Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 143: Normal People and Celebrities
Saturday, May 24, 1986
We got up a bit late. Mom had made breakfast, as always, and hung out with us. Hanging out with Mom was different than hanging out with Dad, or both of them, and I probably hadn’t appreciated it as much in my first life. Maybe it was due to my ex-wife, or maybe it was that first-life Mom hadn’t actually seen how well I could cook and otherwise ‘keep house.’
In any case, our conversations were often pretty domestic. Cooking, decorating, relationships — things like that. We certainly didn’t mention any of our extra relationships, nor the extra parts of the relationships Mom knew about, but there was plenty of conversation about our friends’ upcoming weddings.
In retrospect, it occurred to me that these conversations would be different if Mom had known about our friends’ engagements before Jas and I were engaged. Oh, most of them had actually come after ours, but Lizzie and Janet were engaged well before we had been. They had also been together much longer, so it wouldn’t have been the same, but I suspected it would still have changed things. Mom had been expecting an engagement for so long that she might have pressured us even without meaning to.
And I was certain she wouldn’t have meant to. She had never pressured us. Camille hadn’t, either, but she had come considerably closer than Mom had. We had known for years that Camille was ready for us to get engaged, after all.
Mom had probably wanted to have conversations like these with my ex-wife, but I doubted that had ever happened. Yet another little difference. Another way in which this world was just better.
I headed over to Jane’s office in the afternoon. This time, Jas came with me. She wouldn’t be in the session itself, but wanted to wait in the waiting room.
Just before two, Jane appeared and waved to me. I headed off to meet her, reintroduced her to Jas, then headed back into her office. Once we were alone, I gave her a hug.
“It’s been much too long! And even more too long for Angie!” she said as we settled into our usual places. “Tell her that!”
“I will,” I said, chuckling. “She’s probably on a plane right now.”
“No doubt. I know about her family vacation. We have plans to meet.”
“That’s good!”
“So ... what’s new?” she asked.
“I guess ... first ... there’s some news around Darla. Good news, just ... big, and potentially complicated.”
“Complications are your bread and butter,” she said, chuckling.
“Indeed! Anyway, the matchmaking team found someone they like.”
“Oh! That is good news.”
“And complicated news. For one thing, I had to do something I’ve never done,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I had to discuss a girl in at least moderate detail with another guy.”
“That is unusual. I can see why it might be necessary,” she said.
“It pretty much was. Hank needed to know what he was signing up for, and having Darla explain her sexuality would be awkward, at best.”
“Definitely.”
“Angie or Paige could have, but I know her much better, so ... well, we had a pretty interesting conversation. I didn’t get into detail, but enough for him to understand. I’m feeling optimistic, really. It’s ... well. The reason why this works for me in the first place is keeping in mind that, fundamentally, Darla is still always in control of herself. She can say a single word at any time and everything stops.”
She chuckled and said, “I’m very aware of how much you’re concerned with consent. And it’s a very good thing. I would have far more concerns otherwise! But, still, that makes sense, especially in a situation where there’s ... pre-negotiated consent.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Things change. You can promise as many times as you want that you’ll have sex — much less in some specific way — and revoke it at any time, period. Both parties have to know that. Negotiation takes care of asking at the time, and there are a lot of implicit negotiations along the way. But it doesn’t create a binding contract. In this case, I think Hank needs to be aware of that and kinda enforce that ‘both parties’ thing, because Darla is entirely capable of saying, ‘Oh, but I promised I would do this, so I’ll just go along with it now even though I don’t want to’ to herself. And I’ll freely agree that’s still a sort of consent, but it’s too edgy.”
“Yes, and yes. And a lot of yes,” she said, chuckling.
“I’m fairly sure Hank is on the same page, so that’s good.”
“It is.”
“So, that’s part one. They’ve been talking a fair bit and had some casual dates. Part two is another new thing, more or less,” I said.
“Oh?”
“They’re ... well. Officially, Darla and I are still ‘dating,’ which covers ... everything. Hank and Darla are also ‘dating.’ Normally, the rule would be — always has been! — if someone is dating someone else seriously, I can’t date them. But that’s traditional dating. In this case, they’re both entirely aware things may happen between Darla and me, and I’m entirely aware things may happen between Hank and Darla, and we’re all fine, for now.”
“Very interesting,” she said. “I can guess at the motivation, but I’ll let you explain.”
“Probably what you’re guessing. Hank doesn’t live near here. He’s hoping to get to Houston a time or two. Darla might visit him. Maybe. It needs to pass the Darla’s-mother test, so Clara will want to meet him eventually. Anyway, Darla’s here, I’m here, and ... well. Obviously, she could go the summer with nothing, but she doesn’t want to, and no one wants her to have to.”
“That makes sense.”
“The other side of it — and Hank made this point himself — is that it reduces the pressure on either of them to decide it’s working too soon. If Darla has a ‘relief valve,’ and Hank knows it, there’s no pressure for them to do things they’re not ready to do. In some ways, it’s maybe not as big a decision for Darla now as it was in December — you can only have one first time — but in some ways it’s bigger. She knew me for years and knows I have both a support structure and people who would be royally pissed off if I violated Darla’s trust. She doesn’t have that with Hank. The worst she could do — and it might be really bad — would be to go after him with the Corps. They’re fairly serious about military justice rules in terms of personal relationships,” I said.
“Ah! He’s in the Corps. That tells me something I didn’t know.”
“He is. His plan is to go career military in the Air Force. Military Intelligence. He’s a Computer Science major right now.”
“That could still mean overseas postings and all sorts of other things,” she said.
“Absolutely. Bridges to cross when they get there. It’s obviously not a bad thing for Darla, and she would leap right to the same thought, so we’re fine there, I think.”
“You are, I agree. It is her decision, ultimately. You can be a good friend and offer advice, and undoubtedly Angie and Paige will as well, but it’s Darla’s life.”
“Agreed. And that pretty much catches us up,” I said.
“What’s next?”
“Minor updates on Amy, I suppose. All is well. She’s visiting her parents now, but she’s moved into the house for the summer. She doesn’t have a car, so moving home would have involved her parents driving down to College Station. Compared to us, she has very little in the way of stuff, so it was easy to move her in. She’ll move back out in the fall. That’s already set.”
“Would you let her stay if she asked?” Jane said.
“Tentatively, I think so. We’ll see what Cammie and Mel — and Candice and Sherry — think after the summer. They’re all there, too. By and large, we’re at arm’s length with Candice and Sherry. I mean — we’ve used the hot tub naked together, so our definition of ‘arm’s length’ is perhaps unusual...”
Jane chuckled and nodded.
“ ... but they only occasionally join us for meals or social events. They’re ... we have far-flung friends we’re closer to than them, and that’s not even referencing Jess. Beyond things from the fall of 1980, I know Candice no better than I know, say, Marshall Briggs, and I know Sherry less well.”
Jane nodded again, then said, “That’s what I hear from Candice as well. And ... it’s good. It’s actually very good, I think. Candice would have been fine living somewhere else, and I’ll have no concerns if and when the two of them move out, but I think this has been really good for them. Sherry is now where she firmly sees that Candice would never restart anything with you. Also, that you wouldn’t go for it if she did, but Sherry and I talk as well, and she’s very confident Candice would never do that. And, if Candice won’t do anything with you...”
“It’s hard to imagine anyone else,” I said.
“Exactly. I heard about the hot tub. Under the circumstances, it makes sense. You’re just an object of curiosity. There’s no attraction there. The other thing is, it’s given both sets of parents a really easy transition year. They’re not worrying about their girls in an apartment by themselves or anything, and they know there are two other gay couples ready to talk through anything with them, plus a really supportive straight couple. It just works. As I said before, it works because it’s you. And Angie, too, maybe, but I just can’t imagine it working with any other guy.”
“It’s been great for us. Both helping them out and ... well, honestly, it just looked silly having two empty apartments. One is a bit more understandable, and now we have the excuse of having short-term housemates repeatedly. I’m trying to avoid mentioning that we own the house for at least another year. We’ve told the parents a lot of things now, but ‘we own a house outright while you’re still making mortgage payments’ is a fair bit to bite off right now. When we can include it in ‘and we own millions in stock,’ it’ll get lost in the weeds much easier.”
Jane laughed loudly.
“I imagine it would! I’m still distancing myself from that, but I know it’s only a matter of time, and ... I’m getting ready for it. There’s obviously no way you can switch therapists, after all.”
“It ... would be ridiculously tricky,” I said. “I almost regret how it happened, since the reason it worked back in the day was because of mutually assured destruction.”
She blushed slightly, then laughed.
“I don’t regret it now. It was probably the only way you could be comfortable, and I really didn’t think it would ever matter, partly because it was ‘mutually.’”
“Anyway ... not a factor now. No mandatory reporting.”
She nodded.
“Now, rich people ... I guess you could threaten something else...”
She nodded again, while my mind jumped to somewhere unexpected, so I paused. After a second, she said, “You were saying?”
“Sorry, I sidetracked myself. Well ... it’s relevant, so maybe it’s not a sidetrack.”
“Go on,” she said, smirking a tiny bit.
“It’s ... there was a TV show. Will be a TV show. Maybe. Hopefully. I actually didn’t watch it, but it was critically acclaimed. Won a bunch of awards. Some people credited it with starting a new golden age for television, and they might have been right. It wasn’t my ex-wife’s cup of tea, though, and we watched what she wanted to watch, so ... there you go.”
She nodded a bit.
“It concerned this guy. Middle-aged. Wife and kids. He’s got anger issues, clinical depression, and sometimes panic attacks. He’s highly involved in running the family business, sometimes there are marital stresses ... all of that. The usual therapist stuff, unlike us.”
Jane chuckled loudly at that.
“Sounds interesting so far.”
“The thing is: his family business is the New Jersey mob, where he’s fairly high ranking. Eventually, the undisputed boss. So ... confidentiality is particularly important.”
She snorted loudly.
“Oh, my! Oh ... I would think so, yes. Oh, my goodness! I would watch that, I’m certain of it.”
“It was — Will be? Maybe? — on HBO, I’m pretty sure. They switched from just showing movies to producing their own series — still with some movies — in the 1990s somewhere.”
“Something I would never have thought to even question,” she said.
“Anyway, I’m sure it was along the lines of any other mob relationship. Squeal, and you will enormously regret it.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.