Loosening Up Bk. 04 Ch. 16-20

Amanda asked, "But you said that sex was interwoven in this."

"Sure. Think of the list I just gave you and overlay sex on top of it. Sex completes and helps the bonding process. Remember, having sex with someone changes everything. I can't have sex without love, being open and vulnerable, forgiving that person and myself, being humble and grateful for what they are sharing with me, and so on. It's the glue in a relationship, but not the only thing that holds it together."

Amanda nodded, and Robyn looked very thoughtful. She kept checking in with Amanda more than she was when Dave first sat down.

Dave added, "All this stuff takes courage. For one, I need courage because I stand somewhat alone versus a couple of billion other people that I think take the easy way out and let someone else intervene with the universe for them -- a priest or pope, a rabbi, a pastor, or anybody else but themselves. They need to get out there and do it themselves. They need to become whole beings.

"I was in the whole evangelical movement and brought up in the church, but lots of things bothered me and I couldn't make them go away or take them, as I was told to do, on the basis of trust and faith. Our pastor used to say he talked to God for all of us. That's BS. I paid more attention to all that because Alice was forced to, and I loved her.

"Someone turned me on to researching what is called the Jesus Myth. I got into that, and felt much better about the things that bothered me mostly because there were some other facts that explained the phenomena cited in the Bible, but I didn't have anything to substitute for what had just been taken away. Did you know that before the whole Jesus thing was transcribed into various books in the Bible that there were at least sixteen other examples and myths that his life eventually duplicated after all the cardinals and popes and politicians got hold of the situation. Jesus, as defined, is most likely the work of a political subcommittee.

"I labored to come up with the spirituality that I have. It works for me. Each person has to do his or her own work. If you accept my version, you have to work to fit it into your own life. You can't just go to the 'Church of Dave' on Sundays and then ignore it the rest of the time." He laughed.

Chapter 20 -- Challenged to Loosen Up

Jason and Nancy arrived at the same time from different directions. He had dressed casually for the office in shorts, loafers, and a golf shift, and although he looked casual he also looked like a successful attorney and business-like. Nancy was wearing her monokini the same way Patti and Bobbie were at the patio table. Robyn was in sport clothes and Amanda was wearing both parts of a bikini. There was a round of greetings, and then everyone sat.

As Jason and Nancy got to the large table, his eyes again bugged out of his head as he ogled all the breasts at the table.

Robyn spoke, "I'm over here, Jason. Stop staring. It's impolite."

"Oops, sorry," he said as he sat in the chair Dave offered. "I've been reading legal cases dealing with cohousing developments for three hours. The sight of you all or rather all of you is considerably better and more interesting."

Bobbie ran her finger along the edge of her monokini as though she were going pull the small garment down her legs. "We could make it even more interesting for you."

"I may expire due to a serious aortic failure if that were to occur. Have you all been thinking of ways to tease me all afternoon?"

Robyn said, "No. Dave and Nancy just got here a few minutes ago. Amanda and I were trying to figure out how to get Dave to make love to us, since he keeps putting up obstacles. Patti and Bobbie were providing comic relief."

Patti harrumphed, "Well, now I know what all that sage advice was worth." As Jason looked at her, she shimmied her breasts at him and grinned in a real come-on.

Dave said to Jason, "Some days, holding an adult conversation around here is hard to do."

"Oh, hard," Robyn said. "Dave said something is hard. I like hard."

Jason rolled his eyes.

Dave said, "Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, your lovely and sexy wife is seeking yourawareness that she is on a mission regarding our intimacy. She also has a related assignment with Amanda that I gave her."

"How would that work?" Jason asked.

Robyn said to him in an exasperated tone, "I would like to make love with David. He would like to make love with me, and also Amanda. He has bound us together at the wrist and told us that we must be a package deal, and that we, too, must also make love for him to see. Mr. Prentiss apparently gets his rocks off watching girl-on-girl action."

Dave nodded, "I do; I think all of the men in the Circle do. That also wasn't quite what I said, but you'll come around to seeing it my way."

Jason added, "I do, too. Sounds like a worthy threesome to me."

Robyn was surprised, "So, you don't care who I have sex with?"

Jason laughed, "That's not what you asked. You wanted me to be 'aware', you said, of an impending threesome with you, Amanda, and Dave. All right, I'm aware, and I hope you all achieve some orgasmic nirvana. I do care whom you have sex with because I want you to be loved, unhurt, protected, and safe. In some of your moods, now that you are loosening up, I fear you'll go down to the local bar and take on all comers. That would not be a good choice of ways to sate your hypersexuality."

Dave picked up on his comment, "Is she or are you just teasing her?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "She has phases where she is so hyper or manic in terms of sex that I can't keep up with her. I can often rise to the occasion, so to speak, but not as often as she does."

"Why don't you tell her to get a lover?" Dave teased.

Jason chuckled, "I have. We were thinking that Dale might fill that bill, but since we did our little swap we learned that he had twenty-five or so other women to please here in the Circle."

Bobbie further teased, "There's always several lesbian lovers."

Jason teased back, "It wouldn't bother me. I'd even get charged up about it if I could watch her in action."

Robyn allowed, "Susan and I did play around a little, but I'd not done anything like that before, even experimentally in college as so many other women did. I was a goody-goody two-shoes, AND I happened to like men a lot more than women, at least at that time."

Amanda teased her, "So, our big date is off?"

Robyn winked at her, "I'm thinking about it, Darling."

Amanda then slowly admitted, "Robyn, I've never done anything with another female either." She indicated Bobbie and Patti, "These two talk about it like sapphic behavior is one of the best things in the world."

Bobbie and Patti laughed. Bobbie said, "Because it is."

Patti backed her up, "I agree, although I'm not about to give up men."

Nancy pointed at the two and said, "I'm with them. We have an almost two-to-one imbalance of women-to-men in the Circle. Further, we would all rate ourselves as hypersexual, at least most of the time, so you're not out of line there. That means either you spend a lot of time with some battery-operated boyfriend, our sybian, or being frustrated, or you totally accept and enjoy female-female-male encounters, or you discover how pleasing it is to just be sexual with another female."

Robyn said, "But I like men -- Jason -- so much, and Dale, and I'm sure Dave."

Nancy continued, "So, pretend for a while that you're bisexual. I kind of did when I started, but I really enjoy ANY combination of people I'm with now."

"What was your last great threesome?" Amanda asked.

Nancy chuckled, "Well, I lucked out. I had Sean and Mike doing me at the same time -- DP and all that entails. That was rare though. Before that it was Dave doing Joan, Susan, and me. Whichever pair of women were free were doing each other. I don't think I've ever had so many orgasms in one sexual session. Group sessions with more than one female are the norm ... and fun."

Amanda said sotto voce, "I wouldn't even know how to start."

Robyn nodded and pointed at Amanda beside her. "What she said."

Dave said in a somewhat serious tone, "Then why don't the two of you go off and figure it out. You can even use the big bed in my house or the guest room with the bed made up for greater assurance of privacy."

"Really!" Robyn said, looking somewhat aghast at him. "You want us to go off and figure out how to be sexual with each other?"

Dave shook his head. "That's only part of it. I want you to go off and figure out how to love one another in mind, body, and spirit. I want you to feel in love with and committed to each other. Moreover, I don't expect that to develop over an hour, but you could get a good start. I suspect it'll take you a week or three, at a minimum, but I'm open to surprises. After the two of you achieve some kind of nirvana, this about how to relate to the rest of the Circle."

Robyn stood and put her hand out for Amanda to take. "Come on, Amanda. We have work to do. Let's start by taking a walk around the Circle." The two walked off between two of the houses to the sidewalk around the homes rather than going directly into Dave's home.

Bobbie said, "You were kind of hard on them."

"They need to loosen up. Both of them are too focused on themselves, me, on males, and on membership in the Circle, rather than on the real reason one should want to join the Circle. Sure, sex is part of it, but there's lots more, as you know."

Jason seemed relaxed about the whole situation. "I'll be curious to see the outcome of this. Actually, I'm sure of the outcome, just not sure of the pace or the path she'll take to get there."

Tuesday, as Dave arrived home, Kat met him at his driveway. She waved him to a stop. "Go directly to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Your cellphone is off. Pam just left five minutes ago. Water broke. Mike is driving her. The hospital said they'd have a wheelchair and a delivery room ready. And turn on your phone. I bet the ringer is off!"

The squeal of tires as he headed back to the gate testified as to how much Dave wanted to be present in the delivery room with his wife. Dave checked and sure enough he'd forgotten to turn the ringer back on after his last afternoon meeting.

Fifteen minutes later, Dave found Mike in the waiting room of the obstetrics unit. Mike was a calming influence. "She's fine, and in a good state of mind. She's anxious to get this all over with. You're supposed to go to the nursing station over there and get a set of scrubs so you can go in the delivery room. You need to wash up, too."

Dave followed directions, and a few minutes later found Pam in one of the delivery rooms with two nurses attending to her, and the doctor checking in and out every ten or fifteen minutes.

Pam winced through another major contraction. "This sucks."

Dave philosophized, "It's karma. You go through this bit of pain, and then we have the delight of a child. I love you."

"I'm nervous and hungry and wildly thirsty. Please get me a glass of Chardonnay."

The nearest nurse said, "You'll have to rough it for a few more minutes otherwise what you take in will come right back out the same way when you start to push. I've seen it too many times to count."

Pam nodded but that didn't change her condition.

Doctor O'Reilly came in, checked Pam, and then made ready with a few arrangement of trays of scalpels and other medical things near Pam's delivery end. He made sure she was comfortable in the stirrups, and gave Dave some ice to feed her when he wasn't rubbing her back as she leaned slightly to one side.

Pam rolled onto her back, "Oh, fuck. This really hurts." Tears came to her eyes.

"Push really hard and hold it," O'Reilly said. He rubbed and pushed down on the baby bump, encouraging 'Junior' to exit stage right.

Pam moaned, but nothing happened that time or four times after. The sixth time, however, the baby's head popped out. O'Reilly moved like lightning, ensuring adequate freedom from the umbilical cord, and then on the next contraction helping to extract the slippery and bloody rubbery baby from the birth canal.

O'Reilly said loudly as the child made a bleating and gurgling sound, "Well, congratulations. You have what appears to be a healthy baby boy. Does this one have a name?"

Dave nodded to Pam.

Pam said as she panted, "His name will be Robert Edwards Prentiss."

One of the nurses said, "Prentiss. We had one of those in here not too long ago."

Dave said, "That was my wife, Alice. She birthed John Forrest here and I think it's even the same delivery room."

"Oh, I thought you were this woman's husband," the nurse said.

"I am. I have four wives. Neither of the other two is pregnant ... yet, although one of them has a six year old that isn't mine."

The nurse studied Dave and recalled some of the unique things about this family that she learned during prior visits. Wisely, she just rolled her eyes.

A few hours later, ensconced in a comfortable bed in the obstetrics ward, Pam started to receive the stream of visitors who'd all come to the hospital to see their friend and love. The nurses were overly tolerant as to how many times the 'only two visitors at a time' rule was broken.

Dave came home from work a little early on Thursday. He'd gone in early because Nancy had a meeting and they carpooled together, but he also enjoyed the lack of guilt for leaving the utility on its own for once.

As he got out of his car in front of his garage, Elise came puffing around the Circle and slowed to a fast walk before she came up to him and kissed him. She was sweaty and had obviously been doing more than speed walking around the Circle.

"What'd you do?" Dave asked. Nancy stood beside them wondering as well.

"Ten miles today. I jogged to the bayfront, over the bridge, around St. Armands Circle, out to the Longboat Key bridge, and then back again."

"MOTHER! You'll hurt yourself?"

"Nonesense. You don't think this body got to be the way it is sitting around eating bon-bons do you? I attribute my weight control, my physique and tits, and the lovely texture of my skin, and my hypersexuality at this age all to running. I think it also helps with my libido but I guess that's the same thing."

"You have one of the highest libidos of anybody I know."

"Exactly," Elise grinned. "I like it that way. How would you two like to help me shower before our cocktail hour?"

Dave looked at Nancy and she grinned back.

Ninety minutes later, the three of them strolled onto the patio slightly late for the five o'clock start of the cocktail hour. Elise and Nancy were wearing monokinis, as were a few of the other women.

"Where's Pam?" Owen asked.

"She's feeding Robert. She'll be down in a a few minutes after she can get him asleep again."

Owen teased, "Let's see you have the Bobbie you fuck, and the Bobby who's your offspring. How ever will you tell them apart?"

Dave laughed, "I don't think that'll ever be a problem. Maybe we'll lean towards calling him Rob or Robbie just to remove the possibility of misunderstanding at some future date."

"Not a bad idea."

Dave slid behind the bar with Owen and got drinks for Nancy and Elise, and the prepared one for himself -- a white wine on ice; his favorite and given the way he prepared the drink he reduced his alcohol intake but got the liquid. His doctor had recommended he reduce alcohol to improve his sexual response and recovery times. So far, given what he knew about average male erection, response, and recovery times, he was happy with the result.

Owen had noted that Dave had not seen the message board out in the core hallway between the living room and kitchen areas. He commented, "Ken and Patti are gone for two weeks. Do they tell you where they're going or just disappear on you?"

"They left us a note this morning since there'd been a change in what they'd told us a few days ago. They actually got a run to Hawaii from Salt Lake early next weekend. How Atlantic Airlines ever got a route in the Pacific is a bit beyond me, but I think they bid on it or something like that. It's a plum route for the flight crews as you might expect. They get a forty-eight hour layover there on the big island.

"Volcano?"

"Ken told me it was almost ninety miles away from where they'll be in Kohala. He was more worried about what the volcanic ash being blown up from Kilauea would do to his aircraft engines. He told me the FAA was very careful and was changing the approach routes to the island on a minute-to-minutes basis depending on winds aloft. He said that during their layover, the plane would get checked out to ensure there'd been no damage."

"Ken and Patti seem very compatible. Do they like working together?"

"They talked the airline into scheduling them together for all their flights. They called in some chits resulting from how they handled the in-flight emergency. The airline liked that, so agreed. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't kick it up a notch some time in the future."

"Marriage?" Owen asked.

"I wouldn't put it past them."

"Ah, that'd be ashamed, or would they stay and participate in the Circle?"

Dave shrugged. "Hard to tell. I think they both like the Circle, so I lean towards projecting that as the future IF they even get married, which is a supposition at this point by the two of us."

Dave's cellphone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that Joan was calling him. He'd wondered where she was, since she stopped work for the last month of her pregnancy.

"Hi, Love. What's up?" he answered.

"ME! I'm up. My labor has started and my water just broke. Come get me at my townhouse and take me to the hospital. I have my 'go bag' and everything but a ride."

"I'll be there in two minutes, just sit tight." He rang off and told Owen over his shoulder as he ran towards his home to grab a shirt and get his wallet and car keys.

Joan was calm and sitting on her front steps with her bag beside her as Dave wheeled up at the curb. He bolted from the car, and helped her to the passenger door. "How far apart are the pains?"

"Close enough that you'd better not get any red lights on the way to the hospital."

"Oh, shit." Dave worried.

Fifteen minutes and six large labor pains later Dave pulled up in front of the emergency bay at Sarasota Memorial. An orderly was there with a wheelchair to take her up to the delivery area. Dave left her and parked, grabbed her bag and returned to attend this delivery.

Lauren Jade Paige was born thirty minutes later.

As Dave was presented with the cleaned up and tightly wrapped baby, the nurse looked at him. "Weren't you just in here a week or so ago?"

Dave smiled, "Yes. Nice to see you again."

"But ... why?"

"Oh, this is one of mine, too."

"Wait! Two women were in here as your WIVES, and had babies. Is this woman a wife, too?"

"No, just a very good friend that I love very much."

"I'll say," the nurse postulated.

"I think I told you the last time I was here that my other two wives aren't pregnant. I have four of them."

The nurse did a double take, "FOUR! And Joan Paige isn't one of them?"

"No."

"And they all tolerate each other?"

"They all love each other. Tolerance and ability to get along harmoniously are highly valued in our little community."

"How big is your little community?" she asked, as Dave stroked a finger along side the newborn's little face.

"Right now about twenty-seven women and sixteen men. We have a few considering belonging, so call it thirty and twenty. Fifty people."

"Wow, that's amazing. Are you like the leader or something?"

"It's not a cult. It's just a neighborhood of like-minded souls. I'm on the board but mostly we worry about broken air conditioners, chipping paint, and things like that."