Copyright © 2004. All characters, events, and text in this story are purely fictional, and are created by and the sole property of the author. All rights reserved.
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Writer’s Note: This piece is a sequel to the previous story of Sam and the Powell women entitled “It’s A Family Tradition.” If you haven’t already read that one, I recommend that you do to get acquainted with Sam, his wife Callie, and her sisters. In any case, I hope you enjoy this story. It was fun for me to write it. Consider the usual warning: this story contains sexually explicit content. Do not read it unless you are an adult.
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My wife, Callie Powell Taylor, comes from a lineage of Powell women with some most unusual traditions. As you may recall, last summer Callie and I were chosen to initiate our eighteen year-old niece, Sue Ann, into the pleasures of adult womanhood with a week of instructional and recreational sex at the family cabin retreat. That is a rite that has happened with every Powell girl since Callie’s grandmother’s generation.
Six months after that initiation week, I thought that I had performed all my in-law duties toward the sexual traditions of the Taylor/Powell family. I should have known better. On the second Friday in February, I arrived home from an exhausting day of court appearances, and late client visits at the office. Callie greeted me with an especially warm welcoming kiss, and handed me a gin and tonic, one of the all-time great refreshments, in my opinion.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “We’re not expected for dinner at Momma’s for another hour yet. Go sit in the living room and have your drink. You look like you could use some wind-down time, Sam.”
I didn’t argue. I flopped into my favorite over-stuffed chair, rested my heels on the coffee table, clicked the remote to watch CNN, and took generous swallows of the G&T. ‘Life doesn’t get any better than this,’ I thought. Callie ambled into the room with a know-it-all smirk on her face. Plopping the mail on the table next to my chair, she said with a teasing tone in her voice, “Here’s the mail, Sam. The usual stuff – bills, catalogs, and advertisements. But there is an interesting letter on the top. Looks like you’ve got some sort of invitation. Now I wonder what that might be?”
I looked down at the mail. There, right on the top of the pile of catalogs and window business envelopes rested a cream-colored, almost square envelope, the kind that wedding invitations come in. Curious, I picked it up to examine it more closely. There was no return address either in the front corner, or on the back. The postmark was local (Augusta, GA). The neat, rounded handwriting, with tiny circles for dots on the ‘I’s’ appeared decidedly feminine, and the brown ink was a dead giveaway. I tried to recall what female clients I had served recently (by that, I mean in the lawyerly sort of way).
“Well, Sam, aren’t you going to open it and find out who it’s from and what it says?” Callie inquired in her buttery-soft Georgia twang. She had that ‘cat who swallowed the cream’ sort of grin.
I suddenly got the feeling that Cat already knew both who and what, like so many things that women first share with one another, and then later spring on some unsuspecting male. Since she was so interested in my opening the envelope, I tried to tease her by showing my indifference.
“I’ll read it later, Cat.” I casually tossed the envelope toward the coffee table on which my legs were resting, but shot an air ball that had the card curving in a spiral down to the carpet. Giggling, Callie retrieved the fallen missile, and then straightened up with the letter in her extended hand. I could feel the warmth in my blushing face, but tried to recover my composure.
“Nice try, hotshot,” she said. “Come on, Sam. Open your invitation. I know that you’ll like it.”
“Why is this invitation addressed only to me, Cat?” I asked, as I slipped my thumb under the flap of the envelope. “Why not both our names?”
Cat decided to sit on the arm of my chair with her arm around my neck. She looked at me with that ‘what a dumb thing to say’ look. “Sweetie,” she said, “This party doesn’t work that way. We each get invited separately, and I’ve already opened mine. Just read it, and then I’ll explain.”
I opened the envelope and extracted a folded note card of high quality stock. The note was printed with that fancy raised ink used for formal invitations. There was no signature on the note, so there was no way I could identify the sender. I read the following message:
“The ladies of the Powell Family Heritage Association cordially invite you to participate in the 2004 Powell Family Scramble. This tradition has been celebrated in the Powell family for several generations, and contributes to the bonding of all members of the family, both blood relatives and their married spouses.”
There was a small piece of computer printer paper with additional instructions:
“Your rendezvous location is the Holiday Inn Resort Hotel on Jekyll Island. You will meet your two Powell family partners 4:00 PM Friday, Feb. 27, at the address below, and return the following Monday morning. Enjoy the weekend, and respect the tradition of discretion.”
Callie grinned when I showed her the note. “Well, congratulations, Sam. Now some other Powell women will get to appreciate you almost as much as I do. I’m going to Savanna that weekend, by the way. I wonder whom the committee has worked out for our partners. Whoever they are, I’ll bet we’ll have a great time.”
“Ah,” I replied. “I think I get it, Cat. This Powell Family Scramble is another one of your family’s zany sex traditions, like the initiation of Sue Ann, isn’t it? What is this one about, and how does it work?”
“Well, Sam, my grandma Powell felt that after a woman gets married, she doesn’t always get to express her sexuality when or how she’d like to. For the most part, that’s OK, ‘cause if she’s made a good choice in the man she weds, then she gets enough sex of the good, loving kind, and she’s happy with that. But it’s only natural for a human being every now and then to feel itchy to try something new or different. You know, the longer you have a thing, the more interested you get for an alternative.”
“You mean like a guy and his car, for instance, or the kind of cooking you eat routinely at home, Cat?” I asked. “So the Powell family has created a solution for trying new partners outside of the usual married routine.”
“You got it, Sam, only in this case, it wasn’t the family that created the idea. It was a she. On her tenth wedding anniversary, Grandma Powell decided that when she reached thirty, she would get a taste of another man. But she didn’t want any tangling affair or embarrassment to her family, so she came up with the idea of asking one of her brothers-in-law to spend a weekend with her and a girl cousin, unbeknownst to their husbands and his wife. The clever part of her idea was having a threesome. That made sure that the weekend was just sexual fun, without any possible romantic affair getting started between either woman and the brother-in-law.”
“And I gather that her little escapade grew into a family tradition, Cat,” I added.
“That’s the way it happened, sweetie. When Grandma Powell returned from her little party, she told her sisters to try it for themselves. They did, and the idea kind of just grew. But I’m told that early on, there were so many scheduling hassles, that Grandma Powell and her sisters finally decided on one special weekend every Leap Year. Kind of prevents the thing from getting to be too much of a habit. That’s the way it’s been going on for over twenty years now. Only, now, of course, most of the husbands at sometime or other get invited, so the idea of a secret getaway has kinda got lost over the generations. We all know what’s goin’ on, just not with whom and where.”
“So that’s how the tradition got started,” I replied. “And its chief objective is to give a married woman the taste of another man, but without the predictable risks, as well as keeping it within the family. Fascinating. And it must be working for all you Powell women, because I don’t see an unhappy marriage among all of you. Will this be the first time, like me, that you went to one of these Scrambles, Cat?”
Callie blushed. “Actually, Sam, this one will be my second,” she said. “My first Scramble was in 2000, just before we moved from Boston. I told you that I was going to a family wedding.”
“I had no idea, Cat. Your family traditions are positively incredible.”
She kissed me tenderly. “Believe me, Sam, I was not bored or disappointed with your lovemaking. All that I was doing was satisfying some normal human curiosity, and perhaps acting out some fantasies. And that’s what will happen this year for you, too. And, just like with Sue Ann, once the weekend is over, nothing more happens.” She giggled. “At least for four more years, that is.”
“And you have no problem with me spending a weekend with two other women?” I asked.
“Of course not, sweetie,” she replied. “After all, I’ll be going somewhere, too. We’re husband and wife, and best friends, Sam, but we don’t own each other like property.”