Chapter 15

There weren't any missing adult members of the community when the "Sexual Matters" meeting came to order. Bridgett had a few introductory remarks.

"People, this is important. Try to remember we are talking about something important to all of us. Not just because, well, sex is important. But also because, down the road, it may be up to us, as a community, to have babies, to raise children that will repopulate the earth. We all know how devastating the Virus has been. We are only twenty people. The only other living people we know about are those men down in Ft. Myers. A half-dozen or so. Probably, that group has few -- or no -- women in it.

"Now, let's think about this a little bit. For a long time, before we found our Louisiana and Sanibel Island groups, it looked like women were going to be extremely rare. Emily and I were the only women in our group. We had nine people in the group, then -- seven males and two females. I am past childbearing age, in all likelihood. That meant that, for awhile, Emily was the only woman we had who was likely to be fertile. I know Emily and I, on our way down here from Chicago, discussed that fact quite a lot.

"I wondered then, and I wonder now, what kind of society we're going to have, in the future. Finding Geneva, and then three more women, and three female children, in Ft. Myers, well, that's been a huge relief, because it shows us that maybe women survived the Virus as well as the men did. Right now, our male-female numbers are reasonably equal.

Remember, though, as we discuss this tonight, that maybe the numbers won't stay equal. Remember that, next week, we might find a new group, made up of mostly -- or all -- women. Or mostly -- or all -- men. What I'm trying to say, here, is that maybe it won't work to just stay with the same way of doing things, sexually, as we had in the past."

"That's all true," Max Coward said, "but we gotta have some kind of discipline, too. There's one woman here tonight -- we all know who she is -- and I don't mean to put her down, believe me. But this one woman, already, has had sexual relations with three men in this group! I'm one of them, and I know what I'm saying is true."

Bridgett stood up. "All right, Max, that's enough. You've made your point, and although it was made in a crude way, it's true that we've got to address it."

"I'm not being crude," Max insisted. "I've got no claim on... this woman. But if we're gonna have a new society, and we're gonna try to raise kids in it, there's gotta be some kind of... discipline, about sexual things."

"I'm on the pill!" Sandra Shumer said. "When the Virus came, the first thing I did was hit a drug store, and stock up on birth control!"

"All right," Bridgett said. "So who Sandra has slept with, up to now, maybe hasn't had any impact on procreation questions. Even so, Max is right: The question will arise, sooner or later. It'll especially arise if we end up having multiple sex partners."

"We're gonna have multiple sex partners, anyway," Janice Pennington said. "That's just part of the human condition. The Virus didn't change anything fundamental, like that."

"Janice has a point," Bridgett said. "I've also had sex with... more than one man in our group, since the time of the Virus. I'm probably not going to make any babies, either. But the question of whether we're going to try to control who people have sex with, well, that question is still up for grabs, I think."

"Just because some of us have had -- multiple partners," Roald said. "Does that mean we should condone it? Maybe it can't be forbidden, or made illegal, any more than it was, in the past. But maybe we should have some kind of... standards."

"OK, Bridgett said. "Fair enough. But what kind should we have?"

"Let's all take turns, talking," Ingmar suggested. Let's go around the room."

"All right," Bridgett agreed. "Let's go in order of when people joined the group. That makes as much sense as anything. Carter, you were the one who brought us together, with your radio broadcasts. You go first."

"He's just a boy!" Max Coward protested.

"Around here -- in this society, he's a man," Ingmar said. "His ingenuity is what brought us together. Without him, who knows how many of us would have gotten together -- and how soon?"

Coward said nothing, but his body language told me he had subsided, and that I could go ahead and have my say. I was a little put off by being called upon to speak to this issue before anyone else. I'd given the question plenty of thought, but hadn't arrived at any solid conclusions. "I've... thought about this quite a lot," I said, finally. "It's like Mr. Coward said. I'm just a boy. A teen-ager. You older people remember what that's like. It takes more than a killer Virus to shut down a teen-ager's sex drive."

That got a light murmur of approving laughter. "I think all of us -- most of us, anyway, have felt some amount of sexual tension already," I said. "I know I've felt it, plenty. Probably, if we all confessed our innermost thoughts, they'd be pretty interesting, but maybe wouldn't advance the cause all that much. But I'm gonna say something that'll probably make some of you mad, but it's true. Every woman in this group -- every one of you from the oldest to the youngest -- even you, Geneva, although I know you're just fourteen years old. I'm sorry, but I've -- I've lusted after every one of you."

"Well, that's not such a huge shock," Bridgett said. "You're probably not the only man here, could say that."

"Or the only woman, either," Brenda DiQuinzio said. "Max has made Sandra out to be some kind of slut -- no, no, Max, I know you didn't say that, in so many words. But Sandra hasn't done anything all that strange. First of all, saying she's had sex with three of the men here is a little misleading, because the way I heard it, the only time she's had sex with you, Max, was before the Virus hit. So that means that, now, here in the New World we're all in, she's just been with two guys."

"No more than me," Bridgett reminded us.

"Nor me, either," Brenda said.

Well, I think that surprised all of us. I hadn't heard any gossip at all about Brenda DiQuinzio. She was part of the Sanibel Island group, but she didn't have any history, down there, with Max or with Avril Scott. At least, none that I knew about. I wondered who the lucky guys were. I knew it hadn't been me -- worse luck! Brenda was a small, dark-haired woman, thirty-something and very trim and attractive. I'd have done her in a minute!

Of course, that didn't make her unique. There weren't any women in our group I wouldn't have gladly taken to my cabin, if only they'd have asked.

Everybody waited for Brenda to tell us who she'd been with. She knew that's what we were waiting for, but she sat back down and didn't say anything else. Well, Bridgett hadn't told who she'd been with, either, except for Ingmar.

"OK," Bridgett said, taking the floor again. "I said we'd do this in the order we all got together, and I was the first one, after Carter. But I've already had my little say. So next will be Ingmar."

"Bridgett told you that we've been together, her and me. Far as I'm concerned, I'd like it if our new way of doing things, was pretty much like the old way. If it was, I'd ask Bridgett to be with me. But the two of us, we haven't talked about that. Not up to now. And she says she's been with two of us. I don't even know who the other one is, and that's the truth. The other man, I'm talking about. I'd like to see us continue to have marriages, like before. But I recognize, that might not be so simple -- especially if the number of men and women don't line up right. And I don't reckon we can expect us all to pair off, just perfect, one-on-one, even if the numbers stayed pretty close, like they are, right now. That's all I'm gonna say, for now."

"Wait a minute," Max Coward said. "You just found out Bridgett's been doing some other man, here. How'd that make you feel? What's your reaction to that?"

I think Ingmar would have liked it if somebody had come to his rescue right then. Maybe if somebody had told Max that it was none of his business. But nobody did. I guess we all thought it was a pretty good question. Relevant.

"I was... surprised," Ingmar said. "And it don't make me happy, hearing it. I reckon I'm jealous, of this other man. And it makes me think, maybe, that I don't know Bridgett, as good as I thought I did."

"So. You see there?" Max Coward said, triumphantly. "That's the kind of thing we're gonna be running into, here! Jealousy!... And disappointment. Rage, even!"

"I don't feel no rage," Ingmar said. "But I am disappointed. And I guess I'm jealous, too."

"All right," Bridgett said. "We've all acknowledged, haven't we? This is a tough thing to deal with. We're not going to solve it -- any of it -- tonight. Maybe not for a long time to come. Maybe this shows that we need a lot of -- openness -- about things like sex partners. But let's hear from the other people, all right? Roald?"

"I understand what my father is saying," Roald said. "and I agree, pretty much. I haven't... been with any of the women in our group. But I've thought about it, just like Carter said he had. It's natural. I don't feel guilty about that. All the women here. I even knew about Bridgett, and my Dad, being together, and even that didn't keep me from thinking about her -- Bridgett. She's a fine woman.

"And I can understand how my dad feels -- about Bridgett being with somebody else... And these women from Ft. Myers. I've looked at you all. The way a man looks at a woman, I'm talking. So if, maybe, we needed to -- you know -- in the future, if we needed to make the women pregnant, so we could build a community for the future, well, maybe we'd all have to -- to do it with more than one woman, maybe.

"But I don't think we ought to just, y'know, encourage that sort of thing, all the time. I mean, not just for -- for pleasure's sake. I'd like to... be with Emily. Emily and me, we've become friends. That's all. So far. But I'd mostly like to just be with Emily, if she wanted to be with me, too."

By this time, we were all looking at Emily Kazner, of course, and Emily was blushing furiously. She didn't say anything, but I was pretty sure she liked Roald just fine. And I was just as glad to leave her to Roald, cause like I said before, of all the women in our community, Emily appealed to me, sexually, the least. There wasn't anything wrong with her, really. She just wasn't sexy, y'know?

"Harry?" Bridgett was still sticking to the sequence she'd decided upon.

"I'm kinda past the sex thing," Harry said. "I mean, you was to give me one of them Viagra pills and I reckon I could perform, but I'll tell you all the truth, I'm pretty much past that kinda stuff, by now. I haven't had sex with anybody since we come down here, and a long time before that, back in Grand Rapids, for that matter. I guess if you want my opinion, I think the group ought to try to stick pretty close to the Old Ways, if we can. I understand that if, a year from now, we've got twice as many of one sex as we have of the other, well, something would have to give, some. But we ought to try to not get too far off-track. Hell, sex was complicated enough, in the old days. You get too free and easy, it might be even worse!