Warm Sand

We had two days to kill before the hearing in San Diego, so we killed them driving slowly down the coast of California from warm, deserted beach to warm deserted beach. There was no need for suits, so the three of us swam nude in the cold surf, then warmed our naked selves in a three way knot on the warm sand, three bare bodies wrapped around one another like eels in a can, Claire's nipples hardened by the cold water and the closeness of two testosterone-heated male bodies.

It was casual and intimate, and we found ourselves aroused beyond intension with little effort and no guidelines to limit us. I fucked her almost automatically, then he took his turn on the warm sand right next to me and she spread her legs for the second time in twenty minutes and came in the sun with no one to hear but us.

It was maybe the most erotic two days of my young life and surely the most casual. We were college students, roommates actually, and sex had never been a part of it for us, but after that drive to San Diego it was truly an essential element of our time together. After that she was in his bed or my bed every night, and it didn't matter to any of us that she needed a favorite because there simply wasn't one.

After that wonderful two and a half day drive that ordinarily took less than two hours, we were definitely three of a kind. She walked between us, hand in hand, with each claiming half of her time and all of her body. It was a settled matter. She belonged to both of us and we belonged to her. It was no longer a question of whether we would be together, it was just a fact of life, the way things were.

I am David in this threesome, she is Claire, and he is Jake. There was never a thought of who would be with whom, but it was that we would be with each other, for as long as it worked, and it worked really well for a really long time. It worked until the United States government decided to take issue with North Vietnam and sent Jake to defend the country. He had dropped his classes and that was his fatal mistake. They sent him from Long Beach State to Vietnam without a single hesitation, and he was in fatigues faster than you could say, "Holy shit."

Jake had not planned on joining the service, but plans get changed by the powers that be, and his plans were changed with one letter from Uncle Sam. It came in the mail and he didn't even notice it for two days. "Dear Jake," it said. He was sent to Fort Campbell Kentucky in thirty days from the moment he opened the charming letter from his 'uncle' in Washington DC, reading it to us as we sat at the kitchen table.

Then our situation worked in chunks, with Claire going to Hawaii to be with Jake when he was on leave, and she spent the rest of her time in Long Beach with me at our apartment near the college. I never questioned her being in Hawaii with him, it was how things were supposed to be. He never questioned her being with me at Long Beach, since that too was how things were. It was my asking her to marry me is what sent things into a nosedive.

She paused, looked at the two rings she wore on a chain around her neck, and shrugged. "What about Jake?" she said. I said I loved her, and she said she knew. I said I wanted to be her husband and she nodded. "What about Jake?" she asked again. I had no answer. "I can't marry only one of you," she said.

In two weeks I had an answer. "What about polyamory?" I said. She looked confused and I explained. She listened, then nodded.

"That's the answer," she said with a smile. "I will accept your proposal; I will marry you both."

We told our friends, and they weren't surprised. We got ourselves a church, and we sent out the invitations. We had fifty people there, even my mother came, although she spent the afternoon shaking her head. The most liberal of my relatives were there, my Aunt Amy and Uncle Carl. They were hippies from the sixties and nothing bothers them. Sex with the minister? Fine with them. Handing out joints? Where's the line start?

People knew that after the ceremony Claire would be fucking two guys. Only question was, who would go first. People probably thought we would flip the proverbial coin. Nothing like that. It was a three-at-once. One woman and two men ravishing her at the same time, like on the beach on the way to San Diego those many years ago.

You want to know the problems, right? Well, they weren't sexual. They were financial, whose car got the one car garage, and holiday planning (who went to whose parents and who came for Thanksgiving). That usually took care of itself by who would actually come. My mother would be there, shaking her head; my aunt and uncle, the hippies; my dad once in a while with his latest girlfriend, they got younger each time; and my grandmother, bless her soul, even though she did not understand what was actually happening. For her the biggest issue was who had paid for the wedding. It was us, Claire, Jake, and me.

No one else paid for a thing.

On our first wedding anniversary, we went to Peru and spent a week above twelve thousand feet in Cusco. That settled things since the altitude decided who would be having sex with the bride by issuing altitude sickness to one of the grooms, me, and confining me to bed by myself for most of the time in the highest major city in Peru and not that far from a bathroom.

Sex has never been a big issue for us, not on the beaches on the way to San Diego, and not in the bed in Long Beach. It was always a pretty cut and dried business. She kissed who she was facing and accepted the cock of who she wasn't. We were a pretty equal-opportunity family. I would wait for her to come with Jake and he would wait for me.

The biggest issue was who could get it up fast enough to please her, and neither of us seemed to have a problem with that, and if we did the wait was not all that long. She was a sexually adaptable woman and never had a problem with coming with either of us. I do remember a time, not in Peru, when I couldn't get it up because of medication, but he happily filled in just fine.

The first time we had any of the family visit us it was my mother and she kept asking about the sleeping arrangements. I thought she was asking about the arrangements for her, but what she meant was whether we all slept together in the same bed. Fact is, we decided early on that the one-bed arrangement wouldn't work for us, so we settled on a schedule and each of us would have her for a certain number of nights a week. On the seventh day we would share her at the same time, usually Sunday. That would not have been a good answer for my mother; however, because she would want to know how we arrived at that, would it be fair, and how long we would be on that schedule. It just doesn't have to be that complicated an issue, Mom.

When we drove to San Diego last summer, we revisited each beach we had stopped at in '76. We swam, like before, had sex, like before, and tried to relive the trip again. There was just something different and I realized we were twenty years different ourselves, although the beaches had not changed, if you don't count the housing tract over two of them, and the bodies were just twenty years different now. Older meant not as supple and comfortable on sand that was a lot harder than I remember it being.

Jake is now in insurance, and I run an art gallery in Manhattan Beach. Claire teaches third grade in Torrence, and most of the teachers she works with know us as a family of three, soon to be four. Although we don't know who the father is and frankly we don't care. We often have gatherings at the house and don't spend anytime explaining our arrangement with our friends. They either accept it or they don't. It doesn't seem to matter to most, although I am sure we are the topic of a few hushed conversations around town. "Those two men who share one woman, you know," some people probably whisper in the dark.

Jake came home one day with more on his mind than sports scores, and Claire asked him if anything was wrong. As usual, he brushed it off, but it was clear he was not right. She asked again, saying, "Jay, everything okay today?"

He mumbled something, something about doctors not always giving good news? She asked him again, but he shrugged, said tests came back positive. I realized the tests he was referring to were physical tests from our family doctor. What had not been good news were tests that called for more tests. After two weeks all tests had been confirmed. Jake had been diagnosed with liver cancer. For the next two months we spent more time than we wanted in one doctor's office after another.

In June of that year he started chemo therapy and two months later he was in the hospital with a heart wrenching prognosis. They gave him less than a year but like the fighter he was he lasted two months longer than they thought he would. At his funeral Claire spoke of the time we had with him as a gift that we had to be thankful for. She got a laugh when she said he was one of the best lovers she'd ever had. I later asked her how big that group was and she said, "At least two."

It has been fifteen years since we lost Jake, and yes, Claire and I are still together. We don't plan on bringing anyone else into our family, that had been three and now was two. We have a son, and he was fathered by either Jake or me. Only the doctor knows for sure, for medical purposes, but he is my son as sure as if it was my genes that created him.

His name is Jason and was named after my brother who died at three. He is seventeen and is in his senior year of high school and actually looks a little like both of us. He has my hair color, Jake's shoulders, and my laugh, and he thankfully has Claire's smile.

We have made a pilgrimage each year since Jake's passing to the beaches the three of us visited back in the summer of 1976. We can't swim nude now, because of the houses that overlook the beaches that were once secluded, but we surf, make love after dark, and often just sit and feel the vibe of his spirit. Each one is still a special spot for us, and I feel it just as much as Claire does.

Jake was not only the man I shared a wife with, he was my best friend, a person I trusted like a brother, and someone I was willing to let have my wife three times a week and call him her other husband. As kids we did most things together, and as adults we continued that routine right up until the time he left us. Yes, I miss him, as I know Claire does. I know she loved both of us and polyamorous relationships can and have worked throughout history.

When we left for San Diego in the summer of '76 I did not realize it would be a trip that would last a lifetime, but as I look back it has to be the most important journey of my life. We were going to attend a traffic court hearing over a ticket I got at San Diego State while trying to use time left on an unexpired parking meter. It ran out before I was able to get back, and that ticket ended up changing my life forever.