Mike's Story

Life in the corporate office was much different than it was in the branches. For starters I didn't have to deal with customers every day. It was a bit of a relief. I was an introvert and being able to sit down at a desk and do my job without interruption suited me. After a few months I was good and trained. Soon I was thriving at my new job, and looking toward the future. I took a look around my department and saw that there was only one other underwriter, a kindly old grandmother. The department head was a spinster nearing retirement. I started to plan for the possibility that when she retired I would be able to take over the underwriting department.

The downside of my new position was that I no longer had a good way of meeting women. The office was predominantly female, but mostly older, married women. None of them seemed interested in setting me up with their daughters, either. Not going to college anymore meant no more co-eds to hook up with. The only people I saw all day long now were my fellow co-workers. I spent my spare time with my friends who were all geeks like me. We got together and played video games and never went out to the types of places you would expect to find single women.

I decided to try online dating sites, but I didn't like the type of women that I met there. In fact, some of them were the same ones that blew me off in high school. I considered pursuing them as a sort of revenge, but I really wasn't a vengeful person. I went on a couple of dates with a couple of different women, but all that did for me was validate my belief that I wasn't going to meet the right woman on a dating site.

In the end my parents came to the rescue. They had a friend of a friend of a friend, maybe of a friend, who had a daughter that was just finishing up grad school and moving back home. Sure, I said, give me her email address. There was no harm in talking to her, right? We emailed for a couple of weeks, and then we talked on the phone for a couple of weeks. We agreed to meet for dinner on a Saturday night in August. She was short, maybe 5'4, with curly brown hair and had a mousy way about her. She was cute and sweet and innocent and I found myself falling for her quickly. The feeling was mutual and our relationship was off and running. I thought that everything was finally falling into place for me.

One morning a few weeks later I came into work and found that we were all being ushered into an urgent meeting. My boss's boss's boss, who I hardly ever saw much less had ever heard him speak, regretfully informed us that our little community bank was being taken over by a larger bank. The merger was going to take several months to complete, he said, and nobody was sure yet what it meant for any of us individually. I was crushed. I saw myself rising up through the ranks and running that place one day. Now I was going to either be a smaller cog in a larger company or lose my job altogether.

I wasn't sure how to break the news to my new girlfriend. I had prided myself on having a steady job and career at 24, when most of my friends were still screwing around or trying to establish themselves. She was very understanding. I felt a rush of affection for her. This is going to be the one, I thought to myself.

The next several months at work were rough. We were all on edge, wondering what was going to happen next. One day a group of executives from the bank taking us over came to visit. They completely ignored the employees, instead touring our office while we sat at our desks pretending we weren't watching them and making comments like, "Oh, what a great space!" Their attitude made me so angry I wanted to scream at them. The rumors started flying around. They obviously wanted to keep our office, but what would they do with it? My counterparts in their bank worked downtown, nearly half an hour away. Would they ask me to work in their corporate office? It would be a rough commute. Then the rumor started flying around that they were going to move their mortgage operations to our building. A sense of relief flowed through us. We started to believe that maybe things would be okay after all.

Then one fateful day I was called into a conference room. The head of the mortgage department was there along with a representative from human resources. They broke the news to me as gently as they could, but the point was that the new bank didn't want me. In the end they kept everybody on through the merger except for the managers and the underwriters.

I resolved to take my severance and get on with my life. There were plenty of other banks out there, right? Except that it was 2006 and the industry was just starting to collapse. Banking jobs dried up overnight. For several months I hung on to the hope that I would find a job just like the one that I had and everything would be okay.

Despite my career troubles, I proposed to Donna. She readily accepted. We found a nice two bedroom apartment and moved in together. She had a good job as a secretary and I had a lot of money saved up. I had already paid for my college education and had no outstanding debts. I was able to pay my half of the bills with my unemployment and my savings. As the months dragged on and my unemployment was about to run out, it started to become obvious that I would need to find a new career.

Donna's dad was an attorney, and he suggested that I look into becoming a paralegal. It was a growing field, he said, and you don't have to put yourself a hundred thousand dollars into debt becoming a lawyer. I found that a local college offered a paralegal program that took about a year and was completely online. It only cost about four grand, and better yet it turned out that unemployment would pick up the tab for it. I signed up, ordered the books, and became a student again.

The wedding was planned and paid for by our parents. I was going to get married just after I turned 25. I probably sound like a guy who had his whole life planned out, but in reality all I wanted to do was meet a nice girl and get married and buy a nice house together. Everything else would fall into place after that. I was focused on my "happily ever after," and who ever thinks about what happens after the end of a fairy tale?

"Mike, I want to have a child," Donna said to me one day, a few weeks before the wedding. I wouldn't say the topic never came up before, but I always kind of blew it off. Sure, we'll have a kid or two, I would say. I really wasn't interested in having a child, at least not yet. I spent all of my spare time playing video games with my friends, watching movies, and reading comic books. I enjoyed it and didn't want to have to give it all up because of a baby. I figured we had plenty of time. That's pretty much what I said to her then.

"No, I want a child right now," Donna said.

I didn't understand the urgency. All I knew was that I was unemployed and we lived in a tiny apartment. "Can we wait a year or two until I get a job and we buy a house?"

Donna started crying. I couldn't believe it. I really didn't know what to do. She seemed like a calm, rational person up until then, but suddenly whenever the topic of children came up she would get emotional. The wedding was right on top of us now. I started to get cold feet, but I thought that was all it was.

Despite everything that was going on, we had a beautiful wedding. All of our friends and family were there. It was a perfect May evening. I was happy to be married, but behind the scenes the battle over having a child raged on. It would probably have been easier if I wasn't dealing with a completely irrational person, but Donna refused to listen to reason.

I finally relented. "Yes, we can try to have a child," I told her a few months after we were married, not that she really gave me any other choice. To me, the important word in that sentence was 'try.' I figured I would stop wearing condoms and we would give it our best shot. Maybe we would just try and try and nothing would happen, right?

Instead Donna told me for the first time that she had serious reproductive issues. We were going to have to go to a fertility specialist, she said. Before I knew it I was sitting in the waiting room of the best fertility doctor in the state. I looked around at the other people in the waiting room. We had to have been at least ten years younger than anybody else there. The doctor put Donna on a fertility drug and told us to have lots of sex when she was most likely to be ovulating. That didn't seem too hard, I thought to myself.

Having sex with Donna fell somewhere in between my previous experiences with Janine and Anna. Like Janine, Donna was resistant to any kind of experimentation. She only wanted missionary sex. It also took a long, long time to turn her on, but I didn't mind the foreplay really. I enjoyed exploring her thin, shapely body with my fingers and lips. What set her apart from my previous experiences was that Donna was a multi-orgasmic dynamo once you got her going. I would rub her clit with my fingers until she was good and wet, and then enter her tight pussy. She would have two or three orgasms while I fucked her, each one more intense than the last. I sometimes tried to get Donna to try new things, just to make it a little more interesting, but she refused.

Unfortunately trying to conceive took all of the fun out of sex for me. In the evenings Donna would basically take off all of her clothes and jump on me. It should've been fun for me but it wasn't. Maybe if I was actually interested in getting Donna pregnant I would've enjoyed it more. Instead sex became a chore and I stopped looking forward to it.

In the middle of all of this I finished my paralegal program and received my certification. The very day that the certification arrived in the mail I was called in for an interview with a law firm. They were looking for a foreclosure paralegal. The mortgage industry had collapsed and foreclosures were skyrocketing. They needed a new paralegal to handle the volume. I didn't really have any legal experience but my underwriting experience meant that I knew all of the loan documents and that was a big part of my job. I was interviewed in part by the paralegal that I would be working with and he said that they would teach me the rest. I was hired that afternoon and started the following Monday.

My first day in my new career was like a whirlwind. In the morning I was led through the office and introduced to everyone. I sat with the IT person and was trained on the computer programs that I would be using. The firm was nice enough to spring for lunch at a restaurant for me and my department. I found myself sitting at a table with all of the paralegals and administrative assistants in my group, along with two of the attorneys. I was asked a few basic questions about my life, and then I was left alone to contemplate my new co-workers.

The other male paralegal was Steve. He had been there a few years already and was in his mid-20's like me. Unlike me he was a total jock, a heavy drinker, and swore like a sailor. Despite our differences we found out we liked a lot of the same movies and got along great. The administrative assistant that was going to be helping with my training, her name was Lisa, and she was a stocky, buxom woman in her late 20's, with a wide, friendly face. Another admin was gorgeous, 5'6 and big-chested, with almond brown eyes. Two of the other women were in their mid-30's, one was a loud-mouthed obese smoker and the other a skinny blonde. All of my new co-workers were married with children except for Steve and Lisa, who were dating.

Suddenly I noticed another woman sitting at the other end of the table. Somehow I'd missed her completely up until that moment. I have no idea how that was possible, since she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever laid eyes on. She had long brown hair, doe-like brown eyes, a small up-turned nose, and high cheekbones. She was wearing a low-cut top that showed generous, gravity-defying cleavage. I judged her to be about my age, and later found that she was about 5'8. I forced myself not to stare at her. I was a newlywed, after all. Despite the problems we were having, I still loved my wife. I had to make a conscious effort not to stare at her and to pay attention to the rest of my new co-workers.

Kate. Her name was Kate. Our roles in the department meant that we would interact from time to time, but not often. We didn't sit near each other, either. The way our office was configured Steve and I sat in a back room apart from the rest of the department. When I would come up to the front part of the office I tried to pretend I wasn't looking for Kate. When I needed to talk to her about something work-related I tried to stay professional and pretend that I wasn't looking forward to it. If she was wearing something low-cut I would struggle not to glance at her cleavage. Over time we got to know each other and developed a casual friendship.

As soon as I passed the three month mark at my new job Donna and I started to house hunt. It was now 2008 and prices were dropping quickly. I found a nice three bedroom townhouse that was worth $50,000 less than it was just three years ago. The sellers were grateful to get out from under their mortgage and within 90 days Donna and I were homeowners.

Soon after we settled into our new home Donna informed me we would have to go back to the fertility clinic. Nothing was happening in her quest to get pregnant. I knew that nothing was happening but it was secretly the way I wanted it. I didn't even have enough enthusiasm for wanting to conceive naturally. I really wasn't looking to try something more, especially not at 26. I tried to talk to Donna about it but she just burst into tears and ran out of the room. I threw my arms up in the air and felt like I had no control over my life.

This time at the fertility clinic the doctor decided to do more extensive testing on both of us. For Donna it meant blood work and an invasive exam. For me it meant I got handed a cup and told to go to what I would eventually come to call the "happy room." The room was barely larger than a closet, with a flat screen TV against one wall and a comfortable chair against the other. A sink and a shelf full of dirty magazines were against the far wall. There was a DVD playing, the best of collection of a porn star I had never heard of, a blonde with huge silicone tits having sex with various combinations of men and women. It would do, I thought to myself. I wondered how most men felt about this. I guessed that most men were uncomfortable and got themselves off as quickly as they could. I resolved to enjoy myself, going through several scenes of the DVD while I stroked myself to full hardness. At one point the nurse knocked on the door and asked if I was okay, breaking my concentration. I had to start all over again! Finally after 40-45 minutes I was good and ready and shot my load into the cup. I washed up and left to find my wife waiting for me, looking pale and exhausted. I handed the semen-filled cup to the nurse. "Can I come back again next week?" I asked.

I checked out okay, but the doctor said that Donna suffered from polyps and another medical term that completely baffled me that was causing our troubles. Since we were still young, the doctor said, we could keep trying on our own for a while. "No, I want to try insemination," Donna said to the doctor. I groaned.

Donna was becoming more and more difficult to live with as it become clear that our goals in life were much different. When she was pumped full of hormones ahead of our first attempt at artificial insemination it exacerbated all of those problems. We fought constantly, sniped at each other, and basically didn't get along.

Work became my safe haven. Steve started spending more and more time around Lisa, eventually deciding to move his desk to an empty one next to hers and leaving me in the back room by myself. It suited me just fine. I was able to work when I wanted to work, and goof off when I needed to goof off. I earned a reputation for being on top of my job, and the attorneys left me alone. Whole days went by where nobody would come into the back room looking for me.

Sometimes when things were quiet I would go and seek out Kate. I found that most days everybody took lunch at noon and disappeared except for us, so when I felt like it I would come up to the main room to talk to her. I don't know why but I found myself complaining about my life with Donna to her. I found Kate to be easy to talk to. She listened and offered advice. She was married with a young daughter, but that basic information was really all I knew about her personal life. She would talk about the office gossip, things that I largely missed out on while I was hiding out at my desk in the back room, but she would never mention her family. There were times over those first couple of years that we worked together that we talked frequently and times we didn't talk as much, but it was always pleasant.

Meanwhile the insemination attempts failed. Boom boom boom. Just like that. We tried three times in a year with no luck. At least I got to spend some more time in the happy room, right? Our marriage became more and more strained as the hormones and her frustrations made it more and more difficult to live with her. To make matters worse she was having trouble at work. I had gotten to know her boss at their company Christmas party, and I was shocked when one day my firm's receptionist transferred his call to me. He was worried about her, he said, because sometimes she would run out of the office crying. Donna was a very private person and didn't even tell him what was going on. I told him about our fertility issues and asked him to keep me informed about my wife's behavior. On top of everything else now I started to worry that Donna was going to lose her job. When I confronted Donna about it she didn't even seem to care. Having a child was more important than anything to her, especially her job, she said to me. She wanted to stay home and raise our child until it was five, she said. "Five?" I remember shouting, "We can't afford that!" She didn't respond. She would just stay silent whenever she knew I was right, but it didn't mean that she was going to change her mind.

After three failed insemination attempts the insurance companies will let you try in vitro fertilization. I remember that our fertility doctor was trying to talk Donna out of it. "You're still young," he said, "Give insemination a chance to work. Most couples don't resort to in vitro until they are well into their 30's."

"I don't care," Donna replied, "I want to have a child." I groaned. Donna got more extensive testing done on her. I got another trip to the happy room. With insemination Donna just got a few hormone injections at the doctor's office before each attempt. With in vitro there were injections that needed to be done at home before and after the embryos were implanted, injections that we needed to do ourselves. I was dreading it.

While we were preparing to try in vitro Donna lost her job. At this point in our strained marriage I was no longer sure if I was getting the whole truth from Donna, but she claimed that her boss told her he couldn't have a secretary who put her own needs before his company. I went over our finances and found that we could probably live off of her unemployment and our savings for a while. Luckily all of our fertility efforts were covered by insurance, because there was no way we could have afforded it otherwise.

"Don't worry, my parents will help us out financially," Donna said. That was one of the things I was afraid of, I thought to myself. Her parents used their money as a way to elbow their way into our lives and have input in our decisions. It was yet another distraction in our already troubled marriage.