Double Twist
Chapter 190
“If it weren’t for music, I would think that love is mortal.”
—Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
JOAN HAD TO head back home Sunday afternoon. Then Cindy left. Brittany was staying one more night and Sophie had moved fully to the farm, as had Beca. Rachel had more work to do while we were in school on Monday, so she wouldn’t leave until Tuesday.
We were all pretty relaxed Sunday evening. I dragged Donna up to my bedroom—like I had to force her—and kept her occupied well into the night. We usually made love in her bed and I think just the idea of going to my room instead flipped a switch in her head and she was all over me when the door closed.
“We don’t have time for just the two of us often enough,” she sighed as I continued to lick her. “I love sharing and I love all our girlfriends, but I treasure individual time with each one, including you.”
“I agree, lover. So often, one on one time is dictated by circumstances instead of by our choices. With the number of concerts Rachel is booking Cindy and me, that might be even harder in the future,” I said.
“We just need to make sure we are all proactive in our loving and make time for this,” she said. “Now, Jacob. Come here and make love to me.” I moved up her beautiful body and she caught hold of my cock as soon as she could reach it and guided it to her hot wet center. “Push into me and let me feel you fill me. Fill me. Fill me. Let me feel you fill me,” she sang.
“Are you writing beat poetry?” I laughed. We moved together, enjoying sliding in and out as we kissed and fondled.
“I have an inspiration in me. I love you, Jacob.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “I will always love you.” We were too focused on each other and making love to continue our conversation. Sometimes, making love to Donna was a long conversation simply punctuated with orgasms. This night, we were focused on each other’s pleasure and conversation came in phrases rather than paragraphs.
“You know… Whether we have extended service or volunteer or just do our terms and get out, when it’s legal for us to do it, I want your child, Jacob. I’ll be thirty this year. I think I will be ready when you are past the two-year limit.” There it was. The second time in a week that one of my lovers mentioned wanting a baby. I felt the additional fluids lubricate her pussy as the idea took hold and my cock seemed to swell as I began pumping my semen into her—a test run for our child-making future.
School proceeded as school does. Having recognized my disquiet for the future focus it was, I absorbed what I could from classes. Mr. LeBlanc had recognized that Cindy and I were under pressure to perform more frequently and waived having us solo for the spring concert. All we would need to do is learn our music and blend with our fellow musicians. Yeah. That’s all.
Monday evening, Rachel didn’t get back until after dinner. She was exhausted, having driven to South Bend, Lafayette, and Kokomo to make her presentations. In the morning, she had an appointment back at Mad Anthony with Principal Rice before she’d leave for the airport. I warmed her dinner and sat with her, given a small amount of privacy with the love of my life. After she’d eaten and we cleaned up the dishes, I took her to the shower and washed her tenderly before giving her a long luxurious massage. She interrupted the massage to pull me to her so we could make love. But once she had me in her, she just wanted to lie together, connected at our cores, as she talked to me.
“Do I have your attention, Jacob?”
“All of it, my love.”
“There’s something I need to tell you and I want you focused on me. I’m torn, but I don’t think you should tell the others about this. It’s your decision, of course.”
“Tell them about our making love?”
“No. You asked for greater transparency from the OCS, not getting blindsided. I had to do a good bit of convincing before I got them to agree to let me tell you this. It is considered top secret.”
“My God, Rachel. What kind of thing does the OCS want from me that would be considered top secret?” I started to slow down but Rachel refused to go on until we were back in our gentle rhythm.
“It’s the venue for your intimate spring concert,” she whispered.
“Is that all? It doesn’t make a difference. We’ll just show up, do our thing, and leave.”
“It’s the White House.”
I think my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. I know my lungs ached from holding my breath as I looked into her eyes. Rachel didn’t let me stop loving her, insisting I keep moving my hips and sliding in and out of her as my breathing returned and my heart restarted.
“The White House?”
“It’s top secret because anything could happen between now and then to upset the plans,” she said. “There will be a recognition of the members of the review commission and our pod. No fancy medallions or anything. Just the president’s thanks for helping to get the reform movement underway. But, like I said, anything could happen between now and the first of April. The entire gig could be canceled.”
“I could put my foot in my mouth and insult her,” I said.
“We all know you won’t do that intentionally,” Rachel laughed. “But do you see why I think you should hold this in confidence? I’ve watched Cindy change and grow since she started playing with you but I’m not sure she could handle this information. And it would be so easy for word to leak out. Advance publicity could make it politically impossible to hold the event. It could affect everything we—you—do.”
“Yeah. That makes it really difficult. You know how uncomfortable I am withholding information from my lovers.”
“You’ve kept the old man a secret,” she whispered. “Keep moving, Jacob. Please show me you still love me. I’ve made it very clear to Will, Jo, and Simon that I won’t be a party to withholding information about your performances and our expectations from you. They’re still adapting to that.”
“I agree it would or could be damaging, not only to the president, but to us. Who knew the reform would become such a contentious issue?”
“Love me, Jacob. Press harder into me. Look into my eyes and love me.”
I did as Rachel asked, filing away the information she’d given me to consider at a later time. I was filled with my love for Rachel and she was filled with me. As we gazed at each other, we sped our moves together and reached our peak as we poured love out to each other through our eyes and our touch.
I always hated it when Cindy had to leave. Joan leaving was always sad because Beca just deflated when she left. But having Rachel return to DC left a hole in my heart I didn’t know how to handle. My sudden moodiness Tuesday night was a great cover for my concern over our next live stream concert. Live from the White House? We could double our patrons for that! If…
That was the big problem. If we even breathed a word about this to the public, the president could cancel it with no notice. I had to agree with Rachel. I needed to keep this to myself. In fact, I needed to not even let anyone know that I knew. This was going to be difficult.
I retired early and picked up my guitar. It seemed I was always practicing with an instructor, in a practice room, with Cindy, with the orchestra. I couldn’t remember the last time I just picked up my old friend and played for myself. I sat on my bed, just picking miscellaneous notes, exercising my fingers and running scales. I felt the bed shift as Beca crawled up beside me. It was like the old days when I was doing Sunday morning concerts. Beca knew the best position and curled up just behind my right arm where she could lean against me. I kept playing and got lost in the music. My precious little Beca did what she always did in this position and went to sleep.
I played for a long time. It was like running. Sometimes I just lost track of time and distance and kept going.
And I cried a little.
I know that sounds sappy and weak and like a pussy. Fuck you. A year ago, I’d played with my little sister curled up beside me. I’d never do that again.
I put my guitar aside and slid beneath the sheets with Beca. She rolled to me and cradled my head against her breasts. So nice.
“I miss her, too,” she whispered. “You played for her tonight. For her and for all of us. We love you.”
In 2021, we narrowly escaped a president who attempted to suspend constitutional law by delaying or canceling the inauguration of his successor. The Supreme Court overruled this attempt, swearing in President Evelyn di Marco at noon on January 20, effectively removing the incumbent from office. It is surprising to find that no charges have been leveled against the former president. Why?
Presidential inauguration is not set by constitution. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies is the body that has set the date and time of inauguration since 1937. The current dispute regards whether or not the president, acting in a state of emergency as commander in chief of the armed forces, can countermand the congressional committee with an executive order. Despite the court’s overruling of the order and Congress’s immediate response passing a law negating the executive order, many constitutional scholars are still debating whether the act was legal.
One might expect that in a time following a ‘near miss,’ so to speak, that Congress would act to plug the holes in our inauguration system, binding the president’s authority. But the Senate continues to refuse to hear any legislation regarding the definition of presidential authority. The general method the Senate Leader uses is the agenda, over which he has exclusive authority. Many people consider his authority to decide what legislation comes before the Senate to place him in equal power with the President herself.
Nor has the Office of the President moved to restrict presidential authority or to abdicate it since the attempt to prevent the inauguration of a successor. In fact, the sitting President has used the same authority recently to begin revamping the National Service in the absence of congressional action on the Reform Bill. One can no more expect a president to act to restrict areas of authority than one can expect Congress to vote themselves a salary decrease.
The system of checks and balances put in place by the constitution has evolved into a game of power politics involving the President, the Senate Leader, and the Chief Justice. In any attempt to gain absolute control, it seems likely that a faceoff between the President and Senate Leader will be determined by whomever the Chief Justice throws his support behind.
To a common citizen, depending on the rule of law and constitutional governance, this does not feel like a democratically elected “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
We were almost at the end of the third grading period and my constitutional government term paper was handed in to Mr. Richards. Before it got that far, Donna had proofread all our term papers and made suggestions, including that I needed to cite references when I made sweeping statements like, “Many people consider his power…” That required a rewrite before I handed it in. I wasn’t the only one. As we reviewed each other’s papers, we all used phrases like, ‘that’s your opinion,’ and ‘this is conjecture.’ Just hanging out with people in Washington changed our vocabulary and way of expressing things. I fought a constant internal battle to just be natural and not start sounding like a lawyer who couldn’t make a simple statement.
Saturday night, the fifth, Cindy and I released our fifteen-minute rendition of the next eighteen Schubert dances. We were exhausting ourselves getting new material chosen, arranged and rehearsed. We were doing well with playing straight classical music and LeBlanc had actually complimented us about our music reading during a rehearsal the previous week. I couldn’t help but feel we were playing it safe since our explosion over the holiday. I really missed cutting loose with some of our livelier and, I guess, less classical tunes. We were including a section of Flamenco pieces in our planned concert for April, including a piece by Chick Corea called Spain. I hoped the president liked it.
Patrons asked about our tendency to play straight classics lately during our conversation time after the concert Saturday night. I noted there were ‘only’ about two thousand tuned in for the release, compared to over five thousand at Christmas. Joan was filtering comments and flashing them up on our screen to respond to.
“Are you moving toward strict classical music again? It seems your performances are getting more strait-laced,” asked a patron.
“I’ll take this one,” Cindy said, moving ahead of me. “Jacob and I are both trained as classical musicians. We play in an orchestra and with a quintet as well as doing our patron concerts. This music is in our hearts and sometimes when we play Schubert or Rachmaninov, we get so lost in the music we forget to stop at the end. It feeds our souls. It’s having periods in which we return to these fundamental pieces that make us ready and able to play things like we did for the holiday concerts. We’re going to do more of those lively productions in the future, but we’ll continue to refresh our souls by returning to classics periodically.” Nicely said.
“Jacob, we’re in primary season around the country now and you are a newly minted voter. Who are you endorsing in the midterm elections?”
“No one,” I said firmly. “Like every other American voter, I am assured the confidentiality of my vote. However, that being said, this year I am a one-issue voter. I will vote in opposition to any candidate in my elections who does not favor National Service Reform. And I encourage every voter around the country to do the same. There is no reason this should even be an issue when it comes to the midterm election in November. We should be eliminating every candidate and incumbent standing in the way of National Service Reform in the primary. This is the single biggest issue facing America today and our congress is standing in the way instead of moving forward.”
“Do you have any friends in congress?” asked another. I looked at Cindy and she shrugged with a puzzled look on her face. I turned to the camera.
“Um… I don’t think either Cindy or I… or for that matter any member of our pod… actually knows anyone who holds any elected office in any branch of local, state, or national government. If we have friends there, we haven’t heard about it.”
“Does that include the president?”
“We’ve never met her nor spoken to her. In fact, we’ve never gotten a message from her or an indication she knows who we are. From my perspective, she seems to be as good at quoting memes as our former president was at Twitter.”
Well, that pretty much wound up our chat session and I had to wonder if our unannounced invitation to the White House was about to be rescinded.
We went into midterm exams Monday and in some ways it felt like the toughest tests I’d taken in high school. I don’t think the tests were actually harder but I just hadn’t paid as close attention to classes this term. You get what you deserve. Sometimes.
I was most puzzled by the responses of Ms. Pixler in English. The exam was mostly on Hamlet and the multiple-choice questions were pretty straightforward. There were a few short answer questions that asked things like, ‘What was the major topic of Hamlet’s graveyard speech?’ And finally, there was an essay on the topic, ‘What do you consider the major lesson to be learned from Shakespeare’s Hamlet?’ I wrote about the responsibility to confront injustice even within the ruling government.
I got the test back on Friday marked with an ‘A’ at the top and no other comments.
Getting my paper back from Mr. Richards during last period was a very different situation. Oh, I got an ‘A’ for it but he’d written quite a bit on the back of the paper.
Jacob, your analysis is basically sound, though you need more work on citing sources when you make absolute statements. I’d like to suggest that you begin immediately to expand on this topic for your final term paper for the semester in two and a half months. Are the three people you cite truly the power? Or are they owned by someone else? On the surface, Senator Jeffries’s obstinate objection to NS Reform seems irrational. Who is pulling his strings? Someone must have enough influence over him to get him to block the legislation even if it means he is voted out of office in the next election. Who is profiting?
Don’t limit yourself to investigating the senator. Who is sponsoring the president’s endeavor to institute reform and who will profit from it? The indignity of a nation over the enslavement of its youth might be a public focal point, but it wasn’t enough for the president to act in the first ninety days in office, like the border conflict with Mexico was. What made it important enough to push her to an executive order to create the Office of Civilian Service?
And finally, why did the Supreme Court side with the president-elect in January instead of with the incumbent—with whom they had sided on almost every issue through his term of office? If the issue was not constitutional, what motivated the Chief Justice to swear in a new president in spite of the executive order? The courts are not subject to election but something was a powerful enough motivator to get him to switch sides. What was it?
What I’m asking of you is way beyond the scope of a high school education. I’m asking you to answer the question: ‘Who owns the government?’
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