Chapter 17

Bobby was relaxed and happy. He liked his work. He got to see his children on a fairly regular basis, though not for as long as he would have liked. Betty was always eager to make love with him and when he visited the commune he was sure to get laid. He also got to make love with Teri, occasionally, which was completely different than making love with any of the women in the card club. She was much closer to his age, for one thing, and her reactions were different somehow. With Cathy or Trudy, they clung to him in ways that clearly communicated that they needed him to love them in this way. With Teri, it was more like, “This is fun! I want to do this a lot!!” The women in the club let him make love to them. Teri fucked back at him avidly.

He never knew when he’d get to slide his boner into Teri. That all depended on what their parents were doing and if any “alone time” could be manufactured. They had been taking risks, sometimes and they knew they shouldn’t, but couldn’t help it. He knew about Monique, of course. Russell had told him a lot about her, but he had no idea she would be there as he ambled up the walk to the door. He hadn’t paid any attention to what cars were there or who they might belong to. He tapped on the door and then went in, as usual. He called out and heard Genevieve’s voice coming from the kitchen. He stuck his head in and said, “Hi, Mrs. Jay.”

“They’re in Teri’s room,” she said, giving him only a few seconds of notice. Bobby Grisham was her son from another mother. The kerfuffle over him subverting her son was forgotten, by now.

Bobby didn’t reflect on who “they” were, assuming it was only Russell and his sister. When he got to the door and just barged in, he also assumed they would not be naked and making love on her bed, since Mrs. Jay was there, in the house.

He stopped when he saw Teri and another African-American young woman sitting on Teri’s bed, Indian style, facing each other. Russell was sitting on the bench at Teri’s vanity. Everybody’s eyes turned toward him. The stranger was lighter skinned and very beautiful, reminding him of Naomi Campbell.

“Hey,” he said.

“I’m Monique,” said the stranger on Teri’s bed. “I’m here to visit for a week.”

Bobby, unaware of how much Monique knew, just adapted to the scenario.

“I’m Bobby,” he said with a grin. “I’m Russell’s best friend. I’m glad to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from Russell. He’s right. You’re really beautiful.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” she said, looking him up and down. She heard the sincerity in his voice and it felt good. Then she remembered Russell warning her that Bobby would hit on her. Could he really have done that within fifteen seconds of meeting her? “We were just talking about you, in fact.”

The tone of her voice was what alerted Bobby that things might not be as placid as they appeared. He went on alert.

“I can’t imagine why,” he said. “I’m pretty boring.”

“No, you’re not,” said Russell’s girlfriend. “Please come in and join our conversation.”

She was a complete stranger to the house. Russell knew her, but nobody else did. And yet she was inviting him into Teri’s room to join a conversation?

He grinned. There was nowhere to sit other than the bed, and he didn’t want to sit there, so he just closed the door and leaned back against it.

“Okay. What are we talking about?”

Monique had not planned on confronting everything within the first few hours of her arrival. She had intended to sit back and just look at things, watching the interactions. Her approach to Teri had just sort of happened, bubbling up out of her like a geyser going off. She decided later it was because she was so intensely curious as to how the incestuous relationship had come about. Then Russell showed up and they seemed to dive deeper into something she really wasn’t prepared to talk about. She did not have answers for questions like, “So, what now?” because her own way of processing things was only half done. And then, when Bobby arrived, it was a little like finding herself treading water in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. All she could do was keep swimming. She did that by just blurting out what she knew and what was bothering her.

“We were talking about the fact that you and Russell are both fucking ... I mean making love to Teri, and four or five other women, and Russell has children with some of these women and I love him and want him and I don’t know how to move forward. You have fucked up my boyfriend! That’s what we were talking about.”

“I see,” said Bobby, calmly. “Okay, let’s put some legs under you so you don’t fall down and hurt yourself. The first leg is that Russell loves you. I know this because he talks about you in a way he has never talked about any other woman.”

Monique took a breath to speak but Bobby held up one finger to stop her.

“Now I know that the average girlfriend is not going to be on board with her boyfriend having extracurricular liaisons with other women. I get that. Most women would feel like a man like that didn’t really love her, because if he did he would eschew all other women.”

He took a breath and went on.

“What hasn’t been taken into account is that Russell is not your average man. When you met him he already had relationships with all these women you mentioned. It was a deep, emotional bond with all of them. Nobody’s saying he was in love with them and they certainly weren’t in love with him, with the possible exception of Sarah. She told me one time that when Russell graduates, if he hasn’t been claimed by another woman, she might suggest they get married. She wants to have two more kids and she wants Russell to father them. So ... should he then just abandon all of them? If someone came up to you and said they wanted to be your friend, but only if you refused to have any other friends would you jump at that?”

“No!” said Monique, jumping to get a word in edgewise. “That’s not the same thing. Friends and lovers are completely different kinds of relationships.”

“So Russell is not your friend?”

“You know what I mean,” she snorted. “Don’t try to box me into a logic corner.”

Bobby didn’t seem to mind being pushed away.

“Okay, then. How about this? Do you believe somebody can love more than one person? Say, like a parent loves all his children and not just one.”

“That’s another logic box,” she complained. “Of course you can love more than one person, but a husband loving multiple wives is different than a father loving multiple children. That can be damaging if each of those wives feels like she is superior to the others; that he loves her more; that she should have more rights and privileges than the others.”

“Then that’s her problem, not his,” said Bobby. “I’ll use the card club again as an example. All the women have a unique interpersonal relationship with him. They have that with me, too. And all of them know that we love all of them. Nobody is worried that we’ll stop loving them. They know that if we get married then there won’t be any more sex, but the relationship will still be there. We’ll still be the fathers of their children and we’ll always want to be in the lives of those children as much as we can.”

“So, if you get married, you’re going to tell your fiancé that you fathered half a dozen children on half a dozen other women?”

“It’s only five,” said Bobby, “but yes, if she’s going to be with me she needs to know who I really am. I’m not going to spring something like that on her later in our relationship. It’s like if you’re divorced and have a family. When you start dating a new woman you tell her that up front. Then she can decide if she’s on board or not. It’s kind of like what you’re going through right now, except Russell didn’t fess up as soon as he should have.”

“It’s six if you include Teri,” said Monique. “She’s stupid enough to want to have your baby, too.”

Bobby looked at Teri, who shrugged.

“You’ve made me feel new things,” she said.

Monique looked at the girl.

“If Bobby married you, would you let him keep fucking all those women?”

Teri didn’t even blink an eye.

“Sure. He already does that and I know how close we are. If we get even closer then it will matter less, not more.”

“You’re not thinking about it like a normal woman would,” said Monique.

“No, I’m not thinking about it like you think I should,” said Teri. “I’ll say this, though. If you married Russell, I know how you’d feel and I would not have sex with him again. In that situation I have to honor your wishes because then you’re family.”

It was silent in the room long enough that it became uncomfortable. Monique was the one who had a decision to make, so they let her think.

“Is anybody hungry or thirsty?” asked Teri, unable to just sit there any longer. “I’ll go get it.”

“I’d take a snack and a Coke,” said Bobby.

“I’m not hungry,” said Russell, who was looking at his girlfriend. She looked up then, at him.

“Go ahead and eat,” she said. “I’m still here, aren’t I? If I was that freaked out I would have left by now.”

“I love you,” moaned Russell.

“I know that!” she snapped. “You’re just defining love a little differently than I have been.”

“Do you want anything?” Teri asked Monique, softly.

“Something to drink,” said the girl. “It doesn’t matter what it is.”

Teri left the room. Monique looked at the two men.

“So you’ve both been fucking Teri for over a year?”

Both men nodded.

“And that’s why she got an IUD?”

They nodded again. She looked at Russell.

“And you love me, but if we got more serious you’d still want to fuck her and all these other women?”

“It’s not that easy,” said Russell. “Let’s put it this way. I’d introduce you to all of them and let you get to know them. Then, if one of them wanted some physical love, I’d tell you who it was and ask you what I should do. If you gave me consent, I’d give her, whoever she is, what she needed. It would not be a regular thing, like every Thursday I went here and every Monday I went there. You would be my wife and you would always have veto power. At the same time if you got to know all these women I’m sure you wouldn’t feel threatened in any way if they asked for some affection.”

“Affection,” she snorted. “Is that what you’re calling it? You make babies with them and it’s just affection? So we’re married and you come home from work one night, and say, ‘Hi, Honey. Teri called me and she needs to get laid. Can I go fuck my sister?’”

“You’re making it too black and white,” said Russell. “And I wouldn’t be that crass about it. In that scenario I’d come home and make love to you first. Then I’d say someone else needed what I just gave you, or that someone else wishes they were you. My point was that your feelings matter to me, just like all their feelings matter.”

“Does that mean if we got married and I said I didn’t want you to have sex with any of them ... you wouldn’t?”

Bobby sighed.

Russell was on the spot, fair or not, and he had to give her a black and white answer.

“If that’s how you felt, I would know that before we got married,” he said. “That would be part of my decision making.”

“So, you two have talked about marriage?” asked Bobby, trying to skip over the implied ultimatum that had just come sniffing around.

“No,” said Monique.

“Then this is the perfect time for you to look at him and, knowing who he is, decide whether you can live with who he is or not.”

“Thanks a lot,” groaned Russell. “Tell the only girlfriend I ever had to leave me and go on to greener pastures.”

“He didn’t say I should leave you,” said Monique. “He just said I have to make a decision about that.”

“It’s the same thing,” said Russell. “You’re normal. I’m not. I know no woman would want to be with me if she knew the real me.”

“You’re so full of it,” said Monique. “I know all this shit about you and I still love you.”

“You do?” Russell stood up.

“Yes, but my problem is I still don’t know what I want ... what I think is most important. I remember how you have treated me. You’re not a pussy hound. I knew that when I watched you. You could have been porking a whole bunch of women but you didn’t.” She blinked several times. “Well, not while you were at college, at least. Now I understand that. You stayed true to your sister and those women. That kind of commitment matters to me. I’m trying to wrap my head around how you can give so much love to so many women, and it be all different kinds of love because each woman is unique, and now I have been added to that stable of women.”

“They’re not a stable,” Russell objected.

“Yes they are, and you two are the stallions.”

“So you’re trying to decide if you want to join the herd and be part of the stable,” said Bobby.

“I really don’t think you’re helping,” groaned Russell.

Monique went to him and hugged him. She pressed her breasts against him and rubbed them back and forth. Then she kissed him and rubbed her loins against his. He kissed her back with passion fueled, in part, by relief. He felt her passion and it was genuine. She broke the kiss and stared at him.

“How would you feel if I let another man fuck me?” she asked.

“What man?” asked Russell. That question, in and of itself, told her something. He had not yelled, “No!” That didn’t help because it dragged her into this mess ... or would if she stayed. She went on with what she’d been thinking about.

“You told me you couldn’t introduce me to Bobby because he would try to seduce me. So let’s use him. What if I let Bobby fuck me? How would you feel about that?”

“That’s complicated,” said Russell. “I love him like a brother and I know he would not try to take you away from me. If I thought it would make you happy to do that then I might agree. I can’t really put myself in that situation, so I don’t know what I’d do.”

Monique turned to Bobby.

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“That’s an interesting thing for a woman to ask a man she’s known for fifteen minutes,” said Bobby. “But never mind that. I’ll answer your question. You’re a beautiful woman. Your body is sexy. As purely a man, of course I want to make love with you. As Russell’s brother, I’d have to have his permission to do that. I might even want him to be there when it happens.”

“Why?” gasped Monique.

“Because he loves you,” said Bobby. “He would want to make sure you were having a good time. He might want to make love to you with me.”

“With you,” groaned Monique. “You guys are so strange.”

“We’ve done that with a lot of the women,” said Bobby. “We’ve done it with Teri, too.”

“Done what with Teri?” as Teri came through the door. She had a tray with a plate of cheese and crackers on it, as well as an assortment of drinks.

“They were telling me that they’ve gangbanged you,” said Monique. She looked closely at the girl to see her reaction to such a negative comment.

“You mean when they both go?” asked Teri. “I love that. I have so many orgasms I just melt.”

Monique could hear the sudden, but honest passion in the younger girl’s voice and for the first time felt something stir inside her when she thought about what these two men had done to ... and with ... all the women. As a student of psychology she already knew that the term “different strokes for different folks” applied to the entire world, made up of one species of humanity, but thousands - possibly tens of thousands of subcultures. You could name almost anything and it could be found being practiced as ‘normal’ somewhere in the world.

And, to be fair, what these people were doing was absolutely, completely harmless when compared to keeping slaves or cannibalism or several dozen other customs around the globe.

“Well, I’ve never done that so it seems strange to me,” Monique said.

“You should try it,” said Teri, sounding completely serious. “I never sleep as well as I do when they’ve both made love to me.”

The casual observer might wonder why a girl of Teri’s age and circumstances would be so open to a virtual stranger. The answer was that Teri had hidden this facet of her life from everyone for over a year and it was almost cathartic to be able to talk about it with another girl, especially an older one.

“I don’t think I’ll be doing that,” said Monique, glancing at Bobby. He grinned and rather than feeling disgust she felt another little zing.

“Me, either,” said Teri, clearly sounding sad. “With you here, staying in my room, I won’t be getting any late night visits from either of them.” She brightened. “But I do get to talk to you, assuming you don’t think I’m some little kid who isn’t worth talking to.”

“You give my boyfriend boners,” said Monique, softly. “You’re no little kid. I want to understand more about all this.”

“So you’re not leaving?” asked Russell.

“Have you lost your brain? I’m still here. If I was unable to cope with this I would have left already!”

“Okay, okay. I just needed to hear it from you. You’ve been really brave about all this. It makes me horny.”

“And he’s back,” sighed Monique, “a normal man who thinks with his balls.”

“It might make you feel better if you two made love,” said Bobby.

“And I suppose you’d watch,” she snorted.

“No. Well, maybe a little, but I’d be making love to Teri at the same time.”

“I am not ready to be sucked into an orgy,” moaned Monique.

“It wouldn’t be an orgy,” said Bobby. “It would just be friends, sharing love at the same time in the same place.”

“It still sounds like an orgy to me,” said Monique.

“An orgy would be when he and I switched partners, or the women decided to love each other sexually or something like that,” said Bobby. “I would not expect that to happen. Like I said, I’d look at you, yes. I’d want to see you naked and I’d enjoy seeing my best friend sharing that kind of intimacy, but switching partners wouldn’t be on the menu.”

There was a pause and then Teri spoke.

“Unless you decided you wanted to.”

Bobby was gone and Monique was submerged in the deep pool that was the Jackson family. Beaufort got home and Monique thought he looked really handsome in his uniform. When he shook her hand his grip was warm and firm, lasting just long enough. His smile was like Russell’s. Then it was dinner time and the thing that astonished Monique the most was how utterly mundane and normal everything was at the table. People spoke about their day, or something that was on their mind. Bowls of food were asked for and passed. There was the soft clink of silverware hitting plates and the thump of glasses being put back on the table after a sip had been taken.

She looked at Russell, who happened to be talking to his mother about something one of her friends needed and which she had volunteered Russell to take care of. He was the man who had crawled between her legs dozens of times, mounting her like he had mounted six other women. His passion and ardor as they made love had been utterly genuine. Before she found out about all this stable and herd ... stuff ... she would never have believed he could do, or had done anything like that.

She looked at Teri, who was lifting a fork to her mouth with a clump of broccoli on it. That mouth had sucked Russell’s dick, just like Monique had sucked his dick. She had writhed under him just like Monique had thrust her pussy up at him. He had “tried to breed” both of them, and had successfully bred three other women. And yet he looked so normal, just eating supper and chatting with his family.

She knew she could become part of this family. They had not talked about marriage, but it was definitely on the table. She had never even thought about getting married. Ironically Asshole had turned her off to marriage because he cheated on his wife. Did all men cheat? If she married Russell would that mean he had already cheated on her? It was crystal clear that he would, at one or more times, want to cheat on her in the future, if only with the girl sitting across the table from her.

She had a brief vision of Beaufort and Genevieve, making love in their bedroom, while twenty-five feet away she and Teri made love with Russell. What would that be like? What would it be like to rub up against another woman while you had her brother’s semen in your pussy? What would it be like to see Russell get off of Teri and see his semen leaking out of her pussy?

Genevieve asked her a question and she had to push the fragmented thoughts away. The question was about what she wanted to do when she graduated with her psychology degree.

She didn’t know how she felt about that, either. Her ansswer felt like a half-formed thought and she was embarrassed.

Suddenly, she felt like she was standing on a floor in the middle of an earthquake. What should be solid wasn’t. How could she move forward? How could she keep her balance and get back to stable ground?

At that very second Russell’s hand touched her under the table. They were seated side by side and this was the first time he’d made contact. She felt a rush of relief because she knew one thing that was stable. She knew Russell loved her. That love was unconventional and not at all defined like most would, but she knew it was real. She remembered what Bobby had said about a parent loving more than one child. That happened every day, billions of times, around the globe. That was one rock-solid definition of love. She had said it wasn’t the same but now she vacillated.

“Well, don’t fret that you can’t make solid plans, yet,” said Genevieve. “I knew I was going to teach, but not where and when. I had no idea what kind of school I’d end up in, or what kind of students and parents I’d be dealing with. That all got sorted out, though, and I’m sure your path will become more clear as time passes. You still have two more years of college after this one, right?”

Mopnique nodded and Russell’s hand briefly squeezed her thigh.

She had another vision in which he was on top of Teri, pounding her like Monique loved to be pounded. But he was looking at her, not his sister, and his lips were forming the words “I love you,” as if just to remind her that what he was doing was not a threat to her or their relationship.

She put a hand under the table and it fumbled to find Russell’s thigh. She stroked it. Her fingertips were just inches away from his penis.

Teri had said he snuck into her room most nights.

If she asked him to, would he sneak into her room and make love to her? In front of Teri? How would that make Teri feel?