Dorsai - The Second Generation

Uh, if you wanted to stay with me tonight, I'd like that. Not to do anything, I mean -" just hold each other." She graced me with a pleased smile before answering "Yeah, I'd like that."

It was only a couple of days before Sis felt like she was ready for us to start being intimate again. She seemed a little distracted at first, but I didn't say or do anything other than what I had before. I'd promised that I wasn't going to try and get her to decide one way or another, and I was determined to do just that: leave her to make her own decision for her own reasons. Did I want to be able to make love with her? You bet I did!

But I also loved her as much as I'd said, and having her happy was more important to me than anything else. It was while we were waiting that I got an indirect confirmation from Dad that he and Mom pretty much knew that Sis had me in mind as the one she gave herself to the first time. He'd asked me to give him a hand with some little job or other, something that wasn't unusual. While we were working on it, we kind of chatted a little bit as usually happened; it was kind of a way for Dad to make sure I was doing okay, and for me to bring up anything that was on my mind. We were getting close to being done when Dad told me "Son, I guess you've heard that Janet has started using birth control." A little surprised, I just said "Yeah, Dad, I heard." "Well, I expect that if she's starting to think about things like that, then you probably are, too -" and I have a couple of things I want you to think about." Interested, but not really nervous or anything, I asked "What're those, Dad?" "When the time comes that you're the first guy to make love with a girl, I hope you'll remember that stuff like that is a lot different for girls than it usually is for us guys. For us, it's usually about the physical part of it -" the having sex, I mean.

Most guys are usually pretty gung-ho about it, and don't really think about what it's like for the girl. For them, the first guy they're with -" well, that's most always a special thing with them. It's something that can only happen once, ever, for them: once they've made love and lost their maidenhead, that's it -" it's over and done with forever. There just isn't the change in guys when they stop being virgins like there is for girls." "Yeah, Dad, I kinda knew that." "Well, now you more than 'kinda' know it, and I hope you'll remember it. The other thing I wanted to say is another part of the same thing. The first time a girl makes love, because it's such a special thing and means so much to her, she'll likely want the circumstances to be special, too. I mean, she'll probably want the time and place to be as special as the actual event; and she'll almost certainly have certain ideas about how she wants things to go: not wanting to feel rushed, for the guy to be patient and gentle with her, for him to show that he really cares afterwards, and things like that." "Sure, I can understand that." Dad looked at me for a few seconds before saying "I hope you'll remember it, son. The first time a girl gives herself to a guy, it's something that could affect her for the rest of her life. Not just the loss of her virginity, but even about how she thinks and feels about making love: if the guy gets in too big of a hurry or doesn't treat her right or does anything else to mess it up for her, it could make it hard for her to enjoy being with anyone else for LONG time. And a girl gives her virginity to a guy only because she loves and cares for him -" from her perspective, she's giving him a treasured part of herself; he should make sure that he really deserves what she's offering him."

"That's just right, Dad. I sure wouldn't want it to be any other way; I remember everything you and Mom told us when we were growing up, about the difference between just having sex and actually making love. I really didn't understand it then like I do now, and I sure want to make things right for any girl that would want me to be the first one to be with her like that." Having said his piece, and hearing that I understood what he was saying, Dad didn't belabor the point. He just nodded and said "I'm glad to hear that, son" before getting back to what we'd been doing. After that little chat, I suppose I could have said something to Sis about it.

But a number of things kept me from doing so. First, Dad had been talking to me, making sure that I understood what I was getting into and what was expected of me. Second, I figured that if I told Sis about it, it might just get her more anxious about Mom and Dad knowing about her wanting me to be the one she made love with first. Finally, I'd said I wasn't going to say to do anything to her about it, and I wanted to keep that promise.

Still, I was surprised when Sis told me that her and Mom had had a similar conversation -" though obviously from a different direction. When she told me what Mom had said to her, it did cross my mind to tell her about Dad and me; but I decided that the reasons I had for not telling her when it happened were still valid.

It was a little over a couple of months after Sis had her doctors visit when Mom and Dad told us at supper one night that they were going to be going to a trade show for the kind of stuff they did as part of Dads business as an engineer. The way they explained it, it was going to be a lot of classes and seminars and things on a Friday, and then a big show from a lot of manufacturers the next day. The seminar was a couple of weeks away, and they were going to be leaving on the Thursday afternoon before, and coming back the Sunday after -" leaving me and Sis pretty much to ourselves for two days and three nights. We weren't going to be completely on our own, of course; their friends (the ones we'd called "Momma " while we were growing up) would be checking with us every so often to see if we needed anything, and we knew that we could call Dads friend Paul if there was anything like an emergency. They'd left us alone overnight before, but this was going to be the first time that they were gone for THAT long, and they were understandably concerned about us. But Sis and I both assured them that we could handle it: sure, it was longer than they'd ever left us before, but essentially wasn't that much different. Sis and I would have to cook more of our own meals (both of us were capable of the basics), but otherwise, no big deal -" just a little bit more of something we'd already shown we were capable and responsible enough for. Sis and I both knew that most of our friends parents wouldn't be happy about leaving their kids alone in the house the way Mom and Dad were -" but then, our friends didn't have houses that Dad had worked on.

The home automation stuff that he'd built into it, and the security system, were both controlled by something he called MABEL: Machine Access By English Language. Basically, it was a voice-controlled computer system that handled all the routine, grunt-work, and convenience stuff in the house: temperature, ventilation, the fire and security system (including video cameras that fed into the TVs), lighting, sound, phone, TV, the whole thing. Even if the power went out, there was a small electrical generator that would kick in to make sure everything still worked. While we'd been growing up, there had been a few times that we'd lost power due to electrical or snow storms; MABEL just told us that we'd lost the mains, that we were on generator, and kept going without a hitch. Even the generator had a backup fuel source -" while it normally ran off of natural gas, it could switch over to a propane tank if necessary. All of this was perfectly natural to Sis and me; it wasn't until years later that I came to understand just how good of an engineer Dad was.

Anyway, the last thing Mom and Dad had to worry about was someone breaking in, or us being stuck in a house with no power because of an outage, or anything like that. Their only real concern was us and how we'd do: that we'd eat properly, we wouldn't make too big of a mess, and that kind of thing. And even that was minor for them -" Sis and I had shown them that we were responsible and trustworthy while they were gone too many times before. While we'd likely have a friend or two over, we weren't going to be throwing any parties or getting into any kind of mischief.