Chapter 27: Reflections and Friendly Arrangements

The Cessna 182 seemed to slide almost frictionless through the grey cloud. Every direction the pilots looked there was only a light gray. There was no sense of speed or motion, because all the visual cues that would suggest that were gone. There were only grey and tiny droplets of water bouncing around on some of the windows. Even the sense of being in a cloud was missing. The fog over the coast was thick extending from a couple of hundred feet above the Gulf Coast up to about two thousand feet above the water and sea coast terrain.

Pete said, “Tell me where you are?”

Dave rattled off, “I’m over the Gulf about opposite the city, at a thousand feet, headed north. I expect to be turned onto the localizer for runway 14 in about three minutes. I expect two turns: the first from my northerly heading to a northeast heading, and then a second turn to make the intercept. I should be about two miles outside the outer marker at that point. The gear will go down with the rest of the GUMPS check then.” Dave glanced down at his instrument map to confirm his location.

“Very good. You have this thing nailed. I think you’re ready for your exam. I couldn’t do better at this than you are.”

“Thanks, but don’t blow smoke up my ass.”

“No, I mean it. You are smooth. Every instrument gets seen in your scan. You hold heading, altitude, speed, and attitude perfectly, even when I cover up some of the instruments.”

“It’s easy in this kind of air.”

“You needed some real IFR. I’m glad the fog materialized as predicted last night. When I got my instrument rating, I’d never flown in actual instrument conditions, and I mean zero-zero shit, like this stuff. I’d done a couple of rain storms, but that was all.”

The radio crackled, “November 4-8 Golf, turn right to 0-7-0. We’ll have another turn for you in about three miles onto the localizer.” Dave responded properly to the instruction.

Dave made a perfect procedure turn and rolled out right on the heading. A few minutes later he was turned to a heading of 120 degrees, intercepted the localizer, and then the glide slope and started his descent through the gray soup. The GUMPS check got done, too: gas flow, undercarriage-gear down, mixture, propeller pitch set, and service or radio contact, as appropriate.

Pete said, “This stuff will burn off in an hour. We’ll park and get a cup of coffee. My treat.”

Dave broke out of the fog bank about 300 feet above the ground, and landed normally. They taxied to the FBO and took their time parking and then going over to the main airport terminal at SRQ for a cup of coffee.

After they were seated, Pete asked, “How do you do it?”

Dave looked surprised, “Do what?”

“Keep up with all the women. I don’t mean the sex, although that’d be nice to know, too. I mean emotionally and psychologically.”

Dave thought a minute, “I’m not entirely sure I’m understanding the question, but let me try this. Emotionally, I love all the women so I can just be natural and genuinely express my affection for each of them. I’m not always great at remembering what each one is up to and so sometimes I need a refresher. My wives know of my little problem and so sometimes they’ll help me through a conversation by leading questions to whomever.”

“Were you always omni-female? I mean do you like every woman you meet?”

“I do like every woman I meet,” Dave grinned. “I didn’t always. For ten years I liked only Alice. I was scared to be in the presence of any other woman, regardless of age or social position. I was intimidated, didn’t know what to say, felt like an oaf, and afraid they might want to do something risqué that would show my ignorance.

“As Alice and I loosened up, Pam came into our life. I was unusually open when that happened, but I was friends with Dori, Wendy, and Kat, too. Anyway, Pam did want to do sexual things, and so we did – the other women, too, and I discovered it was pretty nice being with someone other than my spouse. To this day I love variety.”

“Did Alice know about Pam. I don’t think I heard how that all started.”

“Oh, yes. We’d both been challenged by Dori to flirt with someone of the opposite sex. Alice encouraged me to pursue Pam while she watched me work up courage to see her with another man. She flirted with a couple of other men, like Owen, and when the time came was finally with Dev as her first extra-marital sex. I was there fucking Dori and watched her. I’ll never forget. She was right there on a few feet away when we did the dirty; with the others, too.

“Anyway, my fear or embarrassment in dealing with women gradually vanished as I got more experience with them. For a little while longer I think I felt uncomfortable around older women, but then Grace, Emily, and Donna beat that out of me as they came along and showed me how nice mature sex can be. Now, my biggest problem is remembering everything about each one of them. And, just for the record, I like the guys, too, but more as buddies than sex objects.”

Pete smiled, “You must have a computer for a brain and you put everything in the right file. There are about thirty women and sixteen other guys to keep track of, plus now ten kids with more on the way. You’ll need an encyclopedia to keep track. Seems like we’re always having a birthday celebration or toast.”

“I am an engineer. We’re trained to think logically about everything, so I do keep some stuff on my laptop and iPad. A calendar app helps a lot, especially for birthdays and special anniversaries. Alice is better at remembering everything than I am without the electronic aids. Pam and my other wives are, too. I think I let business intervene too much in my life.”

Pete said, “The old work-life balance issue. Karma, I guess.”

Dave nodded. “I’m better than I was.”

“I know from hearing the story that Dori gave you and Alice little challenges to help you loosen up, and that those worked and got you to where you are today, but what I never hear was what your emotions were while you going through that process.”

Dave chuckled, “My head was in a state of dis-assembled chaos. I was so keyed up I could only sleep about four hours a day for months, maybe even our entire first year after we started our loosening up process. Part of it was the sex. No. A lot of it was the sex. That kind of symbolized the complete renovation of the way we thought about each other and the world.

“We agreed to keep each other, keep the house, and to keep our jobs. Other than that we threw literally everything else about our lives in the air to see what came down and in what pattern. Every principle or value we were raised to abide and our wedding vows got tossed out or rewritten in some way. While all that was going on, we started to have sex with other people. Sex, for us, was a big deal, and it still is. I often correct people and say we ‘make love’ instead of fuck or have sex, but at some level it was all the same.

“Moreover, we couldn’t get enough of it. We’d been VERY regimented and almost chaste in our sex lives. Once or twice a week, on schedule, at best, was the rule, but our church was beating into us that sex was ultimately a bad thing.

“Well, we quickly learned that we LOVED sex. We went from zero to sixty miles per hour in our sex lives in 3.2 seconds, so to speak. One week we were barely doing the deed, and the next we were doing it at least once a day, and looking for time to do more. It was a renaissance for us; like coming out of the dark ages.

“At the same time, we were both in turmoil. Alice handled it better than I did, to tell the truth. I was afraid in some ways – scared shitless: afraid that I’d lose her; afraid that I’d never find a solid place to stand again; afraid that I end up alone in life. I was really in crisis. In hindsight, I should have gone into counseling, but that also scared me because I was afraid that I’d be forced back into the way I had been, and I didn’t want that either.

“I guess that gives you a sample of what I was feeling at the time. I learned since then that you can’t keep up that level of angst for too long. Things start to settle down. You almost force them to. You pick a few simple things and nail them down at first, and say to yourself, ‘I won’t let this change any more. This is no longer fluid or in motion or in play.’”

Pete asked, “Like what?”

Dave thought, “We had been religious – Bible church twice a week and all. We kept talking about going back. One day, I just said ‘We’re not going back there ever again. That would be a huge step in the wrong direction.’ Alice agreed with my decision for herself. We ended up challenging all we’d learned about Christianity, God, and the humankind; we rewrote what we fundamentally believed.

“Another example came up when Dori had our group all swap ‘wives’ or partners for a week. Alice disappeared with Owen, and I was sure I’d lost her to him. I had more angst and bile in my veins than blood that week, even though Christie and Heather had replaced Alice and Pam in my life for that time. I finally decided in a hard decision that I could lose Alice; that if she thought she’d be happier with Owen; I’d help facilitate that for her because I loved her and wanted her to find her own nirvana. I think I understood love for the first time that week when I thought about letting Alice go to find her happiness with someon else. I’d learned I loved Heather especially during that week, and I decided I wanted her close in my life. I started to nail down decisions and the way I felt about certain situations.”

“But Alice stayed with you.”

“She did, by a hair’s breadth, I think. When she came back and realized what I’d been through, she nailed me down in her mind, too. We did that for each other, and we’ve never waivered since. Owen is probably her favorite lover, but he’s never going to have her attention and love the way I do. I work to keep it that way, because one of the other things I learned on my journey is to not take others for granted, especially the people I love.

Pete said, “But isn’t that everyone in the Circle?”

“Yes, and a few others.”

“What do you do to stop from taking someone for granted?”

“It’s harder than it sounds. When we get familiar with someone and we really know them, we think we know how they think. I’m constantly stopping myself and saying, ‘Wait, that statement about them might NOT be something they agree with any longer. I defer to that person, even Alice and my other wives. I just might not know what they’d do in some situation or what they’d say.

“In another way, I try not to discount some accomplishment they make, even just making it to the end of a normal week at work. What seems inconsequential to me might be a major milestone for them. I also don’t assume I won’t ever lose something that someone offers me, such as love or friendship. I constantly reinforce my love for others – vocally and frequently. I don’t assume that will always be there for me to draw on unless I fertilize the garden, so to speak.”

“You’re very thoughtful,” Pete said.

“I try to be. It’s also part of my spirituality. For me, the way I express and expand MY spirituality is how I interact with others. I’ve thought a lot about karma, and what the term means and how I want that force to impact my life.”

Pete said, “Isn’t karma like the expression, ‘What goes around, comes around.’”

“Exactly, at least in it’s simplest form. So, if I don’t want bad shit to come back around, I better not be giving out too much of it myself. It’s the Golden Rule in different words in some ways.”

“Don’t you ever get mad at people or peeved with someone in the Circle?”

“Sure, but I try to practice what I’ve come to call ‘constructive anger’ or ‘constructive irritation’. I’m not perfect at it, by far, but what I try to do is make myself stop and analyze why I’m feeling that way, see what value that I hold got insulted and whether that’s really worth carrying my grudge about. I may make a conscious decision to Let Go, or decide to talk to the person and express my frustration or whatever I’m feeling. Fortunately, those situations are rare. Often, I can just drop the issue without remorse. I evaluate the outcome based on the greatest value for each of the parties, minimum damage, the situation, and so on.”