You hear a lot about how kids these days are staying at home, they can't get jobs, lazy-ass bums. Well, mine weren't like that. My kids were born when I was pretty young, and by the time I hit my forties they were out of the house. I don't want to dwell on it but I lost my wife before we got to twenty-five and I raised four kids on my own. I got a great job and a fifteen-year mortgage and so there I was, forty-two years old with an empty house, paid-for. The job had a deal where if you stayed twenty-five years you got the full package, and I had a few years left, so I didn't want to move out yet.
The house is a split-level with five bedrooms, if you can believe that. I converted the basement for two of them, and there are three upstairs. I have always believed in having a "lived-in" house, not a showroom, but I did quite a bit of work on it. I've got a family room in the back, carpeted with the entertainment center and some exercise equipment and a little bar, the living room is on the middle level, there is a library near the front of the house, ground level.
At this age I am not really excited about the idea of spending money going out to meet women. I love women, but the whole dating game is crazy. Everybody is on their best behavior, trying to impress each other, and the sexual thing is awkward as fuck. They don't want to be slutty and you don't want to be a perv or, these days, a predator, so you start slow and eventually decelerate until there is no fire left at all and nobody gets what they really want. Not my style. Unfortunately the scripts that society provides us by default all steer a relationship away from passion and toward marriage, which I am definitely not interested in.
I don't even remember how I got the idea but it instantly made sense. Here I am with a big house in the suburbs, a good job, and no lovin'. I had no desire for the commitment of a relationship, but like I say I love women, and I don't mean just sexually, I mean I like them as people. I love the conversation, the joking, the challenge, and warmth of a pretty smile. So, I thought, what if I had a woman move in with me? Not as a lover, though I would hope it would be sexual, a woman to move in and share the house and fuck me now and then. She would be getting a deal, free rent, and I would have some companionship and a little pussy now and then.
I had to think it through. For instance, I could advertise for a maid or live-in cleaning lady, and somehow make it clear I was expecting more, but ... I didn't want a cleaning-lady. I wanted a woman, a smart, sexy, grown-up woman, my equal. I didn't want a whore, either, a woman who considered sex a professional service. What did I want?
I sat down at the computer and tried some wording, and came up with this: "ISO Uninhibited woman 20-35 to share house rent-free. References, please."
I decided on the reference thing so I could check on them and so I wouldn't get somebody who would come in and steal my shit and disappear.
I left that on the screen for a while and thought about it. It kind of sounded like a fantasy but hey, I'm single, I'm self-sufficient, I can't see anything wrong with it. But as I considered it I realized I had just cracked open the lid of this Pandora's box and peeked in. Was this what I really wanted, a woman to live in the house with me?
Actually, no, if I let my mind go a little bit, I realized, I actually did not want to solicit some random person to be my roommate and live-in lover. I have five bedrooms. One for me, and four for...
I changed one letter: "ISO Uninhibited women 20-35 to share house rent-free. References, please."
I slept on it, and next day posted it on Craigslist.
Man, I did not anticipate the response I got. Within three hours I had received more than forty email replies. A lot were stupid, women who wanted to have sex for money mainly but also some that were simply inappropriate. I narrowed it down to about ten and crafted personalized replies to them.
One wrote: "I am 25 y/o and college grad working as intern. Can't pay rent. Quiet, a reader, and yes uninhibited. Merrie."
My reply would set the foundation for a relationship and I wanted it to be right. Not lecherous but I needed to make it clear that sex was part of the deal. "Hi Merrie. I am a single man, 42, with a big house. I would like to share my life with happy loving women. Please send details and references. Mike."
Merrie wrote back within the hour. "Hi Mike. I am interested but need to be careful. Are you expecting to have sex with these "uninhibited women?" And is any woman living there now?"
My reply: "Yes, I want this to be a sexual thing, and more. I am not looking for a wife or even a lover but want some joy and love in my house. This is not a personal commitment on your part, though I would not want you to bring men here."
Merrie replied with a smiley face and some names of three people who lived in the city. I did not call them. My reply: "When can you come for an interview?"
Her reply: "Tomorrow is good."
Now, I am telling you about Merrie but at the same time I had eight other women responding. Dolly was a thirty-year-old divorcee; Debby was twenty-two and sounded immature to me; Wendy was twenty-six and worked in an office ... and so on. Some sounded better than others and I prioritized my replies.
The next day, Wednesday, I took an "alternative schedule" day off to meet with Merrie. I found I was actually a little nervous. I have never been a "wild and crazy guy," I am stable, normal, boring even. I knew that I could interview someone and then decide to blow the whole thing off, but still it was a very strange feeling to have someone coming over to apply for the job of live-in fuckmate.
At two o'clock, as planned, a slightly older Toyota pulled into my driveway and parked, and Merrie got out. She looked so young. She wore blue jeans and a kind of peasant blouse and sandals. Her hair was blondish, hanging to her shoulders. Not a lot of makeup. She looked like a college girl... as I recall them.
I opened the door before she knocked.
"Oh," she said, looking surprised, her fist poised to tap the wood.
"You are Merrie?"
"Yes, and you are Mike, I take it?"
"Come in."
I offered her some iced tea and she accepted. I could see her eyeballing the house, looking it over for clues that I am a crazed axe-murderer-slash-sex-fiend, and also evaluating whether she could live here. I keep the place pretty neat. There are shoes in the corner and a newspaper on the couch, a couple of dishes in the sink but you know, it's lived-in. We sat in the overstuffed chairs in the living room.
She kicked it off. "Well, this seems like an unusual arrangement you are working on here."
"I suppose," I said. "My kids are grown, it's just me, I thought I might as well have a happy life here. I can live a dream, can't I?"
"And it's not just me, you are planning to have other women here too?"
"Yes."
"And they will have sex with you, too?"
"I don't know how it will work," I said. "But yes. I don't want to own anybody, don't want to marry anybody. I imagine a nice, open, loving group."
"And will they have sex with each other, too?" Merrie asked.
"Huh, good question," I responded. "Great question. Would you want to?"
Merrie smiled. "I see, so you are not going to be, like, in charge. Does it matter to you if we want to have sex or not?"
"Yes, of course." I was a little shocked and disoriented. "This isn't like slaves or something."
"Okay, so what if a lady moves in and then doesn't want to have sex with you?"
I had not thought about this. Of course, I had my little fantasy where everybody was happy but ... "I guess she would move out again."
"So sex with you is a requirement for living here."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"So it isn't really like sex-slaves but they kind of owe you."