Still together, forty-one years later, this story has the same cast as
Naked Ground School
. Like that story it was an entry in a 1000 word short story contest.
All Pseudonyms have been changed to protect the deviant.
***
As I stood there among the tall Comozo Palms growing strong from the broken rocks at the lakeshore, I was drinking a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise and enjoying the fresh-water spray as it landed on my naked flesh. Jamie was a few feet away, she had just called down to the old limestone hotel to have one of our students who were currently living there unlock the gate. Maria was coming for the log books and manuals for the airplane we were donating.
As Jamie and I waited for Maria, I wrapped my arms around my lover of more than forty years and thought about how we had come to this magnificent place ten years ago. It was and it is perfect for us. Our whole extended family lives in the neighborhood and we spend our days teaching a group of motivated young people a vocation that we love. We use the older aircraft that we have built or rebuilt with our students to pay for expenses teaching the next group, and the circle continues.
Maria is coming for the latest fruit of that activity, a 3,500 pound, brilliant red, twin engine, deHavilland 84 Dragon we built from scratch using an original 1943 Australian erection diagram and manual. 168 pages that included scale drawings every one of the parts that made up the airplane. It is a masterpiece of engineering, made of wood and covered in doped fabric. A relic of a day where people actually made things, instead of programming the machines that made things.
"Casual..."Maria said," I was going to say casual Friday." In deference to our lack of clothing as she pulled up to us on the stone trail to the house. "But it's Wednesday."
"It's always casual around here," Jamie replied. "You should try it."
Now we don't run around the barrios naked, and we aren't trying to shock anyone. But inside the stonewalls on our estate clothing is totally optional and not generally preferred. Besides, Maria is cool; she's just nervous. She is part of a 'throuple' with Bert and Ernie and believes that public knowledge of their private lives will only serve to impede their professional goals.