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 “Let’s watch the profanity,” Helen said primly. “I don’t like it. Now be a good loser, Phil. Even if you didn’t win, you’re going to enjoy the next phase of this game.” She turned to the rest of us. “We girls are going to draw lots to see who goes first,” she said. “You men help George get things ready.”

 George brought out a sheet. We helped him string it so that it divided the room in two. There were four holes about the size of a man’s fist cut in it.

 “Take off your pants and shorts,” George told us when we had the sheet up. “Then stand so that only the necessary parts protrude through the hole in the sheet.”

 “Who’s the lucky girl?” Barry wanted to know.

 “We won’t know that until later,” George told us. “It’s part of the game.”

I took the number three position. Barry was first, going from left to right, George second, and Phil fourth. The three of us angled our heads to watch Barry as the game started.

 About all there was to watch was his rather large stomach bumping against the sheet. He gave one particularly violent thrust, and then groaned with disappointment as he was released. George, who was next, didn’t move at all. I guess he was keeping all his muscles clenched so as not to react prematurely. I saw him wince, as if he’d been bitten, and then he too stood back from the sheet.

 Now it was my turn. The most delicate flick of a tongue-tip caressed me. It darted about knowingly, switching sides, and then staying in the center and growing bolder. I was reacting now, and the tongue ran the length of my passion. Then it retreated and was replaced by knowing lips. First they too were delicate, then bolder and finally I was completely engulfed by them. I strained under the caress, about to explode, and was immediately released. Like Barry, I groaned as my unfulfilled lust slowly subsided.

 Phil was last. The first game had over-excited him. When the lips touched him, he immediately clutched at the sheet and released his passion. There was a giggle from the other side of the sheet, as if to say that whichever girl was involved had no doubt about who had such lack of control.

 Phil was actually blushing as we rejoined the girls. They teased him for a minute or so, but then Helen interrupted. “The girl we picked identifies the men as follows,” she said, reading from a piece of paper. “Barry first, George second, Steve third, and our own over-eager Phil last.”

 “That’s right,” Barry told her. “Now, which one of you girls was it?”

 “That’s for you to guess,” Helen told him. “You can draw lots for the order in which you guess. If you guess right, you and the girl who won can go off alone together for a bit—providing, of course, that it doesn’t happen to be your wife. If it is, she gets to choose someone else, and so do you.”

 I was third when the lots were drawn. Phil was first, Barry second, George last. We three men stood to one side while Phil told the girls his guess.

 “Wrong,” Helen announced. “Next.”

 Barry guessed and he was also wrong. Then it was my turn. “Helen,” I said positively.

 “That’s right.” She called the rest of the men over. “Steve guessed it right,” she told them. “And he sounded awfully sure of himself. Were you?” she asked me.

 “Yes. I was positive.”

 “Really? But how could you be?”

 “Well, you’re the shortest girl here.”

 “Yes,” Helen admitted. “But I was on my knees.”

 “I allowed for that. Even on your knees, you’d be shorter than any of the other girls if they’d been on their knees.”

 “But how did that give me away?”

 “There was a definite downward pull,” I told her. “I noticed it from the way Barry and then George was standing. And I confirmed it for myself when you reached me.”

 “A Sherlock Holmes!” Helen clapped her hands.

 “Elementary, eh what son? ” Barry punned.

 “Well come on along with me, Sherlock.” Helen took my hand. “I’m going to introduce some evidence you’ll never forget.”

 I put on my pants, tucked in my shirt, and followed Helen. She led me back through the central hall and down a corridor with some doors leading off it. There was the sound of a TV set from behind one of the doors, and Helen paused in front of it, frowning. There was a female giggle, and that evidently decided her. “Will you wait just a minute,” she said, “while I settle this?”

 “Sure.”

 She pushed the door open, and I had a clear view into the room as she entered. There was a very pretty teenage girl who resembled Helen sitting on the couch. Sitting with her was a boy of roughly the same age. The TV set was on in front of them, but I don’t think they were paying too much attention to it. As Helen entered, they were kissing, and the boy’s elbow was sticking high up in the air while his hand groped inside the peasant blouse the girl was wearing.

 “Patricia!” Helen snapped the name out like a drill sergeant barking a command. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

 “Gee, Sis, we didn’t hear—-” The words tumbled out of the girl’s mouth as she tried to re-arrange her clothing. It wasn’t easy, because the boy's hand was stuck and he was having trouble getting it out from under the tight bra she wore.

 “Of course you didn’t hear. This is disgraceful! Leonard, you go home immediately. Patricia, you go up to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning. To think that a sister of mine could behave—” Helen broke off the sentence. “I’ll have a lot to say to you tomorrow!” She turned on her heel and rejoined me in the hall.

 “These kids today!” she said as she led me into another room. “They have absolutely no morals!” Helen’s fingers worked nimbly at my belt until she’d pulled down my pants. “Nothing’s sacred to them!” She knelt in front of me and her cheek brushed my naked thigh. “When I was an adolescent girl, virtue meant something!” Her mouth moved over me. “But not any more!” Her lips puckered. “Today girls think no more of losing their virginity than of snapping their fingers!” She snapped her fingers, then made a loose fist out of them and encircled me. “There's no controlling them!” Her tongue stayed out on the last Word. “Ah—jud dogo wha thigid thi ideez vrub!”

 “I beg your pardon?”

 “I said I just don’t know where they get their ideas from!”

 “Neither do I,” I agreed as she lowered her head again. “I just don’t know what’s happening to the youth of today. They’re so wild.”

 “Wibd!” Her head bobbed slightly in concurrence.

 “Wild!” I repeated. “Wild! Wild! Wild! WILD-wild- WILD-wild-WILD-wild! WI-I-I-I-LD!”

chapter FOUR

 “DO YOU BRUSH after every meal?” I asked.

 It was ten or fifteen minutes later. The door to the connecting bathroom was ajar. Resting idly on the couch, I could see Helen at the sink.

 “Yes, I do,” she told me as she neatly put the cap back on the toothpaste and replaced it in the medicine cabinet. She rinsed off her toothbrush and put that back, too. “I got in the habit when I was in college. They ran this test, and my half of the class had forty-two percent fewer cavities than the other half, which used Brand X.”

 “The new scientific ingredient, hey?” I laughed.

 “And only Steve has it.” She chuckled back. “My favorite dentifrice.”

 “I’m flattered. But shouldn’t we be getting back to the others?” I asked as she came back in and sat down on the couch beside me.

 “There’s no hurry. Let’s have a cigarette first.”

 That suited me. I gave Helen a light, lit up myself, and then tip-talked up to my real reason for being there.

 “Do you and George have many couples visiting from out of town like Hortense and me? ”

 “Not too often. It’s nice when it happens, though. I like new people. And so does George.”