A Week in Boise

It was a warm late summer day as I dropped out of the mountains of Eastern Oregon and let my new Subaru drift down the hill into Idaho. The Snake River plain was stretched out before me and through the clear Idaho air I could see the next ridge of the Northern Rockies, some sixty miles away. At the base of that ridge lay my destination, Boise. The Boise Front, as it is known defines the beginning of a series of mountains that run north from there to Canada and east into Montana and Wyoming. Between my location and the front range to the north lay a broad plain—a lush green, where there was water for irrigation, and a barren grey green sage steppe, where there wasn't. To my surprise there was quite a bit more city here than I had expected, nearly 500,000 people I would later learn, in a series of towns strung out along the Boise River where it coursed down out of the mountains and drained into the Snake River at a little town called Caldwell. Nothing of course compared to where I had come from.

I was fleeing. Not in the sense of running from the law. Just in the sense of leaving my life in Silicon Valley of the last 20 years or so, and everything it represented, behind. I had replaced my Tesla Model S with a Subaru Outback. I had sold my company, paid a huge tax bill, and purchased a diverse portfolio (meaning I had a lot of liquid assets, way more than I could ever spend). I had shed my girlfriend, or perhaps she had shed me. At best it was mutual. Neither of us had been particularly committed to the relationship. She had been an early investor in my company so she left our relationship with nearly as big a pile of money as me. But most importantly, I was free of the culture of the Silicon Valley start-up environment—no lawyers and accountants, no venture capitalists and investment bankers, no quarterly benchmarks to make, no employees who always seemed to want the company to do something about that idiot the rest of the country had elected President, or at least provide a bigger game room. Their priorities were sometimes unclear. I felt like the guy in the Joni Mitchell song who is celebrating being a "free man in Paris," except he was bemoaning the fact that he had given up his free status when he left Paris "to run the star maker machine", and I had just achieved my freedom and arrived in Idaho, hopefully a safe distance from the Silicon Valley "money maker machine."

An hour and a half later, after sliding through what passes for commute in Boise, I was in the city's North End looking for the home of my old friend Jared Christensen. The streets, laid out in a square grid reminded me of the older parts of Palo Alto with huge old hardwood trees (maples, gums, oaks and a dozen other species I didn't recognize). The houses dated back to the late 19^th and early 20th century, with many rehabilitated, but some showing their hundred year age and probably a better candidate for a scrape and build from scratch than a rehab.

When I pulled up in front of Jared's house, he and his wife Julia were waiting for me on their front porch. The house was a classic craftsman design with a broad covered front porch, probably built in the 1920s. Julia and Jared were sitting on the porch sipping an ice tea. A couple of huge old oak trees dominated the front yard and cast complete shade on the front of the west facing house.

As I emerged from the car stretching my legs and back, stiff from my long drive, Jared jumped from his chair and strode down the walk to greet me, calling out "Michael, you made it." He was still as I remembered him from our undergraduate days, tall and lean, with closely cropped dark hair—good looking by anyone's standards. After college I had gone on to pursue a Masters in computer science and a start-up that had collectively consumed the next fifteen years of my life, but Jared had abandoned the tech studies, choosing to pursue a divinity degree from a small college in Eastern Washington—Whitman Now he was the pastor of a small church here in Boise. Dressed in traditional preacher's work garb of dark slacks and shirt with a narrow white ecclesiastical collar, he embraced me with gusto. Jared in a preacher's garb was going to take some getting used to.

His wife of several years, Julia, whom I had not met, trailed a few steps behind him. She was several inches shorter than Jared, standing perhaps 5-5 or 5-6, even with the benefit of a tall set of heels. She had thick, lustrous, dark brown hair tied in a loose ponytail that hung just a bit short of the middle of her back. Unlike Jared, Julia could best be described as pleasingly plump, with broad hips and, most noticeably, large breasts. Her legs were largely hidden by her mid-calf length dress. She wore glasses and understated make-up that accentuated her round, dark brown eyes. The overall look was consistent with the role of a minister's wife I thought, with the exception of her tall heels. Those didn't fit the mold. I let the question they raised slide past my attention as Jared stepped aside, and she stepped forward to greet me. I extended a hand, having never met her before, but she slid by it, and repeated Jared's embrace, mashing her large breasts against my chest.

"I'm Julia," she said as she released me and stepped back. "Jared's told me so much about you."

"All good I hope," I said with a smile as I looked down at her.

She smiled and said, "Well most of it, but I think you boys did get up to no good now and then."

"Really?" Jared responded. "I don't remember anything like that. I was a minister to be—straight arrow."

"So you say, so you say," she repeated sharing a lascivious smile with me. "Maybe I can get a straighter story out of Michael here."

"Oh no, he was so straight he was boring to live with," I lied. Jared had raised far more hell than me in college.

Julia laughed and shook her head as she turned toward their porch. "Let me get you an iced tea," she said. As she walked away, I couldn't help but notice how the conservative dress she wore draped her hips in a way that made me think thoughts totally unsuited to a minister's wife. Julia was plump, but in a most attractive way, her hips broad and her waist narrow. Jared always had good taste in women I remembered. And, the number of women he bedded and then left seemed never ending. Seduction was his strong suit, but commitment was a foreign concept to Jared. How had Julia managed to catch him, I wondered?

We sat on the porch as we sipped iced tea. I was rather hoping for a beer, but . . . Jared was a minister now. He had met Julia while he was in divinity school, so I assumed she had put him on the straight and narrow. I imagined that the girls he met in divinity school were a far cry from the Stanford Dollies he and I used to chase around with as undergraduates.

When the iced teas glasses ran dry we adjourned to dinner. The air conditioning of the house provided a welcome relief to the warmth of the front porch. Boise is hot in the summer. When I mentioned it Jared said, "Oh yeah it's not Palo Alto is it, but you get used to it."

When we sat down, Julia spoke up, "Jared since we have a guest tonight, perhaps we could have some wine. I have a bottle chilling in the fridge." Actually she had several bottles chilling in the fridge. I was to learn that there were always several bottles chilling in the fridge. Apparently, alcohol on the front porch was forbidden, but it was okay behind the closed doors of their home. That matched one of Jared's characteristics I remembered—a willingness to put appearances before his actual standards.

Jared nodded, easily convinced.

During dinner we exchanged details of what we had been doing over the last fifteen years. Julia was mostly silent as she listened to my description of the founding, growth, and sale of my company and Jared's description of his efforts to grow the little reform Baptist church he had assumed leadership of in Boise and his decision to separate from the sponsoring national Baptist organization. Near the end of dinner, and nearly through the second bottle of wine, I turned to Julia and asked, "So how did you and Jared meet?" I could have asked Jared, but I wanted to give Julia an opportunity to get into the conversation.

Julia smiled and looked towards Jared. He cleared his throat in a fashion loaded with meaning, "Ahem," which I read as a message to Julia to treat my question with care or even just decline to answer.

Julia smiled—a most seductive smile, her lips together and the corners turned up with a twinkle in her eyes I hadn't seen until then, as she thought about how to respond. "Uh . . . well, that's kind of a complicated story. Let me clear the table to the kitchen and then we can adjourn to the living room."

"Certainly," I said, as I stood to help.

Jared had disappeared to the back of the house, but I stayed with Julia and helped her with the dishes. We had them all cleaned up in no time. While she worked she returned the topic of discussion to me, but I was determined that I wasn't going to let her off the hook on the question I had asked earlier, especially since it had seemed to hit a hot button with Jared. I was just waiting until we all reassembled in the living room so I could watch Jared's reactions.

Once the dishes were done, Julia and I refilled all three wine glasses and moved to their living room. I sat down in one corner of their couch and Julia sat at the other end. I noticed that at some point in the evening she had dispensed with her glasses. I wondered if they were really necessary or just clear glass worn for appearances. Jason came in right behind us. I noticed he had changed out of his work clothes and was wearing a loose pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt. Basically the same as me. He sat in an arm chair facing the couch Julia and I had taken.

As soon as we were all seated, I spoke up before either of them could hi-jack the conversation as they had earlier. "So Julia, I think you were about to tell me how you and Jared met?"

She looked over at Jared for a moment and then spoke up, "We met in church."

Jared rolled his eyes.

"Well, really out back of the church," she continued.

"Her father was the pastor," Jared said.

"Yes, I was home from my second year at Washington State, and I was working in the church office before I returned to college. Daddy had hired Jared to clean up the church's summer vegetable garden which was in a post-harvest mess. He was an intern."

"I was pulling up dried out bush bean plants, melon vines, corn stalks, and all the other debris left behind in a community garden at the end of summer and piling them in a truck to haul to the dump," Jared said. "In theory it was an internship I was getting credit for with the divinity school, but I wasn't finding anything particularly religious about it. I think it was mostly Big Al taking advantage of free labor."

Julia smiled more broadly and her pink tongue crept out and licked her lip as she remembered. "He was working hard in the hot sun . . . and he was naked from the waist up." The gleam in her eyes, had, if anything, brightened.

I smiled at her choice of language, she had said "he was naked from the waist up", rather than "he had his shirt off," and she put an emphasis on the word "naked" that made it the focal point of the whole sentence.

"No big deal," Jared said a little defensively. I smiled to myself. In college Jared had been heavily into body building and several of the women who floated through his life had described him to me as "ripped." A couple also described him as "hung," but it didn't seem appropriate to share either characterization here.

"And who was Big Al?" I asked, ignoring the naked part.

"He was my Daddy."

"The Pastor?"

"Yes."

Now it was Jared's turn to smirk.

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow, effectively asking him to continue.

"He wasn't very happy," Jared said.

Now Julia laughed, a hard belly laugh. "That's an understatement," she said. "I'd never seen him so mad."

I couldn't resist, so I asked, "Why?"

Jared rolled his eyes. He had known from the beginning the story was going to come out.

Julia laughed and ignored Jared, the twinkle still in her eyes. "I was on my knees, sucking Jared's cock."

I broke out laughing. When I finally recovered, I said, "I am not surprised by any of this. That's the Jared I remember from college. Five minutes from meeting a girl to getting in her pants."

"Hey it took him longer than that," she said with a pout. "We didn't do that for a couple of weeks." Jared just had his head in his hands now. He'd lost complete control of the conversation.

"Daddy dragged me back to the rectory and told me that I couldn't see Jared again, or any other boys, which was pretty ridiculous given what I had been up to while I was Washington State. Then he turned me over his knee and spanked me hard. After that he went back out to look for Jared, but Jared had the good sense to be gone by that time."

"Needed another internship did you, Jared?" I said with a smile.

He laughed and shook his head, "Yup."

I was having fun with this. Jared was uncomfortable, and Julia was clearly having fun. She wasn't fitting the stereotype of the minister's daughter or the minister's wife. I assumed the wine was helping, and I didn't want to let the conversation drop.

"So how did you two get together? It doesn't sound like Big Al was going to help you."

Now it was Jared that was smirking. Julia had pursed her lips and was sitting in silence.

"Well, are you going to tell him," he asked, "or shall I?"

"I thought you didn't want me to tell this story?"

"It's a little late now," Jared responded. "Michael's dirty mind is already imagining things far worse than what actually happened."

I looked back and forth at the two of them. Julia was blushing. Jared was smirking, holding out.

Looking at Julia, I said, "He's right. I do have a lurid imagination."

She sighed. "All right I'll tell you. I snuck out of the house one morning and went over to the divinity school looking for him." She paused, but Jared wasn't going to let her get away with stopping there.

"And . . .?"

"I couldn't find him." She paused again.

"And . . .?" Jared wasn't about to let her off the hook.

I went to the registrar's office and asked. But he wouldn't tell me how to find him?"

"And . . .?"

Julia was silent with a pout on her face. Then I could see her give in as she shrugged her shoulders and looked directly at me. "So I gave the Registrar a blow job, and he told me everything I wanted to know." She laughed. "Men are so worthless that way."

"When I got back to my room she was waiting for me, but this time she was the one who was naked from the waist up."

"Well, I had this big cum stain on my t-shirt."

"From the Registrar?" I asked

She smiled. Now that the story was coming out, she was clearly enjoying it. "No, from the Dorm Director. I had to blow him too. He didn't want to let me into Jared's room. The poor guy must not have had sex in months. When he came he sprayed everywhere. I've never seen so much cum. What a mess."

"So this is when Jared got into your pants?" I asked.

"Yes, but not like you think. First, he spanked me-for giving blow jobs to the Registrar and the Dorm Director. Then he fucked me. A bunch of times. I spent the whole night there. When I got home my Daddy spanked me again."

"If you haven't guessed yet Michael, she likes to be spanked."

"Hmm, I was getting that impression." I had also noticed that the combination of the topic and the wine had led her to coarser language than I had expected of a minister's wife. I smiled at both thoughts. A button or two at the top of her dress had been released and the skin on her throat and upper chest was flushed. How intriguing—the minister's wife was aroused.

"Jared, don't say such things," she said with mock anger.

"Well, you did tell your Daddy you had spent the night with me, didn't you?"

"Yes, I guess I did," she said as she crossed her arms over her bountiful chest. "I'm a very honest person." She was struggling to keep a straight face when she delivered the second part of her response.

"On bullshit," Jared said. "You wanted him to spank you, and he did."

She dropped her hands to her lap, and I noticed that her nipples had become engorged and were showing plainly through her clothing. Obviously, she found the conversation more arousing than embarrassing.

"He certainly did. I couldn't walk straight for a week, but most of that was your fault, Jared."

"You didn't seem to be complaining that night in my dorm room."

She stuck her tongue out at him and pretended to sulk. Then she smiled and shook her head, laughing at herself.

"Well now you know Michael," Jared said. "Are you sorry you asked how we met?"

"Hardly," I said with a laugh, and turning toward Julia, I said, "The story is consistent with everything I know about Jared and if you hadn't told me I would have let my imagination dream up something similar, although I might not have guessed you like to be spanked."

She smiled and said. "I can see why you two got along so well in college. I suspect you are as randy as he is."

"Oh no," I said. "Straight arrow."

Both of them laughed at me, Jared, because he knew better and Julia, because she suspected me of being as bad as her husband.

Not wanting to leave the subject, I asked, "So Jared, how did you ever get Big Al to let Julia marry you?"

Jared kind of smirked in response.

Julia spoke up, "Oh, before we get into that story, I think we need to open the third bottle of wine I have chilling in the fridge."

Jared nodded, and I said, "Okay with me." I was already feeling no pain, but I had no

where to be in the morning and I was enjoying the wine and the conversation.

Julia headed for the kitchen and Jared followed her out of the room.

A few minutes later they both returned together. I noticed immediately that Julia's dress, which had buttons running the full length of the front, was now unbuttoned from the bottom to well above her knees and from the top more than a couple of buttons down. It also looked like the buttons might have been misaligned—as though it had been completely unbuttoned so it was fully open and then rapidly and improperly rebuttoned. When she leaned forward to fill my wine glass, I could see a lot of cleavage. She gave the same show to Jared as she filled his wine glass. As she walked toward the corner of the couch opposite me I noticed Jared adjusting his shorts to accommodate the lump in them. Hmm, I wondered. Had she unbuttoned the dress or had Jared? Had they done more than simply open a third bottle of wine?

When she took her seat at the end of the couch I was sitting on, she crossed her legs letting her partially opened dress slide well up on her thighs. She no sooner sat down than she leaned forward to release the high heeled shoes she had been wearing, this time showing me even more of her sumptuous looking breasts and the bra cups constraining them.

She kicked her shoes across the floor at Jared, showing a bit more thigh when she re-crossed her legs. "I do get tired of those shoes," she said to Jared.

"Life of a minister's wife," he said. "We can't look dowdy. Besides, I think you attract more tithing from those horny old men than I do."

She laughed.

"And Big Al?" I said, seeking to put the conversation back on track.

They both giggled a bit, clearly feeling the wine.

I looked back and forth at them, trying to ask which one of them was going to tell the story, without actually saying it. It was clear they were trying to outwait each other.

Finally Julia leaned back, putting her hands behind her head and pushing her boobs out in a way that almost caused me to spill my wine. I could feel my already well aroused organ flip flop.