Chapter 77

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”
—Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

WE DREW NAMES at lunch on Monday. Saturday would be the Winter Dance and it was just too expensive for anyone to buy six flowers for my six girlfriends. We did it this way for homecoming and decided the Winter Dance would be a good opportunity as well. Besides, spreading the cost out gave us each some fun shopping to do. We wrote the color of what we were wearing to the dance along with our name and then drew out the info that was necessary to buy one flower.

I, of course, was wearing a gray suit with a red vest. I thanked Mom for thinking in advance when we bought my new suit and getting a holiday vest to go with it. I drew Desi’s name and cocked an eyebrow when I read that she was wearing black. Well, we should go well together, anyway. Not that we’d be together any more than with the others. The next thing, in fact, was picking who was riding with whom. Because of my probationary status, I could take only one other person in my (Mom’s) car. I was given the assignment of picking up Brittany. Maybe privilege was a better term. Livy and Desi would ride with Rachel while Beca took her usual spot next to Joan.

Livy had a game right after school Monday, so we all hung around and cheered from the bleachers. Pretty much the only people who showed up for girls’ basketball were those who knew someone on the team. It was a far cry from the boys who were considered to be a possible AAAA contender for the IHSAA Championship. They were undefeated, but we were only six games into the season. The girls’ season started a little earlier and ended the first of February so there was no conflict with the boys’ State Tournament. Livy helped the team close their tenth win in a row Monday afternoon against Dwenger, 77-38.

It used to be there was a big difference in girls’ and boys’ basketball rules. Now, not so much. About the only thing different was that a few of the smaller schools played fourteen-minute halves instead of eight-minute quarters. Small difference but it made the games go faster.

The game was over early enough that we all went to the mall afterward and ordered our flowers for Saturday night and still got home in time for dinner and to study.

It was the last week before finals and everything was focused on finishing the work in each of our classes. That included a five-page essay which developed a character sketch of five different characters we’d read about during the semester—a page each—for Honors English. The hardest part was choosing characters.

My biggest task this week was completing my startup plan for Introduction to Entrepreneurship.

“That’s the same problem Riko and I dealt with when we started the costume business,” Riley said Tuesday night when he went over what Desi and I had developed. “We had a very profitable contract for a single show. To fulfill the contract, we’d have to quit our regular jobs and devote ourselves full time to the business. But we had no guarantee there would be a second show after the first. What would we do then with no jobs and a ten-month-old baby to care for? It was pretty tense for a while. Developing your startup plan in advance like this should help. And not having to earn a living at it while you are starting up is an added bonus.”

“I’ve got a product and an audience, I guess,” I said. “But the problem is turning an audience into a market. How do I monetize it?”

“Right now, people wait for you to release a show on YouTube, they watch it for free and if they are so moved, they donate to your PayPal. There isn’t any direct correlation between product and revenue. What you need is a subscriber base who purchases your product and can be predicted. But you can’t offer the subscriber base the same thing that you offer for free,” Riley said. “I’d suggest putting up a schedule of live performances and getting subscribers who will pay to watch you live before anyone has access to the free videos.”

“Live?” I squeaked. “You mean have an audience in my bedroom?”

“That could certainly spark some interest,” Riley laughed. He glanced over at Desi and she blushed. “I was thinking more of live streaming, but having a live audience would be a bonus. I just don’t think you are ready to go on tour yet. It’s a very difficult life. But what if once a month, instead of your half-hour recorded performance, you have a one-hour live-stream performance. Something exclusive for your paying subscribers. I could see even producing a CD of the performance and having it available for sale but not putting that performance on YouTube. It has to be exclusive.”

“How could I handle subscribers? That sounds like what Mr. Bryce was talking about in terms of managing the business taking more effort than the business itself.”

“True, but there are newer systems that you could use to handle the management process for you. Set up a Patreon page so that subscribers on it get exclusive access to the performance. Let that service handle the money transactions and give you a distribution platform. When you grow, you’ll want something customized and will have to hire staff, but the startup phase can be handled inexpensively for a percentage of your income rather than a salary.”

I went to work investigating the process. I even opened my Patreon account, but kept it hidden until I knew what the heck I was doing. I had no idea if it would work, but what I needed to present in it was a plan and this would be a good start. Maybe Mr. Bryce would be able to help when he saw it.

“We’re headed for the Plex,” Nanette said when she picked me up Thursday morning. All week, I’d worn one of those dorky-looking face masks because the weather had been too cold to breathe comfortably. Going to the indoor track would mean we could run without suffering.

It also meant that we could run in regular shorts and T-shirts instead of bulky sweat suits. I was reminded why I liked following Nanette as we ran. I did three laps around the quarter-mile track before my boner settled down and I could run comfortably. I was actually thankful that Livy was working too hard with basketball practice to run in the mornings. If I’d been running with both of them it would have been a three-legged race.

“Big plans for the holiday?” Nanette asked.

“Assuming I survive finals next week, nothing else before Christmas. I might sleep. The week between Christmas and New Year’s, though, is packed. I’m doing the show—Fort Wayne PopCon—with Desi and her parents. I think I’m going to be pretty busy.”

“Desi could certainly keep a guy busy. Or a girl,” Nanette laughed. “Jacob, with all the beautiful teenage girls you have in your pod, why do you even want to hang out with an older woman? I like running with you and I want to keep helping you, but I get the impression you’re hoping for something more. Why?”

“Am I the only one hoping, Nanette?” She looked over at me as we paced around the track and then quickly back at where we were going. “I belong in two different worlds,” I continued. “My teenage girlfriends are incredible. I love each of them, even if we haven’t had sex. Or aren’t going to. We’re clinging to each other in a way because we know that we’re about to enter a world that will try to tear us apart. But there’s a part of me that knows a woman only gets better with age and maturity. I look at you and see a woman reaching the best years of her life and I want to be a part of them. Nanette, I know I’m young and you think of me as just a kid, but this kid knows how to appreciate a real woman. Not only do I like you a lot, you turn me on. If we’re never more than running buddies, I’ll still be a part of your life. If we’re more than that, you’ll find all eight of us ready to welcome you into our lives.”

“You really put it on the line there. I respect that. Please give me some time to really think about the possibility. There are so many obstacles. One of the things you’ll find with an older woman is that we aren’t as swept away by our emotions as our teen counterparts. Having lived forty years, I’m not inclined to just throw everything to the wind and grab a new ... fresh ... sexy opportunity.” She grinned at me. She’s sincerely considering getting involved with us. Wow!

My final papers were turned in and I was in need of some serious stress relief. Nanette called Friday evening and said she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be running Saturday morning. Mom agreed that I could take the car and I drove out to Huntington where the college has that beautiful cross country course. It was cold but by the time I got out there, it was bright and sunny.

One of the things I learned during the race in Bloomington was that I could reach and sustain a pace of slightly less than seven-and-a-half minutes a mile for six miles (10k). I did that race in 43:20. What I didn’t know was how long I could sustain that pace.

The grass was both a little long and a little wet, so I would have to watch my step out there, but after I stretched and warmed up a little, I set my watch at the 7:30 pace I wanted and headed out. The Huntington course had a five-mile marked course. It took a minute until I found the pace and felt like I was running free. Then I zoned out.

I started listening to the voices in my head. My characters started coming to life. The important thing I realized as I listened was that sex wasn’t a separate event to them. The more I observed daily life on my geosphere, the more I realized it wasn’t a matter of having x amount of dialog or action and then x amount of sex. The sex in my story was merely a natural progression in the action. It was another source of tension and resolution, similar to the sphere going into an emergency lockdown alert when one engine failed and threatened to destroy the whole ship. When that happened, there wasn’t time for characters trying to shut down and repair the faulty drive to think about sex. They had more urgent things to deal with.

On the other hand, when they had time for interpersonal relationships, sitting in the ship’s bar, listening to a concert, working out in the gym, the sexual tension increased with the human drama. I knew the story was going to get there, but it wasn’t the end of the story.

That was the problem with my early stories. They hit the climax and that was the end of the story. There was so much more to the story after the couple or trio reached the climax. But that sexual tension released—just like getting the engine repaired and back up to speed—and I needed something else for the characters to focus on while I showed them maturing in their relationship. What showed their connection other than sex?