EGBDF

I told him that he was blowing things totally out of proportion. All Greg had done was to fart loudly several times and tell a few stupid jokes. He was just trying to be friendly in a strange situation with a group of people he didn't know. Maybe he was a little loud and unpolished but I intended to spend the rest of my life with him, so they needed to adjust.

When we got back to the house I noticed that more of Mel's things were gone. He'd left me a card with his attorney's name and number on it so I could give the information to my attorney. I didn't have one yet.

Saturday night, Greg and I stayed in. He invited several people over and they sat around playing games on a video game system that he'd installed on my television. I was alone for most of the night until they left. Then Greg and I had sex and he fell asleep.

Monday I woke up and asked Greg if he needed to go to work or something. I wanted some time to clean my house, it hadn't been this messy since Melissa was in her teens and had a party.

It was then that I found out that Greg was between assignments, or in other words he was unemployed.

The doorbell rang and Greg answered it. "It's for you babe," he screamed.

I stumbled down the stairs, still trying to come to grips with the parameters of my new relationship. I noticed that Greg was staring at whoever was at the door intently.

As I stepped up to the doorway I saw there was a young woman there. She was in her early twenties and kind of pretty. She had one of those slim briefcases resting by her legs and a file folder in her hands. She was chewing gum and she just looked bored. She looked as if she was selling magazine subscriptions or something to work her way through school.

She looked up at me as I approached her and asked for me by name. I was sure that she'd gotten my name from one of those internet lists. The companies that compile those lists, buy and sell addresses and names, so they can sell you products that your history suggests that you'd be interested in.

"Melinda Conrad?" she asked, in a really bored sounding voice.

"Yes," I said. "But I'm not..."

"You've been served," she said. She handed me a set of papers and before I could ask her anything else she turned and walked away. She was still cracking her gum and looking into her briefcase for another file. She looked at her watch, got into a car, and drove off.

"She has a really nice ass," said Greg after watching her all the way to her car.

I looked down at the document she'd given me. I guess I'd expected Mel to just sit by and wait for me to decide how our divorce would go. He obviously hadn't. The card he'd left the previous day with his lawyer's information on it was still upstairs. He was pushing ahead with the divorce while I was beginning to question whether or not I even wanted one.

Besides the divorce papers, there was a paper notifying me that Mel was selling my house as part of the divorce settlement. I had 30 days to find new living space or make other arrangements. There were also details on how, if I chose to, I could buy Mel out of our current house.

Mel was proposing to divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. There would be no child support since Melissa was over 18. He intended to continue to support her but the documents indicated that her agreement would be separate from mine and I'd have to find out the details of it from her. I knew there'd be no problems there. Mel loved his daughter. She'd probably be better off than I would be.

He was offering me a small amount of alimony for six months only and 40% of our savings and checking account balances. He had excluded me from his retirement plan. If I didn't accept this settlement, he'd file under infidelity, which I'd already admitted to. There was simply too much information for me to go into. Since I'd been the one asking for the divorce, he was also not paying for my attorney. That meant that my attorney fees would eat away at any settlement I did get. There was also the fact that under the circumstances, Mel had been generous to me as far as the house went. He could have simply thrown me out.

When we first bought the house, my name wasn't included on the mortgage because I didn't want it there. We weren't sure that we'd be able to afford the payments and if we lost the house or had to declare bankruptcy, we figured that one of us still having good credit might be a good thing.

Since the house was totally in Mel's name, he could have simply thrown me out. Especially since I'd cheated on him and brought Greg into the house to live. As all of these things went through my mind, I realized that I was in trouble. For over twenty years Mel had handled all of the details about our life. He'd paid all of the bills, handled the mortgage, bought the cars, and done everything else. I wasn't sure I knew how to go about finding a new place to live, let alone figuring out how to pay for it.

Mel had also been a gentleman in that he hadn't emptied our bank accounts. He had only taken 50 percent out of both checking and savings. That meant that all of the money in the accounts wasn't mine. If I spent more than 40% of the former total balance, I'd have to pay it back.

A bigger problem was the house. Our house was worth roughly $200,000. That meant if the house sold for that amount. I'd get $80,000. But if I wanted to live in it, I'd have to pay Mel $120,000. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to get a mortgage or a loan for that much, especially since I had no work history and no credit on my own. I also couldn't take out any kind of equity loan because again the house was not in my name, so on paper I had no equity.

I needed to get the cheapest lawyer I could find, as quickly as I could find him. I needed to talk to Mel to see if there was any way we could work this out. Maybe I could just give him the house in exchange for letting me live in it until I got my feet under me. That could also give me a few months to figure out what I wanted to do about the divorce.

Mel and I really needed to talk. The problem was that he simply would not speak to me. I decided that I needed to get someone to intercede for me. I called my Dad and asked him if he'd call Mel for me. He refused.

"Melinda, you're my daughter. I'm really shocked and disappointed by this whole situation. That man has been a far better son in law than I ever expected. I do have to call him soon. I need to apologize to him for our last phone call. He called me a couple of days ago trying to arrange to spend some time with your mother and I for our anniversary. I finally dug out of him why he couldn't come to the barbecue. He didn't come because he didn't want there to be any drama or distractions from our anniversary. I couldn't believe what he was saying you did to him." I could hear my mother in the background.

"Then you showed up with that fucking hoodlum and ruined our party. To tell you the truth, I wish that Mel had come to the barbecue instead of you. So if you're trying to get me to con him into meeting with you, forget it. He's suffering enough as it is. Let the man have some peace. You wanted a divorce. He's giving you one. Although if it had been me, if I'd been married to you and you tried something like that, I'd have kicked your ass." Then my father hung up the phone on me.

I decided to call my daughter and see if she'd help me. She did after all want us to get back together. Melissa was even less helpful than her grandparents were. She wouldn't speak to me at all. I called her cell phone several times and it went straight to voice mail. The third time I tried, she'd changed her greeting to one specifically made for me.

"Hi, this is Melissa. I can't take your call right now. Leave a message at the beep unless you're my ex-mother in which case you shouldn't bother calling or leaving any messages because I don't want to hear from you. Bye."

There's a price to be paid for selfishness. And though I didn't realize it, I was only beginning to pay it.

* * * * * *

Ann Wilson was handling the divorce. She was a great lady. Despite her initial treatment of me during our first meeting, I noticed that she was very caring and concerned for my well being. She called me every day to update me on what was going on and what I could expect to happen as a result of it. She informed me just moments after Melinda had been served. She also asked me about what I wanted to do in each and every situation. Some of the things she wanted me to do just seemed wrong to me.

She suggested that I take an extended leave of absence from work. That way I would have no income and could probably get away without paying Melinda any alimony at all. I did like my job, but the thought of being tethered to Melinda for any period of time was more than I could stand.

There were several ideas that I'd often wished that I had more time to explore. There were also several places that I wanted to see or visit. Maybe the idea of taking some time off from work wasn't as bad as I'd originally thought.

"Dad, this place is perfect. It's as big as a frigging house. It has three bedrooms and I love the pool out there. The workout room means that you wouldn't have to join a gym. I think you should take it," said my daughter Melissa. I'd brought Lissa over to the condo I was thinking about leasing. I'd already decided that I liked this place. The monthly note was steep, but they did have both 6 month and one year leases. Right now, a 6 month lease while I looked for a house seemed perfect for me.

Melissa had been wonderful over the past few days. She'd been living with her grandparents so she could be close to me and driving back and forth to her school every other day. Without her support, I wasn't sure that I'd have made it.

Joyce was also great. She'd taken to mothering me and though it was too early, had already started trying to fix me up with someone else.

"Just because you picked one apple with a worm in it, doesn't mean you have to give up on apples," she said. "It would only take me 15 or 20 minutes to find someone you could be happy with."

Over the past week, I'd begun to hurt less. I wasn't as angry at Melinda and in some ways I could see her side of it. If she truly wasn't happy with me, she deserved to be with someone who could make her happy. My only gripe with her was the way she did it and the cavalier way that she picked to tell me.

For the sake of the years we'd spent together, I deserved better. I guess I'd probably have more respect for her if she'd come to me and told me that she wasn't happy. Maybe she could have given me a chance to spice things up and change our lives so that she could be. There isn't anything that I wouldn't have done for her.

But she chose to go out and find a guy, fuck him and then tell me that she wants a divorce. And now she seems to want to talk about things and try to be friends. Fuck her, I can find my own friends.

I called the manager of the complex and told him that I'd take the condo. It was ready to move into so I'd have a check for him first thing in the morning and I'd like to move in over the weekend.

As I kissed Lissa goodbye before she drove back to her grandparent's house, I knew that I was going to be okay. I thought back to when I was 8 years old and my parents forced me to take piano lessons. My piano teacher, Mrs. Lipscomb, taught me a rhyme so I could remember the lines on the musical staff, E-G-B-D-F, Every Good Boy Does Fine. I'd tried to be a good boy for my whole God damned life. I'd be fine. At first, when Mel dropped this on me, I saw no way out of it. Only misery and loneliness, but I was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.

* * * * * *

I was in trouble and I knew it. Greg had drained all of the money out of the savings account to buy himself a car. Over the past two weeks I'd started to wonder why I wanted to be with him at all. It wasn't bad enough that he moved into the house without asking. He'd taken to using the house as a hangout for all of his friends. They dropped by at any hour of the day or night. And a lot of his friends were women.

Then he'd started bothering me about how we really weren't in an equal relationship. We didn't share and share alike. He didn't understand why I could have that with Mel, but not with him. So I gave him a key and stupidly gave him access to my bank account and within a week he'd completely drained the savings account on a used Honda.

I'd tried to explain to him the way that the divorce seemed to be going. It looked as if Mel was going to get his 60%. I'd agreed in order to keep from being named as an adulteress and having Greg dragged into it.

Mel was also unwilling to allow me any latitude concerning the house. We had only 2 weeks left before we had to be out and at the rate things were going, we wouldn't have enough money to put down on another house. I might have to move into an apartment.

Even worse was the news that Mel was going to take a break from working for months or perhaps a couple of years while he got over the depression that our break up put him in. That meant that he'd have no income, so I probably wouldn't get any alimony. He was even letting his daughter down. From what I heard from my sister, Melissa was now staying with my parents so she could support her father emotionally. She was supposedly moving somewhere else this weekend. So he probably wasn't giving her enough money to stay on campus.

Last night had been the worst though. After trying to keep the house clean from the mess that Greg and his friends seemed to leave everywhere, I went out on the deck to relax a bit. I guess I drifted off to sleep. I woke up because someone was tapping me on my shoulder. It was Greg of course.

He wanted a blowjob. I was half asleep so I just opened my mouth and leaned forward. That was when I noticed that his friends were watching.

"Greg!" I yelled, pushing myself away from him.

"Come on baby," he said. "Everybody does it. All of my friends get blowjobs from their girls. It's no big deal." I couldn't remember seeing most of his friends with a girl. And the women that did come over to see Greg or his friends were all sluts.

"If you really loved me and really wanted us to be together forever, you wouldn't have a problem with it," he said. "I guess you'll want me to move out next."

"Okay, I'll do it," I heard myself say. I didn't know whether I was doing it because I really thought that he was hurt, or because if I let this relationship break up, it would mean that I'd thrown my marriage away for nothing.

The next thing I knew Greg's penis was thrusting in and out of my mouth. I wasn't moving my head up and down like usual, Greg was performing for his friends. He'd grabbed me by the back of my head and was thrusting his dick down my throat like he wanted to hurt me. I gagged and he laughed. All of his friends laughed to. I tried to look up and see the expression on his face. I'm sure I was mistaken. It looked like he was smirking at me.

"Take it bitch," he said and then without warning started pumping his sperm down my throat. I choked and had trouble breathing because I wasn't ready for it. He wiped his dick off in my hair and turned back to his friends. "Back to the PlayStation," he roared and they all went back inside the house laughing. "I told you," I heard him stay.

Later on when all of his friends were gone, Greg came to bed. He didn't bother with showering. He just took his clothes off and got into bed. I pretended to be asleep. He rolled me over and started mauling my tits. Then he rubbed my pussy and tried to shove his dick inside of me. At first, the thought of being made love to by a younger man had done wonders for me. I'd been thinking about it lately though and I realized what was wrong. Greg didn't make love to me, we just had sex.

It was a totally physical thing with no emotional connection; at least none on his part. "No, Greg," I said.

"Come on, baby. Don't be like that," he said. He hadn't stopped. He forced his penis into me and I wasn't even wet. It really hurt and I yelled at him and threw him off.

"I'm not in the mood," I yelled. "Good night."

"I'll bet you'd be in the mood, if I was Mel, wouldn't you?" he snapped. Then he left the room slamming the door behind him.

I'm not sure whether I was relieved or upset that he'd left. But I did think about his question and I knew what the answer was. By then I'd begun to realize that I'd been a fool. The only problem was that I had no exit strategy. Greg had told me that he'd be starting work in a few weeks and that things would work out for us after that. He'd needed the car to get back and forth to work and he'd gotten a good deal on it.

I got up about an hour after he'd left. I felt bad about us arguing and wanted to talk about it. Our relationship was spiraling out of control. In a way it was just like what had happened with Mel. In my marriage to Mel I should have spoken to him about my feelings. If I had, maybe we'd still be together. I vowed that I wouldn't make that mistake with Greg. Greg couldn't change if I didn't talk to him about the things I didn't like. We were from different generations and different lifestyles. There were bound to be conflicts.

I went downstairs into the living and heard a sound. It sounded like moaning. One of Greg's God damned friends was fucking some slut in my house, I thought. When I walked into the room I saw that I was right, only it wasn't one of Greg's friends. Greg was being straddled by some chunky blond woman with glasses who was energetically thrusting herself up and down on him. Greg lay back on the rug with his hands behind his neck just enjoying it. The girl noticed me first. Her hand went up to her mouth and she stopped moving.

"Don't stop, baby," said Greg. He hadn't seen me yet. The girl pointed at me and his gaze followed her outstretched finger.

His eyes got bigger and his face paled. He quickly moved out from under the girl and came over to me, still naked.

"I know you're upset," he said. "But this is really your fault. If you had given me sex when I wanted it, this would never have happened."

I didn't say a word. I just turned and went out onto my deck. I sat down in one of the deck chairs that I'd seen on the internet and Mel had painstakingly built and stained to make me happy. As I sat in the chair I noticed that the other three chairs from the set had been thrown into the pool and the chlorine had already begun to bleach the coloring out of them.

I just started crying then and I prayed that I could wake up and this would all just be a terrible dream. I drifted off to sleep again, there by the pool. I awoke the next morning and looked at my watch. I was freezing. I'd slept outside and Greg hadn't come and woke me up. I was also late for my appointment with the lawyers to sign the final divorce agreement.

I went over to the house and the door was closed. Not only closed but locked. I started banging on the door and after about 10 minutes the girl that Greg had fucked last night let me in. She didn't say anything. She just opened the door and walked away. She was walking back up the stairs when I called her.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"Back to bed," she yawned sleepily.

"You aren't sleeping in my room," I said.

"Greg said I could," she spat.

"Get the fuck out of my house or I'll call the police," I yelled.

"Fuck you grandma," she snapped. "I've been thrown out of way better houses than this. I'll be glad when Greg leaves you. You just suck the fun out of everything."

I quickly showered and changed into clothes that were somewhat presentable. I noticed that someone had gone through my purse and all of my cash was gone. I jumped into my car and drove over to Mel's lawyer's office. The man who was representing me was there as well. I sat through about a half hour of legal mumbo jumbo and signed the papers where I was told to.