Family Curse

"What were you two doing?" My mother asked me from the door of the pool house.

"Not what you think we were doing." To my utter disappointment that was true.

"Then what where you doing?"

"Just talking."

"About what?"

"About the women I've been with."

"Women? What women? I don't send you to that school for you to get one of the local girls pregnant."

"And so far I haven't."

"Why would you talk about that with your sister of all people?"

"Because I need advice and I sure can't talk to you about it."

"Watch your mouth, young man."

"Anyway, we done? You got the tux, it's late, and I need to ... ahem, take care of something." I said while making a jerking off gesture with my hand.

She slapped my hand to the side and tried to up her scowl to eleven. See, this is the problem when you punish someone to the max almost all the time. Then you can't scare them anymore.

"Exactly what sort of advice do you need?"

"Mom, get out." I said as I sat on my bed and looked down at my phone. I had long ago stopped caring if my mother knew I had this or not. So long as she wasn't paying for it, she had no right to ask me about it and I let her know that. Silent mode. Call volume all the way down. Record call. Contacts, send.

"No. This is my house." she replied.

"And I'm just a guest?"

"Tell me what advice you need."

"And right afterwards you're going to call Terri and see if I'm telling the truth."

"I might if I think you're lying."

"You wouldn't understand."

"I may be your mother but I was once a young woman like your sister."

"As true as that may be, you already have a low enough opinion of me."

"I'll try to be understanding."

"Ok. Well, see, there's this girl that I like but she's not interested. However, there are these other two girls and they are interested. So I held a kind of contest to see which one would win me."

"What sort of contest?"

"A sex contest. We all had sex together. And I was supposed to pick the one I liked more. Only now I'm confused. I can't decide. I guess I'm starting to think I care about both of them. Would it really be wrong to ask them to both be my girlfriend?"

"And if I get your sister on the phone she'll tell me that that's what you two were talking about?"

"See mom! This is why I didn't want to talk to you. You said you'd give me advice but then forget all about that and ..."

"Advice, don't fuck around and accidentally get a girl pregnant."

"Yeah, I know that much."

"No, you can't have a menage a trois in place of a steady girlfriend. You're acting like a misogynistic chauvinist just suggesting it. You should apologize to both girls and tell them that it's over. Then you should focus on your school work because you're already behind."

"Not my fault and you know it."

"You shouldn't even be dating right now. That's why we sent you to an all boys school."

"Well, maybe if I dated you'd stop thinking that me and my sister were having sex all the time. Jeez, Mom. It was one little thing that you caught us doing and you just had to blow it all way out of proportion."

"That was not just one little thing."

"Please. All it was, was a kiss. Come on."

"You were naked."

"So what? There are towns in Russia where everyone is naked all the time, from the little kids to the old grandparents."

"This isn't Russia."

"Yeah, but Mom, just because Terri and I happened to be naked in front of each other, that does not equate to us wanting to have sex. You just started jumping to all kinds of wild conclusions. And besides, that was years ago, now. Years Mom."

"I didn't raise you two to be nudists."

"Maybe not but I don't have a problem being naked in front of people. It doesn't bother me."

"And that's what they teach you at that school?"

"Wow. You just have to bring the conversation to any place other than you admitting you were wrong."

"I'm bringing the conversation to a place it needs to go so that I can help you and your sister not make a bad decision. And from the sounds of things, we should have had the sex talk a long time ago. Maybe if we had you wouldn't be putting those poor girls through something like that."

"They're not girls, mom. They're women. One of them is even married."

"You're telling me that you slept with a married woman?"

"Yes. I've slept with more than one married woman."

"You should know better than that."

"Yeah, but see, they don't teach us better than that at an all boys school. So when the married ladies come round looking for some action, I don't know what to say but to give them what they want."

"You say no. See. It's easy."

"The point, mom is that they were adults, not girls. And news flash, I'm an adult, not a little kid."

"As you keep reminding me."

"Yeah, cause you need to be reminded. And your advice is to just pretend I'm ten years old and have no interest in sex. Well, guess what, I do have an interest in sex. And I do find it hard to say no."

"That's just hormones talking."

"Yeah, and they're talking pretty damn loud."

"And you felt the need to discuss this with your sister."

"The funny thing is, her advice was pretty much the same as yours just now. You women just don't understand men at all."

"I guess I'm happy she was trying to talk some sense into you."

"I'm just happy I didn't have to argue with both of you at the same time."

"Oh, get used to that if you plan on dating two women."

She wasn't happy with me but she was satisfied with getting the last word. After she left I looked down at my phone and ended the call that I'd started. I pulled the recording of the call, and sent the audio file to Terri.

"Did you get all that?" I texted her.

"Mom's calling me now." she replied.

Let her call. Let her call all she wanted. And to add to it, I was going to start sleeping naked. Maybe then she'd learn to knock instead of just barging in every damn morning.

...

I had been keeping track of the days. So far, there didn't seem to be a pattern in the number of days between each threesome. Some how I had started to think that if there was a predictable schedule to it, then I could prepare myself. But no schedule I could see was emerging.

On Monday I called my new lawyer again to find out if there was any update on my inheritance situation. Yes, I did care about the money. It's money so of course I cared about it. But more than that, I wanted something else. I was sort of thinking that maybe once I got the full inheritance then the curse would be lifted. But then it seemed to me that my logic on that was all wrong. So my next move was to gain access to those safety deposit boxes and see if there were any documents left by my uncle John that explained any of this. Maybe a diary, or letter, or photos. Something.

So far, there wasn't much of an update other than the lawyer being super positive about it all. She was almost certain that the money would be mine, but there were proper checks to make sure about. Banks just don't let you roll up and demand money in another person's account without double checking your story. And even though I didn't tell anyone about anything, and to my knowledge neither did anyone in my family, word somehow got out to our distant relatives about me getting something more than what was publicly announced and now more lawyers were trying to muscle in and make claims on cash they weren't sure even really existed or not. But they sure seemed certain that if I got even one penny more than their clients, they would sue unless I shared.

Was I going to share? No. Not that I was being greedy, mind. I would have been happy to share if anyone of them had come to my defense when my mother was treating me like the plague. I might even share now if any of them could do something to keep me from being paranoid whenever I hear a door close. But all things considered, I was not going to share and them sending their lawyers after me just pissed me off. I guess they couldn't be bothered to come and talk to me themselves. They had to hide behind a lawyer threatening to take me to court. So much for being friendly about it.

For the rest of the day I thought about what I might actually buy with all that money. I looked up how much it might cost to buy a restaurant that had fajitas on the menu and discovered that I didn't have nearly enough for something like that. Plus there was the fact that I didn't know anything about the restaurant business.

On Wednesday, the lawyer came to get me from work and we had a meeting with a lady from one of the banks. I forced myself not to be nervous when I found myself inside a room with them and the door closed. It turned out that the way uncle John had set everything up was really complicated. There was money. That part was very true. It was difficult to know exactly how much money since most of it wasn't liquid. Everything was locked up in assets that were not easily sold or transferred. For some things it was difficult to know exactly how much it was worth without doing an appraisal. Uncle John went through a lot of trouble to make sure this money would be mine and no one else's.

The other weird thing, and I can't claim to understand all of this fully, but the other weird thing was that the way all of this was set up, this wasn't an inheritance at all. Technically, all of this was already mine before my uncle had even died. So now there were IRS forms to fill out and mandatory statements that had to be made. Good Grief! But all of this would have been even more complicated had Uncle John died before I turned 18. Then my parents would have to be in on all of this as well.

"Does this mean I can go look inside one of these safety deposit boxes?" I asked.

"Not yet." the banker said. "The judge has to sign off on this."

"If the money's already mine then why does a judge have anything to do with it."

"Your relatives have filed a motion to freeze all your assets until they get a full accounting. I have to get her to throw their suit out before we can move forward." the lawyer said. "Their lawyer knows they don't have a leg to stand on with this, which is why they're also suing for reimbursement for debts they claim your uncle owed them. They're hoping to scare you but I can tell you right now, none of this is going to hold up."

"Wait, that's not going to affect my pay from my job, is it?"

"Theoretically it could but I won't let it get that far."

Well, ok. That was good to know, I guess.

On the way out of the meeting I stopped by the other lawyer's office, just to say hi. She gave me a really, really big smile.

"John. Always good to see you." she said.

"Wow. You look happy. Win a case?"

"Actually, my husband and I ... we just ... close the door."

"What?"

"Relax. Close the door. I don't want Julie hearing."

Click. Man this better not turn around on me.

"My husband and I have just been able to reconnect a lot recently." she said once we were in private.

"I'm glad."

"It's so funny. I had been thinking of divorce, not as a serious thing, just an option in the back of my mind but now I see that it was really just so stupid. I'm not leaving my husband. I love him more than anyone except my children. I guess it took a little indiscretion for me to be able to see that but now that I do, I'm just so happy to be so lucky as to have him. For that at least, I thank you."

"Well, I'm happy I could help."

"Don't be like that. You will always have a friend in this law office, you hear me. And even Julie is coming round to a positive place of being."

"Is that so?"

"She even told me ..." giggle "She even told me that her and her husband have started to experiment with peeing on each other. She says she loves it."

"What? Really?"

The lawyer nodded as she laughed.

"Well, I guess I'm happy for her so long as she isn't peeing on me."

The rest of the week was largely unremarkable. I kept my head down, I did my job, and I didn't even think of going on a date or anything. Any woman could be the next one to set off another round of whatever was happening to me. On top of that, my sister seemed to be angry with me. She wasn't talking to me as much and after I'd text her, she'd only respond with 'k' several hours later.

Logically I shouldn't be scared of anything. Even if some kind of magic thing was going on, it didn't hurt me. I could even think of a way to use it to my advantage financially. Yet, every door that closed was giving me the creeps. Every woman that looked my way freaked me out. I often felt like I wanted to hide or run or just do something other than just let it happen again.

On Friday evening my father was the one to pick me up from work. I wished my boss a good weekend as I left and then my dad took me to meet up with everyone at the movie theater. One of the new big blockbusters was coming out and we were going to see it as a family. When we all sat down, it was my little sister on one side of me and my mother on the other side, with Terri seemingly no where near us.

Bad line delivery. Contrived, plot hole ridden story that was so boring not even the multiple explosions per minute could keep it interesting. Weird editing. References to previous movies I hadn't seen and set up for future movies I had no intention of seeing. Well, that was a whole big waste of time.

After the movie, we all went to a very up scale restaurant where each meal was well over $100 a person. My mother was horrified by the prices in the menu but my father was beaming with delight.

"Ok. I have big news for everyone." he said and then he began to explain about a big gathering that we were all going to be able to attend. One of the actresses from the movie we'd just seen was going to be there. I personally didn't see the big deal. Why should I be star struck when I have much bigger problems to deal with? But that wasn't all. The governor of New York was going to be there as well as the Vice President and the queen of some such country somewhere.

Wonderful. It would be just my luck that I'd have to service the VP's wife and the old ugly queen as part of the curse before the night was through. Shutter to think.

"I don't supposed I could just stay home, could I?" I asked.

"Son, this would be so good for you. You have to start applying to colleges next year and a recommendation from ..." Blah, Blah, Blah. I didn't care. He mentioned Ivy league and all that but I already knew I didn't have what those schools were looking for unless they only thing they considered was money. Besides, didn't you have to be gay or transgendered to get into an Ivy league school these days? It didn't matter anyway. I was probably just going to go to school with Terri if I could. That is, if she'd still have me.

On the way home, I was informed of some such thing happening way out in the middle of the nearby national forest. My father asked me for the favor of spending the night all the way out there.

"Camping?" I asked. "We've never gone camping."

"It's just one night and you'll actually be in a temp building."

"Why again?"

"Someone has to live on the property for a certain number of ..." he tried to explain it to me but it was going in one ear and out the other. I didn't understand any of it. It had something to do with residency requirements for a local ordinance something or maybe special district something. I don't know. It seemed sort of shady but my father assured me that it was all very legal; just so long as the local authorities didn't take too long a look at their paperwork. It was to help get something passed that the president's party needed in order to keep the Republicans from something something. Man I hate politics. I only had to stay out there for one night and I could come home on Sunday.

This was great. A nice secluded place where I could be all alone. And I knew just who I wanted to be alone with.

"See, it's perfect." I said to Terri on the phone after I explained what was going to happen.

"I can't." she said.

"Why not?"

"I'm busy tomorrow. And besides I'm ... at the time of the month."

"Oh. Ok." I was disappointed but I was going to try and stay upbeat. "Another time."

"And hey, don't worry."

"About what?" I asked.

"You know I'm not going to do anything with the guy."

"What guy?"

"Didn't Denise tell you.? I have to go on this date with this guy. But don't worry. I'm on my period so you know I won't do anything."

"A date?" I felt my own blood drain from my head.

"It's just to keep up appearances. Ok. Don't get jealous."

"I'm not. I just wasn't expecting ..."

"And hey, try not to have any more threesomes for a while please."

"Yeah, yeah, Har, har."

"If you're in a situation where you think you can't leave, just call me and I'll come get you."

The next day, when my father's friend drove me out to what was really a camper trailer, I noticed that it really was just way far out. We were at least fifty miles from the next nearest living person, probably more like a hundred.

"What's this for again?" I asked.

The old man who dropped me off avoided the question. "Just don't worry about that right now. Relax and have fun. You can cook whatever you want in the fridge. Cell service out here isn't great but there's wifi and tv."

When he opened the door for me, I discovered that this was basically someone's house.

"Who lives here?"

"A couple of different people on and off but neither of them can come this weekend."

"It feels weird sleeping in someone else's bed."

"You can have the sofa if you want or pitch a tent outside. Your choice. The only thing is don't go walking off too far. And tonight, have the lights on for a little bit."

"Why?"

"Well, it probably won't happen, but just in case someone comes by to see if anyone is actually living here, we don't want them to have to go all the way up to the door and start asking for names."

"Should I be worried about bears or anything?"

"No. Not here. But of course if you see any kinds of wild animals you think might be dangerous, stay inside and call for help."

"Is it really a good idea to leave me all the way out here with no car, though?"

"Relax. It'll be perfectly safe. Someone will be round tomorrow to get you. No sweat."

No sweat for him. Plenty of sweat for me when I discovered that the little air conditioner only half worked.

The old man drove away and I was left alone to entertain myself. I got on the wifi and texted Terri. No answer. Fine. Whatever.

I walked the perimeter of the property to get a better idea of where I was. That didn't kill nearly as much time as I thought it might. Ok, back to the trailer. There were dvds to watch and one looked kind of interesting. It was some kind of sword and sandal adventure film with nearly no dialogue. Most of it was sweeping landscape shots set to beautiful music and you had to just watch what the characters were doing and see their facial expressions to know what was going on.

Next up was a box set of a tv show about supposedly peaceful space explorers who tended to get into a lot of laser battles with aliens they met. Not that I'd ever take the side of an alien over a human but it seemed to me the people in charge of that ship needed to do some deep introspection to find out why they keep turning others hostile to them.

As the sun went down I heard the various insects outside start to make more and more noise. I hoped the mosquitoes didn't have a way in.

I was checking the window to make sure it was shut tight when I saw a car drive up right as it started to drizzle rain. The person in the car didn't get out right away and I thought they might just drive away. But then the driver did get out and I saw that she was a woman. She ran up to the door and started knocking.