Chapter 156: Planning for Two Dinner Parties

Saturday, April 30, 2005 (Continued)

Dinner wasn't at a fancy place, but I enjoyed it more than the movie. Our waitress was subjected to the sight of Ava's hands being inside Carol's top, clearly rolling Carol's nipples. The poor girl (the waitress I mean; not Carol or Ava), didn't know where to look. She knew where NOT to look though, and for the rest of the meal refused to look at Carol. Unfortunately for her, on her second visit to the table, it just so happened that I was doing the same thing to Julia, so now there were two places she couldn't look. On her third visit I was doing it to Ava, which pretty much meant that for all the rest of our meal we were served by a waitress who wouldn't look at any of us. She was young and naïve, although a little less naïve by the end of the evening. We were just having some fun. It wasn't as if we were exposing ourselves; all she was seeing was someone's hands inside someone else's blouse, which was hardly a big deal.

While I'm on the topic of blouses - that area being something I've long been particularly interested in - if girls' shirts are called blouses (God knows why), why aren't girls' T-shirts called T-blouses? As a follow-up question, why is it that logic never applies to anything related to females?

With three girls, there were topics that one of them knew about, but another didn't, so we had quite a few things to talk about. For example, Ava didn't have much idea about what we were doing with Chloe, so we told her. During the course of that discussion Julia 'informed' Ava that Chloe would probably become another fairly full-time girlfriend for me. I would've 'warned' Ava, but Julia is way more commanding than me. I'm improving, but I've got a LONG way to go to be as bossy as Julia!

Ava was cool with Chloe joining in. Her attitude was, "What Mark wants, Mark gets." She's got a wonderful attitude!

Ava had no difficulty suggesting the reason for my interest in Chloe. While I was thinking about how much truth to include in my response, in case my reason got back to Chloe, Julia said, "It's not only the obvious reason, and it's not only so she can be Mark's girlfriend. Mark could have bedded her days ago if that was all he was interested in. We're trying to do more than that. Chloe's got a major problem with being paranoid about her breasts..." Julia gave some examples, then went on to describe the general idea of the last part of the Chloe Plan.

Ava praised Julia and me for our good intentions.

Praising Julia was fine, as it'd been her idea and plan, but praising me was undeserved. When I attempted to pass all the credit to Julia, Julia said, "{Raspberry}. I couldn't do A THING to help Chloe without you. If I attempted to say something to her about the problem of having large breasts, she'd look at me like I was crazy. What could I possibly know about that topic! Haha. Even if she listened to me, I've got no way of motivating her to act. No, our helping her is only possible because of you. I wouldn't have even bothered to think about doing it, if you hadn't given me the opportunity."

"But..." I started.

"No 'buts', Mark. Accept praise when it's deserved."

"But..."

"I suppose you're going to say 'it's undeserved'?"

"Well, yes. I was. Mainly because it IS undeserved."

"Ava can make up her own mind about that." Before I could say "But..." for the third time, Julia started an explanation or what I think of as the "Tit Flashing Plan". Julia didn't actually tell Ava that tits would be flashed, merely that Carol and Ava were to come when I called, after adjusting their clothes to show more breast, so I could make the point to Chloe that boys look at any and every breast, so she shouldn't take it personally. Ava was perfectly happy with it, with "happy" being the key word - she thought it sounded like fun.

Having lost all chance I had to rightfully direct Ava's praise to where it should go, and after having accepted Ava's hug and kiss to express how impressed she was with me, I changed the subject. Julia and Carol didn't know about Lily's father inviting me to dinner. I briefly described the event, to which their collective response could be summarized as, "Yummy!"

I explained that I was worried about accepting it because Lily had been far too eager. I recounted my and Lily's conversation, with Ava adding her perspective. Julia and Carol accepted that Lily had been eager, but they didn't see it as being suspicious. Carol said, "What girl wouldn't be eager to have you come to dinner with her parents?"

I understood that - while being amazed that it could be true - but felt that Lily's eagerness had more to it than that. I couldn't convince Julia or Carol though. I couldn't even convince myself, as it was merely an indefinite suspicion of mine.

Julia had fun in pointing out, "It's not as if you've got millions of dollars, is it?"

The girls urged me to accept, and to invite them too. Julia adding, "If you're feeling paranoid, invite your parents and several other people. Also, in the days before you can tell several of your classmates that you're having dinner with Lily's family on whatever day. Let Lily hear you say that. If they have any malicious purpose, that'd surely cause them to cancel it."

"Okay. I'll admit that I can't justify my suspicion. I'm probably just misreading Lily. What do I know about girls, especially Chinese ones! I'll tell her tomorrow that I accept. Other than you three shameless moochers, who else should I invite?"

The girls told me that I should invite:

• The three of them (they repeated this point, to make sure I had it firmly memorized).

• The rest of my family: Mom, Dad and Donna.

• Ava's parents, to give them an interesting experience, with the added bonus of their seeing that I was respected (apparently) by the Chengs.

• Chloe, if she was officially my girlfriend by then, which was likely.

• Vanessa and Prof, if they wanted to go.

• Perhaps Chloe's parents, as every other girlfriend's parents would be there.

"Whoa! That's a dozen people already, not even counting me. We can't inflict that many people on them!"

"Why not? From what you said, they want you to invite a lot of people."

"We don't HAVE TO invite that many. Maybe Lily was just exaggerating to make their point that I can invite some more people? Inviting a dozen people is a big imposition. Plus it's probably not a good idea to invite Chloe's parents anyway, because they'll see that I have an 'unconventional' number of girlfriends. That could cause some problems with Chloe."

Julia said, "I half-agree about not inviting Chloe's parents. But when Chloe is your girlfriend, it'd be foolish to try to keep from them that you've got other girlfriends. Corvallis is small enough that if they ask around about you, they're going to find out. But it might be a good idea not to rub their noses in it immediately after Chloe becomes your girlfriend. Let them see how happy she is for a while first, before giving them the 'unconventional' news. Also, if you're worried about numbers, why not ask Lily tomorrow? Ask her what she thinks of a dozen or two. She should know whether that's acceptable or not."

"Okay. I'll do that. Lily also said for me to choose whatever day I wanted, but we can leave that to them, can't we? I'm busy Monday and probably Tuesday evenings, but any other evening is fine with me, and I doubt they'll want to do it that soon anyway. Do any of you have any other evenings you can't make, so we can warn Lily to avoid those?"

None of them did.

"Okay, I'll tell Lily that her parents can pick any evening after Tuesday."

Ava said, "My parents also wanted to invite you and Julia to dinner soon. This morning they ordered a big bed for my room, and it should be delivered mid-week. They want to be able to invite you and Julia around, and to have you stay the night, to get to know you better and to show their support for our relationship. It'll just be an ordinary dinner, nothing as fancy as Lily's. They were thinking Friday or Saturday, so we wouldn't have to go to school the next day. That way we could all sit around chatting in the morning. Is that okay? We don't want to impose on you too..."

Julia jumped in, "Ava, I've got a list of things I want to talk with your parents about that's a mile-long. Visiting them is not an imposition at all, because I'm going to be visiting them many times over the next few months anyway. It's PERFECT, especially if we can talk the next morning too."

A puzzled Ava asked, "What do you need to talk with them so much about?"

"You! Everything from lots of stories about your childhood through to their dreams for your future, and especially the typical ways you misbehave, haha. I want to learn lots of things about you, so that my and Mark's moms and I can do a good job of taking over from your mom. I want your parents to see that we're taking the responsibility seriously and that we'll do a good job of looking after you."

"Wow. They're going to be very happy. Thank you VERY much, Julia."

"It'll be fun. I'm expecting to hear lots of funny stories. I'm sure Mom and Felicity will be getting together with Katie behind our backs too. We'll make sure your parents are happy with your decision, Ava. We know that's very important to you.

^-- "Can I suggest your parents extend their invitation to Carol too. The four of us will be together more often than not, so they should get to know her too."

"I'm sure that'll be fine. You're invited too, Carol. We don't have another bed, because Mom and Dad use the other bedroom as an office, but we've got a sofa, or an airbed if you prefer. Or maybe," and I could see Ava get a funny look on her face, which I couldn't interpret, "you could sleep in the bed with the rest of us. Would that be okay, MARK?" Again with a funny emphasis.

I was starting to worry about Ava's knowing about Carol and me, but Carol's little giggle and Julia's smirk meant that there was something else going on. I opened my mouth to ask, but Julia cut me off with, "You'll find out. Don't worry about it now."

"This is one of those, 'You'll enjoy it better if you don't know' situations, isn't it?"

"Sort of." By now all three girls were smiling and giggling, so it was obvious who was going to be enjoying it the most. (I'll give you a hint, there are three of them and they all belong to the same gender.)

"You 'ladies' - and I use the word doubtfully - just tell me where to go and what to do, and I promise to look suitably embarrassed at the time. How does that sound?"

They agreed it sounded, "Perfect."

Ava said, "We'll let Lily's parents choose their night first, then decide what to do about my parents' invitation. Is that all right?"

Julia said, "Yes. We'll make it either Friday or Saturday, the way your parents wanted. Whichever evening the Chengs don't choose. You should tell your mom that we'll be having the Chengs' banquet either the previous evening or the next one, so her meal should be fairly light. Remind them that Mark eats a lot please."

"Haha. They know. They've mentioned how much they saw him eat at your house. I'll remind Mom though."

#1: <Julia asked for a "light" meal, then said I'd eat a lot of it. Isn't that contradictory? Surely a lot of something light is heavy?>

#2: <You'd think so, wouldn't you. Do you want to risk asking?>

#1: <It seems fairly safe.>

"Just out of curiosity, Julia, you asked for a 'fairly light meal', then said I'd eat a lot. Wouldn't that make it a heavy meal? For me, I mean."

"No. I meant 'light' as in 'not rich'. No fancy sauces and dessert shouldn't be very sweet."

"'Light' means 'not rich'. I thought 'poor' meant 'not rich'?"

"You couldn't ask for a poor meal. That means bad."

"So let me get this straight ... No, on second thought, I think I'll leave it alone. I am, however, convinced that a woman's place is in the kitchen; no one else could understand such a twisted vocabulary, haha. If we've finished discussing the dinners, can I change the subject please?" They agreed I could.

^-- I said, "Ava, the reason I went to the Athletic Club this morning was because I was worried there was doubt about the legitimacy of my win a couple of weeks ago, and those doubts might cause Donna some trouble. Do you think my run today helped that at all?"

Actually, I was using that as an excuse to get on to the topic of the Club. I wanted to find out whether Ava had blabbed about my marathon time. Talking about sleeping with Carol had reminded me, not that I'd really needed the reminder, as the thought of taking all my girlfriends to bed at the same time frequently crosses my mind.

I talked with Ava for a few minutes, not really caring what we were saying. Then I asked, "I was worried about Donna telling someone about my world-record 10k or marathon times. Did you hear anything that would make you suspicious that she'd blabbed?"