“Remember, we buy and sell things to SELL, not fix,” Dina said, embellishing ‘sell’ and ‘not fix’ for dramatic effect. She was humorously chastising me in advance for my tendency to buy odd things when I attended ‘going-out-of-business’ auctions for our side business. We primarily bought and sold used commercial grade exercise equipment, but occasionally other things if the price was right. Or if we needed something.
“And, for this auction, you are there to try and buy exercise equipment, and the generators they are selling. Nothing else. Do. You. Understand?” I nodded. She was helping her friend Laura arrange an outdoor Halloween party for her company, which called for a generator. By coincidence, one of the upcoming auctions I was attending had two for sale. We could help her friend out, then also sell them after the party for a nice profit.
Our used equipment venture began two years ago, quite by accident. I saw a classified ad for a used elliptical machine, a nice one, that led me to attending my first auction. At the time, I just wanted one for my garage, but I found getting it for such a good price exhilarating. I went back later that same day and bought a second one, which I sold on Craigslist two days later, for a $500 profit. That was even more exhilarating, and I was hooked.
Dina wasn’t just partners with me in a side business. She was my ex-sister-in-law, former wife of my brother and his career as a waiter, deadbeat, and leather-jacket-wearing drummer in a local rock band. I remember the shock of meeting her for the first time, because although he’s my brother, and although supposedly he ain’t heavy, Dina was a bright and focused graduate student, and my brother was, to put it mildly, my brother. I was about eight years older than the two of them, best man at the wedding, and best friend when the marriage fell apart just six months later.
I was in an odd position, because my brother was completely to blame for everything. From stealing her money to bringing strippers home with him, I was put in the difficult situation of being supportive of my brother while also knowing that he was in the wrong in almost every way.
When the divorce proceedings started to get ugly over the iguana they bought together, I ended up mediating between them, and convincing my brother to relinquish the iguana, pay her back the stolen money (which by the way I secretly funded), and convincing her not to have him thrown in jail, since he hadn’t only stolen her money, he was a part time drug dealer, his drum set was stolen, and he was committing insurance fraud for a fake injury from the one job he had ever held.
Being an intelligent sort of person, when the time came to give Dina the money, I did it myself rather than trusting my brother to do it. I made up what I thought was a good sounding excuse, that I had invested the inheritance money from our aunt on his behalf, and that was how he was able to pay her back. She acted as if she believed me, although she was a smart person, she probably knew better. Nonetheless, she appreciated me doing the right thing, and the seeds of a friendship were planted.
We remained in casual contact with one another for many years, because we were both part-time Tae-Kwon-Do instructors. And although we were at different schools, the Tae-Kwon-Do community is relatively small, so particularly in a mid-sized town like ours, most black-belts at least knew one another at least by sight, due to the tournaments, exhibitions, and testing events that happened several timers per year.
Then, almost fifteen years after being married to my brother, Dina and I found ourselves in an odd business partnership. It began because I knew that she worked at an exercise equipment supplier, and I would occasionally ask for her opinion on a piece of equipment. One day, a unique opportunity fell into my lap that required more up-front cash than I had on my own, and suddenly, we were partners. Her job also gave her occasional access to damaged or broken equipment that couldn’t be sold, so we once in a while things for free. And to top it all off, she had a way of batting her eyelashes at the movers and getting us hefty discounts on their prices. Dina turned heads wherever she went.
We kept our friendship and our business relationship relatively quiet, as far as our families were concerned. Her family didn’t like my family, and my mother had very much taken my idiot brother’s side and thought Dina was the devil.
In the meantime, I had a flexible job, so I could attend at least one or two auctions per week. I even became a truck owner, having found a retired rental, for, of course, a good price. And on the weekends, I rented it out to a moving company. I wasn’t quite getting rich, but the extra money was nice.
The auction in question was for a spa that had gone out of business, but they happened to have two generators for sale too. Unfortunately, everything was overpriced, so the trip was almost a waste of time. With one possible exception. There was a commercial-grade laser hair removal machine, labeled as damaged, for only $100, including a box with cords and miscellaneous parts, as well as a box of latex gloves. A quick internet lookup on my phone said it could easily be worth $1,500 on the used market, but only if it worked. As an amateur mister fix-it, I decided to take the risk and buy it. It was risky because quite often, an advanced device like this needs an extremely expensive part, which coming full circle, is why it’s for sale in the first place. And even more scary, the risk of Dina’s lectures about buying frivolous things, especially frivolous things that need repair. Regardless of all those practical considerations, I bought it. I felt lucky.
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Before I even started driving, I looked carefully at it in the back of the truck. I could see where someone had damaged the socket where the power cord went in. With a little luck, it would be an easy fix. Although we had a 24-hour storage unit for most of our inventory, I always took ‘to-be-fixed’ items to my house. I got the laser device home and put it in the back bedroom where I kept the things I was going to fix. I put it next to the broken TV that I was going to fix, and in front of the printer I was going to fix. Which was to the left of the shelf where I kept the two identical laptops, the tablet computer, and the high-end studio monitor speakers that I was going to fix. I also had to move the two bicycles that I was going to fix. As I looked at the shelves, I remembered the broken bracket on the top shelf that I was going to fix. “I can’t believe Dina thinks I have a problem,” I laughed to myself. I’d fix her someday too; I knew I would.
I was indeed lucky with the laser. All that seemed to be wrong was the power harness, and pulling it back into place with a pair of needle-nosed pliers got it to where it could be turned on again. This was promising, but I still had to test it. I drew a circle just above my ankle and zapped the hairs within. Nothing happened, though, so my heart sank. After a frantic internet search, I learned, that the hairs don’t fall out for a few days, so I wouldn’t know if it was working or not quite yet.
Since I had gotten out my tools anyway, I took the back off the TV, followed the instructions I had saved on my phone, and saw without a doubt that it was suffering from the two swollen capacitors that tended to always go bad on this model TV. I couldn’t fix it right away, but it gave me a rush. In all likelihood, the TV would work once I replaced them. I went online, ordered a five-pack of the capacitors, which cost only $10.95. If I had just bought two of them, they would have been $4.95 each, or $9.90 for the two of them, so for only a dollar more, I got three more capacitors. I laughed at myself again. But it was a good evening. The speaker with the broken tweeter, it turned out, had just been a poorly soldered wire, so it was also an easy repair. And replacing the tablet’s battery with the one I had bought for it also went smoothly, after only six months in “going to fix it” status. Then, although I was exhausted, I took the good screen from the inoperable laptop and moved it to the working laptop with the cracked screen, leaving me with one fully functional one, and one that was even more inoperable than before.
It was days like this, where I felt the thrill of victory. I would soon have a working 70-inch TV, which I would move to the TV room. Someday. And the fully functional laptop would sell online for about $300, and the broken one maybe for $100, for parts. And the laser machine, if it was working correctly, would yield just a few dollars, but I had gotten it free. I went to bed, watched some lesbian porn on the tablet I had just fixed, masturbated, and went to sleep happy.
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By day three, it was clear that the laser machine was working. The spot that I had zapped was hairless. I started mentally counting my profit money in advance.
Then later that same day, Dina and I went to an auction together. This was a good one, and we ended up with five top-of-the-line spin-bikes for a very good price. Some days, as was the case here, it was just the two of us, no hired help involved, so we got our goodies, and took them to the storage unit. I must admit, moving days could be interesting, since Dina always wore yoga pants and a T-Shirt over her sports bra, and on good days, she’d take off the T-shirt as she got hot. On really good days, it wasn’t a sports bra, but a white ribbed-cotton tank top, cut short to serve as an undershirt, and today was one of those days. Although I had never violated the sense of trust by being creepy and staring, I had to admit, looking at a pretty sweaty girl with a nice body in tight yoga pants with nipple outlines poking through a tank top was a wonderful way to spend an evening.
On extremely good days, which this seemed to be turning into, she would stretch her toned arms far over her head, letting me indulge my mild-to-moderate underarm fetish. We had to rearrange several things to make room for the new purchases, so it took a while.
Eventually, we finished and could stop for a break. I sat on the floor resting my back against one wall, then she laid down and stretched out on the floor across from me, legs parted not necessarily in a sexual way, more of an ‘I’m too tired to move’ way, except her crotch was most definitely facing me. And when she shifted, I would see up her tank top a bit, to the undersides of her breasts. And with that day involving heavy lifting and lots of sweating, there was damp cloth sticking to her body, in the crotch area of her yoga pants, as well as the front of her tank top. Meaning that for me to try to look her in the eyes as she spoke, I not only had to look past her parted legs and up her blouse, I had to look past the full outline of her vulva, the partially transparent-when-wet fabric of her yoga pants, and her nipples clinging to the damp fabric of her tank top. This, I joked to myself, wasn’t just an extremely good day. It was the best day of my life.
On further review, I realized two of the spin-bikes needed some repairs, so we needed to move them to the house. After our break, me at first having to hold things in front of my pants to hide my erection, we loaded the two items into the truck and took them over. As we carried them into the back bedroom, Dina noticed the laser hair removal machine. “What’s that?” she raised an eyebrow, and pointed to it, although I could tell she knew what it was.
“Oh, that,” I paused. I had forgotten it was there, and I knew it looked and sounded creepy, for a single male to own a laser hair removal machine. I felt the need to be defensive. “It’s an, um, a Laser hair remover. I got it for a really low price. We’re going to make almost $1,500 profit on it!”
“You bought a laser hair remover?” She was rolling her eyes, as if to say, ‘stop buying crazy things.’ Then she followed up, saying, “Stop buying crazy things!”
“It was a really good price. A reeeeeeally good price.”
“Does it work?” Dina knew that my crazier purchases often didn’t work. I was a little embarrassed, but I pulled my pant leg up and rolled down my sock to show her the bald circle just above my ankle. “Oh God,” she said, and laughed out loud.
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We had a nice relationship. There was always an undertone of being just friends, and that was fine with me. We ended up getting protein shakes and sandwiches on the drive back to her car, and we decided to park and eat in the truck before heading home.
“Hey,” she said softly. I did enjoy the moments where we had heart-to-heart conversations. And there was a certain tone of voice and a certain way she would begin a thought with ‘Hey’ where I knew it was going to be one of those moments. “I know it was your money, when you gave me back the money Joe stole. Did you know that I knew?”
“I had my suspicions,” I shrugged as I answered.
“It would have worked if you hadn’t said Joe knew you invested the money,” she laughed. “If you had said you secretly took part of his inheritance and didn’t tell him, maybe I’d have believed that.”
“Well, the job he’s at now, he’s been there three weeks. He’s growing up!” I embellished, as if three weeks was a record. Dina laughed. We very rarely talked about our families. It wasn’t so much that it was a sore subject, but that we both had resigned ourselves to it being hopeless.
“Then that day,” her voice trailed off and she turned her head away so I wouldn’t see her face. Just two weeks after she and my brother divorced, I happened to be stopped in traffic at a busy intersection, my car waiting in line next to that mysterious brick building with no signs on it anywhere. And there was Dina walking out of the side door, crying and being helped into a car by her mother. And just as the light changed and I had to start driving, Dina had happened to look up, and we made eye contact. “I know you can keep a secret.”
“Well, same here,” I said softly. I remembered how she had overheard grandmaster Frank telling me in his unkind manner that I was terrible and I should just stop testing for promotions (not all grandmasters are nice people.) But when I left, there were still three cars in the parking lot, including Dina’s, and I saw here surreptitiously walking out the back door. She had heard everything, but I knew that she had never told a soul.
But we had an unspoken bond of silence. We had never before discussed the secrets we knew and had kept, neither the worst day of Dina’s life, or my “top-ten” worst days of my life. It hadn’t dawned on me before how deep our friendship had become. Obviously, I still looked at her ass whenever I could get away with it, but at least I felt guilty about it.
“So.” In addition to the way she would say ‘Hey’ sometimes, there was a very particular way she would begin sentences with ‘So’ when she was about to bring up an even deeper topic. I looked at her, and I suppose there was a certain way I would look that let her know I was listening intently.
“I know it’ll be a little weird, but do you mind lasering me? My advanced swimming lessons for the triathlon start in two weeks. I don’t want to show up all hairy,” she said, looking past her lap to her thighs and knees.
I tried to act as if that sort of thing happened to me every day, and looked at her ankles as I replied. “Sure. I’m not necessarily an expert, but I’m patient. I read a few articles.” Although she probably knew everything I was telling her, I echoed back what I had learned, that a typical session took about an hour, but it takes several repeat visits to get the hairs that you missed each previous time plus the new ones that keep appearing for a while. And how the hairs don’t fall out right away either. “They look pretty smooth, though,” I said, as I tilted my head to look more closely at her ankles. Her delightfully slender ankles.
She gave me an odd look, but continued, “Ok. Mind if we start later this evening? It’ll be cutting it close, needing to be done in just two weeks.”
“Sure. Follow me back to the house,” I said, and she hopped out of the truck, into her car, and we went back to the house.
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“Let me shower first,” she said. This was starting to get real! But being a single male, I knew the guest bathroom didn’t have any towels in it. Or soap, bath or hand. I had to get supplies from the master bathroom and a towel from the laundry room. Wait, she’s worth it. Two towels! That was unheard of for me. It must be nerves, I chuckled at the voices in my head.
I decided to hurriedly go to my room, and put on a second pair of underwear over my boxers. If I got hard, I didn’t want to be caught. And knowing the way pre-cum steadily flows out of me, I needed some extra layers of cloth to absorb things.
Then, I made a makeshift grooming station. By makeshift, I mean I rolled the laser machine into the living room next to the couch, positioned the ottoman in front of the couch, and got the little step stool from the garage. She would sit, her legs stretched outward, and I would sit on the step stool, do one leg, then move the stool to her other side for the other leg.
She came out, having put her top back on after the shower, but was clutching a towel wrapped around her hips by the front. I gulped, wondering how awkward this would be, but thrilled at the prospect of spending time with her legs.
“Well, that won’t exactly work.” I wondered what she meant, and what she was doing. First, she turned her back to me and re-tied the towel so it would stay up on its own. She pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the box that was in the storage tray on top of the machine. Then she took two sofa cushions off the couch, took them to the breakfast table, and placed them end to end on top of the table. And as she leaned forward, her blouse hung down a bit. From behind her hips and seeing up past her abdomen, I caught a momentary glance of her left nipple. She had put her top back on, but no bra. Then she moved one chair out of the way, and another to where it was positioned in front of the two cushions. “OK, I think this will work better.”
I was puzzled. My way on the couch would have made it easier to do her legs. She jumped into a sitting position on the table, the cushions for added padding. Still wondering what she was doing, I rolled the laser machine next to the table, plugged it in, sat down in front of her, and reached for her ankle.
“Oh, you’re so sweet,” she said in a mildly admonishing tone, as if what she wanted to say was, ‘Are you really this stupid?’ Then, in a moment I will never forget as long as I live, she leaned back a bit, threw the towel open, and parted her legs to reveal herself, naked from the waist down, her glorious pussy completely exposed in all its glory. “I thought you understood what I meant. I’m sorry. I hope it’s not too weird?” She said it like it was a question, but I suspect she knew I would have no objections. And I didn’t.
I looked down, under the circumstances feeling it was all right to look at her pussy. Her parted legs. Her pubic hair, nicely groomed, quite short. And her labia. Dina’s gorgeous completely opened labia. “I, uhh. Umm. No, no, not at all,” I babbled.
She handed me the gloves and said, “We shan’t speak of this.” Then she leaned back, propping her upper body up with her elbows, and resting heels on the edge of the table to support her wide-open legs.
So, doing my best to act nonchalant, I leaned forward, my face about a foot from Dina’s wide-open pussy, and began her laser treatment. I was nervous as hell, praying to myself that I wouldn’t start sweating. I was overly tentative at first, but gradually, I got better at it, and we reached the point where I had gotten all the hairs I could get, without pulling her labia apart to get the innermost hairs. Somebody was going to have to do it. “Umm, how do we. I mean, do you want to,” I looked up, babbling, not sure how to say it.