Love Notes from Summer Camp

Just as my oven timer went off, the doorbell rang. The twins raced to the door, and greeted our guests. "Dad, they're here!!"

"Okay, help them carry their bags up to the bedrooms. Then everybody back downstairs and wash your hands. The paella is almost ready!"

A few minutes later, Lori and Cindy raced down the stairs and gave me a hug. The twins were hot on their heels. Amy came down at a more sedate pace, just as I pulled out the paella and put it on the stovetop.

"Mom, we're having paella! Paella!"

"I can see that. It smells delicious, Ron!"

I grabbed her with my oven mittens, and welcomed her to the kitchen.

I asked all of the girls to set the table, and handed Amy a glass of wine. I transferred the paella from the pan into a serving dish and put it on the table. I added a platter of sliced garlic bread to the table, and the feast began.

I was glad that I had used the larger paella pan, because the girls ate like a pack of starving wolverines. Amy and I ate a bit more decorously, but we each had seconds. Everyone had a small piece of key lime pie for dessert.

The twins took their friends upstairs to play in their room, while Amy helped me clear the table and wash the dishes. As we worked side by side at the sink, she turned to me and said, "Your ex must be clinically insane."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's obvious. You're a good-looking man, you have two wonderful daughters who are nuts about you, you have a great job, you go to family camps, and you're an excellent cook!"

"You are too kind. I'm just trying to bring my A game here, because you are way out of my league."

"Why would you say that?"

"You have awesome daughters. You're a great dancer, an amazing musician, and you're beautiful."

"You think I'm beautiful?"

"Duh!"

Amy wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, grabbed my head and gave me a kiss that made my toes curl. I wiped my hands on my pants and grabbed her right back. The kiss went on and on, and started turning into something else. We both became acutely aware of each other's anatomical assets. Amy's ample breasts were crushed against my chest, and the tent in my pants was becoming more and more convex as we kissed. We were oblivious to all else, until we heard...

"Ewwwww! Mom!" "Ewwww, Dad!"

We dropped each other like proverbial hot potatoes, and turned to see our four daughters staring at us like startled tarsiers.

"Sorry, Mom!" "Sorry, Dad!" "We were thirsty, but we're OK!" "Good night!" and the four tarsiers scampered back up the stairs. A bedroom door slammed.

We spent a moment doing our own tarsier imitations, and then simultaneously doubled over in laughter.

"Oops!" I said.

"That wasn't embarrassing at all." said Amy.

We convulsed in laughter again. When we finally caught our breath, I said, "Worth it!"

"Yes, soooo worth it!" said Amy.

"At the risk of further embarrassment, should we try that again. Just to see if we got it right?"

"Yes!!"

We kissed a while longer, and then finished doing the dishes.

We both poured another glass of wine, and then sat down on the sofa, sitting strategically so that further sorties from the floor above could be detected early on.

Putting my wine glass down, I said, "I'm just an oblivious male, who is way out of practice, but I sense a certain turning point in our relationship."

"Damn skippy you do, Captain Obvious!"

"Well, just how far have we turned? Are we up to bed-pushing yet?"

Amy did a small spit-take of wine back into her wine glass. "I guess 'pushing beds together' is going to be one of our euphemisms, isn't it?"

"Could be worse. Could be what my parents used to say."

"And what was that?"

"They would tell us it was time for some of the 'special sleep' that mommies and daddies needed from time to time."

"You're shitting me! 'Special sleep?'"

I nodded. "Yep, that's what they said. So, what did your parents tell you when they were horny?"

"I'm almost embarrassed to tell you. They would tell us they needed to 'take a trip to Tukwila'."

"Tukwila? You mean that bedroom community on I-5 by SeaTac?"

"Yep, that's the one."

"My god. I can never drive I-5 with a straight face again."

"Assuming we do get around to bed pushing someday, and our kids ever break our code, they may claim that we were 'pushy' parents."

"I see what you did there. Maybe more like 'pushing' them into therapy. But don't 'push' your luck, lady."

"'Push' me, baby! 'Push' me hard! 'Push' me all night long!"

"That's what I want to hear! If we decide to 'push' our limits and get kinky, will we give 'pulling' a try?"

"Are you 'pulling' my leg?"

"I'd love to 'pull' every one of your body parts, Amy!"

We both broke up and giggled for a while.

Amy said, "Oh, my goodness. All of this racy language is starting to 'push' my buttons. I'm going to have trouble getting sleep tonight."

"I know some exercise that might help us get to sleep."

"What did you have in mind?"

"'Push'-ups!"

"And 'pull'-ups!"

"Would 'push back' refer to doggie position?"

We laughed again for a while. "Gosh, Ron. Our daughters won't be able to take us anywhere. Every innocent conversation we have from now on will be laced with underlying prurient subtexts."

"Long may we 'push'!"

"Until we're 'pushing' up daisies, buster!"

"Kiss me, you pulchritudinous, prurient paronomasiac!"

And she did.

We made out on the couch for a while, and then went off to our separate bedrooms to sleep.

* * *

After a big breakfast of pancakes and fruit, I drove everyone up to the Whirlyball complex up in Edmonds. We dropped the girls with their instructors and then watched the wild rumpus In the girls' class for awhile. Then we walked to the next court and watched a team of boys playing. "Wow," I said. "Boys and girls definitely have different styles of play. The girls were mostly working on strategy and passing and teamwork. The boys were a band of berserkers that spent more time crashing their bumper cars into each other than on niceties like ball control or points."

Amy laughed. "Are you trying to suggest a metaphor for life there?"

"Nope, just an observation. I'm sure that if we had a larger sample size, we would eventually also see calm, analytical boy teams and bloodthirsty, homicidal girl teams."

"So what do you want to do during the day, while the girls are playing?"

"I want to take you to several of my favorite places here in Seattle."

The first day, we rented a canoe at the UW Aquatic Center, and paddled over to the UW Arboretum for a picnic. The next day we rode bikes from Fremont out along the Burke-Gilman bicycle trail all the way to Golden Gardens Park on the shore of Puget Sound.

In between these excursions, Amy gave me more lessons on a small keyboard I had bought. She was impressed by how much progress I had made in the week since family camp. I had practiced playing chords every day while the twins were in climbing class, and was now able to play an acceptable boom-chuck accompaniment in the keys of C, D and G.

Amy taught me the difference between reels, jigs, waltzes and slip jigs, and how to modify a piano backup pattern to fit all of these different time signatures. She then pulled out a bag of penny whistles and a book called The Fiddler's Fakebook. It contained the music and chordal accompaniment for hundreds of fiddle tunes. We spent a few hours every day playing tunes together, which was awesome.

After a few days, Amy would hide the music from me. She would pick a tune and only tell me what key it was in. She would then play the tune, and let me try to figure out the appropriate chords to play for each part of the tune. At first, this type of ear training was hard for me, but I eventually got the hang of it.

One day Amy said, "Let's hop in the car. I want to take you to one of MY favorite places in Seattle."

We drove from my house down to the main business district of Fremont, and parked a few blocks from the Fremont bridge. We walked to a nondescript doorway marked, "Dusty Strings Music". Amy led me down a long set of stairs to the basement level and opened a door into what seemed to be another plane of existence. This transition was signaled by the pleasant strum of a mountain dulcimer above my head.

To call Dusty Strings a music store would be an understatement. Amy led me into an underground cavern filled with music books, guitars, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, harps, hammered dulcimers, and other instruments that I didn't recognize. We spent the next two hours sampling from this large buffet of instruments. A five-string banjo ended up following me home, as well as the phone number of a clawhammer banjo instructor. Amy bought me my own copy of The Fiddler's Fakebook ,and told me it was my homework for the next few months.

The last two afternoons that week, we spent playing Whirlyball in special sessions for kids versus their parents. I naïvely thought that I and the other parents would have to pull our punches when playing against the team of 10 to 14 year-old girls. This assumption was refuted fairly quickly, as the girls decisively crushed the parental teams time after time. The girls had spent their time practicing their shots and learning strategy. Every time I tried to scoop up the ball and make a run for the goal, I found myself boxed in by the bumper cars of several little girls. Every time I tried to shoot, one of my twins would crash their kamikaze bumper car into mine, making me miss the goal by a wide margin. When the girls got possession of the ball, they would quickly pass it from girl to girl faster than their parents could react. Somehow, there always seemed to be a little girl wide open near the goal. Their team mates would quickly flick the ball to them, and the goal buzzer would sound soon thereafter.

Before the first game, I unwisely made a bet on the outcome of the game with my daughters, with two weeks of dishwashing duty on the line. After soundly whupping the adults, my daughters pointed out that I had made the same bet with each of them, and therefore owed them four weeks of dishwashing. I was a good sport about this, but was only willing to wager ice cream on the subsequent games.

On the way home from Whirlyball, we stopped to grab something for dinner together. The first three nights we picked up pizza, Chinese and Greek food to go. Thursday night we grilled hot dogs and hamburgers at home.

Mark and Lisa and two other friends happened to be playing for a contradance on Friday night, and had hired a sitter for their girls. They invited Amy and me to drop our girls off for a sleepover, and then follow them over to the dance. The girls were thrilled with this plan, but asked Amy and me what we would be doing that night.

I answered, "We two geezers will be so tired after the dance that we'll probably go to sleep as soon as we get home. We'll meet you guys over at Mark and Lisa's house for a late breakfast."

* * *

Amy and I had a lovely evening at the Friday night contradance. Mark and Lisa played regularly with a band called 'The Phinney Ridgerunners." Mark played fiddle, Lisa played flute and pennywhistle, and two other friends played mandolin and guitar. I had heard Mark and Lisa play a few times at camp, but never for a whole evening. I was impressed by how tight the band was, and by the variety of tunes that they played.

Amy and I danced most of the dances together. But in the second half of the dance, the band invited Amy to come up and sit in on piano for a few dances. Somehow, the music got even better. Even though my feet were tired, the energetic music drove me and the other dancers on to dance with even more enthusiasm. One of my dance partners asked me if I was visiting from out of town. I answered, "No, why do you ask?"

"Because you're a really good dancer, and I've never seen you at any of the local dances."

I said, "Thanks! No, I haven't been to many dances lately. But I hope to do this more regularly now."

Amy and I danced the last waltz together. After the music stopped, we and the other dancers applauded the band and caller wildly. We then stayed to help the band pack up their sound gear and instruments, and then headed back to my house.

"What a wonderful evening!" I said as I joined Amy on the couch with two glasses of wine.

"What a wonderful week!" said Amy. "Thank you for hosting us this week. My girls told me that this has been the best summer of their lives."

"I'm getting similar feedback from the twins. I was worried that all of their time with me this summer would seem pretty lame after going to New York with Sarah and Smegma Breath. I was thrilled when they told me that family camp was a lot more fun than the New York trip."

"Let me thrill you some more. I overheard our girls talking after the end of the last Whirlyball match. My girls asked the twins what they were doing next week. The twins said, 'Our mom and her boyfriend are taking us to Hawai'i, but we wish we were going there with our dad and your mom and you guys .'"

I shook my head and said, "OK, it probably makes me a bad person to admit it, but I am indeed thrilled to hear that. Knowing that is definitely going to make me feel a lot better when I have to hand them over to Sarah tomorrow evening. Now, one good thrill deserves another. Is there anything I can do to thrill you right now?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Well, how about this? I agree with the twins. I wish that you and I and our girls were all going to Hawai'i together. Why don't we check our calendars? Maybe you and I could spend one of the winter break weeks there with our girls?"

Amy smiled. "That is a great idea! Also, I really like this thrill game we seem to be playing here. I served you a thrill, and you lobbed one right back to me. Now what can I do to re-thrill you?" She looked at me pensively for a moment, and then took my wine glass, and put it on the coffee table next to hers. Then she placed her hands on both sides of my face and pulled me toward her. She said, "Let's try this..." and gave me a searing kiss.

We came up for air a few minutes later, and I said, "Well played! Now it's my turn. May I have this dance?"

Amy smiled and stood, pulling me to my feet. I then said, "Siri, play some slow romantic blues!"

We eschewed ballroom position, and just wrapped our arms around each other, with interdigitating legs. Cheek to cheek, we swayed back in forth in time with the music. As we danced, I felt Amy's warm breath on my neck. I kissed her neck, and asked her, "What kind of perfume are you wearing?"

"Perfume? None. Don't like them. In fact, I try to use only fragrance-free products. Whatever you're smelling is just me."

"Whatever it is is pretty great. Hmmm... maybe it's pheromones!"

"So you like my pheromones?"

I took another whiff next to her ear, exhaled it back out slowly, and replied, "I do indeed." I moved my head until we were nearly lip to lip. I then synchronized my breathing with hers, but 180 degrees out of phase, so that I inhaled as she exhaled, and vice versa. "Lots of pheromones on your breath as well."

We stood there, breathing each other's exhalations for a minute or so and then slowly turned it into a sensual kiss that evolved over several minutes. "There." I said. "How was that thrill?"

"Mmmm... it was great. Let's try this for a while..." She moved closer to me until the tips of her breasts were just grazing the front of my chest. She then moved them back and forth for some moments. I have always been a big fan of breasts, and thought this was wonderful.


After a minute or so, Amy pulled back and said, "Excuse me a moment — this is a bit uncomfortable. Let me adjust something..." and then pulled her arms inside the sleeves of her blouse, wriggled in a manner that baffled me until her arms popped back outside her sleeves again, holding her bra. She tossed it onto the couch and said "Now, let's try that again..."

This time, when she grazed her boobs along my chest, I noted that her nipples were now quite erect. My own nipples began to respond, and soon we were both making slow nipple to nipple contact. As we did this, our breath became faster and deeper and more ragged.

Soon, nipples were not the only things that were erect. The front of my pants began to bulge prominently. Amy responded by rubbing her pelvis against my bulge, first gently, and then with increasing pressure.

Then Amy pled bathroom needs and excused herself. She returned and sat down next to me on the couch a few minutes later and asked, "Now, where were we?"

I looked at her speculatively for a moment, and then reached down and pulled her right foot up into my lap. I caressed her skin, and began a slow, sensual massage of her foot and ankle, gradually leading up to her calf. I took the sides of her foot in my hands, and rolled her metatarsals in alternate directions, and gently fondled and flexed each toe. I then spent several minutes stretching and kneading the fascia in the sole of her foot. I gave particular attention to the intrinsic musculature of her foot, searching for areas that seemed particularly tense. As I worked my way up her leg from toes to her upper calf, Amy responded first by sighs, then whimpers of delight, and finally soft moans of pleasure.

I lifted her right leg and placed it behind me on the couch. As I did this, her skirt rode up her leg enough that I caught a brief flash of something that didn't look like panties. Had she taken them off while she was in the bathroom? This thought made my penis twitch.

I then turned my attention to her left foot, processing it in the same manner as the right. As I moved up her leg to her calf, she moved her foot into my crotch. By the time I was massaging her upper calf, her foot was pressing rhythmically into my growing bulge. Amy now had her eyes closed, and was breathing heavily. Her skirt had finally ridden up high enough that I could confirm that there were no, repeat no, panties in the vicinity. Instead, I saw a nicely trimmed welcome mat up at the intersection of her limbs. I began kissing her knee, and slowly moved my lips along her medial thigh, adding small licks as I moved my way upwards to the promised land. As I got closer and closer, Amy's whimpering increased.

I blew lightly over Amy's mons, causing her to shudder. However, before moving onward, I couldn't resist asking her, "Am I 'pushing' your boundaries here?"

Amy responded by grabbing my head with both hands and pulled my face onto her mons, and groaned, "Fuck boundaries! 'Push' on!"

I found this greatly encouraging, and did my best to take her literally. I continued to kiss, caress and fondle my way around her mons and labia. This made her increasingly frantic, and her moaning intensified. Finally, I homed in on her clitoris with my tongue, and following several energetic slurps, she clamped her legs against my ears and cried out in glorious release as her orgasm erupted.

She finally released my head, and panted, "Holy shit! That was amazing!"

I asked, "Does that mean it's time to push our beds together? Has push finally come to shove?"

Amy stood up, pulled me to my feet, grasped my crotch and growled, "You bet your ass! You're going to take me upstairs and shove this thing inside me and then push it in and out. As for coming, I think there's going to be a lot of that going around!"

* * *

As much fun as the couch had been, my king-sized bed was even better. As we shed our clothes, we took a great deal of delight in exploring each newly exposed body part. When Amy bared her breasts for the first time, I felt a bit weak in my knees. After spending several minutes worshipping them and her nipples with my hands, lips and tongue, she squirmed out of my grasp, pushed me down on the bed, and began to undress me. As she did, she kissed her way down my chest, taking her time licking my nipples and navel. She pulled off my pants and underwear, and then continued her journey southwards and did a bit of worshipping of her own. Her oral efforts soon had me speaking in tongues and writhing on the bed. Eventually, I could take no more and exploded into her warm and wonderful mouth. She continued her ministrations until she had cleaned up all of the evidence of my detonation.