The Women at the Parties Ch. 02

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A reader of an earlier version of this memoir complained that there were too many characters. It can't be helped. You are accompanying Carl and Ellen to an outdoor party where you don't know anyone. No one will have clothes on. Hopefully, that will help you remember them.

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Sharon and I agreed that, just because Caitlin and Jim broke up with us, we weren't going to let that ruin our sexy parties.

The Friday after Caitlin and Jim dropped the bomb, on my way home from work I went to the A&P to buy party supplies. Renee stopped her Volvo beside me as I was walking across the parking lot. I saw her old friend Bill in her passenger seat. I was disappointed to see him but not surprised. Renée's relationship with Bill went back to college. They parted ways afterwards but remained close friends. Sometimes more than that.

Renée said, in a low voice, "I'm sorry to hear about you and Caitlin. How are you doing?" That's how I knew the news had gotten around that Caitlin and I were no longer together, and probably also that she now was with Jim. It would have been a story people couldn't resist repeating.

"I'll be alright," I assured her. What more could I say? I liked Caitlin a lot, but I only became involved with her because Renée hadn't been interested. I really didn't want to talk to Renée about it.

Bill leaned over from the passenger seat to say, "Split ups hurt. Sorry." Bill was there because of Renée's more painful breakup with Jerry two months earlier. I knew Bill had already made at least one overnight consolation visit. I had a bad habit of driving by Renée's apartment on my way to work, and a couple of weeks earlier I saw Bill's red beetle parked in front.

"We can talk if you want," Renée said with a look of concern. I shifted my two heavy bags of groceries.

"I'll be all right," I repeated. We just looked at each other for a while. I wasn't going to say more with Bill sitting there, and maybe it was the same with her. I nodded goodbye and continued to my car, wondering what the brief interaction was all about.

Sharon came over to my place that night, the first Friday in a long time that Jim was not in her bed and Caitlin was not in mine. We enjoyed making tacos, feeling comfortable enough with each other that we could leave long moments of silence. I guess we were both adjusting to the change. Sharon played with Jake, tossing him bits of ground beef from her plate.

I was starting to clean up when Sharon suggested, "How about we leave that to later?"

I left the dishes in the sink, took her hand, and led her up the stairs to my bedroom. We had been naked together many times of course, but always while playing outdoors or in the same room as Jim and Carol. It was very pleasurable that night to watch her big smile while she undressed just for me. I was smiling too. We came together naked. We just hugged for a while, my hands pressing against her bottom.

Sharon reached down and put my hard cock between her legs, and moved slowly over it, as if to give her comfort.

"I like you down there," she said. Then she backed away and slowly bent her knees, kissing my chest and belly on the way down. She squatted and kissed the tip of my cock. She chuckled. "I can take in more of you than you're used to." And she did, giving me deep comfort and joy with her wide mouth around my cock.

This was the first time Sharon and I made love alone, and it was wonderful. Whatever hurts were feeling, we took care of them.

The next morning, I went downstairs, in the nude of course, let Jake out, made coffee, and brought two cups back upstairs. Sharon and I were sitting up in bed, naked, sipping coffee and not talking much. She had just moved her hand to my thigh when the bedside phone rang. I reached for the phone, trying to imagine

who would be calling me at eight on a Saturday morning. I figured it was probably work, or, crazily, I wondered if it could be Caitlin.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Carl. This is Ellen."

I hadn't heard my first girlfriend's voice in seven years, but I knew it was Ellen before she said her name. I sat up so fast I spilled hot coffee on my chest.

"Ellen! Hello! How are you?"

"Okay. Sort of okay. How are you?"

I thought about it. I had felt very good waking up beside Sharon. "I'm fine," I said. "Where are you?"

"I'm in Boston. I wondered if it would be okay to come visit you."

While I was trying to collect my thoughts and give Ellen driving directions, Sharon lifted the covers off her body and swung her long legs out of bed. She stepped to my dresser and picked up a notebook lying there. Ellen said she thought she could get there in the early afternoon. I watched Sharon writing in big letters on a page. She stood in the nude holding the notepad over her breasts with her head

tilted quizzically. "ELLEN WHO?", she had written.

I never had occasion to tell Sharon about the love of my life.

On the phone, Ellen was explaining that she got my number from my father. "He seemed happy to hear from me."

"Yeah, we missed you." Years ago, it had taken my father a painfully long while to stop asking me if I had heard anything from Ellen.

Ellen said," It's a long drive. Do you have room for me to stay the night?"

Sharon and I dressed and had toast and another cup of coffee on my porch while Jake went around checking out the property. Sharon asked me a lot of questions about Ellen. At first, I felt uncomfortable, but Sharon is an experienced interviewer. Between that and my excitement, I talked quite a lot. But I didn't tell her some of my most cherished memories. I also didn't tell her about what I did when

Ellen told me she was ending everything. Sharon, a good newspaper woman, likely knew I was leaving stuff out.

After our little breakfast, I carried the bags of snacks and fruit I had bought for that night's party out to Sharon's car. "Bring your Ellen along," Sharon said, smiling at me from her seat.

"Not very likely," I said. She put her face out for me to kiss her. After I did, she said "Ta-ta", and headed out the drive.

I went back indoors to change the sheets and clean the house.

All morning, while doing chores around the Casey's property, I wondered what had prompted Ellen to want to visit me. I went back and forth between happy anticipation, and anxiety that she was coming to settle some old score. About one-thirty that afternoon I was on the rider mower, keeping an eye on the long driveway shaded with sugar maples. The county road wasn't visible from the old farmhouse. The gravel drive came out near the big vegetable garden, most of which was planted over that summer with a cover crop of clover.

Jake slept on the side porch while I mowed. Suddenly he jumped up and started barking. I saw him bolt down the driveway. I cut off the mower to hear a car coming up the drive. An old silver Saab sedan with Massachusetts's plates emerged from the trees. It moved slowly towards the house, with Jake running and barking along on the driver's side. The driver stopped. I was walking towards the passenger

side of the car when I heard Ellen's unmistakable voice. "Well, hello to you too, you good dog!"

By the time I rounded the hood of the Saab, Ellen was squatting in the driveway and roughing Jake's ears. "You good boy," Ellen said, "You're really not so tough, are you?" Jake was grinning, ignoring me.

Ellen had kept her brown hair long and neatly held back with a white headband. She was wearing white shorts and a light blue blouse with short loose sleeves. She was grinning too as she rubbed the top of the dog's head.

"That's Jake," I said.

"Oh Jake, you are such a good boy, aren't you?"

Ellen stood and we greeted each other with a loose hug. At once it brought back the physical memory of her compact body. The seven years had made subtle changes in her face, but her fresh looks cheered me like they always had. She objected long ago to me calling her "cute" because she associated cuteness with girls in high school who spent lots of time on their appearance. She never fit in that

category.

While I was on the mower, I had been rehearsing a clever greeting. Whatever it was, it went out of my mind. "How long have you had the Saab?" I asked instead.

"It isn't mine," she said. "A friend loaned it to me for the weekend. It's behaved itself so far. I really like being out of the city and driving on country roads again." She and I had certainly done a lot of that in when we were together.

I took Ellen's overnight bag from her when she pulled it out of the back seat, and she carried her pocketbook. To me, the pocketbook was a new accessory, something she never had use for before. Jake ran ahead and claimed his spot on the porch.

Ellen was delighted by the polished-dark-wood look of the kitchen when I showed her inside. I explained that I couldn't take credit.

"The owners are on sabbatical in Europe until the end of the year. They gave me a good deal. I look after the house and property for very low rent, including mowing the lawn and weeding their perennials. And looking after Jake there."

"Where will you live when they get back? Will they keep you on as a hired hand?" From the way she smiled and moved her hair back, I recognized she was teasing.

I chuckled. "I do have a day job. I don't think I'm ready to commit to being on the land."

"I might like it," Ellen said.

I placed Ellen's bag at the base of the staircase, holding off the decision about which room it would go to.

While she freshened up in the downstairs bathroom, I fixed tuna salad sandwiches, took out the fruit salad I'd prepared, and poured glasses of lemonade. Ellen enjoyed the lunch. We ate in the kitchen and started catching up. She was working at a research lab outside Boston, and I told her about my job in hospital administration. We tried to explain immunology and healthcare finance to each other, with

limited success.

Ellen liked the research lab but was getting frustrated about how little she could do with a bachelor's degree. "That's why I'm going to Stanford this fall, for grad school."

My heart sank. I was feeling good up until then about our reconnection. It had already crossed my mind that I could soon be making the reverse trip to see her in Boston. Now she was telling me she was moving across the country. I nodded my interest and tried not to show my disappointment.

Then Ellen asked, "Do you ever get out to California? ".

"Not so far," I acknowledged.

"I'll let you know if I like it," she said. That lifted my spirits a bit.

After lunch, I asked her if she would like a look around the property. She said it would be good to stretch her legs. Jake sprang up when I opened the porch door and got a scratch under his ear from Ellen.

I led Ellen around the barn to the path to the summer house. I had just mowed it with the rider mower, picking up any fallen sticks along the way. It ran for a quarter mile through birch trees and cottonwoods. Ellen loved the wildflowers and knew the names of all of them. She and Jake stopped to check out a large toad stopped like a statue in the path. Jake lost interest in it before she did.

Back when we were together, Ellen and I spent a lot of time in nature, in the woods or up on the hills around our village. For three summers, whenever it wasn't raining, after dark we undressed and learned each other's bodies and made love under the stars.

Since then, she had lived twice as many years with Nathan, a guy I never met. He wasn't real to me. I don't believe in magic, but, walking with Ellen down the trail, I wanted to magically make the Nathan years disappear.

"It feels good to be walking in the woods with you again," I said now.

She half turned towards me. "I like it too, Carl," she said. Then she reached out and took my hand, and we kept walking. I wondered if she remembered that the last time I took hold of her hand, she pulled it away from me and said I was always holding her back. Maybe she remembered and was trying to make

up for that.

The Casey's summer house was a big screened-in room standing by itself in the woods. It was furnished with worn easy chairs, a pull-out sofa, a card table, and kerosene lanterns. There was a tidy outhouse some distance further in the woods.

I opened the screen door to the summer house and guided Ellen inside. Jake went to his water bowl that I always made sure to keep full. "You must love this," Ellen said, looking through the screens at the woods outside. We were still holding hands.

"It's my favorite place to read and write." It had also been a favorite place for Caitlin and me, but I didn't mention that.

Ellen faced me. "It's too bad we never had a place like this."

For a moment, I thought I figured out what this visit was about, two older and wiser friends having nostalgia for the thoughtless abandon of their youth. But suddenly she was in my arms, giving me a proper hug this time. Over the years I had tried to recall the feel of her. Now it all came back, her chest against mine through our shirts, the curve of her buttocks under her shorts.

Ellen reached up under my tee shirt and touched my back. I thought, What the hell is this about?

I slid my hands under her blouse up to her shoulder blades. It was a miracle remembered when she raised her arms. I pulled her blouse up over her hands. She didn't wait for me to drop her blouse before she was raising my shirt, getting shirt and blouse tangled together. Her bra snap came apart easily, and I moved back a bit to take her bra off her breasts, looking so friendly to me.

"You've gotten good at that," Ellen said. "You used to fumble."

I heard Jake's nails skittering on the wood floor as he laid down. He knew we were there for a good while.

In our summers together, Ellen and I had developed a ritual for beginning to have sex. We renewed itnow. I leaned forward and kissed her breasts, while she held a hand lightly on the back of my neck. I slid a hand down and undid the buttons of her shorts. I reached inside and my fingers grazed her pubic hair.

"There's my Lady," I said. "She feels different."

"I've been shaving."

She undid my belt buckle and button and zipper of my shorts while I watched her eyes. She put her hand inside. "There's my Gentleman," she said. She caressed me lightly, remembering me. "Where's he been?"

Soon we were completely naked, hugging each other, both remembering and learning. I backed away from her and turned to pull out the bed. I pointed to a shelf with pillows, and she fetched them while I folded down the blanket.

"We never had a bed before," she said, standing there holding the pillows against her body. I took the pillows and threw them on the bed, and there she was again, completely naked in the afternoon light flickering through the trees, her long hair hanging over her shoulders. She had what I realized must be a woman rock climber's tan, tanned below her knees and on her face, shoulders, arms, and midriff, the rest of her pale. I didn't care what she said, she was the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

"There's some condoms in the coffee table," I said.

"I started the pill again," she said. "Even though I got stretch marks in college from it. On my butt."

"I haven't noticed."

We lay down on the bed and gave each other pleasure. We were tentative at first, but soon enthusiastic. We explored all the familiar but slightly changed terrain, my belly flatter than when she last touched me, her responsive nipples, the muscles on her calves and abdomen, her soft labia like little pillows, her moist vagina greeting me with a little squeeze. I came, and then she trusted my hand to bring her off.

Afterwards, we held each other and listened to the birds in the woods. We murmured agreement that making love was even better than we remembered.

"Why has it taken so long?" I asked, not complaining, just trying to figure out why we didn't get back to this sooner. Reviewing our histories, we determined that for every month of the last seven years, one or the other of us had been in a relationship with someone else. Until now.

"What happened with you and Martha?" she asked. She was slowly running her hand along my collar bone.

"I'm surprised you even know my ex-wife's name."

"Your father told me. I stopped by one time. He said you seemed happy."

"He never told me that you visited."

"What happened with her?"

"She thought I was still missing you, and she got tired of it."

"That wasn't nice of you." She kept touching me lightly.

"No, it wasn't. What happened with Nathan?"

"He wanted to get married."

"You didn't?"

"No, I would have. But he thought he needed someone classier for his work."

"After seven years he decided you weren't classy?"

"Six-and-a-half. He was always ambitious about his career, but I didn't know it meant he would need a perfect wife."

"Unbelievable."

"I couldn't believe I didn't see it coming."

"You know," I said, "it's okay if you hope that when he finds a classy new wife, she won't be any good in bed."

Ellen laughed. "I do. I hope that she hates oral sex."

We laughed at that too, then we stopped. Like it was risking something between us to joke like that."I don't want to talk about it now," Ellen said. "I'm worn out."

Ellen was tired from her long drive, and maybe from more than that, so we took a nap. We had never been able to do that before, falling asleep together in a bed. When we woke up, we didn't say anything about our exes. She took hold of my erection as if it reassured her.

After we had sex again, we cuddled together, her arms wrapped around me, me moving my hands gently on her back and rump, "This is nice," Ellen said. "I've missed this."

Then I asked a dumb question. "How long has it been?" I was hoping to hear that she and Nate had stopped sleeping together a long time before they broke up.

"Two months," she said.

I stopped moving my hands on her body. "I thought you split up six months ago.

"This was someone else. I feel guilty about it. I slept with a guy when his girlfriend was away. She was a friend of mine too." When I didn't say anything, she asked, "How about you."

I regretted that I forgot that Ellen was always truthful, that if I asked her something, I couldn't count on her for kind dishonesty. I knew if I had any chance to restarting our relationship, I would have to be honest too."

"Last night I got together with my friend Sharon. Her boyfriend and my girlfriend had just broken up with us. I guess we didn't want to spend the first Friday afterwards alone."

Ellen thought about that for a while, then said, "It wouldn't have killed either of you to go for a week without sex."

I didn't tell her that Sharon was in my bed when Ellen called that morning. That was at least a lie by omission.

She gave me a quick hug then, which I took meant that she was both forgiving me and requesting forgiveness.

We hugged again when we got out of bed and stood naked. Then I made her laugh by bundling up all our clothes and having a tug-of-war with her over them. I wouldn't give them up, making her walk naked with me back to the house. Jake ran back and forth along the trail.

"Do you remember," Ellen asked, "that night we took our clothes off and went up the hill to the big white pine? I remember there was a big full moon. You were slower than me because I had tougher feet from going around barefoot. I waited for you and liked looking at you as you came up towards me. We had a long hug under the tree."

"I think of it often," I said. "I'm glad you still like walking naked outdoors."

"Nathan and I didn't spend time outside without our clothes. He could never get over that I used to do that with you. Do you still go around naked a lot?"

"Well, on occasion. In fact, there is a nude party at Sharon's tonight."

Ellen stopped on the path. "For real, Carl? I've always wanted to go to a nude party."

I phoned Sharon when we got back to the house. I told her that Ellen was interested in coming to the party.

"That will make it nice for you. I have an old friend coming too, from the City." Then she said, "I might have a surprise for you!"

"What kind of surprise?"

"You'll just have to wait to see if it happens."

Ellen and I showered together and, wrapped in towels, ate a spaghetti and meatball dinner. Her towel kept slipping down off her breasts.

We had a wonderful long oral session in my bed before getting back into clothes to go to the nude party.

Sharon's front yard was full of cars and pickup trucks when Ellen and I arrived. Even before I switched off my Suburu, we could hear the Rolling Stones' No Satisfaction from the speakers behind Sharon's house. Sharon lived on a rural road with no nearby neighbors to complain.

Ellen raised her eyebrows at all the vehicles. "There's a lot of people here." I wondered if she was having second thoughts. I had been having more than second thoughts myself. After a long separation from my old girlfriend, I was about to introduce her, naked, to my friends, and all of them would be naked too.

"It looks like the usual crowd," I said, glancing over the familiar cars in the evening light. Then I spotted the red Volkswagen beetle with Massachusetts plates.

Sharon told me she might have a surprise for me. I had just about decided that she must mean that she had persuaded our former partners, Caitlin and Jim, to return to the parties. That prospect had intruded on my thoughts on the drive over. What was I thinking, having the woman who broke up with me seven years ago meet the woman who broke up with me last week? Without their clothes on. Any reasonable

man would have turned the car around.

But now I saw that Sharon had an even bigger surprise in mind: Renée, my unrequited love interest for much of the recent past, would be there with her old boyfriend Bill. I felt Sharon should have warned me.

Now, sitting in Sharon's driveway, I must have stared at Bill's car too long, because Ellen said, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just someone I didn't expect to see here."

"Not another girlfriend?"

"No. It's my friend, Renée. And, okay, she is someone I used to hope would be my girlfriend."

I hadn't had time that afternoon to fill Ellen in with all the details of my romantic life. She had not given me a lot of details either.

"It's just that Renée's never come to these parties before," I continued.

"So, there is someone you haven't been to bed with."

"That would be quite a list," I said. "You've gotten an exaggerated idea." I leaned over to kiss Ellen, and she put her hand on my chest as if to reassure herself that I was real. My life was quite different from the despair I was in when she saw me last.

I realized that fulfilling Ellen's wish to attend a nude party would raise some conflicting feelings for me. It had been complicated enough when I thought that Caitlin and Jim might be there.

Whatever Ellen was feeling, she seemed to be in no rush to get out of the car either. I started to say "Are you sure..." when we were startled by someone knocking on my door window.

It was Sharon in a dressing gown, bending down to smile at us. "That's Sharon," I said to Ellen.

"Well, don't be rude," she said. "We better get out."

I grabbed the wine and a six-pack of 7-Up from the back seat, and we got out of the car. I gave Sharon a hug, feeling the shape of her body again through her light summer gown. I could smell tropically scented shampoo in her dark curly hair. She said, "I was beginning to give up on you."

I introduced her to Ellen, and Sharon gave her a hug too. The Ellen I knew in the past did not go in for hugging strangers, but she accepted Sharon's embrace like she was making a point of being broadminded. "I am so happy to finally meet you," Sharon said. "Carl has talked so much about you."

"We haven't seen each other for years. I don't know how he would have a lot to say," Ellen said. "But, Sharon, he told me about you too."

"Don't believe all of it. Come along to the house."

Now Ellen and I followed Sharon into the mudroom. There was a row of hooks on either side for hanging coats and ski poles and snowshoes during the winter. That night they held slacks, jeans, shorts, blouses, and shirts. Sharon kept a bunch of grocery bags in a box for stowing underclothes.

Sharon at once slid off her gown, hung it up, and turned to face us, long, slender, and naked. "I'll see you two outside. Ellen, welcome again to our party. Carl will show you the routine. Ta-ta."

She turned and opened the door into the house, moving away from us with her beautiful long back and swaying buttocks. I thought she was showing off a bit.

"I see why she doesn't mind going around naked," Ellen said. "She has a beautiful body."

I agreed about Sharon's beauty, and I remembered the feel of our bodies together the night before, how every way I touched her seemed to be just what she wanted.

To clear my mind, I turned to Ellen. "I like your body," I said. I meant it.

"I'm okay with my body, but I think it's more of a practical body. It's not elegant like Sharon's."

I didn't want Ellen to be comparing her body unfavorably to anyone. I put my hands on the hem of her polo shirt. "Let me see that practical body again," I said.

She crossed her arms below her chest to prevent me from raising her shirt. "You first," she said. "Sharon said you're supposed to show me the ropes."

I unbuttoned my shirt and hung it on an empty hook. When I sat on the built-in bench to take off my sandals, Ellen sat with me. I stood up to take off my jeans. Ellen removed her polo shirt and handed it to me. I hung it with my jeans. Ellen waited for me to get out of my undershorts before she removed her soft white bra. I placed both in a paper bag. She looked sweet, sitting on the bench top free with her long brown hair over her shoulders. She undid her high-waist slacks, scooched her bottom off the bench and pulled them down. I hung them up over her shirt. She made the same maneuver to take off her panties. I put them in with the rest of our underthings and hung the bag on the hook.

Ellen stood up and spread her hands as if to say, "Well, here I am!" I could understand her calling her body practical. She stood five-four with modest breasts. She had tight abs and muscular arms and legs from rock-climbing, and a scar on her left knee for the same reason. She had a neat brown pubic patch. She was even more fit than she was when she was twenty, and the way she looked moved me like it always had. I was glad that I had overcome a spell of post-divorce chubbiness with dedicated jogging.

If you have been to a nude gathering or nude beach with your sexual partner, you will probably appreciate that my body knew that being naked with Ellen just then did not mean we were about to have sex. It felt good but there was not the same physical arousal. It was because I was missing that arousal that I put my

hands on Ellen's waist. She moved in close, giving me one of her memorable tight hugs. After a moment I regretted starting something. I said, "You better not get me aroused just yet."

Just as I said that Keith came in naked from the house. "Excuse me," Keith said. "I hope I didn't disturb anything."

"We were just about to join the party. Keith, this is Ellen." I felt myself shrinking.

Keith just nodded without smiling. He went past us to the next hook where he had hung up his clothes and began searching in the pockets of his jeans. Ellen moved, not quite hiding behind me but positioning herself to have me between her and Keith.

Keith was a Vietnam combat vet. He was in good shape and kept his face shaved but let his dark hair grow long. He lived at Little Woof commune with his wife Maisie. He had an intensity that made people nervous and had a social awkwardness and sudden mood changes that would later be diagnosed as PTSD.

"Here's that baby," he said, holding up a rolled baggie. "This is some sweet stuff here, better than that shit they are smoking out there." He went back towards the house and then stopped, snapped his fingers, and turned around to look at Ellen.

"Oh hi, Ellen, it's good to meet you," he said. "I hope you enjoy the party." Then he turned again and went into the house.

"That was strange, "Ellen said. "I thought I would be embarrassed, but I don't think he even noticed I don't have anything on."

"The etiquette is to appreciate but not be too obvious. I'm sure he noticed how pretty you are naked." However, I thought, with Keith you could not be too sure. His mind could be somewhere else.

"Well, how was it for you seeing him?", I asked.

Ellen smiled. "It was kind of nice," she said. "I won't mind seeing him again."

Ellen carried the six pack of 7-Up and I carried the wine into the kitchen.

Allie and Zimmer were there, cutting into a big watermelon. Allie was laughing at something Zimmer must have said.

She had curly blond hair and a friendly, open face. She always looked warm and interested when I spoke with her. But when we had sex one night, it didn't leave me with a happy feeling. I sensed she was waiting for her husband to return from the dark end of the lawn, like I was a place holder while Zimmer was busy with another woman. Zimmer never seemed to have a problem finding a woman who wanted

to go off somewhere with him. After that, when our gatherings transitioned from nude party to sex party, I made a point not to end up with Allie.

Allie did look extremely attractive that night. She was not embarrassed to be leaning forward with her breasts hanging over the tall kitchen island while Zimmer sliced the watermelon half lengthwise. Both halves fell on their backs on the butcher block table. Zimmer nodded at me and then cocked his head expectantly at Ellen. I introduced her to them, noticing that I was relieved that Ellen could only

see Zimmer from his bare stomach up where he was standing on the other side of the kitchen island.

Allie asked Ellen where she was from, and then started to quiz her about Boston. Zimmer interrupted her with his own question.

"Has Carl told you what to expect at these parties?" he asked, sounding concerned that I might have misled her.

"He told me I would see a lot of naked people, and so far, that's true. He said the first part of the party is just fun, and that people who stay later have sex. We will leave before then."

Even when she was in high school, Ellen never got why people were shy talking about sex. Earning a degree in biology had apparently only made her more impatient with coyness. The danger that posed for her was that people sometimes mistook her sexual matter-of-factness with sexual eagerness. I could see from Zimmer's expression he was making the same assumption.

He smiled at Ellen, his gold molar shining in the bright kitchen light. "You could miss something you might regret if you leave the party too soon," he said. The way he said it conveyed the message that what she might miss would be him. I was moved by some protective or possessive impulse to move close behind Ellen, who was now leaning against the long side of the island opposite Zimmer.

Zimmer started cutting the watermelon into triangular sections. He held one out to Ellen. "You look like you would like a big one," he said.

Ellen said, "Thanks!", as if she had been waiting all day for watermelon. She took the piece and bit into it, with Zimmer watching her closely.

Ellen laughed and quickly put her hand up to her chin. "It's dripping," she said.

Zimmer grabbed a napkin and extended it to Ellen's chin. "Let me get that," he said. He dabbed the juice on Ellen's neck and then moved his hand down towards her breasts. Ellen lurched away from the napkin, slamming her back into my chest.

"It didn't go down there!" Ellen yelled. Maybe she meant to sound offended, but she said it in a kind of joking way.

"Hands, Zimmer," I said.

"Yes, hands," Allie said. There was no expression on her face.

Zimmer put up his hands in the air. "What?" he said, smiling his gold-molar grin.

Allie and Zimmer filled two big bowls with watermelon pieces. When Zimmer moved away from the kitchen island, his penis came into view. I had seen it at the parties before of course. It was notably large even while flaccid. Sharon had tried to reassure me that his erection was not much bigger than mine. I realized now that Ellen, by pressing close to the kitchen island, would have had a good

view of him below the waist.

Zimmer held open the kitchen screen door and Allie passed through with one of the bowls in her arms. Zimmer looked at Ellen, silently offering to hold the door for her. She held up the piece of watermelon.

"I'm going to finish this first," she said. Zimmer shrugged and went out the door behind Allie, carrying his own bowl.

"Zimmer is one of the flirts I warned you about," I said. On the drive over, we had agreed on the rules for our own behavior at the party: Flirting was okay, but no sex. The problem is that everyone has a different idea about just where to draw that line, especially when they are naked and the evening wears on.

"At college," Ellen said, "the girls called guys like that 'God's gift to women.'"

The actual expression of course is "Men who think they are God's gift to women", but I did not

correct her. Maybe the way she said it is what they meant at Mount Holyoke.

While Ellen finished her piece of watermelon, I uncorked one of the wine bottles and filled a paper cup. Ellen poured a cup of ginger ale for herself. She did not drink alcohol. She dropped the watermelon rind into a compost bucket, I found space in the fridge for our bottles, and we went through the screen door onto the back porch.

Through the speakers Bob Marley was singing about having "Many Rivers to Cross." Jim and I had strung up yard lights before the summer started, shortly after Sharon's ex had cleared out for good. Night was coming on quicker in August. The sky was already dark, but the lighting made it possible to play volleyball and croquet in the yard. The flickering citronella torches placed around the yard for mosquitoes also gave off a little light.

Renée was there playing volleyball. In the nude.

I felt like my heart jumped a beat. I had been trying to get Renée interested in me for more than two years, and this was the first time I saw her naked. She was laughing and jumped up to hit the ball, her long blond hair shining in the lights. I felt some mixture of awe and lust and loss that this vision had been so long delayed. Maybe there is a word for what I was feeling in some language. You would need another word to describe me feeling suddenly embarrassed that Ellen was standing naked next to me.

Renée and Bill were playing mixed doubles with Ruth and Mike. Ruth was a high school teacher with a shy manner and beautiful figure, the woman who had sex with me at our first party. Her husband Mike was a jovial contractor with just the beginning of a beer belly.

Bill was the first to see me when he picked up a ball that had fallen short of the net. "Hey," he said waving, "Carl's here." Renée turned to see me and smiled. "Hello!" she said. She was flushed from exercise, or maybe she blushed.

"Hello," I said back, "It's nice to see you." Then, realizing that my greeting could sound like a double-entendre, I said, "Ellen, this is my friend Renée. Renée, this is Ellen."

I had told Renée bits of my forlorn history with Ellen. Her expression now showed that she remembered some of that. There was something else in her expression I could not read.

Bill was standing close to Ruth, and she turned her full body into his lean frame as he was explaining something. They were interrupted when Mike shouted, "Hey, let's keep this going! Renée and I are two up."

Renée gave me a hand gesture that could have meant "We'll talk later." She turned back to the net and Bill served the ball. It went to Mike, and he hit it back two-handed towards Ruth. Renée's buttocks

jiggled adorably as she side-jumped across the lawn to position herself for Ruth's return.

I touched Ellen's shoulder and pointed with my chin to where most of the partygoers had gathered. Sharon, Zimmer, Allie, Maisie, and Keith were sitting around the fire pit on lawn chairs. Everyone had a beer. Beyond them was the old grey barn with the horseshoe pitch lit up by flood lights. My doctor Pam, blond and rangy, was there that night, tossing horseshoes with her husband and another colleague

couple. Pam and her husband visited a nude beach on St. Martins in the winter and she was happy when I told her about a local nude option.

I led Ellen towards the circle of people around the fire-pit. One of Keith's joints was being passed from one naked person to another around the circle. There was a guy next to Sharon talking in a fast loud New York City style about nude beaches. I figured he was the old friend Sharon told me was coming up. He had a square chin and curly black hair down his chest and belly. He was sitting close to Sharon,

on the other side of her from Zimmer. Sharon was lightly stroking his neck. The two bowls of watermelon on the grass were already half gone.

"You've got no control what kind of bodies you will see there," George was saying.

"It's always been invitation only at our parties," Sharon said. "That's what we decided from the beginning, didn't we Carl? Only people who we knew could be discrete, and who," she laughed, "were also aesthetically pleasing."

Maisie and Keith were sitting with their backs to us. When Maisie heard Sharon say my name, she jumped up and turned to me. "My dance partner!" she shouted. She was top free in khaki shorts. We immediately went into a triple-step to the Stones "Beast of Burden", with me balancing my cup of wine. We ended an under-arm turn with Maisie's breasts pressed tight to my chest. Maisie had a prominent

nose, but I always thought she was sexy. A few steps of East Coast Swing had been our greeting ritual ever since we enjoyed some very close dances at Jerry's bar.

I introduced Ellen to Maisie, who greeted her enthusiastically. "I'm sorry to grab him, but my evening's not made if I don't get in a dance with Carl."

"It was fun to watch," Ellen said. "I'm learning new things about Carl. Now he dances."

Sharon waved to me to come closer. "Come here, you and Ellen. I want you to meet George."

Ellen had I had to walk around the firepit to get to where Sharon was sitting in a canvas folding chair between Zimmer and the square-jawed guy. Allie was sitting on the other side of Zimmer, with a little space between them.

"This is George." Sharon kept caressing the guy's neck. "George, this is my friend Carl and his friend Ellen."

"Hello Carl and Ellen." George glanced at me but kept his eyes on Ellen. "When Sharon called this morning to invite me to a nude party, I was afraid it might turn out to be like people say about nude beaches: The kind of people who go there are the kind of people who shouldn't be seen naked."

I suddenly had the sense that Ellen and I were being granted an audience, both of us standing there naked in front of Queen Sharon sitting between her two consorts. I guess that sort of made Allie the lady-in-waiting. I think Ellen felt uncomfortable too. She squeezed my hand tightly.

I guess I felt I needed to say something in response to George's disparaging words about of nude beaches. "The beach at Truro was fine when I was there. It was all young people. Then Time magazine did a story and that did it in. Throngs of voyeurs showed up and the town outlawed nude bathing."

Ellen turned to me. "It figures you would know about nude beaches too." I'd visited Truro two summers after Ellen broke up with me.

"I agree with you if you are talking about excluding lurkers and pedophiles," Maisie said from behind. "But if you are talking about overweight people or old people, they should be able to be nude in the sun if they want to be." Maisie herself was very thin. Mike had once called her and Caitlin the "Skin and bones girls", which had brought an angry retort from both.

"Yeah, you have a good point," Zimmer said. "Obese people are the one group it is still acceptable to be prejudiced against." Zimmer was the progressive standout among the department heads in countygovernment. It was still compatible then to be a progressive and be constantly in pursuit of women.

Still, it was odd to hear him having a disagreement with George over tolerating obesity. It seemed there was a bit of jockeying going on between the two of them.

"Okay, okay, I need a more enlightened attitude," George said. "I will accept naked fat old people in my future. But not yet!" A lot of people laughed at that.

Maisie called out, "Carl, Ellen, you don't have to be standing there. Grab a chair and join us!"

I turned to look for a chair when Sharon rose and came to me, grinning. She touched my shoulder and leaned close to whisper in my ear.

"Tonight I'm thinking of doing that thing that you and Jim wanted to do with me. Wish me luck."

I jerked my head back, feeling my myself flush. Sharon knew how to embarrass me. It felt like she was violating some confidential intimacy. She smiled, said "Ta-ta", and returned to her seat.

I let go of Ellen's hand to pick up a lawn chair. I was unfolding it when she saw Britt and Preston playing croquet in the far corner of the lawn.

"Carl, let's play croquet instead of just sitting!" she said. She started moving towards the croquet court carrying her cup of 7-Up. I finished unfolding the chair, picked up my wine, and caught up with her.

"What did Sharon say to you?"

I wanted to take her hand again, but she had both hands wrapped around her paper cup. I put my hand on her side and said, "I'll tell you later."

"I don't care. I just didn't like her whispering to you."

Ellen turned and strode towards the croquet players, and I followed. She had a nice bottom to follow.