Chapter 1

When you have been married for several years, things get shoved to the back of the desk. You have jobs, the kids have appointments, then they become teens, and you have a different set of pressures keeping ... things ... on the back burner.

Eventually, you notice that you haven’t make monkey love in weeks, or months, or years. You realize that she hasn’t awakened you with “good morning head” lately, and you cannot recall how long it has been. Similarly, when was the last time you chased her climax with your tongue, with your beard on her thighs? Other stuff seems more important, somehow, and then it hits you.

It hit me when I got low a census day at work, not that I wanted to spend a PTO day at random, and rolled home at around 2230. Then I found that my daughter was getting more action than I was, and I was happily married (yeah, let’s pretend I didn’t just say all that stuff, that I just said... )! Sandy wasn’t really naked. Well, not altogether. Young Lochinvar did a creditable job of getting halfway dressed, and bounding his pale ass from my house leaving a debris trail of the clothing he had not managed to put on, before I bumped the door open with my key, and surprised the young lovers kind of in media res.

I briefly reflected upon how much Sandy looked like her mother, when we were both young, before she succeeded in buttoning her blouse to a dad-view-appropriate level. Of course, the accompanying soundtrack of “Gawd, Dad! How COULD you?!!?” at varying cadences, and with assorted intonations, dulled the flashback, somewhat. For my part, being an old street medic, I was not generally easily intimidated, and tossed it right back to her.

“So, anything you want to tell me?”

“Dad! Ohmigawd! I cannot BELIEVE you!”

“You might think that I did not notice that you haven’t answered my question. I noticed. Any comment, other than chastising me for returning to my own home?”

“Daaaa-aad! We weren’t doing anything!”

“And, not doing anything, required wardrobe adjustments? Here, don’t lose your bra.”

I picked up and tossed the indicated article to her, and her blush, previously at a low simmer, turned about to “boil”. Nice trick, given her dark complexion. (Got that from her mother. Me, I’m pale as they come. Sunburn city!)

I slowly pried the name of Young Lochinvar (Brent), his identity (classmate, surreptitious boyfriend), and the chain of events that had led to our daddy-daughter bonding moment. It seemed that he had arrived, “to study”, and, homework complete (point in the girl’s favor. She generally was level headed), they had “watched a movie”. Teen hormones being what they were, sitting led to hugging, and huggin led to touchin, and touchin led to the state of en déshabillé into which I had intruded. From direct evidence, and witness testimony, it appeared that said clothing choices were about to lead directly into certain ancient and generally highly regarded fertility rites. But not with my daughter. No, not so very fucking much.

“You are grounded to your room, until your mother has had an opportunity to weigh in. School tomorrow, and directly home. I do not mean kinda directly, I mean directly-just-as-if-your-driving-license-depended-upon-it directly. Because, you know, it does. It really, really does.”

“Daddy! You don’t understand!” Hmmm. Playing The Daddy Card. Interesting gambit.

“No, actually, honey, I do understand. I also understand that you either will set and enforce your own limits, and those limits will not preclude you from college, or the trade school of your choice, or your mother and I will set and enforce those limits. I betcha you will be happier setting your own limits, huh?”

She started to blubber, which did not look all that good on an otherwise pretty 16 year old, but I stood fast. “Maybe it’s time you were in bed. Like, now. We all will talk, in the morning.”

She retreated upstairs, bra in hand. Now that I was seeing her as a horny teen boy would, she had a marvelous ass. Just like her mother.

By the time Kathy got home from her “3-11” ICU shift (Yeah. About that. See also, “The check is in the mail”, “the ambulance is on the way”, and “I’m from the government, I’m here to help you”.), I had my feet up, nursing a beer, and stifling my desire to yell at the television.

Gratefully, I switched the TV off. Rising, I enveloped my wife in my arms. She purred, “Hmmm, you’re home early. Low census?”

“Yep. You’re home late. High census?”

“Yep. And a late code. Kind of a group grope, but the patient is now resting quietly on his vent, and midnights has him. Took me an hour and a half to complete my charting.”

“Nice. Well, you missed our little domestic drama tonight. Sandy had planned on you being late, and had not planned on my busting out early. I nearly interrupted your opportunity to become a grandmother.”

Well, THAT got her attention. “Did you just say I’m going to be a grandmother?”

“No, I said things had not quite progressed to the grandmother and daddy with rifle stage, rather, I was my own form of coitus interruptus. Brent did pretty well on our shrubs as a hurdler. In fact, when you consider that he left a trail of clothing, he did darned well.”