Chapter 3: A Suitor’s Questions

Taylor came bounding up to Dave after dinner the following Wednesday night. She had a smile a mile wide across her face and her cellphone in her hand. She wore an unbuttoned man’s dress shirt; she was nude underneath and the effect was positively arousing and stunning on the mid-twenty’s beauty.

“Hi Doll,” Dave said as he reached out, slid his hand under the shirt, and put an arm around her lithe body. “You feel good and look tasty. What’s up and why the smile?”

“I finally heard from Alec.” Alexander Baldwin had been Taylor’s boyfriend up until a month or two earlier when Taylor had decided to put him to a test to see whether he’d be at all amenable to the kind of lifestyle the Circle enjoyed on a daily basis. After the only dinner he’d ever been to at the compound some dancing had started, and while dancing with Dave or Dale, she’d made out with them to discover Alec was angry and very unsettled about what he’d seen. They did talk further according to Taylor, but Dave had never heard the full outcome or exactly what got said.”

“And Alec is back in the picture?” Dave questioned. “I knew you liked him, but I thought he was just kind of a fuck buddy.”

“Oh, he was but he was a good one ... and I guess I’ve discovered I have some deeper feelings for him. I also don’t want anybody out there peeved at me for some reason. The reason I’m telling you this is I’d like you to talk to him. He even asked to talk to you. He wants more info about the Circle and all it implies. I told him maybe half of what I know now about it, and that was over a month ago. When he asked to talk to you it was a friendly text message with a smiley face to show he wasn’t too angry with me. He said he was in ‘learning mode’.”

“Sure. I’ll talk to anybody about this ... well, almost. I don’t want to get us in the newspapers in any way. There are too many people in this community ready to judge how we live as downright wrong, illegal, immoral, and taxable.”

“How can we set it up?”

“Text him back and ask whether he wants to come here or meet someplace? Tell him I’m quite happy to meet with him.”

Taylor’s thumbs flew over the small keyboard on the face of her iPhone as she prepared the text message and then set it. A few minutes later, she got a reply, ‘Dave’s choice. I think I’d like to meet with just him somewhere away from your Circle.’

After showing the reply to Dave he said, “Tell him tomorrow evening, eight o’clock at the Club Ecstasy, but ask if that’s all right.”

The message and reply went quickly, and a minute later Dave had an after-dinner meeting for Thursday.

Thursday evening at the Club Ecstasy things were just warming up from some erotic but not X-rated dances by some of the women on the Club’s roster of dancers. Jim had brought back a dancer named Kitt Kat that was unbelievably sexy and erotic, and she was the headliner scheduled to go on at nine o’clock. Dave wanted to see her after hearing Jim’s reviews and raves.

Going in Dave found Jim Danforth worrying about bar stocks. They said hello and talked for a few minutes, and then Dave got a table and waited for Alec. Alec showed up only a couple of minutes later.

After greeting Alec said, “Thank you for setting this up, Sir. I have a lot of questions, and I should tell you that I’m not sure about the outcome of tonight. I’m trying to be very unbiased or whatever it is I need to be to preserve my relationship with Taylor, but that’s hard for me. I realize how conditioned I’ve been to believe that a traditional relationship is the only ‘normal’ one and that relationships outside of that are abnormal.”

Dave chuckled, “Relax. I’ll try to answer your questions, and then you decide however you want to. I have no skin in the game on this one the way Taylor might.”

Just then a gorgeous waitress Dave recognized came to the table. “Hi, Davey. What can I get you boys?” She’d put her hand on Dave’s neck in a sexy and intimate gesture.

Alec did a double take at the barely clad model quality woman and mumbled something about a beer. Dave just said, “The usual, if you please, Sandy.”

“You come here a lot, Sir?”

“Alec, the answer is yes. Three of my friends own part of this place and one of them is the manager as well. Also, please don’t call me ‘Sir’. My father might deserve that honorific, but I don’t care for it. I’m Dave.”

“Yes, Si ... Dave.”

“What do you want to know?”

“About six weeks ago one night after Taylor had worked there as a nanny all day, I went out to a dinner at your Circle. It was superb, by the way. Afterwards, there was some dancing. She told me that I got set up to test my reactions to her kissing you and another guy. I didn’t take it well. About all I’ve learned since then is that she thinks the Circle is about the best thing that’s ever happened to her, and that ... well, that she has a lot more male friends – and female friends than ever before in her life. She had been hoping that I’d be interested in the Circle. What is the Circle?”

Dave pondered where to begin. “Alec, do you love anybody or have you?”

“I thought I was falling in love with Taylor, but then all this happened and it set me on my ear. If I didn’t think she was worth it, I would have washed my hands of her and the whole situation.”

“Anybody else?”

“I had a pretty serious girlfriend in college. Eventually, we parted ways but we were together for over two years.”

“How do you feel about her?”

“I miss her. I really liked her - Jackie. We parted as friends, but she’s working up in Chicago and I’m here in Florida. We trade emails about once a month or so.”

“What if Jackie and Taylor were both in Sarasota right now and available?”

Alec balked, “I guess I’d have to pick one as my girlfriend.”

“Why?” Dave asked as he leaned forward.

“Because ... if I wanted a serious relationship with one of them, I would have to specialize on them and devote my time and attention to them.”

“Why?” Dave tapped a finger on the table to emphasize the question.

Alec answered more slowly, “Well, because a relationship is based on two people that love each other.”

“Why? Who told you that?”

“Errr, it just is. I don’t know that anybody ever told me that, I just know that’s the way it works.”

“What would you do if I told you that what you believed was entirely wrong and a false assumption?”

“I’d have trouble believing you. All the people I see living together are couples. Sure there are a few gay guys or lesbian women around, but they’re a couple, too.”

“Are you sure you have reliable data? Do you know how I live?”

“I’m pretty sure. The census reports on families and that’s almost always a couple or a single parent? I don’t know how you live.”

Dave tapped the table for emphasis, “Three to five percent of the ‘families’ you mention are polyamorous relationships that involve MORE than two people. About ten to fifteen percent or more of the population has lived in such a relationship at some time in their lives if they aren’t living that way now. That means that around one out of twenty or thirty people you meet are probably living that way now, and one out of ten has lived that way in the past. Think about that as you look around this room. I live that way with my five wives, and I’m engaged to a sixth woman.”

Alec gawked at Dave and digested the statistics. He started, “But ... What do you mean polyamorous relationship?”

“Poly meaning many, and amorous meaning loving; put them together and they mean a group of people living and loving together in a serious relationship.”

“And you live this way with five women?” Alec sat forward and stared in disbelief.

“Alice, Pam, Julie, Heather, and Cricket. I just got engaged to Scarlett who’ll also join our family.”

“Cricket came on to me the night of that dinner I was at.”

“She was part of your test. She liked you, by the way.”

“The test was to see whether I’d want a polyamorous relationship with Taylor and Cricket? Cricket is one of your wives.”

“Yes, and she could still have a relationship with you. She has a relationship with all of the men in the Circle and one or two outside of it.”

Alec said, “I was thinking of a sexual relationship.”

Dave shrugged, “Yes, so was I.”

Alec looked surprised. “You let your wives have sex with other men?”

Dave burst out laughing. What Alec had said was such a trigger statement for him; he knew exactly how he’d react and what he’d say. As his laughter slowed, he said, “I don’t LET my wives do anything. They do as they choose. We are each independent beings. I believe slavery was abolished around 1863 and we even fought a war over the point. I am not a slave owner. To the contrary, I strongly believe in equality of the sexes, and so do the other people in the Circle.”

Alec sat back, “So, they can just have sex with other people?”

“If they want. They’re a little picky about who they make love with. I emphasize the ‘make love’ part of that statement to return to the earlier point I was trying to make. That point was that you CAN love more than one person. I mean that in terms of mind, body, and spirit. You could love Taylor AND your friend Jackie, if you put your mind to it and got rid of the old model of only having one partner at a time. I shed that old model and so I have five wives and am engaged to a sixth. We are deeply in love with each other.”

“But isn’t that wrong?”

“Who says so?”

“Bigamy is against the law.”

“What does bigamy got to do with love? Besides, who gave the ‘right’ to tell you who you could love to a bunch of legislators? Fortunately, that part of the equation is not written into law.”

“Errr, bigamy has nothing to do with love I suppose, and the legislators are part of our government.”

“And what guided their decisions about the law?”

“Their feelings of right and wrong, and around here that’s probably based on the Bible.”

Dave asked, “And who wrote the Bible?”

Alec started and then stopped. “You don’t believe it was the inspired word of God, do you?”

“Do you? If you do, there’s no sense in going further in this conversation. I happen to believe that most if not ALL of the books ever written are the inspired work of God, but not a God that sits in the sky, passes judgment on people, and wears a big white robe with the letter ‘G’ embroidered on the breast pocket. I’ve come to see the Bible as another book of wisdom and allegory written two thousand years ago. Some of it is timeless and some not. You do know that many of the principal characters in the Bible had multiple wives – they practiced polyamory.”

Alec paused and regrouped his thinking. “Taylor implied that she’d ... made love ... with some of the men in the Circle. Did she?”

“That’s not for me to answer. She’d have to answer that.”

“Did you and her?”

Dave paused just long enough to leave a suspicion in Alec’s mind. “That’s up to Taylor to tell you. Is it really that important to you?”

“Yes, but if she’s in a relationship with you or somebody else I don’t want to violate some trust that someone else had put in her to be their girlfriend.”

Dave said, “You met Cricket and seemed to like her. Cricket is everybody’s girlfriend.”

“So she’s slept with all of the men?”

“Alec, do you really care or do you just have prurient interest in the answer?” If she has, that’s her business, and likewise if she hasn’t. She loves everybody in the Circle and they love her. Let me go back to your original question; you asked ‘What is the Circle?’

“The Circle is a large polyamorous family. I happen to have a polyamorous family within that larger family. We are diverse in terms of jobs, wealth, race, creed, color, sex, sexual preference, and national origin. We love each other. We are NOT exclusive or monogamous. We are not possessive of one another, but we are protective and supportive to a fault.

We also are egalitarian to a fault across our diversity. To illustrate that point, two of my wives are engaged to ‘marry’ another male in the Circle that they also love. I think I will end up presenting the brides to their future husband, so to speak. The weddings will not be sanctioned by any government agency and we won’t try to take advantage of any tax breaks or such that such a wedding might suggest. We do try to comply with the outside world while living our lives as we see fit.