[This is the longest story I have published here, and I would like to request something of readers. This piece has a couple of themes that some people don't like. If you are offended by bisexuality or sexual interactions between people of the same sex, or by a wife enjoying sex with someone who is not her husband, then you might want to skip this one. I respect your judgment but don't want to waste your time, if these are things you're not into, and I hope that the ratings and comments reflect the quality of the story, rather than the expectations of readers. ]
My wife always hated Mike. Well not always. I had gone to school with him, and Mike and I double-dated with Deborah and her best friend, and wouldn't you know, I married Deborah and he married Alison. Deborah liked Mike all right back then, we would go out drinking and dancing, hiking and wandering the beach, we did everything together and we were all friends.
After they had been married six months or so, something happened. Alison told Deborah all about it, but I never heard the details. Long story short, there were a lot of tears, a lot of anger, an ugly divorce, and Alison moved off to Bumfuck somewhere. I hung out with Mike a little bit but by then Deborah hated him, and he drifted away.
We settled into a quiet neighborhood and I had a nice job, a nice routine. I wore a tie to work, carried a briefcase, Deborah would pack me a lunch, give me a kiss when I got home. Watch the news, maybe have a drink, go to bed, maybe sex and maybe not, fall asleep and get up and do it all again. We were happy. We went to a baseball game sometimes, out to dinner regularly once I had worked long enough to make money for things like that. We weren't really the clubby type and were more likely to spend a Saturday night at home than going out somewhere. In fact, after a few years of marriage we never went out dancing or partying. Our friends started having kids but we never did, so it was just the two of us at home.
One morning I was riding the Metro into town and guess who I ran into: Mike. He was looking healthy and happy, and was working in an office building a few blocks from mine. He and I started meeting up occasionally for lunch, to talk about old times and catch up on things. Mike was always a little more ambitious than me, and he had worked himself up in his company pretty fast; he was an office director now, he said, still single. He never explained what had happened with Alison but honestly I had never considered any of that to be my business, anyway.
Deborah was not too happy to hear that I had bumped into Mike and was hanging out with him again, but I would tell her scraps of news about him, sort of "normalizing" him as they say, and after a few months I think she mostly forgot that she was supposed to be mad at him.
I guess it was the natural inevitable progression of things, I invited him over for dinner on a Friday. I gave Deborah good advance warning, and she tried to scowl at me but I think her anger had mostly passed by then. Rather than having her cook something, we decided to put some hamburgers on the grill, I'd cook on the deck. Deborah picked up some meat, buns, beer, some hot dogs -- a good thing about grilling is that you end up with a ton of leftovers, lunch for the rest of the week. She was acting cheerful and I hoped she would just let the past be.
We didn't talk much about it, once we had the supplies. It would be nothing to fire up the grill and throw some meat on. When I left for work in the morning I reminded Deborah he'd be coming about seven. Quick kiss, catch the train, same old.
I got home about six thirty, changed into shorts for the weekend, and sure enough at seven exactly there's a knock at the door. I let Mike in; he had brought some beer, too, and we had some laughs about being well-supplied. He likes Stella, I had bought Modelo, so we were fixed there.
Deborah came into the living room to greet him, rather coolly, I thought. She gave him what they call a "church hug" and took his beer off to the refrigerator.
"Wow, she's still looking great," Mike said. "You did real good for yourself there."
"She's a sweetie," I said. I was curious to see how the animosity between them worked out.
We got into the beer right away. I turned out that Deborah also liked to drink Stella, so they worked on a twelve-pack while I had the Modelo to myself. It was one of those beautiful evenings, really perfect, and we sat out on the deck.
We lucked out with this house, I'll tell ya. We back onto the woods, there is a creek back there that is county property, so it can't be developed and we get furry friends wandering into the yard all the time, from possums to deer. We even had a black bear pass through one time. The house next door is a strange story, I don't really understand, they graded the property and started to dig a foundation and then just left it. It's been years. And the other side is a retired couple who have a summer home that they go away to, so we have perfect peace and quiet during the warm months.
I was standing at the grill, spatula in hand, watching the burgers sizzle, and Mike and Deborah were in deck chairs, yacking and sipping their beers. My ears perked up when I heard Deborah ask, "So have you heard anything from Alison?"
"No," Mike said. "I was sorry how that ended, but I don't even know where she lives now. Do you stay in touch with her?"
Deborah shook her head and I could see some old feelings coming back. "No," she said. "She left town and called a couple of times but it's been years."
Mike said, "I was sorry you got caught up in the whole divorce thing."
"I didn't get 'caught up,'" Deborah replied defensively. "I was her friend, she talked to me."
"Well I hope you forgive me for all that," Mike said "We were young and I was stupid. Also, she was not entirely blameless."
From the few stories I'd heard, I knew that there were definitely two sides to it.
We popped another round while the meat sizzled. Everybody's different but I like my weenie burnt a little, you know, swollen till it's almost ready to pop open, and the hot dogs were ready so I pulled them off the fire and set a loaded-up paper plate on the table.
"So what have you been doing?" Deborah asked Mike, making a noble attempt to maintain peace.
"I'm working at Dunne and Benthar," he said, "I go to the lake on the weekends, that's my big fun. Mainly I guess like a lot of us I've settled into a routine. I'm not unhappy."
"What do you do, go fishing?" I asked. I would expect Mike to have a boat. A nice boat.
"No," he said, "I go to Rockinore. There's a campground, places to swim, a nice beach."
"Hmm," Deborah said, with a glance at me. "Isn't that the gay place?"
He laughed. "Yeah, there's a gay area and it's known for that. But all kinds of people go there. Well, not kids." Looking at Mike, and knowing him for years, I would never have doubted he was straight. He is a little taller than me, clean cut, he was wearing a polo shirt and shorts and it looked like he works out, but that doesn't tell you one way or the other about his sexual orientation. Nothing had ever set off my gaydar, so it was a little interesting to entertain the possibility. A little amusing to think I would have missed that.
"So are you gay?" she asked him, never having been the beat-around-the-bush type.
Mike seemed to be enjoying the mystery. "Oh no," he said. "I'm not gay. But those are some fun people to hang out with."
"I wouldn't know," I said.
"Actually," Mike continued, "I usually hang out at the straight end, or maybe I should say the 'straighter' end. But, you know, not always, maybe sixty-forty. They kind of blend together."
"That sounds pretty gay," Deborah said.
"Yeah, I suppose it does. I think it's a matter of how you identify, isn't it? I usually feel like I fit in everywhere."
Deborah looked like she had questions. In the meantime, hamburgers were ready. Deborah had spread everything out on the picnic table, onions, mustard, the works, and we loaded up and pigged out cheerfully. I hung a trash bag at the end of the table for empty beer bottles.
As we were finishing dinner, Deborah said, "So Rockinore, isn't that a clothing optional place? Like a nudist beach?"
Mike nodded. "You don't have to be naked, but most people are. Almost everybody."
"Do you go naked there?" she asked him.
"Oh yeah, I do," Mike said.
That soaked in for a moment as the sun descended toward the horizon and the birds began one last final song before bedtime.
"So what's that about?" I asked him, finally, breaking the silence. "What do people do there? I can't picture it."
"Well I'm not going to lie," Mike said. "Stuff happens out there. More or less constantly. They call it a 'recreation area,' and the joke is that there is a lotta recreatin' going on. Just a lot of friendly people, and nobody's a stranger. They just happen to have no clothes on. Also, not a lot of sexual hang-ups."
"Well that sounds really different," I said. "I could never go to a nude beach. I'd be embarrassed."
"I remember the first time I went to the lake," Mike said. "This was a long time ago. In fact, Alison and I went with some people, that's how long it's been."
"Did she go naked?" Deborah asked. The beer was loosening her up. I always enjoyed her when she got like this. She'd say things she would never have said otherwise.
"Yeah, she did," Mike said. "It was her idea. She took to it like a fish in water."
Alison naked... that was a pretty nice picture. Mike standing beside her kind of ruined the image for me.
"She never mentioned that to me," Deborah said. The implication was that Mike might be lying.
He shrugged. "I know you two talked a lot." The implication was that he held Deborah partly responsible for his divorce.
The implications were getting a little thick.
"So what do you do there?" Deborah asked, bringing us back to a less controversial zone.
Mike studied his Stella for a minute. "I kind of have two lives," he said. "Work and play."
"That's fine," Deborah said. "I didn't mean to pry."
"No, no, that's fine. We've known each other a long time. It's great to see you guys again, by the way. I don't have any secrets from you."
He continued. "Sometimes we refer to the place as 'the garden of earthly delights,' if that gives you a clue. Mainly that's where my friends are. It's a county park, so you pay to go in and park. There is a long beach on the lake, it's more gravel than sand but still nice. Normally what I do is throw a towel down, well I have a rug these days. I bring a couple of things, plop down on the beach and see what happens."
"Sounds like fun," I said, not really believing it sounded like fun.
"And it's a nudist beach?" Deborah asked.
"Yeah, I guess I skipped that step. I take off my clothes then plop down."
"And everybody who walks by is naked," I said.
"Yes," Mike said. "Haven't you guys ever gone to a nude beach?"
"No," I said.
Deborah did not say anything. In fact her silence was kind of conspicuous and we both turned to her.
"My grandparents lived in Santa Barbara." She looked a little embarrassed, probably because after all these years she had never mentioned this to me. "They needed somebody to look out for them, and my parents sent me there in the summer when I was in college. My friends and I sometimes went to a nude beach out there."
