Redemption: Part II

II.
       I guess it was not their faults, but adults should know better. I mean it is embarrassing to walk in on your mother and your neighbor sitting right there making-out like junior-high kids or something. I mean a guy ought to be able to go downstairs for a beer and a smoke and not find his mother necking on the sofa. If I had had a job, that would have been a great story for the guys at work,

I remember thinking later. Of course I wouldn’t have told them how they didn’t even stop or anything. They just kind of quieted down till I went out on the porch to smoke. The only good thing I could think of from the walking in on them like that was that at least Mom was not hassling me about smoking on the porch without a robe. It was kind of cold out that night, and I actually did wish I had thought of grabbing my bathrobe before I came downstairs, but once I got out on the porch, I figured the best thing to do was brave the cold, smoke a bunch of cigarettes and nurse my beer. At least that way they’d have time to finish, and I wouldn’t have to walk back in on them. 

I guess if it hadn’t had been for being forced out there on the porch for so long, I never would have seen what I did, and I never would have ended up in that bedroom. I mean I really am serious about not being a pervert; I just kind of naturally fell into that mess.

From the porch, I could see Frank and Joyce’s front door, and that night I watched this big guy walk out of it. At first I thought he was a crook or something, but then I saw Joyce standing behind the storm door watching the guy walk down the driveway. I felt better for Joyce after that. If Frank was screwing around on her, at least she was dishing out some of his own medicine. It was that kind of thinking that got me starting to think about Joyce as more than Frank’s wife. I mean not obsessively or anything, but like that it would be cool to be with somebody with that kind of attitude and all. I started thinking that she probably liked to do kinky things and all that stuff that Janice hated. I don’t know why I started thinking like that all of the sudden, but I did. I guess once you realize somebody’s gutsy enough to sleep around, you naturally figure they must be pretty hot.

Don’t get me wrong, I never thought about actually going through with anything with

Joyce, I knew how stupid that would be. First of all Joyce is pretty hefty, and second, if Janice ever found out about it, I knew I’d be out on the street before I could zip my fly. I was lucky Janice let me stay as long as she did. Like I said, I hadn’t had a job in a long time and my mother was making-out with Frank in the TV room. If I were Janice, I probably would have kicked me out long before then, but she loved me. I don’t know why she loved me, but she did, and I wasn’t about to risk all that to have some affair with Joyce, but I figured there couldn’t be any harm in thinking about it every once in awhile. At least that’s what I thought at first, but then, when I knew Frank was with Mom, and it was late, I started spending more and more time on the porch smoking and watching Joyce’s boyfriend leave. I know it was kind of like a Peeping Tom or something, but I was on my own porch and she was on hers so I didn’t figure I was breaking any laws or anything. But after awhile I grew more curious, and I wanted to know more. The leaving was just a tease, and I had to find out what Joyce was doing over there. And yes, now I see where harmless fantasy gets a guy, but I guess it was all so gradually developing that I kind of lost touch. 

I mean you know how you sometimes hear about guys who do stupid stuff like flashing people or wearing their wife’s panties to work, or stuff like that. Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending them, I mean they’re definitely sick in the head, but I’m just saying that before you just start calling them perverts you got to realize that they kind of built up to that level and that one little thing leads to a little bigger thing and so on until they really screw up, and when that’s happening to you, the building up stuff, you really don’t think that what you’re doing is all that weird until something happens like what happened to me, and then you realize how sick you look. 

Anyway, as you can probably guess, watching the guy leave was getting a little too stale, and one night when I knew the guy was there, I kind of snuck over and tried to look through the windows and see what I could see. Joyce had pulled all the important shades though, and I really couldn’t see anything but a few shadows here and there. I tried to look in the windows a few more times after that and each time I got a little bolder until I actually was one time standing on this milk crate and trying to see down through the little gaps between the casing and the curtain rods, but no matter what window I looked through or from what angle I positioned myself, I couldn’t see much of anything.

Well, as you are probably thinking, I guess I did get a bit obsessed by that point, but I figured I wasn’t hurting anyone. Anyway, I started to think of ways I could get in Joyce’s house. Don’t get me wrong, I had no intentions of screwing with Joyce or anything, but I guess I just needed to know, I can’t tell you why because I don’t know myself, so don’t go pulling that why crap in your head. I don’t know anyone who can tell you why he did something stupid, but that doesn’t stop most of us from doing it.

I pretty much knew from all my watching how long it took Joyce’s boyfriend to show up after Frank would come over to see Mom, so the timing part was easy, the rest was tricky, but the next time Frank walked in the house and I had

had enough beer to get the guts I needed, I went over and knocked on Joyce’s door. When she answered, as you might imagine, she looked a little surprised and a little hot, but I’m sure she only looked hot because I knew what was up, not because she really looked hot or anything but surprised. I asked her if I could talk to Josh. See, I knew Josh was gone since it was after eight and his girlfriend got off from the ice cream shop about then. So when Joyce told me he wasn’t there, I told her how I needed the key to the riding mower on account of I was cleaning up the garage and how Josh had it. She looked a bit weird about that, I guess because most people know what a lazy ass I am and she probably couldn’t believe I’d be cleaning the garage, but I guess she figured that Janice was making me do it or something like that and she left me standing on the porch and went to look for the key in Josh’s room. I didn’t like being on the porch that much, I mean the light was on and all Janice had to do was step out for a smoke and see me to blow the whole thing. Anyway, she didn’t, and Joyce came back looking a little urgent and asked couldn’t I get it some other time on account of her headache. I couldn’t help but wink at that story. I know I shouldn’t’ve, but I can’t help but wink when I know something that the other person knows and doesn’t want anyone else to know, I guess it’s like letting them in on it and all, but of course Joyce didn’t get my wink, or she just ignored it and kind of started to get a little agitated when I told her how I really wanted to get it done that night and all and could I just have a look around Josh’s room, that maybe since I knew what the key looked liked, I might be able to spot it. Probably because she got the sense that I wasn’t going to leave without the key, she huffed out a big breath and told me to hurry up because her head was killing her. 

Josh’s room was in the back of the house and beside it was the bathroom. I wasn’t sure what I’d do once I got in the house, I mean I didn’t even really think I’d get that far, but when I found myself alone in Josh’s room and heard the bathroom door shut, I just sort of knew what to do. I ran to the outside of the door and yelled in to Joyce how I’d found the key and how I’d just let myself out so as not to cause her anymore suffering. She mumbled something like fine, and, after being sure to open and shut the front door loudly, I slipped into the bedroom and climbed into the back of the closet. Looking back on all this now, the part that worries me is how easily I did all that. I mean if you try to picture yourself pulling something like this off, you’d probably figure you’d either whimp out or mess up somehow, but it is really easy and that’s what bothers me now, well that, and the fact that people think I’m a pervert, but as you can see, I really am mostly like any other normal guy.