Chapter 212: Pipeline Date 1A#1; The First Half

Friday, May 13, 2005 (Continued)

The arrangement for the pipeline date was that I was going to be picked up from home at 6pm, and I was warned not to eat anything in advance because there was going to be an excessive amount of food. They refused to divulge any other information, but already I liked the sound of this date.

Julia reminded me of the colored cards. I didn't really need the reminder, but she was mostly making sure of my resolve:

• Red: if I never wanted to date the girl ever again in my life.

• Orange: if I wouldn't date the girl again until the start of the next school year.

• Yellow: to eliminate her from this pipeline group, but let her join another group one more time this year.

At least half the girls had to be carded, with yellow being no more than half the eliminations. Julia wanted brief comments for the date as a whole, and for each of the girls, concentrating on their reasons for being eliminated or kept.

Julia asked me, "Do you think you'll be able to look the girls in the face when you card half of them at the end of the date Mark?"

"I know if I don't, you will randomly. I know you won't hesitate to do that..."

"Not at all. I'll even eliminate an extra girl, just to toughen you up for next time."

"That's very considerate of you. I won't have any problem red-carding girls who behave badly. Not after practicing on Mackenzie earlier. I would've red-carded her much earlier if it hadn't been for her two sisters. Obviously I'm more than happy to identify the girls I want to keep. The problem I foresee is that most of the girls are going to fall in the middle: nothing particularly good about them, nor particularly bad. It's going to be tough carding a girl who has done nothing wrong, especially when I've been in these girls' classes all year, and have to keep looking at them for the rest of the year. That could get awkward if they think I treated them unfairly."

"Not doing enough right, IS doing something wrong. Also, try to give them believable justifications for their cards, which will be easier if you get most of the girls to open up and participate about something. Especially on the first dates for each group, you'll need to make sure you encourage every girl to participate enough for you to get some idea of her personality."

"I'll try. I wish you were coming with me though. A good girlfriend should come with her boyfriend when he's on a date with sixteen other girls, haha."

"You're a big boy now. I trust you can manage sixteen girls without little, ol' me holding your hand."

"Let's hope the eliminated girls don't get too emotional. I'm egotistically guessing they will be somewhat upset, given they're putting in some effort tonight."

"Some of them may not try hard, and they'll probably be the ones most likely to be eliminated, but they'll still get upset at the implied insult. The competition is going to get even more intense and emotional when you're known to be rich, so you're bound to have problems with some girls, which will be an interesting learning experience for you."

"Excellent! That's something wonderful to look forward to. By the way, do you know what's happening tonight?"

"Of course. I wouldn't let them take my boyfriend away unless I knew what they were intending to do with him, haha."

"So what's happening then?"

"They asked me not to tell you. I would tell you if I thought it was a good idea to, but there's no need. They've got a good date planned and you should enjoy it."

I was at home, hungrily waiting to be picked up for the date. At the risk of delaying my having dinner a few minutes, I'd decided to wait in the living room until the girl or girls came inside to get me, rather than my walking out to meet the car the moment it arrived. I had my family primed to be cool about me dating sixteen girls at once, as I thought it might be good for that fact to be reinforced on the rumor mill. Mom wasn't happy about the pipeline scheme, but it was very obvious to her that there was nothing she could do to stop it, because it would've started another huge fight with my two wives, the girls that Mom was trying to protect. I had to listen to a mini-lecture from her, but Mom did agree to make the best of a bad situation (her opinion; not mine) and to put on a happy face when whoever was picking me up arrived.

When the car arrived, it parked on the street and one girl came up the drive to knock on our door.

Mom answered the door, then she escorted the girl into the living room, saying from the doorway, "Mark, one-sixteenth of your date is here. If the other fifteen are as pretty as May, you're going to have an enjoyable night." May was too busy looking at me to turn around to see that Mom was not smiling.

"Hi May. Mom's right, you do look very pretty. I don't believe I've noticed you wearing that dress to school before."

May smiled happily (you can't go wrong complimenting a girl's dress when she's obviously made an effort to dress nicely), "It's too nice to wear to school."

"On behalf of all the boys at school... 'Aww.' Lucky for me tonight, though. Are you the only one who has come to get me?"

"No. Sophia and Jessica are in the car. We weren't sure about all of us coming in, but from what your mom said it didn't matter."

"Not at all; my family knows all about the pipeline system. Shall we go?"

Mom and Donna followed us down to the car to see what clothes the other girls were wearing. Carol was with Julia at Ava's place, where they were taking advantage of my absence to spend time with Ava's parents to get to know them and their thoughts about Ava better. It'd be a good conversation, but Carol had mentioned her disappointment in not seeing the clothes of the sixteen girls on my date. Mom had volunteered to be nosey on Carol's behalf.

In the course of looking at the extra girls, Mom commented, "It's a pity Carol and Julia won't see what the sixteen of you are wearing this evening. She would've enjoyed that. Mark, try to remember what the other thirteen girls are wearing, so you can describe their outfits in detail to Carol."

"Haha. Like THAT'S gonna happen! Teenage boys are USELESS at things like that, because they spend all their time concentrating on what UNDER the dresses."

In the car, as we were driving to wherever it was we were going to, Jessica said, "Julia has told us that your and her parents don't mind you dating so many girls. It's hard to believe they're so accepting. My parents wouldn't be."

"There are two reasons they're so cool about it: The logic of the situation is fairly compelling. Just like we've told everybody at the lunches and the like, I'm sufficiently unusual that many of the normal rules don't apply. There's no way I can date one girl for a few weeks or months to see whether I like her, then try another girl, etc. I'd be a hundred years old before I found out that girl number 123 was my favorite, and I doubt she'd still be waiting for me.

^-- "And where logic doesn't convince people, Julia does. It's hard for my parents or hers to protect Julia by insisting I stay faithful to her, when Julia is the one arranging most of my dates, and she'd get angry if any of the parents objected to my dating other girls. She's an unusual girl."

"She says it's because you're such an exceptional guy."

"We're well matched then, both weirdoes. Changing the subject, when are you going to tell me what the arrangement for tonight is, with particular regard to when food will be served, because I'm getting VERY hungry?"

May exclaimed, "Food! Oh my gosh, I knew we forgot something."

The laughter of the other girls quelled my panic.

May continued, "We're going to Carina's house. Everyone else is there, and we'll tell you what the plan for tonight is once we're all together. If we hunt around their kitchen hard enough, we might be able to find something for you to nibble on."

When we arrived at our destination, I was escorted into the kitchen, to be greeted by a truly wonderful scene: thirteen girls cooking up a storm! There was food EVERYWHERE! Except in my belly, but I was pretty sure that problem was going to be very well fixed. By the way, the girls were looking very nice too, although most of them were wearing aprons, indicating that they had exactly the right priorities.

I'll write most of the following conversations as if one girl was speaking. In practice they took turns, added to each other's points, spoke simultaneously, etc. There were sixteen girls, so you can imagine how chaotic the conversations sometimes were!

"We've heard you like eating..."

"That's a scurrilous rumor started by someone to trying to besmirch my good name. I totally and unreservedly deny it." Then I made my belly rumble loudly.

After the laughter, "Did you do that deliberately?"

"Rumble my belly like this you mean," I did it again. "Sure. Don't tell me none of you can do that whenever you want? No? I bet you can't make songs by pumping a hand in your armpit either? What about belching the Star Spangled Banner?"

"Haha."

"These are ESSENTIAL skills! Every boy learns them before they're ten, so you know they must be important. How can you possibly expect to be successful in life if you can't belch the national anthem? People will think you're unpatriotic. I've always thought girls spend far too long in clothing stores, and now I know your education is being seriously neglected in the 'Body Noises' department. If food wasn't even more important, we'd be spending the rest of the evening working on making a belching choir out of the sixteen of you. I bet none of you even know what key you belch in, do you?"

It was a sad commentary on our school's music department that none of them did.

Eventually they were able to restart their explanation of tonight's date. "We heard you like eating..." They looked at me, expecting a rumble.

I said, "It's clear that none of you have the refined level of body noise aesthetic appreciation I prefer in my audiences, so please proceed with your explanation."

"Haha. Okay. We paired up to produce eight different dishes. Three different mains, three different desserts, and two pairs on snack foods for before and after dinner. We've done most of the cooking already, just a few final things need finishing off or heating. Now you're here, the idea is that one girl from each pair will socialize with you while the other half works on their food, and they'll swap back and forth so you'll get to spend time with everyone. There are soccer DVDs for you to watch in the den while we're not at the dining table. We decided we didn't want to turn this into a cooking competition, so we're not going to tell you who cooked what. We just want you to enjoy the food.

^-- "Carina twisted her parents' arms into going out for the evening, so we've got the place to ourselves until 10 o'clock. The idea is we just stay here and socialize for the evening, because we figured with sixteen of us there isn't time to socialize and do any activity. I think that's everything. What do you think?"

I rumbled my belly.

"Haha."

"You see what a succinct, accurate form of communication you're missing out on. Seriously, I'm very impressed by your plan. I think you've perfectly captured the idea of the 16-girl pipeline date. Well done."

They urged me to go through to the den, but I said, "Before we do that, I want to say some things to all of you. Can I do that now, or will that interfere with your cooking?"

^-- Now was fine, so I said, "The pipeline system is designed to input a very large number of girls and have a good chance of finding the one or two that I like the most. The pipeline is not designed to compare every girl with every other girl the way exam scores do. If every girl in this group is excellent, then half of you are still going to be eliminated. If group 1B only has average girls in it, then some of them will survive longer than the excellent girls who were eliminated from this group. It is incorrect to compare ACROSS groups, because all my decisions are made purely WITHIN each group.

^-- "If 160 girls enter the pipeline, then there will be 158 eliminations. The system isn't designed to compare those 158 with each other. That would require a vastly more complex system, with many more dates and many more months. All for no real purpose because those girls are all going to be eliminated anyway. The system is focused on, and is pretty ruthless about, identifying the one or two girls I'd most like as girlfriends. It has to be ruthless to be able to process the very large number of interested girls Julia keeps talking about.

^-- "All of which is a long-winded way of me getting ready to apologize. I am sorry that at the end of this date I am going to eliminate half of you. You've been in my classes all year, and will be for another six weeks. You're all nice girls, and I'm happy to chat with any of you at school, including those of you that I eliminate this evening. I'm VERY much NOT looking forward to the eliminations at the end of this date. If you were all grade 9 girls, for example, that aren't involved in my life, it'd be much easier for me. But you're all in my life at school, which will make the end of this evening very tough on me.

^-- "But I have to be strict. If I keep girls in a group because I'm too weak or soft-hearted to eliminate them, then I'm not doing anyone a favor. I'm only delaying the inevitable, because at the end of the day there will only be one or two girls who aren't eliminated. That's an important point I hope you all appreciate. If I eliminated only one girl at the end of a date, it's obvious that all that would achieve would be an enormous lengthening of the time it'd take to get down to the final one or two girls. I am not going to be eliminating half of you because I'm nasty; I will be doing it because the system demands it."

"We understand Mark. Julia has explained it to us and the website is clear too."

"Yeah, I know, but I still hate the idea of any of you getting angry with me, especially if it carried over into our school life. But I'll move forward, assuming you appreciate the situation. I'll add another wrinkle. My choosing which girls to keep or eliminate is based on my subjective opinion, which could be seen as unfair. You may look at the girls I decided to keep, and ask yourself, "Why on Earth did Mark keep her?" You may disagree with my choices, but obviously I'm trying to find my final girlfriend, so my opinion rules. If I want to choose a girl because she can belch my favorite song, then that's my choice, even if you think I'm stupid and that you would have been a better girl for me."

"We all saw or heard about Mackenzie, Mark. She thought she was perfect for you. How such a determined virgin could think that escapes me, but she did, so she's a PERFECT example of how a girl can get it wrong."

"Good example. Okay, my next point is that it's obviously no good to tell you all to try hard, or to wish you all 'Good luck', or any blanket comment like that. I will make one similar sort of comment though. This is obviously the first pipeline date, but I've spent time with groups of girls before. One thing I've noticed is that it's very common for quite a large proportion of the girls in a group to be quiet. I have to eliminate half of you, so if half have impressed me and half have done nothing, then it's the quiet ones that'll go, even though they might be lovely people. That you've structured this date to be groups of eight for some of the time will help, but it's still worth my mentioning this issue.

^-- "Earlier today Julia worded it well with me. I worried about having to eliminate girls who'd done nothing wrong, and Julia said: 'Not doing enough right IS doing something wrong.' The quieter girls among you should remember that. I don't mean I want a rowdy evening. Noise for the sake of it won't impress me, but I do want to get to know you all better, and I can't do that if you don't talk. Which probably means I should shut up to give you a chance to talk, haha.

^-- "I have one final comment. I have to make a private phone call some time tonight. It should only take a few minutes, and any time between 6:30 and 8:00 would be fine. You don't have to tell me now, but if a little gap opens up between those times, that'd be great."

We got on with the date, which meant I got taken to the den, sat down, offered a drink, and most importantly, an interesting range of finger foods. Not snacks out of a packet, but real food they'd made themselves. Little squares of bread, with salmon, some white stuff, and a sprig of something green on them, for example. I could have wolfed them down by the handful, but tried to restrain myself to sampling each of the offerings no more than two or three times - unless they were particularly nice, which most of them were.

The girls put on a soccer DVD. It wasn't a movie, just a collection of unconnected, fancy-footwork segments. I'd intended to ignore it, but a lot of the segments were very impressive, and I couldn't help myself rewinding several times to look at them properly. I was embarrassed the first couple of times I wanted to do that, but the girls said, "That's what it's on for. We want you to enjoy the evening, and Julia said sex wasn't allowed, so the next two things you like are food and soccer, right?"

"Maybe mathematics, although I can't imagine how you'd do that on a date. That sounds FAR too nerdy."

I sat in what was obviously the father's chair, the eight girls (more or less, as they came and went) sat around me, and we chatted. It was a very good setup. The DVD was undemanding of my attention, conversation was simple and casual, there were few enough girls so I could always make easy eye contact with any of them, and there was no time pressure on me. I just relaxed and let it happen.

Once things had been rolling along for several minutes, I started picking up on useful patterns of behavior. One that I picked up on quickly, was with Mia, a girl who was particularly good looking, well endowed, and dressed so a lot of her endowment was clearly visible. Her sole strategy, so far, seemed to be to lean forward often. She spoke often enough, but didn't put any effort into following the conversation or thinking about her contribution. She'd lean forward to say the first thought that crossed her mind. She caught my attention quickly, smiled smugly, and seemed to think her position was secure.

Some girls were very focused on me, to the extent that they would always respond to comments of mine, but usually not to comments from other girls. Whereas other girls would converse much more with their friends than with me. That was perfectly fine and natural, but it raised the question about how much non-Mark conversation was 'allowed' before I should start counting it against the girls involved. That's a trickier question than it seems for several reasons, including that the girls are meant to be impressing me. If they prefer to talk with each other, that would imply they'd never make the effort to be a good girlfriend. On the other hand, it'd be silly if they only talked to me and not to each other. That'd indicate they were too fixated on me and might not fit into my life with Julia, Carol and Ava. It wasn't at all clear to me where the 'good ground' in the middle was.

As there has to be, there were girls who were quieter than others. They all knew each other well, and were familiar and comfortable with my presence, so even the quiet girls contributed from time to time. Julia had suggested I draw the quiet girls out, but I didn't think any of these ones needed much prodding. They'd already been cooking together since school finished, so were already "in action" to their natural levels.

Because I was deliberately keeping track of how often each girl spoke, I was pleased to notice that there were a couple of other girls who did lots of drawing out for me, by repeatedly asking the other girls, especially the quieter ones, for their comments.

There were other dynamics going on, and I spotted new ones from time to time during the evening. I'd not paid much attention before to how groups interrelate (usually I'd watched just one person, e.g., how Julia managed a group of girls), so watching a group so carefully was an interesting experience. With one mind centered, one mind conversing, that left two minds to study the girls. I found that I could see an impressive number of behaviors.

One example was when the girls were cooking in the kitchen they always wore aprons to protect their clothes. Initially they were very careful to take their aprons off before they came into the den, presumably so they'd look pretty for me. After a while one of the girls forgot to remove her apron. I noticed a couple of girls see the new arrivals' clothing mistake, and open their mouths to point it out, but then guiltily and competitively decide to shut their mouths. A second later another girl reminded the apron-wearer of her mistake, causing one of the sneaky girls to frown momentarily.

The winner of the pipeline system would be a girl who pleased me more than any other girl - that's obvious - but I didn't want her to win by destructively competing with the other girls. As a metaphor, I wanted the girls to compete like they were in a running race rather than a boxing match. This was because the eventual winner had to cooperate with Carol, Julia and Ava. Destructive competitiveness within my core group was such an appalling idea that any girls I saw behaving that way instantly got demoted several places down my mental list. Destructive competitiveness was such a bad behavior that I quickly realized that it had to be one of the main things I looked for.

[[That tells you my perspective on the pipeline. It wasn't to provide me with dozens of girls I could play with in a high-pressure competition situation where they'd push themselves to do much more than they normally would. Nor was it to provide girls I'd keep apart from my core group, maybe just to use and discard. I was assuming the purpose of the pipeline system was to provide a winner or two, and that the winner(s) would socialize with my core group to a considerable extent. Many guys would've delighted in 'milking the pipeline' for all it was worth; but my thoughts were on the end of the process rather than the fun I could have during it. This was nice of me, but it was also weak of me. I was thinking about after the process had finished because I was uncomfortable about many of the human aspects during the process, hence my initial speech to the girls.]]