Long Simmering Swing

We drove straight from the wedding to Rockford to stay at V’s parents’ house while we searched for an apartment. Frank and Lisa (my new in-laws) have it good! Nice big house on the western shore of Lake Rockford. Frank has all the toys; ski boat, jet skis, a ’60 Corvette, ’66 Mustang Cobra GT, country club membership, season tickets for football, basketball and baseball, a twin engine Beechcraft for business, a condo at Vail and a condo at Corpus Christi where he keeps his deep sea fishing rig. I had met them a few times at State U before we got married and went fishing for marlin once with them. I knew her folks were rich, but I really had no idea.

We started apartment hunting. I liked the first one we saw, but we had to check out a dozen more before V settled on one that she liked. It was a nice downstairs one bedroom, close to my work and close to one of her father’s stores, but not too close to her parent’s house. Within days of signing a six-month lease, the place was immaculately furnished, compliments of Frank.

Frank also took me to his tailor for my work clothes. Within a week I had two finely tailored three-piece suits, a solid charcoal gray and a navy blue, with a half dozen other suits on order. Frank made sure that I projected a prosperous image for my new firm.

What with setting up household, baseball games at night, flying to Corpus to fish on the weekends, playing golf at the Rockford Valley CC, and playing with Frank’s toys on Lake Rockford, plus a quick trip for the Fourth to Colorado to escape the heat, it was a wonder that I was ready to report to work on the fifth of July. Damn, my first day at work and I was exhausted.

I had thought that work would be a pleasure, an opportunity to apply what I had worked so hard to learn at State U, plus learning how it was really done. I quickly learned that in the real world of deadlines, big money contracts, and zero tolerance for mistakes, that college was a cakewalk. My visions of working an eight hour day with bright, congenial colleges and then coming home to a lovely wife, eager to feed me and fuck my brains out was an illusion. Eight hours regularly stretched into ten, sometimes twelve hours. Saturday mornings were regularly gobbled up as I tried to catch up. My colleges were an egotistical bunch, ruthless in pursuit of their professional goals. My evenings were consumed with sports events or dinner with the in-laws or my bosses. My lovely wife didn’t cook, and didn’t have the time; she was working for her dad, learning the ropes, being groomed to take over his business when the time came. (So that’s why she majored in finance.) It wasn’t at all unusual for me to drag my butt in after a long day, finding no wife but instead finding yet another message on the answering machine with a request to join them at the ballpark or the Club. Sometimes I made it, but sometimes I merely consumed a microwaved frozen lasagna and scotch or two, before heading to bed alone.

The first six months flew by. I was just getting used to and comfortable in the new apartment when V wanted me to look at a house she had found. It was in a very desirable neighborhood, a big house with lush grounds. We pulled through the gates and onto the circular drive, parking under a porte-cochere. The house was sort of modern, massive, done in ragged chunks of white limestone and trimmed in rough-cut cedar, evocative of a mountain lodge. Inside the house was equally stunning, with soaring ceilings, rough-hewn beams, a massive stone fireplace, knotty yellow pine walls in the den (the real stuff, individual boards three to five inches wide), marble floors. The kitchen was dated, but was large and well laid out. The bedrooms were nice sized, but the closets were small and the baths all needed some work. Outside was a paradise. A large free form pool with a waterfall anchored the extensive flagstone patio, which was surrounded by a dense garden that graded from flowering easy formality into a jungle backdrop. The place had complete privacy. I looked around and thought, ‘This is nice! Real nice! Someday…’

“Do you like it?” she bubbled.

“Yeah! Its beautiful.”

“Good, because I bought it.”

That statement took a moment to sink in. “You bought it? V, I don’t make the kind of money...”

“It belonged to friends of Mom and Dad. I had been here a few times as a kid and always loved it. They were about to put it on the market. Dad told me about it and I jumped on it.”

“But V, I can’t afford…”

“Don’t worry Honey, I paid cash for it out of my trust funds.”

“Trust funds? What trust funds?”

“Dad has been socking it away for me since I was little. Over the years it grew into a sizable sum. Don’t worry Baby, there’s still plenty left.”

“You didn’t tell me about any trust funds.”

“Well, Daddy said to never tell anyone about it. He was afraid someone would marry me for my money. You married me because you love me.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Oh yeah, I’m starting in the shipping office next week, handling deliveries to customers.” She had been working the floor as a salesman at a nearby Designer House.

“That’s great honey,” I said looking around our new house.

“You want to go skinny dipping?” She didn’t have to ask twice.

A few weeks later I was promoted to Associate Engineer and given the responsibility of overseeing a project that was nearing completion. It was a freeway interchange in Kansas City and required me to travel to Kansas City once a week for a few days. Actually someone else was watching out for the project and watching me to be sure that I could handle the job. The net result was big increase in salary, but less time at home.

I’d come home to the ‘Lodge’ and find the place swarming with Mexican laborers as they ripped out the kitchen and ripped out walls in the bedroom wing. V and I slept on a futon spread out before the massive fireplace in the living room. The weekends I didn’t work were spent in Corpus fishing, or playing golf. The nights were still filled with sports events and family dinners at the club or some other swanky restaurant.

Another six months passed and the remodeling was complete. The kitchen was now something out of Architectural Digest as was the bedroom wing. The original five bedrooms and three baths had been rearranged into three bedrooms and two baths. Actually two of the original bedrooms and their shared bath remained pretty much the same except for an increase in closet space, the addition of a walk-in shower to the Jack and Jill bath arrangement, and the replacement of all the other bath fixtures and tile work. The other three bedrooms and two baths were converted into a Master suite with a luxurious bath and huge closets. One year out of college and I was living in a show place.

It was weird. I was knocking down more money than I ever dreamed of, but I had no place to spend it. No house note, no car note, no furniture note, no entertainment costs to speak of. I did have to pay the utilities, taxes and insurance, and on a place like the ‘Lodge’, those costs made me cringe. Hey, I’m not complaining, it just isn’t what I ever envisioned.

The biggest problem was there was precious little time for myself and there was no time for V and me to be alone. I was becoming soft and had put on few pounds. My new suits were getting a little too snug and my favorite jeans suddenly didn’t fit. I began jogging at lunch rather than chowing down with my boss and compatriots. I joined a gym and forced myself to make time for a workout. Soon the bod was slimming down, and my muscles were firming up. Unfortunately, I now had even less time to relax and debauch.

Our sex life took a hit. Not all at once, but gradually, insidiously, a creeping decay that went unacknowledged. First to degrade was the quality of sex. No longer did I have the time or energy to spend two hours making love in the evenings. No longer did we make love two, three times a day. Except for Sunday mornings, sex devolved into a series of quickies. A quick fuck, a quick blowjob was what I was settling for; V was settling for masturbating with a vibrator to get off. Next to go was the frequency. Most evenings after a ball game or a late dinner, we were both simply too tired. There were simply not enough hours in a day.

We realized that her parents were gobbling up what little free time we had after work. It was hard to turn down an opportunity to go deep-sea fishing. It was hard to turn down box seats behind home plate or box seats at mid-court. It was hard to pass up a weekend of snow skiing. It was hard to pass up playing golf. It was hard to settle for that frozen lasagna rather than dining on prime rib or lobster, but damn it, something had to give. We began showing some discipline by not trying to do it all. We realized what we already knew. There was nothing better than lying about the pool nude, sunning and fucking, except perhaps wandering around the house nude all day and being very creative and spontaneous about sex.

We investigated a couple of nudist parks within an easy drive of Rockford. They were a disappointment. The first was place was stuck back in the piney woods. The pool was incredibly small and was the only amenity. There were a few old trailers, streaked green with algae and a few tent sites. The patrons were mostly older and decidedly lower middle class. The other one wasn’t much better.

We did make it back to El Sol de Maya for several three-day weekends. Those were occasions of rejuvenation and liberation. We really enjoyed it there. I got over my reluctance to use room service for room service. We became comfortable using the caves at the pool. No one ever bothered us or approached while we screwed, but outside we were approached often and I had to wonder what it would be like. I knew I wouldn’t have any problem fucking another woman, but I didn’t know how I’d handle some other guy fucking my wife. We talked about it, or rather danced around the subject. V wasn’t too keen on the idea of me having sex with someone else and she wasn’t keen about having sex with a stranger.

A little more than two years had passed since our wedding when V got a letter from Ginger. Jake had finished training and had been assigned a permanent duty station at the Air Force base on the south side of Rockford. We hadn’t seen them since their wedding. V and Ginger had naturally kept in touch with cards and letters, plus the occasional phone call, but Jake and I naturally hadn’t directly communicated at all. I knew through V and Ginger that Jake had been assigned to fly right seat in the C-130, a four-engine turboprop trash hauler. I also knew that he was very pleased with his assignment.

V and I were both excited that our good friends would be living so close. We had met a lot of people and socialized, but we really didn’t have any really close friends to speak of. Not the kind of friends that you could trust with intimate secrets. The Air Force base was about an hour drive from our humble abode and V and I hoped that we would see them often.

It was mid-October when Jake reported for duty. They had taken up temporary quarters in base housing while they looked for a house off base. V and I arrived at about 6:30 PM, it was a Tuesday and Jake had a training flight scheduled for 2:00 AM later that night. What a deal! We really couldn’t stay very long, nor could we party, but it was great to see them.

Ginger was as lovely as ever. Dressed in cutoff jeans and tight t-shirt with a low neckline, she was braless as her nipples clearly stood out from the fabric. When I looked into her clear green eyes, I thought back to the many, many times that we had fucked with complete abandon. I gave her a hug and a kiss, wanting to grind my hips into her, but Jake was right there. I should have taken the opportunity.

Jake clutched V tight against his bare chest and ground his crotch into my wife! The kiss was long, very long. V was a little flustered when she broke away from him, but pretended that nothing had really happened, even though his PT shorts were tented out. Ginger smiled sheepishly. I let it slide; after all we hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

Ginger gently admonished him, “Honey, we’ve got company. Go put on a shirt.”

Their quarters were still littered with packing boxes. Ginger had somehow managed to find the right pots and pans to cook a great supper. Over dinner we tried to catch up with our lives. I learned that Jake had passed up a fighter to take the venerable transport. He related how the sports models were a bit cramped for someone his size and how after only two hours or so in a T-38 he was cramped and very uncomfortable.

“I realized that I was a pussy, but hell, I knew I couldn’t handle a twelve hour mission in a fighter, strapped in, unable to stretch, unable to pee except in my flight suit, and still be able to make split second decisions. Shit, if I was wrong, it might result in me killing a bunch of friendlies on the ground, all because I was cramped and distracted.

“In a trash hauler, I can at least get up, get a cup of coffee and take a civilized leak. Besides, they’re really a lot of fun. Oh, you don’t get to do all the turning and burning, but when you do a short field landing with no room to spare, I guarantee that you will eat that seat cushion with your ass.

“But the big thrill is doing a low attitude extraction. You know, drop the ramp in the back, flying balls to walls, wheels up, ten feet off the deck. When that chute pops, you can feel the aircraft stop in midair for a fraction of a second. You’ve got pull the nose up as soon as it pops or you’re going to have mud up your nose. Of course after it pops and the pallet of toilet paper slides out, the nose pitches up and you’re off into the wild blue again. Love it!”

As much fun as Jake had been having over the last two years, for Ginger it was another story. For the first year they were in Del Rio, Texas, not exactly a garden spot and nearly a day’s drive to somewhere else. They were only going to be there for a year, and decent jobs for her were non-existent. When Jake went off to train in the C-130, it wasn’t much better. Base housing was always marginal at best. Still it gave her time paint, a hobby I had no idea that she was interested in, nor did I have a clue as to how good she really was. It suddenly dawned on me that the reason I thought that she was sweet but shallow, was I that I was the one who had been shallow.

I gave them the run down on how I was building bridges. It felt so mundane compared to what Jake was doing. V related how she was now an assistant manager at her store and all the trials and tribulations of remodeling the ‘Lodge’ while we lived there. Even at its worst moments, it was far, far better than living in the government-issued crap-hole that Jake and Ginger now occupied.

Towards the end of the evening Jake asked me if we had ever gone back to El Sol de Maya.

“Yeah. Four times. Like I said, we love it.”

“Too bad we missed you. We went last spring when I was on leave. I suggested that we go to Cancun and Ginger asked if we could go where you two went on your honeymoon. I was surprised. I said ‘Honey, do you know that it’s a nudist resort?’ She said, ‘Yes, Vanessa told me all about it. Said it was really fun.’ So we went.”

I looked over at Ginger and she blushed. “Did you get naked Ginger?” I mischievously asked.

“David! Don’t be an ass,” castigated V. “Really, you act like a child sometimes.”

“It took us a little while to get up the courage, but you were right old buddy, it’s a great place!”

The girls chatted and the guys swapped lies. Later I found out that V and Ginger talked about house hunting, where to look, which areas to avoid. I also discovered that she offered Ginger a job. Jake and I talked sports, about the room service maids and some of the folks we had met at El Sol de Maya. Jake was excited to discover that I access to great seats at just about every game in town. First thing we knew, it was past ten. Jake needed some shut-eye and we had had to get home. Before we left, we invited them over Friday night and if they could come over, they should plan on spending the night. Jake said it all depended on the duty roster, but if they could make it they would come.

Naturally, things got screwed up. Jake had duty until Sunday evening, so we rescheduled the get together for the following weekend. That didn’t stop V and Ginger from getting together, after all, Ginger was finally going to get to use her degree in Interior Design at Design House. They met for paper work and skipped out for house hunting and lunch. It helps to be the top dog’s daughter when it comes to flexibility.

I got called out of town and looked like our weekend would have to be delayed again. I told V to hold off on canceling until the last minute. I finished up at my site work and made it home late Friday afternoon. I wasn’t home but fifteen minutes when the Dawson’s arrived.