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THE YEAR OF LIVING AWKWARDLY This is the text of a letter I sent my wife shortly before we were married. The original was typed on a portable typewriter, so it had many misspelings and overstrikes, this version is cleaned up a bit. I think it speaks for itself.
Highway Motel My Dearest Anne, Things are going well here, the installation of the monitoring system at the mine is on schedule and I’m sure I’ll be able to leave to come back to the U.S. next week. It’s hot as hell here, but the motel has air conditioning and a pool. The sign at the bar is funny: “Proper attire for this area is shirt, shoes, and long socks,” it’s a given that you’re wearing shorts. When I was in Perth I even saw men in suit jackets and neckties wearing shorts. Australians seem to have a more authoritarian view of dress codes than Americans. For example, a young technician working in the control room where we’re installing the system was sent home to change because he was wearing dark socks instead of white socks, although the manager had no problem with wearing shorts to work. Young women working in stores and banks, etc. are required to wear uniforms with really short dresses. Anyhow, it’s only a month until we become the very happy Mr. and Mrs. Delgon, and there are some things I need to tell you before we visit my family on our Honeymoon in South America. I had wanted to tell you this in person, but this emergency installation came up, and I can’t use the phone to talk to you more than a couple of minutes a week, so here is a brief history of my childhood, and some things that you need to know about what will happen when we visit my family. You already know that English is my first language and I’m a U.S. citizen, but I was born and raised in South America. My parents were members of a sort of commune in remote high hill country. It was called “The Compound,” and the first thing you’ll notice when we get there is that nobody wears any clothes. There are some exceptions, of course, babies wear diapers, toddlers too when they’re inside a building. People often wear shoes or boots when working in the fields or workshops. Men doing hot work, like welding, wear a floor length heavy leather apron and gloves, but it’s completely open in back – it’s much cooler that way. And of course, we wear regular clothes when we leave The Compound to go to the nearby village, or the capital city, or, once every few years or so, fly home to the U.S. to visit grandparents. And you needn’t worry that you’ll have to be naked all the time. There are many wonderful things to see in the area – the waterfalls, canoeing, and hiking, shopping in the district town – we will always get dressed for that. When I was growing up in The Compound there were lots of children of all ages, and that is still the case today. Unlike some communes that started up in the fifties and sixties, this one has a substantial endowment from The Matriarch who founded it shortly after the end of the second world war. She had made a bundle as a war profiteer, er, investor, and the income supplies The Compound with nearly everything it needs. Men work the fields of course for fresh produce, milk, and meat. And men work in the shops to maintain the equipment. Because The Compound is in a somewhat remote area, it’s necessary to be have this capability. The Matriarchs could buy anything else we needed, albeit often with a long lead time. When you were growing up in the States, there were only a few TV channels, and no VCR’s, so you remember when children played outside together, played inside together, listened to phonograph records, or read books. In South America back then there was no TV and not enough books or records. So playing together, inside, and mostly outside was what the children did. Since we were always naked you might imagine that a lot of the activity was somewhat sexual in nature. Nothing could be closer to the truth. Sexual contact began at a very early age. I knew who my Mother was, of course, she was the one who nursed me until I was three. But more than that, every adult and older child was a caretaker for every child. Nearly every contact with a child, whether by an adult or an older child, involved skin to skin contact, stroking all over, kissing nipples, thighs, asses, and genitalia. The result was children devoid of shyness, loved by many people, but lacking a central focus of maternal or paternal love. So I don’t know who my father was, I doubt that the father’s name on my birth certificate registered at the American Embassy was my real father, but anyway it doesn’t matter because I had many fathers. My Mother probably didn’t know either, since monogamy, even serial monogamy, was discouraged by The Matriarchs. I don’t know why, they were just strange. So, back to my childhood. It was spent naked and in constant innocent consensual sexual contact with other children – boys and girls, as well as men and women. There was constant genital contact with the children, but there was no actual intercourse. Most people ate together in one of the mess halls. There were chairs for the adults and the children sat on their laps, the adult sharing their food with the child. Toddlers who were still nursing sat on their Mother’s lap, of course, but the other children just picked an adult or teenager at random. Children quickly learned that they had to remain reasonably still to get any food. The fork was held in the adult’s left hand in the European fashion, and except when using the knife or drinking from a glass, the right hand remained in the child’s lap. The child’s hand’s went anywhere except to the plate. There was usually a gentle stroking of the child’s thighs, vulva or penis throughout the meal. The food, generally excellent, was brought to the tables by serving men. All the men took turns doing this, while women never acted as servants. Nobody bothered with napkins. At the end of the meal the children performed a general licking of any spilled food After breakfast the children all went to school, like children anywhere. In addition to the usual subjects we also learned Spanish and the local Indian language. Sex was a topic that was taught far earlier and in far more depth than in any American school, and there was quite a bit of sexual content to the games we played. Discipline was strict, and promptly enforced with hand spankings or paddlings. The children were expected to take school seriously, and before the end of High School, nearly every student had taken what we would call University Level classes today. Since The Compound was in the Tropics, darkness always came shortly after dinner, and except on nights with campfires or ritualistic ceremonies – I’ll get to that subject soon, bedtime for children was early. After dinner there was time for homework and a time for reading or quiet play. We all lived in a number of rambling houses with many bedrooms. Each adult had his or her own room, although, as you might imagine, adults rarely slept alone. The children slept with other children near their own ages, eight to a room – nearly always four boys and four girls. The room had four beds and the children were required to share a different bed with a different child each night. There was always an adult in the room next door to supervise. Everyone got up at sunrise or hours before, if they were cooks or serving men. The showers were large and shared by men, women, boys, and girls together. Nobody had to wash themselves, there was always someone else to do that for them. There was a dividing line between child and adult and that was puberty. The Matriarchs managed this passage in a peculiar way. Every child in The Compound who was nearly sexually mature was watched for the signs. The first sign was menarche. When a girl had her third menstrual period, she was a candidate for “The Year Of Living Awkwardly.” This usually happened when a girl was twelve or thirteen. For boys, the sign was producing white cum three months in a row. I don’t want to go into how the samples were produced or evaluated, but they had to be certified by one of The Matriarchs. They boys usually achieved this milestone at age thirteen or fourteen, and they became candidates for “The Year Of Living Awkwardly.” It didn’t matter who you were friends with, the first candidate of one sex and the first candidate of the other sex became a pair. Now this wasn’t a religious cult, exactly, it was a weirdly secular cult with rituals, but the combination of a qualifying boy and girl called for a ritual. The boy and girl looked forward to it because after it they got their own room, and were allowed to fuck. But it was also the introduction to “The Year Of Living Awkwardly.” I hadn’t mentioned before that all this sexual contact between children and adults wasn’t entirely unregulated. There was no fucking of little children. Period. There was no unwelcome sexual contact, at least after preferences were established, but sometimes there were transgressions, and that resulted in, at the judgment of the Matriarchs, and depending on the age of the transgressor, a spanking, whipping , or caning.. So along with all this sexual freedom were occasional punishments. But back to “The Year Of Living Awkwardly.” Once a boy and a girl had demonstrated their sexual maturity was advancing, they were made to do everything together. This group had a weird philosophy, and one of their tenets was that cooperation was better than individual action. Their method of training this was to force young teens to work together in every activity. Their wrists were cuffed and connected behind their backs with about a foot of chain. By moving one hand as far behind his or her back as possible, the boy or girl could just barely reach something near the opposite hip. To avoid chafing, the wrist cuffs were exchanged for cuffs above the elbow several times a week. In addition to the cuffs severely limiting use of the hands, loose metal collars were locked around their necks. The collars were joined by about two feet of chain, and they were not removed for a full year. Wherever they went, they had to do it together, and cooperatively. The collar was loose enough that the children, could, for example, change from a face to face to a face to back position fairly easily The cuffing and collaring was conducted in a nighttime ceremony attended by nearly all the adult and teen members. It was meant to be a mystery to the other children, so they were never allowed to attend until it was their turn. There was singing, solemn promises, affirmations of responsibility by the two children and all the members. It was a pastiche of religious ritual, without invocations of religious authority. And there was also a ritual whipping to remind the children of the seriousness of the endeavor. After the collaring the boy and girl were escorted to the room they would share for the next year. The escort was chosen by the girl, usually a teenage girl friend. The business of being cuffed and collared was new to the children – this specifically was not allowed to be practiced during playtime – so the escort had to show them the best way to walk together. This was the easiest to learn, just walk side-by-side holding hands. The escort had to show them how to brush each other’s teeth – she handed the girl the brush and toothpaste. She would tell her to squeeze the toothpaste onto the brush behind her back. She couldn’t see what she was doing, but the escort would reassure her she would soon learn how to get the right amount of toothpaste on the brush. The boy would kneel behind the girl, face level with her butt, and he would move his head to place the toothbrush against his teeth, and the girl began brushing. The boy moved his head to get the toothbrush to the right places. After a bit the escort instructed them to change places. Incidentally, this is one of the few times a girl got on her knees near a guy, it’s one of the Matriarchs’ rules. It only took a few weeks of practice to master tooth brushing. The next step, using the toilet before bed, was easier. One child sat on the toilet while the other spread his or her knees to stand straddling the toilet and the other’s naked thighs. This put one set of genitals very near another’s mouth, but the first night the young couple were usually too nervous to take advantage of this situation. Then there was the matter of the toilet paper. They had to turn back to back standing over the toilet for one to wipe the other and then to drop the paper in, but the paper dispenser was arranged to be easily accessible. They took turns washing their hands behind their backs, then it was off to bed for their first sexual intercourse. There was no problem of a hymen, all the fingering a girl received had eliminated that years ago. The problem was the limitations the bondage put on their movement. The escort would help them to lie on the bed, boy on the bottom and girl on top. The escort would make sure both were sexually aroused, which was almost never a problem, then point the boy’s cock the right way to slide into the girl’s vagina. They fucked. Oh, I forgot to say, the girl was on the pill, and would continue until age eighteen at least. Usually, they fucked several times during the night, asking for the escort’s assistance as needed. Naturally, they missed breakfast. In the shower, bound as they were, it was difficult for them to wash each other. The escort washed both of them. Subsequently they would get up at dawn and shower with everyone else when there were plenty of people to help them out for the next year. They skipped breakfast and school the first day, but at dinner time they walked hand in hand into the mess hall, occasionally grinning fatuously at each other. Although they were not really in love, they were very happy and proud of beginning this step on the path to adulthood together. At the mess hall they now had a chair and no longer sat in an adult’s lap. The girl and boy stood in front of their shared plate and first did any cutting with a knife that might be required. The boy used the knife and the girl pushed the food – steak, chicken, baked potato, or whatever that needed cutting – for the boy to cut to bite sized pieces. Then the girl sat while the boy stood with his back to the food and fed her. When she had had enough, the boy knelt on the floor while she turned herself sideways on the chair so she could stretch her bound hands holding the fork first to the plate, then to the boy’s mouth. Dearest Anne, I know the preceding paragraphs were a bit stilted and impersonal and I did mess up the tenses a bit. I did that deliberately because it is you I love, not the nearly forgotten Melissa I spent the awkward year with. But you need to know, because when we arrive at The Compound together, as man and wife, we will, since you are a newcomer, experience the same ceremony. It will be for only a “Week of Living Awkwardly.” It is true that the ritual whipping will be a little bit stronger than it would be for a young teen, I want to reassure you it is brief and only serves to reinforce our mutual love. -- Love, Ken |