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“Secret Sex, A Book Alive Online,” written and lived by John Scott G.
Chapter 12 – Numbers Game.
Jeanne was a quiet flirt. Whether she was in a classroom, out on the quad, or in the lunchroom, she didn’t say much but people gathered around her anyway. Attractive women can achieve this. It’s called the “moths-to-a-flame” phenomenon.
And it’s a lot of fun to watch. But it was soon evident that her flame did not appreciate my mothness. It was made clear that Jeanne’s public circle of friends didn’t have room for me. It was something she conveyed to me in a very subtle way:
“Stop bothering me at school,” she said, confronting me as we stood by a long row of lockers in the Humanities Building.
“What?”
“You have your friends and I have mine. Let’s keep it that way.”
“But we — ”
“You like playing The Game, right?” she asked in a cold, matter-of-fact tone.
A voice inside my head began screaming at full volume: Yes! Yes! Yes!
“Sure,” I said, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Okay, then stop bothering me at school.” She walked away. I just stood there in confusion and consternation. I wanted to yell something at her but got caught up in watching her body move. I watched her hair bouncing slightly with each step. I watched her hips swaying with each step. I watched her thighs flexing with each step. I watched her. . . well, you know what I watched.
Weirdness and strangeness were familiar to me because, hey, I was in school. But Jeanne’s reaction was taking things to a new level of bizarre. At least three times a week, we touched, kissed, caressed, and made love when we were alone together in her house, but she wanted me to avoid her in public. Odd. Peculiar. Confusing. But I went along with it. A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?
I tried to look at this as a “secret lover” kind of thing, but frankly, the situation didn’t make any sense to me. After all, everyone on the bus could see we were together, yet within the classrooms or anywhere on the school grounds she didn’t allow me into her own private group, a special cadre of associates, acquaintances, and hangers-on. Not sure if she considered any of them to be friends, although they all used that word.
What the Hell?
Questions swirled in my little brain. I wanted some perspective on this. So I asked some family members about the situation. Naturally, I talked to them without providing any incriminating information. In other words, I left out the really good details. But still, the search was on for some explanation of The Ways of Women. I started by asking my mom:
“Ahh, women,” said my mother with a smile. “Men will never know about women. We’re just different, but vive la difference.”
Which I believe is French for “hurray, tonight we have beef” or something very celebratory. Mom was good in so many ways, always providing a kind word, a hug, a snack, and excellent recommendations about clothing (just do the opposite of her suggestions) but she was hopeless when it came to dating advice. So, next I asked my dad:
“Ahh, women,” said my father with a smile. “You will never know for sure what goes on in their minds. That’s one of the mysteries of life. Learn to live with it. It can be fun.”
Yes, I was very lucky to be learning about the fun part. I just wanted to know about the crazy part. So next I asked my uncle:
“Ahh, fuck ’em,” said my uncle with a smile.
Ah, some useful information. Yet not really an answer.
“Okie-dokie,” my uncle said, seeing my disappointment. “Listen up. There was this famous shrink named Freud. Looks like his name is spelled ‘free-uhd’ but it’s pronounced ‘froid.’ Anyway, he said that men don’t know what women want. And he’s right. Men don’t know what women want. And you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because women don’t know what women want.”
I looked puzzled.
“All right,” he said, “let us now consider the species known as women. This is a category of creature that has half their wardrobe that fastens in the back. Is that logical?”
“Guess not.”
“Right. Not logical. Okay, this is a race of people that says they want a warm, loving, kind, strong, smart, caring and sensitive man with a sense of humor, and then they go out with the stupidest clod they can find as long as he has a hot car. Is that being straightforward?”
“Um, no.”
“Right. No. And this is a tribe that makes up rules of behavior that only apply to you and only when they want them to apply to you and woe unto you if you can’t figure out what the rules are and when they apply. Does that make any sense at all?” He didn’t even wait for my answer because he supplied his own: “No.”
He let that sink in. Man, it could be daunting whenever my uncle said stuff.
“So, if you find a girl who lets you do it,” he said, “do it!” He slapped a hand on my shoulder. “Afterwards, just look cool and uninterested in her and get the hell outta the way until she wants you around again. Now go get ’em kid, and don’t bother me ’cause I’ve got serious drinking and smoking to do.” He gave me a bit of a shove but he was smiling.
Like I told you, Uncle Larry was frightening sometimes. Scary-true, but scary nonetheless.
Game On
So things proceeded with Jeanne as they had been proceeding. At school, I moved amongst my circle of friends and Jeanne moved in hers. She never introduced hers to me, and I never introduced mine to hers. In public, we were aloof and distant and reserved. Or mysterious and poetic and mythic. Or we were just being teenagers. Guess it all kind of depends on how you looked at it.
When we were on the bus, it was all fingertips and petting and exploring and lightly pinching and heavy breathing. When we were at her house, it was more of an Extravagant Explosion Exploratorium kind of thing. Here are some conversational highlights:
“That goes where? Really?!”
“Umm, that works great!”
“It’s kind of a tight fit unless. . . oh wow!”
“Don’t touch me there . . . not there. . . Yeah, there!”
And so on.
Game Players
There is an English proverb which states that all good things must come to an end. This may be true, but I didn’t see any reason why those good things couldn’t start up again the next afternoon or during the next bus ride. Besides, have you considered the contradictory information contained in proverbs?
“Look before you leap” vs. “He who hesitates is lost.”
“The pen is mightier than the sword.” vs. “Actions speak louder than words.”
“A change is as good as a holiday.” vs. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“Birds of a feather flock together.” vs. “Opposites attract.”
“Clothes make the man.” vs. “Never judge a book by its cover.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” vs. “Familiarity breeds contempt.” (Both seemed to apply to our relationship.)
Discovering
One afternoon at her place, we were straightening the living room when I discovered a pair of panties scrunched down in between the sofa cushions. They were nice. Skimpy, flimsy, sheer. Great to look at and would be terrific to touch when they were filled out by a beautiful woman’s body.
“One of yours?” I asked, smiling.
“Let me see,” she said. “Nope.”
“One of your mom’s?”
“Are you kidding? She always wears cotton.”
“Your sister’s, then.”
“Nope.”
“Um, then I don’t — ”
“I told you before: you have your friends and I have mine.”
“You mean. . . ”
“You’re not the only one playing The Game,” she said.
Game Over
I had read about men with men and women with women but never met anyone who was involved with any of that. Or at least I’d never met anyone who talked about it. Picturing Jeanne with another girl wasn’t such a bad fantasy. Thoughts like that fueled the fire for several weeks. Until one day she mentioned something about having “a couple people over for gaming.”
“You mean me and you and your friend?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t mean that.”
“So, what are you talking about?”
“You’re not the only one.”
“Yeah, I get that. You have more than one girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“Am I your only boyfriend?”
“You’re not my boyfriend.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
I honestly didn’t know what was going on. I was out of my depth here. “How many players are we talking about?”
“I’m not going to give you a list of names.”
“There’s enough for a list?!”
“I knew you couldn’t handle this,” she said, and began straightening clothes in her closet. She did that whenever the conversation strayed onto a topic she didn’t like.
The conversation wasn’t much to my liking either, but we did keep talking, and slowly the picture emerged. There were about five different people involved at the moment and there had been dozens in the recent past. I was just the latest. We had been hot ‘n’ heavy for a while, to use her term, but now she was moving on.
Wait! “Moving-ing-ing on-on-on…” There was an echo to her words. Then there was an intense and frightening reverberation to all the sounds in her house. And soon there was a full roar everywhere, building to a crescendo of noise and sonic overload and cacophony and thunder that did not end.
“But. . . !?” I stammered. “I don’t. . .!?” I gulped. “What are you. . . ?!” I wasn’t questioning what she was saying — the meaning got through to me. But I literally could not hear her.
Nor could I hear anything else. I staggered out of her house, weak in the knees. Suddenly the sound cloud reversed itself. And there was Nothing. Nothing in the atmosphere but the empty whoosh of air. A car drove past in silence. Then another and another, each with a purity of silence. A dog in the yard across the street was barking without making any noise at all.
I began walking home while my head cleared. I was hurt. Dismayed. Shocked. Deflated. Until it occurred to me that I could play The Game with others.
Which brightened my mood somewhat. Although finding new partners proved more difficult than I had initially expected. Because, as it turns out, it was much easier for a desirable girl to play around than someone, well, like me. Still, it didn’t keep me from trying.
So allow me to say something to you now that is from the bottom of my heart and the top of my tummy (they are so close that I don’t know which one is applicable here). . . you must work hard, be diligent, remain dedicated. You must strive to be able to play on. And I hope that, as you move through your life, you will be able to utilize the lessons arranged for you in this chapter: No matter what obstacles or kitchen utensils you encounter in life, You Must Follow Your Dream! Even if your dream is to get laid.
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“Secret Sex, A Book Alive Online,” written and lived by John Scott G, is Copr. © 2011-2012 by JSG, all rights reserved under U.S. and international copyright conventions. Commercial use in any form is forbidden without express written permission of the author. Originally published on eNewsChannels.com with permission. Credits: Book cover design: Phil Hatten; Author Photo: Phil Hatten.
