Prologue and Glossary

This starts roughly in the fall of 1962, in a timeline different than ours. It is time-travel, do-over, and somewhat autobiographical. The history of Cuban Missile Crisis events is generally quite accurate, drawing from sources mentioned below, as well as my own academic and professional background from a few years after the events.

I moved the locale to Washington, DC, where I lived for more years than I spent growing up in a New Jersey suburb of New York City, where I experienced the events. When I discuss the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, White House, and other places, I’ve been there.

Most characters live and work in an apartment complex near American University, which I attended. Terry, a major character, leases several floors -- assume rooms and remodeling are quickly available. There is no experimental high school at the real AU, but the equivalent is common.

Once the establishing chapters are set, the general form is to have, on specific dates:

· Historical events

· (Fictional) Do-over actions of the characters

· Hard sex as part of the continued bonding of the clan of characters

Beyond the effects of the Others/Alien Space Bats, that clan is bonded emotionally, intellectually, and sexually. Their mutual oath of honor comes from an Honor Harrington novel by David Weber. I hope you will recognize a scene taken from the acting of Anne Bancroft.

Aspects of the sex are drawn from the sexual magick of Alistair Crowley, and other more academic studies of sexuality and magic-with-a-k (that works). If you are squicked by snowballing and creampies, you probably won’t like this story, because the combination of male and female fluids is considered, in this model, to have strong magickal properties. There may be minor M-M and transgender interactions.

Sexual interactions

There is no overt male-male homosexuality, but the characters are open to the idea of heterosexual group scenes in which there is M-M, F-F, and M-F contact. I personally identify as het, but I once had a lovely lady turn to me and say “You like watching me with other women. Why shouldn’t I get turned on by watching you with another man?”

She had a point. At our next threesome, she asked her husband and I to play a bit, under her direction, and it was a very hot scene. Subsequently, I went to a swinging party where, in designated rooms, women could suggest men interact in ways that they enjoyed, in return for giving very hot lesbian shows as well as true orgy scenes in which pretty much anyone could do anything to anyone.

A Lesbian Lass of Khartoum

Invited a Gay Guy to her Room

They argued all night

As who had the right

To do what, how, and to whom.

Since some people will give 1’s because they don’t like sexual practices about which they were warned, I will turn off voting until the first few chapters are up. The surviving readers will be fair.

The History

I lived through those days of October, at the age of the younger characters of the story. Don’t try to tell me that they are too young to understand the picture. Now, at the time, I had been my Army Reservist mother’s study partner for a number of things including the correspondence program of the Command and General Staff College, but also unclassified coursework on the effects of nuclear weapons and on nuclear war. When I crouched under my desk or in the hallway, I had a very good idea of the effects of a bomb on New York City. We might or might not be protected by a low mountain between us.

Because this is my story, I have chosen some enjoyable changes, such as moving the introduction of the miniskirt from when I remember it becoming prominent a few years later, to the start of the story. The Ethical Slut came out in 1997, but I use many of its ideas in 1962.

In the culture of the story, caring relationships between teachers and students, exploring sexuality, are accepted. No, the story line doesn’t get into legalities. Abuse of Registered Companions and Companions-in-Training is taken very, very seriously.

As in the real world, my adoptive mother was single and professional, in many ways psychologically in a fatherly role for the time. In my world, I was unaware that she was a lonely lesbian, not that I even knew the word at first. My (Harold’s) mother is off-screen, a very busy social worker and therapist who leaves him as a latchkey kid.

For story purposes, there is no accidental pregnancy and no sexually transmitted diseases, except perhaps carpal tunnel syndrome from cybersex. High heels are always comfortable, and, unless there is a story reason for it, no one trips in them. Again, unless there is a story reason, hair and makeup don’t get mussed by sleep or showers -- sometimes during sex.

Sources

Besides personal experiences and interactions with many participants, there are a great many, of which this is a small sample.

· President’s Foreign Advisory Board Chronology

· Chronology of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the George Washington University National Security Archive

· Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days

· CIA History Staff, CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

· Robert M. Beer, The U.S. Navy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trident Scholar Research Paper, U.S. Naval Academy, 1990

· Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation

· Dino Brugnoni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Also personal conversations with the author)

· Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy 1961–1964

· Samuel Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons

Glossary

Some simplified for storytelling reasons

AAA: Anti-aircraft artillery, specifically guns in an AAW system.

AAW: Anti-air warfare, encompassing command & control, radar, fighters, missiles, and guns.

ADA: Air defense artillery, either missiles and guns, depending on context, or guns alone.

ADM: Admiral. At the time of the story, a “rear admiral” could be equivalent either to a one- or a two-star general of the other forces. Vice admirals wore three stars; admirals (with no adjective) were four-star.

ANADYR: A river in the cold north of Russia, used as the code name for the Cuban operation as being in no way suggestive of the balmy Caribbean.

ASW: Antisubmarine warfare

AU: American University

CCO: Technically an abbreviation for “Handle through COMINT Channels Only”, but an abbreviation for SECRET or TS SCI SIGINT information. It might be accompanied by even more restrictive caveats.

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency. During the Crisis, it, and the U.S. intelligence community, were headed by John McCone.

CIB: Current Intelligence Bulletin, a still TS/SCI document with extremely limited circulation, but without the complete all-source content of the PDB.

CINCLANT: Commander in Chief, Atlantic. I have taken liberties with this designation, rather than get into the complexities of the organizations involved. It was the operational-level headquarters for naval forces in the crisis, headed by Admiral Robert Dennison.

CJCS: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Senior officer of the U.S. military and statutory military adviser to the President. During most of this period, GEN Maxwell Taylor. His predecessor was GEN Lyman Lemnitzer, who lost Kennedy’s confidence and was ignored until transferred to the prestigious European/NATO command (SACEUR).

CNO: Chief of Naval Operations. Senior officer of the Navy; member of the JCS. In this time, Admiral (ADM) George Anderson.

COMOR: Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance of USIB. Sets reconnaissance priorities.

CSA: Chief of Staff of the Army. Senior officer of the Army; member of the JCS. During this story, General (GEN) Earle Wheeler.

CSAF: Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Senior officer of the Air Force; member of the JCS. In 1962, GEN Curtis LeMay

DCI: Director of Central Intelligence. At the time of this tale, this official was formally the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community, dual-hatted as the chief of CIA. In practice, since he did not control the Defense Department intelligence budget, his authority over the Community was limited.

DEFCON: Defense Condition. DEFCON 5 is peacetime readiness. DEFCON 3 is high operational alert, held by most commands during the Crisis. DEFCON 2, taken by SAC, is the “COCKED PISTOL” readiness for nuclear war. Actual war is the never-yet-invoked DEFCON 1.

DIA: Defense Intelligence Agency. Created by McNamara in 1961, to reconcile claims of the service intelligence agencies with independent analysis, and also to be a counter to the CIA.

DINAR: A code word for even more sensitive TS/SCI SIGINT within CCO

DOD: Department of Defense, headed by Secretary Robert Strange McNamara. That really was his middle name, which, understandably, he wrote as “S.”.

ELINT: Information from non-communications signals, such as radar. An example of intelligence fusion would be to confirm that a radar in a photograph became operational, when its signals were detected by ELINT. ELINT tends to need to be line-of-sight with the source, so collecting it can be risky.

EXCOMM: JFK’s main advisory and operational committee for the Crisis. Generally, it was an enlarged version of the NSC, but the only military member was Chairman Taylor.

FAN SONG: A fire control radar for the SA-2, with a backup search capability.

FAS: Foreign Area Studies center at AU, a contract research center funded by the Army.

Chapter 1 »