Oi 14: on the Plain

On the Plain (KOI 14)

Columbia. Summer and Fall, 1974. And Winter and Spring, 1975. And so on.

Strangely enough, learning that Danny and Candi's secret recreational habits matched our own did not foster an immediate desire to swap hobbyists' credentials and start work on mutual, fun projects. Some formal social awkwardness seemed to be at play, a set of rules regarding privacy that had not obtained in the earlier, chance encounters that Becca and I had wandered into together.

I was fairly keen to further explore the erotic potentials of Danny's monkey wife. (Okay, so maybe I was simply a randy 23-year-old, just becoming aware of the unique appeal of "teenagers" -- she was 19, now -- from my newly-mature perspective.)

But, truth to tell, my earlier trysts with Candi had been enhanced by my impression that I was engaging in an intrigue. Somehow the knowledge that Danny might not mind such trespasses so much took some edge off any anticipation of his girl.

And paradoxically, there was the introduction of guilt. Or rather, the introduction of the possibility of being found out! If Becca and I tipped our hands in the other couple's direction, wouldn't my earlier tricks with Candi become general knowledge? My behind-the-back stuff, my betrayal of Danny's friendship?

And while Becca and I had maintained an "open relationship" outside our coupling, she rarely discussed her dates away from me and I never told her anything about what I was doing. The mysterious others we might take on for a weekend, or three, were threatening: possible -- no, probable! -- rivals. We thought as little about each other's bagatelles as we could. But the earlier stuff between Candi and me might bring Becca's latent jealousy, if any, out into the open. Not to mention the potential ill effect on my friendship with Danny.

I was distrustful of Candi's discretion in such matters. What if she slipped? It wouldn't be beyond her to say something stupid.

Becca, for her part, suddenly experienced a bunch of emotions similar to those of people more inclined to conventional sexual relationships. She'd known Danny for years, and while he'd had a window of opportunity for a while, she wasn't sure she wanted to fuck him now. Sure, he was desirable, in a long-haired, rough-and-tumble way. But her friendship with Danny had been maintained for so long outside the perceived possibility of rough-and-tumble, it required a significant realignment of her feminine sensibilities toward him before she could even think of such interaction.

Finally, there was consideration of our four-way compatibility with Dannycandi. It took us some years beyond college to get a fix on this aspect of our generally accommodating natures. Eventually, we determined that it was next to impossible to wet up for people we didn't like personally, though opinions regarding virtual strangers might be waived on occasions of general riot.

And the compatibility had to be "four- (or six- or eight-) way." My or Becca's serious dislike of any same-sex member of our pod would lead to a tacit rebellion against any further engagement. My knowledge of Becca's dislike for another's husband would spoil any enjoyment I might take in his wife... at least, if we were engaging as a foursome.

And Becca wasn't sure she wanted Danny, and she wasn't sure she really liked Candi. And she wasn't sure she liked the idea that I might like Candi. And she wasn't sure I was telling the truth when I said I didn't mind the idea of her and Danny. And I wasn't all that sure about any of it, myself.

Once we were cast out of the Paradise of Southern Illinois, Becca and I found our unconventional sex life turning complicated.

So, deciding what we'd do with our knowledge of Danny and Candi's swinging put us, as a couple, in the sort of comic quandary commonly associated with the "singles" situation. Did we really want to know Dannycandi "better?" What if they no longer swung? What if they were embarrassed about their premarital swinging? Would bringing up that stuff jeopardize our friendship? What if we came on to Dannycandi (assuming we really wanted to), and they turned us down? We'd look like fools!

Gary was no help. All he knew was that Danny and Candi had turned up at Joe and Judy's place twice in the summer before we'd linked up with the Sieberts. They were there on the introduction of some absent acquaintance of the group that Gary had never met, some guy from Candi's native Kansas City.

"'Don Holmes?'" I asked Gary.

"Some name like that," said Gary.

Well, there was one connection made.

Gary recalled that Danny and Candi's behavior on the weekends in question was sort of like mine and Becca's. Danny seemed bemused by it all, kind of quiet and awkward. Candi was way more outgoing.

How or why Danny and Candi had eventually turned up on Joe and Judy's circuit hadn't been something for Gary to inquire about. And that was the fullest extent of Gary's knowledge. I didn't want to compare notes with him about Candi's performance.

So we didn't even have any background on which to speculate how Danny and Candi lay, in the present, though we knew a little about whom they'd laid two years earlier.

We did know that Don and Dena Holmes had been regular weekend visitors at Dannycandi's trailer, the previous year.

That was enough to go on, I finally decided. After two weeks and a couple of strange nights of cribbage and beer with Danny and Candi, Becca had resolved that Candi was she guessed okay and that Danny would be interesting, or at least funny, in bed.

"You talk to them about it," she ordered me.

I reckoned I would. I took the route of least resistance (based on past experience), hoping as well to quash the nagging doubt about Candi's discretion. I got Candi by herself and said something, like,

"Did you know Becca and I know Judy and Joe Wilson?"

"Who?" went Candi.

"Those guys in Illinois. You know, you and Danny spent some weekends there a couple of years ago."

"Oh," Candi's mouth was dropped open, though not in any sort of surprise. Sometimes Candi could be sort of slow.

"OH!" Candi's eyes brightened, and she laughed in a conversational way. "Oh, migod!"

"So, anyway." This was suddenly getting difficult. "So anyway, Becca and I were wondering if maybe, you and Danny, you would want maybe, to have a, go on a..."

Candi hugged me like a show business veteran.

"I don't know," she said. "I mean,

I

know. I'll talk to Danny about it."

"Uh, don'ttellhimabout... you know... us," I blurted out, chickenheartedly.

"God, no!" Candi said. "That was

cheating!

"

*****

Danny was genuinely perplexed the next time Becca and I ran into him.

"You, too, huh?" he mumbled.

"Uhh... ' last four years," I replied.

"Strange world," Danny shrugged. Then his face broke into an embarrassed, involuntary leer.

So, for the last month before they left for California, we were into the same sort of domestic scene with Danny and Candi that we'd found ourselves in with Gary and Sherrie. It was a little more ticklish at first, they not being family and all. And it was sloppier, too, Candi not having Sherrie's talents and Danny working with an overhang of backwoods Baptist guilt disguised as mordant diffidence. Most of our stuff happened in separate rooms, that summer. It was a different story six months later, after the couple returned from California.

It turned out that the pairing of Danny and Candi had never been entirely separate from swinging, though the two of them had settled down to just the occasional weekend with Don and Dena once Danny married Candi and moved her to Columbia.

Don and Candi were old... friends, from the ad hoc Loose Park love-ins of 1970. Candi was a stereotypically troubled hippie chick at the time. Stowed somewhere under several creeps' beds in Lee's Summit, there were a couple of nasty snapshots of her from those days. Don had met Danny in '71, while both were working on the summer construction project contracted by Don's father. Don introduced Candi to Dan without expecting more than manly wham-bam and subsequent beery comparison and contrast of experiences. But Danny had gotten to know Candi under blitzkrieg conditions in some runaway basements during their briefest of flings with hashish and amphetamine, and he got carried away.

The hash and speed business seemed to explain a lot, to Becca.

Our get-togethers in July weren't all so drab as you might expect.

Dannycandi's little house wasn't built for privacy, and the door to their dark, single bedroom was, for all practical purposes, open to their living room. The living room's sofa sleeper was unfolded before our arrivals, though its sheets were seldom fresh. Dannycandi's place was well-shaded, but not air conditioned. Three window fans provided an industrial-zoned background hum to our dates, white noise that failed to drown out the snap and snicker of our hours-long horsing.

The customary sex-and-bacon odor of their home added a perverse charm to the setting. The lack of air conditioning actually helped my fever along, even as it contributed to some chafing. Candi was as eager-bodied as ever, and the summer sun had brought back her tan, seeming even to darken her nethermost regions, though the contrast of her young greybrown breasts against her dark shoulders and midriff added a soupcon of trash to the presentation of her body. Her sweaty black muff floated on a greywhite background of ghost-panty, and Candi took my tongue into her slit as long as it could work. The smell! Far from being disgusting, it called for further tasting, taste of sweat and smarm and the mucous curd of prolonged lovemaking. We'd finish, for a while, in the living room, and lie listening to Danny and Becca at work next door to us. There would be low activity there, but the noises and the smells would eventually drive us back into one another's loins, grinding louder, happier, more fully, within our sweet brown reek.

Nineteen-year-old monkeygirls weren't as exhausting then as they seem to be to me these days. But maybe you couldn't tell so from Danny's condition, that summer.

Danny's problem wasn't as devastating as it sometimes can get, but it occurred often enough you'd have thought someone, Don and Dena if no more objective counselors, would have suggested the obvious solutions. But it was up to my fiancee Becca, the quondam Recreation major, to speak to Danny's condition and prescribe the most direct forms of relief.

"I don't care about your

state of mind

, right now," she's reported to have told Danny. "If you're going to be like this all night, you can just strap this on."

Sherrie and Gary's molded latex tubing had provided Becca and me with a lark, during our first pre-honeymoon days in Columbia. The clip-on sheath was little more than two inches long, but its knobbly relief pattern, faintly depicting something like coupling ferrets or otters, provided excellent friction at more than all the right spots. Becca's normally orgasmic enough au natural; The Tube could turn things right out onto the edge. The two of us used it with the respect due any serious psychotropic agent. I was in fact a little leery of the cumulative effect of the thing.

But I could understand Becca's point, with Danny. A red beard tangling in your darkling muff as a nicotine-tinged lip lunges over your clit -- well, it must start to get scratchy after the first ten minutes. When Danny was "on," he was good playing around about Becca's bed. But if he was "on," Becca figured, he could also play around on top.

And during his frequent bad moods Danny had the tendency to, literally, just suck. With fluffing, his large member would half-inflate, but even the most patient recreation counselor could have a difficult time coaxing it to a serviceable posture. And Becca, though very kind, is not especially patient.

So, on the morning Danny left with his wife for California, he left with a new toy.

*****