Loosening Up Bk. 08 Ch. 16-20

About a dozen Circle women came to the cocktail hour straight from having been working, reading, or dozing on the patio chaises. They were topless or had very thin wraps on that didn't hide much.

Mandy, who Dave figured was around thirty years old, didn't blink an eye, but she obviously took in the relaxed dress code. Nobody else was paying much heed to the way they were dressed so he figured she decided she wouldn't either.

Jim observed, "Most of the drinks that you serve are non-alcoholic."

Dave shrugged, "We try to drink healthy. We have no lushes here. If somebody started to tie one on, we'd stop that in its tracks. We really watch out for each other. I do think because people are driving to dinner our consumption of beer and wine is way down. Were you worried?"

"No. I'm a one beer or one glass of wine kind of guy myself. Mandy, too. Right, honey?"

Mandy smiled, "Right. I am so impressed with what you've built here. I haven't read it yet, but Jim gave me a copy of a book by an author named Cricket. He told me a little about it on the way driving over here."

Dave commented, "Cricket is one of my wives. She's in L.A. for a month working on a screen play with her other husband." Dave just loved to bait the unfamiliar.

"Huh?"

Jim kind of snickered to himself Dave noticed. He said in a casual tone, "Dave has ten wives. Cricket is the author ofRoad Trip andCrystal Clear -- those movies we liked. Alice, the pretty blonde surrounded by about twenty people over there, is also a wife. She's who we rescued from a hostage situation this morning."

Mandy digested that, "You really have ten wives? Shouldn't Jim arrest you for bigamy?"

Dave laughed, "Only Alice is my legal wife, but I made the same commitment to nine others. Fortunately, that's still legal."

Jim said in his nonchalant tone, "Scarlett Johansson is one of them."

"The movie star?" Mandy's voice had a touch of awe.

"Yes. I believe she's in Patagonia for the week doing some special shots which needed that kind of scenic background for the current movie she's working on."

"Are you two men having fun at my expense?"

Dave and Jim each shook their head. "Not a bit."

Just then Nikky came to the bar. Dave stopped her, "Nikky, tell Jim and Mandy our relationship."

"I'm Dave's wife ... one of them. I think I was number six or seven, but we don't really keep track of the order, except we all know that Alice was first."

Mandy asked Dave, "How long have you and Alice been married?"

Dave blanched at his weak memory, "Errr, I think our next anniversary will be twenty-one years."

"Children?"

Dave blushed again, "Errr about a dozen."

Mandy leaned in, "Not all with Alice, I presume."

Dave laughed, "No, only one with her so far, but only a few with my wives. There's the one with Alice, two with Pam, one with Heather plus one adopted, and one adopted with Scarlett. The other children are all by other women in the Circle for whom I became the baby daddy."

"You get around," Mandy teased yet the dry tone indicated she was slightly shocked at the same time.

"As you'll see in part of that book, this place is a very close community. As a result, many here don't think of paternity with the same degree of reverence that people outside our gates do. What we want are healthy children. We have a school for most of them here, too." Dave pointed to one section of the core next to the construction.

Dave said, "As a result of the construction, the teachers are holding classes down at Scarlett Johansson's home on Perimeter Road. The kids should appear up here any minute to be with us for dinner and bedtime. She volunteered her spacious home. They'll move back here to their regular classrooms when the rebuild is complete."

"How many students are there?"

"About twenty now. We also have six older teens, and they go to the regular school system, and they also get some special tutoring in subjects they think they're weak in by each of us. The younger kids are getting to an age where we'll have them participate in some of the public-school activities that involve larger groups, such as sports, band, choir, or orchestra. We have a close relationship with one of the elementary and one of the middle schools in the county. Several women in our midst also work as teacher's aides at those schools as well as in our own."

Jim said, "Yes, I read that the Circle has quite a service ethic as part of its ethos."

"We do. Everyone in the Circle is on some kind of team to help keep our collective home clean, neat, and functioning the way we want. This is one of the reasons I'm tending bar. I'm also on the Board, and when we have a kitchen, I run the omelet station for the weekend breakfasts. I do a few other odds and ends, too."

Dave explained, "I'm also one of the pilots in the Circle, and we have a flying club. I'm on that board as well, and am part of the team that cares for the hangars, runways, and tarmac. We try to run a tight ship." He laughed at his add-on comment.

Mandy glanced around taking in about ten women who were topless lying on the chaises or sitting and talking, "And the nudity?"

Dave looked around. "No one is nude, although we used to be a good part of the time -- we were more 'active' then. We've toned it done mostly because of the younger children being around. We maintain a European atmosphere here now. The kids have been educated about what that means. They also don't talk much about what goes on here when they meet outsiders.

"When you read the book, I think you'll get more of a flavor about why we're the way we are today, as well as the history of the place. Cricket did a good job. She's an author and her love of the Circle comes through in how she wrote about the place.

Alice was snuggled up against Dave later that evening. "Do you think Jim and Mandy will be back?"

"I think he will. He was pre-sold by reading the book twice. I'm not so sure about Mandy. She played her cards close to the vest. We never got to talking about the sex, but it was in the background of what we talked about when the Circle was the subject. She may not even know about it since she hasn't read Cricket's book. She was mildly concerned about the nudity, I think. I told her that we used to be fully nude before we got to this stage and hinted about the sex part of things."

Alice chuckled, "I bet she devours that book tonight and tomorrow. She'll be back if she's the least bit horny."

"I couldn't tell whether she was or not. We 'hyper-sexuals' don't always announce our presence, even when possibly in the presence of like-minded people. I didn't push the issue with her."

"Will you make love to your wife? I happen to be horny all the time, and you know how to scratch my itch."

Dave teased with a poke and a scratch on her heart-shaped tattoo, "Which one?"

He got poked back, but before it could happen again, he sank over eight inches of solid man meat into the velvet vagina of his true love.

* * * * *

A few days later before the sky got too dark to work, Dave watched the last of the steel girders go into place over what would again become the core kitchen. This was good news. He guessed that the roof might appear before the end of the next day -- a Saturday. It'd then get sealed within a week as the permanent roof was installed, making the space weather and HVAC tight. After that some of the re-wiring and plumbing could start, and even some appliances brought into the space. He could see they might make the three-week window.

Dave joined Phil, Ron, Cindy, and Rachel tending bar and serving bar snacks. Bobbie had arranged to use Dave's somewhat larger home kitchen to prepare some hors d'oeuvres, so those came out on trays carried by Bobbie and Shelby to some light applause and accolades for her effort.

Aaron took it upon himself to collect orders for pizzas or subs so that the crowd wouldn't have to leave the Circle and go out for dinner. With so many orders, he ended up splitting up the order between three pizza places that delivered. After ordering he gave a heads up about the deliveries to the guard at the gate. Later, only a few people left to go out to dinner.

Alice and Dave were surprised to see Jim and Mandy return. This time they were both in shorts and not looking like they just came from work. Alice worried that her nearly naked appearance in a monokini would turn off the couple, but that didn't seem to be the case. Of course, Jim looked very pleased. Mandy watched her friend with a smirk more to see his reaction.

Alice had decided she really liked Jim and wanted him around in the Circle. She also discerned that one key to getting him involved was to convince Mandy that she should also belong.

Alice ran across the patio to where the couple appeared between Owen Bennett and Jack and Grace Anders' homes. She gave each of them a warm, full body hug and effused with genuine emotion that they had returned to visit. She took both their arms, pulled them to her bare breasts, and led them to the bar, calling ahead to her husband for several glasses of wine. As they walked Alice explained about the pizza orders -- a guarantee of plenty to eat, and the likelihood that most people would stay around the Circle that evening.

Dave also bubbled with glee about the return of the couple after having not seen them for a few days. He said, "I was worried that you wouldn't come back. We really liked having you visit with us."

Alice agreed, "Yes, you have personalities, jobs, and interests that are diverse from most of the rest of us, so we need you to hang around with us -- a lot. We like the whole idea of diversity." She gestured to the larger group of Circle members milling around or seated.

Mandy smiled, "I do, too. If everyone in a group is so homogeneous, whatever do they talk about? You never learn anything new or have your viewpoints challenged."

Alice teased, "Did you read the book?"

Mandy nodded, "Most of it. I confess to focusing on the parts Cricket wrote rather than the newspaper articles. I'm sure my colleagues at work were wondering what I was doing on my breaks because I had my nose in the volume most of the time."

Jim volunteered, "We're going through it together in the evenings. This is my third pass through the material and Mandy's first. She'd tell me what chapters she was reading and I'd rescan things before we got together for dinner and discussion. That was one of the reasons you didn't see us all week. We felt as though we should be better prepared when we arrived than we were the last time."

Mandy looked around at the other men and women in the Circle scattered mostly at various tables around the patio. She'd already given Alice the once over and didn't seem to mind the nudity. Over half the women were topless and wearing only the bottom parts of bikinis. She said in a jaunty tone, "So, I'm ready to conform -- at least to this part of things."

Mandy unbuttoned the blouse she was wearing and removed it. She was braless and had very attractive breasts, at least to Dave's eyes. He guessed they were B or small C cups with perky nipples. She passed Dave her blouse; "Can you keep that behind the bar someplace where I can retrieve it later?"

Dave stowed the blouse in a clean, dry place for her where it wouldn't wrinkle too badly.

Jim said, "I have some interesting news about Reverend Morton to share. He decided to plead guilty to all charges rather than go to trial. It helped that we had recorded the conversation he had inside the plane while you were a hostage, Alice. You got him to basically confess to every misdeed he'd done, including skimming off a shitload of the church's assets before the payout from the settlement with your sister was initiated. That also let us use anything he said against him in court. All the things he did around here, including the use of explosives were included. We have him for attempted murder on those counts alone. He won't be around for quite a while. He really did want to hurt someone. I think I told you the Feds want to add a few years to his term, as well."

Dave asked, "Where did he get a mortar?"

Jim shook his head, "One of the more devout members of that Bible church up in Ohio was a somewhat senior officer in the National Guard up there. I guess they use live rounds for some of their training. That man gave Morton the launch tube, six mortar rounds, and a hand grenade. He used three rounds on your empty lot, the core kitchen, and the cabana, and we have the other three for destruction. The hand grenade is what he tossed into your core living room. By the way, he confessed that the first round that went off in your field was supposed to have landed on your busy patio where everyone was congregated. He would have killed at least a dozen people if that had happened."

Alice hugged the police detective, "I'm glad that's over with." He noted well that her luscious breasts pressed against the thin sport shirt he was wearing.

"Well, we have at least one more arrest to make up in Ohio, but the FBI will likely handle that end of things. We have an open warrant for that guy. We also have pulled in a local guy who made some false ID for Morton so he could buy the rifle and ammunition that he used on the Zenith building."

Dave said, "Enough. Let's move on to nicer topics now that we're all safe from radical extremists again."

Mandy asked about how some warm hors d'oeuvres had been prepared if there was no kitchen. Alice took her by the hand and said, "Let me give you a quick tour of our home and the part of the core that's not being rebuilt." The two women strolled off towards the home that served as the base for Dave and his ten wives.

As they went through the home, Alice pointed out the large kitchen that was doing double duty for Chef Bobbie for lunches and hors d'oeuvres as well as the household for a few weeks. They strolled through the spacious living room, glanced into the media room, and then Alice led Mandy upstairs asking for forgiveness for any mess any of the family might have left.

The more private spaces looked a little more lived in but overall were exceptionally neat. Mandy was impressed with the five guest rooms, and then Alice led her into the largest room in the house -- the master bedroom.

Alice explained, "When we did some renovation work on the house, we added almost two thousand square feet of space. A lot of it went into this room and the adjoining ensuite bath."

Mandy gasped, "I've never seen a bed that big -- and you have TWO of them!"

Alice explained, "There are eleven of us when we're all here, which is rare. Nonetheless, we are prepared for that contingency. Six people can sleep in each bed. We sometimes have that many, although usually not everyone is family."

Mandy said in a soft tone, "So ... where do you make love? This place sounds too busy."

"Oh, no; it's not. We're often in here. We're not shy, either within the family or with guests -- other Circle members. In fact, I admit that just about everyone in the Circle is a bit of an exhibitionist, and we're all certainly voyeurs. I thought Cricket said something about that in her book."

"Oh, she did. I just couldn't really envision that until now. This room kind of brings it all into focus. She indicated that the patio was a favorite place, too."

Alice teased, "We sometimes have four couples or groups in here making love. I've not seen more than that but it could happen."

"Groups?"

Alice said, "The Circle has more women than men. Often, the configuration of lovers is a man with two women, even sometimes three. If not that, perhaps two or three women by themselves without a man present in their midst. We do trade around a lot. I don't mean to shock you, but that's our reality. Since we all love or really like each other, we don't see it as deviant behavior."

Mandy was mute on that news.

Alice went on, "Although I think all the women except for a couple prefer men, we're quite bisexual. I never thought of myself that way until we started to broaden our perspective and loosened up years ago. Then I found the softer side of love through some of my other female friends and sister wives." She giggled, "I doubled my chance for a date for Saturday night."

Mandy laughed nervously and said, "I've never done anything like that."

Alice shrugged as she led the way back to the core, "Oh, you just do to someone what you figure you'd like done to you. It works amazingly well. I don't even think about it any more. I easily shift from partner to partner without thinking about their genre. For many of my lovers I know what they like and can deliver it to them."

Back on the patio, some of the pizzas and subs had arrived; so various tables had started to eat. The next pile of food arrived minutes later and got distributed. Dave gave out more drinks, and then left the bar to be self-service.

Ty circulated through the tables chatting briefly with each group. When he got to the table with Dave, Alice, Jim, Mandy, Jason, and Robyn, he reminded them to stay around for 'dancing'. He commented, "Our sound system got destroyed by the explosive, but I set up my stereo under the protection of the eaves so it should give off enough sound for getting us started." He winked at Alice. She grabbed his hand and pulled him in for a lovely kiss.

Mandy said, "Wow! Nice kiss."

Alice said, "He was one of my first lovers other than Dave. His wife Dori kind of started all this."

Mandy sat up straighter, "That was in the book. You caught her fu ... doing something daring in the car next to yours one morning at work?"

"Exactly. I was so shocked. That was when I started getting an education on the way life really worked. I was so sheltered. I also didn't like that I was so prim and proper. I felt I was missing out on a lot of things, and it turned out I was right. Dori gave me challenges -- really Dave, too -- and we kept loosening up."

Mandy said to no one in particular, "Maybe that's what I need."

Alice commented, "You weren't shy about removing your blouse."

Mandy gave a fake smile, "That took every bit of courage I could muster to do that ... and become topless. I was sure everyone would stare and point at me with accusing fingers, but nobody did."

Alice briefly hugged Mandy, even allowing their breasts to touch. "The outside world and how we're brought up to think about sex have done a real number on us. Being naked or nearly so is such a natural state, especially in beautiful weather like this. We've been waaaaaay too influenced by various religious groups over time. Who decided that sex was a taboo subject? If you can figure that out, I would like to desecrate their monument."

"I guess I feel the same way, only I haven't loosened up the way you have. I just read where some flight got diverted because a new mother was breast-feeding her infant on the plane. She was even using a cover. This is sad and so misogynistic. People need to loosen up."

Dave commented, "It's a mindset. Once you can achieve that state of mind, you don't even think about it any further."

Alice said, "Well, we do think about the nudity more today than a few years ago because we have children. We don't want them to have the same hang-ups we have about sex, but we also don't want to be putting on wanton shows of lovemaking for them the way we used to do for each other."

Jim asked, "You mean the evening encounters mentioned in the book?"

Dave laughed and so did Jason and Robyn. Jason chimed in, "When we first started to associate with the Circle -- over ten years ago, you might find several couples out here on the patio making love anytime, day or night. I don't think the members at that point had any restraint. It was a great time of life."

Robyn added, "I was hornier then than I am now, and it was fabulous. Even if I popped over here to have lunch, I could go back to work with that warm and wonderful feeling of having my lights really turned on by one of the men."