Chapter 280: The Department of Horrendous Stupidity

Friday, September 2 to Sunday, September 25, 2005 (Continued)

I announced that we didn't have time for another group Cutie-Duckling date before school restarted. Although I had a lot of other things going on, such as the Target Game's coming to a head, there would've been time for another Cutie-Duckling group date if I'd wanted one, but I delayed it while I waited to see if there was any fallout from the last group grope. At the speed the Cutie-Ducklings were running ahead of my plans, the next date could well cross the point of no return, so some caution was definitely a good idea.

[One thing that took quite a chunk of my time was my water garden. Vanessa had pointed out that there was no reason I couldn't take charge of landscaping the front of my own house, as that'd get the job done much faster than waiting for her, because she had so many other things to do. I'd hire a professional of course, but I first needed to do some research on water gardens so I could be a good client. I did some online research, and also visited several gardens and talked to quite a few people. It caught my interest because I could see that it was possible to do something that looked very special, so I spent a lot of time on it, often driving quite long ways to visit good examples of the art.]

I remembered to ask my loyal advisors' for their advice about the "So Many Virgins" Cutie-Duckling problem.

Carol reassured me, "They all say they willing to have sex with you."

"I'm not so much worried about their willingness, as what happens when their mothers discover that they're not virgins anymore."

We discussed it for a few minutes, but we couldn't think of a good en masse solution.

Not having another group Cutie-Duckling date didn't stop individual Cutie-Ducklings dropping in as often as Carol or Donna would let them. Sometimes I wasn't at home, which was usually fine with the girls because Patch always was when he and Donna weren't at Riding Club meetings. Sometimes I was in but busy. I tried to spend some time with them though, because they usually got into their Australian bikinis if I was around.

I got feedback from the casual visitors themselves, from Carol and Donna (who checked up on all of their friends), and from Diana and Claire (who also contacted all the others, theoretically providing more reliable feedback because their working for me wasn't known). All the feedback was the same: the Cutie-Ducklings were having a great time, thought I was the best guy they'd ever met, all had crushes on me, would do anything I wanted, etc. A few of them might get nervous at the point of a major decision, but as far as talking about their feelings was concerned, they were giggly-head over spread-open-heels in love with me.

The casual visitors were the ones most eager to see me again, which didn't necessarily mean they were the best ones for me to get very sexy with. They might just have been the most 'in love', and girls can react weirdly to emotions sometimes, if not usually. I thought it was the girls who immediately put their new bikinis on and flaunted themselves to me who were the ones who should be invited into my bed. So I did take several of them there. The virgins didn't get more than a damned good licking, but that was enough to blow their inexperienced little minds. The non-virgins tempted and begged me so much that I yielded to it, after short, half-hearted, protestations of concern and reluctance (from me, not them).

I would've yielded to temptation much more often except that my first yieldings led to a problem: the girls started calling Carol every day (sometimes Donna, but all but one of them were Cuties). Some of them even called several times a day. They were dropping in too frequently, and otherwise making nuisances of themselves.

Some kind but very stern talking was required. There were enough of them and they were appearing so often that I got to try several different approaches, and I made the happy discovery that the best way do dealing with them was to put them over my knee and spank their bottoms painfully. It worked even better than talking to them rationally. That addressing their bottoms worked better than addressing their minds amused me, but there was no doubt that it stopped their annoying behavior. I think because it made them believe they'd been behaving childishly, but whatever the psychology, I used it to good effect several times.

I decided not to start any more problems, so that's how the Cutie-Ducklings reached the end of summer vacation.

Diana and Claire were more than mere Cutie-Ducklings, so I saw them apart from the others. They continued to visit quite often, usually to see me but not always. When I wished to invite them over, I would get one of my sisters to call them to offer, "Do you and Claire want to come over for a ride at 10 o'clock tomorrow?" When the invitation to ride didn't mention Patch's name, that was our code for the ride not being on Patch.

They were cute, obedient, helpful, thankful, and a lot of fun sexually. It was also great to see how happy they were. They were SO happy these days that I was worried about their parents getting suspicious, but they said they'd told their parents how much they loved visiting "Carol, Donna and Patch."

Which reminds me of three other things they were: smart, discreet and tricky. Mackenzie had won the Mark Quiz in part because she was an intelligent girl, and that ran in the family. Diana and Claire were smart enough to keep everything discreet, even when they were arguing with Mackenzie or their parents about something or other. Although our cover story is that they remind me of my sisters, thank goodness they didn't remind me of Donna's shortsighted impatience.

Mackenzie knew I had sex with lots of girls. As far as she knew not anyone as young as Diana, let alone Claire, but that didn't mean Mackenzie thought her sisters were safe, especially as Diana's body was certainly mature enough and she was only a year younger than me. Mackenzie did suspect me of misbehaving, but fortunately Diana was very good at looking innocent, exclaiming, "Mark would NEVER do anything like that. I'm Carol's friend and he'd never risk upsetting Carol's friendship with me. He's a perfect gentleman! He never touched you on the date you had with him and you're much better looking than I am. I'm just a little girl compared to Mark." Mackenzie's suspicions were allayed.

Their delight in being tricky was mostly because they were pissed off with their mother for lying about how wonderful sex was; both the physical act and the cuddling and talking afterward. Their mother had lied to them, so they had no compunction about lying straight back at her. Mackenzie provided a wonderful example of how their life would've gone had they continued down the path their mother wanted them on.

They were gaining a lot of confidence, and were confident that they wanted their life to go exactly the way it was. That was important to me, because I wanted them to be strong enough to ignore their mother's brainwashing until they were old enough to take command of their own sex-lives. That way I wouldn't feel I'd taken one-sided advantage of them. I didn't mind having uncaring quickies with some girls, but I was seeing Diana and Claire repeatedly and they were very nice girls, so I wanted to be good for them. I made sure we spent quite a lot of time talking after sex.

[[My personality was improving in some ways, although I realized this way of thinking about myself only when typing about Diana and Claire. A year or two ago I'd been far too sensitive to people's hurt, including my own. That sensitivity did more to determine my behavior than anything else. These days my actions were much more determined by the opposite of hurt: happiness. Diana and Claire were extraordinarily happy, so I enjoyed their company a great deal and wanted good things to happen to them. Most of the girls that stayed in my life were those that first showed me their happiness, as Alexis had. Carol's happiness was the greatest both in its degree and in its effect on me. Julia was also extremely happy with how everything was working out, although her happiness didn't glow out of her the way Carol's did because Julia's was a little too self-satisfied. Ava had joined us through a mistake of Julia's and mine, but she'd developed into a wonderful and valued part of my life because she was happy. Pat was sort of in the middle for being semi-happy when with me. Girls like Savannah could never share simple happiness with a guy unless they got what they wanted first, thereby guaranteeing that they wouldn't get it from me. My year-ago personality had been too one-dimensional when driven by hurt, and I could have been equally one-dimensional when driven by hurt's opposite, but other aspects were emerging. Just as Carol was growing and changing, so was I. My changes weren't all wonderful, like Carol's, as arrogance had already started creeping into some of my thoughts. At this time, I didn't think I had much of an ego, but you might have noticed several examples of arrogance in recent chapters. It was a natural development given all the success, praise and flattery I was getting.]]

Carol lost interest in being sexual with Diana after the Cutie-Ducklings started throwing themselves at me, partly because there was no game for Carol to play anymore, and partly because Carol didn't take long to grow through her interest in her games with Diana. That didn't upset Diana at all, as sex with Carol had never been important. They were still good friends, especially because they both knew that I liked them both very much. Sometimes when I was lying in bed chatting to Diana and Claire, Carol would join us, as she enjoyed contributing to and learning from the conversations. Julia too sometimes. Mostly, I suspected, to keep an eye on what I was doing. Obviously not out of jealousy; more likely because she wanted to watch my progress. Julia spoke less than was natural for her, so I was fairly sure she was observing deliberately. That was very fine with me. If I was doing something wrong, or even just poorly, I'd like Julia to tell me. I even asked her to, but she said I was doing fine. She added one comment that took me by surprise, "You're making a big effort to give Diana and Claire confidence. A few months ago you had none of your own, and now you're giving it out. You learn very quickly."

"I hadn't realized that before. When we first started going out and you kept telling me to get more confidence, I didn't understand what you meant. At best I thought confidence would be an act I could put on to cover my insecurities. Other people could breeze through life, but I never expected I'd be able to. Yet now I can sometimes breeze through entire days without feeling insecure. That's a big change for me."

"You've strengthened a great deal, even though you still depreciate yourself too much."

We got into another mutual admiration session. Julia enjoys expressing herself about the wonder of me, and she especially enjoys me telling her what a wonderful effect she's having on my life. She knows she is, and she takes a lot of well-earned pride from it.

^

Because it was the start of a new career for me, I'll tell you more about my water garden.

My Wing was made into one long building that straddled the edge of the mound. The mound is twelve feet high and that edge was held near vertical by a retaining wall.

(The mound's slope was near vertical on both sides and around the back, but far gentler on the front, which could be walked up quite easily. There were wide steps on the east side of the front, which led down to the visitor parking area and the drive, and another set of steps off the front of the mound just to the east of the easternmost end of the swimming pool. There was also a stairway on the rear of the mound, straight out from the back door. It ran down the edge of the wall of the mound, toward the east, rather than extend perpendicular like the front stairways did.)

The exterior front of My Wing's Staircase Room, and the retaining wall on the west side of the mound, made for a very large corner. That was accentuated by the Staircase Room's exterior wall being almost featureless, as the front door was on the far west side of that room.

The landscape architect that I got to design the water garden did a number of things that I thought were very clever. The end result was:

• The area was themed as if a mountainside was descending into forested foothills and then to a plain. In miniature obviously, but the theme was obvious.

• The area extended about 90 feet forward from the Staircase Room, all the way along the west edge of the mound, to its front edge. It was also about 25 feet wide, that being roughly the length of the Staircase Room.

• All the material that'd been excavated from the mound for my tunnel and garage had been dumped in the unused southwest corner of the property, as Vanessa had plans to use it to relieve the boredom of a totally flat property. My architect 'stole' nearly all of it to raise the ground level for the entire landscaped area. It was piled about six feet high at the corner between the mound wall and My Wing (i.e., was half the height of the mound). From that corner heading the 20' directly west to the front door, it sloped steadily down to zero (the original ground level). From the original high-point corner, it also sloped down to zero over the 90' north.

• On this base were placed many more discrete piles of earth. They were of randomized, natural-looking heights, but with a strong trend of having mountainous looking hillocks and rocks on the west side of the garden, and progressively smaller, gentler hills and rocks on the east side.

• Similarly, ground cover and low bushes were planted in the western areas, with increasingly taller and wilder looking trees toward the 'mountainous' east, but careful that none of them exceeded the height of the top of the mound, because apparently that would've given a bad 'line'.

• A path was laid north out of My Wing's front door, over a few deliberately placed little lumps and snaking just a little, to give the illusion of its 'skirting the foothills'. Once it got far enough north to pass the landscaped area, it turned right and headed across the front of the mound, joining the path that started at the bottom of the steps in front of the pool.

• Just outside the front door was a path that turned hard right and led 'into the mountains', up to my private hot tub. The tub was located next to the mound's wall, in a 'canyon' between two large, upstanding, craggy-looking boulders. A natural looking wooden roof and well-placed plants and rocks made it resemble a natural rock pool.

• The path to the hot tub had a branch that led north, running the entire 90-foot length of the landscaped area. For the inside of a residential property, it was an adventurous path, with many ups, downs and sudden turns to get around trees and rocks. It wasn't "wild", but you wouldn't want to try to walk it with your eyes shut (I could, but you shouldn't). It was "wild" enough to be fun.

• Lastly, the original idea for the whole area: water. A natural looking rock pool was built at the top of the mound. Water was pumped into it from a hidden pipe, the pool overflowing to form an impressive waterfall off the side of the mound; impressiveness achieved mostly by carefully choosing the shape of the rocks it flowed over, as the volume of water was actually quite low. Because the landscaped area was very 'lumpy', there were many hollows for the water to collect in, starting at the base of the waterfall before spilling over that basin's lowest side and flowing along a natural looking streambed into the next hollow, etc. Obviously the water's path was carefully designed and fake, or the water would've soaked away into the soil. After overflowing the basin under the waterfall, the stream ran toward and alongside the path to the hot tub, then turned to meander north, going all the way to the end of the landscaped area before disappearing under a rock, to be pumped back to the top of the waterfall again. The walking path north crossed and re-crossed the stream four times.

• An artist painted a landscape picture on the outside wall of the Staircase Room. By placing plants near the wall, reproducing them in the painting, and by painting with the right perspective, the painting merged with and continued the "Untamed, Mountainous Wilderness" theme, giving the 'garden' an impressively convincing visual infinity. You were never truly fooled, but visitors were always amazed by how very well it worked. Apparently the mound's wall constrained the viewing angles, enabling the artist to control the perspective. And by making the mound's wall dark in the landscaped 'mountains' near my house, the darkness could be continued into the painting, which performed some sort of framing trick on human eyesight. However it worked, it produced countless, "Wow! That's COOL!"-type comments (from my visitors anyway. The parents' visitors tended to talk differently).

I'd intended a, "Small, Formal Japanese Water Garden." Instead I'd got an, "Untamed, Mountainous Wilderness," but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and the end result, that enjoyment being why I'd gotten so carried away. It was NOT a cheap exercise!

I haven't mentioned it much so far this autobiography, but I enjoy walking in natural forests very much. There are many great nature trails around Corvallis - in fact, around Oregon - and my family walked them quite often. I especially enjoy being alone in the forest, with nothing but nature all around me. For me, it's a very nice feeling, provided it's a nice day. My new garden was too open to be a convincing forest, but sitting near the stream would give me the right sounds, smells, and - if I looked in the right direction - sights too. It wasn't totally convincing, but easily good enough to be an evocative reminder.

My little front garden turned into a MUCH larger project than I'd expected, which is one of the reasons why I was busy in the last couple of weeks of summer, and for several weeks thereafter.

I had a lot of fun with it, but one particular source of fun is too amusing not to mention. About a week before the end of summer, I happened to remember that the Norris home was surrounded by a substantial garden. Mackenzie's being interested in orchids strengthened my suspicion that Mrs. Norris might be an enthusiastic gardener, which I confirmed by asking her daughters after we next finished having sex (no matter how much I was enjoying my project, talking about gardening does NOT come before having sex with two eagerly cooperative, pretty sisters).

I got Diana to ask her mother whether she was free to give me some gardening advice.

Diana called me to say that her mother was delighted to be of service. I'd been sure she would. She was still actively encouraging Diana's SLOWLY - but reportedly successful - developing friendship with me.

I wanted to keep Mrs. Norris's nose out of my real bedroom because the size of the bed would cause problems. So when she came over to inspect the area I was pretending to want advice on, I made sure she knew that I had only a few minutes to spare for her, "As I have to rush off to do something important." I managed to keep her focused on the garden.

I'd insisted on picking her up, to control her presence on my property, and impress her with my car, although its image was a bit too flashy for Diana's ideal boyfriend. We talked gardening as I drove her home, me describing what I wanted to do, some of my ideas, etc. I'd done quite a lot of research already, so I could talk impressively (I remember EVERYTHING that I pay attention to). Somehow I failed to mention that I'd employed a very good landscape architect. We (the architect and I) hadn't come up with the "Untamed, Mountainous Wilderness" theme when I was doing this with Mrs. Norris, but that didn't matter.

I popped in to see Mrs. Norris about once a week. Never for long, but for long enough for her to see that I liked Diana and treated her with total respect. I oozed 'gentleman'. (Remember that in 3A-land I'd not done the magic tricks for the Norris's, so Diana had never sat on my lap, and I'd never mentioned a single sexy word in the family's presence, not even the highly inappropriate "bra and panties".) I was civil to Mackenzie, but I made sure it was obvious that I was not comfortable around her. And I treated Claire like she was a tomboy friend of my younger sister's by picking her up and swinging her around, and similar sorts of things. I made sure to act like Diana was clearly my favorite, something I expressed in very non-sexual ways. If Diana opened her mouth to say something, she had my immediate attention; and when I said goodbye, it was always Diana that I named last. I clearly liked Diana a lot, and at my apparent current rate it'd take me about three years to think of holding her hand, and another two before I did the deed. (Obviously I'd warned both girls in advance that I'd be acting so focused on Diana, so Claire wouldn't feel jealous and say something she shouldn't.)

That'd been the sum total of my plan, merely to give Mrs. Norris hope about Diana and me, and to show her that I clearly didn't want the company of a morally too-flexible girl who would willingly reveal her bare breasts. As it turned out, the landscaping project got larger and larger (it required heavy earthmoving equipment, a crane to lift the boulders, a LOT of workmen, etc.) I had to admit to her, "I'll obviously need to hire professionals soon, such as a surveyor to take all the levels to make sure the water flows the way I want. I don't know enough about individual plant species either, so I'll need to hire someone who can choose the plants and trees that'll produce the effect I'm going for." She was amazed at the scope of what I was designing, that a mere 15-year old boy could take on a project so large with so much confidence, and afford to pay for it. She'd given up asking, "What do your mother and father think of it?" because I always had answers that clearly indicated that it was entirely MY project. After all, it was on my property.

By the way, I never talked about any of the Williamses with Mrs. Norris, and had warned Claire and Diana not to. I don't know whether Mrs. Norris knew they lived in the house with us. I'd also said nothing about them during the abbreviated guided tour I'd given her. It was hard to imagine that it hadn't come up with someone during her first visit to the mansion, but she obviously didn't know that I slept with Julia. Hopefully, she didn't even know that Julia existed; or if she'd seen Julia, hopefully she'd assumed her to be a friend of Donna's, as Julia is much smaller than Donna (although always much better dressed). I had my story ready, "Yes, Julia WAS my girlfriend, but now she's my sister's girlfriend. A rather surprising way for me to lose my girlfriend, but I'm extremely happy to see Carol blossom in her new relationship. Carol means a great deal to me."

Mrs. Norris never gave me any trouble. Either she was too ignorant (in the literal, non-pejorative sense), or she was too greedy (in the very pejorative sense). Diana reported that my quick visits always left her mother very impressed by me, and resulted in her having conversations with Diana to encourage her to advance her relationship with me. Diana never had any trouble with those, as we'd discussed the delicate art of mother-management several times.

A week before the end of summer vacation, on September 19, Mom, Dad, Vanessa, Prof, Julia, Carol and I all had a bad day; separately and simultaneously. I knew nothing about the others' experiences at the time, so I'll just detail mine.

I was up in Portland. I'd come up first thing in the morning to visit several places with water and/or Japanese gardens that my landscape architect had recommended I have a look at. Some of them were private gardens, but he'd already called the owners to ask their permission for me to visit, so I was spending the morning working my way through the list of addresses he'd given me.

I was talking to one owner, a nice lady, when two big men in suits appeared out of nowhere. We were in the middle of her garden, on her private property and they walked around some bushes and into sight only a few yards away.

As soon as I saw them, one of them flashed a badge at me, too far away and too fast for me to see, saying, "Mark Anderson. Department of Homeland Security. We'd like a word with you please?" [I learned that the question mark shouldn't have been appended to that sentence. And while you're mentally removing appendages, you should probably take the "please" off too. The "like" hadn't been particularly accurate either, and "word" turned out to be a massive understatement. All things considered, his statement had been somewhat misleading.]

Quite a few things flew through my mind. Multiplied by my having quite a few minds, the next few seconds were mentally very busy. They could be telling the truth, or they could be Binion's minions, or more kidnappers. I even thought they might be footballers, but that was silly; I was just trying to think who my enemies might be, and "footballers" came to mind. No other source of trouble seemed likely enough to bother thinking about - Aikido bosses pissed off about the EKP article? Nope, can't see it. So they were DHS or baddies; a distinction I hoped was a distinction, but I had some worries about that.

The nice lady I'd been talking to said, "Oh dear" and backed away from me, so she wasn't going to be much use, not that her getting me out of this had been at the top of my list of likely outcomes.

Having established that they might be baddies, or might not, I then had to decide what to do about it, ideally during the three or four seconds it'd take them to get to me. Violence and/or running away were obviously silly right now (maybe later though). It was better to let them get within six feet of me so I could start reading their intentions. That'd give me so much more information that I'd actually be safer that way, provided they weren't zero feet away from me.

When they walked into my proximity range, I was very relieved to sense nothing worrying. They were intending to walk up to me. One to my front, one to my right side, which were the directions they were already walking in. There was nothing physical to worry about so far.

When they were about four feet away, I said, "Stop! Show me your badges." By the time I'd finished, one of them was standing right in my face, and the other was standing immediately beside my right side (they hadn't stopped). I hadn't reacted, and proximity had showed me that their intention never changed, and so far neither of them was intending to do anything. The guy to my right was prepared to grab my right arm, but his intention was 'on hold', so to speak. He was merely planning it, rather than about to execute it (the 'quality' of the ki he was radiating indicated the difference).

"Show me your badges please?"

The one beside me had no change to his intention; not even a moment's intention to take out his badge. It seemed that he was concentrating on his job of pinning me if I tried anything. The one in front of me showed me his badge again.

Just seeing one badge would be fine. They'd both be legit, or both not. My plan was to get an ID number (or "DHS Employee Number", or whatever the badge called it), then call the Corvallis cop station to see if they could confirm it was legit. If I introduced myself as "Mark Anderson, the guy who was kidnapped and nearly murdered," they'd remember me all right, and should be cooperative when I told them two big guys claiming to be from DHS were physically intimidating me, which they were, as both were big guys and well inside my comfort zone.

I reached for the displayed badge, and he pulled it back.

"I need to see your ID#, or whatever it's called."

"So look already."

Not having any real choice, I took his well-articulated advice. Spotting it, and easily memorizing it.

I reached for my phone, barely starting to move before the guy on the right responded by grabbing for my arm (my cellphone is on my right side. If it'd been on my left, the colors of my ring and watch face would somehow cause girls not to like me anymore).

I froze, but his grab continued coming toward me. His intention was clearly to grab me now. He was no longer thinking about it; he was doing it.

I REALLY didn't want to be grabbed, so I took a step backward (not running, just stepping), while telling the guy in front of me (not that I had much choice about who to talk with, as that guy was IN my face), "I just want to call to confirm your badge number's legit." I also used EKP on the grabber, so his hands passed in front on my arm as I slid back. It'd seem like a reasonably natural mistake to him, and it'd take him a couple of seconds to recover from it, which would be ample time for my perfectly sensible request to convince him to stop grabbing for me.

"No calls," said my conversation partner, flicking his badge closed while reaching for my left arm with his spare arm.

The other guy had now missed his first grab, seen his surprising mistake, and was starting a new grab.