Chapter Six: A Lessons in Dating, Part 1
Fortunately, not all of my friends were like Helen. Gemma was another girl that I hung out with. She was a cute blonde with a great personality. She was funny and always had a good comeback; while she wasn't in the best cliques, she was certainly well liked.
Ken and Helen started going out, and after seeing them together for a while, it made me realize that I wanted to ask Gemma out. However, before I did, I decided to ask my mother about it.
"Mom, how do I ask a girl out?" I asked her.
"Are you interested in someone in particular, or is this a hypothetical question?" she asked.
"Gemma," I told her.
My mother had met Gemma when she had been over. I sometimes, though not often, had a group of friends over. We had a nice house and a pool, so my friends enjoyed it, but I wasn't always comfortable, because I felt it impinged on my domain. When my friends came over, which I always announced beforehand, my mother made sure that she and Girl were dressed in a much less revealing fashion and Girl behaved quite differently. It wasn't that I minded the style of dress or the behavior, just that it felt dishonest, as if we were putting on a show. As a result, I didn't have them over often, but on occasion, they did visit.
"Gemma's very nice," Mom told me. "When did you decide you wanted to start dating?"
"Well, Ken has been dating Helen for a while, and he seems to like it, so I thought it was about time for me to start dating," I replied.
"Ken and Helen?" Mom exclaimed. "That seems like a weird couple."
"I know," I said darkly.
"So now that your friends are dating, you feel you need to as well?" she asked.
"Well, I'd like to see what it's like, and I do like Gemma a lot," I told her uncomfortably.
"That's nice," she said with a smile. "I think the best thing to do is to just tell her that you like her and that it would make you happy to go out with her."
"OK," I said. It made sense, and I thought that Gemma would say yes.
"Before you ask her, though, you should talk to your father," my mother told me.
"Why?" I asked.
"Well, I think he wants to give you some advice," she explained.
Later that night, after my father came home, I told him my plans to ask Gemma out.
"My son is growing up," he said with a smile.
"Dad!" I complained.
"That's OK," he told me. "But I'd ask that you wait a month or so to ask her out."
"Why?" I asked. I didn't think that I was patient enough to put this off a month, now that I had decided to do it!
"Well, I gave you access to Girl so that you'd feel more comfortable around women," he explained. "Girl, however, is not a good model to base a dating experience on. You will find, as I'm sure you know, that she is not at all representative of the girls that you will be dating. What I'd like to do is set you up on a few dates, let's call them practice runs, with a woman who will behave more like a real date would behave."
"I guess," I said, though I was disappointed that I would have to wait to ask out Gemma. "Why do I need to do that? Will it be someone my age?"
My dad smiled and shook his head. "For my purposes, an eight grader would be totally inappropriate. No, the girl that you will be dating is a friend of mine named Katherine, and she is eighteen years old."
"Eighteen?" I asked in surprise.
"Yes," he told me. "The person needs to be of legal age to make decisions for herself, and the perfect girl is a little older than you. However, she will try and act like an eighth grader. You know - immature."
"Dad!" I whined again.
"As to whether you need to do this, the answer is no," Dad said. "However, my advice to you is to take me up on this offer. You will be asking Gemma out for the first time. You will be dating for the first time. Certainly, it can be fun and interesting to experience the dating experience as a novice, but I think that you'll find that if you do this dry run in a non-threatening environment, when you do finally ask Gemma out, things will go much more smoothly. You'll be confident, because you will know what to expect, and as a result, Gemma will have a better time."
I rolled this around my mind. Certainly, an eighteen year old would be very sexy. However I wasn't sure that it would really be the same as dating someone in my class. Nevertheless, my father's ideas had been quite satisfying in the past, so I agreed.
"Let me just warn you," my father told me. "After each date, Katherine will provide me with a critique. Don't be offended; just think of it as a learning experience. She'll tell you what you did right, and what you did wrong, and you'll be able to correct for the next time."
"Great," I thought. "Another class."
That weekend, my Mom drove me to meet Katherine. Though Katherine probably knew how to drive, she was playing a girl my age, so Mom was driving us to the movies. We stopped at her apartment and I went to the door. I knocked on the door, and a girl opened it.
"Katherine?" I asked.
She nodded and held her hand out, "I assume that you are Jake?"
I shook her hand as I appraised her. She had brown hair and was wearing only a little makeup. Her hair was done in a plain style and she was wearing a short tight skirt and a cute sweater, something I'd expect to see Gemma wearing. She was short, probably just five feet, and her tits were relatively small. All in all, she didn't look all that much older than I did.
After shaking her hand, on the spur of the moment I bent over and kissed the back of it. She giggled and blushed, and we went out to my mom's car.
"Thanks for asking me out," she said when we were strapped into the back seat of the car. "What are we going to see?"
"Well, there are a couple of movies playing and since I wasn't sure of your tastes, I thought that we'd decide together." We discussed the options, and decided on a romantic comedy. It was not my first choice, but I hoped that the comedy would be enough to make up for the romance, and I figured that it wouldn't hurt to make her happy.
We went to the movie theater, and I bought her ticket and food. My dad had given me money for this date, since it was his idea, but he warned me that I would have to spend my own money once I started dating for real. As we stood in line for the popcorn, Katherine held my hand in hers. I smiled at her nervously, and soon I pulled away to place the order.
We sat down in the theater; there was still about ten minutes before the movie began, so we told each other about ourselves, or rather, I told her about myself, and she told me about a fictional eighth grader. Well, perhaps it wasn't fictional, maybe it was her in eighth grade, but I knew that it wasn't her now.
The movie started and we watched it, quietly trading occasional comments. After the movie, we walked to a nearby ice cream store and got an after movie snack. We talked a bit more, and I came to believe that the picture that she presented was, in fact, her own story. Given what we were doing, and the fact that my parents 'knew' her, probably in the biblical sense, I was amazed that she'd had such a regular childhood. Then again, I probably shouldn't have. Most people who came into this lifestyle probably worked their way there slowly as they matured; not everyone could have a family as open as mine.
I really wanted to question her about her real life, who she was and how she got there from this ordinary eighth grader, but I would have to leave that for a different time. Now we were just two teens on a date. Eventually the time came for us to leave and my mom came and drove us home. I walked Katherine to the door and told her that I had a very nice time. She thanked me, then I waved good bye and went back to the car.
When I got home, Dad called me into his study. "I've just been on the phone with Katherine," he told me. "Before I tell you what she said, why don't you tell me how you think that it went?"
"OK, I guess," I said.
"Just OK?" he asked.
"Well, I didn't really know her that well," I explained. "We had a nice time, but I guess we weren't entirely comfortable with each other."
"Well, Katherine agreed with you," Dad told me. "She said that you were nice when you picked her up, and kissing her hand was charming. She also liked that you discussed the movie choice with her, and she realized that it might not have been your favorite choice, so she appreciated you taking her tastes into consideration.
"She was disappointed, however, when you pulled your hand out of hers abruptly after she had gone out of her way to show affection. She also said that you didn't seem very assertive or confident most of the night. You were pleasant, but that you should have just been yourself more, and not been so nervous."
"But it was my first date!" I complained.
Dad smiled and said, "I'm not saying that you did badly! For a first date, it was actually quite good. I'll confess that my first date probably went much poorer than yours. But you should learn from the criticism. Next time, don't worry so much about it, just have fun! You'll find that she enjoys it more as well!"
Dad looked at me for a moment and then asked, "Did she turn you on?"
I was a bit embarrassed, but I said, "To be honest, though she was quite nice, I wasn't thinking of her that way. I was more worried about how things were going."
"Well, then you were definitely too nervous because she is a very attractive and sexy girl, and if she didn't get to you, then you weren't paying attention."
He got up and patted my back. "Don't worry! Next time will be better, I'm sure."
I went to bed, and I rethought the date. I agreed with what Katherine and my dad had said. I re-examined the night's events in my head and thought where I could have done things differently, and I resolved strategies for next time. Then I thought about Katherine a bit more, and I realized my father was right, so I called Girl into my room; I guess that Katherine had turned me on after all!