Chapter 172: It Hurt My Head

Monday, May 2, 2005 (Continued)

Speaking of Chloe, I had to do something about her appallingly defeatist, cowardly, non-cooperative, totally unacceptable attitude. And while I was talking to her, I had to get her to undo some buttons too. I checked with Julia that my presence wasn't needed for her pop quiz, so I could spend lunchtime trying to straighten Chloe out. Julia agreed, and wished me good luck.

I approached Chloe. She was nervous to see me coming, and so she should be, with her having such a terrible attitude. I told her, "You and I need to have a serious talk at lunchtime. I'll meet you by your locker at the start of lunch, okay?"

"Umm, why?"

"You know very well why. Because you're making one of the biggest mistakes of your life." I might've been laying that on a bit thick, but I was willing to justify it by making up as much bullshit as I needed to. "You'll be at your locker?"

"I don't really think..."

"Let me put it this way. If you're not at your locker, then I'm going to discuss our relationship with you before and after every class we have, in front of every one of our classmates, day after day until the exams are over. We WILL talk about this, one way or another. I will be at your locker at the start of lunchtime. If you don't want to be embarrassed in class day after day, I strongly suggest you be there too."

I walked off, chuckling to myself at her reaction.

#1: <That was VERY well said. She loved it. How did you know that'd work so well? And while I'm in the area, WHY did it work so well?>

#3: <Once I got over the shock of her not even trying to do what we wanted, I thought it through and realized that she just wants to see us jump through some hoops first, to prove we're interested in her. Remember Julia said that Chloe's insecure about whether we really like her or not. If we do a lot of work, she'll feel reassured.>

#2: <Hey, you're starting to understand girls! Did you fall down and hit your head, or something?>

#3: <I can't claim much credit because it's pretty obvious. If she thinks every boy only likes her for her breasts, then we convince her that we're not interested in her breasts, then she's going to worry that we don't really like her. That's simple.>

#2: <It's also logical, so it's good to have you back.>

#1: <It was logical, which normally would worry me, but she was obviously happy when #3 talked that crap. What impresses me is that we didn't actually have to do a lot of work, we just had to threaten to do a lot. If she's that easy to cheer up we shouldn't have much trouble with her at lunchtime. I presume she wants to be convinced?>

#2: <Of course; I'm gorgeous! Who wouldn't want me! Haha. Yeah, she should be easy. We know from Julia that she's desperate for a boyfriend.>

#1: <I feel better now. I was quite pissed off with her before.>

#2: <Yeah, I was too. It's fine when a girl foolishly gives us her body to play with, but I get really pissed off when she foolishly withholds it, especially a body like Chloe's.>

#3: <That's for damned sure.>

I took Julia to my locker at lunchtime, to give her the smaller of the two Chinese lunch containers and one of the pairs of chopsticks for Carol. I couldn't resist opening my container for a look. The food was unrecognizable, but there was plenty of it and it smelled delicious. Happy at those two wonderful attributes of my lunch, I closed the container and went to find Chloe, to work on satisfying another appetite of mine.

She was waiting by her locker.

#3: <That's good. I DEFINITELY didn't want to have to talk about our relationship in front of all our classmates.>

#2: <We could have started with, "Remember the time you took off your blouse and bra to show me your breasts in the girls' bathroom." I suspect she would have been begging us for a private chat after that.>

#3: <Good point, about two wonderful points.>

Somewhat tersely, and without smiling, I said to her, "Follow me." I was pretending to be angry at her 'betrayal'.

Chloe followed, as we maneuvered through the crowd around the lockers. I took us outside and toward the school's admin block. The vast majority of kids prefer to have their lunch as far from supervision as possible, so we'd easily be able to find a seat out of everyone's hearing.

When we were seated, I said, "Lunch first, Chloe. Apart from anything else, I need to calm down. I'm quite upset with you. Even angry, and I don't want to talk with you when I'm angry."

"Oh. Why are you angry?"

"Lunch first."

I pulled out my lunch, grasped the chopsticks, and took the first piece of whatever it was with considerable curiosity. Delicious! The other pieces followed considerably faster. It was some sort of chopped up meat on a bed of rice. A flavor I'd never had before, but it was delicious.

Chloe asked, "You're eating Chinese food?"

#3: <Do you think it was the chopsticks or the rice that gave it away?>

I answered, "Yes," and kept eating. I was NOT going to get into a discussion about Lily's providing me with lunch from now on. God knows how I could explain to Chloe why Lily was serving me, considering I couldn't even explain it to myself. One thing was for sure, I wanted Lily to keep making lunch for me, because it was wonderful! And there was too much for me too, which was even more wonderful (that meant I had that most wonderful of things: leftovers!). Lily's servitude was rapidly becoming a truly excellent development. The quality of lunch also had me very much looking forward to Saturday's dinner.

[I'll mention now that Lily provided Carol and me with a daily supply of delicious and highly appreciated lunches. Always delicious, always plentiful, and always different, which was quite a novelty for a guy who was used to the same few sandwich fillings year after year. Rice featured frequently, but every dish was distinctly different. It was enjoyed immensely, for the short while it lasted.]

When I'd eventually had enough food, and had closed the container of what were now leftovers (lovely girl, that Lily), I turned to Chloe. In a stern voice, I opened the conversation with, "I presume you're physically capable of undoing buttons? You don't have a terrible muscular disease that makes it impossible for you to undo them? It's not too complicated for you? Your parents did show you how as a child?"

I was far too stern for Chloe to find my questions funny. She just said, "Yes."

"On Saturday morning I spent a considerable amount of time explaining how important it is that you start unbuttoning the top of your blouses at school. You said you understood. You were even impressed by the depth of my thinking and understanding. Yet every single one of your buttons is done up. You just confirmed that you were capable of undoing them, so that means you are deliberately refusing to, correct?"

"It's not that. My mother wants me to dress modestly."

"And you obey your mother in the matter of your dress?"

"Yes. She's my mother."

I pulled out my cellphone, held it up, and asked, "What's your mother's number?"

Funnily enough, Chloe didn't give it to me. Instead she asked, "Why?"

"I'm curious to find out how she can insist on your having every single button done up, yet she lets you trick guys into the girls' bathroom so you can wave your naked tits at them."

#3: <Chloe appears happy with her decision not to give us her mother's number.>

Unsurprisingly, Chloe didn't have a good answer, which was a pity because a good answer would have been truly impressive. She did manage to say "Ahh," though.

"Let me take a wild guess, your mother wouldn't approve of your stripping and waving your tits around at a school?"

"It wasn't as bad as that. It was only..."

"WOULD she, or would she not, have approved of what you did?"

I waited for a couple of seconds, but Chloe didn't answer. So I said, "No problem. We'll continue this discussion on Wednesday, to give me time to visit your home to ask your mother myself."

"Ha-ha," from Chloe. Not really a humorous laugh. More sarcastic than anything, I guess. She clearly didn't think I was serious.

With a totally serious face, which I'd been maintaining the whole conversation so far, "If you don't think I'm serious then you don't know me very well. Right now you're worse than useless as a girlfriend, so I've got nothing to lose by visiting your home and asking your mother. It'd serve you right. Girls shouldn't be allowed to wave their tits at boys and lie to them as much as you've lied to me."

"I have NOT lied to you. I've only ever..."

"Crap! You lied to me about your refusal to undo a button being because your mother wants you to dress modestly. The reason you didn't undo a button has got NOTHING to do with your mother. When have I EVER lied to you, Chloe?"

Chloe didn't know whether to address the lying accusation or my most recent question, which was largely why I'd asked the question. I'd learned from the best (best that I knew of, anyway). Julia loves to put a zig at the end of a zag (or sometimes - to really confuse people - a zag after a zig).

After half a second or so, I repeated louder, "When have I EVER lied to you? Come on, answer the question! It's a very easy one."

"Umm, never. You've never lied to me."

"No, I haven't," which made yet another one. "It's a great pity you aren't equally moral. From what Julia told me, you lied to her at least twice too. You told her that same pathetic mother excuse, and you told her you didn't believe I could be interested you. Not only do you tell lies, but you do it often, and they're pathetically transparent nonsense."

^-- I waited for a moment or two, but Chloe didn't pick up on the point I left for her. So I raised it again, "Why on Earth would you lie to Julia about believing I wasn't interested in you? Julia knows damned well that I'm very interested in you, and she knows damned well that you know that too."

"You are?"

"You can't POSSIBLY be asking me whether I'm interested in you! You know for a fact that I am."

"I DON'T know that. I'm just a silly girl and you're the most amazing genius I've ever met. There's..."

#3: <Leave the "silly girl" comment alone, tempting though it is.>

"GOOD GRIEF, GIRL! Julia and I spent HOURS arguing on Friday night because of you. She and I together and separately have spent hour after hour talking and thinking about you. Especially me obviously, because I am so attracted to you. It's a week later, but I'd STILL be standing in the damned bowling alley's parking lot talking to you, if Julia hadn't dragged me away..."

"{Giggle}."

I went on to detail all the times over the last several days that I'd thought of Chloe. I won't bother listing them all here, because you wouldn't recognize most of them. [See if you can guess why? Hint: my honesty is inversely proportional to the girl's bra size. (Not linearly proportional either, and not even proportional to the square. I've never measured my honesty quantitatively, but I'm pretty sure the relationship is inversely proportional to the conical volume).] In other words, I bullshitted her, wildly exaggerating how much time and effort I'd spent on her.

By halfway through my recitation, Chloe wasn't even listening properly; she was too busy being happy. So I kept going, making the rest of the list even less accurate. After I'd finished that fiction, I added, "Chloe! Do I have emotions?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I mean, do I have emotions? It's a simple question. Do I sometimes feel sad, or happy, or angry?"

"Of course. But why are you..."

"The next time you want reassurance, walk up to me and tell me, 'Mark, I'm feeling insecure. Would you please reassure me that you like me.' That would have saved me a great deal of anger and worry. Julia too. Everyone feels insecure sometimes, and they need reassurance at those times. That's a normal part of every relationship, and there's no shame or embarrassment in it. I know you needed reassurance, but you did a bad thing: you lied to try to trick me into reassuring you. Lies cannot be used to strengthen a relationship, they only damage it. I appreciate that you're very inexperienced at relationships, so I am not going to hold it against you, but please do not do it again. Julia and I do not want there to be any deceit in our relationships with you."

"I'm sorry. I'm not very good at this type of..."

"No you're not, which makes listening to me and taking my advice even more obviously the right thing to do. As well as making it important that you tell the truth. You won't get good at relationships if you use dishonesty. And why bother lying? It's not as if I'm trying to take advantage of you in any way, is it?"

"No, it's not. I know you wouldn't do that."

"So you trust me?"

"Yes. You know that, I told you that on Saturday."

"Then why didn't you trust me enough to tell me you were feeling insecure and needed reassurance?"

"Umm." Chloe hung her head, then added, "I'm no good, am I?"

"That's nonsense. You cook delicious pizza. That's actually not a joke, but I need to explain why not. There've now been several times when you've insisted to me that you trust me totally, and then a few days later you do something that shows that you don't trust me. I told you on Saturday morning that Julia was being too simplistic thinking that there was only one secret I had about you. You are also being too simplistic about trust. When you tell me you're sure you trust me totally, I know that you can't know if that's true. How can you be positive you trust me about things that have never happened yet? You're definitely improving, because you now not only trust me with your body, but you even want to give it to me, but there are still plenty of ways your trust in me has yet to be tested. If I asked you to climb onto the roof of a 10-story building and jump off, you'd think I was crazy. Even if I said, 'Don't worry, you can trust me, ' I'm sure you'd laugh in my face, and then go home to tell your mother that your boyfriend has gone crazy.

^-- "When you described yourself as 'no good', that was also an incorrect statement, like your telling me that you totally trust me. People are too complex for a blanket statement to be totally true. There are some things you're very good at, like cooking pizza. And there are some things that you're not good at, like anything you would've learned from prior relationships with guys. There are some things you aren't good at now, which I'm sure you'll become very good at. An obvious example of that is making love. Being a virgin you obviously are not skilled, but I'm sure you will become a good lover in time. I'm looking forward to teaching you VERY often, haha."

Chloe commented, "You talk about sex with me quite often."

#3: <Damn. I can't tell whether that's an encouragement or a complaint. Do we go up or down from here?>

#2: <If in doubt, follow her. Let me.>

"What reasons do you think I have for doing that, Chloe?"

"Umm. I don't know."

"I'm sure you don't know all of my reasons, but you should be able to guess the easy ones?"

"Umm, you're checking to see whether I get angry, like you did when you first started talking about my breasts?"

"Yes. That's the first reason I had. Can you think of another reason?"

"Umm. No. Not at the moment."

"One reasonable guess would be that I was looking forward to having sex with you."

"Ohh."

While Chloe was deciding how to react to that, I copied her by giving the issue a little more thought. More than once today I'd thought that Chloe needed a damned good fuck to knock all the foolishness out of her. It might've been too hopeful to expect to remove "all the foolishness", but the fuck still seemed justified. I also thought about Julia's idea of my taking Chloe to bed and giving her a VERY good time, but leaving her a virgin. That should create a great deal more desire in her to move forward, so she'd hopefully start doing the things we wanted her to do. That approach actually delayed my getting sex from her in preference for working on Julia's altruistic goal for Chloe. Of the two alternatives, fucking her outright had plenty of appeal, but it was short-term appeal. Julia's "Orgasm the Virgin" plan was better, so decided to move ahead with it.

But a zig before the main zag would make her think even more highly of me. I had a few points I wanted to cover in this discussion, and getting too much into sex would probably prevent that, so I'd bring them up now. "Chloe, I'm going to change the subject totally away from sex. There's something else more important I wish to discuss. You know I like you a great deal, as you overheard me say that I think you're a lovely girl. My opinion of you is causing me to try to achieve two major goals with you. One of them is what we've been talking about, which is your becoming my girlfriend. I would enjoy having you as my girlfriend, provided you're honest with me and you start taking my advice much better than you have been recently.

^-- "The second goal is much more important than my enjoyment of your company. Julia and I are very concerned about the quality of your life. Your WHOLE life, starting right now, but especially after you graduate school. You don't have good relationships with males. You get visibly uncomfortable if any guy comes within six feet of you, and you're visibly fearful if one is standing next to you. When you get a job, you're going to be unable to work with your co-workers, bosses, customers, etc. You can ignore guys at school, but you can't ignore them when you get a job. I could say a lot more about that, but I don't think I need to. I can see by the look on your face that you know what I mean?"

"Yeah. I hate the idea of getting a job. Lots of male bosses use their authority to force their female staff to do indecent things."

#3: <Good grief. Trust Chloe to have that right on the top of her mind.>

#2: <Even though her head is messed up, let's not argue with her about it. We don't have access to any facts or personal experience so we can't argue knowledgeably, and she's actually agreeing with the point we want her to agree with.>

"Julia and I know how to greatly improve your life, like we told you before, remember?"

"I remember, but I don't understand how?"

"I certainly can't explain it now. It'd take hours, if not days. And I doubt I could get you to understand the complicated parts anyway."

"But you're only fifteen. I know you're a genius, but you've never worked full time, so how could you know what to do? You don't even know what sort of job I'll get."

#1: <Argh!>

#3: <We can't argue the individual points. Play the 'do you trust me' card.>

"Chloe, do you trust Julia and me?"

"Yes, of course. Mostly."

#2: <What does the "mostly" mean? Especially after "of course".>

#3: <Leave it! Go with the "Yes" and hope for the best.>

"Good. That makes things much easier for everyone. So there are two reasons for my spending time with you: hoping you'll become a good girlfriend for me, and so Julia and I can make the rest of your life much happier. And of the two, the second is by far the most important. You understand those points, don't you?"

"Yes, if you say so."

#1: <Argh! Where are you trying to get to with this line anyway?>

#2: <I'm trying to get her to unbutton her blouse. Ignoring that crap about her mother's preference for modesty, Chloe's insecurity about our liking her is actually irrelevant to that, because the blouse unbuttoning thing is part of Julia's plan to change Chloe's attitude. Remember we told her on Saturday that we'd want her to unbutton it even if we went to different schools. I'm simply trying to get her to a point where we can successfully ask her to undo some buttons.>

#3: <That's fine. Julia's goal is a worthwhile one, and we'd certainly benefit from it too. I think we need to be more direct, because Chloe is getting tangled up in whatever thoughts - God knows what! - are going through her head.>

Showing the patience of a saint - but no other saintly attitudes, especially not chastity - I said, "Good. I'm glad you understand. Remember, on Saturday we said that your unbuttoning your blouse was something that it was important to do for the SECOND reason. I said it wasn't for my personal pleasure or anything like that. I'd still want you to unbutton your blouse even if I went to a different school and I never saw you. It was for YOUR benefit, not mine. Do you remember that part of the conversation on Saturday?"

"Umm, I'm not sure. I was very tired and excited, and you were waving your, umm, your 'thing' around. It was very distracting."

#1: <Oh God! She forgets the conversation, but she remembers our 'thing'. From the girl who hates guys who won't talk with her as a person rather than a body!>

#2: <I'm still trying to recover from being so impressed by her confident use of biological terminology.>

Trying to lighten the mood a little, while I was also trying to summon more patience, I said, "It's called a 'cock', Chloe. Or, in my case, it's called, 'That Wonderful, Awe-Inspiring, Perfect Example of Manliness'. But you can call it 'cock' for short, if you like."

"{Giggle}. Okay. 'Cock', {giggle}."

#1: <We're making progress. We've trained her to say 'cock' and giggle a lot.>

#2: <It's very hard to tell she's a virgin, isn't it?>

#3: <Now that we've taught her to be so crude and down to earth, I'm worried that we'll start getting her mixed up with Alexis. If only there was some way to tell them apart! Let's cross our fingers and try the next painful step.>

"Congratulations, you're now a potty-mouth like almost every other kid at our school. Back to the main point. On Saturday I rather brilliantly convinced you to come to school with some buttons undone. Unfortunately my cock was too awe-inspiring and you've forgotten, but fortunately you trust me, so all I need to say is that it's very important for Julia's and my helping your future that you start to undo a button or two. So would you please undo one button now, Chloe."

Her hands didn't even move; just her mouth, "I don't understand why?"

"I know you don't, sweetie, but it's important. You can trust Julia and me on this point, because we've given it a great deal of thought and discussion."

"But this might be one of the times I shouldn't trust you, even though you say to."

"Why wouldn't you trust us? It's not like we're getting any personal gain out of this. Your blouse will still be buttoned higher than virtually every other girl's in school."

"This might be like your example of jumping off a 10-story building. You said I shouldn't trust you, even if you said to trust you about jumping."

#1: <God give me patience.>

#2: <If we're asking God to give people things, can we please ask him to give Chloe a brain. Or maybe to remove whatever brain she's got; either would be fine with me.>

#3: <Maybe he could give her a physics lesson too. Help her understand that plummeting ten stories and impacting on the ground so hard that most of your bones break and internal organs rupture, isn't equivalent to undoing the top button of a blouse.>

"Chloe, sweetie, my ten-story building example was to teach you that trust is not a simple yes-or-no concept. In the case of a ten-story building, your life is at stake, so you'd require an impossible level of trust to justify jumping off the roof. But undoing a single button is such a trivial event that there's no comparison at all. You hardly need any trust at all to make undoing a button a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Other girls adjust their buttons simply because the wind changes, and you can't get more trivial than that. Julia and I are asking you to do a very simple, trivial thing, so please humor us and do it."

#1: <Anyone want to bet she'll say, "Yes Mark," and do it?>