Bad Choices (Hypernaturals 8)

The Tale of Three Dicks: Dick One

Morgan and I hit the road early. Jessica let us drive her Honda Pilot. It's a good road car, and neither my little car nor Morgan's Miata is great for luggage. Day trippers, or weekenders at most. Better if we are packing to stay indoors the entire time and therefore have minimal clothing needs.

I looked out the window as the miles rolled by, thinking. Morgan is driving. We stopped for gas and some water. Hit to the road again, all with little comment

After some time she said to me. "Ok. Head time over. What is up? You are saying nothing. Usually, by now you have made at least one pass at me."

"Sorry. I promise I will soon." I replied.

I looked at her. She gave me a quick and evaluating glance away from the road. I guess the way I replied gave it away. With Morgan or Jessica, I can hide little. Jessica leads with her heart. Morgan seems to vibrate on my mental frequency.

"You are bothered by the rather animalistic and abandoned sex in the woods, and then again in the shower." Morgan stated. It was not a question. She knows why I am lost in my head. The pheromones gone: The cold light of day showing me to myself in a new light.

"Yes." I said. I know that is not going to be the end of it, but I hoped the short answer communicated I am not ready to talk about it.

I saw her settle into the driver's seat slightly in my peripheral vision. Her shoulders take a set. Morgan about to tackle.

"Ok. Not ready. I understand. Better than perhaps anyone else in our family as I am like that as well. Also: It was MY back that was involved. So sit there and listen, my husband. I am going to tell you the tale of three dicks."

"Really?" I was slightly incredulous. This is not a Morgan thing at all.

"Shhh, my boy-toy. Sit there and listen. You will know when it is time to say something." Morgan told me.

She launched. She did not use a story-teller voice exactly, but it is also being transmitted in clear text and large type I am to listen. I am nothing if not an obedient spouse. "When I was a Homicide Detective, I did all the usual cop things. One of those is going to cop bars. See any cop show on TV, you know about Cop bars. They are real: We have them. There is more than one Cop bar in Houston, but there is this one near my office that all the people in my precinct used. If you were attached to the Montrose area, this was the bar. There we dealt with the stresses of the job. All of that type of thing."

I thought it telling that even after all these years, sometimes when Morgan refers to her previous life in Houston, she uses words like 'we'. Still a cop.

"As Homicide detectives, Sam and I did not normally catch the things like spousal abuse and similar, unless they were tied into the larger case, in which case the spousal abuse had escalated already. Normally Sam and I got the robberies and the murders. The rapes sometimes. That kind of thing. We closed a case earlier in the day and finished the paperwork so I was free to go. It was a brutal case where a football player raped and killed a young woman. All the usual garbage. Privilege gone wrong. He thought he was entitled to her body because he was a sports star. The rape was completely intentional and planned. The young woman's death was an accident. She fought back. He knocked her around. According to Cooper's autopsy... Cooper is the M.E... she was 120 pounds. According to interviews Sam and I did of friends and family, she did not know self-defense. She was a stereotypical sweet young thing that went to church, was saving herself for her husband, and thought nothing but the best of people. In her circles, the boys that flocked around her were vying for the husband role so they could get into her pants. They understood the order and 'honored' it."

Morgan air quoted the word 'honored'. I tilted my head in a silent question. Morgan saw that in her peripheral vision.

"That is a sideroad in the 'dick' story. That is amber waving fields of dick that are unrelated to this story's dick. Suffice it to say that the cluster of clean-cut young men around her wanted this pretty young thing to be their ever obedient wife. In that church, women were chattel and once married, subservient to their husbands' desires." Morgan's own thinking on that idea needed no explanation or expansion. Her tone of voice said all that needed to be said.