Chapter 12
He spent four days with the Brookses then went back into town to see if any mail had come in to the post office box. There were only three letters, all of them from people in the metropolitan area, but it was heartening to see that all three letters contained membership fees.
Jim sent out acknowledgements promising to get a copy of the bulletin to them as soon as possible. Of course, he couldn't put out a bulletin until the club had at least a hundred members. There was no more mail in the next two days and Jim used the time to set up a filing and indexing system.
Each member would be issued a code number consisting of one letter and four numbers. The letter of the alphabet would indicate the member's area of special interest. There were five individual categories and five couple categories. The first two numbers would indicate the month of the year they took out their membership, and the remaining numbers would indicate a specific member. If, for instance, a member joined during any of the first nine months of the year the second digit in the number would be zero, the first digit indicating the month and the last two being the identifying numbers. If he ran out of digits in any one period, Jim could always hyphenate and add suffix letters and number.
When that work was completed he went back to Westchester to spend the week end. At that time he broke the news of his venture to his friends. They were enthusiastic and happy for him and all of them wished him success.
The following Monday there were only a few letters waiting for Jim. But by the end of the week the tide of mail was building. In short order Jim had accumulated two hundred members for his club and had sent out a bulletin.
The two hundred club members broke down to one hundred and thirty-five singles and sixty-five couples. All of them had come from the stolen mailing list and Jim's gross take was four hundred and ninety seven dollars and fifty cents. After printing and mailing he had a net profit of three hundred and eighty-three dollars.
And this was only the beginning! There would be much more money when the responses to the ads started to come in. Those people would not be offered charter membership. It would cost them five dollars apiece to join.
Jim estimated he would require a minimum of six thousand members to make any real money once the club was going. For, once he was established, the main source of income would be the remailing fees. Fifteen hundred letters a month at fifty cents each was only seven hundred and fifty dollars. Printing, advertising, and mailing costs would eat up two hundred and fifty of that, leaving ony five hundred a month for profit. And with that many people he would have to hire office help. He wouldn't be able to do all the work himself. Salaries would cut his profit down to nothing. It looked like the only way the club could exist was by always attracting new members.
Jim estimated that it would cost approximately a dollar and a half per member for a full year of bulletins. This figure included all overhead, printing, mailing, post office box rental, rent on the apartment, and even a prospective salary for one typist. Viewed in that light, of course, the picture was much better. A portion of the initial membership fee was profit, and all of the remailing charges were profit, too.
Jim was pleased with himself. It looked like he just might be well on his way to his first million. He could kick himself whenever he thought about all the time he'd wasted working for Conklin at starvation wages. Then he realized the time hadn't been wasted at all. He'd gained invaluable experience in that office, and without the list of names he never would have been able to get his club started.
Hiring a secretary was a tricky thing. Jim needed someone he could trust completely to maintain the confidence of the files. But the work piled up on him before he could find a girl and he was forced to go to his friends for help.
Josie and Meg helped him out for a couple of weeks and then Lucy Cattledge found out about it. She had been working as a librarian in one of the Westchester towns. She could type. She had a good business head. She was perfect for the job.
Jim hired her at a hundred and fifty dollars a week, nearly double her librarian's salary and she was worth every penny of it. After only three days on the job Lucy made several suggestions which smoothed out the entire operation.
With the two of them working it wasn't very bad at all. For two and a half weeks out of the month all they had to do was handle the remailing service and correspondence with new and prospective members. For the other week and a half they were busy putting out the bulletin.
Inside of three months business was booming. He'd been contacted by several companies who wanted him to make sales pitches to his members. It was all the usual stuff, the girlie pictures, the transvestite and flagellant publications, the film companies.
Jim screened each offer carefully, accepting some but rejecting most. One innovation he did make was the offering of discreet and confidential photo finishing and film printing for those people who liked to take pictures and movies but had no way of doing their own processing. That one sideline proved a gold mine all in itself. Jim had had no idea that there were so many amateur photographers in the world.
He charged a substantial fee and the film lab worked at cut-rate prices because they made copies of the better films and pictures and put them into the commerical market. And Jim improved that angle when he switched his business to Tommy Guising. Guising would do the processing and finishing free, just to have the opportunity to make copies.
But the friendship between the two men was dead now. Their only relationship was through their mutual business interests.
In the spring Jim stopped racing around long enough to sit back and take stock of his progress. His bank balance was a comfortable sixty-three thousand dollars, and the club had sold more than twelve thousand memberships. Since its inception the club had remailed almost twenty thousand letters.
The figures were staggering!
At this rate, and with minimal continued expansion, Jim would have made his fortune in less than three years. Life was now a soaring sphere of joy. Jim had business success and the personal relationships he'd always wanted. He had a good apartment now, an expensive sports car, clothes, money. Tt was all more than he'd ever dreamed of. If things continued on like this he intended to move out of town, buy himself a house, hire a couple of servants. Being in business for yourself opened up a lot of tax advantages. Almost all his expenses could be written off as business costs. If the monthly net picked up any more he intended to incorporate.
Summer came and it was the best time of the year for the Westchester group. Their kids were away, the days were long and warm. The group's activities always stepped up in the summer.
The group made plans for a long Fourth of July week end. Jim and Lucy closed the office on Thursday afternoon. They wouldn't come back again until Tuesday morning.
The bash was to be held at George Carpenter's place. Carpenter was far and away the wealthiest man in the group. He was the one who owned the fifty foot cabin cruiser. He also owned a two hundred acre property upstate. The land was completely wooded and the main house was hidden from the road. There was a stream running through the property which Carpenter had had damned to make a swimming pond.
By Thursday evening the group had assembled. They were larger now, having added six additional couples since Jim had joined. In all there were approximately thirty of them.
The house was big but it didn't have fifteen bedrooms. But that didn't matter. No one intended to sleep unless they were physically exhausted. And with this group there was no requirement for privacy. Rooms could be shared-even beds. That was not at all unusual for two couples to be making love on the same bed at the same time.
Carpenter had a movie projector and screen and the evening's festivities began with a review of all the group's films. That was like watching ordinary home movies. There was chatter and conversation. People howled with laughter when they saw themselves and their friends. There were catcalls and wisecracks and much hilarity.
This was the first chance Jim had had to see himself on the screen. The first few moments were disturbing. At first he hadn't even recognized himself and then he'd been embarrassed. But those feelings passed quickly and he joined in the general commentary.
By the time the showing was finished several couples were already engaged in love-making. When the lights came on the others gathered around the performers urging them on and offering advice on techniques.
As time passed more and more people paired off. At these extended parties the initial affairs always involved only couples. Later on, toward the end, there would be threesomes and foursomes and more.
There were a couple of the new women whom Jim had yet to sample. He made sure he paired off with one of them. She was a short, busty blonde with curves that just went on curving forever.
Jim got her into a corner, pressed against her, and necked with her for a while. She returned all his kisses and caresses. She was a lively thing, with pneumatic hips and the softest skin imaginable.
After a while Jim took her hand and led her out of the house into the warm darkness of the night.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"I thought you might like to take a swim in the moonlight," he told her.
"Oh," she squealed. "That sounds like fun. I haven't been skinny dipping since I was. in high school."
They went to the pond, dived in, and cavorted about like a pair of healthy young seals. They chased one another through the moonlit water, splashing, teasing, and ducking.
Then, when they'd had enough sport, Jim took her by the hand, led her to the shallow edge of the pond, and sat her down. The water was just deep enough to reach to their hips when they were sitting and shoaled sharply to the shore a foot or so behind them.
Jim pushed her back and when she was lying down the water came only to her throat. Her breasts were thrust up into the air and the water only covered her from the hips down.
They kissed and she guided his head to her breasts. He tortured the water-slick flesh as he kissed her breasts. All the time his hands were busy beneath the water, playing about. Her hands were equally busy.
When Jim rolled to her he discovered that the water added a new dimension to the pleasure of love-making. That impeded sensation enough so he could maintain full control at all times Under those circumstances he could have made love te the woman all night long if he wished without ever having to finish.
The mutual ending, however, was swift, devastating, and thoroughly satisfying. They lay together for a while afterward, languishing in the lassitude of after pleasure, then rose and went back to join the party.
There were more women after that. And drinks. And Jim gave himself up totally to the domination of his senses. When he was incapable of making active love he took his pleasure from the soft, undemanding caresses traded with, one of the women.
He slept for a rime, woke, made love some more, and slept again. Day came, then night, and day again. And all was sheer heaven.
By Sunday night the tone of the party had changed from individual participation to group participation. That began when Josie Brooks and one of the newer women members decided to put on a Lesbian show for the others.
They performed in the middle of the living room with the others circled around them. The other woman was tall and dark, offering perfect contrast to Josie's petite blondeness.
They began standing, facing one another. They embraced, kissed passionately, and sank slowly to the floor. Josie was the active partner during the preliminaries. She initiated the kisses and caresses. Toward the end, though, they were both kissing and caressing at the same time.
Josie knelt beside the brunette and swept her hands over her body from shoulders to hips. Her clever fingers manipulated the other woman's breasts, tweaking the nipples, teasing the soft flesh.
Then she leaned forward and kissed those breasts, spending much loving attention at each. The brunette sighed and yelled and twisted, and she made ineffectual attempts to carress Josie.
Then the small blonde moved around and knelt behind the brunette's head. From the position, when she leaned forward to kiss the brunette's breasts, her own smaller bosom hung right beside the brunette's lips. Now they could both work at the same time.
Very soon after that they were engaged in the classic Lesbian posture, both intent upon giving and receiving pleasure. It was then that one of the men made that a group affair. He moved out of the circle of spectators, knelt behind Josie, and began to make love to her.
Soon there were groups forming all over the big room. And there were always odd numbers of participants, sometimes an extra man and sometimes an extra woman.
Jim found himself in one group of five, with three men and two women. Everyone was occupied and the only contribution he could make was to give pleasure to the second woman. But then, by giving pleasure he was also receiving.
The groups broke up and reformed and this time Jim was part of a threesome. The two women were Lucy Cattledge and Josie Brooks. Jim and Lucy assumed a classic pose, her face a mask of intense lust as she sought the ultimate pleasure.
Josie leaned by him to offer her breasts to his lips and he accepted the delicious fruit. When her desire grew more demanding the small blonde moved around so that he could give her more delicate attention.
Suddenly there were several loud, startling noises, and shouts. Heads popped up, people sprang apart, women screamed.
The room was filled with strangers....
Uniformed strangers....
Cameras clicked, flashbulbs popped.
The uniformed men, state policemen, brought matters quickly under control. The place was surrounded. There was no escape. It was as though the world had exploded, had reached an end.
The officers allowed the members of the group to dress and hustled them off to the county jail. Later, from a reporter who was trying to interview him, Jim learned how they'd been discovered.
During the winter the Carpenter property was a favorite lovers' lane for the local high school kids. Early that Sunday evening a carload of them had driven up, seen the lights, and peeked in through the windows. After that there had only been the matter of making a report to the proper authorities.
Jim was unable to keep his name out of the newspapers. And one enterprising reporter had managed to uncover the business of the correspondence club. The state attorney general launched a massive investigation.
Before the investigation was over the lives of several hundred people had been ruined. The other members of the group got off with heavy fines and/or light prison sentences. In one sense the adverse publicity was enough punishment for most of them. The men lost their jobs, the families were ostracized in their communities.
Jim could not convince the authorities that he was not the organizer of the group. And because of his correspondence club things went badly for him. He hired the best available lawyers and the legal battle waged for more than three months.
By the time the trial was over Jim's funds were completely exhausted. The ironic thing was that it would have gone much easier for him if some smart investigator had not been able to trace a direct connection between Jim's club and the photography racket.
Jim Benton drew a ten year prison sentence.
Tommy Guising's name was never even mentioned.