Love Always Wins Pt. 02 Ch. 05-09

"Well, we could make sure of it." Terri said as she reached over the console and opened the fly on my boxers! "Oh my! And it looks like somebody here is thinking of coming out for some fresh air!"

I groaned with surprise as Terri helped Little Stefan to pop up and out of my boxer shorts. Fortunately, we were on a reasonably straight stretch of road so I was able to keep us from going off and into the ditch!

"Dadburn it, woman! Not only are you incorrigible, you're dangerous!"

"Why thank you Stef!" Terri massaged Little Stefan all the way back to the campground, but not enough to make him cum, just enough to keep him standing tall in the fresh air!

After safely parking at our campsite and before we got out of the cab, I was motivated to ask, "All right Terri, what is your end game with this gambit? Is it your intent to give me a case of blue balls, or do you have something less devious in your game plan?"

Terri gave me her best Cheshire grin and replied, "Well, to tell the truth, it started out as a fun tease. Then it morphed into a fun toy to admire and play with. Now it's kind of boomeranged on me since I'm now pretty darn soggy down under, but Ms. Kitty is too sore to play!"

I was raising my eyebrows in frustration when Terri continued, "However, if you have no objection, I would love to have a snack before supper."

"Damn! What makes you think that I have anything left to give?"

"Welll, I have had a nice supply of precum to play in for the past couple of miles..."

"Okay, pax. I wish this was a bench-type truck seat! You could have your snack right now, right here!"

"How about you drop your drawers and go sit on the picnic table by the trailer?"

"Uh, not here! As I demonstrated back at the fire tower, I have no problem getting rutty in front of Mother Nature; but on the other hand, exhibitionism is NOT one of my kinks!"

"But there isn't anybody in the campground that I saw when we came in..."

"Yes, but there are some vehicles in the parking lot so there are folks around who are fishing or day hiking. This campsite is in full view of the horse trail that goes right by the campground and I saw some horse trailers at the corrals when we came in. Oh, and about a third of the riders and other day users have small children with them!"

"Okay, point taken! I will confess that showing off in public is not one of my kinks either. Let's get into the trailer and have some fun!"

I managed to stuff Little Stefan into my shorts and we quickly retreated to the trailer where I got some much needed relief and Terri got a bigger snack than I thought I could deliver!

Both of us agreed that protein needed to be on the menu for supper. Terri started the campfire while I fired up the generator and used it to thaw out some large steaks that we proceeded to grill over the fire along with some ears of corn.

After eating and cleaning up from the meal, Terri and I settled into armchairs around the campfire and shared what was left of the wine from supper.

"Malbec, ay? Not bad at all. Normally Rosé is as close as I can get to a red. During supper, maybe I was hungry enough that it didn't matter and now maybe I'm partly sloshed, but given those possible caveats, thish shtuff ain't haff baad!" she finished with a grin. "How did you get into it?"

"I came across it in a liquor store a few years ago and wondered what the hell it was. I definitely liked it, but it was a pain to try and find it in those days. Fortunately, these days it is unusual for a liquor store not to have any in stock. Also fortunately, I have yet to come across what I would call a truly bad vintage."

"Okay, so much for oenology. We've got to finish off Stefan's philosophy of love tonight."

"Ahh, gee whiz! And here I was so looking forward to a night devoted to the intricacies of Chinese peritransitional calculus, NOT!"

"Very good. I also vote against an evening of Chinese polywhatsis! Now, let me offer a hint, Stefan. The floor is now yours!"

I paused to gather my thoughts. "I believe that I have pretty much laid out the fundamentals of love as I see them—Stefan's theory of love, if you will. What I think I need to shift gears to is an exploration of some of the ways that this theory interfaces with the culture—and some of the specific implications that might have for us.

"Now back in the day when I believed in the existence and inherent wisdom of 'love at first sight,' I would have espoused the idea that two, or even more, people could leap into level four or five relationships as soon as they knew that they were in that level of love. These days, I am a whole lot more circumspect on this idea. As I alluded to earlier, high doses of dopamine and oxytocin make it real easy to mistake 'lust' for 'love.'

"This makes it important that we ease into levels four and five. In an ideal world, level three would be achieved at a civilized pace from the first level and then would flow seamlessly into level four and then to five. In our case, the Universe has contrived to get us to friends with benefits faster than the speed of light! That in itself is not a problem. In fact, it's more of a gift from the Universe. However, every silver lining has to have its cloud, and for us that is the fact that what we deeply believe is love may really be lust. It almost goes without saying that lust is not a solid foundation on which level four and level five loving relationships can be built!

"I gather that many people think that lust can morph into love over time. I will grant that this is entirely possible, but I also regard this as something of a fool's bet. Given strong economic and cultural incentives, lust is more likely to resolve into simple duty at best and codependence at worst. Without strong economic and cultural incentives, at levels four and five, lust simply sets the stage for disillusionment and vituperative separation.

"A complicating factor that can worsen the downside of lust, is the fatuous belief that WE can change good people to be even better people. People do change over time, but it is largely an internal process over which others have minimal influence and which is most often attempted to be effected through negative reinforcement. Nagging is the most common negative approach, and while it may bring results that last for hours, it also inexorably pushes those who are dutiful, or lustful, or even loving farther and farther apart.

"If you do not love the whole person of another, you do not truly love them. To truly love someone is to grok them. You know them well enough that you know all their virtues and all their failings and you accept them as they are and not as you think they can be improved!

"The cloud that the universe has gifted you and I with is a two-headed dragon: first, we need time apart to allow the flames of lust to subside and see if we can then find the hot coals of love in our hearts, and, second, we need time together to enable us to grok each other—to learn if we can truly love each other come hell or high water!"

Terri stirred. "So the universe has given us a conundrum. To be flippant about it, we need to be apart in order to be together." She smiled ruefully, "Much as I'd like to, I don't see any obvious holes in your argument, but I do start to see where this is going—and I don't like it!

"Fortunately, the solution to the conundrum lies in sequencing, but I still don't like where it is going!

"Stef, let me change the subject a bit. I'm getting chilly, could I sit in your lap?"

"Terri, it will be a cold day in hell when my lap is not available to you! This camp chair might be a bit cozy for two, but I'm sure we can manage!

"Let me get my cape so we can wrap up together in it."

Indeed, the chair was a bit cozy, but we did manage to snuggle up together inside the heavy wool cape. Just being close to one another totally made up for any minor deficiencies in comfort!

"And how does it come to be that you just happen to have a nice, heavy wool cape to wrap up in? This is definitely the first time I've run across a cape as part of a campers kit!"

I chuckled, "I have always figured that the old timers knew more about survival than us arrogant moderns give them credit for. I've always been curious about capes and cloaks, so when I came across a genuine French gendarme's cape in a surplus store, I had to have it! It's a bit heavy for packing around in the woods, but it is flat-out wonderful for sitting out around a campfire in the evening!"

"This is awesome Stef! All warm and snuggled up with someone I love, sitting by a campfire while the stars are thinking about popping out one by one—I could get used to this! Even the coyotes howling can't make shivers run up and down my spine now!"

After a few moments of admiring the dimming sky and the darkening pines standing like sentinels around the flickering light thrown off by the campfire, Terri finally said, "Well, professor, I guess you can continue. I promise that I won't let my mind wander too much." She placed a gentle kiss on my lips and pulled back a bit with an expectant air.

"Let me put my train of thought back on its tracks and I'll see what I can do."

"First off, you are right, the conundrum can be resolved sequentially, and much to my mixed feelings about it, we are both committed to starting the process to see if the driving force behind our mutual attraction is lust or love.

"I am committed to staying here for more than another week so I can support the gathering of my family. You are committed to seeing your father tomorrow and to not disappointing other friends and family too badly by totally rearranging your itinerary for your vacation. Ergo, we WILL have time to be alone and to see how much love is in our hearts after the lust has had a chance to burn away."

"For how long should we be apart?"

"Oh, wow, Terri! I wish you would ask easy questions!

"My lust, and/or my love, says that we should plan to rendezvous at the first place you arrive at after saying goodbye to the last friend or relative on your itinerary. My, hopefully, good sense says that you should have at least a week in a familiar setting so that you can decompress without unusual distractions, meditate on what has transpired so far, and explore the alternative paths into the future that have been opened up.

"In my mind, that means that we eschew communication between us until you get back to Indiana and settle back into your regular routine for at least a week."

"Uh, wait a minute! Are you saying that we go for something on the order of about three weeks without phone calls, texts, or letters?"

I hugged Terri closer to me and replied, "Fuck! I sure as hell am, and the emotional side of my brain is in full revolt against the logical side! At least lust and love are in agreement that our relationship needs to go to level four and maybe five—and they want to do that yesterday!

"However, if we go to level four, I want that to last, and if we go to level five, that HAS to last! We have to do our best to get lust out of the equation so that we are as sure as it is possible to know that we are building on the bedrock of logic and love and not the sand of lust!"

"That sounds so cold! My problem is that my mind is split on this too." I detected a rueful smile in the firelight, "However, much as it devastates my emotional side, I have to say that my logical side has captured the flag—dammit, Stef!"

"Well, I suggest that you contact me after you have had at least one full normal week in Indiana. If you need more time than that to disperse the fog of lust and find the treasure of love, then you need to take it!"

"And what about you during this period of radio silence, so to speak?"

It was my turn to generate a rueful smile. "I reckon that I get to be miserable until I hear from you."

"Huh? Why does it sound like I am the owner of the critical link on this part of the decision tree?"

I had to chuckle, "Terri, you own most, if not all, of the critical links on the entire decision tree that addresses our situation and its resolution."

"Okay, why?"

"The way I see it, I have about a third of my life yet to live. You have two-thirds, or maybe even three-quarters of your life ahead of you. I have no right to entice you, overtly or even inadvertently, into doing something that you may come to regret.

"The mere fact that I have woven two-thirds of my tapestry of life and perhaps learned a few tricks of the persuasion trade in the process, does not mean that I should use the experiences and skills thus acquired to force you to weave, completely irrespective of whatever your karmic purpose or objective may be, any pattern I please into your tapestry of life! As an outsider, I do not have an inkling of your life's karmic purpose. Like most people, you are probably unclear about what your karmic purpose is, BUT at least you are close enough to it that you can use your intuition and logic in order to come as close as possible to fulfilling your karma.

"If you, entirely on your own, come to the dispassionate decision that your life needs to interface with mine at love level four, or even five, in order to be complete, then that is more likely to be an expression of the need or requirement for fulfillment of your karma, whether that be for good or for ill."

"What is keeping me from controlling the pattern woven into your tapestry of life, Stef?"

"The majority of my tapestry of life is already woven. You are not in a position to ruin it entirely. If your feminine wiles are sufficient to entrap me even after I have had a chance to evaluate the situation with dispassionate logic and intuition, then perhaps that is part of my karmic purpose, and shame on me if I don't like what my failure to exercise the word "No" winds up doing to what remains of my life.

"Let me shift metaphors. You, Terri, are a beautiful butterfly that has flown into my life and landed on a bouquet of flowers that I am cultivating. I would love for you to land on my sleeve so that I and the world could always see and enjoy your beauty.

"To that end, I could capture you and seal you in acrylic or even a small bottle where I could at least keep you alive. But in either case, you would be reduced to nothing more than a pretty trinket that I could proudly display to emphasize my smallness of mind and my crass pretensions to be a connoisseur of beauty.

"In either case, you are deprived of free will and, with that deprivation, most of your beauty. An eagle that launches from a snag over a lake and soars on the air currents for the sheer joy of living is far more glorious than an eagle caged in a zoo or stuffed and displayed in a museum.

"If I cannot get you to ride willingly on my sleeve, then I will be content to let you explore my flowers, and, barring that, I will be happy if all I am allowed to do is to watch you as you flutter about my life. What will cause me marked distress is if you elect to fly out of my life forevermore!

"In more concrete terms, I know enough about you to know that I will always value you as a friend. Completely aside from the sex that we both seem to, I mean, DO enjoy, you are fun to be with and mentally stimulating to chat with. At love level two there is nothing not to like about you.

"I think that the probability is high that we could be friends with benefits or best friends forever. At least in the short term, we have already achieved level three. Over a longer term, the social costs would not be insurmountable. The shift in lifestyles needed would not have to be unduly disruptive. The investment of personal time need not be onerous. Only as we approach level four do the lifestyle costs approach a threshold beyond which a last resort of plausible deniability becomes impractical."

I couldn't read Terri's expression in the flickering light, but she sounded a bit nervous. "Are you saying that levels four and five are off limits to us?"

"Oh no! All I'm saying is that the social costs may be painfully high and the changes needed to be made to our current life trajectories and karmic pursuits may be equally wrenching.

"Fortunately, level four can be entered into on sort of a trial basis. If the costs prove to be too high for one or both of us, we should be able to back out of it without incurring too much social and psychological damage.

"Where we have to really be careful is level five. Both of us have to be comfortable that we can make it work for at least as long as it takes for every child that enters the equation to reach the age of 'majority' somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five.

"I guess where I am going is that I need to be sure that if we move higher than level three, you are entering into the relationship with your eyes wide open and perfectly willingly. To think that I might be the agent that entices you, someone that I know I already love, off on a path that you come to regret or even hate, is a burden that I cannot stand to bear. I have to know that you know what you would be getting into, and to that end I must do my best to acquaint you with all the negatives I can think of associated with either of the top two levels of love. Effectively, I think that leaves you with every single one of the critical decisions that are to be made. All of my decisions are secondary to yours."

Terri silenced me with a quick kiss. "Shh! I understand what you are doing and why; and I appreciate it! However, if this is to be our last night together, I want to cuddle up with you without having what may turn out to be a pretty dark cloud poisoning the atmosphere!

"It's late. I'm tired. Let's get to bed so that I can let you warm me up while I get the rest I need in order to be alert and have a safe drive tomorrow. Okay?"

"Uhh..."

"I promise I will not leave tomorrow until you have completed your negative sales pitch. Fair enough?"

"Okay, why don't you start getting ready for bed while I get the fire put to bed? Here's the cape. Go ahead and take that in with you." I gave Terri a playful swat on her butt and said, "I'll be right behind that beautiful butt of yours!"

Terri's teeth flashed in the firelight as she grinned and replied, "You ARE a perverted old man—and that's what I love about you!"

We brushed our teeth and undressed in each other's presence without so much as a glimmer of embarrassment. Well, I will confess that I was a bit embarrassed that Little Stefan insisted on rising to the occasion as soon as Terri was naked.

"Oho, I see that my little friend hasn't forgotten me! A girl always appreciates a compliment and Little Stef sure knows what the ultimate compliment is!

"However, I have some bad news for the two of you. Not only is my Kitty still pretty sore, but I am also feeling a bit off for some reason. What I would like to do tonight is to just cuddle up with the person that makes me feel warm and safe, if that is all right with you."

"Terri, this rutty little guy somehow is showing more get up and go than I ever remember seeing even in my younger and much more rutty days. I don't know how he is doing it, but I also think that he is overestimating his limits. A quiet cuddle with the most perfect woman I know sounds like a date made in heaven!

"So, Terri, let's go! I can hardly wait to get you under the covers and warm you up!"

Chapter IX

Morning came with the realization that there was some light stealing into the trailer and that my morning wood was just plain stiff and painful. The next thing that registered was that my penis was being licked and sucked on with a great deal of enthusiasm! Wow! This is going to be a prize-winning wet dream! Wait a minute, what's this weight on my chest? Hmm, and something seems to be holding my left arm down. What gives? I finally really opened my eyes and saw a big lump on my chest under the covers. Aha, obviously I am under attack by my favorite succubus! I'll lift the covers here and return the favor! Heh, heh!