Chapter 83: The Biffs Plea Bargain

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 (Continued)

We strode away quickly, and even with that Julia had difficulty holding in her mirth long enough to get out of earshot. She held it for as long as possible, and then it boiled out of her. "Keep walking," she gasped, "they can still see us."

We half-carried Julia another few tens of yards, and Julia said, "Let's sit here. I have to laugh."

We sat, and I held Julia while she got a good laugh out of her system. Carol laughed along too, but in a much more controlled fashion. I was still too confused to be able to laugh.

Soon Julia was able to say, "I REALLY enjoyed that! I LOVE working for you, Mark. I get to do the craziest things, and they're so much fun! Those poor girls. I was taking them up, then crashing them down, then taking them up and down again, over and over again. They were SO lost."

"They weren't the only ones!"

Julia continued, "The part that I like the best was that almost everything I said was true."

#1: <Huh? Now I'm REALLY confused. Was she listening to herself?>

I pointed out, "But almost everything you said was UNTRUE. That's why I didn't say much, because I had no idea where you were going next. You weren't constrained by reality, that's for sure!"

Julia laughed, "Haha Mark. Almost everything I said was TRUE. I understand you couldn't follow me, because I was deliberately zigzagging up and down so THEY couldn't follow me. I'm sorry that made it harder for you and Carol.

^-- "Carol, you did wonderfully, by the way. I loved your 'staggering out of Mark's bedroom' goodbye. That was a wonderful image to leave them with. Your comment about not wanting naked photos in your locker was also a wonderful addition. You were wonderful, thank you." Julia leaned forward and kissed Carol, who happily kissed her right back. We were much closer to a lot more people than where we normally have lunch, and lots of them noticed. My girls' kiss lasted about five wolf-whistles and eight catcalls. I patiently waited for Julia's explanation about how a conversation that was 95% lies could be deemed "almost everything I said was true." I had plenty of patience as I was enjoying watching them kiss.

^-- Julia carried on, "Since Mark's first speech I've been thinking about working on the girls like that, but I'd been planning on doing it in a day or two and in class. I had an idea about what I'd say at the start of class, to plant the seed and make people interested; and then what to say to everyone after the teacher left at the end of the class. But when they asked about our getting married, it was such a golden opportunity. I'd completely forgotten that people will expect us to do that because I don't think about our GETTING married anymore. Another thing I really like is that I totally destroyed every expectation they had. Remember we were talking about expectations earlier, Mark?"

"Yes. And I can confirm that you did an excellent job of destroying everyone's expectations, especially mine."

Julia explained to Carol, "Just before lunch Mark and I were talking about how he gives girls unrealistically high expectations. A girl left a letter and naked photos in his locker just before lunch, and he's already texted her back saying he'll answer her letter this evening. So now he has to, even if we would all rather do something else."

Carol said, "So those are the photos you were talking about. I'd never heard about any before. He got them just before lunch?"

Julia nodded.

"Haha, that's so funny. You made it seem like his locker gets swamped with them. You're so good at this Julia."

I interrupted, "That reminds me, you never answered my question about how you thought you mostly said the truth."

Julia said, "We don't have time to discuss that at length, so let's do it this way, 'Everyone put up a hand if you think I mostly told the truth'."

Julia and Carol quickly put their hands up. Julia said, "You're outvoted. It was mostly the truth."

"Hang on. I'm the Lord. How come I can get outvoted?"

"Darling, you ARE our Lord. We WILL do anything you tell us to. But as wonderful as you are, your orders can't change a fact. If you told us the world was flat, we wouldn't believe you. Same with my bamboozling those girls with mostly the truth. You can't order us to believe it was mostly lies. You can't change facts. Sorry."

I also can't win an argument with Julia. I felt like grumbling to myself that being a Lord wasn't all that good, but even my usual pessimism couldn't make me blind to the fact it was actually working out rather well so far, although very confusingly today.

Julia assumed I agreed with her and resumed, "Back to expectations. Those girls have none left. They don't know how long it'll take you to make the decision, and I'm sure they've got no idea whether you'll decide yes or no, which is just so funny! Imagine fourteen eager, good looking girls being so confused about whether a teenage boy wants them or not, haha. Imagine if Mark treats them normally for the next couple of days, which is mostly to ignore them, but to be polite when they do interact. They won't know what it means, and they won't even know whether to be happy or unhappy. Then on Monday he asks one of them how her weekend was. She'd be thrilled, even over something that takes Mark just a few seconds to do. The important thing is that Mark is free to do as much or as little as he wants. If he decides he wants lunch with them one day, they'll fall all over themselves to join him, which is far better than scheduling an appointment that constrains us, especially as we don't care if a few miss out. They can't be pushy with him at all. Just a single frown from Mark or me would have them running away. 'Managing expectations' is such a great concept. I'm definitely going to think more about that."

"Um, on the topic of treating them, how do I do that? What sort of things should I do or say?"

"The absolute bare minimum! That's why I tried so hard to destroy their expectations for your actions toward them. You saw that with your text message to the new girl. If you do something, not only does it take time to do it, but it creates the expectation that you'll keep doing it in every similar situation forever after. When you don't, you feel you have to apologize for it, which wastes more time and creates a whole new expectation you have to meet in the future. Do as little as possible! Ideally treat them as you normally do, and only say something extra once or twice a day. That's NOT once or twice per girl, that's once or twice in TOTAL, across ALL fourteen girls. Having to do one or two things per girl would be a disaster if you had a hundred girls chasing after you. If you can, try to accept anything any of them do for you as perfectly ordinary and expected. If one of them held a door open for you, for example, just say 'Thank you' in a perfectly normal tone of voice, like you're just being polite. If you made a big deal about thanking her, she'll expect big deals every time she does something for you, and that'd be a disaster with a hundred girls all trying to do things for you. In other words, play it cool. Very, very cool. Okay?"

"I understand. Having to run around making sure fourteen more girlfriends are happy all the time would be impossible. That's hard enough with just two."

"I know you don't really mean that. You make us happy very, very easily. A good way of thinking about these girls is that it's THEIR job to make YOU happy, not the other way around. You don't even need to say anything special if they do their job because it is their job. Only if they do something exceptionally good should you go out of your way to compliment them. Otherwise, when it's convenient for you, just drop the occasional LITTLE comment, just to string them along and keep them happy. Do it whenever you feel like, but not in response to any of their actions, that way they can't create an obligation for you out of knowing when you should do it."

Julia paused, and I took a few seconds to admire her skill at this stuff, and to make sure that I had her instructions memorized. I'd been so lost during the lunchtime conversation that I needed to know what to do from now on, or there was too much chance I'd mess up whatever Julia's strategy was.

Julia added, "I should say that my overall plan is not to try to get any more girls ready for you. When the court case is over you can pick two or three girls, maybe out of these fourteen or maybe others. That's up to you. Take them to bed and fuck the eyeballs out of their heads! Give them so much pleasure that they're incoherent. We'll make sure their experiences become widely known."

"Ahh, I'm confused about the whole sex thing, not to mention TOTALLY confused about how what you did to them could be called "getting them ready." But sticking to sex, I don't understand how you can just say "Take them to bed," like it was automatic, or something. Guys are always trying to get sex from girls and failing miserably at least 99.9% of the time. I was listening carefully, and none of them said they wanted sex with me. You repeatedly assumed it, but none of them confirmed it. When the trial is over, you're going to have to do a lot more work on them before one of them wants to have sex with me. Shouldn't you..." I stopped because Julia and Carol shaking their heads and giving me looks like I was an idiot.

Julia explained, "First you didn't recognize that nearly everything I said was the truth, and now you can't see how eager they are to jump your bones. You must've fallen asleep and dreamed a different conversation. As soon as the trial is over, you'll see them leaping for joy and into your bed."

Carol agreed, "You've got them in the palm of Julia's hand, Mark. I have to go in a second, but I've REALLY enjoyed today. Thank you very much, Julia. It was great fun to see you bamboozle those poor girls. I was scared to meet them and now I laugh that I helped confuse them so much. Is lunch with my friends still on for Friday?"

Julia and I both agreed.

"Good, thanks. I'll see you at our car after school. I love you, Mark," I got a one-second kiss on the cheek, "I love you, Julia." Followed by a twenty-second kiss on the lips with tongue and passion. There's something wrong with this world that a guy's girlfriend can kiss his sister better than he can. When I'm Emperor of the World that's the second thing to change, right after ensuring that there are only seven colors, none of which will be salmon, although I am tempted to decree the existence of an eighth color called trout.

After Carol left, I asked Julia, "Are they REALLY eager to have sex with me?"

"Absolutely. Didn't you see how excited they were?"

"Mostly they looked horribly confused. Their brief moments of excitement were only about dating me, weren't they?"

"It was about doing everything with you. With more experience, you'll start to understand girls better."

#3: <Because we sure as hell don't understand them now!>

#1: <It's not as if we've had much practice at recognizing girls who're lusting after us, is it?>

#2: <How do you know? Maybe it's happened dozens of times and we've never noticed.>

#1: <That's a REALLY depressing thought!>

First class after lunch would be interesting because it'd have most of the fourteen girls in it (our school schedules classes so most classes are at the same time every day, except some days when they're not, just to confuse things). Julia and I had a little time, so took turns accompanying each other to our lockers, and then we headed to class, with me reciting to myself, "play it cool, play it cool". I had no idea what, if anything, would happen, but whatever did would be followed by me playing it cool. As we approached the room, we could see a few of the girls grouped together in the hallway. They saw us coming and all turned to face us. Julia raised her hand and called out, "Hi."

I gave my action considerable thought, finally deciding to raise my hand and call out, "Hi." If in doubt - and about the only thing I wasn't in doubt about, was that I was in doubt - following Julia's lead would be a good choice.

As we approached closer to the group, I gave some thought to what I would say when we arrived. I decided to go with "Hi," but without my raising my hand this time, because sometimes I like to live life close to the edge. But as it happened, about ten yards short of the waiting girls Julia stopped and pulled me beside her against the hallway wall, where we leaned casually. Oh-so-casually. Julia was closer to the girls, and had her back to them as she was half-facing me. Which meant I could see them over top of Julia's head. Julia looked up and quietly asked me, "They confused?"

I looked at Julia, watching the other girls out of the top of my eye. "Yep, they're confused all right. They're starting to talk among themselves about what to do."

"Good." In a normal voice Julia asked, "So how does your soccer team normally do against Crescent Valley?"

I don't think Julia has ever asked me a soccer question before, and her sudden interest in the topic now was obviously feigned. I could have said, "About even," but that wasn't what Julia was looking for. Instead I launched into a long-winded monologue of an answer, providing all sorts of reasons for our relative performances.

She looked up, giving me her entire attention, which I was CERTAIN was feigned. I was still providing a very fascinating answer when the girls edged into our two-person group, their nominated spokesgirl to the fore. Before any of them spoke, something they were not quick to do, Julia said, "Excuse me, Mark. Don't forget where you're up to because I want to hear the rest of that." Turning to the girls, Julia said, "Hi?" I didn't know "Hi" could be a question, but apparently it can be if Julia wants it to.

The sacrificial spokesgirl unhappily asked Julia, "Umm, everyone wanted to know why you didn't join us? If you don't mind us asking, that is?"

Julia smiled happily. "That's perfectly fine. I understand that none of you have ever been in this situation before, so asking about something you're not sure of is a very intelligent thing to do."

The no-longer-sacrificial spokesgirl breathed a sigh of relief.

Julia explained, "Mark and I love each other, so we spend a lot of time talking alone together. I'm sure if Mark was your boyfriend, you'd want a lot of time alone with him, wouldn't you?"

"Y-Yes."

"That's the main reason. We like talking together. We didn't mean to slight you at all, nothing like that. We both enjoyed lunch. You enjoyed lunch, didn't you, Mark?"

"Yes. It was fun and all the girls were dressed very prettily."

"I enjoyed it too. It was good to finally make a decision about that problem and stop worrying about it. I was also feeling guilty that I did so much talking that Mark didn't have a chance to say much. I'm sure you've all noticed that he's normally a fairly quiet guy." They indicated that they had noticed that. "I try to be a very good girlfriend, so I was just taking advantage of the few minutes Mark and I had alone to talk with him about things that are important to him, like soccer. I don't know whether you know it or not, but he's by far the best player on his team, and he takes the game very seriously." Actually I treat it like a game, i.e., for fun, but there was no need to point that out now.

^-- "Mark is an incredible guy and deserves the best possible girlfriend, so I try VERY hard to be as good as I possibly can for him. You've," Julia's arm waved to indicate she meant the collective group, not just the spokesgirl, "interrupted that now, but that's okay because you didn't know any better. I like ALL of you - or I wouldn't have invited you to lunch - so I'm happy to explain.

^-- "There are a HUGE number of girls who want Mark. You heard about the 6th grade 'Ducklings', there are also a large bunch of Carol's friends, and every high-school grade all the way to 12. There are at least fifteen girls in this class who like Mark a lot. You can work out for yourselves how many classes there are in our high school, and how many girls that means are interested in Mark. I make it hundreds of girls who're attracted to him, and who want to talk with him. That's not counting the girls from college, Mark's various sports, and other places. It's impossible for him to talk with all of them as much as they want, especially because he's so busy doing 10th and 11th grades, plus college courses, plus being his soccer team's best player, and other things. Not to mention that I want to talk with him alone most of the time."

Who knows how many girls they thought were interested in me, but I could see them think that their odds of getting romantic with me - I was still confused about what that meant for these girls - were vanishingly small. Not that anyone in my family will admit to understanding anything about odds, not anywhere near Mom anyway.

Julia continued, "Mark likes talking to pretty girls, and you are all particularly pretty today, but he can't do it all the time. If we want to talk with you we can very easily walk over to join you, or wave at you to come over to us. If you're walking past, call out "Hello" or even stop for a quick chat if there is something real that you want to discuss with us, but be aware that Mark's time is much more precious than most people's. Certainly more important than mine, Carol's and yours too. If you watch him carefully you'll learn to tell when he's busy. If he's happy to see you and talk with you, you'll learn to recognize it in his face. I had to learn that too. When I first started going out with Mark I thought my time was just as important as his. I even tried to make him run around after me because girls SHOULD make their guys run around after them, shouldn't they?"

That produced the desired laughter from the girls. They all knew how to make guys jump through hoops; that was one thing I knew was damned well covered in those secret classes females sneaked off to. (Both "damned-well covered", and "damned well-covered". English can sometimes be efficient. You can tell how often by the length of my autobiography.)

"I've totally given that up now. I NEVER, EVER try to make Mark run around after me. That would be wrong. Instead I run around after Mark, doing everything I can do to help him. Just like me, any of you that want to be Mark's girlfriend will also need to change your attitude in that way."

A guy and his girlfriend, Jane, who were in this class, were walking past us in the hallway. Jane stopped to ask, "What's that about 'want to be Mark's girlfriend'?"

Her boyfriend stopped, backed up, and for some reason seemed unhappy at her interest in this topic.

Julia laughed, telling her, "Ask any of these girls sometime."

She looked over the group, memorizing faces. Then she gave into her boyfriend's tugging. They walked into class, while the boyfriend seemed to be intently talking to her about something. I chuckled to myself.

One of the girls around us, not the spokesgirl, asked, "What do you want us to tell Jane?"

Julia said, "The quick answer is 'anything you want'. Or nothing, if that's what you want. It's up to you. Just so long as it doesn't cause trouble for Mark. Mark doesn't have time to talk with every girl who's interested in him. I don't have time for that either. So here's your very first chance to do something for Mark: you can answer Jane's questions for us. That's what a good girlfriend to Mark would do, just like I'm doing now, to save Mark the bother of having to explain the same stuff over and over again. This is what I do: find ways to help the man I love. It's not the normal way we treat guys, is it?"

One of the girls asked, "Don't you find that demeaning? I don't mean to be negative, but you sound so old-fashioned, from way back before women's lib had even been thought of."

Julia said, "I think that's a very good question. One of the best any of you have asked today. Women's lib is the way the world should work. Men and women DO have equal rights, and men should never be allowed to TAKE rights from women. Mark has never taken anything from me. What he did was EARN an amazing amount of my respect. So I treat him in the way I know he deserves. Remember he let me fall in love and continue to have a relationship with Carol. Not only is there nothing in it for him, he loses a lot of my time with him. He knows I would instantly stop that relationship if he asked me to, but I know that he never will. You heard his speech so you know that he never will. Does he sound like a Male Chauvinistic Pig, or a loving, giving man who deserves our voluntarily given respect and best efforts to be good for him? Unlike any of the other boys you know, Mark TRULY does deserve the best from you."

You'll be glad to know that no one thought I was a Pig. One of them, Lily, asked, "Mark is best at school, best at soccer, best at bed and best his speech! Mark very special above ordinary boys?"

Julia answered, "Lily, you've got NO IDEA! He's so far above ordinary boys that they're ants compared to him. I don't have time to discuss that now, but I know what I'm talking about. I would like to get back to my discussion with Mark now, so can you please leave us?"

Julia was distracted for the first few minutes of class, clearly worrying about something else. But after those few minutes, she suddenly sat up and gave class her full attention. The attentions of girls who'd had lunch with us were initially all over the map, but since Julia and I didn't acknowledge any of their looks they settled down. They weren't being flirtatious, but I guessed they would have happily responded if I'd been, once I'd worked out how. I noticed that Jane, the girl with the concerned boyfriend, looked at me and "The Girls" several times. She knew something was up and was trying to put it together from the clues given out by everyone during class. What was the chance Jane hadn't noticed that all "The Girls" were particularly well dressed today? "Dressed to impress a boy," according to what Julia had said at the beginning of lunch.

As soon as class ended Julia leaned over and told me, "I have a small problem that I want to talk with you about. Let's have a talk outside." If Julia had a "small problem", then I was in big trouble.

We were still packing our bags when one of The Girls approached us. We were now standing and hoisting our bags. Seeing that, she asked, "Do you have time for another question?"

Julia answered, "Sorry, no."

"Oh." To her credit she backed away, although that was probably mostly from the surprise rather than the "respect for Mark" that Julia had instructed them to have.

Julia and I headed out. We went outside and stood far enough away from the paths to have some privacy from people overhearing us.

Julia said, "I didn't foresee the problem that those girls are going to be generating an ENDLESS series of questions. The more we tell them, the more questions they're going to have. As they get to know you better, they're EACH going to want to ask you and me even more questions. Not to mention asking questions about how this unusual new relationship has to work. They've never had a relationship like this before, and they're bound to have lots of questions about it, but if we tell them nothing then they won't know how we want them to behave, so they'll say or do things we don't want them to. It's a mess, and there are so many of them."

I agreed that we had a small problem. Adding, "I thought you might have a solution because you seemed to make up your mind about something two or three minutes into the class?"

"I made up my mind to stop worrying about it and to talk with you about it after class. Unlike SOME people, I have to concentrate in class."