My stepdad, Frank, never got further than watching me shower, drying my butt, and giving my buns a loving hug. I never locked the bathroom door, that summer, and Frank attended my showers whenever he was home alone with me. It was always cause he needed to talk with me, of course.
After that first confab, though, I did wonder where things were headed. Next time Mom was traveling, I found out. I came home late afternoon, from my run and stood in the living room talking with Frank as I stripped for my shower. He said, "You know what I've always wanted to do?"
Oh, shit. Long sigh from me. "No, what Dad?"
"Go to one of those topless dancing bars."
"You've never been? Jeez, I've even been. Just to see."
"Nope, but I want to go. Just embarrassing being a single male, there."
My black running bra tossed down on the heap. I rub my tits a little. Summer, you know; sticky in that bra. Flattens my nips. "What? Who else goes?"
"If you're with a girl you don't look so hard-up."
Cut to the chase. "I'll go," I said. "Once, maybe." I already had an idea for the whole summer. The idea's name was Naomi. She had come to the Academy my last year, there. Not as a freshman, as a one-year postgraduate. It's sort like, you go to a public high-school, then, before college, you do a year at the Academy to add luster to your academic credentials.
A black girl. In fact, she was into her roots: Maasai. Lion-hunting warriors in east Africa around where Kenya now is. Naomi knows her history—at least since about the late Nineteenth Century.
