In Search of the Final Freedom: Chapter 70B

Eight hundred miles away from Sparta, Bonnie’s night was indeed going well.

Only after her first lecture were Bonnie and Gayle able to check in at the hotel that was right on the University of Texas campus. At Gayle’s request, Bonnie had booked a single room for them, but with two queen beds. She was not sure what Gayle was planning, but she strongly suspected they would end up in the same bed before the night was out.

Because she’d not checked into her hotel room before her first lecture, she’d presented in the fully opaque blouse that she used for travel. Even without the see-through top, she got looks… stares, at the airport and on the plane. She laughed to herself, “It must be the electric blue boots,” though she knew the reason why people looked. It was hard not to feel pleased she still got those looks at forty-four years old. However, in her room, she’d changed into a sheer lace blouse for dinner and her scheduled talk to the students afterward. She’d been amused when Gayle changed out of her travel clothes and Bonnie got a first look at what her protégé had decided for her speaker’s look. She’d not adopted Bonnie’s style at all, instead, she had chosen to emulate Amy. That was a style that Bonnie thought of as disinterested academic or librarian sexy. But it fit her, and on the younger woman, it was indeed sexy. As they prepared to leave their room, Gayle was wearing an ensemble very reminiscent of the kinds of things Amy wore every day to the office: slacks, flat shoes, and a button-down blouse half-way unbuttoned, and no bra.

When, as they walked down the hotel hallway, Bonnie commented on her outfit, Gayle laughed and said, “I must have gone through a dozen iterations before I settled on this look for my FFF presentations. It sure is good that Amazon has such a liberal return policy. It’s not as brazen as what you wear, but I think it is authentic to who I am.” Then she added, “But in LA, I’ll be wearing the shirt you gave me. The one with the sheer stripes.”

Bonnie just said “I think you are right. That outfit is the real Dr. Gayle Simmons-Perkins. I’m sure you’ll turn heads tonight.”

“Standing beside you? Not likely. I could be naked and they’d only see you.”

Bonnie chuckled, “I think you way overestimate how people respond to me… and underestimate how many people are attracted to nerdy sex-pots.”

They both laughed.

The UT chapter of the Final Freedom Society took them to dinner at a Tex-Mex joint. Bonnie rarely went outside of her speaking venues in her presentation attire, but she figured Austin was a college town so she’d not get looks as long as her blazer was buttoned up. She was wrong. She got lots of looks. While it didn’t bother her, she noticed Gayle discreetly buttoning up her blouse even before they got their table.

Over dinner, Bonnie got a better idea of what the student group wanted her to talk about. Rather than writing something new for them, which would have been difficult in the two days she had in the office, she had the outlines of seven lecture modules on her tablet. She had come to Austin with the intent of simply choosing two or three of them to string together based on how she read her audience. However, in the discussion, the kids (and that is how they seemed to Bonnie) seemed most interested in how ethical non-monogamy works in long-term relationships. This was something she could easily talk about, but it was not what she’d prepared.

Bonnie was glad she had a group of escorts to take her to the room where she was speaking. It was in a classroom building that was largely deserted. She was sure she’d never have found the right room on her own. They arrived at the smaller lecture hall at 6:45 so she had time to both chat with people as they arrived and to take a few minutes to organize in her head what she wanted to say. While there were not even a hundred people when she began, overwhelmingly undergraduate students, she felt like this would be a very friendly audience.

Before she began, Bonnie handed the Leica camera she used to take photos of all her speaking engagements to Gayle (who’d unbuttoned her blouse again). Normally she would simply recruit someone from the front row, but she just decided to hand that task over to Gayle.  After a glowing introduction from the same young woman who’d picked them up at the airport, Bonnie stepped behind the lectern. She began by saying, “You Longhorns are very gracious… except on the football field.”

That brought a round of laughter.

“I think you have beaten my alma mater something like twenty years in a row. But, I won’t hold that against you. I feel sorry for people like you who actually expect your team to win games. I went to nearly every home football game in my four years at Vanderbilt, but we never expected our guys to win, so we were never disappointed.”

Laughs.

“Hey, you laugh but Vandy wasn’t always terrible. Did you know that Vanderbilt actually has more national football championships than Texas?” Really, we have five and Texas only has four. Of course, the last one for Vanderbilt was in 1922, so it’s been a while for us Commodore fans. But that is only because we’ve been letting the champaign age.”

Another round of laughs.

“My fond memories of Vandy football are not about what happened on the field though. They are about tailgates before the games. It is like even at a highly academic school like Vandy, hanging out with friends, eating barbeque and drinking is where the memories are made.  And… there is nothing quite like having semi-public sex at a tailgate… and I was notorious for doing just that. Our football team might not score a single point on the field but I always scored before the kickoff.”

More laughs.

Though Bonnie had told her kids and their friends about her college years, she’d never told the story in public. However, she was sure this was the right approach to this group. “When I met my husband halfway through my junior year, I had the reputation of being the sluttiest girl on the Vanderbilt campus.” She just stood there for a few moments to give her listeners time to process what she’d just said. Then she continued, “But unlike the stereotype easy bimbo blond, I was on a full-ride academic scholarship and double majored… at a school like Vanderbilt University, not a slack school like Texas.”

Laughs.

“The normal line up of slut shamers didn’t know what to say about someone like me. I just didn’t fit into their prejudices. Some of them simply pretended they didn’t know, but others doubled down on their attacks. While it is true that I was justly known for having sex with multiple partners nearly every week, everyone who knew me, knew that I studied way more than I fucked.”

There were scattered laughs indicating her audience didn’t know exactly how to respond.

 “Then (as now) I highly valued my sexual autonomy. My body was mine to use as I chose and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. This evening, I want to take a few minutes to talk about sexual freedom in the face of a society that wants to punish you for exercising it. However, before I do so, I think it is important that I start by positing that your sexual autonomy is not a function of how much sex you have or how many different people with whom you do it. Sexual autonomy, true sexual freedom is to know that you and you alone choose with whom you have sex, why you have sex, and what you do when you have sex. That means you have just as much right not to have sex, or to be monogamous as to practice free love. It is your choice. Nobody has a right to tell you how you can and can’t use your body.”

She was actually surprised by the applause.

She nodded in acknowledgment of their support. “With that established, I am going to open by talking about my own journey and how my experiences when I was your age set the stage for the work I do now. So, please don’t think me vain by telling you my own story, but if you will indulge me, I think I will make it worth your time.”

“I am now forty-four and have been sexually active for twenty-nine years. Of that time, I was completely monogamous for seventeen of those years; but, it was out of choice, not out of compulsion. When I met Cooper Campbell, the man I eventually married, he fully knew my reputation. We’d been introduced by a friend of his with whom I’d had sex several times. His friend was simply trying to get his shy classmate laid by setting him up with Fuck on the First Date Bonnie… yes that was what I was sometimes called by those who knew me…Fuck on the First Date Bonnie.” She put her hands up and said, “Hey, I was busy and I didn’t see any reason to spend an evening with a guy I didn’t want to have sex with.”

As she’d hoped, she got laughs.

 “So when I went out, even on a first date, having sex was the default plan. It only didn’t happen if the guy turned me off by his behavior. But to be candid, I got that reputation my freshman year. By the time I met Cooper, first dates with people I didn’t already know were a rare exception in my life. Most of my sexual partners that year were friends from the academic dorm. Beyond that, my actual dates were mostly with people I’d been out with before or I knew from my social circle. Which is how I met my husband. Other than the summer when Cooper was in Europe and I tried out the Nashville club scene; while we were dating I only made it with a handful of guys I’d not done it with before.” She paused… “Oh well, football tailgates were the exception. You see, since nobody ever saw playing Vandy as a real threat, and everyone liked an excuse to visit Nashville in the fall, every home game had a large contingent of good-looking guys wearing the other team’s jersey.  For me, collaring one of those hot guys for a quick fuck was still on the menu for me right up until the very last home game of my college career.” She rolled her eyes, “Some things were just too fun to give up until the bitter end.”

Laughs.

“By the time I was set up with Cooper, I was well known at least by reputation well beyond the people in the academic dorm. To this day, he likes to tell people he was terrified when he met me, he thought I was some sort of man-eater.”

More laughs.

“I’d not actually set out to get that reputation. I certainly didn’t have it when I was in high school. While sex was a consistent part of my life from the spring at the end of 9th grade, I didn’t date at all… like go out to the movies date, until I got to college. All six of my sexual partners I had before I went to Vandy were people who lived within walking or bicycle distance of my house which was deep in the back woods. You see I grew up a dirt-poor hillbilly from east Tennessee. Even the hillbillies thought I was poor, and that is saying something.”

She paused for laughs, and they came.

“Literally all I had to wear to school were worn-out hand-me-downs from my two older sisters that rarely fit well. I did not present an attractive look to boys, so they just didn’t see me. I was the classic wallflower. And since I simply didn’t have the money to participate in school activities, I found refuge in books since I was an exceptional reader from the time I was very young. So while I lived in social isolation, early in my teenage years my mind soared with Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Honoré Balzac.” She laughed, “and Balzac gave me a particular kind of thing to think about.”

Laughs.

“But it was when I discovered Henry Miller, John Updike, and Anaïs Nin in the public library during my freshman year of high school that my horizons really began to expand. I guess it was fortunate for me that my mother did not finish high school because had she known what ideas were being put in my head, she would have burned those books.”

Laughs.

“Once the weather warmed up the year I turned fifteen, after spending the year in those dirty books, I found another way to escape from the difficulties of rural poverty: actually having the kind of sex that those books talked about. Not quickies in the backseat sex, but by guiding first my best girl friend, then several boys who lived near me, I found that the joys those authors described were actually available to someone like me. Since I knew what I wanted it to be like, even in that first spring and summer, lovemaking sessions ran hours, mostly made up of kissing, touching, and caressing on a blanket deep in the woods. Now as an adult, I realize how fortunate I was that my early sexual experiences were deliberate attempts to experience the things I read in those books. Even better was that the four boys, and two girls, I did it with were… let’s say, pliable to my desires. They were willing to let me set the agenda. I honestly didn’t know that sexual encounters lasted less than an hour or two until I went to college.”  She gave another face and got the laughs she was hoping for.

“I just thought snuggling naked or sitting on the guy talking about just normal things at length, while he was inside of me, was how it was for everyone. You see other than those four guys and my one female friend (the other girl came later), I never talked to anyone at my school about those kinds of things. I didn’t hear all the horror stories so many girls get from their friends. In my ignorance, I developed very clear expectations as to what I expected out of sex. All that first summer, we met at my grandfather’s abandoned moonshining camp… yes, I really am the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of Appalachian moonshiners.” She took a bow, and got a mix of laughs and applause.

“I think I was about five when I tried sneaking a gulp of the family recipe.” She made her eyes go wide and put her hands to the sides of her head in shock. “Let me say, I never tried that again.”

Laughs

“The camp was secluded, and it had been laid out so that nobody could sneak up even if I stayed there naked for hours on end… which I did day after day. I liked being naked, even if it was just me lying on a blanket reading.  When it got cold, I moved into my father’s rather large woodworking shop since when he was at work, nobody went out there.”

She decided not to include the fact that after her father caught her having sex in his shop, he put a latch inside the workshop so that no one else would walk in on her and her guy again. Nor did she say that after he found her completely naked right in the act, her father had talked to his sister who took fifteen-year-old Bonnie to get on birth control the very next week. So, while nobody at school knew what she was doing, her father and aunt did… and were quietly supportive. That had been very important to her developing view of sexuality, but still, she skipped it.

“I learned a life-changing lesson that first year. I found that when I was naked, it didn’t matter how poor I was, I was a woman and I was as good as any woman alive.” She let the truth hang for a moment before reiterating, “Sex is the great social equalizer. The rich don’t have any joys in lovemaking that are not available to the poor, and that realization changed my life. And the fact I was a totally ignored wallflower at my school proved to be to my benefit. By only having sex with a handful of people I’d known all my life, rather than boyfriends I was trying to impress, it was not about status or buying attention. It was me and someone I trusted disappearing together into a world of mutual comfort and pleasure. Feeling one of their bodies holding mine made all the hardships of my life go away. I’m sure it was the same for my friends, who were just as poor as I was. By agreement, none of us ever told anyone at school what we did, even though I spent time with each of them on a regular basis. That went on for over three years, though one boy who was a year older left town during the second summer, and my best friend stopped coming with me when she got a regular boyfriend at about the same time, but a second girl soon took her place. Secrecy was important since it was what facilitated the extended times we had together without anyone looking in on us. Two of the guys had several girlfriends from a higher social class than me over the time I met with them, but that didn’t spoil what we had in secret. We didn’t think it was cheating on their girlfriends since by then they knew we would never go public with our special relationship.”

Bonnie had not intended to tell nearly so much. She had already said more than she’d told Misty and her friends. She didn’t know why she kept going on into more detail, but she did.

“So a few times each week, my life was perfect. In some ways, it was like I held my breath until the next time I could take off my clothes and feel warm skin on mine. When school was in session, it was usually only two or three hours a week in total, but in the summers, I spent whole days making love on and off. Yes, I loved all four of those guys, but they were not my boyfriends and I didn’t want them to be. You see, I was determined I would get out of those mountains and I knew, even at fifteen, that the one way out was college and the only way I could go to college was to earn scholarships. I saw too many girls from my school lose sight of their goals because of a boy, and that wasn’t going to happen to me. So, while what I got out of sex was very important to my life and my emotional well-being, I did not let it derail my life plans.”

She saw understanding looks on some of the girls' faces. She wondered how many of them had a similar story in their efforts to get to the exclusive University of Texas.

“By the time I’d finished high school, I firmly believed that sensual bodily pleasures with trusted friends, of which the sex act was only a part, was a legitimate way to find fulfillment in life. For me, it was critical to my emotional well-being and my happiness. Of special note was that for me sex was not tied to romantic partners as popular culture teaches it should be. Though it would take several more years to find the words to describe sexual autonomy, the core concept was there before I even went to college. To this day those early lessons about sexuality guide my life. It is also the foundation of how I teach others, especially teenagers, about sex. Those kids in the church youth group I lead never hear the nonsense that sex is only for adults. I openly teach that teenage sex can be a healthy part of growing up. My two kids are now sixteen and eighteen, but it was back when they were just moving toward sexual maturity that I taught them what I’d learned at their age. Namely, learning about sex with a close friend is a safer and less emotionally fraught path than looking for a romantic partner to explore those things.”

She considered a moment and then said, “I actually have an entire lecture on raising children in a sex-positive home, but I think you all have some years before you are faced with that challenge.”

She got nods across the room.

“So, when I arrived at Vanderbilt, I brought with me some very clear beliefs about how sexuality should work in my life. First off, I firmly believed that spending naked time with friends… and yes, I believed friends plural, both male and female, was very important to my emotional well-being. It was my way of coping, and when I arrived at Vandy, there was an enormous amount of stress walking into a dorm nearly entirely made up of people who had upper-middle-class life experiences that were a world away from mine.”

Bonnie’s throat constricted. She’d never told this next part to anyone in Sparta, ever. All her life she’d worked mightily to project an air of strength, but those first weeks at Vanderbilt University nearly destroyed her. But she reasoned that in an audience of what was almost entirely undergraduate students, there were more likely more than a few who had the same culture shock she’d experienced all those years ago. So she moved on.

“While I was sure the new jeans and blouse my family had bought me from Walmart would help me blend in the day I arrived on campus, I was wrong. I felt my poverty shone like a beacon to all those well-dressed, confident young people. Yes, I know some of that was likely in my head, but I also know that I did not blend in. Not just in dress, but I talked like a girl from a holler in the mountains and I knew it.”

Bonnie struggled to continue. Emotions that had lain buried for twenty-five years welled up in her. “The first night, fortunately, my roommate had not yet arrived, because I did something I’d never done before or after.” She had to take a deep breath to get out the next few words. “I sobbed all night.” She had to take another breath before she could keep going. “My night was filled with deep wracking sobs because my world had come apart.” Bonnie had to push back the wave of pain that she felt. “I’d achieved the sum of all my dreams, not only was I in college, on full scholarship, but I was at Vanderbilt. Yet, I’d never in my life felt more ashamed of who I was. I was the dirty child and grandchild of a moonshiner from the hills. Over and over I berated myself for ever thinking I could be anything else. I was sure that I did not belong there and never would. Had there been a way for me to go home, I would have. But I didn’t have a car, I didn’t even know how to drive. Even if I begged my father to drive back to Nashville to come get me, I doubted he would do it.”

It took her several moments to compose herself after that admission. She’d only told one other person about that awful night, her long-time college roommate, Jackie. She had no doubt in looking at the faces in her audience that more than a few of them had been through the very same experience. That comforted her.

She began again, slowly. “The next day I skipped breakfast; but before noon, hunger drove me to the dining hall I’d been told was reserved for first-year students. I’d planned to sit by myself, but by chance, I saw a guy sitting alone and he looked all the world like he felt as out of place as I did. From his dress and demeanor, I just knew he was a mountain kid like me. I didn’t sit next to him, but at the same table. It was hard, but after several minutes of silence, I pushed myself to make an introduction. By the time two sentences were out of his mouth, I could tell he really was just like me. As it turned out Timothy was from a town just north of mine, and as we talked it was clear he felt just as out of place as I did. We talked for nearly an hour before I asked if he wanted to come with me back to my room. Looking back, it is clear he had absolutely no idea what I meant by asking him to come to my room with me.”

Bonnie paused to give that time to sink in. The laughter that followed indicated her audience was following.

“When the door to my room shut, I pulled Timothy to me and my tongue was in his mouth in seconds. I knew only one thing that would make my day bearable, and I just assumed Timothy was thinking the same. But he wasn’t. He had no idea what I had in mind, but at first that thought didn’t even occur to me.  We all tend to project our own life experiences onto others, and I did that very thing to poor unsuspecting Timothy. I regret my overly aggressive and unexplained actions now, but at the moment, I was fully under the delusion that he wanted to be with me in the same way I wanted to be with him.”

“Remember, while I’d been having sex multiple times a week for three years, I’d only had four males and two females as partners. All of whom I’d known all my life. I had absolutely no experience in bedding someone new, but what I did know was that I desperately needed to share my new bed with Timothy, right then. I couldn’t live through another night like the one I’d just had and I only knew one way to make the pain go away. And oh, I say I didn’t know how to bed a new guy, well until that day… until I pulled him to lie with me, I’d never actually been in bed with a boy. Not once.”

Laughs.

“While my kiss took him off guard, Timothy did respond… in a clumsy way. When I began pulling off my clothes a few minutes later, he just stood catatonic.” Bonnie struck a mouth-open pose which brought on laughs.

“It was only when I was completely nude and he was still fully clothed staring at me that I realized what was going on. Later he told me that he’d never before seen a girl naked in person. And without sounding full of myself, at eighteen my naked body was something worth staring at.”

Laughs.

She got a face and said, “Hey, my naked body is still damn fine. Do I need to take off my clothes and prove it?”

She got some eager nods.

“Sorry, can’t do that here. But I actually have presented for the FFF in the nude before.” She nodded for emphasis, “It doesn’t bother me at all. But I admit that lecturing in the buff certainly gives the session an interesting vibe.”

Laughs.

She then went on. “But I wasn’t at a loss seeing his response. I’d been the first sexual partner for five of the six people with whom I’d had sex, and the sixth one, one of the guys, had stuck it in a girl before, but that action was the extent of his sexual knowledge. So, I knew how to proceed with Timothy. After I kissed him again, I asked if it would be all right if I helped him get undressed. I was well used to leading in sexual settings, so the very act of guiding him as to what to do was comforting for me. It was something I knew I could do well. After he got over the shock, his gratitude and willingness to follow both my lead and my directions made for a very nice experience for both of us. Most importantly for me, feeling his body next to mine, and inside of me, made me feel like maybe that dorm room could become my home. Sex was my salvation that first semester as I looked for a place to fit in with people so different from me. Though I’d not in any way intended to become the dorm slut, for the next four years sex was my zone of solace and comfort as well as my public identity.”

“Some two hours later, we’d had two rounds of sex but had been lying in my bed talking for a good while when the door opened. Jackie, the girl who would be my roommate for the next two and a half years stepped in, pulling two suitcases behind her. To her credit and my relief, she did not get upset. Yes, she was clearly surprised to walk into her college dorm for the first time to find her new roommate in bed with a guy, naked. Now, this was not the first time I’d been seen by a girl with a guy.”

She paused and considered whether to tell the story that she’d inadvertently set up. She’d never told anyone this part… not Jackie or even Cooper. She wasn’t sure why she’d never told it… well, she did know. Telling it would bring back that deep feeling that she knew, despite all her decades of pretending to be respectable, she was still that hillbilly girl from Tennessee. She suspected she’d never fully be over that sense of inadequacy and this story seemed to reinforce the feeling… even if the memories themselves were sweet. However, she decided if there was ever a time to tell the whole story, it was to this group of undergrads who’d taken the initiative to provide her a way to address them.

“My cousin Betsy who is two and a half years younger than me, was the second girl who joined me at my special spot in the woods… my sixth sexual partner. You see despite my efforts to keep it secret; it was inevitable that someone knew what I really did when I was supposedly just going to the woods looking for solitude in which to read in peace. In Betsy’s case, her mother, my father’s sister was the one adult confidant I had in my life. Studies show that nearly all kids who make it out of poverty have an adult in their life who provided support, my aunt was that person. She was the one who helped me choose the right courses in high school, bought me a SAT prep book, and helped me fill out my college and scholarship applications. Oh, I’d never been to Vanderbilt until that terrible first day since no one in my family had the means or the understanding to take me to visit before I became a student.”

“In addition to all of that, my aunt also took me to my gynecological visits and helped me obtain birth control. And she was the one person in all the world who knew all about how I used my sexuality to escape the hard life I lived. When her daughter Betsy turned fifteen, with my approval, her mother let her sit in on our talks. Years later, I began to wonder why she’d asked if Betsy could join us. By the time I was old enough to understand the significance of that question, my aunt, my savior, the woman who had been the lifeline I so needed, had died of breast cancer.”

Once again Bonnie had to briefly stop talking. By hiding her relationship to Betsy, she had failed to give proper public credit to her aunt for all she had done for her. That pain would stay with her forever and she knew it.

“So, my cousin knew absolutely everything. So it was, about four months later, in the spring before I finished high school, we went out to the camp together for the first time. I know it may seem appalling for me to admit that I had sex with my female cousin, but well… one of my aunts is married to one of her cousins. We were mountain people after all, and when I told my aunt that her daughter and I had sex, she was not surprised. She was just happy that Betsy was doing it with someone who wouldn’t abuse her or get her pregnant. She did make it clear though that she did not want Betsy to have vaginal sex with my boys. Though more than once Betsy complained about that stipulation, we stuck to it… if only in a technical sense.”

“Over that summer before I went to Vandy, she and I spent a lot of time out at the camp together… naked. Sometimes it was just by ourselves, but a great many times it was with the three of my guys who still lived nearby. Though she never had intercourse with any of them, she was right there when I had sex with those guys for hours on end… and she enjoyed it when they watched us too. But, that is to say, when Jackie saw me in bed with Timothy, it did not freak me out to be seen by her in a sexual setting. We did however get dressed quickly and he left before her parents made it to our room. To this day Jackie and I are dear friends. We were one another’s maid of honor when we got married and though she has lived halfway across the country for decades we still talk regularly.”

“I told that story to explain that a key concept in the pursuit of sexual freedom is to embrace the idea that our sexuality is wholesome and appropriate to use for a variety of reasons. Each of us finds how to use our sexuality to benefit ourselves and those around us. There is no one right way or reason to have sex. The only wrong ways or reasons are those that harm you or your partners. It simply can’t matter to us how sex-negative those around us are, we have to find what works for us.”

The hall filled with applause. It was only then that she realized that as she’d been speaking the crowd had grown significantly. Now the lecture hall was filled, and a few people even stood at the back.

“In those first few months at Vandy, I don’t know what I would have done had I not had a roommate who understood my need to get comfort from making love to Timothy and a couple of other guys I’d hit it off with. Like I said, when I was naked, I was as good as any of those rich kids in my dorm. Fair or not, it was over my very first semester at Vandy that I built my reputation as the slut of the academic dorm. Timothy became the first of what would eventually be dozens of guys over my time at Vandy who lived in my dorm building and became friends with whom sex was intrinsic to our relationship. Even after I got over the transition to my new environment, I continued to invite guys from the dorm to my bed several times a week to relieve the academic stress I was under.”

“While I had a lot of sex in college, the majority of my encounters were what Jackie and I euphemistically called ‘study breaks.’  When I found I’d reached my limit in my books, I would call up one of my friends and ask him to come by my room. And I think it is important to clarify, that while penetrative sex was certainly part of what we did in my bed during those study breaks, it was the entire experience that provided the therapeutic benefit. A good percentage of the time during my study breaks, which generally lasted about an hour, we were not engaged in what is commonly thought of as sex. Feeling our naked bodies together was just as important to me as feeling the guy’s penis inside of me or reaching orgasm. And since the intent was that after my friend and I were done, I would return to my books; very few of those study breaks, particularly on weeknights, included high-intensity action. Rather I nearly always focused on low-keyed acts that led to high-intensity emotional release. It was the escape from the difficulties of my life that I needed and got.”

Again she paused to let the idea settle in her hearer’s minds.

“In effect, I had just transferred what I’d been doing at home in the mountains to my dorm at Vanderbilt. The primary difference was that instead of rotating among the same four guys and a girl for years, the group of guys changed over time as they found more conventional relationships with other girls. That didn’t offend me, rather it gave me a sense that I was doing those guys a service in exchange for what they did for me.”

“My dorm building was coed by floor, and everyone… I mean everyone in the dorm knew why on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, a guy came to our floor and knocked on my door. Initially, when word got out I was having a steady stream of guys come to my room for sex, it created quite a stir; but in time everyone came to see it as just a normal part of life in our dorm building. My role was the dorm slut and everyone accepted that. By the end of the first month or two, Jackie could study right through one of my sessions. Me having sex with her in the room eventually lost any sense of kink or even abnormality.”

(OK, this is a gratuitous sex image of college-age Bonnie taking a "study break" while Jackie works at her desk. I just thought my readers would rather see this than another image of Bonnie lecturing."

“But,” Bonnie added, “she also learned important lessons from me. Before she came to college, she believed that sex was only something to be done as part of a romantic relationship, and that was primarily done to make her boyfriend happy. Over that first fall, she too came to understand the therapeutic value of sexual sharing with friends. While she never did it as much as I did, by Thanksgiving she was bringing guys back to our room, whether or not I was there. While we were never lovers per se, if one of us had a bad day… or a bad date, without comment the other would slide into bed and we’d use our sexuality to ease the other’s pain.”

“However, not all of my sex in college was during study breaks or to comfort my roommate. As I said earlier, I got a kick out of having casual sex with guys I met at pre-game tailgates or other such events. For my first year, most weeks I went on at least one real date. Just like having sex in a bed was new, so was going out in social settings. Jackie helped me a lot in knowing how to act and what to expect on dates since I had absolutely no experience with activities which would seem quite normal to most eighteen-year-olds. And while I’m sure it was not her intent, by letting me use her clothes, I learned to dress to get attention.” Bonnie snorted, “When I saw all of her beautiful clothes that first day, I’m sure my eyes popped out of my head.”

There was a smattering of laughter.  Bonnie wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“I found college was a smorgasbord of sexually available guys and wearing Jackie’s clothes, guys noticed me in a way they never had before. Moreover, since I had a bed to use anytime I wanted, my first year I was downright profligate. While having sex with friends to get comfort was old hat to me, dating was a learning experience… one with a steep learning curve.  Until it first happened to me after a date, I’d never experienced a guy simply wanting to put his dick in me to get off as quickly as possible and then leave. The first time it happened I wasn’t just left unsatisfied, I was angry.” She put on an angry face and then gave an imaginary guy the finger. It got laughs.

“I’d heard about other girls who got used by guys as nothing but someplace to put their dick, but it had never happened to me. It was a real shock.  In time I learned to identify the guys who simply wanted to fuck me… and you can be sure that those guys never got the chance. Even when I had casual sex like at tailgates, I never responded to come-ons, rather I got it on with guys I chose, not those who thought they were choosing me. For me the difference was important.”

Once again, she stopped to look over the faces. In seeing the response she got, she was sure her point was made.

“More commonly the dates that ended unsatisfactorily were with nice guys who simply lacked the experience to be a good lover. Just as teaching my new dorm playmates was an expected thing from that very first day, it was easy for me to just make that a normal and assumed part of dating as well. Bringing my experiences from back home to Vandy, I just naturally assumed that I initiated and led every sexual encounter… which was also how I got that sexually aggressive reputation that so scared inexperienced Cooper Campbell.” She grinned, “Me a man-eater? I can’t see that.”

Laughs.

“While I loved my time in college, a lot, and to this day I am not the least bit ashamed of the fact I don’t know how many sexual partners I had in those years; there was a price to be paid. While the term slut shaming might be new, the attitude is not. By the start of my second year, very few guys saw me as girlfriend material, and fewer still thought I was someone a decent guy would marry. I found that out the hard way. I only had two boyfriends during my first two and a half years of college. Both relationships fell apart when after less than two months of going out, the guy decided it was time to tell me that he alone had access to my body. Well, I wasn’t about to let some guy tell me who I could and couldn’t have in my bed, so both relationships ended badly. And in both cases, the angry young man made an effort to trash me for it. Yes, somewhere in my sophomore year, I began to hope for a romantic relationship like other girls had, but I valued my bodily autonomy even more.”

“What Cooper’s buddy who introduced us did not expect was that his sexually inexperienced friend and I would find a connection. Cooper had a kindness and loving nature that was like no other guy I’d ever been with… and by January of my junior year, I’d been with a lot of guys: several times as many as the most promiscuous girls I knew. So after our first date, I asked him out again… and again. For nearly a year, before I agreed to marry him, we went out every Saturday night. By the end of the second month, I was spending Saturday nights in his apartment. But unlike the prior two guys I had dated, Cooper Campbell never even hinted that he should have a veto right over the use of my body. Even when I pushed it and made it so he simply could not ignore who I really was… like meeting him at my door naked and flushed from just finishing a sexual encounter, he responded that he loved me for my independence and sense of who I am. He didn’t measure my worth by who I invited into my body between the times we were together. I waited until I found a man who loved me for being me and to this day, I am thankful I did.”

Applause.

“When Cooper and I made our own home, I was determined that even though I had decided to be monogamous, I would not have the kind of cold asexual marriage my parents had. Since the very first, I’ve decorated our bedroom in a way that many people would more associate with a brothel than that of a respectable married couple… complete with a large reclining nude painting above our headboard… of me.” She nodded to affirm what she said, then struck a pose and got some laughs.

“Hey, it’s a really nice painting. The artist used an amalgam of nude photos that I’d asked my husband to shoot of me spanning our first decade together… you see he had won several photo contests by then, though he’d never shot a naked woman before I badgered him into it.  I’m quite proud of that painting. In our home, neither nudity nor sex has ever been an issue. When Cooper and I began having friends over to spend the night in our bed, our kids just took it in stride. As our two children moved to becoming sexually active, I opened up about my teen and college years. I did not hide how I used my body in the ways that benefitted me regardless of social expectations. In doing so, I began considering how I could have done things better during that time. Like all parents, I want my kids to get the most out of life; however, I do not want them to make some of the same mistakes I made. And I did make mistakes. Big ones.”

“While I have directly told both our daughter and our son that I have no shame or regrets about the frequency of my sexual encounters, nor the number of partners I had from when I was fifteen until I married their father at twenty-two, I do have some regrets about how I went about it.”

“I regret that I did not sufficiently consider my obligations to my partners: both my dorm playmates and their father.  While I believe that sexual freedom means I can have sex with who I want, when I want, and why I want; that freedom should not be taken as the right to ignore the feelings or welfare of my partners… which now I realize I did as a matter of course.”

“I cringe when I think back at how I called my rotating group of dorm guys, ‘my stable’ without any sense that I was treating them as if they were stud horses whose sole mission was to service me. And I am a planner, so I systematically looked for guys in my dorm building who would meet my needs. By definition, the guys in the academic dorm were very smart and worked very hard at school. In practice, a disproportionate number of them were socially awkward with little to no sexual experience. Those were the guys I felt most comfortable around, so they were my natural friend group.” She laughed, “And to be honest, even though by the time I started dating him, Cooper Campbell was a fifth-year architecture student and teaching assistant, he was another total geek. Hey, I have a type.”

Laughs.

“I found that such guys were my tabula rasa onto which I could imprint what a good lover was. I molded dozens of guys into lovers that met my needs. So, I collected new guys and trained them the same way I trained Timothy. Or less charitably, I trained them as one would a horse or dog with direct commands, never asking them what they wanted out of our relationship. Even so, I rarely failed when I decided to bring a new guy into my stable. When offered a chance to have an ongoing sexual relationship with a hot girl, few of the geeky guys I recruited balked at my offer.”

She paused and acted as if she were pondering on something, “Come to think of it, I don’t think a single one said he didn’t want to have sex with me. Isn’t that odd?”

Laughs.

“The result was that until the second semester of my senior year, I had a rotating stable of between five and eight guys who were not only at my beck and call, but they practically worshiped me.”

She put up her arms and bowed in obeisance.

Laughs.

“At 18, 19, and 20 years old to have a coterie of guys who adored me felt great,  especially since I’d been at the lowest rung of the social ladder back home. And it was not just that they came when I called for them to join me in bed. As those relationships developed, I found that if I wanted one of them to join me for lunch in the dining hall, or to join me for an actual study session, he would drop what he was doing and be there.”

“To have adoring fans was intoxicating and it blinded me to the fact I was using them. The truth was that while I was having sex with each of them about once every two weeks, I didn’t go out with the guys from my stable. There was no path for them to move from fuck buddy to boyfriend. Now I realize how unfair it was to those guys who would do anything for me.”

She paused. It was difficult to make this public admission.

“It has been only in the past few years that I’ve truly come to understand the gravity of my sinful behavior. Yes, I know that is a religious term, but as a follower of Jesus, to use people for my own ends regardless of their wants or needs is a spiritual offense and it deserves a spiritual condemnation.”

Again, she paused. There was a smattering of applause.

She walked back to the lectern and stood for a moment before continuing. “I’ll get back to that, but first, let me explain something I glossed over. You see, that first guy, Timothy, set the pattern. As I found out that first day, he had zero sexual experience, so step by step I taught him what to do. Not just the mechanical things like how to kiss, how to give me oral sex, or the best ways to fuck me, but how to sense what I wanted in foreplay and how to act after we’d spent ourselves. Every one of my guys learned the importance of post-coital snuggling and caressing. And just as importantly, I taught them how to publicly treat a girl with whom they are having sex. For a lot of my guys, those were things that they simply couldn’t do without explicit guidance. Few of them had any reference point for any kind of ongoing sexual relationship. It was of particular importance to teach them how to act around me in public because everyone in the dorm knew who was in my current stable. Vanderbilt is not a large school, a tiny fraction of the size of UT, and those in the highest academic tier were even a smaller group, so being part of my entourage was a fairly public status.”

“While I realize I did not always treat my guys the way I should have, I can say I never acted as if they were not important to me or part of my larger life. I wasn’t ashamed that I was having sex with any of them, even those who came across as the most nerdy. I wanted every single one of my guys to know that I was proud to be their sexual partner even after I became rather popular around campus… at least in certain circles. I knew full well how other outcast girls tried to emulate how I dressed and acted in public. And be sure, those guys were friends, not just playmates. Many times, right in front of other people, I thanked one of my guys for how great he made me feel the night before. I know without a doubt, my actions boosted the self-confidence of my guys… and their social status.”

“What I’d not foreseen, was that as my guys became skilled lovers and I was open about how much I enjoyed my time with them; those geeky young men would then attract girls in a way they’d never done before. As such, my stable of guys was always changing as they began to move into romantic relationships. I thought that was great, however, I had a firm rule that once one of my guys started dating a girl, I would not ask him to have sex with me. I did not want to make enemies of the girls I lived with. That is unless the girl he was going out with expressly told me it was OK if he continued to join me in my bed, which happened a couple of times.”

“But, even though I feel I minimized the one-way nature of those unequal relationships, all these years later I have a sense of guilt at how selfish I was. One of the things I’ve vowed is that in this stage of my life, I will make atonement for that behavior. Those of you who read my blog have read how I am committed that those people who share my bed will come away the better for it. I have told you all this in hopes you will not have the same regrets I do.”

She paused to emphasize her point.

“But potentially the single worst thing I did wrong was that I did not consider the risks Cooper Campbell was taking by dating me. Yes, he accepted the looks he got from his peers for dating the sluttiest girl on campus. Oh, I should say, I leaned into my detractors by dressing the part on a regular basis so it’s not like I didn’t contribute to the way people talked about me.”  She took a pose pushing back the sides of her jacket to fully show off that her nipples were on full display with her quarter cub bra and see-through blouse, then said, “I know that it’s hard for you guys to imagine someone as prim as me dressing in a way that comes across as sexually provocative.”

Laughs.

“On several occasions, while we were dating, I had sex with one of Cooper’s classmates from his cohort of architecture students. At least I should have asked him if it were OK if I did so, but I did not. He’s told me that once in class, a guy openly bragged about fucking Cooper’s girlfriend the Friday night before. He says it never bothered him that guys talked about having sex with me, but that does not absolve me for not considering Cooper’s feelings by doing it with people in his classes. But that isn’t the risk I’m talking about. I mean I did not give him enough information about my sexual activities to properly evaluate the risk he was taking by putting his penis into me without a condom, or for that matter the risks he was taking by going down on me… which he was wonderful about doing before he entered me nearly every time.”

Bonnie grinned and added, “Hey, there were reasons I kept going out with him.”

Laughs.

“While from the very beginning, he knew I was not sexually exclusive, we never talked about what I did with other guys. In my mind, and in his, we were being mature about it by making a non-issue of the fact I had sex with other people on a regular basis. Amazingly, it was not until this past year that I fully explained to my husband about my study breaks which were my most common sexual activity the entire time we were dating.  It was that same day that my husband told me that when he came to pick me up for our Saturday night dates, he often could taste semen in my mouth when he kissed me. While I knew that I sometimes could still taste it before our dates, especially those times my Saturday study break ran late… like the guy left my room five minutes before Cooper was due to arrive…”

She shrugged, and she got more laughs.

“You see just about the time I started dating Cooper, Jackie moved in with the guy she eventually married, so my Saturday breaks began running longer and longer.” She put one hand up in a stop motion. “Yes, I know now I would marry Cooper but that first semester I didn’t, so I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about spending a few hours naked with a good friend before I pulled on my clothes to go out with my new boyfriend.”

“Still, it was a bit surprising to me that all those years ago, with his very limited sexual experience, he knew what made my mouth taste that way. And I know that more than just my mouth tasted of semen on Saturday evenings, so did my vulva. Well, he actually said the first couple of months he didn’t realize what that taste was. After all, while he had some sexual experience with a couple of prior girlfriends, it was rather conventional, so he had no idea what semen tasted like. It was only after the first time I met him at the door naked and we had sex before we went out… I mean, fair or not, I intended him to pick up where my fuck buddy had left off before he arrived. It was only when he actually saw another guy’s semen at the mouth of my vagina before going down on me did he realize what he’d been tasting every week for a couple of months.  But according to Cooper, by then, he had already decided he wanted to marry me even though he didn’t ask for another half a year. Seeing what I’d been doing moments before he arrived did not stop him, nor did he ever bring it up, not once. When we finally talked directly about it last year, he just said that he knew who I was from our first date. Had seeing proof that another guy had been fucking me before he got there bothered him, he’d never gone out with me at all. Even after realizing he was tasting other guys on me, for him it was just part of being my boyfriend.”

She paused and said, “Cooper is truly an amazing man. I thank God every day that he came into my life.”

She was surprised when she got applause for that.

“So, we began dating in late January, then after a ten-week break while he studied in Italy that next summer, we continued dating as soon as he got back. All through my senior year Cooper and I were a serious couple. While my recreational sexual activity with other guys did not end until Christmas, over the fall it declined significantly from the prior three years. My weekly study breaks went from nearly every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to pretty much only on Saturdays. Part of it was that my new roommate did not want me to have sex while she was in the room. Saturday afternoons were the only time she promised to be out for a couple of hours every week. That fall, I did not even look for any new playmates, so on Saturdays it was just the same few guys, one of which was one of those whose girlfriend had specifically told me she wanted him to keep seeing me.”

“But perhaps the most important reason I tapered off my steady diet of sex with a variety of people was that my need for that constant affirmation from feeling a guy’s body next to mine tapered off. It had a lot to do with the fact that even though we’d not started talking about marriage, Cooper’s love for me, and my love for him had already begun to sustain me. But before that, during our first semester dating, although I usually used condoms on regular dates, week after week I had two, three, and more than a few times, four different guys fill my vagina with their semen between my dates with Cooper. He simply had no idea the kind of risk he was taking and I didn’t tell him. It was categorically wrong of me not to give him fair warning.”

She thought it a good thing that she saw a number of heads nod in agreement.

“I rationalized not telling him how many different guys ejaculated into me each week because most of the unprotected sex I had was with the guys in my stable, and I was the only sexual partner for nearly all of them. Of course, that is not anything like responsible behavior and I know that. But it doesn’t matter if he knew I was having sex with other guys without using condoms, my failure to spell out how irresponsible I acted was inexcusable.”

Nearly everyone in the hall responded in agreement with her assessment. She didn’t know if she should be glad they agreed, or to be mortified they knew how immoral she’d been.

Either way, she plowed on. “But it was when he was in Europe that I engaged in the most egregious behavior that put him at profound risk without his knowledge.  You see, by the time he left for Italy, I had a deep-down belief that I’d found the man I’d spend the rest of my life with, and that was months before we started talking about getting married. But rather than rejoice in that thought, it frightened me. My parent's marriage was cold, and while I wouldn’t say loveless, it wasn’t the kind of life I wanted for myself. Perhaps even worse was I feared feeling like an outsider for the rest of my life. You see, Cooper Campbell is old Georgian gentry, so far up the social ladder that I couldn’t even see that rung from where I thought I belonged… even though I was on my way to graduating summa cum laude. It was that same fear that engulfed me on my first night at Vanderbilt. To this day, deep down here,” she tapped her heart, “I am still that little girl who cringed from the nasty looks of the middle-class people as my mother paid for our groceries with food stamps.”

She had to stop again. Why was this so hard? She wasn’t that little girl anymore and hadn’t been for a lifetime. Yet, just saying the words made her want to run from the room in shame. This time, she had to close her eyes to regain her composure.

“I was so afraid that by marrying Cooper I would have to live in his world the rest of my life around people who would make me feel like dirt. I’d not even met his family, but in my imagination, they would see me as a mangy stray cat their son brought in. As Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, Fear is the mind-killer.”

“For ten weeks, while Cooper was studying in Italy, I tried to erase him from my heart by becoming a Nashville club girl. If I drove him from my heart, I would be safe... or so I thought. In those two and a half months, I did things that were profoundly destructive. Of all the things I’ve ever done in my life, the things I did those few months are the things I most deeply regret. For the only time in my life, I drank to excess… like getting drunk four or five nights a week, and I often lost myself in recreational drugs. You see, prior to that summer, I’d smoked weed just a handful of times and was rather modest in my alcohol consumption. From the time I was a young teen, I had not seen booze or drugs as conducive to my life goals, so I’d steered clear of those traps. Yet between my junior and senior years, I rationalized that since I was only taking a single fluff class that summer, I could loosen up. The very first night when the girl who I’d asked to take me clubbing introduced me to MDMA, I thought I’d found a shortcut to the kind of joy I got from my time in bed with friends.”

A pang of guilt shot through Bonnie. She could have given Sarah a much more personal warning about party drugs, but she’d failed to do so. She knew all about ecstasy, but she’d not told Sarah that she’d taken it night after night when she’d gone clubbing. Was it because Lamar had been sitting there? How many times had she said she felt no shame for her actions? Yet, she did feel shame for this and that shame had kept her from giving Sarah the advice she really needed.

Bonnie tried to push those thoughts aside and kept going. “In turning from the joys my body could experience naturally to chemically induced highs, I temporally threw away the autonomy I’d worked so hard to achieve. Though at the moment I’d convinced myself I was doing those things in order to gain complete freedom, it was anything but. Lying to oneself is a poison all its own.”

She had to stop to compose herself. This was all so much harder than she’d imagined it would be.

“It was because of the drinking and substance abuse that I repeatedly woke up in beds I did not recognize with men I only vaguely remember meeting. Night after night, I had sex with would-be country music stars, band members, and tourists. I fucked in alleyways, in public restrooms, in the back of clubs, and went to fancy hotels & seedy apartments not having the slightest idea where I was. Once I got thrown out of a club for giving a blow job right at the bar. I was fortunate I wasn’t arrested then and there.  And, while I carried condoms with me and used them when I was sober enough to think of it, I know that at least several dozen perfect strangers deposited their semen in my vagina… at least a couple dozen, likely quite a few more. I just have no idea how many.”

Once again, she realized she was going far beyond what she’d ever told anyone before. But while her admissions were hard, she found it oddly cathartic. At this stage in her life, it was time for her to come clean to herself about her past… all of it. While she’d told a glossed-over version of that summer of being a party girl to a couple of people, she’d never really faced what she’d done. Now came the hardest part of all.

“Were all those encounters fully consensual? Of course not. It took me years, decades, to admit to myself that more than once men took advantage of my state to have sex with me when I was too far gone to give genuine consent. When I say I don’t know how many men I had sex with that summer, I mean I don’t even remember all of my sexual encounters. Twice I woke up in my bed, still in one of the clubbing minidresses that Jackie had given me when she moved out, with no idea how I got back to the dorm. The semen stain told me I’d had sex… unprotected sex, with a man (or men) I couldn’t even remember. While the men who fucked me when I was semi-conscious were morally and legally in the wrong, the truth is I went to those clubs meaning to get wasted and then to have a man or men fuck my brains out. So, I too have a moral complicity.”

She’d known that was true for decades, but she’d never said it out loud. The words were devastating. She found herself having to hold back the tears, but she pressed on.

“Even after the first time I knew I couldn’t remember with whom I’d had sex, I went to class that day then out clubbing again that night. I can’t tell you why I didn’t see what I was doing. I don’t know. It is a heavy burden to know I have sold myself out like that, even if it was only for a few months. I would never ever want my daughter to follow that example.”

She went behind the lectern to appear to be looking at her tablet, but in truth, she just needed a minute to clear her head.

“Looking back, I know that not only was I very lucky not to contract a disease, but I was in serious physical danger as well. How many young women don’t survive such things?” She took a deep breath. “Tonight is the first time I’ve ever told all of this because even saying it aloud shocks me. I simply don’t want to believe I could do that to myself, but I know I did, and over twenty years later it still hurts. If I can dissuade one person not to take the risks I did though, it is worth it.”

 “But, fortunately, my days as a club girl were time-limited. When Cooper came back to town in late August and I realized I’d not driven him from my heart, my experiment in being a party girl ended. I simply pretended none of that had really happened. I even threw away all four of those minidresses and the shoes that went with them so I had nothing to remind me of what I’d done. I accepted for good or for ill, that my future was to be the wife of Cooper Campbell. From that day to this I’ve never used recreational drugs nor can I recall ever drinking past the point of being slightly tipsy. In our home, while we treat teen sex as normal and healthy (as long as it is done safely), we have strict rules against recreational drugs or underage drinking. I was very, very fortunate to come away with nothing more than shame and guilt. But I did not tell Cooper what I’d been doing while he was gone. I did not go to get checked for STIs and we started having unprotected sex the very night he got home. It was not until last year I let my husband know how much danger I’d put him in without his knowledge. I had an obligation to tell him that by having unprotected sex with me he was taking the same level of risk as having unprotected sex with several random women every week all summer. It was wrong of me not to tell him. Even though I did not pass anything to him, that does not absolve me.”

Again, she saw heads nod. Only then did she feel the tears that had made their way down her cheek. Shame was not an emotion she felt very often, but she had opened herself up to be overwhelmed by it if she did not push on.

“And all of that was to avoid a fate that turned out to be the greatest single event in my life. Not only were all my fears unfounded, but they were literally the opposite of how my life with Cooper unfolded. He and I have had a wonderful… truly amazingly loving marriage all these years and my mother-in-law is the kindest woman I’ve ever known. Frank Herbert was right, fear is a mind killer, and it almost killed me.”

“By that Christmas I knew it was time for us to commit, to get engaged. When we did, I unilaterally told him I would stop having sex with other people. He did not ask me to, but I did so because, at the time, I just equated marriage with monogamy. However, even then I did not give up my autonomy. When we were working out our wedding vows, Cooper watched me cross out the line about forsaking all others. Though we did not have any big discussion, he knew I was not going to promise to never have sex with anyone else for the rest of my life, nor did he ever ask me to do so. Yet, I didn’t have sex with anyone but him for seventeen years. You see, preserving my autonomy did not mean I had to have sex with other people, it just meant I reserved that right to myself. You can own your body and still not have sex outside of a monogamous relationship. It is a matter of choosing with whom to have sex, not being forbidden to do something. Do you see the difference?”

She watched the heads nod.

“Once I stopped seeing other guys, Cooper and I didn’t even discuss the matter for fifteen years. He never brought it up, not once. That is the kind of guy he is. One Saturday morning a little more than five years ago, while we were having our normal post-coital coffee in our bed… you see, Saturday morning sex had been our thing since I began spending most nights with him that last semester of college. We’d been married fifteen years by then, and while we still had sex regularly, it had become, for want of a better word, stale. Not bad, but well we’d been married a long time, and having two small children at home taxes a couple’s sex life.”

“Apparently, he could tell I’d become less than satisfied with how things had been going. We’d talked more than once about inviting my best friend to join us in bed and I’d begun telling him more frequently about meeting guys that got my motor running. But, it was all just talk and fantasy. However, as we sat up in our bed that morning, my dear husband just casually mentioned that he would not feel betrayed if I had sex with someone else… male or female. He said it just as calmly as if he were telling me he’d be taking the kids to the park later that day. While it was not a new concept for us, saying it aloud was his way of telling me I still held my bodily autonomy even after a decade and a half of marriage and two children.”

“While I’d begun to think about sex with other people rather frequently by then, I didn’t have any plans to act on those thoughts. But I guess he knew me better than I even knew myself. Just over a year later, I asked if he would mind if I had sex with a particular woman from church. He simply restated that my body was my own. He did the same a month later when I said my friend had asked if we could move on to have a threesome with her husband.  Since that day, I’ve had sex with something approaching a hundred men and women. I’m not sure how many exactly, but it is somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred. A good many times Cooper has been there with me, but for the majority of my extramarital encounters, he has not. Yet nothing has actually changed between my husband and I. Our relationship was never based on an expectation of enforced monogamy. It was that early foundational agreement that ensured the stability of our marriage over the long run.”

“True sexual freedom must be something you prize and are willing to stand for no matter who attacks you for it. If you value your sexual autonomy, it is something you simply can’t wait to bring up months into a relationship.  Will telling someone on your first couple of dates that you intend to maintain your sexual autonomy close off relationships? Of course, it will. Some men, perhaps most men simply assume that owning access to their girlfriend’s body is their right. For men like that, a woman’s sexual autonomy is a threat to their masculinity. So women, you need to ask yourself how important is your sexual autonomy before that first date.”

“I’m not saying you should rate your sexual autonomy as a first-tier priority as I did, but if you do, you have to make it so much a part of you that bringing it up is just part of who you are. And if you choose to give up that autonomy and make a promise of monogamy, don’t do it by accident or under pressure. Even giving up your sexual autonomy should be a freely made choice. Otherwise, your resentment of your new partner will become a major stumbling block.”

The nods made her feel she’d made her point.

“Oh, I suppose I should say this explicitly even though it should seem obvious. When you tell a prospective partner that you value your own sexual autonomy, make sure you also let him or her know that you value their autonomy just as much. You should make it clear that you will not infringe upon their autonomy any more than you will let them infringe on yours. Just to be candid, most nights I’m on the road with a couple in my bed, my husband is not sleeping alone. Tonight, as with most nights I’m gone, one of my close friends will be with him. It is how our marriage works.”

That last bit provided a segway into Bonnie’s lecture module on the ethics of maintaining a long-term non-exclusive relationship. By using a mix of both philosophical principles and examples from her life and the lives of other people in The Circle, she made it both substantive and entertaining. As she always did, she did not shy away from the fact that her ethics were rooted in the teachings of Jesus. However, she made a point to tell the students how the teaching of “love thy neighbor as thyself” was not anything like unique to Christianity. She gave examples of how it is found in most of the great religious teachings of the world, even if religious leaders of all faiths rarely even try to live out that core doctrine.

When Bonnie finished her talk, the same young woman who had introduced her came back to the lectern. “Thank you, Ms. Campbell.  We’d asked for an unfiltered presentation about ethical non-monogamy, and you have given us a more direct talk than most of us would have with our best friend. No sidestepping, no euphemisms. I think I can speak for our entire chapter in thanking you for opening yourself up like that. We all could tell that some of what you said was hard. What you have done for us has not gone unnoticed, nor unappreciated.”

There was a round of applause.

The young woman went on, “When James first suggested we ask you to talk to our group, away from the main conference, some of us thought you might just repackage your FFF lectures; but you didn’t do that. You have met us where we live. A lot of what you said hits very close to home for some of us.” She looked around before saying, “And I’ll take your example and say openly that I’ve had a good many sexual partners, not as many as you for sure, but more than enough for some people to label me a slut. You have given me the courage to stand up proudly for my choices to use my body as I see fit. I thank you for that.”

There was a round of applause.

She smiled and then said, “You have given all of us a lot of things to think about, but first, we will give you a short break before we begin the Q&A session.”

Bonnie was grateful for the break. Her talk was far more emotionally taxing than she’d expected it to be. She asked to be pointed toward the nearest ladies' room.”

A few minutes later, she returned to find two stools set up in front of the lectern. Bonnie had asked in advance to have Gayle join her, primarily to give the new FFF speaker an opportunity to field the kinds of questions that Bonnie was used to.

The lecture hall, which must be over a century old had good enough acoustics that Bonnie had not needed a microphone for her lecture, and she wasn’t offered one for the Q&A session.  After introducing Gayle, but before she sat down, Bonnie looked around the filled lecture hall, then asked, “Would anyone be offended if I remove my blazer before we start?” Unsurprisingly no one said they would be, though several dozen camera phones came up to take her photo as she scooted up onto the stool.

The first group of questions were routine to Bonnie, things she answered in most Q&A sessions. She was even able to pass several of them off to Gayle and a couple more she asked Gayle to add to her answer.  However, about twenty minutes in, a young woman asked something new. “Ms. Campbell, in the first half of your talk you seemed to be suggesting that sex with trusted friends was the ideal. Do you completely discount the idea of sex for love?”

“That is a great question,” Bonnie said, mostly to give her time to consider her answer. However, the answer formed in her mind quickly. “No, not at all.  The real question is how do you define love? Now if you only define love as the rom-com/romance novel kind of love where your heart palpitates when you see that person and you live every moment of every day longing to be with the object of your love; I would indeed say that while that kind of love leads to amazing sex, that kind of love is not at all necessary for fulfilling and meaningful sexual encounters.”

“I have a broader vision of love than I once had. Recall those four young men with whom I had a sexual relationship that lasted for three years while I was in high school. While at the time, I never allowed myself to even consider the word love to describe how I felt about them, looking back, I can see I loved each of them deeply. I had the kind of connection to them that certainly qualifies as love, even if none of us dared use the word. Partly that was because of my fear that should I say I loved one of them, I would become anchored to those backwoods for the rest of my life.  But just as important was that I had the same connection with all four of them. The idea that I could love four different guys at the same time simply didn’t fit with how I thought the world worked. Today we would call that a polyamorous relationship, but I don’t know if that word had been coined yet.”

She didn’t say that she had embraced her love for Betsy fully although she had.  She’d filled her heart with love for Betsy that summer and told her so hundreds of times. Yet, Betsy wouldn’t even speak to her at her mother’s funeral last August leaving a bitter taste in Bonnie's mouth. Why had her cousin let becoming a religious conservative rob her of those joyful memories? Just another reason to fight against religious leaders who turn joy into sorrow, a wonderful time in two girl’s life into a point of shame.

Bonnie’s answer continued, “I would also say that while I didn’t have romantic love for the guys in my college stable, I did love them in the broader sense of having an intimate caring relationship. Beyond that, I believe that it is possible to love everyone who is close to me, regardless of how long I’ve known them. Let me see the hands of everyone who has read my blog about the couple I spent two nights with last month, the one that included the photo taken by the wife of me in bed with her husband?”

At least three-quarters of the hands went up. She was not surprised given that the people who were there had to go out of their way to come hear her speak on a weeknight.

“For those of you who did not see it, while at a conference, I spent one evening in a hotel hot tub with a married couple and their teenage kids. While the family all wore swimwear, I did not. I was pleased how the parents took my nudity in stride, neither gawking nor shielding my body from their children. Then the next evening I was with the wife and her daughter in a different hot tub at the resort… that time they followed my example and removed their swimwear. By the time the woman and I went to my room, it was easy for me to love her because we’d already built a foundation of care and respect. Then later when we asked her husband to join us, I latched on to their love for each other and we had an amazing night making and feeling love. Yet, I’d only spent a matter of hours with them before having sex the first time. So, I think we can bring love into most of our sexual experiences, even though we might only have romantic love for a handful of people our entire lives.”

The young woman followed up by saying, “But do all sexual experiences need love? What about hot and sweaty quickies, like at a party? Not that I’m saying I have sex with guys I just met, but some people I know do.”

There was a round of laughter.

Very seriously Bonnie asked, “Not to be too specific but do you mean for instance at a hypothetical tailgate, where a certain young woman might pull up her denim miniskirt between a white Suburban and a red pickup truck so that a super-hot guy that I… I mean she, just met can drill her to an orgasm so intense that her knees nearly buckle before she could wobble back to her friends?”

The laughter filled the hall.

Still laughing, the young woman said, “Yes, I mean something just like that.”

Bonnie grinned. “Again, the issue is how do we define love? The truth is that I don’t remember that guy’s name and since he was in The University of Tennessee colors, I never saw him again.”

She put her hand on her hip and went on a tangent, “The reason I remember that particular time was that it was the last time I had sex at a tailgate like that. It was at the final home game my senior year. I was there with my girl friends since Cooper hated tailgates, but he met us about an hour later for the game itself. I had told my friends that I expected that Cooper was going to ask me to marry him soon, so I wasn’t going to fuck some random hot guy we met … but he was really… REALLY hot.”

Laughs.

“My friends gave me a hard time because I didn’t do what I’d said. But those girls had been with me when I got banged at tailgates quite a few times, so they weren’t shocked. OH… I should say that that season, I put a condom on every single dick before it went in me. In fact, I nearly always did that with guys I met at tailgates, going back to my freshman year. But I remember that time because it was the very last time I had sex with someone I’d not done it with before… well up until a couple of years ago. BUT… as I was saying before you guys got me distracted. I don’t have to remember the guy’s name for it to be a respectful and mutually enjoyable experience.” She winked, “And it was enjoyable. Oh yes, it was.”

Laughs.

“Let me ask you, does the length of time a fire burns determine if the fire is real? Can it be expressing love if you realize that you and another person have a spark then you spend ten minutes fanning that spark into a white-hot flame that leaves you both feeling better?” She waited then answered her question, “Yes, I believe it can.”

“And conversely,” Bonnie went on, “does love even need sexual desire? Isn’t it expressing love to buy a hungry person a meal? Love is showing compassion, not necessarily passion.  Sadly, the reverse is also true. How many sex acts are done with desire and passion but without compassion? That is not love, even if it is done by a married couple. The answer is that even in a hot sweaty quicky, if you are doing it for the betterment of both you and your partner, it is a loving act. That is why sex with close friends is such a safe bet, if you and your friend have a foundation of mutual respect and care for one another’s welfare, then it is easy to make love not to just fuck.”

“Let me play professor. I’ll throw out a real-life scenario and I’ll let you decide if love is being shown and to whom. My husband teaches a Sunday School class for married couples in their twenties. Three of the couples in that class are also part of our free-love circle. One of those couples, I’ll call them Jim and Jan, is closer to Cooper and me than most. Well, Jim is an A/C repair tech and occasionally if he has a call near my house close to his lunch break or at the end of the day, he might text to see if I’m interested in him stopping by the house. You see, because I travel on weekends, I’m normally home on Mondays and Wednesdays. Since last fall, it had worked out for him to stop by twice. About a month ago, I was home and got a text that he’d just finished a job a couple of miles from my house and did not have his next appointment for close to two hours.”

“Understand, while I like Jim, he’s not someone I would call one of my lovers, his wife Jan is, but he’s just a friend. However, the first time I had sex with him last September, at a party at my house, I was pleasantly surprised by his bedroom skills. I’d unfairly judged a book by its ragged cover. So, last month, when he texted me, I was just about to take a masturbation break, so I said to come on over. We had a very nice hour of lovemaking, after which I took a phone pic in the mirror above my bed of our two sweaty bodies. I then texted the photo and a nice note to both Cooper and Jan. So, I ask you, how was love being shown and to whom?”

As she knew would happen, when she called on students to give their opinions, there were some questions about why she’d sent the photo and how she’d expected them to react. In the end, it appeared that her audience understood that through a casual sexual encounter with a man who was no more than a friend, Bonnie had shown love to everyone concerned: Jim, Jan, and Cooper, as well as to increase her own happiness. After perhaps ten minutes of discussion, Bonnie used the topic as the opening she’d been looking for to let Gayle give her first public description of her non-monogamous marriage. Earlier, at the hotel, Gayle said she wanted an opportunity to get over the hurdle of talking about it in public, so Bonnie was glad she’d found an entrée to do that.

As Bonnie expected, at 10:00, when the hall's reserve time came to an end, the crowd of enthusiastic college students didn’t want to leave. As a result, they migrated to a student hangout and talked till well past midnight. After about an hour, however, there were just ten students with Bonnie and Gayle around a long rectangular table. Not surprisingly the questions posed in the bar & grill were even more personal and explicit than in the lecture hall. Both Bonnie and Gayle gave extremely explicit answers in return.

When one of the students asked how she kept visitors in her home from seeing the painting she’d described in her talk; Bonnie said she didn’t try. She then opened up her briefcase and took out her tablet to show them a picture of the painting, explaining that it was fully visible from their living room. She had it in a file folder of all of the photographs that hung in different rooms of their house, including the playroom. She carried it with her for discussions like this one. Even Gayle was surprised when the tablet was passed around and groups of two and three clicked through the images. Not surprisingly the photos generated a whole new round of questions.

It was not lost on Bonnie that as the discussion wore on, Gayle increasingly cozied up to a good-looking graduate student. When they finally left for the hotel at something like 12:30, Bonnie informed her protégé that while she simply would not be up for a play session when they got back to their room, she and her new friend were free to use the second bed while she slept.

By intent, Bonnie never brought night clothes with her on her speaking trips, so while Gayle gave the guy an energetic blow job, his eyes followed Bonnie as she undressed and then walked across the room in the nude. However, if he had hopes of her joining in, he was disappointed.

While Bonnie fell asleep to the sounds of passionate lovemaking, when her alarm went off at 7:30 AM she found Gayle in her bed, snuggled up to her… still quite naked. They shared their very first kiss (for several minutes) before Bonnie insisted they had to get up. However, they did take a shower together which involved more kissing and touching. Bonnie only headed off a full sexual encounter by promising Gayle that they would make love in their new hotel room as soon as they arrived in LA. As they dressed, Gayle chattered on about what had gone on in her bed last night (early this morning) while Bonnie had slept. Bonnie couldn’t help but be amazed at the transformation in Gayle since that December evening in Duluth.

A copy of the Austin Statesman (the local newspaper) was under their door when they got up, so when Bonnie and Gayle went down for the convention-provided breakfast she took it with her. She read an AP article about a teen rave busted in a place called Sparta, Georgia. To herself, Bonnie said, “So it’s gone national.” However, any discussion she was going to have with Gayle was preempted by a group of four middle-aged people who asked to join them at their table.

The newcomers were all political writers and had been in Bonnie’s main lecture the day before. Their opening questions were mostly routine, but it was the fact they all recorded her words that was new. Because of that, she was careful about how she answered. She avoided saying anything that could be sensationalized. It was their follow-ups that focused on sexual politics that was not normal for her. Fortunately, Gayle was right there and was happy to give the FFF positions academic heft that Bonnie could not.

It took nearly half an hour, but one of the writers finally asked about the erotic photos at the close of her presentation the day before. This question was asked more than any other. She was glad that Gayle was there to see how she handled it. While she confirmed the photos in her presentation were of actual penetrative sex, she up-played the blandness of posing for them. Since her session with Salvador was indeed rather bland, it was easy to talk about that and to make the inference that posing with Nell and Daniel had been equally dull… even though she knew that was not true at all.

She had time between breakfast and when she was supposed to do her morning presentation to call Amy to give her the heads up about the AP article. Then she called Cooper. When she told her husband about what she'd read, he said he’d seen it. They agreed that it was roughly the same article that had run in the three local papers a few days ago, only (thankfully) the Euro Club was not mentioned. The only real news was that it had gone national. She told him that Amy had told her that Judith Kohl had called and wanted to talk again. She had run her article about her investigation of the matter the day before, but since it was not nearly as titillating as the ones blaming the Euro Club, Amy doubted it would make it beyond Augusta. Ms. Kohl had written that her investigation found that the lake party was organized by a group of men who have been arrested twice before for organizing similar parties. Evidently, no one locally had even made a cursory check into this before the first article ran, but that fact was referenced in the new piece. That may be why the Euro Club had been omitted from the AP article.

Cooper finally told his wife about Lamar’s visit to the principal’s office and the mess from the previous night and concluded with, “Sue Ann came back over to the house around 7:15 this morning, and she was still there when I left for work.”

Bonnie asked him what was going to happen next. He told her that Sue Ann was taking the day off work and driving Ruthie around. Mike was taking on her case pro bono and was personally going with her to see a judge about a protective order later in the morning. After that, Sue Ann and Ruthie were going to Milledgeville to see someone who specialized in domestic violence. But he told his wife that he thought DeeDee had done a great job the night before. Cooper felt better that the crisis that he had witnessed had been handed off to more competent hands than his.

Due to a power outage in his building, Cooper left work when he finished his class at 1:30. As he was on his way home from work Maggie LaCroix called.  “Can you come out to my place tomorrow night? It’s time we get going on the offense. Aunt Margo has been busy. Saturday there will be a meeting of the pastors of the conservative churches in the area. I don’t know what they are planning, but I’m sure they will be trying to bully the authorities into some sort of action.”

“I’m sure your right” he agreed.

“I don’t mean to be short,” she said, “but I’ve got more people to call. See you tomorrow evening at 8:00.”

Cooper considered that there must be more going on than he knew to prompt Maggie to decide now was the time to flex the muscle that she’d been working to amass over the past half year. He called DeeDee to ask her if she could come with him to the meeting. He was not surprised that she was not only willing but excited to meet those people of influence who were willing to challenge the right-wing orthodoxy of neo-Puritanism. Cooper also used the call to praise her for how she’d worked with Ruthie the night before and asked if she’d heard from her today.  DeeDee said she had, and briefed him on the ongoing plans. She told him that while Sonny was at work, Ruthie and Sue Ann had gone by her house to collect the things she and her kids would need for the next week. She said that Ruthie was not sure what she would do in the long term. She wanted Sonny to get help so as to preserve the family but was realistic enough to know that the most likely end of this would be divorce.

Cooper thought the affair from the night before was behind them, until he pulled up to his home to see the windows to his home office had been broken out. “Damn,” was all he could say. He knew full well what had happened.

Though he’d turned on the high-priced home alarm system last night after they’d come inside, it was primarily designed to help monitor the pool area, to keep the kids safe. There were no cameras facing the front of the house. While there were alarms on the windows of the first floor, they were designed to go off if the window was opened. Big rocks through the glass did not set them off. He had two conflicting thoughts. He both wished Bonnie were here and he was glad she was not here to see this.

Inside he was happy to find that the window panes were the only thing actually damaged. While one of his high-end monitors he used for design had been knocked over by one of the large rocks, it appeared the impact had been glancing. When he switched it on, he was glad to see it still worked. As he was cleaning up, he got a text from Pastor McBride. “Could you come by the parsonage this afternoon? We need to talk.”

He had a sick sinking feeling in his stomach. Somehow he knew the rocks on the carpet were not the only ones being thrown his way. The kids had not come home from school yet, of that he was thankful. That would give him time to clean up the glass and call Tom Gaylord to come over to put in new panes.

The activity kept the sick feeling in his gut at bay, at least until he got into the car to go to the church. Still, the kids weren’t home yet and Tom was on his way, maybe the windows would be fixed before they made it home from school. He hoped so. Better not worry them about the home being attacked. He considered leaving them a message, but he would certainly be home well before 6:00 when they were going out to dinner.

Rev. McBride had been at St. Thomas for nearly six years. He was a decent man, and not the worse preacher they’d had over the years. Most importantly he was not inclined to get hung up on silly petty issues, preferring instead to look at the big picture of improving the community. Cooper felt like a schoolboy being called on the carpet. He did not like the feeling. He sat on the edge of the sofa, looking at Rev. McBride in the matching chair across from him.

“You know me,” Pastor McBride opened, “I am not the judgmental type. I can full well see the good you are doing not just here but through the work that you and Bonnie do with your foundation. I believe that you are, in truth, doing more of God’s work than I am.”

While Cooper appreciated the kind words, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It was me, remember, who pushed you to do the research into Christian sexuality, to write your first article, and to have it published. I’ve never told you but I took a good bit of heat for that.  There are more than a few legalists still in the Methodist Church. And even before this latest flap, there are those who have insisted you and Bonnie should not hold leadership positions here.  You could probably name most of them.”

Cooper nodded in agreement. He just wished Rev. McBride would get to the point.

“I guess you’ve seen the newspaper reports and heard the discussion.  You’ve been implicated as complicit and even responsible for the debacle at Lake Sinclair.”

Enough Cooper thought, and he responded.  “You know full well my family was out of the country last week.  You also know neither I, nor any of my family, had the first thing to do with that. I can’t believe you would even suggest it.”

“Hold on Cooper, I didn’t suggest it, nor did I think for a second you had anything to do with that.”

“So why the inquisition?”

“The Bishop. It seems he heard our church singled out by name on a radio talk show, and not in a flattering manner. That is not the type of publicity he would like to have. Just the kind of thing the Baptist will use to paint us as apostate liberals.”

“They’ll do that anyway” Cooper snarled. “So why do we care what those narrow-minded bigots say about us.”

“Because some of those narrow-minded bigots are Methodist deacons!” he said defensively.

“And what has the district leadership done in the last fifty years? The whole lot of them hasn’t done for youth what Bonnie and I have done here in this tiny town. We have the largest most influential youth group in the Conference, and you know it” Cooper said almost shouting

“I know that!” the minister responded in the same tone. Then he sat back in his chair. “That has been our trump card. Your success has not gone unnoticed in the District or the Conference.  And I said our trump card, not just yours. You and I are in this together. However as impossible as it sounds, that has been your critic’s chief point as well, they contend that you are using the church as a platform for your personal agenda.”

Cooper narrowed his eyes. “They’re right in that I am promoting an agenda. Where they’re wrong is in asserting that my agenda is not the very message that Jesus was trying to spread.  They and their kind have been trying to substitute legalism for Christ for a thousand years.”

“Again, I don’t dispute that.” The pastor, suddenly looking very tired said “That is just the way it is.”

“So, do you want us to leave the church or am I going to be brought up on charges of heresy?” Cooper asked bitterly.

“No, of course not. But…”

Here it comes Cooper thought.

“There is a high probability that I will be reassigned over all this, and possibly disciplined.”

Now Cooper saw what was happening. Someone had gone to the District Superintendent to circumvent Rev. McBride’s support. Now Cooper was embarrassed. He might cost the pastor his job, and yet he had jumped all over him. In a flash, Cooper realized that the threat to Rev. McBride was not just to punish him but to harm his entire family. His two children were in Lamar’s grade. Their six years in Sparta must be like a lifetime to them. The threat was that they would be uprooted and moved to a place chosen by the Methodist Church leadership, not based on what was best for them, but what suited those leaders who wanted to punish their father.  And Cynthia? Cooper was quite sure she made more money in her secular career than her husband made as a pastor. If they just packed up and moved, what would happen to her? If the district Superintendent made good on the threat, the McBride family would be faced with painful and difficult choices, very possibly driving Payton McBride from the ministry entirely… which very well might be the goal of the conservatives who were driving this. Even the threat of ‘reassigning’ him must already be causing his entire family terrible pain. Far more pain than Cooper’s family had been subjected to. All he could do was apologize. As contritely as he could, Cooper said, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea it had gone that far. I certainly didn’t mean to drag you into this.”

Payton McBride sat up straight in his chair, “You didn’t drag me anywhere. Four years ago, I pointed you toward the path on which we now both find ourselves. Though you don’t know it, even before I asked you to research Christian sexuality to help John & Lois in their marriage, I’d been talking with Herb Connors and Stephen Black about these things. I just didn’t think they had the skill set needed to help in that case. That is why I asked you.”

Cooper remembered way back before Christmas, at Maggie's house, Herb had mentioned that he and Stephen Black had been talking to Rev. McBride about sexual morality for years. Now he saw that when he’d been sent by his pastor to help the Draymans, four years ago, Herb had known all about it.  He’d long suspected that Rev. McBride had already come to the same conclusion that Cooper did: that Lois could in good conscience have a loving sexual relationship with two men. Rev. McBride wanted Cooper to find it for himself and present it to Lois and John as his conclusion, not their pastor’s. But he’d never even suspected Herb knew all about it from the start. But… now he understood that by that time, Herb knew the woman he planned on marrying had a loving sexual relationship with another woman, Maggie. Church elder, Herb Connors had the same conundrum as John Drayman. 

It was like suddenly so much over the past few years became clear to him. This wasn’t a path that he and Bonnie had taken on their own, it was the path Rev. McBride was on all along but couldn’t say it publicly. Cooper tried to remember why he’d never asked Herb to clarify what he said about the talks that he and Pastor McBride had about sex. Well, he knew why he’d forgotten. Maggie LeCroix sort of put all that out of his mind… until now.  

Perhaps reading Cooper’s face, Rev. McBride said, “Yes, I know all about Magnolia LeCroix’s group, Georgians for an Open Society. I never knew her father, he’d passed before I came here, but I gather he was quite the free thinker and it appears his daughter is taking his ideas way beyond just talking about them. Georgians for an Open Society is just what we need right now. While I know that Magnolia has been using her soirees to gather up members… yes, I know about those too... it is not the only way the group membership has grown.”

There was a lot of new information coming at Cooper very quickly. So, Pastor McBride has known about Maggie’s group from the start?  And he even knew about the soirees?

“While Ms. LeCroix and Sherry Connors have been gathering the wealthy and powerful from our area, I have quietly been presenting Georgians for an Open Society to a group with a wider reach if not the same wealth. You see there is a network of progressive Christian ministers that have been meeting in small groups for over half a century here in Georgia. For a long time, their primary focus was desegregation and fighting Jim Crow, now they… we, have a broader social justice focus. However, within that group is a sub-group working for sexual freedom. Yes, that group mostly works on LGBT issues, however, a few of us have been proposing a broader vision of sexual freedom, much like the FFF does.  Your writings have been very helpful in that effort. I have recruited a group, albeit a small group of ministers and leaders of independent Christian ministries who have agreed to work with the Georgians for an Open Society when they make their public debut.”

It took this long for Cooper to say what he’d been thinking. “Let me get this right. You know about what Maggie is doing, and have been working parallel to her to bring in ministers to join the fight to extend sexual freedom?”

“Yes. That is exactly right. But I haven’t been working directly with Ms. LeCroix, in fact, I’ve never met her. That has been intentional. Herb is my contact and through him we have been, as you said, working on a parallel track preparing for what is upon us now. You could say we have been operating in cells with each cell working independently. But don’t read too much into that analogy. We’ve not been anything like that organized, at least until now. Cynthia and I will be at the meeting at Ms. LeCroix’s home tomorrow night on behalf of about twenty Christian leaders from across the state.”

Cooper was sure his face betrayed his surprise.

Rev. McBride just nodded, “We will be there so the two parallel tracks will come together tomorrow night. Herb said that Magnolia promised that everyone would keep their clothes on for the meeting so as not to put Cynthia and me on the spot.”

Cooper couldn’t hold back the laugh which lowered the emotional temperature in the room.

The pastor further reduced the temperature by asking, “I’ve never been to her place before. Is the home as impressive as I’ve been led to believe?”

Cooper smiled, “Oh, it is. I can assure you it is. And I have no doubt that you will be surprised at some of the faces you will see. And for that matter, they will be surprised to see you.”

“No, they won’t,” Rev. McBride said. “I was told that Magnolia is giving everyone from her group who she’s invited a heads up that I will be there. Herb, in turn, has assured her that I can be trusted to keep secrets that need to be kept.”

Cooper snorted, “Uh, yea. It seems you have kept a whole passel of secrets that you are only telling me out of necessity.”

He smiled and nodded. Becoming more serious again, Rev. McBride went back to the point of their conversation, “Cooper, you didn’t start me on this path, I’ve been on it at least in a theological sense from the time I was in seminary. Yes, I deliberately nudged you to start down it as well. However, you put the ideas into action. I never even tried to do more than advise people like Herb and Lois to consider Christian sexual morality in a different way. You have taken those ideas and put them into practice in ways I never even dreamed of. You and Bonnie have had the strength and vision to blaze a trail I was not bold enough nor strong enough to cut myself. For that I thank you. And, I won’t go into it now, but I and my family are further down our mutual path than anyone, especially our critics, know.”

Cooper just sat. He did not know what to say. After some minutes of quiet, he asked softly, “What should I do?”

Rev. McBride perked up “What should you do? Fight the good fight; carry the message of love and grace.”  Then he got quiet. “The question is where should you do it? As I said, you are by no way alone in your goals, even among Christian leaders. You may have Margo LaCroix and her friends against you… and now, evidently, Sonny Boyd and his crew.”

“Oh, you heard?” Cooper said more despondently than he’d intended.

“Yes, and I’m impressed. To stand up to Sonny like you did, to protect Ruthie. You should be commended.”

Cooper didn’t like taking credit for Wyatt and Stephanie’s actions, but he could not stray from the story, and… apparently Sonny seemed to equate Cooper with that gun. So much the better. He just replied, “I don’t think Sonny saw it that way.”

Now Rev. McBride actually smiled for the first time. “No, he didn’t. But I guess having a naked man point a gun in my face would not excite me either. Sue Ann actually told my wife all about it before Sonny came barging in this afternoon demanding you be excommunicated or something.”

Cooper couldn’t help but smile. So Sue Ann had gotten their version of the story to Pastor McBride first. Likely, inadvertently, the minister had shaped Sonny’s memory of the events. Even though he knew the details Sonny seemed to remember were not factually true, the sight of him demanding the pastor act like the Pope was funny.

Rev. McBride continued, “Sue Ann sure is a salt of the earth kinda gal. While Ruthie went with Mike to the courthouse before noon, Sue Ann met with my wife for lunch and just spilled the beans, all of them. Of course, I think you now know that most of what she said about your group’s… uhhh, unconventional approach to building a Christian community was not new to my wife, or to me. You and your crew have not made an effort to be secretive, which I think will work to your advantage here. Had you tried to hide what you and… what did she call it? The Circle?”

Cooper nodded to confirm the story.

“Had you tried to hide what you and your friends are doing it would have been harder to claim the moral high ground. But you haven’t done that. Even without the FFF website and your wife’s blog…”

Cooper interjected, “Oh, you read that?”

“Of course I do, so does Cynthia… and like it or not Glenna does too.” He gave a sly grin, “You can tell your wife that my wife loves her stories. They have rather spiced things up in the parsonage for sure.”

Cooper couldn’t help but laugh. Of course, reading what Bonnie was doing would bring a spark to Cynthia McBride. Hadn’t Gina’s stories done the same for Bonnie? That seemed like so long ago now.

Rev. McBride continued, “Cynthia and Glenna read the Euro-Club site together, especially Misty’s posts. Her approach of using euphemistic language often makes it very funny as well as… uh…. interesting. Your daughter’s writing has spurred a lot of very direct discussions in my home. Like I said, you and your family have made no effort to hide what you are doing. Why do you think my wife, when she filled in for you at Youth Group, openly told the teens that she was sexually active in high school and that she and I lived together before we got married? Nothing Sue Ann told Cynthia as she explained why Ruthie was naked in your hot tub was a surprise… well, some of the specifics were, but not the bigger picture. We did not know that Sue Ann had a regular thing with Dwight and Brandy Connely for instance.”

Cooper interjected, “Oh, she did tell everything didn’t she?”

Rev. McBride nodded, “Yes she did.” He laughed, “Had Cynthia not known so much of it already it would have been hard to digest it all in one sitting. But once Sue Ann finished explaining why you all were in the hot tub, naked, she related the events of Sonny’s arrival. She was a little vague as to how you had such quick access to your grandfather’s sidearm, but I know she’s dating a deputy Sheriff and it was not hard to read between the lines as to who all was in your hot tub and what really happened. But I want you to know that I’ll have no trouble officially accepting her version that you were the man of the hour.”

Cooper couldn’t help but laugh. The very idea that he could have reacted the way Wyatt had was so preposterous it was funny. He was glad Rev. McBride understood the truth behind the story. He was appreciative of his pastor’s willingness to endorse Sue Ann’s version of events… at least officially.

Pastor McBride went on, “Sue Ann asked Cynthia for help in securing emergency support for Ruthie and her kids since it turns out that their family savings are tied up in a bank account with only his name on it. That kind of control over the money is fairly typical in an abusive marriage.  Cynthia then called me and fully briefed me, which turned out for the best because when Sonny showed up, I already knew what had happened and had the local AA chapter's phone number on my desk.”

“Bet you’re no more popular than I am. Watch your windows” Cooper said and then told him about the damage to the fence and windows.

Before he left, Cooper and Rev. McBride had talked through the practical steps to do what he’d first suggested a year ago: starting an independent youth ministry. He told Cooper that he’d been quietly working on this for some time and he knew some of the churches represented by the ministers who were going to help with Georgians for an Open Society would even ordain him, or Bonnie, or both. Far from the crushing feeling he had when he arrived, Cooper was filled with gratitude and visions of the possible when he left. Rather than he and Bonnie being alone to face the attacks, he now felt like he was part of something larger.  Even while he felt the weight of fear and guilt for the future of the McBride family, he also felt hope.

Where was this all going? The future seemed both more hopeful and more uncertain than he’d believed it was just a day ago.