We are the four. We've known each other since high school. We went to the same college. We were on the same football team together with the same major. We married cheerleaders with great personalities and bodies to match. In graduate school, we studied together in Computer Science with different areas of specialty.
Armed with graduate degrees, we established ourselves as independent contractors in Information Technology. We signed consulting contracts as individuals but worked them all as a team. Our expertise in varied areas of the IT world allowed us to bid opportunities not available to a single practitioner. Over time, we've picked up considerable education from each other. We function as an integrated unit although we look like independent contractors to the outside world, including the tax agencies.
I'm Gene. My specialty is in computer/human interfaces. I also specialize in network interfaces. I married Jamie during my first year of graduate school. Vince is our information security guy. Vince is married to Kimberlie, Kim to most of us. Doug is our data specialist who shares his life with Val. Finally, there's Burt. Burt's specialty is computer languages. His wife, Lois, swears he mumbles incoherently when sleeping and dreams in JavaScript.
Our wives all know each other and the four couples maintain an active social life without the complications of benefits. All four women work and while children are a possibility, they're sometime in the future.
We live within a short distance of each other and our home offices are crammed with the tools of our trade and look like the bridge of a starship. We keep our own records and at the end of each quarter we pay each other as necessary to level our incomes.
Separately, as employees of some Silicone Valley enterprise, we'd make about $140K a year each. Working together, we each average more than four times that. The best part of the arrangement is that we don't have to work too hard, the commute is measured in feet and inches and we can create time off whenever we want. Golf is one of our priorities and we play twice a week.
Five years ago, I organized a week long golf getaway for the four of us. Originally, I thought we'd go with our wives but they declined. Jamie explained to me that the wives had little interest in killing time in some golf wilderness while we disappeared to chase a little white ball into the woods.
I worked with an agency that specializes in golf getaways. I settled on seven nights, six days at a mountain resort with four nearby nationally and state ranked golf courses and a number of other private clubs that the agency could book for us. The result was an eight day, seven nights, outing with two travel days and six days of golf on six different courses.
It wasn't cheap but it was incredible. Travel was first class. We were picked up at the airport and shuttled to the resort where a mini-van was available for transportation to and from the courses or whenever we wished to leave the resort. Carol, the resort concierge, met us in the lobby, checked us in and showed us our room.
We had a four bedroom suite, each with its own bathroom, on the limited access top floor of the resort. The suite had a large common area with kitchen, dining and living sections and a huge 85 inch television. A short walk from the suite and up a flight of stairs was a pool and hot tub reserved for the residents of the top floor.
Our days were simple. Breakfast, golf, a lazy afternoon, dinner, more free time and sleep. Breakfast was in the resort hotel and the golf courses were spectacular. We played a modified version of Stableford scoring with a five dollar Nassau payoff. Afternoons were spent sleeping or soaking in the roof top hot tub. Dinner each night was a different ethnic cuisine, some of which were off the resort grounds. Evenings we watched a movie or sports and we slept well in preparation for the next day. Carol checked with us twice a day, after breakfast and before dinner.
At home we were greeted like conquering heroes. Nobody had had sex for over seven days and our wives wanted to make up for lost time. None of us objected. The whole thing was such a success, including the homecoming, that we planned to do it again the next year.
I worked with the same agency and selected a different resort for the next golf trip. The resort had nine courses on its property and another thirty nearby. I selected four on the property and two others with national rankings.
We planned the same routine. However, this time we had two, two bedroom suites across the hall from each other and the hot tub and pool were shared with the rest of the guests. The restaurants were excellent but uniform in offerings. It was less expensive than the previous year and we did have a good time, but we noticed the missing amenities and variations and thought the lower cost didn't compensate for the loss of luxury.
The next year we went back to the original resort. We scheduled the same suite, three of the original golf courses and three we hadn't played. Carol, the concierge, remembered us from two years ago and led us to our room. The routine was the same, breakfast, golf, rest, dinner, something social and sleep.
The evening of the third night we were there, there were no sports on television and no movies we could agree on. Burt spent about ten minutes with the television remote searching the various channels available. He discovered an adult service with soft pornography films. He put on one and we settled in to watch. Within fifteen minutes, we were all unhappy with the result. Not only were the scenes unrealistic, they were obviously staged. More than that, it reminded us that we were hundreds of miles away from home and without female companionship.
We killed the flick and Doug searched for a deck of cards. His thinking was we could play poker to kill the evening. When he didn't find any, he grabbed a room key and headed out the door to find Carol and a deck of cards. Burt went with him.
I unpacked my laptop and began idly searching the internet and Vince fell asleep on the sofa. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. Vince woke up but I answered the phone. Burt was on the other end.
"Gene," he said. "You and Vince have to come down here."
"Down where?" I asked.
"In the lounge," explained Burt.
"What are you doing in the lounge?" I asked. "I thought you were looking for a deck of cards?"
"We were," explained Burt. "But we found something better. Infinitely better."
"Okay. I'm listening," I responded.
"It's the lounge," explained Burt again. "It's crawling with women and I think they're all looking for connections."
"So?" I asked.
"Don't you get it?" he asked. "Live women, looking for sex," he said.
I could hear the excitement in his voice although I didn't see how it applied to us. "What do you want us to do?" I asked.
"Get your asses down here," stated Burt. "We can't miss."
"Did you forget you're married and so are the rest of us?" I asked.
"Whose to know?" he responded. "I don't plan on saying anything when we get home."
"You're nuts, you know," I chided him. "And you're playing with fire."