92: Routine

Routine is a great thing.

I'm serious. It seemed like the past four years, since moving to Bloomington, our whole clan had been moving from one emergency to another. It might make for exciting reading, but I was getting pretty tired of it. I was nearly 23 years old and I had responsibilities. I had a business to manage. I had a community to care for. I had my cónyuge. And I had my children. For the most part, I just wanted to sit at home and play with the babies.

I often went to Casa del Agua early in the morning and made breakfast for my family there. Matthew was almost three years old and what a guy! It seemed he knew exactly which days I'd be there and came rushing out to meet me as soon as I started making breakfast. He was in a toddler bed now and had his own routines. He got up in the morning, took off his pull-up, and used the potty. Then he came into the kitchen, usually dragging a blanket and a stuffed animal with him.

"Up, Papa!" he'd demand. I'd scoop the little guy up and dance around the kitchen for a few minutes while he giggled. Then I'd plop him into his high chair with a glass of juice while I made food. The first time I made him scrambled eggs, he'd looked at them strangely. "Mimi!" he exclaimed. I had no idea what was up. Finally, through a series of signs and just pointing, I picked him up and walked over to the spice rack. He carefully selected a bottle of rosemary from the spice rack and proudly declared, "Mimi!" I sprinkled a bit on his eggs and he dug in. He used both his spoon and his fingers to shove the food in his mouth. Turned out that Doreen had been fixing him scrambled eggs and she always put rosemary in them. Everyone was shocked that he knew what and where the rosemary was. But best of all, when we were alone in the kitchen and he had his sippy cup and eggs, Matthew would look up and say, "Papa talk."

I wondered exactly how much he understood of what I said, but I'd spent my mornings for ten years talking to Rhonda early in the morning. It seemed like a natural extension to include Matthew in the conversation. Of course, not all the conversation I engaged in was particularly appropriate for the little boy, but he didn't seem to mind whether I was talking to him or to Rhonda.

Doreen, Doug, and Sandy were all up about the same time in the morning. Rachel didn't have class until ten and often worked in her studio until late at night. Dor always brought my little C-Rae to me for morning slobbering. She was twenty-four weeks old now. Before long I was going to be given permission to start giving her age in months! I just loved the dickens out of that little girl.

Of course, I didn't go over every morning. I had cónyuge in my house and another unbelievable baby girl. I just couldn't get enough of Xan, nearly nine months old. And there was no telling which mother would be bringing her to the kitchen in the morning. All the women in the casa, and Josh, wanted to have time holding and cuddling our little girl. In the evening, I usually sat in my big chair to study with her cooking on my chest. Her little body pressed against mine would generate so much heat as she slept, I was sure we'd both be medium rare. Dani, Rhonda, Samantha, Rose, even Nicki, would carefully cuddle with us for a while.

And most evenings, I left a little deposit in Liz, hoping that we'd start the next baby soon. I could tell when her second period started that she was getting a little worried. Her mother had set a pretty high expectation with twelve kids and had often warned Liz that all a boy would have to do was whisper the word 'sperm' near her pussy and she'd be pregnant. It wasn't proving so easy. All we could do was keep trying.

By mid-September, the routine was well-enough established that it was time to start planning for the future. Chuck and Frankie arrived the eighteenth and moved into the second guest room. Angela was so seldom home during the same hours as everyone else, that they never conflicted in sharing a bath with her. I felt bad and thought I should give them the master suite, but they refused.

"This place is luxurious compared to where we've been camped the past month!" Frankie said. "There was running water in our cabin for doing dishes and washing up. The shower was outside hanging from a tree in the jungle. There was a composting toilet on the other side of the cabin."

"Pee in the yard, poop in the bucket, our landlady said. We thought she was kidding until we got there," Chuck laughed. "This one might take two chapters in our book!"

"You're writing a book?" I asked.

"Might as well. We got a degree in it," Frankie said. "We figured we might as well write something along the lines of 'The Life of a Spoiled Trust Fund Baby.' So far, all we've done is write in our journals each day while we try to come up with ideas for your show."

"Well, I hope you've got better ideas than I do. We're supposed to shoot the pilot in two weeks and I'm personally terrified."

"Don't sweat it, Brian," Chuck said. "We've got your back on this one. I understand the first audience has been chosen."

"We have the women of Beta House coming over. We promised them a little party and a donation to their chosen charity for their assistance," Samantha said. She'd lined a second group up for two weeks later. We'd be filming the same show with two different audiences. With luck, we'd get one that was usable.

"I plan to go visit Beta House this week," Frankie said. "We're good with having the same guests on twice?"

"We're working on it," Sam said. "Through the miracles of Courtney's new video editing software, we can actually splice things together if we need to. Joyce is still getting the hang of the non-linear editing, but she's done some good stuff with Chick Chat this fall already."

"Elaine had a guest she wanted at the end of the show who could only be here first thing," April said. "We shot it completely out of order and Joyce put it back together the way we wanted it."

"Cool. Let's think themes and then talk about opening monologues."

ELAINE: Hi, everybody. Oh, I know you! Thanks for coming to support our new production from Hearthstone Entertainment. We're all really excited. I'm not normally going to be up here warming up Brian's audiences, but it's his first time and we don't know yet if he's going to be funny. [Laughter.]

How many of you had to beg off a hot date in order to come here tonight? Yeah. Me too. Did you have to give him a blowjob? Yeah. Me too.

You know that new gum they've got out that has a liquid burst of flavor in the center? I call that come-gum.

"Oh, god. This is going to be terrible," I said. "Listen to them." I was in Stall One with Cassie listening over the loud speaker system while I waited to make my big entrance.

"They're laughing like crazy. They're ready to have a good time."

"They're laughing because she's funny!" I complained. "They'll hate me. I think I'm going to be sick."

"Sit!" Cassie commanded and pointed at the chair I'd been pacing around. I sat. In an instant Cassie had my legs pried apart and was kneeling between them as she unfastened my trousers.

"Cassie?" I said. "I'm supposed to go on in a few minutes."

"I might be new at the job of being your assistant, but I know my responsibilities. Rhonda gave me very specific instructions. Now lean back and relax. I've got it under control." She sure did. I mean, fuck! Cassie! She'd been practicing and I had images of Josh with his cock in her mouth. Well, that didn't do anything for me. It was my cock in her mouth. However she got this good, it was worth it. And I didn't take long. I guess the pressure had really built up while I was waiting. I groaned. Cassie moaned. And choked a little, but she kept it from getting on my trousers.

"Oh, Cassie. I didn't know this was part of your job," I gasped.

"It isn't," she giggled. "It's part of being your cónyuge. I love you, Brian. Now pull yourself together and let's get on with the show."

ME: Good evening. I'm Brian Frost. Welcome to XX/XY: The Man's Show for Women. Boy does that sound strange. But if it was a man's show for men, we'd spend the next hour just staring off into space in companionable silence. Someplace along the line one of us would say something and then we'd all go home feeling like we'd had a great conversation. [Laughs.] I have forty young women from Beta House on the Indiana University campus with me to pilot our show.

So are all of you single? How could I be so lucky? Maybe I'll finally get a couple answers to questions that I've always wondered about. Without being intentionally sexist, and while recognizing that there are a lot of different kinds of relationships that don't involve a woman and a man pairing up, and that not everyone needs to be paired up to be happy, I'd like to know—not for myself, but a friend—how many of you want a boyfriend who is kind and loving? [Hands raise. Giggles.]

AND who respects and honors you? AND who is romantic? AND who is a great conversationalist and always listens when you are talking? AND who would guard and protect you from harm? AND who is a great lover who puts your needs first? AND who would be a wonderful father to your children? AND who is financially and emotionally secure? [Hands go up with each question until the women simply leave them up.]

That's fair enough, I suppose. So tell me honestly: Do you plan to replace your current boyfriend or just add a second? [Lots of laughs and several calls of 'replace' and 'add.']

How many of you even believe such a guy exists?

Well, there might not be enough of them for each of you to have your own. Are you willing to share with each other? [Gasp.]

I know. Just like a man. Why does life have to be so complicated? We should all be able to have what we want. But love is a two-way street with multiple intersections. I know guys like I've just described and I asked them what they wanted in a life mate. We're going to talk about a few of those things on this show. Tonight I have as my guests Karla MacDonald, author of the best-selling book Love Me Like I Am... [Applause.] NFL Rookie, Jerry Farmer... [Applause.] and questions from you, Beta House at Indiana University, our first stop for XX/XY!

My first show was underway.

"I sucked."

"I think it was me who did the sucking," Cassie laughed. "And you did not suck. They loved you."

"They loved that we were giving them a party," I said. "We can't give a party for every audience. That's like paying people to like you."

"They knew and we knew that this was special," Samantha said. "They were so impressed that you knew about their pledge competition to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. That is something we need to make sure we plug in every show. We need to know the group's charity of choice and we should put a subtitle at the bottom of the screen that gives the address of where to donate. You've always had good luck getting people to contribute to a worthy cause since you did the talk show tour last summer."

"They all filled out the surveys," Donna said. "I should have results tabulated tomorrow. I'm heading home now. I doubt we'll need to keep surveying every audience, but I've got an idea that we might use for a weekly game. I'm too tired to talk about it tonight. 'Night-night."

We wrapped things up and headed home. It was nearly eleven o'clock. I walked in the door and stripped. Even Chuck and Frankie peeled out of their clothes in the entry. I walked into the family room and found Dani nursing Xan in my big chair.

"Just who we needed to see," Dani smiled. "Baby is all milky and needs Papa to dance with her." Rhonda went to the CD player and put on KD Lang's Absolute Torch and Twang.

"Isn't that a little lively for this time of night?" I asked.

"She loves it. Dance with her."

I tossed a burp cloth over my shoulder and put Xan against it. We started two-stepping around the family room to the sound of "Full Moon Full of Love." She had a big burp, but not much milk came up. In five more minutes, she was asleep in my arms.

Donna had some good ideas. We'd try a game while the audience was being warmed up. I wasn't sure about the whole warm-up concept yet. Sure it was great to have Elaine the first night. The audience would have come just to see her. But how would we arrange an improv comic for every show? Elaine's afternoon performances just didn't seem to require anyone to talk to the audience before she came on. Warren would play some music and people would start feeling good, then he'd segue into Elaine's theme song, and poof! She'd walk out on stage and rock the house. My music was definitely pre-recorded, though Warren was working on getting us a good theme developed.

"So, what we do is pass out a little quiz to the audience before the show," Donna said at our staff meeting on Tuesday. "We organize it like a game segment. You have a contestant from the audience try to guess what the audience answered to a half dozen questions. Not only will the crowd have fun, but we'll get some pretty valuable audience profile information from every show."

"Does that mean I need a writer with me for every show?" I asked.

"You can handle that," Frankie said. "It's not like you need lines to go with the questions. You'll find something funny about whatever is answered."

"I think when we get it rolling, though, we should collect a week's worth of answers and then have the contestants on just the Friday show. That would give a target for people to watch and would also make it more difficult for the audience to share answers around," Chuck said.

"I like that," Sam said. "We need a few show features that differentiate XX/XY from other shows. Like Carson had Carnac and Letterman has the Top Ten." Sam shifted uncomfortably in her chair and took a deep breath.

"We need to work on the opening monologues," April said. "I don't want to copy the camerawork we do on Chick Chat because then we'd start having a Hearthstone Style and I don't think we want that. Elaine's asides are uniquely hers. But I don't want Brian to look like a statue up there either. I hate the fixed camera position concept. I've got half a notion to film the whole monologue from behind him and focus on the audience instead of Brian."

"That's fine with me."

"I think we can develop something that isn't quite so drastic," Frankie said. "I'd like to consult with Nicki on our style."

"You can bet April and I are talking to Rhonda," Sam laughed. "It's great that we have mentors right here where we can talk to them." She stretched again. "Let's wrap this up and do what we need to in smaller groups. Next week is midterms and I know Brian has studying to do."

"Sweetheart, are you okay?" I asked, catching up with Sam at the back door.

"Yeah," she sighed. "Apparently a side benefit of having my shoulder blown to bits is that I can predict the weather now. My shoulder is a little inflamed."

"You should see your doctor."

"My next appointment is in eight days. I think I can stand it that long. I'm just thankful I can lift my hand above my waist. It's just that every once in a while I don't get it where I intend and I smack someone in the balls or a boob," she laughed. "How about you? Do you have any residual pain like that?"

"A little. Mostly my physical pain goes away after I work out in the morning. Let's go upstairs and I'll rub an analgesic on your shoulder."

"Why don't we go upstairs and you can smear slippery fluids around on me where it will do the most good?"