The Honeymoon Ch. 04

The rest of the day was much the same. The tour guide was wonderful, a mountain of Polynesian flesh with a pleasant face and a lot of funny jokes about the island, the flora and fauna, its architecture, its history and (of course) the tourists themselves. But the bus was air-conditioned and rumbled around at what felt like three miles an hour, and there was only so much attention-keeping one tour guide could do. She and Patrick spent most of the trip canoodling: kissing, touching, whispering, giggling, and occasionally even letting hands wander where hands shouldn't wander in public. She felt like a high-schooler--or, at least, what she imagined a high-schooler would feel like, since during her actual high-school years she had been a model of propriety. Was she still drunk? It felt a little like it. There were things hovering on the periphery of her consciousness, a knowledge that she should pay attention and show some modesty... But these things seemed unimportant, easily dismissed, when set against to the fact of her lover, and his body, and his presence beside her. She was with Patrick. Nothing else really mattered to her right now.

As the tour bus approached their hotel, their hands got friskier, to the point that (probably) anyone who looked would have noticed what they were doing. By this time Amanda was melting with pent-up lust; she practically dragged Patrick back to their suite. Or maybe he dragged her. Once they got to their bedroom, the door closed behind them, he yanked down his pants, pulled her panties aside (she had worn the really cute skirt he liked), bent her over the bed and simply plunged in from behind. He thrust with abandon, their skin making a wet slapping noise with each impact. Her face was digging into the bedspread, her hands knotting the fabric; her breasts swung with each thrust; he rammed into her, the angle different, stroking into new places inside her, making her muscles quiver with pleasure. She felt unleashed, like an animal in heat; her bottom was upturned into the air, and she realized he might be able to see her anus. The thought only turned her on, and suddenly she was exploding on his cock, her body squeezing down on him as he groaned too, and stiffened, though he didn't stop moving, and spent himself inside her, seeding her with his cum.

When they emerged, their hearts still racing, Kerri and Winston were reclining at ease on the couch. "Had your fun then, I hope?" said Kerri with a smirk. "Because I want dinner, personally."

"Sorry," said Amanda, feeling sheepish, "it's just..."

"You're enjoying yourselves," said Winston, "and each other. Nothing wrong with that."

"I didn't really realize it was going to be this good," Amanda said.

"Do you climax?" Kerri asked.

"Sometimes," said Amanda. "But I don't mind it if I don't. It feels good anyway."

"Wait, hold on," said Kerri. "Are we talking about, during sex here? I mean, actual intercourse?"

"...Yes..." said Amanda, confused. "Why?"

"You can climax from sex?" Kerri exclaimed.

"...Is that unusual?" said Amanda.

"Just a little," said Winston. "What's the statistic?--only one woman in four can achieve it consistently. Or was it five?"

"Wow, I, I didn't know I was so talented," said Amanda, giggling a little.

"Well, that explains why she's going so crazy," Winston said.

"Oh, give her a break," said Kerri. "She's just discovering it all for the first time. It's pretty intoxicating."

Amanda had to agree. Throughout dinner she tried to pay attention to Kerri and Winston; she felt bad for having ignored them, and for being so wrapped up in Patrick. It was harder than she expected. But she did honestly feel bad. And besides, there were so many interesting questions to ask.

"Seriously? Most women don't have orgasms from sex?" she said.

"Seriously," Kerri said.

"Why not?"

"It's because of the way women are designed," said Winston. "Men have orgasms by stimulation of the penis, right? Well, on women, the equivalent is the clitoris. Starting to see any problems here?"

Patrick said, "The clitoris isn't in the vagina."

"How come you know more about my body than I do," Amanda grumped.

"Well, when's the last time you got face-to-face with your down-there?" Patrick said.

"...Fair enough," she said. Or unfair enough, as the case may be.

"And on top of that, it takes the average woman four times longer to have an orgasm than it does the average man," Kerri said.

"Seriously? Four times?"

"How'd they come up with that figure?" Patrick asked.

Winston shrugged. "Probably just by comparing masturbation times, the assumption being that the person who's best at getting you to climax is yourself."

"Which is not something all women do anyway," said Amanda. That much she knew.

"Hmm," said Kerri. "So it might be biased because the only women who participate in the study are familiar with their own sexualities to begin with. The actual average, the one that includes women who are still repressed by society, might be quite a bit longer."

"Well, hold on," Winston said. "Isn't it the same bias with men? Only sexually liberated men participate in these studies too."

Amanda knew the answer to this one too. "Yeah, but there's a lot more men who are sexually liberated than women. Kerri and I talked about this. We--" She indicated Kerri with a tilt of her head. "--are discouraged from exploring our bodies, even though we're the ones who need it most. Whereas you guys..."

"If we aren't wanking off every night," Winston said, "they think something's wrong with us."

"Whereas there's something wrong with us if we're wanking off at all," Kerri said.

"Weird," Patrick said.

"I think it's a real mess," Amanda said. "I mean, how backwards is that? Kerri's considered weird for having a healthy interest in her own body. And not just any part of her body--the part of her that's most important, because it lets her have children. She's interested, and that's considered weird. And then I... Well, I went with the pressure. I did what was expected out of me, and kept my hands out of my pants. And what do I get? A lot of frustration because, when the time comes to 'switch on,' I can't, and then I feel like a failure because I can't please my husband in bed. Whereas Kerri is made to feel like a failure because she can. Who came up with this nonsense!"

"Idiots," said Winston.

"The patriarchal domination of culture," Kerri proclaimed.

"Necessity," Patrick said.

They all looked at him.

"Okay, look, guys," he said. "When I first got in the armed forces, I thought there was a lot of stupid shit going around--all these customs and traditions and practices that you obeyed just because you always had. Obviously, I didn't say anything, or I'd get my sergeant's boot shoved up my ass, but I thought it was all pretty stupid. But as time passed and I got further into my training--and especially once I got to active duty--I started to understand that all these things they had told us to do were actually to our benefit. Why do you wanna do it that way? Because we tried it the other way, and we know this way works best because the guys who tried it the other way, died because of it. And so, as more and more things were handed to me that I was supposed to take on faith, I got into the habit of assuming that there was a good reason for doing it that way, which I might not know right now but would find out about later. And heck, sometimes I could even get a sergeant to explain it.

"I think that's true of all the rest of life too. I think we try things, and they work, and if they don't work they get phased out. And that means that all the customs and taboos and laws we have in our culture--everything--is there for a reason."

"What, even discouraging women from exploring their sexuality?"

"Yes, even encouraging women to be sex-negative," Patrick said.

Kerri frowned, but Winston laughed: "Oh, I get it: the opposite of sex-positive."

"What possible benefit could it have?" said Kerri.

"Well, under what circumstances is it a good thing for a woman to abstain?" Patrick asked.

Amanda said, "When you don't want her to get pregnant."

Patrick nodded, but Kerri said, "No, abstinence isn't the answer in that case. Contraception is. Put her on the pill. Or Depo-Provera, like you and I got last month."

"Ah, but, there's the thing," Patrick said. "Are those available?"

"Well, duh," said Kerri, "there's a drug store on this island somewhere."
"No," Patrick said, "not now. Were they available back in the day, when people were first deciding whether to encourage women to be sex-negative."

Kerri blinked a few times, clearly adjusting her thought patterns.

"Imagine we're back in the Stone Age," Patrick said, "when you lived in like groups of 50 because there just weren't that many people to begin with. You've got two tribes here. Tribe Alpha embraces eternal sexual freedom and encourages its members to experiment sexually with themselves and each other. The other tribe, Tribe Bravo, embraces the sex-negative lifestyle we all know and love. What happens in ten years?"

"Well, Alpha Tribe is going to have a lot more children," Amanda said.

"No birth control, just teenagers doing whatever the heck they want..." Winston nodded. "Yeah, a lot more children. And maybe lower health standards too, if people are doing ass-to-mouth."

"Doing what?!" said Amanda. Was that what it sounded like?

"Aaaand let's move on!" Kerri said. "But Patrick, what's wrong with having lots of children? That's what the human race has been doing, isn't it?--expanding the population."

"Yes, it's good to have children," said Patrick. "But is it good to have too many children? And, even worse than that, children whom you aren't ready to raise, because you're a single unwed mother? With an infection, because you did ass-to-mouth, and maybe an STD too? And you're not the only one, because all your peers are also caught up in this nonsense. Alpha Tribe has--how many teenage girls? Let's say ten. If just half of them get pregnant... Well, that's gonna be a huge drain on the tribe's resources. Remember, these are unwed mothers too, so all the normal economic factors that go into making a family aren't in play here. These societies would have had to be communisms. And we know from our own lifetimes that a communism can only provide for so many slackers before it collapses. And an unwed teenage mother, who's in ill health to begin with? Definitely a slacker, as far as a communism is concerned.

"So a larger population, yes: but a weaker one because of undernourishment and disease. And that's just this one generation. Imagine if this were to happen over the course of multiple generations."

"I am starting to see your point," Kerri said.

"I've got a counter-argument," Winston said. "Patrick, what you're saying is true--no one can doubt that. But what you're describing can easily be countered by discouraging fornication. There's no need to discourage sex as a whole if the only thing that needs to be limited is when it happens."

"You're right," said Patrick. "And I'll be the first to admit that I'm no historian. Maybe I'm overthinking this."

"No," said Amanda, "you do need to discourage sex as a whole."

They looked at her.

"What's the one thing we're all taught on this subject?" she asked. "The one thing everybody hears? It's this: 'Boys only want one thing.' We're taught that practically from the womb--I mean, hell, even a Disney movie said it. The point is, we're taught this because it's true." Suddenly abashed, she looked at Winston and her husband. "No offense intended."

"None taken," Patrick said gravely.

Winston chortled. "Guilty as charged."

"So girls are taught to guard their dignities and their reputations," Amanda said. "We're taught not to give it up... Because if you teach boys to wait until marriage, they will nod and smile and then just ignore you once you're out of earshot. If pre-marital sex is going to be prevented, it has to be the girls who prevent it."

"Okay, I'm with you there," said Kerri. "But it's a long step from 'Protect your reputation' to 'Sex is bad and you shouldn't enjoy it ever.' Which is--as I'm sure you can attest, Amanda--what we're taught."

"Yeah, but, where were you taught it?" Winston said. "The church. Now, Amanda, don't get riled up about this, but... churches can get overzealous sometimes."

Amanda laughed. "Christ taught us to embrace the truth. That includes uncomfortable ones."

"Oh, good," Winston laughed. "Anyway, the point is, churches can get overzealous. They take the wisdom of the day--which of course is probably something smart and useful--but then they go crazy with it. They say, 'This must be the truth, always, because God said it once and therefore it must always be true.' Forgetting that, of course, wisdom is context-sensitive, and sometimes doesn't mean the same thing in a different place."

Amanda frowned. "I don't agree with that. I think there are things that are always wrong, no matter the circumstances."

"Oh, no, I agree," Winston said. "I'm just saying that not everything is always wrong. Take the death penalty. Is murder always wrong?--even of a murderer? Yes, I think so. But I also think that, on rare occasions, there will be a person who is so dedicated to causing harm and hurting other people, that the best choice--not the good one, but the best one--is to kill him so that he can't hurt anyone again. It is a crime to hurt him, but it would be even more of a crime to let him go on hurting others."

"You could even argue that, because you know he has no intention of living a peaceful and non-violent life, it's a virtue to kill him early," Kerri said. "If your objective is to provide the maximum amount of good to the maximum amount of people, then surely the life of this one man--a man who is contributing nothing and in fact subtracting from the community because he kills people at whim--is worth the lives of the uncounted others whom he would hurt if he were allowed to live. No one believes that murdering Hitler would be immoral."

"Though we do have the 20/20 of hindsight," Patrick said. "Remember, he was Time Magazine's Man of the Year. If someone had managed to stop him before he got started--before we actually knew what he was capable of--how would history look upon that murderer?"

"I don't know, but fortunately that's not what we're talking about," Winston said, grinning. "The point is that, once upon a time, it benefited society to socialize women to be sex-negative. That time may or may not be over--but, because churches got involved, that attitude will never die now. It's a Holy Law, you see, and that means they have to cling to it whether it's necessary or not."

"I don't think we're that crazy," Amanda said. "The church's attitudes have evolved. We're slowly coming round on the gay-marriage thing."

"Yeah," Winston said. "But slowly. Because the church is filled with people who would rather believe a book than what they see with their own eyes. So long as churches operate that way..."

"Point taken," Amanda said.

"Good god," Kerri said. "And this is the environment our kids are going to grow up in? They're going to have to face all this insanity?"

"Well, that's where parents come in," Patrick said. "Just as yours did, Kerri, when you grew up: it'll be your job to teach your kids what you think is right."

"Yeah, but, everything they thought was right, I thought was wrong," Kerri grumbled.

"Well, maybe that's what your job as a parent will be," said Amanda, shrugging. "To present your views and be shot down. But at least you can present them. Every child has to start somewhere. Could you have gotten as far as you have without your parents' views to rebel against?"

"So I should expect them to disagree with everything I say?" Kerri exclaimed. "Boy, I can't wait to tell that to Mom. She used to complain I was a brat!"

"I mean, I hope to raise our children as Christians," Amanda said. "And I hope they'll become Christians themselves later. But that's just it: faith in Christ isn't something I can impress on them. I have to let them come to it themselves; if they don't, it isn't genuine. And if they don't, I just have to accept that God is calling them in a different direction. And I'm certainly not going to beat them over the head with the sexual mores I was taught. If I have a daughter, and one day I find her masturbating, I'm going to encourage her."

Kerri snickered. "Seriously? You're going to encourage her?"

Amanda felt heat on her face. "Shut up, you know what I mean." Even as she said it, though, she wondered if it would prove true. I like to think of myself as a liberated woman, but the past four days have showed me something about that. What will actually happen if I come across a daughter of mine, exploring herself? Will I be supportive, or will my repressive training kick in?

Kerri was still chortling. "No, I don't know what you mean, why don't you tell me?" Then she relented. "No, seriously, I do know what you mean. It just sounded way, way wrong."

"Well, I'm guessing your kids will have some natural curiosity to begin with," Winston said.

"Why, what makes you say that?"

"Well, if it goes anything like the past couple of days," Winston said, "they'll hear mommy and daddy making weird noises from the bedroom. Much the way we have." He grinned.

Amanda felt her cheeks heat again. "We're not... That loud."

"Oh, you're loud enough," Winston said, grinning.

"And it's not so much that you're loud as that it's freaking obvious what you're doing," Kerri said. She put on a mock face: "Uh! Uh! Uh! Oh yeah!" She grinned.

"Well, we'll try to be more discreet next time," said Patrick.

"Oh, don't worry about us," Kerri said. "We're just glad you've worked it out enough that there can be a next time."

Amanda smiled at her husband. He smiled back.

"And there they go," said Kerri, tossing up her hands. "Excuse me, waiter? I haven't gotten my cooties shot renewed recently."

Patrick leaned close to her to whisper in her ear. "I'm looking forward to our next time."

She answered: "I love being so close to you. It feels like we really are one flesh."

"It's pretty good for me, too."

She stroked his cheek. "That's what I was looking forward to more than anything else. The chance to really be... with you. To be a part of you."

He moved in for a long, lingering kiss. She tasted many things in that kiss--what he had had for dinner, yes (shrimp scampi), but also his love for her, and hers for him; and the lust that had been simmering under them all night, now returned to the forefront of his awareness--and hers.

They stayed with their eyes locked for a little while after the kiss. So the look of despair Kerri on Kerri's face passed them right by.

Back at the room, Amanda felt a little ashamed. "Maybe we should... Hold off a little. I just... We keep getting lost in our own little world, and ignoring them. And making enough noise to disturb them!..."

"I think they were teasing us about that," he said. "But, if you want to back off a little, that's okay with me." He gave a little chuckle. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit worn out!"

"Oh no," she said, "are you hurt? Did I injure you?"

"No, no, not that at all," he said, "it's just that... Well, I think the most I ever came in one day, before now, was three times. And that was back in high school, more than ten years ago. Today... What has it been now, four times? And I'm getting on to thirty."