Chapter 4: About Mary

My mother named me after the Virgin Mary. She still thinks I'm a virgin.

I wonder sometimes if she had sex more than once. It doesn't seem to bother dad, which seems strange to me. They love each other and sleep in separate beds. It's clear there are all sorts of people in this world.

I was born in Denver. Dad worked for a big insurance company and mom was with one of the big accounting firms. We lived there until I was about ready for school. Mom and dad didn't want me in Denver schools, so we moved to Fairplay, where mom's sister Bessie has a ranch.

Dad opened an insurance office, and mom went to work for the Co-op that sells all the farm supplies there. I went to school, and after school I took the bus to Aunt Bessie's and stayed there until mom or dad picked me up. I almost always slept at home, and we were usually at home together on the weekends, at least until I got really busy with work on the ranch.

At home, mom cooked and kept house when she wasn't working. They both worked long hours and sometimes I didn't get picked up from Aunt Bessie's until after dinner. But we had a pretty close relationship, except when mom would lecture me about covering my body, and keeping my virginity, and staying away from boys, and, and, and... I learned to tune it out.

Mom and dad really love me, want the best for me. They just have a different view of life than I do. They are proud of me, too, which helps.

The reason I could tune out mom's lectures was that her sister, Bessie, had a different point of view, and I spent a lot of my time with Aunt Bessie, with Beth, my cousin, and Dan, Beth's brother. I'd get to the ranch after school, and Aunt Bessie would have chores for me. I'd work pretty hard most of the time, but with plenty of breaks for cookies and hugs and talk about why things are the way they are, and why my folks are so strange.

Bessie says my mom and dad are just the way they are, and I should take the good and the not-so-good together. I know they love me, and Aunt Bessie gives me the space to be myself and find my own way in life. Aunt Bessie loves me, too, so I've got two moms, not just one. And one of them I can talk to.

At the ranch, as I said, I did chores, but I had to do homework, too. Beth and Dan and I all had schoolwork as the first priority. And it was mixed with ranch work — looking after horses and cattle, cleaning up around the main house and barns, and working on the range with the hands. I learned to drive a tractor when I was seven, and I can handle a bale of hay without getting stressed. I grew up with horses.

Bessie has three hands who've been with her for a long time. Jesse is the foreman, he bosses the hands and Bessie bosses him. The hands live in the bunkhouse and Jesse has a place built on to one end of the main house. Most of the time, we all eat together — Aunt Bessie does the cooking and runs the chuck-wagon during round-ups.

When we first moved to Fairplay, mom, dad and I spent Christmas at Aunt Bessie's. I had a great time, and I got to sleep with Beth in her bed. I was kind of surprised when Beth came to bed in nothing but skin, but she didn't seem surprised at my pajamas, so we snuggled up together and slept like spoons all night. Her bare skin felt good. I was a little surprised again in the morning, when Dan slipped into bed with us. He was naked like Beth, and he and Beth cuddled as though it was natural for them. Seeing Beth and Dan was the first time I had seen people naked. I never said anything about it to mom or dad, but, for some reason, they never stayed there overnight again.

It got to be a routine, school, homework and chores at the ranch with Beth and Dan, home again at night. Sometimes homework at home, too. Weekends, I usually went out to the ranch during the day, home again for supper with mom and dad at night.

In the summer there was a lot more work to do. After school was out, the chores on the ranch seemed to multiply. I learned to ride when I first got there, and could saddle and groom a horse by myself before Christmas. That first summer, I really learned to ride; I was in the saddle most of the daylight hours, and now and then the three of us would take sleeping bags and spend the night under the stars. Beth and Dan usually zipped their sleeping bags together and I'd have to watch them making love while I tried to sleep. I kept most of my clothes on in the sack.

That first summer, though, I also learned to swim. There is a creek that runs through the property, and about a mile behind the main house there's a draw with cottonwoods and sycamores. Aunt Bessie had a corral there and a line shack for towels, mattresses and barbecue stuff, and there was a stretch of fence around it all to keep the cattle from fouling the water. They had dammed the creek so there was a good swimming hole there, and we all learned to swim like fish.

The first time was a little strange for me, because, when Aunt Bessie took me and Beth and Dan out there, she'd just said, "Come see our swimming hole." When we got there, we put the horses in the corral and went down to the water. Beth and Dan stripped and jumped in. I didn't know what to do, and I said to Aunt Bessie, "I don't have a bathing suit. What'll I do?"

"Just take your clothes off, dear. Nobody minds here, and nobody will say anything to your mom and dad. We all swim naked. Join us." And she took off her own clothes, too.

Well, I said to myself, 'might as well', and soon Bessie was leading me into the water. Of course, it was cold enough that I started looking for ice cubes, but it was fun, and we all played and swam until I was blue. Then, Bessie made me get out and dry off and lie in the sun to get warm. Dan came over and lay down next to me, and we talked. I liked it.

Before long, my cousins had taught me to swim, and we would spend our spare time in warm weather at the swimming hole. On weekends, or when there was time during the week, Bessie would join us, and sometimes the hands would come in for a swim, too. I found out that the regular hands all swam naked as we did, and now and then, when I was out on the range with one of them on a hot day, we would get to a stock tank and strip and take a swim.

During round-up, when there were extra hands around, we either didn't go swimming or wore bathing suits. "We do things our own way, here," Bessie told me, "and we don't advertise them when there are strangers around."

But all the nakedness got me pretty confused, and I asked Aunt Bessie about it. The next day, after schoolwork and before chores, Bessie and I took off our clothes, and Bessie gave me the grand tour of our respective vaginas. She told me how each of the different parts worked and how they would grow as I grew up.

"I guess I don't need to tell you not to tell your mom about this."

"I won't. I don't think she'd understand this is something fun and important. But I can talk to Beth about it, can't I? And Dan?"

"Of course you can. They've been wanting me to tell you all this for weeks. You have all the fun you want to, and when you have any questions or anything else, you let me know."

From then on, the three of us cousins felt perfectly happy whenever we went swimming and just went naked whenever we felt like it. Usually, we tried to be private about it, like at the swimming hole or in the hayloft, or in one of their bedrooms in the winter. Beth taught me how to eat pussy and how to enjoy it. Dan taught me how to do a good blowjob, and when I got big enough, I got to share his cock with Beth. Of course, Beth was already fucking the hands, so I wasn't on short rations with Dan.

Don't get me wrong. Life at the ranch was not all bare-ass bathing and fucking. Aunt Bessie expected you to do what you were told, to do what you said you would, and to think carefully about what you say and do.

"Not even animals do things without thought," she'd say. "There is no worse excuse than to say 'I didn't think'." And, when we'd say something off the wall that wasn't clearly a joke, she would challenge us: "Tell me what you really mean by that." And we would really catch it if we weren't totally honest and reasonable in our answers.

Ask a question, you got a full answer, with directions on where to find out more. Later, she would ask you what else you had found out.