My Polyamorous Girl Pt. 11

Chapter 11 -- A Three And A Half-some

I was a little troubled about Hera's revelations of the previous evening. I had spent so many years wrapped up in my own social and sexual insecurities that I'd never given much thought to the idea that others would be suffering from them as well. I knew now that Tethys, Megan, and now Hera had gone through some major emotional challenges that had been part of the shaping of their sexual identities. I knew that Carl had his self-image issues as well before Tethys entered his world. I wondered about the others in our group -- Henri, Sonia, Joe, and Joanne. Could we all be compensating for some unresolved issues in our respective pasts? Maybe not so much Joe and Joanne, they'd been raised in this lifestyle and it was normal for them. On the other hand, nearly everyone I knew had some sort of relationship issues, including my coworkers in the software business, and hardly any of them "compensated" by having open, polyamorous, swinging sex lives. Maybe, I thought, the reasons for being sexually compatible with us were as varied as the people themselves could be, and I shouldn't worry about why they were into our style of shared group sex, but only the fact that they were happy doing it. I was feeling pretty well adjusted to it myself by now.

Beth met me at work with a twinkle in her eye. "So," she began, "how did things go with your friend last night?"

It was time to stop being annoyed. She obviously had gotten over her initial offense, and seemed now to be far more interested in titillation. I couldn't begin to fathom why, and it wasn't my job to entertain her. I was a professional, she was a professional, and I preferred to keep our relationship at that status. By now I'd told her so a couple of times. I was the one now within my rights to take this upstairs and have her dealt with. But I saw no reason to do that. I was beginning to see where she was coming from, maybe. Unless I was wrong, which wouldn't have been surprising either.

"Things went very well," I answered with a smile. I offered no additional information. She paused for a second, an expectant look on her face. I simply smiled again.

"You're working on the database interface code, right?"

She looked crestfallen. "Yes, I've got most of it done. The glue code to Oracle is as straightforward as it can be under the circumstances. I think the functions are sequestered well enough. Have you guys ever considered dumping Oracle and replacing it with Postgres?"

"You're preaching to the choir," I shrugged. "I've made that argument for years. We'd save on licensing and maintenance fees, and I think we'd end up with a more stable platform, but management claims the conversion would be too labor intensive." I was gratified that she would even be thinking along those lines.

"It would be labor intensive to rip Oracle out and replace it with Postgres," she admitted. "But this whole program is pretty antiquated. We could redo the whole thing from scratch with newer tools and a more efficient architecture. It would be faster, less buggy, easier to maintain, and it would probably be less work than patching it all the time."

"Once again, the heavenly chorus," I told her. "If you can come up with a way to convince the higher-ups of that, and pry them away from Oracle salespeople, maybe we can stop financing Larry Ellison's private island."

"Well, why don't we discuss it over lunch," she smiled. "I'll buy."

I was on to her. "You have something else you want to talk about over lunch, I think." I sighed. "Better there than here in the office, though. Your curiosity worries me."

"Don't worry, I'm not a cat," she said sweetly. "I have good reasons, and believe me Taylor, I'm not a threat. I promise."

"All right," I shook my head. "But not at the Nerd Deli. The whole staff eats there. Some place a little more out of the way."

"Ooh, a private lunch! I feel like I'm on the fast track," Beth giggled.

"You'll be on a fast train out of here if you make this disruptive," I warned. I hoped she wasn't going to try to come on to me. She was already pushing it. "Now lets see what you've put together so far."

I called up her daily submissions and sat her beside me as we conducted a quick review. I had to admit she did good work. The code was clean, well organized, readable, and looked functional. It wasn't quite bug free, though.

"Don't you think you should have put the 'return_replace' connector in a private function?"

"Oh shit, I thought I had done that," she said. "That'll only take a few minutes to fix."

"Ok, do that, and then continue the links on the other tables. And I think Mike has put together a couple of new many-to-many subtables that he says are ready to insert. Make sure everything's re-normalized when they get in there. And if you have a good executive summary for a new Postgres-friendly architecture that management can digest, pitch that to me over lunch, and we can talk."

"I told you Taylor, I'm not a threat."

"Well, you are a bit puzzling at best. Let's meet at the China Wok at noon, if you can stand a Chinese buffet."

"I've had lunch there three times already in two weeks. I haven't seen anybody else from the office, though."

"That's good," I nodded. I lowered my voice conspiratorially. "You already know more about me than anybody else in this place. Let's keep it that way. I don't want to mix business and pleasure."

"No danger, Boss," she repeated.

We went over her ideas as we ate, and it turned out that more than half of them were arguments I'd already used, and had already been rejected. A few moments of introspection convinced us that there was still hope, however.

"Don't take this the wrong way," I said, looking across the table at her, "but you're a very attractive woman."

Beth blushed, and I noted that made her just a touch more attractive. It was an attractiveness that I knew would trigger most men, and would have affected me as well before I'd been ruined by Tethys. She had generous sized breasts, much larger than what I was accustomed to. She could have been described as "curvy," not overweight in the least, but a bit more fleshy then the women I was enjoying at present. Her face was very pretty, high cheekbones, a classic straight nose, smooth skin with a healthy peach color, hair full and shiny, a medium brunette with a slight wave. Her eyes were a shiny and mischievous blue, and her mouth had those slightly naughty upturned corners that made her look perpetually about to spring a trap on someone. I had a feeling she could be a pistol if she wanted to be.

"I suspect that's part of the reason you were hired, although it doesn't make me feel good to say that," I continued. "You've probably noticed that you're the only woman in any of our technical departments. This is a male-dominated industry to begin with, and our company is even worse than average. So we'd been talking about hiring women to at least take some of the social pressure off. I guess that makes you the token female."

"Well, that's nice to know. So all I need to do is either to sex up my outfits, or else be twice as competent and work twice as hard as the men for less credit, just to keep my job."

"You've got the competence part down already, Beth. I have to say I've been impressed by the quality of your work so far." She smiled involuntarily, and radiantly at that.

"But for our purposes at the moment," I mused, "you don't need to sex up your outfits, but I think old George Lundas in the executive suite might respond more positively to your feminine wiles than to the logical power of your argument. I know he wasn't impressed with my version of it, but coming from you he might forget that it's a logic he's already rejected."

"So we need an airtight proposal, with a seductive presentation? I could do that."

"I don't like it," I shook my head. "It might bring short-term success for this one idea at the expense of your long-term credibility."

"We may need a few more lunches to hash out our approach." There was that smirk again.

"One advantage you have is that you aren't easily discouraged," I gave her an eye roll. "How many times have I told you to mind your own business?"

"And I've told you I'm not a threat. I haven't mentioned this to anyone else, and I'm not going to. Ever." Beth rested her chin on her palms as she sat.

"Look, Taylor, I'm sorry I over-reacted to that picture. It was so unexpected, I admit I was shocked. I was already feeling vulnerable in a new environment, and I didn't know where I stood. I felt like the first thing I had to do was defend myself. I didn't mean to give you the impression I was rubbing it in or using it as leverage against you. I just had to figure out where I fit into all this, and... I was just unprepared."

"I'll repeat again," I said. "I'm sorry you had to see that, and I can understand how it could have been taken as a form of intimidation. You know by now that wasn't my intent."

"I do know it, and honestly, it's not something that would normally bother me. And I am curious, even though I know it' none of my business."

She tilted her head a little to one side, and leaned towards me.

"Most people don't know this about me, Taylor, but one of my hobbies is writing fiction. I like writing erotic fiction. I don't make money at it, I've had a few short stories published on a website that's not too picky about literary quality, but I'm trying to get better at it. I'm interested in alternative relationships so I can write about them. I've never had one and don't really plan to, but I'd like to have some understanding of them so I can depict them with some credibility. Up until now, I've never known personally anyone involved that way. So it's like you fell into my lap, and I want to know how it works. That's why I'm interested."

"Ok, for art," I chuckled. I'd heard Tethys use the term recently, and I was going to run with it.

"For art," she smiled back.

"You want to make us characters in your great novel?"

"Not necessarily, but I'd like to have some background understanding. Details, anecdotes, feelings, psychological interpretations, all that."

"That's all stuff I'm still struggling with myself," I confessed. "It's not like I've been doing this all my life, and I guess most people don't, so my experience may not be typical."

"Can you start with an executive summary?" she asked. "Maybe that will help me the most right now."

What the hell. I guessed there wasn't much left to lose, and it was better to have Beth as an ally than an antagonist, especially considering the professionally disruptive quest we were about to embark on. There would be a certain amount of reciprocity involved in this, once I'd opened up to her, I expected she would owe me something in return. With her software talents now obvious, she would be an asset to my department, and having her loyalty would be valuable.

"Ok," I conceded, "Not too much detail, I hope. Are you writing this down?"

"I'm listening," she whispered. "And concentrating. I'll remember."

"Good, it's probably better not in writing. To begin, Tethys, my girlfriend, is not the monogamous type. She's very honest, and I've known it from the beginning. When I met her, she was in a casual relationship with another guy, who also did not expect her to be exclusive. I've been with her for a year and a half, and for the first year of that, she was seeing both him and I, but we weren't seeing anybody else."

"Why not?"

I shrugged. "I'm a nerd, and socially awkward, and not good with women."

"I would have never guessed that," she said with a small giggle.

"Well, to steal a Monty Python phrase, 'I got better.' She's a big part of the reason for that."

"Did the three of you ever get together at the same time," she asked hopefully.

"A couple of times, he's a good guy, and she would have liked to do that more often, but he's as much of a social recluse as I am, and the logistics weren't in our favor either."

"OK the first year," she nodded. "What about the last six months?"

"She met another couple, Sonia and Henri. Those are the people you saw in the picture. Sonia's a model, a songwriter and a singer in a band, and Henri's a chef, a real master culinary artist. She met Sonia first, they got involved, then Sonia brought Henri in. Sonia went on tour for a few months to Asia and Australia, so for that time Tethys was seeing me, Carl, and Henri on a rotating schedule. It was a juggling act, for sure."

"And you were still seeing nobody else?"

"No, although Tethys kept encouraging me to go out with other women. For a while I thought she might be setting things up so she could break up with me without feeling bad. But really, she just thought it was unfair for her to be getting all the action and Carl and me being left out. Carl was in the same boat as me, he wasn't the type to just go out and date easily either."

"So what you have is an open relationship where she's the only open one? It does seem kind of one-sided."

"It's not quite like that," I squirmed a little in my seat. "It may have been with Carl, he wasn't the kind to ask questions. They were just a 'friends with benefits' arrangement at the time, although it's gotten deeper since. Tethys and I were always kind of serious, for some reason. But no, she doesn't just go out and date whoever and whenever. She wouldn't have expected that of me, either. We're a team, so if there's anybody she's interested in, we discuss it first. She wouldn't see anybody I disapproved of, and I wouldn't go out with anybody unless she was happy with it."

"That's interesting. It seems complicated," Beth mused.

"It can be, but we kind of have a schedule worked out. She sees Carl three times a week, she sees me three times a week, and she keeps Thursday to herself. So if there's anybody else involved, they have to fit into the gaps. And yes, she has the physical endurance to handle it. I'd call her an athlete in that respect. She can sure wear me out.... Ummm, TMI. Strike that from the record."

"It sounds like she spends more time having sex than having a job," Beth crinkled her nose up into eyes. "What does she do for a living?"

"She's an artist, she sell paintings on the internet and through a couple of art galleries in town. She's not rich, but she does all right."

"You seem to surround yourself with artists," Beth remarked.

"I guess so, it just seems to have worked out that way."

"So now this Tethys of yours is involved with three gentlemen and a lady, and you're still limiting yourself to her?"

"Well, uh, things have gotten a bit busier just in the last couple of weeks," I shrugged. "Since Sonia got back from her tour, she's introduced us, and, well, that was kind of intense."

"And the lady you entertained last night?"

"Her name is Hera, she's a ceramics artist. Yeah, you're right, there's a lot of artists here. She sells sculptures through the same gallery that Tethys uses, and Tethys met her the week before last. She had one date with her, and then brought me in, so Hera's kind of part of our group now."

"That was fast. I see you two do a lot of vetting." I gave her a glare.

"We don't pick up random people off the street. That's why nothing was happening as far as other people for a long time. Things just kind of snowballed all at once."

"So how many people are you two involved with now?" she asked, almost skeptically.

"Well, we have what Tethys is calling a 'tribe'," I thought, trying to keep count. "There's Tethys and Carl and I, she's had Carl for two years and me for a year and a half, Sonia and Henri for six months, Hera for two weeks, Megan in the last week, and, oh yeah, there's Joe and Joanne. That's a couple Tethys and Carl met at Hippie Hollow a few weeks ago, and we've had them over with the rest of the group once. They'll be hosting all of us at their house on Sunday. I think the tribe is probably big enough for now.

"So now you've gone from a cuckold to having orgies? I wouldn't call that a stable relationship."

I glared again. "Look, if you're wanting to understand alternative relationships, you'll do a lot better if you leave your prejudices behind when you ask about them. They skew your interpretations, and you end up with an even more distorted picture than you started with."

"Ok, ok!" she lifted her palms in surrender. "You're right. I guess I just don't have another template for understanding this."

"You need a new template for sure," I said. "But even more, you just have to smash the one you have. It's irrelevant, it doesn't apply. Maybe you should talk to Tethys about this instead of me. It's not a random set of behaviors, she has a very well thought out philosophical basis behind it all. She's tried to explain it to me, and I could try to explain it to you, but if I have trouble seeing the whole picture, it looks like it would be totally over your head."

"I'm sorry, I guess I was just concentrating more on the titillating details than the background," she confessed.

"And that won't help you understand, and that's why we don't talk about these things with most people," I grumbled. I felt like I'd wasted my time.

"I am sorry, Taylor," she repeated gently. "I keep thinking I'm open minded, and then I jump right to judgment. That was unfair of me."

"But not unexpected," I said, making motions to get up. "Seems like everybody wants to know about our private lives, but nobody wants to understand them. They just want to have bullet points to base judgments on. I don't need that."

I stood waiting as she rose. "I do hope you don't talk about this to anybody else."

"I won't," she whispered meekly. "Sorry."

We drove back to work in silence.

Beth didn't bother me the rest of the day, she stayed in her cubicle and worked dutifully on her assigned projects. I tried to work on mine as well, but inwardly I was fuming. I would never have expected the label to upset me like that. "Cuckold." Put aside the fact that it literally did not apply to my situation: Tethys was not my wife, she was not cheating on me, she was not being impregnated with another man's child for me to raise, and she had never taken any kind of vow to "forsake all others." Neither she nor I were acting out any humiliation fantasy where she would berate me for my "inadequacies" as she fucked another man in my presence. It was just the opposite. She bragged about me, and she introduced me to other women, who seemed impressed. I now had five beautiful ladies who had already fucked me, and who wanted more. There was no humiliation in that.

But the word was worse than that. It wasn't just an insult directed at me, it was an insult towards Tethys, and to all women. It carried the assumption of a woman as property, property a man must defend his rights to against other men, or lose those rights. The woman may be wayward and faithless, but it was the man's responsibility to correct her behavior, or else he could lose his property. That was a social standard that went back thousands of years, across many societies, but it was one I had utterly rejected long ago. A man and a woman have equal responsibilities in a relationship, first and foremost of which is honest communication and collaborative decision-making. ALL other responsibilities are those agreed upon through the application of the prime two. If Beth, as a woman, believed she should be some man's property, then there was no way she'd be open-minded enough to be able to understand any of the dozens of possible alternative relationships that people are capable of finding happiness and fulfillment in. I decided her erotic repertoire of stories would be a limited one. I also decided that I had nothing to be ashamed of, the problem was with her, and if we were going to collaborate to turn this company around we'd better first settle some ground rules between us.