PEYDRAN

  “My second fiancee is so hot!” Ren howled as Freya ground her way down my body in the wedding video footage. Ren didn’t actually have a second fiancee— yet. Freya had said she’d think about marrying him if he went to Floria with her.

  A few days before the wedding, Ren and I'd spent the day in the city seeing Nayth’s hometown. Ren wanted to have a romantic prix fixe dinner at Juanna’s on the Terrace, and I balked, complaining that I didn’t want to re-create Ryst and Nayth’s first date.

  But Ren countered that he’d make Ryst take Nayth to J’s on his first night in Shurwinn and rent them an evil cabin, complete with headboard handcuffs so they’d have to re-create our first date, and we’d find out who did first dates hotter.

  I'd laughed so hard that I forgot to be grumpy. After a fabulous dinner, we went to the concert hall where Nayth, Ryst, and Freya waited for us. The minute Ren walked into Nayth’s box, he asked Freya, “Do you have video of yourself watching Nayth give Ryst a piggy back ride out of the naked forest?”

  To which she responded, “Hey, sexy, if you get lonely, I might have a fix for that.”

  Ren slid his hands around her waist and pulled her to him. Freya was his height, so she smooched him right on the lips. He looked at me with glee and declared, “Peydran, I kissed a girl, and it wasn’t disgusting!”

  Then Freya slid her hand around the back of his head and really kissed him, slipping her tongue in his mouth, and Ren pulled back, grimacing.

  “Come to Floria with me, Ren,” Freya demanded.

  “We’re not going on Nayth and Ryst’s honeymoon,” I protested.

  “Say anything else stodgy tonight, and I’ll dress you in a kurta and spank you, Peydran Madrano,” Freya threatened.

  “Marry me, Freya? Please? Can I have a wife and a husband on Floria?” Ren asked.

  “Come home with me and Mom, and I’ll think about it,” Freya replied.

  That was how I'd wound up engaged to a man who was almost engaged to a Florian woman.

  In our guest suite, I had one earbud in, listening to “Before” while Nayth undulated his pelvis against Ren’s ass. Rocking my pelvis, I closed my eyes. I still didn’t have the Floreno undulating pelvis down. I’d practiced it on the starliner with earbuds in while Ren had recorded “All Love And All Things,” but I still wasn’t as good as Freya or Nayth.

  I needed to be— I couldn’t let Florians out dance me. Hadn’t Ryst said Nayth’s Dad gave her Floreno lessons? Maybe Klear would give me pointers. I pictured Klear Carmidee behind me, his thigh between my legs, pelvis rocking against my ass, and I grimaced. Gross.

  Wait, was I actually stodgy?

  “Ren, I think I’m stodgy.”

  Ren’s video paused, Freya’s face inches from my belly button while we ground down on each other to nasty Bhangra, and he looked at me in confusion, a question on his raised eyebrows.

  “I might actually be stodgy. Would you want to dance with Nayth’s dad the way you danced with Nayth? Am I stodgy?”

  Ren covered his mouth with his hand, and it looked like tears were about to burst out his eyes. He looked away and took several breaths, obviously bracing himself. Then he turned back to me with his nostrils flaring and his face looking almost constipated from the need to laugh but holding it in and managed a single word, “No.” We erupted into fits.

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  “It was the grammas too! The grandpas!” Ren howled. “They’re all fiends! I’m stodgy too, Pey’o! I’d never dance with my gram the way Nayth did. Gross!” Ren declared.

  “But I suppose they have a point, don’t they? Why is the grandpa less sexy than Nayth? We’re gonna get old, and are you gonna stop dancing? I hope not. We should definitely go to Floria and dance with people we think we can’t so we don’t turn into stodgy old men who need to be dressed in kurtas and spanked for being prudes.”

  “Are we prudes, though? I mean, I don’t know, Ren. It’s—“

  Ren cut me off saying, “It’s that whole sensuality and sexuality conversation, isn’t it? Just like Sibsil Creed said. What is chemistry, or what is sensuality? Who decides? I mean, look at these screens, Pey’o, it looks like we’re watching porn prequels, not wedding videos. Nayth looks like he’s about to strip me and ride me downtown, and you and Freya look like a hetero couple about to get to it."

  "If we mixed these shots with something dirtier, it would look really different than the reality, right? Nothing was going on in Nayth’s pants. Freya? Well, it’s hard to tell, but she danced with everyone just like she danced with you, so I think that’s just Floreno. I think that’s Floria— challenging what we think ‘sensuality’ is. They aren’t doing it to challenge us, they’re just being themselves, but we aren’t used to it, so it’s gross to us."

  "We’ve got new music: banjos, sitars and dohl drums playing out Floreno which should be guitars, violins, and bongos. Things are shaking up, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what it does to us. Whaddya think?”

  I opened a video: “Minister Carmidee—“

  “Please, Peydran, call me Klear. I hope you and Ren are well this morning?”

  “We are, and we love being here in LaGrange. I need a Floreno tutor. I know you must be busy—“

  “I’m free right now. Should I come to Nayth’s dojo or would you like to come over here to the main house?”

  “I’ll meet you downstairs in five.”

  “A few days dancing in Floria, and you will be expert, Peydran. You are a gifted dancer already. Now, I have a favor to ask you. Will you teach me Bhangra? I realized too late that I should’ve been asking Ryst for lessons! We’re going to a wedding in Shurwinn unprepared, and we can’t study stream videos to learn your dances. There simply isn’t information about Shurwinn.”

  “Absolutely. Right now or do you need to get going?”

  “How about later this afternoon?”

  I nodded, “But before you go, can you answer some questions about Floria for me? Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Ask away.”

  “Nayth told me in Florian there are no words for ‘hetro' or ‘homo?' I assume the same isn’t true for Sturm?”

  “Correct,” Klear nodded.

  “So, there’s no definitions in Florian? You just are with who you are with?”

  “Yes. And if you go up to someone in a festival and tell them you’re gay, well, they’ll hear you speaking Universal and know that you’re not speaking their language. And that’s both literal and metaphorical. They truly do not understand why the words exist in Universal. Why would you need to define it?”

  “But surely there are boundaries somewhere, right? Some things that off the table?”

  “Absolutely. Incest is a crime. Sexualizing children is a crime. No one under 17 is allowed on nude beaches— no exceptions. It doesn’t matter if you’re breast feeding, and you want to bring an infant. Go to a beach that isn’t a nude beach with your children. Public nudity is a crime. You can go to a flower festival dressed in a bikini. But take that bikini off, and people will look at you like you are dog shit on the bottom of their shoe."

  "No sex in moving porters, just like everywhere else in the 9 Galaxies. No sex in public; not even on nude beaches. Nayth and Ren could have danced ‘Before' nude on the beach exactly like they did last night, and it would have been acceptable. They could’ve gone into the ocean in the dark to finish. But if they started making love on the beach, people would kick sand in their faces in disgust. Does that help?”

  In my mind I saw couples of all shapes and sizes naked on a beach, dancing to “Before,” and I wanted to grimace. I decided I’d keep being stodgy because I really didn’t want to see naked people— not even Nayth, and he was a chocolate drop anyone would want to see unrobed. Unless you were me. Stodgy Peydran.

  I was going to avoid nude beaches on Floria.

  “Hunh,” I nodded. “I think that helps. It sort of re-arranges your brain, doesn’t it? I mean, you didn’t grow up going there, right? So, did it scramble your mind going from Sturm to Floria?”

  He laughed, and it was so much like Nayth. Beautiful, deep, and free. It was so Florian— free and wild. Lovely to look at. “That’s a very long story, and one I haven’t thought about in a long time, Peydran. Thank you for asking. I’ll have to think on it a bit and remember life before Fahnca. To be honest, I’m not sure I really want to remember that life. Life’s so much richer with my family in it, but I’ll think on it, and we’ll talk about it again, okay?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for the lesson. You’re a wonderful teacher, Klear.”

  “I look forward to being the student, Peydran. See you in a few hours.”