Chapter 10

The rest of the school year limped along until it was time for graduation. Well, we were graduating from middle school to high school, and everybody made a big deal of that. I thought that it was ridiculous, but I had to go along with the game everybody else was playing. I managed to live through the graduation exercises, but I refused to have anything to do with the Senior Prom. At last, I was finished with middle school and could start preparing myself for my future life!

That summer, I noticed a marked increase in my reading speed and comprehension. Obviously, the ring's work on my brain was paying off. I did toy with the idea of skipping high school in favor of home schooling because classes were awfully boring there at the last of the school year. However, I did reconsider when I realized that I needed the high school experience to determine if I was really cut out to be a politician.

There was not much in the way of political spots for Freshmen, but I did decide to run for Class President. That was really only a ceremonial job that would require my attendance at about four or five functions during the year, but the important point was in finding out what it was like to run for office. That was something that I was interested in!

Ring did bump up my aura some, and I did use that factor to get people to listen to me as I campaigned, but I did not want it so high that people were compelled to vote for me because I asked them to. I had read a lot about what it took to get elected, and I had talked with most of the town's successful politicians over the summer, so I applied what I had learned and managed to get myself elected with 63% of the vote. That was the highest that anyone had ever gotten in being elected Freshman Class president, and I was proud of my effort.

I had gone whole hog and made an effort to talk to every student in the Freshman class. That seemed to have paid off. Several of the politicians I had talked to had emphasized the importance of personal contact with the voters. Apparently, they were right. I carried almost all of the female vote and about 30% of the male vote. Since I was running against three jocks, I figured that I had done unusually well.

This was purely a popularity contest, so I could not find any campaign issues to raise. I just set out to show what a fine person I was, and how I was concerned with my fellow man. Hell, if I had to, I was prepared to throw a campaign bar-b-cue, but Dad talked me out of that. None of the other candidates could afford to do that, and he said that a lot of people would think that I was just showing off. Let me say this: it sure helps to have a smart Dad!

My harem worked on my campaign, but there was not a lot that they could do since they were Seniors, and this election was for Freshmen. However, they did talk me up to all of their friends and made sure that all of the Freshman girls knew who I was. I thought that they made a significant contribution to getting my vote as high as it was, and I tried to make certain that they understood how much I appreciated their efforts.

All of a sudden, a fantastic opportunity showed up. One of the City Councilors decided to retire and move to southern Florida. He thought that the winters in South Alabama were too severe for him at his advanced age (he was 57). Hell, the man was generally conceded to be an idiot, and the only reason that he was elected was that nobody else wanted such a thankless job. He barely ever got more than 10% of his ward's vote, but he won anyway because he was unopposed.

Well, I found out that there was no age limit, low or high, for ward councilors, so I talked to Dad and Mom, and decided to run. My biggest problem was going to be convincing people that I was serious about the job of councilor. I did have an opponent, but he was the proverbial "used car salesman," and most people did not trust him. He was older than me, 38, so he was a legitimate candidate in the eyes of most people. His age would probably get him elected, but I intended to make him work for it!

My girls were very enthusiastic about this campaign, mostly because they could actually work on it in meaningful jobs. Mom even agreed to help by stuffing envelopes. I figured that alone was my first real campaign victory.

I spent every spare minute in the afternoons and on the weekends going from house to house in my ward. I had a very professional flier printed up along with some equally professional business cards. I wore a suit, and made a point of being polite to everybody I met, even those who ridiculed me for trying to do an adult's job. I think that I actually did change some minds about my maturity.

My main campaign thrust was toward getting the streets and sidewalks in my ward up to the county standards. Alabama does that sort of thing on a county basis, not on a state-wide basis. A lot of people curse the streets and sidewalks, but nobody seems to know what to do about the problem. I researched the situation, and I came up with what I thought was a workable plan. The money was actually there in the city treasury; it was just that nobody had made any effort to get it used properly.

I held one election rally, mostly to catch any people whom I had missed in my door-to-door rounds. It was a big bar-b-cue supper with the food supplied by the best restaurant in Houston County. Yes, it was expensive, but Dad agreed that this one was a good idea. We tried to get a count of the number of people who showed up, but that was impossible. We had a lot of people from outside the ward dine with us, but I didn't mind, because I wanted to become well enough known that I could run for mayor of Dothan as soon as practical.

Anyway, the whole thing was a big success. We even had square dancing and other country music, and that always went over well with this constituency. I also gave a little speech and answered questions, mostly about why I was running for office at such a young age. I explained that I was interested in becoming a professional politician, and I was testing my ability to gain votes. Further questions were on how I was going to handle the job of councilman and go to school, go on dates, and all of the other things that teens did in this day and age. I answered every question, and I think that most of my answers were believed. All in all, it seemed like a very successful affair.

My opponent didn't bother with all of these things, probably because he figured that he was backed by the major political faction in the city and there was no way that he could lose to a high school kid—emphasis on "kid."

Anyway, I won! It was not a big vote in my favor, but it was enough to know that I could have done much better had I been a little older. Also, I did not make full use of the aura enhancement that my ring could have given me, so I was very happy with the results of the vote. By this time, I was 17 years old, but how many boys my age could actually say that they were an elected member of the City Council?

I attended my first council meeting and found out just how much influence I was going to have: zero. Okay, now I had to start digging for political dirt on my colleges so that I could force them to listen to me, or else I had to have my ring upgrade my aura. I went for the increased aura. I didn't want to resort to the political equivalent of blackmail to get my points across. I really didn't know which was more ethical, but I decided that blackmail was just not my style!

It turned out to be a lot of work to do everything a councilman was supposed to do, so I gave up on the idea of continuing with school politics. I figured to serve out my year as Freshman Class President and let that be it for my high school political career. My term of office had been for only one year, so I was not letting anybody down by dropping out of high school politics.

I was supposed to serve on several council committees, but I was left off the distribution list for announcements of the meetings until I raised Hell in open meetings of the full council. The Eagle had a lot of fun with that little fiasco, and it never happened again. I sent a note of thanks to the reporter and the editor of the newspaper, and I got nice notes in response. That's when the power of the press dawned on me, and I started talking regularly to both people. The reporter was a woman and the editor was a man.

Reporting on the City Council meetings was the kind of dog-work that beginning reporters were assigned to, so Rachel Anderson was very appreciative that a council member would notice her, even if he was at the bottom of the pecking order. Rachel and I developed a strong friendship that never went any farther than that because she was happily married, and I didn't want to mess that up. Nevertheless, I did stay in as much contact with her as I could manage because she was very helpful to me.

As it turned out, I was assigned to the Public Works committee, and that was perfect for carrying through on my campaign promise. Public Works was way down on the list of popular committees because most of the work was cut-and-dried. As a result, very few of the regular members attended the meetings and voted by proxy in favor of whatever the chairman wanted.

That was perfect for me! I went to work on the chairman of the committee and convinced him that he would look great in the newspaper if he pushed through the project to fix the streets and sidewalks. I got Rachel to start covering our meetings, and she saw that it would be a feather in her cap if the bill went through. Anyway, it took several months of work, but I finally got the chairman to post my bill on the regular agenda. As usual, the agenda carried with the proxy votes, and my bill was sent to the full council for approval.

Rachel put a lot of pressure on the full council to pass my bill. Enough councilmen were afraid of what a negative vote would look like when Rachel got through with them that my bill passed unanimously! Later, in celebration, I took Rachel and her husband to dinner, an act they both appreciated.

Rachel gave credit where credit was due in her writeups on my bill, but she did make the point that it had been my campaign promise. She made a big deal about how I had carried through on the promise, a rare thing in politics. I was the talk of the town, at least in the coffee shops, for about two days before something else caught the public eye. Still, I was very happy with the result of my efforts, and I hoped to have it be the launching pad for a series of triumphs.

HA! I finished the first year of my two-year term with that as my only triumph. Oh, I did work to get some other bills passed, but they were not things that I had originated. I was somewhat disappointed at that, but Dad said that I would find other things to spearhead as I gained experience. He was proud of me, and that meant a lot to me.

My harem was also a great supporter of my work, and that helped more than I could say. Not only that, but the sex was a great morale booster. The only thing that was amiss was that Ann was not living with us. Therefore, I spent more time in physical contact with her on our trips to and from school than I did with the other girls.

Ann had stopped wearing panties whenever she was around me, and she loved for me to scratch gently on her pussy lips with my fingernails. That invariably produced an orgasm for her, and I think that was partly what kept her tied to me when she could have found other partners for fucking. Ann claimed that she was sticking monogamously to me, and I believed her.

By this time, the work on my brain by my ring had nearly reached completion. I found that I could read a book and retain its information almost as fast as I could turn the pages. If I wanted to, I could read a 500-page book in a couple of hours and repeat every salient point back to a questioner, including the page number where the information could be found.

That made school a real bore until I found relief. I had to attend school for the time spent in the laboratories, so I could not just opt for home schooling. On the other hand, I found that I could split my attention so that I could pay enough attention to the class to keep the teachers happy while I spent the majority of my brain power on other tasks.