned that almost nothing gets her hotter than watching two women kiss, undress each other and make nasty dripping wet love! She's hinted on several occasions that she wouldn't mind experimenting with a threesome – if the added partner is a woman. Once a few months ago at a night club she became very friendly with another single gal and together they danced most of the night together and even kissed quite a bit while rubbing their barely covered breasts all over each other. Like an idiot, I told Carla 'no' that I wasn't in the mood, so her friend didn't come home with us that evening ... and Carla gave me the silent treatment for most of the next week.

Yeah, I was an idiot. I ought to have said 'hell yeah baby!' and at least watched the fun, even if I wasn't really in the mood for weird and wild love. We'd been fighting a bit lately that prior week and I was still a bit stung by a few sharp critical comments she'd made to me earlier in the car that evening, so I was feeling crabby and in the mood to get back at her somehow. It was very petty revenge, but at the moment I sort of enjoyed it. Since Carla lost her job, we haven't had any spare money for drinks out, let alone clubbing, so the opportunity for a retry hasn't been right. That and we're fighting worse than ever right now hasn't improved the mood much either!

Carla's corporate job in lower management had paid nearly double what I make, but then again she was allegedly worth it, having a degree in business, while mine was just in Sociology. A stupid thing to get a degree in, but it was easy for me and it didn't require any study all. Like most Humanities BA degrees, it's also useless for doing anything other than working fast food – a fact that Carla's been reminding me of nearly non-stop for years. She made her point years ago and now the entire subject has just been flogged dead as far as I'm concerned. I think the main reason that I continue to keep my crappy job now just because it deliberately annoys her ... and I actually like it enough to be happy to go into work in the morning. You can't say that about most jobs!

Fortunately, I'm good with computers and have l33t programming skills so I don't have to work fast food – thank goodness! I'm a senior support analyst for an auto parts company, working in the tech support office for their franchise supply software division. All of our stores are franchise operations, privately owned and operated, but they're required to buy only our parts, ordered online via our inventory software system. The system, coded nearly 99% by my boss John, usually works like a charm and we have very few problems, all mostly handled by our three normal customer service support techs. Sometimes there will be a problem that gets escalated up to me, or John himself, but not often; at most a couple of times a week. This leaves me with too much time on my hands to either read a book, surf the internet, or play an on-line computer game for endless hours. My boss doesn't care – I'm just there so that he has a reasonably capable backup available in the case of an emergency so that he can take an occasional sick day or some vacation time.

This leaves me with way too much time on my hands, usually. Sure I could job hunt for a better paying job (that wouldn't be hard) but then I'd also probably have to work harder... much harder. I'm a slacker at heart, so I'm fine with where I am. I've got seniority over all of the other support techs and there is decent job security because our department is a profit center for the company, safe from all fits of downsizing or layoffs. I just show up to work, keep my head down and things stay fat, dumb and happy ... and I like it that way!

While things were fine at work, Carla was becoming increasingly unhappy at home. As I was now finding out, it just takes one person who is unhappy to upset the entire marital applecart.

Before Carla was laid off, we had been living in a pretty nice rental home and regularly saving up money to make a future down payment on a mortgage. Now, just keeping up with the rent would take my entire salary check so we very drudgingly moved down to a much smaller place that wasn't much bigger than our old living room. It was in a dumpy neighborhood, but the price was right. The way the economy was, we didn't have much hope of Carla lucking into another job even half so good. She was being very picky over jobs she'd even apply for and I had the impression that her interviews hadn't gone well. She probably was showing off her 'I know it all!' attitude to her new potential bosses, which never goes over well at a first encounter. She also swears that her old boss was bad-mouthing her reference-checks, which is illegal, but of course we couldn't prove it. Now Carla was a stay-at-home housewife, and she hated every single minute of it! Every night I was now returning home to an increasingly angry and annoyed wife, mad at the world and everyone in it ... especially me!

It was fast getting to the point that we were fighting with each other worse than ever, and if one of us was talking the other was certain to be not listening.

Our new house was technically really an old 1930's single family residence that a previous owner during the 1980's decided to renovate into a pair of small duplexes. Did I mention small? Yeah. He put a brick wall right down the middle of the house and knocked out walls and renovated until the floor layout only looked oddly peculiar, rather than farking bizarre. The bedroom wasn't too bad, and our side of the house had the original kitchen layout but it suffered a smaller living room instead. No formal dining room at all; there was just no place left for it, so it was sort-of merged into the living room. This makes things very casual for dining and sometimes really messy, like when Carla has put in a porno flick for mealtime viewing.

The backyard was small and tiny, even before the subdivision and the owners didn't bother to run the brick wall across the yard. As it was, our half of the concrete patio was just big enough for our BBQ grill and a couple of container plants. My 250 gallon big black plastic outdoor fish pond ended up taking the rest of our side of the dirt covered back yard. Well at least it fit.

Our neighbors, a pair of young ladies in their early to mid twenties, were mostly as quiet as mice and after a brief 'hello' introduction right when we were moving in, I didn't see either of them again for over a month, except in passing on the driveway that we shared. The brick wall in-between us was a pretty good sound insulator, except in the bedroom. Late at night I could pretty regularly hear the sounds of lesbian sex on the other side, especially since at least one of the two girls was very definitely a screamer. I couldn't tell which one, but since (as I mentioned earlier) I tend to have too much time on my hands, I got curious and decided to find out for sure, but I was already pretty positive that it would be the blonde, Dora.

Dora hadn't quite won nature's lottery, but she'd hit four of the five numbers dead on. She was tall even without heels on and had long legs that went up forever, with perky curly blond hair that just touched her shoulders, perfect cheekbones and a voice that could melt butter. Her tits were a bit small, as were her hips, but maybe these points were just not to my personal taste. It's a shame that she missed receiving even an ounce of brains and she talked incessantly about nothing. Still, someone out there would score her at a full ten points. She worked from home doing something that I couldn't quite figure out, but that it involved computers.

From what I could safely and innocently overhear, Dora had more gripes than any beautiful woman ought to have, mostly concerning that her roommate and partner Paula actually had a life of her own outside of the duplex, which Dora only rarely ever left.

Paula wasn't a classical beauty, but to my eyes she had something special. She was shorter than her girlfriend and with a rounder face and more feminine body that hinted she'd gain at least five pounds a year as she aged unless she constantly dieted. The thin librarian glasses were an excellent style touch for her and her quiet and slightly husky voice was guaranteed to get a nerdy guy like me smoldering. Brains she had in plenty, when she wasn't at school or work or having hot wet lesbian sex she was usually nose into a book, and she quickly developed the habit of sitting and reading in a lawn chair in our backyard on Sunday mornings next to my fish pond, watching the goldfish, the purple water lilies, and the dragonflies that hovered nearby, usually perching on the umbrella palm plants, waiting for other insect prey lured to the waters.

In about a dozen talks with Paula I don't think I learned a dozen facts about either of our neighbors combined. She was fairly shy around me and spoke in sentences of just a few words, even to direct questions. She and Dora were close, but 'not committed', she did say once. She was attending classes at a local culinary academy in the morning and then had an internship at a fairly famous upscale restaurant that filled the rest of her afternoons and evenings, often until late. The internship paid a very small stipend, just about equal to minimum wage considering the long hours she worked, but she said repeatedly that she was lucky and grateful to have it. She would graduate from the academy in another three months and expected to have several decent job offers immediately afterwards. Good luck to her!

I asked Dora once about her internet business, and if she could use Carla once in awhile for part-time help and she just hysterically laughed. I'm still not sure if that was a yes or a no.

Anyway, with Dora and Carla both at home alone during the weekdays, it was no surprise that they would both start to get together during the day, for tea and coffee, snacks and feminine conversation. No big deal, or so I thought at the time. Honestly I didn't even think twice about it ... until Carla asked me while in bed one night if she could have my permission to have an affair ... with Dora!

Well, I give her points for at least asking first!

"Look!" Carla grumbled, and a little louder than I would have preferred. The bedroom part of the brick wall was definitely not completely soundproof. "It's not like I'm wanting to screw around with another man, or even have a threesome without you there! I'd even offer to let you watch, but Dora really isn't into men at all and doesn't want even you ... or any man in her house. She's already insanely jealous enough that Paula works around men all day long ... and much too late into the night."

"That's the part that makes my ears twitch." I replied. "She's the jealous one all right, but yet she propositioned you ... isn't that her now cheating on her own partner, doing herself what she's always accusing her lover of doing? That's more than a bit two-faced!" It was hypocritical. In my past experience, when some was being hyper-suspicious about their partner having an affair, that just usually meant nine times out of ten that they were just reflecting guilt away from their own extra-marital escapades.

"Well, maybe..." Carla hemmed and hawed, "but that's her responsibility to inform her own partner, and I've done my part by asking you. So is it a yes or no?"

"Well that depends, my darling and faithful wife ... so how far have you two already gone? Well past the holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes over the coffee table, I suppose."

Carla averted my eyes, a very good sign that she was trying to come up with some innocent and comforting lies. I poked her in her hip to prod her to answer.

"Alright ... we've kissed a bit, groped each others tits and we've masturbated in front of each other – but she hasn't eaten me out ... yet!" The 'yet' part was in a much softer voice and more than hinted that this would just be a matter of time, my consent given or not.

"Look!" She continued, in a rather cross tone of voice. "You know that I've had a fantasy about doing it with another woman for a long time, years even, ever since high school. You even promised me awhile back that I'd get another chance ... and Dora is better, and safer, than just picking up some strange girl in a bar! You should be appreciative!" I wasn't. In fact, I was beginning to get righteously annoyed!

"We're married, that's supposed to mean that we're only supposed to have sex with each other ... or if both of us agree otherwise – and we're both together. If you feel that you need to have flings by yourself in private, then maybe the idea of being married is cramping your action. Let me know, and we can correct this problem. Does this mean that I get to have a solo fling with our department secretary at work or pick up a girl alone in a bar as well? What's good for the goose has to be good for the gander as well!"

"Of course not! That's a completely different thing and you know it!" Sure, I completely understood the rules now – she gets the right to have a fling and have sex outside of marriage, but I don't!

I could tell I was already on the losing end of this argument. To my wife's mind, if I said no again now, that would mean never ... and I'd be allegedly breaking my word to her. Granted I had no memory of technically ever actually and formally agreeing to allow her to find a threesome for us to have sex together with, but probably she had construed one of my earlier vaguer statements as an agreement. Still, that agreement was for another woman in a threesome, together – not solo lesbian sex!

I tried to explain the logical fallacy between these acts to her and that just continued to lose me points until I ended up shouting at her to just do whatever the hell she wanted ... because she would anyway, and I left the bedroom to sleep on the couch.

"So ... was that a 'yes' or a 'no'?" Carla gruffly asked me the next morning just as I left for work.