   Foreword

   This is the sixth in a series of narratives concerning a research
project done by the author for his Master's Program.  If you've read the
preceding narratives, you're fully up to speed about what this project was
all about.  If you haven't, you really should, because once in a while what
happened before will help you understand why the author reacted in one way
or another.

   This couple didn't end up in the study, but that was only because I
couldn't figure out a way to put them there without jeopardizing the final
results.  Even though I didn't identify the participants in the paper, I
had to keep documenting data for potential peer review.  If that would have
happened, and this couple was discovered, it would have invalidated the
whole paper.  You'll understand why when you read it.

   =====================================================================

   The Master's Project - Micky and Susan

   By Beating Off Bob (beatingoffbob@yahoo.com)



   I got a call from a woman named Susan one day, in which she said she was
friends with another couple I'd interviewed for the project.  She'd gotten
my number from them.  She asked if I would please come and do a preliminary
interview with her and Micky, and consider putting them in the program.

   I had, by this time, interviewed seventy couples in the program.  I had
sixty-three of them "in the can", or finished, and was beginning to feel
the pressure of getting the remaining interviews wrapped up so I could
start writing the paper.  My advisor was very happy with what he had seen
thus far, though, and was not pressuring me to finish.  His attitude was
that, the more interviews I had, the better it would be in the end.  So I
was open to adding more couples to the project.

   "How long have you and Micky been married?" I asked.

   "Well, there's a little problem with that," she said softly.  "We've
been together for fifteen years, but we can't get married.  It's a legal
thing.  But we're totally committed to each other, and we WOULD get married
if it were possible."

   "I'm not sure I understand why you'd want to be in a project that
examines married couples, if you can't get married," I said reasonably.

   "Melanie explained what you're trying to prove," said Susan, "and Micky
and I look so much alike that people often think we're related.  We just
thought it could help raise awareness ..." She trailed off and it was
silent for a few seconds.  Then she went on.  "We think our situation would
support your research, and your research could help support our situation."

   I had a sudden thought that she and Micky might be brother and sister,
or close cousins, which would explain why they couldn't get married.  I
knew there were a lot of people who deeply loved each other, but were in
that kind of situation, where the law prevented them from pursuing their
love like 'normal' people did.

   I knew I couldn't put an incestuous couple in this study, but I also
knew that there was a very wide vein of material that could be mined in
that area.  I was already thinking about my Doctorate program, and the idea
of doing a study on incestuous couples in committed relationships had
already been teasing at my mind.  It would make a HUGE splash in
sociological circles, if I could get it published.

   It was for that reason that I agreed to do the initial interview with
them.  I didn't plan to use it for the current study, but might be able to
plant the seeds for a future project.

   I may have mentioned this in the past: Don't make assumptions.  They're
almost always in error.  You'd think I would have figured that out by now.

   =====================================================================

   I arrived at the address given, and found it to be a neat little two
bedroom house, about forty or fifty years old, in a neighborhood of similar
houses.  It was one of those neighborhoods where a lot of blue collar
workers are raising new families, and have managed to scrape together
enough money to buy their first house.  The houses on this street had
probably been sold, at one time or another, as "Fixer-uppers".  They took a
lot of maintenance, but their owners were proud to be home owners, so they
took care of them as well as they could on a limited budget.

   When I rang the bell, a nice looking woman answered the door.  She was
probably in her mid thirties, and was slim in that way that runners look
slim.  She wore her brown hair long and it fell just past her shoulders.

   "Hi," she smiled.  "You must be Bob.  I'm Susan.  We're so glad you
decided to come." She helped me open the storm door by pushing on it as I
pulled, and then stood back to let me in.

   "You have a nice house," I said by way of making conversation.  "You
take good care of the place."

   "We've had to learn to be plumbers and carpenters and even a little
about electricity," she smiled.  "It's been an education, but it's fun
too."

   She offered me something to drink, and I declined.  I had another
interview later that evening, and wanted to get their preliminary interview
out of the way so I could concentrate on the later one.  It would be the
last for that couple, if all things went well.  She took me to the living
room.

   There was another woman sitting in a chair, leafing through a magazine,
and she looked up when we entered the room.  She smiled and I saw the same
smile as I had seen on Susan's face.  She had the same long hair, if a
little darker, and the same slim build.  She looked older, but not by much
more than a few years.  It was pretty obvious I was meeting Susan's older
sister.  They looked that much alike.  I had no idea why she would be here
for the interview, but "extra" family members had played a pretty big role
in the lives of some of the couples I had interviewed, so I didn't really
mind if she was there.  I looked around for Micky, but didn't see him.

   "This is Bob." Susan introduced me to the woman in the chair.

   She stood and held out her hand.  She had a nice, firm grip.  Shaking
hands with a woman is different than taking a man's hand.  When men grip,
it is either a custom, or a competition, but has little meaning usually. 
It's a formality.  Women can shake that way too, in either case, but they
have a third way of shaking a hand that is more of a touching thing than it
is a custom thing.  It's hard to describe, but when I feel a woman's slim
hand in mine, sometimes it feels like more of a caress than a handshake. 
Like a little hug of sorts, maybe.  It is, for me at least, a very intimate
kind of feeling, and it's usually really nice in an inconsequential kind of
way.  This woman took my hand like that.

   "We're so glad you came," she said, letting me have my hand back.  "I'm
Micky."

   I stood there, dumbfounded.

   "You're Micky," I said dully.

   "Yes," she said calmly.  "We're lesbians."

   CHAPTER TWO

   Time flowed by.  I don't know how much.  I just remember feeling frozen
as it did it.  Finally I got my wits together.

   "Oh," I said.  "I thought you were sisters."

   "Everybody thinks that," said Susan.  I could hear the apprehension in
her voice.  "But we're not.  That's why I thought you might be interested
in interviewing us.  I know I should have told you on the phone, but we
wanted you to see it ...  before you decided ...  you know ...  what to
do."

   My mind was awhirl.  I had been anticipating a brother and sister,
involved in a long-term monogamous relationship.  It was that assumption
thing.  It had bitten me in the butt a number of times, but I was a slow
learner.  Now my mind tried to stop the momentum it had built up in one
direction and switch abruptly to a second, completely different azimuth. 
The laws of physics seemed to apply to thoughts too.  My mind gave a kind
of twist as the laws of nature fought that change of direction.

   I almost said "You don't look like lesbians," but caught myself as I
realized how patently stupid that would sound.  Lesbians don't look any
different than anybody else.

   I did manage to re-think things, though I don't know how long I stood
there speechless.  They were kind enough to let me adjust without talking.
I looked from one to the other several times, taking in the startling
similarities in appearance.  If they had been together fifteen years, they
were serious about each other, and that was what I was investigating,
though I hadn't thought even once about commitment in a same-sex
relationship.  Still, the sociologist in me perked up at a whole new world,
and the possibilities that lay in that world.  In one sense, it was just as
valid to study same-sex couples as it was to investigate incestuous
couples. Both were 'anti-social', according to most of society, but I
already knew that real love and passion, like that in a heterosexual
marriage, could exist between relatives.  So why couldn't it exist between
two other people, even if they were the same sex?

   I had a few biases that had built up over the years.  I didn't know
anybody in the community that was adopting the new term "Gay" to identify
themselves.  I wasn't even sure how large that community was.  I hadn't
given it much thought.  It was kind of like a cow with six legs.  I saw one
at a tourist trap right off of Interstate 70 in Kansas once upon a time. 
It was interesting, but it was just an oddity.

   But the two women in the room with me weren't 'odd' in any way I could
detect, other than their self-identification as being lesbians.  Everything
that was available to my five senses seemed completely normal.

   "Give me a minute," I asked, while new thoughts flooded into my mind.

   I remembered Lizzie, teaching her daughter to masturbate.  That was
same-sex ...  sex.  I hadn't thought of that as a 'lesbian' arrangement.  I
thought about that now.  I realized that, when I thought about
"homosexuals" and got that uncomfortable little chill down my spine, that I
was actually thinking about two men together.  I didn't understand that,
and it was uncomfortable.  Why didn't I feel that chill when I thought of
two women together?

   I thought about THAT for a few seconds.  It was easy, really.  What two
women did to each other, I would gladly do to either of them, or let them
to it to me.  What two men did together I had no interest in.  It was just
male bias that caused the reaction.  I couldn't actually justify it
logically.  That probably deserved more time and thought.  But the fact was
that it didn't bother me that these two women loved each other and engaged
in sexual acts together (another assumption, but a reasonable one).

   I found I was interested.

   "OK," I said.  "This isn't what I expected, but let's talk about it a
little bit and see where it can go."

   Both women relaxed and smiled.  I suspect they got very little
acceptance for their lifestyle from 'normal' people.  The fact that I was
non judgmental made them feel better about the risk that they were taking
in exposing themselves to a stranger.

   For lack of anything better to do, I just asked them some of the
preliminary questions.

   "How did you two meet?"

   Susan volunteered that answer.

   "My divorce had been final for a couple of months, and I had calmed down
from that.  I knew there were good men out there, but I didn't know any way
to meet them.  I went to a singles bar just to see what it was like.  It
was awful."

   Micky took over.

   "It was the same for me.  I had been divorced longer than Susan, and had
been trying to meet a man.  I was disillusioned, but I kept going back.  In
fact, the night I met Susan, I had decided that that was the last time I
was going to go to one of those places.  All I seemed to run into were
jerks and men looking for a quickie.  I was sitting there at the bar
feeling sorry for myself when Susan sat down beside me."

   It was Susan's turn again.

   "So there I was, sitting next to Micky, though I didn't know her at the
time.  These guys kept coming up to me and laying the lamest lines on me I
had ever heard.  It was just agonizing.  During a break in the onslaught I
asked Mickey if it was always this bad.  She laughed and started telling me
horror stories of her own.  Before long we left there and went to a coffee
bar.  We got a table and sat down and became friends."

   It sounded all so normal somehow.  I knew women who complained about the
dating scene the same way.

   "So you were both married ...  before," I said.

   "Yes," they both nodded.

   "Forgive me," I said, "I'm not all that current on same sex
relationships, so I may say some stupid things, or ask some stupid
questions," I warned.  "How, exactly, does a woman in a regular
relationship get interested in another woman?"

   Micky smiled.  "If you're asking if I always felt attracted to women,
the answer is no." I saw Susan nod in agreement, and she broke in.

   "Me neither.  I had never felt anything for a woman.  I had friends I
was close to, and I loved them, but I wasn't attracted to them that way.  I
liked men.  I liked sex with men.  Well, with my husband, anyway.  He was
the only man I ever had sex with.  But he was mean, and I knew that if I
stayed with him I'd end up in the hospital sooner or later."

   "So, how did it happen?" I asked.  I was curious about this.

   Mickey was still smiling.  "We've thought a lot about this, over the
years.  I liked men too.  My divorce was for other reasons.  Basically my
husband was addicted to gambling, and he wouldn't get help for it.  It was
tearing our lives apart and when I gave him an ultimatum, he took off.  He
didn't contest the divorce - didn't even show up in court.  What happened
between Susan and me happened over a period of a year.  We got to be
friends.  You have to understand that a divorced woman is no longer welcome
in the homes of her married friends.  When you're free, like Susan and I
were, other women see you as a threat.  So the support group we had during
the divorce proceedings evaporated once the divorces were final.  Basically
all Susan had was me, and all I had was Susan.  I think that's why we got
so close."

   Susan was nodding again.

   "We spent almost all our free time together," she said.  "We went to
shows, and concerts and shopping.  It was like a date, because it was fun,
but there was none of the angst that's always there when you're with a man,
trying to figure out whether to kiss him or not, or whether to let him come
in after a date or not ...  all that stuff.  In fact, we went out on dates
with men together, sort of double dating.  We went to singles bars together
and if we both met a man who seemed reasonable, we'd go somewhere with
them. But that didn't work out either.  Usually the men wanted to separate
us and just get us into bed.  So, eventually, we quit doing that and just
went out together to do things.  We got closer and closer."

   "OK," I said.  "But there had to be a time when something happened.  I
mean there was a first kiss or something ...  right?"

   Micky nodded.  "That was pretty strange, when it happened.  It was about
nine or ten months after we met.  We were sitting around eating chocolate
and watching old movies.  I don't even remember the name of the one we
watched, but it got us both going."

   Susan laughed.  "I blurted out that I needed to get laid.  It was that
time of the month that I get particularly ...  um ...  horny." She blushed
a little.

   Micky grinned.  "I offered to loan her my dildo."

   "You're kidding," I said.  I meant it.  I thought she WAS kidding.

   "Nope," she said smugly.

   "I had heard of them, of course," said Susan, blushing more, "but I had
never actually seen one.  I ...  um ...  well, I took care of things, but
not that way."

   "I went and got it," said Micky grinning.  "I thought she'd have a cow
when I brought it out of my bedroom."

   "It was this big pink thing," laughed Susan.  She was still blushing and
wasn't looking at my face.  "It looked so real, though, that ...  I don't
know ...  I can't really remember."

   "She's just embarrassed," snorted Micky.  "Her eyes got so big I thought
they'd pop out of her head.  She said there was no way she could use
something like that.  We got to laughing and then I dared her and the next
thing I knew I was teaching her how to use it."

   I looked at Susan, who was still looking elsewhere.  Finally her eyes
glanced at me, and then away, and then back.  She was beet red.

   "You probably think we're perverts.  Everybody does," she said.

   "No, not really," I said.  "I'm just trying to understand."

   She looked a little less uncomfortable ...  enough to go on.

   "It's just that she was so tender, and she cared about me.  I had never
even THOUGHT about doing something with another woman, but suddenly I felt
so good, and it felt so right, and then we were kissing and then it was
like we'd been looking for each other all our lives."

   "You love each other," I said simply.

   "YES!" said Micky urgently.  "I'm like Susan.  I'd never done anything
with a woman before.  But it just didn't feel strange.  It's hard to
describe."

   "Don't feel bad," I said sagely.  "No one can describe how love feels.
That's why kids have to go through all that pain and anguish as teenagers.
You have to try things to find out if they're right for you.  All too often
we try the wrong things, but, once in a while, we stumble upon something
that really meets a need."

   "That's it exactly!" blurted Susan.  "I needed someone to be close to
... to love and be loved by.  I kept thinking it had to be a man, but then
this happened and suddenly everything changed."

   "Has it been worth the ...  um ...  problems?" I asked.

   "You mean all the hatred and fear people display when they find out?"
asked Micky.

   I nodded.

   "It has to me," she said, looking at her lover.

   Susan smiled and nodded.  Her blush was gone.  I liked to think it was
because I was being so open-minded.

   I looked back at my forms.  Some of it didn't seem to apply.  I told
them as much, and they got curious about what differences there might be
between interviewing a heterosexual couple and any other couple.

   "Well, one of the things I'd ask is if you both masturbate, and whether
you engage in mutual masturbation.  That's pretty much a moot point in your
case.  It's the same with oral sex.  I guess I could ask you what each of
you think the other's best sexual feature is."

   Susan got pink again, but Micky answered right away.

   "I love her eyes and the way she crinkles her mouth when she's thinking
hard about something."

   "I wouldn't exactly call those sexual features," I said.

   Micky looked right at me.  "Whenever I stare into her eyes, or see that
crinkle, I want to tear her clothes off."

   "OK," I admitted.  "I guess that counts after all." I grinned and
shrugged.  I looked over at Susan.

   "I don't want to say," she said.  "It's embarrassing."

   "I'm surprised that, after what you told me already, anything could
embarrass you," I said.

   I looked at Micky, who was trying to hide a smile.  She stood up and
turned sideways toward me.  She was wearing a pullover top, which was
somewhat loose and she reached behind her to pull it tight across her
stomach.

   Susan looked up and yelped "Mickey!  Don't you DARE!"

   Micky just laughed and then did something I was amazed at.  She slumped,
somehow, and her hips pushed forward a little bit.  The small of her back
went forward too and that made her abdomen jut out.  She must have relaxed
the muscles in her belly or something, because she suddenly looked like she
was maybe four or five months pregnant.  She brought one hand to that bulge
and rubbed it.

   "MICKYEEEEEEE," wailed Susan.  She covered her eyes.

   Micky spoke then.  "She likes to pretend that she's a man when we make
love with a strap-on, and that she's impregnating me.  When I do this it
drives her wild."

   I don't know if I was like most people or not.  I didn't really
understand anything about people of the same gender who formed these kinds
of attachments.  What I had heard thus far made it confusing in one way,
because it sounded like any other love affair in which two people fall in
love and then express that love sexually.  My mind had a hard time
imagining that I could do that with another man, which made it seem just as
unlikely, to me at least, that two women could truly feel that way.  But it
was obvious they did.  And it was obvious it was real.  I had seen couples
deeply in love, and you can tell they're deeply in love.  And here was
something that made these two seem even more normal.  I could easily
understand how the thought of impregnating your partner could be
fantastically erotic.  Ralph had wanted to impregnate Tanya, but just
couldn't.  It was the same with this couple, in a way.  Susan wanted to
impregnate Micky, but just couldn't.  It didn't make it any less erotic an
idea ...  it was just physically impossible.

   "How does that make you feel?" I asked Micky.

   Somehow she slumped even more, but her belly came back in.  It was a
kind of slump of dejection.

   "I'd love to be pregnant.  Both of us would.  But that's too
complicated."

   "Wow," I said.

   "You think that just because a woman is a lesbian that she loses all
interest in raising children?" asked Micky.

   I held up both hands.  "Like I said, I'm new to this, and there's a lot
I don't understand ...  have never thought about before.  I don't know
about you, but I'm having a great time here.  I've learned more in the last
half hour, about something I was ignorant of, than I could have imagined."

   Neither of them said anything to that, and it was silent for a little
bit.  Normally I don't mind that, because silence is uncomfortable, and if
you let it happen, the interviewee will start talking just to fill that
silence.  But this time I was the uncomfortable one.  I felt stupid, and I
wasn't used to feeling stupid.

   "Let me tell you what I THINK I understand thus far," I said.  "You can
tell me if I have it right, or correct me if I've missed something, OK?"

   They both nodded and Micky sat back down.

   "OK, both of you fell in love with a man, but it didn't work out."

   They nodded before I could go on.

   "And both of you were still interested in having a relationship with a
man, but couldn't find the right guy."

   Another set of nods.

   "And you became friends ...  close friends ...  and when the time was
right, you expanded that friendship into something that included sex.  You
didn't ...  decide ...  you were lesbians, as much as you decided to let
this friendship include sex.  It sounds like there is sometimes some role
playing that goes on, where one of you acts in a masculine way, and feels
some of the things a man might feel about the woman he's in love with."

   I got two more nods, though they were less enthusiastic.

   "I'll bet you have arguments, just like any married couple would, or
roommates, for that matter.  Sometimes you get on each other's nerves.  But
you have grown to love each other so much that it's worth staying in the
relationship that already exists because the needs it meets outweigh the
uncomfortable spots along the way."

   They looked at each other and then back at me, and then they nodded. 
This time it was a fractional nod.

   "What I think is that you are in the same situation as a couple of
cousins are in when they fall in love.  The world says they can't feel that
way about each other, but they DO feel that way.  There isn't a decent
reason in the world why they SHOULDN'T feel that way, but somebody made up
a rule that they aren't allowed, and that puts them in a bind.  It's the
same with other taboo relationships.  There might be some weak reasons to
prohibit the relationship - genetics, maybe - but nothing that couldn't be
worked out if everybody really tried to work them out.  But the world
doesn't WANT to work these problems out, so they just say 'You can't do
that.'"

   Now I got nothing.  That was OK, because I wasn't finished.

   "It just sounds to me like you are two normal people, who have found
happiness together, but who have a hard go of it because of people outside
the relationship.  I'm not sure I'd even call you lesbians."

   I realized that sounded stupid, or maybe sexist, and I didn't want them
to think I was either.  Ignorant was OK.  There's nothing wrong with being
ignorant.  You can fix that.  Stupid and sexist, though, are diseases, and
harder to cure.

   "What I mean is that, a couple of hours ago I would have called you
lesbians ...  but now ...  it just doesn't fit with my preconceptions of
what lesbians are."

   That wasn't any better.  If anything I was digging myself in an even
deeper hole.

   "I'll just be quiet now." I said, looking down at my clipboard.

   Susan chuckled.  "You aren't any worse off than we are.  I've never been
comfortable calling myself a lesbian.  I just love Micky more than anybody
else I know.  It's still uncomfortable for me in some ways, even after
fifteen years."

   "How does your family take it?" I asked out of curiosity.

   "I think it hit my Dad worse than my Mom, initially," said Micky.  "He
was conflicted for a while.  But about a year after we had been living
together he and I got drunk one night watching a football game and he
confessed that he felt better.  It was hilarious.  He felt better because
he didn't mind thinking of me and Susan naked in bed, but thinking about me
in bed with a man drove him nuts.  He didn't like my ex from the
beginning."

   "My family doesn't talk about it," sighed Susan.  "Ever."

   "They just pretend it isn't there?" I asked.

   "Pretty much," she said.  "My mother makes veiled references to it, but
only when she's bemoaning the fact that my brother hasn't produced any
grandchildren for her yet.  He runs his own company and he and Melanie -
that's his wife - feel that the company isn't well enough established yet
for her to get pregnant.  They say it costs too much." She stood up.  "My
mother knows that it gets to me when she talks about that.  I had plans on
giving her grandchildren as soon as I got married.  She and I talked about
it then.  But I can only thank my lucky stars that I didn't get pregnant
before I found out my husband ...  and the father of those babies we
didn't' have ...  was a louse.  He would have made a terrible father.  I'm
going to get something to drink.  You want anything?"

   I said a Coke would be nice, and she left.

   "Susan feels like she's let her family down," said Micky softly.  "I
used to feel the same way, but I guess I got over it."

   "Let them down?" I asked.  "Just because you two love each other?"

   "I'm not really welcome at family gatherings.  Susan can come to my
folks house, like during the holidays, but I never go to hers.  They just
pretend I don't exist.  But what I think REALLY bothers her is about not
having children," she said.  "She feels like she's not helping keep the
family line going."

   "Oh," I responded.

   I knew how Tanya had felt about having kids, and I knew just how strong
that desire had been.  But that had been a biological kind of thing, not so
much for her parents as for herself.  And she had Ralph to be the father of
the baby I had impregnated her with.  That got me to thinking.  Susan had
Micky.  Or vice versa.  I mean there were two of them in the relationship.
Neither was father material, though, and it just seemed foreign to think of
them raising children and sleeping in the same bedroom.

   THAT got me to thinking even more.  My biases were strong, and I didn't
like that.  Bias is fine, as long as you don't let it control you
completely.  I mean having a bias towards something just means you like one
thing more than others.  That's a healthy bias.  But when a bias prevents
you from exploring the world around you, like a racial bias often does,
that simply means you've put on blinders and are ignoring a portion of the
existence you are part of.  That's not so good.  Those biases diminish
life, both yours and that of others around you.

   I didn't realize I had been sitting there like a bump on a log until
Susan came back in with the drinks.  Micky just sat there the whole time.
Maybe she was thinking too.  Or examining me.  Or maybe she was one of
those special people who can just sit and don't have to talk all the time.

   Thinking isn't one of my strong suits.  If I have the time to really sit
and mull something over, I do OK.  But more often I think a little bit, and
then open my mouth WAY before I should ...  before I've had time to really
reflect on something as long as it deserves.

   I did that this time.

   "You know ...  there are ways you could have children," I said.

   I wasn't thinking of impregnating either one of them.  I swear.  I was
thinking about test tubes and medical facilities and adoption agencies.

   Micky, though, must have read the part of my mind that I wasn't paying
attention to ...  that part that remembered Tanya begging me to make a baby
in her.

   "Thanks for the offer, Bob, but I don't think so," she said dryly. 
"Whenever we go out there are a whole raft of men who would be more than
happy to solve that little problem.  We tell them 'No' too."

   I realized immediately what she meant and felt my face flame with heat.

   "No!  That's not what I meant!  I meant at a clinic." My words were a
little forced.

   Susan, like a lot of women I've talked to about invitro fertilization,
shuddered.

   "The thought of all that clinical sterility, and some strange man's
sperm ...  it just makes me want to puke." She looked stiff just thinking
about it.  "All I can think of is long needles, and cold steel, and some
stranger perched between my legs while I'm on a table.  Ugh!"

   "But there's no reason why you couldn't HAVE children if you really want
to," I insisted.

   "Most people wouldn't agree with you," said Micky.  She was looking at
me strangely.  "Your attitude is quite different from most of the people I
know."

   "You don't care what people think about the two of you being in love," I
argued.  "What's the difference between that and not worrying about what
people think if one of you has a baby?"

   "People have all kinds of names for us the way things are," said Micky.
"I've been called a dyke, and a cunt-lapper, a carpet muncher, and a
wanna-be, and all kinds of things that aren't that nice.  More than one man
in a bar or restaurant we're in just calls me "Butch" when we have rebuffed
him.  Guys can't stand the idea that Susan would find me more attractive
than she does them.  Most people have to assign gender to us, because they
can't think any other way.  Since Susan is the more feminine, I always get
stuck with being the male."

   "You don't look anything close to male," I objected.

   "I'm just telling you the way things are," she said, waving a hand at
me. "People are not tolerant of what we have built.  They pretty much
ignore us after they call us names.  If we had children, though, I can see
people trying to make a lot more trouble."

   "It isn't right," I mumbled, surprised at the heat I felt.

   "Why, thank you Bob," said Micky.  "Maybe we've finally met a real man."
She smiled.  "You'd better be careful, or people will start calling you a
Dutch Boy."

   I looked at her, confused.

   "It means a man who likes to hang around lesbians," she explained.

   "They have a name for THAT?" I asked incredulous.

   "They have names for everyone who isn't just like they are," she sighed.

   "Well," I said, surprised at how dejected I felt for them, "the couples
in my study won't be identified by name.  I'm not sure yet whether it will
be necessary to stipulate whether a particular piece of data is tied to the
man or the woman, but for what it's worth, I'm going to try to fit you guys
in it if I can.  Maybe some day I'll fess up that a same-sex couple was
involved in it.  Come to think of it, I may just do a separate study on
that!"

   "You're sweet," pronounced Susan.

   That made me feel better.  Odd, huh?

   It was getting late.  I stood up.  Things were still just a little
uncomfortable, which was ironic.  First off, I think I was the first man
they'd sat down and talked to in a long time who was willing to take them
as they were.  That made me "strange and different" in the same way they
were "strange and different" to me.  And, even though we were comfortable
talking about things, there was still the residue of our preconceptions
that made things uncomfortable.  They viewed me as a "man", which meant I
was not to be trusted, and was likely to say or do something insensitive. I
viewed them as a life form I knew existed, but which I knew almost nothing
about.  They seemed completely normal, except that they preferred sex with
women instead of men.  That was ironic too, because I liked sex with women
too.

   You see what I mean.  It was difficult to get my thoughts settled, and
that made it ...  uncomfortable.

   I made another appointment with them and left.

   CHAPTER THREE

   A couple of nights later I dropped by my faculty advisor's house.  I was
like an adopted child to Fran, his wife, and she greeted me, as usual, with
an invitation to come into the kitchen and have a piece of pie.  She was
always trying to fatten me up.

   "Ted's not here," she said.  "He had a faculty meeting tonight."

   "I know," I said.  "You're actually the one I wanted to talk to, and I
needed him to be gone for this."

   "Oh?" she responded.  "How interesting!"

   I was suddenly nervous.  She was the only woman I knew well enough to
ask intimate questions of flat out.  And what I wanted to ask her was
pretty intimate.  That caused me to fiddle around a little bit.  I might
have blushed.  Whatever I did, she noticed it.

   "Well, it certainly doesn't look like you just need a shirt mended. 
Have you finally come to sweep me off my feet and seduce me?"

   I have to give you a little information about Fran here.  She was Ted's
second wife, and he had married a lot younger the second time around.  Fran
was probably only five or six years older than I was, and she was a babe.
To look at her you might have thought that Ted had married a coed from one
of his classes, but Fran was straight from the farm when he married her. 
He was visiting his parents after his divorce, and they had taken him to a
square dance to "cheer him up".  Fran was nineteen at the time, and worked
as a waitress in the town cafe.  Every man town drooled over her, which was
one reason the cafe did such a good business.  And every man at the square
dance was drooling over her too.  They couldn't compete with the professor
from the big city, though.  At least not in Fran's eyes.  She asked him to
partner her.  His square dancing was rusty, but the moves came back quickly
and by the end of the night she had snared him.  He was helpless.

   The fact that he now got to come home to a blond bombshell every night
was one of the reasons he was a great professor.  Academia was only his
job. His life was Fran.  He was well balanced.

   "Jenny's doing her homework," Fran purred, referring to their
ten-year-old daughter.  "But it's math, and she's a whiz at that, so we'll
have to hurry.  We wouldn't want her to catch us."

   She teased me like that a lot, but only when we were alone.  Oddly, I
knew she was only kidding.  She was gorgeous and sexy in the extreme, but
she was Ted's wife, and, other than the passing fantasy about her, I
thought of her as a friend, rather than a potential lover.

   "Yeah, well, you may change your mind when you find out what I want to
ask you," I muttered.

   She got serious instantly.

   "OK, shoot," she said, holding the plate with my pie on it in one hand
and a fork in the other.

   I sat down.  She put the pie in front of me and sat across the table
from me.

   "I need to ask you if you ever had ...  sexual feelings ...  for another
woman," I said, looking at the pie, instead of at her.

   She didn't answer, though, and I had to look up.  She was looking at me
intently.

   "Why in the world would you ask me that, Bob?"

   So I explained about Micky and Susan, and how I was all confused,
because they seemed like such normal people, but lived an abnormal
lifestyle.  I also explained that I was having trouble seeing a real, or
logical difference between their relationship and that of a married couple.

   "Other than the fact that they can't have children together," she
prompted.  I had told her that part too.

   "Yes, of course," I agreed, "but lots of married couples choose not to
have children, so even that isn't so different, in a way."

   "I don't know if I should answer your question," she mused.

   "You don't really have to," I said quickly.  "It's just that I don't
know any other women well enough to ask anyone else that question."

   "So, what I hear you saying," she said, sounding like Ted now, "is that
you aren't asking ME the question ...  you're just asking a WOMAN the
question."

   "I guess so," I said weakly.

   "And you are just trying to understand," she said.  She was still
looking at me with a very intent look.

   "Yes!" There was a little frustration in my voice.

   "I don't want you to talk to Ted about this," she said.

   She had already answered the question.  I just didn't have any details.

   "OK," I agreed.

   "Mary Beth Freeman," she said.

   "What?"

   "Mary Beth Freeman and I were best friends.  We went to school together
our whole lives." She looked nervous now, but she went on.  "We spent all
our time together ...  practically lived at each other's houses.  We ... 
learned about sex together."

   "That doesn't sound so odd," I ventured.

   "It was more complicated than that," she said, her voice steady.  We
explored things, and it was all just fun and games at first.  The first
time she had an orgasm it scared us both half to death.  Then, when we
realized that what had happened hadn't hurt her, we kind of went crazy."

   Fran's eyes went a little unfocused as she remembered the kind of
passion I wasn't sure I had ever experienced.

   "When we were fourteen, we blackmailed her brother Billy into showing us
the parts of boys we hadn't ever gotten to see before.  That led to ... 
well, I was scared, but Mary Beth wasn't, and he deflowered her right in
front of me.  Maybe two weeks later he took my virginity too."

   "Wow." That was about all I could come up with at that moment.  I had
visions of a leggy blond Fran tumbling around in bed with her best friend
and her best friend's brother.  I realized my dick was getting stiff, and I
was glad I was sitting down.

   "He looked a lot like you," she said.  "That's probably why I flirt with
you so much."

   "Wow," I said again.

   My curiosity was aroused as well, though, and her willingness to tell me
something so intimate let me ask her for more details.

   "So, you were attracted to both men and women?"

   "No," she said firmly.  "I was attracted to Mary Beth and Billy." She
waved a hand dismissively.  "I'm sure that a lot of people would say that
it was just hormones, but back then it felt very real.  I thought I was in
love with both of them.  And in some ways I WAS in love with them.  But the
point is that I didn't have any interest in other girls.  We did everything
two girls could possibly do together ...  sexually ...  but I never felt
that kind of attraction for any other girl.  Boys were different.  I was
attracted to lots of boys."

   "So you weren't a lesbian," I said.

   "You know what I think?" she asked, relaxing back in her chair a little.
"I think 'lesbian' is a name somebody came up with to label someone who was
different.  I think people are capable of loving each other, and that means
that sometimes a girl loves a girl.  Men can feel the same thing.  It's
just not accepted.  It sounds like your two women are in that situation. 
For that matter I'm convinced it's possible to love more than one person at
a time.  I know I did.  I still love Mary Beth.  I just don't get to see
her any more."

   "But if you DID get to see her ...  would you still ....?"

   She frowned.  "I don't know.  I'm sure we've both changed.  I don't know
if it would be the same or not.  She got married and has two kids.  Billy
joined the Army and got married too.  I don't even know where he is.  I
doubt that we'd feel the same way about each other now, but I just don't
know."

   "So, do you think I should keep these two in the project?" I asked. 
"They seem to be as much in love as anybody else I've seen.  I've only
interviewed them once, but they act ...  married, or at least something
like that."

   She frowned.  "On one hand, your paper is about marriage, and they're
not married, despite how things look.  That could muddy up your study if it
ever came out."

   Then her frown vanished.

   "On the other hand, I loved Mary Beth," Fran said simply.  "If things
had been different I think I could have been very happy being paired with
her.  We didn't even think about things like that back then.  Love is love.
That's my opinion."

   "Thanks," I said.  I felt better somehow, knowing that a woman I liked
and respected, - and who was as normal as the day is long - could feel that
way for another woman.  Even if it was in the past.

   "No problem." She smiled.  "Not a word to Ted.  He might not
understand."

   "Where have you been?" I asked her trying to leer.  "Men have always
gotten excited about two women engaged in hot, sweaty sex."

   "Now Bob," she said softly.  "Just because I let Billy watch while I
licked Mary Beth's scrumptious pussy doesn't mean I'd let you watch.  But
you're right, now that I think about it.  That did always make Billy so
excited that he just had to ...  fuck one of us." Hearing that word from
her lips affected me in ways I wasn't prepared for.  It was a very sensual
word when she used it.  She also gave me that incomprehensible stare again.
"Then again, you DO look a lot like he did when he was in High School. 
Hmmmm..." She trailed off and I got up before I did something stupid.

   She just laughed as I hurried toward the door.

   "Bye, Bob," she giggled.  "Don't be such a stranger.  I always have lots
of pie ...  and other tasty things to eat ...  around the house."

   Her laugher was ringing in my ears as I rushed out of the house.

   =========================================

   My second interview with Micky and Susan was much more relaxed.  I think
that was because I was much more relaxed.  I had done some thinking about
what I'd told Fran - that Micky and Susan acted "married".  It was little
things they did that caused me to think that way.  It was the way they
looked at each other, and their posture when they stood together.  It was
the way that, while telling a story about their past, one picked up the
narrative from the other in that seamless kind of storytelling way that
shows that both have the same memories about something because they lived
it together.  Yet, as in any marriage, there were the inevitable tiny
differences that caused them to argue about what had really happened.

   In that sense, when I saw them the second time, it was easy for me to
think of them as a married couple, and it was just more relaxed somehow.

   The first thing I did was remember to ask for photographs, which I had
forgotten all about on the first visit.  It was startling in a way.  The
pictures they had of when they were much younger were with their husbands,
and family, before they had met.  They both looked like women, but not that
much alike.  They didn't have a lot of pictures of them as a lesbian
couple. But the ones they did have showed a steady progression of features
beginning to blend into that appearance of sisters.  Maybe it was easier to
see when two women were compared.  I don't know, but it was obvious that
they had come to look more alike over the years.

   I already had down how they met, and we went into more detail about what
they liked about each other, and the interests they shared.  One of the
things that was fascinating was that each had some of the stereotypical
attributes of a male.

   Micky, for instance, had taught herself how to do simple plumbing and
electrical work, and to do most home repairs.  Susan had hung around as a
kid while her father worked on their cars, and she took care of vehicle
maintenance.  I was surprised at that, thinking Micky the more aggressive
of the two, and therefore better suited to deal with garage mechanics, most
of whom were male.  Susan laughed and told stories about the few times men
had treated her like a typical clueless woman, and how she turned the
tables on them, telling them why their initial diagnosis of the problem
could not be correct, or suddenly speaking the language they were using.

   Susan also coached a girls softball team, sponsored by the bank she
worked at.  There had been the inevitable parents meeting when word of her
living arrangements leaked out, but she had patiently explained to the
group that, just like most of them didn't look at every teenage boy and
girl as a sexual object, lesbians didn't either.

   "You should have seen the looks on their faces when I told them that,
while I liked girls, I didn't get turned on by LITTLE girls.  I thought
they'd all just curl up and die right there.  People always think that
homosexuals have this overpowering desire to turn everybody else into
homosexuals too.  I asked them if they talked to their kids about being
heterosexual.  None of them would answer, of course.  but I already knew
the answer.  Nobody talks to their kids about being one or the other.  So I
told them that I didn't talk to the kids about being homosexual either."

   "But it turned out OK?" I asked.

   "It turned out better than OK," she grinned.  "I got four volunteer
assistant coaches out of that meeting.  I told them that, under the
circumstances, to protect myself from any allegations, I'd have to have
some of the parents helping coach the team if I was going to stay on as the
head coach.  We were winning that season.  Parents will do anything to keep
their kids on a winning team."

   "I have to ask," I said cautiously.  "Were the volunteers men or women?"

   She laughed again.  "What a good question!  There were two of each!  It
was hilarious.  The whole group got in a huddle and were bargaining about
who would 'have to do it'.  One of the women whispered that she wasn't
going to do it if a man wasn't there, because people would think she was a
lesbian too.  In the end, though, they found out I'm not some beast, and we
all became friends."

   "So, are you invited to places ...  as a couple?" I asked.

   "Rarely," said Micky.  "Only certain people are comfortable enough to do
that.  It makes the other guests nervous too, so we don't do that much."

   "How about other groups?" I asked.  "Are there ...  clubs or something
...  places that lesbians go?"

   "Sure there are," said Susan.  "But they don't appeal to us much.  Some
of those people are pretty militant.  We just enjoy being together.  We go
to the movies, and belong to a bowling league.  Nobody thinks a thing about
it when we show up together.  Besides, we have a few men friends.  I like
being around men.  They're not so competitive with us as they are with
other men.  And the women who know about us don't see us as a threat to
their men either.  It's kind of weird in a way.  Women who are afraid of us
as divorcees, lose that fear because they think we don't like men at all.
It works out OK."

   "I have to say this," I said.  "You guys just aren't what I expected
from a couple that calls themselves 'lesbians'."

   "Why, Bob, whatever do you mean?" asked Micky.  She was smiling and she
was teasing me and we both knew it.  But I was game.

   "Well, for one thing I expected you to hate men too.  But you don't."

   "True," said Susan.  "I miss making love with a man."

   "See what I mean!" I groaned.  "Lesbians just don't miss having sex with
a man."

   "Bob, you poor, poor thing," said Susan.  "You're just like all the
others.  You want to put us in a box ...  define how we're supposed to
feel. Merriam Webster defines "Lesbian" as a female homosexual.  If you go
to the definition of homosexuality, it says: "erotic activity with another
of the same sex " and "the state of being a homosexual"..  If you then look
up "homosexual", it says: "of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency
to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex".

   She had obviously memorized those passages from the dictionary.

   "It says 'tendency' in there, Bob, and 'erotic activity', not that we're
required to hate men, or avoid men, or be disgusted with being involved
sexually with a man."

   Susan was in full lecture mode now, and I could tell that she had done
this before.

   "I love Micky, and I love making love to her and being made love to by
her.  I have a 'tendency' to prefer her lovemaking above all others, but
that doesn't mean I don't have sexual interest in other people.  PEOPLE,
Bob.  Men are part of PEOPLE."

   "So you're actually bisexual," I said stubbornly.

   "Bob, we're just sexual," insisted Micky.  "When I was married I was
faithful to my husband.  So was Susan.  When we weren't married any longer,
and found each other, and fell in love, we decided to be faithful to each
other in exactly the same way."

   "This is hard," I complained.  "I'm trying to understand, but it's
hard."

   "You're making it harder than it has to be," sighed Susan.  "Everybody
does that, though, so why am I surprised that you would too?" She took a
sip of soda.  "Do you have a girlfriend?"

   "Not right now," I said.

   "But you HAVE had a girlfriend?" she prodded.

   "Sure."

   "And were you faithful to her?"

   "Sure."

   "And did you ever look at another woman and wish that you didn't have to
be faithful?"

   "Well, not like that," I objected.  "I mean sure, I noticed other women,
but I didn't want to cheat or anything."

   "It's the same with us.  We notice men ...  we even talk about them
sometimes ...  about what it might be like to do that again ...  but we
don't pursue it because that would cause a separation between us."

   "How about other women?" I asked.  "Do you notice them too?"

   "Not so much," said Micky.

   "Then why do you call yourselves lesbians?" I moaned.

   "I lick her pussy, Bob!" said Micky tersely.  "And she licks mine, and
we suck each other's nipples, and we have long, wet kisses.  That's erotic
behavior, Bob, and it's between two women.  What the hell ELSE are you
going to call it?"

   "It's a label, Bob, like we said before." Susan took over while Micky
tried to relax.  "People have to have a label to put on us.  For us it's
just ...  us.  We love each other, and because of that we do things
together, both sexual and non sexual.  We never thought of ourselves as
'lesbians' until people demanded that we put a name to our relationship."

   In that instant I think I finally got it.  They were just people.  They
had lots of roles in life.  They had roles as employees, and sisters, and
nieces, and daughters.  They had roles as home-fixer-upper, and mechanic,
and bowler.  Susan had a role as a coach.  They were shoppers, and drivers,
and voters, like all the rest of us.  The only difference was that they
each loved another woman, instead of a man.  If you ignored that, they were
as normal as apple pie.

   When you look at a married couple, what do you think about?  If they're
newly wed, then perhaps you think about what they do in the bedroom naked.
But the average married couple doesn't bring that instantly to mind. 
Rather, you see them as individuals, bonded by a legal convention.  You
like some things about him, and her, and maybe there are other things you
don't like.  But you don't judge them based on the fact that they are
probably having sex together.

   Why, then is it, that when we look at a gay couple, all we can think
about is what they do naked in the bedroom?

   It's just prejudice.  That's all.  Plain and simple prejudice.  And
prejudice is in the mind.  It's something you can control if you're willing
to do so.

   I got all of that in that instant.

   "I get it," I said.  "I actually get it!"

   Both women relaxed.  I may have verbalized what I was thinking ...  what
I just wrote above this section of the narrative.  I can't remember
actually.  My mind was all lit up with the epiphany that I was prejudiced
and hadn't even known it.

   It was like a switch had been thrown and a light had been turned on. 
From that point on, they were just Susan and Micky, and I was able to
continue the interview just like I had with anybody else.

   The same thing happened with them that had happened with most of the
couples I had interviewed.  I was fascinated with them as people, and we
became friends.

   And, as had happened with a lot of other couples, we continued having
"interviews" long after all the data had been gathered.  They invited me to
go bowling with them, and I went to softball games, and was invited over
for dinner.  Micky was simply wicked at pin ball, and almost always
outscored me and Susan by double the points.  We even went roller skating.
I had fun that night, because neither of them had been on skates in years,
and I did a lot of catching of women as they tipped backwards.  I might not
have thought of them as potential sexual partners, but catching a woman as
she falls on skates inevitably means you get handfuls of ...  woman ... 
and that's just fun for any guy, you know?  They didn't even scold me for
it either, which I thought was pretty cool of them.

   It was as normal as apple pie.

   If you're a man, you'll understand what I'm talking about when I tell
you that, after initially seeing them as women, each desirable sexually in
her own ways, when I finally spent enough time with them, that faded and I
looked at them as just Micky and Susan, women I knew.  I didn't wonder what
they looked like naked any more, and didn't visualize them naked in bed,
unless they got lovey dovey and kissed each other in front of me.  Then I
got a boner.  But for the most part, I didn't think a lot about them
sexually any more.  That just wasn't one of the roles they could fit into.
Maybe women understand that too.  I don't know if that happens to them or
not.  But it's really cool when you can get to that place with a woman and
be real friends, with no sexual overtones involved.  Women can make better
friends than men.  Maybe that's because they don't compete with men so much
as another man might.

   =============================================================

   And then, as had happened with only a few of the couples I interviewed,
something strange occurred, and the world gave one of those convulsive
little jerks that changes things forever.

   ==============================================================

   What happened was that I had a birthday.  I know that's not so strange,
in and of itself, but I had two new friends and I was one of their only
close male friends, so it was a big deal for them.

   The subject came up while we were in an antique shop, of all things.  We
had been just running around together, wasting time, and went into the shop
just to see what was there.  Micky got all fascinated with an old blow
torch that had a brass body.  She was talking about polishing it up and
displaying it on a shelf.

   "Why in the world would you want to display a blow torch?" I asked.

   "Because it's cool!" said Micky, fondling the tool.  "It's so old, and
nobody uses them any more.  I like old things."

   "Then you'll like me a week from Friday," I laughed.  "I'll be
twenty-five."

   "That's not old!" said Susan.

   "Yes it is," countered Micky, grinning.  "That's a quarter of a century
old."

   We went on about our business and I didn't think anything about it,
other than to admit to myself that a quarter of a century sounded a whole
lot older than twenty-five years, for some reason.

   When we parted company Susan told me to be at their house for a birthday
celebration on Friday night, my birthday.

   ============================================================

   I took wine.  I know you aren't supposed to bring yourself a present to
your own birthday party, but they were throwing it, and I wanted to
contribute more than just a quarter of a century.

   Micky met me at the door.  I was surprised because she was all dolled
up. She had on a suede looking skirt, with a silk blouse and makeup,
including eye shadow and lipstick.  Micky could look good in about
anything, but I had never seen her like this and she was a babe.  She still
looked like a thin runner type woman, but she was a good looking thin
runner type woman.

   She dragged me into the kitchen, where Susan was cooking.  It wasn't
anything fancy, just spaghetti, with green beans and corn, but there were
also fresh home-made hot rolls, something I have a particular weakness for.
Only home-made chocolate chip cookies will turn my crank any harder.

   What surprised me about Susan was that she wasn't dolled up like Micky.
She had on a tank top and running shorts, and her hair was in a pony tail.
She looked like she had just come back from a run, but there was no sign of
sweat or anything like that.  Still, she had that healthy athletic look
that makes a woman look so desirable to a man.  Think about beach
volleyball for a minute.  Yeah, I knew you'd understand.

   "You going somewhere tonight?  I asked Micky curiously.

   "Nope, tonight is your night," she said, peeling the foil off the top of
the wine bottle.  She got into a drawer and pulled out a cork-puller, or
whatever you call those things.

   Then she bent over to clamp the bottle between her knees that silk
blouse drifted away from her chest and I had an unobstructed view of two
very nice breasts.

   They were not encumbered by anything.  She was small enough that the
blouse didn't touch her nipples in that position.  I swallowed, having a
very characteristic, but unwelcome reaction to those breasts.  I'm ashamed
to say that, when she pulled the cork and stood back up, I glanced to see
if her nipples showed through the blouse.  They were mere bumps, and the
pattern in the blouse made them hard to see.

   For some reason my eyes went to Susan's back.  Through the tank top I
saw what was obviously the outline of a sports bra.  I chided myself for
being a letch.

   Dinner was wonderful, with light conversation.  I stuffed myself with
hot rolls, which soaked up most of the wine I drank.  We polished off the
bottle and I wished that I'd brought two.

   Then there was a cake, chocolate, (we had all admitted to being
chocoholics) with chocolate icing.  Spelled out on the top in white icing
was the word "GEEZER".  It had one candle on it.

   "Couldn't use all the candles," said Susan, setting the cake in front of
me.  "Fire hazard." She said it with a straight face.

   "Ha ha," I said grimly.  But I smiled too.

   "Happy birthday, Bob," said Micky softly.

   "Not yet," said Susan, mysteriously.

   "Whadja get me?" I asked like a little boy.  "Come on, come on, whadja
get me?"

   "Something you may not want," said Susan.  "We had a long talk about it,
though, and decided to offer it to you.  You don't have to accept."

   That got my attention.

   "A lifetime membership to Lesbian At Home magazine?" I quipped.  "My own
T shirt that says 'Lesbians don't get down ...  they go down?"

   "Ha, ha," said Micky, mimicking my previous grim voice.

   "We have another saying," said Susan.  "I guess we could put it on a T
shirt for you.  It goes like this: 'Sometimes you feel like a man ... 
sometimes you don't'."

   She let that hang out there and my mind went for the obvious.  Except it
wasn't obvious.  These two had a life together that didn't include that
kind of thing.  I felt bad for even thinking what I was thinking.

   I had to say something, though.  What I came up with was: "Well, it's
catchy, and the right kind of people would understand it instantly.  It's
pithy and funny too."

   "Bob," said Micky in a strange voice.  "We haven't included men in our
relationship because we never met a man who we could both ...  be with ...
under circumstances that would not strain our relationship.  But we've both
missed having a man ...  around ...  sometimes."

   I heard what she was saying, but still couldn't believe she was saying
it, even when she went on.

   "But you're a different kind of guy.  At least we think so.  You know
the deal.  You know how we feel about each other, and you know that
anything that happened would only be ...  sharing ...  and not a promise of
anything else."

   Susan stood up and looked down at me.  I had this insane urge to wipe my
mouth because I felt like a little boy who has frosting all over his face
after somebody just discovered that some of the cake, (made just for
special guests) is missing.

   "We could spend some time with you, Bob ...  intimate time ...  and we
don't think that would hurt anything at all.  We thought about giving you
...  us ...  for your birthday."

   "You have GOT to be shitting me!" I blurted.  My hand slapped over my
mouth instinctively as I cursed.

   Damned if I didn't feel chocolate icing on my lips.

   What I was thinking was that, after everything else that had happened, I
shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that THIS was happening.  But I
WAS surprised.  And I had been surprised EVERY time something like this had
happened.  In a way I shouldn't have been surprised that I was surprised
... about being surprised.

   Or something like that.  You get the drift.

   Of course Micky and Susan had no idea what I was thinking.  What they
heard was rejection.

   "Never mind," said Micky stiffly.  "It was a mistake."

   About then I realized what my outburst must have sounded like to them. I
was their "man friend" ...  their "Dutch boy" ...  who was disgusted by the
very thought of having sex with a couple of lesbians.

   I literally jumped up, knocking the table four inches away from me and
bruising parts of me that I didn't want to bruise.  My unruly friend - the
one that lived in my pants - had started dinner mostly hard, and I had
surreptitiously adjusted him upward, to lie flat on my abdomen.  That meant
that, when I stood, my balls were perfectly positioned to thwack the table
edge, with no bumper, to put it in automotive terms.  The table moved four
inches, and my balls went temporarily flat.  I sat back down with a groan
and put my forehead on the table.

   "Ohhhh shiiiit," I moaned.  My hands went to my crotch.  But I couldn't
feel sorry for myself.  I had something much more important to do.  I
forced my head back up.  They looked a tad bit blurry because there were
tears in my eyes.

   "No!" I croaked.  "Not mistake," I gasped.

   "It sounded like it to me," said Micky tersely.

   "Give me a second," I pleaded.

   Slowly the pain ebbed to the point that I could actually think, and I
was able to breathe deeply enough to almost talk, instead of just groaning.

   "You're acting awfully strange," said Susan.

   "We all act like this when we use a table edge as a nutcracker," I
panted.

   "Oh my!" said Susan, sounding sympathetic.  "I didn't know.  Do you need
something?  Can I get you something for it ...  um them?"

   "No," I said, my voice a little more under control.  "Only time heals
this wound." Then I went on.  "I wasn't ...  I didn't mean for you to think
...  there are things you don't know," I finished, unable to phrase my
comment sensibly.  "I was just surprised, that's all."

   "You sounded more than surprised," said Micky darkly.

   "It's just that this has ...  happened before," I said weakly.

   "You got offered sex by two lesbians and you didn't TELL us that?" Micky
sounded shocked and outraged.

   "No," I moaned.  "Other couples I interviewed ...  things happened ...
and I was surprised then too.  It's just that I never thought this would
happen again."

   "You're not disgusted?" Micky's voice was a little higher than normal.

   "Of course not.  You're both babes.  Why would I be disgusted?" I asked.

   "He called me a babe," said Susan preening.  "He acted just like a man."

   "Of course I act like a man," I said.  "I AM a man.  Or I was until a
few minutes ago.  Now I'm not so sure.  I might be able to store my balls
in my socks from now on.  I'm afraid to look."

   "I'll look!" said Susan impishly.

   CHAPTER FOUR

   A few minutes had passed while I cradled my jewels and waited for the
urge to puke to abate.  Susan tidied up the table and Micky just sat and
watched me do what I'm sure appeared to her to be fondling myself.

   "Are you guys sure about this?" I asked.  "You don't owe me anything or
...  anything."

   "I told you we talked about it," said Susan.  "It's simple.  You're
different than most men ...  special.  You have something to offer us, and
we have something to offer you.  As friends ...  really close friends. 
It's kind of like when Micky and I did something together the first time.
We both thought we'd like it, and we did.  Now we think we'd like to give
us a birthday present for you."

   The way she turned it around, being honest and clever at the same time,
was funny enough that I chuckled.  It didn't hurt so badly any more, though
I was still a little queasy in the stomach.

   "You want Mommy Susan to kiss it and make it all better?" asked Susan in
a sultry voice.  I guess she believed me when I said I wasn't disgusted.  I
should have noticed her self-characterization as 'Mommy Susan', but I
didn't.  I looked at Micky, and she had a tentative smile on her lips. 
That's as far as it went, but she at least didn't look mad any more.

   "Very, very much," I said, looking first at Micky and then back at
Susan. "I'd like that very, very much.  But what about Mommy Micky?"

   I could play that game.  Of course I had no idea what the rules were,
but I was willing to play.

   "Two kisses are much better than one," said Susan, looking at Micky.

   Micky folded her arms under her breasts.  I realized that those nipples
were much more visible right now than they had been earlier.

   "You dressed like that for me?" I asked.

   She nodded, looking uncertain.

   "I'm honored," I said.  I meant it more than words could communicate. 
"You're beautiful."

   "She is, isn't she," said Susan in a voice that almost purred.  "She
looks scrumptious, doesn't she.  You could hardly tell how nervous she is."

   "You're nervous?" I asked Micky.

   "Of COURSE I'm nervous," she grumped.  "I haven't done this in fifteen
years.  I have no idea whether this is a horrible mistake, or one of the
best things that will happen to me this year.  Do you know how unsettling
it is to be horny and nervous at the same time?"

   "You don't have to be nervous," I said.

   "I know that, but I am anyway," she shot back.  "I'm not a virgin, Bob."
She shuffled her feet.  "But I feel like one.  What were you talking about
a minute ago?  It sounded like you've had sex with other people in your
project."

   "That's why I reacted the way I reacted," I explained.  I guess I don't
see myself as the kind of guy who gets ...  um ...  these kinds of
opportunities."

   I had almost said 'sucked into situations like this', but thought better
of it at the last second.

   "And it happened more than once, which was even more surprising.  When
you said ...  what you said ...  it just blew me away because ...  well ...
it's just hard to believe." I wasn't lying.  It WAS hard to believe any of
the women I had interviewed had offered themselves to me.

   "Ooooo" squealed Susan.  "He's even modest, Micky.  Ohhh can I have him,
pleeease.  You know you want to do this, Micky.  We talked about it and you
got wet."

   "I know," said Micky less than enthusiastically.  It's just so different
thinking about him ...  and this ...  and you ...  and him ...  and me."

   I have to point out here that I misunderstood almost everything I had
heard thus far.  I thought that Susan, being the more feminine of the two,
was offering herself, with Micky's blessing, and that was my present.  "Us"
in that scenario meant me and Susan, with Micky's part of the offering
being that she was sharing the love of her life.  I may have understood
their relationship, but I still had traces of my original bias deep down in
my brain.  I had assigned the role of 'male' to Micky, in this lesbian
relationship, like a lot of other people did.  And that bias I had was
responsible for not understanding what was really going on.  All I saw was
that Micky was obviously uncomfortable about all this, so I offered her a
way out.

   "Look, seeing as how it's MY birthday, I should be the one telling you
what I WANT for my birthday.  And seeing as how you two love each other,
and I don't want to mess things up between you, I'm afraid I have to demand
that, if anything sexual goes on, it must include both of you at the same
time.  I'm talking threesome here."

   See, what I thought I had just done was demand something that would be a
deal breaker.  I was actually kind of proud of myself in a way.  Any man
would have been salivating to be able to mate with either of these women,
but I had put their feelings above my own.

   But, like most men, even though they had made the offer clear enough for
a deaf man to understand, I hadn't heard it.

   "Well, of course," said Susan, looking confused.  "We could never do
things with you alone.  That would be cheating!"

   "Say what?" I asked.

   "It's not just one of us," said Susan.  "We're BOTH your birthday
present." She looked at Micky.  "Didn't we TELL him that?" She looked back
at me like I was crazy.

   "I knew that!" I blurted.  I put my head back down on the table.  "No I
didn't." My voice was muffled.

   "That's why I want him," said Micky.  "He's just such a normal, every
day man, but when he's honest like that he's so cute I just want to eat him
up."

   Well, the short story is that I found myself being herded into the
bedroom.

   But you don't want the short story, of course.  The long story is much
more interesting.

   The trip from the kitchen to their bedroom was probably only forty feet
or so.  But all of us were suddenly living a life we were not prepared for
in some ways.  I had never been with two women whose announced intention
was to make love with me together.  Sure, I had been in the room with two
women who were naked, and who were intent on making love, but there had
always been another man present too.  The fact was that I had a sudden
attack of doubt.  Every man dreams, at one time or another, of having two
women vying for his sexual attentions at the same time.  But few men think
about what that means.  It's hard enough to satisfy ONE woman sometimes. 
Making TWO women happy ...  women who had sworn off men to boot ...  well
that's a daunting challenge.

   And I knew, somehow that I had to make them both happy.  This was
something new and risky for them, and even though it was MY birthday, I
knew that this needed to be good for THEM too.

   Add to that the fact that they were leading me toward that private space
no man had been inside - ever - with these two women, and their emotional
state was just as frenzied as my own.  They were breaking one of their own
rules ...  violating that private space, in a way.  Not only were they
breaking their fast of men, they were doing it at the same time, together,
and doing it in the place usually reserved for their love with each other
to be expressed.

   It was a forty-foot trip of starts and stops, kisses and hugs, both
between them and me and them and ...  them.  You might think I felt left
out when they were kissing and groping each other in the hallway, while I
just stood there, leaning against the wall.  Think of it as a conversation
at a cocktail party.  Lots of people are talking when you're not talking,
but it isn't necessarily boring.  You're all there, having a conversation,
and each person adds a little to the situation.  Watching them being in
love with each other was a kick, and they weren't even naked!  And they
they'd turn on me and suddenly I was back in the conversation, kissing and
stroking two beautiful women.

   It was an uphill trip all the way, based on the way we were all panting
when we actually got to the bedroom door.  I pressed Micky against that
door as I kissed her, and her lips were hungry and demanding on mine. 
Susan hugged us both from behind me.  Metaphorically I was the "meat" in a
sandwich, and my own meat was responding as such.  Somewhere between the
kitchen and the bedroom my brain did a function check and, ignoring the
lingering pain in my scrotum, it ordered my prick to make me proud.

   Micky mewled as I shoved my erection into her abdomen.  The sound she
made was one of half terror and half agonized impatience to get at what was
terrorizing her.

   I turned around in the sandwich and treated Susan to the same feeling,
rubbing the lump made by my prick across her mons sideways as I found her
wet and willing lips.  She rubbed back, and rubbed her chest against mine
too.

   Micky opened the bedroom door and pulled us both through it.  Up to that
point in time, not a single word had been said, once we'd left the kitchen.
Oh, there were moans and grunts and rasping breaths to fill the silence, to
say nothing of the wet and sloppy kisses that bounced off the walls, but
nobody said anything in actual words.  My reference to "conversation" was
more a thing of body language than vocal.

   As soon as we entered the inner sanctum, though, they started arguing
immediately.  They argued about who got to take my shirt off, and who got
to unbuckle my belt and unzip my pants.  They were arguing about who got to
pull my underwear down when my pants dropped and it became clear nobody
did, because I wasn't wearing anything for anybody to pull down.

   There was a sudden hush in the room as two women squatted, one on either
side of me, staring at my prick.  Maybe they stared at each other past my
prick.  I don't know.

   Susan stood up and whipped off her tank top.

   "I dressed like a college girl," she explained.  "We wanted you to have
variety." She ripped off the sports bra and shoved her running shorts down
over slim hips.  She wasn't wearing anything under them.  She had the body
of a thirteen year old, except that it was all grown up.  She looked so
smooth that rain wouldn't be able to stick to her body.  "I'm so horny,"
she moaned.

   Micky stood too, and I bent over.  They had forgotten to argue about my
shoes and socks, so I dealt with that and stepped out of my pants, leaving
them on the floor.  When I stood back up I looked at Susan.

   "Wow!" I said appreciatively.  She blushed.

   I turned to look at Micky and saw her fingers were at the buttons of her
blouse.

   "Let me," I asked.  "Please?"

   I teased them by taking my time.  I unbuttoned a button and then spread
the cloth apart.  Twice I traced a finger along the exposed skin.  She was
small enough there was no cleavage, but she shuddered and closed her eyes
the second time I did that.

   "You're taking so long," complained Susan.

   "You were impatient," I scolded her.  "I like unwrapping my presents."

   Micky opened her eyes and looked down as I undid the next to last
button. I pulled the blouse out of her skirt.  She looked past me and let
out an explosive, nervous giggle.  I turned to see Susan pulling her
running shorts back on.

   "Hurry up!" she glared at me.  "I wanna be unwrapped!"

   "The shorts are enough," I grinned.

   When I pulled Micky's blouse all the way open she closed her eyes again.
I traced my fingers across nipples that were now erect and pointed, and she
shuddered again.

   "It feels so different," she murmured.

   "You ain't felt nothin' yet," I said.  I leaned down to suck briefly at
one nipple and she moaned, her hands coming lightly to my head.  Then her
hands went to her skirt.  She unzipped it and it fell to the floor like it
weighed ten pounds.  She was wearing a garter belt and powder blue panties
that were lacy and very feminine.

   "We didn't know what kind of undies you like," she said, her voice just
above a whisper.

   "I like those," I said.  "But, like any man, I can't wait to see you
without them."

   She laughed at that and pushed me away.  I turned and knelt to jerk down
Susan's running shorts as she jumped, surprised at how quickly I moved.  I
leaned forward to lick her pubic hair while I cupped her hard buttocks in
both hands and pulled her against me.  Then I kissed my way up to one of
her equally small breasts and found a rosy stiff nipple waiting for me.  I
sucked on it lovingly and then turned and jumped on the bed, bouncing and
flopping onto my back, spread eagle.

   "Be gentle with me girls," I pleaded in a falsetto voice.

   Then it was a general pileup, with squealing girl voices, and a few
growls from me, as hands fluttered everywhere, rubbing here, cupping there,
squeezing this, pinching that.  Both of them crawled all over the bed. 
Micky kissed me while Susan swallowed my prick whole and then dragged her
lips upward lovingly.

   "I'd almost forgotten how warm they are when they're real," she sighed,
kissing the tip of my cock several times.

   "I remember them being soft and hard at the same time," said Micky,
breaking the kiss to speak and then going back for more.  I had my middle
finger in her pussy and was using it to pull her toward me.

   "Yup," said Susan.  "That's what we got right here ...  soft and warm
and hard all at the same time.

   Then they argued about who got to feel it inside first.  While they were
doing that they kissed each other, and Susan got rid of the rest of what
Micky was wearing.  When she pulled the panties down she dove in between
Micky's thighs and slurped for a few seconds while Micky stretched like a
cat, arching her loins up at her lover's face.  Susan crawled up to push
Micky's face aside and kissed me, her face wet.

   "That's how she tastes," she said when she was done.

   "You taste good," I said turning my head to find Micky's face an inch
away.  "I could get used to that taste."

   "OK," she said softly, "but you probably can't compete.  Susan is the
best pussy-licker in the whole world."

   She pushed herself up then, and straddled my face, lowering her pussy to
my lips.  I reached up to control her hips with my hands.  She settled onto
my lips with a sigh and I did my best to compete.  I felt hot pussy slip
down to wrap my prick in tightness, and Susan's hands came around under
Micky's arms to play with her breasts.  The bed started bouncing.

   "What are you doing back there?" asked Micky, knowing full well what her
lover was doing.

   "I'm giving me Bob's birthday present for him," moaned Susan.  "Ohhh
Micky, you're going to be soooo glad we decided to do this."

   "I'm already glad," purred Micky.  "He's not bad ...  not bad at all."

   Let me make an understatement.  Never having been in this situation
before, with two happy, naked women making love to me, I got a little extra
excited.

   I couldn't talk, because, while Micky didn't weigh all that much, she
knew how to use every ounce to keep her pussy lips welded firmly to the
only set of lips I had.  She was more or less masturbating her clit on my
nose, but because she was moving, shall we say, energetically ...  I had
plenty of time to breathe while she made my whole face wet with that
delicious juice.  I kept trying to nip at her clit with my lips, and
occasionally she let me suck it in, but she couldn't stay still.

   Meanwhile, down in the lower forty, Susan was about to strike oil a lot
sooner than most women strike oil with me, so to speak.  I had the sudden
crystal clear realization that neither of these women could possibly be on
birth control.  Lesbians have no use for the pill, and a diaphragm would be
an equally useless expenditure of funds.  No condom had been produced.  I
thought immediately of Tanya, and then Lizzie and Rachel, two of whom were
suspiciously pregnant after ...  striking oil in Bob's lower forty.  With
Tanya it had been on purpose.  Then I thought of Lisa and her daughter
Nikki, both of whom did things ...  naturally.  I didn't know yet whether
those liaisons might bear fruit.  The Senator's wife had made love with
abandon, but it had only been that one time.  Well three times that one
night, anyway.

   And here I was again, bareback in a fertile pussy, about to do my best
to increase the population if she didn't get off quickly.  About all I
could do was buck my hips up extra hard, because I sure couldn't say
anything.  Whether she got the message or not I don't know.  But what she
said when I exploded made it clear she knew what had just happened.

   "Mmmmmm, he's squirting in me, Micky.  I'd forgotten how good that feels
too ...  all warm and wet ...  mmmmmmm."

   "Ohhhhh fuuuuuck" gasped Micky, and I found out she had only been damp.
She squirted so hard, and squirted so much that I got it in my nose and had
to close my eyes.  I choked for an instant and then her weight left me as
she got up on one knee.  Her hand went between her legs and rubbed
furiously.  It had to be to prolong her orgasm, because she was dripping
all over me as I gasped in air and blew it out my nose.  My hands wiped at
my eyes and I blinked and swallowed at the same time.

   "Sorry," she panted.  "I should have warned you."

   "'s OK," I sputtered.

   Susan's hips had gone into overdrive while all this was happening, and
she groaned her way through her own orgasm as I wiped my face and Micky
finished up and flopped onto her back beside us.  Susan's pussy clamped
down tight, and I raised my head to see her abdominal muscles actually
rippling.  Then she stopped, her head hanging, and her pony tail draped
across the left side of her neck.

   "Ohhhh I had no idea how much I've missed that." she said, her voice
throaty.

   She crawled over to Micky and assumed the classic 69 position.  I saw a
string of semen drip down and Micky opened her mouth to capture it and then
slurped at the pussy I had just filled up.

   I was left to lie there weakly, and gather my strength.

   "You taste good too, Bob," mumbled Micky.

   They pleasured each other through another orgasm apiece.  It isn't fair
that women can have them right in a row like that, with no recovery time.

   Then they returned to me, pushing and pinching and making me move until
each was lying on another side of me, on their stomachs, with their faces
right next to Mister Happy.

   And he WAS happy.  It kind of fit with the birthday thing, you know?

   They argued about who was going to suck it.  What made that hilarious
was that whichever one wasn't claiming rights, had it in her mouth.  It
went something like this:

   Micky (while Susan was sucking): "Hey, don't hog it!  I should get to do
that.  You already had it in your hand AND in your pussy."

   Susan (after pulling off, and while Micky was then sucking it): "No, I
should go first on everything.  I'm trying him out so I'll know if you'll
like it or not."

   Micky (after deep-throating it and then sliding her lips up to suck the
knob, and while Susan was back on it sliding her mouth up and down along
its length): "No, it was my idea to do this in the first place.  I should
get to do it."

   Susan (after tonguing the head and using her hand to squeeze out a drop
of precum (or maybe post cum), which she lapped up, and while Micky was
trying to do the same thing): "No, I got some in my pussy, and now I need
some in my mouth.  It's a balance thing."

   Micky (after kissing up and down its length and then jacking it to full
hardness, and while Susan was trying to deep throat it like she had seen
Micky do): "No, you got some in your pussy and now it's my turn."

   It went on and on like that as they traded back and forth, until I was
ready to go and anxious to find out if the similarities between them
included a tight, hot pussy that would let me squirt in it.

   They might have been out of practice, but they recognized when a prick
was good for what it was intended to do.  I thought it was ironic that
Susan had ridden me, taking the superior position, but Micky wanted to be
underneath.  When we got arranged and I slid into her, she told me what she
wanted.

   "Ahhhhhhh, you're right baby," she said to Susan first.  "This feels so
much better than Henry."

   "Henry?" I asked, digging in deep.  She was, in fact, just as hot and
tight and velvety as Susan.

   "That's our dildo's name," she sighed, thrusting up at me.  "Lie down on
me, Bob, I want to feel your weight on top of me."

   I did, and that meant all I could do was use my hands to pull me toward
her head and then rock back down a little.  I only moved inside her maybe
an inch, but it probably put a lot of pressure on her clit.  Her arms went
around me and she helped me rock.

   "He feels so different," she moaned.

   "It's kind of nice, huh?" asked Susan, sliding her hands along my leg
and up to my buttocks.  She started helping me rock too.

   "I love you baby," moaned Micky, obviously talking to Susan.

   "But you love that too, don't you?" asked Susan.

   "Oh fuck yes," grunted Micky and her velvety pussy became a vice around
my prick.

   Micky made lots of noise when she came, a series of grunts and huffs and
squeaks that, while different, were woven into a rhythm that matched the
walls of her pussy as it milked me.  But I had cum not all that long ago,
and the urge wasn't upon me, so I just rode her a little harder until she
went limp under me.

   "That's one," I whispered.

   "Hey!  I only got one!" complained Susan, her hands sliding down to
tickle me between my ass cheeks.  That made me thrust harder up into Micky.

   Micky spread her legs, pulling her knees up to flank my hips, and I
dropped my knees down to the bed.  I was able to do my little circle thing
then, where I rested almost all my weight on my hips and went in little
circles.  That got her off again and she made all those sounds again.

   We one more time before I felt the urge to fertilize her.  This time I
could talk, so I warned her.

   "Gonna squirt in a few seconds," I moaned.'

   "Mmmmmmm" was the only reply I got from her.

   So I went in deep and stopped, and the only thing that moved was my
prick as it bulged and then spat long ropes of sperm into her belly.

   =================================================================

   All that had taken about an hour.  When you read stories on the
internet, and in Penthouse Forum and places like that, the guy always goes
for hours and squirts gallons of semen and leaves the women limp, sobbing,
but satisfied husks.  Then he stands up, still stiff as a board, and preens
in front of them.

   Well, the fact of the matter was that it was I who was the limp husk
after that hour.  They, on the other hand, were peppy and excited and
voluble in praising each other for their brilliant idea to suck the life
out of poor quarter-of-a-century-old Bob.  Since I was down for the count,
they spent another hour making love to each other.  They ran the gamut of
emotions while doing it.  There were long moments of soft kisses, and
stroking, interspersed with bed-shaking, head board-pounding activity and
cries of release.

   Then both of them were sitting, Indian style, one on each side of me, as
they played with my limp noodle.

   "I had also forgotten how men are so ...  transitory," commented Micky,
pulling fruitlessly at my penis.

   "Be nice," scolded Susan.  "It's his birthday, and he's a quarter of a
century old.  Have some tact."

   "But I feel so empty," complained Micky.  "And you sucked all the good
stuff out of me," she complained further.

   Susan's fingers went to the wet split of her sex and rubbed gently.

   "It felt so good ...  all that warm stuff up inside me." She leaned over
to kiss me, putting her hands on my chest.  Her legs were still folded and
she was resting on both knees, like some kind of Yoga guru.

   "You'll get all hard again ...  won't you Bob?" she asked sweetly.

   "I want to," I said, somewhat weakly, I have to admit.

   "No pressure," she said, kissing me again.  "I think we've just decided
that it may take a while to give you all of your birthday present."

   She rocked back down into a seated position and looked at Micky.

   "What do you think?" she asked.

   "I think I'm glad we did this," said Micky, still playing with my prick.

   "I'm glad you feel that way," said Susan.

   "It feels so different," said Micky.  "I mean it's going to change
things a lot."

   I had been busy looking at their breasts, kind of tuning out what seemed
a little like pillow talk.  But her comment seemed odd somehow, and caught
my attention.

   "We've always wanted this change," said Susan.

   That made me even more curious.  What change could they be talking
about? They were committed to each other, and I had no illusions that I had
just convinced them to take up men again.

   "What are you talking about?" I asked curiously.

   Susan looked down at me fondly.

   "We should have asked you first," she said.  "But once we decided to do
this, I think we got carried away a little bit.

   "You did ask me.  You even said I didn't have to," I pointed out.  "Not
that any sane man would have refused you," I added.

   "No, that's not what I meant," said Susan.  "We thought about what you
said ...  about having babies.  I know we said we weren't interested ... 
but that's changed now."

   "Oh," I said.

   You might be sitting there thinking "Well Duh!, Bob," but how many men
actually get recruited to father children on a woman they're not married
to. Men try to knock women up all the time, but usually that's not the most
welcome outcome, as far as the woman is concerned.  It's pretty rare for a
woman to say "Come on, Bob, just knock me up, please?" It had happened to
me more than once in the last six months, and while YOU might think that
should have prepared me for it, I can argue just as rationally that the law
of averages was on my side for not suspecting anything at all.  So don't
give me a hard time for being surprised.

   "You sure?" I asked.

   I felt a little like a man who went into the bank to make a withdrawal,
and who pulled a grocery shopping list out of his pocket, along with his
pen, while standing at the teller's window.  The teller, thinking it's a
stick-up note, starts shoving money into a sack and thrusts it out at him,
saying "Here, take this!" It wouldn't be at all out of character for a man
in that position to say "You sure?"

   "They will be OUR children, Bob," said Susan, meaning hers and Micky's.
"That means we'll raise them and love them and tell them who their father
is, and how we met him.  You'll always be welcome to come and see them and
interact with them, but Micky and I will raise them together.  Can you live
with that?"

   Remember that pesky little bias I mentioned earlier?  Well, it raised
it's ugly little head again.  With Tanya, impregnating her was a patently
surrogate thing to do.  That baby would have a mommy and a daddy to raise
it, and I had agreed to that.

   Gertie was pregnant, but nobody knew whether Hiram or I had fathered
that one, and she had found a man who would raise it with her anyway.

   Though I didn't know it at this moment, Jane was pregnant too, but even
if I HAD known it, I still wouldn't have been sure it was mine, and I could
never try to intrude on that family to stress any "parental rights" I might
think of.

   I was scheduled to be Rachel's birthday present in a few years, and the
inference was that she was going to let me knock her up then, but she'd
probably live at home, since her primary lover was her father.  Who knew
what would actually happen, but if things DID go that way, there would be a
mommy and a daddy for that baby too.  It was the same with Lisa and her
daughter Nikki, should my seed ever take root there.

   But this seemed different somehow.  These two women were offering to
accept my seed because of who I was.  There was no man in their lives, and
wouldn't be.  If I made them pregnant, my babies would have no father. 
Don't get me wrong ...  I knew quite well that Micky and Susan would make
great parents, and that their children would grow up with the same benefits
as any other child in our society, but it just felt different somehow.  In
THIS case, I felt a need to be involved, should I create life.

   "I'd get to see them?"

   "Of course," said Micky.  "They'll know who you are, and why we decided
to do this."

   "And I'd get to do ...  Daddy things with them?" I asked, not having any
really clear notion of what "Daddy things" actually meant.

   "You'd be their Daddy, Bob," said Susan.

   "But I wouldn't live here," I said, somehow knowing that was true.

   "That's tempting," said Micky seriously, "but I'm not sure that would
work out well."

   "Am I just a handy penis?" I asked.  I was feeling a tad bit insecure I
think.

   "Of course not!" said Susan, putting her hand on my chest.  "You're a
man we admire and respect.  Your seed is precious to us because of who you
are, Bob, and not just because you're a man.  At the same time, the way
things developed, it just seemed like it would be a waste to pass up an
opportunity like this."

   I felt a stirring in my groin.  I don't think it had as much to do with
the fact that two hands were fondling me, as it did with the fact that
these women wanted MY seed, rather than just any man's seed.  That pretty
well banishes insecurity.

   "What if it takes more than once?" I asked, for completely self serving
reasons.

   I guess that showed through, because Micky laughed.

   "We haven't had a man in fifteen years, Bob.  I, for one, had a pretty
good time here, and I'm not waiting another fifteen years to do it again."

   I covered my face with both hands and moaned through my fingers.  "I'm
just a sex toy!"

   Susan was suddenly lying on top of me, her warm body rubbing all over
me.

   "No you're not," she said, kissing my fingers.  "You're going to be the
father of our children.  This is serious, Bob."

   I took my hands away from my face.  "This is crazy, that's what this is.
Women just don't DO this," I said.

   Susan kissed me lightly.  "You may have noticed, Bob, that Micky and I
aren't your average woman."

   =================================================================

   The upshot of it was that she was right.  There was nothing average
about them, even though 99% of their lives was as completely normal as it's
possible to be.  They were two people who decided that what they wanted to
make their lives into was worthwhile, and to heck with what anybody else
thought about it.  They weren't hurting anybody.  They didn't corrupt the
people around them.  They just wanted to be happy, like most couples ... 
loving each other and raising some children.  What they wanted their lives
to be was normal.  They just didn't go about it in the same way as most
other people.

   I went back, again and again.  What was so outrageous about it wasn't
that I impregnated both of them.  What was so outrageous about it was that
our friendship was just like a hundred other friendships I had with a
hundred other people ...  except that this one included having sex with
them sometimes.  There were plenty of times when we went out to dinner and
then went home to watch a movie or something, and nothing happened except
that we all vegged out on the couch and ate things that weren't good for
us. The relationship wasn't BASED on having sex ...  it just INCLUDED
having sex once in a while.  That was what was seemed outrageous.

   Both were elated to have swollen bellies, with all the problems such a
belly brings the average woman, to say nothing of women in their situation.
Both were content to have a "party" with me once or twice a month, to fill
the gap, so to speak, that their usual relationship couldn't fill - at
least physically.  It was too early to tell if two kids would satisfy them
or not, but it was plain that they had a father on tap should his services
be needed again.  At the time I made my notes on this couple, there was
every indication that, barring some unforeseen complication, I would be
"the man" in their lives for years to come.

   But, of course, something unforeseen did happen.  The earth wasn't
finished shaking us up with its little twists and jerks.  Life is
complicated.  That's what makes life interesting sometimes.

   One of those complications is that you'll have to wait to find out what
happened, because that's in another narrative in this series.
   
