Double Time
Chapter 90
“You need to know where you’ve come from to define where you want to go.”
—Z. Allora, The Craving
I DON’T KNOW who was most surprised Sunday morning. I’m guessing it was me. I was preparing my music for the morning concert, having not done any prep on it this week. First off, I was back in track practice after school every day, which was cutting into my music practice. And then there was Valentine’s Day Dance with Desi and the party at Joan’s. It didn’t devolve into an orgy but there was a healthy bit of play. Brittany had been a little put out about Nanette not playing with her but we were all firm that it had to be that way until she was sixteen. She looked enviously at Desi in a hot make-out session with our newest girlfriend. I couldn’t have that, so I coaxed her into my lap and spent a good bit of time coaxing her top off and then coaxing a couple of orgasms out of her. I knew from previous experience she had no hymen to interfere with our play and delighted in thrusting two fingers up inside her pussy until she wailed.
But, like I said, it wasn’t an orgy. I took Brittany home (her home) after the party and she returned the favor with a blowjob in the driveway before she went inside.
Then I went home, not having made any arrangements for a girlfriend during my concert.
I was just warming up the strings and my fingers when my bedroom door was pushed open.
“Here you are,” Mom said. “We leave for church at nine-thirty, so if we don’t see you before then, perhaps we can all have lunch together.”
“Thanks, Mary. We’ll talk about it,” Nanette answered. She walked into my room and pushed the door closed behind her. I just sat there staring at my newest lover as she looked my room over.
I haven’t mentioned too much about Nanette’s looks other than she’s thin and strong, about five-four, short brown hair, and brown eyes. But I nearly always saw her in running gear or dressed casually like she’d been yesterday. Or naked. What I’m saying is that I’d never seen her dressed up. The woman who stood in my bedroom was… Wow!
It wouldn’t be fair to my fifteen-to-nineteen-year-old girlfriends to say she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It’s hard for any forty-year-old to maintain the fresh blush of youth that pretty much defines the beauty of a teen girl. Or guy. I knew for a fact what I looked like at forty and tried not to think about it when I looked in the mirror at my sixteen-year-old face. But there was a different kind of beauty that emanated from Nanette. She had a mature confidence that my younger girlfriends lacked and sometimes tried to make up for with a little too much makeup or clothing a bit too flashy. Nanette just had it in spades.
“I’ve never seen you in a skirt before,” I finally croaked out. The skirt was about knee-length and full, not tight. It was topped with a light blue blouse that had two buttons open at the top, revealing a simple gold chain and pendant. “And makeup!”
“Not too much, is it?” she asked nervously. “The skirt covers more than my running shorts do. And you’ve seen everything under it.” To demonstrate she flipped the front up to her waist and let it drop. Maybe I’d seen it before but I was quite willing to see it again. She had powder blue panties on that matched the blouse.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. I stood and finally managed to get my feet to work so I could walk to her and hug her to me while I kissed her.
“Don’t get too carried away,” she whispered. “We have your concert to do. First.”
Different classical guitarists have favorite positions to play in. I was taught a traditional pose when seated. I had a block I put my left foot on to raise my knee and that’s where the waist of the guitar rests with the neck pointing up at about a forty-five-degree angle. That spreads the right leg out a bit to support the lower body. Nanette encouraged me to take the classic pose in my chair. Then she grabbed one of my pillows and put it on the floor to my right. She arranged herself on it and leaned in with her head on my right thigh. She stayed low enough that she didn’t touch the guitar and I found I liked the slight pressure of her leaning against me.
“Comfy?” I asked.
“Yes. Play for me, Jacob. I’m your lover now.”
I clicked on the recorder and started in. I started with Piazzolla’s ‘Oblivion’ but I couldn’t tell you what I played next. And next. I know that somewhere in the mix between numbers I dropped my right hand to pet her head and then went back to playing.
“We should be good children and go out to have breakfast with your parents before you upload the recording,” she said. It was only nine and I found myself looking down at her on that pillow next to my chair as I ran my fingers through her short hair again.
We did and the first thing Mom asked was if it was uploaded already.
“We thought we’d come have breakfast with you before I upload anything,” I said. I shifted a little to conceal how ready I was to upload. Mom dished us both bowls of hot oatmeal and I watched to see how Nanette fixed hers. I like mine with butter and brown sugar. Nanette reached for the carton of half-and-half. I could live with that. At least she didn’t dump honey or strawberry preserves in it. I scowled at Pey’s fruity mixture.
Dad asked how the concert had gone and we talked about the positions and how they worked. Then my family left for church and Nanette and I cleaned up the kitchen, laughing about how normal everything seemed. We headed back to my bedroom and I focused on adding the titles and getting the file uploaded to my YouTube channel. I turned away from my computer to find Nanette stretched out on my bed.
Naked.
“I’ve never made love in my boyfriend’s bed in his parents’ house,” she whispered. “Will you fulfill my fantasy?”
I did my best.
I couldn’t just spend all weekend with my girlfriends and after lunch with my parents, Nanette went home. I had to do homework. I was counting on the holiday the next day to give me enough time to complete my US History term paper. It was due by Friday but I knew I wouldn’t have time later in the week to do a good job and this was an AP course I’d been admitted to based on my performance in Human Geography.
The assignment was to analyze a trend of government policy over the past fifty years that would show either a move toward more open markets or toward isolationism. We had to choose which we thought was the trend and defend it with policy and economic statistics over the past fifty years. But I kept getting derailed. If anything, the economy seemed to be more steady over the past fifty years than I remembered. There were still peaks and valleys, but they weren’t as pronounced as in V1. And there was something else wrong that I couldn’t put my finger on. Most of the names in congress and the presidents were what I remembered but it just didn’t jive. Normal party politics drives trends in my experience. The radical dips and climbs were caused by shifts in policy from administration to administration, each one claiming to have done a great thing for the country in reducing the debt (which always kept climbing), lowering unemployment (usually done by changing how it was computed), and reviving our country’s world leadership (which usually meant the rich were getting richer). But I wasn’t seeing the radical market corrections and policy shifts I expected.
I went down the list of presidents in V1’s life and the party swings since Vietnam. That’s when I found the anomaly. I had to adjust all my thinking. The names were the same but for the past fifty years, they had all been the same party.
Wait! Obama and Trump were the same party? Bush and Clinton were the same party? What the hell happened? There was only one political party in America.
The reason I wasn’t seeing huge trends and corrections was because a single overarching policy had been in place, modified from within instead of by external combat. The best I could tell was that the single party was fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and intensely nationalistic. Opponents in national elections had differing views but they were within the framework of a single policy. That was how such radical amendments and laws as National Service, restricted gun laws, and mandatory birth control all came about.
I looked up the current list of representatives and senators and recognized a good many of the names, but there was only one party represented. Except… I found a total of six representatives and one senator who had no party affiliation listed. They were from exactly the places you’d expect. Vermont, Texas, Wyoming, and Indiana.
This information threw me more than anything I’d encountered so far in V3. And it was so commonly accepted that it wasn’t even an issue in our history books. To compare, people gave no more thought to it than to the idea of states, counties, and townships. If you weren’t specifically looking for information about it, it didn’t exist.
I remembered clearly the chaos that shifts of party made on V1 politics. Every dog has to piss on a fire hydrant to show it’s his. When power shifted in the House, leadership changed. The speaker changed to the highest-ranking person of the ruling party. Without multiple parties, it simply moved to the members with the most seniority. In case of a tie, it was voted on by the members. I was sure there were power struggles that took place in the House and Senate. How could there possibly not be? Factions would rise and fall. But a few small adjustments had evened out the course of American history.
And while the country was apparently stable, with less debt than the trillions I remembered, it was also a country of high tariffs, high taxes, and more restricted individual liberties. We were nationally elitist in the extreme with limited immigration, almost no international aid programs, and a bullying military presence around the world. What we lacked in individual ego—what we used to call the ‘me first’ mindset—we had nationally in spades. America first and the rest of the world be damned.
This was going to require a lot of study. V3 America was not the one I expected.
18 February 2020
I’ve come face-to-face with a contradiction in my life. I finished my US History paper, carefully reciting facts and keeping any reference to things I thought personally out of the way. I am in a different world than I thought I was in. I recognized the fact we were even more isolationist than we’d become in the old man’s lifetime. But I didn’t make any comparisons.
My favorite dystopian authors were English and as far as I could tell things in that part of the world had progressed the way I remembered. I’m sure there are differences but I’ll be discovering those for the next fifty years. What I’m not sure of now is whether I’ve been revealing too much of myself in my stories handed over to Ms. Levy for her critique. My best protection lay in my writing of science fiction and some erotic romance. Those were both considered ‘alternate reality’ genres. After I finished my paper yesterday, I reread the story I was planning to give her today and made several edits.
My confidence is shot full of holes. I’m afraid that anything I say could expose just how much I don’t belong in this world. And that lack of confidence could expose me as well.
I love most of my life the way it is shaping up. I love my girlfriends and I love my music. I love writing. Hell, I even love running. And all four of those things are things I don’t remember having in any past-life experience.
I guess I’m a little paranoid at the moment.
I handed Ms. Levy a red folder after class on Tuesday morning. She smiled and just slid it into her briefcase without opening it. I seriously considered going back into a career in math. At least that didn’t change.
“When are you going to let us read one of your stories?” Brittany asked at lunch.
“When I get one back that isn’t completely marked up in red pen,” I laughed.
“That was a beautiful concert Sunday,” Beca said, changing the subject. “Nanette’s position was really lovely. Who do you want next?”
“Isn’t it my turn yet?” Livy whined. “I’m done with basketball. We haven’t had a track meet yet. I’d like to have a little cuddle time with my boyfriend Sunday morning.” I looked around the table and realized she was right. She was the only one of my girlfriends I hadn’t played for.
“Yes, beautiful. It’s definitely your turn,” I said. “The problem will be keeping my hands off you and on my guitar. What would you like?”
“Mmm. That’s a loaded question. Here’s what I think. I’d like to be taken out on a date Saturday night. A real one like you’ve had with everyone else while I’ve been running my tail off.”
“You’ve still got a really nice tail,” Rachel giggled.
“Yeah, well, you’d know better than anyone,” Livy said. She gave a quick kiss to our girlfriend and then went back to her plans. “I think you should stay with me Saturday night and do your Sunday concert from my bed. Then we can move to making love as soon as the camera is turned off.”
“Leave the camera on. We’d all like to watch,” Joan said with an evil grin.
“I’m not taping that kind of stuff,” I said. “I want to make love to each of you but I don’t want it out there where someone not in our pod might encounter it.”
“Thank God for that!” Livy said. “Some of the things I want to do to you aren’t for others’ eyes.” I could only imagine.
“I like the idea of doing it in your room,” I said. “I mean recording. Okay. And everything else. Are you sure your parents will be okay with it?”
“Mom asked me when I was going to do a concert with you and I told her ‘As soon as you let me have Jacob spend the night.’ It was a little strange.”
“What did she say?” Beca asked.
“She just asked me why I thought that wasn’t okay. I think Mom and Dad have been worried I wasn’t really part of the pod,” Livy said. “I don’t know when they thought I’d had time to do anything else.”
“Hey, you know, that’s one of the reasons for having a pod. We all need to support each other, even during times when we feel isolated,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry, honey. We haven’t done a very good job, have we?”
“I’m not complaining. Just knowing you are there has been a big help. I’m just ready to be closer to you all.”
I’d been playing with an idea for a few weeks and not having to use my room for Sunday’s concert gave me the opportunity I needed. I’d reached a point some time ago that I accepted the ‘art’ on my bedroom wall as being something V2 needed to express his identity and frustration to the world. Most everyone liked it but it was beginning to wear on me. I was ready to not have ‘Die Fucker!’ on the wall behind me when I played.
Nanette and I went to run at The Plex Saturday morning. There were a lot of people there, including some track teams who were training for the first indoor meet at Wesleyan next week. Jock had encouraged us to use our student passes to get at least one workout in there but only the varsity team had actually practiced there. Snow and ice still made running outside risky, but the track was clear and there was really no other place where the shotput and discus guys could practice. High jumpers and long jumpers practiced on the mats in the gym. We didn’t have a serious pole vaulter yet this year. We also practiced relay handoffs in the gym.
Nanette was serious about me getting my time down on the 3200-meter run and we claimed a lane and took off. She was yelling at me most of the way through the thirteen-and-a-half-minute run. During the last half lap, she had her hand on my back screaming for me to kick it.
I like cross country. You get outside and run mostly on grass with some courses including dirt or tarmac sections. Even the twisting 5k track in Terre Haute is interesting. When you run outdoors, you’ve got a 400-meter track and running two miles is eight laps. An indoor track is typically a 200-meter oval. You have to circle it sixteen times to get 3,200 meters. Boring! But that’s what we’d be running next weekend and I was thankful Nanette had pressed me on it. I realized I could have done it a little faster if I’d picked up the pace on the twelfth lap instead of the fifteenth.
I wasn’t the only one getting my butt kicked around the track. With the season openers next weekend, a lot of guys were in there trying to adjust their running to the short track.
Nanette and I had a little intimate time in the shower when we got back to my house and then she had other things she had to get done. So did I. I got out the painting gear from the garage, spread a tarp and started rolling Killz over my one-time masterpiece. I realized I was putting an end to some of V2’s legacy. It was time.
It also stank. I was thankful that I’d be sleeping at Livy’s house that night.
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