Close Friends Notes and Thoughts
This tale is part memoir, part extrapolation and part wishful thinking, and it's been a true labor of love to write.
If you've made it to the end, you've witnessed the evolution of the group of six, then seven, grow into a stable, polyamorous group.
I wanted to explore how a group of friends might come together and enter into this kind of long-term relationship.
The reason is that I was in a group of close friends just like these after graduating high school over forty-five years ago and I've wondered if we might have somehow ended up like the characters did in this story.
The events, settings and characters in this story almost all stem from actual events, places and people from my past. Most of the supporting characters are based on people I've known over the years.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but in this story, no one is truly innocent. I've made sure of that.
This tale began when I moved to California after graduating high school in the Midwest. Most of the scenes in the first few chapters actually happened, with a few changes, and only a couple are purely fictional. The rest are based on actual events, and extrapolate out from at least a seed of genuine history. Some scenes are almost verbatim accounts of things that actually happened.
These early scenes are the memoir part of the story. Over forty-five years later, I think back on how extraordinary that time of my life was, and where it might have gone had a few things happened differently than they did.
As the story progresses, it passes beyond my actual experiences, and this is where the extrapolation I mentioned, coupled with a healthy dose of wishful thinking, especially with the sex scenes, takes over.
So what actually happened? Is any of this really true?
Good question.
Shortly after I turned eighteen, a series of events occurred that not only shaped my life, but were straight up sexy as hell. After I moved to California, I got a job, made friends and got a studio apartment. Almost exactly as the first chapter describes.
A close group coalesced, composed of myself, my two best friends and three beautiful young ladies.
As described in the first chapter, I got a job in an auto parts store after meeting Mick and Bob while working at K-Mart. I was surprised, and very happy, when Mick's ex-girlfriend, Demi, unexpectedly brought into my work a very cute girl that I ended up falling deeply in love with. The scene where Gus meets Lois is almost exactly how it actually happened.
And yes, Lois, Demi and I ended up hanging out together, the three of us basically dating for several weeks. I made out with both girls (while the three of us were together!) and gave them both back rubs, progressing so far as to have them get topless and allow me free access to their wonderful boobs, all the while being a horny and hapless virgin who didn't know how far, or fast, to take things. Oh man, they got me so damn horny. Just like in the story.
I lost my virginity to Lois, but not quite like in the story. It happened just after Lois and I became exclusive and Demi began dating Bob.
Alas, I did not lose my virginity to both girls at the same time, as that is where the story shifts into wishful thinking. But one night it almost happened. The three of us were making out on my waterbed, and we ended up with our hands all over each other. It still kills me to think after so many decades how close I came to realizing the miracle that I end the first chapter with. If I'd just known to take things a little further...
So what then?
Most of what happens after the first chapter is made up, extrapolated from where things were at the end of the mostly factual events in chapter one.
I've often looked back on that time and wondered if there might have been some path the six of us could have traveled that would have ended up with us in a polyamorous relationship.
I've wondered over the years how a stable, long-term polyamorous group might start and function, and that's the impetus for this story.
Book One begins that journey.
From chapter two on, with a few notable exceptions, this tale travels an imaginary path, taking you, the reader, on a journey that brings the characters together in a hopefully realistic and plausible way.
I asked myself, what if back then we started sharing with each other? We were very close. A few times we'd be laughing and playing around, and someone would touch another's boyfriend, or girlfriend, in a more than platonic way. There were times we'd kissed, and Mick once felt up Lois under her shirt in a dare. I humped her deep into my waterbed later that night.
We all joked around, and that was about it. But... what if we pushed things? Just a little further?
Might we have crossed some of the lines this story demolishes? Maybe. It didn't happen, but could it have?
Would we have had sex with each other? I would have loved to be with the other girls. I know the guys liked my girlfriend, Lois. She was so damn cute and sexy.
Would we have continued this? Could it have turned into something stable, where we formed a sort of family, or a group of husbands and wives?