TAGS: Party, extramarital, nudity, oral sex, car sex, one night stand, casual sex, chance encounter, happily married, hairy pussy
We closed the gate behind us after pulling off Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway on California's central coast. My wife had the combination for one of the dozen or so padlocks, linked together and holding a chain securing the swing gate through the fence. It led to a cluster of shoreside cottages in Pescadero, a tiny town about halfway between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Bet's co-worker Sandy had a friend who owned one of these, and let her use it this weekend. We got invited to Sandy's birthday party at the cottage, along with other friends of Sandy's who we mostly didn't know. Yet.
Rolling down the sandy, double-rutted dirt track beneath the Monterey pines toward the edge of the bluff, 80 feet or so above the modest waves splashing the rocks, we left the highway behind and passed four or five cottages before Bet identified the one we were invited to. It was October so the little group of summer homes on the narrow private "road" all appeared empty, but a handful of cars were already at the one we were looking for. Like several of the others, a shingle-type sign out front hung from the back side of a wooden T with its foot buried in the sand, with a family's name carved into it and rustically filled in with paint. A very old-looking mailbox hung from the front side of the T, with a beach scene amateurishly painted onto it, sandpipers and beach roses fading despite the protection of the shade beneath the pines.
The small, single-story house, and the dozen others in the vicinity, all looked like quintessential summer beach cottages. Bet and I parked, and as we walked up to the front door, I smirked at the decorations and affectations which would have been just as much at home on a Cape Cod, Catalina or Key West property: Pot buoys hanging from under the eaves, a salty-looking roped mat before the door, Japanese glass fishing-net floats strung up in the windows, and a pair of oars as pale as driftwood nailed up crossed above the picture window. A woman I didn't know opened the storm door before we could knock or pull the handle ourselves, and briefly said, "Oh, hey, come on in," and held it for us with her hip before breezing out into the yard without stopping for an introduction. The armful of glass beer bottles, with tops already off, justified her briskness and Bet cheerfully said, "Careful with those!" as the woman marched toward a little knot of people circled in the yard. Then I spotted Sandy inside and held the door for Bet, and we went in. This was already feeling like it would become a very fun day.
I saw one woman inside who I recognized, but damn if I could remember her name. I had met her at Sandy's house some time or another. Sandy was chattering with some other girlfriends I didn't know at all, but were generally our same age and, predictably, had the appearance of a certain tribe of San Francisco young-thirtysomethings who were probably into acoustic music, raw vegan cuisine, inventing their own novel forms of bodywork therapies, or reading the latest intensely feminist chick-lit in Mission District cafes on the weekend. Sandy's husband Raul was not in sight, so, Bet and I stood unobtrusively waiting for a moment to interject our Hello's and Thanks-for-inviting-us's into Sandy's conversation. Whereupon she introduced her conversation mates to us first, before leaving it to us to introduce ourselves reciprocally. Nice. Now we knew more than two people here.
So far, Raul was the only other man I was aware of being present, and I hadn't even seen him. Sandy is a highly social woman, and other than being at a really cool beach house on the Pacific cliffs of central California, and being a good bit larger, this gathering was similar to many we had been to at Sandy and Raul's own home over the years. Sandy surrounded herself with people she could make into a surrogate family, as the one which produced her had been extremely dysfunctional and toxic, and she no longer had anything to do with them. Virtually all of Sandy's friends were women, though many of them had male partners or spouses who were of course always welcome to these invitations. Exhibit One, myself. Jay Marlee, husband of one of Sandy's adopted sisters, Bet Van de Hock.
Bet is an awesome woman. We fell in love and got married, and were genuinely each other's best friends. There was sex at the beginning, but it had been very nearly completely absent for a few years now - she had come out as asexual. I have come to understand that it's as valid as any sexual orientation among all the other letters in the LGBTQIA+ alphabet soup, and we have been determined not to allow it to spoil everything else about our loving partnership, or give a fuck whether anyone else understood or judged. It's mostly not something other people would tend to know about anyway, unlike some of the other orientations.
Sandy also had special feelings for Bet. Something about the introductions made me feel like Sandy was closer to us than to the three women we encountered with her upon our arrival. As soon as we got her attention, we had all of it, instantly. Introducing the others to us first, and not even bothering to introduce us to them herself, seemed to reinforce this. But we spent a few moments with them picking up the thread of the conversation we had interrupted, as Sandy then needed to go do something elsewhere right that minute. Then we excused ourselves to bring some things in from the car.
Food. I had volunteered to roast three chickens and serve them. We left the bag of beach stuff in the car, as it was fairly cool and, discussing it, we didn't expect to do more than walk, down on the beach - which we hadn't seen yet but I could see where it was. Past the houses and trees to where there was a broad hiatus in the top of the bluffs, maybe fifty yards across to where they continued above the other side. Something was down there and I figured it had to be the beach, and I pointed it out to Bet. She looked with interest and said, "We'll have to check that out later on."
Bringing in the chickens and tools, I set up in the kitchen, preheating the oven and getting the chickens ready to go into it. This made me something of a minor celebrity for the fifteen minutes or so that it took. As happens at parties, people milled in and out of the kitchen, and many stopped to peer at my activities with interest. I chit-chatted as they looked on, getting introduced to most of them. Two couples, one of them a straight pair, one lesbian, stuck around to watch the whole process and talk with me about my cooking "secrets", since I promised it would come out juicy as hell and completely delicious. A dreadlocked, Berkeley-looking woman wrapped in what I almost thought might have been rags but was probably some two hundred dollar organic hemp pseudo-sari wraparound pointedly made a face at my chickens but refused to look at my face as she came in the back door and found the living room by way of the kitchen. Vegan, I thought, but kept it to myself. I also kept to myself my opinion of dreadlocks on white people, but sniggered smugly, with a dismissive sniff as I let it go. The man who I was showing my knives to was oblivious, but all three women noticed my reaction to the post-hippie chica walking by, and from them in turn I got a subtle, knowing nod, a sympathetic, mild eyeroll, and a sigh and a short comment from one of the BIPOC lesbians: "... Ardra." Everyone but the guy tutted quietly to each other. I never found out what was behind the attitudes, but they seemed to share my own irritation with the hipster woman.
In all, about thirty people had arrived by now, and the party proceeded. Inevitably the only three other men who were there drifted away from their wives or girlfriends and we wound up cliqued together. I was glad that they were not sports-loving meatheads with nothing on their minds but the games they would be missing, and we found stuff to talk about. There were myself, Raul, the man from the kitchen, Luke, and the fourth guy turned out to be with that woman I had recognized when I had first come in the house, but couldn't remember what she was called. Patrick was his name and I got briefly re-introduced to his girlfriend Maria. "Glad to see you again!" she chirped, and I said likewise. We'd probably meet yet again at another of Sandy's events sooner or later, so I tried making a firm mental note of her name this time.
Those chickens finished roasting, resting, and getting cut to pieces, again making me a center of attention as I answered questions about how to do it, where to cut in order to separate the wings, drumsticks and thighs at the relevant joints, and get the breast off the backbone. "Ardra" was rather loudly talking over some other people at the leafed-out dining room table, which had had most of the rest of the food on it for over an hour by now. She stopped talking, as did most others as I brought three chickens' worth of pieces out on the big platter I had brought for this purpose, and she gave an audible "Uggh." into the hush that ensued as people looked at and smelled the steaming meat and helped move things out of the way to make room for it on the table. I ignored her and told people, "When the chicken's gone there will be some drippings and juice in the dish you could dip these tater-tots into!", to appreciative murmurs at this good idea and a new round of questions about how I was able to get it so juicy. I modestly answered, repeating the importance of taking a whole chicken out of the oven before it's 100% done and letting it rest while it continues cooking on the inside. I reassured the skeptical Luke that this wouldn't result in salmonella poisoning. Ardra's audience was now my audience and she huffed when she found they weren't listening to her finish making whatever point she had been blaring about before my distraction.
Bet, knowingly, had endured a patient wait for the chicken and had avoided over-stuffing herself from the rest of the table's offerings. She eats very slowly and by the time she was done, a little more than half the partygoers had gone for a walk to the beach, so we followed. Further down the little private road, we found the footpath and, holding hands fondly, picked our way down the bluff to the hollow where a small sand beach lay. It probably wasn't private property, but it was isolated enough that it might as well have been, with no trails to it from the main road and some distance to the nearest parks which would attract most of the passers-by. I recognized everyone there as people who had been at the party, so it seemed like if there had been anyone in any of the other houses after all, despite the empty appearances, they weren't on the beach.
There were a small number of people I hadn't been directly introduced to, but everyone there or at least their significant other had chit-chatted with me at one point or another. And given the urban, adult crowd, from hyper-liberal San Francisco, I didn't think any of them would be perturbed by my wanting to go in the water, though I hadn't brought trunks. Cooking always makes me sweating-hot, even though the day was pleasantly cool - and the Central California water would be quite chilly. And so I asked Bet to watch my clothes and eyeglasses, unselfconsciously stripped nude, and went in for a dunk. I fully submerged myself under the choppy waves a couple of times and that was enough, and I got out. I didn't make eye contact with anyone on my way back to where my clothes were. I couldn't have even if I had wanted to, without my glasses. My vision is quite bad without them. At any rate, once I had them on again, nobody seemed the least bit ruffled by my bare nakedness, and it was over in a few minutes. I re-dressed and felt a lot better.
Bet had gotten into a conversation with another woman who struck me as similarly shy, like Bet herself, and you know how sometimes people like that pair up at a party and keep each other company. On the inside of her left wrist I noticed a Claddagh-design tattoo, heart pointing in. It matched one I had seen on Ardra, the borderline-boorish vegan woman I had crossed paths with back up at the house. Bet and her new friend were quite involved talking about whatever it was, so as most of the beachgoers made our way back to the house after a little while, I left the two of them to it and looked for a bathroom.
Wouldn't you know it, I wasn't the only one with that idea, and there were four women all waiting outside the door to the only bathroom in the cottage. I wanted relief, so I casually went outside. I hadn't really checked out the property other than the cottage's interior, so I didn't quite know where the best spot would be to conceal my pissing, and made a full circle around the house and yard before I settled on stepping behind three pines which seemed to make a good screen from the property. I wasn't concerned about the other couple of cottages which were in plain view from this spot. I unzipped and let'er rip back there.
I heard a voice. "Does that hurt, when your balls cringe like that?"
I frowned mildly, and looked around myself. A bit deeper into the woods, Ardra was squatting behind another pair of pines. It seemed she hadn't wanted to wait in line either. "What?" I asked.
She gestured. "I saw when you came out of the water. I don't know how you can stand it - it can't be more than fifty degrees! Your dick and balls just about crawled up inside you, and they still look all tight." I hadn't even seen her on the beach.
I was shaking myself off, and cupped myself under my balls with one hand to feel what kind of shape my scrotum was in now. "Yeah. Tightened right up, didn't it."
I started to tuck myself back in to my jeans, and she said, "Hey. Wait." I saw her stand, with the trees mostly between us, and pull her weird hippie hemp skirt down to cover a big white ass and some vivid tan lines, then pull underpants up underneath it. When she spoke, I stopped in the middle of what I was doing, and she came around the trees to look at me. "Lemme see."
