Reverse Polygamy

After a late breakfast, we checked out and drove back down to Redding where my Saab was parked in the Mt. Shasta Mall. Before saying goodbye to Clyde, Hal and I had to promise to invite him to our wedding whenever that might be.

Picking a wedding day can be rather involved if there happens to be a large family from one or both sides. Hal’s family was all in Germany and after two failed marriages, he knew they would not be interested in investing much time and money in a third. I had parents and a moderate sized family in Boston and thereabouts but due to events related to religion and church loyalty, I had cut myself off from them when I was in primary school. The only family I had was my Aunt Louise in Minneapolis and she wasn’t a stickler for ceremony. In the end, we decided to invite only Aunt Louise, a small group of colleagues from UCSF and some closer friends from my ski patrol – and Clyde of course.

Back in the days when brides were virgins or expected to be virgins, there was another factor to be considered in setting the wedding day – the brides monthly cycle. In those days, the wedding night was the big first time - often for the groom as well - and no bride wanted to have to tell her horny bridegroom that conditions down below were not ideal for entry. In other words, the bride’s period should not coincide with the wedding day. In setting our wedding date, Hal and I considered my cycle as well but in another way and for another reason.

We finally settled on a Saturday in mid-September and decided to have the wedding and reception in a Unitarian Church in San Anselmo where a friend of a friend was the pastor. True to his word, Clyde drove down from Hayfork – on Saturday morning early. We had offered to find him a motel room but he made arrangements to stay overnight with his friend Arty Winters in South San Francisco. That was okay with us, even though we had other plans.

It was a gorgeous California summer day and since the ceremony was pretty low key and we had a caterer do all the reception arrangements, it was a low stress wedding. Except for a couple things. One was that early on during the reception, I noticed Clyde seemed to be trying to pick up Julia, a younger colleague of mine. The other was that he might leave early to have more time visiting with Arty in South San Francisco. I took care of the first concern by telling Julia the lie that Clyde was in a pretty intense thing with a girl in Hayfork. To keep him from leaving early, I asked Julia to be a prick tease and keep him from leaving too early. I hated to be so devious with Clyde but Hal and I had our reasons and we knew Clyde would understand – if he ever found out.

So the reception wound down and Clyde was still there when the caterers started cleaning up. Julia had just left, obviously having begged off with some excuse or other. Clyde took his loss in stride. “That colleague of yours, Julia, nice girl. Said she had to get home and finish a paper that’s due Monday. Too bad. We hit it off pretty well. Well, it’ll be good to see Arty again.”

Now it was time for Hal and I to drop our bombshell. We’d agreed before hand that Hal would be the bombardier. “Clyde, maybe you could visit Arty another time. We reserved a room for tonight in Jenner – hotel called. Nice place, right on the Russian River, big individualized rooms, traditional décor,” then giving Clyde a special look, he added, “and king size beds.”

In spite of our threesome background, Clyde was more than a little surprised. After all it was our wedding day and Hal and I were starting our honeymoon. All he could say was ask, “you mean?”

I answered for Hal. “Yes Clyde, we want you to join us in Jenner. It’s sort of on your way back to Hayfork.” Then just to make sure he understood our intentions, I added, “and we booked only one room – with only one king bed.”

Checking in, we used the same hoax as we had at Whiskeytown. Ask for a roll-in single bed – ‘for my younger brother.’ Our room had an exposed-beam ceiling, a living room furniture group by the patio doors that faced out over the river, and as promised a king size bed. After the bellhop left us, we just stood around admiring the room. Hal and I hadn’t planned how the night was to go down, we just thought we’d let things happen. What we had planned was to come clean with Clyde. I initiated things by sitting down on the sofa. Hal sat down on my left. Clyde moved to sit in the armchair facing us, but when he saw me patting the spot to my right on the sofa, he joined us there.

I opened the subject by telling him the situation with Hal having had a vasectomy that turned out to not be reversible. Clyde is no dummy and although he must have suspected what we had in mind, he feigned a bit of innocence. “Gee, I really sorry to hear that. You two would be such great parents. Parents like you never had, Kitty.”

“Clyde, we planned our wedding day around my periods. My last one ended 11 days ago. I’ve been off the pill since June and we didn’t bring any condoms along.”

“And if I get you pregnant?”

Hal answered. “Then Kitty and I will have a child that happens to have your genes. We talked about using a sperm bank but we’d much rather know who the baby came from.”

His reply told us he agreed to father our baby. “And would you let me be, well, like an uncle?”

I answered. “Something like that. How or if you explain it to your future wife is up to you, Clyde.”

He looked towards the big bed. “Well maybe we should get started. They say the more you do it, the better the chances are.”

I had to throw in some more technical wisdom. “The prevailing opinion of fertility scientists say it helps if the woman orgasms.”

They said it sort of together, worded slightly different but essentially the same. “We’ll do our best!”

There was a question in the air. Who would be first? Clyde insisted that since it was Hal and I’s wedding night, Hal should be first. We undressed one another while Clyde sat in an arm chair looking on. After a rather long session in which I came multiple times and Hal managed two ejaculations, we lay on our backs, sweaty and drained.

It was Hal who took the initiative to get Clyde to bed me. “Kitty, let’s make room for Clyde.” Then he scooted over to one side of the big king bed. Clyde stripped and joined me. I wondered if I had it in me for another session. That changed when he started running his calloused hands over my body. It was just like my dreams after we’d met and before we first had sex together. After he gave me a clitoral orgasm, I begged him to enter me.

The next morning, I had a go with both of my men and afterwards as the three of us lay in bed, Clyde asked us about our honeymoon plans. He was a little surprised to hear that we thought we might spend a few days in Hayfork because the closest thing to a motel was a place with the word ‘hotel’ in its name but was really just a tavern that served hamburgers. I was a little down because I knew that Clyde lived in a small cabin with a double bed that squeaked and sagged towards the middle. Seeing our look of disappointment, he mentioned that we could always stay at the Timberjack Lodge, which was only a couple miles outside of town.

So we called ahead and got a room at the Timberjack for that night, Sunday. After a late breakfast, Clyde headed out taking the fast way via I-5. Hal and I decided to take a more scenic route and took Highway 1 up to Fort Bragg. It was in Fort Bragg where I pointed out the motel where Clyde and I had shacked up the weekend when I had gone up to break up with him. Then we drove over to Willits where we got on 101 and headed north. Just north of Garberville, we exited 101 for a county road that led us towards Hayfork. While gassing up in Garberville, we got a shock when we found out it was still nearly 100 miles and almost 3 hours to Hayfork – the roads are that crooked! But the drive is scenic and you pass through interesting places like Alderpoint (along the Eel River), Zenia, Mad River and Peanut.

The Timberjack was no Jenner-By-the-Sea or Brandy Creek Lodge. In fact it wasn’t even as nice as the old rustic motel in North Shasta Lake but it served our purpose well. The room had two double beds and neither sagged in the middle like the one in Clyde’s rented cabin.

Clyde had to work the whole week – 7 AM to 6 PM, which meant he was putting together a nice nest egg for his winter of skiing. At first Hal and I wondered if he’d have enough energy left to fertilize one of my eggs. We needn’t have wondered because Clyde and I did it once or twice before going to sleep and then in the morning again. Clyde’s energy reserves seemed inexhaustible.

Monday evening he came out to the Timberjack after work. He’d taken time to shower at his place so it was already close to seven. We went into Hayfork for dinner and had beer and hamburgers. Mid-September, it was still warm enough to sit outside at the Red Bud and it was then that Clyde expressed his concern about us being able to have a proper honeymoon in Hayfork. I told him he didn’t need to worry. Hal went into more detail. “After you left for work this morning, Kitty came over to me in bed. Believe me, we did it honeymoon proper.”

We all laughed and I added, “Then we went for a drive – all the way to Big Bar and back. Anybody who’d needs to recuperate from Bay Area traffic needs to make a drive like that. Didn’t see many people along the way and the ones we did see really stared at my Saab.”

Afterwards Clyde followed us out to the Timberjack. The manager caught us when we parked and wanted to know if we were a party of two or a party of three. We just told him Clyde happened to be driving through and we offered him the other bed. It didn’t seem to occur to him that we might be carrying on a relationship that every church in Hayfork would frown upon, he just wanted another $10 a night for the third person.

By that time the three of us were getting pretty used to being a threesome so undressing for bed was no big deal. I stripped and pulled on a sleep shirt. Both of my men went to bed in boxers and tee shirts. Hal’s were the only bed clothes that stayed on all night.

Clyde was about to enter me when he noticed Hal was already asleep and whispered to me. “Kitty, was the drive that tough?”

“Not really. We did it a couple times while you were working overtime.“

The rest of the week went pretty much the same except that we grilled outside Clyde’s cabin before going out to the Timberjack. On Friday morning, Hal and I said goodbye and left for Whiskeytown where we checked into the Brandy Creek Lodge where we spent a more traditional honeymoon weekend.

My next period was due for the end of September. When it didn’t come, Hal and I started counting the days until we could make a pregnancy test. It was just after Columbus Day when we celebrated with a bottle of champagne. It was to be my last alcohol for over a year and a half.

Fortunately, that year winter came in November so I got in a few weekends of skiing before I was too far along for that to be safe. Afterwards, I put in a lot of first aid room duty and Hal skied so we had contact with Clyde, albeit only every few weeks when we happened to be at the same ski area. The relationship had changed though and not just because I was pregnant. Clyde started following some more natural young-man instincts and got into trolling in the aprés ski scene. In fact he was trolling so fervently that we had a hard time arranging to have him over to my condo for dinner.

Our daughter, Louise Johanna, was born in June. Louise was to honor my Aunt Louise and Johanna was the name of Hal’s favorite aunt.

Hal and I had joked about inviting Clyde to witness the birth. Naturally that was pretty far out. Imagine: Me, a tenured professor at UCSF, having two men present in the delivery room of the UCSF hospital! What fun it would have been explaining that to the OB and the midwives: “This guy, Dr. Hal, is my husband. This guy, Clyde, is the guy who I fucked to get pregnant.”

The following winter, I was able to ski on patrol again, just not with Hal. After all, someone had to look after Louise. To be fair to Hal, on a typical weekend, I’d ski one day and he the other.

We saw Clyde on a fairly regular basis and even managed to have him over for dinner at my condo a few times. One Saturday night after one of those dinners, Hal told him how we’d joked about having him witness Louise’s birth. He made his own joke about explaining to his virgin girlfriend that he had to go down to San Francisco for the birth of his daughter.

Talking about Louise’s birth was the opening Hal and I had been searching for. I took the chance. “You know Clyde, Hal and I been thinking about how Louise ought to have a sister or brother.”

His eyes perked up. “Oh? Well yeah, being an only child, that’s not always so ideal.”

Hal chipped in, “Anyway, Clyde, you know the problem I have. I got examined by one of the best urologists at UCSF. They just can’t fix my vas deferens. Maybe someday, just not yet.”

I added, “And Clyde, my fertility window gets closer to closing every day. We just can’t wait too long.”

Clyde, no dummy by any means caught on. “So you want ….?” He looked at both Hal and I.

Hal answered. “Yes Clyde. We’d like you to father another child for us.”

He swallowed and was quiet. Hal and I thought maybe he might not even agree. I tried to hide my disappointment but managed to speak. “Clyde, if you’re going with somebody and don’t feel right doing this? That’s okay. It’s just that it’d be so good if Louise’s sibling could have the same father. And we know you and trust you.”

“I’m more or less just trolling around, not all that successful either. Thing is, back when we made Louise, we – you, me and Hal – we had a relationship that resulted in you getting pregnant. Now, well it’d be like, well, ……….”

“I knew perfectly well what he was getting at. “You mean it’d be like breeding? To me, not really. More like renewing the triangle relationship we had. That our triangle got interrupted, well that had more to do with Hal and I being busy in SF and you up north working and then in the winter here at Tahoe. Look, Hal and I thought this over pretty well. My next ovulation is about three weeks away. We thought that maybe we could renew things before then.”

Clyde couldn’t even begin to hide his excitement. “You mean like tonight?”

Hal was the one who set the tone. “Look Clyde, I think you and Kitty ought to go to our bedroom and get reacquainted – in so far as that’s actually necessary. I’ll give Louise her bottle and diapers and put her to bed. Take all the privacy you need. I’ll turn in here on the sofa.”

Clyde got up and took me by the hand. We started towards the bedroom but then we turned and looked at Hal. He grinned, winked and said, “have fun!”

In the bedroom, Clyde took me in his arms. “I missed you Kitty.”

“Come on, all those snow bunnies up here?”

“Nothing like you Kitty. Just not the same as you and I.”

He held me tight, body to body, so close that I couldn’t help but feel his erection against me. We got reacquainted just fine but there was a difference. Not enough that we couldn’t really get it on together, but still.

My ovulation came during the week and we asked Clyde to come down to our condo in San Francisco. Again, the sex was just fine, Hal even remarked the next morning that from the sounds, Clyde and I must have been especially energetic. It was true, we had been pretty lively, but still, there was a difference compared to when Clyde had impregnated me the first time.

One weekend later that winter, I was working in the first aid room at Alpine when Clyde walked in with a cute brown haired girl about his own age. “Kitty, I want you to meet Ann.” I liked her immediately and I couldn’t help being happy for him. Both Hal and I liked them both and we had them over for dinner a couple times. Seeing them together made me realize that my relationship with Clyde had finally made the change from romantic to just friends.

I was looking forward to getting an invitation to their wedding but it never came. It was only the following winter that Hal and I got the full story on what happened. It seems that Clyde and Ann went their separate ways when spring came and when he got the announcement of her wedding to a guy named Devin, he went on a drinking spree that could easily have ended badly. Fortunately though, he had a boss with the sensitivity and common sense to straighten him out.

I sometimes wonder if there were conditions under which our polyandrous relationship could have continued. Say if Clyde had been a health care professional in the city. Or even if he had just lived and worked in the city. Would the age gap still have been a problem? At any rate, the romantic-sex triangle ended more or less the same way it had begun – without planning, just sort of happened.