Double Twist
Chapter 191
“As I drifted between waking and sleep, surrounded by so much love, my only coherent thought was, ‘I need a bigger chair.’”
—Devon Layne, The Prodigal
18 MARCH 2022
If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were all sucking up. Neither Brittany nor Cindy has been a minute late for curfew when they go home. They’ve both established their routine of being at the farm Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday nights but both have backed off pushing for additional nights like Sunday. They are perfect daughters, perfectly obedient to their parents. Even Beca is spending a couple of nights a week at her mother’s house—usually Monday and Tuesday. Em and I spent a night a week at our parents’ house. Different nights.
I overheard a conversation with my parents and Rachel’s parents when I stopped by to visit one evening and they’d gathered to play cards.
“Rachel calls three or four times a week,” Dee said. “I think she misses having her mother around to give her advice. Being out in the world is so hard on them.”
“Randall says Livy does the same thing. Our children miss us and will always be our children,” Bert said. “Missing them is part of our burden.”
“I spoke with Riko yesterday. She was very tired because she says Desiree calls her after rehearsal every night. Usually about eleven. They talk for hours,” Mom said.
I guess we’re all bonding with our parents and making sure nothing upsets the plan for the next two weeks. Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll stand before a judge in Boston with my eleven girlfriends and we’ll become one plural domestic partnership. We’re getting married.
I’m a little sad that Remas has chosen not to join us in the ceremony. She’s sad, too. It’s smart, really. She doesn’t want to join us until she’s had a chance to be with us on a more regular basis—as in sometime after we move to DC. She feels a little like a satellite to the real family.
Family. When it comes down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Twelve people who love each other and want to be with each other always, forming a single social and economic unit that we’ll call a family. A family we have decided to name Octave. I will become Jacob Hopkins Octave. Rachel Evans Octave will be my wife. So will Nanette Schwartz Octave. And Cynthia Marvel Octave.
There are twelve half-steps in an octave of music. Twelve in our family. The Octaves.
The girls were all fluttering. I don’t know what else to call it. I guess I was fluttering, too. We’d all gone out for a run this morning—just a mile to be out enjoying the spring weather. Donna and I checked the back field and decided it was too wet to run the tractor over to mow. We might have to bale the cut grass by the time the ground is dry enough to run the tractor on. We don’t want to have it sink into the beautiful driving range.
But that wasn’t the only fluttering we were doing. We cleaned every square inch of the farmhouse. That meant moving all the furniture. And as long as I was moving furniture, the girls all thought we should try a different arrangement. In every room. Beds got moved. Sofas got moved. Tables and chairs were reoriented. Donna even changed the position of her desk and decided we needed another desk in the study to accommodate our business. We all tended to drift in and out of the study as we worked on schedules, programs, contracts, and accounting. She was right. We needed at least one more desk.
I was looking at the big calendar drawn on the whiteboard with dates and locations for our upcoming concerts. April and May were going to be a zoo. Rachel, on behalf of the Office of Civilian Service, had negotiated Fridays off for Cindy and me to travel to different schools for assemblies. We weren’t going to play every school in the Fort Wayne area, but Rachel had booked assemblies in the eight largest schools in the region.
In addition, we were doing six Saturday concerts and they were as far away as South Bend, Lafayette, and Indianapolis. We’d developed our playlist so we had a one-hour program for assemblies and a two-hour program for Saturday concerts. Starting April fifteenth, we were going to be very busy.
My stomach growled and I realized I was catching the tantalizing smell of cookies baking. I drifted out to the kitchen and found Beca lifting a tray of cookies out of the oven and putting another one in.
“We’re all being so domestic today,” I laughed as I sampled a hot cookie.
“Careful! You’ll burn yourself,” she said, slapping at my hand. “We’re nesting.”
“What?”
“Nesting,” my sister said from behind me. She broke a piece off my cookie and shoved it in her mouth.
“I thought I was immune to this kind of thing,” Nanette said as everyone began wandering in. “Is someone pregnant? We’re feathering the nest.”
“Not me,” I said. Enough of my girlfriends had mentioned wanting to become mommies after I finished my two-year National Service that my cock was involuntarily rising at the very mention of pregnancy. Or perhaps it was because of Cindy backing up to me and rubbing her bare butt up and down my cock.
“And just think, when we get to DC, we’ll start the whole process over again,” Donna said. “Only we’ll all be there. I love each and every one of you but I want you all to know I miss Joan, Desi, Livy, and Rachel intensely.”
“Yes. I wish we were moving at the same time we’re getting married,” Sophie said. “I want us all to live together.”
“But this is the hard part we prepared for,” Beca said as she broke from a kiss with Brittany. “We all understand we are forced to be apart, but we support each other and love each other. At least Rachel, Desi, and Livy have each other for support.”
“And Remas,” Cindy sighed.
“And Remas,” Beca agreed. “And next week we have Friday off school because of the teacher workday. Who wants to go to Chicago with Jacob and me to visit Joan?”
“As a teacher, I have to participate in the workday,” Donna sighed. “Otherwise I’d be right with you.”
“I have to work, too,” Nanette said.
“Sophie?” Brittany asked. “Think we can talk Mom and Dad into the two of us going to Chicago with Jacob and Beca for the weekend?”
“I don’t think it will be a problem,” Sophie said. “But, Cindy?”
“No way I even want to ask my parents. They have a notion that we should go off on a little family outing that weekend. One last hurrah, you know?” Cindy said. She kept up the rubbing against my cock and I was about ready to fuck her right there in the kitchen. I think that might have been what she was hoping.
“I’m going to stay home and pamper Donna and Nanette,” Em said. “The house will be quiet and I think they deserve a hot scented bath, a massage, and some sweet loving.”
“Oh, Emily, I love you,” Donna said. Nanette caught Em in a hug and kissed her. If I fucked Cindy on the kitchen counter, I’d have to move to the end to give Nanette and Em room. The timer rang and Beca turned from her embrace with Brittany to get another tray of cookies out of the oven.
Though she was loud and emphatic as usual, Cindy’s weren’t the only orgasms that were screamed out that weekend. The eight of us in the house managed to find about every position we could get into to please each other. We didn’t get much practicing in, so I took Cindy home and we practiced there for a couple of hours, much to the delight of her parents.
As much as possible, I was working ahead in my classes. Conducting experiments in physics was difficult to do except during our twice-a-week labs. In Latin, Miss Lustig said to just make sure I’d memorized the vocabulary for the week and did the translations. Class time was spent reading aloud and translating.
In English, I was deep in the disturbing novel A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was one of four novels for this unit. My favorite dystopian novels were on the list: Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. Rounding out the list was Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was more familiar with the movie than the book. Who could forget Jack Nicholson? We had a paper due before spring break on the topic of ‘What is my responsibility to myself and to others?’ I was having difficulty keeping that one down to the requested five pages. I had a lot of thoughts on responsibility these days.
LeBlanc was driving us during rehearsals. The week after spring break was our spring concert. I was thankful Cindy and I didn’t have solos, but periodically LeBlanc would call the two of us forward to perform a piece from our upcoming concert and have it commented on by the orchestra. Our Rachmaninov arrangement that was just three minutes long generated a fifteen-minute discussion on whether or not interpreting a composition for one instrument on a different one was consistent with honoring the composer’s intent.
I had most of the practicum for Business Math completed and was just attending lectures. We were working on the integration of statistical functions to project revenue growth rates over marketing spend with diminishing return. I wondered how many people actually used that for business planning. We certainly didn’t.
Finally, Mr. Richards was leading us through the legislative process and explaining why it took so long for a bill to become law—if it ever did. He compared standard legislative process to initiative process and we had an interesting discussion on whether the electorate should be able to initiate new laws and why that was a dangerous thing.
One of the things that we had to make time for was clothing. First, Cindy and I needed to expand our performance wardrobe. It wasn’t so much that we needed different looks as that we needed to have our clothes cleaned and laundered between performances and know we always had fresh clothes when we appeared. I was pitting out my shirts something fierce. I only wore dark shirts now because the sweat beneath my arms was too visible in a white shirt. I wanted nothing after a performance so much as a shower. And while I loved Cindy’s scent and flavor, after an hour in the spotlight her body odor was a little intense, too. We bought clothes, careful to make sure our outfits were compatible.
And we all needed wedding clothes. Yeah. Everyone wanted something nice to get married in. Who could blame us?
I’d worn a no-lapel or collar suit a few times and really liked the five-button mandarin look. I couldn’t find one, so I went to my friend at Louie’s Tux Rental. He had me fixed up in two days and I walked out with a new suit I could also wear for some performances. It was the same cut as the suit I wore for my first concert appearance with Cindy. I thought the navy blue was striking.
The ladies all got new dresses and there were frequent late-night Skype conversations as they showed off their selections to each other. It turned out that the major activity when Beca, Brittany, Sophie, and I went to visit Joan in Chicago was dress shopping.
Shopping for a single dress for a single woman can take all day. Multiply it by four, add a stepmom into the mix, and try cramming it all into two days! I spent a lot of time waiting near the fitting rooms in one store or another. I also discovered Optimo on Jackson in the Loop. Optimo is one of the top hatmakers in the world and I was like a kid in a toy factory. A guy sized me up pretty quickly and directed me to a beautiful hat in a color he called aubergine. It fit my head like a… hat. Anyway, it was so beautiful I had to have it. I spent more for the hat than I did for my new suit!
It was exhausting shopping for all these ladies’ clothes, but the rewards in bed at night were worth it all. I was snuggled up with four beautiful naked ladies and, while they were certainly enjoying each other, they made sure they were enjoying me and me them, as well. I would never get tired of this wiggling mass of girls all over me.
“You’re really going to do it this weekend?” Carol asked. She was the lead violinist on the Vivaldi piece. I was continuing to work on mastering the mandolin for the piece, but Carol was going to be the principal artist for the whole work during the spring concert. She was very talented.
“We do it every weekend,” Cindy hissed at her, much to the amusement of Brittany, Beca, and me.
“God! You are so oversexed, Cindy!” Carol poked at her. “I mean, you’re going to get married? That’s what I’ve heard. You’re eloping?”
“Yeah. My Cindy’s going to be in my arms forever,” Beca said, hugging our youngest partner.
“Wait! You what? I thought Cindy and Jacob were getting married.”
“They are. To all of us,” Brittany said. “We’re going to Boston and all twelve of our pod are signing a plural domestic partnership agreement.”
“Twelve of you? OMG! And you all do it with each other? Like all the time?”
“We do take breaks,” I said. Carol looked at me with a calculating look, like she was measuring me up.
“Um… since you already have like a dozen girls, care to add one more sometime?” she whispered.
“Carol,” Cindy said. We all leaned in so we could hear her normally soft voice lowered even more. “Are you saying you’d like to put your face between my legs and lick me to orgasm while Jacob plows your fertile field from behind and Beca and Brittany suck on your nipples?” Carol gasped and clasped her knees together.
“I’ve never… with more than one… or girls… or… Do you taste really good, Cindy?” she finally stammered out.
“I think you should ask the others at the table,” Cindy answered. “They’ve all tasted.”
So, word was out that we were going to come back from spring break married. Or whatever we chose to call the relationship. Technically, I guess they were going to call us partners. That was good enough for me.
Friday morning, we were all at the airport with our cars in long-term parking. We were in the charter terminal waiting for Joan, Ray, and Debbie to land. Ray’s contribution to our wedding was a chartered Embraer 145 with seating for fifty. I was carrying both my guitar and my viola da gamba, so they got seats to themselves. Sharon Long and her boyfriend were going, too, so Joan would have four people from her family attending. Em and I would have Mom and Dad. Brittany and Sophie had the five others in their family. Livy’s family of four and Rachel’s family of three were attending. Cindy’s parents and brothers were seated. Her instruments would fit in the compartment in front and didn’t need a whole seat to themselves. Riko and Riley were bouncing around on the jet like school kids. I felt bad that neither Donna nor Nanette had family going to our celebration with us. I made sure to spend time sitting with each of them on the hop to Boston.
I think Beca was knocked out with shock when her mother pointed her toward the entrance to the terminal to see a ramrod-straight army officer come marching up. She looked dead serious and came to a halt directly in front of Beca. The two women stared at each other for a full minute and then rushed to hug each other. I’d never met Beca’s sister before but couldn’t have been happier that Captain Brenda Brown had chosen to support her sister’s wedding.
Forty of us boarded the airplane. Ah, yes. Somehow Pod Two had managed to bring Katie with them.
The Vietnamese foster kids had returned to their home as soon as their parents were out of the hospital and able to care for them. As close as they had all become to our parents, I almost expected their whole family to join us but I guess they weren’t ready for that yet.
Rachel, Livy, Desi, and Remas met us at the airport. Remas wasn’t joining our partnership yet, but she wanted to be with us to witness it. We had a charter bus that took us to the Hotel Lafayette where we’d booked an entire concierge floor for the weekend.
This was going to be an expensive weekend, but as far as we were all concerned, it was our wedding weekend and our parents had all chipped in a bit to help offset the expenses, including a beautiful meal in a private room at The Meritage. We were celebrating and planned to keep celebrating all weekend. Including the toasts our parents were making at the table.
“My little sister and I have had a few disagreements over the years,” Captain Brown said as she stood with a glass of champagne. “We spent a lot of our youth not understanding each other. I suppose we still don’t understand in many ways. But I know this young woman who sits beside me is the most courageous person I have ever known. She has shown me the truth of the old Shakespearean quote, ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ It is her example I strive to follow in my life as an officer.”
That must have taken a lot for Brenda to say. My conversations with Beca had indicated a lot of anger and bitterness between the two. If anything, Brenda felt that she’d accepted the body she was born with and didn’t see why her little brother at the time couldn’t do the same.
“My daughter is about to be married,” Mark Marvel said when he stood. “No matter how we phrase it or what laws govern it, I have talked to her long enough to know that here in her head—and in her heart—she is marrying ten young women and a young man. Like all parents of teens—like you—I’ve been worried that she was too young to make this decision, that she didn’t have the life experience to make this kind of commitment. But over the past two years of her association with this pod, I have seen my daughter blossom from a talented little girl to a talented and loving young woman. I have no doubts in my mind or in my heart that this is what she wants and what she should have.” Betty was sitting on the other side of Cindy bawling her eyes out.
And the toasts continued. I reflected on how fortunate we were and how unusual we were in this day and age. Beca was the only teen who had only one parent and she was flanked by a loyal and loving sister. Donna and Nanette had invited no relatives, but Debbie Long sat next to Nanette and raised a toast to her. Brittany’s grandma, with Sophie on one side, offered a toast for Donna, seated on the other side, as well. The rest of us at the table had two parents with us. Even though Joan’s parents were divorced, they were united in their support of her. We were a partnership and an extended family that would always support each other.
The official ceremony Saturday morning took nearly two hours. It wasn’t just signing our partnership paper. Everyone had to be checked in, identity verified, and questions asked. Brittany and Cindy had to have parental consent forms filled out, signed by both parents, and notarized. After the consent forms were completed and sworn to, the judge—a retired guy who had been recommended to Rachel by one of her contacts in DC—read a declaration of emancipation for both Brittany and Cindy, enabling them to enter into our partnership contract. We had to show our permanent address and name form that declared us to be the Octave Domestic Partnership. We didn’t need to literally change our names but an appellation that stated ‘Of Octave PDP’ would be added to any official papers.
And then each of us addressed each of the others to affirm our love and our desire to be bound together in partnership.
“I now pronounce the twelve of you to be members committed to a plural domestic partnership. From this day forward you will be known as Octave Domestic Partnership. May you thrive in your relationship and in all your undertakings.”
We were married.
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