Chapter 15: Thanksgiving 1983, the Elopement

Once she realized she was pregnant, Val called her mother and told her. Being a practical woman, Mrs. Fitzgibbon suggested elopement as the most viable means of resolving Val's predicament. Of course, she was also thinking of the family's social status and how that would be affected with a pregnant bride walking down the aisle.

"But Mother, I've always dreamed of a big wedding..." Val whined.

"Of course you have," her mother agreed. "But from a practical standpoint, you can't traipse down the aisle with a big belly."

"I know, I know," Val sobbed.

Seizing the initiative, her mother continued. "You know we can't possibly get a wedding date at the church for at least six months. I mean, I was only talking about wedding dates with Stacy Rhodes the other day. Do you recall Stacy?"

"Isn't she the organist at church?" Val whimpered.

"Yes ... yes, she is," her mother said, and then continued. "She told me how crowded the schedule is for the remainder of the year."

"Aren't there other..."

"Perhaps, but we have to consider our social standing. We couldn't possibly have the wedding in another church. Think of what people would say."

Mrs. Fitzgibbon really had no idea what people would say, but pressed on, telling Val she would talk with the pastor and see if certain arrangements might be made on her behalf.

Joe's parents were more practical and taking their own social status into consideration they knew that on short notice, things might become complicated enough to warrant their intervention.

So, although they fully realized the bride's family was responsible for making the necessary arrangements, they decided to bribe the kids with a wedding present involving them going to Paris, and getting married there, without either set of parents present.

Mrs. Fitzgibbon took the news of the Paris elopement well. It's the best way out of what could be a nasty dilemma, she told herself, and ran up the stairs to Val's room to give her the news.

Of course, Val had already heard the news from Joe, but pretended for her mother's sake, and they hugged one another, and then Val jumped up and down, feigning delight at the trip to Paris, although in her heart of hearts, she had wanted a Wilmington wedding to make all her friends jealous when they saw her in her wedding dress.

PARIS

Val tried to hide her disappointment at not having the big wedding she'd always dreamed of as they boarded the plane for New York at the Wilmington airport. But it took one look at her face for Joe to know how she really felt. And so, he did what he thought the right thing and plied her (and himself) with Champagne and other liquors. Eventually they fell off into a drunken slumber, and failed to do what they had promised Bernie they would do enroute, join the Mile High club.

The honeymooning couple stayed at the Villa Modigliani, a delightful hotel situated in the heart of Paris' Montparnasse district. Joe's father had told him that it was the perfect spot from which to explore the magnificent city of Lights; however it rained their first four days in Paris and they never got to the gardens of Versailles, or the exquisite Jardin du Luxmebourg.

The second day they stood in the rain for three hours to get into the Louvre Museum. And then found that they were too tired to walk through the entire tour and left, greatly disappointed. They did, however, manage to see the three great ladies the famous museum houses: the Venus de Milo, the Victory of Samothrace, and of course, the Mona Lisa.

They ate well, and from Val's perspective, perhaps too well, for she gained four pounds the first week and basically fasted for the remainder of her honeymoon. Joe didn't care about adding any weight, but nevertheless, took advantage of the workout facilities the hotel offered and held his gain to two pounds. The accommodations, on the other hand, were elegant, and Val and Joe made the best of the constant rain by making love in each of the rooms in their suite.

The antique clock on the mantle had just struck seven in the evening. Val heard it from the bath, where she had just showered, and was gazing at her figure, looking for traces of her pregnancy. She breathed a sigh of relief on detecting no bulge. Not yet, thank God, she thought, and then studied her breasts as they rode high on her chest.

She smiled Mona Lisa-like on seeing her nipples extended in arousal at the mere thought of what she would be seeing at the sex show that night. Joe had refused, well to be specific; he had told her he didn't know what they would see. But that whatever it was it would involve men and women having sex. He sent a chill down her spine when he added, "And we'll have a front row seat."

Her eyes scanned downward, quickly flicked past the flat, hard belly to the dark, thick pubic hair that covered her cunt. It lay in a mat and she idly ran her fingers through it to pull it out to its fullest. It was as thick as the hair on her head and when she walked without panties on, she could feel it brush between her legs and it always excited her.

God, she thought, everything excited her. Ever since she'd accidentally discovered that practically anything touching her skin was enough arouse her. The first time it happened, Val had inadvertently inserted one of her sister's tampons to stem the flow of her period. What she didn't know at the time was that her sister had an exceptionally large vagina and required the largest size tampon available, while Val needed the smallest. It acted in a dual capacity on Val's behalf: stemming the flow of her menstrual cycle, and more importantly, acted almost as if she were using Ben-Wa balls inside her. For while Ben-Wa balls roll with the motion of one's body and titillate the nerve endings along the vaginal walls, the tampon, saturated with her menstruations, swelled to an even larger proportion, and with every step taken, made contact with the most sensitive parts of her sexual glands in much the same way, keeping her level of arousal at the highest pitch with each and every step she took.

That particular day, she'd had a terrific orgasm walking from the family car to Church. The friction between her legs as she walked on that cold winter day set her clit tingling, giving her what felt like tiny electric shocks each time a leg swung forward. At the end of just one block, she was breathing hard and could feel her nipples compressed so tightly against her bra cups that she thought they might poke their way through the filmy material.

Embarrassed and confused, Val was halfway up the Church steps when it hit her, and she almost passed out as it started between her legs and passed up her body. She grabbed the railing that ran up the center of the steps and caught herself before she fell.

Val's mother noticed her strange behavior and mistakenly attributed it to the large Hershey bar she had caught Val eating the night before. Actually, Val was only nibbling on a small section, preferring to horde the remainder for those times her sweet-tooth made its stringent demands on her.

As Val reached the top step and the entrance to the Church, a second orgasm ripped through her, more powerful than the first. Her father grasped her by the elbow and whispered "Are you all right?" The concerned expression on his face told her that she had better come up with a good excuse to get out of entering the church. She bought some precious seconds feigning loss of breath; although she really was having some trouble breathing. It helped clear her head, and looking into her father's eyes, blurted, "My period. I just got my period, Dad!"

Confronted by news he never expected to hear, her father took her by the arm and hurried her back to the car without a word to her mother, who was already busy seating herself and Val's sister Heather. He drove Val home, helped her to her bedroom and without another word, returned to the car and drove back to the Church.

From then on, Val discovered that many things could bring her to orgasm. She experimented over every part of her body and spent many a night in her room while studying, rubbing this or that to see what affect it had.

Val picked up her pearl-handled hairbrush and rubbed the end of the handle over her cunt's slit. A purring sound emerged from her throat and her knees buckled. Jesus, am I that close already?

Joe picked that moment to enter the bathroom, intent on relieving himself, but stopped abruptly on seeing the hairbrush in her hand.

"Come with me," he said, with such urgency in his tone that compelled her to follow him.

Joe was amazed that the idea occurred to him as quickly as it had. Photograph her masturbating. He had both a brand new video camera, a wedding present from his mother of all people, and a trusty Polaroid, which he had already used with Val as principal subject, baring her breasts, ala Playboy Magazine photo layouts.

He led her to an antique glass table situated at the point where the foyer met the living room and had her sit down.

Val nodded as she sat down, looked dumbly at the hairbrush in her hand as if recognizing it for the first time and wondering what it was doing there.

"I'm going to take some pictures, Val. The lighting is perfect. It's our honeymoon; we should have something of ourselves as a keepsake. I know you're horny as hell, so go ahead and start. I'll give you instructions as we proceed."

"But you're not in the picture," she protested.

"Not this one, no. But I will be, probably toward the end."

"So what do I do?"

"Lie back on the table and use the hairbrush. I'll start with some Polaroid's, then I'll switch to the video camera."

Val already in a sexual haze followed his instructions, and Joe took several shots of her from a standing position with her inserting the hairbrush into her opening. He was nearing the end of that particular roll of film when it occurred to him that if he lay on the floor he might be able to capture her from a position he'd never seen before, and did so. He got four spectacular shots that he was later told might sell for several thousand dollars. But he knew it would end his marriage, and by that time, several thousand dollars was a drop in the bucket for him. Joe did the wise thing, he put them in a safe deposit box in his bank, and almost forgot about them.