Chapter 43: One Seriously Warped Individual

November 8, 2002, Chicago, Illinois

Danielle and I finished eating, I left a tip on the table, then went to the register to pay. Once I'd done that, we left the restaurant.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

"I thought that was clear!" Danielle replied with a soft laugh.

"How did you get here?"

"Talia drove me. She promised to pick me up if I decided not to go home with you, though she thought that was unlikely."

"When do you need to be back?"

"For class at 9:00am on Monday. Can I stay the weekend?"

"For that, you'd need to ask my wives. The thing is, I do need to walk my wife to work tomorrow morning just before 6:00am, my son has a hockey game at 9:00am, I have a karate class at 1:00pm, then tomorrow night, my guy friends come over to play poker."

"Every weekend?"

"Instead of poker, my guy friends and I go out for breakfast on alternate weeks, but the other stuff is normal."

"What about during the week? I don't have class on Tuesdays. You own your company, so can you play hooky from work?"

"I could," I replied.

"Pick me up on Monday afternoon and bring me back early on Wednesday morning?"

"I could do that. And we wouldn't have any interruptions."

"You can pick me up in front of Quad 2 on Monday. What time?"

"I can be there by 6:00pm, so let's say that."

"And drop me off there around 7:30am on Wednesday?"

"Yes. I can take you back to your dorm now so you can show me where it is for Monday. That way, Talia doesn't have to come pick you up."

"Great!"

🎤 Birgit

"Jesse thinks you'll like Mitch," I said to Fangsu as she, Tiffany, Naomi, Hannah, and I walked to Giordano's.

"Will he want to..."

"EVERY boy wants to!" Naomi declared. "But we decide who gets to!"

"Have you?" Fangsu asked.

"No," Naomi said. "Not yet. I don't even turn fifteen until February, and I'm not Birgit!"

"NOBODY is Birgit!" Hannah declared.

"Truth!" I exclaimed. "I'm the only one of all of us who has, and Naomi is exactly right. The boys all want it, but we decide which ones get it and when!"

"Which makes it VERY easy to get them to do what we want!" Tiffany said, causing the rest of us to laugh.

"You really do that?" Fangsu asked. "Use it to get what you want?"

"Not like make them buy stuff, or whatever, but get them to behave," Tiffany said. "Boys tend to be really dumb."

"Like Troy Simms!" Fangsu said.

"Who's that?" Tiffany asked.

"A boy at school who I liked, but then he pulled down a Muslim girl's scarf."

"How rude!" Tiffany exclaimed.

"Birgit threatened to cut off his penis and testicles and make him eat them!" Fangsu declared.

Hannah, Naomi, and Tiffany all laughed.

"Sounds about right to me!" Hannah declared. "Of course, for the right boy, I'd be happy to have it in my mouth!"

"You'd do that?" Fangsu asked.

"For the right guy? Absolutely."

"Girls who say it's gross are wrong," I said. "I know from experience!"

"I don't know if I'm ready for that ... or anything else," Fangsu said.

"Do not let a boy pressure you," Hannah said. "You only do what you want, with who you want, when you're ready."

When we arrived at Giordano's, I introduced Fangsu to Mitch, then went to sit next to Philip. I thought about kissing him, but the last thing I wanted to do was attract attention to our age difference and the fact that, despite him being a nerd, I liked him.

🎤 Steve

"You're alone?" Kara asked when I walked into the house later on Friday evening.

"With walking Jess to work, hockey, karate, and Guys' Night, Little Red Riding Hood and I agreed on Monday night, I'll take Tuesday off work. She actually asked for two nights, but I explained she'd have to ask your permission for that."

"I might be willing to negotiate!" Kara said impishly.

"She did say she wanted to be very, very bad!" I replied with a grin.

Kara and I exchanged a hug and kiss, then I hugged and kissed Jessica, and we headed up to our room so that I could change.

"Suzanne is out with the Coven," Jessica said

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." I replied.

My other two wives laughed at the Macbeth reference.

"One of the ingredients is some part of a Tiger!" Jessica exclaimed.

"Actually," I replied, "it's most likely a reference to a plant — Lady's mantle, which has lobed leaves that resemble a tiger's mane. If the analysis we read at Milford Junior High was correct, most of the ingredients are actually references to plants, with many of the names no longer applied to them."

"Does Little Red Riding Hood have a name?" Kara asked.

"Danielle," I replied. "She has the same idea you did when you were sixteen, though she's eighteen. She showed up wearing a red cape with a hood and tested me with the lines from the fairy tale."

"The better to eat you with!" Kara smirked.

"Her IM moniker is SongOfSolomon7," I chuckled.

"That's just perfect!" Kara declared.

"The kids are coming back here after dinner," I said. "So we should make ourselves scarce."

"Whatever could the three of us do to occupy ourselves for the next four hours?" Kara asked, pulling her sweatshirt over her head.

It turned out I didn't need to put on any clothes until much, much later.

🎤 Birgit

"Can we discuss something privately?" I asked Philip when the gang had returned to my house to hang out after our pizza dinner.

"Sure," Philip said.

I took his hand and led him to my room, where I shut the door, and we sat on the loveseat.

"You know what I want to do, right?"

"I'd say that's been obvious from the first time you spoke to me! But..."

"You can't get past that I'm only fourteen; well and a half. I'll be fifteen in May. But I want to say some things, and I just want you to listen, OK?"

"Yes."

"You know I'm not a virgin, and I haven't been since before I met you. I suspect that you might never have done it, and that's OK because everyone has to decide the right time. You know I want to do it with you, and I'm pretty sure you want to do it with me, but you're concerned I'm too young, but I'm not. As I said, everyone has to decide when it's right for them, and for me, it was July 17th, about three weeks after my fourteenth birthday.

"Think about how I behave, and I'm sure you'll agree that I don't act like a typical fourteen-year-old girl. I'm a mature, intelligent, self-confident, sexy young woman, not a clueless, giggly teenager. I mean, I do giggle at times, sure, but overall, I act like an adult, not a little kid, and you should see me as a young adult or young woman, not as a little girl.

"I also know you're worried about my dad, but you shouldn't be. I want you to spend the night sometime soon, and I'll ask my dad in front of you. He'll say something like 'Have fun, but remember the rules', and you'll know he's OK with it, as are my moms. There are only two rules my dad and moms made. The first one is that I always have to use birth control, and I'm on the Pill, which I told you, so that's covered.

"The second rule is that anyone I want to be with has to have an STI test, no matter if they're experienced or not. I'm not sure how much you know about the transmission of STIs, but it's possible to get them in ways other than directly exchanging bodily fluids. I'm positive you aren't using IV drugs, and unless you had a blood transfusion before 1987, the risk is tiny, but the rules are inviolable.

"It's easy enough to get a test at the clinic at IIT, so I want you to do that, and once you receive the results, I want you to spend the night with me. Nobody but my family will know, and none of them will object. And if you're worried about never having done it, I promise I can teach you everything you need to know to make me feel really good, and I promise I can make you feel really good."

I'd said my piece, so I simply stopped talking and waited.

"I'm six years older than you are, and..." Philip said.

"So what?" I interrupted. "In eight years, I'll be twenty-two, and you'll be twenty-eight, and nobody would even think twice!"

"I was going to say before you interrupted that you're way more experienced than I am."

"Sorry," I said. "I'll be quiet and let you talk."

"You're right that I'm concerned about your age, but that's mostly because of the crazy amount of trouble I could be in if anyone ever found out, which is what I told you at the Halloween party. You're right about not having done it, and you might have guessed that was my first kiss when we kissed that night. I just never had much luck with girls, and I'm not used to girls hitting on me, and I've definitely never had one who said she wanted to have sex with me."

I sensed he was done, so I felt I could respond.

"It's normal to be nervous," I said. "I was when I had my first time, and I had planned it in advance. He hadn't done it before, but we figured it out! Will you do something for me?"

"What's that?"

"Get the test so we don't have to worry about that; you aren't committing to anything."

"Why me?" he asked.

"Because I like you! You're nice, good-looking, and in good shape! And I know you like me because you spend time with me."

Not to mention the reaction he'd had when we danced, but I actually didn't get a good feel because he'd shifted positions too quickly.

"Do you want to kiss me before we go back downstairs?" I asked hopefully.

Philip nodded, and we exchanged a soft kiss. I didn't push for more than one, partly because I couldn't go beyond kissing but partly because I didn't want to scare him away. All I could do was hope he got the test and see what happened after that.

November 9, 2002, Chicago, Illinois

🎤 Steve

"Any special plans for today?" Jessica asked me as Kara, Suzanne, and I walked her to the hospital on Saturday morning.

"The usual," I replied. "Cuddle time with Birgit, breakfast, Jesse's hockey game, lunch, my afternoon karate class, and then Guys' and Girls' nights. Matthew and Chelsea will join us tonight, and she'll go out with the girls."

"Have those two ever had a single second when they weren't the perfect couple?" Suzanne asked.

I chuckled, "Ask Matthew about what happened when he was five, and she declared she was going to marry him. Elyse and I thought he was going to run away! But it didn't take all that long for him to get used to the idea, and I actually had to increase the minutes on our cell plan to accommodate them!"

"Tiger, did you hear from Dante?"

"I did! I should have mentioned it last night, but in all the excitement, I forgot!"

"You fired six shots, not five!" Kara declared impishly.

"Oh, sure, and I wasn't there!" Suzanne faux whined.

"You were out wreaking havoc with your Coven!" Kara countered. "Your choice!"

"Ignore them, Tiger! What did he say?"

"There are five companies to review, four of which most likely do not require me to travel; just get the prospectus and talk with the techies. He wants me to actually see the tech at a company in the Phoenix area. They're working on Continuous Glucose Monitoring devices and researching non-invasive testing."

"Oh! Sexy!" Jessica exclaimed.

The rest of us laughed because Jessica only appreciated technology that had direct application to the practice of medicine.

"Dante thinks the non-invasive testing is at least a decade away, potentially two or three, but the CGM is the real deal. I don't know much about it, so I'll do some research and speak to Mary at Mayo to get an understanding beyond the lancet, test-strip, and monitor setup I use."

"And we get something for that, right?" Kara asked.

"A thousand a month in fees, plus all expenses, and then a taste of any IPO. If any of the companies hit, our taste would be somewhere in the six-figure range, possibly higher. Of course, most startups flounder and fail, so it might turn out to be nothing. That said, Dante sees this as a continuing relationship, so there will be plenty of opportunities."

"We have some through Samantha, too, right?"

"Yes. That's how we got in on the PayPal IPO. As always, it's as much who you know as anything else."

"Hi, Jess!" Allyson called out as we crossed the street just north of the hospital.

"Hi, Ally!"

"Thanks for trading with Jessica," I said to Allyson.

"You're welcome! Did she tell you what I wanted in trade?"

"Of course I did!" Jessica declared. "What better way to tease my husband than to tell him a pretty blonde doctor is interested?"

She was about our age and was, indeed, very pretty, though she was wearing what I'd taken to thinking of as 'ER drab' clothes, which she'd swap for scrubs as soon as she was in the locker room. 'ER drab' was muted colors and loose-fitting, and Jess had started dressing that way as soon as she'd become an Attending, except on days she had to teach.

"You know," I said slyly, "there are exceptions to every rule ... I'll leave it to you and Allyson to work that out!"

Kara, Suzanne, and I all hugged and kissed Jessica, and after she and Allyson had gone into the hospital, Kara, Suzanne, and I turned and headed home.

"Interested?" Kara asked.

"I was actually teasing," I said. "She's pretty, no doubt, but we have rules for a reason, and breaking them on a whim seems like a very bad idea. Especially when things are calm across the board. Even Stephie is in a good mood most of the time!"

🎤 Jesse

"Just you today?" Libby asked when she and Lilibeth got into the SUV at her house on Saturday morning.

"I'm more than YOU can handle!" I declared.

"Oh, please!" Libby exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "Physiology is NOT in your favor!"

"Well, sure, if you just lie there!" I teased. "As usual."

"GIVE ME A BREAK!" Libby protested. "You know that's not true from first-hand experience!"

"So you say!" I said as I pulled away from the curb.

"I should fuck your dad! Maybe he's better!"

I laughed, "Believe whatever you want! And do whatever you want, but you know what it means if you do."

"Hmm. Never be with Jesse again? That might be a good thing!" Libby teased.

"WAIT!" Lilibeth objected. "You'd do it with Jesse's dad? He's ancient!"

I laughed, "I'll let him know you said that!"

"He's like forty, right? That's almost three times as old as I am!"

"You're fifteen, and he's thirty-nine," I replied. "So more like two-and-a-half."

"And so what?" Libby asked. "He's good-looking and in good shape!"

"I could take him in an instant!" I declared.

"Maybe in a wrestling match because you're bigger and stronger, but he'd kick your tail feathers before you could lay a webbed foot on him!"

"Hardy-har-har!"

"Seriously, Lib," Lilibeth asked. "You would?"

"Sure! Not just any random guy that age, but Jesse's dad? Yes, please!"

I made fake gagging sounds, causing both girls to laugh.

"Seriously," I said. "If you want to, go for it, but then we're simply friends."

"Who are you playing today?" Lilibeth asked, clearly changing the subject.

"Chicago South," I said. "It's Wolcott College Prep with players from Jones Prep and another private school, similar to our combined team."

"Where do they play?"

"Morgan Park Sports Center. It's a Park District Rink at 115th and Western."

"How many more games do you have in your season?"

"Three after today. Then there's the long break for Christmas, and playoffs start in January."

"You were citywide champions when you were a Freshman, right?"

"Yes," I replied. "Do NOT ask about last year!"

"They crashed hard out of the playoffs!" Libby exclaimed.

"Thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject! While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?" I said in my best Miracle Max impression.

Both girls laughed.

"I didn't ask," Libby said with a smirk.

"You and Birgit are SO much alike," I said, shaking my head.

"I'll take that as a compliment!" Libby declared.

"You would!" I chuckled.

🎤 Steve

"Julie?" I asked in surprise when Julie Moran sat down next to me. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you without either of our daughters knowing about it. They're with the Girl Gang, and I knew you'd be here."

"We have about fifteen minutes before they drop the puck. Let's go get some coffee."

"Is anyone with you?"

"No, but Jennifer and Josie should be here any moment, and I saw Libby and Lilibeth when I came in."

We got up and went to the concession stand, where I bought us each a cup of coffee, then we went to a small table against the wall, away from the others.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I had the heart-to-heart talk with Tiffany," she said.

"How did that go?"

"I'm sure this won't surprise you, but it surprised me how mature and well-informed she is and how well-reasoned her ideas are."

"That doesn't surprise me in the least. I told you I thought she was mature."

"Not because of me, though; because of Birgit. I'd say that's true for the other two girls in their inner circle, too — Naomi and Hannah. Rachel is a bit older, and I guess Birgit mostly keeps her school friends and Girl Gang separate, except for one girl."

"Fangsu," I said. "I actually saw her here when I came in, along with another girl from the Lab School."

"How is the education there?"

"Very good, though I have a serious problem with their attitude towards sports. They're basically 'everyone plays because sports are for fun', and skill and merit aren't rewarded."