Chapter 2: A Family Discussion

I woke the next morning, late. I was rather disoriented when I woke. I was naked (and I always sleep in cotton pjs) with a comforter over me, and not in my own bed either. I shook some cobwebs out of my head as I sat upright and was sorry I did so; I had a headache that went all over. I looked around and realized I was on the bed in the spare bedroom, and then remembered the night before. Somebody, probably one of my parents, had covered me with the comforter and left me to sleep.

I climbed off the bed, feeling a little unsteady, and went down to my room. Sometime since the party ended my door was unlocked. I reached into my closet and grabbed my bathrobe, then stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. I ached all over and felt ... crusty!

I soaked under the hot water for hours, but it was just after eleven when I climbed from the shower. I scrubbed my teeth (twice!) then went back to my room. I dressed and wandered down to the kitchen. I needed coffee!

I wasn’t quite ready to meet my parents sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee. I really didn’t want to meet them right now. Still, they surprised me by not saying anything other than “Good morning.” They were both looking at me quite calmly.

“Good morning.”

“Hungry?” asked Mom.

“Uh, not really.”

“Not even for Belgian waffles?” she asked brightly.

Suddenly I felt my stomach growl silently and my mouth started to water. My Mom makes just the best Belgian waffles, light and fluffy and about an inch or two thick. “Well, okay, maybe one.” I sank onto a kitchen chair.

My father was silent as he first poured me a large glass of orange juice, which I drained in seconds, then a cup of coffee, which went down almost as fast. He almost looked like he was smirking at me, but when I looked at him, all I got was this annoying, innocent smile.

Still, by the time I was done with the coffee, I felt human enough to look around and pay attention to things. The kitchen looked clean and orderly, like normal. Mom was getting everything set up to make waffles, so I stood up. The least I could do was help set the table.

It was Daddy who broke the ice. “Honey, your mom and I want to talk to you about last night.”

“Yes?” I answered. It was a neutral response, the best I could think of. I had a bunch of questions, too!

“Well,” he continued, “we need to ask you if you are using birth control and what type.” He looked a bit embarrassed but asked anyway.

Whatever I was expecting, it sure wasn’t this! “Daddy? That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

Mom snorted a laugh out. Daddy just smiled. “After last night, honey, I think we can ask a few personal questions, hmmm?”

It was my turn to laugh and snort, and I suppose that really broke the ice. Mom spoke up next from over at the counter. “Amber, now you know we’re into swinging. Well, a big part of that is trust. Trust and honesty and openness. We should talk about things.”

My father nodded in agreement. “Your mother and I have no secrets from each other. We tell each other everything, what we do, what we’ve done, what we’re planning. Total honesty.”

“Jesus!” I exclaimed, and then looked guiltily at my mother. You don’t swear in our house!

Surprisingly, for once, my mom didn’t yell. She simply said, “Please don’t use gutter language, Amber.”

“Sorry.”

“Answer your father, please.”

I looked at my father and took a deep breath. “I’m on the Pill, Daddy.”

“For how long?”

We were really going to get into it. “Since late last fall, right after Thanksgiving, I guess.”

“Is that when you became ... sexually active?” asked Mom.

“Uh, sort of.”

“Sort of? Was that with that Bill fellow?” asked Daddy.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Honey, we really don’t want to drag this out a sentence at a time. Maybe you could tell us just what you have been doing, and then after brunch we can answer your questions,” said Mom.

I nodded and collected my thoughts. “Okay. Last fall, when I was dating Billy, it seemed like we were getting closer to, well, being intimate.” My parents simply nodded in understanding. “So, I went to Doctor Mark and asked him for a prescription, and not to tell you. I was over seventeen and he had to keep it secret. Anyway, we didn’t, get intimate, I mean, but we got close.”

“Why? What happened?” asked Daddy. He had his head cocked to one side, looking curious.

“Well, like I said, we got close. I mean we did some petting, real heavy petting. Real heavy! And I ended up...” I looked over at my mother. “Mom, if I say what happened, is that going to be gutter language?”

She stared at me for a second, then broke down in laughter. “Now that’s funny! Rules are off until later!”

“Okay. So, we got as far as fingerfucking and handjobs, and I gave Billy a blowjob right before we broke up.”

Neither one of them blinked at my language. Daddy simply nodded. “So, why’d you break up?”

“Because the next day I heard around school that he was bragging about getting a hummer from me.”

He winced visibly at this, and Mom simply shook her head in disgust. “That was last fall. What about over the winter and this spring?” She poured some batter into the waffle maker.

I shrugged. “Well, I was so pissed off at men in general, I didn’t date anybody until this spring. I’ve been dating Bobby Smith since the end of March. We started having sex a few weeks later. I mean we started out sort of slow, but we’ve gone all the way since then.”

Daddy nodded in understanding. “Would you say you were relatively inexperienced or more experienced?” he asked lamely.

It was my turn to laugh. “Daddy, I think I had more sex last night than I’ve had in my entire life up to that point.”

“I’m not quite sure how to take that, for good or for bad,” Mom said humorously as she served me the first waffle. After that we stopped talking for a bit. I loaded my waffle with butter and maple syrup, like Mom does, but Daddy uses dark corn syrup for some strange reason. I was starving and ate two, which I never do. Mom simply made a second to split with Daddy and didn’t say a word.

I put my plate in the sink and turned to face them. “So, is it my turn now? Can I ask some questions?” Daddy just grinned at me as Mom took a last bite and washed it down with juice. She made a ’come along’ motion with her hand. “Well ... what was that last night? How long ... what ... how ... when...?” I was stammering as I tried to frame my questions.

Daddy chuckled as I tried to express myself. “Sit down, honey, before you hurt yourself.” He poured me some more coffee. “Last night was a swing party. You got the general gist of it, hmm? Well, we’ve been swingers or swappers since when you were a little girl.” I stared at him as if he had grown a second head. “I’m actually kind of amazed that you’ve never noticed anything.”

I shook my head. “I had no fucking idea!” I glanced at Mom as much from my language as from disbelief. Since when I was a little kid? “How...”

Mom didn’t blink. She just smiled at both me and Daddy.

Daddy answered with a grin. “Well, actually it was your mother who got us started, so to speak.”

Mom snorted at this and laughed, and I simply stared at her. “Well, sort of, I suppose.” She turned to face me. “It was shortly after we moved here. You must have been about seven or so, I guess. Anyway, we were having a welcome party, a cocktail party, and Jeff and Christy McNabb were here. They had just bought their house a month before us, I suppose. Well, anyway, I had a drink or two too many, and Jeff made a pass at me.”

“Here? In the house?” I asked incredulously.

“Here, in the house. In the den, actually. I was fairly lit up, and I let things go a bit too far. Nothing happened, really, but he kissed me, and I kissed him back and we sort of groped one another before I realized what was happening and put a stop to things.”

I thought about that for a moment. The McNabbs live next door (I came through their back yard last night) and are about five years younger than my parents. That would put them in their mid-thirties, I guess. I’m eighteen and born right after my folks graduated college and married, so they’re around forty or so. I’d never really thought about him. He’s a nerdy kind of guy, skinny and already starting to go bald. She’s sort of cute, though, small and slim, and firm and perky tits from what I saw of them last night.

Mom continued, “Well, that night, after the party, your father was just an animal!” I yanked my head over to stare at him; he grinned back. “We made love over and over! Sometime during the night, I quizzed him about what had gotten him so turned on and he admitted that he had seen Jeff and I kissing in the study.” Shit - that was the same place I first got it on last night! “It really got him going! All it took him to be ready and come after me for the next week or so was for me to mention that night and what had happened.”

“Well, a few weeks later we were at a party over at the McNabbs. They had invited us even before our party, so we couldn’t turn them down. I decided, without telling your father, to tease both your daddy and Mister McNabb. I wore this nice linen shirtdress and not a lot else. A thong, some stockings and heels, nothing else. I flaunted it with the pair of them all night - and got royally plastered to boot!” Daddy chuckled at this, and Mom smiled. “So, it went sort of like the first time. I flirted, he made a pass at me, I responded like before. This time however, after he started touching me, he undid some of the buttons on my dress.”