Alice, My Uncle, & Me Ch. 03b

"Don't worry, I'll call you as soon as we get back to let you know we arrived safe."

"Mike, here's a better idea, one that I think is likely to have a certain therapeutic effect. Don't call me when you get in; call me while you and Jeff are fucking. It will surely show him that your relationship is all right with me, it will build his confidence, it can be a useful step toward healing the hurt we all three feel."

That Allie! She was incredibly wise, incredibly profound. Others may have thought that this would have been an incredibly risky experiment, but Allie was extremely confident in her man, and in the vast strength of their relationship.

"But what about Mikey?" she asked.

"We'll see how that develops," he said, smiling at me, and putting his hand on my shoulder; "but for Jeff's sake, he has to know pretty explicitly the kind of relationship that Mikey and I have."

So now Jeff, Mike and I were in Mike's apartment, and he opened a nice bottle of merlot. We took seats in his little living room, Mike and I on the small sofa and Jeff in a chair immediately adjacent to it. I noticed that Mike took care that his right calf very slightly touched Jeff's left calf. It was a little thing, indeed it only amounted to Mike's golden hair intersecting with the thick dark hair of Jeff's beautiful calf, but it was very powerful. I knew its potency because Mike kept just the tips of the fingers of his left hand on my right shoulder as we talked. The force they exerted could be measured at just a few grams; but their power to affect, even control, me was quite astonishing.

I think Jeff was a little disconcerted that I was there; or more specifically, that he didn't have Mike all to himself. But then, that was part of Mike's plan to try to rehabilitate their relationship, but on firmer grounds for the future.

Over the wine, the conversation grew deeper. Jeff's personal life was somewhat confusing. He was in a relationship with a classmate, Phoebe, the daughter of a classics professor, and also with his housemate, Harrison, an instructor in the Chemistry department. They were both healthy, affirming, and fun relationships, but it went without saying that neither of them -- and not even both of them together -- came anywhere near to matching what Mike and he had once shared. Harrison, Jeff volunteered, was a really great fuck, though. He was a part-time yoga instructor, and he had, over the course of the last two years, trained Jeff in some really cool techniques. Some weekends, their sexual interludes together sometimes extended up to six uninterrupted hours, punctuated with climaxes of such quality and intensity that Jeff had hitherto never even suspected could exist. Mike appeared to take this statement with equanimity.

Jeff's relationship with Phoebe was very enriching. Her areas of research closely paralleled his and they reinforced each other's work very neatly. Their sex was always good and sometimes, Jeff, said, fantastic. He knew she loved him, and he thought that he was falling in love with her too.

Jeff's inquiries about Allie seemed to me to be more polite than cordial; but we all understood the rather miserable context in which they were offered, and Mike and Jeff soldiered through this difficult patch, and as soon as possible they moved on to other matters.

Like the bachelor party, whose beginning was now only a very few hours away.