Liberty Summer Ch. 01-02

"Moving right along," Mom said. "Overnight guests are always welcome at the breakfast table, no matter who they are."

Greg rolled his eyes. He wasn't blushing, he was was flushed with anger. "Look..."

Greg is not gay. I know because I know his browser history. Bi-curious maybe but I know he gets erections over girls. Plus we had played doctor together as kids. There was that one time with the lost chess piece when we were nine or ten... I'd gotten mine out but his had required parental assistance. That and, despite his athleticism, his lack of interest in all things mechanical made him the odd duck of the family. Stereotypes much? Gees.

"No worries Greg," Dad said. Give him credit, Dad sounded like he really meant it. He consulted his card again. "Party, drug and alcohol policy remain unchanged."

Mom and Dad were very strict about those things. We were allowed beer or wine in their presence to demystify the booze to us but unsupervised use was forbidden. No drugs, period. And parties? You only have to call the fire department once to understand their reluctance to have a horde of unsupervised teenagers in your home.

"This next one is something I've been waiting for," Mom said.

"Within reason," Dad said. "The house and grounds are now clothing optional."

"That means no shocking the yard crew or the neighbors," Mom said. She grinned. "But also, no more tan lines!"

You know that ancient music video "Stacey's Mom?" Well I've actually gotten that vibe off of some of my school friends when they came over to our house. It was bad enough with Mom in a string bikini. Having your mom topless or worse when friends come over is going to be a trip. Plus Dad... eww.

"And finally..." Dad glanced at mom. She met his eyes and slowly nodded. "All these changes apply to every adult living here. Except of course your Mom and I do own this house―or approximately half of it by now anyway―so we do get to have parties."

It took a minute for that to sink in.

Holy fuckity fuck fuck.

I shook my head in wonder. That explained so much: the overnight babysitters... the weekend getaways... Watching them flirting with occasional hints of much more with Bill and Towanda Little on shared vacations year after year before the other family moved to Atlanta. Gees.

My parents were swingers!?

"Mom!" I said. "Dad!"

Dad shrugged. Mom was actually blushing, but defiant.

"About your parties..." Greg said. "We're not going to have to..."

"No Dear, we're not going to rub our lifestyle in your faces." Mom said. "The worst you can expect is our having our own guests for breakfast now and then."

"Well there will be a little bit more to it than that," Dad said.

"Yes," Mom said. "I almost forgot"

Which sounded not at all convincing. She reached into her purse and pulled a shiny metal ring and quickly snapped it around her own neck. This being the Twenty-first Century, even I knew what that was. My mom? Collared? I looked at my Dad.

"Oh no Dear," Mom said. "It's not his."

Greg started laughing so hard he ended up bent over with his head down on the table.

I wanted to cry. My world had just been turned upside down. "D-daddy?"

"Rusty?" Dad seemed remarkably unperturbed. I mean I know he would have known but you'd think having his children find out would make him... I don't know. Instead he put on his "my baby's crying" face and opened his arms.

I rushed into them.

"How?" I asked. "Why? Who?"

"Your Mom has certain needs I can't fill."

"He can Dear," Mom said. "But it hurts him to do it."

I looked up at him. "But you let someone else... another man... it is another man?"

"Yes Dear," Mom said. "Your Uncle Bill."

"Sweetie, I'm an engineer, not a doctor. When your Mom needs medical attention we take her to a doctor."

"That's not the same thing!" I wailed.

"No, I suppose you're right. But it's the closest I can come up with at the moment."

"But the... the..."

"Sex?" Mom asked. "Yes there's sex involved. We just told you we partied with the Littles, among others, so I don't see―"

"But this makes Daddy a whatchamacallit, a cuckold?"

Mom laughed. "Hardly Dear. If anything I'm your father's cuckqueen. Ask your Aunt Towanda. Or Olivia Snow—"

"Samantha," Dad said rather sharply.

"Forget I said that," Mom said to me.

"Okay Mom," I said. Olivia Snow had been my Sunday school teacher for three years. Her daughter Pamela was on the other end of the famous hand sniffing incident.

"I'm sorry Dear," Mom said to Dad. "My tongue slipped."

"I know Dear," Dad said. "These things happen. Let's move on."

That got an odd look from Mom. Like what Dad had said actually pissed her off.

"Look Rusty," Dad said. "Bill is very good at what he does for your Mom and they both enjoy it. I think of it as a sport they share, like tennis. Bill is a pro."

"And he has the equipment for it." Her voice had a cruel edge to it.

Dad looked pained at that. It made me mad. "Mom!"

"Bill is quite a skilled woodworker and makes all kinds of―"

"That's not what you meant!" I yelled.

Mom deflated. "Yes Dear, you're right. I shouldn't have said what I did when I did. It was mean."

"It is what it is, as they say," Dad said. "We are endowed by our Creator..."

"Stop!" I said. We're talking about cock size and my Dad is quoting the Declaration of Independence! I mean it makes weird sense in that it's something outside a guy's own control but gees Louise... Suddenly I was trying to laugh while still crying and ended up with hiccups. Dad was holding me and patting my back.

"Your father is good and sufficient for any woman's needs," Mom said. "Your existence if proof enough of that. Bill is just a special treat now and then. If it helps, Towanda has labeled your father 'N.B.' and it's stuck with our social group."

"Hick..." I bit the hook. "NB?"

"It means 'Not Bad―for a white guy.'" Dad said. He didn't sound proud about it though. More like resigned.

Greg snorted. He had been a spectator to all this family drama. Thinking about that I realized it was often the case, and I had a bad premonition about it. Like I needed another belly lurching revelation. Shit. This was supposed to be a happy occasion! New car, not just parental permission but actual approval to sexually explore, no more tan lines with a whole long summer stretching out ahead and... wow.

"I'm gonna need some time to think," I said. "To adjust, you know?"

"Of course Dear," Mom said.

"Yes Rusty Wusty," Dad said. He kissed the top of my head.

"Yes Rusty Wusty" Greg sneered.

"Greg!" Mom and Dad said in unison.

Greg got up and walked out.

"That's not good," Dad said.

"I'll go and talk―" Mom started.

"No," I said. "Let me."

I found Greg out on the back deck fishing for something in the mini fridge.

"Whatcha doin Bro?"

"Having a beer," he said. "Want one?"

I looked around with guilt but then decided, after all that just happened? Fuck it. "Yes please."

He turned around and handed me a Yuengling. I uncapped it and took a swig, deciding I was never going to be a wine mom. Beer bitch? Yeah that sounded right. "Some shit huh?"

"Yeah some shit." Greg sat on a nearby lounger hunched over, dangling the bottle from his hand. "Look, if you think I just need someone to listen to me vent my feeling, I'm a guy, not one of your girlfriends. We're not like that."

"I know." I joined him and put an arm around his shoulder.

"I'm a guy. A regular guy. I like girls, I really do. I love the smell of them..."

I snorted. "I know! That time you put Pam Snow up on your one hand at the homecoming game, you think nobody saw you smell your palm when she was down?"

He looked over at me with a sheepish grin. "Caught hell for it from Coach Archer. Like she doesn't sniff their panties in the locker room."

"It's called discretion Bro."

"Sounds like there ain't gonna be much of that around here from now on."

"I don't know. I think they think they may have gone too far too fast..."

At which point Mom demonstrated perfect timing by coming through the sliding door wearing only a towel and her collar. "Mind if I play through?"

She didn't say boo about the beer even though I could tell she noted the bottles in our hands.

"Sure thing Mom," Greg said. "Nice pedicure."

"Thank you Greg," she said. "I just want to catch some rays before the sun goes behind the the wall."

The wall was the sound barrier of the turnpike that abutted our property to the west. The expressway here was elevated so the wall was rather imposing. So much so it may have reduced our property value, which was probably why we could afford it. But the space between our property line and the wall was a bit of wilderness we had explored as kids. Every kid needs a bit of wilderness growing up. You take the good with the bad.

"I'll just give you two your space," Mom said. As she walked off, hips swaying more then I ever remember before she called back "Two beer limit please."

"Yes Mom!" we said in unison.

"Look Greg, about the 'Rusty Wusty' thing...."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry Sis."

I slapped his shoulder. "No you idiot, I'm the one that's sorry. They treat me better than you. Especially Dad. Not all that much but enough to notice. I notice."

"Yeah, sometimes I feel like the fourth wheel on a tricycle."

"Yeah, like that." I took a swig of my beer. It was cold and foamy and good in that bitter sweet way of it, perfectly matching the mood of the moment.

"But it's only natural," Greg said. "I'm different. I don't know how it happened, but I'm different than what everyone expects in this family. Why should they invest as much time in me as they do you?"

"Because you're my brother," I said. "And their son."

"I don't know, the father-daughter thing is a pretty big thing for humanity. 'Cleopatra' was the most common girl name in ancient Greece. It means 'beloved of her father,' in other words 'Daddy's Girl.'"

I looked at him as he drained half his beer in a gulp. "You'd kill at playing Jeopardy."

"Thanks Sis. You remember that time when we were ten and I got that chess piece stuck in my ass?"

"Yeah I do." What the fuck, I guess we both knew that was a defining moment for him.

His shoulders slumped even more that they had been. "So it's no surprise people think I might be gay."

"You're not gay Greg," I said. "And how would anyone know about that anyways?"

"I know, but I gotta tell you, I like having things stuck in my butt. But only when a girl does it."

"It's called 'pegging.'" I said. Two can play the trivia game.

"I know," he said. "But how can I ask a girl to do that for me without her thinking I'm gay?"

"Duh, because you were asking her and not some guy?"

"That's not the way Nicole thought about it." Oh shit, so that's how those rumors, not to mention the tauntings, and the fist fights our junior year had come about.

It was such fucked up situation. Some of the trouble actually came from the openly gay kids who had their own table in the lunch room. Their clique and hangers on were a solid power center in student politics. They had started chanting "shit or get off the pot" at Greg when he walked by instead of joining them.

It got to the point where Greg wavered. He actually went out on something like a date with one of the openly gay kids not of the gay table clique to see what would happen. It was Calvin Wu. I think they played miniature golf. Didn't work out. But they came to some kind of weird friendship thing.

Yes there were some gay kids who were not in the power clique. Some, like Calvin were ostracized for having a wrong opinion on some side issue entirely unrelated to alternative genital gratification. What the fuck is the Laffer Curve anyways?

Others were more about some aspect of their lives other than about their sexual preference like sports, gaming, or music.

Calvin, besides being something other gays accused of being a 'log cabin,' was into piano. He spent every free moment down in the auditorium practicing on the school's prized Steinway. You'd hear sweet notes wafting about at that end of the school sometimes if the halls weren't filled with kids between classes.

Pretty much everyone who wasn't an asshole liked Calvin.

He died in a fiery car crash on an icy mountain road New Years Day along with Mr. Ellingsworth, our economics teacher. The whole thing had a Thelma and Louise vibe to it.

Greg and I went to the funeral. It was closed casket. Not many people from school were there because it was Saturday and therefore not an excuse to take a day off from classes. My brother cried. So did I but girls get a pass on things like that. Another shit part was that crying at Calvin's funeral only fed the rumor mill further at school.

Let's be clear here. This was not about Greg being gay or not gay, it was about him having a chink in his social armor that could be exploited for sadistic satisfaction. When I go to hell it will be just like high school.

"Nicole Redmon is a stupid bitch," I said. She was a walking talking high school meangirl cliché. I didn't think she actually thought Greg was gay but that didn't matter shit, my brother had given her the power to take a wrecking ball to his life. I vowed revenge.

"Well yeah, but she's hot." That look in Greg's eyes when he thought about her was enough confirmation of my brother's orientation for me. "And a well known slut, so I thought I'd take the risk."

"The world is full of hot sluts Greg." Present company included, I thought. "When you go away to Billing you'll just have to flex those massive biceps and they'll come a knocking."

"But will they understand when I ask them?"

"Maybe one in a hundred," I admitted. "Out of five thousand or so on campus, that means at least fifty will be happy to shove things up your ass."

"Finding them in that big a herd would be a trick."

"Leaving aside calling a group of young women a herd for the moment there's the added benefit that you would be a new person in a town full of newbies looking to hook up, with all your high school baggage left behind. Far behind. I can't say that. Half the class is going to State."

"Nah, maybe a quarter."

I took a swig of my beer. "You get my point."

"Yeah I do." He took another swig. I decided he needed some affirmation of his manhood but was in a quandary of exactly how I, his twin sister, could help with that without it getting icky.

An idea struck me. "Do me a favor?"

"Anything Rusty Wusty." I think it was the first time he ever used that name without rancor.

Now that I think about it, it was Grandpa Clarke who first called me Rusty. It was when I was really small and 'helping' by handing him tools as he was on his back on one of those mechanic creeper things under his pickup. Dad had added the cutesy addition when he first heard his own dad call me that.

I put on my coquette face and looked him side wise. "Throw me in the pool?"

Greg drained his beer and I put mine in the cup holder on my lounge chair. Next thing I knew I was in his arms and headed pool-ward. I shrieked in faux effrontery as I went into the air and splashed down in the deep end. I came up for air just as Greg cannon-balled in, making the whole pool ripple with his impact.

I pulled off Grandpa's T-shirt and my shorts and threw them onto the grass. I swam to the steps at the shallow end and walked up and out. I was reminded of my ankle socks by their squishing on the concrete. Or at least one of them. I had no idea where I had lost the other one. Conscious of my nudity I took off my last piece of clothing. Now I was even more naked than my mother, who was lying back on a nearby lounge texting on her phone.

"I thought you said no more tan lines," I said as I approached.

She looked up at me. "Come again?"

I pointed to her collar.

"I'm not supposed to take it off without asking."

"So ask."

"It's not that simple."

"How so?"

"If he thinks I'm trivializing it I'll be punished."

"Punished how?" I asked. "Will he beat you?"

Mom chuckled. "Not likely because that would be what we call 'funishment.'"

"You like being hit?"

"Sometimes."

"So how?"

"I have no idea. Bill comes up with unique ways to make me miserable for extended periods of time. It's why your Dad couldn't handle being my Dom. He was too gentle with me and let me get away with things. I'm a brat."

"You say that like it's a good thing."

"It's a fun dynamic." She reached up and took off her collar.

"I thought you were supposed to ask?"

"I am, but I didn't." She smirked. "Now I'm going text him that I did and why."

Her thumbs flew on the touch screen for a few seconds. "There."

"Now what happens?"

"Well, since it's obvious that I'm provoking him, he'll think I'm just being a brat and not being unserious about our relationship. Bratting is more likely to get me funishment."

"That sounds... manipulative." And enlightening.

"It's not like you read about in books."

"I should hope not." Of course I'd read Fifty Shades or at least tried to, yeesh.

Greg came out of the pool naked and dripping. Of course I've seen my brother naked before but only while we were kids. Back then the thing between his legs was still his pee pee. Now it was definitely a cock: a pink uncut sausage dangling almost exactly as far as his prodigious balls. All in all a fine symmetrical package beneath his ginger bush wet and glistening from his swim.

"Feeling better Greg?" Mom called. To me she murmured "I never realized he's such an Adonis."

"You should tell him that," I said. "He could use a bit of special attention."

"Greg dear, you are turning into quite an Adonis, you know that?"

"Uh... thanks Mom." He hurried over to the cooler to get his second beer, then into the house, still dripping.

Mom frowned at that. "Boys react differently to compliments."

"Some," I said. "It makes them suspicious. Especially the ones who have been hurt."

"Yes," Mom looked sad. "But at this point I can't think of what to do about it."

"Mom, you're 'Mom.' You'll think of something."

She looked at me. "That's the loveliest thing you've ever said to me."

"Greg and I talked. Remember that chess thing when we were ten?"

"Yes..."

"Remember everything that happened? Everything?"

She eyebrows scrunched down for a maybe ten seconds then up again when she realized what I was talking about. "Oh! Yes, I think I know what you are talking about. When something like that happens best thing is not to make a big deal about it lest the child become fixated."

"Well it didn't work," I said. "Greg asked Nicole Redmon to peg him and she spread it all over the school junior year. That's what all that trouble was about."

"Oh dear."

"So I wasn't kidding about you being Mom, Mom. Please think of something."

"Well thank you for being so confident in me." Her face wasn't exactly grateful.

"Without telling him I told you?" I added. "He trusts me."

"I won't Dear," she said. "Do you mind if I discuss this with your father?"

"I guess so, if you think he can handle it. As you've made clear Dad's the Rock of Gibraltar on some things but other stuff, the kinky stuff, he's out of his bailiwick."

"I think you would be surprised what your father can handle." She gave me a smug 'I've seen some shit' look.

Mom's phone beeped. She read a text, smiled and replied.

"Was that Uncle Bill?"

"Yes it was."

"Tell him I said hi?"

More texting back and forth. After a minute she said, "he says hi back."

I shivered and got up. "I need a towel."

"Fresh stack in the cabana."

"Um... good luck on the funishment."

"Thank you Dear," she said not looking up from her phone. "And thank you for being so understanding."

"Sure thing Mom."

I went into the cabana and found the stack of towels. I toweled off and started to wrap one around me than decided against it. With the damp towel over one shoulder I went and picked up my wet things. I also picked up Greg's. I rinsed Grandpa's T-shirt in the sink by the barbecue grill to minimize the bleaching from pool. I didn't give a shit about the other things but I did need to find that sock before it ended up in the pool filter. It was over by the far end so I fished it out with the pool net. Done being responsible I retrieved my beer and went and sat with Mom for a while.