Things hadn’t changed in seventy years. People still lived in houses in 2092, still went to school, got married and found jobs. If you listened to Grandpa, he’d tell you the rich were still rich, the poor were still poor, and politicians still served their interests and not the people who elected them. Bea thought Grandpa was just being grumpy when he said those things, but she didn’t mind. Grandpa took care of Bea. He enjoyed telling stories of when he was her age, almost as much as she liked to hear them.
One thing had changed: the taboo surrounding sex. Bea found it hard to imagine they kept people apart because of gender; changing rooms and toilets were designed for just men or women. Grandpa told Bea that when he was sixteen people only got naked in private. You went to seedy clubs or had to download videos from dubious websites if you wanted to see couples have sex. Things were different in 2092. There were now parties where people did little else.
Of course, Grandpa banned Bea from attending these parties. You had to be of a certain age. Teenagers were old enough to drink, get married and vote at sixteen. They legally enjoyed sex. Parents discouraged teenagers from going to these events until they finished school, but friends talked, planned, and imagined what it might be like. The girls in Bea’s school had spent years wondering how many times they would go, or how many boys they might have before getting a reputation.
They considered the parties a rite of passage; not something just to be enjoyed, but something every boy and girl should do before they ventured into a life of work or university. Grandpa recounted memories of spring break, kind of the same thing, but the sex, if it happened, was a lot more discrete.
There were, of course, girls who would lie about their age, who wouldn’t wait until school finished and risk everything for the experience. There were also plenty of men equally keen to be the first to fuck a teenage virgin, but Grandpa had been strict, just in case Bea got pregnant.
Getting pregnant had become the point. Thanks to pollution, climate change and food shortages, the birth rate had slowed. Scientists believed that less than one in ten girls would produce an egg and fewer than one in twenty boys, enough sperm to fertilise it. As testing became time-consuming, expensive and inconclusive, young women took to having sex with as many men as possible, in the hope they might be lucky.
Friends revered the few fortunate enough to conceive, and becoming a parent was a far higher reward than a top-notch career or degree. Mothers were supported by the state; they didn’t have to worry about jobs, having an income or, if they chose, a partner. The more children they gave birth to, the better for everyone.
Some people considered the approach immoral and some men felt ashamed of bringing up a child fathered by a stranger, but mostly by the older generation, those who could remember life before the population went into a steep decline.
Grandpa was of that age. He still thought sex was something special. He remembered the nerves when he first met the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his children. He remembered waiting until their wedding night before they first made love, but he was pragmatic. Things were very different in 2092. Grandpa would also do anything to see Bea happy.
Happiness had become elusive for Bea. Since finishing school, she had been on holiday on a Greek island with three of her best friends, the perfect opportunity, as Grandpa saw it, to get those first-time nerves out of the way. She had admittedly been busy applying for jobs and going to interviews since getting back, but with Christmas rapidly approaching, parties were being arranged almost back-to-back.
“Are you going out tonight?” Grandpa asked as they sat and ate dinner.
Bea had, as usual, buried herself in the social network on her phone and gave a familiar shrug, the sign she was listening but too busy to reply.
“I’m going to a club with Charlie. I wondered if you wanted to come?”
Charlie (short for Charlotte) had been a friend for years. Charlie stepped in to help with bathing, changing and feeding after Bea’s parents died. When Bea started school, Charlie had been there when Grandpa couldn’t, waiting at the school gates. When Bea reached puberty, Charlie had been the one to sit her down and talk about sex and periods.
Bea had once asked Grandpa why he hadn’t married Charlie. His answer; she liked women the same way as him, meant nothing to the seven-year-old, but Bea thought it explained why Charlie never wore a dress or make-up.
“You’re always going out with Charlie,” Bea now said, her focus suddenly changed. “Why are you inviting… wait, what club?”
“Just a little place we go now and again.” Grandpa suppressed a smile. “Not one of those big parties that you would go to with lots of loud music and dancing. People just sit and talk, have a few drinks and… well, enjoy themselves.”
“You mean, have sex.” Bea was, as usual, more direct in her choice of phrase.
“Yes.” Grandpa felt a blush rise on his cheeks. “It’s what people do these days.”
“And you go to watch,” Bea said emphatically, looking at Grandpa as if she had suddenly discovered a whole new side to him. “Is this one of those clubs that you used to describe to me as being seedy, as though they were somewhere dirty that I should avoid at all costs?”
“Well yes, but in my defence, you were then underage, and I didn’t want them to seem glamorous and make you think it was somewhere you wanted to be.”
“So which is it?” Bea’s tone had suddenly become teasing. “Seedy or glamorous?”
“Somewhere in-between I guess,” he replied, the awkwardness apparent in his voice. “It was your grandmother that first suggested we go. It was members only back then, lots of darkened rooms, and you couldn’t go unless you were part of a couple.”
“Granny?” The word shocked Bea. “You mean you used to go with Gran?”
“Yes. Your Mother had grown up and gone off to college, and being suddenly alone together, well, we’d got into a bit of a rut. We didn’t go often, just now and again. The club seemed to bring back that spark.”
“So you met other couples there,” Bea said, trying to put the pieces together. “Does that mean you had sex? Did Granny have sex with other men?”
“Yes, at least I did, with other women. Your grandmother and I were always in separate rooms. We made a vow never to tell each other what we got up to so that we didn’t appear to be making comparisons.”
“Is it all still separate rooms?”
“The layout has hardly changed. They’ve made the lounge bigger, but there are still a lot of rooms.”
“So if people go off to these rooms, how do you… wait, you don’t go to watch, you go there to join in? You have sex too?”
Bea sounded triumphant while Grandpa’s embarrassment felt complete. He had never wanted to keep secrets from his granddaughter, and sex was now too important a subject to skirt around, but the conversation had not gone the way he expected.
“If you and Charlie are going there to do that, why are you inviting me?”
“Because you don’t seem happy going out with your friends.” The awkwardness again was evident in Grandpa’s voice. “Ever since you came back from holiday, you haven’t wanted to go out. I have heard you on the phone with Chloe and hear you make excuses. You don’t seem to want to do anything. I just thought if you came out with me and Charlie, it might help with whatever is bothering you?”
There followed a long silence while Bea considered what Grandpa had said. She knew exactly what was bothering her but typically wanted no one to notice her moods or overhear her conversations (despite privacy being impossible in their tiny house). She was in equal measure angry that he had listened in, and grateful that he cared enough to say.
“My friends lost their virginity out in Greece,” Bea started, the emotion adding an edge to her voice. “It was like they couldn’t wait to do it the first time and didn’t much care who they did it with. I know it’s supposed to not matter anymore, but it all felt wrong. Now it feels like I am under pressure, that they are expecting me to jump on the first man I meet to have sex, wherever we go.”
Grandpa walked around the table and hugged Bea. “I think I’ve told you too many tales. It wasn’t all romance and easygoing when your grandmother was alive, even if I made it sound like that.”
“I’m glad you’ve told me how things used to be,” Bea said. “It all seemed a lot simpler back then.”
Grandpa wasn’t at all sure it was any easier, but Bea seemed happy to accept the invitation and that, for the moment, was all that mattered.
The club wasn’t what Bea imagined. There were two burly security personnel outside, a ubiquitous sight for most town centre venues. They were, however, doing finger-prick blood tests, something that Bea had not previously seen or considered. It was, according to Grandpa, aimed at keeping people safe from disease.
Inside, the ground floor was more like the pub Grandpa had occasionally taken Bea to, a bar down one side, a few booths and tables, and a small dance floor and stage. There was music coming through the speakers, the lighting dimmed, and groups of people sat around happily talking and drinking.
Most of the people seemed to know Grandpa and Charlie, and Grandpa was delighted to introduce Bea. One or two were faces that Bea recognised from people that had visited the house, or met at some event they had been to, but most were strangers.
There were certainly more men than women, aged anything from mid-twenties to late-seventies. What balanced the numbers and age profile were two tables of girls of Bea’s age. Bea didn’t want to question whether she didn’t recognise them because they were from a school out of the area, or were just girls from a junior year.
With the endless, simple conversation helped along by alcohol, Bea began to relax and enjoy. Her natural curiosity, however, kept her focus on the other guests in the room. It quickly became obvious that the people that Grandpa had introduced her to, and she had assumed were couples, were not, at least not in the sense she thought she understood. Men and women appeared to change tables and partners with surprising rapidity, whether that was to share a drink or a dance or to disappear up or down one of the two staircases.
Upstairs led to some small, private, comfortable rooms, with staff on hand to clean and replace bed sheets. Downstairs, however, was a little more public and had rooms designed to cater for what Charlie described as more-devious-tastes. Bea felt bewildered and intrigued in equal measure.
A couple of hours had passed when a girl from one of the younger groups made her way over, introduced herself, and placed herself on Grandpa’s lap almost before he could speak. The conversation that followed was brief and pointed. It wasn’t long before Grandpa clumsily apologised to Bea and Charlie and he and the girl made their way towards the stairs.
The girl bemused Bea by refusing to let go of Grandpa’s hand. Incapable of stopping her short skirt from riding up, she proudly gave the rest of the room a view of her ass. She wasn’t wearing panties. When they reached the staircase, Grandpa steered the girl through a doorway off to the side.
“That was an invitation to go watch,” Charlie said.
“Really? Why…”. Bea stopped, suddenly unsure how to word the question that hung in her mind.
“Because your grandfather knows me too well. Few women come here interested in getting laid by another woman these days. The younger ones want to get pregnant, and while I can do most things, that isn’t one I’m equipped for. So your grandfather lets me watch.”
Bea was now used to Charlie’s sexuality and tastes, but this was another of those occasions where she didn’t know how to respond. Her curiosity piqued about the club and everything she had seen, she told herself that watching Grandpa was all about not wanting to spoil Charlie’s fun. Her motivation, however, was from something much deeper.
Charlie led Bea through a discreet door behind the bar into a small, dark, dusty room. “A hidey-hole to cater for those who got their kicks out of voyeurism,” she explained as if the description applied to everyone but herself.
The oppressive darkness and silence made the small space strange and uncomfortable. Bea felt as if all the nerve endings in her body were suddenly alive. The cold prickled her skin, the air made breathing difficult, and her brain tried to absorb every detail of what she could see through the two-way mirror.
She had been to the swimming pool with Grandpa frequently so had gotten used to seeing him naked. Now, however, she noticed the thinness of his legs and arms, the wrinkles and dark spots that marked his skin, and the white, wiry hair that covered his body. She was acutely aware of the old man’s fat belly, the one physical feature that had been the source of complaint by Grandpa for as long as Bea could remember.
Bea became entranced by Grandpa’s genitals, how his testicles hung low and large, how his penis grew long and thick as the girl stroked and then placed it in her mouth, how the large, purple head emerged from under its shroud of skin and glistened with saliva.
It enthralled Bea to see Grandpa lay back on the bench as the girl climbed astride him, his impossibly large shaft vanishing easily between the blood-engorged lips of her womanhood. She imagined how it must be stretching the girl’s vagina and, as their two bodies touched, how the length must be pressing past her cervix, distending the muscles surrounding her womb.
“I hope you realise I can hear the noises you’re making.” Charlie was whispering, but her tone was light and teasing.
“What noises?”
“You sighed when that girl climbed on top of your grandfather and he began fucking her.”
“Sorry,” Bea replied, embarrassed. “I think I want to be doing that with someone.”
“I know,” Charlie said, her voice now turning serious. “I hope you won’t be angry, but your grandfather has been telling me about you. He is worried. It was me that suggested he should bring you here.”
“I don’t see how me seeing him have sex with some girl helps.”
“I’m not sure it does, but being in here, just me and you, gives me a chance to propose something and you coming to the club tonight, well, I thought it might give the suggestion context.”
Bea stayed silent, but her focus was now totally on Charlie.
“Most of the men here tonight have noticed you. There are a few that have hardly been able to stop looking your way. This place is very easygoing but men won’t go up to a female in here unless she shows some sign she is willing. Sitting, chatting and drinking with us old folk is not giving off the right signals.”
“I know you want your first time to be special and believe me, we both understand that you don’t want to just choose some stranger and ask him to join you. Downstairs is a room designed for group orgies. Few people go down there now, but most of the regulars know what it is for. If people saw us leading you that way, I’m sure several men will follow.”
Charlie paused, expecting some reaction, but Bea again remained silent.
“Some will want to look, but if we get things going and make it clear we are willing for others to join in, someone will.”
“You mean the three of us are going to end up naked down there?”
“You should undress first, but yes, we might all end up naked if others are slow in coming forward.”
“And if everyone wants to watch, we are going to…”. Again, Bea seemed incapable of finishing the sentence, imagining Charlie riding her grandfather, as the young girl was in the next room.
