Swingin' on a Star

Hey Folks, this one is kind of twisty. It's more of a character study than a fable. There are no sterling examples of humanity here, only several very flawed people who make the best of a bad situation. The only thing about this story that is a Sterling example of anything would be the job that Barney-R did in editing it. But I think it's a good story for a cold winter afternoon. SS06

* * * * * *

Life really is funny. Right now, everything is just perfect. I never imagined it would be this way. I mean technically, I should be miserable.

I should be depressed and living in a dark, musty basement apartment, eating tuna and drinking store brand or no-name beer.

I should be spending my non-working hours surfing for more and more outrageous Internet porn. My liver should be just about cooked, and I should be contemplating different methods of suicide to end my misery.

However, I'm not. I'm not heartbroken. I'm not miserable. I'm not depressed ... shit I'm not even sad.

In fact, I'm so happy I feel like I'm swinging on a star. You know like the old Sinatra chestnut. I feel like I'm doing it all. I'm swinging on a star. Carrying moonbeams home in a jar and all of that crap.

I'm driving a car, a Mustang Shelby GT 350R, that I shouldn't own. At least, I wouldn't if things hadn't gone my way. One of the things I had to do was to lose a hundred and forty pounds of useless fat.

Even as I begin the thought, my right foot lifts and the beast growls in protest as less fuel is delivered to its hungry motor. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the cruiser. I laugh as I realize what it is. I've never really seen one of these turds ... I mean cars.

What galls me is that some local police department has actually wasted its money on one. Without flashing its lights the car takes off after me. I slow down even further while trying to see if the lumbering elephant-like vehicle is coming after me.

So what happens when you take one of the heaviest, least aerodynamic muscle cars on earth and add an even heavier and bigger motor with almost twice the horsepower?

Almost nothing. There are videos all over the Internet of all kinds of cars smoking the aptly named Challenger Hellcats. And someone had the balls to make one into a police cruiser. It pulls up next to me. I pull over to the side of the road to see what he wants; he did not catch me speeding.

As he exits the car, I notice that he ... is a she. I see long inky black hair, tied up in a bun. The mirrored sunglasses come down revealing crystal blue eyes. She saunters over to my car without any sign of a ticket book. I lower the window.

"Why'd ya stop?" she asked. The honey-like voice makes me think of magnolias and tall, cool glasses of iced tea.

"That's what you do when you're pulled over by a cop," I said, lowering my own sunglasses.

"I didn't pull you over," she smirked. "I wuz jest checkin' ya out. Whut is that?"

"It's a Mustang," I said, proudly.

"Where's the back seat?" she asked. "Where's the radio?"

"It doesn't have any of those things," I said. "No air conditioning either. There is no extra weigh on it. The only things on the car are the required safety features. Other than that everything that doesn't make the car go faster is gone."

"How much horsepower," she gushed.

"Six hundred and sixty," I said.

"Wanna race," she asked. I laughed.

"One ... You're a cop," I said. "Two ... I don't do street racing. It's illegal and unsafe." Okay I was lying about that part because she was a friggin' cop. "And three ... that turd you're driving wouldn't stand a chance."

She laughed herself. "They have to pay me to drive this thing," she said. "It's like driving a bus with racing strips. My car, on the other hand, is a beautiful, sleek Camaro SS." The smile on her face and the accompanying smirk told me everything I needed to know.

If I wasn't so busy, I would have loved the ensuing chaos. Unfortunately, I had other things on my mind.

"Rain check," I said? She looked at me, and the smirk faded. It was replaced with a look of concern that touched me.

"You look like you're driving to your own execution," she said.

"Something like that," I said. "On the other hand, this might be the best day of my life. Ninety minutes from now I'll either be totally miserable or elated beyond my wildest dreams. Tell you what ... when we race, if you win, I'll tell you the whole story."

"What happens if you win," she asked.

"Then we have dinner at a nice restaurant of my choosing," I said.

"How nice a restaurant," she asked.

"The dress up type," I said.

"Shit, that sounds awesome," she smiled. "I might have to let you win."

I laughed then. "Won't happen and we both know it," I said. "Neither one of us is that type of person."

She nodded. "See ya later," she said. "And I'll be in a real car, so expect ta get your ass kicked."

I just laughed. And thought about how much I loved being single and free. It really didn't start out that way. Barely a year ago, the beginning of 2015, I was trying to figure out how to tell my wife, that I wanted to pull the money out of my 401k for the down payment on a Shelby GT 350 R. It went even further. I also wanted to keep the 2012 Mustang GT that I was driving then instead of using it as a trade in. And finally I wanted to take out a home-equity loan to add onto or rebuild our garage.

It all made perfect sense to me, but I was sure she was going to tell me that I was out of my fucking mind. I could hear her already. "Your 401k money is for OUR retirement," she would say. "We live in fucking Michigan, Ted. Why do we need TWO cars that you can only drive for half of the year? What are you going to do, drive one from May until the middle of July and the other from mid July until October? Or will you drive both of them for the entire summer? One on weekdays and the other will be your weekend car.

Yep, Elaine was going to think I was nuts; especially when she found out that I would probably be paying for the GT 350R for the next six years. She would really flip out when she found out that it didn't have a radio or air conditioning or a back seat. I had decided to wait until after the party to tell her.

The party was a big event for our circle of friends. It was, of course, the way we all got together to watch the super bowl. The game featured the New England Patriots, fresh from "deflate gate," and another team of cheaters, the team whose over use of ADHD drugs had earned them the nickname, "the Sea-Aderol Sea Hawks."

We all had heavy bets on the game as usual. Every year at the end of the party, we threw everyone's name into a bucket and the person who hosted the party pulled one out. The lucky person, whose name was pulled, hosted the party the next year.

This year the party was being held by my next-door neighbor Mickey and his wife Samantha. Most of the couples in our circle were bringing some sort of food item or other party need. We all looked forward to the party each year. We all got together frequently through the year, but our Super Bowl parties were legendary and open only to a small group of about six couples.

Most of us grew up in our small Michigan city, or married someone who did. This was a big event for Mickey. Let's just say that Mickey was kind of the low man on the totem pole of our group.

Most of the guys made fun of Mickey because he was the least athletic and least successful one of us. Okay, I may as well admit it. Mickey is, first of all, a really big nerd. And secondly he's a REALLY BIG nerd. Mickey is a fat guy.

He was kind of like the mascot of our group, so a lot of the guys made fun of him and played jokes on him. I never did. I neither made fun of Mickey nor played any kind of mean jokes on him. I guess it was mostly because I saw how badly some of those jokes hurt him.

Mickey and his wife Samantha lived next door to me. We traded off favors and helped each other with projects at each other's condos.

Hosting the party was a big thing for Mickey. He saw it as a chance to gain a degree of respect from the guys we hung around with. He was tired of always being the butt of their jokes. Mickey had asked me to borrow some of the small tables I had on my deck; that way people who didn't want to watch the game and just wanted to be at the party to eat and share some camaraderie could hang out in his sun room. It was too cold in Michigan in February to be outside, but his sunroom was nice all year round.

As usual, on a day that I didn't have to go to work, I stayed in bed long after Elaine was up and about. I vaguely remember Elaine saying something about going over to help Samantha get ready for the party.

My first thought after eating, was the fact that it was a Sunday. For me, Sunday meant one thing above everything else; washing my car. Since I would be at the party for most of the day and evening, I decided to do it while Elaine was out so I didn't have to hear her bitching about it.

Elaine thought that it was a waste of time for me to wash my Mustang when it was the middle of winter and the car never left my heated garage until late spring or early summer. She thought that it was even stupider, since the car had a car cover to prevent dust from getting on it. For me, it was a habit.

I got all of my car wash products and my orbital polisher out and ready. I tuned my iPod to my favorite car washing playlist and started.

Since no one had been inside of the car since I washed it the previous week I decided to forgo the interior.

It always amazed me that the car could pick up dust while under the cover. While washing the car, I always let my mind wander and was usually amazed at what I came up with.

It was that morning that I came up with the perfect way to get Elaine in the mood for me buying another Mustang.

Elaine had been telling me for months that it was time for us to start having kids. We needed to start looking for a house and move out of our condo because with a child or children, we'd need more space and a big back yard for them to play in. I knew that she envisioned a future with a big house, and me trapped behind the wheel of a lawn mower, as big as a fucking tractor. I'd spend all of my free time when I wasn't plowing that massive lawn, taking care of a swimming pool or doing other stupid projects around the house.

I had no idea how to tell her that I was not Tim the tool man Taylor. I don't know shit about plumbing and had no interest in learning. I would much rather spend a Saturday polishing my car, than polishing or refinishing a wood floor.

Whenever we went to the mall, Elaine was always telling me that if I got bored, I could always go look around Home Depot, and she would call me or come and find me. She always looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that I had no interest in going inside of a Home Depot.

"My father loves Home Depot, Teddy," she always said. "It's a guy's store. They have tools and stuff."

"Your father drives a Honda," I told her.

"And he gets all of his tools for the car at Home Depot," she said proudly totally missing my point.

"So, Home Depot sells teeny-tiny little plastic wrenches?" I ask with a serious look on my face. "Do they only sell them in pink or do they have the baby blue ones too?" Of course, it went totally over her head. To Elaine, anything she isn't interested in is just irrelevant.

But that morning I realized that if I told Elaine, that I needed to go ahead and buy my last Mustang, because we needed to start putting away money towards the house and the kids, she'd look at it as a last gasp of my childhood type of thing. She would see it as me becoming more mature and leaning on her side of things. I could even tell her that I needed to buy a good one and not drive it very often, for the sake of practicability. I was pretty sure that making it sound like I was beginning to think about things the way she saw it, would probably work.

After I finished polishing my car, and figuring out the way, I was going to deliver my proposition to Elaine, I was feeling good. I was looking forward to a great game and also to someday soon driving the car that many magazines were calling the ultimate Mustang of all times. And come on, I wasn't an idiot. I knew that next year or the year after that there'd be a new ultimate Mustang of all time. However, I just wanted this one. After that, Elaine could become the baby factory she wanted to be and hell, we could even buy a house. I was going to need a bigger garage anyway.

I went into the house to order a few pizzas for the party. On super bowl Sunday, it was important to get your orders in early. After I had arranged for the delivery, I started moving the tables.

We had a gate in the fence between the two yards that made things easier. I carried two of the small tables onto Mickey's porch. I was as quiet as I could be. I wanted to load and arrange all the tables there without him knowing it.

As I turned to leave, a movement from inside of the condo caught my eye. There was a small space between the drawn drapes where I could look inside. Human curiosity being what it was; I peeked.

I saw a slim but well rounded ass moving from side to side as the woman the ass belonged to crawled across the floor of Mickey's Den. The pre-game shows were already playing on the giant TV on the opposite side of the room.

It definitely wasn't Samantha's ass. Samantha is a much bigger woman. I've always thought that Mickey was blessed to have Samantha. She was much better than he deserved. Samantha is a bigger woman, but she's so pretty her size doesn't matter. She has that perfect hourglass shape that all men love. It makes your dick hard as soon as you see her no matter what she's wearing.

Her boobs are huge and her butt is round but it's actually her face that you can't look away from. She has wild unrestrained jet-black hair, and her tanned skin comes from her Hispanic heritage. Every time I see her, I wonder what the hell she's doing with a clown like Mickey.

At the last barbecue we had last summer, I must've spent at least an hour staring at her ass as she bent over the grill, tending to the meat. Samantha's ass is a work of art.

But the ass I watched crawling across that floor wasn't hers. It was some skinny chick that was much lighter than Samantha. I couldn't believe that asshole was cheating on Sam. I always knew that Mickey was a loser, but cheating on the best thing in his life was just stupid.

I had glimpsed Mickey through the drapes before I was distracted by thoughts of Samantha. However, now looking at him, I went into shock. Fat ass Mickey, the neighborhood joke was standing in front of the closed door to the room. Fat assed Mickey's dick had to be a foot long. It was as thick around as my forearm, and he was waving it around in front of the woman crawling towards him.

I couldn't make out the words he was saying, but his gestures were really clear. He pointed at the floor ordering the woman crawling towards him onto her belly. It was even more humiliating as she went down onto her stomach, yet continued to crawl towards that huge dick as if she was a drug addict, and it was her fix.

As I watched she reached him and grabbed for it. She tried to take it into her mouth, but it was simply too big. Suddenly, everything in my stomach came up. I vomited all over Samantha's rose bushes.

I looked back inside, just in time to hear a scream as Mickey tried to force his huge organ into the slit between the legs of the no longer crawling woman. I couldn't tell if her scream was from pain or pleasure but after a few moments, it became clear. She pushed Mickey onto his back and lowered herself faster and faster until their bodies were slapping together so quickly and so hard that the ripples across Mickey's fat belly moved like ocean waves across a beach.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of a car pulling up in Mickey's driveway. I looked around the edge of the porch in time to see Samantha grabbing bags out of the car. Maybe that was when my mind snapped.

Right then I thought back to those corny old movies I used to see when was a kid. Whenever I was sick and stayed home from school, I ended up watching a lot of old movies from the forties. I wasn't really into them at first, but even though I had a TV in my room, it wasn't hooked up to the cable, so I had very few channels to choose from.

Whether or not I want to admit it those old movies affected me a lot. They were always about people and the way they dealt with their problems. The heroes in those movies didn't have always to resort to violence like they do in the movies now. Sometimes the guys in those movies just made the best of a really shitty situation. When life gave them lemons, they made lemonade. And they always seemed to realize that as bad as things were, they could always be worse. They seemed to be able to find the bright side of almost anything.

And that was when I started whistling that song.

"So would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar.

And be better off than you are. You could be swinging on a star."

I went back through the gate into my yard. I forgot all about the game. It no longer mattered. I made a couple of phone calls and gathered as many trash bags as I could find. I heard a lot of people arriving at Mickey and Sam's house and a couple of times; people knocked on my door.

I never answered it. I guess the game was probably on when I went back into the garage. My garage was heated so I wasn't suffering or anything like that. But to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I'd have noticed anything in the state I was in.

"I thought I'd find you out here," she said. Somehow I knew it would be her. As I looked towards her, I saw her push back a long errant lock of hair.

"You're missing a great game," she said. "The half-time show is about to start. And your wife is upset with you. She told us you were probably out here playing with your car and adding some kind of super turbo thingy on it and just lost track of time."

"Samantha, have I ever told you how beautiful you are?" I asked her. She just smiled and looked away shyly.

"Hurry up and do whatever it is you're doing," she gushed. "I saved you some of your pizza."

* * * * * *

Elaine

I don't understand football. I mean I know the basics. I know about the touchdown and the field goal, but the rest is just a blur. I only go to the party each year to socialize. I don't really understand why the men get so excited about it. A couple of the women do too. But I guess it's better than watching NASCAR with Ted. Anything beats NASCAR. I don't understand how my hubby can get excited about watching guys driving in a circle for three hours.

By the end of the first twenty minutes, I no longer care whether it's Billy Bob, Cole Trickle, or Luke Duke in the lead. For a while I just watched to make sure, Danica didn't win. I hate that bitch. I have no idea why NASCAR tries to force that woman down our throats. She is clearly just a marketing ploy. They need to realize that women are smart enough to recognize how transparent they are.

In two years of racing NASCAR, she has never come close to winning. Her greatest moments in the sun are usually when all the leaders decide to make a pit stop, and she suddenly finds herself in first place, by accident. While that's going on they make all kinds of announcements about it. It's like the zoo letting everyone know that a trained monkey has learned to recognize a word. Usually, the word has something to do with food.

The announcers are so happy they're giddy."Lookie heah y'all," they proclaim. "Danica is leading the race." We all know that she isn't going to win. As soon as the good drivers come back from the pits, they pass her one by one until she's back in the rear of the pack. It's as inevitable as winter following fall.