Loosening Up Bk. 02 Ch. 01-04

Dave chuckled, "Six if you count Alice's sister who has moved in, and four year old Matthew."

Matthew was squirming around in Pam's lap.

Jack teased the child, "Is that your mommy's lap?" He thought it was.

Matthew said firmly, "No, this is Mommy Three's lap. I have four mommies. That's my Mommy or Mom One," he pointed to Heather. "Mom Two is there," he pointed to Alice, and Julie Mom is Mom Four." He pointed at Julie. "I can count to forty; wanna hear me."

Jack smiled at the tot. "Well, I think you have lots of other mom's, too." He glanced around the circle in the living room, "and a whole bunch of daddies."

Matthew grinned and pointed, "I call them my aunts. Daddy Dave gives the best bucking bronco rides. He's my Dad, but not my father." He looked at Heather, "Did I say that right, Mom."

"Yes, Honey. You said it just right," she said as the others laughed at her son.

In the momentary quiet lull, Matthew said, "Why aren't all the other girls mom's, too?"

Jack winked in sympathy at Heather. He obviously had lots more questions, but maybe he'd find out more during his interview.

Jack left and the group stayed around and kicked around some of the items that had been discussed. Wendy seemed a little concerned about giving up some of her privacy as did Ty, of all people. Several in the group raised the issue of too much togetherness.

Clarisse declared that she wanted to take Matthew for a walk and help him get ready for bed, hinting that she was not in a playful mood because of her monthly. To her surprise, Ty joined her.

There was some rearrangement of people in the Circle, so new couples and a couple of threesomes formed. Alice went off to the master bedroom with Sean and Wendy. Dev and Dori took over one of the guest rooms, and Sean, Heather, and Christie took the other. Kat and Dave opted to stay in the living room to be an anchor for those that might return from their walk, and then they'd join in the fun.

In the days that followed, Jack sat with each person and family interested in the cohousing proposal Owen had suggested. He'd started with Owen, and then worked his way through Alice, Pam, Julie, Heather, Dave, Dev, Wendy, Sean, Kat, Ty, Dori, Mike, Clarisse, Roy, and Christie. He even spent a few minutes with Matthew. Where there were couples or clusters of people, he also met with that grouping to see whether there was a different dynamic that produced different ideas for the living space.

Jason Riggs, Esquire, was the attorney Jack Anders recommended because he was the nearest expert on cohousing and condominium laws in the state. Jack explained, "Other lawyers go to him for information, consultation, and a deeper understanding of the law in this area. He's probably the best there is."

Jason came into the conference room and was surprised to find a large eclectic group of people there: Dave, Dev, Ty, Alice, Pam, and Julie. After introductions were made, Jason took control of the meeting; "Jack Anders told me that you want to move quickly on setting up cohousing for about fifteen of you in various combinations." Heads nodded. "Well, I'm your guy. I can keep you out of trouble with the state, and pretty much keep you out of trouble with each other down the road. As some people say, I've seen the movie. The agreements we do will ultimately be like a prenup to some of you."

Dave explained the various arrangements and demographics of the group. He bluntly commented on the intimacy the group's members shared, but Jason didn't blink. Dave figured he'd heard that news from Jack.

Jason went to a large white board in the posh conference room. He said, "There are four kinds of documents you need to get this started: articles of incorporation, declaration, bylaws, and any rules or regulations. All of you will agree to adhere to all of these documents if you plan to be in this community.

"The incorporation papers gets you started as a not-for-profit corporate entity, establishes the board, and the general procedure for managing the company that will hold and manage the common areas of your cohousing project.

"The declaration is long and detailed, complete with initial blueprints of the complex. It talks about the kind of properties within the complex, the priorities, who can do what to what, easements, right of access, who owns what, who is responsible for what, what to do when something breaks, use of liens, financing, discusses sales or lease of units, approvals of same, restrictions – for instance, no commercial business may be conducted from the property, and provides a legal description of each part of the complex.

"The bylaws go into detail about the board, voting, critical meetings – such as an annual members' meeting, borrowing money, establishing fees and budgets, emergency powers, bonds, insurance, and a few other items.

"Last, are the rules and regulations that impinge on the property and the owners. This is more of what you can and can't do, what the board will do about it if you violate anything, and how routine business will be conducted."

Dave said, "It sounds like a mountain of paper and legalese."

Jason responded, "It is. I'm going to give you a strawman and be available to walk you though every phrase in it. State law requires much of it. If you get it right it'll save you headaches later. By the way, Jack knows much of this, mostly from hanging around with me in meetings. We've been through this with a couple of other projects together, but nothing this ambitious or this homogeneous."

"How long to put it all together and what does it cost?"

"I can give you a strawman. Owen Bennett told me he'd process the real estate transactions through this office, so we'll lump the costs in with that, so they'll get distributed equitably across all your members. In this case, unless you get really fancy, it'll run about $20,000 total. The real estate side of this will be another $6,000 based on what Owen told us."

"Gulp!" Dave said in an aside to the others.

Jason said softly, "You'd be paying six figures at any other law firm in the state."

Ty chuckled, "Bring on the boiler plate."

Jason reached into a couple of file folders he'd brought to the meeting and extracted a one-and-a-half inch thick wad of paper printed on both sides and a CD. He slid it across the table to Ty. "This has a first cut at everything I just talked to you about. From your standpoint, most of it is boilerplate, but it does comply with all state regs – as of today. We need to figure out what's different for you, so I need some of you to go through this with a microscope, flag out questions, edits, or revisions, and then tell us what's missing. You can copy the file on the CD to anyone's computer to spread out the burden. The paper stack is so that you get a feel for what it looks like in paper and for some it's easier to read that way. Flag your edits, changes, questions, and so forth."

"This'll take weeks, right?"

Jason smiled and teased, "I thought you wanted to move quickly on this. Let's meet a week from today to finalize this. In the meanwhile, you should put a board of directors together to act for everyone else in regard to these documents and to assume the initial leadership role of the project."

On their way home, the group talked about the new board. That evening, everyone gathered to hear the summary of what had happened with Jason Riggs. They also put a board together, or at least the start of one.

Dave said, "We need at least one outsider that knows what they're doing. Riggs would be our attorney in this, but we need someone on the board that knows some of this and when we should be consulting the legal team."

Alice said, "Jack Anders would be logical. He even said he wanted to be part of our complex."

Dave nodded, "Good idea. Anybody else have a nominee?"

Pam spoke up, "I think he'd be ideal. He'll know the buildings we're putting together inside and out, and he interacts with the city and county all the time on building rules and regs. He can help us stay in compliance."

Dave said, "I also think that Ty would be a great president of the board. He understands business, meetings, the financial side of this, and how to keep a team of people heading in roughly the same direction."

The others in the Circle quickly joined in and over his protestations he was elected unanimously.

Dave became vice president, Wendy the secretary, and Julie the treasurer. An empty board position was created with the hopes that Jack Anders would take the post. Dori took on the landscaping and beautification committee, Christie and Alice the social committee, and Pam and Dev took on maintenance and operations despite there being nothing to maintain or operate. Dev knew construction and repair, so that was also a logical assignment looking ahead to when the building materialized.

Chapter 2 – Barely Legal

Ty and Dave made copies of the disk that Jason Riggs had given them, and then parsed up the work of microscopically reviewing the million words that made up the foundation documents for the cohousing project. The group met again on Friday night, not to socialize, but to discuss their reviews of the several hundred pages of boring administrative text.

Christie and Alice had taken on the sections in the various documents dealing with membership, induction, expulsion, and such. When their turn came, she started, "We agree with what Jason wrote regarding membership. A member is an individual housing unit; one vote per unit."

Ty asked, "That short changes some of the people sitting here. What about Pam, Heather, and Julie, for instance. They live with you, but don't get a vote?"

Alice said, "I talked to them specifically. They are content to let Dave or me represent them in whatever voting would take place."

Dev said, "That seems unfair since there are five adults in your unit, but only two in our unit or Sean or Ty's unit, and only one in Christie, Roy, and Owen's units."

Pam spoke up, "We're glad that suffrage is alive and well. We couldn't think of any other way to do this. We can work on committees and have input that way, and we're as free as anybody to speak up at monthly meetings."

Ty said, "I've noted this point. Let's talk to Jason about it. We should at least leave the door open in the documents to make a change about this feature. What else do you have?"

Alice said, "In Jason's documents if you buy a unit, you automatically become a member. We wanted more control. The board would recommend to the general membership each new member, as well as their spouse, partner, or any other person living with them. We would want to check them out and vet them, if not require that a majority of us know them well before they buy in. We could see down the road that others may want to join us, and felt this would be a way to control it. We felt that a three-quarters vote should be required of the membership. We also wanted a one-year probation period, but were unclear about how to tie this into their purchase of their unit; there were personal financial implications."

Dave asked, "Is this because of the fact that we expect everybody in our membership to be in open sexual relations with us?"

Alice and Christie nodded. Christie said, "We were thinking we should get past the NRE or New Relationship Energy stage in a relationship before full membership was granted. By then, everyone's warts will show and we can make a better decision."

"Do you really think we'd vote someone down a year after admitting them?"

Christie and Alice nodded. Christie said, "I can't tell you how many guys I've met that turned out to be bad news a few months after I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. That could go both ways or even with a couple. We could get lied to about a criminal past, drug use, alcoholism, and all sorts of things. What would happen if we got a fundamentalist in our midst that decided to go undercover and convert all of us? I dread the thought."

Sean said, "If it takes three-quarters of us to vote someone in, it should take the same to vote someone out."

Alice smiled, "We agreed, and that's what we wrote into our draft for Jason to consider. There's more, too."

"More?" several of those sitting said.

Alice said, "We want to be safe. So far, we've been a closed group, and unless I'm mistaken none of us have strayed outside our Circle ... and, yes, I know Dave and I did early on by getting with Pam, Mike, Christie, Heather, etcetera, but we're all very stable now – and clean. Even Dori and Ty haven't been with their other swinging friends for over a year. We need to protect ourselves in some way.

"To do that, we ask that everyone in the Circle sign a pledge to either use a condom or abstain from sex with the rest of us, and then wait for an STD test to be completed. The same applies to males or females. If we find this rule has been violated, we recommend an automatic six month suspension of membership and require a relocation to other quarters during the suspension."

"That's severe," Sean said.

"We wanted it to be. If you screw around, especially possibly passing on an STD to some of us, there should be hell to pay."

Sean argued, "But if your outside partner just had a clean STD test before you have sex with them, shouldn't that negate the need for this restriction?"

Christie and Alice looked at each other and briefly conferred. Alice then spoke, "I think you're right. We'll note that, and as with all this stuff talk to Jason about it."

Most of the heads nodded; even Sean's.

Several people digested that, including Dori and Ty. Dori said, "What would happen if Ty and I wanted to play with our other swinger friends?"

Alice smirked, "Decisions. Decisions. We're fine with that, just when you do that we expect you to honor and respect the rest of us with a clean test timed appropriately to your other sexual relations. I suspect your other friends have similar requirements."

Dori nodded, "They do, in fact. We will honor that. Do we need to give advanced notice so no one thinks we're sneaking around behind everybody else's back?"

Alice looked at Christie. They obviously hadn't considered this.

Christie said, "That's a good idea. To keep it low key, why not just let the president or VP of our group know. We'll add that clause to our rules section but make it a suggestion rather than a requirement."

There were a few more comments about the cohousing project and membership documents. There was one suggestion that most of the people liked, and that involved the use of an outside arbitrator to resolve unresolvable disputes between members. An escalation process regarding a problem was also discussed.

At the end of the meeting, Ty laughed and said, "One more thing." Steve Jobs had made the expression famous just before introducing some of innovations that transformed society, such as the iPhone and iPad.

"What?" Dave said.

Ty teased, "We need a name for our homestead. The 'Cohousing Project' that we seem to use just doesn't seem to do our future home justice."

Alice said, "We're referring to ourselves as The Circle. Why not use that?"

There was silence in the room as heads nodded.

Ty asked, "Any other nominations?" After a long silence, he said, "All in favor, say 'aye.'"

A loud chorus rang out with the positive vote.

"Opposed, say 'nay.'"

The room was silent.

"The Circle is officially and legally born tonight. We'll make it official in all our documents, as well."

Owen, Ty, and Dave met with Jack Anders on Saturday morning. He had a couple of different designs for the Circle Cohousing Project on his computer and hoped to have them ready to show to everyone the middle of the following week. The men listened to Jack and asked many questions about the various designs.

Ty eventually asked the sharp-witted man, "We have another subject to discuss with you; well, maybe a couple."

Jack looked puzzled.

"We would like you to serve on our initial board of directors, and maybe continue on the board for some period of time after our first year. There are many logical reasons for this: you're an outsider and thus have more objectivity than any of us might, you will know the buildings inside and out, you are connected to many local contractors and the city, and you are an all-around nice man. We like you, and want you on our side or under our tent flap, or however that is said."

Jack was taken aback by the request. Finally, he said, "I am honored and yes, I accept." He paused, there were obviously other questions he wanted to ask but felt as though he couldn't in that instant.

Ty read the situation. "Of course, we would like to have 'members' on the board. We could make an exception, but several of us heard you say one time that you were interested in living in such a project."

Jack nodded. "My wife and I are interested. I did talk to Grace about it." He paused and added, "She was very excited about the prospect, especially after I described all of you. She wanted me to be sure we're not imposing on you all too badly."

Ty said, "We know you are aware of the intimacy between each of us. Am I to interpret your interest as a desire to participate in that aspect of our community?"

Jack smiled slightly, "You are." After a pause he went on, "Many years ago, Grace and I and another couple were ... involved ... on a frequent and intimate basis with one another. We loved them and they loved us, and we learned a lot from the seven-year experience. Unfortunately, it ended when they had to move to the west coast. We've seen each other a few times since, but ... it just isn't the same. We have longed to repeat that experience with others in a larger group, but the opportunity has never arisen since then – until now.

"We'd like to try to recapture those feelings and again experience the shower of love that we felt back then. After I'd met and talked to all of you, I knew you were the kind of people we would want to build that kind of relationship with. I know we're older than the rest of you. We hope you'd see that as an asset. We would be honored to be considered by your clan – by the Circle."

"What does Grace do?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. She's an RN at City Hospital in obstetrics. She's been there twenty years. Before that she was a trauma room nurse. She's also a licensed midwife. We've been married twenty-six years, by the way."

Ty said, "Can the two of you join us for dinner tonight. We gather about five-thirty for drinks and hors d'oeuvres, have some kind of dinner – often outside if the weather is nice and that lends itself to barbecuing, and then we sit around talk, and gradually work into some intimate time with each other. You would be welcome to stay or go at any stage; no harm, no foul, especially since this would be Grace's first interaction with any of us."

Jack said, "I accept, but just let me check with Grace. She gets off at four, so this will work with the shift she's on this month." Jack grabbed his cell phone and fired off a text. He got a near instantaneous reply, 'YES. Looking forward 2 it. What do I wear?'

The men laughed. Dave said, "These arevery casual gatherings. Most of the women dress on the hot and sexy side, even slutty if they're in the mood. The men wear mostly athletic shorts and t-shirts. We're at my house tonight and I have the pool fired up, so most likely we'll skinny dip after dinner. People may wear swimwear, but that will get dispensed with after dinner unless you guys hang around and object in some way. That activity provides a nice segue to the group lovemaking that happens later in the evening."

Jack said, "We'll be there, appropriately dressed, and play the rest by ear." He grinned.

A few hours later after most of the friends and neighbors were in the back yard or the kitchen helping Alice and Pam with the side dishes, Dave heard the doorbell right. He hurried to the door, with a pretty good guess as to the arrivals.