The Humper Game Pt. 06 Ch. 01

Author's note:

This is, in all its seven parts and their many chapters, one very, very long story. If long stories bother you, I suggest you read something else.

No part of this story is written so as to stand on its own. I strongly suggest that you start with the beginning of Part 1 and read sequentially—giving up at any point you choose, of course.

All sexual activity portrayed anywhere in this story involves only people at least eighteen years old.

In fact, nowhere in Part 6 is there any explicit sexual activity. (This should surprise no one who has read Part 5.)

This entire story is posted only on literotica.com. Any other public posting without my permission in writing is a violation of my copyright.

Part 6. "If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another—"

GENERAL: But wait a bit. I object to pirates as sons-in-law.
KING:         We object to major-generals as fathers-in-law. But we waive
                   that point. We do not press it. We look over it.

        — W. S. Gilbert,

The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty

Thursday morning, not all that early, we flew off to visit Ellen's family. Steve was the first one I met, because he picked us up at the airport. I knew what he looked like, because Ellen had shown me family pictures, and we had talked on the phone enough that I knew a lot of what he was like—and I liked him a lot. But I was still kind of surprised when, after he hugged Ellen, he gave me a hug as well.

I must have showed it, because he said, "That first time I talked to you, I told you to treat her right. Remember? It's been real obvious that you do, and you're just what she needs. I hope our parents can see it for themselves now, but I've told them so enough times. So welcome, and I'm real glad to meet you face to face." I was really touched, and I said so. Ellen was glowing.

One thing I should have seen in the pictures but hadn't really noticed was that Steve was a lot taller than Ellen, almost as tall as I was. He was pretty thin, too. I quickly tried to remember the pictures. I thought their parents were just about Ellen's height. Steve projected a very nerdy appearance, with glasses with thick, dark frames and hair that tended to look tousled most of the time.

We got all our baggage collected and went off to Steve's car. We had too much, in my eyes, but I didn't see how we could reduce it much. Clothes for at least a week—and we would have to manage laundry sometime in spite of that. Running clothes and shoes. Gifts. Capacity for more gifts, meaning that things weren't packed tightly. Some classwork to work on. Tablet plus keyboard for me, tablet alone for Ellen. Shaving gear for both and other related things. Lots of small items.

Ellen's parents greeted her with cries of joy—how good she was looking! how much they had missed her! They spoke to me politely, welcoming me as a stranger, a guest. I considered this acceptable, since I was a stranger, after all, and their daughter's guest. I tried to be as polite and respectful as I possibly could.

Ellen and I had discussed how I should address them. She approved of my calling them Mr. and Mrs. Chan, until and unless they invited me to do otherwise. They normally went by Peter and Mary, but Ellen had made sure I understood that their real names were Chinese. The English names had been chosen by their parents when they were very young—possibly very soon after birth, possibly even earlier—for them to use in dealing with Americans. Ellen thought that once we were married—and assuming that they approved of me and liked me by that time—they probably would want me to address them as Mother and Father. Ellen and Steve called them that, but also sometimes used Chinese equivalents when addressing them formally.

We brought our things in, and stood talking for a few minutes. They asked about our flight, and asked me about my classes. I kept my answers general. After a few minutes, Mrs. Chan showed us to our room. I was having a little trouble with facial and body language—even though Ellen's parents were born in the US, they had a trace of an accent, and that applied to nonverbal communication too—but even I could see clearly in her stiffness that she disapproved. I looked at Ellen. This was not something I could address, so if she ignored it I would have to—but she seemingly had no trouble reading my face. She said, "Phil, let's get our things into our room first, but I need to speak to my parents." So I followed her, and then remained behind while the two women went out. There was a small bookcase in the room, so I found a book that looked interesting and sat down to read.

It was at least an hour later that the two of them returned, with Mr. Chan this time. Mrs. Chan said to me, with no preliminaries, "Mr. Morris—. Excuse me. Phil, I apologize to you for my manners a few minutes ago. My daughter has pointed out to me how rude I was, and she is correct. Please excuse me. You understand, when my husband and I were about your age, our parents arranged our marriage. I don't mean that we objected to their choice, of course, and we have certainly been very happy together all these years. We are in a country where young women choose for themselves whom they will marry, but old ways of thinking are not always easy to leave behind.

"And in our day, young people—young people like us, Chinese people from good homes—were expected to remain chaste until they married. Some did not, of course, but they did not flaunt this. Ellen reminded me that we are now in America, a generation later, and also that we knew what would happen at your school, and had agreed to it.

"Please excuse me for acting as though you should not be here. You are welcome here, as my daughter's guest but also as her intended husband. I did not think things through, and I am ashamed."

I wasn't sure how best to respond. I was afraid to offer a hug, afraid of offending her. After a moment, I said, "I'll gladly forgive you. I know you meant no offense, and that it's hard. And thank you for welcoming me in spite of that."

Apparently that was, if not the precisely right thing, quite acceptable. She smiled, and both of them visibly relaxed. I was going to have to ask Ellen some questions later. But for the moment, Mrs. Chan said, "I must go and see to dinner. Please make yourself at home in the meantime."

"Thank you."

Ellen's parents left us together, and after a moment Ellen said, "Phil, I knew Mother would be difficult, but I thought we had straightened out most of it earlier, over the phone. Thank you for being patient and understanding. Your answer was what it needed to be, because she meant what she said—she was very ashamed, having to admit that her daughter needed to correct her manners. Her attitude. It really will be hard for them, but now they truly are committed, and unless something concrete offends them they will be trying."

I didn't say anything, and after a minute she went on, "I told them that we are now being chaste, even though we are sharing this room, and this bed. She finds that hard to believe—and even more so, that you were the one who insisted that if the pastor asked it we would do that. But she knows that I wouldn't lie to her. To her, this is a very big thing.

"Now I should go help with dinner, and you should talk with my father. I can't really tell you what to say, except that anything that helps him believe that you will have a good job after we graduate will help. Steve will help you, if he's there."

We went out, and she led me to where her father and Steve were talking, and she left me with them—after a quick hug. Steve was showing his father prints of some of his recent work, and they backed up the discussion to show me the ones they had already looked at. I found it very interesting. Technically, they were truly excellent. In the case of some drawings which were intended for an instruction booklet, they were very much better than I was used to seeing in such places. I said so, and in answer to my questions Steve admitted that this had involved extra work for him, because those who had commissioned the illustrations had to be shown that their original ideas weren't clear enough. He said that in the end they were pleased enough to offer a small bonus—not enough to pay for his extra time and effort, but more than they had contracted for.

I thought Mr. Chan was impressed that I had seen what I had. I told him that I had studied art only as far as the general curriculum had called for it. I explained that my grandfather had been a commercial artist as well, but that other than seeing two or three things he had displayed, I hadn't really known anything about that part of his life. There had been times when I saw him working, but early on I hadn't been able to sit still to watch while he worked, and later when I might have, I had the habit of letting him work by himself.

At that point, Steve spoke with some heat. He said that my grandfather was well known to those who worked in that field—admittedly, a somewhat narrow one. He reminded his father of some prints he had displayed in his home, identifying them as Granddad's work. And I said more or less what I had to Steve on the phone, that first day—that Granddad had viewed art as a secondary calling, a means of providing for his family by serving the needs and wishes of others. He would have been diligent in trying to do this excellently, but that was not his true passion. I described how much of his time and energy he had poured into teaching me the scriptures.

"I know it was always a disappointment to him—to both my grandparents—that I did not believe. But for some reason, he was always convinced that I would believe, one day." I was choking up, a little. "I so wanted to please them, and they understood that. But I knew that they would never have wanted me to try to comfort them by pretending to be convinced when I wasn't."

By this point, I was affected to the point where I was having trouble speaking, and I apologized. "I'm very sorry, I hope both of you will forgive me. They were killed in an accident a few months before I went into high school, and I still miss them terribly when I'm reminded." And we all stood for a few minutes without saying anything, until I had better control of myself.

Mr. Chan asked me about my plans once I had graduated. He understood me when I said that it was hard to know at that point. I said, "I really think I might like to teach, but there are several things against that. One is that I really don't know that I would do well. I tend to overload the student with the details that an expert wants and needs to know, but which overwhelm a beginner. I actually think I'm learning to do that less. We've been doing a Bible study with a friend—I'm not a believer and she is, but she asked me to do this. Ellen also contributes, and one of her tasks is to warn me when the point is getting lost in all the details.

"But anyway, teaching history would mean more years of schooling. To teach in college, I would need grad school, and then I would face several years of non-tenured positions, never able to really settle down. And to teach at the high school level, I would need at least a year or two of education school, I think, and I'm not sure I could get through. They seem to be so bogged down in political correctness that they no longer care very much about whether you know your subject and can communicate it." Both of them nodded vigorously at that, and I wondered what was behind those nods.

I described several ways of using a history major in non-academic contexts, mostly right out of the booklet Professor Wheeler had given me and my talks with Uncle John. I also said, "My father works for the State Department, and I suspect he can put me in contact with people who can use the historical knowledge and research skills I have. I need to raise that with him when we're there."

I thought perhaps I had satisfied Mr. Chan that, if I didn't have specific plans a year and a half ahead, I had a good grasp of some of the possibilities.

We went in to dinner, and I asked about Mr. Chan's work. I knew he was a wholesale importer and exporter, primarily dealing with the Far East, but I knew almost nothing about what that would involve. I was interested and glad of the chance to learn. I could see that my questions pleased Mr. Chan, though I didn't know why. Later, Ellen told me that part of it was simply that I was interested. It seems that many people take it for granted that foreign-made products are available and just don't care about everything that involves. My passion for context and details had worked in my favor for once, it seemed. But she also said that my questions were perceptive. He could see that I didn't know, but I reasoned from what he told me, finding new questions to ask. This also seemed to me basic and natural, but maybe it's not, for some reason.

They didn't go in for a big display of Christmas decorations, but Ellen's parents did have a smallish Christmas tree in their living room. From what Ellen had told me, they made a minimal American celebration, gathering Christmas morning to open gifts, and sharing a large dinner in the afternoon. Since the holiday fell on Sunday that year, we had decided we wouldn't go to church that morning. We'd spoken to Pastor Mac, and he had said that he thought that on my first visit with Ellen's parents this was wise. We saw that a nearby church had a service the evening of Christmas Eve, so we told them we were going to that.

Somehow, it was a very moving experience for us. It was done as a service of Lessons and Carols, scripture readings alternating with related songs sung by the congregation, often just one or two stanzas. I presumed that was in order to prevent the service from being too long—or maybe it was simply because the songs were sung from memory. The church was darkened, a candle being lit during each song. The sanctuary was perhaps half full, and I wondered whether visitors, probably mostly family members, made up for those who were away with families in other places. There was a brief sermon on the meaning and importance of the incarnation and its place in redemption. Communion was served at the end, in the—still mostly unlit—sanctuary. Of course, we didn't take part.

As we left, we spoke briefly to the pastor, telling him who we were and why we were there. He had met Ellen's parents, but didn't know them beyond having been introduced and saying hello three or four times. As I said, I found the service simple and moving, and I made a point of telling him so, and Ellen added her agreement.

On Christmas morning, Ellen and I gave her parents a gift, and we gave one to Steve. Ellen had insisted that I shop with her and be consulted, but I had to trust her judgment entirely. I had been coming to know Steve somewhat, but I had no idea what he would like to receive, and her parents were terra incognita. After a couple of days in their house, I had a little more idea of their tastes, but not enough to do a good job choosing a gift. They gave us each a gift, something of a knickknack for me—from which I guessed that they had not consulted Ellen—and a beautiful, framed, Chinese art print for her. Mine was to my eyes exotic and beautiful and way too breakable. Steve gave us a framed print of a work by my grandfather, which again had me choked up.

We gave Steve food, to wit a moderately small cheesecake, and from his reaction I gathered this was perfect. Had I seen him in person earlier, I would have questioned this, as he seemed too thin to be one who enjoyed food all that much, but I plainly would have been wrong. We gave Ellen's parents a little music box, a real one, spring-driven, not one of the awful synthesized electronic ones. It was beautiful to look at, patterned woodwork, with a painted scene inside the lid. It seemed to me that they were surprised and very pleased. Ellen had warned me that we should stay away from anything Chinese or Chinese-themed, and this was certainly not Chinese. It was a recent replica of a Swiss-made box from the early nineteenth century, more expensive than a lot of mass-produced ones. I guess it qualified as a knickknack, too, though.

I gave Ellen matching earrings and pendant. I'd gotten these at the same time I got a set for Sam, the earrings of which I had already given her. I later showed Ellen the pendant I had for Sam, and she was enthusiastic about it. Jenny had been more of a problem, to me, but I had gotten another pendant, by itself, which Ellen pronounced more than acceptable. She asked, and I told her that the woman at the shop where I'd bought them had asked to see pictures of all three of them, and also asked me a lot of questions about what they were all like. I had explained that, in the school where we met, most jewelry was forbidden, when she asked why I didn't know anything about what other jewelry they wore. Ellen said again, "I never get help that good when I shop!" I wondered whether that was because she knew what she was doing.

Ellen had gone along with me shopping for Mom and Dad, too, but had deferred to me when I said something like a cheesecake would be much appreciated. We had decided to wait until we were there to buy it. I was glad the one we'd bought for Steve had survived the trip.

Of course, with Christmas on Sunday, Monday was a holiday, and most everything was closed. I spent some time in the morning talking with Ellen's parents, just casually discussing many things. At the beginning, I felt about as casual as if I were trying to make my way through a minefield. But it became plain that at this point they weren't challenging or testing, but really just getting to know me, and I relaxed a lot. They asked more about my grandparents, and I told about both sets—how I'd never known Mom's father, and how Nonna had died when I was so young, without my being able to tell her goodbye. I almost broke down again, just from that. I had told Mr. Chan some about Granddad, but I said a lot more about him and Grandmom, their important place in my upbringing, and how much I still missed them.

They, in turn, told me about their own parents' lives, both in China and in the US. I found that very interesting, and had lots of questions. I would have found it terribly hard to come into another country, with a very different language and culture, the way they did, and I thought that the Chans saw how much I admired their parents for having done this. They explained some of the social network that had existed for new Chinese immigrants at that time.

I asked Mrs. Chan about housework she would like me to do, and persevered in the face of her protests, so I spent time in the late morning and early afternoon vacuuming and washing windows, and a few other things. Of course, I had already done what I could on the bathroom Ellen and I were using.

And despite the holiday, Mr. Chan went in for a couple of hours to do some work, and he invited me to go along. We were pretty much alone in the warehouse he took me to—there were a couple of security people there—and he spent quite a while showing me around it, explaining things. What he had gone in to do was mostly paperwork with some computer work, and I sat in his office with him as he did it. He explained some of what he was doing—making sure things were getting where they were supposed to go, and getting some orders out to fill orders that had come in despite the holidays. Orders to suppliers to fill orders from customers, I mean. His contacts abroad knew about the Christmas holidays in the US, but the business still didn't stop. Even American customers shopped on line on the holidays—apparently many more than I would have imagined. I found it all fascinating, but there was too much I didn't know.