JC and the Three Clowns

"Well, dating is just flirting on a regular basis and I wouldn't mind it in the slightest. Dating you, I mean. It would have to be just dinner dates and maybe some dancing, though. I don't want to give Clare an opening to counter-sue and try to negate the pre-nup, so everything would have to be above-board. I think it would be fun, as well as pissing Clare off. I'm not jealous, I wouldn't mind if you dated Janet, too. If she want's to, I mean."

"I think she will. Even if it's just to piss off Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber, Janet will go for it. I know Bud will hate it, and that will help Janet decide in favor of practice-dating."

"I don't doubt it. Clare's not going to like it much either. You're younger than he is and also smarter, better looking, richer and an all-around better catch. Do you like to swim? I've got a pool and we could have a pool-party and invite all my friends to meet you and Janet. That way I get to piss off all my friend's wives because I got rid of a jerk and upgraded to a hunk. One that's so good he's got two women and can handle them both."

"I swim, and I think it would be a good idea. We can talk about it at dinner and make plans, OK?"

"It sounds perfect. I'll see you and Janet at seven and we can plan things out."

"Great! Oops, Janet's bringing in Sleazy now and I'm sure it's because she's whining and complaining about something, she's got that look in her eye. Gotta go, we'll see you at seven. Good-bye until then, you sexy thing."

"You too, Studly. Till seven. Bye."

I had gotten off the phone just in time. Sleazy, previously known as Lucy or Lucille, was coming inside, escorted by Janet. Fuck! The bitch had been crying. What the hell did she have to cry about? All I did was interrupt the afternoon's planned festivities, she's the one that cratered our marriage.

"Jace, Honey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

I interrupted her before she could get any farther. "Don't try to tell me that you walked into our bedroom, found two guys there and just accidentally slipped and fell on a dick! When you started to complain, Bud also slipped and 'accidentally' shoved his dick in your mouth. I'm not going to believe it, so don't start. Remember that pre-nup that you thought was silly because we were going to be together 'for ever and ever'? Well, we aren't. I'm filing for divorce on Monday. You'll get what the pre-nup calls for, a rental for six months and twenty thousand dollars. If you don't make problems, I'll give you full credit for the extra half-year which makes it forty thou and I'll throw in your car. Now, pack your shit and get out of here. If you're quick, Clare can give you a ride to the Station Motel, but if you waste time you'll have to call a cab."

"But, but..."

"I'm in no mood to listen to your motorboat impressions. Shut up and pack, or I'll piss on your clothing like you pissed on our marriage!"

I think she had the barest glimmerings of the fact that I was serious. She packed, and she managed to be finished while Clare was still outside, whining that 'it wasn't fair'. What the fuck is fair about fucking someone else's wife in his own bed? The little jerk was clueless about the way the world worked. There was an old TV show where the guy with the parrot used the line, 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.' I'd update it to make it say 'Don't fuck my wife if you don't want to get fucked over.'

As Dummy's car drove off with Sleazy, Janet came back from her house. "Well, Dopey is convinced that he has a chance to salvage our relationship if he does everything I ask of him. Right now he's shaving his mustache and then he gets to shave off all of the hair on his body. Do you know of any gay guys that would like to fuck a straight guy wearing a dress and makeup? They'd have to overlook the fact that she's not exactly passable and will probably whine, piss and moan a lot."

"Not really. I know a few guys that are into t-girls, but they've got higher standards in their fuck-partners than a balding fat man in a dress, even if you did a hell of a makeup job. Remind me to never get you mad at me, you can get really evil when you're pissed off."

"Well, he's still got his nuts and dick, so I think he's getting off lightly. I guess I'll have to go buy a strap-on and do the job myself. If I had the time I'd put him on a diet and get him thin enough to make him passable. With a wig, some decent lingerie and him acting real swish, I might be able to get him fucked, but that would take time I haven't got. I like the idea of torturing him a bit before I toss him out on his ear, but I've got better things to do with my time. There's this really sexy guy I know that just dumped his wife for cheating on him, and I've managed to get him to agree to some flirting-practice. I'll let him believe that that's as far as I'm planning to go, but I plan on dating him and getting him to fuck me. That will have to stay my secret for a while, so don't tell anyone, OK?"

"Not a single word will pass my lips to interfere with your plans. You might have to put a bit of a rush on those plans, though. I've heard that newly single guys have hot redheads and blondes hitting on them all the time."

"Yeah, I've heard that, too. I'll have to really up my game. I could always find a hot blonde to partner up with and we could try seducing him together. I'm not ready to get tied down, but if my idiot can have a threesome, I don't see any reason why I can't. I just have to go slowly enough not to spook the guy."

"I don't see any reason that plan wouldn't work, other than it might take some time to find the blonde. Oh, by the way, Beverly has something of the same idea, you might talk to her a little bit and see if she and you could get together on a project like that. She's a hot blonde, and you're a slightly hotter redhead."

Janet made a pout and said, "Only slightly hotter?"

"Well, on a scale of one to ten, you're a ten and she's at least a nine-and-three-quarters. It's hard to say, though. If I didn't have a thing for redheads with freckles, I might rate both of you at ten."

"What time are we meeting her for dinner, again? I seem to have a sudden urge to get to know her and see if we're really compatible."

"Seven. She said that attire should be dressy, seeing as how it's the country club. She said I could wear a sport-coat, but I'm going to wear my new Armani. If you two are going to get all dolled-up, I'm going to do my best to keep up with you."

"You do that. I'm sure Beverly will appreciate the eye-candy, I know I will. Should we take one car or two?"

"I'd vote for one, no sense in making the lot-attendant park two cars. I'll offer you an inducement, we can take the Corvette. How does the idea of a hot redhead and a not-too-bad guy in a classic convertible sound?"

"Sounds yummy. I've got a couple of conditions, though. We have the top up on the way there so my hair won't get mussed, you have to dance a bit with me after dinner, and we put the top down and take the long way home after that. By the way, the way I'd put it would be 'a gorgeous guy with an attractive redhead'. Which do you prefer pantyhose or stockings with a garter-belt?"

"It depends. Pantyhose are more modest, and they work well with a business suit or a public outing. Stockings are nice, but most women only wear them when they're trying to go all-out sexy. They both look nice, but it depends on the look you're going for."

"Thank you sir, I think I'm going to go for sexy. Do you want to bet that Beverly won't do the same?"

"No bet, do I look that stupid? An attractive woman dressing to meet another woman for the first time would always go for stockings. Definitely stockings, maybe they'll be hold-ups, but probably not. The kind of heels that put her in danger of a nose-bleed from the height, too. It's always good to make a good first impression."

"Good. That's the way I like to dress. Smart and a bit sexy on the outside but a little naughty on the inside. I can still dance while I'm wearing heels, which is a good thing. I need the extra height when I'm dancing with a tall, handsome man."

"I'm not that tall. Six-one is just a little taller than normal."

"It is when they guy they're replacing is five-eight. If I wore my five-inch stiletto heels, I was an inch taller than he was. That made him uncomfortable dancing with me, so he wouldn't unless I wore flats or low heels and I like skyscraper heels. How tall is Beverly?"

"I'm not exactly sure. When I danced with her at few charity functions, she was about two inches shorter than I was when she was in her heels. I'm not sure how much of if was the heels, but she wore heels that were tall enough to make her legs look good. I do know that she had the same complaint about Clare, he was shorter and it made him not want to dance with her. It didn't stop him from dancing with taller women other than his wife, though. She said something once about him liking her in heels until they got married, but it baffled me a bit."

Janet giggled and said, "It's not baffling, it's just the standard short-man syndrome. Tall, leggy girls you're dating are 'look what I scored', but they want wives that are shorter than they are, so they feel more like a 'big man'. I think both Bud and Clare decided they could 'cope' with a little extra height if it came with some financial incentives. Bud got to move out of his apartment and into my house and I bought him a new pickup. I assume that, with her having the money in the relationship, she let him pretend to run things at the office, as well as all the rest of the nice stuff."

"I suppose so. I had to listen to him talk about his business at a party, once. An accounting firm is a bit different from a computer tech firm, but even I knew that he didn't understand ninety percent of what he was saying. I think he thought that saying it repeatedly and loudly would make it sound like he knew what he was doing. It didn't. It just made him look like a vain, insecure little jerk that had delusions of adequacy."

She giggled some more and said, "Delusions of adequacy! I like that! Bud was like that, too. He always had an opinion about everything, but it was usually apparent that he didn't have a clue. It's like the old saying, 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.' The problem was, he tried to do it all the time and about everything, rather than just exaggerate a bit about something he really knew."

"Yeah, he tried to tell me 'all about computers' once. He got just about everything wrong, but I didn't mention it to anyone. It was only a problem if he was giving advice to people that took it. That could cause problems, but most people knew he was a bullshitter and didn't have problems with ignoring him."

"That's just another part of the short-man syndrome. They don't think they look important, so they try to sound important. I don't know why they do it, look at Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, and Emilio Estevz. Go back in time and look at Alan Ladd and Audy Murphy. They're all screen stars with lots of beefcake credits. Nobody thinks Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Michael J. Fox, Richard Dreyfuss, Joe Pesci and Dustin Hoffman aren't great at what they do because they're short. You can't convince someone who has a sense of inferiority stuck somewhere deep inside them, though."

"You seem to have done your homework about short actors."

"Scorsese isn't an actor, he's a director, but they're all famous Hollywood types. Hollywood types are about the only famous people Bud knows about, so I used to bring them up in conversation when he got pissy about his height. It never seemed to do much good, but I tried."

"You omitted Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Rooney from your Golden Age list, and Bogart deserves an honorable mention, he was only five-seven but he hid it. If it was his idea instead of the studio's, that would exempt him from consideration as someone who wasn't bothered by his small stature. Still, he did show that you could be successful with women ever if you were short. Lauren Bacall was about five-ten, and even taller in heels. She didn't have a problem with a shorter man. If he could get a stunner like Bacall in spite of his height, it proves that being short is not a disadvantage."

I'm going to skip ahead a bit in my story. We had dinner, Janet and Beverly liked each other, and I was in trouble. I couldn't decide which one was prettier. I was pretty sure that both of them wanted to take things to a more advanced level, but they were willing to wait for the serious stuff until the divorces had at least preliminary approved. (Maybe my intuitions were off, but I doubt it. I'm usually pretty good about stuff like that, excepting my experience with Sleazy.) The funny thing is, there were no rivalries. Both of seemed OK with the idea of both of them sharing me. (If you think I minded that, you need to check and see if your brain pan has developed leaks, as you're obviously a couple of quarts low!)

Dinner went well. The country club did a superb surf-and-turf, so we all had that. After dinner, the band got started and we danced. First I danced with Janet, then I danced with Beverly, and then we repeated as necessary. At the end of the third cycle, I got a surprise. Her name was Sharon, her husband didn't dance, and she had gotten permission from Janet and Beverly to 'borrow' me. (I think those dance lessons I took were paying off!) A few more cycles with my original dance-partners, and the surprise was repeated. This time her name was Louise, and the rest of it was exactly the same.

To make a long story short, we danced till midnight and I was 'borrowed' six times. I did ask Bev and Jan what was going on, though. The story seemed to be that there were a lot of wives who attended these dinner-dances, and most of the husbands either didn't dance at all, or were satisfied with fewer dances than their wives would prefer. Bev had made sure that none of the husbands minded and both the husbands and the wives knew I wasn't a gigolo or a stud-on-the-prowl.

It turns out that at least four of my dance-partners were married to sitting judges and the fact that I was polite and didn't cross any boundaries of decorum worked in my favor. I didn't exactly have 'influence' of my own, but those judges were more than willing to treat my divorce as favorably as they were treating Beverly's.

I think our petitions for divorce set a new speed record. Bob, my lawyer, had both Beverly's and mine already drawn up and printed. It took him about five minutes to read Janet's pre-nup and then draft her petition using mine as a template, as it was already on his computer. Once it fit her situation, her petition was done. He attached copies of our pictures and our witness statements, and made copies for his files. His PA notarized the originals and messaged them over to the courthouse. Total elapsed time, forty-five minutes.

All three of us had skipped breakfast and had brought coffee-and-croissants. (Not the kind that fast-food restaurants use as part of their breakfast sandwiches, the real kind. The place we got our coffees also carried a very nice line of pastries.) After the lawyer, we went to brunch and were still there when I got a telephone call. The Judge had approved the petitions and they were being served by his bailiff. Assuming the petitions were served promptly, another Judge was ready to grant the preliminary divorce decree the next morning! (All divorces do not go this swiftly, this was a special case. It seems the judges that had wives at the dinner-dance were also the ones that handled divorce filings. Gee, what a coincidence! It seems some of those wives had also been divorced from cheating spouses, and Beverly had 'mobilized the cavalry' to get expeditious handling for our cases. Maybe it was a bit sneaky, but it was legal and it worked.)

By eleven o'clock Tuesday morning, we were almost divorced. It was only a preliminary decree, and the three clowns could still challenge it, but they had little chance of success thanks to some very good pre-nups and the fact than no children were involved. After that, it would take three to six months and our divorces would be final. Janet's previous divorce had taken over a year. Granted, a house that they had owned in common was at issue, but that wasn't the thing that took the longest. Her first asshole (Bud was her second asshole.) had argued over everything, and they never agreed. (Who argues over the custody of fucking goldfish!) Then he insisted on counseling, 'to save the marriage'. Janet thinks he was putting up roadblocks to get Janet to throw some money at the problem to get it to go away. (That's why she had a carefully written pre-nup this time.)

There were no challenges, I think their lawyers told them that the terms they had been offered were as good as they were going to get. By the end of three weeks we had their signed agreements and the only thing left was the statutory time before a final decree was issued, so a mini-celebration was planned. Janet and I were invited over to Beverly's place and told to bring our swimsuits. I prefer the speedo type of suit that competition swimmers use. It's fairly comfortable and it dries easily. Roll it in a towel, twist the roll and it's almost dry. Hang it on a hook and it rapidly dries rest of the way. The girls didn't go for convenience, they had a sort of competition going. 'Who can wear the skimpiest micro-bikini?' (Take a wet t-shirt contest and feed it large amounts of steroids. Really! Three tiny triangles of silk held together with thread was a perfect description of those bikinis. When these girls compete, they really compete! Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I like perving on babes in bikinis as much as the next guy.)

So, here I was poolside with a gorgeous redhead and an equally gorgeous blonde in micro-bikinis. (Who says divorce has to be an unpleasant experience? Not me!) Then came the words that erotic literature has taught men to hate. Janet said, "Honey, we have to talk."

"OK, I've got no problem with talking. What exactly did you want to talk about?"

Beverly took over like Janet was the quarterback and she was the running back that had just been handed the football. "Well, what we wanted to talk about was the practice things we've been doing. We started with practice-flirting, moved through practice-dancing and lately we've been doing practice-dating. We've been wondering if we could drop the 'practice' part of the label because we'd like to try it for real."

"To be honest, I've thought about it, but I keep coming back to the same problem. I've been spending most of my time with you two and not looking for a partner. If one or the other of you two has found somebody special, I'll back off. Which one of you has found someone?"

They giggled. Yep, both of them. In unison. I like girls that giggle, but the unison thing was a little weird. Then it got weirder. Janet said, "We both have, and the one we've found is you! We got to talking and Bev confessed that she was really interested in seeing more of you. I almost got in a cat-fight with her about it, because I'm interested in you, too. Well, we didn't fight, we got drunk together. Sometime between the third and fourth bottle of wine, we decided that you were the best guy either one of us had ever found and we didn't think we could find a better one even if we kept looking. So, the conclusion was obvious, we had to convince you that you needed two lovers. I think the French term for it is Ménage-à-Trois. What do you think of our idea?"

What the hell do you think I said? Do you think I'm stupid? (Don't answer that, marrying Sleazy gave me undeniable 'stupid' credentials, but I was now a former idiot! I said yes, of course.)