Life as Story Pt. 01

'Is this wrong?' I snickered ... of course it's wrong, radically wrong but it isn't wrong, too — it certainly isn't wrong to feel this way, a way I haven't felt in years, decades ... back to that one weekend in college. And anyway, I rationalized, I didn't go after it I merely succumbed to it, succumbed to a young temptress who was simply more insistent than I was reluctant.

I lay there replaying all I could remember but what got to me more than images of the stick figure in full lust was the overwhelming question: why had I deprived myself of this for all these years? Why have I made these exquisite feelings feel so foreign? I knew part of the answer but not all of it.

The shock of the deaths was paralyzing to both of us. For me, it was a long process to work through. And I did, with time and professional help. Wendy had all the feelings I had plus the guilt. It was the guilt she could never begin to deal with, a guilt she tried to make me feel as deeply as she did. She shut down; I hovered in a kind of purgatory where everything was numbed ... except my business life so I doubled down on that.

I didn't feel numb now, I felt rejuvenated, the stick figure did that to me: she showed me new possibilities and I wanted them.

It looked to me like the mother has been entirely wasted by the massive project of bringing up the daughter.

The daughter was grinning, laughing, fidgeting — having a merry old time with the reunion; the mum was calm to the point of comatosity, already a spent force at the prospects of a week with her only child.

While the mother sat impassively on the passenger seat the daughter leaned on the back of my seat, ignoring my orders to do up her damn seatbelt, and talked my ear off — I got the mother's full bio on the ride home from the bus station. The mother never contributed ... or needed to.

Sally Cambolt is a church-avoiding Christian; she works in a department store, managing various departments 'which are probably going to fall apart because she's not there.' She has a two bedroom apartment not far from the store 'so she can walk to work and stay fit ... she walks a few miles a day while at the store, too.' Oh, and she likes to use porn and her bra size is 36 dd.

I expected some reaction out of the mum. Nothing. She just looked stoically ahead as if she was used to it, which, no doubt, she was.

I had to say something to temper my embarrassment. "I guess with a daughter like this you never have to go to confession."

"Never."

I found an excuse the next day to stay late at work, never a challenge. When I got home after 10 the mum was in bed, the daughter was in her office — I had to hand it to her, she worked hard. I had hoped to sneak upstairs but she caught me and couldn't wait to give me her daily debrief — she did this every day, a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened to her.

The mum was in the kitchen when I came down the next morning, swaddled in her daughter's terrycloth robe. She is a naturally pretty woman, elegant even without make-up but her aura of melancholy is over-powering. What do you say?

"I can't thank you enough for looking after her. She was in a tough spot and you stepped in and you're still stepping," she had the grace to grimace, "knowing how difficult she can be."

I chuckled, I couldn't help it.

She smiled, it was only fleeting but it changed the entire atmosphere in the room. "I know, believe me, I know."

I thought of that smile all day, it was gloriously enigmatic but wonderfully suggesting, too, that there is a whole level of her personality that is contrary to her sullen sadness. People have always fascinated me, most often for their disappointments so to have two demonstratively interesting women now living under a roof that usually just covered me is enlivening, that's the word I came up with near the end of the day.

They weren't home when I got there; I was surprised at how disappointed I was. I made dinner for myself, ate it in front of the TV while listening for the front door to open. It hadn't when I went to bed at 10:30 and it didn't until after 11.

The terrycloth robe was in the kitchen again the next morning when I went in, and so was a translucent t-shirt on the stick figure, one that refused to hide the two prominent red nipples. The moment I entered the mum got up and poured me a coffee, the daughter started talking. She was busy, did I mind taking her mother out to dinner tonight, a good restaurant and maybe to a show if we could find one, you know, make a night of it?

The mother sat impassively as her daughter made her pitch — she could have been back on the passenger seat. I said, sure, but I didn't have to, there was no way out and we all knew it.

I was getting good at tuning the daughter out so, thinking about restaurants — I seldom go, I'd have to ask for advice at work, her reference to someone called Gloria didn't stick ... until I replayed her voice in my head. She had been saying something about a date. My attention just started to click back in when Sally said to me, with a hint of that smile, "She may finally have found her girl, I hope you're in a mood to celebrate."

This was totally disorienting but I didn't have time to work through it because Clair was later quick to explain. "I'm not saying she's the one, I think she is, I've gone out with her a few times," she looked at me and grinned, "I've behaved myself, totally behaved myself ... she made me horny, as you know but it didn't get me anywhere; she's never lets me sleep over, it's been close but she's uber cautious, which is OK but she has to start giving me some encouragement ... she knows that and she was trying to yesterday so don't expect me back tonight, not that you can't do whatever you want to even if I'm here ... you can, I want you to." She looked me in the eyes. "My mum is one lonely woman."

The lonely woman just sat there impassively.

I made arrangements with her for tonight then got out of there as quickly as I could. None of this made any sense to me but then nothing about my domestic life has made any sense since my impulsive invitation at the coffeeshop ... but could it possibly be true? Could a lesbian daughter have sex with a guy to prime him for her mother? Ah, no, there had to be more here but, though I searched for meaning all day, it never arrived — who introduces her mother by describing her bra size and porn habits? What was she doing? Did she really bus her here to see if I would go for her?

Anyway, I spent most of the day mulling this and getting nowhere so when I got home and they were both there I just blurted out my question. "What's this all about?"

"You're as lonely as mum ... you're handsome, you're rich, you're a nice guy — everything about you is perfect for her but you seemed too cold, too remote, no fun at all. Why would I ask her to come all the way here if you weren't worth it?" She shrugged. "So I had to find out; I had to crawl into your bed and find out if you had a pulse. You do." She grinned with satisfaction. "So here we are. Where are you going tonight?"

I looked at her mother. Mercifully, my shock that I had been outed trumped my embarrassment.

Sally grimaced. "I haven't apologized for my daughter since she was about two and I'm not going to start now."

I wanted to get it out of the way. I tried to stammer out an explanation but she quickly waved it away.

"I know what happened, she told me, she told me how hard she had to work to get to you," she laughed, "she can be pretty insistent."

"So it doesn't bother you?"

She hesitated a moment before answering. "I thought she was going to be the wild child, everything about her pointed to it. She wasn't, not at all, in fact she went the other way. One day ... it was after high school, she came to me and told me she thought she might be gay but wasn't sure. She wanted to sleep with me ... to find out. I reacted as you would expect me to react ... like you did. But she pressed and pressed like she did with you. So, there. I've slept with my daughter, she found out she's gay, I found out I had no problem with it. We slept together last night, we hold each other — we've been in it alone together since the beginning. I know she's a loose canon but she's my loose canon and I think she's perfect the way she is, unusual, but perfect in her own way. Whatever she does she does for a purpose. She told you why she slept with you; how could that possibly bother me?"

Impassive people can be difficult to talk to because, well, they're impassive. But she isn't really impassive, she just comes off that way until she opens up and you find out that, unlike the daughter, she doesn't seem to have a devious bone in her body while being just about as open as the daughter.

When we sat down in the restaurant I asked immediately about the husband/father, a subject that she was more than willing to talk about because life with him was the life she wanted. They were hippies, long after hippies had died off, free-spirits, free-love types who actually had a Volkswagen van, she laughed at this admission (and I got a glimpse of her radiance). He took off in that van leaving her alone with a two year old.

"She's told you about her story theory, she tells everyone about it. Denis was the centre of the story that he and I created together. It wasn't an original story, if you think of those Charlie Manson girls you'd get a pretty accurate fix on me, but I thought I was original and I knew he was and then he was gone and the story was over, totally over and I had to create a new one for Clair and me."

I wanted to hear that new story but first she wanted to hear mine. So I gave it. It didn't take long and she didn't react, not even to the car accident and the suicide but my story created the tone for her stage-two story which, Clair was right, seemed remarkably similar to my own, a story of getting by: all work, no play, little of interest.

"Why didn't you try to meet someone?" I asked, a hippie-free-love-type living alone didn't make a lot of sense to me.

"I did, I tried for a few years but I didn't get anywhere — the men I attracted I didn't want. Finally I decided I had to get it out of my head that I needed a man to validate me." Her grin turned into a smile that all but weakened me. "But I do need a man, not very women's lib of me to admit that I know, but ... if I don't actually need one I sure would like one, especially now that I'm losing Clair."

"So that's really why you're here? To check me out?"

She laughed. "Yep, and to see my daughter who insisted you are the one for me. She trusts you and she doesn't trust anyone. That's why I came ... to check you out. And I thinks she's right to trust you. So do I. Do you know why? Because you didn't try to hide that you slept with her, you confronted her about it in front of me. That impressed me a lot."

I felt the stirrings of an erection while I tried to think of something to say, 'wow' just didn't seem enough. The waiter bought me some time as he poured the coffee and removed the dessert plates.

I was about to complement her on her honesty when she said, "But there is one thing about a relationship that is vitally important to me ... in addition to trust. I would want interesting sex or there would be little point for me to get into a relationship." With this bombshell she got up and I turned and watched her walk to a table behind me. She leaned down and spoke to an older woman who immediately said something obviously curt and shook her head. When she came back and sat back down again I waited for an explanation.

"I asked them if they would like to come back to our place with us ... that we swing." She looked at me challengingly.

Nothing in me could understand this, nothing.

"Relax," she laughed at me, she could see how absolutely freaked out I was by this. "She said no."

I was missing something here. Logic. "Why on earth would you do that?"

"Because I meant what I said and I wanted to show you and if they said yes, I wanted you to show me."

"Like your daughter did, to test me."

She shrugged, "We don't trust words."

"So you just went over there and asked perfect strangers?"

"I have been sizing them up. It was an educated guess ... and I wasn't wrong," she added this last bit under her breath.

The woman bent down and spoke directly to Sally, "We've changed our minds. We'll meet you outside."

As the woman walked away Sally grinned like it was a victory. "I can go out and tell them no, but I sure don't want that. It's up to you. Do you want to start writing a new story or do you want the old one?"

I still didn't completely get it or didn't think I did. "So what? We go back to my place ... and screw?"

"Have a party, see where it goes, she's pretty. Come on." She got up, put on her jacket and led me to the waiter who hurried to get the bill.

They were standing close together just outside the door. They looked like they could be 60. "We don't live far from here, ten minutes or so," Sally said.

The guy said, "We've never done anything like this before."

"Do you want to give it a try, we're friendly."

They looked at each other, two responsible adults way, way out of their element, as far out as I was. "OK," the guy said.

"Great," responded Sally, legitimately excited it looked like. "Follow us," she looked at me, challengingly again, "give them the address in case we get separated."

I did, I actually did and in a minute my hands were shaking even as I gripped the steering wheel.

She notice. "Look, do you want interesting sex or not ... if not, say so."

"Is this so easy for you?"

"I've slept with my daughter, of course this is easy for me and it'll be easy for you, once you do it. She's an attractive woman ... what's your problem? It will be fun."

My mouth was dry, I was anything but horny. "What are the rules," I asked, although my mouth didn't work very well.

"There aren't any rules, there are only objectives: let's have fun ... if we can do that we have a chance together."

"Is that what this is about?"

"Relationships are all about opportunity. The timing is perfect for both of us to have a relationship so let's see if we can start writing a story together ... one that we both like, that's what this is about. Why miss an opportunity?"

They must have been feeling like I was, nervous, excited, uncertain, afraid. Their lights were behind me the entire way — I looked for them to suddenly turn away, I even hoped a little they would, but they didn't, they parked behind me, I led the way up the stairs and we we were in the house, the four of us. What now? The guy was shortish and a little over weight, his wife was quite tall and appeared elegantly thin. When Sally took the guy's hand and started walking, he followed, looking back. "You OK?" he asked his wife.

She nodded, her regal visage looking determined.

"I've never done this before either," I said. "You're the boss, OK? We go as far as you want."

There is a fierceness to her eyes, this was not a woman who was used to doing what others' said. "No, I know nothing about this, I want to do as I'm told." When she took my offered hand I leaned in and kissed her gently ... as an ice-breaker. She took it that way and kissed back, timidly at first but she quickly gained confidence and leaned into me, her body pressing against mine and I could sense a hunger ... but I had no sense of the boundaries. Soon she pulled back and bore her fierce eyes into mine again. "My husband treats me nicely, I don't want you to ... come on, I want to see them together: he's never been with another woman; I've never been with another man — we've become totally boring."

When we got to the bedroom the guy was sitting on the edge of the bed, Sally was standing in front of him with her top off and her hands on his shoulders — his hands were on her hips, his eyes on her large white bra.

"That's Sally," I said to announce our arrival, "I'm John." The guy quickly got up, shook Sally's hand and awkwardly made his way around her to shake mine.

"I'm Donald, this is Patricia." He watched me kiss Patricia on the cheek then remembered to go back to Sally.

If the two women were as disoriented as Donald and I, it might have been awkward, but they weren't, they were both focussed on undressing and we were both equally focussed on watching them.

Patricia appears patrician in body and soul, lithe, elegant and self assured if not at this moment actually confident. Her blue dress dropped off in a single movement and I could easily see her small, pink bra was holding very little, and her skimpy pink panties beneath the pantyhose pinched into a very taunt belly and held a fairly flat ass. When she looked at me I quickly got at my clothes taking them off so fast I forgot to get embarrassed by my erection.

She smiled at it as she nimbly slipped her panties from her foot. "I thought the days I could cause one of those were long gone," she quickly thought about it, "or is it them."

'Them' were the two breasts the guy was drooling at as Sally lightly gripped his impressive erection.

"Do we share the bed or find another room?" I heard Patricia whisper.

Good question. "Do we share the bed or find another room?" I asked our tour guide.

She looked back at us like we were nuts. "You do whatever you like ... whatever your hearts' desire. There are no rules here."

The woman immediately crawled on the bed and when she did I admired a gaping, somewhat hairy pudenda that struck me as way too big for the healthy but frail-looking body. Immediately her hand went towards Sally and she guided the breast to her husband's lips.

But it wasn't her husband's lips she cared about. The hand, it was clear, closed firmly on the breast and in a moment Patricia was lying down and she was guiding Sally by the breast to climb on her and there it was, the most erotic sight of my life, Sally's naked back creased with an angry looking red bra welt and the patrician's long elegant fingers insistently digging into the marked and freckles skin as Sally used her knees to open her guest wide in welcome.

I don't know much about sex, pathetically little for my age; I know nothing at all about kinky sex, I haven't had any of that ever, even in my thoughts. So this was hard to process and Donald I could see wasn't having any easier time of it, even though Sally's fingers were still half-fondling his erection.

I sat on the bed and ran my fingers up the inside of Patricia's regal leg; she opened it further as I got higher — her pussy was nowhere near as big and gaping from this view, more delicate and refined with thin and greying dark brown hair neatly clustered tight to her opening. I touched her, just barely when Sally's hand found the one I was balancing on and insistently guided it over to replace her's on Harold.

I flinched, of course I flinched but the air of permissiveness was so overpower it encouraged me to close my fingers around his prick — the guy clearly didn't give a shit as long as someone was gripping him.

Then he was gripping my wrist and tugging and I felt myself going, re-aligning, stretching but obediently going and I knew why: it wasn't desire, although I was shocked I felt no aversion; it was because I was just too out there not to and because I didn't want to be the anchor, I wanted to be a team player.

And then his skin was on my lips, his sinewy cock was in my mouth, his need poking at my throat ... I could feel a hesitant excitement in his thrusts which were timid, uncertain — respectful, I thought and I could feel the hand on my shoulder and back caressing me, reassuring me and a voice in my ear, "He'll be quick. Don't let him cum."

I was conscious of trying to balance it out. I was sucking, I couldn't deny that, it was surreal but real too, something I would later have to confront, but my hand was searching, too, travelling up the inside of her leg looking to connect me with the centre of her femininity, looking to deflect me from one act to another. But I didn't get there: sounds were coming from him, sounds that made it seem like he was losing it and I was being pulled away and I went ... I went with some reluctance and was guided up on my knees and I was between her legs and she was pulling me down and in and I was slowly empaling the thin, regal body of the patrician patriarch whose stern beauty was staring at me impassively as Sally watched me make the emotional transition.