Big Ed's Place

This story came to me when Gary Jordan suggested a storm festival in honor of another author who’d been evacuated due to a hurricane. The song by David Wilcox has haunted me since my undergrad days when my then-girlfriend used to listen to it all the time. When she dumped me, it was for much the reason as in this story–because I was second best. It was straight-forward to give the narrator his own ‘second best.’

Fireworks marked the turn in the Holiday Series from light and fun to something with actual conflict. Ironically, by the time I’d written it out, it’s nearly as long as the rest of the series to date combined.

With this story, what I wanted to do was have our foursome hit the limits of exhibitionism. I wanted them to go from it all being fun and games to being something serious, just as Dave has thought it might be all along. I also thought that the transition from looking to touching was the one that would give these characters the most conflict. They’re all rational, mature adults who are good at communication and so most of the standard sources of conflict (which boil down to immature or idiot characters) didn’t exist. Thus, we have a story in which despite everyone’s best efforts, things blow up.

In laying this story out, I identified three key scenes. The men’s striptease just seemed to be fair payback. The women’s show was built around the silhouettes, an idea I got from the book Sex Games by Linda Sonntag. The final scene with the fireworks was stolen from an actual visit to that viewing site in the story many years ago. I didn’t have sex at the site, but I did notice how it would be possible, given a couple of accomplices to serve as lookouts.

The other fun part of this story was the music. ZZ Top’s Greatest Hits has a prominent place in my car’s CD library and just seemed to fit for the guys. The Joe Loss Orchestra classic is, of course, one that just about everyone has heard and summons up images of the old burlesque era. With that as the lead off song, the rest simply had to be Blues, which meant raiding my home music collection and spending a few hours engaged in ‘research’ while listening away.

(the story is here)

I took a substantial break between writing the first four Holiday Series Stories and this one. When I returned to the series (after The Ugly One), I wanted to write something light. Fortunately, the holiday that was next up–the guys’ birthdays, lent itself to something fun and sexy.

I’d placed Will’s birthdays in May/June as part of the background for the first story, because I wanted it six months away from Christmas. It wasn’t too hard to put Dave’s nearby to allow for the story. The only question left was the gifts.

For that, the obvious was a striptease. How can one have a series on exhibitionism without a striptease or two? It is, perhaps, the oldest exhibitionistic sexual act, going back to Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils that led to John the Baptist’s demise. I decided that the striptease would be the central scene of the story.

The songs used in this story are “You Can Leave Your Hat On” by Joe Cocker, “Black Velvet,” by Alannah Miles, and “I Touch Myself,” by the DiVinyls, all excerpted just a little to allow them to fall under the fair use clause of the copyright laws. I recommend listening to them all, if you can.

I chose “You Can Leave Your Hat On” because it is the archetypical striptease song. It’s also extremely easy to choreograph a striptease to for an amateur–just follow the words.

“Black Velvet” is sultry, bluesy, and definitely a song to evoke passion. I once had the pleasure of watching a group of fully clothed women sway and dance to it and it raised my pulse more than any nudity would have.

The DiVinyls song rounded out the set because I wanted something that moved from seductive to blatantly sexual. The image seemed to fit with characters who would do just a little bit more than ‘show.’