Chapter 40: Company Picnic

I biked home at a leisurely pace, because I didn’t have the energy to move any faster.

My mother examined my purchases and gave her imprimatur, and was pleased that I found the closeouts in addition to the sale items. I told her I had run into some friends at the mall and we had hung out, so she wouldn’t question why I had been gone so long.

I brought the bag to my room and hung up the new shirts, culling the old ones now past their expiration dates.

I lay on my bed thinking to take a nap for an hour, but kept coming back to Katy. I liked her, though I didn’t think she was my soul mate.

I realized that, as much fun as the sex was, as hard as I had cum, I had missed that “mind-meld” thing that happened with Karen, as well as the spiritual component where we both felt like we had connected to something larger than us. I wondered if I’d ever find that with someone else.

I was awakened by Mindy calling me for dinner, without realizing that I had fallen asleep. Mindy, to my surprise, no longer kicked the door and yelled at me to get up in the morning, but talked to me as she would any other person.

I wondered if that was the result of my periodic “suggestions” to her that her brother was an okay guy, or because she had matured and outgrown her hostility, or perhaps she had developed some new respect for me due to that Rooney/Amanda thing and my association with Karen.

At dinner she talked about clothes shopping with my mother, and I realized with sudden dismay that school was starting only a few weeks from now. Where had the summer gone? I’m not ready for school yet.

After dinner I helped clear the table. It was Mindy’s turn to help wash dishes, and she moaned at the injustice of it all.

Then the phone rang and she panicked. Should she drop the dishcloth and run to the phone, or stay where she was and let someone else answer it and wait to be called to the phone? Decisions, decisions. But, a moot point, as it turned out. It was Karen.

“Hi, nice to hear your voice. Let me guess, you’ve called to beg my assistance with a difficult mathematical problem that has stumped you and your colleagues. Was I right?”

“Not even close, Carter. But do hold on to that inflated ego, it might serve you well as a partial substitute for lack of talent.”

“Ouch. So what’s up?”

“You doing anything Sunday afternoon?”

“Not that I know of.”

“My dad’s firm is having their company picnic on Sunday, kind of an annual tradition and they do it up big time, with food and games and fireworks and music. Mom had asked me to go, but I always find it a little boring hanging around with the kids our age, because they have nothing between their ears.

“However, my dad said I could bring someone along if I didn’t want to hang out with the others. Something that might interest you?”

“If you’re there, I’m interested. What time? I can meet you at your place, just say when.”

So we worked out the details, bring sunblock, towel, bathing suit, sunglasses, appetite. Something to look forward to. The weekend was looking a little brighter.

I told my mom what was going on, and she wanted to prepare food for me, but I told her it was all catered, so no need.

A little less disheartened, I read some, reviewed some Spanish grammar -- I had gotten it into my head that I now knew more Spanish than most of the people at school who had taken two years of Spanish, so maybe I could test out and get credit for those two years of a language. -- I’ll check with my advisor when school starts. -- then I watched a video and went to bed.

Saturday morning I woke up relatively early for summer, about nine, and stumbled downstairs for breakfast and coffee.

As I started my second cup, Jeffy scratched at the screen door. I had gotten so used to hearing his squeaky bike announce his arrival that I hadn’t heard him arrive. I motioned him in.

“Jeffy, what’s up? Haven’t seen you in a few days. What have you been up to?”

“Trying to get in trouble and not having much luck. I’ve gotta find a better class of friends with access to a better class of parties.”

“So it’s true what they say, the rich and famous do forget the little people in their life when they find success. We thought you were one of us, Jeffy. Our parties are no longer good enough for you?”

“You know what I mean, Carter, don’t give me a hard time. What’s up with you and Karen?”

I listened to see who was up and around the house, but I couldn’t be sure, so I gave a nod of my head to indicate we should go outside. We sat in the lawn chairs under the tree. I filled him in on the latest ruling from her parents.

“So you have to stop seeing her, Carter?”

“No, that’s not what I said. They just don’t want us to date exclusively, so she has to go out with other guys and I’m supposed to go out with other girls, so we can see if we’re still as committed to each other as we seem now.

“I hate the idea, but she’s bought into it for at least the foreseeable future.”

“Well, that sucks. You seemed really, I dunno, happy, smiley, the last time I saw you.”

“I’ll still see her. I’m going to a picnic with her tomorrow, for her dad’s company.

“I just hate the idea that she’s going out with other guys who are going to be doing their damnedest to get her clothes off.”

“But isn’t that ... never mind. Anyway, I came over to tell you about my date with Kate.”

“Didn’t you already tell me that? You went to the movies, and later got tongue and a boob?”

“No, that was the first date. This was the second. We went out a couple of days ago. We got pizza and went to hear a band at the Paramount.

“I didn’t think the band was that good, but she loved it. She was dancing around with everyone else, clapping and shouting, she was really into it, having a great time. Anyway, I had fun just watching her have a good time.

“So when we left she was still on a high from the dancing and the music, and she was holding onto me as we walked and talking a mile a minute, did I like the band, what did I think about their hit -- I had no idea which one was their hit, but I faked it -- and did I play music, and what bands did I listen to.

“She was on a music high, all excited. So I put my arm around her, and then she put her arm around my waist as we walked.

“We took a shortcut across the baseball field in Branson Park, you know where it is, right? And they have these dugouts there for the teams, covered concrete with benches, and we’re halfway across the field when it starts raining.

“I hadn’t even noticed the weather, because she was so excited about being at the concert. So it starts coming down pretty heavy, and the only cover is those dugouts so we run for it. We got pretty wet running, but we were out of the rain in the dugouts.

“So it doesn’t look like it’s gonna stop for awhile, and she’s starting to shiver a little because her dress was wet so I put my arm around her again while we talked, and she’s leaning against me.

“So we start kissing and it’s like she’s really getting into it, trying different things with her tongue and changing the angle of her head, stuff like that, and I start rubbing my hands all over her, which gets her even hotter.

“Carter, how come we can never tell which girls are gonna be the ones who are really into experimentation? You wouldn’t think, looking at Kate, that she would be so into playing around with sex. I always thought it’d be the trashy-looking ones, with the heavy makeup and too much jewelry.

“Anyway, I got my hand on her boob again and she loves it, she starts breathing heavy and I can feel her nipple getting all hard.

“So she starts sucking my tongue and I really thought she was gonna sprain it or something, she was working at it so hard, so I grabbed her butt with my hands and she jumps.

“I thought for sure she was gonna slap me, that I’d gone too far too soon. But no, she says, and I quote, “Fuck, Jeff, that feels good!” I am not joking, Carter, word for word.

“So I figure I’m good to go, so I squeeze her ass a little more while she’s squirming, then I get my hand under her dress and between her legs, just sliding my fingers in and out, and she goes nuts.

“She’s saying, “ohmygod, ohmygod, yes”, and get this, Carter, pushing into my hand. She’s about to get off.

“So I manage to push her panties aside and get my hand in, and I’m rubbing her pussy and her clit, and she’s getting more and more frantic, and a lot louder, too -- I was trying to remember how close the field was to the nearest house in case someone might hear her -- so I figure she’s really close and I slide two fingers into her cunt and start fucking her with my fingers, and, honest to God, Carter, she starts going off like some porn star, talking to me, she’s saying, “Yeah, baby, fuck me with your fingers, fuck my little pussy, do it, I’m so close,” like that.

“And she goes on for like two minutes, then she starts gasping and goes all rigid, and shouts “Yes! Yes!” and grabs on to me hard.

“She takes a minute or so to come down. Then she says, “Oh, that was really good, Jeff. I needed that.”

“Carter, it’s like there are two different women inhabiting the same body, and I don’t know this one. I think I like it, but she’s nothing like the Kate I was hanging out with.

“Anyway, to finish, she says, “I think you deserve a reward. We can’t fuck now, not enough time, but maybe this will do.”

“So she unbelts my pants and drops them and sits me down on the bench and gives me the best blowjob. Carter, she swallows!”

“Jeffy, women are complicated. They have a public image that everyone sees, and a private image that only their husbands or lovers see, and sometimes not even then. So the Kate you know is still there, this is just a side of herself that she hadn’t shown you yet.

“You should be flattered that she thinks enough of you to be so open with you. You may learn some new and interesting things soon. Buy lots of condoms. Just in case.”

We talked a little more and I tried, as tactfully as possible, to ask what had happened with Marla. He said he’d called her a couple of times but she was always ‘busy’, so he gave up, figuring she had some new guy. That’s what I figured, too.

Fortunately, Jeffy had someone else now to help curb his disappointment. The new guy probably wouldn’t last long either. My new opinion of Marla was that she was engaging in a long-term research project having to do with sex in all its variations, and Jeffy and his brethren were just her lab rats. Good luck to her.

Jeffy eventually left, saying maybe we’d do something together later on. I realized with a little embarrassment that I was still calling him Jeffy like we were in third grade again. I’ll have to give him an upgrade now that he’d gotten laid. It’s going to be Jeff from now on.

I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon reading and doing chores, and Jeffy -- Jeff, that is -- and I and Frankie went to the movies that evening.

Sunday morning I got up late. There was some pancake batter left over from everyone else’s breakfast, so I made pancakes and bacon. Then I just lazed around until it was time to go to Karen’s. I collected my things and put them in my backpack, and biked to her house.

Her dad was loading the car with beach chairs and other picnic paraphernalia. I said hello, and asked if I could help, but he said that was the last of it, and they were about ready to go. Karen and her mom came out then, and her mother locked up. “Glad you could join us, Tom,” she said.

The picnic was at a park they had reserved, as they did every year, apparently. I asked about the picnic, how long they’d been having it, how many people at the company, and so on, and her father gave me the background briefly.

They’d been doing it for about thirty years, normally on this weekend which had usually worked out well, weather-wise, over the years. There were about 250 people at the company, not all of whom would attend, but those who did would bring families, so there could be upwards of 600 people there.

It was, in theory, a way for employees to cut loose a little and bond, while making everyone feel like they were part of a larger family. There would be games for the kids, things like baseball and touch football for the grownups and older kids, and lots of food.

The parking lot was already pretty full, but we found a spot not too far away from the site. I helped carry the chairs and bags in, and they found a location in the shade where they decided to encamp.

“Let’s go look around, Tom,” said Karen, so I went off with her.

We checked out the food area where they were getting the grills going for burgers, and chicken pieces were already roasting over a fire. The caterers were unloading salads and desserts and all the side dishes. We felt that they knew what they were doing, so we moved on.

There was an area with small kids activities like face painting and coloring books and costumes for dress-up, and another area for older kids with games of skill like a beanbag toss, and another where you tried to toss a ping pong ball into a small mouth jar and win a prize.

It kind of looked like a carnival sideshow, but I was told that people looked forward to it.

We wandered a little further and found a swimming area with a lifeguard. “This could be fun when it warms up later,” I said. “You brought a suit, right?”

“Not my first rodeo, Tom.”

There was a small section of woods a little further back, which looked like a nice shady spot. Maybe later.

We wandered a little further and sat on the ground under a tree and just watched the people congregate while we talked. I told her about how surprised I had been at how close the start of school was, and she replied, “Yes, isn’t it exciting?”

I looked at her and said, “Oh, we really must find you some professional help. This isn’t normal.”

“What do you have against school, Carter? You like learning.”

“I do. I like seeing people excited about the thing they’re trying to teach, so excited that they try to pass on their enthusiasm for their subject and get us excited about it.

“But mostly we get teachers who are going through the motions, trying to muddle through until they’ve put in their twenty years or whatever it is they need to retire.

“I like the classes where teachers make us feel like their subject is interesting and important. Mostly I don’t find that.

“You, Karen, somehow see past all that, and understand that the subject matter, even if it’s presented poorly, needs to be mastered. Is it because you know you’re going to be tested on it and your grade will depend on it?”

“I guess so. I look at middle school and high school as a maze we have to navigate before we get to the really interesting stuff on the other side.

“You’ve talked about geography as an example of a subject that is presented badly, basically a bunch of unrelated facts that we have to memorize for the tests.

“I get that, it’s tedious, and we’ll probably never use ninety-five percent of it ever again. But I need to learn it so I can pass the test so I can get the grade, because the grade is what the people on the other side of the maze will be looking at when it’s decided what road will be open to me when I get through the maze.”

“I really wish I had your patience and dedication, Karen. You just push through, doing what needs to be done. You’re so organized.”

“You seem to be doing okay in school. What inspires this pessimism?”

“I dunno, it just feels like a lot of school is going through the motions. Learning should be exciting. That’s what I really like, when a teacher makes you look at something in a new way and it opens a door in your head and you start to see the possibilities.

“You remember Mrs. Musgrave, seventh grade math? She saw me getting bored with those idiotic ‘find the value of x’ equations. They were so easy, even if the other kids were struggling.

“So she took me aside and showed me how groups of related equations can be represented as a matrix and solved, and that opened up linear algebra, and all of a sudden I was interested again.”