A Creative Challenge Ch. 29

"Omigod, you two are SO much alike."

Mike and I were on our third beer when Amy arrived home. She stood in the doorway and stared at both of us in turn when she saw us sitting at the kitchen bench , then she pretended to rub her eyes with both her fists as if she was having double-vision, then looked again and shook her head.

"That's so scary. You could almost be brothers."

"Except I'm the good-looking one," said Mike.

"He got the good-looking bits from his mother," I said, pleased at Amy's surprised reaction at meeting my son for the first time.

"I can't see any bits that aren't good looking from where I'm standing," said Amy provocatively but tongue-in-cheek.

She walked towards him, and he stood up politely, holding his hand out to shake hers. She went straight past his hand, held him by his biceps, and kissed him on both cheeks, European style.

"I'm Amy, in case your Dad hasn't told you about me."

I don't remember him mentioning you at all, come to think of it," said Mike, playing along with her. "What was your name again?"

"Sam, come here, I want to slap you!"

"You warned me she might get violent," Mike said to me.

"And you're next!" said Amy, laughing,.

I could tell she was pleased and relieved that Mike was not tense or awkward at meeting her. I had told her that he was hoping to be home for Christmas with us, but she didn't know when he was coming. I kept his arrival a surprise because I knew she would stress about how Mike would feel about her and his Dad living together in the house that held so many memories of his mother, but I also knew she would handle it fine if it was just sprung on her. I wasn't worried about Mike, he was more than mature enough to cope, and I was sure he would come to like her as soon as he got to know her, and I was right.

"I'm glad you're home," I said. "Mike and I had just starting saying 'do-you-remember-when' to each other, so now's a good time to take a break from catching up, and he's probably as hungry as I am."

"What, you think I'm going to cook for you both like a good girl should? Dream on."

"No, I thought I'd take two of my favourite people in the whole world out to dinner."

"Right answer," said Amy. "I'd better go and get ready."

"She really can cook," I said to Mike, when Amy had left the room to go freshen up. "Very well, in fact."

"From what you've told me, I doubt there's much that she doesn't do well," said Mike, already impressed with my lovely girl.

I hadn't seen Mike since he went back to University at the beginning of the year, but we talked on the phone every couple of weeks. I had told him about Amy, how she had transformed my work, how much she had come to mean to me, and about her – our – somewhat unorthodox lifestyle. Well, not everything about it, but I had always preferred to be open and honest with him, so I didn't leave much out, and he was never easily shocked. Jeannie and I had raised both of the twins not to be judgmental but to treat people as they found them, and I knew he would do just that with Amy.

That first evening we spent out together after Mike came home was the best fun I'd ever had in Amy's company without her being naked. She was in sparkling form over dinner, and once she realized that Mike already knew about some of our adventures she kept us both in fits of laughter retelling some of our stories from her point of view, which meant they were told with a lot of embellishment, although by contrast, there were things she left out, and some she hardly mentioned. Tracey, for instance, was relegated to a very minor role, Buckingham was just one of the many staff at Fantasia, and although the recent afternoon at the mall was recounted in some detail, she left out the bit about sucking my dick for the whole length of Commercial Street in the rush hour. Mike was a good audience, concentrating on her every word, and in return, he was emboldened by her candour to respond with some stories of his own, recounting incidents he had been involved in that only a few short years ago he would have died rather than admit to with either of his parents in the room.

I had always imagined that Amy and Sally would get on together well, but Mike's opinion about anything had always harder for me to predict. I was a little disappointed that Sally had chosen to spend Christmas skiing with her boyfriend's family rather than coming home with Mike to meet Amy, but I was pleased that there was an easy rapport between my lover and my son. I put that down to Mike and Amy being the same generation, and I enjoyed sitting back and admiring both of them, letting someone else do most of the listening and some of the talking for a change. Amy had not dressed that night to be provocative, to be particularly sexy, but she just couldn't help it. Her effect on me was always pretty much the same no matter what she wore. She could give me an erection wearing a potato sack.

When she spoke, her lips and tongue danced close to each other to shape the air blown out by her ribs and made audible by the muscles in her throat. When she smiled, her eyelids widened to reveal the blue-white surrounds to her blue-green pupils, her cheeks creased near the corners of her mouth, and tiny crinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes. When she laughed I could see the wet soft palate and the quivering uvula at the back of her mouth, both of which knew what it felt like to be brushed aside by my desire-hardened penis.

Amy spoke with her hands like an Italian, and her t-shirt, stretched one way and then the other by the twists of her torso and the gestures of her arms, was alternately loose and flowing or wrapped tight against the undulations of her body. The bulging side of her breast where it met her ribcage and the shallow dome of her nipple with its embossed central stud pressed themselves momentarily against of the inside of the material, then vanished again as she made another conversational point in a mixture of words and body language. As she spoke, sometimes our eyes collided, and she knew that I was watching her, observing her, claiming her, savouring her. From time to time she would reach up with one hand to gather an errant strand of hair and tuck it behind her ear. It was a gesture that allowed her middle finger to outline the ear's whole shape then gently travel halfway down her neck before lifting itself away. It was a gesture of such casual sensuality it almost made me faint.

Mike was a media communications student so he was very interested in the photographs Amy told him I had taken during the 'showtime' escapades. At home later that evening I offered to show them to him, but he made a point of politely asking Amy's permission first, even though he was not expecting her to object.

"Do you mind if Dad shows me his pictures of you when you are out in public naked? I'll understand if you don't want me to see them."

"Do I mind? Absolutely not," said Amy, glad to have been asked, because it gave her an excuse to bring up an issue that had been on her mind. "In fact, I wanted to ask you something, too. I expect Sam has told you about how we don't normally wear clothes at home, and it will be a hard habit to break. I'll try to remember to stay dressed, if you prefer, but it would be a lot easier if I didn't have to be careful all the time – if that's OK with you.

"Amy, if it's OK with Dad, whatever you want to do is fine with me."

"Sam?"

"My darling, I didn't imagine you would suddenly become coy, just because Mike's here. He's a big boy, he'll cope."

"Is that right?" she said with a smirk. "We'll see."

"You know very well what I meant."

"I do. But you don't know for sure what I meant."

Mike was amused by the way Amy always seemed to have the measure of me, and I was glad that he didn't disapprove of his smitten father's new love nor of his exhibitionistic explorations with her.

"Where are those pictures, then?" he said.

Amy was interested in Mike's reaction to her 'showtime' adventures and she sat behind me with her chin on my shoulder while we all looked at my photographs on her PC screen. There were a few really nice shots of Amy in amongst the other out-of-focus or wobbly images, but with a little explanation from both of us, each sequence told enough of the story for Mike to be able to relive the whole incident with us.

"Dad, these documentary sequences are a really neat idea. I think there is a publishing opportunity here somewhere. But you need to get better at taking the pictures."

"I'm an artist, son, not a photographer. Besides, it's not easy trying to keep an eye out for trouble and concentrate on taking pictures at the same time."

"Sam tells me you're a really good photographer, Mike. Why don't you take them for us?"

Mike didn't respond to Amy's suggestion, but he thought about it for a moment of two, then asked me a question in return.

"What sort of trouble, Dad?"

"I don't know. I guess you never know how people will react. Someone might harass her. She might even get arrested. We don't exactly have permission to do this sort of thing, you know."

"I don't think you need it."

"I don't understand," said Amy, sitting up, suddenly very interested. "You mean getting naked in public is not illegal?"

"I don't know if it is or not, but you're artists so it probably doesn't matter. Look, I'll show you."

Mike typed 'www.spencertunick.com' into the PC and up came a website with a picture of hundreds of naked people on it.

"This guy is an artist. He puts an announcement in the paper which gets him all these volunteers – just regular people – to gather somewhere public, they all take their clothes off, he takes pictures, and then he exhibits them in art galleries. He's famous for it."

"Cool," said Amy, taking over the mouse and looking at some of the other pictures on the website.

"The point is, he was arrested when he tried to do it in Times Square in New York. He sued the city, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. They said it was 'free speech' and that he was protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Same principle would apply to you."

"How did you know about this guy... Tunick?"

"I could say it was one of the advantages of a college education, but the truth is..." Mike took the mouse back from Amy and clicked on a few pages, then pointed to a picture of a rear view of several hundred people, all naked, kneeling as if in prayer in the middle of a city square. "...don't you recognise your own children, Dad?"

I looked closely at the picture on the screen, then it dawned on me.

"This was taken in Central Plaza. Here in the city. Are you and Sally in there somewhere?"

"That's my ass," said Mike, pointing to one of the sets of raised buttocks, "and that's Sally's."

"When was this taken? I don't remember anything about this."

"We didn't tell you. We were in our last year at school, and we lied about our age. You were busy at the time."

"That was just before your mother died. I wasn't paying much attention to you guys, or anything else very much. Sorry about that."

"You being on this website is SO cool," said Amy, tactfully changing the subject and bringing our attention back to the picture on the screen.

"You've no idea how cool it was. At five in the morning in October, Sally just about froze her tits off, and I think you can guess how it affected me. It was quite an experience, though."

"So will you do it?" Amy asked Mike. "Will you take the pictures for us?"

"Sure" said Mike.

"Sam, I think it's time we did some Christmas shopping."