Chapter Thirty Nine - Beware of Potholes
I must have sat in stunned silence for at least two or three minutes before Carissa came back out of the house with the two coffee mugs in her hands.
"I brought you a refill because I thought you'd need it." She said quietly. "I think perhaps we should talk some more. Sandy went out the back door for a walk and will leave us alone for a while."
"Unh, yeah. Thanks for the coffee." I looked at her quizzically.
"I'm still the same person, you know." She said flatly, perhaps she wondered if I was seeing her as changed in some way. "I haven't changed, just your knowledge about me has changed."
"No, actually I wasn't thinking about that." I shook my head in negation. "I almost expected you to come out with something else to shock me."
"Oh, I don't think I could do that. I think you're going to have a hard enough time accepting one revelation like that a day."
"Hah, then why did you throw two major slam dunks at me so early in the day?"
"Two?"
"Yeah, first you said I had a dominant personality, then you hit me with the second item about you and other women."
"Well, I thought you knew about being dominant." She leaned back against the porch rail and sipped her coffee.
"But, I don't feel that I am dominant, not really." I frowned at her. "I've always felt that I try to think problems through, then present solutions. I don't try to be overly forceful or anything."
"Oh you aren't. You just have the ability to convince people to see things your way. The only time I see you giving way on anything is if you aren't personally committed to an idea." She frowned then. "I didn't mean to give you the impression that I thought you were physically forceful in a domineering way, because you aren't. Instead you out-think anyone around you and convince them that your approach to a problem is better than theirs."
"Oh, you gave me a completely different impression when you talked about domination. In fact I think the word domination carries a different meaning to me than it does to you. To me domination is forcing people to do things against their will, while I convince people to do things my way."
"Well, whatever way you manage to do it, you still get your way. For instance right now, you're almost managing to convince me that you're right and I'm wrong." She smiled wryly and shook her head. "It's not that I'm saying that you're a bad person in any way either. I don't think that at all. I suppose that dominant isn't a good description, I guess very intelligent and extremely charismatic would describe you in a better way."
"Well, thank you. To me those descriptive words have a positive connotation, not a negative one."
"Is that so damn important to you?"
"Yeah, in a way it is. I'm not just sure why, but I suppose it's because I like to think of myself as a nice guy, not a mean pushy bastard."
"But you don't have to be mean to be dominant. The two terms aren't synonyms." She protested. "Someone who is mean is usually severe and heavy handed. Someone who is dominant is only superior and masterful. A dominant person doesn't have to be pushy or anything like that. You dominate by being intelligent and persuasive."
"Okay, whatever you say." I sighed, letting her think what she wanted since I didn't want to argue any more. "Now, I'm done my coffee and I need to look after the animals. Can we talk as I'm doing that?"
"I guess so." She sounded unenthusiastic, but she got to her feet and walked with me.
"Okay, now about that other subject ..."
"You mean about me and my sexual desires, don't you?"
"Yeah, I think that's the only other shocker you threw at me, or was I so stunned by that topic that I missed something else you told me?" I snorted as we stopped at the chicken coop to open it for the day. "I must admit that after thinking about your reputation as one of the 'Ice Cubes,' you completely floored with that one. Hell, I thought you and your sister blew through every guy your age within fifty miles, so you liking women was a total shock to me."
"Didn't you ever wonder if there wasn't a reason or two for why we 'blew through' so many guys, as you so inelegantly described our dating practices?"
"You mean that both you and Corinna like gals?"
"Well, not really. I think Corinna does, but she won't admit it to herself, let alone to me. Although we are identical twins and our tastes are very much alike, that's one way we seem to differ somewhat. Then you came along and admittedly, you were the first guy who really turned both of us on, which made life really rough between us for a few days." She sighed. "Then you came out to the farm with Sandy in tow and threw the two of us for a loop. However, you brought Wil along at the same time and he was quite a bit like you, but even more than that, Corinna had always had a crush on him. So, we were trying our best to compensate for the loss of the attention we were hoping to get from you by getting drunk and playing with him. That's when you came back from your one and only date with Sandy, looking like someone had kicked you in the balls. After which, life got really complicated."
"Yeah, it did, for all of us." I frowned. "Just what did happen between Wil and Corinna anyway, or am I asking a question I shouldn't? I mean I thought they were going to get married and all that, then suddenly they broke up."
"I'm not certain myself." Carissa sighed heavily. "I'm hoping that the whole thing was related to that damn growth in Corinna's head, but I don't know. I do know that Wil still cares deeply for her. He still goes to see her quite often, even though she's under treatment for suicidal depression now and not always able to have visitors."
"Yeah, I know he's been visiting her. She doesn't seem to reciprocate his feelings though."
"Oh, I'm not sure of that." She snorted. "I think she's afraid to admit her feelings right now, and on top of that, I think her psychiatrist is one of the old school who is pushing her toward Wil, so she might be fighting the idea out of perversity."
"Why would she do that?"
"Because she told the doctor that she was enamoured by his nurse, just to shock the doc when he pissed her off one time." Carissa frowned. "I think it backfired though. I'm certain the psychiatrist is an old fuddy-duddy who thinks anyone who's sexual preferences differ from the norm is sick and needs to be cured."
"Well, according to the Bible ..."
"Oh, to hell with the bible!" Carissa said flatly, almost angrily. "Why should either Corinna or I live our lives according to the dictates of a two-thousand-year-old fictional account of life at that time, one that was written by a bunch of religious nomads? As far as I'm concerned, that's the first real science fiction book ever written. If it isn't science fiction, it's fantasy. It's got burning bushes, pillars of salt, walking on water, guys 'rising from the dead' and all that. And all of this is really supposed to have happened? Get real!"
"Whoa there. The Bible has a lot of decent teachings and ..."
"Oh sure. The basic tenets about life are all common sense, so in that context it's a decent guide. But let's face it, those laws were meant as guides for the lives of a group of people that lived in a desert and half way around the world at that." She interrupted again. "But if you really read that chronicle of supposed facts and revered beliefs closely, it contradicts itself seven ways from Sunday. Hell, in one section it promotes Solomon as a 'wise man' for having a huge number of wives and in another it speaks of 'cleaving onto' only one. Then there's the bit about worship, in one place it talks about worshipping by yourself, hidden away in a closet, and in another it literally propounds evangelicalism. It's like that in so many places. There are a million ways to interpret what it says, because there's no consistency, and I know that because I've read the damn book from end to end, several times. In my opinion, if it were written today, a lot of what's in it would be branded as hate literature, and without the backing of rich, religious fanatics, no publisher would set it into print. Between the Bible and the Koran, I don't know which is the more dangerous. If you consider the two of them, they've been used as bolsters for more wars and more death than anything else published in the world."
"Now just a minute." I held up a hand to stop her tirade. "You know I wasn't raised to go to church every Sunday, but we live in a part of the world where most of the people around us do. This is 'Bible Belt' Alberta after all. The morals of the community establish our laws and since the majority of people around here believe in the Bible; we have to honour their standards to some extent."
"I know, but even while I'm being a hypocrite and pretending in public to give credence to society's standards, I still live my life my way as best I can while still being realistic." She sighed. "I try to live by most of the ten commandments myself, because they make sense, but even then, I reserve the right to use my own judgement."
"Okay, let's leave that argument and get back to our original discussion about you and female lovers." I changed the subject. "Just how much experience do you have? Or is it your attitude more than actual action?"
"It's not so much what I've done as what I want to do." Carissa sighed deeply. "You know I was a virgin when we first made love, so that tells you a lot right there. However, Corinna and I first tongue kissed when we were about nine or ten years old, but we never went much further than that. At summer camp one year, I played around a bit with one of the girls, but not that much. We were scared of getting caught and getting into trouble. The desire is there, but if a girl makes a mistake, there are some pretty darn heavy consequences, so I've been really careful about anything I say or do."
"So what you're telling me is that you think you like girls, but you have no real experience in doing anything physical?"
"Well, yeah, but... I do know that some girls turn me on." She blushed. "Sandy does, almost as much as you do."
"Sandy?"
"Unh huh." She giggled then, still blushing brightly. "When she and I were talking last night before coming to bed, she was really upset and I hugged her. When I did, she turned to look at me and teary cheeks, runny nose and all, I kissed her. It wasn't a French kiss or even a very long kiss, but she did kiss me back. I really liked that."
"Oh!" I looked at her suspiciously. "So getting her into bed with the two of us last night accomplished two things for you, huh?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it gave Sandy a chance to sleep at my side and maybe a chance to seduce me, but it also gave you a chance to see her nude and perhaps play around with her body a bit too."
"Umm, yeah, and I know it's not nice, because you weren't warned about it, but I was hoping for even more than that. In a way I was hoping a three way would evolve." She sighed. "If we had convinced you to play, I'd have enthusiastically gone along with it, but you didn't seem to want to get involved."
"Well, I think you know, that isn't really something I've even thought about, let alone really wanted." I frowned, then decided to be honest. "I guess in a way it does turn me on, but at the same time it scares hell out of me."
"Oh I can see it turns you on, but then, you're a teenaged guy and a gal in a tight pair of jeans can turn you on." She grinned, looking pointedly at my lap. "I just don't understand why in the world would it scare you? I thought having two women in bed with him at once was a dream situation for almost any guy."
"Umm, not really." I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes. "Like I said it isn't something I've spent a lot of time thinking about and after seeing what happened after Corinna was in bed with us, I can see all sort of possibilities for problems stemming from that sort of thing."
"Corinna's problem wasn't because she had sex with you. She still doesn't realize that the two of you even had sex, Her problem was caused by that damn growth in her head, and you know it; you're just trying to shift the blame because you feel guilty. And, I don't understand that because you said you thought you were dreaming. If I felt guilty about every guy or gal that I had a sexy dream about, I'd go nuts." She snorted loudly. "Besides, Corinna is my sister. I might have been slightly jealous, but mostly, I think I was upset because I couldn't be involved."
I had to laugh at that, and she frowned at me in surprise.
"What's so damn funny?" She demanded.
"Well, a while ago you compared us to animals and I was thinking that incest is a lot more common amongst animals than any other form of sexual abnormality." I couldn't help grinning. "There are fewer gay and lesbian animals than there are incestuous ones."
"Oh for cripes sake." She snorted, then had to grin. "I guess you'd know though, since you spend so much time around animals."
"Yep, you have to keep a close eye on bloodlines when you're breeding animals, that way you don't encourage recessive genes. In a way, I suppose humans should do something the same, but it will never happen." We were at the stallion's corral and I gestured toward the pair of horses. "Look at those two, yesterday they didn't care one bit that both of them had blood lines that were well suited to produce a decent foal. All they knew was that she was ready for him to breed her and he was willing."
"Do you know what that really means to me?"
"Not much, I guess, but maybe you should tell me." I laughed.
"Well, if you were governed by instinct and pheromones, like those horses are, both Sandy and I would have gotten bred last night, so that was a darn poor comparison." She laughed then. "Now, what else do we need to do this morning? We've done all the chores."
"First, we'd best eat breakfast. Then I think Sandy might want to go to town to get some clothes. That is, if she's going to stick around for a few days." I smiled at her. "If you took the car, so you could talk while driving without being drowned out by wind noise in the jeep, It might be the perfect time to talk to her about how you feel about women. Then when you get back, we can all talk."
"Well, we did talk a bit last night, just not much."
"Oh, I was under the impression that you were hoping for things to develop after you got into bed."
"Hey, after I kissed her and she kissed me back, don't you think I had enough on the ball to say something?"
"No, because I thought you'd have told me about her reaction."
"Actually, there wasn't much of a reaction. She wasn't shocked, but she wasn't enthusiastic either. It was almost as if she expected me to react that way." Carissa frowned then. "That meant I was the one who was surprised."
"Well, I'm not really surprised by her reaction." I smiled as we walked toward the cabin. "As you said, there had to be a reason why you and Corinna dated so much and gave out so little satisfaction. Perhaps she guessed from that?"
Carissa looked at me in surprise, but we were coming to the front porch and just then, Sandy stepped out the front door.
"Oh, I was just about to call you to breakfast." Sandy said quietly.
"Well, good morning. Sorry I awakened you so rudely." I grinned up at her from the foot of the stairs.
"Oh. Hi. Are you talking to me again?" She asked quietly.
"Huh? Oh sure, why not?"
"Well, I thought you might still be angry. You sure seemed angry this morning."
"Oh, I wasn't angry, more surprised and shocked." I sighed, having a hard time concentrating because I was still thinking back over Carissa's earlier statements. "By the way, Carissa said you'd never seen a guy's dick before. Didn't you look at me when we were skinny dipping yesterday?"
"Oh, I told her that I'd never seen one up close and engorged."
"Engorged?" I said in surprise, then chuckled. "Now that's one term I've never heard used before."
"I guess that's almost like I was using medical terminology and rather formal, isn't it?" She giggled. "What would you call it then?"
"Oh, hard, I guess. Or if I was being more formal, I suppose I'd say aroused. Guys have lots of names for the condition, 'stiffy' is about the mildest and 'boner' would be one of the cruder names. 'Having a hard-on' is probably the commonest term that guys use though."
"All of those are crude, but okay, if you want, I'll use a different word. Which term would you prefer I used?"
"That depends on a lot of things." I teased.
"Well, she slept with you and woke up with it in her hand, that should tell you a bit about how she feels toward you ... and it." Carissa grinned at both of us, getting into the teasing mood, but trying to tease us both.
"Hey, you encouraged me." Sandy protested, blushing as she shifted her gaze from Carissa to me.
"I heard." I grinned, then tried to change the subject. "Now did you say breakfast was ready?"
The ploy of changing the subject only worked until we were all sitting at the kitchen table with food on our plates. Carissa was far to interested in sleeping arrangements to let the subject of sex lie for long, but even then she seemed to dance around it a bit, which was somewhat of a surprise to me.
"Chris and I had a long talk about things." She said quietly.
"Oh?" Sandy looked at me with a slight smile and I thought I saw a twinkle in her eye.
"Yeah, I was telling him about last night. In his words, I floored him." Carissa continued.
"Oh! Well, now that I think about it, I don't doubt it." Sandy's smile faded.
Silence descended on the table for a moment or two, then Sandy sighed. "Chris, by being silent, you aren't helping us out here."
Somehow I'd known that was coming, but since I'd just taken a large bite of toast I gestured toward my mouth with a finger and chewed exaggeratedly to give myself time to think. Carissa saw that and giggled.
"Give him a moment, he's thinking." She managed to say, still giggling loudly.
I knew from the way she was acting that she was on edge and I also realized that somehow Sandy seemed to have the upper hand at the moment, which surprised me. The whole dynamic in the room had changed from what it had been the evening before. I looked at first Sandy, then at Carissa, then took a sip of coffee before speaking.
"Sandy, from what you've said and done since she spoke to you last night, you don't appear to be too upset by Carissa's surprising idea. Would you mind explaining why?"
"Well, you know how I feel about you." Sandy blushed. "But, I guess what you're talking about is the idea of one guy with more than one woman, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I am." I nodded.
"Well, I told you about Mom and Dad living through the dust bowl in a small community earlier, but I didn't mention where it was. They were from near Cardston, down near Waterton Lakes Provincial park and the US border."
"And why is that significant?" I asked, but I could see Carissa was just as curious as I was.
"Well, from the looks of your faces, I guess, I'd best explain." Sandy sighed. "Cardston was started near the turn of the century by members of the LDS Church, Mormons in other words. Up until 1947 there were still members of the church in Cardston who practised polygamy, so both Mom and Dad were exposed to them. I thought perhaps you two were Mormons and I was being invited into your relationship as second wife."
I'm not sure if I was more surprised than Carissa, but both of us must have looked shocked. Sandy looked from one of us to the other, then broke into laughter.
"I take it that I was mistaken." She managed to say through her laughter.
"Unh, yeah." I managed to grunt, still shocked at the idea.
"Oh." Sandy snickered. "Well, there was a reason for thinking you were, Chris. Mom heard about your dad living with both his first and second wife at the same time, and jumped to the conclusion that he was a Mormon fundamentalist. That's why she was so anxious to set up the apartment in Calgary with all of us in it. She was positive that if I played my cards right, I'd end up in the situation I was in last night."
"So when I kissed you last night and invited you into bed with Chris and me ..." Carissa's question trailed off.
"Unh huh. I was positive then." Sandy broke into embarrassed giggles. "Sorry."
"There was nothing that formal involved." Carissa broke into laughter. "I just like you and I think you're sexy."
"But, Chris is yours, or at least you're living with him, what gives with that?"
"Well, I've never figured that out." I chuckled. "I'm not ready for marriage yet and I don't get it at all. She just decided to move in and ... well, I'm sixteen. I don't know of any teenage guy who would throw a beautiful woman out of his bed if she was willing to climb into it."
"Well, I'm eighteen, but the same sort of desires run through my head. Having a regular sex partner who happens to be kind and considerate is wonderful." Carissa grinned at that. "Oh yeah. Thanks for saying I'm beautiful, Chris."
"So you two aren't formally engaged or anything?" Sandy asked, looking at Carissa first for some reason.
"Unh uh. I'm not certain that it's completely informal." Carissa answered softly. "I think our folks think we're meant for each other, but we're both quite young. I'm not saying that a long term relationship is out of the question, but neither of us has gone far in that direction. We're still getting to know one another."
"Actually, that sounds like I do have a chance." Sandy grinned and winked at me. "That is if Mr. Teenaged Guy is still willing to bed a pretty woman who's willing to jump into his bed."
"Wait a minute." I held up both hands. "I'm still not certain that I want anything to happen. Oh, and I disagree with you. You aren't just pretty, in your own way, you're just as beautiful as Carissa."
"In her own way?" Carissa grinned, trying to tease me.
"Sure, both of you are different." I sighed. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that you're willing to go along with the idea."
"Well, you know why. I told you. I wouldn't kick Sandy out for eating crackers in bed." She laughed, somewhat embarrassedly.
Sandy just blushed, then giggled. "Well, that idea is better than the FLDS's 'rule of Chastity' and what that implies."
"Who, there you go throwing around initials and some sort of rules that I don't understand again." I sighed. "What does 'FLDS' stand for, and what is this 'rule of chastity' thing?"
"Okay, 'FLDS' stands for the 'Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints,' which is the polygynist branch of the Mormon church. 'The Rule of Chastity' states that a woman may only have sex during the period when she is ovulating or if she's pregnant because, according to the church, sex is strictly for making babies." Sandy sighed. "Sorry, I keep forgetting you guys don't know anything about the Mormon church."
"Well, I'm not sure I really want to know much about the church, but you used a word there that I haven't heard before. You said polygynist, didn't you mean polygamist?"
"No, actually I didn't. Polygamy implies a multiple marriage, but it doesn't differentiate between sexes. Polygyny is a specific word, meaning one man and several wives." She took a deep breath, then sighed. "Just so I don't lose you guys in my conversation, I'll explain a little more about their rules and stuff. In the FLDS, women are required to serve a man and be submissive to his needs and anyone who disobeys a man will have their souls burn in Hell for eternity. Since polygamy is illegal in Canada, the church has a thing called 'celestial marriage' for all but the first wife. She can legally marry her husband, but her husband isn't a polygamist if the other marriages aren't sanctified. Legally, he's an adulterer, but adultery isn't illegal. A celestial marriage ceremony consists of the woman placing her hand in the man's hand in what is called 'the patriarchal grip' and that's it."
"Holy cripes. How do you know so much about them?" Carissa asked.
"Mom told me. She's a lapsed Mormon, but her sister lives in Bountiful."
"Bountiful? Where's that?" I asked.
"Oh, Bountiful, BC. It's down near the US border, near Creston. That's where the FLDS from Cardston moved in 1947 or '48. I think at that time there were only eight men and the rest of the group were women. Now there must be hundreds there though, because they breed like rabbits. I mean the men believe that the more wives they have and the more children they have, the higher level of heaven they attain. I think the leader, or as the call him the bishop, there is Ray Blackmore, and if I remember right he has eight wives with who knows how many kids."
"You sure know a lot about the place."
"Well, yeah, I've got an aunt and several cousins there. I think the place is scary though."
"Oh? Why would you think that?"
"Hey, I'm female, single and my mother was a Mormon. I worry that some old geezer in his seventies might try to grab me in one of those handshakes." She tried to grin, but it was a rather weak attempt, then she shook her shoulders as if shivering. "Could we change the subject?"
Yeah, I'd like that. I think the whole setup needs a lot of thought before we do anything rash." I smiled at her and nodded my head. "Carissa, you may be all for the idea of everyone living together, but I think both Sandy and I need some time to decide since the stakes have changed overnight.
"Okay." Carissa agreed, then turned to Sandy. "Sandy, Chris suggested that you and I take his car and run to town. We can drop around your house to get some of your clothes and while we're there, I can get a few groceries."
"I'll go along with that." Sandy smiled. "Why aren't you coming, Chris?"
"Nope, not me, not today. I want to go check the artesian well, up by the lake today. It has a bit of sand that gets carried in with the water and about once a year we have to scoop it out or the flow reduces. So that's what I'll do today."
Of course once they had made up their mind to go to town, they were in a rush to get going. In fact they ran around the cabin like wild women as they got ready. Inside of a half hour they were gone and I was able to relax.
I was very glad to be alone, because I wouldn't be disturbed. I had some thinking to do about the situation that I now found myself in. As I loaded the tools I'd need to clean out the artesian well, I decided to do the work first, then sit down in the shade of a tree and think about the situation. Since I felt that what we were contemplating was a huge step, I didn't want to leap into it without considering the consequences.