Chapter 159: My Stupid Way to Look Noble

Sunday, May 1, 2005 (Continued)

I doubted Julia and Ava would be saying anything for a while, so it was a good time for me to leave. As I expected, so much time had passed that Carol wasn't in the bathroom. I was a bit too stinky to wander around the house for something that wasn't urgent, so I had a quick shower first.

I finished my shower before Julia and Ava arrived - I must have left more cum in Julia than I'd thought - so I went looking for Carol. She wasn't in the kitchen. Sadly, neither were any croissants, damn! On the way to check the hot tub and the Guys' Rooms, I heard her voice coming out of Prof and Vanessa's study.

I headed that way. Before I arrived I heard enough to understand that Carol was describing how I'd reacted when the Duckling lunch came unstuck because of what I call the "fame throng" (or "damned fame throng", depending on my mood). It wasn't a secret topic - just as well, with the door open - but it was still embarrassing for me to walk in to.

I solved my dilemma by calling ahead, "Is that you, Carol?"

"In here!"

Prof, Vanessa and Carol were sitting in the center of their study, chatting. Carol was wrapped in towels, which was good with Sophia maybe still in the house. I sat next to Carol on the sofa, and she immediately relocated herself to my lap.

Vanessa said, "Carol was telling us that your fame is starting to cause you problems."

"Yeah, I heard from the hallway. Our lunch with the Ducklings got messed up because of it."

"What lessons did you learn from it?"

#2: <Here we go again. No wonder Julia is so smart about people. Can you imagine sixteen years of living with Vanessa and Prof as your parents!>

#4: <I suspect they let Julia cruise for the first year or two, so maybe only fourteen years of lessons.>

"My first lesson was that crowds of people are a pain in the backside. An unmanageable, rude, stupid pain in the backside. In their desire to be friendly with me, they trampled all over my LUNCH! Can you imagine anything LESS friendly to me! Haha. I can laugh at that now, but I was damned annoyed at the time.

^-- "Umm, Julia did some online research for me on how to handle such situations. There wasn't much apparently. Some stuff about taking control of the crowd early before it gets too large or too unruly, meeting them halfway so when I separate from them they'll know our meeting is over, setting rules for their behavior, and stuff like that. Julia did say that even if I did everything perfectly, crowds will often still be uncontrollable."

"Yes, crowds are known for it. I'll be interested to hear how you get on next time."

#2: <That's it? No pointing out my mistakes, no telling me that running away had been cowardly, no lessons. That was easy.>

#1: <I think she's going to spread this one out, over weeks or months if need be.>

"Ahh, I'm not sure there's going to be a next time. I was trying to think of another way of meeting with the Ducklings. Somewhere away from all the other people."

"I can guarantee there'll be plenty of next times. Once it's well known that you're rich, it could become a common occurrence. I suggest you to use middle school to practice what Julia told you, because you'll never have a crowd that's easier to dominate than a bunch of 12- to 14-year olds. That way when you start having trouble with high-school students, or people in public later, then you'll be more confident about what to do. After years of teaching unruly mobs myself, I can tell you that confidence is very important."

"I guess you're right. I also guess I'd better do this sooner rather than later."

Prof agreed, "I should think so, yes. I can't imagine any sensible reason why they'd make us wait more than a week between our first and second business trips. Maybe they'd say a month out of caution because we'd won on our first visit, but I'd be surprised because what would they use those extra three weeks for? I'll try to talk them into a week, so it might be all over in less than a week and a half, and then you'll be publicly known as being very rich, all going well."

"Wow! I'd better pick another day for a Duckling lunch soon. Next Thursday or Friday, I guess. That'll make Donna happy."

Vanessa said, "Good. If you can, let yourself be seen, so you get to practice controlling the crowd."

"Yeah. It's not going to be a sexy meeting, unfortunately. I'm going to make damned sure I hang on to my lunch next time too!

^-- "Changing the topic, I came looking for Carol to mention a couple of things to her, but now I think about it, we should check this idea with you two, and probably with our parents too." Turning to Carol, I asked, "Carol, what do you think about discussing your little plan about Ava and us now?"

My question had been deliberately vague in case Carol objected, but she was fine with it, "It's a serious issue, so that'd be a good idea."

I was about to start, when I remembered the door was open. There was no reason not to close it the easy way, so I said, "I'll just close the door."

Carol started getting off my lap, telling me, "I'll get it," but by then I'd already started pushing it closed with NP.

Carol, Prof and Vanessa all chuckled. When the door had closed, Prof said, "That's a great ability for a lazy person."

"Yeah, but unfortunately I can't do the single most useful thing I want with it."

As he knew I wanted him to, Prof bit, "Oh, what is that?"

"I'd love to be able to lie in bed and fly cookies up from the kitchen whenever I felt like one. Unfortunately I need line of sight."

Prof asked, "Who'd have right of way on the stairs, the human or the flying cookie?"

Carol suggested, "The human could solve that problem by eating the cookie."

"Mutiny! Any more crazy talk like that and I'll flip you over and spank your bottom. My cookies are sacred and are NOT to be interfered with!"

Vanessa said, "I, for one, am very glad you can't raid the kitchen from your bedroom. I can too easily imagine food disappearing as fast as I could cook it, with no hand in sight for me to slap. We'd have to issue the rest of the family butterfly nets whenever it was dinnertime. Speaking of which, I gather from Carol that your anniversary breakfast went well? I know your spare croissants went down well with everyone else, thank you for those."

"You're welcome. All of them got eaten, did they?"

"Yes. Don't look so sad, I'm sure we can find something else for you."

"Good. Maybe in a little while though, because I'm not hungry yet. I was just disappointed that they're all gone. Sort of a matter of principle. Anyway, the reason I closed the door was to discuss an issue to do with Ava. Ava's going to be part of our core group, as I call it, for another couple of years at least, and there's no way we want to try to keep the reality of Carol's and my relationship from Ava for that long. It's already a nuisance avoiding being too affectionate, let alone EXTREMELY affectionate, like we should've been this morning, if you get my drift?" They indicated that they got my drift. It wasn't exactly the hardest drift to get. I continued, "We know Ava's not worried about brothers and sisters having sex. In fact she thinks Carol and I are crazy for not going at it hammer and tongs already. We all think Ava's trustworthy too, mostly because she comes across that way. I'm pretty sure she hasn't blabbed about my marathon time, or about my Nipple Power." [I'd already told Prof and Vanessa the derivation of that name, when I told them that "TK" was changing to "NP".]

^-- "Carol's idea is that when I decide to trust Ava - probably in a few days - then Carol will have a fake heart-to-heart talk with Ava, about Carol's just starting to develop sexual feelings for me. The idea is to get Ava to push Carol and me together, to make her think she's responsible for it. That way she'll be even less likely to blab about it. Also so that if we decide to let any other girls know about it, we can get Ava involved in that too, so the new girls will know Ava was the instigator. If we can, we'll even make Ava work quite hard to convince me to bed Carol..."

Carol interrupted, "Yeah, and I'm going to approach her for advice on how to resist my desires. She's going to have to work hard to push us together."

"I haven't discussed this much with Julia or Carol, but there's an opportunity to tie Chloe in. According to Julia's plan, Chloe will probably become my girlfriend in a few days time, two or three probably. Julia is pretty sure that Chloe won't be a long-term girlfriend; about a year or so Julia thinks, and I'm certainly not going to disagree with Julia over ANYTHING involving understanding girls. For a good chunk of that year Chloe's going to be pretty dependent on me, so it'll be a pain trying to hide my relationship with Carol from her. My idea is that if Carol holds off on her talk with Ava for a few extra days, then we'll have a chance to quietly sound out Chloe about her attitude to Carol and me, then maybe Carol can have her fake heart-to-heart talk with Ava and Chloe together. So we'd get the same benefits for Chloe as I mentioned for Ava. So, I guess the questions I'd like your opinion on are: should we tell Ava at all? Is our way of telling her - by fooling her into thinking that she's brought us together - the best way? And then the same questions about Chloe."

Vanessa said, "We also saw that Ava didn't seem to have any emotional bias against sibling incest when she was teasing Andrew. That and what Julia has told us makes us think you're right about that aspect of her personality. In terms of her trustworthiness, after her parents, you and Julia are the most important people in her life now, and she believes she needs you, so I think it's very unlikely that she'll 'rat you out', so to speak. Perhaps by accident if she didn't know something was a secret, but if you're very explicit to her about what you want her to keep quiet about, I think she'll likely be trustworthy.

^-- "However, there is one aspect that I think you're not giving nearly enough weight to: the fury of a woman scorned. People are very easy to get on with while they're getting what they want, but when they stop getting what they want out of a relationship, they can get extremely bitter, vindictive and revengeful. A high proportion of the divorces I've seen people go through have had one or both of the parties turn nasty. It's 50/50 on whether it's the man or woman, but it's the woman often enough that you have to take warning from it. I'm not so worried about Ava because what she seems to want you and Julia are able to provide, but I hardly know Chloe. She might be all sweetness and light while she's getting closer to you, but what if she proposes marriage to you in a year's time and you refuse her. She could easily decide that if she can't have you, then she'll do her worst to ensure no other girl can either, by getting you sent to jail perhaps. That sort of behavior is far more common than you would've seen at your age, but Prof and I have seen it many times."

"MANY times," agreed Prof.

Vanessa continued, "You should plan for half of your serious girlfriends feeling vengeful if you refuse something they have their heart set on, so you'd be wise to make sure they don't have anything they can easily use against you. It'd be extremely easy for them to use your relationship with Carol, as that'd take just a single phone call to the police. You should try to minimize that risk by making it very clear up-front that you're in multi-way relationships, so marriage is NEVER going to happen. Stress that every time even a hint of her desiring marriage comes up in conversation. But even with that sort of preparation, you're still going to get vengeful ex-girlfriends often enough that you should be extremely cautious about who you tell your secrets to. My advice about Chloe is to put off telling her as long as possible, ideally forever, and certainly not to bring telling her forward just because it neatly fits into your telling Ava at the same time. Wait until you absolutely have to tell her before you even start thinking about it, rather than leaping ahead unnecessarily. It's quite possible that her parents might forbid her sleeping overnight with you, for example, which would mean you'd never have a pressing need to tell her about Carol."

"Okay Vanessa. You've convinced me about Chloe. I was trying to solve an inconvenience before it even happened, and that's not worth the risk."

"No it's not, especially because it's not just you that'd be at risk, but Carol, Donna and your parents too. You need a great deal more reason than merely 'inconvenience' before you put them at that much risk. While I'm mentioning them, you should also talk with your parents about this before you tell Ava. You're making decisions that can dramatically affect their lives, so they have a right to be involved in the decision. There's no pressing need to tell Ava as you can always wait a few more days, so you've got no excuse not to consult your parents."

"Okay. We'll definitely do that."

"Good. I can't even guess how Ava will react when your relationship with her comes to an end. There's no way of knowing how someone will react when they think their situation has changed badly. Someone who behaved like a saint for years when times were good, might turn into a vengeful bitch if she felt unfairly rejected. The key word is 'unfairly'. People can behave very, very badly if they think they've been treated unfairly. It's common for people to feel justified in committing murder if their feelings were unfairly hurt. That's totally irrational and disproportionate, but all too common. So none of us can predict how Ava will behave if she feels you were unfair to her.

^-- "The only measure you can take is try to make sure she never thinks you've been badly unfair to her. That's not as simple as always treating her in a way you think is fair, because people can have very unbalanced ideas about what they think is fair for them - two people contributing equal efforts to something will usually think they're personally putting in 70% because people overvalue their own contributions. When the relationship ends, each person can easily get angry at their impression that they were putting in twice as much effort as the other. Just because you think you're being more than fair, doesn't mean the girl thinks you are, and won't feel cheated afterward. By all means do your best with Ava, but don't naively assume that will be enough.

^-- "Another approach is to manage her expectations. If she never expects to marry you, she'll be less likely to feel unfairly treated when you don't. I'll give you an example of something I think would work quite well. I should start by saying that I like Carol's idea about her fake heart-to-heart and everything that follows from that. I imagine Julia liked it too, as it's exactly the sort of trickery that Julia loves."

Carol emphatically agreed, "I'll say she did! I'm sure she's going to want to discuss it at length, as soon as we get some time alone."

"Yes, and add to it, I'm sure. Julia does tend to get carried away with plans that appeal to her. Don't let her push you off the line you want to take, Carol. Remember that you'll be taking the greatest role in this little trickery, and you have to be able to bring it off convincingly. That'll be much easier for you if you're following a plan that you're happy with.

^-- "My point about Ava is that you should arrange it so Ava and Julia get a chance for a private talk about you and Mark getting physical, before anyone tells Mark that it might happen. Get Julia to point out to Ava that if Mark starts having a complete relationship with Carol, then he'll never want to marry anyone. 'He loves Carol so much, that he'll never want to marry any other girl.' Not Ava, not Julia, and not anyone else. Let Ava ponder on that for a while, without Julia's input. If Ava is the sort of person I think she is, she'll come to the decision that Mark and Carol should still become lovers. It'll be her own decision to give up on marrying Mark, which will be far more effective at destroying her expectation of that happening than Mark telling her he won't."

Carol exclaimed, "That's an amazingly good idea Vanessa. Poor Ava, that's going to make her feel very hollow."

"That's what will make it so effective."

Vanessa seemed to be obsessing about marriage, so I asked, "Umm, Vanessa, you keep mentioning girls getting upset about not marrying me. The first time or two you mentioned it, I though it was just an example, but you seem to be thinking it's the biggest worry?"

"I do think it's the biggest worry. I said earlier that about half of your girlfriends will feel vengeful when you break up with them. Here's another - but much more accurate - rule of thumb: the proportion of your serious girlfriends who'll be hoping to marry you will be EXACTLY 100%. They will ALL want to marry you, and a high proportion of them will do more than just 'hope' for it: they'll actively try to make it happen, and you know that 'all's fair in love and war.'

^-- "Girls instinctively want to find a mate and bind him to them. They are also culturally conditioned, legally and financially advantaged if they do so. You might as well say that girls are FORCED to get a guy locked to them. Your politely telling them to 'forget it', isn't going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of standing up to all the other influences driving them. EVERY serious girlfriend you have is going to be praying for the chance to marry you. I'm mixing my metaphors very inappropriately, but some of those girls are going to sell their souls for the chance to get you in front of a church's altar, haha."

"Umm. But there's been no sign of that so far. Julia's not like that. Carol can't really, and Ava's not like that either."

"Julia's heart would leap for joy if you asked her to marry you. When her head caught up, she'd turn you down, but don't doubt what her fundamental desire is for. That's why it's important that you do little things like your breakfast in bed this morning.

^-- "Don't look so worried, Mark. Julia has never been happier than she's been the last few weeks. You don't have to worry about hurting her, because you're not. She's having a grand time. It's just that 'marriage' is a magic word to a girl, and they can't help themselves when they hear it. Julia knows and approves that you're not going to marry her in the foreseeable future. But girls such as Chloe aren't going to understand the consequences of your uniqueness nearly as well as Julia does. They're going to try to marry you, and they may not take kindly to being turned down. So everything you can do to reduce the emotional investments the girls put into their dreams of marrying you, the less of a backlash you'll get when they finally understand they're not going to achieve that dream. You don't look like you're following me, Mark. What's the matter?"

"I'm worried about Julia. I never realized that marriage was so important to her. I'm being selfish playing around with other girls and there's no good reason why I couldn't marry her. I can't marry Carol, but there's no reason..."

"{Raspberry}," from Carol, right in my ear. To explain the logic of her argument better, Carol added, "What part of, 'Julia has never been happier, ' don't your understand? She wouldn't marry you if you asked her anyway, so why are you worried about it?"

"But Vanessa said Julia's heart would leap for joy if I asked..."

Vanessa interrupted, "You only hear what you want to hear, don't you? I also said, 'Julia knows and approves that you're not going to marry her', and, 'she's having a grand time.' You're definitely a 'the glass is half empty' sort of guy, aren't you?"

Carol answered for me, "No he's not. Mark will think the glass is 'almost empty', he'll worry about it, feel sorry for it, and will spend the next half an hour apologizing to it. Haha. Your heart's in the right place, darling, but your brain's very dumb sometimes. Julia is VERY happy, and she wouldn't marry you if you begged her to, especially when you're offering out of pity."

Vanessa added, "Julia has a mission for her life now: helping and looking after you. She knows that's far more important than the ordinary dream of a marriage, a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and 2.3 children. Before you arrived on the scene, her biggest challenge was getting more than a third of her Girl Guide troop to help with their fundraising drive. Now she's intimately involved in what she believes is one of the most important developments that has ever happened to the human race. She spent years dreaming about getting married, so it's going to take a while for her to get it out of her system, but that's all that's happening, Mark. You're not mistreating or taking advantage of her. She feels enormously privileged, not used.

^-- "If you proposed to her, then once she recovers from the surprise, she's going to be disappointed in you. She'll know it's a silly idea, and she'll be even less impressed that it's motivated by unrealistic pity, as Carol rightly said. You've replaced her rather ordinary dream of marriage with something far grander and more fantastic. She is truly far better off than she would be with some ordinary Mr. Right. Have you got that?"

"I guess so. I just didn't like to think of her suffering because of my selfishness..."

"Stop being so deliberately thick-headed! Not to mention that this is all about nothing anyway, as you're only fifteen so the most you can do is get engaged and then wait a couple of years. The essential point is that you're giving Julia far more than you're taking away, so she's not suffering at all. She's HAPPY, for goodness sake! You're such an unrealistic, depressing pessimist. I've answered enough of your questions about Ava and Chloe for you to fill in the gaps, and I'm tired of this silly conversation, so go upstairs now and ask Julia to explain it to you."

Carol got to her feet, to let me up. I knew I'd made a fool of myself, so I was happy to escape, but I didn't want to repeat my mistake with Julia, so as I was getting to my feet, I said, "Umm, I think she's with Ava now, but I'll talk with her later."

"So sorting out whether or not you're marrying Julia is less important than asking Ava to leave the room for a few minutes. I'm sure Julia will be impressed by that."

Carol's laughter saved me from having to answer, while she followed me out of the room.

In the hallway I paused, not sure where I should go next.

Carol knew though. Taking my arm she said, "Come on. Let's go tell Julia what you did."

I couldn't think of any way of getting Julia to never talk with her mother ever again, so I was doomed to have to face this sooner or later.

"{Sigh}. I was stupid, wasn't I?"

"Yep," answered Carol, helpfully. "You had good intentions, but you were miles off target."

We found Julia and Ava having a shower, which was a pity (not that they were having a shower, but that we found them, sigh). Carol told them we wanted to talk with Julia privately in the bedroom soon.

I saw the excitement in Ava's face, so she'd presumably leaped to the conclusion that it was to do with Carol and me being together. To set Ava right, I said to Julia, "I said some very stupid things to your mother, and she's ordered me to repeat them to you so you can tell me off again. We'll wait in the bedroom. Take as long as you want in the shower. Three or four years would be about right."

While we were waiting for them in the bedroom, I thought about the justification for removing Ava from the room during the discussion, and wondered whether I could think of a way of extending it so Julia had to leave during the discussion too. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a good reason.

Ava came in with Julia, but before I could repeat my request for privacy, Ava said, "I just came to take the breakfast dishes down to the kitchen."