Chapter 16

We had been concerned about how our militantly naked girls would go one they had to go back to school. We sat them down and had a serious talk with them about people not understanding how they thought, and they agreed that they’d wear clothes ‘as appropriate’.

But we missed something.

Not long after they went back to school, the school held their swimming carnival. Both Jael and Toni signed up to swim, of course, and Jael smashed the school records for freestyle swimming. Every one of them, all lengths, obliterated. If it had been an official race, she’d hold several Australian age group records for the longer lengths. Toni came second, not that far behind and far ahead of anyone else. Jael and Toni got a lot of attention for that, and for not shaving at all (weird how people obsess about that), but they got a great deal more attention because they changed into their swimsuits at the side of the pool. They didn’t make a show of it or anything – they just did it. If other kids chose to watch – and it seemed like every single kid in the school did – then they saw what were normally private bits out in public briefly.

We weren’t pleased when we heard about it, when the school complained to us. It turned out that they had done it at swimming training a couple of times, but the coach had just ignored it. “That’s when it’s appropriate,” Toni explained to us. We warned them they’d get unwelcome attention. But we didn’t make them stop; that’s not how we do things if we can avoid it. Instead, we talked the possible consequences through with them, put some guard rails in place, and encouraged them not to do it anymore. Should we have stopped them? Maybe, but the damage was definitely already done.

They did get some unwelcome attention, though it was actually less than I expected.

Toni copped it first. A boy from her class found her with no one else around, and said she was obviously looking for a real man, begging for ‘it’. Toni knew him as a big mouth blow hard, so she agreed, sure, Jael and her were looking for a boy to do it with them, and he looked like a good candidate. When he picked up his jaw off the floor, he agreed to meet her at the pool after school (the school let any of the high school kids swim laps in the pool). He turned up super excited, only to find a group of Toni’s friends cheering for him to get changed by the side of the pool too. Pretty much everyone heard about that stunt, and almost all the boys got the message.

Jael got the next one, and it was a totally different matter. A boy in their class sent her a snapchat threatening to rape her. She got it not long after getting home from school, and brought it straight to Kat and I for advice. It was nasty, but also pretty incoherent – mixed up with standard crushing on her. Toni knew the boy pretty well, and he was usually nice, though quiet, but prone to ill-disciplined outbursts. We could decide to take it to the police, the school, the boy’s parents, or Jael could just ignore it – what to do? Jael wanted to just ignore it – how could he get to her? But we said, no: you might be confident, and safe, but there’ll be other girls who aren’t, so we need to do something about it. We did two things immediately: Jael and Toni messaged all the other girls in their network asking if any of them or any girls in their network had been hassled by the boy, and Kat went to talk to Sal – Sal and Lem were living with us at the time: time for her to have that talk about her rapes she had long put off with Jael. I had a work meeting, and Lem would be home a few minutes after that finished, so we’d talk to him then.

A few minutes later, Sal came and sat on my lap and hugged me tightly. “Give me strength, Dave.”

Good thing I got the camera off quickly enough. I muted my mic, hugged her back and said, “This is what you’re here for, to give strength to Jael. But you get strong by making her strong. I think you’re ready now – secure, loved, and you’ve made peace with your past. Understanding this will help Jael understand a lot of things. So don’t be afraid.”

Sal talked to Jael with Kat and Toni there as well, sitting in a tight little circle on our bed. I dropped off the work call – they didn’t really need me – and listened quietly in the background. I felt really privileged that Sal let me listen in. She did a great job, too, explaining what happened, and what the consequences were, all the way through to this year, including showing them something I didn’t know about – a scar that she still carried from her first time (I saw it when I massaged her, I just didn’t understand its significance). I think she finally has a good objective assessment of what she did that contributed to things, without blaming herself. Jael and Toni listened, and cried, and asked good questions, and got good answers. And I found out something else I hadn’t followed up on – both of the original rapists did end up in jail, for raping other girls.

This is the kind of discussion that really binds family together, and I could hear that it was working really well for that. And for the rest of the evening, Jael stuck very close to Sal; naturally the discussion affected her greatly.

When Lem came home, I grabbed him to help me on task in the backyard and made sure his hands were busy when I told him what happened. As I expected, his emotional response was very strong, and I rode it out. When he stopped shaking, he agreed that we had done the right thing so far, and that we should talk about it at dinner. And he agreed with me that our main focus should be to make the girls strong.

By dinner time, Jael and Toni had heard back from their social networks – six girls said they’d been hassled. Most of them had dismissed it and him as a weed not worth their time, but one was pretty upset about it – it seemed he was getting worse over time. Also, they’d heard from a church friend of both of them that the boy’s father was gone, and his mother was doing it tough. We had a long talk over dinner, and by the end of dinner, we had a plan.

Jael wrote back to the boy, and sounded positive, and asked him on a date, to meet her at a café not far from the school soon after school ended the next day. I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to go for that, but Jael and Toni thought that he would.

Lem told me how it went.

I was waiting outside with Sal, and Jael had a table inside down the back, all alone, waiting for the boy. He was easy to recognise when he went in, and we followed him in. As soon as he sat down, Sal and I went in and sat down next to him. Jael looked at him like a worm, and said, “This is my mum and dad. You can talk to them.” Then she got up and walked out.

A few seconds later, he seemed to figure out what was happening, and went to get up. I grabbed his wrist and said, “You can leave, but if you do, we’ll just go straight to the cops with the evidence, and you’ll get convicted as a sex criminal. Or you can stay and talk to us. Think about it.”

(I felt just a little sorry for the kid. Lem’s a very imposing physical specimen).

The kid wilted, and said he wasn’t going anywhere. So I let go and showed him the printout we made of his messages. Then I let Sal do the talking.

“Why did you threaten to rape my daughter?”

That little kid was shrinking inside. I could see it. He didn’t want to explain – like, how could you?

“Do you think it would be fun, do you?”

Sal told him about her first rape. Trapped in the car, them holding her mouth shut, and hitting her against the car till she stopped struggling because she couldn’t think, ripping her clothes off, and spreading her legs, and how they got hard by all that, and how much blood there was. I could see the kid, he was crying, and he was going to be sick. He wasn’t pretending at all. I mean, if we thought that he was just pretending to be upset about it ... straight to the cops. But no, this kid was retching.

I put my hand on Sal’s – enough, so she stopped. “Are you going to threaten a girl ever again?” I asked him.

He sobbed, and said, “Never.” I could hear it too, he really meant it. Sal waved to the front of the café – his mum was now waiting to join us, and it was time, quicker than we thought. Sal really did a number on this kid – I was in awe, to show such poise and strength on that subject.

“Good,” said Sal, “but there’s more to it than that. Once you threatened Jael, we asked around all the girls, and they told us about you. How many other girls have you threatened?”

While he was trying to figure out how to answer that, his mum sat down at the table with us. He was shocked – he hadn’t seen her coming. She was glaring at him, a genuinely angry look on her face. “Yes,” she said, “How many other girls have you threatened?”

He said “none,” so I asked him if he wanted me to produce more printouts to show his mum. He cried some more, and eventually said it was maybe seven or eight.

His mum was shocked. This isn’t just a once off bad decision – it’s a strong pattern of behaviour. We had talked about it with her earlier in the day, and she hadn’t been quite ready to admit that there was a real problem, but she was now.

“OK,” I said. “You’ve never going to do it again, and there’s going to be a punishment to make sure you’ve learnt the lesson. Right?” I said, looking at his mum.

“Yes, definitely. Ollie, you’re in really deep trouble now. I’ll quite happily turn you over to Jael’s mum and dad to punish you. You deserve whatever they give you.”

Sal said, “I think we should just give him a spanking like a nasty little boy.”

The kid looked at his mum. I could see he didn’t think we’d really do that. So I said, “Yes, I’ll hold you, and your mum will pull your pants down, and all the girls you’ve hassled will get to do the smacking, till they think you’ve had enough.”

The little kid just about wet himself. He was really panicked now, shrivelling up into a little ball.

His mum looked like she was thinking about that, and then, eventually she said, “I think we shouldn’t do that. This time. But Ollie, if this ever happens again, that’s definitely what we’ll do.”

That was a set up. We wouldn’t really do that – we couldn’t, really. But we wanted it to be hanging over him.

I nodded. “OK, that’s for next time, if there ever is one. Here’s what’s going to happen to you, Ollie. You’re going to make a list of all the girls and give it to your mum, and she’ll check it against our list. Then you’re going to go to each one, in front of her friends, and you’re going to apologise to her face. And then each one of them can tell your mum about someone that they know, maybe an old person, who needs help around their house, and you’re going to spend a day doing whatever they need doing.”

I looked at the kid, and the expression on his face, and you know what? I actually felt a little sorry for him. He really needed a father to lead him away from this kind of behaviour, but he didn’t have one. “Ollie, welcome to being a man. You have to be brave and tough and own your own problems. And being strong isn’t about threatening girls, it’s about making them strong. Show your mum that you can be strong.”

He listened to that, actually, and it was good that he did because a few minutes later, he got to practice apologising to Jael and his mum made him get it right, and Jael got to practice responding firmly but also graciously.

Dinner that night was fun. Lem was so proud of Sal for how she handled it, and she deserved it. And Jael and Michael were astonished. Well, all of us were. I mean, they were like a lion and a lioness defending their cubs – and everyone else’s. I let them talk themselves out about it, and then I said that Kat and I had an announcement. Kat did the announcement.

“When Sal and the kids came here, we told you that we were taking over being parents for Jael and Michael, for a while. Well, the time or that has well and truly come for that to end. Michael and Jael, we’d like to thank you for being our kids for a while, and you’ve rewarded us richly. Now, we’re giving you back to your Mum and Dad. We’re still here, of course, and we still love you, but they’re first now.”

Jael and Michael were on board with that, and we had a little round of informal speeches from them, and Lem, and the rest of our family. But not Sal. She was overcome, too much to speak, smiling broadly as her tears flowed like a river.

After dinner, she pulled me and Kat over to a lounge, and sat on my lap. “Dave and Kat, this really is the best day of my whole life. I know I keep saying that, but it is. Everything has come together. I don’t know how to thank you enough.” Her and Kat hugged, and cried together for a little while. I just held both of them, counting my blessings.

When they pulled apart, I said to Sal, “You remember that I promised you a spanking if you sorted your life out. Well, as of today, you’ve officially sorted your life out, and done so really comprehensively. Do you still want that spanking?”

Sal looked at me seriously. “Yes, I really do, please.”

“OK, do you want me or Kat or Lem to do it? And can you tell me why you still want it?”

Sal looked at me, and then Kat, thinking about that. “I want all of you to do it, I think. I know it’s weird but it just makes me hot to think about it, and it somehow makes me feel loved.”

I knew it was time to make good on my promise. Now I just had to figure out when. And how.

Lem and Sal’s wedding anniversary was on Saturday in late November. After discussing it with Lem, Kat and I chose that night – spanking Sal would be our anniversary present to her. We asked Tim, Michelle, Zach and Zara if we could have the house to ourselves, but they begged and begged to be part of it, and in the end we decided to let them.

The day turned out to be a lovely warm and sunny day, which was useful since it was such a busy day. It started early for Lem and I – we made a trip out to an old lady’s house and met Ollie and his mum there; this was his third day of community service, cleaning up an out-of-control garden for the old lady. Lem’s punishment idea had sounded like a good one, but since Ollie didn’t have a dad, Lem had to get involved. The first day had been an easy one, but Ollie hadn’t really tried, so Lem got into him at the end of the day – did he want that spanking, did he? The second one, Lem had been there start and end, and Ollie had really given it a go. I could see now, looking at Ollie with Lem, that there was definitely a father figure thing going on in the way Ollie was looking at him. I knew Lem had mixed feelings about it. Ollie’s mum, on the other hand ... I could see it in her eyes, she’d have tried to get something going with Lem if she hadn’t seen Sal. Or else, just banged him in gratitude, if he’d even noticed her. There’s always a price for doing a good deed. But Lem ... I was impressed. Doing life right is coming effortlessly to him right now.

Then we went back home to get ready for lunch. For lunch, we had a lovely family meal, with all thirteen of us sharing an outdoor table at a lovely winery in the hills to the northeast of Melbourne. After a long leisurely meal with a lot of laughter, happiness, and family bonding, we all returned home to prepare for our evenings.

Toni, Michael and Jael had been invited to a sleep over for a friend at school. The mother had called Kat about it, unsure if we’d let the kids go, since there was going to be a large group of boys and girls and her daughter wanted them all to sleep in the loungeroom together, “presumably stacked double” said the mother, but that’s what they all wanted. Well, that wasn’t going to be a problem for us, but we did check that the mum had enough support on hand to watch out for alcohol being sneaked in. The kids, on the other hand, were unsure that they could go because of the date, being Lem and Sal’s wedding anniversary. Luckily for them it suited us just nicely to have them out of the house. So mid-afternoon, Michelle dropped them off at their sleep over, after they’d had a talk to Kat and Sal about the rules – they wanted to talk about playing spin the bottle, since they’d heard that might be on the agenda. After some discussion, they decided that they were OK with anything within the rules (e.g. no penetration) that didn’t involve taking underwear off, as long as it was out in the open. Also, they had a mission: to look out for kids getting pushed outside their comfort zone or pressured to do something in private, either when playing that game or any other time.

Late in the afternoon, Lem ran off to check on Ollie, while the women helped Sal to get ready for their dinner date.

Tonight, that was a serious effort. Once Lem and Sal started planning the night, Kat had got in contact with her old friend who organised that sex show we did, and she hooked us up with a fashion designer who adapted a dress he already had for Sal. And what a dress it was ... it was an elegant tight fitting ball gown, all black, down to the ankles, with a low V in the front, and a very low back indeed. There was no way you could wear any underwear with this one, and it was all lace. It was legal ... barely. Good thing Sal was clean shaven: she looked like gift-wrapped sex wearing this one. The price for all this was that getting the dress on and off, or even just lifting it up to go to the toilet, was a tiresome process that required at least one other person to help. Even walking was difficult without assistance. Lem had no idea what was coming.

The restaurant they were going to was at a yacht club, right by the beach. They’d have a table on the very edge of the sand. But it wasn’t one with a good carpark nearby. And Sal wasn’t going for any long walk, nor was it all appropriate for Lem to drop her off at the restaurant and then go find a park given what she was wearing. So Tim and Michelle volunteered to act as their support crew – Tim would chauffeur, and Michelle would help if Sal needed the ladies room. We set it up with the restaurant, they’d hang out in the staff break room while waiting. They hit up the Op shops to find matching uniforms, though Michelle’s was a uniquely sexy take on the theme, tight with a bare mid-riff.

Getting Sal ready was as a long process that started with a ‘calming’ massage, though Kat finished by ‘getting her in the mood for her dress’. Then a long session of makeup, and both Michelle and Zara working on her hair, and then finally Kat and Zara worked the dress onto her.

When Lem got home, Michelle was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. “Sal doesn’t want you to see her dress until it’s time to leave. So you’re coming to our room, and Sal’s asked me to get you ready.” But first, she took him to the shower, and got in with him, and cleaned every inch of him, though he wasn’t allowed to touch her. I’d say ‘poor guy’, since she left him hanging, but I reckon he had a good time anyway. I know she enjoyed getting her hands all over his abs. Then she shaved him, dressed him and did his hair very nice. He looked awesome – a great mix of casual, and formal, like you’d see the Hollywood stars in the magazines. Finally, Michelle got dressed herself.

Then we all lined up so we could watch as Lem saw Sal for the first time. Yep, he was as stunned as we expected. We took photos, and then Michelle showed Lem how to help Sal down the stairs and Tim drove them to the restaurant.

I hoped they had a good time, and I wondered whether they’d be able to contain themselves, though they didn’t really have any choice with that dress – it was such a tease, but no quickies. They did have some serious stuff to talk about: they needed some space of their own, but it wasn’t clear how that could work with our kids so entwined. We could keep carrying them financially, no problems, but they needed their own space as a couple. We’d told them having that wasn’t necessarily about money, but about how they thought of themselves; as a couple, how did they want to carve out their own lives? They were lucky to have a world of options, but they had to find some answers while they were at the restaurant.

Michelle told me how it went.

Walking behind them into the restaurant was awesome. They’re such a beautiful couple – almost physical perfection. Everyone stopped to watch as we walked past them to the best table in the house. What a beautiful day – perfect weather, and the view across the bay was amazing. Their table was actually in the sand, so I helped both of them take their shoes off, and then I kissed them both for good luck, and went up the staff room to wait for them to call.

Their waitress was all over them, she was hot for them. She came and asked me about them, were they movie stars or something. She couldn’t believe that they were just my aunt and uncle, and normal people. The wait staff had to walk past us all the time, and they were all commenting – people kept asking them who the celebrities were. They gave us some food, and we had a great time chatting to them.

The waitress came and told me that Sal needed the ladies room, so I went out to their table and helped her put on her shoes and then stand up, and escorted her to the ladies. As soon as we walked in, I realised we had a problem – the old building we were in had really small cubicles, and there was no way I could fit in one of them with Sal. So we just had to hitch up her dress out in the main ladies room. It was funny, you know, all these women suddenly needed the ladies room, and then the room was full of women watching Sal. She had no privacy, and I had to get the dress right up over her hips. I felt bad for her until I saw her face once she got on the toilet. I could see how much she loved it, all those people admiring her. No wonder those Hollywood starlets are so sexed up. Maybe one day I’ll get to experience that. Then I helped Sal get the dress sitting right, and escorted her back to their table. I can’t tell you how many of those women wanted to know where we got the dress from, and what she was famous for, and I even got a job offer: heaps of money to create the same experience for another couple. It’s a good thing that they didn’t know what I did for Lem beforehand!