Chapter 31: Sea Stories

December 6, 1991, Milford, Ohio

“Isn’t that just a bit over the top?” I chuckled.

“Too suggestive?” she smirked.

“Cherry ice cream, with cherry syrup, and three cherries? No, not at all! Though I think that might cause a diabetic shock if I ate it!”

“I’m not that sweet!” she giggled.

“No, you certainly aren’t!” I said, deadpan.

“Jerk!” she laughed. “I was never anything but sweet to you. Well, except when you didn’t deserve it!”

“I think you might be engaging in some selective memory, there, Sweetheart. That last summer together wasn’t what I would call sweet.”

She sighed, “No, it wasn’t, but I was really thinking about High School. Do you ever wish you were fifteen again? Or thirteen? Or whatever?”

“Not really. You know my take on that.”

“I do. But some days I wish I’d accepted your offer that day in the apartment. Things would have been very different.”

“Yes, they would have. And who’s to say they would have been better? Maybe in that alternate timeline the helicopter is five minutes slower getting to you. Or Al Barton is five minutes further away from the hospital. Or he’s not even on call.”

“I know, but still.”

“Bethany, would you give up Nicholas to go back?”

“No!”

“Nicholas is half Bethany Krajick and half Nick Evans.”

“You are so damned logical at times! You’re worse than Commander Data!”

I chuckled, “I didn’t tell you what Abbie said.”

“Which was?”

“She compared me to Data and said that I should turn off my ‘emotion chip’ and fuck you so hard that you were unable to walk, talk, or even see straight the next morning.”

“Sold! Let’s skip the movie!”

“Look ... will you be honest with me, and answer me truthfully?”

“Sure.”

“Could you really do that? Do you think I could really do that? Isn’t our relationship far more complex? Your son told me that you love me. And I told him I love you. Can we really turn that off for one night of passion?”

“I’m willing to try!” she giggled.

“Bethany...” I sighed.

“It’s a difficult question to answer.”

We were both quiet for a bit, and ate our ice cream.

“I didn’t tell you before,” I said, “but in Chicago, when we were having the ‘guys only’ sauna, Nicholas asked if you and I were trying to make a baby.”

“What?!”

“He’s not dumb, Sweetheart. First of all, remember who his best friend is.”

“Jesse.”

“Exactly. And you know Jesse’s mind on that topic. But I want to point out that despite her mom’s best efforts to hide it, Francesca knew that Carol was sleeping with Stan! She said they were trying to make a baby and she was about the same age as Nicholas is now. And we don’t hide the fact that we sleep in the same bed.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we just cuddled and that we weren’t trying to make a baby. Fortunately, Mr. Big Mouth didn’t make some comment about my vasectomy and not being able to make a baby! But what I told Nicholas led to the talk about why we weren’t having sex.”

“With a two-year-old?”

“And Jesse and Matthew. Albert and Michael were kind of oblivious, though they were there. But the girls have talked to Jesse about good touching and bad touching, and about not doing things with someone unless you want to and they want to. I told Nicholas we weren’t trying to make a baby because we didn’t want to. Because we love each other.”

“This is surreal even given how long I’ve known you! You’re discussing our sex life, or lack of one, with my two-year-old son and your not-quite-six-year-old and four-year-old sons.”

“I find the alternative to be foolish in the extreme. Trying to hide things which are obvious only creates future problems. As I said, Francesca figured out her mom was having sex with Stan despite Carol’s attempts to hide it. Which is healthier, Doctor Krajick?”

“OK, but still!” she laughed. “You have to admit it’s strange.”

“I suppose it is. We need to finish our ice cream so we can get to the movie.”

“Drat! I thought you’d take Abbie’s advice! And I heard Jessica tell you that your test was azoospermic.”

“Yes, she did. But what happens in the morning?” I asked.

“Well, if you take Abbie’s advice, I won’t be able get out of bed, talk to you, or even see you!” she giggled.

“Yes, but after that? Next week? Next month? Next year?”

“I can’t predict the future and neither can you,” she said. “So when you finish your ice cream, you are taking me home and fucking me unconscious. Period. No arguments.”

December 7, 1991, Milford, Ohio

Bethany sighed deeply when we disentangled on Saturday morning. I knew the feeling, as I’d very much enjoyed the warmth of her naked body next to mine. I climbed out of bed, put on my robe, and went to take a shower. Ten minutes later, I was back, fully dressed, and Bethany hadn’t even moved.

“Sweetheart, your mom says breakfast in ten minutes,” I said.

“Ugh,” she groaned.

“Time to get up!”

“But it’s so warm in bed. Well, not as warm as when you were next to me.”

“Come on, get up!”

“Fine,” she sighed, slowly climbing out of bed. “You were right, by the way.”

“I usually am!” I chuckled.

“That doesn’t make me any less frustrated right now, but the closeness was very important to me.”

“I took a BIG risk, Sweetheart.”

“I’m a good negotiator!”

“But?”

“But I STILL want you to fuck me silly!” Bethany said fiercely. “As much as I enjoyed sleeping naked in your arms, your steadfast refusal to even kiss me in a sexy way PISSED ME OFF!”

That last bit was said with mock anger, and she started laughing.

“You agreed with me, in the end,” I said.

“I know,” she sighed. “And I’ll come up to Chicago for New Year’s and talk with Kara and Jessica as we agreed. It does make sense.”

“If we’re going to do this, and there is no guarantee we will, we have to ALL agree on what the rules are.”

“You still don’t think we should?”

“I don’t. But...” I sighed, “you’re my Sweetheart.”

“Which is both the problem and the solution, isn’t it?”

“Very good, Doctor Krajick. It’s the very reason I want to, and the very reason I can’t. But you need to get a shower so we can have breakfast and I can go get beat up by Doctor Mercer for an hour or so.”

“Beat up?”

“Not intentionally, and honestly, I’m the one beating up myself because of what happened between Stephanie and me.”

“Ed says they only come over for Sunday dinner. Well, I guess he comes to breakfast and Guys’ Night, and she goes to Girls’ Night Out.”

“Yes. That’s Doctor Mercer’s prescription. And I don’t talk to my sister one-on-one at all.”

“Given the last private thing she said to you, I don’t see how you could have done anything differently. Your wives were exactly right. Well, and so were you, to tell them and Doctor Mercer immediately,” she said. “But tell me, how is Jess doing?”

“Surprisingly well. That night in the hotel with the three of us let us have a really good talk. We worked through some things, and then we saw Doctor Green, which always helps. She did start reading about the summer after High School, though, so I expect some rough patches in the next week.”

“The situation with you, Jennifer and Stephanie?”

“Yeah. And lucky me, I get to tell Doctor Mercer about that today.”

“No WONDER you aren’t happy about going there this morning.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed.

An hour later, I was sitting on Doctor Mercer’s couch, relaying the story. I’d tried to skip it, but as Doctor Mercer probed for the extent of our sexual activity, as well as the times we’d tried to end it, I didn’t have much choice but to reveal that it had happened.

“I suppose at this point, I should cease being shocked,” Doctor Mercer said. “Do you know if that was her only true same-sex encounter?”

“The other ones I know of were like the one I told you about with the two girls. To my knowledge, the only girl my sister ever really made love with was Jennifer. They did so again, when Jennifer came to visit me in Chicago after Kara and I broke up.”

“Were you with them?”

“No. Jennifer and I agreed we wouldn’t sleep together because it could interfere with fixing our relationship.”

Doctor Mercer shook her head, “You and Jennifer often used abstinence to make sure you were thinking clearly. And it seems to have worked. But you never used it with anyone else.”

“Not really. Sure, there were periods of decreased activity, or the ‘sexual fast’ for the month before my wedding, but no, only Jennifer and I used it that way.”

“And I believe you are of the opinion that had she not been averse to penetration, you would have married her, and someone like Josie or Kara would have been the third person in the relationship.”

“I suppose so, yes. But who knows?”

“And you and Jennifer have a very close relationship now, and sex doesn’t, well, interfere, in it. Similar to those periods.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Though there was speculation that Jennifer wanted to end the abstinence. But I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to get into THAT discussion with Doctor Mercer.

“How do you feel about that threesome?”

“Now? I believe it was a huge mistake. But then? It was supposed to be the end of my sexual relationship with my sister. But it didn’t turn out that way. As I’ve said, it was one of the many times we tried to break it off. Mostly at my urging. But I always let her have me when she really wanted me. I was pretty weak.”

“Once you taste the forbidden fruit, and like it, it’s hard to give it up. It was Jessica that finally forced the issue, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but whomever I had married, it would have ended. It had to at that point. And the last time? It felt weird.”

“Your sense of the problem was developing, I suspect.”

“Yes. I mean, I knew, intellectually, it was wrong from the start. But sometime in ‘84 or ‘85, I began having very serious second thoughts. There were strong pushes from Karin and Anala that really jarred my thinking and pushed me to reconsider what I’d done.”

“I’m going to ask you the questions I’ve asked you every time. Remember, you must be completely forthright with me.”

I nodded, “Yes, of course.”

“Do you have any sexual feelings towards your sister? Any urge to be with her?”

“No.”

“If you were guaranteed to be able to get away with it, with nobody ever finding out, would you do what she asked that day through the car window?”

“No.”

“And the last one, and I understand how it upsets you, but it’s vital. Do you have any sexual urges or feelings towards any of your children, or any sexual thoughts about them?”

“No!” I said firmly.

I’d exploded at her when she’d first asked that last question, but she’d gently explained that someone in my situation, an older male sibling who had had sex with a younger sibling, was much more likely to abuse his own children. It had taken her ten minutes to get me to even speak coherently to her the first time she’d asked it, but eventually, I understood why she had to ask the question.

“Good. Now, back to the matter at hand...”

At the end of the hour, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, which was par for both the telephone and face-to-face sessions.

“How is she doing?” I asked.

Doctor Mercer pursed her lips, “She’s still talking to me. That’s the best I can say at the moment. And I suppose that’s the best I can hope for. She’s very upset with you for, as she put it, ‘betraying the beautiful relationship and making it something dirty’.”

“Which is not at all my opinion,” I said.

“No, it’s not. But as we discussed, she has to believe it is. If she felt you still believed what you do about it, there would be no hope of getting her past this. She’d never, ever give up her quest to have you to herself, have your babies, and, as she thinks, live happily ever after.”

“I never asked, because I was afraid to before, but what’s YOUR opinion of how I feel?”

“I think, advisedly, that you are able to view what happened with two lenses. One of those lenses is the seventeen-year-old boy who loved his sister so dearly that they could engage in a highly erotic, mutually satisfactory sexual relationship, and understand what it was and what its character was. The other lens is the critical one, the one of the adult who realizes just how heinous what he did was, and who regrets having done it. And would undo it if he could.

“What’s interesting, and one of the reasons I find counseling you both challenging and fulfilling, is that you are, generally speaking, mentally healthy, despite having more than a few internal dichotomies. The two positions I mentioned are diametrically opposed to each other, and in conflict with each other, but you can express both of them in a coherent manner. But not only that, you embrace both of them as true. And yet, you aren’t clinically insane. You are, as my father would say, an odd duck, Steve.

“We’ve discussed your views on abortion when you talked to me about Bethany originally, and then after your girlfriend had the abortion. It’s the same kind of thing. You hold extreme views on the topic. So extreme, in fact, that you are to the right of most who oppose abortion. And yet, you insist that it has to be legal, safe, and a woman’s choice. That makes NO sense to the vast majority of people, and in fact, would put you firmly on the left side of the pro-choice crowd, because you don’t think anyone should interfere in a woman’s choice for any reason. And yet, as I said, you are stridently anti-abortion.”

“And I’m stridently anti-war but pro-military. And a whole bunch of other things that most people don’t think make sense. But they all come down to the same thing - I want to make my own decisions and be left alone, and as such I have to leave everyone else alone as well. I think working through all of these philosophical questions, along with all the counseling I’ve had, has let me view my own actions through a very critical, often jaundiced, eye. So yes, I do believe exactly what you said.”

“I’m curious, and I suspect I know the answer, but what’s your opinion on homosexuality?”

“I fully support equal rights. I think Jennifer and Josie SHOULD be allowed to have a marriage license and all the state benefits that come with it. That said, I’d prefer there be NO state involvement of any kind, and no benefits to gain. It’s better to simply use contract law and let people make whatever arrangements they deem best for themselves.”

“One question, and I don’t think I’ve ever asked it, and I certainly didn’t make a note of it. Have you ever had a same-sex encounter?”

I chuckled, “No. I haven’t even been in a threesome where there was another guy. Not my thing. At all. If the Kinsey scale went negative, I’d be to the left of whatever the lowest heterosexual number is!”

“But homosexuality doesn’t offend you.”

“Why should it? What people do is their own business. Nobody is forcing me to do it. Hell, nobody’s even ASKED me to do it! And I think you can imagine why!”

“What about the threesome? Surely some young woman has asked about that.”

“Indeed. And I turn them down. One was quite insistent about it, and tried to encourage me to experiment, but I have zero interest. No, I have less than zero interest.”