Chapter 39: Like Father, Like Son?

August 15, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

“Whoa!” Cynthia declared, as she turned the pages in The New Joy of Sex. “All these positions! I want to try them!”

She was paging through the section of the book which had lots of illustrations.

“Wait!” she gasped, as she turned the page. “Bondage? Whoa! He has her tied to the bed!”

“That might be fun,” I grinned.

“And then I can tie YOU to the bed?” she asked with a silly smirk.

“I suppose turn-about is fair play.”

“And threesomes?”

“That might not be the best idea,” I said carefully.

“Not saying I would, but why?”

How could I tell her that I was concerned about going down the same path my dad had gone down?

“I’m just not sure,” I replied.

She continued flipping pages into the section of the book about health and diseases.

“Prostitution?” she laughed. “I don’t THINK so!”

“No thanks,” I replied, then teased her by saying, “but most of the adult men I know say you pay for it no matter what!”

“You!” she screeched. “I’ll make you pay if you aren’t careful!”

I chuckled, “Sorry.”

“I know you were teasing. Ewwwww! Anal sex? Yuck!”

“So ‘everything’ doesn’t actually mean ‘everything’?” I teased.

“Would you try that? Seriously?”

“I’ve done it before,” I said.

“Was it totally gross?”

“No, just weird.”

“Francesca really let you do that with her?”

“I can’t answer that question,” I said.

“But she was the only person you were with before me, right?”

“I can’t answer that question, either.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not right to talk about what I did with any girl, or even which girl I might have been with.”

“But we all know what happened with Francesca.”

“You assumed,” I said.

“Well, duh!” Cynthia replied. “We should start on the first position we haven’t done! Me on top, facing away from you! And practice until we get it right!”

She took the book and put it on my nightstand, and after we undressed we kissed and touched and then she faced away from me and slowly lowered her body onto mine. I reached up and cupped her boobs, and she started moving.

“This doesn’t feel as good,” she said.

“Uhm, try rubbing yourself,” I suggested.

She moved her hand between her legs and after a minute, she moaned softly.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s the trick.”

Three hours later, after having done it that way four times, we went to the shower. After the shower we changed my sheets, then went downstairs to play Nintendo until Cynthia had to go home.

August 15, 2000, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

“Our last night together,” Liz sighed, snuggling close.

After I’d finished my lengthy session with Doctor Brown, we’d had dinner with Mary, Don, and Maria Cristina, then come back to the room and gotten right into bed.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, sighing deeply, and I felt a tear drip from her cheek onto my chest.

There really wasn’t anything I could say. We’d both known this would eventually happen, and I knew it would be difficult, more so for her than me, but I did have a feeling of sadness that our beautiful sexual relationship was coming to an end. She was right about one thing - had it not been for what she called the ‘wrong time, wrong place, wrong situation’, we might have been a couple. But that was playing ‘What if?’, a game I felt always resulted in a loss.

It was a good five minutes before she spoke.

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “Part of me just wants to cuddle like this; part of me wants to ‘adult’, then sleep in your arms; and part of me wants you to fuck my brains out all night and in every possible way.”

“It really is up to you, but we’ve never, ever even come close to anything like the third option.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “John liked to fuck; you like to ‘adult’. They are two very, very different things.”

“I agree completely,” I said. “It started in St. Martin and it’s never changed.”

“True,” Liz agreed. “I think I could count on one hand the number of times we’ve done it in the missionary position, and even oral sex has been somewhat limited. With John, it mostly the opposite - lots of oral and hard, energetic sex. But that was OK, because it seemed to fit the relationship.”

“Interesting,” I replied.

“I loved him, but not the way I love you. He was very virile and had a need to be dominant; you’re just as virile, maybe even more, but you’re very gentle, too.”

“Did you say anything to him about it?” I asked.

Liz laughed softly, “No. It was different, but it kind of fit the relationship. It was pleasurable, too.”

“A side of you I don’t know,” I chuckled.

“I knew you could do that, if I wanted, but you liked being gentle and I really liked you being gentle, so I didn’t say anything.”

“But now?” I asked.

“I don’t know; I just got that idea in my head for the first time last night. So I asked you. But you said you felt it would be a bad idea, so I dropped it.”

“That was partly because you’ve kept that wild side hidden.”

“Because I felt it wasn’t us.”

“Then why think about changing it now?”

“Because I wondered what it would be like to have YOU take me powerfully; to have you dominating me.”

“Which memory do you want,” I asked gently.

“And that really is the deciding factor,” she said, moving on top of me.

We adjusted into our ‘adulting’ position, and when I was hard, Liz slowly impaled herself on my shaft.

August 16, 2000, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

“That was perfect,” Liz said after our final ‘adulting’ session on Wednesday morning.

She lifted herself from me, and the two of us went to the shower. I adjusted the spray, and we stood in a tight embrace under the warm spray, rivulets of water running down our bodies and flowing into the drain. I very much enjoyed the feel of her body against mine, and savored every minute, ensuring it was burned into my memory, as it was quite likely I’d never share a skin-to-skin embrace with her ever again. I really did love her, and I wished there was some other way, but given her needs, there simply wasn’t.

“What are you thinking right now?” she asked.

“About how wonderful you feel, but more about how much I love you,” I replied. “And you?”

“About how weird it will be, starting tomorrow, to be around you all the time but know that we can’t be together this way again. It makes me sad, but this was always the destination; it had to be, because of my desire to be a wife and mom. Well, now that I’m a member of the Bar.”

“John was an idiot,” I replied. “A first-class idiot. He missed out on marrying the most wonderful unmarried woman I know.”

“Self-preservation is strong with this one,” Liz laughed. “You could swear in court that you hadn’t said I was more wonderful than your wives!”

“They know how I feel about you, so there really isn’t much to worry about.”

“That’s the thing that always amazed me - they knew we were madly in love, but never once interfered. And they’ve always treated me like a sister.”

“And they’ll continue to do so. Remember, the only thing that’s changing is we won’t ‘adult’ again. You’re going to continue to be my closest confidante and know everything there is to know about me, and be the person I turn to for advice.”

“That was the thing Deborah told me she’d really miss - the closeness of the relationship, even after you two stopped sleeping together.”

“Just make sure you’re up front with any guy you get serious with. You don’t want to spring our close relationship on him as a surprise after you’ve gotten close.”

“Julius knows we’ve been close for years - I explained, leaving out a few key details, about us meeting when I was eighteen and you mentoring me and then hiring me.”

“How well do you know him?”

“I’d call him a casual acquaintance,” she said. “I told you how I met him and that I put him off by saying I was focused on law school. I saw him a few times between then and when I graduated, but it was always just ‘Hi, how are you?’ kinds of things. When we ran into each other after I graduated, he asked again, which isn’t a surprise given that’s what I’d told him.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t implying I was surprised or upset, I’m just curious.”

“Samantha told me about the transition from ‘lover’ to ‘dad’. Is that what this is?”

“Something like that, but Samantha and I were never in love.”

“YOU were never in love,” Liz said. “She was, though I guess she never told you.”

“Let me rephrase - we weren’t in love the way you and I are. I love Samantha dearly, and have from very early in our relationship, but it’s not the same as you and me. So, I did know, but it was different.”

“And Maria Cristina?”

“That one was a decision, on both our parts. We love each other, but the character there is different even from Samantha and me.”

“Because it was, in effect, contractual? Remember, I read those contracts, too.”

“And THAT is not in them!” I chuckled.

“Obviously, since that would nullify them and subject both of you to potential criminal charges.”

“I continue to find that completely illogical. I can take a girl to very nice dinner and a movie, and buy her a nice gift, with an agreement that we’ll have sex afterwards, and that’s OK, but if I just hand her $500, it’s illegal! That makes no sense. I mean, what if I buy her a nice gift and give her the receipt and she returns it and keeps the cash. Is THAT illegal?”

“It would depend on the character of the relationship. If you had an ongoing, romantic relationship, the government would have a hard time making the case. If you picked her up in a bar and never saw her again, then they could make the case.”

“You do realize how dumb that is, right?”

“I didn’t say I agreed! I simply said they could make the case. I tend to agree with you on this topic, though I’m obviously concerned about trafficking and about women forced into prostitution. But a high-end escort, for example? I agree - nobody should care.”

“And if she pays a pimp?” I asked.

“Because models don’t pay agents? Or bands? Or writers?”

“We’re on the same page,” I replied.

“I hate to say this,” Liz sighed, “but we need to wash up or I’m going to turn into a prune!”

“I promise to spread baby oil over every single inch of your skin if necessary!”

“Just get the shampoo,” she said, laughing.

Twenty minutes later we were dressed, and gathered our things. We met Maria Cristina at her room, then the three of us went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Once we finished breakfast, we checked out, then tossed our bags into the trunk of the rental car and headed for the airport for our return trip to Chicago.

August 17, 2000, Colorado Springs, Colorado

“Good morning, Steve,” Olivia, the receptionist in the NIKA office in Colorado Springs said when I walked into the office on Thursday morning.

“Good morning, Olivia. How are things?”

“Great! How was your flight?”

“Only about ten minutes late, which, all things considered, isn’t bad.”

“Barbara is in her office.”

“Thanks.”

I waved my card past the sensor next to the door and went through and down the hall to Barbara’s office. As usual, she hopped up and we exchanged a hug. We sat down and about thirty seconds later, Olivia brought me a mug of Earl Grey.

“Thanks,” I said.

“We aim to please!” she said with a smile, then left.

“She’s much more relaxed than last time I was here,” I said. “She greeted me by my first name and referred to you as ‘Barbara’.”

“She’d only been here about six weeks when you were here before; she’s much more into the ‘NIKA way’ now!”

“Good! How are things otherwise?”

“No issues that need your attention.”

“How are things with Aisyah?” I asked.

“She’s fine and there have been no issues with that medical practice.”

“Good. Anything that you’re concerned about that I can help with?”

“No. You can go play with the kids!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Jaworski,” I teased.

“Get out of here!” she said with a laugh.

I went to the programmer’s area and was greeted with very nice hugs by Skye and Kajri, and chaste hugs from Vickie and Nicole. Marlene, and the lone guy, Mick, and I shook hands. He was the most recent hire, and when I’d heard we’d hired him, I had chuckled at the role reversal from most IT shops where it was often a lone woman with all the men.

“Are we being taken to the woodshed?” Nicole asked.

“That’s not my style,” I replied. “This is about improving our process and updating our coding, review, and testing standards. To be frank, if there is blame to apportion, it’s on the fine educational institutions which are sorely lacking in proper QA training and in teaching proper coding standards.”

“And you said that to Dave?” Kajri asked.

“I did. Even IIT has slipped a bit - far too much Java and VB, and not enough C. And they dropped the assembly language course from the list of required courses. It’s an elective now.”

“There isn’t much call for that these days,” Mick replied. “I suppose there was when you were in school.”

“There was,” I replied. “I did assembly language programming for my internship. And while I agree that there is less need, the skills you learn from that kind of environment are important - and while it’s low-level, the things you learn help keep you on the straight and narrow when you move up to C or C++. Java and VB take care of a lot of that for you, so students who use those for the majority of their projects in college don’t develop the kinds of skills we need. Just out of curiosity, how much of your coursework was in anything other than Java or VB?”

“One C course, just as you said; no assembly language courses were required and I didn’t take one because, to be honest, it didn’t seem relevant.”

“I totally get that,” I said. “It’s not your fault, per se. It’s similar to our issue with finding well-rounded applicants because the major universities seem to steer all the computer science majors to technical or science minors. Yours was in theology, if I recall.”

“Something that interested me, and to be honest, wasn’t all that difficult. I like to write, so it was a pretty easy minor.”

“It’s a side hobby of mine,” I replied. “I did take a two-semester world religion course when I was at IIT. The professor ended up performing my marriage.”

“About that...”

I chuckled, “We can discuss that at lunch. Shall we get started?”

The morning flew by as we went over the revised coding standards, and then we headed to lunch.

“You’re really ‘married’ to two women?” Mick asked after we’d ordered our food.

“I heard the air quotes,” I replied. “It’s a true marriage. Forget what the state has to say about it, because it’s none of their business. We tell them only about my legal marriage to stay out of trouble, but except in that instance, Kara, Jessica, and I are truly married.”

“And you have kids by other women, too?”

“Yes. Trust me, if someone here tells you about my life, it’s most likely true. We don’t hide any of that.”

“I read the ‘NIKA Story’ in the New Employee pamphlet. You really ran a computer dating service?”

I nodded, “And I have the newspaper clippings to prove it. Doctor Beth Pater, who sits on our Board, was my business partner in High School, just as the story says. Trust me, it’s all true.”

“See what happens when you let a guy into the girls’ club?” Kajri teased. “They ask questions!”

“He objected to the ‘Spa Weekend’ for programmers we had two weeks ago!” Nicole said with a laugh. “We took his girlfriend instead.”

“And we agreed to go to a Broncos game later this year to make up for it,” Skye said.

“Are there any issues any of you want to talk to me about?”

“How bad is the downturn going to be?” Vickie asked.

“Outside of tech? It doesn’t look too bad. Tech is going to continue to be a bloodbath. Whoever decided that stock market value didn’t have to have a positive P/E sure took everyone else for a ride! That’s why the NASDAQ corrected - there were insufficient earnings to justify the insane valuations. Heck, even Amazon hasn’t turned a profit. My biggest fear is that, as usual, nobody will learn their lesson and we’ll see the market run up again based on pure speculation.”

“Tulips?” Kajri asked.

“Not a bad analogy. Like the proverbial railroad stocks before the ‘29 crash, it’s about bidding them up beyond their actual value, and you exacerbate it by borrowing the money to do it. Bo came out to talk to all of you, right?”

“That was before I started in June,” Mick said. “But Barbara gave me the gist of what he said.”

“His advice is sound. And Mick, if you want a one-on-one session with Bo, just let Skye know and we’ll set up a conference call.”

“Thanks.”

“I hear you’re heading to South America,” Skye said.

“Sam was uncomfortable with going to Bogotá, and I don’t really blame her. So rather than split the trip, I’m handling all three EZI offices.”

“I take it programmers don’t get to travel much,” Mick asked.