Pushing the Envelope: A Prequel from The Barter System World Read online

  “You know I can’t. No matter how much I want to. It would influence my research results if I had an outside opinion…and you know you can’t keep from giving your opinion.” She squeezed her again before letting go. “I’ll miss you so much. This will officially be the longest time we’ve been apart. Remember our disastrous attempt at separate summer camps when we were thirteen?”

  The friends smiled as they remembered begging their parents to switch them to each other’s camps. Though it had been an attempt to have their girls “branch out” and meet new people, they liked things exactly as they were and weren’t having it.

  Eventually, their frustrated parents brought them home. They spent the rest of the summer swimming and laughing like idiots at the beach.

  Tawny grinned. “I thought our moms were going to flip out when you threatened to hitchhike from Georgia to North Carolina to be with me.”

  Their moms had been best friends for more than thirty years. They grew up together in New York City. After Tawny’s father died of a heart attack when she was six, it was Archer and Dalia who helped Maggie raise her daughter.

  When Riya’s mother died in a car accident her senior year of high school, it almost killed Maggie along with the rest of them. The woman she’d always considered her “other” mother stepped in to fill as much of the void as possible. She loved and looked after her best friend’s daughter as if she was her own and Archer had always been a father figure to Tawny.

  “Mom keeps questioning me about where you’re going. Will she have enough to eat? Will she be around people she doesn’t know? That kind of thing and it’s escalating. While you’re here, she isn’t being too persistent, but I shudder to think about how bad things will get before you resurface.” She paused, watching two elderly women power walk down the beach. “What if she gets it out of me?”

  “Simple. If you tell her what I’m really doing, I tell Aunt Maggie about those piercings to your kitty and your nipples that I held your hand through a few months ago.”

  Riya grinned mischievously. Tawny would find herself subjected to withering glares and subtle are you on drugs questions from her old-school mom if she ever found out what Tawny was really like.

  The redhead laughed despite herself. “I’m worried myself, of course. I’m going to ask once more and then I won’t be a mother hen anymore…much. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  She placed her hands on Tawny’s shoulders, only slightly lower than her own.

  “I promise to be careful. The phones have a built-in GPS so if I go too long without uploading files, you’re allowed to check on me, but please don’t worry. I’ll see you in New York for our celebratory chick weekend in early November and we’ll road trip back together.”

  She hugged her one more time, glanced at her little beach place, and got in the car. Rolling the windows down to remove some of the sweltering humidity, the full blast air conditioning made it bearable to breathe.

  When she turned on the stereo, the CD player blasted what could only be one of Tawny’s mixes. Riya smiled. “You made me a compilation.”

  Tawny nodded and both of them ignored the tears shimmering in her eyes.

  She leaned out the window. “I’m a clever girl and I won’t let anything happen to my best friend’s best friend.” Putting the car in reverse, she blew her a kiss. “See ya, Tee.”

  Chapter Three

  As she pulled away, Riya allowed herself one final glance in the rearview mirror, immediately wishing she hadn’t. Tawny dropped her face in her hands and cried as she drove away. Her best friend was not a crier, not ever, so when she disappeared from sight, Riya was almost relieved.

  If they’d spent much more time strolling down memory lane, she might have begun to question her dissertation, her subjects, and worse – herself.

  As much as she loved her friend like a sister, she needed to do this.

  She didn’t know how everything would play out, if the research would balance against her own sense of self-worth in the end, but one thing was certain - it was the experience of a lifetime and she was on the road, heading toward it.

  She got on the interstate and headed north toward Orlando. Tawny’s mix was a selection of hits popular in Florida to remind her of home. Flo Rida, T-Pain, the Bad Boys soundtrack, and Will Smith’s Miami thumped through the speakers and had her singing along.

  Songs they’d danced to a hundred times in one of their living rooms pumped her up instead of making her homesick for what she was getting further from with every mile.

  Over the last several years, Riya had fallen into a deep rut of schoolwork and writing that found her sitting alone in her house for days at a time. A friendly, positive person by nature, she realized the year before that she needed something to shake her up – to bring her back into the world again.

  It wasn’t that she was bitter or that she hated men; nothing could be further from the truth. She simply didn’t even bother putting herself out there anymore.

  Though she didn’t know, it had been Aunt Maggie who shocked her to her core two years prior. Introspective after the departure of another of Archer’s flavors of the month, she’d been staring through her living room window at the Intracoastal Waterway behind her building.

  “I don’t know where the days went. It seems like just yesterday, I was laughing with your mom. Dalia was pregnant with you; I was pregnant with Tawny and married to the only man who ever loved me. Now I’m past fifty, barreling at breakneck speed toward sixty, and I’m terrified because I think that was the best it is ever going to be for me.”

  With a sad smile, she added, “I guess I’ll live through yours and Tawny’s happiness and that will have to be enough.”

  Her words had resonated with Riya. All her life, she’d taken time for granted. It was an affliction of the young and she knew that.

  That conversation changed everything. At the time, she was twenty-five and all she thought about was earning her degrees and settling into a career routine.

  As a hard-core A-type personality, Riya had withdrawn into herself and her work to a point that truly wasn’t healthy. There was “always time later” for dating, for a life, for happiness. She had her dad, Tawny, Maggie, and a few friends she studied with but no one else.

  Running, working, eating, and sleeping defined her existence.

  In that moment, she realized she’d slipped past being alone to being lonely. The interactions with her subscribers were no longer filling the void, the writing wasn’t as satisfying, and she knew it was time to step fully back into the real world again before she went too far to go back.

  What she had, what she’d made for herself, was no longer enough.

  She purposely bought her duplex in an area that had shitty parking so her father couldn’t drop by without a production.

  Riya’s first night in her own place, she started setting up a website. It remained unnamed and unpublished because she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it. She simply knew she would need it when one of the many ideas in her head solidified.

  It would signify a way of bridging her career goals with her personal ones. Forcing her to interact outside the virtual world with people beyond her little family and enabling her to roar back into the world in such a way that she would never allow such self-imposed isolation to happen again.

  When her father installed another too young, too hyper, too cosmetically enhanced woman in their house days after she’d left – a mere three weeks since the last one was packed up and moved out – the focus of her research came to her.

  The differences between women and men appeared extreme but perhaps the base causes were so similar as to go unnoticed.

  Both Maggie and Archer had lost spouses they loved deeply. Maggie responded by throwing herself into bringing up her daughter as well as Riya. Archer threw himself into his business for the first couple of years then switched to picking up and rapidly discarding women who were young and foolish.

  The fact that h
e couldn’t see how deeply Dalia’s best friend had grown to love him in the last few years was heartbreaking for the girls to watch. It was never spoken of but it was impossible to miss by anyone paying attention.

  As a woman, Riya certainly understood the emotional attachment Maggie had always held for Archer. That it would transform into romantic love after years alone made sense. There was also their shared connection to Dalia O’Connell – something that made those emotions so much stronger.

  It was her father’s reaction that confused her.

  As the years wore on, his personal choices made very little sense in the grand scheme of his life. He didn’t want a long-term relationship but moved women in and out of his home several times each year.

  He complained of his girlfriends’ vapid immaturity but continued to choose the same ones repeatedly.

  Initially, she was determined to get demographic research. After receiving the first few dozen survey responses, she knew male participants were responding as if by memory – not with the depth she was searching for.

  The first launch was not gender-specific so she also received answers from women bashing men as a species. Responses too often started with “men can’t” or “men won’t” and their frustration wasn’t going to get her questions answered.

  Riya felt she had a strong grasp on women and their views after those first few tries…it was time to talk directly to men.

  She pulled down the first survey and spent two weeks creating an introductory application for male participants only. Offering free downloads of her most popular erotic stories – read by a currently well-known porn star who once dated her father – men poured into her site.

  Analytics of the data and download times confirmed that most of her bogus applications came from that particular attempt.

  Using the results as a separate project, she changed direction yet again, targeting private clubs and organizations. Places off the grid that no one simply found without a specific search.

  Swingers, men and women in the BDSM lifestyle, alternative magazines, and retreats geared toward sexual pursuits provided her greatest influx of viable applicants.

  Chat rooms for men’s hobbies, financial papers, and law enforcement clubs were also excellent sources.

  Each of her final participants came from one of her focused searches. She’d also gathered many valuable contacts all over the country that she planned to use for future projects.

  Riya wanted to know why men and women did the things they did. The real truth, the deep dark most people hid from other people and even themselves.

  There were few things that could give you a true glimpse behind the mask people wore out of habit. That offered the connection necessary to cut through the bullshit to the meat of a person’s psyche.

  At first, she believed written data would be enough.

  It wasn’t until she was reading their essays that she understood the extremely personal role she’d have to take to complete her dissertation.

  After battling with self-doubt for days, she sent private emails to each of the dozen men she had remaining and outlined her unusual requests.

  Some applicants expressed concerns over her physically infiltrating their real world daily lives. Their hesitation was understandable – her proposal was certainly unorthodox – and she thanked them for the incredible information they’d already given her.

  Nine men were willing to participate on a far more personal level – although some didn’t believe it would get that far. Two respectfully withdrew within a few weeks – after careful consideration – on the grounds of her well-being. Another man was chosen from the last batch of essays and her course was set.

  Riya admitted to herself that she’d been discriminating about looks when she realized her interactions with these men would be more complex than she originally thought. Otherwise, she didn’t care about race, religion, income, or anything else but the information they could provide.

  Sex would be her way through the labyrinth adult males slowly constructed around their inner selves as they matured. She would give each man the use of her body for approximately one week and devour every scrap of information she could from their time together.

  Today was the start of something that would change the course of her life. Only time would tell if it would be for the better.

  No matter what, she’d certainly have a lot to tell Tawny.

  The drive to Orlando took three hours, counting the stop on the turnpike for gas, a shake, and a bathroom break. Riya purposely scheduled the first leg of her journey close to home. This was her first face-to-face exposure to one of her subjects and she didn’t want to be too far away to turn back.

  She kicked herself for the lack of confidence that necessitated a safety net, but felt she’d made the right decision all the same.

  Her final selection of project participants signed releases for her to use their anonymous input for her dissertation. Along with their original application, questionnaire, and essay, they would be required to fill out three additional surveys. One before her arrival, one during, and one they would complete by the end of November about their experience. They also agreed to voice-recorded interviews while she was with them.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be a one-way street. They would get what they wanted or needed from Riya as well. This was the first experiment of its’ kind to her knowledge.

  Entering Orlando around noon, she took her time finding the house of her first subject. Traffic here was heavily congested due to the various theme parks, but most of the houses were lovely and the locals were genuinely friendly.

  Riya found the address but didn’t stop. Instead, she drove to a nearby convenience store to freshen up and settle her nerves. It wouldn’t do to arrive looking like a wayward traveler. She brushed her hair and teeth before adding fresh deodorant.

  Once she was certain she was ready, she got back in the rental car.

  Taking her laptop from her bag, she sat in the air-conditioned vehicle for a few minutes, breathing deeply. Opening her “Subject One – Sean” folder, she took her time re-reading his application and essay as well as the correspondence between them.

  Every subject recently received her standard acceptance email – with a few important reminders – and the approximate date of her arrival.

  Good afternoon, Sean:

  Your application to participate in my dissertation has been accepted. My itinerary is attached in pdf format. Please remember the following terms, as outlined in our signed agreement:

  I will arrive on a Friday morning and stay a minimum of one (1) week.

  You are expected to cover all expenses during my time with you, up to and including non-typical clothing for occasions requiring more than casual attire.

  You must have internet access in your home throughout the duration of my stay.

  You will provide safe transportation, of your choosing, to my next destination.

  Sexual intercourse must include the use of condoms at all times. There are no exceptions.

  A current physical with blood work – dated no more than three days prior to my arrival and confirming a clean bill of health – must be emailed to me.

  Your personal sexual preferences will be accommodated as long as my health or safety is not at risk at any time.

  You agree to complete three surveys. The first before my arrival. The second at the halfway point of my time with you (which will be audio recorded). The third will be completed after my departure and submitted no later than November 30th.

  Let me know if you have any additional questions. I’m sure our time together will be mutually beneficial. I’ve attached the first of the surveys to this email.

  Please return it to me by Thursday of next week.

  Kind regards,

  Riya

  She read his response right behind it and smiled.

  Hi, Riya:

  I look forward to meeting you, too! I understand and accept the conditions in both the contract and yo
ur email.

  I’m very curious to meet you in person and think we’ll get along great.

  I’ll take good care of you while you’re here and can’t wait to see what your other surveys include. The first one is attached to this email. Wondering how I did. I’ve always been rather good at tests.

  See you next week!

  Sean

  SURVEY ONE

  Subject Name: Sean

  Subject Age: 37

  Subject Career: Internet Entrepreneur

  Marital Status: Divorced

  Children (Y/N): N

  Annual Income: $150K

  Location: Orlando, FL

  What was your primary motivation for applying to this study?

  I was intrigued when I found your site and was convinced by an old Army buddy to apply.

  What do you hope to gain by your participation?

  More knowledge about the "investigator" (not just carnal) and maybe myself. Some of the initial questions you’ve asked really made me think.

  What is one thing you wish the investigator to know about you?

  I don't overcomplicate things but I take life seriously.

  Do you have any negative assumptions regarding this study?

  There being either NO emotional impact or TOO MUCH. I’m already thinking too intensely about what time with you will be like.

  What is your most secret sexual fantasy?

  Experiencing that "chemistry" I hear people talk about. Being on the water with a willing partner who isn't looking over her shoulder or asking for constant reassurance about sharks.

  Have you ever told anyone else about this fantasy?

  Yes, but no one gets it.

  Have you attempted to realize this fantasy in your daily life?

  Not yet. I rarely take women out on my boat - never for sex.

  How have you utilized the Internet in your sexual life?

  Light porn. I tried online dating three times and regretted it almost immediately.

  Looking once more at his photo, she decided to trust her instincts and quit stalling.

  She returned to the bungalow-style home on a quiet residential street a couple of miles from the gas station. The yard was well manicured and the house in good condition. There was a white Ford Explorer parked in the driveway and she parked behind it.