Chapter 11: Holidays

By the time school closed for the Christmas and related holiday season recess, our extended family had reached a new stasis.

Misty lived with Penny, Joan, Doug, and me all the time. There was no longer the pretense that she’d go home two or three evenings a week. Instead, Brad and Marjorie came to us a night or two during the week, and on the weekend. Sometimes it was only one of them during the week, as the other traveled for business. We also had a place for them – a guest room that they started to leave clothes and toiletries in.

While that bedroom was ostensibly theirs, musical beds or sleeping spots were frequently the order of the evening, so there was no telling whom I’d find in my bed or any of the others. More often than not, I had Penny and Misty with me at night even though we all may have been sexual with someone else in our ‘family’ before bedtime. Marjorie and Joan both had romantic and sexual interest in me and the feelings were mutual. Moreover, Doug often found he had two women in his bed if Brad were traveling.

Despite all our sexual shenanigans with the others, Penny and Misty needed to tell me of their love many times each day. I loved them in return, and each day felt that love grow stronger and most lasting. I tried not to think about the long-distance future for when they were older. I just took a day at a time.

The holiday period was not going to be one long sexual orgy. We had invited various parents to join us. We’d carefully crafted the invitations to state ‘for a day or two’, closing off, we hoped, longer stays but keeping us in good stead with our parents.

The peak occupancy time was Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the day after – Boxing Day. We simultaneously had Joan’s parents, my parents, my late-wife’s widowed mother, and Marjorie’s divorced single father with us – six new bodies to add to our seven.

We put the large air mattress on the floor of the master bedroom. Supposedly, that was where Penny and Misty were going to sleep – being BFFs and all. In actuality, they’d be in my bed, as usual. Joan ‘reluctantly’ (Ha!) asked her son to sleep in her bedroom on a bed made from couch cushions. In actuality, he’d be in her bed probably with his cock in her pussy half the night as he often did. They too were deeply in love.

Brad and Marjorie had their assigned room. We put my parents in one guest room, Joan’s parents in the room assigned to Misty and Penny, and Julie’s mother in the last guest bedroom that was ‘officially’ Doug’s room. Marjorie’s father happily said he’d sleep on the sofa in the media room ‘unless he could find a better offer’.

Of course, most of the parents hadn’t met before. Julie’s mother and my parents had last seen each other as Julie lay dying in the hospital. It had been a sad time, and I hoped that last sense of meeting two years earlier didn’t dampen the spirit of the season. After a few hours with everyone celebrating, I decided it didn’t.

Penny was very solicitous of her grandmothers, spending a lot of time telling them about her schooling and her growing career aspirations. Misty also proved to be an ideal hostess with her grandfather and the other relatives. All the women tended to take over the kitchen. Periodically, great meals or sweet treats would emerge from that room to the detriment of everyone’s weight control: pies, no end of decorated cookies, several cakes, and various fancy side dishes to go with the wonderfully stuffed turkeys, game hens, and salmon we had for main meals. No one was going to starve to death in our household.

After each meal, we gathered in the living room and different conversations took place between everyone. I thought there was some good bonding going on in the room, even between the olders that hadn’t even met prior to the holiday. By bedtime, many new and deep friendships had been made and lots of laughter had prevailed.

Christmas night, I was up late after everybody else had gone upstairs or to his or her bedroom. I was being quiet and working in my home office. I happened to have the lights off, using only the computer screen where I was cleaning up some accumulated emails and paying bills.

To my surprise, I glanced up the hallway outside my home office just as Don Edwards, Marjorie’s father, tiptoed out of the media room where he was sleeping and crept up the stairs to the second floor. He was definitely being secretive. I was curious, so I followed him also on tiptoe, staying in the shadows. In full stealth mode, Don snuck into the room being used by Julie’s mother. I heard the click of the lock, and smiled to myself. Son of a gun, another romance was in progress in the house.

Just as I reached the top of the stairs doing my detective work, I bent over to pick up a cocktail glass that had been left on the floor by an occasional table and chair. I heard another door open and saw my father furtively emerge from his bedroom and go across the hall to the door where Joan’s parents were sleeping. He checked all around to be sure he wasn’t seen, but didn’t see me. He didn’t hesitate and went inside the other bedroom. Seconds later, Joan’s father came out of the room with a grin and tiptoed across the hall to my parents’ room. Both men were only wearing boxer shorts. Neither saw me crouching in the shadows near the top of the stairs.

What the fuck, I thought. I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed in the previous five minutes. The two single parents were now shacked up, and the two complete parental units had just swapped spouses. I had trouble dealing with my shock and disbelief in what I’d seen. The whole scene brought a smile to my lips with a large trace of scandal sprinkled over it.

I tiptoed in to find Penny and Marjorie in my bed. Misty had gone in to be with her father. This was quite a household. Later, I learned that Joan and Doug were also in with Brad and Misty. It was a sexual night in the household.

The next morning, Boxing Day, we had a big communal breakfast with the thirteen of us. After we were all fed and sitting around with our second cups of coffee, I decided to tease everyone.

I started with a typical question a host might ask, “Did you all sleep okay last night? I was sure I heard several of you moving around – in and out of bedrooms and such.”

I looked accusingly, I thought, at each of our six visiting guests, daring someone to admit to their visitors. I almost burst out laughing. All six of the parents blushed, and not just a little bit. They all looked guilty as sin. Everyone was quiet. Don lied, “The sofa was just fine for me – no problems here.”

I finally did chuckle, “It seems I’ve embarrassed all of our guests. Just so you know, this is not a house where embarrassments occur. We are amazingly tolerant and non-judgmental here of anything you choose to do.”

A couple of shoulders relaxed. I continued, “I think I know what was going on, and that’s just fine with the rest of us. We are a very loving home, and we extend those rights to you, as well.”

Now, everyone was curious about just how much I knew, especially my mother who almost said something. I was curious whether anybody would hang himself or herself with an inopportune question or admission. No one did. I think they were overcome with the thought that they’d been caught in swapping or visiting situations. I chuckled the rest of the day.

I had told Marjorie, Penny, Joan, Doug, and Misty about my observations. They were watching the show from the peanut gallery just the way I thought they would. I had fun with a little teasing. In the end, I didn’t pursue the matter any further even though I was tempted – especially with my parents. I thought that that evening the arrangements were made again and with less secrecy than their first night in flagrante dilecto.

The October Swingers’ Party had been Joan and my introduction to swinging – her first time, and my return to the pleasurable activity fifteen years after Julie and I had been involved. We’d liked the people and had gone to another party in November and had a really good time now that we knew many of the group better, including Brad and Marjorie.

Several people in the group bemoaned the fact that there wouldn’t be a party in December due to all the activities around the holidays. The usually hostesses and hosts were stressed out. In a slight moment of weakness, I volunteered to hold a New Year’s Eve party for the entire group. By the end of the evening, it was a solid fact that my home was the place to be on New Years’ Eve. Joan’s friend Barb and Marjorie said that they would help in the preparations and in getting the word out to the members that weren’t there that night. Many accepted the invitation that night.

Thus, after the last of the parents departed our home after their Christmas visits, we started to prepare the house for New Year’s Eve. We cleaned stuff that hadn’t been cleaned since Julie and I had moved in right after Penny was born. We rearranged the furniture so that we could fit more people into the living room for social time, and more people into the bedrooms for sex.

We bought another air mattress – king size. We created a space for it in our bedroom. The queen size air mattress went in Joan and Doug’s bedroom. While Doug helped me with the furniture, Penny and Misty added to the Christmas decorations to make the house festive tailored to New Year’s Eve.

I had misgivings about the teens participating in the swinging activities and told them so over dinner one night. Joan and Marjorie were less concerned. Brad just laughed.

The three teens had been miffed about being unable to participate in the previous two parties that the adults had attended. Penny cited their need to experience life in all its forms and vagaries. She was assertive and mentioned how ‘everyone’ in the family should share the same experiences, regardless of age.

I tried to defend the slippery slope that we were already on without calling attention to it by having all the teens be active participants in a swingers’ society – including my own daughter.

Misty ignored my comments and described in detail how adult they were and how even in their looks, especially with a little makeup, they could appear to be ten years older. To prove the point, she pulled out some pictures on her iPhone where the girls had been dolled up one night when we went out. She was right; Penny and she looked to be in their mid-twenties. Doug was in some dressy sport clothes and also looked older.

Doug smiled and said he happened to love adult female pussy; we all laughed. Joan punched her son’s arm and Marjorie swooned. He cited the need he’d heard his mother state about the men in the party running out of steam by midnight. He said, “Being a teen and with fabulous recovery powers, I can fuck all night and still be ready for more. I look adult – like the girls, have a great physique that may be especially appealing to the women, I love older women, and can be very engaging and romantic. To look even older all I have to do is not shave for a week.”

I stated my concerns again as the others in the family circle paid attention. “We’ve been operating on the wrong side of legality for some time. We have incestuous relationships galore here, and we have underage teens involved as well. We are unsure about the acceptability of either of those activities with the other participants in the swing group. If either of those were unacceptable, we might find ourselves involved in some unhappy legal proceedings, some of which might separate the families involved.

There was a silence. Doug said, “So, don’t tell anybody. Just say we’re friends or distant cousins or something. We’ll use different names.”

Penny said, “Remember that old story about the underage teen that put a piece of paper with the number twenty-one on it in her shoe. When anybody asked her, she’d truthfully say that she was ‘over twenty-one’.”

Misty said, “We could leave the house and ‘arrive’ after many of the other people are here, too. That way it doesn’t look like we live here. We’re special guests you invited. We’ll take care of the make-up and all, too.”

I commented, “Penny and I look alike.”