Chapter 23: “Then There’s Only One Thing Left to Do.”

June 23, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

“Steve,” Kimmy said over the intercom, “I have a Suzanne Aavik for you.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “Put her through, please.”

A few seconds later, Suzanne was on the line.

“Hi!” she exclaimed when I greeted her. “I’m in Chicago for three weeks. Can I still run away and join the circus?”

I chuckled, “You might want to find out what the circus is actually like before you join! If you’re free, you’re welcome to come to the house tomorrow or Sunday and meet the clan.”

“And we can continue the conversation you put on hold?”

“If you like,” I replied.

“I told you that you’d made me so curious that I’d have to show up. Well, I’m showing up! How about Sunday? My dad and I are going to the Art Museum tomorrow.”

“Sure. Let me give you the address and how to get there. Train, bus, or car?”

“Car. Dad will let me borrow his Lexus.”

I gave her directions to the dojo so she wouldn’t have trouble parking, and then the walking directions for the few blocks from there to my house. We agreed on 11:00am and said ‘goodbye’.

“Who?” Penny asked.

“A friend. Someone I met on the plane to Denver a couple of months ago.”

“You are SO bad!”

“Don’t make any assumptions, Penelope. Your assumptions about Kassidy and Iris were dead wrong. And in case you didn’t notice, they both were flirting with Dan, the new programmer Tasha hired to replace Big Jim. And I’ll point out that he’s about twenty-five.”

“OK, OK! You were right! But what about your lunch date yesterday?”

“Leigh will be coming to the Rap Sessions, most likely. And I’m glad you and Terry decided to attend. But, and I’m going to make this point quite clearly - despite sex being discussed, it was discussed as a concept not as an activity. I haven’t seen a single sign that she’s interested.”

“I think you’re slipping!” Penny declared.

I wasn’t, because I was going to spend the night with Nicole on Saturday, and I was betting there was a good chance Suzanne and I would get together at some point, if not this weekend, then sometime in the future. What was changing was just my age, and that created an impediment for more and more girls as time went on.

“Think what you want,” I replied. “But I’ve always gone through phases. This one just might be semi-permanent, at least with regard to teenagers.”

“Speaking of that, did anything change with Jesse’s friends?”

“No. Jennifer tried to talk to Heather’s mom but got exactly nowhere. Jesse and his friends are royally pissed at her. They really got on Paul’s case, as they should have, and he regrets being what Birgit would call a ‘dumb boy’, but there is no way to fix it because apparently Heather’s mom doesn’t believe in redemption. Even more concerning, I’m seeing strains of that in society as a whole - certain activities or certain beliefs are so bad that nobody can ever recover from them. It’s like how felons who get out of prison are treated - no redemption, even for non-violent offenders. If that idea pervades society, we’re in real trouble.”

“I know what forgiveness feels like, and redemption, so you know I’m on the same page. You believe firmly in second chances, and both Terry and I are very glad for that.”

“One mistake, no matter how bad, shouldn’t permanently ruin your life.”

“Lisa Glass?”

“I’d say that was way more than one mistake,” I replied. “But I’ll concede there are crimes which are heinous enough to warrant life in prison, though I don’t agree with adding ‘no possibility of parole’ because it denies redemption and metanoia.”

“Devil’s advocate - Ted Bundy or Charles Manson?”

“Well, Bundy is dead, but if he could be certified as rehabilitated, sure. The same is true for Manson. That said, both of them were unlikely candidates for release. I’m not saying everyone should be released, just that everyone should have the possibility, no matter how infinitesimally small, of demonstrating they have been rehabilitated. And there can be conditions on release, too.”

“Timothy Jefferson?”

“Yes, him too,” I sighed, “IF he showed proper remorse and rehabilitation. He hasn’t.”

“I’m guessing you don’t think Noel Spurgeon should have been sentenced to forty years?”

“No, I don’t. Some prison time based on the applicable laws? Sure. But then release him with conditions. You know, no contact with teenage girls, and so on. If he violates it, he goes back inside. And I’m sure there are other solutions, such as house arrest, and so on, which cost the state far less, and give the person a chance to show redemption.”

“You’ll never convince the public at large,” Penny said shaking her head. “They buy the lie that safety comes from locking up a huge percentage of the population and never letting them out.”

“They also buy the lie of ‘stranger danger’,” I replied. “And a whole bunch of other lies told by moralists, control freaks, and the government.”

We both shrugged and turned back to our computers. At the end of the day, I headed home where we were entertaining the Jaegers and Quinns. While I changed, I told my wives about Suzanne’s visit on Sunday.

“You seem to be locating initiates,” Kara observed.

“Two so far,” I replied. “But Suzanne has another year of school in Colorado before she moves to Chicago. We’re still at least three new members short for the Fall. And we’ve lost some of the best kids to jobs out of state.”

“Maybe advertise again?” Jessica suggested. “You know, the way you did in the past?”

“We’d have to get a sponsor on campus to be able to do that,” I said. “But we do have some students, so that might work. We’ll have to wait until August, though.”

“I think I found the right person for my fantasy,” Kara said.

“Oh?”

“Her name is Paige and she’s a friend of Mattie’s. Mattie told her about her experience and Paige is VERY interested.”

“Jess?” I asked.

“I approve, but with one condition, to which Kara agreed.”

“Reluctantly,” Kara said. “But Jess made a very good point.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Mattie has to be the one to demonstrate,” Jessica said. “Kara can’t participate in any way; just watch.”

I nodded, “I actually think that makes sense. I’ll need to meet the girl.”

“I’ll set it up. You’re OK with you and Mattie?”

“For you, yes; but you know this is a one-time thing, right?”

“I do,” Kara replied.

“And your next fantasy?” I asked.

“No others, Snuggle Bear. Just this one. I’ll make arrangements for you to meet Paige.”

I finished changing and we went downstairs. The Jaegers and Quinns arrived, and their kids and ours went next door to Penny’s house to spend the evening with Amber, Andy, and Stephen. Maria Cristina was out with friends.

“The kids are gone,” Kathy smirked. “Let the complete debauchery begin!”

“Or not,” Tom replied with a wry smile.

“Spoilsport!” Kathy teased.

“I know you better than that,” Tom said.

“Then I suppose dinner and a sauna will have to do,” she said with a theatrical sigh.

“Seventeen years of good behavior kind of gives it away,” Bethany added.

The timer on the oven sounded and Kara and I went to the kitchen and got the homemade pizzas from the oven. We carried them into the dining room and the others joined us.

“Did Pam let you know she’s going to be in town in August?”

“She did. I wasn’t in the office when she called, but Kimmy relayed the message.”

“Longing to see Dale Melrose?” Kathy asked.

Bethany laughed, “He had a serious thing for me during Freshman year. And for you, too!”

“He had a serious thing for EVERY girl,” Kathy replied with a soft laugh.

“And Pam had a serious thing for pretty much every guy during Freshman year!” Bethany said.

“While we’re on this topic,” I said. “I wanted to bring up an incident from Jesse’s party last Friday.”

I explained what had happened between Paul and Heather, and Joan’s response.

“I’m not sure what else you could have done,” Bethany said. “Were Paul and Heather a couple?”

“That’s not entirely clear,” I replied, “and the kids seem a bit more circumspect about having a boyfriend or girlfriend than we were at fourteen. And given Joan’s reaction, which feels a lot like Carol’s, I’d say the kids are reacting to their parents by either keeping it hidden or, in some cases, repressing their desires. We never had to hide it.”

“Well, not being boyfriend and girlfriend,” Kathy replied with a smirk.

“True,” Bethany agreed, “but Steve’s point is well-taken. The kids can’t have normal dating relationships the way we did because parents freak out about it.”

“How much of that do you think is because they know what they did in High School?” Tom asked.

“A lot,” Bethany replied. “If you think about it, these are parents who graduated from High School roughly the same time we did, or a bit earlier. I think Carol is 40, for example, and she would have graduated around 1978. Our parents, well, Steve’s dad being the extreme outlier, all graduated between about 1955 and 1960.”

“1954 for my mom,” I interjected. “She got married ‘late’ for those days.”

“Right, but think about their situation - they graduated before the sexual revolution, so for them, sex was a big risk for a host of reasons. Fast forward to our peers - they were in High school pretty much at the height of the sexual revolution, at least with regard to High School kids. The ‘Summer of Love’ was 1967 and it took a few years to really spread to High School from the college-age kids. Melanie’s parents are really an outlier in that way - they were WAY ahead of the curve.”

“What do you mean?” Tom asked.

“Sorry, Tommy,” Bethany said with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s what happens when you walk into the theater in the middle of the movie!”

“Melanie’s parents lived in a commune,” I said. “Melanie’s mom was fourteen when she got pregnant and her parents kicked her out, so she and Melanie’s dad went to live in one of the first communes in California. Trudy was fifteen when Melanie was born. But as Bethany said, they were WAY ahead of the curve. The thing is, they never lost their free and open attitude towards sex, and were cool with Melanie and I sleeping together.”

“‘Sleeping’,” Jessica teased. “Right!”

“ANYWAY,” Bethany continued, “With a few exceptions, I suspect most of the parents we’re dealing with had some kind of sexual experiences in High School, even if they never actually had intercourse. I know everyone here, with the exception of Jess, lost their virginity in High School, or Junior High, in a couple of cases.”

“So how did WE turn out OK?” Kathy asked.

“You’re making a BIG assumption,” I grinned.

“Jerk!” she growled, but it was mirthful. “You know what I meant!”

“I do. To be honest? I know you’ll point to me, but I have to point to Melanie’s parents, Jennifer’s parents, and Doctor Mercer. They helped shape my attitudes, and I know Doctor Mercer helped Bethany and Kara, too. She never condoned how free I was with my affection, but she never judged me and she helped me understand sex in a way I never would have without her.”

“And Steve first saw her when she was helping me with overcoming my rape. He and I were kind of dating, which prevented him from having his dream date for the turnabout dance!”

“I’m just glad they didn’t act on their mutual crush in seventh grade,” Kurt added, sounding almost relieved.

“Me, too!” Kara declared.

“Me, three!” Jessica quickly added.

“Doctor Mercer certainly didn’t approve of Steve’s methods, but in the end, that was exactly what I needed. I’ve told Tommy the whole story, and the rest of you know I consider that I was a virgin when I was with Steve the first time. And he helped me see myself in a positive light. And that’s what led to Nick, and now to Tommy, who knows I love him deeply, so he isn’t afraid of my past.”

“There was only one time I was afraid,” Kurt said.

“My twenty-second birthday?” I asked.

He nodded, “When she grew back her pubic hair just for that occasion, it made me a bit nervous. Not that I didn’t trust her and you, but...”

“Was that the one where all the girls French-kissed Bethany?” Jessica asked evilly.

“What?!” Tom and Kurt exclaimed simultaneously.

“Not all the girls, Babe,” I replied with a silly grin. “Sofia couldn’t bring herself to do it.”

“Which really surprised me,” Bethany said. “Especially given it was the one and only French kiss with a girl Elyse has ever had!”

“And I thought Stuart had a wild life in High School,” Tom said, shaking his head. “I know quite a bit about our host, but very few details like THAT!”

“I know a LOT about our host, but somebody failed to tell me about THAT!” Kurt replied.

“An impromptu birthday gift for Steve,” Kara giggled. “I bet you can imagine what Cindi wanted to give him!”

“The same thing Cindi has wanted to give him since she and Dave broke up all those years ago!” Kurt said with a laugh. “He resolutely frustrated her with his complete immunity to her most obvious asset!”

“I was never immune to her brains,” I said firmly.

“As I was saying,” Kurt grinned.

“You do realize that her take-home pay is higher than everyone else’s at NIKA, right?”

“I do! And I’ve never said she wasn’t brilliant, just that it’s not the first thing people notice!”

“And what did you notice about me?” Kathy asked.

“The same thing Steve did! The red hair and green eyes. Holy hell, were you hot! And still are!”

“Nice recovery,” Kathy said flatly. “Kara, Jessica, might I borrow your floggers?”

“Sure!” Kara agreed quickly. “But going back to our topic at hand, I have to agree that Doctor Mercer was key to all of our development, but Steve took her philosophy and ran with it, basically to a place similar to the one Frank and Trudy Spencer occupied, and he’s consistently advocated for it since High School. Our peers who had that attitude in High School lost it and many of them became prudish, fearful that their kids would do the same things they did.”

“But why?” Tom asked. “I mean I get they ARE doing that, but why?”

“They never developed a philosophical underpinning for it,” I said. “They didn’t ever sit down to think about it. For Frank and Trudy, it was a philosophy - a way of life. For someone like my mom, it was dirty and had to be hidden. For others, it’s being overly-protective. For others still, it’s religious or social pressure. And, I suspect, some amount of embarrassment in talking about sex, or the human body in general.”

“I learned about that in the sauna,” Kurt said.

“That one threw me for a loop,” Tom said. “Especially the kids. But that was social conditioning, according to my live-in therapist!”

Bethany smiled, “It is. And Steve, who’s the expert in this area, can confirm that being ashamed of being naked goes back to the root myth of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Adam and Eve partake of the ‘forbidden fruit’, realized they were naked, and were ashamed. They hid themselves from God because of that. And THAT is the basis of Western society from the second century onwards. The Romans of the Republic and early Empire, for example, generally had no issue with nudity.”

“That’s true,” I said. “And we also inherit from Augustine of Hippo, called a Saint by the Roman Catholics, the notion that sexual desire, in and of itself, is bad, and that ultimately leads to the need for the ‘Immaculate Conception’ in which God intervenes to prevent any improper sexual desire, called ‘concupiscence’, when Joachim and Anna procreate, thereby freeing Mary from Original Sin, so that she doesn’t transmit it to Jesus when she conceives ‘by the Holy Spirit’.

“As an aside, the Orthodox view on that is that it denies Jesus’ essential humanity, because he no longer has a complete human nature. For the Orthodox, what we inherit is not ‘sin’, original or otherwise, but the effects of sin, that is, mortality. Jesus, as man, was truly mortal, and as such, had the same essential human qualities as each and every other person. In that way, he could heal everything fallen about our humanity. But I digress.”

“No, it makes the point,” Bethany said. “For the West, sex becomes ‘dirty’ and ‘sinful’ except in a very narrow context. Not just to only be within marriage, but even then, only for the purposes of procreation. It creates the largely ignored Roman Catholic rules about chemical or physical birth control, and, in effect, teaches that each and every sex act MUST have the possibility of procreation, making oral sex taboo and sinful.”

“I place a lot of blame at that man’s feet, not God’s” I replied. “And honestly, listening to a guy who asked God to allow him to continue having sex with his mistress kind of disqualifies him in my book!”

“Hypocrisy is THE mortal sin in Steve’s spirituality,” Kathy said.

I chuckled, “I said that to someone yesterday. And if everyone is done with their pizza, we’ll clean up and then continue our relationship as ‘sauna brothers’.”

“Jorge’s equation of the sauna with water in Stranger in a Strange Land,” Kara said. “You miss him a lot.”

“I do,” I replied.

June 24, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

On Saturday, after breakfast with the guys, karate, and lunch with Kara and the kids, I headed to Oak Park. As before, I parked in the driveway and went to the front door and rang the bell. Natalie opened the door and let me in.

“Hi! We just got home from practice and Nicole is in the shower. I just made tea.”

She shut the door, then led me to the kitchen where she poured tea for us. I set my overnight bag on the floor, and sat down.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go up to the shower!” she said as she sat down.

“Only with an invitation,” I replied. “Anything else makes an inappropriate assumption.”

“How does that work at home?”

“In the master bedroom, there’s just an opening without a door which leads to the bathroom. The toilet has its own private area with a door, but not the rest. And given we share the bedroom and bathroom, there’s no expectation of privacy in the shower, or whatever. If Nicole invited me, then I’d go. But she’s not expecting me in the bathroom, so to me that would invade her privacy.”

“Even though she intends to have you screw her completely senseless for the next eighteen hours or so?”

“Even then. Never assume anything in that regard. Remember Russia?”