Commune

It was a modern day commune, like in the sixties when it was peace and love, and brothers and sisters. Hey, man, mind if I sleep with your old lady? Sure, man, I don't own her. She's free as a bird, man.

The commune sat on old farm land just off the border of New York and Pennsylvania. A lottery winner had bought the property. An old sixty's throwback, dyed-in-the-wool hippie of the modern day of video games and cell phones and high-def TV. All of which were strictly prohibited on the property.

"None of the man's devices are allowed," Stu Robertson, the lottery winner and owner of the commune told anyone who wanted to join. "All the articles that corrupt our youth are to be deposited right here." Stu held out a large stainless steel garbage can half filled with cell phones and Blackberrys.

Stu Robertson stood six foot four, thin as a sapling, with straggly, albeit clean, shoulder-length hair, and a patchy attempt at a beard. Stu, immediately, defended his winning the lottery, another of the man's tools of corruption, as a sign from a higher being, that it was meant to be so he could buy this farm land and form a commune. "Synchronicity, man. Carl Jung. Dig it."

"The problem with the downfall of the sixties generation commune was the inability to designate work so the commune could function on a long term basis. Everyone was allowed to do as they please so the system collapsed," Stu preached our first day upon arriving. We all stood inside the expansive living room while Stu stood on the hearth of the fireplace and spoke to us. "Not that I'm opposed to free will and free love." Stu winked at a leggy blonde who had tossed her bra into the garbage, her nipples erect against the T-shirt she wore. "But there has to be organization or the system will self-destruct. Everyone here will be assigned a particular responsibility, one they are comfortable with, a strength. For example, I myself am very good with my hands." Another glance at the leggy blonde. "So any repairs to the house or barn, I am more than qualified to handle having been a carpenter under than man's iron hand. So what I'm asking is that you volunteer what it is you think you can contribute to the community to keep it running smoothly. As of now we are in need of some yard maintenance."

I raised my hand.

"Yeah, you," Stu said to me. "What's your name, brother?"

"Freddy," I said.

"I like your style, Freddy my man," Stu said, walking over to me and taking my hand in a soul brother handshake. "You definitely got the right attitude. You volunteering for the yard work detail?"

"I have some experience," I said. "So, yeah, I guess I am."

"Far out, man," Stu beamed. "Far out. What's your experience, man?"

"I did some landscaping and yard maintenance in California for a while."

"No fucking shit," Stu said, amazed. "A true Californian in our midst. Like a sign from the hippie gods of yore, man. That's righteous, brother, totally righteous." Stu moved back to the fireplace. "Is there anyone else willing to volunteer to help my man Freddy on the yard work detail?"

The leggy blonde raised her hand. Stu's face lit up like a beacon.

"And what is your name?" Stu said, jumping off the hearth again and taking the blonde's hand in his.

"Star," she answered.

You'd of thought she had told Stu she was the Virgin Mary by the look on his face.

"Truly you two are a sign of things to come," Stu said, still holding Star's hand and gesturing towards me. "Is Star your given name?" he asked turning his attention back to Star.

"Yes," Star answered.

"We are going to make it," Stu pronounced to the group. He let go of Star's hand and made his way back to the fireplace hearth. He turned back to the incoming group. "I feel it. Like when I felt it was time to play the lottery my brothers and sisters. The commune, a perfect concept of living together as a whole. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. Let's celebrate."

In true communal fashion Stu made his way to the communal bong and fired up a huge bowl of reefer, each of us taking one of the hoses with the attached mouthpiece and inhaling.

Stu had taken the barn and converted it into a kind of mini hotel. He had built about thirty stalls with room for two people to sleep comfortably and private enough for the inevitable liaisons. The back, left-hand corner of the barn housed the urinals, toilets and communal showers. There would be no septic problems in Stu Robertson's commune.

Each stall had a mattress, blankets and two pillows. I took a stall with my buddy, Eric Stanton.

Eric was the one who had talked me into coming here. We had been working together that winter and spring for a company running machine parts from Buffalo to Cleveland. It was good pay, and fairly easy work. Too good for a couple of twenty-three-year-olds like ourselves. But come to find out we weren't just running machine parts. The Feds busted the operation in late May. Seems Great Lakes trucking was also running methamphetamine from the Canadian border.

"Hey, look at this," Eric said to me one morning as we drank coffee and read the paper.

There was an ad in the paper for "serious-minded hippies" to join a commune just outside of Jamestown, New York. Stu Robertson, Proprietor.

"I'm not a serious-minded," I said. "I don't even have long hair."

"Listen," Eric said, seriously. "We're on the verge of losing this apartment and with no legitimate jobs prospects this could be our answer. This is a commune. We don't have to worry about jobs. Live off the fat of the land. This is that dude who won the mega-lottery."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning we don't have to worry about a place to stay or food to eat," Eric said. "And from what I understand, these communes are full of chicks who are into free love. And you know what that means."

"What?'

"Free sex."

I met Star out in the backyard the next day. She was dressed in a pair of cutoff jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt. She still hadn't retrieved her bra. I had on a pair of jeans, sneaks and tank top.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning," Star replied. "Ready to get started?"

I was, but I was disappointed. So much for free love and all.

Stu was prepared. He had bought two lawn mowers, a gas-powered weed eater and had them stored in a small shed.

"I'm not going to make the same mistakes as my predecessors," Stu said, when he came out back to check on us. His eyes roamed all over Star's body, sliding up her long, tan legs, lazily gliding over the frayed edges where the cutoffs met the curve of her ass and then continued on up over her breasts and to her face. "They let their land go to hell, pissed and shit wherever they pleased, and the next thing you know the local authorities were making a visit and shutting them down. Threatening to prosecute for illegal drugs, even prostitution. Ain't gonna happen here, my friends. They were afraid of organization. They should have embraced it."

I watched as Star took in every word Stu said. She was buying it, hook, line and sinker. So much for Star, I thought.

We went to work as soon as Stu finished his verbal manifesto about communal longevity.

The farm had a little over an acre to be mowed. Star and I went to work. I started on one side of the lot and her on the other. I got into the work. I forgot about Star and Stu and the commune. I stripped off my shirt, my muscles feeling like they had a life of their own, my adrenaline flowing through my veins and the sweat poured in the hot June sun.

It took Star and me about two hours to finish mowing. I had taken up the bulk of the work, driving myself like a slave in one of those zones I fell into when I was doing physical labor. I could feel my muscles twitching, wanting more, pushing it to the limit. I cranked up the weed eater and started to rip down the foot high grass in the front ditch like a soldier with a machine gun.

An hour later I stood out front and noticed my handy work. The place, even Stu would have to admit, looked good. Damn good.

I fired up the lawn mower again and mulched the weeds I had whacked in the ditch.

I had completely forgot about Star as I stored the equipment back in the shed. Her mower was already there, but Star was nowhere in sight. Probably with Stu, I thought.

I walked back to the barn and decided to get a shower. I grabbed a towel, a few clean clothes and found the communal shower empty. I stripped and eased myself under the cool stream of water. I leaned against the wall as the water cascaded over my back. The heat of the day washed away, along with the bits of grass and weeds that had clung to my body. This was what it was all about, I thought. I was in a kind of meditative nirvana from the hard work I had just finished. No drug could reproduce this feeling. Not that I was opposed, or hypocritical enough, to turn away a joint, but this feeling was self-induced, a natural high.

"You're hard to keep up with," I heard a voice say. It startled me and I turned to find Star standing there in the communal shower, naked. "Next time I'll be ready."

Star walked to a shower and turned on the water. She turned her back to the water, leaned her head back and soaked her golden locks. As she arched her back, I watched her breasts float upwards, the water running over them and down her stomach. I watched the water glide over the faint, blonde down of hair just above her pubic bone, the light brown patch of hair glistening.

I found myself getting hard and quickly turned back to my own shower and tried to forget that Star was just a few feet away, naked.

"Do you always work that hard?" she asked.

"I just sort of get into it," I said. I tried to keep my back to her, my erection not subsiding, but growing.

"I guess so," Star said. "I felt like a slacker compared to you. Stu was impressed."

That did it. The very mention of Stu deflated my desire like a punctured tire.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said.

I buried my head under the shower of water and sulked. How in the hell could a hot chick like Star be interested in a skinny, scraggily freak like Stu Robertson? Fuck him and his communal bullshit, I thought. Just a bunch of hippie rhetoric. Wait until winter sets in, I thought. Sure, Stu had seen to it to put heat in the barn - a damn good heating system by the looks of it - but wait until the long, drawn out winter settled in. Then it wouldn't be so hip and cool and "dig it, man" and groovy anymore. But then I thought about Star snuggling up in Stu's bed over the winter, those soft breasts and downy hair his for the taking, and my anger resurfaced. Doubled, because I realized I forgot soap, shampoo and a wash rag.

"Hey," I said, turning to Star, not caring if I got another erection. But she was gone. The communal shower empty.

"Where you been?" Eric asked, when I returned to our stall.

"Doing my communal duty," I said, still stinging from my encounter with Star. "What have you been doing?"

"I was helping Stu string some lights for the big dance coming up."

"What dance?" I asked.

"Stu decided to have a dance," Eric said. "Star talked him into it."

Great, I thought. A dance where I'd have to watch Stu and Star dancing together.

Over the next week I kept myself busy cleaning up brush around a small pond toward the back of the lot. Stu had decided to have the dance next to the pond in case anyone felt the urge to skinny dip. I found an old tire and tied it to a tree branch overhanging the water with some thick rope. I contemplated making a noose and hanging Stu from it.

The whole commune was buzzing over the fact we were having a dance. During our communal dinners it was all anyone could talk about. Stu, at the head of the table, smiled like he had just been elected president. Star, sitting off to his left, like the first lady, made me want to puke.

I kept myself busy every waking hour, looking for things to do. I found two saplings in the nearby woods and transplanted them into the front yard. It took hours of digging around the young trees to save the roots, and then hours more to transplant and water them, making sure they didn't go into shock and die. Afterwards, sweaty and dirty from the work, I entered the communal shower to find Beth, a buxom brunette, her head fully lathered in shampoo, her heaving breasts white with the flowing soap, facing me.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hello," I replied.

"Could you give me a hand here," she yelled. "I got soap in my eyes. I can't find the water."

I dropped my towel and hurried to her. I grabbed her shoulders and directed her head under the running water. She began to rinse the shampoo from her hair and eyes, her buttocks sliding over my cock and making it stand at immediate attention.

She finished rinsing, flung back her full head of hair and turned to face me. "Thanks," she said, and then glanced down at my erection.

"Sorry," I said, trying to cover myself with my hands.

Beth glanced around, making sure no one else was near. Stu had made it perfectly clear he didn't want sex in the communal areas. "Nobody wants to be stepping into a sticky mess while they're just trying to take a shower or go to the bathroom," he had said.

Beth reached out, separated my hands and wrapped her hand, still coated in lather, around my cock. The sensation of her warm hand and slippery suds made me shiver. She glanced around again, got down on her knees and placed the tip of my cock near her mouth.

"I won't tell if you won't tell," she said, her warm breath coating my cock.

But before I could answer, the sound of footsteps thwarted our efforts. Beth got up off her knees and drifted back under the shower. I made my way to another shower head and quickly turned on the water, keeping my back to whoever had entered. The cool water and unexpected interruption caused my erection to die a quick death. I glanced over my shoulder and Star had come in with her stallmate, Indigo.

Indigo was the name Stu had seen fit to give her now that he was infatuated with Star's name and how it had made the whole communal experiment seem more real and definitive. He had bestowed upon Mary - her real name - the name Indigo. And she had dug it. Dug it because she had this mane of dark, steel blue hair and Indigo was now her signature. Mother Nature's signature. It was what she should have been called she told everyone.

I glanced over at Star and Indigo as they showered. Indigo, her back to me, and Star looking at me and smiling.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," I replied.

"I saw the trees you planted out front," she said. "They look wonderful."

Indigo turned from under her shower of water and looked at me. Her dark nipples almost a match for her hair said, "You planted those trees?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"Groovy, man," she said. "I'm digging them."

"Thanks," I said.

"Say," Indigo said, turning to face me, her dark patch of overgrown pubic hair looking like a jungle. "Did you put that tire in the tree near the pond?"

"That was me," I said.

"Far out, man. Far out. Classic touch and just in time for the dance."

"Are you coming?" Star asked.

"Coming where?" I asked, trying not to stare at her body. Star, not completely into the communal experience, had not neglected to shave her armpits and legs, and had seen to keeping her pubic hair trimmed. She stood there, totally naked, like it was the perfectly natural thing to do, a little hitch in her hips and waited for answer. "You mean the dance?" I asked.

"Of course," she said. "You've put the most work into it. Surely you're going."

"I hope so," Indigo added.

"Me too," Star said.

"Really?" I asked, excited at the prospect Star was expecting my presence.

"Yeah," she said. "I was just talking to Stu about it and he said you had to come. You're like the...how did he say it?" Star turned to Indigo.

"He's like the quintessential example of a communal member. Unselfish. Hard working. Always thinking of the family," Indigo said. "Handsome," she added. "No," she laughed. "He didn't say that. But it's true."

I smiled the best fake smile I could muster under the circumstances. They had me until Star mentioned Stu again. What was the attraction?

"He's going all out," Indigo continued. "He's splurging and bringing in a live band to play. Acoustical, of course."

Splurging, I thought, and then the light in my head finally turned on. How obvious it had been and yet I had missed it. Star was waiting for this communal charade to finally fade away and she would still be standing side-by-side with Stu and his lottery winnings.

"I don't think I'm going," I said.

"Why not?" Indigo asked, disappointed.

"Yeah, why not?" Star asked.

I wanted to tell her I was disgusted by her facade, her veiled attempt at trying to act like some kind of pacifist and nonconformist. Drifting in among us like an aimless ship at sea and finally finding her port. But it was all a cover because she was just a gold-digger, willing to do anything to have the almighty buck. A fake. A phony. Fuck her, I thought.

"I'm not much of a dancer," I said.

"I doubt that," Indigo said, her eyes taking a walk all over my body.

I stood there, daring Star to look at me, to go ahead and try to turn me on with just a look. I stood there naked, my cock dangling between my legs, limp as a sleeping dog and I wanted Star to glance down just to show her the connection was gone. At least my connection anyway.

"That's too bad," Star said. "With all the work you've done it would be a shame if you didn't come. Stu will be disappointed."

I almost said it. I almost blurted out that Stu could go fuck himself along with his pile of lottery winnings, but I was saved by two other brothers, Sweden and Kyle, walking into the shower.

"Well, ain't this truly a communal shower," Sweden, a tall blonde with a head full of wild, wind-blown hair, said.

"Truly is brother," Kyle, his short, beer-bellied, hair all over his body, stallmate, agreed.

"Star, Indigo, Beth" Sweden said, nodding to the girls.

"Sisters," Kyle said, his eyes looking at them, not like sisters, but like prostitutes.

"Sweden, Kyle," Star said, before turning away, her eyes drifting over me for a fraction of a second.

I looked over and Beth was giving me a quizzical look, glancing back and forth between me and Star.

"I saw the way you look at her," Beth whispered in my ear later that night.

I was asleep. I thought I was dreaming. Dreaming of Beth's tongue running up the side of my face to my mouth, her hand sliding into my shorts, over my hard cock, setting it free.

"I still owe you," she whispered. "For the shampoo."

Beth's lips moved down my chin and over my neck to my chest. She kissed her way, slowly, down over my stomach to the tip of my cock. I could feel her warm breath as her mouth closed over my erection and enveloped it. I dreamed I came in her mouth as she cupped my balls with her hand.

I avoided everyone but Eric over the next few days. I was sick of hearing about the dance, sick of trying to avoid Stu's over-the-top attempts at trying to convince me to go, sick at seeing Star and having my stupid pride hurt.

I saw Beth at dinner and she winked at me coyly and licked her lips. Maybe I hadn't been dreaming.

I kept to myself and continued to work off my frustrations.

"Hey, California," Stu yelled to me as I was mowing the back lot. He had taken to calling me California, a name, I hated to admit, I liked. But I kept on mowing, pretending I didn't hear him, hoping he would just go away. But he didn't. He came up from behind and tapped my shoulder. "Hey, California, can you stop for a moment?"

I killed the engine. "You don't like the job I'm doing?" I asked, without turning.

"What?" Stu asked, sounding genuinely hurt and even more surprised. "Brother, you have been the answer to my prayers. In a manner of speaking, of course, seeing as I'm an atheist and all, or, at least, an agnostic. My rhetorical prayers, anyway. I have never questioned your work ethic or the quality of that work, brother. I'm hurt you feel that way."