I headed south-west. And it did not take very long for me to discover that an attractive young female rarely was alone -- especially one driving an extremely expensive BMW convertible! The problem of Brad’s convertible I solved at a motel somewhere in Missouri. The guy was drop dead gorgeous, but when we got to it, his sexual technique so resembled Brad’s he could have been a twin! I lay beneath him and groaned inwardly. He drove a Chevy Blazer. Well, that’s what he had driven until he met me. In the morning he drove a BMW convertible. Well, I left him the keys and a note suggesting a straight swap, and I presumed he would not be stupid enough to pass up on such an opportunity! So thenceforth I drove the Chevy Blazer, with California plates. I had it my head that California was the place to be. Can’t think why!

Santa Monica was not exactly what I had in my mind’s eye, but it was certainly a lot closer to where I wanted to be than “Peoria”. I took a room in a cheap motel and, after a few days relaxing on the beach and roller-blading up and down the boardwalk, I started scouring the neighborhoods for somewhere more permanent to stay. It was on the third day that I came across the message, on a board in a local store:-

“Commune seeks fourth female. Reasonable rates. Must be broad-minded.”

There was a number and a breezy female voice answered when I called. A couple of innocuous questions and answers back and forth and I had the address and was on my way. Jane met me at the door, dressed, as I discovered subsequently she almost always was, in a bath robe! She was nice, inviting and encouraging. The only question that could have raised an eyebrow was “Do you have experience of communal living?”. When I said “No!”, she just nodded and said that rather few people had, but I looked like the kind of person who would adapt rapidly. She showed me around a few large rooms, one of which was obviously a communal bedroom. Yes, Jane replied, when I asked, this was where everyone slept. It was a commune, after all.

What was remarkable about that first encounter is not what I asked, but what I did not. It was obvious that there were men and women in the commune. So they all slept in the same room. Er….? But I did not ask. And as for ‘the rent’, ‘Oh, we just chip in a bit now and then for groceries and stuff’. I did not follow up by asking more detailed questions. It was one of those situations. You really didn’t know what you were getting into, but the only way to find out was to get into it! Anyway, I was in California to experience the new and exotic. And what better way to start than by joining a “commune”. Whatever this was it would surely be different from the stifling marriage I had just left behind me. And if I didn’t like it, I would leave and move on. That was California. If you did not like where you were at, you moved on. There was always something else around the corner.

The ‘commune’ occupied the ground floor of a two-story building. The apartment above had a separate entrance and as time evolved I noted there was a fair traffic on the stairs. I assumed initially that the apartment above was also a commune. This turned out to be only partially true --- but let me not get ahead of myself.

Our ‘commune’ consisted of 6 permanent members, 4 women and 2 men, complemented by ‘hangers on’, who came and went, spending an hour or occasionally a night, but then disappearing as suddenly as they had materialized. These people, I was given to understand, sometimes had difficulties with ‘the authorities’. Of the permanent members Jane, low thirties, was somewhat older than the other women and served as a kind of ‘house mother’. The other five were Alicia, Mandy, Alex, Bob and of course myself. Alicia and Mandy were around my age, low twenties, while Alex and Bob were older, late thirties or even forties, that age, at any rate, when men are ageless, neither young nor old. I was duly welcomed by each as they arrived back from wherever they had been and enjoyed my first communal meal on my very first evening. Bob brought the food from the local Mexican take-out and it was good. Especially preceded by a couple of Margaritas (Alicia’s speciality) and accompanied by a bottle or two of very reasonable Zinfandel. All the while blue-grass music calmed, and the candles strewn around the room that Jane had lit almost as a ritual gave off a pungent, exotic fragrance.

I drank enough that my fears of ‘the night’ were subdued to practically nothing. Nevertheless it was a shock when at some hidden signal we all headed for the bedroom and an even greater shock to realize a moment later that I was the only one with clothes on! It could not have come as a surprise that Jane’s bath robe was her only covering, but the others seemed to divest themselves of clothing with hardly any more effort than it took to slip a bathrobe off one’s shoulders.

I could not help but turn my back as I undressed demurely and I confess to a definite inhibition when it came to bra and panties. The alcohol gave me courage however, and after some minutes, I turned, naked, prepared to deal with whatever fate was mine. I need not have bothered however because by the time I was ready the constellations were set in place. In one corner of the room, hidden by the dim light provided by wall niche candles someone had lit in advance, Bob and Mandy were entwined around each other, while closer to me in my corner of the room, Jane and Alicia were thoroughly preoccupied with Alex. Jane was stretched out on the large mattress kissing him and working her fingers through his hair, while Alexia was already fondling his cock and balls, and as my gaze focused on her, began to fellate him gently.