Chapter 10

Shortly after the start of school word began to get around that Eric and I were sleeping together. I could have hotly denied it, adding fuel to the rumors, or I could smile and admit it. After analyzing things in my best redhead manner, I chose the latter.

"Yeah, once a week or so," I said. "It's kind of fun, and he makes me feel special."

The girl, expecting a hot denial, looked confused. "What, this shocks you?"

"N-no," she stammered. "I just thought ... well, you know."

"That I'd deny it? I will tell you we go to a lot of parties, so we don't have as much time by ourselves that I'd like."

That seemed to sit well with her. To have sex we'd have to be alone, and we went to parties. That rumor had gotten around, too, but nobody knew what kind of parties. I even got some sympathetic looks when I mentioned that several of them were at my grandmother's just in Mississippi.

"God, grandparents can be such wet blankets," one girl told me between classes. "I went with one boy to his grandparents, they have a place on a lake a few miles south of here, and every time I thought we were alone, his grandmother or grandfather would come snooping around to make sure we weren't doing anything. The only privacy we had was when we were driving the boat for water skiing."

"And that isn't privacy," I said. "You're right out there for everyone to see."

"Tell me about it."

I didn't add that dear sweet Gram was a swinger. That wouldn't fit the persona I was carefully presenting. I'd been curious how she'd gotten started, and asked her one afternoon when she and Grandpa visited our place.

"Or was it your mother who got you interested?" I asked. We were sipping iced tea on the back porch and watching the dogs chase in the yard.

"In part. My mother did do this sort of thing, but after she met Dad she settled down. She was quite the little mink before marriage. I don't know how she got away with it, either; girls were watched very closely in those days. Dad was a pharmacist, and Mom had access to condoms. This was before the Pill, so a girl had to use something."

"Did she ever talk to you about it?"

Grandma shook her head. "I found some pictures, though. It was Mom in what passed for a very daring bathing suit, a two-piece that came well up her hips and wasn't that low-cut on top. It was taken on a trip to Palm Beach in Florida, and that's a good thing. Back here it would have caused quite a scandal. There, well there it was just one of the suits girls wore.

"From what I later figured out, that's where she cut loose. They had some wild parties there, about like ours, but a little more constrained, and she was quite the party girl. I picked it up in school. The Pill was available then, and I took full advantage of it."

"Here? In the South?"

She chuckled. "No, not quite. I shocked a few people by taking off my halter top to sun bathe, but it was a private location and I was just trying to tan my back. That was my limit of daring here. No, I did a road trip one year, spent my junior year in college on a one year study program in Los Angeles at UCLA. I'm not sure what I learned academically, but I fell in with some people who held parties like ours."

"Were they as fun as ours?"

"We're still doing it, aren't we?" She sighed. "We had actors and actresses, ordinary folks, well-known and powerful people, and college kids, all together in a single house. We'd party until the boys couldn't get it up, and then stagger off to bed, only to do it all over again the next day. There were weekends where I didn't wear a thing except suntan lotion."

"Seems I'm doing a lot of the same thing."

She nodded. "So I hear. After the first few months, though, I settled down. And I suspect you'll do the same. Partying like that is fun, but it's kind of nice to just get involved with a few people."

"I've been trying that," I said. "So far I'm liking it."

"I thought you would. I told your mother much the same thing. Most young women are that way when they first get sexually active. For a while they can't get enough of it. The trick is in maintaining your enthusiasm. There's an old saying: put a jelly bean in a jar every time you have sex during the first year of your marriage. After the first year, take one out. You'll never empty the jar."

That sounded like a real downer. "Think that's true?"

"I know it is. After a while other things occur in a woman's life, and she takes some of her sex life for granted. And then she doesn't know how to restart the flame, all she knows is how to put it off. That's why I like what we have. We never let the fire go out because there's always someone else around, and we've learned to take pleasure in it."

"And you do it in pairs with your partner, Grandpa in this case, so you're never running around behind his back."

She nodded. "People have asked to get together in private, and I've told them no, not unless I can bring my husband along so he can have fun, too. They don't like that."

"I think I had that figured out with Eric shortly after I met him. I noticed that I was having a lot more fun with him along than I was when it was just me."

"You're lucky to find him, dear," she said, patting my hand. "Just make sure you keep him."

That didn't require or risk over-thinking. I made sure we found more and more things to do where we were clothed. Oh, I still wanted to jump his body and impale myself on his dick, but that was Friday nights. And Saturday and Sunday was reserved for fun with other kids our age who liked to party. And during the week he and I found all sorts of things to do. Was I making plans around him? Of course I was. The girl who tells you she has more than one date with a guy and doesn't form some sort of future in her mind is telling a fib. We do that with a lot of guys until we find the one that is right for us. I just happened to get lucky the first time I was in a position to do that.