I'm not sure why I went into the Adult Book and Toy store on Jefferson boulevard. I had only been there once before. It was with a couple of buddies the summer after graduation, a long time ago.

The place back then thrived as half sex shop half head shop tended by both male and female clerks. We were young and wild in the shop. A rich selection of colorfully lit exotic and erotic merchandise was arranged on shelves and cabinets. Danny kept turning on the battery operated dildo demonstrator models hanging in a row on beaded chains.

"Hey Jack," Danny would say, "Look at this one," and, Feel this one!"

"No, I'm not gonna..."

"Seriously Jack, feel this thing, it moves!"

There were a few viewing booths in the back. Frank and Danny and me crammed into one and dropped two quarters into the slot to begin watching a not-so-pretty blonde being spit roasted by one white and one black guy. It was beyond anything we imagined. We were laughing and whistling at the screen for only a few moments before a skinny ferret of a guy with stringy mullet hair came over, pointing out the 'One to a booth ' sign on each door.

Things were different now for both me and the Jefferson boulevard store. Everything had changed for me, and for a store ravaged by the Internet the priorities of space had been completely reversed.

Two display counters near the front door held a small electronic cash register. An obese middle aged woman wearing what appeared to be a wig, Doris Day blonde, sat on a stool behind the counters smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone. Haphazardly displayed behind the glass was a small collection of dildos. Two self-standing condom displays were close by. Plastic sex toys in blister packaging and zip-lock bags lined one wall. A couple of low cabinets held DVDs for sale on one side and rentals on the other.

The rest of the place had given way to private viewing booths lining both sides of two narrow aisles like large gymnasium lockers. The only other person I saw was a skinny middle aged guy leaning up against the first locker on the far left cleaning his fingernails with a small pocket knife.

A sign above each aisle said, "Pay Before Entering".

"How much for a booth?" I asked the fat lady.

"Hold on," she said into the phone before putting it down. "Straight or Gay?"

"Straight, does it matter?"

"Nah handsome, it don't matter," she said, throwing a subtle smile, "Just curious. Fifteen for ten minutes, a half hour is thirty. Time starts when you close the door. Straight movies to the right, gay one's down the left."

"Jesus, must be some pretty good movies."

"You can get movies on your phone."

"Yeah, I know." I put thirty dollars on the counter.

"I think you'll like the second to last booth on the left side of that right aisle."

----————----

After two years of community college I just couldn't go on. I had felt just as lost as when I finished high school. I enlisted hoping to find something substantial.

I married Cindy, a girl from the neighborhood, before I left for basic. She just graduated two years behind me, suddenly beautiful. Cindy had grown up a tom-boy and as she became a woman, developed a self-conscious habit of drawing her long yellow hair forward of her shoulders to drape over her still unaccustomed to breasts. It was a hopeless gesture. She remained radiantly on display, all skinny legs and arms barely covered in cut-offs and tube tops or damn, those cropped-tees she knew I liked. Her soft round boobs were delightfully misplaced on such a thin girl. Even her thick yellow hair couldn't hide them.

There was a graduation party in someone's back yard for a couple of the graduating kids. By the end of it Cindy had picked me, there was no denying it. Maybe it was because I was going away or maybe because I couldn't take my eyes off of her. I walked her home. Along the way she kissed me with an open and passionate intensity I have never experienced before or since.

Beginning the next day we did everything together. She already knew about sex but we both learned more. We watched a lot of porn together that summer. She bought new DVDs all the time, calling them our "How-to vids". Sex was like her shiny new toy.

Cindy would look at me like I was some sort of prince. That she didn't know how beautiful and sexy she was made it hard for me not to fall deeply in love with her. We got married in late August with two weeks to spare. She postponed going to college. I was more excited than scared about the military, but if something happened to me I wanted her to get my pension.

Images of her from that summer carried me all the way through basic. She wrote me every day. Usually it was everyday stuff about our friends and the neighborhood. Sometimes though she'd describe in detail something she promised we'd do the next time we were together again. She'd always end those letters with: "Gave you a boner didn't I? XXOO :)"

I'd take my change to the commissary and call her as often as I could. I wrote back every now and then but mostly I needed to hear her voice even if only for a few minutes.

After basic I had some time home before deployment. Cindy and I slept together in her parents basement. We talked about her going to college. She could get student loans for whatever tuition we couldn't afford, which was most of it. She wanted to become an elementary school teacher. Her parents promised to help as much as they could. If they knew how we tore the skin off each other down in the basement they might have thought her unfit.

Even after falling asleep in exhaustion I'd often awake a few hours later with Cindy working my limp dick with her mouth until I was ready to go again. She did amazing things with her mouth but what she loved most was to straddle me like a cowgirl, to feel the full length of me up inside her as she ground down hard against me one minute and cantered the next with her gorgeous tits gyrating. After all the sex we had earlier, she knew that she could relax into orgasm after orgasm without concern about me blowing my load before she got her fill.

Becoming an Army Ranger changed everything. The training was intense, the assignments even more so. Days would pass without a thought of Cindy. I was B-team most of my first tour, A-team all of my second. The intensity kept increasing. It was intoxicating and addicting. I re-enlisted.

Home after my second enlistment, Cindy begged me not to return for a third. She was a teacher. I didn't have to go. She pleaded, "So why?"

"Because I need to go," I insisted, "The country needs me, my team needs me." My head was messed up.

"I need you!"

We argued. Cindy said she would not, could not wait anymore. She wanted a divorce. The worry was torture.

"Not till I get back," I said, "In case something happens." If she still wanted a divorce when I got back I promised I'd give her the damn divorce, thinking it would never come to that.

I went for my third enlistment. Things did not go well.

I've been home for over two years now. Cindy didn't wait. She had made up her mind the day I left. The first time I saw her upon my return took my breath away. Filled in but still fit and trim her skin glowed beautifully. She was poised and confident. Her hair, more golden than yellow, stopped at her neck.

Cindy dated a number of men while I was gone. Eventually she settled down with Frank, my childhood friend. My former friend. He was a science teacher. She reminded me that she had warned me she couldn't wait. She told me Frank had a kid but the little girl lived with her mother. Cindy lived with Frank. All this I had known, Danny kept me informed.

Within six months of my return she filed for divorce. I dragged my feet, but before the year was up it went through. I wanted to go back to Afghanistan, but that door had been closed too. At least I received an honorable discharge.

I was back to feeling lost. I dated a number of women and mistreated all of them. I felt disdain for the ones that liked it and nothing for the women who didn't. I wanted the sex but none of the attachment. Soon dating was just too much of a bother.

I started hanging out at bars, usually with Danny but sometimes I'd pick up one night stands. That too wore thin so I often pushed away from the bar after a couple of beers, said goodnight to Danny and headed home alone. One night while still on our first beer Danny said from out of the blue, "She's not happy."

"She made her choice," I said.

Both of us knew exactly who were talking about.

"Might have been you that made the choice."

"What I made was a mistake, what she made was the right choice."

-----———-----

I walked into the second last booth on the right and closed the door. I scrolled through titles and cover art on the screen and picked a video featuring a skinny actress with big soft tits. She began with a little strip tease and by the time a guy with a shaved head worked his tongue against her shaved pussy as she reclined in a couch with her legs splayed wide, my cock was expanding uncomfortably in my jeans. I opened my belt and zipped down to give it space. A moment later everything dropped to the floor and I began stroking myself.

I was startled by a raspy smoke worn voice. "Nice cock, want me to suck it off?"

I looked down toward the sound. An oval hole about three inches wide and maybe six inches tall seemed right to accommodate the varying heights of the dicks of different men. Certainly right for mine.

At first I just stared, afraid the fat woman from the front had snuck into the booth. Then the woman reached a frail arm through the hole and grabbed onto me. "Come on, I won't bite. Just give little Angie a taste of that meat." She squeezed then fluttered her fingers over my swollen head for a few seconds.

"How much?"

She withdrew her hand. "You insult Angie. Angie is not a prostitute."

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

"Of course if you want to leave Angie a little gift after..." With a voice so much like Gollum's I thought Angie should stop talking about herself in the third person.

I turned so my cock, already beginning to wilt, was closer to the hole. Understanding the arrangement made it easier. Angie took hold again and guided me through. Her lips felt good sealing over the tip. Her hand stroked along my shaft.

By twisting my torso a little and my head a little more toward the screen I could watch the video. The bald guy was on the couch beneath the girl who in sixty-nine was repeatedly making his cock completely disappear in her mouth. It was impressive. His cock was a good bit longer than mine. Her tits were usually mashed against him but when she lifted they swung free for a few seconds before she lowered again. A few times she choked on the cock but stayed with it, the way Cindy would. She was pretty but not as pretty as Cindy. I looked carefully just to make sure.

Along with the porn, Angie was having the right effect. I wished it was faster. I had the urge to pull my dick back and finish myself. It was excruciating to wait for Angie who plodded along at an even stroke rate while slathering her lips and tongue nonchalantly over the tip. I was pressing hard against the opening wanting her to take more and go faster but Angie just worked slowly on until I eventually pumped an excruciating half-weeks worth into her mouth.

My pants back in place I peeled two twenties off the small tuck of bills I had in my pocket and pushed them into the hole. Angie whistled twice, a small double twill.

"Thank you for the nice gift," She said sounding formal, "Angie likes nice gifts. Wanna come back same time Thursday?"

"What day is today?"

"It's Monday."

"Maybe."

I did return Thursday, and the following Monday. I still couldn't get a bead on the draw of the glory hole. It was definitely the hole, maybe the anonymity. It sure wasn't Angie who, in spite of the way she seemed to savor sucking my cock, I remained pretty certain I might be glad I never actually saw.

When I went the fourth time again on Thursday the fat lady said there was a different person tonight.

"Where was Angie?"

"Don't know, called me this morning."

"You said person, guy or girl?" I wasn't sure if I actually cared.

The fat lady laughed. "Girl."

I put thirty bucks on the counter and went to the usual booth.

I selected a video featuring a college girl home on break alone for the first time with her new stepdad. I kept glancing at the hole. Nothing. I wanted to bend down and take a look through. I took out my cock instead and tried to focus on the porn. It was weak.

The actress was pretty enough I guess and was sexy enough to be teasing the stepdad into flirting back with her but she just wasn't attractive to me with her dark hair and thick thighs. She had his hard cock out and was stroking it when suddenly she stood in front of him and lifted her tight top off over her head to reveal a pair of grapefruit sized implants. My cock hung limp.

I was ready to scroll through new video choices when a hand came through the hole and said, "Need help?" The voice was clear.

I looked down at the hand and saw long inviting fingers. I turned. My pudgy softness was encircled by the fingers, tugged on gently, then wonderfully massaged as the fingers deftly rolled and squeezed with rapid abandon.

I got hard quickly. Before I knew it the fingers had guided my cock through the oval hole. Her mouth covered it with an urgent hunger I never experienced before. Her lips squeezed and her tongue danced while her fingers pushed through the bottom of the oval to cup my balls. She pulled me tight against the wall until the base of my cock was pressing against hard enough for me to feel the edges. My balls were through too, still caressed and encircled by her fingers. She bobbed her mouth onto my shaft a few times, then pulled off to stroke it vigorously, then slid her lips around it again with her tongue working,, constantly working. I imagined her face against the wall as her lips encircled and squeezed the very base while my tip pushed into her throat.

The face I imagined was Cindy's. Her young face from the summer before I first left, a willing shyness framed in long yellow hair.

"Jesus," I groaned out loud and orgasmed into a mouth that remained active and eager to the end.

I heard the door of the other booth open and close before I could have reached for my cash. Before I even collected myself enough to pull my pants up the click of high heels went hastily past my booth down the short hallway. The video was still playing. It was stupid. I felt empty.

I entered the dimly lit hallway from the dark booth. There at the end, silhouetted by the lights from the main part of the store she stood with her hip cocked, long legs in tight jeans, her arms crossed. Back lit, I couldn't see her face, but there was no mistaking Cindy. I was stunned, frozen. She spread her arms out and braced her hands against each side of the hall.

"Do you remember that summer when I was buying those porn DVD's?" she said.

I nodded. Cindy let the silence hang a moment before continuing as if she had asked a question of her fourth grade students.

"I bought them all from Betty here," she said giving her head a little sideways nod toward the counter out of my line of sight. "We became good friends that summer. You met her once or twice. She weighed a bit less then."

"And had dark hair?"

"Still does under that wig she wears in here."

"I remember."

"I even invited her to our wedding, her and her husband Pinky here," nodding the other way toward where the skinny guy was probably still standing. "She declined, suggesting that it was better to keep our friendship on the down-low."

"OK," I said tentatively without a dawn of where she was going with all this.

"I don't see her that often, she keeps long hours here, but we talk on the phone. Betty gets bored a lot. She recognized you that first night and called me, said you needed help."

Another long silence hung in the air. There was not a sound, not so much as a moan even from the gay side. I found no words.

"Betty also knew I needed you."

"You don't need me. I'm broken."

"I don't love Frank. I want to be with you. I need to be with you, and I think you wouldn't be broken with me."

There was another even longer silence.

"Will you marry me again?" I finally asked.

"Will you ever leave me again?"

"Not a chance."

"I'm still young enough to have kids."

"I dunno, you're no spring chicken, not much time to waste."

Cindy took three steps in her high heels and wrapped her arms and legs around me. "Let's get started then," she said before kissing me as openly as that first time I walked her home.