US Highways

White Line Fever

14 September 2014

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I MADE IT TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN the second week of September and spent a couple of days camped at Newport, Oregon. I’d made my lifelong fantasy trip across the country on US 20. I needed to decide what to do next. I headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway, slowly making my way back to Seattle. I spent a weekend in the Siuslaw National Forest campground about a mile from the beach and since I was feeling a little isolated ever since Alice left, I decided to go to Church on Sunday.

I do that every so often. I’m terrible at bars. If you are a man in a bar by himself, you are obviously either a drunk or on the prowl. I suppose it is different for women, though they’ll say they just went out to have a drink and a little fun. The truth is women never go to a bar alone. If you happen to be one of the guys who goes to the bar alone on the prowl, you not only have to compete with the other guys who are on the prowl, you have to separate a prospect from her herd and then try to speak cleverly at a volume she can hear over the music and shouting at the ballgame on the big screen TV.

Tom Twain had me edit his book The Real Man’s Sex Book. I admit that he was a lot more successful at picking up women than I was. He’d never been married. He did a lot of traveling around the world and seemed to have a successful engagement with a woman in every port of call. He had advice on picking a girl out of the crowd.

“Pick up the wingman,” he said. “First, she isn’t as pretty as the main target at the table. Usually, she’s a little hungry for attention. Her friend, the pretty one, always has guys trying to get her to dance, buy her drinks, feel her up. So, chat the wingman up. Make wry comments about the way guys are falling over her friend and how well she’s putting them in their place. And then slip in that you think those guys are missing the opportunity to get to know someone really sweet by wasting their time on her friend instead of her.”

Tom swears that this has gotten him laid every time he’s tried it. It’s also left a few very startled and suddenly alone debs in bars abandoned by their wingman.

Me, I find that getting laid is only part of the attraction. I don’t mind that part, for sure, but I just like to talk to people and if the person happens to be a nice or pretty woman (not necessarily both) it just ups the enjoyment. Churches are a great place to meet people. A single man of an appropriate age, who is intelligent and enjoys good conversation over coffee after church, becomes a target for eligible women and/or their mothers.

So, I went to the Unitarian Church that weekend because Unitarian Universalists tend to have a very liberal outlook on life, relationships, and politics. I remember the first time I went to a Unitarian Church after having been disillusioned by the Methodists who refused to ordain gay ministers. Rev. Barbara, the minister at the UU Church, who was also obviously gay, had greeted me after the service and listened to my complaints.

“Well, Ari, you know what they say about Unitarianism. It’s the halfway point on the slippery slope from Methodism to Golf.” I don’t play golf, so I figure I reached the bottom of the slope on a free fall.

Oh, yes, I was telling about the service at the UU Church near the beach in Oregon. The speaker for the day was a woman who worked in social services and counseling. She talked about dealing with depression. I was dealing with that.

It wasn’t that I was particularly depressed. Having Alice for that wonderful week together and then being three weeks on the road alone with my thoughts and my characters, certainly left me with a wistful feeling. But overall, I was excited about what was brewing in my head. I was thinking I’d write a sequel to Redtail. I’d always planned on that being a one-off, but since I visited Laramie and Centennial, Wyoming, I’d become enthused about going back.

The depression I was dealing with was Hannah’s. LNDtH was only posting around chapter fifty, but I was writing Chapter 107. Hannah was dealing with her guilt and depression and Brian was struggling to ‘fix’ it. The speaker started talking about developing our own ‘mental health first aid kits.’ Brilliant! What would I put in my own mental health first aid kit? Besides a condom. And a Viagra. Some people joked that their kits were filled with chocolate. But the speaker was talking about having things like a CD with a piece of music that always makes you happy, an uplifting poem, a baby picture of your child, or a ribbon you won at the 4H Fair. It was to be filled with things that would remind you that life is fundamentally good, even if you are having a bad day, and that you are fundamentally a good person, even if you don’t feel like it.

‘The Kit’ was born. It would be months before I wrote the chapter it appeared in and a year before it posted, but the first—very first—image in my mind of my kit was of walking into the trailer and finding Alice standing naked in a box marked, ‘Mental Health Kit.’

Some old guy, who said he planned to write the story of his life because it had been very interesting, monopolized my time after church. I was afraid that I would hear the entire story before I could get out for lunch. I didn’t care, though. I had a new idea.

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I kept going north without anything significant other than the thousands of words I was writing. I would be finished with the writing of Living Next Door to Heaven: The Rock before November and able to focus NaNoWriMo on my Redtail sequel. I was still struggling trying to find a title, but it would come.

I did have a little surprise when I went to explore Tillamook, the home of Oregon’s premier cheese. I turned into the Tillamook Creamery, only to discover that I’d misread the sign and it was the Tillamook Crematory. Tillamook Dairy was a couple miles farther on.

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I got to Seattle in time for the various poke and prod appointments that men of a certain age need annually. Doctor, dentist, eye doctor, accountant, lawyer, and daughter.

Maddie and I have always had a great relationship, even though neither one of us is good at sending regular messages to the other or picking up the damned phone. Nonetheless, as soon as we meet at Red Robin and start consuming a burger and beer, our literary conversation is likely to go all over the charts. God help the person who overhears.

“Dad, I need to kill a guy with something in an artist’s studio. It has to be something the artist would normally be handling every day so that everyone would expect her fingerprints on it. What’s sharp enough? And should I stab him in the heart or in the neck?”

We hammered that issue out for a good long while and I caught a couple raised eyebrows as our server came by with more fries.

“So, I’m thinking that the brother and sister are close to each other and would be totally in love if it weren’t for the fact that they are related and society says no,” I said. “But the characters they are sent back in time to occupy have fallen in love with each other independently. Now, brother and sister are riding in the heads of these two lovers as they consummate their marriage. Are they committing incest?”

“You’re going to torture your characters again, aren’t you, Dad? I love it!”

Well, you get the way our conversations go.

Maddie and I agreed long ago that it wasn’t appropriate for her to read her father’s porn. But we’re happy to discuss the characters and plot twists. When she found out that I intended to write my Redtail sequel from the perspective of the girl involved, she said I needed help.

“Those librarians in Laramie said they’d help, didn’t they?” she asked.

“Yes, but the issues I’m having with this are scarcely historical details. I’d come off as an old pervert if I started asking college women if they’d ever had sex with their brother.”

“So, get someone else to ask the questions.”

What questions? We worked out an entire interview questionnaire that would help me think and talk like a ranch girl in Wyoming.

Like Mitch when he wanted to know how I knew so much about ranching and cattle in Redtail, many of my readers have asked how I know certain things. Many have also pointed out mistakes that I’ve made. A few have been surprised to find out I was a man instead of a woman and have asked how I write women so well. One email I got said, “If you are a man, you know women better than most women do!” I wrote back, “If you are a woman, I take that as a compliment.”

Here’s the basic truth. Research. I’d never been to Wyoming when I wrote Redtail. I filled notebooks full of descriptions I found, dates of railroad construction, homesteading, legends of old Laramie, wildlife behavior, how many bales of hay it takes to winter beef cattle, and the difference between the amount paid per pound for a cow versus a steer. I looked up unsolved robberies and missing money to locate actual scenes where all clues disappeared.

By the time I left Seattle and worked my way back east to Laramie, I had a three-page interview questionnaire and a plan for research at the University Library.

The questionnaire was to get discussions started, not to get a bunch of yes or no answers. So, the forty bullets each contained several questions. Some of it was simply to get context and to listen to how the women sounded. Other parts were to get some explicit information from young women that they would not normally share with an older guy—or any guy for that matter.

1. What type of music do you enjoy and listen to? Who are your favorite artists? What are your favorite songs? Is it different if you are dancing instead of listening?

2. Where do you go to dance? What kind of music is played? With whom do you dance? Are there school dances? Name the top three places for nightlife.

3. Do you ride (horses)? Were you raised with them nearby? Where do you like to ride? Describe the training your horse received.

Those were pretty innocuous as a warmup for the interview.

6. Describe high school dating. What do you define as dating and is it common? When did you begin? What did you do on a date? Were there social pressures surrounding dating? What were your favorite places or activities for a date? Did you become serious with a person you were dating? How quickly? Are you still seeing your high school sweetheart?

7. How does college dating differ from high school dating? Is it easier to find a date? Do you have a ‘steady’ that you date? Are you engaged?

Of course, the really interesting stuff came later in the interviews. I could only hope that the interview would get this far.

24. Are you sexually active? When did you begin? How do you reconcile your sexual behavior with your religious beliefs if any? Do you consider yourself to be permanently monogamous, serial monogamous, pluralist, polyamorous? Is sex important in a relationship? Do you have experience with same-sex relations? How did it work out? Do you have favorite sex acts? Absolute sexual no-nos?

25. Are sex and love always together for you? What are your views on sex outside of relationships?

26. What is your opinion of romance? Is it important to you? Do you want a permanent long-term relationship (as in husband or wife)? How soon?

27. Do you have siblings? Same sex or opposite sex? Are you close? What do you love about your brother/sister? What do you hate? Do you think it is okay for siblings to be sexually attracted to each other—regardless if they ever act on that attraction?

I had high hopes for my research trip to Laramie, but few expectations. However, when I sent a copy of the questionnaire to Alice to get her opinion, she sent back nearly twenty pages of detailed answers, some of which we used for phone sex. I’m still pulling gems out of that little document.

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It was windy in Laramie. Most people had already pulled out of the KOA campground, but they still had a section for winter campers that had power and insulated water pipes. I was warned to disconnect my hose at night. There was no way I’d be able to use my awning without turning my trailer into a kite. Every time I tried to cook on my gas grill, the wind blew out the flame. I would be cooking inside the trailer for my two weeks in Laramie.

“You know how Laramie was founded?” the campground host asked me. I’d told her that I was in town doing research for my novel.

“I’ve read about the coming of the railroad,” I answered.

“Well, that’s only part of the story. The first settlers were headed to California. They came over the ridge of the mountains there to the east of us and got hit by this wind. As soon as they got to the river here, they decided to make camp and hunker down to wait out the wind before they continued,” she said.

“Oh.” I’d never heard that story. I guess it made sense as being how the Union Pacific decided on this location for their station.

“Yeah. They’re still down there,” she deadpanned.

I’d been had.

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My first research stop was at the Union Pacific Station Museum. I got lucky. The museum is run by volunteers and is normally only open by appointment. I happened to pull into the parking lot about six blocks from where the original station had been just as a volunteer was opening the door to do some maintenance. He let me in to tour the exhibits, which included a variety of information about the creation of Laramie City, Wyoming.

The Union Pacific had vast land grants along the route from Chicago to Promontory Summit, Utah where it met up with the Central Pacific Railroad and the famous golden spike was driven. The land was much, much more than the right of way for the tracks. It included land for stations, water and coal depots, forest land for ties, gravel pits, and even towns. The UP began selling lots at one of the major termini for the railroad in April of 1868 and in two weeks Laramie City had 5,000 residents. The railroad arrived on May 9. On May 10, hundreds more people, goods, and supplies arrived on the first train. Laramie City was the staging point for the construction of the long grade that moved the rails over the Rocky Mountains.

I’d found the perfect place for my characters to come to their climax, so to speak.

There were still a number of the original or restored storefronts and businesses in Laramie, including the first building made of brick and a few façades, saloons, and brothels. Brothels were a big business in Laramie. They were still legal until the 1960s when the City finally did away with them. Some of the most colorful characters of the 1860s were associated in one way or another with the brothels, which included most of the music halls and bars in town. Some were no more than tents with a line of workers waiting outside to get their shot at one of the prostitutes.

It was when I got to the Coe Library at the University of Wyoming the next day, though, that I started on the true road to discovery, and the nature of my research changed.

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“May I help you with something today?” the librarian in the rare books room asked. She was a nice woman in a business suit sitting at the first desk. I guessed that she was about thirty—one of the professionals and probably not a student. Though she had no trace of accent, I’d met enough people of Mexican descent since I got to Laramie that I recognized her Latino heritage.

“Hi. My name is Aroslav. I’m doing some research.”

“The author,” the librarian said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I read Redtail after your last visit.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We had a lottery and I lost.” She had a bright smile when she said that and I hoped she was joking.

“Uh…”

“We knew from the listing on Amazon and what you told Ms. Cooper when you were here that it was a dirty book and I volunteered to read and review it before the pure eyes of any of my colleagues were forced on it.”

“I hope you didn’t consider it dirty or offensive,” I said.

“Anything that says erotic is assumed to be pornographic until proven otherwise. We order copies of everything that we discover has mention of Laramie or historical Wyoming in it. There are some sexy scenes in the book, but nothing that made me masturbate. Not everyone in the department has read it,” she said. “By the way, I’m Aubrey Diaz. How can we help your research? Are you writing a sequel?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Since I wrote the first book without ever having visited Laramie, I thought that I’d spend a couple of weeks doing research before I started this one. I’m jumping back a few years in the time travel sequences for this one and my characters will arrive about the same time the railroad does,” I said. “I’ll see if I can heat up the sex scenes for you and make them more satisfying.”

“Oh, it’s not as if I wouldn’t have done Cole if I’d met him in a study room,” Aubrey laughed. “I can see already that you are going to make me a character in your next book.”

“How can you see that? I only have a rudimentary sketch of what will happen in this book,” I said.

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In fact, I’d only figured out the title and the role of the raven while I was in Seattle. My editor, Jay, had looked at my potential titles which included “Wapiti”, “Bugle”, and “Chogan” and shook his head.

“What are these?” he asked.

“Well, Redtail refers to a type of hawk. He’s the catalyst for Cole’s time travel. I’m not settled on the catalyst for this one. The first two refer to elk and the third one is the Algonquin word for raven. I’d prefer something to do with a raven, but there’s no reason to have Algonquin language in Wyoming. Unfortunately, the Cheyenne word is kohkahycumest.”

“Redtail is also a descriptive term. Why don’t you think of something distinctive about the animal and use that? Like if it was an elk, you could call it Elevenpoint.”

Brilliant. This is why we have story consultants and editors.

Blackfeather.

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“I’m psychic,” Aubrey said. I looked at her. “Seriously. My mother was a Mexican spirit reader. I’ll read your cards, your tea leaves, your palm, or your fortune. Oh. Sorry, you don’t have much of a fortune, do you?”

“You pegged that part right,” I said. “And I think you are right. You just got a role in the book. How would you like to be a sixteen-year-old virgin selected for the sex-act that starts the time travel?”

“I wasn’t a sixteen-year-old virgin even when I was sixteen. It sounds like fun! Now let’s get the rest of your research underway.”

I started describing the basics of what I planned and Aubrey started bringing me resources. They were spread out over two tables with my laptop open on one and resource books next to it. Aubrey spread out original plat maps and directories so I could take pictures of them on the other table. Nice, short, tight skirt.

I didn’t stop for lunch and worked until the special collections room was ready to close. I had enough historical data collected to keep me sifting through things for days. Aubrey brought me a history of Laramie City written in 1875 that said,

of those [5,000 residents], a thousand were strong, earnest, daring men, ready to face any danger or ready to undertake any perilous task if they could, in any honorable way, better their fortunes. Another thousand were ready to adopt any policy, honorable or otherwise, so that they got money, and ran no great risks. The balance, with the exception of a few good and noble women, were made up of gamblers, thieves, highwaymen, robbers, cut-throats, garroters, prostitutes, and their necessary companions, who made their living by preying upon the poor laborers who, as soon as their month’s wages were in their pockets, would rush into town from the road and timber, and sport while there was a penny left.

I packed up my dead computer, dead cell phone, and dead camera. Everything needed to be recharged, including me.

“Aubrey, you’ve been so much help today, I don’t know how to thank you. May I buy you dinner?” I said.

“I knew you were going to ask that, so I cleared my calendar,” she said. “Let’s go to Rosie’s. Tomorrow is the border war and you’ll see lots of students there. Probably Pistol Pete and the Cheerleaders, too.”

Maybe she was psychic. Maybe I’d get lucky, too. That skirt… When she’d been leaning over the table in front of me spreading out maps, I’d had some distinctly pornographic thoughts about her bending over.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Aubrey said. “And the answer is definitely… maybe.”

I might have found a woman crazier than me.

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about crazy women when I found Belle wandering around the house in the middle of the night with a butcher knife. Even neurotic Paula who couldn’t go to sleep at night if she had to get up in the morning. Once when Treasure had gotten testy over something and I responded calmly, she laughed that she needed to write a thank you note to Paula and Belle for making her look normal. Then there was the groupie, Jodie. Or Becky in Florida, or the nudist Nona, or Val the leech in Tennessee. I’d had experience with crazy.

Or Georgia. Remember her? None of them could compete with Nikki, though. Which was worse, the sickness or the cure?

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A Long Time Ago: Stalker

“You are in so much shit!” Nikki said as she approached me in my workshop. As a sophomore, I’d been given a work study grant to put in ten hours a week in the theater scene shop. Carlos, who took care of the school stage at Ben Davis, had been hired to design the shows, but I was his assistant technical director, so I had a lot of work to do on the fall production of Hamlet.

“Are you on my crew today, Nikki?” I asked. That was about the only thing I could guess that might be deep shit. I liked Nikki, but she scared the bejeezus out of me. She was just… batshit crazy.

“No. I just came over to inform you about your troubles and wait to watch you explain it to Paula,” she laughed. Nikki’s laugh never sounded funny. It was the kind of laugh you expect the psycho in a horror movie to have, only it wasn’t fake. It was the simple enjoyment of something purely evil. Paula and I were still kind of feeling our way around a relationship. We were sort of boyfriend/girlfriend and sort of not. We didn’t go out. We just hung out together on campus most of the time. Who had money to go out?

“How about just telling me what kind of trouble I’m in,” I sighed.

“You have a secret admirer. Or maybe she’s not a secret to you and you’ve just been hiding her from the rest of us,” Nikki said.

“How do you know this?”

“I saw your picture on her mirror during dorm inspection.” The color drained from my face. I sat down.

“Maybe she is on a freshman scavenger hunt?” I suggested. “They have those for orientation, don’t they?”

I didn’t doubt that Nikki had seen a picture if there was one. She was the freshman dorm monitor. That was a sophomore who could act as a big sister to the freshmen and perform the duty of room inspections once a week. Personally, I believe Nikki got the job because it included a private room and there was not a woman on campus who would share with her. She’d gone through four roommates during our freshman year. The last one had withdrawn from school three weeks before finals. Apparently, she was flunking out, but rumors had it that she simply couldn’t stay three more weeks in a room with Nikki.

“Mmm. It’s not just one picture,” Nikki continued. “I recognized you right away, so I investigated carefully. There’s a newspaper article that looks to be about three or four years old with a picture of you getting mud in the face and a description of your musical based on Origin of Species. I didn’t know you did that! Nice notices. There was a prom picture and a series of you onstage. Couldn’t tell the production. And she cut your photo out of the yearbook. Who cuts up a yearbook?” Nikki asked.

I was wracking my brain trying to come up with an answer. Prom? Had Deb transferred? If so, Paula and I probably wouldn’t last the month. But Deb wouldn’t be housed in the freshman dorm.

“She has lipstick hearts and kisses all over her mirror with ‘Mrs. Aroslav’ and ‘I ♥ Ari’ written on it.”

“My god! Who is this crazy woman?”

“Her name’s Georgia.”

It’s a good thing I was sitting down. Georgia, the crazy girl who gave me her panties after the Valentine’s Day Dance my senior year. The last time I’d seen her, she had found out I was assisting at the Summer Theater Institute and had enrolled for a week. She’d popped up near me every time I turned around. I don’t think she ever attended any of her own classes that week. I kept sneaking around the campus trying not to run into her. The last night, she’d shown up at my dorm room and knocked. We didn’t have peepholes or anything like that. I just opened the door and she pushed her way in. She was wearing a diaphanous gown that showed clearly there was nothing beneath it.

I thought Georgia was seriously cute. I’d spent an entire evening staring down her dress at her tits and finally managed to get hold of one of them. They were just about perfect. But she was also scary as fuck! For three weeks after that date, I received a card from her in the mail every day. Some of them were expensive cards. They all had hearts, or messages like “Love is running your fingers over the cracks in someone’s heart and soul while looking into their eyes with a smile that says ‘I’m staying’.” Where do people find these things? She started calling once a week until my mother asked her to stop. I thought it was funny at first. Deb even thought it was funny and wanted to act out what I’d done with Georgia. Then it got spooky and then stalkerish.

She stood in the middle of my room at Institute and dropped the gown, confirming my notion there was nothing under it.

“Take me. I want you, Ari. I can’t stand waiting any longer. We’ll have such beautiful children together.”

Oh, fucking shit!

“No! You’ve got to get dressed, Georgia. You have to leave. I’ve got a girlfriend. This room is monitored. I have to get up in the morning. You have to go!”

It was so painful to do that! Those little titties… I couldn’t take my eyes off them the whole time she was there. They were so perfect, I just wanted to suck on those little nipples! But coming to my room naked? Have my children?

I’d waited until I thought it was safe, packed an overnight bag and ran for my car. I drove the seventy-five miles home, snuck into the house, and slept on the sofa. I didn’t really have a room in this house because my folks had just moved there with my baby sister when I left for college. I had my sleeping bag with me and Mom found me there in the morning.

Now Georgia had followed me to college? Just shoot me!

Why did such perfect little titties have to be attached to someone so creepy?

“Nikki, you have a master key, right?” I moaned.

“I am not going to let you into her room so you can have your wicked way with her. You want in the girls’ dorm, you come to my room.”

“That’s not what I was thinking. I was wondering if you could go in late tonight and sort of smother her in her sleep,” I groaned. “Or me. I’ll give you the key to my room and you can sneak in and smother me.”

Nikki seemed to consider it a minute.

“I was kidding, Nikki. I was kidding!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not really a serial killer. But I might be able to classify this as ‘just cause.’ Well, I could do you if you promise to fuck me before I kill you. I hear that men have an incredible orgasm while they are suffocating,” she said.

“Nikki, please. This is serious. I need to stop this. She can’t just follow me around for the rest of my life. I’ll have to talk to her,” I complained.

“I’ll figure out something for you, but you’ll owe me big time.”

“No violence. You know how I feel about violence,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. Like I’d go to prison for you. Ha!”

Nikki stood to leave and I looked at her tattered black jeans, T-shirt, and camo jacket. Her hair this week was black on one side and purple on the other. I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Nikki, what color is your hair really?” I asked. She turned to face me. She popped open the top button on her jeans.

“If you really want to know, bring your face over here and take a really close look.”

“Nikki! Stop! Geez you’re weird!”

“Don’t you want to get in my panties, Ari?”

“I’m afraid of what I’d find.”

“I am NOT a boy!”

“I know what to do with a dick. I’m afraid you might have teeth down there.”

“Nobody will say things like that when I’m rich and famous,” she snarled.

“How are you going to become rich and famous?” I asked.

“Paranormal research,” she answered. Suddenly, I’d unleashed a demon. She got a brown envelope from her satchel and approached me, ignoring the fact that her jeans were coming unzipped now that the top button was open. She apparently didn’t wear underwear, because there were light brown hairs peeking out of the fly. “I finally got the photo I’ve been waiting for. I set a time-lapse camera with long exposures that I layered one on top of the other when I printed this image. Girls have been telling stories about the basement of the dorm being haunted for years. Would you believe that two years ago, a girl claimed the ghost got her pregnant? I captured the ghost. Look at this!” She triumphantly showed me the photo that showed a rather blurry black and white image of the common room in the basement of the dorm. There was a bright spot on the left edge of the picture.

“Where’s the ghost?” I asked.

“There! There!” she practically screamed, pointing at the bright spot. “You can see eyes in the center.” I examined the photo more closely.

“Nikki, I think that’s the reflection of the exit light in the window,” I said.

“You’ll see. When I’ve refined the processing and push the film a little more, everyone will be able to tell that I’ve caught the specter. You’ll see,” she muttered as she stuffed the photo back in the folder and left. Oh, crap! That makes two crazy women to deal with.

That was the least of my worries, as it turned out. Two days later, posters started appearing around campus. That’s not unusual, especially in mid-September. Classes were electing officers and since our school didn’t have a Greek Council, we elected a typical student council. There were always posters up for the student offices. They didn’t usually have my picture on them, though. I was walking to the cafeteria with Paula and she spotted it.

“So, I’m not enough? You have to date all the girls on campus?” she yelled at me. She stomped off. I read the poster.

“Aroslav for Campus Boyfriend. Heck with the rest, Date the best!”

Not only was there a poster; no, there were lots of posters. Everywhere the campus candidates had put posters, my face showed up. And there were stickers, too. “I ♥ Ari.” I saw one on a girl’s backpack. This was not good. In my first class, six girls turned around to look at me and held up their notebooks. They all had stickers that said, “Future Mrs. Aroslav!” It lost a little something with the black lipstick print, but I couldn’t expect Nikki to spring for color stickers. I couldn’t believe she’d paid what must have been a fortune for stickers and posters. I knew her parents were rich, but this was ridiculous.

I dragged myself into lunch with people I’d never met slapping me on the back and telling me I had their vote. Girls were coming up to kiss me on the cheek and say, “Will you be my boyfriend next?” Nikki had put together a whole fake campaign so that Georgia’s little mirror display looked like she was just copying everyone else on campus.

Paula came up to me as a cute girl from my sociology class was giving me a hip check and dragged me away to a table.

“Okay. I got that it was a joke. Nikki explained everything. You are a bastard!” she said.

“It’s not my fault, Paula. Really.”

“You’ve never fucked her, have you?” she said flatly.

“No! I escaped.”

“Then tonight you come to my room and demonstrate every single thing you’ve done with the little bitch. Every. Thing.” Paula left. That, at least, wasn’t a bad prospect. In fact, it was reminiscent of Deb. I’d never slid my hand into Paula’s shirt to squeeze her bare breasts, nor had I seen her naked.

The campaign settled down when a guy who was well-liked and very popular was also nominated for the position of Campus Boyfriend, though his posters weren’t as classy as mine. I heard that Georgia withdrew from school. Neither my name nor the other guy’s actually appeared on the ballot.

I felt bad, but if the only reason Georgia came to this college was to trap me, we were both much better off with her going elsewhere. Cute little titties and all.

But one day, I was going to have to deal with Nikki.

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Back to Laramie

Rosie’s Cantina was just what Aubrey had promised. We drove separately so she could go home and change clothes before she met me. I wandered around downtown to scope out what happened on Friday nights. Things were lively. I spotted the Coal Creek Coffee Company and couldn’t help but stop in to get a quick cup. Good espresso, even though prices on everything were a dollar more a cup than most places. They called my usual ‘shot in the dark’ a ‘turbo.’ Every coffee shop has its own term for adding a shot of espresso to a cup of coffee.

When I got to Rosie’s, I had to wait for a table. There was no sign of Aubrey yet. The promised cheerleaders, however, were bouncing around in their little short skirts and crop tops. If I recalled the pictures I’d seen, this wasn’t an official uniform for games. There were NCAA rules regarding cheer uniforms just like there were for sports uniforms. These, I assumed, must be a special edition for, let’s say, lifting people’s spirits the night before a game.

Pictures seemed to be the order of the day. For a dollar, a cheerleader would pose with a fan. I was told the money was being collected as part of their big charity drive. It was a well-established menu card. For five dollars, the cheerleader would sit on your lap for the photo. Multiple cheerleaders at once, multiple dollars.

As soon as I was seated, a very cute little redhead cheerleader rushed to my table and asked if I’d like to support their charity by having a picture. I told her my cell phone was dead, but I’d make a donation. I intended to pull out a single, but realized I’d laid a ten on the table for her. She pushed my legs apart and sat on my knee.

“Darla! Snap the pic!” she called, waving her phone. My hand automatically went to her waist to steady her on my knee as she leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek. That was a very silky smooth, and bare waist. She stayed put while Darla handed back the phone. “I’m Reba,” my cheerleader said. “What’s your number? I’ll send you the pic.” I gave her my cell number and she sent me the photo. “Now you’ll have my number, too.” She leaned in close to my ear. It was a little difficult to hear what she was saying over the noise in the room. But I got the message. “I know older guys sometimes have needs that aren’t being met at home,” she whispered. “Sometimes I have needs that I can’t afford and a couple hundred extra spending money comes in handy. Call me.” She kissed me on the cheek again and slipped away.

I was a little dazed when I looked up and saw Aubrey grinning at me.

“You didn’t waste any time. You’ve got lipstick on your face,” she laughed.

“I guess the donations are for a good cause,” I said lamely.

“Things get crazy the night before the Border War,” Aubrey laughed. “It’s a good opportunity to raise money for the cause. This is Mandy. Mandy, meet Aroslav.” A woman stepped around Aubrey and scanned me from head to foot. I guess it was a woman. The left side of her head was… not quite shaved, but the dark hair was no longer than my beard. The hair on the right side was blonde with purple streaks and hung to her shoulder. She had multiple piercings in the visible ear, one through her nose, and when she finally spoke, I caught a glimpse of a stud piercing her tongue. “Be polite, Mandy,” Aubrey admonished. Mandy sighed and held out her hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Aroslav,” she said.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mandy,” I said, recovering my sense of equilibrium. I wasn’t expecting Aubrey to bring a chaperone. I wondered what kind of relationship she had with the much younger woman. “We can wedge another chair in here at the table. I’m starving. I hope you two are hungry.”

The waitress came to take drink orders and carded Mandy when she ordered a beer. Apparently, she passed as the drinks were on the table and we’d ordered a double rack of ribs to share among us. Aubrey played the part of a chipper and lively hostess, a stark contrast to Mandy’s almost sullen quiet.

I discovered Mandy was a sociology major in her last year. When she spoke, I was fascinated by the flashes of the silver stud in her mouth. She was a good bit taller than Aubrey, but not as tall as me.

It wasn’t as if Aubrey was using Mandy as an excuse not to be friendly to me, either. We got messy because there just isn’t a good way to eat ribs without using your fingers.

“I’m going to have to go wash up before I can put my hands on the steering wheel,” I laughed. “This sauce is great.”

“I can help,” Aubrey said. She grabbed my right hand and started licking my fingers.

“Slut,” Mandy muttered. Aubrey grinned at her and reached out to dip her own fingers in barbecue sauce. She offered her hand to Mandy and while she licked my fingers, Mandy licked Aubrey’s. I was feeling how constricted my jeans were.

I love my 501s. They’re good-looking blue jeans and probably Levi’s best. But I once read a comment that compared them to a cheap hotel. There’s no ballroom.

“You’ve been watching my clit-flicker all through dinner,” Mandy said to me. She locked her eyes on mine and I discovered I couldn’t pull my gaze away. Deep, purple eyes.

“Your what?”

Mandy answered my question by sticking her tongue out and wagging it so the stud clacked against her teeth. She looked over at Aubrey.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Please?” Aubrey said. Mandy returned her gaze to me.

“My girlfriend wants to play with you,” she said. “There’s just one problem with that.”

“What’s that?” I asked. “I don’t want to create problems for you.”

“Oh, it’s no problem for me. It might be for you, though,” Mandy said. Her whole demeanor had changed once the finger licking started. “You see, you can only get to little Miss Diaz’s tight little pussy through me. You got it in you, cowboy?” I breathed out, not knowing how exactly to respond. “Better yet, can you get it in me?”

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After a very small amount of debating and a few barbecue flavored kisses beside my truck, the two women decided to ride with me and go to the trailer rather than either of their apartments. Even though they considered themselves a couple, they didn’t live together and they had kept their relationship secretive.

“This is so cute,” Aubrey said when we were inside. The wind was whipping up a storm outside and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there was some snow by morning.

“Make yourselves at home,” I said. “I need to go out and disconnect the water line so the hose doesn’t freeze tonight.”

“We won’t have water?” Mandy asked.

“We’ll have water,” I said. “It will be through the internal tanks and pump, though. Not from outside.”

I went out and did the work. It only took about three minutes to disconnect and drain the hose. That was enough time for Mandy and Aubrey to get naked and into my bed.

When I’d started fantasizing about Aubrey bent naked over the edge of my bed this afternoon, I’d never considered the possibility of a two-for-one. I stripped as I watched the two of them kissing and loving on each other in my bed. The view that was exposed to me was Mandy’s back. Hardware wasn’t the only addition to Mandy’s body. The artwork on her back was incredible. She had a rose tattoo. I don’t mean a single long stem rose discreetly displayed on her shoulder blade. This was an entire rose bush that ran from her shoulder and the base of her neck down the left side of her back and butt, wrapping around to her stomach. I counted five large blossoms and many, many thorns. It covered about two-thirds of the width of her admittedly slender back. It was breathtaking.

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Aubrey looked over Mandy’s shoulder at me as I stripped.

“See anything you like, cowboy?” she giggled. Mandy had her face buried in Aubrey’s shoulder. The roses were turning red.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen two more beautiful women together,” I said. I brushed the length of Mandy’s torso from her neck to her butt as I leaned over her to kiss Aubrey.

“After reading your descriptions of Mary Beth, Ashley, and Cole together, I decided it was my duty to get you a better education about how two women and a man work together,” Aubrey said. “In the interest of being a good research assistant,” she giggled. Mandy playfully slapped at her and then turned her head to look at me.

“You don’t think I’m too much of a freak?” she asked.

“Mandy, you are beautiful, and this artwork is nothing short of gorgeous.” The younger woman rolled slowly toward me, still held in Aubrey’s arms, until I could see her breasts and the roots of the rose bush wrapping around her stomach. Her navel was pierced. I leaned over her and brushed her nipple with my lips before raising my face to hers for a deep, sensuous kiss. I felt Aubrey take my hand and guide it to her own skin as I kissed her girlfriend. Aubrey rolled slightly away from me, exposing her breasts to my eyes and questing hands as I reached across Mandy to kiss her. I started to get into the bed, too, but was prevented by Mandy pushing her butt out to the edge so there was no room for me.

“Just stay there for now, Aroslav,” she whispered. “Touch all you want, but let us get things started before you try to jump in.” With that, she pulled Aubrey’s face to hers and kissed her deeply while she fondled the Latina’s breasts and stomach. Her hand disappeared between them as I reached out to explore Mandy’s curves and trace her artwork with my fingers. That pleased her greatly. Her hips moved forward and I saw that she and Aubrey were slowly humping each other’s thighs.

“He has nice hands, Aubs. Strong fingers, but gentle,” Mandy whispered. Aubrey moaned. “He’s stroking my ass, but he’s not digging between my cheeks. Oh, god! He found that spot on the side that always makes me wiggle. Right below my hipbone. Did you feel how much juice leaked out of my pussy against your leg?”

“Is he hard, Mandy?” Aubrey gasped. Mandy’s hand snaked around behind her and I made sure she found my cock on the first try. She stroked it and squeezed a few drops of pre-come onto her fingers.

“Really hard. Taste. Does he taste good off my fingers?”

“Ye-es,” Aubrey whined.

“Will you eat his come out of my pussy?”

“YES!” Aubrey arched her back and shook as she came from Mandy’s expert manipulation. “Is he? Is he going to fuck you, baby?”

“Soon. We need to get things lined up. Come on. I know what you want between your legs. Scoot around.” Mandy dropped down off the bed and turned to kiss me deeply. “Next time you kiss me, I’ll be covered in Aubrey’s come. Better give her a quick kiss, too. And I just know you’re dying to squeeze those sweet boobs.”

“You’re psychic, too?” I asked.

“You think I need to be psychic to see you looking at her fat nipples and just know you want to squeeze them?” she asked. I leaned over her side to kiss Aubrey. Aubrey latched onto my lips and clung to me as she kissed until she suddenly gasped and jerked away. I saw Mandy twisting a nipple. I squeezed Aubrey’s other boob and Mandy worked her way between us.

“He’s going to watch now. He’ll watch while my long pink tongue parts your pussy lips to lick you,” Mandy said to Aubrey. She turned toward me and gave me another light kiss. “Go easy, cowboy. I don’t do guys very often. Treat my pussy nicely.”

Mandy turned away from me and bent over the bed far enough that she could put her head between Aubrey’s legs and open her older girlfriend’s lower lips with her tongue. I watched as I continued to rub Mandy’s back and slid my hands around to caress her slightly more modest breasts.

“He’s rubbing me, Aubrey. He’s touching my tits,” Mandy managed a running narration as she continued to lick at Aubrey’s slit. “He knows… knows how to treat a girl’s nipples. I can feel him behind me. He’s so hard. He’s leaking all over my ass. You’ll have to make sure you get every drop with your tongue, girlfriend. Ah-um… He’s rubbing his cock up and down my ass crack. You think he wants to poke in my pooper? Maybe some time, but not before he fucks my tight little pussy. Mmm! Do you feel that? That’s my leg pushing up against yours on the bed. He… he put my leg up there. Oh, Aubrey. That means my pussy is wide OH! Open. Oh. Aubs he licked my slit. All the way from button to butt. I… He… might make me come before he… Yes!”

I licked Mandy as she kept up a running commentary and had her first orgasm. I could hear her licking change as she started beating a tattoo on Aubrey’s clit with her tongue-stud. Aubrey screeched and I stood to line myself up with Mandy’s wide-open pussy.

“He’s doing it, Aubs. He’s pushing that big fat cock up into my little tiny hole. It’s so tight. He’s almost all the way in. Oh, no! There’s more. He’s still pushing in. Can you feel my finger up inside you, baby? He’s so much deeper than that. I don’t think I can take any more. This is his big long cock coming right out of my mouth into your pussy. Feel it? He’s fucking you right through me!”

I’d bottomed out long before Mandy’s narration ended. But seeing her mouth engulf Aubrey’s pussy each time I bounced against her butt and drove into her was incredible. And what she said about being tight and wet was completely true. I wasn’t sure how long I’d last like this.

Aubrey’s feet came up to wrap around Mandy’s back and I caught hold of them to start licking her toes. She squealed again.

“He’s licking my toes while he’s fucking us,” Aubrey screamed. “Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me!”

With Aubrey’s feet over my shoulders, I hunched down against Mandy’s back, hugging that rose bush. My hands slid under her to squeeze her breasts again and keep going up to her neck and then under her chin. I found her hand busy plunging in and out of Aubrey as she flicked her clit with that stud. I managed to wiggle a finger into Aubrey’s hole with Mandy’s and started sawing in and out with the motion of my hips. Both women were shaking and I was vibrating against Mandy’s ass. When Aubrey reached up and twisted her own nipples, the scream that issued from her mouth was met with my bellow as my come rocketed out of my cock. Mandy’s whine was somewhat muffled in Aubrey’s pussy.

Long after I’d come, my hips convulsively rocked up against Mandy. As long as I could stay hard, I wanted to stay in. Mandy seemed happy to have me there as she pushed back against me and I kissed her rose tattoo. Mandy was wiping her entire face through Aubrey’s pussy. Eventually I slid out of Mandy and our combined fluids began running out of her.

“I’ve got a creamy center, Aubrey,” Mandy said. “Let me up on the bed and you can have your little treat.” The two girls worked around so that Mandy was lying on her back and Aubrey was going to work on her come-filled crotch. Mandy turned her head and kissed me, smearing Aubrey’s juices all over my face. Then she dropped her head slightly and sucked my limp cock into her mouth. I began to harden as Mandy moaned with Aubrey’s ministrations. When she called out her next orgasm, she almost swallowed me. I responded to her sucking and hardened rapidly. Mandy came again.

“I’m ready,” Aubrey said. “Is Ari ready?”

“Are you ready to fuck my little Mexican girlfriend, Ari?” Mandy asked. “I know how juicy she is. She’s going to slide down this pole as easily as my mouth does.” She demonstrated and I moaned. We shuffled around and I lay on my back. Aubrey crawled up from my feet and straddled me. For the first time since we left the library, I focused all my attention on Aubrey as she slicked my cock with her pussy juices and bent forward to kiss me.

She had brown eyes with little gold flecks in them. I’d only known one other woman with eyes like that.

And she was a witch.

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A Long Time Ago: Initiation

I didn’t become a pagan overnight. I’d been raised in the church. It was true that I had a perfect attendance Sunday School pin that had bars for sixteen years. I was a true believer. I thought all my grade school and high school classmates hated me because I was the religious kid. Yes, I knew that Hannah and Cassie and Carl all went to the same church I did, but I was the religious one. I was going to write Christian plays. Even in grad school, I was focused on discovering the dramatic structure of a Bible book. Religious drama was one of the things that had drawn Paula and me together.

My mother warned me, all the way back when I got my Bible at confirmation when I was twelve, that too much studying of it would damage my faith. I later wondered if she was warning me or encouraging me. She was right. The more I studied, the less faith I had. The more remote God became. In theater, people are likely to experiment with anything. There were people doing Feldenkrais exercises, people smoking dope, people studying Buddhism, people who lived only for sex. Some things were even taught as ways to make characters more real—the Stanislavski method.

Paula had become upset with an actor in a one-act she was directing. “Phil, why don’t you know the part yet?” she demanded the last week of rehearsals.

“I’m still looking for the effervescence of the character,” he responded.

“Learn the damn lines. Then you can look for tiny bubbles,” she shot back.

For my part, I learned creative visualization. I learned to relax and to create things so real in my mind that they became real in my life. Richard Bach. Read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life. You get the idea.

And then there was the witch.

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Her name was Judith, and I don’t know if I found her eyes more bewitching or her tits. I’m sure she’d waited on me at the Uptown Bar and Grill on numerous occasions before I ever got my eyes up far enough to meet hers.

A bunch of guys got together every Friday night to play cards in the basement of a local cigar store. I went every week. Jim would let me fill my pipe from one of the tobacco canisters if I was short of money. There were some hard times back then. I had a five-dollar limit when we started playing and stuck to it rigidly. At a nickel a chip I could usually play the whole evening. And if I won five dollars, I’d stop at the Uptown on the way home to have a burger and a beer at a quarter after midnight.

Judith was the waitress. And looking at her boobs in the tight little T-shirt she wore in the bar was all the entertainment I needed for hours. I was sure she wore a bra because I could see the outline of the straps over her shoulders. But it must have been one of those that were just thin nylon or something, because I could also see the clear outline of her constantly hard nipples.

I took a book in on a Sunday afternoon once, during the time between Paula and Belle. Figured I’d just watch a football game or whatever was on the big screen while I drank a beer. I was spaced out.

“You know you can use that power for more than attracting money,” Judith said as she set my beer down. I was reading Gawain’s book yet again. That’s when I looked up into her eyes. So dark brown they were almost black with little gold flecks in them. “Like you can improve your relationships, attract sexual energy, or just become one with the earth around you. Read this book and let me know what you think.” The book she handed me was Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance.

I’d already begun writing Behind the Ivory Veil, but I knew that I was missing the catalyst that would bring Rebecca to Greece. How would I connect what she was studying in Edinburgh with the mythology of the Metéora? In The Spiral Dance, I found the rituals that would permeate The Props Master series, and that would gradually become the guidelines for my life.

But it didn’t happen all at once

I’d collected works on Greek, Roman, Norse, and Celtic mythology when I wrote my thesis, as well. I’d read the The Chronicles of the Deryni by Katherine Kurtz and was fascinated by the weaving together of magic and Catholicism. My dissertation dealt with oral versus written traditions. I wrote about the evolution of the Bible from the ballad dance, as illustrated by Miriam’s dance in Deuteronomy. So, yeah. Studying the Bible got me started on the road to becoming a pagan. But now I added other books, in addition to my own copy of Starhawk. Ritual Magic, Practical Witchcraft, Candle-burning Rituals, The White Goddess, The Methodist Book of Worship. Over the years, the simple rituals and oneness with the earth displaced the judgmental hierarchy of western Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion.

Belle and I managed three years together before the spectacular conclusion of our relationship. When it imploded, I found myself once again sitting alone at the Uptown staring into Judith’s headlights. Then I lifted my eyes to hers.

“It’s your birthday, isn’t it,” she said. I nodded. “Why are you here alone?” I explained my sad story. “Shit. You do have some lousy luck, don’t you?” She slid into the bench on the opposite side of the booth. “How long have you been practicing the pagan rituals now, Ari?”

“About five years now, I guess.”

“Have you ever been initiated?”

“Just the ritual in Starhawk’s book. I’ve been a solitary,” I said.

“You have a robe?” I nodded. “All your tools?” I nodded again. “Wear it and bring your tools. I’ll pick you up at seven tonight. Ari, you’ll still be a solitary when we’re finished, but you’ll know.” I looked into those gold-flecked eyes and nodded.

I’m not going to go into all my initiation ritual. It was very personal. We wore robes to the clearing where we gathered wood for a fire and she prepared the space. There are places where you can do that in Minnesota. When she shed her robe and directed me to do the same, I got to see those firm, tight orbs just as she viewed my staff. And orbs they were. I’d have sworn they were fake if it weren’t for the fact that I later got to test them. From the moment she challenged me at the edge of the circle with the point of her knife held at my chest until the last embers of the fire had died and the circle was released, I was in her power.

“Know that it is better to fall upon my knife and die than to enter the presence of the dread mighty ones with fear in your heart,” she said.

“I come with perfect love and perfect trust,” I answered.

We spoke ritual words. We broke bread and drank wine. We danced around and around the circle. We spread our robes on the ground and made love.

I won’t try to convince you that there were visible walls of flame rising from our cone of power, but I could feel it. And when I came in her, with her, it might have been the only time in my life that instead of feeling drained by sex, I felt filled.

We were never lovers again, though I invited her to my next Solstice Celebration. We had come together in my initiation. She was my high priestess.

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Back to Aubrey and Mandy

When Aubrey kissed me, she slid forward and then back to take my cock inside her. It was no slow, sawing insertion as I’d had with Mandy. Not that Aubrey jammed herself down on me, but once she started down, she just kept going until we couldn’t go any farther.

Aubrey had a way of just doing pelvic thrusts, rocking forward and back, while we kissed, that gave all the stimulation we needed. I was soon in the same rhythm, just rocking my pelvis back until we almost disconnected and then forward until we were completely joined. Every single thrust stimulated the entire length of my cock and the entire depth of her pussy.

And we didn’t come.

I can’t even say we made love, though fucking sounds so limited to describe the next twenty minutes of kissing and rocking in and out. Nor was Mandy idle, though she did not try to incite us with her commentary as she had when I’d taken her from behind. She lay with us and petted us. She joined in our kisses. I learned a lot about three-way kissing that night.

Eventually, Aubrey started to shift.

“I can feel it,” she said. “It’s going to be so good. In a few minutes, you are going to spray more come into my coño than you thought you had in your body. It’s time to get into position.”

‘Into position’ involved me sitting up and leaning against the several pillows I keep stacked on my bed. I do half my writing in bed, propped up on pillows. Aubrey turned to face away from me and reinserted my cock where it would do us the most good. She leaned back against me and pulled my hands around to play with her breasts as she exposed her neck for me to kiss.

When Mandy started at my balls and licked all the way to Aubrey’s clit, I almost lost it. We paused and settled back into a slow and gentle rhythm again. Mandy would wait until I was almost out of Aubrey before she licked up the entire length of my cock. Then, as I pushed back into Aubrey, Mandy would tap our lover’s clit with her stud. When I was all the way in, she would lick my balls and suck them into her mouth, tapping softly with the hardware in her mouth.

Aubrey’s breath was coming in long, drawn-out moans. I realized I was harmonizing with her. And, indeed, it was just a few minutes—never having changed the pace or rhythm—that we came.

Years of habit had trained me to drive deep and hold while I came. Aubrey and Mandy enforced maintaining the rhythm—though with a few stutters—throughout our orgasm. It made it seem like it went on forever. The stimulation of pulling out of Aubrey as I came and having Mandy lick the length of my cock as I pressed back in, still jetting, was fucking unbelievable. When Aubrey pressed down to hold us together in the aftershocks, Mandy kept gently bathing my balls and Aubrey’s pussy with her tongue. It could have been irritating, but it was just enough stimulation to slow my softening and let us stay joined that much longer.

And when I finally flopped out, Mandy was there to catch the residue with her tongue and suck our combined fluids off my flaccid cock. Aubrey lay back against me with her hands on mine cupping her breasts.

“I knew that would be spectacular,” she breathed.

“You’ve done it before like that?” I asked.

“No. I’m psychic,” she said.

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Our Friday night fun lasted most of the night. I wasn’t always involved. Mandy and Aubrey were good together. They liked to have fun, but they were kind and considerate lovers to each other. When I was no more than a limp noodle, it was fun to be beside them while they made love.

Even these two voracious lovers, though, had to take a break on Saturday afternoon to go into town and watch the Border War, UWyo’s annual clash with Colorado State University. The game this year was at Colorado, so we went back to Rosie’s Cantina and managed to get three seats at the long bar. We had beer and later we had fries. Finally, we had big bowls of chili. It looked good until about the middle of the third quarter and then the Cowboys started to slip and the Colorado Rams edged them out.

I took a selfie of the three of us in the bar with my recharged cell phone. Aubrey took charge of the phone to send the picture to her and to Mandy and to see that I had their numbers in my directory. Aubrey, of course, discovered the photo of Reba.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “Have you called her, Ari?”

“Uh… no. Should I?”

“Not if you ever want in this pussy again. How much did she say she’d charge you?” she demanded.

“Is this like a thing with the cheerleaders?” I asked, avoiding her question.

“No. Just with her. No one has proven that she solicits. No guys will testify. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame them. A couple hundred and you get to stick it to a nineteen-year-old cheerleader? Even if you decide not to, you don’t want to spoil it for anyone else. Besides, you’d be the one in the spotlight if you brought accusations.”

“I see no reason to call her. There is nothing she has that the two beautiful women who spent the night in my bed last night don’t have double of,” I said. I had thought about calling her.

“Good answer,” Aubrey said. “I’ll leave you the picture because she’s good masturbation material for man or woman. But I’m deleting her contact info.”

We walked out of the cantina with several slightly pissed and pissed off fans grousing about the game.

“Too bad the team lost,” I said. I was becoming rather fond of UWyo.

“Probably for the best,” Mandy said. “There won’t be as many jailed or injured.”

“What?”

“Well, if the home team loses, it can be kind of hard on the visitors,” Aubrey said. “It might not mean that you get beat up, but the police might just suspect that you were drinking and pull you over, just because you have out-of-state plates. The home fans on both sides of the border are pretty enthusiastic about their teams.”

“Well, I’m glad we were right here in Laramie,” I said. “Uh… I didn’t actually make an official invitation, but it is Saturday night and I’d love it if you joined me again.”

Mandy and Aubrey held a whispered conversation. Then Aubrey pushed Mandy toward me.

“Ari? Is the invitation only open for both of us?” she asked. She was looking down and I thought she might be blushing.

“Of course, you are both welcome,” I said. “Oh. But if only one of you can or wants to come tonight, that’s okay, too. Is everything okay between you? I don’t want to create any problems for the two of you. You are way too sweet.”

“It’s okay,” Aubrey sighed. “We’d each like to spend one-on-one time with you, though. I don’t work on Mondays. Mandy has class. So, it makes sense that tonight is her night and I get Sunday. If you’d like to be alone with each of us, that is.”

“I’d love time with each of you,” I said. “I’m here for another week, though. I hope we’ll all be together again. I really like both of you.”

“I knew you would,” Aubrey said. She winked at me. She didn’t need to be psychic to figure that out.

 
 

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