In Search of the Final Freedom: Chapter 59a

In Search of the Final Freedom: An Erotic Socio-Political Novel

BOOK FOUR

Sounding the Clarian Call

Chapter 59

Bonnie was tired, she now wished she’d rescheduled either yesterday’s two meetings with Stephanie and Ruthie, or she’d rescheduled her planned get-together with her mother-in-law. Yet, she’d postponed this afternoon’s event twice already. One thing was certain, Bonnie didn’t feel like she was sitting on the sidelines, she was busy doing things that had a positive effect on people’s lives. And, this week she would not be traveling at all for the first time since New Year's, she was grateful for that.

It wasn’t like she’d not seen or talked to Miss Bee, as Bonnie had begun to call her (as opposed to Grandma Campbell). Over the ten weeks since New Year’s, she and Cooper had begun inviting her to join them out for lunch on Sundays. They’d done that when the kids were small, but they’d gotten out of the habit somewhere along the line. The first time Miss Bee and Travis had joined the Marshals and Simms at the restaurant by the lake, the conversation seemed to have been stilted. After all, it was at those Sunday lunches Bonnie normally briefed her friends on how her speaking events had gone, often including a mention of the couple(s) she’d invited to her hotel room that week.

However, bit by bit, the shackles began to fall off and even Cooper began to speak of who he had keeping him company while Bonnie was on the road. At those lunches in the first few weeks in January, Bonnie had been concerned that she might say things that would offend Cooper’s mother or her boyfriend. Fortunately, it appeared that Miss Bee and Travis were indeed adjusting to a level of openness about sexual things that simply had not been part of their life before. In mid-February, Trish quite openly let Miss Bee know that she spent nearly every Saturday night in bed with her son… with or without Bonnie. Slowly, Bonnie and her friends began to see Miss Bee and Travis as part of their world, even though the two retirees had both made it clear that they were not even considering anything but monogamy for themselves. Now that they were into March, Miss Bee knew full well that Cooper had one of Bonnie’s friends in his bed nearly every Friday night while at the same time, Bonnie was doing the same while traveling.

Bonnie had expected to more or less sleep all day on Monday, but Ruthie’s request to talk to her had derailed that. Not that she resented it, it was just that she was dragging. So, she didn’t get out of her bed until past 10:00 on Tuesday morning and just lounged around until close to noon. She sent Cooper a text thanking him for starting to have someone come to the house twice a week to help with the housekeeping. Otherwise, she’d be cleaning all day today instead of relaxing.

Trish and Slosh arrived just before 2:00 bringing some finger food to transform this into a proper women’s day out. Sherry and Miss Bee arrived together at 2:00 sharp. Bonnie greeted them both with a hug.

Once all four of her guests had arrived, they chit chatted in the living room for about half an hour before Bonnie led them to her bedroom where she had four terrycloth robes laid out on the bed.

As far as Bonnie knew, it was her mother-in-law’s first time in the master bedroom since she’d moved out well over a decade before. Stepping through the doorway, Miss Bee said of the nude of Bonnie above the bed, “I’ve seen that painting from the living room, but I just pretended I had not. I think it is lovely.”

Bonnie replied, “Thank you. About five years ago Cooper had a painter in Atlanta use a series of photos he had taken of me over the years to make it. It is sort of a composite of me from my mid-20s to my mid-30s. I don’t mean to sound vain, but I really like it.”

“You have every right to,” Miss Bee replied before she systematically looked over the room’s sexually oriented décor. In doing so she quipped, “Cooper’s father would not approve of any of this. To put it mildly, he was quite the prude.” She paused then said in a slightly sour tone, “Though that didn’t keep him from having several affairs with women young enough to be our daughter.”

That was news to Bonnie. She’d not really known her father-in-law very well before he passed. Though, based on what she knew about Sparta’s elites, that revelation was not really surprising.

It was only when Miss Bee turned to see the large photo on the front wall of Bonnie and Cooper having anal sex did she gasp in surprise. Staring at it, she said, “Oh Bonnie! Sherry had warned me that there were some explicit photos on the walls of your home, but I’d thought she meant nudes, not something like this… right in your bedroom.”

Bonnie replied. “I put that photo up in here because it empowers me to march to the beat of my own drummer. It’s the juxtaposition of the explicit sex with my defiant gaze that gives the image its power. The fact it shows me enjoying anal sex reminds me every day that I do what makes me feel good no matter what convention says I should.”

It took her mother-in-law a few moments to compose a response.  “Yes, I see what you mean. While it certainly is explicit, the way you are looking at the camera speaks to your self-confidence. May I ask who shot the photo?”

Bonnie answered, “It is from the Caribbean sailing cruise we went on last year. We didn’t know until we were well out from Miami that it was a sex cruise. It was that week when Cooper and I stepped out into a new way of life. I’d already begun having sex with one of the women from church and her husband, but that trip moved us to an entirely different plane. The photo was taken by Judy LeMarco, the wife of Cooper’s old boss.”

Bonnie was wondering if she’d made a mistake by bringing Cooper’s mother into her bedroom when Sherry came to her rescue. “Bee,” she said, “You and I have had several talks over the last month that you said were enlightening. Recall how I told you all about how your son and Bonnie have never treated sex as something that needs to be hidden. If I thought this was too much for you, I would have warned Bonnie not to bring you into her bedroom.”

From conversations with both Sherry and her mother-in-law, Bonnie knew the two older women had talked extensively about Sherry’s background and Bee’s new life living with her lover. Bonnie was beginning to conclude that Sherry had lived the life that Miss Bee would have lived had she had her choice. Rather than being appalled hearing about Sherry’s decades of free love, even when she was married, Miss Bee had been fascinated by it. Significantly for today’s event, a few weeks ago, Miss Bee had joined Sherry and Magnolia LeCroix in Sherry's gazebo hot tub. So, this afternoon would not be her first time to get naked with friends; but doing the same with family was still a leap. With all that in mind, Bonnie told her mother-in-law, “It's not that we take sex lightly, it is just we don’t think it is dirty or shameful.”

“Yes, I know. Sherry and I have talked about those issues at length. All this isn’t    too much for me, but it is… well it will take me some time to become as relaxed about sex as you all are.”

With that, the women proceeded to remove their clothing and don the robes Bonnie had put out. Bonnie couldn’t miss how anti-climatic it all felt. They had been working toward this moment for months, yet as they all sat in the hot water there was no drama or even visible discomfort.  Perhaps that was because Miss Bee had already been hot tubing at Sherry’s place making this event nothing new. To Bonnie, it seemed this was just a group of women relaxing. Even when Misty and Sarah arrived to join their mothers, it seemed… well, it seemed so normal. The only thing of note was that there were three generations of her family present. Bonnie was particularly pleased with how well the girls blended in as peers rather than children.

After some time, Misty asked, “Grandma, you promised to tell me about your summer of ’67… or was it ’68?.”

Miss Bee nodded and answered “Yes, I did. And to tell the tale fully, I will have to talk about both of those summers. But now that I know about Sherry’s summer of ’68, my summer of ’67 seems much less racy, although, I think my summer of ’68 is at least in the same league as hers.”

Bonnie recalled Sherry’s story of her first year as a genuine hippie in San Francisco. Could Miss Bee have really been anything remotely like that? For the first time, she became quite interested in the big secret her mother-in-law had been holding all these years.

Sherry countered, “From what you’ve told me, and you haven’t told me much, I think that in 1968 you and I were living two versions of the same idealistic life.”

“I guess you are right. But unlike you, the summer of ’68 did not break me free of social convention. I had two summers of freedom, but by the summer of ’69 that freedom was gone and I spent the next forty years locked in a box of conventional expectations.”

Bonnie, who had known Miss Bee for over two decades, perked up at her choice of words. Had her mother-in-law felt locked in a box for all those years? Perhaps this story was far more interesting than Bonnie had expected.

Speaking directly to Misty, Grandma Campbell began her story.

“Anette Jenson was and is my closest friend. We were practically sisters growing up. We’ve known each other as long as we can remember, and even now all these years later she is still very important to me. But, back in the late 70’s she and her husband moved to Texas where she’s been ever since. From the very first week of my relationship with Travis, she has known everything, and I suppose I’ll tell her about today as well.”

Miss Bee stopped to gather her thoughts and then began. “Beginning when we were ten years old, we began spending a night or two each month in the woods between her family's cotton fields and my own family’s. Her father bought us first a little army surplus pup tent, then when we were about twelve, he got us a larger canvas tent in which we could stand up and walk around. It became our summer home for the next five years. We’d pitch it in the late spring and didn’t take it down until fall.  Back in those days, nobody thought anything about two ten or eleven-year-old girls camped in the woods for days on end, completely out of touch with the outside. It was like we had our own little world in those woods. We camped right on the creek that divided our two families' land, and though at a run we could be to either of our homes in ten minutes, for all practical purposes we were totally alone.”

Misty asked, “What did you do out there?”

“I know it may seem strange to you now, but we didn’t do much. This was before the electronic age and life just moved at a slower pace. We talked and told stories, we listened to my transistor radio, we collected bugs and roasted weenies over our campfire. It was all very idyllic. The creek was only knee-deep, so we couldn’t swim in it, but without the least idea that we were being provocative, we got naked and played in the water quite a bit. It was just two little country girls living in a world utterly of our own making. I simply can’t explain what an insular and idyllic world I grew up in.  I suppose we were in the last generation that simply didn’t know the larger world existed.”

“When Anette turned fifteen, she got her driver's license, you could do that in those days. Her father gave her their old Dodge Dart and she and I were free to explore further from home. In the early spring, we began looking for a new campsite further from our homes. While our place by the creek had seemed remote to an eleven-year-old, to us at fifteen and with a car, our world expanded and that old campsite suddenly was no longer remote at all. It took some looking, but half a mile off of Lake Sinclair’s dirt perimeter road, we found what we were looking for. At the tip of a little cove was a small clearing that had a section of sandy beach. That was decades before all the new houses on the water were built, and by parking her blue Dart off the road between the trees, no one would know we were there.”

“With some help from Anette’s older brother, we were able to drag the heavy canvas tent down the trail to our new campsite as soon as school let out for the summer. Over the past few weeks, trying to remember that summer I found it difficult to separate the reality from the rosy glow of an idealized dream.

That summer, much like the prior ones, Anette and I were together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We slept at her house one night, my house the next, and out in our tent the following couple of nights. My mother rarely knew where I was, and it didn’t occur to anyone that she should.  Our lives were so divorced from the larger realities of the world. We were far more naive and childlike than fifteen-year-olds are today. We still very much had one foot in childhood, even as we were becoming young women.  The Dart gave us real mobility. For the first time, we were able to engage in new social interactions with older teens which tilted the table toward our emerging adult identity.  While we might have been childlike in many ways, both Annette and I had developed the bodies of young women, and those bodies got noticed. Not to sound vain, but we were quite pretty with figures that got attention everywhere we went. When we showed up at the local teenage hangouts, we got the attention of older guys in a way we never had before.”

“One day in June it was really hot at our campsite, and without warning Anette pulled off all her clothes and ran into the water. As I said, when we were younger we played in the creek naked, but as we grew up we realized that our little campsite was not nearly as remote as we’d supposed. We were all too aware of our developing bodies and didn’t want our mothers or my little sister showing up while we were naked. So, it had been several years since we’d played in the water bare. But with our new camp, we really were alone, so even before she’d gotten to the water, I was pulling off my clothes too.  After skinny dipping for a while, we flopped out in the sun.  It felt glorious to lay out bare in the sun’s rays. Over the summer we repeated that many times. A few times we even ran naked through the forest like dryads. It was all quite innocent, yet as much as we were acting like little girls, we had eyes. We knew we did not look like little girls anymore.”

“One evening when we’d met up with our friends in town, for some reason Anette told some guys that it was a shame they didn’t know where our secret campsite was because we’d spent the entire afternoon wearing only our shoes.  Looking back, I can see it surely sounded like a sexual invitation, but the truth is we were utterly clueless to how those older guys would take her words.

All summer we flirted shamelessly, however, we simply had no idea of where to go from there. Flirting was an end in itself, not means to an end. The truth is, we had only the vaguest idea of what sex and sexuality meant.  We knew we liked the attention, and between ourselves, we talked about the tingly feelings we got when we were around certain guys; but, we only had the haziest idea of what those feelings meant. Over the prior year, at sleepovers with friends, the topic of boys and indirectly of sex increasingly dominated our time. Yet, it was the blind leading the blind. None of my friends even had a clear understanding of the basics of sex and conception. I had this fuzzy understanding that a man and a woman were naked in bed and somehow, they made a baby. The mechanics of how it worked was beyond me. We had no sex ed at school and none of our mothers peeped a word to us about sex, so where were we supposed to learn?”

There was a slight delay when Misty quite directly said she’d learned all about how sex worked by watching her parents do it through their open bedroom door. Bonnie looked for a negative reaction from her mother-in-law, but she just nodded and said “So Sherry has told me,” before going on with her story. “By the end of that next fall, Anette had moved past simple flirting and she was going out with a boy named Mark. To Anette and me, he was a handsome rebel bad boy. Importantly, his family was not in our social class. He didn’t even go to the private school we went to. To put it crudely, he was what our parents would have called white trash. But of course, that simply made him all the more desirable to Anette, even if she had to go to great lengths to make sure her parents didn’t know she was dating him.  They had been making out hot and heavy for a couple of months, and by then she was letting his hands into her blouse and her panties. She was at a decision point about going all the way with him, but she knew how little she knew about those things, and I was of no help.”

“Anette had a cousin, Deborah, who was a student at Georgia College at Milledgeville, what is now GCSU. Because her mother repeatedly made comments that Deborah was morally loose, Anette decided that she might be the one who could help her know what to do next.  So one afternoon we drove over to visit her in her dorm room. In three hours, we got a crash course in the birds and the bees as well as practical sexuality. She ended up not only having to give us a primer on the male anatomy and how it works, but on our female parts as well.”

That elicited laughs from Misty and Sarah. They simply couldn’t imagine a world where girls their age were so ignorant.

“From the very first she was plainly saying things and casually using terms that our friends only hinted at. In truth, I found much of that talk quite embarrassing… but it was life-changing for me.  For example, she directly addressed masturbation. She asked Annette if she played with herself and asked if she’d ever given herself an orgasm. Anette sheepishly admitted she often touched herself down there and had been doing it almost nightly since she’d started letting Mark put his fingers into her. But she told her cousin that she didn’t think she had ever had an orgasm. I was so glad Deborah didn’t ask me. While I’d been putting my hand in my panties at night for years, I was sure I’d not had an orgasm the way she described it. As Deborah explained in detail how she got herself off, I’m sure my face was red the whole time. Yet, I listened closely since virtually everything she said was a revelation to me. She said that until we could give ourselves orgasms, there was no use in trying to get a boy to do it for us. While her words embarrassed both of us, we listened intently.”

“Looking back, I see that for the first time ever, I was hearing the truth about sex.  She went into what Anette could expect when she went all the way for the first time. She also spent a good long time telling her how to ensure she got her satisfaction as well as how to please Mark.  When she directly told us that she was having wonderful sex with her current boyfriend several times a week, I’m sure my jaw dropped. In our world, nobody ever admitted something like that. She also seemed to indicate he was not her first. Understand in 1967, such a frank and explicit talk about sex was no small thing.

Perhaps the most important thing she told us that day was how to prevent pregnancy. While by then the pill was available, and she told us she was on it, she didn’t expect there was any way Anette would be able to access oral contraceptives. So, she focused on getting her to commit to demanding Mark use a rubber every single time. She just assumed Anette would start having sex with him soon. Anette said she wasn’t but I think she knew her cousin was right. By the time we left my head was swimming. Though ostensibly Deborah was just talking to Anette, it was a seminal day for me.”

“It took us weeks of talking over what her cousin had said to unpack it all. Between the two of us, we were able to recall nearly everything we’d heard. We found ourselves talking directly about things that were previously beyond our imagination. A week or so later Annette excitedly told me that by doing what Deborah said she did, she’d given herself her first orgasm.” Miss Bee took a deep breath and then looked at the two younger girls and said, “I actually practiced saying all this several times, but still it is very difficult for me to tell you these things. I worked so long to put these things out of my mind, now that I think I need to share these events it is so very difficult.”

Bonnie almost told her that she didn’t need to continue, but something told her that Miss Bee needed to pass these memories on to her granddaughter. So she said nothing and waited. Finally, Misty’s grandmother continued.

“It took me almost two weeks longer even with her telling me how she did it, but soon my nightly sessions with my hand in my panties became much more interesting… and satisfying.”

Misty and Sarah both interrupted the narrative to tell Grandma Campbell about learning to masturbate to orgasm long before they were sixteen like she’d been.

Despite the fact it was so difficult for Miss Bee, Bonnie was pleased how well the conversation between Misty and her grandmother was going.

Miss Bee resumed her story. “As I’m sure you have already guessed, well before school let out for the summer, Anette and Mark went all the way. As far as I can recall, before summer came, when they had sex, it was always in his old Ford. Of course, she told me all about it and part of me was jealous she was doing all these new things but I wasn’t… though even I knew that with Annett’s help, I was on my way.”

“When school let out and it came time for us to set up our summer campsite again, Mark and his cousin CJ were there to help.  Neither of them went to the school Annette and I did, but they had both been in the group of people we’d hung out with the summer before. That is how we had met them. It was not until May, when Anette and Mark had set me and CJ up to go on a few double dates with them, that I got to know Mark’s cousin better.  Initially, I was not interested in him because I had a crush on a boy from our school. But he began to grow on me. Even before school let out, I’d made out with him a couple of times…”

Grandma Campbell paused and added, “and I’d let him feel me up… initially just up top though. It took me off guard how much I liked feeling his hand inside my bra. The week before school let out, I let him into my panties and he fingered me. He seemed to know what he was doing more than I did and I really liked it.  After that, based on the explicit descriptions from Anette about sex, I began to fantasize about having sex with CJ.”

 “It was on a Saturday that Mark and CJ lugged our heavy canvas tent the half mile from where we left Anette’s Dodge Dart to the campsite. That afternoon, things got more intense. Even before we’d gotten everything all set up, we were all hot and sweaty. Without asking me, Anette peeled off her clothes to go skinny dipping with the guys right there. What was I supposed to do? I followed her example and soon she and I were in the water while the guys just stood there dumbfounded. Anette had to directly tell those oafs to take off their clothes and join us.”

That generated a round of laughter. Sarah told Miss Bee that she’d had to do the same thing to get Lamar out of his clothes the first time they all went skinny dipping. Trish added, “But that day it wasn’t just you young people, all three of us moms were there too… and we were also naked.”

Miss Bee shook her head, “I simply can’t imagine doing that with my mother there. Before those two guys took off their clothes, I had never even seen a photo of a naked man, let alone seen one in real life. When Mark got an erection while he and Anette kissed, I didn’t know what to think. Deborah had described it, but well….” She smiled, “it was bigger than I’d expected.”

That brought on more laughs.

“After we’d played in the water for a while, Anette and I flopped ourselves down by the fire pit as we had done the year before. While I knew full well it was an invitation to the guys, I didn’t actually realize at the time that to the guys it would be like a blinking neon sign saying we wanted to have sex with them.  While Anette had been telling me for close to two months about going all the way with Mark, when we’d double-dated they’d only made out in the front seat while CJ and I did the same in the back… well actually she’d given him head, but I couldn’t see her doing it.  But when I sprawled out on my back looking up at CJ, I knew something was going to happen, though I did not know how far I was ready to go that day.”

Sarah popped out the question, “Did you both have sex?”

“CJ and I didn’t, not that first day. After the guys put out a blanket for the four of us to lay on, we made out fully nude for a very long time. I put my hand on his erection for the first time. He guided me to jack him off. Seeing him ejaculate was… well it was memorable. Before we were done, he’d used his fingers to get me off… twice. It was quite a day for me. But Anette and Mark did it all, right there beside me and CJ. Deborah had told us about getting on top of the guy, but I couldn’t even picture what that meant when she told us about it. That afternoon, on that blanket, I saw how it was done. But I think the thing that made my eyes bug out the most was when she put his erection into her mouth. The week before she’d told me that she’d given him head in the front seat while CJ and I were getting busy in the back, but actually seeing her put it into her mouth was something entirely different.”

Miss Bee paused and briefly closed her eyes. “A funny thing happened over those early weeks of that summer… I fell in love with CJ. Was I in love with him before we had sex the next day, or was that part of falling in love with him? I really don’t know.”

Misty cut in, “So when you did it the first time, was it outside by the lake like your friend did?”

“Yes, in the same place, the next day. Anette was right there and talked me through him breaking my cherry. It hurt, but it didn’t take long to get past that.”

Misty said, “That is so cool, when I had sex with a guy for the first time, I had a friend there with me too. But in my case, she and I had been having sex for over a year before the night I first did it with her boyfriend. I’d broken my cherry a long time before that with one of Mom’s dildos, so that wasn’t an issue for me.”

Her grandmother just looked at her. It clearly took a few moments for her to process all that. Then she said, “I hope your first time was as magical as mine.”

Misty nodded, “Oh, it was.”

“I don’t know how many times CJ and I made love under the sun and stars over the next three months. If the summer of ’66 was about magical innocence, the summer of ’67 was all about magical love.  By the first of July, I was totally and completely in love with CJ. So much so that not going all the way with him would have seemed unnatural.  Because I was totally in love, joining our bodies like that didn’t seem dirty or sinful in the least. That was actually a surprise to me. Part of me had expected to feel dirty or like a tramp, but I didn’t. Not at all.”

Both Misty and Sarah seconded her words and so Miss Bee’s narrative was derailed for a little bit as the two girls told how they completely understood what she was saying.  Misty considered telling the group about her growing feeling that while she loved Tommie deeply, she was very concerned that their relationship didn’t have a future. She decided to talk to her mother about it after everyone left.   

When Grandma Campbell finally went back to her tale, she said, “Like the summer before, Annette and I went skinny dipping and laid out naked in the sun any day it was warm enough, but the year before it had been just the two of us. Adding the boys changed it into something completely different. They were not there with us every day because they both had summer jobs, but they were there many nights and on the weekends. By mid-summer the funniest thing happened, going naked around CJ and Mark lost its novelty. Anette and I seemed to return to that feeling of being one with nature by going without clothes. We didn’t always go naked when the guys were there, most of the time we didn’t, but if we did, it didn’t necessarily lead to sex… well not immediately. As you can imagine, pretty much anytime they came out, we had sex before they left. However, making love in the sun was part of that natural feeling, like we were in the Garden of Eden.”

That time it was not just the girls who commented about understanding, the mothers did too.

“In practice, daytime love making was sweet and relaxed, while most of the hot and heavy stuff happened at night. Usually in the tent, but if the bugs let us, we stayed out by the fire. Given that it was summer in Georgia, it was way too hot to do it under covers so we never covered up. Between the daytime sessions by the lake and the nights in the tent, Mark and Annette were right there beside me and CJ nearly every time. They saw everything we did, and we saw everything they did. Oddly, having sex side by side, or even simply watching them do it didn’t feel especially kinky. Somehow in our brains, we knew other couples didn’t do it in front of their friends, but from that very first afternoon, it was just the way it was for me and Anette.”

Grandma Campbell stopped and seemed to consider not going on, but then said. “Soon I found out why Anette liked giving Mark head. I became a real fan of giving oral sex. Annette and Mark showed us how to do sixty-nine, and soon it was a staple of our sexual routines. I gave a lot of head up until I started dating Cooper’s father. But the first time I started to go down on John Campbell on our third date, he made it clear that was only something whores did, and I wasn’t a whore.” She got a mischievous smile and added, “But Travis doesn’t see it that way.  It all came back to me literally the first time he and I had sex. And unlike the guys back then, he doesn’t hesitate to reciprocate.  Given our ages, it is less demanding than other things, so we do it a lot.”

Bonnie could see Miss Bee blush, but apparently, she was pushing herself to tell that part even though it clearly embarrassed her.  

 “Sometimes we did it side by side at the same time, but a good many times the four of us alternately had sex and watched the other couple doing it. And we did it a lot. Anette and I were sixteen and the boys were both seventeen, so we could go on day and night without wearing out. When the boys were there, several times a day one of the couples was getting it on. And it became so normal that I remember carrying on conversations with Anette even while I sat on CJ with him inside of me. Looking back, it's hard to believe how we got to that point in that one summer. But of course, back then a whole summer was a very long time. Just like it had been for Anette and I growing up, we had our own little world with our own conventions, and for us having sex in the open became just a normal part of that.”

She looked right at Bonnie, “Hearing your stories over the last few months, it hit me that we never even thought of swapping partners or Anette and I doing each other. Even while I understand that it seems totally natural for you to share your husband with your friends, or to do it with them yourself, things like that just weren’t in our imagination… at least not that summer. For me, the summer of ’67 is like a dream. I was so totally in love with CJ. He was my whole world. And since Anette and I had been camping together for years before that, our parents never had a clue we were not alone. In fact, our parents never knew a thing about us dating boys from across the tracks.”

Misty cut in again, “Since you told me that my grandfather thought he was your first, I guess they never did find out. How did you pull that off?”

“No, they never did find out about me and CJ.” Misty’s grandmother’s face then took on an air of sadness. “In the fall, CJ had a falling out with his father. As soon as he turned eighteen, he joined the army. I was crushed that he was willing to leave me to go to Vietnam, but we were Old South, and fighting our country’s wars was what young men did. I understood, but it hurt. I wrote him every day, first while he was at boot camp, then when he was deployed.”

She paused and seemed to have to gather herself up before she said in a lower tone, “Then came the Tet Offensive in January of ’68. We’d been told that we were winning the war, but then North Vietnam launched a massive attack at the end of January. I’d never been much on watching the news, but because of CJ, every night I watched Walter Cronkite tell America what was happening in Vietnam. It was just before Valentine's Day that an article in the local papers reported that a local boy, CJ Smith, had gone MIA… missing in action.”

Bonnie could see the pain on her mother-in-law’s face.

Again she paused. When Miss Bee began again, she was so quiet that Bonnie had to strain to hear what she said. “My world collapsed around me. My parents knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell them. I cried for hours day after day. My grades at school cratered and many days I just didn’t go.  While he stayed officially an MIA for years, we all knew that meant he was dead.  Even though I was married by the time the POW/MIA bracelets came out,  I had… I still have the metal bracelet with CJ’s name on it. John just thought it was out of support for a local boy, he had no idea what CJ meant to me. It was not until 1975 that another article in the paper said that CJ’s remains had been turned over by the Vietnamese and he had officially changed from MIA to KIA. Only then did I put the bracelet away.”

Nobody in the tub said a word as Granma Campbell sat in silence for several minutes. Bonnie saw the tears that ran down her cheek.

Finally, she went on, “It is still in my jewelry box. I occasionally take it out and hold it to my heart.”  There was another spate of silence. “After a few months, I found solace in venting my anger at the useless war in Vietnam. Not that I went to any big protests or anything, but I seethed with anger at President Johnson for getting CJ killed. By spring, I imagined myself as an anti-war hippy, even while acting at home like the good girl my parents expected me to be.”

She looked over to Sherry, “It is strange that at that very moment, you were living the life I wanted to live. But I simply didn’t have the courage to run away to California like you did. I really, really wanted to just take off like you did, but I couldn’t. And the truth is, I was far too sheltered to be able to survive on my own like you did that same summer.”

Sherry, who was sitting beside Grandma Campbell, took her hand and said, “We all have our own path to walk. You walked yours and I walked mine.”

Misty’s grandmother nodded her head and continued. “When school let out, Anette and I pitched our tent again. In my pain and anger, I invited all the anti-war rebels from our school to come out and join us. A month before that I’d had my first joint, and had casual sex with one of the guys from our little anti-war group for the first time.

Oh…” she seemed to remember something, “In the winter, Anette’s cousin got student I.D.’s for us from her college. With them, we were able to go to a clinic just off her campus to get the pill. At the time neither of us were having sex since she and Mark had broken up in the fall, but being on the pill gave us a feeling of being grown-up. Even more, it was pushing back on the expectations of my social world. For a society girl to plan to have sex was simply not done. You see, it was common for high school girls to have sex, but it was not OK to plan to do it in advance. Sex for girls my age was supposed to be in an unplanned moment of passion with your true love.  But, when they did it and became pregnant, they simply dropped out of school and got married. And that was not a black mark for a girl’s reputation since getting a good husband was the primary objective for girls like me. Getting pregnant was a means to that end. So, for me, every morning when I took the packet from its hiding place and swallowed my birth control pill, it was a secret act of rebellion.”

“That summer, the summer of ’68, our little hidden campsite became the hangout for the fifteen or so of us closeted kids from my school who wanted to emulate the hippies of San Francisco. The drinking age then was eighteen, so it was no problem getting beer and we had a couple of people who seemed always to have grass. And to make it feel like a hippy scene, two of us played the guitar and someone brought a set of bongo drums and a tambourine so we even had our own music. We smoked dope, listened to music, and practiced free love. And I was the one who made it all happen.

 Annette and I were the two oldest girls there and I set the tone and agenda with my behavior. I had obtained several fringed hippy vests and many days I wore one of them, unbuttoned, without a shirt on underneath. In that outfit, I was exposing myself on and off to everyone who happened to be there that day. And to be honest, I was proud of my boobs and liked showing them off. Several times I simply went topless all afternoon. I guess that is why I chose to go topless on the Mediterranean cruise Travis and I took after Christmas. I was reclaiming who I once was.  And it was me, not Anette who first went skinny dipping in front of the whole group. I didn’t mind one bit showing my body off. I got a real sense of liberation by transgressing our social norms so flagrantly.” She smiled and said, “Actually Travis and I have talked about going to a nude resort in Jamaica this summer. We haven’t made reservations or anything, but we are talking about it.”

Sherry jumped in, “But she has talked to him about joining Herb and me in my hot tub.”

Miss Bee nodded, “Yes, I have and I’m sure that will happen, likely in the next week or two.   But, back in the summer of ’68, in addition to skinny dipping, I smoked a lot of grass and did LSD several times… and… I was easy. I set the example to the other girls by having sex with all of the guys who were part of our little group. Its all sort of hazy in my memory, but I remember that I decided I wasn’t going to have a real boyfriend again. So I treated all the guys in our core group as if they were semi-boyfriends. At the start of the summer, there were ten of us, six girls and four guys. By August there were fifteen of us in our little hippie group. Additionally, it was not unusual for someone to bring a friend with them. On any given day there were only six or eight people out at the camp. On Saturdays, we would normally have more, but, we never had fifteen people there at once. So it was always a small group.”

“As I said, I set the tone. If I was taking a guy into the tent, I’d let everyone who was there know that we were on our way to make love, sometimes I’d ask if anyone else wanted to join us. We started with four guys in our group, but by the first of July, we had added two more. What seems funny now looking back is that we always had more girls than guys, often there were two girls for every guy. I’m not sure why that was. You would think we would have attracted more guys since they were nearly guaranteed to get laid any time they came out to our camp, even visitors. Since I’m telling everything else, I’ll confess, if one of the guys brought a friend or cousin or something, he at least got head if not a full balling. It wasn’t always from me, but over the summer, I had sex with three different guys I’d just met an hour or two before. Many days that summer I took one of the guys to the tent to make love in the afternoon and then that night another guy would be my partner on my sleeping pallet.”

Sarah asked, “If you had two girls for every guy, did the girls have sex with each other? That is certainly what happens with the club.”

Grandma Campbell seemed to think for a moment then answered, “Sometimes, but what was more common was two girls sharing a guy in the tent. I had quite a few threesomes like that. One of the younger girls became my shadow. Before that summer I hadn’t really known her since she was two grades behind me. Since she no longer lives in this area, I’ll tell you her name was Stacy. If she was there when I took a guy to the tent to make love, she’d follow me in. Sometimes she did the guy with me, but just as often she …” Once again Miss Bee took a deep breath, “she joined him in making love to me. Stacy is the only female with whom I’ve ever had sex … well I mean me giving oral sex. It was normal to kiss and fondle the other girls in a three or foursome, but only a few of the girls would go down on other girls. I wasn’t one of them… except with Stacy when it was just her and me, and I didn’t do that very often.  Over the summer, we made out a lot, usually with a guy to make a threesome, but sometimes it was just the two of us. And… she went down on me every chance she got. She couldn’t get enough of my down there. She just loved taking her time kissing and licking me and she didn’t care who saw her do it.  Now I can see that she was totally in love with me, but at the time, that idea was simply beyond my comprehension.”

“While the prior summer it hadn’t occurred to me and Annette to switch off with our guys or have a real foursome with everyone involved at once, that second summer doing so became pretty normal. As I said, threesomes with two of us girls and one guy was pretty much a daily thing, but there were also quite a few foursomes with two couples. Twice that summer we had an out-and-out orgy with everyone there that day getting naked and doing it as a group on a blanket by the fire. Since I no longer had to worry about condoms, having casual sex was easy… and very enjoyable.”

Grandma Campbell looked right at Misty, “Yes, your grandmother smoked loads of dope and was in sex orgies when she was your age. So don’t think you are the first to do such things.  Without sounding cliché, that summer I drowned the pain of losing CJ with sex, drugs, and rock & roll.”

Bonnie knew her face revealed how stunned she was. She simply could not imagine Cooper’s mother doing such things, even when she was Misty’s age.

Misty asked, “And your parents never found out about any of it?”

“They never really knew what all I was doing, but right at the end of the summer, we got caught. One of the guys overdosed on pills. After we took him to the hospital the county Sheriff began snooping around. A week or so later, our campsite got raided. That was in late August not long before school started again. I kicked myself for not taking down the tent after the guy OD’d. Had the law waited another week, they would have only found where our campsite had been. However, because this happened in late August, we were able to have a full summer playing like we were hippies before we got busted.”

She looked at Misty and Sarah and said “The world back then was very different. Since most of the kids they rounded up that day were from the best families in the county, it was all hushed up. We weren’t booked and the local paper didn’t report it at all. My mother picked me up at the Sheriff’s office. I was there when the Sheriff himself talked to her. He didn’t really tell her the whole story… like when the deputies showed up I was smoking a joint and was only wearing a pair of cut-off shorts and one of my fringed vests. I was lucky that they didn’t arrive while I was in the tent with a guy. The deputies who raided our camp let me pull on a tee-shirt before putting handcuffs on me.” She laughed and added, “That meant I had to take off the vest right in front of him. I have always suspected that was why he’d offered to let me get dressed. He wanted a good look at my tits.”

There were several laughs at that.

“The Sheriff was a family friend and when he told my mother why I had been picked up, he just made vague references to the fact drug use and unnamed other things were going on at the campsite.  On the way home, my mother didn’t ask me what happened or how I was involved. She never asked even once, but she made it clear that I was never to talk about any of that… ever.  She was much less concerned about what I did than for my reputation to be sullied. I actually don’t think she told my father about her trip to the Sheriff’s office at all. She made it clear I was never to go back to that little campsite again… not even to get my stuff. And so, my fantasy that I was a real hippie came to an abrupt end. My mother only brought it up again once, and that was when I’d begun to date Cooper’s father. She pulled me aside and specifically told me not to tell him anything about what happened at the lake… ever. She said that if he asked about it, I was to deny I’d been there. And I did exactly what she said. And importantly, I was no longer able to get refills of my birth control. That is why the day I finished high school, I was nearly three months pregnant. Two weeks after I got my diploma, I married John Campbell. I never breathed a word to him about anything that happened those two summers, and he never asked.”

“You might think that eventually, word would reach him about what happened that last summer.  After all, those same people who saw me dancing naked and giving head right in front of everyone eventually became the leaders in Sparta society. I won’t name names but there is a man who is a leader in our church who’d been one of the guys in the core group that summer. He and my husband were friends for years, yet he never breathed a word that he and I had sex dozens of times when we were teenagers.” 

Bonnie was struggling to rewrite everything she knew about not just her mother-in-law, but about the older people she knew who decried the low morals of today’s teens.

Misty just slowly said “Wow Grandma. That is so cool. I’d heard from my mother about Miss Sherry’s time as a free-sex hippy, but I never would have guessed in a million years you basically did the same thing.”

Her grandmother nodded.

“Perhaps I didn’t get all my wildness from my mother. But, while I have a lot of sex, I’ve never even tried marijuana.”

“That’s probably a good thing. The world is not like that now. If the same thing happened today, it would be treated very differently. It would not get hushed up. It would be all over the news, especially since they found alcohol, pot, LSD, bennies, and some other pills when we were raided. Even more sensational would be that among the kids picked up, most of the girls were sixteen years old and younger. The day we got busted, one of the girls there had not even started high school and a couple more were only rising sophomores. And I was far from the only girl who was super easy. Those young girls had every bit as much sex as I did. Oh yea, that bust would be a big deal today… probably national news. But no one found out.”

Looking at Misty, Miss Bee said, “When I told you that I’d had a great deal of sex before I met your grandfather, I let you know that I’d only told that to one person over all the years. I told my daughter after she’d had a pregnancy scare in high school. And a few weeks ago, in preparing for today I told Travis.” Then to the group she said, “And while I have decided to reclaim that person I wanted to be and don’t mind you all knowing about what I did, there are women and men in town who would feel betrayed if they knew I’d told you all of this. I trust my story will not be repeated outside of our group… and yes, I now consider myself part of your group even if I missed the summer of skinny dipping.”

There was general agreement on that point, and then Grandma Campbell said, “OK Misty, I’ve told you about my wild summer. Do you want to tell me about yours?”

For over half an hour Misty told her grandmother about her summer starting with the end-of-school party when she had sex with Natalie Foster and Cassidy White  simply because they’d asked her to. Sarah jumped in to add that Mrs. Ericson had gone right into Misty’s bedroom while they were doing it. That led to the girls telling her how at every club party, several mothers chaperoned, which means they went right into rooms where people were screwing to ensure condoms were being used.

It seemed to Bonnie that Miss Bee had a hard time believing that, so she confirmed their story and said “Yes, I’ve seen over half of the club girls having sex at my house. Understand, I walk right into the rooms so I see everything. The girls are told in advance that they should not do anything they would not want people to see. It is an issue of safety. While they seemed a little surprised at the first party, now they fully expect one of the chaperones to come into the room while they are in the act. I’ve not seen a single time that either of the participants make the slightest effort to cover up, usually, they don’t even slow down when I’m in the room. Though sometimes they chat with me before I go.”

Miss Bee came right back and said, “But that isn’t so different from my summer by the lake. It was not unusual for people to come into the tent while we were getting it on. Lots of times I talked to people while one of the boys was inside of me. And on days when it was especially hot, the whole front of the tent tied back so everyone at the campsite saw whoever was balling.”

When they got back to their narrative, Misty and Sarah told Miss Bee about the trip to Miami, with Slosh and Trish adding in details. By the time they put back on their robes and went back inside, Miss Bee had become fully part of their group. Bonnie hadn’t meant for it to happen, but inside, Sarah put the photo book from the Miami trip into Miss Bee’s hand. While the girls had told her about almost everything in the book, showing her the photos was quite a large step, especially since there were more than a few photos of Bonnie having sex. Bonnie was relieved to hear Miss Bee tell Misty and Sarah, “You don’t know how fortunate you are to have a book like this. What I wouldn’t give to have photos from my summer of ’68.”

By the time everyone left, Bonnie was sure the day had been a smashing success. She was quite pleased that Misty stood with her at the front door thanking everyone for coming, as if she was the cohost of this event. The realization that her little girl wasn’t pretending to be her cohost, but truly had filled that role as a peer made Bonnie feel like a successful parent.

******************

Over the past two years, Cooper’s comfort level with all the new things had been continually pushed.  Though Bonnie and the kids took to the new openness about sex much easier than he did; he was rather proud of his ability to absorb all the changes. First was the topless beach, then the return of family nudity indoors and out, then friends nude at their pool, then his little girl being openly sexually active, and since Christmas Lamar was having sex too… with two girlfriends. There were so many new things. With all that, Cooper felt good that he’d done as well as he had.

It wasn’t just Cooper whose life had changed. Lamar’s experience over the past two years had in some ways been similar to his sister’s, but in a few important ways, it had been very different. First, while Misty was an active participant in the family’s transition into becoming the model for both nudism and open sexuality; Lamar had almost no role. Because of his age, he’d been left out of most of the discussions that led to the changes. All of it had just been foisted upon him. Even the public notoriety around the first set of nude photos had largely missed Lamar. Since then, new photos of his mom, his sister, and her friends continued to show up on the net and at school, yet before Christmas, he had never once been shown in any photos the club had made public.  Consequently, while his sister’s notoriety grew, Lamar continued to be relatively unknown.

Beginning in the late fall, two things started a change in Lamar’s status at school. First was that he at long last became linked to his sister and the nude beach photos. When a high-resolution photo of him and his topless sister building a sand castle began to circulate in January, his connection became more widely understood. Yes, the photo was a year and a half old, but it was clearly him.  Even still, Lamar had sat through enough very stern lectures from his parents to know he could only talk about those things that were already general knowledge. So, when guys at school would ask about what the topless beach was like, now he could talk about it. He could also confirm that his mom, Misty, Sarah, and their friends had gone to the topless and nude beaches this past summer, because photos of them were all over. By February, Lamar realized that Misty and Sarah were behind the release of most of the high-quality photos that were showing up on the web since the fall, but he could not tell anyone that.

The other change in Lamar's status at school was that since Sarah had finally gotten her own car, he and she began to go out on dates in town. Because of that by the new year, they had become publicly identified as a couple.  Any guy dating a Euro-Club girl had social status at Jeff Davis High.  If that girl were one of the few with topless and nude photos on the net, it would give that guy even more status points.  That was Lamar by mid-February. By the Valentine's Day school dance, there was hardly a guy at Jefferson Davis High School who wasn’t jealous of Lamar. His popularity had soared.

Cooper had been apprised of a little party by the new group of younger Euro-Club girls for Lamar’s mid-March birthday. It was planned as a sort of coming-out event as he was finally turning sixteen.  Sarah had told everyone she and Gabby were going to jointly do Lamar right on the Campbell’s game room floor, in front of everyone as a birthday present. When his wife had clued Cooper in on that plan, he decided that he and Bonnie should take separate cars to work that Tuesday. While Bonnie would leave the FFF office a little early so as to be there for the party, Cooper planned to leave the university later than normal. He and Bonnie thought it would be better for him not to walk in on a group of sixteen-year-old girls… possibly naked and engaging in public sex at his home. 

When he finally headed home late enough that he was sure he’d miss Lamar’s birthday party, Cooper called up DeeDee Hildebrandt.  While it was the case that they had been talking on the phone for months as he made the hour-long drive home, it had only been in the past two weeks they had explicitly agreed they were more than just friends. That made it different. There was no doubt that their new status as a couple had changed the way they interacted. He knew they were still in the process of redefining their relationship, so they were feeling their way forward. Since the Monday morning a week ago when DeeDee talked to Bonnie about becoming her husband’s girlfriend, they had not even seen each other, let alone had sex. They’d had a planned date last Thursday night, but it fell through due to an issue with DeeDee’s business. The simple truth was they both had full lives and finding time to have a romantic relationship was going to be hard.

Even though he and DeeDee had decided to pursue a romantic relationship, they both knew that their active sex lives would not change. Last weekend Bonnie had been home on Friday night for the first time in months so he and his wife had a romantic date. On Saturday night Trish had spent the night with both him and Bonnie, then on Sunday afternoon, he and Bonnie had their weekly sixty minutes of pleasure with Butch and Tabitha. At the same time, last Friday night DeeDee had spent the night in an Atalanta hotel with Mr. Dallas, then had her regular time with Mr. Big on Sunday morning, he knew that on Wednesday, she would be driving to Macon to have her regular time in bed with Brother Paul and his wife Mary. As they talked on the phone on his son’s birthday, they made plans for a dinner date at a nice restaurant in Milledgeville on Friday. In that call, DeeDee asked, “If you don’t mind, I would like to do something different Friday night. I would like us to spend the night in my bed rather than yours.”

Cooper didn’t see a problem with that and he wasn’t sure why it sounded like this was a big deal to her.

When he said that was fine with him, she explained. “As you know, I’ve been having sex with men for some twenty-five years. But in all that time, other than with my ex-husband, I’ve never had a man in my own bed at home. We both have sex with a variety of people week in and week out. Pretty much you always have women come to your bed and I always have sex in hotels or the man’s place. Bringing you to my home will be meaningful to me. With you, I am treading into entirely new territory.” She laughed then added, “And to be honest, it was my daughter’s idea that I should bring you home. She is actually very excited for me and wants me to bring you into our life in the same way you brought me into yours.”

Cooper hadn’t even considered that his budding romantic relationship with DeeDee would naturally be important to Bailey. The idea that she was bringing him into her family’s life in a way she’d never done before had not really occurred to him.

After he and DeeDee said goodbye, Cooper called home. He wanted to see if it was safe to arrive at the house in fifteen minutes.  Only once Bonnie had heard all about his talk with DeeDee, did she tell him what had gone on at Lamar’s party. “At Sarah’s request, Misty delayed bringing Lamar home from school by half an hour to give Gabby and the other girls who go to school in Baldwin County time to get to our house.  Sarah had originally wanted to have her mom cover her naked body with icing to make a sexy living birthday cake for Lamar, but Slosh vetoed that because first it was too messy and second it would require way too much participation from Mom.  Most of the younger set of club girls made it today, but the only guys here are Byron and Lamar. That was by design. For a while, it was mostly just a normal little birthday party. Once we had finished with the cake and presents and such, Slosh and I excused ourselves to the living room before the girls gave our son his real birthday present. Though, to be completely honest, Slosh and I might have peeked to see what was going on every once in a while.”

Cooper asked, “What does every once in a while mean?”

He heard Marcy’s voice through the phone say, “Bonnie, tell him the truth. We saw everything! Turn on the speakerphone. I want to make sure he hears it right.”

“OK,” Bonnie agreed and Cooper could tell she’d gone to speakerphone. “We turned off the hallway light so we were in the shadows looking into the game room. We watched a good bit of the time, but as you know from the hallway, we can’t see the whole room. But we did see a few things.”

“Like what?” Cooper was baited into saying.

“I’ll put it this way, by the time you called, we got peeks of all eight of the girls giving our son a Happy Birthday blowjob."

Slosh corrected her, "Don't believe her. We saw a lot more than just peeks. We flagrantly watched from the hallway as Sarah and her friends stripped Lamar naked and one by one sucked his cock while he sat on one of the gaming table stools. Don't let her pretend we didn't.  We watched the girls, one after another, put his dick down their throats. None of them had him in their mouth for more than a minute or two, but they all did it. As I understand the plan was made in advance for all the girls to be able to say they’d given him a birthday blow job. And if you don't mind me saying so, I’ve seen your son’s erection a lot since Christmas, and he has a very nice tool for sure."

Bonnie and Cooper both knew full well that Slosh had indeed seen a lot of Lamar’s erection. Since the first of January, their son had spent every weekend at the Marshals. Between what Lamar, Sarah, and Slosh had said, they had a pretty good understanding that not a weekend had gone by that Lamar and Sarah hadn’t had sex in one of the rooms downstairs… usually more than once. And as they understood it, Lamar and Sarah had sex right in front of Slosh so often that it had lost any sense of being unusual.

But, Bonnie also knew it wasn’t just Sarah and Lamar doing it in the Marshal’s living room. She knew full well that over the past half-year, Sarah had come home from school more than a dozen times to find her mother screwing some man on the same sofa that she and Lamar used. Weeks before, Sarah had told Bonnie that the times that she found her mom having sex with a man she didn’t know, she’d tried to ensure he didn’t see her. But the half a dozen times she’d found her mom doing it with Chad Webber or Anson Whipple from their church group, she’d walked right into the room while they were doing it and chatted with them while they screwed. Only after she’d let the men know full well that she had seen everything, Sarah would go upstairs and leave her mother and the man in peace.

After Slosh had ratted Bonnie out, she admitted to Cooper, "OK, we watched the whole time while our son got eight good, if not long, blow jobs. It was a birthday party that every boy on the planet would envy. After the little blow job game, the girls broke up into smaller groups talking, playing video games, and such, except the girls didn’t let Lamar get redressed. All the while they have been messing with him.  Before the party, Sarah told me that she and Gabby both planned on screwing Lamar during the party, and they have. When you called, Gabby was bottomless, straddling our son in one of the overstuffed chairs.”

Bonnie finished by saying, “Then you called and we are now in the living room.”

Cooper was smiling in his car as his wife and her friend told the story. He then heard Sarah’s voice. “Mrs. C., I know it wasn’t the plan, but we’d like to all pile into your bed under the mirror, sort of like the older girls did in Miami. I think everyone wants a chance to have Lamar inside of them before the party is over, and it would be way more comfortable in your bed.”

Cooper’s wife responded, “I don’t see a problem with that. But you can’t do what they did in Miami and skip the condoms because they are inconvenient.”

Sarah’s voice could be heard thanking Mrs. C. Then Bonnie said, “I guess there is now a new plan.”

Cooper heard Slosh tell Bonnie, “Perhaps we should just give them the run of the house for a little while. I don’t think the girls will eat Lamar and Byron alive if we go out to dinner. If it was just Sarah and Bailey, it would be no problem for them to do it in your bedroom with us here in the living room; but, it might be better if we weren’t watching while the whole group has an orgy in your bed.”

There was as short pause before Bonnie asked, “Cooper, are you OK with just meeting us at the Bistro?”

Cooper replied, “Sure, let's do that. I’ll meet you there.” With that, he pushed the button on his dashboard display to end the phone call.

At the McGregor Mill Bistro, they took their time since Bonnie had told the girls they would have an hour and a half to themselves. To Cooper, Bonnie said “Before we left, we went into the game room to tell the girls that we were leaving. I was a little surprised to see Hillary Tomlinson had replaced Gabby in Lamar’s lap. But unlike Gabby, Hillary had removed every bit of her clothing, but she didn’t even flinch when we walked in on her having sex with our son.”

Cooper nodded and commented, “Hillary surprised me after the second club party back in September…” He looked right at Bonnie, “The one where you went to sleep before it was over. To keep from waking you up, Ashely had gotten out of bed and bent over the dresser for us to finish up. As I’ve told you, we had an audience, but I don’t think I told you that Hillary was the boldest of all the girls. She came halfway into the room as she watched me banging away on Rebecca’s mom. If you recall that was the first time Chad had said it was OK for me to put my dick in her. I was doing her hard when I looked over to see, almost in arms reach, Hillary… completely naked. She was just standing there intently watching us have sex. She didn’t show the least bit of discomfort at the situation. I mean I’ve known her since she was a baby, and she just stood there watching me pounding Ashely. She didn’t look away and was right there until both Ashley and I climaxed. And when I pulled out still hard, she didn’t flinch at my erection two feet away from her. I’d simply not expected that from her.”

Bonnie nodded, “Yes, I heard that story from a couple of sources. And you were right, she wasn’t embarrassed in the least. From what I was told, Hillary was fascinated seeing you two go at it. She thought it was terrific that you let them openly watch you like that.”

Slosh put in, “Sarah told me that too. As I understand it, most of the girls at today’s party were there watching you do Ashley that night. From what Sarah said, during the party, Ashely had spent a good deal of time upstairs watching different couples having sex; so, you and Ashely were validating the girl's behavior by allowing them to watch you bang her. And perhaps you aren’t aware, but there isn’t a kid in the whole Youth Group who hasn’t heard that story.”

Cooper nodded, “I hadn’t thought about it like that. Yes, Ashley told me she’d seen a lot of sex over the night; but I’d not considered that by simply ignoring the girls’ presence, we were validating them as we did it.”

Bonnie laughed, “All the while they saw me sleeping on the other side of the bed, oblivious to what was going on.”

They all laughed at that.

Bonnie went on, “I must admit, that night… before I crashed, I was particularly happy to see Hillary blend into the Euro-Club. I’d been rather surprised when right in our conversation group, without blushing, she asked me how to make anal sex feel better. She said it just so matter-of-factly as if it were the most normal question in the world. As you well know she is there every week for Youth Group. When my nude beach photos came out, she was one of the first people to tell me that she supported me and thought the photos were great. Even still, I’d not realized how much she was on board with our philosophy until she was in my discussion group that night. While I haven’t talked to Francis about it, I suspect she knows that her daughter is not only a part of the Euro-Club, but that Hillary openly has sex at our house.” 

Bonnie recalled how the Monday before the Valentine's Day party, Slosh had told the group of four mothers that Brandy’s son, DJ, had told Hillary’s little brother, John, that his parents had not only had sex with Bonnie and Cooper, but he’d actually seen it happen at his house with his own eyes. It seems that when John had told her what DJ had said, Hillary had directly asked Slosh if it were OK if she told her mother all about what she and the club girls did at the Campbell’s home. She was concerned that coming from her little brother the facts likely would be all muddled up, so she wanted to tell her mother what she knew firsthand.  That morning at The Waffle House, Slosh told the other three mothers that she’d explicitly told Hillary she could tell her mother everything, even the part about her standing just a few feet away while Mr. C. and Mrs. Ericson had sex. Bonnie had in turn told Slosh she’d done the right thing by approving Hillary telling her mother anything she wanted to.

Bonnie knew that Hillary’s parents were active in county politics as a voice of liberal Democrats. After all, they had named their daughter after Hillary Clinton.  Both Francis and James Tomlinson were vocal in their support of their Methodist church's acceptance of same-sex marriage; however, she’d never spoken to Francis directly about what she taught in Youth Group or what all went on at the Campbell home. She strongly suspected that Hillary’s mother was supportive, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Slosh said, “Oh, I spoke to Francis just this week about Lamar's birthday party. She directly asked if the girls were going to have sex while they were at your house. I told her what Sarah had told me about the planned birthday blowjobs. She just laughed and commented that when she was in high school, she would have fit right in with the Euro-Club. In our subsequent talk, I found out she indeed knows everything. She even asked to be invited next time we have a woman’s day at your place. She specifically said she wanted to see your playroom and the two photo books. It seems Hillary has given her quite a rundown about both the club’s activities and what happens at your house. If I’d talked to her before the afternoon with your mother-in-law last week, I would have brought her with me then.”

Bonnie replied, “Thanks for letting me know. I’d already suspected from what Hillary has told me that her mother is supportive of Cooper and me. But I know her father is worried about his political career. I think he’s planning to enter the Democratic primary for the State Senate next time. You won’t hear him say a word about any of this one way or another until a clear community consensus comes out. He is a politician after all. But it's good to know Hillary’s mother backs her and us.”

Slosh added, "Megan is in the same boat. As we saw today, she is no stranger to dick either. Back in the fall, I talked to her mother about all this at length. Privately she told me she's very supportive of what we do and of Megan joining the club, but she and her husband aren't ready to give any public support to you or the club yet.  To be fair, as part of the LaCroix clan, they would pay a high price for publicly supporting us."

Though Bonnie suspected that was the case, Slosh had never told her about that conversation. "Thanks for telling me. I had no idea you’d talked to Teresa about the club. Ever since my beach photos came out last spring, she seems to scrupulously avoid any meaningful conversations with me. We used to talk quite a bit in that we are both outsiders who married into leading families here. But she’s been aloof since May."

Bonnie decided to see what else Slosh knew about the support she had from the mothers of Sarah’s friends. While the first group of Euro-Club girls had been Misty’s friends from church and she had known most of their mothers for years, that was not true of the new set of girls.

“Slosh,” she said, “what can you tell me about Lindsey? She's not a regular part of the church youth group so I don’t know her at all. You’ve said you know Lindsey’s mother, but I’ve never met her. I’ve gotten bits and pieces about you and her from Lamar. From what he has said, I think she’s on board with what we are doing. Is that right?”

“I’ve known Sharon and Lindsey since Lindsey was in 3rd grade. She is active with the Milledgeville Players, as are Baliey and Hannah. However, Lindsey only started coming over to our house about a year ago. From what I've seen at the theater, Lindsey is probably the best young actor we have in the whole region.  Sarah is brassier, but Lindsey has more range. I just wish she was at Jeff Davis, not Baldwin Central. She'd be great as the lead of our spring production. In the last year, I’ve seen a lot of Lindsey, and I mean literally. I've seen a lot of her naked body at my house. Even before school let out last year, months before Bailey first went nude at your pool, Lindsey was Sarah's partner in going naked in our hot tub. You must remember the day Sarah told me that she and Lindsey were having sex right under my nose. I’d been totally oblivious before that. Now they don’t hide anything.”

“As for Lindsey’s mother, Sharon, she is a dedicated drama person and she has long been someone I could talk to. About five years ago, I was in The Crucible with her. Sharon and I hit it off and she found she could openly tell me about her life in ways she couldn’t really do with other women in our area. Oh yea, she’s on board. She is just thankful that by joining the Euro-Club, her daughter is now only having sex with high school guys rather than passing herself off as a college coed. Before Lindsey and Sarah became lovers, she had been having sex with guys who were way too old for her. Worse yet, Lindsey had been going to parties where she’d come home drunk or stoned. As far as I know, she hasn’t done that at all in the last year or so.”

Slosh turned to Cooper, “You see, Sharon is the only person in the area, besides Mike, who knew about my Slosh identity before I told Bonnie and the girls in August. That is why she feels she can tell me about her life. We are two birds of a feather. She has actually been encouraging me to revert to my Slosh persona for several years. She and her new husband, Eric, have a sort of don’t ask, don’t tell marriage. They both sleep around, but they pretend they don’t. Yet, I’ve gone to her house and played in their bed with her and her husband, twice. So, their pretense is paper thin since they have both seen me having sex with their spouse. But, like all the guys I do who aren’t in our circle, Eric has no idea Mike knows I had sex with him. There is something that men like about screwing another man’s wife behind his back… especially the wife of a man who has status in the community like Mike has. Besides that, Sharon and I have gone out clubbing several times. Two of those times we ended up in a motel room with a pair of hot guys young enough to be my sons. However, those times going out with Sharon at night are the exception for me. I try to have most of my liaisons with men during the day when I am not teaching so as not to impinge on family time. Since mid-October, Mike has come home from work to get sloshy seconds more weeks than not.”

Cooper laughed, “I don’t get sloppy seconds very often since most of Bonnie’s action is when she’s out of town. However, about a month ago, Calvin Jefferson had come over to look at our heat pump that was making funny sounds. After he was done, my grateful wife gave him an extended thank you in our bed. They were just finishing up when I got home from work. That day I got sloppy seconds in a sloppy bed.”

Slosh laughed and said, “I’d not heard about that.”

Bonnie nodded in confirmation.

Slosh went back to what she’d been saying before she went off on a rabbit trail. “But, Sharon was the one local woman who knew all about my life as Slosh Hidelman at the Blue Globe. We have been talking about me restarting that life for years. Had I continued doing community theater myself, it is very likely I would have started even before Gerta came to stay with us. However, since I started teaching at Jeff Davis, I haven’t done very much with Community Theater other than take Sarah. My teaching and putting on a production every semester has been all the theater I could do.”

Something just occurred to Bonnie as Slosh talked. “Oh, damn. Are any of the girls we watched doing Lamar today your students?” 

Slosh replied, “Only Sarah and Bailey. I guess it's good that only half of the girls who came to Lamar’s party go to Jeff Davis. As you know, the school district only allows juniors and seniors to take drama classes now, due to budget cuts.  Hannah and Lindsey are both long-term drama people and would be in my class if they didn't go to Baldwin Central High. But, Sarah, Bailey, Lindsey, and Hannah started to hang out as a group two years ago when they were still in the children’s theater program. They played in Wizard of Oz together and as the play progressed, they all became good friends. They were the four female leads in that production. Lindsey was Dorothy, Hannah was the Wicked Witch, Sarah was the Good Witch, and Bailey was Auntie Em. That is when Hannah began coming to the youth group. It’s only natural they'd become tight.  Beyond that, all four of those girls were practically raised on that stage so they'd known each other for years."

"Prior to that Wizard of Oz production, while I had gotten to know Lindsy’s mother, I’d not spent a lot of time with Lindsey herself, or Hannah for that matter. Bailey has been my daughter’s bestie since they were in fifth grade. I know both Lindsey and Hannah better now because they have been coming over to the house since then, but it has just been since September they have become regulars. I guess the ability to drive lets the girls choose when and where they hang out with their friends for the first time."

Bonnie agreed with that assessment and added, "Perhaps you aren’t aware, but on Sunday nights, Hannah and Troy have been having sex in our upstairs playroom since the fall."

Slosh nodded, “Oh yeah, I know. I hear everything.”

Bonnie laughed then put in, “I couldn't miss how Lindsey and Sarah were making out before we left. From what I saw of their interaction, I can tell that Lindsey sees Sarah as her lover.”

“Oh, she is and has been since Bailey’s life got taken over by that guy last year. I’ve talked to Sarah asking her to be sure this whole complicated mix of relationships and sex doesn’t get too far out of hand. We don’t want any hurt feelings or controversy…. at least till the first of June when I no longer work for the school district.”

Bonnie asked, “How’s that going? Getting any more heat?”

“Not really. Some cold shoulders, but no real problems since it got out I was not asking for a contract for next year. Sandra Holland is pretty distressed to see me going. I think I’m her only friend in the school to whom she can talk about her personal life.”

Bonnie suggested, “Once school lets out, let's invite her to join the events at my pool… or Trish’s pool if that is how it works out this summer.”

Slosh thought that was a great idea.

As they wrapped up Bonnie asked, “So, lady, how about when we get home, we kick the girls out of my bed if they are still there, so we can get naked and busy? It’s been too long since you, Cooper, and I have played.”

After pretending to think about it for a few seconds, Slosh replied, “Sounds fun but we will have to cut it off in about an hour, I promised Mike I’d be home with him tonight.”

Bonnie smiled, “I think we can work that out.”

**************

After dropping her brother off for his birthday party, Misty went out with Tommie, Kelli, and Cody to Olive Garden in Milledgeville. The idea was to make the night special. It had been three months since she and Tommie had become a couple and she was beginning to think their relationship was already on life support. Perhaps a nice night out would help.

She was quite sure that no matter what Tommie had said in December about accepting her as she was, he wasn’t fully on board. The big sticking point predating their formal relationship was sex, specifically Misty having sex with other guys. For close to two months, she’d been monogamous, but at the Valentine's “not-a-party she’d had sex with Joanne & Kurt before the evening really started, and with Mimi and her two boyfriends at the end of the night.  A week or so after that, she’d had a romp with Kelli and Cody. Then last week she’d had sex with Samuel and Rebecca after she’d done the planned erotic photo shoot of her mother with the two of them.

The shoot had gone very well, even though it had taken forever to do. For over six months Misty had been conducting at least one photo shoot nearly every week. Over the fall and winter, she’d done glamour/nude shoots with every one of the women who’d been part of the nude Sunday swim days, even Miss Sherry who was as old as Misty’s grandmother.  Up until she had gotten her studio equipment at Christmas, she’d tried a variety of locations. Mostly she shot in her home and yard, but she’d also done the shoot at the Jackson’s horse farm, and Bailey’s mother took her to the historic mansion where she met “Mr. Big” every Sunday morning. That shoot was perhaps her most challenging, yet the most successful one she’d yet done. Mrs. Hildebrant had an entire wardrobe of high-end lingerie and Misty had shot her wearing seven different outfits in at least ten different parts of the house and grounds. Misty wasn’t sure exactly what the man’s real relationship with Bailey’s mom was, but he’d given her $500 for the photos. Misty didn’t think that was too bad for four hours work.

While she’d done dozens of glamour/nude shoots, her mother’s shoot with Samuel and Rebecca was only the seventh formal erotic photo shoot Misty had done since the Miami trip. The first had been back in the fall, not long after her mother’s Arabian Nights party, she’d shot her mother and Butch Smith going at it in their kitchen. A few weeks later she’d shot Brandy Connely with Calvin Jefferson in her parent’s bed. Then after she’d gotten her new studio, she’d photographed Dwight Connely with Trish Simms as her first studio erotica.  Additionally, she’d shot four couples from the Euro-Club as they turned eighteen.

Lighting was the bugbear in these shoots of couples having sex. The second person in the scene threw shadows on the first, so the challenge was to get both participants adequately lit using her four lights.  She was sure each shoot was getting better, but this would be her first try at posing three people together. She’d considered doing it “on location” in her parent’s bed or in the living room; but she’d opted for her studio in the game room. Her approach was for the majority of the photos to be couple’s shots of her mother with either Samuel or Rebecca, then finish with a set with all three of them in the frame.

She was quite pleased with the first set of her mother and Samuel. His exceptionally large penis gave Misty more latitude in positioning them on the padded bench she’d brought down from the top of the stairs. In order to shoot couples photos that had the spirit of a threesome, she posed Rebecca in a secondary role. By having Rebecca posing as if she were watching Misty’s mother having sex with Samuel, she simplified the lighting yet retained the idea that it was a threesome.

Later Misty photographed her mother bringing Rebecca to a loud and energetic orgasm with Rebecca laying back on the bench. In the last of the planned sets, she had her mother lay on the bench with Rebecca on her knees straddling her head, while Samuel stood at the bench’s foot, holding Misty’s mother’s legs upright as he worked his large cock in her. Sadly, Misty had not been pleased with that set. Looking for a better arrangement, she’d tried laying Rebecca on the bench while her mom went down on her with Samuel doing her mother from behind. That pose solved the lighting issues, but she’d had a very difficult time fitting all three of them within the confines of her studio backdrop.

In the end, she’d had Caitlin help her move the lights into her parent’s room and shot all three posing setups again, using the big bed rather than the bench. While shooting in the bedroom presented its own challenges, she was much more pleased with the results. Since they were already in her mother’s bed, she finished out the shoot by telling the three of them to do whatever felt natural to them. Caitlin worked to move the lights and Misty worked to frame the photos as they did exactly that. The trio had gone at it for over half an hour more as Misty tried to capture the intensity of their erotic play. Due to all the challenges, the shoot went so long that Misty’s dad arrived home from work to watch the final twenty minutes or so. Misty even took a few minutes to shoot her father eating her mother’s cream-filled éclair as soon as Samuel pulled out. Misty knew that was something her parents liked, but she’d never seen him do it before. The juxtaposition of her mother flushed and sweaty from hours of sex with her father in his neatly pressed shirt and tie made for an interesting set of photos. She was glad she’d stayed to shoot them.

From start to finish, it had taken close to three hours and everybody was exhausted.  However, after a rest period, Misty, Caitlin, Rebecca, and Samuel spent an additional hour in Misty’s bed.

 Misty did not deliberately hide the fact from Tommie that she was still occasionally having sex with other guys, but she never mentioned it either. However, she had directly told him that Mimi Howard spent the night with her after the “not-a-party.” She didn’t expressly say they had sex, but he had to know that is what she meant. Since then, Mimi had spent three of the four Saturday nights with Misty, in her bed. As Sarah had done, Mimi ate dinner with the Campbell family when she came over each week. One Saturday evening Tommie also joined the family meal. Afterward, while Mimi joined Misty and Tommie in the hot tub, he asked that she not join him and Misty in the bed before he had to leave. Mimi wasn’t offended because Misty had told her in advance Tommie wouldn’t go for a threesome.

 Another Saturday, Mimi’s two boyfriends came over with her. After dinner, since Misty’s bed simply wasn’t big enough for a foursome, they’d used her parent's bed. While her parents couldn’t see into the bedroom from their recliners in the living room, when the TV allowed, they could hear what was going on. In effect, Mimi filled the hole left in Misty’s life when Sarah began spending every weekend with Lamar. 

Misty was sure that Tommie understood that anytime Mimi, Kelli, or Caitlin spent the night with her, the visit included Sapphic sex. When Kelli came over for a sleepover, in late February, Cody came with her and stayed several hours. But all this had been willfully ignored for months. The topic hovered right out of reach. There was no question they both steered clear of any conversation that might bring up her having sex with other guys. All the while loomed the issue of her scheduled “posing” for Amy Douglass on her birthday. 

Back in the fall, several times before they became a couple, Misty had directly told Tommie how excited she was about the plan for her to pose for an erotic painting by Dr. Douglass on her 18th birthday; however, in the past three months, she had only mentioned it once, and that obliquely.  She knew full well he could not have forgotten this plan for her birthday. In late February, she felt compelled to directly ask if he would be willing to pose with her on that day.  When he did not say yes, Misty told him "I understand that you might not be comfortable doing that, especially since the painting might be sold to a public art gallery. I'll let Dr. Douglass know she needs to book one of her male models to join me. Tommie, I really would like to make love to you for the painting, but you need to understand, I am going to carry through with this.  If you can't, or won’t do it, Dr. Douglass will have to make plans."  

In the intervening three weeks they had not spoken about it. However, she did contact Dr. Douglass to let her know she needed to find her a guy to pose with. A few days later Bonnie told her daughter "Amy has a great guy lined up for you.  He is amazingly hot, but she wants to know if you have a problem having sex with the same man who posed with me last fall." 

Misty had not only seen the photo of her and the handsome Brazilian man from her mother's presentation, but she’d seen the entire set of over a hundred erotic photos from their session together. He was indeed hot, and the photos of him having sex with her mom were smoking. Misty had no problem with saying "I'd love to work with him. It doesn't bother me at all that he has been with you. You can tell her how both of us had sex with Brett and Zara in Miami."  And so it was set. If Tommie changed his mind they could cancel the model, but if not, they were ready. With less than two weeks to go, this issue was looming up on them.

Misty, Tommie, Cody, and Kelli took their seats at the table at Olive Garden. They'd made it well into dinner before Cody off-handedly made reference to her mother's birthday present for Samuel. Kelli then asked Misty, “How did the photo shoot with your mother, Samuel, and Rebecca go?”

“Actually, really good. It was tiring, but I got several really great images. Next time you are over I’ll show you the photos. I can’t exactly bring them to show the school photography staff.”

That elicited laughs, even from Tommie. Misty continued, “They are good but not great. Shooting sex artistically is way harder than you might think.”

Kelli smiled and asked, “Now that she’s done him twice, has your mom admitted that we were right about Samuel being an amazing lay?" 

Misty could have punted, but she decided not to. She was tired of not being herself around her boyfriend, so she answered as if he were just one of the other Euro-Club guys. "Yes, she did.  She was quite effusive in her praise after their first time. But as we talked about it leading up to the photo shoot, it was having sex with Rebecca again that seemed to be what excited my mother the most. She told me twice that she could have spent hours between Rebecca’s legs. I’d not expected that. She called their time together, magical.  And that is even with her being careful about what she says about that threesome since I had a little moment when I thought my friends would rather be with my mother than with me." She then told the three people at the table about what had happened and the talk she and her mom had that night. She’d never spoken of her mother having sex with Samuel and Rebecca in front of Tommie before. It was hard to read what he thought about it.

Kelli said she understood then added, "Though of course, I can't even begin to imagine how I'd ever be jealous of my mom. But, really all that says so much about the relationship you and your mother have.  Even if there are problems, you two seem to be able to talk them through. I just hope I can be like that if I have a daughter.  So, have you played with them since they were with your mom?"

She almost sidestepped the question, but she felt she should answer Kelli’s question honestly. Misty tried to keep her voice relaxed as she said, “The shoot left us all wiped out. However, because my mom was concerned about my little bout of jealousy the first time she had sex with them, she suggested we go upstairs so they could show me and Caitlin some appreciation for shooting the photos. So yes, we played in my bed after the photo shoot even though I’d previously sworn I wouldn’t have sex with my models. I decided that could be an exception to the rule given the circumstances and how many times I’d done it with them before. Samuel was a champ. Even after the long photo shoot with my mom where he came twice, he had enough wood for all three of us girls. The four of us went at it so long in my bed that Mom had to wait for us to finish so she could take us all out for a late dinner.”

 Even while she was speaking, she knew her words were difficult for Tommie. Since they’d been dating, she had never before expressly said she’d had sex with another guy in front of him. But she knew it could not be a surprise no matter how much they pretended. Surely, at least he had to realize she’d had sex with Cody. The day after she’d been with him and Kelli, while they worked on the yearbook, Kelli’s blatant comments all but spelled out that they’d had a threesome the night before. Or had Tommie deliberately not understood what Kelli was saying?

She decided that she should change the subject. She reached over and grabbed Tommie's arm.  "I am so excited. Tommie's parents will be out all night on Friday, so he can spend the night in my bed. It will be the first time in over a month. Samuel might be a good lay, but I'd rather have the guy I love in my bed. That night, my mom will be out of town speaking and my dad will be going out with Bailey’s mother, so we might have the house to ourselves for at least a few hours. I’m not sure what my brother’s plans are for Friday since Sarah will be at a play rehearsal in Milledgeville. He’s planning to ask Gabby over to our house, so we will see.

Misty was afraid to look over at Tommie. Yes, she explicitly acknowledged having sex with Samual, yet she'd made it clear she was excited about Tommie spending the night.

Kelli replied, “I’ve heard a rumor that your dad and Bailey’s mom are becoming a couple or something like that. What is going on with them? And what does your mom think about it.”

Misty explained all she knew about her dad and Mrs. Hildebrandt. She concluded with, “I think it may be too early to call them a couple, but they are certainly opening the door to that. My mom and Mrs. Hildebrant have talked it over and she is totally supportive of them.” Once again Misty found herself wondering what Tommie was thinking about yet another revelation. After all, the idea her parents had sex with other people was still hard for him to grasp and now she was talking about Bailey’s mom becoming her dad’s girlfriend.

Kelli then moved the conversation from a problem topic to a worse one, “And next week you turn eighteen. How are the plans going for you to pose for a birthday sex painting?”

Misty cringed, but still she answered. “Yes, finally it's all planned.” She tried to act as if this was not a difficult subject with her boyfriend. “My mom has already sent the school a note that I will be gone on a trip to tour Augusta State a week from Friday, so I will just go with her to work that day. Dr. Douglass has a studio in the FFF office space, so we will work there. As I understand it, it will take most of the day on Friday, but we actually will tour the Agusta State campus after I'm done.  I will go back to pose again in April. Mom said that Dr. Douglass says doing two posing sessions works best for her.”

Cody asked, “What are you guys talking about?”

Misty really… really didn’t want to get into any more detail about this, but Kelli answered the question. “Misty’s mom works with this famous artist. She did that painting of her parents that looks like a jungle that hangs in their family room. I know you’ve seen it.”

Misty was a little surprised when Tommie spoke up to tell Cody, “You know the painting she’s talking about, the one of her parents doing the deed.”  Misty wasn’t sure if his tone was snide or just a little disgusted.

Kelli picked up, “The artist is very famous and she gets paid like $20,000 to do paintings like that. She is going to paint one of Misty having sex on her 18th birthday and Misty gets it for free.”

Misty clarified “What she will do is paint a small, I mean like three feet across, version as a draft, then she is going to make a big one, like fully life-size, as a final version for a gallery show. I’ll get the smaller one and she’ll put the big one in her next exhibition to sell.”

“That’s too cool,” Cody said.

Tommie didn’t say anything more about it, negative or positive.

Cody then asked the big question. “So, you mean you will be having sex in her studio? Who will you be doing it with?”

This was the detail that she and Tommie had been avoiding.  She made a point not to look at her boyfriend when she told Cody, “Amy, Dr. Douglass, is famous for her paintings of people making love. So of course, that’s what she’ll paint me doing.  I’d really like to do it with Tommie.” She paused and took Tommie’s hand. “But he is not really excited about being a model.” She again glanced over to Tommie and added “And besides it’s a school day and he can’t exactly ask his mom to write a note.”

Cody looked at Tommie across the table “Yea, I can see you asking your mom for a note to skip school so you can be painted screwing your girlfriend.”

Tommie lightened up at that “Yea, right! I can see asking my mom that.”

They all laughed. Misty thought that was a good sign.

Cody asked, “So what are you going to do since Tommie can’t be your co-model?”

Misty took a breath and spit out quickly “Dr. Douglass has a graduate student who is also a professional model. He has done this with other women for Amy. My mother has actually posed with him before. He is really good looking and most importantly for Dr. Douglass, he can keep it up for like, forever.”   

Kelli instinctively answered with a “oooh, can I come too?.”

“Oh, yea, right” Cody scoffed “Your step-dad makes Tommie’s parents look positively open-minded.”

Kelli nodded in agreement.

“As I understand the plan, Dr. Douglass will be doing something like a composite painting of me alone as the primary subject but will incorporate smaller paintings of me doing it with the male model. I’m not exactly sure what that means.” She knew all this would be testing Tommie’s limits; she did not look over at him before continuing. “What I understand is that the first part of day one, I will be just posing alone and Amy will tell me how to stand or sit while she does a series of nude sketches and reference photos of me. Then after lunch, the male model will be there. I expect she will direct us like I do couples when I’m doing an erotic photo shoot. I always let my models know in advance that while they will physically be having sex, they should think of it as modeling. Then over a period of months, she will put all the sketches into the smaller test image before she makes the big final product. The second posing date will happen during that time. As I understand it, usually the first and second paintings are very similar, but not always.”

Cody nudged Tommie and said “Dude, you gotta go. That will be rocking.” Then he added, “Not that I’d mind posing with her if she asked me, Misty is super hot and as you know she is terrific in the sack. You really should do it.”

Tommie made an unintelligible reply and Cody began to chide him but Kelli cut him off, “Cody, knock it off. Tommie knows Misty does it with you, but he isn’t comfortable talking about it over dinner.”

Tommie looked up and said “Thanks for thinking about me Kelli, but I’ve become quite used to hearing people talk about who my girlfriend has sex with. There might be someone at Jeff Davis who doesn’t know that Misty has sex with other guys, but I doubt there are more than two or three of them. Even before we became a couple, I’d heard twenty different versions of how she has photos of all the guys she’s screwed hanging on the wall. Most of what I’d heard about her walk of fame photos before I actually saw them is far more lurid than the real pictures. There is simply no question that she is the most talked about girl in school. Not a week goes by when someone doesn’t share with me a new rumor of who Misty has had sex with. That long predates when she and I became a couple. If our school newspaper did a poll asking who was the sluttiest girl at school, Misty would win hands down.”

Misty couldn’t believe he had just said that. Not that she didn’t know that it was true, but Tommie scrupulously avoided any mention of her sex life. For him to call her a slut… or rather that people at school thought she was a slut was jarring. Yet, by the way he said it, she knew this was something that was a real part of how he saw her.

Kelli shot back, “She’s not the sluttiest girl in school.”

The other people at the table turned to look at Kelli. She smiled and then said, “That distinction goes to Haley for sure. Misty isn’t even in the top three sluttiest girls in the Euro-Club.”

That relieved some of the tension and Misty even laughed a little.

Tommie, however, shook his head. “While Haley might have the most sexual partners, and I know how she works at shocking people with her antics; you have to know Misty is the best known by a long shot. That was true before I told her I accepted her for who she is and we became a couple. I knew full well what I was signing up for when I told her I wanted her without reservation. And to be clear, most of the people who would say that she is the biggest slut at school don’t do so out of malice. I’m also sure if we did a poll, we would find that she is the most admired girl at Jeff Davis as well. Unless I am talking to church people, when people talk about her around me, their comments are usually positive, not attacks.”

He turned to look right at Misty, “You might not realize how much you have changed what people think is admirable behavior when it comes to sex.  I have no doubt that half of the guys at school would give just about anything to be in my shoes, no matter how often you do it with other guys. You, and the club in general, have succeeded in changing what guys want in a girlfriend, at least at Jeff Davis. You have to know that before you, even a rumor that a guy’s girlfriend has slept with another guy would destroy their relationship. Yet, that just doesn’t apply to you or any of the club girls. People who tell me that they heard you slept with so and so over the weekend aren’t necessarily attacking you or trying to say I should be angry. Not at all. Almost every time the tone is positive and they are simply asking me to confirm what they heard. Your enigmatic posts on the club’s website seem to talk about you having sex with other people, but you do so in a way that isn’t at all clear and certainly ensures you are talked about.  People come to me just assuming you tell me everything so I can decipher your meaning for them. From what I can tell, most people expect, that for us, having sex with other people is an expected part of our relationship and it is something we discuss regularly.  And I guess they are right in one respect, I knew full well you would continue to have sex with your friends before we became a couple. So Cody talking about how good you are in bed is not offensive to me even though, contrary to what people think, I don’t actually know who all you have fucked in the last three months. But I know Cody and Samuel aren’t the only ones.”

Misty wasn’t sure how to take Tommie’s words.

He sat back in his chair, seemed to think, then went on. “And, mostly, I don’t have a problem that the whole school thinks you fuck other guys all the time. Yet….” He briefly closed his eyes, then leaned forward with his elbows on the table, “There is part of me that thinks something is wrong with me that I don’t feel betrayed when people talk about how my girlfriend’s pussy is like Grand Central Station with guys cumming and going all the time. There is a voice in my head that says I should feel violated, but I don’t.” Tommie paused and looked right at Cody. “There is something in me that liked hearing you say how much you enjoy having sex with Misty. Though admitting it makes me feel like a jerk, I actually liked hearing you say how good she is in the sack. It was a turn-on. Part of me wants to ask you to tell me all about you fucking Misty; yet another part of me wishes I’d not heard you mention it.” He paused again, took a breath, and said, “Those two ideas are constantly competing in my head and I can’t silence one and cling to the other no matter how much I try.”

There was silence. Nobody knew what to say.

Tommie then continued. “Here is the problem for me right now. A large part of me, most of me, wants me to say that after dinner, we need to go to Misty’s house, get naked, and all have sex together. I am sure you three would agree to that in a heartbeat. The idea that an hour from now, I could be screwing you,” he said looking at Kelli, “while right beside us Cody is screwing Misty is exciting for me. And I am quite sure if we did it, I would enjoy it. It would be amazing.”

Tommie stopped talking and there was a long silence at the table. Misty couldn’t figure out what to say to that. Finally, Kelli said, “I am sure I would like that too. Misty knows full well that I’ve been attracted to you for something like two years.”

Quietly Tommie replied, “And I have been attracted to you too. Not romantically, we would make a terrible couple, but I’ll admit I’ve wanted you purely in a physical way for several years. I have always thought you are hot. And what makes it difficult for me is that I know if I simply asked Misty to make it happen, I could have sex with you.” He laughed, “I have this recurring fantasy about having sex in the Publications Room. The three of us are in there alone all the time and mostly I think of doing Misty bent over one of the desks while you watch us. But sometimes, I visualize doing you while Misty watches us… smiling.”

Misty was astounded by his monologue. Sure, she’d had the same fantasy more than once. However, she didn’t know where he was going with this. She was quite sure that both Keli and Cody were as surprised by Tommie’s words as she was. She put her hand out to him, “You are right. If you say you want to have sex with Kelli, I can and would make it happen. And if I were there, I would certainly have a smile on my face while I watched.”

Kelli in a more energetic voice said “Then let's do it. Let's go to Misty’s house and fuck our brains out.”

Tommie looked at Kelli and in a sad tone said, “But I can’t, no matter how much I want to. If I did, afterward guilt would consume me for having sex with you just because I want to. It is all I can do to convince myself that my love for Misty makes our lovemaking OK with God. I could never find a way to excuse myself for doing it with you, Kelli.  And while I’m just as sure that it would be a huge turn-on to watch Misty do it with Cody… but later on, I would feel like dirt, like a perv, and totally cut off from God.  So, what I expect to happen is that after we are finished eating, I’ll go home. It is a school night after all. And while I am trying not to think about it, I will know that the three of you will be having a great time in Misty’s bed. The best I will be able to do is smile to myself knowing how much Misty enjoys having sex with you two. It actually will bring me happiness to know Misty is enjoying herself even if I can’t allow myself to be a part. As much as I’d like to call Misty later on and ask her to tell me all about it, I won’t… I can’t.”

Misty knew deep down that it was that conflict within Tommie’s heart and mind that, in the end, would doom their relationship. She’d known that from the very first day, but as her mother had advised her, she would enjoy it all while she could. To stave off the dark cloud that was gathering in her heart, Misty changed the subject. She told the others how she found out the day before that as part of her internship next summer, she would be going to Spain for two weeks.