Chapter 25: Harbingers of Things to Come

On the first Tuesday in May when Dave got home from work, a beaming Bobbie met him at the door from his home into the core. He was coming for drinks and dinner. Alice was right behind him.

“I’m so glad to see you. Maddy had her baby this afternoon. Thank you, daddy. You are now the father of Logan Anthony Wyatt.”

Dave bowed to her with a grin a wild wide. “Thank you for the privilege of helping you expand your family. I am assuming that you and Maddy will have all things child under your aegis, unless you ask for aid or counsel?”

Bobbie hugged the man, “I love you, David. Yes, Maddy and I have this under control – well, as much as a four-hour old infant will allow.”

“Go and be with your wife. Why aren’t you there?”

“They kicked the visitors out because it was feeding time for babies and new mothers. I could have stayed, but I want to come up and tell people and put up a sign about dinner. I’m sorry, I got totally diverted when Maddy’s water broke and ever since. Everyone is on their own for dinner tonight. There are a few leftovers from the past two nights in the refrigerator.”

Dave said, “I think I’ll get a group together and we’ll head out to somewhere for dinner or order pizzas in.”

Bobbie headed over to Mike and Clarisse’s home to tell them the news and alert them to dinner plans.

Dave joined Sharon and Jake in tending bar for the Circle and friends as they gathered. Everyone was abuzz about Maddy’s birth. Fortunately, everything had gone well in the birthing process. Eventually, several teams of people formed up to head to different restaurants. The Circle members had discovered, even several years earlier when their numbers were smaller, that if they ALL showed up at a restaurant expecting to sit together and get served, that the restaurant would go into panic mode with little in the way of good results. There were so many available restaurants around the city that splitting up into groups of four to six created better results.”

Dave ended with Alice, Pam, Sean, Kat, and Sheri. Three one-year-olds also made the trip: Johnny, Bobby, and James. The group took two cars and ended up going to the Longhorn Steakhouse on Fruitville Road near the Interstate. Since the tourist season with a million snowbirds had ended, they got seated immediately, and had their meals twenty minutes later; a far cry from what would usually happen in February.

After ordering, Sheri told the group how her flying lessons were progressing. She had been taking lessons from Pete and Doug and using the Cessna 152 that Owen had bought for the Circle Flying Club a few years earlier. Sheri was really enthusiastic about her new hobby, and she had some places to fly since her parents lived a comfortable flight away in eastern North Carolina. Sheri had just soloed and had been talking to her instructors about getting signed off after her cross-country trips to actually fly the trainer north to see her relatives.

Sheri stood in awe of Pam, Alice, and Dave, as well as their instructors, who all had their commercial-instrument ratings. To her, those were like the Ph.D. in aviation certificates. Pam had again taken to using the Cessna 182 for a lot of her consulting trips around the southern and eastern parts of the country.

Alice raised an interesting issue that had been a suggestion from Ross Buchman, the university theology professor who had married a group of Circle members not too long ago. He’d also started to hang out around the Circle with the intent of eventually becoming a member.

Ross had volunteered to do a Sunday ‘Contemplation, Meditation, and Spiritual Conversation’ service for the Circle if anybody was interested. Alice noted that he had been affiliated with a group called the Center for Positive Living a few years earlier that had folded for lack of funds and a minister that was losing his edge. Ross had said he wouldn’t have participated if it had the word ‘Church’ in the title. He had become quite anti-religious since his ordination, but chose to retain the fun parts of the qualification such as being able to marry or counsel people.

Dave said, “Explain more about what it’d be like.”

Alice shrugged, “He said he’d teach us how to meditate and lead us in calming spiritual meditations. He’d also have us contemplate specific spiritually-related topics. The examples he gave were words like compassion, love, intention, gratitude, and personal renewal. There were others but I forget what he said. He’d get us started and help lead or facilitate the discussion depending on how many of us there were in the group.

“The spiritual conversation part of the discussion might be a little more like a sermon or talk. He’d get us really into a topic that he’d done some thinking on and then hope that we had discussions about it with each other over the coming week. He’d always be available to keep things going or answer questions.”

Kat said, “I like the sound of that. I’ve kind of missing doing something spiritual on the weekends.”

Sean said, “We are always doing spiritual things, we just don’t talk about them. Our loving lifestyle is based on spiritual underpinnings.”

Pam said, “I think we ought to have a couple of sessions a month to test out what Ross is talking about. If we like them, we can step up the frequency. If we don’t, they’ll peter out due to lack of attendance.”

The others nodded in agreement. Alice said, “I’ll tell Ross that we like the idea and encourage him to start. I can help him get the word out to all the Circle members. Maybe we’ll do the first Sunday of each month over the summer.”

Dave asked Alice, “Hey, what’s up with Bridget? I never heard anything further about her plans for university or the summer.”

“My bad. Karen told me a week or two ago, but so much has been going on I forgot to mention it. Bridget is definitely going to the university here in Sarasota. She’s accepted, and even has a scholarship. She wants to study civil engineering and environmental sciences. She’s ambitious and might even try for a double degree.”

“So, is she moving here in August?” Pam asked.

“No, the second week in June. She got a summer job at Mote Marine working on the amelioration of Red Tide and mostly being a gofer. She has no real background on it, but she’ll be a part-time lab assistant to some of the biochemists they have on staff. She works there until school starts in mid-August. She’ll be living with us, so get ready to have yet another woman around the house.”

Kat teased, “A horny woman. Bridget emailed me about wanting to do a video with Mike and his adult video crew. She said she needs the money to help with college expenses. I think we’ll have a new and steady actress in our midst.”

Dave asked, “Do we need to do anything to our guest room to get it ready for her?”

Pam nodded, “I think we need a better desk. We’ll also have time over the summer to add furniture and even redecorate if she wants. I’d leave it for now until she gets here. Let her put her own stamp on the room.”

Alice said, “Karen said that Bridget redid her room at home, getting rid of the teen girl kind of posters and making the place look ‘more adult’, as she put it. She’s also become a neatnik – her room is spotless, clothes put away or in a hamper, bed always made unless she’s in it, and so on. Karen can’t believe the transformation. I guess she really did flip into being a responsible adult.”

“What about Circle membership?” Sean asked.

Alice said, “Well, she’s been with many of the men and women in the Circle, and in that regard took to the Circle’s sexual behavior like a duck to water. She’s one of the most orgasmic people I know except maybe for Cricket. She still needs to develop relationships with everybody and I think everyone will cut her some slack because of her age, willingness, and help elect her into membership. I have no doubts about her performing her membership duties. She’s so eager to fit in. She’ll do fine. We just have to be sure she keeps her grades up.”

Dave smiled, “Somehow I think having Bridget living with us is going to be like having six wives. I just have a feeling about her.”

Alice rolled her eyes, “I know what you’re saying. I agree. We may have to have a talk with her. I do think she’s young enough to take whatever we say as a good lesson about how she should live her life. Karen told me that her daughter is embracing a sexual lifestyle. She and Candy have had several interludes together at Bridget’s instigation, and somewhat to Daryl’s embarrassment, Bridget has watched them make love on the bed as she’s jilled off, even on the same bed. Karen said she even sucked her father clean after he came inside Karen just two nights ago.”

Dave chuckled, “I like the idea of all this incest. Paul and Megan both had sexual relationships with Erin and Ashley before they came to the Circle, and they’ve continued. Rachel and Jack hadn’t done anything for years, but Grace and Rachel had. Rachel told me in some pillow talk a few months ago that she finally seduced her father. I don’t think they have sex very often, but they make it a special occasion. She loves the transformed relationship.”

Pam teased, “You should get Rachel and Ashley to both do Paul and Jack together. They could swap back and forth and really make a night of it.”

Dave laughed, “What makes you think that hasn’t already happened?”

Pam gawked but was faking it with a funny face, “They did. Why wasn’t I told? Why wasn’t everyone in the Circle told? We could have all watched and refereed.”

Dave continued to laugh, “They’ve also involved Cindy, Meggie, Sharon, and Cricket in some of their forays on the older dads, but no more than two at a time. Neither Paul nor Jack are as resilient as they’d like to be. They have long refractory timeframes.”

Kat said, “Speaking of sexy young women, did all you guys meet Taylor?”

“Taylor who?” Dave asked. Sean had almost the same question in unison.

Kat explained, “About two weeks ago the moms and Maddy hired a temporary nanny to care for tots. Her name is Taylor Volker. She’s just your type guys – cute and fuckable. I’m surprised you don’t know you’ve had this luscious cutie in your midst for the past two weeks. She’ll be a lot more visible for the next few months now that Maddy is on maternity leave.”

Dave asked, “Is she a truly a temp?”

Pam grinned, “She’s a maybe full-timer. She was a K through 6 teacher, and is off for the summer. She didn’t like all the restrictions, rules, and management styles of the principal at her school, and then learned that the Sarasota County School Board imposed a lot of that. She is thinking about seeking some other line of work, but she loves children.”

“We were thinking of home schooling the kids. For the most part they’re only a year old, but they’ll start learning stuff really fast now. Would she be interested in setting up some of that?”

The three mothers shrugged. “We’ll talk to her about it.”

“What about our lifestyle? Does that give her fits and conniptions?”

The three moms grimaced. “We didn’t tell her. Until today and Maddy’s delivery she’s come on weekdays at nine and left at five o’clock. Starting today, she’ll be here from eight in the morning until five-thirty at night, and not on weekends. As usual one of us will relieve her here and there during the days. She hasn’t seen much in the way of our free and open lifestyle, except for some of the partial nudity on the patio during the afternoons when some of the women are sun tanning.”

“And to prevent her from running screaming for the front gate, you plan to address this problem how?” Sean teased. Dave nodded.

“I guess we’re going to have to have the discussion with her really soon, huh?”

Dave chuckled, “Oh, yeah. I think real soon, like tomorrow. If she hangs around here until Friday and helps with the kids the way Maddy did until everyone is home, she’ll get a heavy dose of our sexual behavior.”

Wednesday morning, Alice, Kat, Joan, and Nancy sat down with Taylor in the nursery. They carried folding chairs in from the living room so they could be near all the cribs and playpens that were normally set up for the brood of Circle children. Additionally, the door to the room stayed closed for toddlers on the floor scooting around. Taylor seemed nervous about the visitors but they assured her that it was nothing she had done, but they did want to make sure she understood some of the things she’d now start to see going on in the Circle as she worked the longer days associated with the job.