Other Voices - an Introduction

Author's Note:

"Other Voices" is intended to be a companion series to "The Freyja Club," in which I hope to flesh out the characters first introduced in that series.

Be advised. This introduction is woefully deficient as stroke material. Sorry! You'll just have to await chapter 1. However, I promise that you will understand The Freyja Club and the people I've met there a thousand times better if you exercise a little patience.

BACKGROUND

Last night I retired from the company that I'd served for the past forty one years. There was a nice retirement dinner at an exclusive club and over five hundred people attended. I was humbled by the good wishes for a long and healthy retirement and the generosity of the company which had returned my loyalty in spades.

I didn't get a gold watch, but I did get a very nice retainer for future consulting work and a more than generous retirement bonus.

This morning, I'm sitting on the patio deck writing on a laptop, and reminiscing.

I'd joined my company directly out of the Army after serving a tour of duty as a Captain in Vietnam. I had a degree in engineering, and that's where they put me. At the same time however, I was pursuing an MBA in finance, and that's ultimately how I ended up gravitating to that world.

At the time I joined my company, they were relatively small, in a niche business, but had a visionary young management team that had big plans. There is a truism that success is often just being in the right place at the right time, and I just fell into it.

By the age of 28, I had risen into the ranks of senior management and had been put in charge of developing and implementing the company's business expansion strategy, which centered on finding and acquiring comparable businesses all over the world.

At the time, I believed that I was about the youngest person to hold such a position. In the following years I acquired a working knowledge of corporate law, regulatory compliance, investment banking, negotiating strategies and a host of other subjects, not the least of which was a crash course on the vagaries of human nature.

By nature, I'm not gregarious, but I am friendly and curious. In conversations, I'm rarely the one holding court. I'm often described as a "good listener," but I think that's just a by-product for someone who asks lots of questions.

In the last forty one years, the company grew to the position, where now it ranks as one of the Fortune 50. I like to think I had a lot to do with that.

On a personal note, my business successes were not carried over to my personal life. Of necessity, I traveled a lot, and often for considerable periods of time. This proved to be anathema for the development of a stable family life. Oh, I got close a couple of times, but the reality was that to get one thing I loved, I would have to sacrifice another thing I loved. Did I choose correctly? I don't know. Ask me again in another twenty years.

My current network of friends and acquaintances is considerable, and with many, I don't believe my retirement will dull our relationships. As I think about these many friends, I know that I wouldn't have met most of them if I had chosen a different path, and any misgivings that I might harbor are assuaged by that knowledge.

Romantically, I've had my share of involvements. Most were casual for a few months, more than a few could be legitimately called 'one night stands,' but there were three long term relationships; Jennifer, Karen and Maribeth. I'll get back to those later.

When traveling, either domestically or abroad, I was usually alone. Occasionally I might have traveling companions, but those were exceptions to the rule. I mention this to introduce something that will end up being at the heart of this narrative. In a word "eroticism."

Ever since I became aware that boys and girls are different, I've been fascinated by the subject of sex.

I grew up in a military family with only a brother and we relocated frequently as my father was transferred from one post to another. This had the effect of exposing me to lots of people, different races, different cultures, different points of view. I entered puberty with all the normal anxieties and questions as everyone else, but there was one period that impacted me forever.

The very early 1960's were still relatively calm when compared to the cultural upheaval that followed a few years later. I was 16 when my Dad received orders to France. We followed and my brother and I entered high school there. At the time, France was much more progressive and permissive than America was, and because of this I discovered something I probably wouldn't have elsewhere...

Victoria erotica.

I'd always loved books, so when I'd see a bookstore I'd always want to go browse. In the small French towns we lived near, there were few English titles, but the ones I found proved to be provocative. Many of them were erotic novels written around the turn of the century.

A main component of Victorian erotica was the female sexual object. Women were defined in terms of femininity, subordination, and the object of sexual desire. The books described sex in erotic detail, and such works as The Romance of Lust, My Secret Life, and Venus in Furs, stimulated my sexual fantasies and provided the images for my frequent late night masterbation sessions.

By today's standards of 'in your face' pornography they seem antiquated and quaint, but they delved deeply into the underlying human emotions and desires of both men and women and revealed to me important differences that are being subordinated in today's culture of sexual equality.

Years later, on long transoceanic flights and lonely nights in hotel rooms, I began to think about those early images and thus I started my hobby of writing erotica on the Victorian model. The theme's of male dominance and 'on the surface' female subordination in an erotic setting led me to write about 'The Freyja Club.'

The Freyja Club was founded in the very period that had so captured my adolescent imagination and I began to wonder if such an institution could continue to survive into our present age. This raised in my mind, both moral and, quite frankly, operational questions of how such a club could plausibly exist in today's world.

As I began to put pen to paper, and in later years, fingers to keyboard, these ideas continued to evolve. What emerged was half erotic novel and half detective story in which the central character (me) journeys through exotic settings and encounters men, but mostly women, who freely embrace the hedonistic and sexist culture of the club.

As I wrote the evolving chronology of my own experiences at the Freyja Club, I became aware that there was much exciting and interesting material that I was glossing over and leaving behind. As I introduced characters such as Daniella, Kyree, Michelle, Susan and Nancy it became obvious that they needed to be developed in ways that had nothing to do with my interactions with these delightful people.

'Other Voices,' is intended to be their stories, told from their perspectives. While they will be written as if they themselves are the narrator's, the descriptions of their thoughts, feelings, emotions and events, will be what I've gathered, piece by piece, over the years that we have been friends, lovers and partners in this journey we call life.

I hope you're enjoying the ever evolving tale of 'The Freyja Club,' and that 'Other Voices,' will double your pleasure.