A Christmas Carnal

"And by the way," I added as an afterthought. "Any idea why she would bring a couple of homosexuals with her, to come visit me? She can't seriously be looking at converting me to gay."

It was Sharon's turn to laugh. "I haven't got a clue what that girl is thinking," she admitted. "It's virgin territory in there, the undiscovered reaches of her mind."

We finished the chores and went back inside to find out that Miriam and friends were already starting on dinner while running some laundry. I bowed out and went to check my email. I'm not sure what the others did. I do know that when I finished up and headed to the kitchen to find the others, Sharon beckoned me from the parlor. When I got there, I found Miriam already ensconced in a beanbag in front of the fire.

"Hi!" Miriam greeted me as I walked in. Sharon didn't bother with the verbal. She just kissed me. Deeply. A lot.

"Leave some of his brain operational, Sis," Miriam commented from the floor. Sharon eased up and went to sit with Miriam while I sat on the couch. Both women turned to face me. I kept my mouth shut.

"So Sis tells me you two have torn down the walls and found out you really love each other and that includes sexually," Miriam started out. Straight to the point, per usual.

"Yeah," I answered, a little defensively, I know. "It's the right thing to do, regardless of anybody else's opinion."

"Oh, I'm not going to argue that!" Miriam beamed. "I'm glad for you. Now the rest of my plan isn't necessary."

"What rest of your plan?" I was, of course, immediately suspicious.

"I came to Denver to fix you," she told me, then waited with a smile in her eyes while I struggled with it.

"I'm not broken," I told her.

"Not anymore," she agreed, still smiling. "Sharon fixed you first."

"What are you talking about?" I was getting irritated.

"Hear me out, then blow a gasket," Miriam told me and I decided to settle back and listen.

"Every Christmas season, I call to see how you're doing," she went on. "I get this undeniable feeling that you are massively depressed and a premonition that you could be suicidal. So I call to talk to you and make sure you're going to make it through the holidays, drunk maybe, but not killing yourself. This year was different. I felt something was wrong. Really wrong. Something wasn't the same pattern. The premonitions about suicide were so strong they were alarming. And I got real scared that your loneliness was finally going to push you over the edge. So I developed a plan."

"You needed a relationship that meant something to you, someone in your life you could love, or at least respect, and who would love and support you in return. I didn't have a clue who that might be. So I enlisted Paul because he's bi but mostly gay and a really wonderful guy, in case what you needed was a gay lover. And I enlisted Ashley because she's bi but mostly lesbian and a really wonderful girl, in case you needed a kinky three-way or something, or even just a non-threatening partner you could enjoy without strings. And I brought me, because if neither of the above worked, I was going to seduce you and make you love me and get you the hell out of the pit of despair you were digging yourself into."

"Then I get here and find out it was worse than I thought, but you two fixed it, and now Sharon isn't going to commit suicide because you rescued her and you aren't wallowing in drunken hopeless despair because she rescued you, and I don't have anything to do except pull my own weight around here while I mooch off you and Sis. So, congratulations!"

I was speechless. My brain was going ninety miles an hour trying to process what I'd just heard and was completely disconnected from my mouth. I just sat and stared at my little sister while I tried to work it out.

Sharon was going to commit suicide? She hadn't said anything about that. She seemed really happy and upbeat when I saw her, and when we were being honest about being depressed and how we handled it, she didn't mention wanting to check out.

Or wait... note to self: remind Sharon to tell me the rest later. Maybe that was the rest she was going to tell me. I looked over at her. She just shrugged and half-smiled apologetically.

And Miriam was going to seduce me? What the fuck, over? And she brings a couple of friends to help get me out of my depression?

"Did you really think..." I started to ask her.

"That Paul, Ashley and I could fix you? Sort of. I was desperate. It was worth a try," she interrupted me. "And if we're stuck here through Christmas, they're not bad people to be with. They are probably my two closest friends and the ones I usually spend the holidays with, so I don't end up where you and Sharon have been. You aren't the only ones who miss Mom. And David..."

"I really don't want to hate Christmas, Josh."

I couldn't deal with this. It wasn't wrong, or crazy, it was just too much all at once. I got up and walked over to the decanter of brandy Sharon kept on the bookshelf and poured a lowball glass. Sharon was watching me closely and Miriam was watching with curiosity. I knocked back half of it and returned to my place on the couch, letting the small nuclear explosion warm my insides... and hopefully numb me out a bit. I needed to get to bottom lines and soon.

"So, you figure Sharon and I have fixed each other," I echoed back and Miriam nodded. "And you're perfectly fine with Sher and I having sex." She nodded again. "And your friends aren't going to be weirded out by it." She nodded again. I took a deep breath and let it out.

"So welcome to Holiday Central," I told her. "We're going to be a little light on presents until the roads open up and I can make it back to town."

"Screw the presents," Miriam told me rather directly, then paused, obviously thinking about something. I didn't interrupt. Finally, a slow grin gathered on her face. "Screw the presents..." she iterated softly, then looked me straight in the eye.

"Are you up for an orgy, Josh?" While I took some time to look dumbfounded, Miriam turned to Sharon and asked the same question. "How about you, Sis? You up for some uninhibited pleasure?" Thank God I wasn't the only one looking like I'd been hit with the Stupid Stick.

"Well, I guess that subject waits for another time," Miriam blew right through the pregnant pause. "In the meantime, feel free to sample the wares. I have it on good authority that both of you are attractive to both of them, not to mention me, so don't get your panties in a bunch around us. And Sis? Anything you need help with around here, just ask."

There was a long moment of silence while Sharon and I looked between each other and over the Miriam and back. I had a feeling I knew what the night's conversation was going to be about while we were huddled under the comforter with each other.

"Let's go see how dinner's going," Sharon suggested, effectively tabling any further discussion. "I wasn't going to bother with a tree this year, but..."

"Oh, yeah!" Miriam bubbled. "We'll do a tree! Josh and Paul can go hunt it and kill it and drag it back, and we squaws can set it up and dress it. Do you still have all the old ornaments and stuff? It would be so cool to set it up like we used to, and..."

Miriam was still bubbling when we sat down to dinner.

* * * * *

Sunday Night

I held Sharon close in the dark and savored every moment. The snow was still falling and the house was finally quiet. Dinner had been beyond informative and the after-dinner activities ended up being a major ice breaker.

At dinner, Miriam decided to level with Paul and Ashley about my relationship with Sharon. And that led to an in-depth discussion of some pretty personal subjects, allowing me to find out a lot more about the others. Not just our guests, although that was intense, but about Sharon and Miriam as well.

Sharon had been intending to commit suicide. She had simply reached the end of her rope with no hope in sight. Until I needed rescuing from town. The thrill of hearing my voice and then seeing me had made her stop and wonder what the fuck she was thinking. That pause made letting in the light of hope possible.

I admitted to being in the same bottomless pit, no way out, no hope. My decision to come see Sharon was born out of desperation and for once, God came down on my side in a big way. I readily admitted that I'd stopped denying my love for my sister, and that I wasn't ever going to turn my back on her again. There had been enough loss in our lives.

Paul told us that he was, in fact, bisexual and found the women very attractive, but that his emotional preference for men, and hence his physical preference, was because of a long relationship with one of his uncles. He'd been seduced as a child, but not -- to his mind -- abused. He loved his uncle and found being with him perfectly natural. His uncle contracted cancer when Paul was entering college and it drove a lot of Paul's decision to become a nurse. His uncle had died about two years ago, but after Paul had gotten his certification as a trauma nurse, and his uncle had let him know how proud he was.

Paul was also part of an advocate group that Ashley and Miriam belonged to as well, and that is how the three of them got to know each other. After looking at the two girls for consent, he also shared that the three of them were lovers.

Ashley laid out her story, along the same lines as Paul, but a little inverted. She was bi and happy to have Paul and a couple of other male friends as lovers, but her lesbian preferences had come from a male cousin and not in a nice way. He had gotten her drunk and raped her. The two people who came charging to her rescue, emotionally and physically, were her mother and father. They protected and consoled her while they went after prosecuting the cousin, and somewhere in her mother's consoling, a physical relationship evolved.

She acknowledged she was giving us the short version, but where it went from there, according to Ashley, was she and her mother developing a deeply caring Sapphic relationship, and then when her mother moved to include him, developing a physical relationship with her father. In both cases, the relationships weren't abusive and she managed to get her head screwed back on straight and went to school to become a lawyer. She still had a loving relationship with her parents, but they lived on the East Coast and she lived out West, so they seldom got together anymore.

"So, you two have positive experience with incest," I sought to confirm. Paul and Ashley both nodded.

"We three," Miriam said and I felt clubbed. I wanted to say "What?" but although my mouth was moving, nothing was coming out.

"Sis, would you make sure Josh doesn't hyperventilate?" Miriam asked. Sharon just shook her head and came around behind me, beginning to massage my shoulders.

"I take it you're clueless," Sharon commented. Her touch distracted me enough that I looked up at her, very, very confused. "It's a weird one, Josh," she went on. "Just shut up and let her tell it."

I did.

"I was eighteen, just graduated High School the previous Spring, when David was killed," Miriam stated matter-of-factly. "I'm sure you remember. I was going to go to UC Berkley the following Fall, when I got the student loans and shit figured out. His death hit me hard. Mom tried to console me. Hell, she tried to console all of us. I wasn't having any part of it. Some part of me died with him. I stopped caring about being the good little sister. I started acting out and the person who reined me in was Grandpa."

"He'd been a motorcycle messenger for the Germans in World War II. He was fourteen. He'd lost family and friends. He sat with me and talked about what the loss was like. Stuff he hadn't talked to anyone about since the War. We shed a lot of tears together. We also shared physical comfort and in the end, I was the one to seduce him. Except it wasn't really seduction, because when I came on to him to deflower me, he actually went to Grandma to get her permission."

"Some kind of Old World custom. Helping with the sexual education of the children. Grandma said yes, and Grandpa took my cherry -- and he was damned good at it, too. Grandma was a lucky woman. Anyway, Grandpa and I occasionally diddled until he died. He and I had a gentle, loving relationship that no one else needed to know about, except Grandma, so I've got no problem with incestuous relations as long as the people involved aren't getting forced or hurt."

It took awhile for that to sink in.

"Wow..." That was about it for what I had to say for the rest of dessert.

After dinner, while we were washing up, Paul approached me.

"Josh, I have a question for you," he told me as I finished putting away the flatware.

"Okay," I told him.

"Are you uncomfortable around me?"

"Do you mean, am I homophobic?" I asked, wanting to answer the right question.

"Well, both," Paul nodded, "you don't have to be uncomfortable with me to be homophobic. And vice versa."

"I don't know," I told him honestly. "It's never been put to the test. I'd like to think not."

"Uncomfortable or homophobic?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him and he smiled as he caught my meaning.

"The reason I'm asking, Josh," he explained, "is that you seem awfully tense. If I took your blood pressure right now, you'd probably be hypertensive. I happen to be trained in massage, and after seeing the look of relief on your face when Sharon began massaging your shoulders, I thought I'd offer to give you a massage. And hope it wasn't taken as a come-on."

"I'll take one!" Sharon exclaimed from behind me. Apparently she'd overheard the offer.

Paul smiled and turned. "I'm good with that," he told her. "Let me see how full my dance card is, though." He turned back to me with a questioning look.

"How about you start with her and I'll let you know," I told him. "Although the odds are leaning in your favor."

"Fair enough," he smiled. Then he turned to Sharon. "Do you have somewhere you would prefer? I would want you to be able to lie out straight, both on your belly and your back."

"The parlor should be fine," she told him. "Fireplace, open space, beanbag chairs..."

"Sounds good," he nodded. "Let me run up and get a couple of things from my stuff and I'll meet you back down here."

"Cool..." she smiled. "See ya." Then she grabbed my arm and started hauling me off to the parlor. Or den. Or however you wanted to think about it.

"Where are you dragging me?" I asked, unsure of her intentions.

"To the parlor," she told me in a businesslike manner.

"Why?"

"So you can watch and learn," she told me. "If a professionally trained masseur is about to turn me to mush, I want you to learn how to do it, especially if we're going to spend more intimate time together. You want me to have mind-numbing orgasms? Being relaxed is a great place to start."

I guess I saw the sense in that and went ahead and walked with her to the parlor. We already had a bunch of bedding stashed in there in case the power went out, so she just rearranged some of it on the floor. She was finishing up when Paul returned with a weird horseshoe-shaped pillow and a bottle.

"For your head," he told her, handing her the pillow. "So you'll be more comfortable." She eyed the pillow for a moment, then shrugged.

"You're the boss," she told him. "You want me nude?"

"It will make the massage easier," he told her, "but you can cover up as much as your modesty requires." It took less than thirty seconds for my beautiful older sister to be standing in front of him naked.

"Nice," he murmured as he gave her the twice-over.

"I'm glad you approve," she murmured with a sly wink at me.

"Yeah, nice..." Miriam's voice came from the doorway.

"Ditto," was Ashley's comment. Sharon started to blush. All over.

"Ignore the um, persons behind the curtain," Paul smiled. "Just lie down on your tummy with your face in the pillow and your hands to your sides, palms up."

Sharon moved to comply and Miriam and Ashley came the rest of the way into the room, settling into one of the couches. I moved to the other side so I could get an unobstructed view of whatever Paul was going to do. The bottle turned out to be massage oil and Paul produced some hair clips from one of his pockets, pinning up Sharon's hair before he began applying the oil.

"Man, you come prepared," I commented and he gave me a slight smile.

"I was a popular Boy Scout," he acknowledged with a bit of imp showing. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear the story behind that one. Sharon, though, he began to melt like butter.

He started at the base of her skull and began working down her neck and onto her shoulders. He began slowly and gently as he spread the oil into her skin, then came back and worked a little harder and a little deeper, following the same pattern. The third time he went back to do it again, the moan he elicited from Sharon sounded orgasmic. It wasn't, but you get the idea.

As Paul worked on her neck, shoulders and back he began a quiet commentary to me, not doing anything to draw Sharon's attention from the feelings he was imparting. He explained that the six basic massage strokes were circulation, kneading, friction, compression, passive exercise and percussion. He explained that a complete body massage usually ran from the back, to the back of the legs, the feet, the front of the legs, the chest, the arms, the hands and the head and face. Erotic massage meant minor changes to the kinds of massage to bring out not just relaxation, but opening your partner to more intense intimacy. And all the time he explained this, he was working his way down Sharon's back, to her butt, to her thighs, calves and feet.

From the sounds she was making, you'd think she was dying the many little deaths. She moaned and groaned and sighed under his expert hands. When he finished her feet and asked her to turn over, she muttered something indistinctly into the floor.

"I'm sorry," Paul answered. "What did you say?"

"I said, I can't move," Sharon repeated. "I'm a puddle of jelly."

"Josh?" Paul turned to me. "Would you give me a hand?" I nodded and we knelt on either side of Sharon, prepared to lift her in unison and roll her over before lowering her on her back. Before we did, however, Miriam and Ashley joined us and it was the four of us that easily lifted my limp sister into the air and turned her there, slowly lowering her down and putting the horseshoe pillow under her head.

"Thank you," Paul smiled to the three of us and then he resumed spreading oil on her calves and thighs before beginning to massage her front. He had stopped explaining at this point and was just paying close attention to the job at hand. He was very careful as he worked up Sharon's shins and thighs, paying extra attention around her hips where she must have been particularly sore, based on her moans.

Her moans changed slightly, and I recognized them, when he worked on the inside of her thighs and her groin. But he didn't stop to mess with her -- he just kept going up her abdomen and sides to her chest, where again, he carefully moved her breasts out of the way so he could massage her pectoral muscles, but didn't do anything sexual. Although based on her moans, I think Sharon wanted him to...

He paid a lot of attention to her shoulders, arms, neck and head, and by the time he was done, my sister was limp fettuccine. She looked absolutely angelic lying there, completely relaxed, completely tranquil.

"Okay, Josh," Paul turned to me with a smile. "Your turn?"

I let out a bit sigh. "You bet," I told him. "She looks like she's in heaven."

"Then let's leave her there for awhile," he suggested. "There's plenty of room for you to stretch out closer to the couch, especially if we move the coffee table." The words weren't out of his mouth before Miriam and Ashley were moving the table. I looked at their expectant faces and realized what was coming. They wanted to see me strip. By their expressions, neither of them was the detached professional that Paul was.