Chapter 5

We were worried we’d get caught as we stumbled through my cousin’s window. She caught her nipple on the screen and yelped a little as we fell on the floor. It was such an endorphin rush running with my cousin while she was naked. We had no alibi – no excuse if we had been caught.

I didn’t know about endorphins back then – the runner high from excitement. I also didn’t know about dopamine. Cigarettes and sex will often trigger a chemical reaction to release dopamine as a reward and that’s part of their addictive quality.

In this case, the Dopamine hit that I received was simply from the sensation of doing something I shouldn’t be doing – and getting away with it. It was a feeling I truly had never felt before. I always colored in the lines in the coloring book. I always followed the rules and seldom even thought about why the rules were there.

This summer was really the first time I had questioned the rules that were in place, and only because they were so different and naughty than everything I had ever been taught.

“You fat-ass, we almost got caught,” Harley chided me angrily as we struggled to our knees in her darkened room.

I was hardly fat – I was actually quite skinny except for my bubble butt. I found her insult amusing and endearing. I realized that sometimes when her father called her a fat ass or even a stupid bitch – he didn’t mean it in a hateful or antagonizing way. It was somehow a term of endearment. I didn’t understand why it was, but that is how it felt.

It was so audacious that Harley would call me a fat-ass, especially since I wasn’t one that I quite liked it. I blurted out “Don’t call me a fat-ass, you fat-ass!”

Harley didn’t snap back at me for calling her a fat-ass. In my 14 years on the earth, I had never said a mean word like that to anyone. I didn’t see what I said as mean either – certainly nothing to feel guilty about. I didn’t quite understand why, but it felt oddly satisfying to say that to my cousin.

I doubted Harley had a lot of deep thoughts about it. She had let the insult roll right off of her back.

“Would your dad punish me if he caught me sneaking out at night?” I asked.

“Probably,” Harley replied instinctively without hesitation. We both imagined me naked standing in the living room trying to eat dinner with the family. “I mean, I do not know. He would probably say something like...”

She patted her tummy and pushed it out to imitate her father’s beer belly. Then she spoke in this absurdly dorky voice that didn’t sound like Uncle Eddie at all. “I suppose that you and Farty-Ass Harley were out getting into trouble only because she is a bad seed. It’s not your fault that Harley corrupted you. You go sit and watch Laverne and Shirley and I’ll stick a nettle bush up Harley’s dirty fat ass and make her ride it like a motorcycle, making vroom vroom noises around the yard until she turns 18.”

“That is oddly specific,” I laughed at her imitation of her father. “Has he ever made you do something like that?”

“No, but I wouldn’t put it past him,” Harley admitted as she plopped down on her bed. Her big tits flew up as she landed on her back and then landed hard on her chest and flopped like two over-full water balloons. “He makes my mom do all sorts of wicked stuff.”

“Like what?” I asked as I changed out of my clothes into my nightgown. I didn’t bother with a bra but I kept my panties on.

“Well, you saw all those men she fucked at the YMCA?”

I instantly made the connection to what Harley said. A nice guy would wander over, talk briefly to my Aunt, and then she would ask her husband if he minded. She told me she was going somewhere to talk with the man. I assumed that Eddie might get a little jealous or suspicious but he seemed flattered. “She said she was going to talk to them in private.”

“Yeah, my mom the conversationalist,” Harley used air quotes and suggested that she could be the next Phil Donahue (TV talk show host) because she “talked” so much. “She was either sucking their cock, or fucking them.”

“Where?” I asked as I adjusted myself.

“The cunt or the ass, where else?” Harley answered dryly.

“No, I didn’t mean what part of her body,” I grappled with the idea that someone put a penis into my Aunt’s butt. I clarified that I wondered where they could have had intimate relations.

“The men’s bathroom, their car, behind a bush, my mom loves sex.”

“Eddie knows about it?” I asked.

“My dad may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid,” Harley sounded really wise when she said that. “My mom only fucks other men with his permission.”

I didn’t understand that at all. I assumed that infidelity was the end of a marriage not the cornerstone of it. I thought that may create jealousy and uncertainty. Why did she need so many sex partners? I was too shy to ask all of my questions.

“My mom will fuck anybody that my dad wants,” Harley made it abundantly clear that it was not negotiable.

“Even married men?” I asked. I was raised to believe that sex was something between two people that loved each other very much. I couldn’t imagine she just gave it away to anyone who asked. Wouldn’t those men worry about their wives finding out?

“If it has a dick, Juggs will fuck it,” Harley assured me.

“Does it work the other way around? Can your father have sex with anyone he likes?”

“You’ve seen my Dad,” Harley folded her arms up and looked at me incredulously for asking the question. “Who would fuck him other than my mom?”

“I just find it hard to believe he is okay with her cheating on him, but not the other way around,” I still couldn’t get my head around this arrangement. They were doing a “Hot Wife” marriage before that was a term that anyone knew about.

“It’s not cheating if Eddie knows about it,” Harley insisted that I must be dense for not getting it.

“Since you have to do whatever your dad tells you, can he tell you to fuck someone?”

Harley got quiet. I thought maybe she had fallen asleep or was angry that I dared to ask such a question. “I don’t know. He’s never said anything like that to me,” Harley became introspective.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked. Harley was VERY attractive and a lot of boys would certainly have liked how open she was about sexuality.

“This is Laurel Montana. There aren’t a lot of options,” Harley grinned. “I’m not a virgin if that is what you are asking?”

I wasn’t. I wanted to know if she dated a boy or had gone steady. A relationship and not a sex act. I just didn’t have the mental maturity to fully vocalize my question. I think it made Harley uncomfortable so she changed the subject.

“Take off your panties. This aint a sixth grade sleep over. I am not going to finger you in your sleep. Jesus. Let your flaps air out a little,” she said bluntly.

I slipped my panties off and dropped them off the bed.

Rush music came from the boy’s bedroom. It was soft – not enough to wake up Eddie and Juggs. It annoyed the hell out of Harley. Her eyes flashed daggers and her pretty doe eyes started to boil.

“I am going to break that record into a thousand little pieces and shove each jagged piece up your assholes,” she threatened.

The music continued for a few seconds and then they shut it off. Harley leaned back on the bed with a satisfied look on her face.

“Aren’t you worried they will tell your dad you said something like that?” I whispered.

“Eddie would tell you that sounds like something I would say,” she smiled breezily. She told me that her dad would punish her for the things SHE did and said, but he wasn’t likely to punish her because her brothers tattled on her. Harley seemed to think that insulated her and gave her permission to be rotten to her brothers when her father wasn’t around to hear it.

Then again, she called me a fat-ass and I considered it a term of endearment. I wondered if they thought her insults and barbs were how she showed affection to them.

I was still grappling with how different she and her mother were. I had a pretty good vocabulary even at 14. I read a lot of books. I knew what ‘submission’ meant by definition in the dictionary.

What I did not know was how good natured but outgoing Juggs and often sour-tempered Harley could both be “submissive”. Was Harley even submissive? She seemed to do everything she could to skirt her fathers rules and get in trouble. She often acted like she didn’t care about the consequences, but then she would sniffle and whine when her father called her out. Then once the door was shut and he couldn’t see or hear her, she’d flip him the bird and act tough again.That didn’t make sense to me.

I suppose that when I truly thought about what submissive meant, I pictured myself – meek, shy, bookish. The kind of person that got along to get along. A rule follower that did not question and did not protest. I was the type who would sit quietly when the teacher had to leave the room. Harley and Juggs were different from one another and very much the same in many ways. They both didn’t fit neatly into my pre-conceived (and rather naïve) notion of what submission was. When Eddie said that quiet submission took strength tonight, It spoke to me.

I pictured a matronly African woman when Eddie said quiet strength. The type that gives birth to her children without painkiller, carries them for miles to get them food, and quietly accepts whatever is given when she gets there – that type of strength. The kind of person that works hard and doesn’t need to be told what a good job she did. She does a good job because she doesn’t know any other way to do it.

That wasn’t what Juggs and Harley were like though was it?

“Hey, you guy should come over and play truth and dare, We’ve got the blanket fort set up,” Lloyd said. I thought it was odd that he called “Truth and Dare” but apparently that was the game they played in Montana.

“The truth is you are a goonie loser, and the dare is shut the fuck up before I put my knee up your ass the long way,” Harley asked through the wall if that was the kind of truth or dare they wanted to play.

They didn’t respond.

“Trust me, you don’t want to play Truth or Dare with them. They’ll have you squirting mustard bottles up your asshole and trying to write your name.”

“Can’t we give them dares to the do the same thing?” I asked as devil’s advocate.

“Jeepers Creepers,” Harley asked “Who wants to watch Lloyd with the mustard squirts trying to spell his own name?”

“Does your dad ever put them in charge of you when he leaves?” I asked.

“No,” she insisted before thinking about it and changing her mind. “Yes, They are my older brothers though, so kind of. but not like they can spank me when I am rude. Mom is in charge when Dad isn’t here.”

“Does your mom spank you?”

“Sometimes, you saw her make me stand in the corner,” Harley seemed to be getting uncomfortable with my questions but I was just so curious. To her, this was how she lived and it was perfectly normal. The questions might have come across as judgmental or critical of how things were.

“How do the boys respect to her as an authority figure though? I mean they call her Juggs, not even her first name and then they watched her get dressed down at dinner and stripped of dignity.”