Chapter 19: A Rhetorical Question

Wednesday evening when Dave got home from work, he was surprised to see Jason and Robyn Riggs sitting at one of the high-top tables with Dale and Susan. They already had drinks. He walked over and said hello.

Dale explained, “They were here on the weekend, and I thought I’d show them what a weekday ‘homecoming’ was like.”

Dave chuckled, “OK. If you want to participate you need to take a little initiative to get things started then people will know it’s all right to cross a boundary.”

On that note, Dave leaned over and gave Susan a passionate kiss that lasted quite a few seconds. As they parted, there were some barely audible whisperings between the two that clearly indicated the love and affection the two felt for each other. He then entered into a backslapping guy hug with his friend.

Dave looked to Jason and Robyn. The both laughed, but Robyn stood and came into Dave’s arms. “Is this the right idea?” she asked. The two embraced and entered a kiss that was a near duplicate of the one he’d shared with Susan. He maintained the kiss a little longer. As they parted, he whispered to her, “Oh, yes. You’re going to fit in here just perfectly. I’m glad because I like you – a lot.”

Robyn grinned at him, and then Dave did the man hug with Jason and included fist bumps.

As others came on the patio, they greeted Dave, Dale, and Susan with the kisses and hugs. Occasionally, someone would move to include Jason and Robyn in their homecoming tradition but in a more measured manner.

Robyn eventually asked, “Is it like this all the time?”

Aaron responded, “Every day, although on weekends we come and go with errands and such so it’s not so prevalent.”

“And everybody works out and away somewhere?”

“Not everybody,” Dave said. He pointed at Kat and Mike, sitting together with baby James in his arms. “Mike and Kat work together in a computer lab he has in his house about two-thirds of the time. The rest of the time he has a studio off Route 301. Bobbie and Maddy are our chef and nanny, so they’re here all the time. Holly, Pam, Julie, and Owen are often working out of their homes if they’re not traveling, as do some of the others. Clarisse, Rachel, Ashley, and Heather are all seniors at the university, so they’re home a lot but studying. All of them have been taking course overloads so they can finish. Most of the rest of us work outside the Circle: the public electric utility, Bank of America, Knightsbridge Manufacturing, Wendy’s Boutique, the Club Ecstasy, Atlantic Airlines, and Sky Ranch Airport account for a few of our diverse jobs.

“Wow, this really is an eclectic bunch, but the greetings ... the hugs and kisses.”

Dave teased, “How do you greet Jason when he’s been away for a while?”

Robyn thought, “He doesn’t go away. We work together, so we see each other a hundred different times a day.”

“And so you never kiss him and tell him you love him many times each day?”

“Errr, when we ... you know ... make love.”

Dave watched Jason start to pay attention to the conversation, “Oh, but Jason often comes and tells you what a sweetheart you are, and how marrying you was the best decision of his life, and things like that.”

Robyn said defensively, “No, but I know he loves me.”

“How?” Dave asked. He held his hand up defensively, “That’s a rhetorical question. You do not need to answer it. Also, don’t get defensive. I’m serious in trying to get you to think about it.

“We all get in ruts. Alice and I were in one for nearly a decade, and except for a few interesting milestones in there such as getting engaged and married, the rest of the time we were in a rut. And then we got challenged to loosen up. Some of those challenges got each of us thinking about what we did to express our love to each other and to the other people we cared about.

“At first, we thought it had to do with sex and making love, but then we realized that there also needed to be a hundred or a thousand other little things that carried that message. One of the best ways I know to communicate that is to hug and kiss someone and to verbally tell them I love them. Susan and I made a little more of a production of it for your benefit, and I took advantage of the moment to extend my kiss with you because I wanted to and you seemed willing, but doing what I just said only takes a few seconds with each person. That’s why this hour of each day is important to each of us in the Circle; it’s when we tell the people we love that we love them.”

“Wow. I think you just started a new celebratory rite in the Riggs’ household. We should be doing that three times a day or more, especially when we know the other person has something that is worrisome or angst producing hanging over their head.”

Dave smiled benignly. They got his message.

After a few twists and turns in the conversation, Robyn asked Dave, “What did you and your wives do to loosen up? You used that term a little while ago, and I heard someone else use it. Maybe it’s something Jason and I should do.”

Dave started, “First of all, it was only ‘wife’ at the time – Alice and me. We’d been raised as fundamentalist evangelicals, taught that sex was bad, taught that you obeyed certain verses in the Bible and ignored others, and followed the directives of our parents and the pastor. I had a lot of freedom, but threw in with Alice who had much stricter parents.

“One day Alice caught Dori fucking some guy in the parking lot at work. That was the turning point because it triggered various revelations to Alice by Dori about her lifestyle and openness of their marriage, and started a series of challenges Dori gave to Alice and me to help us loosen up.

“The first few were kind of predictable: start to dress more seductively, reveal more skin, flash strangers here and there, flash your boss, watch some porn, and learn to sexually tease other men. Alice was superb at it. I was changing, too; learning how to not only tolerate what she was doing, but also fully enjoying it in many dimensions.

“At the same time, we were friends with three other couples, one of whom were Dori and Ty. Dori was urging the other two through similar challenges. When we got together on most Saturday nights, we started to swap partners at first to make out with them, but that escalated. The make out sessions got increasingly sexual.

“Pam came into our lives about that time. We both fell in love with her and she with us, so we invited her to become a wife. A couple of weeks later, Alice had her first sex with another male. She loved it, and so did I – I was there and saw it happen. I thought I’d dissolve in a blubbering mass of cuckolded flesh, but instead I loved the whole scene. I wasn’t humiliated; we don’t do that. She fell in love with Owen, and then spent a romantic week with him in Paris and Rome. While they were gone, I had Christie and Heather stay with me. Heather and I really bonded, and she also became our wife. Alice’s sister showed up for a visit and ended up becoming my fourth wife.

“While all that was happening, we were expanding the number of people we were having sex with. The common thread was that we really liked those people – even loved them, so that made it easy. One day we decided to live together, so the concept of the Circle was born, and then this cohousing project.” He gestured around him at the core, pool, and homes.

Robyn said, “Surely, you don’t love all of them the same?”

“No, but close,” Dave replied. “I described it to someone once as having multiple children and then getting asked which one you love the most. You love all of them, but an accurate answer to that question depends on each one’s behavior that day or even the last hour, how much quality time you’ve spent with each one, and myriad other things. The difference within the Circle is that many of us try to pick our partners for intimacy based on where we know there might be a deficiency – in other words, I make love to someone I haven’t been with for a while. There are twenty-eight Circle women, and only sixteen Circle men.”

“But sooner or later, over some time period, you fuck all the women?”

“Make love, yes.”

“So, you’ve done the young teens – Rachel and Ashley.”

“They’re no longer teens but when we first developed our relationship they were, and yes, I do. I love them.”

“And you make love to the mature women?”

Dave laughed, “I don’t know at what age to draw the line to answer that, but yes. I make love to ALL the women. I love them. Call me indiscriminate, but I have a warm and loving connection with every one of them. A couple carried or carry my child.”

“So, you’ve made love with Elise?”

“Yes.”

“The incest doesn’t bother you?”

“Consenting adults can do whatever they want about sex. We are sober, conscious, aware, and consenting adults, not under any pressures or duress, and we decided we wanted that kind of relationship. So, no.”

“Which Circle members are over forty-five?”

Dave had to think, “The women would include Grace, Donna, Emily, Elise, Joan – just barely, and Megan. The men include Roy, Derek, Jack, and Paul. Pete is knocking at that door soon, if he’s not already over the line.”

“To your earlier remark, who has carried your child?”

“Alice and I had Johnny. Pam and I will very shortly have a baby; we opted not to know the sex, so I can’t give you a name just yet. I may have been the sperm donor that rendered pregnant Wendy, Holly, Joan, and Susan. Why am I not leaping around, and why aren’t the two husbands to the married women at my throat? The answer is that we love each other. We reached the point that’s extremely difficult for many American men to contemplate: most of us care little about the paternity of our children. We will ALL raise them together, protect them, educate them, nurture them, and love them, regardless of whose little spermatozoa made the successful swim upstream to find the waiting egg and do the fertilization thing.”

Robyn looked surprised. “That is amazing, controversial, and abnormal by society’s standards.”

“And what do you say to the critics that might claim the Circle is nothing but a sex club established by a few males so they have a steady supply of pussy available?”

Dave didn’t accept the taunt. “I guess I’d say that we might ‘appear’ that way, but our behavior is to the contrary.”

“And what evidence would you cite?”

“Well, Your Honor, I bring forth as evidence the tenet of the Circle dealing with equality of ALL members regardless of age, sex, sexual preference, race, or family status, etcetera. Offers to have relations of a sexual kind are as often initiated by a female as a male. Due to the imbalance between the sexes in our membership, we have F-F-M sessions more frequently that M-M-F sessions, but the women prefer that, and have been vocal about that.”

Robyn commented, “Oh, yes, I recall you said something when I asked if you ‘let’ Alice do something, and you talked about how the females were not your possessions, nor were you theirs. I assume that would apply here.”

“Of course, it’s part of the egalitarian part of our creed. In love, we are all equal.”

“And Mr. Owen Bennett, billionaire extraordinaire, doesn’t get preferential treatment?”

Dave shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. He is quite insistent about not getting any favoritism. We have rarely taken advantage of him. The last time was when several of us joined him to fly in his private jet to Topeka on very short notice when one of our Circle members piloted and survived a major plane crash. Before that, I’d have to think hard.”

Robyn knew the story and nodded.

Dave laughed, “I can show you a check that Alice wrote a few years ago to Owen for $145.00. In the memo space it says, ‘For three tattoos’. Our first encounter with Owen, other than Alice flashing him, was when she engaged him to put three tats on her body. When all our relationships with him started and cemented, that’s all we thought he was – a really nice guy who worked in Greg’s Tattoo Parlor.”

“That’s amazing. I’d like to hear that full story sometime.”

“Get Alice to tell you. There was some sexy stuff attached to it because we were in the process of loosening up, and her run-in with him and subsequent actions were all part of one of our challenges. In those early stages, none of us knew he was ‘THE’ Owen Bennett.”

“That’s cute.”

“And you weren’t jealous of the sexy stuff that went on?”

“Of Owen or of any of the men that have made love with Alice or my other wives? The answer is solidly ‘No’. I experience compersion over the situation; meaning I hope they are having a good experience and feel loved by whomever they chose to be with – to make love with. Let me ask you, how did you feel seeing Jason make love with Susan while Dale was loving you?”

“Oh, right to the point. Some brief background. Jason and I have not been swingers or swappers before. We just got to loving Susan so much that we wanted something more in our relationship with her. Dale would come around too, and he’s so likeable that he’s also hard to ignore. I cautiously approached Susan one day, not too long ago. We kind of knew something about the Circle from the legal work Jason did for you, what he learned then, and subsequently small comments Susan would make about her weekend or such.

“Anyway, Susan lit up with enthusiasm about us doing something sexual together. She said she’d love it and knew that Dale would as well. That led to last week when we swapped.

“I loved the experience. I love Dale. He was so careful and romantic, but different and demanding in his own way. At the same time, I was unsure of what Jason would think of me fucking Dale, or how he’d end up feeling about Susan after they’d made love a couple of times and then slept together. It was only after we got home and talked that I really felt better about things. Was I jealous? I was but it went away; I was unsure of myself and how our marriage would handle this situation.

“And, I know, you’ll tell me that we should have had the discussions about how we’d feel BEFORE we did the swapping, but we didn’t. All we felt then was the lust and desire to be with them as a couple – our affection.”

Dave said, “So, how do you feel now? You were together again this afternoon, right?”

“Yes, and it was much better.”

“But there’s still a little uncertainty. Jason might fall in love with Susan and run away with her.”

“I guess that’s the feeling but I know he wouldn’t.”