Chapter 74: A Whimper, Not A Bang

April 5, 1997, Chicago, Illinois

“You missed cuddles this morning!” Birgit said accusingly when I walked into the house about 9:30am.

“I know, Pumpkin, but I had a work emergency and had to go see Aunt Joyce and Grandpa A.”

“And now we have to get ready for karate!”

“I know. We’ll have some family time this afternoon. I don’t have any plans.”

“Good!”

I hugged her and the rest of the kids, then went to find Kara. We hugged and kissed, and went straight upstairs to get ready for karate.

“Did you sort things out with your dad and Joyce?” she asked.

“We talked about things, but I haven’t made a decision as to how to proceed. I’m sorry I can’t share the details, but it will involve talking at length with Ben van Hoek.”

Kara smiled, “Becky is no threat at this point, and I have no worries about her.”

“I just needed to make sure I was open and forthright about it.”

“I know. But it’s not a concern. How did things go otherwise?”

“We’ll see what comes of the depositions. Right now, I think we have Dante on the ropes, but I’ve seen that movie before and the ending always seems to have him coming back like Jason or Michael Myers!”

“You don’t like those movies.”

“No, I don’t, but it’s still accurate.”

We finished changing and then went downstairs to get our daughters for the walk to the dojo. It was a fairly typical session, and when we finished, Kara, the girls and I headed home. We had lunch, and then Kara, the girls, and I spent the afternoon cuddling, playing games, and talking. The girls were happy that their brothers weren’t home, though I missed seeing the boys. Kara, the girls, and I prepared dinner, and Birgit supervised when Kara and I went to get Jessica at the hospital.

“Hi, Tiger!” Jessica exclaimed.

We hugged and kissed, and then my wives and I started home hand-in-hand-in-hand.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Busy. I don’t think I sat down for more than ten minutes all day. Nothing terrible, just busy. How was Cincinnati?”

“I always enjoy seeing Joyce, Jake, and the kids. Businesswise, we’re not sure of our next step. I told you about the situations with Dante and Lone Star. Anything exciting happen here?”

“Not really. Kara and I both taught yesterday, and last night the Jaegers and Quinns were over with their kids and joined us for homemade pizza.”

“And you survived with your son on a camping trip with Dave and his boys?”

“I’ll let you know when he’s home safe tomorrow!” Jessica replied.

“True,” I grinned, “he’s camping in Wisconsin and Packers fans are well-known to be completely deranged!”

“Very funny! And you don’t even pay attention to football!”

“No, but there are a few Packer fans at work, and they like to wear their Packer jerseys the way I like to wear my Penguins jerseys.”

“You do that to annoy the Blackhawks fans!”

“And your point is?” I asked with a grin.

“He enjoys annoying Penny even more!” Kara said.

I shook my head, “She and Terry are working very hard on their relationship, so we’ve both toned it down a bit.”

“You two will NEVER stop!” Jessica declared. “Any more than Jesse and Birgit will ever stop! They’ll have grandkids of their own and STILL be needling each other!”

“I think Jess has a burning desire to be ‘needled’,” Kara teased impishly.

“Excuse me?” I exclaimed in mock outrage. “‘Needled’?”

Jessica laughed softly, “Wow, Tiger! You usually aren’t touchy about that!”

“He’s just pretending to be upset,” Kara smirked. “Obviously!”

“Of course,” I replied, “‘Needle’ is the name of a sword in the book Jennifer gave me - A Game of Thrones.”

“Is the book any good?”

“It’s OK. I don’t think Martin is a very good writer, but the story is engaging enough that I can overlook that, at least so far.”

“So, about being penetrated repeatedly?” Jessica asked.

“I think that can be arranged!”

April 6, 1997, Chicago, Illinois

“Want to make a wager, Elizabeth?” I asked just before the Sunday Rap Session.

“Last time we did that, I was WAY off!” she said, shaking her head.

“Times have changed. But we have to be a bit careful about how we handle this with next Fall’s selectees in attendance.”

“Are you sure you want their first meeting to be about sex?”

“It won’t be about sex,” I replied. “If it gets to in-depth discussion, it’ll be about individual liberty and bodily autonomy. I have a bunch of forms with about a dozen questions that we’ll hand out when they come in, then quickly summarize the answers.”

“So, contrary to your High School, you expect the Juniors to mostly be virgins?”

I nodded, “That seems to be the trend. And it’s not a bad thing, in and of itself, so long as they have proper sex education and a healthy view of sex. I don’t think they do.”

“That’s for sure,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head. “There are days when I look at some of my progressive friends and ask what planet they’re from. You know how I feel about sexual assault, and I know you agree with me, but this undercurrent of all sex being about men exerting power over women is dangerous.”

“I’m curious. What danger do you see?”

“They’ll make it impossible for men and women to have healthy relationships and ruin sex for everyone!”

I chuckled, “The ‘Junior Anti-Sex League’!”

“No thanks!” she grinned. “I like eight hard, thick inches as often as I can get them!”

“I know horses who are jealous of ‘Big Ben’,” I chuckled.

“And I can deep throat those eight inches, too,” she smirked.

“TMI!” I chuckled.

“Oh, please! You’re the person I know who is most open about sex and not shy about discussing it!”

“Possibly,” I grinned.

“There are days when I wish you hadn’t been married when we first met. I’m pretty sure a ‘test drive’ might have been a hella good time!”

“I don’t quite measure up,” I replied with a grin to let her know I was teasing.

“And you know damned well that it’s not just size. Having a big dick and not knowing what to do with it is worse than having an average one and being an expert!”

“Slightly above average, according to my friend Melanie!”

“But she said that in High School, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your shoulders aren’t the only part of you that keeps growing until you’re around twenty!”

“Could be,” I grinned. “Are you and Ben going to get married?”

“Asks the man who wouldn’t even use a marriage certificate as toilet paper?”

“I said nothing about whether or not the state was going to give you its worthless blessing.”

“Taxes,” Elizabeth replied. “That has to suck for Kara.”

I shook my head, “Not really - she gets to file as ‘head of household’ so it’s not like she gets nailed by filing single. But in the end, our combined income is high enough that short of tax shelters, of which I’m always leery, we get nailed pretty good by Uncle Sam. Illinois has a flat tax, as mandated by the State Constitution, and at 2.5%, it’s not unreasonable. Now, if you want to talk property taxes, those increase at about four times wage growth and destroy any chance of building actual equity. And renters have it worse, because the property owner passes the taxes on to tenants in the form of rents, which renters can’t deduct from the income taxes.”

“I may regret this question, but what’s your idea on taxes?”

“Given where we are now, I’d prefer a VAT, excluding food, and a flat tax of 10% on income over twice the poverty level, with no other deductions and no tax shelters. And I’d refund all VAT to individuals at or below the poverty line. I’d also remove the income limits on Social Security and Medicare taxes. Basically, the more you make, the more you pay, and the more you spend, the more you pay.”

“We only have a minute, but what about people who make all their money investing?”

“Rather than a different capital gains tax, I’d impose a transaction tax. That encourages people to buy and hold stocks, rather than day trade, which I think is going to lead to a huge bubble in the stock market. It won’t be 1929, but it’s going to be ugly, especially in tech stocks.”

Just as I said that, others began arriving for the Rap Session.

“And remember,” I continued, “that’s not how I’d actually set things up, only how I’d start to get us out of the mess we’re in.”

Elizabeth nodded, but that had to be the end of the conversation as everyone had arrived. I handed the survey to each of them making it clear they shouldn’t put their name on the paper, and encouraging them to answer truthfully. Each of the current students had brought with them one new student. I was introduced to Holly, Liv, Leah, Nelson, Fred, and John. They were all Juniors in High School, and if they were accepted, they’d join the four others remaining because they were going to college in Chicago.

I quickly scanned the sheets before we started and wasn’t surprised to find that five of the six were virgins and the sixth was the only one who had seen someone of the opposite sex of their age or older naked; that none of them read the newspaper or a news magazine; none of them had been out of the country except one who had been to Canada; none spoke a second language other than Spanish; all of them were planning to go to college; and all six identified themselves and their parents as Democrats.

“Anyone want to ask questions about the survey?” I asked once introductions had been made all around.

“Why did you ask those things?” John, a lanky blond with lots of freckles, asked.

“Because it gives us a good idea of where you’re coming from,” I replied. “I’m happy to answer those questions publicly, too. Nobody else needs to do that. If I answered those questions at sixteen or seventeen, my answers would be that no, I wasn’t a virgin; that yes, I’d seen plenty of people my age or older naked; that I read the newspaper and US News & World Report regularly; that I’d traveled to Europe, and in fact lived there during my Junior year of High School; then I spoke fluent Swedish and passable Spanish, and now basic German and Dutch; I was a computer nerd then, and now I have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science; and my parents were mostly Republican and so was I, but now I’d call myself ‘libertarian’ with a small ‘l’, though it’s a bit more complicated than that.

“The point I’m making is that all of those things are basically opposite of what you all put on your forms, minus the fact all of you want to go to college and one of you has been to Canada. Part of that is because I grew up in a rural area east of Cincinnati, but part of it is also that times have changed fairly significantly. My High School years were 1976 through 1981; yours will end in either 1997 or 1998. That makes me, the old man here, sixteen or seventeen years older than all of you who are in High School.

“Let me put that in context - when I was born, the Civil War hadn’t been over for a hundred years and World War II had only ended eighteen years earlier. The Mercury program ended the year I was born and it would only be six years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, something which happened before all of you were born. Color television sets were a rarity and luxury when I was born. John F. Kennedy was president, and he would be assassinated seven months to the day after I was born. I had graduated from college when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, while the oldest of you who are in High School would have been six. Growing up, we’d never heard of HIV or AIDS, something which didn’t come into general knowledge until about ten years ago.

“The bottom line here is that in some ways, we’ve grown up in different worlds. So many things have changed, and, to be honest, I think much of that change is for the worse. I think we’re rapidly moving towards a point where rational discourse will be impossible, and where the principles which form the foundation for the United States will be challenged and undermined, and that, frankly, scares me. Oh, I just realized I misspoke. There is one thing which has been completely consistent from my birth to now, and in fact from my dad’s birth in 1917 until now, and that’s that the Cubs STILL haven’t won a World Series!”

Everyone laughed.

“Are there any more questions?” I asked.

“Why does whether or not you’re a virgin matter?” Liv, a petite brunette, asked.

“It doesn’t, in and of itself, but to be honest, nearly all of my friends had engaged in intercourse by the end of their Junior year, and some much earlier. For us, it was something of a rite of passage, and while our parents certainly didn’t encourage it, society didn’t treat it as abnormal the way it has been starting to recently. And while we weren’t given as much freedom as we might have liked, we were treated mostly as adults, and weren’t nearly as controlled as teenagers are now. I call it the ‘infantilization of teenagers’, because more and more, society, and parents, are restricting what teenagers can do as if they were little kids.”

“You don’t consider teenagers ‘children’?” Holly, a bubbly blonde, asked.

“No, I don’t. In fact, I don’t consider children to be ‘children’ the way society does. My kids, the oldest of whom is eleven, are treated as if they were mature enough to run their own lives, and have been since they were old enough to walk and talk. And they all do a good job of it because we’ve taught them responsibility, independence, and self-discipline from the time they were little. If you were to talk with Jesse or Birgit, they would sound like adults, minus the fact that their voices haven’t changed because they haven’t gone through puberty just yet.”

“What do you mean by ‘run their lives’?” Nelson, a serious-looking, dark-haired guy asked.

“Just what he says,” Patricia interjected. “They make most of their own decisions, have adult friends, travel by themselves, and so on. They’re supervised, of course, but not controlled. They’re all really smart and I’d say they behave more like college kids, minus the drinking and sex, than ten-year-olds!”

Everyone laughed.

“Is it really true you have two wives?” Leah, a curvy redhead, asked.

“He does!” Kara replied. “He, Jessica, and I are all married to each other, though according to the State of Illinois, it’s just Steve and Jessica who are married. But we don’t really care what they think.”

“And kids by other women?”

“I have seven kids,” I replied. “Two each by my wives, two by my friend Elyse, and one by my friend Jennifer. All of us live on this property. Jesse, my eldest, lives with his two moms in the coach house out back. Elyse and her boys live with us, and she’s seeing someone steady.”

“That’s a bit, uhm, different.”

“It’s ‘weird’, too,” Elizabeth said with a grin, “if that’s the word you were thinking. But it works for them, so nobody should think there’s anything wrong with it.”

“My church would say there was,” Leah replied.

“Pardon me for being blunt,” Elizabeth said, “but your church can go pound sand. It’s OK if they want to believe that, and it’s OK if you want to believe that. What’s not OK is trying to force others to follow those rules.”

“And that,” I replied, “is one of the reasons why all of you are here. Your friends felt you were mature enough to handle the kinds of conversations we have here and that you were open-minded enough so as not to be judgmental. If you can’t handle this, or don’t want to hear things which might offend you, this is NOT the place for you. As I like to say, ‘Free Speech’ is a guarantee that you will be offended, perhaps deeply so, and it’s too fucking bad if you don’t like it! I don’t have to keep my opinion to myself just because you don’t like it.”

“But Elizabeth just told me not to!”

“If you listened carefully,” Henry said, “which is something you need to do here, that’s not what she said. What did she say?”

“Not to say that,” Leah replied.

“No, that’s not what she said,” Nelson responded. “She said you can’t force it on anyone. You can express your opinion, and try to convince someone to agree with you, but you can’t force them to agree with you or try to force them to live the way you want them to. Is that right?”

“Exactly right,” Elizabeth replied. “Most of us here don’t have much use for organized religion, though Patricia and Henry are faithful, practicing Catholics.”

“Why is that?” Nelson asked.

“Science,” Elizabeth declared. “She’s a cruel mistress and she’s just as jealous as any other god! And she has no mercy or care for your feelings.”

“So,” Becka grinned, “pretty much like any god!”

“Let’s not go quite that far,” I replied. “That said, I do want to make clear that appeals to authority won’t work with this group. They are, from a philosophical standpoint, of little value. Just because some important, revered person said it, doesn’t make it true. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t quote someone or use them as an example, just that it’s not proof of anything.”

“So all of you only believe things which can be proved?” Holly asked.

“I’d say it’s more that we’re skeptical,” I replied. “And healthy skepticism is a very good approach to life. That’s not to say you can’t have faith; you can. But faith is a very personal thing which isn’t transitive. You believing in something doesn’t provide me with any evidence of the truthfulness or reality which you believe.”

“So the witnesses to the Resurrection don’t mean anything?” she asked.

“They do,” I replied. “And they are evidence, not proof. And yes, I know about Didymus, and the statement that those who have believed without seeing are blessed. But none of those things are ‘proof’. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, mind you; what I’m saying is neither you nor I can prove that it DID happen.”

“So you don’t believe in God?” she asked.

“That’s not a simple question to answer, and it’s one we can discuss at length at a session. Today we’re basically getting to know each other and setting what amount to the ground rules.”

“Fundamentally,” Claire said, “you have to keep an open mind if you want to participate. Well, that’s not quite true, you can come here with a closed mind, but you’ll hate every minute of it.”

“I was very close-minded when I met Steve,” Becka said, “but he and a mutual friend, Abbie, helped me break out of that trap.”

“Trap?” Holly asked.

Becka nodded, “Trap. I was a stuck-up, self-righteous, prudish bitch. Abbie and Steve, and these Rap Sessions, helped me open my mind.”

She winked at me to add ‘and other things’ to her statement, without being too indiscreet.

“You no longer believe in God?” Holly asked.

“I believe; I just don’t believe I’m his personal spokesperson on earth with a mission to tell everyone who disagrees with me that they’re going to hell. I tried that and it turned out badly.”

“Remember,” Henry said, “keeping an open mind doesn’t mean you have to agree with us. In fact, we don’t all agree on anything except that we pretty much want to be left alone to live our lives the way we see fit, with minimal interference from governments, churches, and society.”

“What do you all think so far?” Elizabeth asked.

There was general agreement from the new kids that they were interested in continuing. We were close to out of time, so we broke for refreshments. All of the kids said they’d be back in two weeks which made me feel pretty good, and when they’d all left, Kara and I began working on the family dinner.