Chapter 8: I’ll be Here!

January 14, 2001, Chicago, Illinois

🎤 Steve

On Sunday, Leigh arrived early, using Suzanne for what amounted to ‘cover’ for joining us for breakfast, after which the three of us went to the sauna which I had pre-heated.

“How are you doing?” Leigh asked when we sat down close together on one of the benches.

“I actually feel better than I have in a long, long time; mentally, I mean. The drugs aren’t clouding my mind, but they’ve taken the edge off my feeling that I have to DO something.”

“I have the impression you made a lot of snap decisions,” she said.

“Yes, I didn’t realize how compelled I felt to do so. Now, my thinking is more «lagom», but my gut reactions are still as strong as they were. I just don’t feel the need to act instantly.”

“Says the guy with a history of dragging out the decision to have sex with a girl for AGES!” Suzanne teased.

“That was intentional,” I replied. “It was a product of Bethany pushing her version of positive consent on me and a couple of sub-optimal experiences. Delay helped minimize that risk. But dragging things out wasn’t always good, because in some, it simply frustrated the girls. The manic phases were different, of course, and those were usually when I got into some kind of trouble.”

“Which is why you’ve been so careful with Mia.”

“Partly,” I replied. “The other part of it is she’s Jesse’s teammate and friend.”

“But he doesn’t care, right?”

“About Mia? No. He would be VERY annoyed if I were to be involved with Libby in any way, even inviting her to the Rap Session.”

“That does make sense, and I totally understand why you’re hesitant.”

“Did something happen?” Leigh asked.

“Mia thought she was ready for what she had been angling for, but it turns out she wasn’t. I had a pretty good idea that was true, and we had a talk where I think she had an ‘Aha!’ moment, but I’m not sure what that means.”

“There is another potential Circle 2 candidate,” Suzanne said.

“Circle 2?” Leigh asked.

“Well, if we’re the Inner Circle, that’s what I’d call the next circle - possible subversives who can bond closely with Steve, but not have a long-term relationship.”

“What do you consider long-term?” Leigh asked.

“That’s a good question,” Suzanne replied. “I’m not sure, really. Are you concerned I might think you aren’t long-term?”

Leigh nodded, “The thought had crossed my mind. And I wonder if there should be some kind of minimum commitment.”

“That’s a tough thing to do,” I said. “Things change and relationships change. I’m not saying this is going to happen, but I am sure there is some sequence of events which would lead to Suzanne altering her plan to stay with me for life.”

“Hang on a sec!” Leigh protested. “You’re married! Isn’t that a lifetime commitment?”

“Yes, but think about what I said.”

“Well, in the general case, I’d say divorce, but you don’t believe in that solution!”

“And yet Jess, Kara, and I came close to that when Jess was at several very stressful points of her medical training.”

“I didn’t know that!” Leigh exclaimed.

“Don’t feel bad,” Suzanne said, “I didn’t either.”

“The number that pops into my head is six or seven years,” Leigh said. “That’s about how long it will be from when I became Steve’s lover until I get my MBA. I know that’s a bit self-interested, but it makes sense. And I guess at that point I would move into Circle 2, because I’d have properly bonded with Steve.”

“I guess the question is how do we make a stable Inner Circle,” Suzanne replied, “and how do we go about a transition? And what are the conditions of membership?”

“We covered a few,” Leigh replied, “at least for girls - sexual exclusivity, participation in the Rap Sessions, acceptance of the subversive philosophy. Is virginity a requirement?”

“I’m not sure it’s a requirement,” Suzanne replied. “That would eliminate too many potential candidates.”

“Not as many as you might think,” I replied, “at least if things continue the way they’re going. But I agree it’s not a requirement. I think, ultimately, the key is the acceptance of the subversive philosophy. Everything flows from that.”

“True,” Leigh agreed. “It’s why I decided I had to sleep with you, and why I agreed to the threesome.”

“You’re OK with that?”

Leigh smiled, “It was certainly an interesting, fun, eye-opening experience, and I don’t regret it, but I don’t think I have any real inclination in that direction.”

Suzanne smiled, “So, exclusively heterosexual like Steve?”

“Yes, minus that fun experiment. And I do mean that - it was fun. How would you classify yourself then?”

“I think mostly heterosexual. I really enjoyed the threesome, and I’d willingly and enthusiastically do that again with Steve and the right girl. But in general? No. And alone with another girl? No.”

“I derailed the conversation,” Leigh said. “Who’s this potential Circle 2 person?”

“Birgit’s Social Studies teacher,” Suzanne said. “Steve and Birgit escorted her through the looking glass! I’m going to invite her to the next Rap Session.”

“That should prove interesting!” Leigh said, laughing.

“I will have to have a talk with Birgit about it,” I said. “It’s one of those things which simply can’t be discussed outside this house.”

“That should be a fun conversation with Miss ‘I want to sell defloration tickets to my friends’!” Suzanne teased.

“She was giving them away,” I chuckled. “Well, as far as I know, anyway!”

“And your wives are fully on board with this?” Leigh asked.

“Yes. It’s basically been the pattern of my entire life. There has always, always been a third girl. Suzanne intends to be the permanent third I’ve been searching for. You and the other girl in the ‘Inner Circle’ will be like the long-term girls I’ve had over the years who don’t live with us. And so long as everyone is on the same page, it works just fine.”

“Implying that there were one or more girls who weren’t on the same page?” Leigh asked.

“Yes. One specifically had the idea of displacing my wives. That was while Jess was struggling, and this girl saw her chance, as it were. A good chunk of it was my fault for not recognizing what was developing, but I wasn’t thinking completely clearly because of the situation with Jess. One of Suzanne’s most important duties is to serve as a check on my thinking, though I think the drugs are helping in that area.”

“What are we going to talk about today?” Leigh asked.

“I think the issue of society’s conformity, and how it stifles human progress. It’s going to be a repeat topic because right now we’re fighting a losing, rear-guard action. The goal is to eventually turn the tables, but that’s going to take time.”

“Fighting the tide of history?” Suzanne asked. “Society has always demanded conformance. You make the point about Socrates regularly.”

“That’s true,” I replied. “The difference is, Socrates could have accepted banishment because there were plenty of alternative places he could have gone. That’s no longer true. Governments were not able to exert the kind of control over the populace as they are now, and there were plenty of places you could go to escape whatever social pressures to which you didn’t want to be subjected.

“Think about as recently as a hundred years ago in the US - there was so much territory and so little government, that you could easily find a place where nobody would, or for the most part, even could, bother you. You could be anonymous, change your name, and be whomever you wanted to be. Nowadays, you can’t do anything without government approval, which requires submitting completely to the system.

“That conformity is enforced by licensing schemes, zoning, and regulation, and there is no way to just pick up and move from say, Rotterdam to Plymouth. Or from Palmyra, New York, to Nauvoo, Illinois, and eventually Utah Territory.”

“The Pilgrims I get,” Leigh said. “Palmyra, New York?”

“Mormons,” I replied. “Utah Territory was the clue if you didn’t know about the Grove Experience and the discovery of the Golden Plates.”

“I know zero about Mormonism!”

“It’s, in effect, a gnostic version of Christianity, which claims special knowledge imparted to Joseph Smith by the Angel Moroni. When Smith died, the Quorum of the Twelve took over, and Brigham Young led them to Utah Territory where they founded Salt Lake City.”

“Wait!” Leigh protested. “‘Quorum of the Twelve’? Like Battlestar Galactica?”

I chuckled, “Exactly like Battlestar Galactica! Glen Larson, the creator of the series, was a Mormon and incorporated a lot of Mormon theology into the series.”

“Do you know anything about Scientology?” she asked.

“It’s just another UFO cult,” I replied.

“A UFO cult?”

“According to L. Ron Hubbard, an evil galactic overlord named Xenu loaded space planes that looked like DC8s with rebels from his planets, sent them to Teegeeack, which is Earth, chained them to volcanos, and nuked them. The souls of all of those beings, called Thetans, are now infesting all of us who aren’t ‘clear’! All we need is an ‘e-meter’ and ‘auditing’ and we can ‘blow off’ those ‘Body Thetans’ who cause all of our problems. Then we become an ‘Operating Thetan’ and can advance to OT VIII! Hubbard died before OT IX through OT XV were revealed, and they may not even exist.”

“You CAN’T be serious!” Suzanne protested.

“Oh, I’m more than serious. Check out the website www.xenu.net which is the home of ‘Operation Clambake’ and exposes all the Scientology secrets. If you follow the Scientology system, you end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting what amounts to a UFO cult created by a hack sci-fi writer.”

“When you and Leigh are fooling around, I want to check that out! OK to use the computer in your office?”

“Of course.”

“What do we do about the demand for conformity?” Leigh asked.

“Well, first, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Right now, moral panic is sufficient to move enough people that the subversives can’t get a real audience, but that day will come. It reminds me of ‘Best of Both Worlds’, the TNG episode. My response is the same as Picard’s to the Borg. He said that our culture is based on freedom and self-determination. The Borg replied that freedom was irrelevant and so was self-determination. They insisted that we must comply. Picard’s response was ‘We would rather die’. I’d say that nails the answer.

“There’s another thing he said, this time in ‘The Drumhead’ - ‘Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged’. I’d say that also nails it perfectly. Think about the well-earned animus I have for DCFS and other similar agencies. Or the complete bankruptcy of the ‘think of the children’ hectoring to get adults to give up their rights. So far, those tactics have been very successful. And they’ll be even more successful in the future, with the subversives fighting the rear-guard action until things are as bad as they were in Nineteen Eight-Four.”

“And you’re recruiting rebels from the waist down?” Leigh asked with a smirk.

“Not just, but yes. We’re not there yet, but I see the signs of people believing that book is a manual rather than a warning. All it will take is the right event to trigger the tightening of security and the increase in surveillance. Right now, things are backwards, and they’ll continue to be backwards.”

“Backwards?” Suzanne asked.

I nodded, “Yes. People should not fear the government; the government should fear the people!”

Suzanne nodded, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.“

“Yes, though unfortunately, we’ve lost touch with the point that true safety cannot be destructive of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The entire point of creating a government with limited powers and creating the Bill of Rights was an attempt to keep the people safe from a potentially powerful central government. It failed miserably. Something is going to happen and the Bill of Rights will come under even more intense attack.”

“Like what?” Suzanne asked.

“If I knew, I might be able to do something about it! It could be civil unrest like in the 60s that leads to a crackdown. It could be a presidential assassination or other violence, similar to the Weathermen, the SLA, or the SDS, that leads to some kind of crackdown. It could be some cataclysmic natural disaster or global pandemic which causes disruption and is a pretext for a crackdown. A natural disaster is the most likely scenario in my mind - the ‘Big One’ in California being the prime suspect, so to speak. Or it could be some kind of serious terrorist attack, though short of an improvised nuke, I’m not sure what a terrorist group could do that would be large enough to set off a serious assault on individual rights. The natural disaster is the thing that will do it, at least as I see it.”

“Sorry,” Leigh asked, “SDS? SLA? Weathermen?”

“The schools suck,” I sighed. “They were groups who used violence in an attempt to bring about societal change. Let’s talk about this at the Rap Session, but you might know the SLA because of Patty Hearst.”

“Who?”

“Kill me now!” I groaned, but then remembered quickly it wasn’t her fault. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. As I said, the schools suck. Patty Hearst was an heiress who was kidnapped by the SLA - the Symbionese Liberation Army - twenty-seven years ago. You weren’t even born, so you obviously wouldn’t remember it, but the fact that you don’t know about it frightens me in ways I’m not sure you can even imagine.”

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?”

“That’s the first point I’d make, yes. The second is that it’s difficult to understand the 70s and 80s without understanding the 60s, and you can’t understand the 60s unless you understand the 50s and World War II. And so on.”

“Where do you start then? ‘In the beginning’?”

“Or with the ‘Big Bang’,” I chuckled. “But no; I think for understanding where we are now, you start with Ancient Greece, then Rome, then follow the threads to the modern day. The problem we’re discussing is how I actually met Birgit’s teacher, Alicija Czerwinski. Birgit pointed out that she made a very biased statement about the start of World War II. Birgit was right, but her approach was wrong, because she pressed the issue at an inappropriate time.”

“I’m afraid to even hazard a guess about the true origins of World War II.”

“To be flip, I’ll say the fall of the city of Rome in AD476. But actually it’s only a little flip, and one could make a reasonable argument for setting the origins in the late 4th century when the Germanic tribes began migrating into Roman territory in large numbers. The western part of the Empire was already collapsing at that point, but I think that’s where you have to start because from then until 1989, it was a matter of asking the question ‘What is Germany?’.”

“That sounds WAY different from what I heard in school.”

“Shocking,” I said dryly. “But even if we fast-forward, we have to either look at the Congress of Vienna or the Treaty of Versailles.”

“I’m assuming you have some books to suggest?”

“Of course,” I grinned.

“Suzanne, can I ask a favor?”

“Sure. What?”

“Would you mind leaving so Steve and I can take a whirlpool bath and fool around in here?”

“Not at all! See you guys at lunch!”

Suzanne kissed me, left the sauna, and closed the door behind her. I got up and adjusted the controls, then turned on the tap to fill the whirlpool with very warm water. I helped Leigh into the tub, then got in. We sat down with her in front of me, and between my legs. She leaned back against me and I wrapped my arms around her. When the tub was full, I shut off the tap and turned on the whirlpool jets. We sat quietly for about five minutes, enjoying the warm, moving water before Leigh spoke.

“May I ask a question?”

“Always.”

“I’m curious about your agreement with your wives that allows what we’re doing. Did they know beforehand?”

“Absolutely. Kara and I have known each other for over twenty years, and we first dated when I was a Senior in High School and she was a Junior. We dated, but she knew I was seeing other girls, and when we first met, I was planning a future with ‘Mom One’.”

“I thought she was exclusively lesbian.”

“Growing up in the 70s in a conservative, rural county of Ohio didn’t make things easy on her. She was very confused about her sexuality, and the social pressure to conform didn’t help at all. She knew, very early on, that she was lesbian, but struggled mightily. We had all kinds of ups and downs and our relationship alternated between heaven and hell until she finally met ‘Mom Two’ at Stanford. Josie helped Jennifer figure things out, and once they agreed to be together, they asked me to help them have Jesse. All that while I was dating Kara, though we had our serious problems as well - what we called our ‘Year in the Wilderness’.

“Along the way there was a girl named Stephie who I thought I might end up with, though she would have required exclusivity, something Kara, by that time, did not. But Stephie always really belonged to Jason, and she realized that and I let her go to him, which was a good thing, because he was the person to walk with her down the path life forced her to walk. After she died, Jason married Abbie.”

“Hang on a sec; could you have been exclusive with Stephie?”

“I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure she felt I couldn’t, which was a small part of why she went with Jason. In reality, they’d known each other from before they started school, and were each other’s first kiss in fifth grade. They’d have been each other’s first, but he ended up dating another girl because he and Stephie were too much ‘brother and sister’ in their minds. They figured it out later.”

“Just curious; go on.”

“Anyway, after Kara’s and my Year in the Wilderness and after Stephie decided to be with Jason, Kara and I were working out the terms of our relationship, and truthfully, she was going to be ‘second wife’ with Bethany as ‘first wife’, but not sharing the way Kara and Jess do, if you know what I mean.”

“No threesomes!” Leigh said with a soft laugh. “Bummer for you!”

“True, and very likely Bethany would have required exclusivity within that arrangement, and given her current attitudes, I’m pretty sure she would have insisted on it, if not right away, eventually. But, in the end, as it always did when Bethany and I tried to be more than best friends with awesome benefits, it blew up in our faces. By that time, she’d had her horrible accident, which is how Kara and I met Jessica. Jessica immediately began actively trying to involve herself in my life, which I later found out was because Al Barton insisted she do it, and his reasoning turned out to be one hundred percent correct.