THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER FORTY - THE JOKER
THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO OUR FAMILY DOG, PANXITA
WHO AFTER 16 YEARS OF LIVING JUST ABOUT THE BEST LIFE, A DOG POSSIBLY COULD, BARKED HER FINAL GOODBYES TO THE WORLD ON DECEMBER 16TH, 2023.
HAVE FUN IN DOGGY HEAVEN, WHERE THE TREATS AND CUDDLES ARE EVERYWHERE AND THERE´S NEVER A SHORTAGE OF FOUR-LEGGED FRIENDS TO PLAY WITH!
GODDBYE, MY ALWAYS SWEET AND LOYAL COMPANION
"I´m a picker, I´m a grinner
I´m a lover and I´m a sinner
I play my music in the sun
I´m a joker, I´m a smoker
I´m a midnight toker
I sure don´t want to hurt no one"
STEVE MILLER (From the album "The Joker" (1973))
Sent: March 29th, 1999
From: SpielbergsDisciple
To: AGirlNamedJoey
Subject: How´s it hanging?
Hi, Joey. It´s been a few weeks since our last e-mail exchange, so I just wanted to make sure, that you hadn´t forgotten all about me!
Back here, I´ve been busy with getting everything prepared, for us to (hopefully) be able to begin casting next week, while I´ll be working practically around the clock on doing pre-production, along with keeping up in school. Buy hey, I can always sleep when I´m dead, right? One bright spot is that my folks are letting me have the house to myself for half of the weekend, so Mary-Beth is coming over for a romantic dinner.
Pacey says hi too, by the way. I don´t know if it´s some kind of phobia, that he has towards electronic mediums, but I wouldn´t rule it out entirely! You´ll just have be patient with him, I´m afraid!
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Dawson
Sent: March 29th, 1999
From: AGirlNamedJoey
To: SpielbergsDisciple
Subject: re: How´s it Hanging?
Hi, Dawson. Sorry, that I haven´t written these past few weeks, but they´ve been flying by, like there´s no tomorrow! It´s insane to think that I´ve nearly been here for three months already and that it´ll only be a few months, until I have to travel home again! This weekend, as a reward for the near-perfect report card, I came home with, my host parents are taking me and Emma to Euro Disneyland near Paris, and since it´s likely to be my only time visiting there, I´m looking forward it like a kid before X-Mas! They´re only paying for the trip and the entrance fee, so it´ll probably wipe out a good chunk of the rest of my winnings from the beauty contest, but we only live once, right?
Good luck with everything, Dawson! I know in my heart that you can do anything, you set your mind to! Oh, and have fun on your date!
Love, Joey.
Have you ever felt like the joke was on you? To Dawson, it was close to the best description of the situation, he´d put himself in. One thing was that he had to juggle having two girlfriends at the same time (even if one of them didn´t see themselves as being one, and had another boyfriend), a situation that he wouldn´t wish happening to his worst enemy, but on top of that he both had a movie to make (not a small feat in itself!) and with the end of the schoolyear (and with that also finals) coming up soon, he couldn´t slack off on his schoolwork, or he´d be sure to be hearing constant sly little passive/aggressive remarks from his mom about it, pretty much from when his summer vacation began, to when it came to an end. In other words, a fate ten times worse than death!
"What does this thing do?" Pacey confusedly asked him, while they were spending their Saturday afternoon busily unpacking the new camera (an actual movie camera, as opposed to the glorified home video one, that he´d shot his first movie on), boom mike (with an extendable metal rod, to go along with it) and small lighting setup, that would allow them to shoot scenes outside in the evening. and had all been delivered to his door that morning. Thanks to his dad helping him with finding the best offers online, he´d only paid a little over three grand for the whole setup, a great deal less than what he´d expected it to cost him.
Having the proper equipment, that he needed, was something, he really could have used when shooting his first movie, especially considering that it was after all, intended to be a scary horror movie! Looking back on it now, it felt infinitely more campy, than scary to him, and if this was going to be a movie, that he could be proud of (and perhaps even, put him on the map as a young film maker, to watch out for in the future), then the production values would have to be upped by a long way, to go along with the far better script, he felt like he had this time around.
"That´s ..." he began saying, as Pacey handed the "Whatever it Was" over to him. "Something, I´m not sure of what is either! We´ll figure it out sooner or later".
"Do you think your idol Steven Spielberg ever looked at a piece of filming equipment and had no clue, what it was?" his friend teasingly asked, before continuing with his share of the unboxing process.
"He probably did, when he was my age. Rome wasn´t built in a day, Pacey. Not even for the best of them!"
"Let me ask you this, then? How old was Spielberg, when he directed his first movie? If anyone in this entire town would know, I´m sure, it´s you!"
"If we count the first projects, he directed for TV, I´d say that he was around twenty-two, twenty-three. Why?"
"I´m getting to it. And I´m guessing, that he´d spent a few years film school before then?"
"Actually, he got turned down by the film school, that he most wanted to go to, believe it or not! Can you imagine having been the Dean of that school, who´d told Steven Spielberg, the most successful movie director of all time, that he wasn´t worthy of getting into his precious school? I bet, that guy felt like a total doofus, when he saw Spielberg winning the best director award at the Oscars!"
"I´d be surprised too, if he didn´t! Dawson, my point is that when you start out training to be a mountain climber, you don´t start off by trying to climb Mount Everest! Just like you don´t enter into the Tour de France, when you still need to have training wheels on your bicycle!" Pacey exclaimed, making a point that had popped into Dawson´s own head a time or two as well.
"I know that it´s perhaps an overly ambitious project, better than anyone does!" he tried objecting.
"I´m not sure that you do! Listen, your first movie, it was just you, me and Joey working on it for the most part and joining us during the last part of filming it, was Jen. If we messed up a scene or two, it was like, so what? There wasn´t any pressure on us to get anything done within a certain time frame, and if a shot came out blurry, we could just re-shoot it the next day, and there´d be no worries! This time, you´ll have to worry about staying within a budget and keeping things moving according to a schedule, there´ll be people counting on you to pay them on time, and with the expectations that you´ve set up for yourself with this flick ..."
"Pace, don´t you think that I´ve had all of those thoughts too?" he had to interject, if nothing else not to let his buddy beat him, when it came to who was the bigger realist out of them.
"All I´m saying is that everything considered, don´t you think it would better to push off the start of the shoot until this summer, when you won´t have any schoolwork to worry over and your all-time favorite distraction will be off on her own little vacation, far away from you?"
"I´ve already told you, that I agreed to spend part of it visiting my aunt in Philadelphia. Not to mention, that If I push it off, who´ll I get to act in it? Nearly everyone that I´m thinking of casting goes to our school, and I´m pretty sure, they have other and, in their eyes, far more interesting plans for their summer, than spending it being bossed around by me! Plus, who´s to say if one of my principal cast members doesn´t have to move away, thanks to their parents and suddenly switches schools? I´d have to reshoot every scene, that I´d already shot with them, and even then, it wouldn´t live up to my original vision. Have some faith in me, Pacey. That´s all I´m asking from you, as my best friend".
"Hey, I have all of the faith in the world in you!" his friend reassured him. "I just don´t want you to come to me in a month and telling me, that you´re considering making a run for it, because it´s become too much for you!"
"I won´t, I promise! You have my word as a former boy-scout!" he answered, trying to sound as confident, as it was within him to do.
Was it real confidence though, or just an act, he was trying to sell to his oldest compadre? To be honest, even Dawson himself wasn´t entirely certain.
For the first time in her life, Mary-Beth could say that it was near impossible for her to find ways, that it could be better. Dawson, in spite of her initial reservations over dating a guy, who clearly wasn´t over another girl yet, had turned out to be the poster boy, for exactly what the best kind of boyfriend is, when you´re fifteen, in your first relationship and all of the things that come along with it, are things that you´re slowly picking up along the way. Him being as inexperienced, as she herself was, meant that their whole relationship felt to her like a journey, they were going through together and if that wasn´t enough, it was like lately he´d been even more attentive to her needs, than he had been at first, and was trying harder than usual, when it came to keeping a smile on her face, every time that they spent alone time together.
The one slight drawback, she could see in their future, would be when his movie went into full production mode, which would no doubt take up a large chunk of his available after school hours. Since it would only be for a short period of time, she could live with it however, as long as he kept up the sublime work, when it came to keeping her happy the rest of the time!
Him being busy making his movie, could even be a small advantage to her, she figured, since it was already becoming clear to her, that the role of student body president came with nothing short of a mountain of extra work. Both, when it came to the meetings themselves, but just as much in making sure that she was properly prepared for them, if only so that she wouldn´t come off as being in over her head. Which, in all fairness, she still wasn´t sure if she wasn´t, but so far at least (in the three meetings that her newly selected committee had held), if felt to her like she´d come off as being qualified for the job, and hadn´t just been someone, who´d lucked into it, after most of those competing against her (for one reason or another) had dropped out of the election.
She already knew that she would be spending much of her summer vacation in Montana, visiting the lion´s share of her family, that lived down there. She didn´t mind this at all, seeing as she (aside from those few weeks every summer) only got to see them at Christmas (even that hadn´t been every year), and they always welcomed her back with open arms, making her feel at home, if not instantly, then close to it. Dawson had plans to spend part of his summer in Philadelphia, that much she already knew from being told by him, meaning that whatever time they had together until then would be precious, and she planned on milking it, for all it was worth. Whether the "Milking it" part also extended to going further in the touchy-feely sense, than they already had, was something she was still debating within herself. What she could say with certainty though, was that it wasn´t entirely out of the question.
It was with all of these thoughts in her head, that she took Mikey, their family´s nine-year-old Briard and in many ways, second child of the family, for a nice, long walk downtown to the only store in town, where she could buy the pet food for him, that her mom had forgotten to buy, every time that she´d passed by the store for the past two weeks. Seeing as it was a beautiful early spring day and she couldn´t allow their beloved pooch to starve (not that she didn´t know all too well, that her parents would just spoil him rotten with other kinds of food instead!), she didn´t mind any more than he did, taking him out to experience a little more, than their usual walks around the neighborhood offered a dog like him, who was still as curious when it came to exploring the world, as he´d been, when they´d first gotten him as a tiny and unbelievably adorable, little puppy.
The store, that she needed to go to, called "Everything for Everything Living", was down close to the pier and was one, mostly frequented by a combination of other local pet owners, combined with farmers or farm hands from the small handful of farms, that in the old days used to almost fill the entire region, but had since declined rapidly both in size and numbers, and in the summer a whole lot of tourists, by far the most of whom came in there to buy bait, for their upcoming fishing trips. After leashing Mikey up outside of the store and assuring him, that she wouldn´t be long, she quickly went in to buy a four-pound bag of dry food for him, along with a small bag of doggy treats, that she knew from experience were his favorites.
As she came out, she saw that he´d managed to make yet another human friend, while she´d been inside the store. Not that it was anything out of the usual for him to do so!
"His name is Mikey, in case you were wondering" she told the girl her own age, that she recognized from school. From what she remembered, her name was Hannah, but it wasn´t like they´d ever spoken to one another. Mikey clearly liked her though, and especially, the kind and caring way she was cuddling him, so that was a positive sign!
"I´m sorry. I was sitting in the restaurant across the street with my parents, waiting for the lunch we´d ordered to arrive, when I saw him standing here all by himself and I couldn´t help myself. I´m Hannah, by the way" the girl introduced herself and they smiled at one another.
"I recognized you from school. I´m Mary-Beth, but I have a feeling that you already knew that!"
"It would have been close to impossible to not have heard your name mentioned ten times a day, minimum, these past weeks! Congratulations on winning the election. I voted for you, like pretty much everyone else, I know, also did!" Hannah, in an almost overly friendly tone, told her.
"Thanks. And if you feel like you should apologize to anyone, it should be Mikey, but it doesn´t look like he has anything to complain over!" she joked back to Hannah, who let out a small giggle, as she gave little Mikey a good rub, from the top of his back, down to the beginning of his tail.
"If only boys were as easy to deal with, as one of his kind is, am I right? You go out with Dawson, don´t you?" Hannah, in what seemed like a slightly peculiar question to her, asked.
"That´s one way of saying it, but we´re a little more serious than that" she answered, not wanting to disclose too much to someone, who still was a stranger to her.
"How serious are we talking here? He hasn´t asked you to marry him yet, has he?" Hannah asked, as she raised a concerned eyebrow and now, it was Mary-Beth, who couldn´t help herself from giggling.
"It hasn´t gone that far! Not yet at least!" she told Hannah, who let out a small sigh.
"That´s a relief! Don´t get me wrong, he seems like a nice and talented guy. Otherwise, I wouldn´t have agreed to invest a cent in his movie! I´d just hate to see a girl like you, who has the world at her feet right now, throw it all away for some guy, who might not be worth it. You could call it a natural concern, that I have for the not-so-tough parts of the female race, nothing more. So, I´m guessing that you live around here?" Hannah, in yet another in her line of questions, that were bordering in being a tad too personal, asked.
"Actually, we live a couple of miles away and we should probably get going, before he becomes so hungry, that he´ll start chasing the birds and squirrels around!" she jokingly excused herself, from this "almost interrogation", Hannah was putting her through.
"We can´t have that, can we?" Hannah smilingly replied. "We should talk more at school, than we have so far, Mary-Beth. You seem like the kind of cool girl, I wouldn´t mind hanging out with" Hannah bid her goodbyes, before heading back to her parents and the lunch, that was sure to be better than the three slices of toast, Mary-Beth had for her lunch.
On the walk home, she kept replaying her short encounter with Hannah inside of her head. It wasn´t like it had been an uncomfortable experience, still, something about the way, that girl had asked her questions, seemed off to her, like she had some other reason for trying to befriend her, than just the both of them being dog lovers.
For now, though, she had a big date with Dawson that evening, to get ready for. With her parents having allowed her to stay the night there and his parents letting him have the house to himself, until they were to arrive home, circa noon the day after, who was to say what exactly might transpire between them in the early hours of the night?
After Pacey had headed over to his brother´s, to see if he couldn´t bum a ride home from him, Dawson had spent the next hours meticulously going over everything for the evening ahead. From making sure two times, that he´d bought all of the ingredients for the lasagna, he was making for himself and his date, to carefully selecting the most romantic songs, for when they got to "That Part" of the evening, there was practically nothing left to chance, save for an unforeseen accident, like the entire power supply in their house going out, or something akin to it.
He´d only just finished honing his look for the evening, when the phone rang. His first thought was that it could be the TV station, his mom worked for, who were prone to calling her at home so often on the weekends, that it sometimes annoyed her. He therefore didn´t pay it much mind, when he put the receiver up to his ear.
"Leery residence. This is Dawson speaking" he said, trying to sound as proper on the phone as he could, in case it was someone from the station.
"Don´t you sound like the receptionist, every time I´ve called my dad at his office?" an unwelcome voice on the other end playfully replied.
"What do you want, Hannah? I´m getting ready for a date with my REAL girlfriend!" he told what was no doubt the last girl, that he wanted to talk to at that moment.
"Is that a feeble attempt to hurt me, Dawson?" she asked him mockingly. "If I gave a rat´s behind what you thought of me, I might have cared, but I don´t! So, you have a big date tonight, huh? Do you think Mary-Beth will spread those virginal legs of hers for you, and you´ll get lucky?
"Don´t talk about her like that! Look, if the only reason you called was to taunt me, I´m hanging up!"
"Easy there, Romeo! I just wanted you to know, that I had a little chat with her today".
"You´re lying and I´m hanging up!"
"If you don´t believe me, just ask her. Don´t worry, I didn´t spill any sordid details to her, that you wouldn´t want your sweetheart to hear! Yet anyway!" Hannah menacingly said, sending a knot flying right down into his stomach.
"What´s that supposed to mean?" he asked, all the time dreading what would be said next.
"She´s real a little sweetheart, isn´t she? I know that I took an instant liking to her, once we got talking".
"And?"
"And it would be a real shame for someone like her, to get her heart broken. She can have you all to herself tonight, as long as you´re mine tomorrow evening. Is that understood?"
"What if I say no?" he asked, even if he could already guess, what the answer was.
"Do I really have to say it out loud? Face the facts, Loverboy! From now, until I decide to let you off the hook, I own you! Play nice and you won´t have anything to worry about. Don´t, and I´ll have to tell my new friend Mary-Beth all about how easy it´s been for me, to make you forget all about her!"
He didn´t get to reply, before Hannah hung up on him. As he stood there for over a minute afterwards, staring out into blank space, it was more a feeling of disbelief, than anything else, that filled him.
Was she bluffing or not? It was hard to say, but what the question was even more, was if he could afford to find out, if she was or not.
No matter what the case, he had a lasagna to take out of the oven, so it could be allowed to rest for a short while, before his date got there. Unfortunately, he didn´t have the time to, because moments later, it knocked on their door.
It was almost a relief to him, to see that it was Pacey.
"I must have dropped my wallet somewhere, and you know that I hate to interrupt, when you have a date coming over, but ..."
"It´s fine, Pacey. You can come in and look for it" he told his friend, who looked a bit relieved.
"Thanks. It´s been driving me off the wall, since I realized, it was missing! Is Mary-Beth here yet?"
"No, but she shouldn´t be long. Come in" he said to Pacey, who didn´t have to be told twice.
To Pacey´s relief, it didn´t take him more than a few minutes to locate his wallet. While he was looking for it, Dawson used the time to set the dining room table for himself and Mary-Beth.
"Your dinner sure smells nice! You´re sure that I convince you to let me stay for an hour or two?" Pacey jokingly asked.
"Not this time!" he quickly answered his best bud, who must have picked up on him still being shook up, from his phone conversation with Hannah.
"Are you okay?" Pacey asked, sounding concerned.
"Yeah, why?"
"When I left here a few hours ago, you were on cloud nine over your date tonight. Did something happen in the meantime?"
"It´s just pre-date jitters, nothing else. I´m fine, Pacey" he reassured his friend, who smiled to himself.
"You still get pre-date jitters, even after all of these months, where you and MB have been going on at least one date a week? That´s so cute, dude!" Pacey quipped, making both of them laugh.
"I can´t help it! Just between us, I´m also kind of hoping that this will be the evening, where we ... consummate our relationship, if you catch my drift?"
"Ah! Got ya! Well, best of luck with that! Do you have protection, in case things go the way, you´re hoping, that they will?" Pacey asked and of course, in spite of all of his meticulous planning, when it came to this evening, there had to be one extremely important thing, that he´d forgotten to buy!
"It´s the one thing, I forgot to pick up from the store! Dammit!" he blurted out, but as the good friend that he was, Pacey had the solution for him hidden in his wallet.
"I bought a few of them, after the first time, me and Joey ... that´s not important!" Pacey stopped himself, before he´d revealed too much. "They only cost me a few bucks each, so just accept it for a present".
Within moments, a vital piece of prophylactic had switched hands between the boys, and Pacey looked like, he was about to leave.
"Have you and Joey done the deed yet? I mean, you don´t have to answer, and it´s none of my business, if you have. I ... nah, just forget it!"
"What is it, Dawson? Time is ticking down to your hot hook-up, so we don´t have all evening, to wait for you to get the words out!"
"I´m just not sure that we´re ready to go all the way yet! There are a lot of commitment things, that come with ... doing that, you know?"
"Yeah, I know. Look, don´t tell Joey that I´ve disclosed anything about what we´ve done in private together, or she´ll literally tear my head and assorted other limbs right off my body, that I´m sure, I need to survive! All I can tell you is that we haven´t done that one thing, either and it´s for the same reasons, that you haven´t. Sex is a huge step and the last thing you want to do, is mess up your first time, right? So, just take it as far with her, as you´re both comfortable with, and save the images from that into your spank bank!" Pacey advised him, as only Pacey could!
"What if she´s disappointed, that we don´t end up doing it?"
"It´s Mary-Beth that we´re talking about here, not Sharon Stone in the ending to "Basic Instinct"! She´ll be more than happy, as long as she gets all that she can handle, when it comes to intimacy from you. Dawson, you couldn´t have picked a better girl for yourself, and I mean that with all sincerity! It´s like you´re meant for one another!"
"You really think so?"
"I´m so sure of it, that I´ll swim buck naked from one side of the creek to the other, if you two aren´t still a couple, by the end of this school year! Have a nice evening!" Pacey said his goodbyes and was soon out of the door again.
If they were so perfect together though, why had it been so easy for Hannah to seduce him? This was a question that Dawson pondered, right up until their door bell rang, signaling the arrival of the girl, he now knew for certain, that he was truly in love with.
When she´d arrived at Dawson´s house, Mary-Beth hadn´t been sure what to expect, except that she was sure, she would wind up enjoying herself that evening. Anything else, naked activities included, would just be a bonus and nothing more.
In those regards, the evening was a pretty decent success, seeing as they rounded third base for the first time. To her (pleasant) surprise, he even seemed to know what he was doing down there, and wasn´t at all acting like the fumbling first-timer, she´d expected him to be. Truth be told, he´d been VERY knowledgeable, and while having sex with him would surely have been great too, she really didn´t need any more pleasuring, than she´d already been subjected to that evening. Part of her, the constantly curious side, wanted to press him on how, he could possibly know a girl´s body so well, when he hadn´t tried more than she had before. Then again, why should she do anything to potentially ruin, what had been a through and through perfect date night?
As for her date, by the time her mom picked her up in her car the day after, she wasn´t sure if she wasn´t already dating the boy of her dreams.
END OF CHAPTER FORTY