Front Leg Across

"And what they're sneering about doesn't even match up with us. An exhibitionist is a woman who calls attention to herself at all times, including in public. I never do that, and have no desire to do it. A voyeur, in this theory, is a man trying to see from hiding every private part of a woman, without her knowing he's doing this. That's taking something he has no right to. It's also cowardice, and I won't tolerate that in a man. He should admit that he wants to see me naked, and be present if I agree to show myself! I might say no, but I won't lose respect for him."

"But...strangers buy pictures of you? Aren't they, um, hiding?"

Jessie smiled at her daughter. "A very good point. But that's the buyers' choice. My choice is to let pictures be taken of me, knowing that they'll be seen by others. So many people endure sad and lonely lives, fearing that the act of pleasuring themselves is an eternal shame. If looking at my nude body can make them feel better then, I can't object."

Darla said nothing, paging through the album.

Jessie waited a few moments, then said, "Please tell me."

Darla met her eyes. "This is, um, something that I'd like to do. To record the image of my body. Do you think Dad--"

"No. He's very adamant that a father shouldn't do that with his daughter. And I have to say I agree with him. But if you'd like to pose this way, we could help you with what to look for in a photographer. Although, things are changing. What I do with Dad may not be what you do, with someone who respects you."

Jessie crushed her smoke in the ashtray. "From what we've seen, there may not be camera clubs much longer. With the girlie magazines, a man can see women, undressed, without buying a camera and learning how to use a darkroom. So in a while we might be back to me stripteasing for Dad, and him ogling me first in person, and later in pictures."

Darla said, half to herself, "So there's no shame in a nude body."

"Sadly, most of the world seems to think there is."

"There are times when I'd like to be free of clothes," said Darla, "but I don't know how that could happen, except in the shower."

"I can give you addresses of nudist colonies, but you'd need a car. And you shouldn't go alone, driving far away through places you don't know. Perhaps you and I could go together." Jessie hoped she wouldn't have to say again why Walt should not be involved.

Fortunately, Darla was sharp enough to catch on. She smiled and said, "That'd be great!"

Darla imagined Steve holding a camera, and watching her undress. "Mom...what do you think of Steve?"

Jessie kept her face neutral. "I think he tried too hard to impress me and Dad, at the picnic. If he likes having a crew cut, that's fine. But at least twice he insisted that he isn't a juvenile delinquent. And that was never in the conversation."

Jessie looked more closely at her daughter. "What do you think of him?"

"I like how excited he is about me. But, um, I don't think he listens to me."

Jessie said, "Honey, I'm pretty sure you know more about the birds and bees, plus the women and the men, than most girls your age. I'd like to think that all mothers tell their daughters everything about being a woman, but I suspect that they don't. Especially when it comes to enjoying their bodies. Have you been satisfying yourself, when you get really excited?"

Darla cowered, but nodded. "Um hum. And it feels really good, and I'm still a virgin."

"You should take some time, before Steve picks you up, to finger your clitoris. An orgasm will clear your head. It's time for you to find out if he's the kind of man like your Dad, who really loves women. Millions of men will want you to show them your body, but only a few would treat you properly when you do, and value your happiness as much as their own. You should learn if Steve is one of the few."

Jessie then suggested a question for Darla to ask Steve.

***

Steve parked the DeSoto on the local lovers' lane. In a few seconds, the car's rattles and knocks ended.

He put his beefy arm behind Darla's shoulders, his hand sliding over the light fabric covering her upper arm. Leaning at her ear, he said in his usual volume, "Romantic, huh?"

Clouds covered the moon, and the view down the hill was blocked by trees in full leaf. Darla was already having trouble remembering the Western movie they had just seen, it was so much like the one the week before.

She felt Steve's thumb trace across her arm, towards her breast.

"Steve," she said, "have you ever heard of cunnilingus?"

"Who?"

"It's not a who. It's a way to make love."

"Welllll, I sure am interested!"

"It's when a man licks and kisses a woman's, you know, her belly. All the way down, between her legs."

Steve jerked back, his lip curled. He looked down Darla's body. "You mean, um..." He gulped.

"A man shows his love that way," Darla continued.

"I think there are better ways a man can show his love," said Steve rapidly, "And love your, um, belly." His lips approached her mouth.

"Ooh," said Darla. "You know, I just got a splitting headache! Time for me to get home."

***

February 1981

"Help convince me," said Darla, undoing the buttons on what she judged to be a fifty-dollar shirt, "that I'm not reliving an old mistake."

"I think I came to my senses. Quite a while ago." Mark gently stroked her back, easing the peasant blouse along her skin. It was made from a fabric no peasant could afford. "I'll do whatever I can to convince you of that."

There had been some potholes in their road together, and more beyond where their roads diverged. Darla could only guess what their road would be like if it merged again. "Is it possible to say we forgive each other, and decide that this is enough?"

"I think we have to start by saying it," said Mark, "but not assume that this heals all wounds."

She gave a silent laugh. "You're saying all the right things." She added an ironic tone. "It's as if you actually learned something."

"How about this? My notion of freedom was an egocentric indulgence. Anyone who seemed to be hurt along the way, I wrote off as not liberated."

"Including our daughter?"

With an effort, he kept his eyes trained on Darla's. "That wasn't the drugs talking. I honestly believed that breaking the shackles of the nuclear family would be good for everyone, and we'd advance into the future of peace and love. It took a long time for me to see that the world wasn't working that way. If Simone never again wants to have anything to do with me, I'll accept that. If she wants me in her life, I'd rejoice."

Darla couldn't help smiling. Mark had not endured anything to demolish his egocentric indulgence, but he had chosen to step away from it, and reach out to Darla. "And so you present yourself to me," she said, enjoying her teasing lilt, "all dressed up for a post-hippie future."

Mark snarled, pulling off his shirt. "The washed-up movie actor who somehow became President can kiss my ass, and so can all of his ilk. I just happened to have an uncanny knack for improving semiconductors."

Darla sat up, and lifted her blouse. "Are you ready for a disappointment?"

"The only thing that could cause that is you telling me to go away."

She unhooked the sheer black bra, and let it slide down her arms.

He laughed. "You're hunched over, and they're still lovely."

"Oh well," she said, "I'll just relax the way I always do, like in the April 1971 issue of Scalawag." She arched her back and ran her hands through her hair, elbows raised. High placement on a prominent rib cage, and moderate size, put her breasts close to where they were in that photo shoot.

Joining her mood, he smirked and said, "You were always legs and face. You could've gotten implants, but you had this silly notion about maintaining your health."

"I always took my mother's advice," said Darla, unbuckling Mark's belt. "Speaking of that, my parents are coming to visit. How determined are you to pursue me?"

"I will eat any amount of crow, and still expect to be shunned by them."

Darla believed that Jessie would forgive, if not forget. Walt might not try for either.

He raised his rump to assist her drawdown of his pants. As she did the same with his boxers, she looked in his eyes rather than between his legs. "Keep being honest," she said. "You're comfortably rich, despite the divorce settlement. You're one of those detestable men whose looks improve with age. Does your being here have anything to do with rumors of this new disease?"

"Not the way you think." He kept his eyes on hers, even as he felt her fingers lifting his dick. "My fear is that you would close up with somebody else. I've stopped myself from approaching you for years, certain you'd turn me away. Now, I have to take the risk.

"I've heard what you've heard," he continued, "that this may be much worse than syphilis and gonorrhea. But if all I wanted was more sex, I'd keep tomcatting in the world at large, disease be damned. My life means nothing without you and, yes, Simone. If I can do anything to make your lives better, I seek only to have a chance. Peace and love, with the meanings I should have used all along."

Darla grinned, rolling onto her back to shed her skirt and underwear. "In that case, you better still be a great fuck."

He reached for her gently. She grabbed him and made them roll around. He doesn't want to assert himself, she thought. He believes that this is entirely my decision.

She laughed, and kissed him while tousling his hair. "What are you, a sack of potatoes? Where's my naked fun boy from rained-out rock festivals?"

His smile was wary. "Maybe that's it. A bed with clean sheets doesn't get me going." Then he swept an arm around her back and pulled her in for his own kiss, deep but sweet.

We seemed to do everything right, she recalled. Mom and Dad looked after Simone when Mark and I went off and played at free love, three or four weekends a year. It was wonderful to learn that we could have sex with other people and still love each other.

If only Mark hadn't been so insistent about the commune. I was never going to subject our daughter to that kind of life.

At her cleft, she felt his fingers. Some were delicate, others firm, all working to arouse her. She sighed, then said, "You'll find everything is about the same."

Then he brought in his other hand, and she went limp, on her back, thighs wide. No lover in the past thirteen years could lift her so surely to pleasure, with their hands, the way Mark had. A knuckle slid on either side of her labia, a few strands of hair trapped by a thumbnail that pulled slightly, steadiness in contact even when she twitched from sudden thrills. Darla writhed, nearly swooning from the feel of his hands, skilled and sure, as though they had never been absent. His smooth transfer of her inner moisture, to surround her clitoris, made her marvel at how much better his hands were than most men's mouths.

With a moan, she shifted to her side and got next to him. He slid to mirror her, a hand lifting her thigh. She filled her hand with his meat, now stiff and thick.

They had enjoyed many positions in their time together, but for some reason this one, side by side and face to face, seemed to do the most to heighten their senses. His entry was smooth, her reception was slick. The shared warmth showed on their faces as sublime enjoyment.

They weren't reduced at once to gasping and yelping. At first they were just playful, chatting and joking. Yet her stroke of his hair, his fondling of her bosom, sent them to a plateau of pleasure from which greater heights could be scaled.

Soon their drive and grind sped up, and there were gasps and yelps. "Please thumb the nipple," she whimpered, as their trunks still flexed in rhythm. I've welcomed and enjoyed so many other cocks since we parted. Can I actually think I recall this one, from the press of the glans here, the slide of the duct there? A rush set her neck shivering. Or is it okay if I think of this as a stranger making me cum?

Mark's right thumb pressed Darla's left nipple, slightly off-center, to move it sideways as well as inward. The nipple stiffened, but yielded to the circling he gave it. He saw goosebumps just beyond the areola, and felt a joy aside from what her vagina did to his phallus. Legs and face only? Not when it mattered.

Darla's howls found their peak, as she gripped his shoulder to anchor herself while buffeted by hot spasms. Beyond the storm within her skin, though, Darla relished the joy of her skin itself, free and unfettered, a delight from her first nudist camp visit with her mother and, yes, even in the mud at rained-out rock festivals. The thrill of her skin broadened the effect of the surges and flexures of her internal ecstasy.

Mark steadied her thigh as Darla climaxed. He had managed to stay back from the brink, while ensuring that his dork did what it should. He could have submitted then, released into his ex-wife, but he still wanted to let her decide how things would go, even this glorious thing.

As her breath returned and her eyes focused, she said, "Okay if I, finish you, in my mouth?"

His eyes widened. Does this mean she still doesn't want me? It had become common, in sex by singles, for a woman to offer a blowjob to avert the commitment implied in receiving semen in her vagina, even with birth control.

Reading his expression, Darla grinned. "It's nothing like that! Sorry to ruin the suspense, but I welcome you as my one and only lover and companion. I will want you to shoot your slop between my lower lips many, many times. Now would be fine, if you're worried about injury. But blowing you would be a lot of fun for me."

He was so relieved by her statement that his body almost went slack. "Well, yes, Darla, I encourage you to have fun!"

Buzzing from orgasm, hyped by her nudity, she pulled back from him with a shlerp, and got on her knees above him. She knew that few forty-two-year-old mothers had her kind of energy, but lately mature women had taken up exercising. Soon, they might be a force for men to reckon with. She was also aware that women who had previously devoted their whole lives to their families were finding ways to do things for, and place value on, themselves.

She raised his shaft and licked along the side. "I used to be so timid about this," she said, "even in our free-love days." She grinned at his slack-jawed face. "But then I found that some men became much better if I gave them this boost." She drove her tongue through pubes, to curl it around his balls.

"I've become very good at doing this as agonizingly slow foreplay," she said. "But I don't think that's what you need right now."

She plunged her open mouth down his spire, and deepthroated him.

Several times he said "Eeeaaaghh!" or non-words to that effect. Darla tried to show skill with tonguing and sucking, and blocking her gag reflex, but Mark might not have perceived that, as his spurts were already filling what little space was left in her mouth. She tasted none of it, as she guided it down her gullet. It was just another flavor about which she cared little, like their combined sweat and her lube, which had been on the outside of his cock.

She swallowed, and got a tissue for her face as she rose to knee-stand. In their married life she had picked up some of the terms from his physics and engineering. She teased him now as she lifted his softening putz. "I seem to have served entropy. I've taken you to a state of minimum energy."

"Second Law of Thermodynamics," he slurred. "That's the way the world ends. With a bang and a whimper."

***

"If you want to bring Crandall back into your life, go ahead," said Simone, paging through an 'alternative weekly,' eyes on it alone. "Just don't expect me to be around."

"If you think you can get by your whole life waiting tables, with or without your punk attitude--I'm sorry, is it goth now?"

"It's freedom. You wouldn't understand."

Darla silently counted to ten. Then she said, "I'd like us to have a civil talk about something you may find interesting. And, if I can persuade you that your love of freedom isn't compromised by it, you may want to explore some options." She turned to face towards the kitchen. "Mom, would you please join us?"

Simone puzzled at the addition of her grandmother to the moment. "We gonna have a tea party, or something?"

Jessie smiled. "No marijuana for me, thank you." Her gray hair was tied back, but her stride was easy, and her heft of a stack of photo albums at her waist presented a posture like that of a college girl.

Darla guided the three of them to sit side by side on the sofa, Simone in the center. "If you really believe, as you once put it," said Darla to her daughter, "that my part-time work made me a compliant sex object toadying to the patriarchy, then this discussion can end quickly. But first, you should learn more about what influenced my choices."

Grinning, Jessie opened one of her albums.

For quite a while, Simone said nothing, as her mother and grandmother detailed the context of the images.

With the album open to the bus-garage shot of Jessie and two other nude women, Simone said, "So this was, like, the underground origin of the sexual revolution?"

"A revolution which, as you are well aware, is far from complete," said Darla.

"At the time," said Jessie, "I didn't see it as so dramatic. We were simply a man and a woman who were eager to learn what they could do for each other, and meeting people who were looking for fun. Since then, however, I've come to think in more detail about what we did.

"I won't argue with the feminist perspective on equality," Jessie continued, "but my own experience tells me that there is inherent beauty in womanhood, and nearly everyone responds strongly to that. So many cultures produced figurines that boldly celebrated a woman's fertility, which the more modern world seems to have shunned. Were the men in the camera clubs so wrong for wanting to see this beauty? And especially wanting me to get my front leg out of the way?"

Darla laughed, and Simone couldn't help joining.

"So you and Gramps were totally perfect?" said Simone with a challenging tone. She tried to find a 'no' but thought she might accept 'yes.'

"Absolutely not," said Jessie at once. "In the mid-sixties, it was finally shown what tobacco does, and how many people got lung cancer from it. Our sex life had been waning, with no more camera club sessions to feed our energy. Walt and I helped each other quit smoking, by getting back to more sex, and finding that we weren't too old for it. I told him that if cold turkey meant that I would get his drumstick, he'd also have hot gravy."

Darla raised an eyebrow. "Was it really that easy?"

Jessie side-eyed her. "It was that simple, but it wasn't easy. Seeing how tough it was for us to kick the habit showed us how serious this really was. We had to admit that we had become addicts. Fortunately, we'd always been happy to share oral love. And, well, we also chewed a lot of gum."

Darla opened a different album. "Here's a look at the next phase." On the very first page were images of Darla and Jessie, together, nude.

Simone had seen plenty of her mother's magazine spreads. These Polaroid photos showed Simone something different. The women often stood side by side, Darla three inches taller than her mother, but Jessie with more dramatic curves, and none of the markers of middle age that Simone would have expected.

Even more telling, however, was the pure joy of their expressions, in wooded, rough-hewn surroundings. In magazines, Darla appeared seductive, or aloof, or even aggressive. These pics displayed simple happiness, along with two sunlit vulvas.