Loosening Up Bk. 09 Ch. 26-30

After the class started, whenever Odessa wasn't at the university, she was sitting in the shade on the patio doing homework and studying for her classes. Heather, Christie, and Kellie had all worked with her on study habits, and helped her keep her nose to the grindstone in terms of studying. As a result, Odessa ended with two 'A's' for the classes. The grades at the tougher school greatly improved her self-confidence.

Dave went back to Georgia several times to visit the researchers trying to develop something novel and commercial enough with their lasers and algorithms. Eventually, he reported to Mark that while the money would be well spent, he didn't see anything coming from that group of people that would generate the kind of double-digit returns Mark was looking for. He didn't see they were doing anything disruptive to their potential markets.

Dave spent time working with Mark on doing a strategic plan for Worthington Industries, working division by division to blend the executives ideas and suggestions into a coherent whole. He was surprised at how diverse some of the opinions were.

Of course, JR had him back repeatedly at EneRG. Dave had more knowledge than he gave himself credit for in running the battery business, and JR, as the new CEO, continued to tap into that stream of consciousness.

Dave also got some opinions from JR, Heather, and Cricket about his motorcycle trip around the country. The three of them were enthusiastic about him taking the time for the trip. They thought he should space out the visits of wives and other friends to accompany him, and be sure to do segments of the trip alone.

Cricket said, "Part of the reason for the trip is to get in touch with the 'inner you'. I know you think you know 'you', but you'll keep finding new skills and attributes that I don't think you can even imagine exist."

Heather had teased, "Besides, like Jim Mellon in the book Road Trip you'll meet all sorts of interesting women that you'll want to make love with and bring into the Circle in some way. We love all the others you've influenced that are here."

Dave often used the road atlas app on his iPad as he scanned various routes and tourist spots he wanted to visit in the states. He started developing a list, state-by-state. Some states had nothing that appealed to him, but others were full of sights, friends, and associates -- even past friends he'd almost lost touch with from high school and college. He got to thinking he'd start this adventure after the weather warmed sufficient to allow comfortable camping in the northern states the following spring.

As the Circle had grown, the martial arts classes had continued to take place on a weekly basis with Wan Suh. He reminded everyone, to Rose's chagrin, that she had been attacked by three men and had decimated the playing field with her skills just up to that point. Dave approved of his efforts to work with the women in the class to prepare them for similar situations. Even his own confidence had increased in situations with rowdy men around, such as sometimes at the Club Ecstasy.

Deke from Mark Worthington's clan also showed up every other Saturday to continue the training in weaponry, focusing on handguns, but also expanding to knives and other nasty tools of the trade. He was ex-military and knew his subject matter well.

Matt and Rose each had summer jobs as they prepared to start college in August. Matt had gotten a job with the software company where several others in the Circle worked. The company developed and sold computer games. Matt's job wasn't in the software end of the company, but rather in the packaging, wrapping, and shipment of the games to various retail outlets around the country.

Rose scored a job at Mote Marine Laboratories out on City Island. Dave let her use his car to commute to the job. She was a peon at the labs, doing everything from feeding fish in the aquarium tanks, to cleaning some of the tanks after the fish had been transferred and the water drained. Some of the work was dirty, but she persevered. She knew if she did a good job, that the following summer she'd be up a few clicks in the pecking order as far as work went.

Whereas Matt had to wear what qualified as 'business casual' clothes to work, Rose was often in a bikini wearing a man's shirt to go to work or cutoffs and a crop top. Regardless of what she wore, she looked deliciously enticing, but in either of those outfits she attracted a great deal of attention from the males on staff. Rose was 'hot', even when dirty and dripping with sweat from working in one of the tanks for an hour with a scrub brush. Every day as she matured, she became increasingly attractive and desirable.

The summer passed at what seemed like lightning speed. It arrived, a few events took place, and it was gone.

Matt, Rose, Toby, and Danica all started their freshmen orientation at the university in mid-August. Odessa attended, too, although she'd been slotted as a sophomore. The keynote of the event was when the chancellor of the university spoke to the incoming class. He gave the traditional remark, 'Look at person on your left, and the person on your right; they won't be here when you graduate.' The realization that you were on other people's left and right was not lost on the incoming students.

Classes started the next week for the university crew and so did the more formal classes for the Circle Home Schooling Program. Samantha held a briefing about the new curriculum the home-schooling program would be using for all parents and anybody else interested. Dave attended and was one of many who volunteered to help out in the classroom over the coming months.

As had been the case the previous spring, the core teachers in the home-schooling program consisted of Samantha, Taylor, and Athena. Elise had been helping out as well, but she was on the road with Roy in their RV touring the country.

The young students were ready and eager to start with classes again. They liked learning, and all thought the challenges it presented were worthy of their attention. Samantha knew to intersperse exercise between class periods, so the children were all getting some significant outdoor time in as well as classroom hours. School wasn't a burden; it was a fun activity.

Over the summer the jazz band Zoey and the Circle matured in their sound -- really a mix of jazz and pop rock. The group had sent out three short disks to the A&R managers at three record groups. Dave learned that A&R stood for artist and repertoire. These men and women were the gatekeepers to the big labels. They were the ones that said 'Yea' or 'Nae' to the music they heard on hundreds of demo disks each week. Kyle, Ashley's husband, had coached the group on how to submit and get recognized.

At the same time that was going on, Erin volunteered her time to help the band put up a website and create content for it other than the demo music. Of course, no one really knew about the 'zoeyandthecircle.com' web site. If one looked there, the bands bio was there with little to say other than they had formed and played together for a year. They were also connected with the Circle -- the reality TV series.

There were individual bios for each of the band members, too: Alan on keyboard, Lars on drums, Jaxon on sax, Ben on clarinet, and Neo on rock guitar. There were musician-oriented photos of each member, and then some dramatic photos of the group playing in what looked like a night club.

The night Dave sat to listen to them in the recording booth with Stu and Beth, he learned that the group had shopped around a disk of their music at various night clubs and dance spots in Sarasota and Manatee counties. Jim Danforth had hired them to play some short gigs at the Club Ecstasy between acts. The bigger coup came based on Lars work. The Marina Jack hired the group for four consecutive Saturday nights in October. They finally had some paying gigs, although no one in the group especially needed the money. The band voted and was finally able to pay Erin for some of her work on their behalf.

Videos and recordings were made of their live performances, and those were put up on the website. In November, two of the labels they'd sent a short demo disk to contacted them: Warner Music Group and Sony Music. The A&R managers in both places had liked the demo, wanted more, had gone to the website and listened to the ten songs they had posted there, and they wanted still more. Some additional recordings were made, including two live recordings at Marina Jacks, complete with all the audience noises, applause, and cheers.

A week later, a woman named Drew Hartman called from Warner Music. She reached Lars, the official contact for the group. He'd used his cellphone number, and he was at work at EneRG when she reached him.

Drew was crisp. "Mr. Nilsson, we want you. We would like our lawyers to get in touch with each other or with your agent and work out a deal. We have a contract ready to email to you and your lawyers as soon as we have the contact information."

Lars was ready. He'd already talked to Jason Riggs about representing the band's interests legally. He gave out the contact numbers and email addresses. An hour later, he and Jason both had copies of the draft contract. Kyle also was brought into the loop. An hour after that WMG's lawyers had called Jason and talked about the 'deal'. It took Jason two days to work through the contract, propose some counter language, confirm with a few friends in the entertainment industry about the percentages involved, and then sell WMG on the revised deal. By the end of the week, everyone had signed.

On December first, Dave flew the band Zoey and the Circle to Nashville. A suite of rooms had been arranged for them at the Intercontinental, as part of the contract. Angie Nilsson and Amy Stulling had accompanied the band as part of the entourage. Angie had said, "Any decent band always brings along some fans and groupies. It gives the band an aura and image of success."

Angie also didn't want Zoey to be the only woman getting fucked eight ways from Sunday when they weren't working. She wanted part of the action, too, just the way Amy did.

By the end of the week, WMG had decided to use four cuts that the group had done in the recording studio at the Circle, and eight other tracks the group laid down in Nashville. The first album was put together. A promotional tour was also defined for the group starting the first of March when the company decided to release the first album for the new group.

Dave picked up the musicians and their groupies on Saturday morning and flew them back to Sarasota. Bingo! The Circle had another group of popular musicians beside Ashley Steerman, America's country music sweetheart.

Ashley had talked to the group several times on speaker phone as things developed and they got closer to a recording deal and contract, encouraging them and sharing what she knew about becoming a recording success. She also kept their spirits up while they waited to hear from the studios. Kyle talked to them several times a week.

To the delight of WMG, Spring Garden Productions and their camera crews captured the very beginning of Zoey and the Circle. Helen Ursinger talked to the WMG agent for the band and agreed to feature the band at several places in Season Four of the reality TV series The Circle, the thirteen episodes that would start airing in January of the following year. She'd also add a focus on the band in Season Five taping, so that there was some continuity.

In September, Season Three of the Circle started to air on the cable channel that had bought the series. The videos were now a huge success and the Circle was one of the most popular cable shows watched across the country.

Doctor Phil featured the show on one of his daily network broadcasts. As guests on the show, he had Dave and Alice. He also had several psychologists talking about why the show captured the attention of so many Americans and what the benefits and pitfalls of polyamory were.

The conclusion of the psychologists is that this was a dream for many viewers. The people in the Circle were loved by many, had a significant sexual life full of romance, enjoyed periodic excitement either directly or vicariously through one or two of their close friends, and even lovers.

Dr. Phil tried to get Dave or Alice to talk about the prolific sex drives in the group, but they simply said they enjoyed full lives in every dimension of their lives. They were glad people enjoyed the series. Everything else was a 'G'-rated elaboration on those points.

Dave did mention that he and several others in the Circle were coaching at least one group in getting started with something similar to the Circle. He held up his hand and asked that they not get a huge influx of fan mail asking for help. "We're a small group, most of us with full-time jobs, so we don't have that much time to coach others."

Dr. Phil laughed, and got them talking about the kind of fan mail they got regarding the show. Both Dave and Alice felt comfortable talking about that aspect of things. Dave tried to assure the audience that the mail was not resulting in changes, despite what various fans asked them to do or not do. There was audience laughter when he commented about receiving specific sexual suggestions, including to stop blocking some view or asking him to use particular positions to improve the camera angles.

Dr. Phil showed several clips from the show, one showing the Circle 101 class. He had Dave talk about the curriculum and how it was different every time. Dave explained, "I'm not trying to transfer my notes to our pledges. I could hand out Xerox copies if that were the case. I'm trying to get our pledges to think critically about themselves, their value set, and how those fit or don't fit with those of the Circle. Moreover, I want people to meet and bond, so the 'class' is more frequently a guided rap session. I set up the topics with some key questions. I've become good at getting people to talk about what they like or what bugs them about the Circle."

"Why do that?" Dr. Phil asked.

"Ultimately, membership in the Circle is really the acknowledgement that a person really wants to be with us and thinks about life the way we do. We don't expect conformity or total agreement, and there's not. I want people to think about who the Circle is and what the things we value are, and then how they stand on all those points. We just don't want someone to join and then discover that they have little in common with us, and that they really don't agree with much of how we think about life and lifestyle. I say that every member has 'self-selected' into the Circle. People decide that they WANT to join. It's not that we accept or reject their application."

While the Season Three episodes still tracked the Circle, they also started to track some of the younger members who at that time were pledging the Circle. Thus, Rose, Matt, Toby, and Danica got singled out. They were of age, but they also liked the notoriety. Unfortunately, the group they wanted to tease were their high school friends, and only a few of them were left at the university after graduation. Their classmates had scattered far and wide across the country, and a few overseas.

Rose's episode with the three young men that started to assault her was one of the topics that made an episode. Some of the scenes were reenacted for the cameras, but the videos from the high school security cams added accurate realism to the event. Her report to Jim Hotch, the interaction with Sgt. Orach, and then the communications with the lawyer were reenacted.

Rose used the last name Prentiss for the TV show, in order to keep her mother's name and their relationship reduced in the public eye a little. She didn't want something she did that the audience didn't like to reflect on her mom. Matt did a little revisionist history and used Manning as his last name, his mom's maiden name. This guise also let the two declare that they were boyfriend-girlfriend without the world needing the detailed explanation that they were both legally Prentiss kids or unrelated step-siblings.

Part of one episode showed the drawing for the thirty Circle members that would fly to St. Croix on Mark Worthington's 737 for an extended weekend. The excitement of the drawing was highlighted as well as some side discussions about the fun activities that would go on there. Of course, for the public domain, the rampant sex between the Circle 'winners' and the people in Mark's tribe who were flying down was not mentioned.

An episode also featured Roy and Elise looking and buying their large, rolling mobile home along with a car that could be easily towed behind. The cameras captured Elise going through the home, almost giving a guided tour except she was talking to herself and discovering the many features of their home on wheels. The episode also showed their packing up and departing.

The graduation party occupied two episodes. The first containing much of the planning and the start of the party, including checking people in, especially being sure they had 'good paper' regarding their health. The checkpoint for car keys was also shown. The second episode contained more of the wild dancing, the nudity in the pool (appropriately using pixelated portions of the video), and the moderated drinking. Late in the episode it showed people checking their alcohol level before they could retrieve their car keys. Many of the groups had a designated driver who'd had no alcoholic drinks.

Dave laughed because Greg and Owen's temporary tattoo parlor was not shown, nor was the mattress room where some people spent a good part of the party enjoying sex.

The episode raised the issue of old-versus-young members of the Circle and how they interacted with each other. The effort was obviously trying to create a little drama, except the examples they chose were all loving couples with some being married to others: for instance, Ike was shown interacting with sexual overtones with Piper, and Joan Paige was shown dancing in a nearly naked state with the barely clad Jon Lopez -- one of the student pledges at the time. Ike and Joan were well into their fifties; the other two had just started their twenties.

Another feature of one episode was the introduction of Felicity Jones to the Circle by Scarlett and Dave, and then recording the journey of how she fell in love with the place and with the people in it. She even did a feature interview with Helen Ursinger. The timing of that episode was amazing, because a new movie just came out which starred Felicity as the leading actress.

Celeste Montreau sat on the edge of her seat in the core living room. On a blanket close by on the floor, Kendall Hanks carefully examined a stuffed bunny for the tenth time in as many minutes. When the baby squeezed the toy in the right way, it squeaked; an awe-inspiring feature she hadn't discovered until ten minutes earlier.

Celeste explained, "So, when the last of their children entered the first grade, I was no longer needed unless I only wanted to work two or three hours a day or help on weekends. I thanked them, and we had a good cry over my departure, but it was time. The Wilsons gave me a sterling written recommendation that you have in front of you, and I'm sure they'll verify all of that by telephone or personal meeting. We're still friends, and I will want to watch the children grow up."

Celeste was the finalist for the job of nanny for Ashley and Kyle's baby. The fact that it was Ashley and Dave's baby was glossed over and not yet mentioned. Dave was presented as a surrogate during the interview for Kyle who had to be in Nashville more than he expected.

Celeste had short blonde frizzy hair, a smile that dazzled everyone she beamed at, great comfort with young children, and a natural friendliness with all adults. Dave thought of her as somewhat sheltered, although he couldn't quite put his finger on why.