Chapter 18: A Matter of Trust + Epilogue

(Shirley)

I heard Jim get up that morning. I waited until he left, and I watched out the window of the spare bedroom as his car left.

He looked like shit.

Something inside me was happy about that. I managed to extract a little revenge on that pervert. On the other hand, there was another feeling, as if I was almost feeling sorry for him.

Me? Feel sorry for Jim the manipulator? That's a laugh!

It took me half a dozen trips between Jim's house and my old apartment to bring my shit back. There were a few things that I used to consider special--gifts that Jim gave to me--and I put them all into a bag and left them in his underwear drawer. He can have them!

My sister was coming to visit, but she will have to make do with my one bedroom apartment. That had been our original plan anyway--before Jim entered the picture. The past weekend, Jim and I purchased some stuff for Mary Sue's visit and set up the spare bedroom, so I took all the stuff we bought, even though I realized that I'd never be able to use half of it in my apartment.

Why on earth would I ever move into a house with a guy, especially one as manipulative as Jim? He was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the male species, and I fell right into his fucking trap!

I realized now that Jim must have hypnotized me into wanting to move in. I was stupid enough to allow him to hypnotize me. God, I even woke him up with blow jobs!

I can't believe that I was becoming just like those stupid mindless twats that swoon all over their guys. They give them their mouths, their vaginas, even their asses. The guy simply gets his rocks off. I had been so pathetic!

As I was putting stuff into the bathroom in my apartment, I saw my reflection in the mirror. That was the face I remember. Shirley! Welcome home!

Something bothered me about that reflection, though. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it probably was just the fact that I was upset.

About seven at night, the phone rang. It was Wendy.

"Yeah. Are you with the enemy?" I asked, suspicious as all hell.

"Are you talking about Jim?" Wendy asked. "No," she answered before I could reply. "I noticed your car in the parking lot. May I come visit?"

"Are you alone?" I was still suspicious. After all, Wendy was probably still being manipulated by Jim just as I used to be.

"I'm alone."

I really didn't want company, but she was a friend, even if she might still be under Jim's influence. I decided that I would need to keep her at arm's length from me until I could get her free of Jim's horrible manipulation. "Sure," I answered.

I saw Wendy approach my doorway and she was indeed alone. I let her in.

"Wow. You look like shit," Wendy remarked.

"Thanks."

"No!" Wendy said. "I saw Jim earlier today. He looked like crap, too. Did you guys have a fight?"

I shrugged. "Not really. I just suddenly saw him for what he really was."

"And what's that?"

"He's a manipulative, smarmy little bastard. I'll never trust him again."

Wendy surprised me by nodding. "I figured you say that. He is manipulative."

Did my friend truly believe that? Wasn't she still under his influence? "So you see? I can't be with him."

"Sure."

Something about Wendy's immediate agreement hit me as being less than honest. Did Jim send her here to spy on me? If so, he would get an earful, then. "He's dishonest. He's deceitful. He's ... he's ... a terrible person. And I hate him!" There. That felt good!

"I see," Wendy said. "What made you come to this decision all of a sudden?"

"Huh?"

"Why did you figure this out just now? I may not think he's dishonest or deceitful, but apparently you do. Obviously, you were closer to him than I ever was. What did he do to deceive you?"

I was at a loss for an answer to that. He was a guy, wasn't he? Wasn't that enough? That didn't seem to be something Wendy would understand. "Men just want sex. That's all they want. The same way those guys at the bar were the other night." I realized that this was a great example to use with Wendy. "Those guys will say anything, do anything, to get into your pants."

Wendy nodded. "I see. Jim tried to ply you with liquor and have his way with you."

No. That wasn't right, and Wendy knew it. "Well, he probably wanted to do that. I didn't let him."

Wendy simply nodded. "So, I guess you know what he is thinking all the time."

"Of course. I know what they're all thinking!" Wendy's calm demeanor was pissing me off. "They want nothing except to trick you and humiliate you. Did you know he gave me a hypnotic suggestion so that whenever he humiliated me in public, I'd get horny instead of angry?"

"Jim did that to you?" Wendy asked. Her calm response did not indicate that she really believed it.

"Yes! I figured that one out. He even admitted he gave me that suggestion!" There! I had her!

Wendy wasn't perturbed. "Did you give him a chance to tell you why he gave you that suggestion? You guys played some ... interesting games together."

"Um ... well, he gave me an explanation. But that's beyond the point! He wants to humiliate me! That's all he was ever after. Humiliate the fat girl! Make her blow you in public!"

Wendy nodded. "He sort of did that to you, but you woke up and found you were simply in his living room, right?"

"Yeah, but he left the suggestion there! He was going to do it again. In public this time! I know it!"

"Uh, huh." Wendy didn't seem convinced. "What's this about humiliating the fat girl? Wasn't he helping you lose weight?"

"Well, yeah. He said that..."

"What size were you when you started your weight loss program?"

"Um. Sixteen."

"Be honest, Shirley. It's me. You were an eighteen."

No! "I had a couple of size eighteens, but most of my stuff was sixteen." I protested.

"OK. What size was the dress that Jim recently purchased for you? The one that looks hot."

Wendy had a point. Quietly, I answered, "Fourteen."

My friend nodded. "I guess he hypnotized you into getting skinnier. He can be quite the bastard, huh?"

I didn't want to answer her, but I needed to bolster my argument. "Jim only had me exercise so he could leer at my body. He made us strip naked! You know that!"

Wendy smiled. "Of course. I knew it before I even agreed to the program."

"He gave you a choice, but he didn't give me one!" There! Let's try and see Wendy get around that one!

"OK. He manipulated you. I said that you knew that all along."

"Yeah, well ... last night..." I couldn't explain why I felt so angry at Jim. Words just didn't sound right.

Wendy continued talking. "Of course, if he just wanted to see you naked, then I guess he thought your body was worth seeing."

I was about to agree when I realized Wendy's trap. My friend was actually trying to trap me! "No! That's not it!" I tried to come up with an alternate explanation--something that would show Jim as he truly was. "He ... he just wanted to humiliate me." Yeah! That's it. "I told you, he wanted to humiliate the fat girl!"

Wendy looked at me strangely, and then shrugged.

That girl's actions were starting to piss me off. Wendy was only here to spy on me for that monster. She was working for the enemy. Her words gave her away!

Wendy finally broke the silence by asking, "Are you going to Jim's house for exercise tomorrow?"

Oh, God! I forgot! He left that compulsion in me. He even managed to get me to agree to keeping that one, the fucking sneak!

"Um ... No. I'll ... um ... I'll exercise here."

Wendy simply shrugged. "I'll be at Jim's."

"Traitor!" The word escaped me unbidden. Now that it was out there, though, I realized that it was true. Wendy was a traitor.

Wendy didn't seem fazed by my outburst. "I see. Well, if that's the way you feel about me, there isn't much that I can do. I don't love Jim, and I never did. I thought he was nice, and I thought the two of you together made a great couple. Anyway, I don't need to spy on you for him. You were my friend before I knew Jim personally. My loyalty is to you. I think I understand your feelings. Believe me, I really do."

"Bullshit," I said, not very loud.

Wendy continued. "There's not much more that I can do, and I don't want to force you to change your mind. I just want you to think for yourself. Weren't you happy before? Didn't Jim help you become more assured of yourself? Didn't he love you when you thought nobody could love you? Wasn't he the one man that you could trust when you could not trust any man? Didn't he help you find a new job? Those things don't sound self serving to me."

Without waiting for an answer, Wendy simply went out the door.

"Fucking traitor!" I said impotently at the closed door.

(Jim)

Wendy called me later that evening. She was very upset at what Shirley called her, although she made it a point not to get upset when she was face to face with her friend. Shirley's words still hurt, though. Wendy told me that she talked with Shirley in her apartment and said that she was indeed in the state of mind that the two of us anticipated.

"She's not entirely rational about it," Wendy said. "She called me a traitor. You were right about that. I didn't let her see it hurt me, but it really stung."

"I hope this doesn't cause a permanent rift between the two of you," I said with a sigh.

Wendy shook her head. "I kept trying to tell you that Shirley has always had issues."

"Yeah, I know."

"You really need to talk with her. You aren't like ... Fuck! She told me that in confidence..."

I was getting frustrated with whatever Wendy was holding back from me. "Told you what?"

"Uh, uh. She may hate me and think that I'm your spy. I'm still not going to divulge something she told me in private. Let's just say that she told me something once, and it sort of explains why she hates men. But, it's you that needs to talk with her."

I didn't know what to say.

"I'm sorry, Jim. I tried to be calm and rational. I think I just pissed her off more. She thinks I'm on your side. I told her that I was friends with her longer. I pointed out that you loved her when she thought nobody could love her."

The conversation was interrupted by call waiting. "One second, Wendy."

I flashed the phone, and saw that the incoming was from Shirley. "Hi, Shirley."

"Your fucking spy just left. I hate you both!"

"I love you," I said, simply.

"Fuck you!" There was a click.

The may have been just words, but they hurt.

Wendy's call came back, and she asked me, "Was that Shirley?"

"Yeah. She hates us both."

There was a long pause. "I really hope for all our sake that things work out."

I nodded, and then realized that there wasn't any way that Wendy could see me. "We'll see. I guess you'll be here tomorrow."

"Yeah."

The phone went dead.

It was another long night with very little sleep.

At six in the morning, the phone rang. I picked it up, but I received a dial tone. It was probably Shirley. I was immediately reminded of Wendy's comments about Shirley and how her reaction was the same as divorced people getting vindictive with each other. She was thinking about me enough to actually call me up to interrupt my sleep. I only had about an hour's continuous sleep before the call came in, and I wondered if this meant that there might be hope for the two of us. My exhausted body didn't seem to think so.

There were other wake-up calls spaced between a half hour and forty-five minutes apart. I answered them and received dial tone. I knew I wasn't going to be getting much sleep, so I got up.

Wendy's comment to Shirley about showing up for exercise wasn't something I considered myself until Wendy mentioned it to me after their talk. Shirley still had the compulsion, and I was pretty sure the location was to be my house (only for lack of a better location when I initially gave her the suggestion). Wendy said that Shirley seemed a bit worried when she mentioned it to her, so I decided to try something. I sent Shirley and Wendy an email offering to relieve them of any need to come over to my house. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get any indication that the message was received or read.

Wendy's words still echoed in my brain. "You can't have that kind of hate without love being there." Was that true? I never really loved somebody, other than my family. I never felt rejection because I avoided the situation entirely. With Shirley, I knew I was jumping into the deep end from the get-go, and now it appeared that I was going to join the billions of other people that were rejected over eternity.

The biggest problem, of course, was that this was all my own doing.

It was true that I didn't know about Shirley's issues with men. That was my own fault. I saw something was there, but I was never brave enough to broach the subject with her. Of course, Shirley kept avoiding the subject, but I should have pressed.

I thought back at Wendy's Dr. Simons, the quack that cured Wendy's weight problem in a single visit. Never for a moment did I think that his therapy was effective; you simply cannot change a person's life by snapping your fingers!

How was I much better than Dr. Simons, though? Oh, I did research weight loss on the web, and I did "prescribe" a regimen of eating right and regular exercise, but did I ever try to go deeper into Shirley's psyche and find out if there was some other, more deep seated problem? No. Instead, I took a quick way out, and added some titillation for my own benefit.

Yes, I was just as bad as Dr. Simons. At least the doctor had the professionalism not to fall in love with Wendy.

Although I knew there was nothing sinister in my suggestion that Shirley trust me, I tried to think how my life would be if I never put her under. If Shirley would never trust a man, neither of us would have had the fun that we had over the last month or so.

I wished there was something I could say--something I could do--to get Shirley to like me again. I would beg her forgiveness on my hands and knees, if that would make her once again look at me the she did so recently.

I never really had a girl friend until Shirley. I was too busy studying in college, and too busy with my career afterward. That's not to say that I didn't date, but I never expected any second dates, and they were rare. It never bothered me not having a girl friend before. I simply never made a place for anybody else in my life ... until Shirley came along.

There is a Joni Mitchell song called, "Big Yellow Taxi" that asks the question, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till its gone?" I fucking paved my own paradise and put up a parking lot.

Great work, Jim.

At noon, there was a knock on my door. Despite my hopes that it was Shirley, I saw that it was Wendy's car in the driveway.

I took a few deep breaths before I opened the front door. I already made up my mind to remove all of Wendy's hypnotic suggestions, no matter if she ended up hating me or not. I just simply couldn't continue to have my irresponsible use of hypnotism adversely affecting other people's lives.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door...

(Shirley)

I couldn't sleep.

I knew I made the right decision about Jim. He was manipulative. He was untrustworthy. He was a sneak. He was a man, god-damn-it!

So, why did I have trouble sleeping? Did he give my some sort of sneaky suggestion to make me feel guilty?

Finally, at six in the morning, I got up. I was so fucking mad at Jim. He was probably sleeping blissfully while I was worrying over...

What was I worrying about?

There were tremendous misgivings that I felt about the upcoming day. Wendy pointed out that we never removed the suggestion that made me exercise at Jim's. At the time, it seemed as if it was a harmless one. Now, I realized that I was going to have to see that dirty old bastard!

I called his phone number, and waited until he picked up. I realized that I didn't really want to talk with him, so I just hung up the phone. Afterward, I felt a bit of satisfaction hoping that I may have interrupted his sleep.

I tried to put things away. My apartment was still all messy from my sudden move back in yesterday. Each time I'd see something that reminded me of Jim, and I'd think of some date we went on, or something we did together. It was entirely frustrating! I was trying to get over that bastard, and here he was invading my thoughts!

At seven and again before eight, I called Jim again, hoping I was spoiling his beauty sleep. I know that this was childish, but it did give me something that I could actually do to get even with him.

My box of linens was in the living room, so I moved them into my bathroom. As I was setting up the towels, I saw my reflection in the mirror. There was something about the person in the mirror that bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I scowled at the reflection and went back to my work.

It was only after I was back in my living room that I realized what bothered me about that reflection. I used to be happy, and right now I was not!

Well, it's Jim's fucking fault. He was the one that made me unhappy. He's responsible for that now-permanent scowl that I now had on my face.

I thought back to the evening that Jim showed up at my apartment to hypnotize me. I had a lot of reservations about it at the time. Jim was a man, after all. But that wasn't completely it. I knew about Jim from work. He was all business, did what he said he would, and expected everybody else to do the same. He never talked about women, and I don't think he ever dated. I never heard him tell a dirty joke or make an off-color remark about anybody.

So why did I allow Jim to hypnotize me? I tried to tell myself that Jim forced me to, but I knew that this was a lie. He didn't force me to do anything. In fact, he tried to talk me out of the whole thing, and I knew that this wasn't just simple reverse psychology.

The damned truth was that I was unhappy with my life, and I was unhappy with that fat cow that I used to see in the fucking mirror every single day of my life. Wendy paid nearly five hundred dollars for a session with a behavioral therapist and she lost a bit of weight. I wanted that!

Yes, I really wanted to lose weight, and I thought that Jim would be a free ticket. If it didn't work, what could I lose? He might make me not like fatty foods, but I knew that I could always have him take that command away from me. It was a win-win situation!

It didn't matter anyway.

I made a mistake letting Jim hypnotize me.

What could I lose if it didn't work? How about my dignity? How about my self respect? Why didn't I think of that before? Was losing weight so damned important that it blinded me to the truth that all men were slime?

I was fucking angry at that man! Some straight arrow he turned out to be. He only wanted to get his rocks off at the expense of the fat girl.

I walked like an automaton into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and saw it was empty. I forgot to go grocery shopping yesterday. With a sigh, I figured I'd stop at Denny's to get one of their breakfasts. Of course, I then remembered that those eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, and ham dishes were loaded with cholesterol. How many calories were in those appropriately named "slams" that I didn't need?