Chapter 18. White Scarf And A Tie

Tuesday Midday

I planned to leave for the office at 4 in the afternoon Tuesday, and stay there office for a full work day. With travel time I would get home well after midnight. For the rest of the morning, through lunch, and into the afternoon Irene and I spent time alternating between acting like young lovers and talking about the future of our people. She enjoyed the freedom and relaxation. Long-term sexual play, without actively working on my erection while she enjoyed a great deal of pleasuring, was another new experience to Irene. For instance, she had no idea how much I could pleasure her toes. She said it was almost enough fun to consider taking a husband, but she was worried about being distracted from her job, which she loved so much.

I warned her that many men were not good at being relaxed like I was that afternoon, once they got married they wanted to get off every time they got the urge but otherwise they have other priorities. “They don’t find spare time to just cuddle and talk, most men would rather talk to their buddies. A man spending time talking to his spouse is usually considered a bad thing unless the are newlywed or share a common economic interest.” A guy’s interest in relaxed social talk prior to marriage is more about getting into a girl’s panties. “Of course, women encourage that. Consider that a date is something social with talking, followed by sex which ends the encounter. Never the other way, sex then talking. That casts sex as the reward for the guy. But after marriage, sex becomes a routine along with everything else.”

Her limited experience supported the theory, which would make it even harder to find a male companion.

When she said that she admitted thinking about a female, but she also wondered about a FMF combination, where the other two were a stable couple and she was a guest star for either when time allowed. She thought she was the sort of unusual person where it might fit. Of course, that arrangement tracked with her temporary marriage.

I demurred. I said that in theory it was a good idea, but I was not sure of her finding even one other person to fit with somebody as independent and action-minded as her was a long shot. Fitting in with a couple seemed even less likely. Especially in the divorce capital of America. But she had an idea about that.

“Men of the Tribe do not have the same sense of ownership in their wives that the women of the Colony and LA have, maybe they would be happy with two wives who played together.”

“That is a good thought, except that there are fewer men in the tribe, meaning it would be hard to get the council to approve.” I thought a minute like a lawyer. Nia came to mind, she had a tribal upbringing and expectations but was now excluded from their company. There is the question of local chiefs and their authority. “I was born to merge the Tribe and the Colony. I have to think ... Somebody born in Texas is a Texan for life, but if they move to New York they live by New York laws. Maybe your answer lies there. In this case Nia and Corum are like Texans in New York.”

“Well, it seems the limit for me is how old I can get pregnant, and while I wish no ill upon any in the tribe, in a few years things there might change. Speaking of which, when are you going to marry those two kids?” She meant my Tribal wives.

“In about a year and a half, when they are 18. I am not going to change the Tribe overnight. The kids will be in LA by next summer at the latest. As far as the Tribe, I view their traditions as very important. They have lasted twice as long as the Colony.”

“We both know that the Tribe are your Praetorian Guards, with a loyal unassailable redoubt and your final refuge. Even helicopters have trouble at that attitude.”

(The Tribe was extremely loyal to me because of the women in my life - Zoam, Marta and Zar, plus now Mer and Per - and the fact that I grew up there. Also, they now had a lot of day-to-day improvements, like electricity, which they associated with my grandfathers and me. Water was coming.)

“Yeah, that to ... I have to revitalize them somehow. More childbirth’s, fewer mothers dying, maybe start a location at altitude in this country. Colorado and California have some options, including one or two I am working on.”

“Changing subjects, you really are a nice person to kiss and spend all day in bed with,” she said putting her words into action. I guess my toes were attractive also.

I had to agree with that. After that maybe we didn’t talk so much, at least not in words. We both found lots of places to kiss and nibble the other person. She had never before known the pleasure of little licks on the bottoms of her toes. Now we both knew she could not sit still for them. Also, every time the play got warm enough for her, she discovered that sitting on my face was one of those gifts that kept on giving. Fast or slow, between the end of the shoulder stand and the time I left, she enjoyed getting off that way half a dozen times, to her great delight.

Over lunch Irene shared some of a dinner conversation about the White Scarf. It was a gathering at Bente’s. She started by admitting her close cousin was provocative. There were 4 couples at this dinner party, she and Corum were the only non-romantic couple.

Right away I said that an LA dinner conversation sounded like people thought they were in a democracy where their ideas deserved more than a hearing. The Patron would listen, but putting things to a vote was simply not done in the Colony, and pushing any idea based on popularity drew a strong response. “The next Patron is likely to be the the same way.”

Irene had no problem with my view of these things, she believed in a chain-of-command. But on the other hand, if I was looking at merging our societies, the Colony’s White Scarf had to be considered.

The system lasted four centuries in relative isolation. But when the legal buyers of cocaine appeared in the late 1800’s the Patron started to send out some people to look around. The two world wars, including events like Hiroshima told the Patrons he had to plan for the future. Eventually Toad started the Pablo apartments in LA as a permanent population. (My father’s project in Miami could not survive, it could not get a toehold where Toad could.) Now I was the presumptive heir of three communities: the Tribe, the Colony, and the settlement in LA. My job was to unite the three.

Currently most of the residents from the Colony who were now in LA had arrived in the two decades before 9-11. They lived in the Pablo or the surrounding area, and had children attending the city schools that our volunteers and incentivized educators effectively controlled. For about half of the married couples both parents were children of the Colony. Most of the rest had a child of the Colony married an LA resident (like Ernie and Belen) where the “outsider” got a crash education in our ways before marriage. The children knew about our culture from birth. But the also knew their ‘local’ peers would not understand the culture, any more than our kids understood about Crips and Bloods, or NASCAR, or Hindu culture.

One concern was living and working in a larger community with a high divorce percentage, a community where adults had a wide assortment of sex practices available. It was a place where each younger generations seemed to show less regard for a link between sex and a relationship compared to their parents. For instance, some students councils at LA high schools were debating conduct rules that suggested a BJ or similar pleasure on the third date was a reasonable expectation. My people were becoming more and more a ghetto or a gated community, just without a visible fence.

Actually, the presence of “49” gave the police and neighboring gangs something they could focus on as providing a fence. Members of 49 were almost never brought to police notice, we did not prey on our people as every other community did. Our crime stats simply did not justify an police presence, and the only neighboring gangs who attempted to flex into our territory found a lot of invisible, but very real roadblocks. Forays by individual criminals usually were met by our patrols and they were not heard from again. Good riddance.

At one point I had to raise a subject. “This may sound a little patriarchal, but that is part of my job. At one point earlier, you mentioned something about losing your ability to have children. Now, to be honest, and thinking like your German grandfather I have to say that you are too valuable as breeding stock for me to allow that to happen without a fight.”