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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
In all the years that Jennifer – as she tried to think of herself now – had worked at the Redlite Ranch, she had never had much social contact outside of the place with any of the girls she worked with there, even though she considered some of them to be friends. Once in a while she’d accidentally run into someone, and there would be a few minutes of guarded remarks about how this or that girl was doing, but that was relatively rare.
One of the few exceptions to this was on the hijacked Southern Airlines Airbus when Jennlynn – as she was then – ran into Mallory, a big black girl who had off and on specialized in being a dominatrix at the Redlite. When the hijackers had tried to take over the airplane it was Mallory who led the immediate countercharge to retake the airplane. As far as Jennifer was concerned Mallory was the real hero of the incident, but for some reason she hadn’t drawn quite as much media interest. Possibly it was because she seemed to welcome the attention, rather than shun it.
So it was rather unusual for Jennifer to be intentionally getting together with a Redlite Ranch co-worker, although her meeting with Norma wasn’t entirely social in nature. In fact, she’d had a considerable debate with herself over whether she even wanted to punch the number she had been given. She had waited until a couple of days after Norma should have been home to make the call, but after identifying herself she heard Norma say, “I was wondering if you were going to call. I take it you still want to continue what we talked about a couple weeks ago.”
“I think so,” she replied. “I’ve been able to think up a couple of angles we didn’t cover.”
“I’ve come up with two or three myself. When would you like to get together? I’m free almost anytime since all I’m working on at this point is research. I just need a couple days notice so I won’t get tied up with something.”
“I’m pretty free myself. I’m more or less on flextime. I put enough evenings and weekends in at the shop that if I want to take off during the day nobody says anything about it. Is there someplace we could get together?”
“How about right here at home?” Norma suggested. “I suppose we could meet in a bar or restaurant or something, but we might find ourselves talking about something we don’t want people overhearing. If we were to do it during the day, Charlie will be at work and Jeff will be in school, so it would be just us girls.”
Somehow that seemed like a remarkably open offer, especially considering how much girls at the Redlite usually tried to cover up their outside identities. “I can do that, if you don’t mind my coming to your home,” she replied.
“I don’t mind, considering who you are,” Norma replied. “There are others who I wouldn’t make the offer to.”
A couple of days later Jennlynn – since this would involve her old life outside Lambdatron, that seemed to be the name to use – pulled the Monza to a stop in front of a normal-appearing suburban house not twenty minutes from her condo. Like many suburban Phoenix homes it didn’t have much of a yard and the houses in the neighborhood were packed pretty close together. She checked the address, then got out of the car and went to knock on the door. In a minute, Norma came to the door wearing a tank top and not particularly short shorts, looking for all the world like the middle-aged housewife she was most of the time. “Jennlynn!” she said. “I’m glad you could make it. Come on in, I have some coffee on.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” she smiled as she went inside. At first glance, the living room appeared to be as normal as the house, with nothing that revealed the secret life of at least one of the people who lived there. “Nice house you have here,” she commented.
“It’s all right,” the older woman shrugged. “I don’t think I’d want anything bigger. It’s enough trouble to take care of as it is, and when I’m gone for trips up north Charlie and Jeff mess it up so bad it takes me a couple of days to get things put back together like they’re supposed to be. When Steffy was still living here she did a pretty good job of keeping thing in order, but she’s up at Northern Arizona, so that’s no help. So are you hearing any good news from your husband?”
“Not really,” Jennlynn said as she took a chair at the kitchen table, while Norma went to get coffee from a pot on the counter. “Will still isn’t doing much of anything, but he said he gets the idea things are going to be cranking up in the next few weeks. I guess there isn’t much I can do but wait it out.”
“I’m glad I don’t have that issue,” Norma said as she poured coffee. “It must be hard for you.”
“It could be worse. At least I know Will isn’t in any real danger, or at least I don’t think he is. But I miss him and I can’t wait until he gets home.”
“That’s one of the advantages of taking my trips up north,” Norma said as Jennlynn noted that she didn’t use the term “Redlite.” Things were clearly different here than they were there, but that was true for Jennlynn, too. In a way she had been living two separate lives, so maybe separating them some more was a good idea. “I miss the things going on at home,” her host went on. “Now that Steffy is a freshman in college I know that Jeff will be gone before too much longer, and I can see that my life is going to change more than I want it to.”
“It happens. My life has changed more than I wanted it to in the last year or so, but I’m having to adapt to it whether I want to or not.” While Jennlynn had things she wanted to talk to Norma about, and she was pretty sure it went the other way too, there was nothing wrong with having a little chit-chat. “So what’s your daughter studying?”
“Just the basic stuff, the one-oh-one courses they make everybody take,” Norma replied as she served the coffee and took a seat across the kitchen table. “She doesn’t know what she wants to do yet and it changes just about every time I talk to her. I keep thinking that she ought to take a year or two off and get a job just to help her organize her thinking. She used to say that she wanted to get a job where we go up north when she was old enough, but now that she has reached that age I haven’t heard much about it from her.”
Jennlynn could hardly believe her ears. “You mean your family knows about it?”
“Of course they know,” Norma smiled. “Charlie has known about it from the beginning. After all, I was a paid date before we started doing freebies, and he was the one who suggested that I give it a try up north. The kids, well in the beginning all they knew was that mommy had to go away for a while, but the truth slowly came out and young enough so it was never a big shock to them. Charlie and I thought it was just as well that they had some idea of how the world actually works. That way they can be a little more ready for what real life is like.”
“Well,” Jennlynn replied after thinking about it for a moment, “you might have a point there. I know I never learned much about how the world really went around when I was living at home, or I might not have run so wild in college and wound up working up north in the first place. So do you think your daughter is really going to do it?”
“I don’t know,” Norma shrugged. “Charlie and I have tried to teach the kids that there isn’t really anything wrong with it, but that the problem is the people who think there is. Whatever happens, it’s going to have to be her decision to make and I don’t want to try to influence her. At least we’ve tried to set the facts in front of her, rather than the fiction known to most people. If she’s going to do it, I’d rather it was up north rather than some of the ways we talked about the last time you and I got together.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Jennlynn replied, trying to make sense of Norma’s logic. Even from a woman like her, it was not what she would have expected, despite knowing Shirley’s history and her family following in her footsteps. “I’ve often thought it would do some girls good to do a few weeks up there to get some idea of what life really can be like.”
“I agree, it would do a lot of girls some good. If nothing more, they’d learn how to handle a man the right way, rather than have to get along on a lot of the blatant misinformation and bullshit that goes around.”
“You know, back when I did Fast World I thought about dropping in a line like that but I figured it would never get on the air, so I didn’t bother.”
“Probably not. It just wouldn’t be politically correct, no matter what the context was. But just because something is politically correct doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“So what does Jeff think of all this?”
“That’s interesting,” Norma smiled. “It’s given him a whole different perspective to the whole boy-girl thing that goes around when kids are in their middle teens. You know how some girls are at that age? They use their bodies to tie boys up in knots, while they don’t realize the power they’re playing with or the risks that they’re taking when they don’t intend to do something but tease a boy and not follow through?”
Jennlynn couldn’t help but laugh. “Right. I saw some of that when I was in high school, and some of it in college. It wasn’t every girl in the class by any means, but there were two or three of them who thought they could get a boy to do just about anything for them and not give him anything in return.”
“Some things never change. It was like that around me, but there were more than two or three.”
“Well, I went to a small high school, and I wasn’t into the dating or gossip scenes much, so I probably didn’t pick up as much of it as I could have. So what happened with Jeff?”
“He started going with a girl like that. The first time I met her I realized he was dealing with a girl who thought she was a princess with a golden pussy. Sure enough, she started the same old thing, asking for everything but not giving up much of anything in return. She was real good at getting him wound up and then leaving him hanging, and she got to him pretty good for a while.”
“You didn’t tell him what was going on?”
“Of course I told him, but he was like any teenage boy, he wasn’t going to listen to his mother if he had other ideas. So I decided to sit back and see how it played out. If nothing else, I thought he might learn a lesson from it.”
“Did he?”
“I think so. I never got the exact story, but from the way he told it I guess they were going hot and heavy at it one night, and while he got his hand on her boob her bra never came off before she shut him down. He was about the horniest and most frustrated fifteen-year-old you ever saw when he got home. I mean, he was really wound up. I was going to take pity on him and offer to take the edge off, but Steffy beat me to it.”
“Your daughter did him?”
“It wasn’t the first time, but he really needed it bad right then. I mean, how many times have we had someone come in up north looking to work off some frustration because their girlfriend or wife wasn’t interested in them, or at least what he wanted to do with them?”
“I wouldn’t want to put a number to it, but it was fairly often.”
“Look, kids are going to play around and experiment. You know that and I know that. I’d just as soon it was done under carefully controlled conditions where the risks of something bad happening are low. I’ve had Steffy on injectable birth control from when she started her menses, and I insisted to both kids that they always use a condom, so there wasn’t much of that kind of risk. I didn’t think they were going to get hung up on each other and they didn’t. It was just a safe way for them to work off some teenage curiosity and hormones, and they both realized that. Either of them could have gotten into a lot more trouble if they’d tried to do their exploring elsewhere. And I mean a lot more trouble. At least now they have some idea of what they’re doing and how the game is played, and that can’t hurt them in the long run.”
“There are a lot of people who wouldn’t agree with you.”
“That’s their problem, not mine. Look, I know it’s illegal, and I know why brothers and sisters shouldn’t fool around with each other unless they’re careful. It’s just like what we’ve done is illegal except for where we go up north. But just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do so long as both parties take proper precautions.”
“Well, yeah,” Jennlynn replied thoughtfully. It was something she hadn’t really considered before, at least in that context, but she realized that Norma had a point. “It would be nice if some kids learned what they were doing before they have to do it for real and screw things up in the process.”
“Oh, shit, yes. I could tell you stories, but I suspect you could tell me pretty much the same stories. Look, have you ever done a virgin up north?”
“Not often, but occasionally. I see what you mean, though. All the book learning and porn videos in the world don’t measure up to actually doing it, especially with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Precisely. God knows the kids may have other problems in their lives, but that’s one they’ll avoid.”
“So what happened with your son and this girl?”
“They broke up, which I think is what she was getting to the point of doing anyway. If she’d let things go much further she would have had to put up or shut up, and she wasn’t about to put up. Besides, I think she realized that Jeff wasn’t going to play that game, at least after Steffy adjusted his attitude, so she decided to take her act elsewhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if she winds up getting date-raped and maybe pregnant when she pushes some guy too far. If she does, too bad for her, but she doesn’t realize the fire she’s playing with. At least it won’t be Jeff who’ll be in the hot seat when it happens.”
“It makes me wonder if he has a girlfriend now.”
“He does. A nice girl, a lot of fun, but it was clear from the beginning that she wasn’t going to play that game so he doesn’t push her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wind up in bed with each other eventually, but if they do, she’ll want it and he’ll be able to give her what she wants. If it doesn’t happen, well, Steffy will be home in another couple of months, if she doesn’t decide to turn herself out up north instead.”
“Do you think she’ll do it?”
Norma shook her head and frowned. “Actually, I think the odds are against it but I’ve been wrong before. Do you remember Shirley talking about girls who talk a good fight but get reluctant when they have to face up to reality?”
“I’ve seen it happen and I know you have, too.”
“I know Steffy isn’t a virgin. She’s been around the block a few times and had fun doing it, but if I’m correct I don’t think she’s overdoing it. But I don’t think she’s quite ready for the reality yet. Maybe that’s good. It’s kind of a shame. A couple of times we’ve teased each other about coming on to some guy up there with a mother-daughter act, but I doubt if it will happen, if for no more reason than I don’t think I’m going to be going up very much more. Let’s face it, I’m old enough that I don’t get picked out of the lineups anywhere near as much as I used to, and it’s getting near the point where it’s not worth the trouble. That’s part of the reason I decided to go back and get my doctorate. I don’t like going up north any less, but I have to face up to facts, too. You’re not planning on going back to doing it, are you?”
“No. I decided to hang up my spike heels when Will and I got married,” Jennlynn said slowly. “He’d be all right with me continuing work up north, I think, but I’m square enough that I don’t want to do it. I’m pretty sure you know the deal with him. I mean, with Shirley, his mother, and his sister, he knows exactly what the score is a lot better than most guys who show up there, so he doesn’t have many illusions about it. It was starting to get a little stale for me even before all the business blew up after the hijacking. After that and Fast World I knew I could charge prices up there that would set new records, but I never wanted to be that out about it because that’s not how I wanted to be known.”
“That’s kind of a pity. You could have made yourself a millionaire with those prices.”
“Hell, I already am a millionaire several times over. Doing what I did up north was never more than a fraction of my income, at least after I was out of college. I did it for fun, for relaxation, and for sex without all the crap that usually goes along with it. Being that greedy about it would have taken a lot of the fun out of it for me. I tried it a couple of times after the hijacking, but I used my old work name. I didn’t even fly in there – I flew into Vegas and rented a car just to try to disassociate myself from being Learjet Jenn. I think some of the fun went out of it when that happened. Except for shooting Fast World I hadn’t been back there since up until a couple weeks ago, and that was because I wanted to talk to Shirley and George. I guess I was getting to the point where I felt I’d done it enough and it was time to move on. Will just made for a good excuse for what I think I really wanted to do anyway.”
“At least you’re getting out of it on your own terms, instead of being more or less forced out like I am,” Norma sighed. “It’s kind of a shame. Charlie and I have always enjoyed getting out and catting around a little, and it’s always been all right between us so long as it never got too far out of hand, but now that’s going away and I’m not sure what’s going to happen with us. Charlie is an OK guy and we’ve always gotten along well, but I can see it’s going to change things a little, too. Maybe more than I want.”
“It sounds like the two of you have worked out a pretty good deal with each other.”
“I think we have,” Norma smiled. “Granted, it’s a little odd, but we’re not hiding anything from each other. I suppose we’ll continue to do some swinging and swapping, but we’ve toned that down a little the past few years. We might pick it up again when the kids are gone, but then we might not, too.”
“Do the people you play with know about what you do up north?”
“No, it would be a turn-off for them, and I’ve always been a little sorry about that, so we’ve had to keep it quiet. I mean, they’re fun and freethinking, but I don’t think my being a professional would go over very well with them. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is.”
“Just out of curiosity, I have to wonder what you tell people when you go up north for three weeks at a crack. You said your family knows all about it, but what about the neighbors?”
“I have an elderly great-aunt who needs full-time in-home care,” Norma smiled. “Several of us in the family take turns caring for her, or at least that’s what we tell everyone. Charlie and I never explain that she actually died about fifteen years ago. I hate lying about it, but it’s been a convenient excuse that everyone believes, so that will be one good thing when I finally decide to give it up. How about you? What’s your excuse?”
“I didn’t bother lying about it,” Jennlynn laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the place where I work, but then just about no one does. Everyone there has known for years what I do, and they more or less approved of it. Back in the beginning there would occasionally be someone from the shop who drove up to check me out, but it got so routine it hadn’t happened for a while when I quit.”
“That must be some place you work for.”
“I think so. The guy who runs the company actually told me flat out years ago to go back to working up north on the weekends. I was really shocked when he did, but I was so horny by then I wasn’t going to turn him down, either.”
“Why did he ever do that?”
“Like I said, I was horny when I was keeping it straight, so I wasn’t getting any action and the longer it went on the worse my temper got. He swears I was getting to the point of mass murder, although I don’t think it was quite that bad. I do have a pretty strong sex drive, and I have had ever since I discovered what sex was all about when I was in college. Working up north at least kept my temper under control.”
“And now your man is in the Persian Gulf. No wonder you’re getting a little anxious.”
“I guess I must be getting older,” Jennlynn shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it was back then, but it hasn’t gone on for as long, either. Let’s just say I’m going to be very glad to have Will come home.”
Norma looked at her for a long moment before going on, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re transferring some of that frustration to your frustration about the effects of Fast World and all that other stuff.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Jennlynn sighed. “I can rationalize it all I want to, but I still feel bad about it. It’s what I really wanted to talk to you about.”
“It’s what I wanted to talk to you about, too. I have had a couple of ideas, but they’re not simple and they’re things that really need to be talked out, but it’s always nice to shoot the shit for a while first. What would you say if I warm up our coffee and we get down to business?”
