Chapter 40: Sandy

Josh and I were in the out-of-doors hot tub, getting rid of the kinks from our luncheon with the homeless when he smiled and moved out of the water.

Why the smile? I asked.

The intervention is finished. Gloria wants me to join them.

May I listen in?

Yes.

After he toweled himself dry, he strolled away toward the guest quarters.

Aren't you going to dress? I asked.

No. Gloria and Wanda are nekkid.

I laughed. That's the way it is, huh?

Maybe.

Why maybe?

Listen in and find out. My polygraph neurons will be humming.

I connected with Gloria and Wanda. They were silent, waiting for Josh. Gloria was worn out. Wanda was nervous, and her anxiety increased when Josh entered Gloria's rooms, that is until Josh took her into his arms and kissed her.

I'm proud of you, he said. He turned to Gloria. You're wiped out, Gloria. I want you to do nothing but relax until the party tonight. Sandy's in the hot tub by the pool. Why don't you join her there and let the bubbling water do its thing?

I felt Gloria's head nod. She hugged Wanda and left, joining me a few minutes later.

I'm thirsty, Josh said to Wanda. Any root beer in Gloria's frig?

Wanda laughed. I doubt it. She has a carafe of ice tea, though.

That'll do.

Wanda hurried away and returned with two glasses of ice tea. They settled on the sofa facing each other.

At the same time, Gloria sunk into the frothing hot water of the hot tub and sighed with pleasure. "This feels good. Just what I needed." She looked at me. "Are you connected with them?"

"Yes."

"Good. If anything goes awry, let me know. Otherwise, let me relax."

I laughed. "All right."

Have you forgiven your parents? Josh asked Wanda after sipping some ice tea?

No. What my parents did to me isn't forgivable. Gloria says she's all right with that.

What Gloria thinks doesn't matter anymore.

Why not?

What matters is what you think, what you feel. That said, Gloria is a wonderful woman, caring, loving, and very, very wise. Personally, I'll listen carefully to any counsel she offers me, but in the end, I'm responsible for myself, so I must decide what's right and what's wrong for me.

That makes sense, and it's not inconsistent with what Gloria has been saying the last couple of days.

As a child, you loved your parents. Do you still love them?

She hesitated. Would she lie?

Yes. I hate what they did to me, their manipulation - Gloria called it brainwashing - but I loved them then, and I love them now. They were sick, Josh, mentally fucked up, and I had the bad luck of being born to them. What they did was counter to our cultural norms, but they never hurt me physically. In fact, they gave me a great deal of pleasure. When they were killed, I started to hate them. They'd given me so much pleasure, so much love, and suddenly they had abandoned me. I hated them for that, but deep down, I knew their death wasn't their doing, and by then, I also knew what they'd done to me was very wrong, and I hated them for that, too. Still, I didn't want to hate them, so I suppressed what they did to me and made them into normal, caring parents so I could love them.

Gloria says if I'd been given to normal, loving parent substitutes after my parents' death, I might have learned to cope with what my real parents did to me and get on with my life without burying how they'd used me for their own sick desires. Instead, my aunt and uncle became my parent substitutes, and they continued the abuse but in a different way. They belittled me, called me names, beat me. I couldn't love them, so I suppressed my parents' sick behavior so I could have someone to love. She shuddered. Josh, you can't believe what I've gone through the last couple of days.

Josh put an arm around her shoulder. Yes, I can. I was with you all the time.

You were?

Yes. Have you forgiven your aunt and uncle?

No, and I won't try to forgive them. I never loved them, and I never will.

Good. You seem to understand the psychological manipulation and sexual abuse your parents visited upon you, and you certainly understand the abuse heaped on you by your aunt and uncle. Do you understand how this abuse affected you?

I think so. It made me feel as if I wasn't lovable.

Bingo! Give the lady a kewpie doll!

Wanda laughed, which tickled me.

So, you believed you weren't lovable. What were the results of this erroneous belief? Josh asked.

I had a difficult time... no, that's waffling, and Gloria wouldn't let me hedge anything. I couldn't maintain a relationship, Josh, sexual or otherwise. Sexually, I was frigid. I don't think I had more than ten orgasms from the age of twelve when my parents died until I met you, and those orgasms happened during my early teen years from masturbating. I not only suppressed my memories of what my parents did to me, I also suppressed my sexual urges and responses.

Do you think you've reconnected with and repaired your past?

I've reconnected with my past. Repaired it? No. Some repairs have been made, but I'm not cured, Josh. Still, I think I can join the living now. Will I repair my past? I don't know. Some of it is repairable, other parts - fuck it, I say. Let it lay.

I could feel her grin. I was proud of her.

What about your lost years? Josh asked.

Lost years?

Yes, those years when you couldn't maintain personal relationships, even friendships, the years when you couldn't function sexually.

Ah, those years. Lost is a good description for those years. Except for my work, Josh, I'm going to write off those years.

Do you have any past connections with people that you misused that you'd like to fix?

Hmm, yeah, a couple, maybe more. One man and one woman, definitely.

How will you fix what you did to them?

Wanda laughed. Fuck 'em, probably. They both cared about me. I had sex with them, but... you know, I didn't come and I looked for excuses to make them the villains, not me.

Do you think you're cured regarding your frigidity?

You helped me come, not once but a bunch of times, and Gloria... well, if you were with me all the time, you know what happened between Gloria and me.

Is all incest wrong? Josh asked.

No.

Is all pedophilia wrong?

Yes. Wait! I take that back. Gloria told me about kissing Darren's little cock when he was a baby. She said sometimes while she was changing his diapers he'd get hard, and she'd kiss his little hard-on, even suck on it a little, and Darren would squirm around and giggle. He liked it. Why shouldn't he like it? It felt good. Some might call what Gloria did to Darren pedophilia. I don't. She said he seemed to like her blowing a raspberry on his belly the same way, or a kiss to his ear or when she nibble on his neck. She just loved him; she wasn't having sex with him.

We're having a party tonight.

Gloria told me.

It's not a clothing optional party. We'll be nekkid, Wanda. Would you like to join us?

I felt the nod of her head.

Are you sure? Does your desire to attend the party come from a sense of obligation to Gloria or me in any way?

She snorted an ironic laugh. No, that would be coercion, Josh. I'm a big girl now, a woman, an adult. I can make a decision like this. I love you, Josh. I know you don't love me like I love you, and I'm all right with how it is between us. I also believe I know the difference between love and sex. I'll find out for sure tonight. I need this test, Josh.

I broke my connection with Wanda. Is she telling the truth, Josh? I asked.

Yes, as she sees it, Josh replied after ending his connection with Wanda, as well.

Will she fall apart tonight when she sees you with me or Nicole or Gloria, and especially with Grace?

That's a part of the test.

Risky.

What I do isn't the riskiest part of the test.

Oh?

The big question in her mind is will she respond to others besides Gloria and me.

Oh.

"Josh, who's your favorite watercolorist?" Gloria asked as Josh petted her breasts with soft, adoring touches.

Josh blushed. "I don't know any."

"You've got to be kidding. You haven't studied other artists?"

"No. Hmm, I did do some surfing on the Internet, but what I saw there were photographs of paintings. I like visiting art museums, but they don't hang many watercolor paintings. I'm self-taught, Gloria; trial and error, that's it. Name some famous watercolorists for me and I'll look into them." He kissed along the side of her neck.

Gloria shivered with pleasure and reached for his partial hard-on. "Hmm, I like Charles Demuth and Winslow Homer. I own one watercolor painted by each. Look into Zoltan Szabo, Tom Hill, Andrew Wyeth, and Edward Hopper. There's more, of course. I'll give you a list tomorrow."

Good. He's hard, she thought.

"Thanks. Did any of them try to paint souls?" A hand wandered from Gloria's breast to her hip, and then to Gloria's inner thigh.

"Not that I'm aware." She spread her legs slightly.

Josh's hand cupped her cunt. She was wet. I knew she'd wanted Josh from the day they'd met.

"Shucks. I wanted to see how another artist approached my problem," Josh said. "Wanda, you know more about art than anyone here. Has any artist ever tried to paint souls?"

"Edvard Munch, maybe. He painted The Scream, a painting referred to as the 20th century's icon of angst. Wait, I'm wrong about Munch. The Scream reflected an emotion more than a soul. Honoré Daumier, perhaps. I think his painting entitled Third-Class Carriage touched on what you're trying to do. I'll do some research and give you some more names later this week."

Josh laughed. Sandy, Nicole, they're trying to educate me.

You need some education, buddy boy, Nicole said.

You also need to fuck Gloria, I said. She's quivering inside.

Wanda, Josh said, when I lift Gloria, take my cock and put it in her cunt.

Okay. Put her back to your front so I can lick her clitoris while you fuck her.

I watched as Josh lifted Gloria, seemingly effortlessly, and with Wanda's help, Josh's hard cock impaled Gloria's cunt. Gloria nearly climaxed when he bottomed out. She did climax when Wanda's mouth covered her vulva.

Wanda stayed with her, though, and she climaxed again a few minutes later. Josh, I knew, took Gloria's second orgasm as his own.