Chapter 18A

There was a palpable increase in intensity at rehearsals on Tuesday, both during the early morning at Barnaby's studio and later at ACT. It no longer felt like we worked on minor showcases to stimulate our egos and little else. Our work would be seen beyond the workshop in a more professional setting and with a greater audience. Though Lindy would take the spotlight, I felt featured as well since my acting, my dancing and best of all my play would be part of it.

And yes, Lindy choreographed on Tuesday. She worked with Barnaby and Samantha and Miwa. Despite the constancy of her work, choreographing and dancing the dance I participated in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and working on the collaboration between mentor and young diva the other mornings and directing my play during the day and attending Snake's tales in the evening, she showed no exhaustion. In fact she thrived on it. She displayed the confidence Snake seemed to pin on her offering her a showcase. She became exceptional: a true professional. Her transformation or more an increase in confidence awed me. Just out of college, I never had a chance to work amongst professionals with professional expectations until that point. It brought more nerves to me, but I found the added nervousness helpful. It seemed to intensify my work, make it more professional, on equal footing with Betty.

After one of the few nights that I didn't have sex, nestling in the crowded bed at Snake's suite with Lindy, Miwa and Helena, we awoke together at 6 and headed to Barnaby's. I could see Lindy's new level of concentration almost immediately.

Sam and Barnaby's relationship had obviously become more intimate and loving. Over our usual coffee and croissants the lovely young half Asian dancer and the living legend discussed their date. They decided to have a picnic in Golden Gate Park the evening before and learn about each other. In that public place they couldn't display physical affection except for the occasional kiss. The location brought him memories of the sixties and Haight Ashbury and the hippies, Barnaby's parents among them. His parents attended the Be-In bringing their young child, and he experienced drunkenness for the first time amongst the stoned and the tripping. That brought Sam to her first involvement with booze and grass. And as they chatted they moved beyond the awed young dancer and the smitten old legend and entered a deeper place of friendship.

"I loved every minute of it," said Sam with unexpected solemnity. The bubbly teen had quieted and seemed more mature.

"It was perfect," Barnaby agreed. They leaned against each other in there side by side metal folding chairs and kissed lightly. "Even just getting a goodnight kiss at your door when I dropped you off couldn't have been more perfect."

"I could tell you needed more," said Sam. "I mean I think you were erect the whole evening."

"I was," Barnaby admitted with a laugh.

"Did that make you feel guilty?" Lindy asked Sam.

"Nope. I fixed it," Sam blushed.

"She waited just long enough for me to get home," Barnaby recounted.

"Hey, I needed relief, too. I just wish I had earphones like you. I had to hear you on speakerphone and worried about my roommate hearing, but I really didn't care. I'm finding my box the phone came in and getting them out for next time though."

"The first thing she says is 'I'm naked.'" Barnaby remembered fondly. "I immediately envisioned her lithe body and her pert tits and her luscious ass. 'You better get naked too, ' she ordered. It didn't take long. And it didn't take long for her to cum. You were just as needy as me."

"Unh-hunh."

"Luckily she's multi-orgasmic."

"And I had Barny, my toy. Susan bought it for me when I confessed my infatuation to her. She claimed it's life sized. It's purple too like the dinosaur."

Everyone laughed.

"She knew from experience," Lindy guessed. "Did that make you jealous?"

"Are you kidding?" Sam replied. "It gave me hope. She had been me a decade before. I didn't think it would be possible until she confessed it. And she told me ... Well I knew after what she said I hadn't chosen wrong as far as enjoying the man I had a crush on. Of course it was only hope still. I felt ... I felt like I stepped into a dream when he invited me to visit you Lindy, just the two of us. Even then I wasn't sure, but that didn't last."

Again we laughed.

"Was it too much, Sam?" Lindy asked. "Did you want to slow it down to... ?"

"God no. It ended all my fears in one fell swoop. I thought I was too young and silly. And my shyness would keep me from confessing my ... passion for him, for you, Barnaby. But you guys just blew the doors down. It was ecstasy. No, I wanted to step back because..."

"You want the courtship," Barnaby finished for her. "You want us to last."

Sam nodded. "Every sexual relationship I ever had had been just sex. The guy or the girl wanted to get off and I did too. Nothing held on. I want it to hold on. I want us to be so intimate you can't bear to leave me." Tears emerged from her big, intense eyes. "Can we be? People will say..."

"I don't care what people say!" Barnaby bellowed. Setting his coffee swiftly on the ground, grabbing hers to place it safely beside it, he pulled her into his lap, her long legs straddled him, and kissed her fiercely. When it ended, he murmured, combing through her thick black hair, "I haven't wanted to be with anyone like I want to be with you since..."

"Miwa?"

"Unh-hunh. But that had to end. I don't want this to end. But you ... I'll be old when you're still young."

Sam smiled and kissed him briefly. "Let me worry about that. I want to be your young chicky, Barnaby, to turn you on for ever and ever. And I get all your experience, in bed and out. What's the problem?"

Lindy smiled. "You guys ready?" The lovers nodded, their eyes connected. "Let's explore this walk in the park, okay?"

And later at ACT according to Helena, Lindy nudged my play into greater form with as great a confidence and tact as she worked Barnaby and Sam and Miwa through new movements. Helena was all smiles at lunch and I greeted her with my own smiling face.

"I finally feel like I can do this," she told me.

"Me too," I replied.

After a lengthy hug and kiss, she added, "I know I'll be nervous, but I can't wait to have an audience."

"You'll feed off their attention, and the nerves and added energy will intensify your presence. You'll hold it in your outward calm generating a dynamo of atomic proportions."

Helena giggled. "Are you talking to me or yourself?"

"Both," I grinned.

Noticing a gathering of the command group for Lindy's play including Barnaby and Natasha with Natasha's brilliant Chinese/American director Jessica there as well, I excused myself from my lover and joined that inner group. Helena sat with her fellow angels and Nick.

Natasha looked tight and ready to burst. "Uh-oh," I thought.

"You want me to change everything in less than a week?" Natasha grumbled at Barnaby. "And who are you to say..."

"Not everything," Barnaby countered. "Just the pace. It's too even. It needs to be more elastic like a rubber band stretched to near snapping before easing up. The movements stay the same, but slowed or sped up to effect the tension."

"And where exactly does that happen?"

I could tell Lindy wanted to join in. I held her hand and kissed her to hold her back. Changing words needed her input, but not this. She sighed after our kiss and nodded at me. When I looked away from her I noticed the table looking at me.

"What?" I asked.

After a pause waiting for the director to make her decision, Natasha finally asked me, "Joe ... Do you notice the ebb and flow of tension?"

"Of course. Like I said before, the whole play seems to be a long fuck between Betty and me, easing back and thrusting."

"It's there," said Natasha contemplatively. "But does it need such obvious emphasis?" Closing her eyes, I noticed movement behind the lids as if she tracked the inner vision of the play on them. Her eyes opened wide and she smiled wryly. "A blow job!" she announced too loudly, blushing when the room went silent and stared at her. She managed to laugh through her embarrassment when everyone else laughed.

"Explain," said Lindy unable to resist.

"When the mouth moves off the cock, it sucks bringing resistance. We speed up when the tension flags, slow when the tension rises counter-intuitively." She and Barnaby and I pulled out Lindy's play and began our working lunch.

"Natasha," Jessica interrupted. "I feel like I'm in a good place with your play."

"That's good to hear," Natasha smiled.

"I feel like we'd be clubbing a dead horse if we kept at it all afternoon. And I can reward my cast for their good work. Why don't I, after we run through it once, come watch your play afterwards? By then you'll have time to work through this pacing thing and I can be an outside observer."

The two directors looked at each other far longer than expected. "Thanks," murmured Natasha during the long stare. At the end, Jessica blushed.

"Hmm," I thought. "Perhaps Jessica's cast wouldn't be the only ones getting rewarded."

A rather private woman who never joined us at Helena's home to relieve our libidos and never really revealed her sexual preference, I had an inkling Jessica preferred the ladies. She had a pretty face never enhanced by make-up. Her jeans and manly shirt though not exactly frumpy hung loosely on her. Except for her natural prettiness, she had a butch air. Perhaps seeing Natasha sometimes with Nick or more often with exquisite beauties like Betty and especially Naomi made competition for affection essentially impossible. Perhaps she hadn't even realized the possibility of sharing her bed with the unique looking Goth. All that changed during the lengthy stare.

"Two things," Naomi told me later that evening, looking quite sated. "Jessica has a mate she's been with for years, Chinese like her but from Taiwan, a brilliant mechanical engineer with a working visa and as petite as Jessica is big. She's a lipstick lesbian. Though plain she exudes femininity. They're very much in love. But I guess Jessica used us for fantasies. And secondly both figured Jessica would be too shy as well as too self-conscious to invite Natasha home. When it finally happened and with the aid of Snake essence, we had a brief dinner together and a glorious romp in the hay. Both had skills being brilliant and creative and having lots of toys. And both invited us back for more. I plan on inviting Betty to up the ante."

"More creative juices becoming juicy pussies," I said.

"Oh yeah. Natasha was definitely juiced up after rehearsal. I thought Lindy's play had been doing great, but Barnaby's idea really brought it to a peak."

"Definitely," I grinned. "And it got my juices flowing as well."

"Just as much as mine from Lindy's brilliance," murmured Helena, naked under her nightie, squirming in my lap on my reviving penis getting my Jockeys even wetter than the mix of Lindy's and my essence had already done inside the underwear. And perhaps some of hers remained on my penis since we had started with a pummeling quickie as soon as the door had closed on the smaller bedroom in Nick's suite and we ripped away the barriers. Miwa brought Lindy to climax with her talented tongue just as quickly beside us. We teamed up pleasuring Miwa afterwards, and as usual the taste of pussy and its inevitable wash of girl cum restored me, and Lindy rode me energetically for nearly a half hour. We finally came out to join Nick and his angels devouring a messy feast of crab Buzz had brought us from Fisherman's Wharf before recommencing Nick's tales. It was Maddy's turn, telling us of her seduction of Lionel, Sir Kevin's assistant.

"We always had company," she began, "what with Kevin and our team of archeologists and Maggie of course. He could be distracted by the others. Not anymore."

"Madeline," Lionel gulps, opening the door of his small apartment near Edinburgh University. He awaits the archeology professor, Kevin's old mentor, to return from summer break to discuss Troy with other students attending. His eyes dart about like a frightened ferret looking for her usual company.

"Call me Maddy I told you," she says with a slight smile. She pushes his lean body, a few inches taller than hers, back into his room, securing the door behind her.

"Why aren't you with Mr. Mackenzie?" he asks.

"I could ask you the same. And it would be Sir Mackenzie by now."

"Yes, I suppose it would. I'm not much for parties."

"You must learn to have some fun, Lionel. All those ladies are missing your clever wit." She sits on his narrow bed.

"Such frivolous banter," he gulps.

"Just so. And thus your cleverness could be that much more needed."

"Uhm ... Tea?"

"That would be lovely," Maddy smiles, removing her gloves and hat and placing them on the bedside table over a mound of books. "Could you assist me in removing my boots first?"

He obediently though shakily kneels at her feet to unlace the nearly knee high boot on her right foot. Once removed, she lies back on the bed opening her legs and pulling her skirt to her thighs, sighing, "Ah, such a long trip. Could you rub my calf a bit? It feels a bit tight."

Once the second boot has been removed, he tentatively complies, touching her soft flesh with the tight muscles beneath for the first time. "A little deeper, my Lion," she coos. "I'm not as fragile as I seem."

"You never seem fragile to me," he gasps. "I have seen how strong you are and how relentless."

She giggles and sighs, "Ooh, such strong hands. A little higher please." She chuckles when he ineffectively caresses her knee. "Higher, my Lion. And how did you know it was me and not my sister?"

"You look at me differently."

"Ooh, delightful. In what way different?"

"You look into my eyes and not at them."

"And why do you suppose that is?" Maddy presses her foot into his groin finding purchase on a growing lump of flesh.

He gasps but more importantly he at last looks into her eyes. "Unlike your sister and even Mackenzie you seem to care what I have to say."

Her busy toes caress the lump successfully. "My sister cares about what you say. In fact she often reiterates your ideas to our knight when they're intimate. He's often more receptive after a good fuck."

"Maddy!"

"Oh bosh. Grow up, Lionel. It's just the two of us here."

"But you're such a lady."

"What makes you think that? You don't think that of my sister, do you? You consider her a slut, maybe even a whore. Remember I was right there with her with our knight until I realized I preferred your company."

"I thought ... I thought what your sister did disgusted you."

Maddy chuckles low and sensuous. "My other leg, Lionel. Start from the calf again. On the bed, silly. Much better. Mmm. No, my sweet Lion, nothing about my twin sister disgusts me. She is just like me. I'm never disgusted with myself. Higher, Lionel. Should I be?"

"It's just that ladies..."

"Again with that lady shite. Ever been with a girl? Ever touched her like you touch me?"

"Uhm, yes."

"Really? How delightful. Make us tea, my Lion and tell me all about it." She chuckles at his brief expression of regret but ends it when he looks embarrassed standing and revealing his libidinous condition. "Such a silly man," she thinks to herself watching him turn away shyly and head to the small stove to heat up some water. "I made that thing stand at attention and he's afraid to let me see it."