My life was miserably boring.
From early morning to late night I'd work and come home to my boring wife and then there'd be more work to do. She just gave up on life after our second kid. She gained weight, stopped caring about her looks and became completely uninterested in sex.
This had been going on gradually for years and these days she just wore stretch pants and baggy t-shirts. It made me feel more miserable to come home and see her. The very moment I'd open the door, I'd cringe inwardly. Today she was eating popcorn and watching some show on the TV. Without looking at me she asked, "What's for dinner?"
My wife had no job. The kids were at school all day, and when I'd get home, she expected me to secure dinner. After awhile, I quit encouraging her to get a job or socialize or get a hobby, or dress nicer. Maybe it was my fault. I was a geek. Clean but plain, and I probably drove her to boredom and the cycle just spiralled out of control.
"Grilled burgers again?" she asked, annoyed.
Thing is, I really like sex and sexy women. Their makeup excites me. If they take time to do their hair, it means something to me. I love them in their business skirts, in their low-cut blouses, in their high-heeled shoes, in their snug pantyhose.
It's not that I was a fetishist, but more plain my wife looked, more drawn I became toward sophistication and complexity of women's attires. You could see time and effort they spent on their looks and I was instantly appreciative of it. Almost admiring. They were complete opposites of my lazy wife.
Every woman at the office wore something ultra-modern and sexy these days. Partly conservative, but always sexy. Skirts and nylons and god knows what kind of underwear. It felt as if women were almost teasing me purposely, knowing all I get at home is stretch pants with potato chip crusts.
Of course, it was all in my head, but my eyes went straight to their asses. To their cleavages. To the gaps between their thighs. To their bra straps. I hoped they didn't notice me staring.
Over time I became more and more sexually frustrated. It's not like I could cheat on my wife, but she wasn't putting out and on a rare occasion that she did, it was pathetic because her heart wasn't into it, and she wasn't making herself look attractive to me. It felt like I needed some kind of escape, even a brief temporary one.
One day an attractive coworker of mine asked me if I could look at her washing machine. Everyone knew I was handy with machines. She was just beautiful, tall with straight black hair, always made up and dressed to a 10. God, I'd do anything for her.
What she really wanted me to do was justify giving up on the machine, and then offer to take it away in our family minivan, since she drove a tiny sports car. Either way I was secretly glad to not go straight home so I cheerfully replied, "Sure Mel, be happy to look at it."
"Thanks, you're a real sweetheart!" she said and touched my back with a sign of care.
Once I got to her condo, she led me to the laundry room and muttered something about the machine leaking. I texted my wife earlier to let her know I'd be helping a coworker with this, but didn't tell her it was a woman. Despite being uninterested in me, my wife was interested in other women not being interested in me. Because women are weird.
Melissa asked, "Do you need anything from me?"
I shook my head, and said, "This might take an hour or so, but I have all the tools with me."
She thanked me and went to change and catch up to some bills, leaving me alone. Her machine was older and, yeah, it looked like it was leaking. Not being a complete idiot, I unplugged it and started removing the side cover. It was stubborn, but these things are built simple.
By the time everything was off, I could see the leak right where the tub seal hit the transmission shaft. Thankfully, it was still wet so I knew that was the problem. I've done this kind of repair before and it was always remarkable that a $2 part could cause so much trouble. The seal had to be replaced.
Happy the issue wasn't so complex, I yelled through the door. She was in the kitchen now, making dinner.
"Hey Mel, think I found your problem. We can probably fix this tonight, if you're okay with taking a chance. The o-ring is bad but it's an older machine, so we can just seal it with silicone. Normally you'd get a replacement part, but it takes time to get that over here. And your machine is older so makes sense to just seal it and use it until it dies."
She walked back in the laundry room and said, "What? I didn't hear you." She then dumped her laundry hamper on top of the dryer.
Jesus.
Not wanting to repeat myself, I just took options away from her. "We can fix this tonight," I said with a touch of fake confidence.
"That's great!" she smiled at me, adding, "Do you need me to go get anything?" She was gorgeous, even in jeans and a shirt.
For a second I thought about it and replied, "Nah, think I got everything I need."
"That's so awesome, thanks so much. Guess I'll go finish up making dinner." She ran her fingers through her hair and looked beautiful doing it. "Will you let me know if you need anything?" she asked and smiled so much it melted my heart.
While she didn't care about the complexity of this problem, she was at least thoughtful enough to ask about helping. I declined and set to work. I opened the top cover and realized that her unwashed laundry was already loaded, so I just went ahead and picked big chunks of it and added them to the dryer pile.
The softener cap came right off, and then the agitator mounting ring, but the god-damned shaft was frozen. For a few minutes I grunted and applied all my strength to unscrewing it, but nothing happened.
She came back to check on me so I told her about the frozen shaft. "Think we can still fix this tonight, if you go get me some penetrating oil from a store," I offered.
Her smile was contagious. She was such a happy person and she chirped, "Awesome, I'll go get it right now."
