This is the fourth chapter in a series of postings about a young woman, Melissa, who returns from college with her new boyfriend, Jamie, for a visit to her home, a ranch in a remote corner of Southeastern Oregon, and discovers that her parents, Lisa and Luke, have drastically changed their sex lives. It will work better if you have read the prior Chapters.
Jamie and Luke had finished their chores, showered and were enjoying a beer on the porch.
"So are you fully retired now, Sir? asked Jamie.
Luke smiled. "You're never fully retired from the ranching business unless you sell the ranch and move to Phoenix or something dumb like that. This one ranch I inherited from my family has turned into quite an enterprise. There's this ranch, which like we said last night, really isn't a commercial enterprise anymore, the new home ranch in Vale, and the big operation we have over in Harney county. It's down near French Glen.
Jamie had no idea where French Glen was but he had learned not to betray his ignorance of Eastern Oregon geography.
"Oh yeah, and then there's a big feed lot over in Caldwell we bought last year. We shut down the feeding operations in Vale and French Glen and consolidated all of it over in Idaho. I forgot to mention the Caldwell operation last night. Lisa was distracting me."
"So I heard," Jamie said.
"Well the girls got their signals crossed, and we weren't expecting you two until today."
I'm sorry."
"No need to apologize. It all came out all right."
It certainly did, thought Jamie as he remembered watching Luke and Lisa screwing down by the pasture the night before. He and Melisa had been secretly watching from the barn's hay mow, while they did the same thing. Jamie had never watched other people fucking before, other than porn videos which aren't the same at all he had decided.
"Anyhow," Luke continued," the two main ranches and the feed operation are all run by hired managers. Our son Sam is the operations boss, but he and his wife Gina live in Boise. She finds Eastern Oregon a little rural for her taste, and she doesn't want to be anywhere near the feedlot in Caldwell. Can't say as I blame her for that. Lisa and I live here, and in a home we have in Boise, and then there's the cottage over on the coast. He laughed. I have to ask my tax man where it is I actually live. I guess we're like Sam, Boise is the main base of operations. At least that's where our lawyers and accountants are. And then there is the big trust Lisa inherited from her family in Virginia last year. I think the lawyers have just about got that moved to Idaho, although the location of a trust is sort of a metaphysical concept that only a tax accountant would care about. God life gets complicated."
"It sounds like the two of you have been very successful," Jamie said.
"Yeah, but I'll tell you son, we just about pissed it all away a couple of years ago," Luke said.
That was when they spotted the women coming down the ridge.
"So tell me Jamie," Luke said, changing the subject "How long have you known my daughter?"
Jamie's stomach turned over. He had worried as he drove over from Eugene about being cross examined as a would-be son in law, a role he wasn't anywhere near ready to sign up for.
"Only about three months," he said. "She started working as a barista in a coffee house I like to study in. But we didn't get together until about three weeks ago, when we discovered we both needed a place to live this summer."
"So now you're roommates?" Luke said.
"Yes Sir."
"Roommates with privileges," Lisa tells me.
"I guess you could say that, Sir," Jamie responded. His discomfort was ratcheting up by the moment.
"We didn't have that term when Lisa and I got together in college, but we weren't that different. Except no one would have rented us a place together then, so we about wore out the back seat of the little VW I owned. I should have had a van like yours. Oh, and stop that 'Sir' crap. Call me Luke."
"Yes Sir."
Luke laughed at him. "Hard to do, ain't it?"
"Yes Sir, er, Luke."
"Listen son, I know you and my daughter are probably screwing like minks. She hasn't told me, but she said as much to her mother over the phone before you two came out here." He laughed. "I think she wanted to make sure we weren't going to put you in separate bedrooms."
Jamie smiled. "Yeah, she was a little worried about that, but I get the impression you and Lisa have changed a lot of things in your life since Melissa went off to college."
Luke laughed. "That's an understatement. We lived the life of a well-mannered monogamous couple for almost thirty years. My god, we could have been Mormons. But it wasn't working. I was spending a lot of time off in Salem and Portland on politics and ignoring Lisa. And when I was home, I was obsessing about getting the chores done on the three ranches I was trying to run. Then I made the mistake of getting involved with a young woman in Salem. Jesus, I thought Lisa was going to kill me over that when she found out. Our relationship was on the verge of divorce.
"That was when our son Sam sent us to a marriage counselor over in Boise, Reverend Christensen. He showed us a whole new way to think about our relationship. The Rev taught us to draw a clear distinction between love and lust. It's fine to be monogamous with your love. In fact, that's the right way to do it. You can't walk around being in love with multiple partners at the same time. It just won't work. But it's just not realistic to expect lust to be limited to one person. That's how the advertising industry sells things in this country for Christ's sakeβbased on lust. Who is going to turn down a sales pitch from Charlize Theron or Brad Pitt. Not going to happen. We all lust after lots of people beyond the person we are in love with, and we need to indulge that lust to live a full life."
"So how does that work for you and Lisa?"
"We have what some people call an open marriage. We're still very much in love and very married, but we accept that each of us may find others attractive, and we've agreed that we are free to act on that. To put it in less technical terms, we each fuck other people and it's not a sin in our marriage. I had to give up politics to do that. The press would have had a field day with me over that, but hell, I was sick of politics anyway."
"Sounds like roommates with privileges."
"Yeah, kind of, but our personal commitment, the love side, goes a lot longer than the term of a sublease."
"Yeah I get it. So, if Lisa sees a man she likes, she's free to pursue him."
"Or woman."
"Oh, yeah I guess that seems fair. Melissa doesn't do that. I don't think."
"You mean women?"
"Yeah," responded Jamie.
They were silent for a moment. Luke wasn't quite prepared to explain their relationship with Sally. That was more complicated.
"Do you do men?" Jamie asked.
Luke smiled. "No, I haven't quite been able to develop a taste for that yet. Lust is lust. Either you got it or you don't. What the Rev is about is teaching us how to enjoy and satisfy our lust, without destroying our loving relationships. He teases me about guys from time to time, but that's just him teasing. Lisa does it too. The Rev wants to see his clients getting the sex they need, but he's not about creating needs where they don't exist."
"Does Melissa do other guys?" Luke asked.
"Well, not in the last three weeks . . . as far as I know. I'm sure she did before she met me. I know I was sleeping with other women before and she knows it too."
Luke laughed. "Would she be upset? If you were screwing someone else?"
"No. We haven't made any commitments. The 'roommates with privileges' term pretty accurately describes where we are."