Chapter Six
Naked Weddings
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As always this true story tells the tale of adults. Persons aged 18 or older when any sexual activity took place.
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Laban said, "It is not so done, to give the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also..." -Genesis 29.26
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INK ON VELLUM
"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." Those words top the three beautifully calligraphed pieces of vellum, tastefully framed and on display in our 'corporate offices.' Three long sentences in flowing Hebrew make up the Covenants, copies of ancient wedding contracts, the text of which Eva found in one of the Pastor's many books.
Mom and Dad had a plan, George would stay for me to graduate, then he could go on to college. I would stay for Ethan, then he would stay for Nate. Since they were rarely home, they would sell the house and use that to help fund our degrees. But selling real estate in a small high plains Texas town was tricky. You either sell it at a deep discount or expect a very long process. In addition we, or at least some of us, needed a place to live during the drawn out process.
I had a better plan, I had done the research. We were dispatching and taking loads for Mom and Dad and two of their friends who drove. Pooling those resources, three trucks and a steady customer base, we could create a loosely scheduled service on a single dedicated route, cut empty miles, fuel cost, and get everyone home two or three nights a week instead of one.
So, we had a talk with Mom and Dad, I created then delivered the prospectus. We had five employees already lined up, and lots of supporting documentation. They went for it, it was our first business enterprise together. By the time they got tired of driving and we sold the business to a big transportation conglomerate, we had twenty trucks running eight routes. They bought a retirement cottage on a little lake that we called 'The Country.'
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THE NAKED WEDDINGS
Eva was an ordained minister, at least in the eyes of the State of Texas. The minister was beautiful, beaming, ready to begin the ceremony, and as naked as the day she was born twenty years earlier. So was the groom, and the bride, and all the witnesses. It was a naked wedding. The first of three that Eva would perform today, in fact the first weddings Eva had ever performed. It was the first use of her new space, which conveniently still had the paper taped up over the windows.
We do everything together. We played our games together, we started one business together. Then a second, this one. Remember the difficult nature of selling real estate in Erewhon, Texas, well most swords have two edges. I went looking for a business venture that we could get the property owner to take the note back on.
It was a historic, if mildly decrepit structure. In the heart of town. It had originally been a livery stable, a saloon, and a bawdry house, then a host of other things over the past ninety years. Now it was ours. We cleaned it out, and had multi line phone service installed so we could run the dispatch. It was a lot of work, but we were young, we knew a lot, and just as importantly we didn't know what we didn't know.
Eva moved her youth ministry into what had been the stable, it was a nice big open space. Most importantly it freed her of the many restrictions imposed by her father's church board. We opened a coffee shop and cafe in the old saloon space, The rooms of what had been the brothel were divvied up. One for our playroom, with the euphemistic sign 'Corporate Offices' on the door. One for George and Kristin, with a connecting door into the adjoining room reserved for Jamie and me. One for Punch and Lillian adjoining Eva's. Leaving three unclaimed.
I had two more sales to make. I could sell our parent's house at a decent price if Mom and Dad would hold the note for five years. There was room to park their truck on the gravel lot out behind our building. They could have those three rooms, we could knock a hole in the wall and install a new door to create a three room suite for Mom, Dad, Ethan and Nate.
Eva wrote script for the covenants and together we made the physical documents. We signed them, all of our names on each document. We stood together, lovers all, swearing before God our undying love, support and commitment to each other. Quite literally without concealment, our souls as naked as our bodies. Our oaths consecrating Azusa, Eva's new house. That was forty years ago. "I remain my beloveds', and my beloveds remain mine."
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THE NAKED DINNER
When George got home from the Farm Supply, Kristin was in the kitchen cooking. I met him at the door with a kiss.
"Hey, go get a shower, Kristin is making us Coq au Vin."
He looked into the kitchen to see beautiful, curvaceous Kristin, dressed in a very attractive manner, something he might have chosen, stirring something, looking happy and graceful.
"Kristin... That's Steve's little sister Kristin?"
"Yeah, she looks kind of cute in a dress, don't you think," asked Jamie.
