The Bouncing Buns Gentleman's Club

Chapter 4

The pier "yacht club" was a bit of a misnomer to Beverly. On some piers, marina tenants pooled their funds to rent a slip, cover it over with a wooden deck, and add sun screening to create a gathering place. These clubs varied from lavish to minimal, depending on the inclinations, available funds and social dynamic of the group.

Once money had been raised and spent by the founders, new people coming in were expected to pay some set amount to buy in and gain the right to use the social area, outdoor cookers, bar, and any other amenity the club may have acquired.

Beverly hadn't given them her decision to join or not and was being courted, so to speak, by the group. The sad part was that after the initial niceties and courtship were over, you were either in or out. It was quite uncomfortable for those on the pier who chose not to fork over the buy-in price, in this case $2500, because they were then effectively isolated to socialize only with other non-members.

After a few weeks observation, Beverly had identified a pattern among the club members. They would arrive for the weekend, usually on Friday evening, and hang out at the club slip. Saturday morning, the men would walk around the pier with their coffee and socialize mainly or exclusively with other club members, or sit on their dock boxes smoking cigars.

Invariably, conversation would turn to the new piece of electronic gear they'd recently installed, their last excursion on the boat, how their business was prospering, or the size of red fish they'd caught the weekend before. At some seemingly agreed upon time, they would all convene at the communal slip and continue doing the same, usually in the company of their "trophy wives" later in the morning. The heat of the afternoon would find them either back on their boats, out shopping, or relaxing at a local bar and grill. As evening approached and the heat of the day had passed, they would return to the yacht club for the evening get-together.

Occasionally, someone would decide to take their boat out, usually to Red-fish Island in the bay or on down to Galveston, and the rest would often follow suit. The same routine would hold for Sunday, except toward evening when they would pack up their cars to return to their weekday homes.

Beverly had already decided not to buy into all of this, but hadn't told them so. She knew there would be social consequences once she did and she wasn't looking forward to it. She'd decided to stretch the process out, hence her social obligation with them tomorrow. Besides, the club area was a safe neutral place to meet her new male acquaintance if all went according to plan.

I wonder if he's a member, she thought. No, there's no way a guy like that would join something like the yacht club.

Beverly had a half glass of her standard two glasses of wine per day, for "medicinal purposes," and was already having trouble keeping her eyes open. Work intruded upon her thoughts, reminding her she had part of an evaluation yet to finish tomorrow. It wasn't often that she had to schedule one in two sessions. Of course, the time constraints of the community clinic made it more likely to happen, but the complexity of this one would've likely caused it to be drawn out anyway.

The kid, Dana, was in some ways a tough nut, but there were disturbing signs of more than just a healthy respect for Bud as an authority figure. Based on first impressions, Beverly had also come to suspect that the real psychopathology in the family was Barbie and, sadly, Dana was likely destined to end up the way she had.

It was the old nature versus nurture debate. Did Dana inherit a genetic predisposition to having emotional problems, did the environment do it, or was it a combination of the two? More and more, Beverly had come to the conclusion that both were important and it certainly seemed so in Dana's case. She likely inherited much less than "designer genes" from Barbie. Those in addition to the way they had to live, likely sealed her fate.

Beverly felt exhausted by the time she finished her second glass of wine and wondered why she was still up so late on a work night. After she secured the doors and turned out the lights she went to bed and fell fast asleep, but not before a fleeting thought about that blond haired hunk in the hatch a few boats down the pier.

A smile came on her face.