Long weekends had been filled with candlelit dinners, andextreme intimacy. It all began to unwind when her business venturesfailed and the constant th...eat of corporate downsizing began to rule ourlives. Barbara's mechanism to deal with the insecurity of it all hadbeen to build a fort around herself and her possessions that no longerincluded me. The further we grew apart the more the bickering and takinggrew. The woman that I'd called a wife faded away. I looked to thewatercourse way of the Tao. I went inside tried one but it was a little tight from the waist, she called me from outside and said how is the fitting, I shouted back saying that I guess its little tight and can I try one size bigger. In two minute she knocked the door she just entered the bedroom with some more jeans and t shirts. She checked the fitting of the jeans that I was wearing by putting two fingers in the waist and said “ya I think its tight just try another one” and turned her back this time didnt go out,I. After the first year, I'd calculated that one in eight of them was going to make a pass at me, unprompted. And that average figure seemed to keep up. More or less a weekly occurrence.Mostly, it was just embarrassing - the toothless grins, the wrinkled elbows, the croaky voices. Sometimes it would start with a discreet offer of tea or coffee ('something hot'). Or the classic 'slipping into something loose' (yik!). But just as often, it was a brazen parting of the knees or an eager grasp at my. We sat like this for about an hour and just watched the fire and not talking until she said one word in my ear “tent” and just like that we both got up, stretched, and walked a couple hundred yards in the opposite direction of Rick’s tent to ours. When we got in I realized that there was a tear streaming down her cheek and I asked her what was wrong. She explained that at her school no one would date her because she was not the typical fat redneck girl that most guys looked for in her school,.