THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - WE DON´T HAVE TO TAKE OUR CLOTHES OFF
"We don't have to take our clothes off
To have a good time, oh, no
We could dance and party all night
And drink some cherry wine, uh-huh?"
JERMAINE STEWART (From the album "Frantic Romantic" (1986))
Sent: March 16th, 1999
From: JenRocks
To: AGirlNamedJoey
Subject: The dance.
Hi, Joey. I can already guess that you´re waiting excitedly for the low down, on what went down at the dance, so I´d better fill you in!
We started our evening at the Ice House ...
"Jen, I´ve never met a girl like you before. You´re warm and sweet, like no one else, and with the exception of my sister, I´ve ... I probably shouldn´t bring Andie into it! Okay, let´s try this again!" Jack told himself, while he was practicing in front of the mirror, how to break the news to Jen that evening, that for as much as he´d become fond of that awesome girl from New York (which admittedly, was a heck of a lot!), there was a very good reason, why he couldn´t date her.
"Who are you talking to, Jack?" he heard his sister say through the door to their bathroom, which he was already well aware, that he´d been occupying for too long, especially considering that his twin sister had her own big date, to get ready for.
"No one, Andie! I´ll be out in a moment" he quickly replied to her and for as little as he liked to, he had to admit to himself, that when the time to come clean came, he´d probably have to wing it and just hope that his date for the evening wouldn´t be a slobbering mess, after he was done with his "confessional".
"Well, get out of there! I have to pee really bad, and I can´t wait any longer!" Andie complained loudly and with such an emergency on his sister´s hands, all he could do was unlock the door for her. Moments later, his flustered looking sister came rushing in.
"Unless you´re ready to see a whole lot more of me, than I have a feeling that you´d like to, I suggest that you move your butt out of here right away!" she told him off, as she hurried over to the toilet and began pulling her pants down.
"I have more than my share of issues, as it is!" he darkly joked to Andie, before leaving her to do her business.
What he´d kept telling himself over the past two weeks, since he´d asked Jen to the dance, was that it was only this first time, where coming out to someone would be this troublesome. That once he got this highly dreaded "virgin run" out of the way, it would be so much easier to come out to firstly his sister, followed by his other friends and eventually in time, his parents and the rest of their family. In that sense too, he knew that he couldn´t have found anyone better to come out to first, than a girl like Jen, whom he was sure wouldn´t become angry and in the worst case, out him to everyone else (until he was ready for it, at least). He´d heard and read stories about it happening and how the ones, who´d been outed, in some cases had become hunted prey by the moralistic masses, leading to them becoming outcasts and in the most tragic cases, going so far as taking their own lives, thanks to the hatred becoming too much to deal with. While he couldn´t in his wildest imagination see himself taking it that far, as someone who´d always preferred to blend into the background, the last thing he wanted was to be known as "The Only Gay Guy in School" and having to carry the stigmas that came with it everywhere he went, until high school came to an end, at the least.
It almost went without saying, that he´d rather have avoided having to turn down Jen at all, and in fleeting thoughts now and then, he´d actually gone so far, as to consider trying to convince her to enter into a "Fake Relationship", just so that his classmates (like he´d already overheard a few of them do) wouldn´t be logically asking themselves why a boy, who was well above average in the looks department, wasn´t using those looks to have plenty of girls lining up around the block, to try to get a date with him. Having a girlfriend (even a fake one) would quell those rumors in an instant. The only fault with that plan, was that he wasn´t sure if he was humanly capable of doing anything that could remotely hurt Jen, and that if he (even unknowingly) did so, it would no doubt stick to his conscience for years, even in the best-case scenario.
Had he only been straight, then he probably would have been looking forward to this day as the highlight of his life so far. As things stood, he was dreading it more, than anything else in his life.
Pacey, when it came to getting advice, had a number of sources to go to, depending on what his imminent problem was. If he´d gotten a stain on his shirt, for example, his first thought would be to go to his mom. A woman, who still hadn´t met a stain, that she in her stubbornness in getting rid of it, hadn´t gotten the better of in the end. If there was some piece of movie trivia, that he´d forgotten and it was bugging him, he had the walking movie encyclopedia known as Dawson, who in ninety-nine percent of cases had the needed info, hidden somewhere in the back on his mind. For advice on girls, his favorite choices (with Joey not being available at this time) were either Jen, or alternatively his older sister Gretchen, depending on what the exact issue consisted of. What he needed now, on the other hand, was a Bonafide expert when it came to repelling girls, and with his brother never having had a girlfriend, he figured that there wasn´t a bigger master on the subject anywhere in the world. Plus, as an added bonus of course, it also gave Pacey yet another chance to tease the living hell of out of his brother!
"Doug, I´m begging on my crying knees here! Tell me your secret, when it comes to becoming resistible to every female, walking the earth right now!" he jokingly said to his brother, who´d come over to their mom´s house to do his laundry, and wasn´t finding his joke funny in the slightest.
"Very funny, Pace! Doug is gay, ha, ha! Doesn´t it bother you at all, that I´m not?" Doug annoyedly answered him, while staring at his clothing spinning around inside of the washing machine.
"I think, we can all agree that it´s still up for debate! Come on, Doug! No man has that many Streisand CD´s in his collection, without having to ask himself some serious questions!" he couldn´t help himself from teasing his older brother, who gave him a glare that told him to lay off it, since he wasn´t in the mood. Not that he ever was, mind you.
"And what does that noise, you like to listen to, say about you?"
"If you´re referring to my love of Skynyrd, you should know that referring to the greatest band of all time as being noise, is a direct equivalent to musical sacrilege! Doug, please! I need your help here!"
"If you lay off the gay jokes, I can try to help. Don´t, and I´ll have to chase you out of your own house again!" Doug answered, like he meant it. The look that the brothers shared between them, put the matter to rest.
"How do you do it, Doug? I mean, for as little as I´d like to admit it, it isn´t like you´re ugly or anything like that!"
"Your point being?"
"That in a town, where every available bachelor your age has been snapped up long ago, it´s seriously like something out of the X-Files, that you´ve never even had a girlfriend! My only conclusion ..."
"This I have to hear!" Doug interrupted, before rolling his eyes.
"Is that you must unknowingly be transmitting some kind of vibe out, that sends every female creature running away from you, rather than to you! Teach me, Mr. Miyagi, so I can go to that dance tonight and I won´t wind up making out with my date and ruining my relationship with Joey!" he got down on his knees and half-way quipped to Doug, who just shook his head to himself, at his pleas.
"Let me ask you, Pacey. Do you want to make out with this girl, you´re going on a date with?"
"No, which is why I asked her to go with me as friends and nothing else, I swear! Only ..."
"She wants to be more than friends?"
"I´m strongly getting that feeling, yes. It´s isn´t like I´ve done anything to lead her on, not knowingly, anyway, It´s just ... my raw sexual magnetism, that´s been putting ideas in her head, I suppose!" he confided to his brother, who for once in a rare while let out a small laugh.
"Your ... raw sexual magnetism aside, wouldn´t it be easier to go with the most logical explanation?"
"Which is?"
"That what she´s picked up on, is that you´re a nice guy and that´s it. Granted, it´s been a while since I was your age and I can´t claim to ever have been a girl your age ..."
"Again, something that´s debatable! Sorry, I´ll stop now! It´s become like a natural reflex, I can help it!" he explained to an annoyed looking Doug, who in turn stared him directly into the eyes.
"Do you want my advice or not?"
"I said that I´m sorry, okay? Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You´re my only hope!" he quoted princess Leia from the first Star Wars movie, while mimicking Carrie Fisher´s body language from the scene in question. It only succeeded in drawing yet another headshake from his older brother.
"Now I´m Obi-Wan Kenobi, huh? What I was saying, before you had to be an obnoxious smart-ass for the tenth trillionth time, was that if you ask me, what she´s picking on is simply that you´re a naturally born and bred nice guy and someone, who wouldn´t dream doing anything to hurt her. Like it or not, Pacey. That´s a fact about yourself, it´s impossible to deny, even if you can be a royal pain sometimes!"
"You could be right. What if I tried behaving like a total jerk towards her tonight? Could that work?"
"I´ve never met the girl in question, or seen you act since that 3rd grade school play, and even I can already tell you, that if she has half a brain, she´ll see right through your act!" Doug sharply answered and was probably right.
"Unfortunately for me, she pretty much only takes advance classes in school".
"In which case, I´d definitely tell you to come up with a plan B. You can call it "The Curse of Being Nice", if you want to, but being as kind as you are, and far more caring towards the needs of others, than most boys your age are, is by a long way your most admirable quality. Of course, It´s a shame for all us, that you don´t have more than one, but that´s another matter! From what I remember, it´s also a quality that´s in extremely high demand among fifteen-year-old girls, that are on the lookout for a boyfriend" Doug explained and to some extent at least, what he´d said made sense to Pacey.
"Talk about being cursed! Why is it that when I didn´t have a girlfriend, there wasn´t a single girl in town, who would touch me with a pitchfork, and now, when I don´t want them to, I have too many of them wanting to hook up with me?" he sighingly asked his brother, who just smiled at his question.
"That´s a question, I´m guessing that men have asked themselves since the dawn of time, and the truth is that we still don´t have an answer for it. What I can tell you for sure, is that if you plan on staying with Joey until you´re old and grey, then this won´t be close to the only time, where you´ll have to tell some girl, that you can only be friends with her. If you want to put a positive spin on it, you can see this evening as helpful practice for your future" Doug explained and for a short moment, the two brothers actually shared a nice little moment of understanding between them.
Was it as easy as simply telling Andie, that he could only be friends with her and that was as far, as it would ever be likely to advance to between them? All Pacey could say, was that he hoped to his bones, that it would be.
Before the dance, they´d all agreed to meet up at the Ice House, since it was only a ten-minute walk away from the school and with it being one of the busiest days of the week at the restaurant, Abby would be heading straight from her job as a waitress, to the dance that awaited them. With Andie being the sort of person, to whom being the slightest bit late for anything is considered a disaster, the two of them had arrived in good time and with all of the dancing they were likely to do that evening, the siblings used the opportunity to have a short sit-down over a soda, while they waited for the rest of their party to start arriving.
The first couple to make their appearance (with the exception of Abby, who was busy serving tables at a break-neck speed), were the happy couple themselves, Dawson and Mary-Beth, who (aside from looking very quietly pretty, now that she was all dressed up) had the same constantly plastered on smile, that she´d had on every time that he´d seen her, since she´d become the youngest student body president at Capeside High in over forty years, at the election a week earlier. To Jack (and pretty much everyone else, from what he could tell), if there was one boy/girl coupling at his school that made perfect sense, it was those two. One part of it was that both of them were kind of shy and a more than a little bookish, but it was just as much that whenever you saw them talking, it was like they were off in their own little world full of teenage infatuation for one another, where every cloud was fluffy and pink, and nothing could ever come between them. The truth, as he was well aware, probably wasn´t that simple and if they didn´t argue at least a little here and there, it probably would have been un-natural. Still, if there was one couple at their school, that he´d be willing to put money on getting married someday, it would surely be those two young lovers.
They wouldn´t have to wait more than a minute or two for the next arrival, that being Pacey, who´d been given a lift by his brother Doug, in his brother´s police cruiser. He´d only met Doug once and you couldn´t say that it had been the best of first introductions (seeing as Doug was more concerned with scolding his little brother for yet another thing, Pacey had done wrong, than engaging in pleasantries), but Pacey had assured him that his brother wasn´t like that all of the time, just most of it and could on the rare occasion, show himself to be the kind of caring brother, that any guy would be lucky to have. One thing that Jack could easily tell, whenever Pacey talked about his siblings, was that in their own special way, they were almost as close, as he himself was with his sister. Speaking of his sister, he could have sworn that he´d practically seen her jaw drop, at the sight of Pacey in the used, but quite stylish suit, that he´d bought for thirty-two bucks their local Blue Cross, a few days earlier (something that Jack knew all about, since Jen had gone there with Pacey as his "Fashion Advisor"). To be honest, it felt a little strange to him, seeing Pacey wearing anything aside from his usual "As Casual, As Can Be, Wear", and seeing him in fancy wear would take some getting used to, no doubt. To himself however, all that mattered was if his sister was pleased with how her date looked and that, she clearly was in abundance! So much, in fact, that she nearly knocked their sodas over, when she got up from her seat to greet her date, and he had to quickly scramble, or their beverages would have wound up on the floor.
Melissa and Jen were the last to arrive, after having used the early part of the evening for some "sisterly" bonding, while they got ready for the dance together. During Jack´s time in our great, big world up to this point, he´d seen many attractive girls his own age and even gone on dates with a few of them, before Kate (who hadn´t been a slouch in the looks department either) had managed to snatch him up and become his first and so far, only girlfriend. Jen, in her elegant dress and made up to look like a million bucks, put all of them to shame and he could only imagine, that he would be sure to get a plethora of jealous looks that evening from other guys, who weren´t lucky enough to be there with someone as stunning looking, as his own private fairy-tale princess was. Not that Melissa wasn´t looking all kinds of pretty either (Abby clearly thought so!), but in all fairness, even the highest paid Super-Model would have looked common and plain, compared to his date for the evening.
"Do you like how I look?" Jen very cutely and nervously asked him, while they were waiting alone outside for Abby to change into her dress for the dance, and the rest of their party were indulging in the first tasting of a small "Party Snack Creation", that Bodie and Bessie were using the occasion to try out on them.
"Let me put it this way: You should prepare yourself for getting more than your share of jealous stares from the other girls tonight, and it won´t have the slightest thing to do with how good I look on your arm" he told her honestly, trying to praise how she looked, while at the same time carefully not giving off any indications, that he wanted to get with her.
If it worked or not, was hard to say, but she looked overjoyed at his praise, so that was at least something.
"You don´t look all that shabby yourself! I should warn you in advance, though. I know a grand total of three dance moves, and I can only do one of them fairly well!" she jokingly told him, before doing a comedic demonstration and them sharing a small, albeit clearly also very nervous, laugh over it.
"Trust me, Jen! By the end of this evening, it´ll be you feeling sorry for me, for looking like I was born with two left feet!" he joked back, getting yet another incredibly adorable smile out of her.
If only there hadn´t been that tiny thing known as his sexuality getting in the way, it would have been so easy to see himself starting a family with this gorgeous girl, after they´d dated throughout the rest of high school (and all of college of course), before they tied the knot in front of all of their friends and family, with all of them telling them stuff like "It was about time" and asking them, if it wasn´t time to put some work into a "Family Extension". He could just imagine Andie and his mom crying happy tears in the front row of the church, as himself and his bride said their "I do´s" to each other. To put the cherry on the Sundae, his dad would congratulate him on choosing the perfect girl, before they shook hands and agreed to let the past be the past. After they´d had that perfect wedding day, Jen and himself would live happily together forever more, raising a whole litter of kids, that they could use their life´s wisdom to steer in the right direction, while at the same time also working hard for themselves, so that when the kids had left home, they could just enjoy life, however much of it was left by that point.
Would his family be as happy for him, if the one he was getting married to was named Ethan, Darryl, or Mark, and there wasn´t a bride at the wedding, only two grooms? It was hard for him, to see his dad fully accepting it, when he thought back to various more or less bigoted comments about gays, that his dad had uttered in the past, and to his mom, this would mean that he couldn´t give her any biological grandchildren. With Andie, after having gone through her own personal hell in that looney bin for several months, being understandably scared of passing her mental illness down to her possible children, Tim not being with them anymore and it being unthinkable, that his parents would have any late runts of the litter, it was likely up to him, to continue their family lineage (in a biological sense, at least), if it wasn´t to completely die out.
No one knew all of this better than Jack, and as he stood there smiling back at a girl, that it was like had practically been made, so that they could end up together, it was with a head full of conflict and an unmistakable feeling, that when the time came to come clean to her about being gay, he would chicken out, like he usually did. Worst of all, he was also pretty sure, that if she tried to put the moves on him, he would have to fight an almost impossible internal fight not to want to kiss her back.
"Mmm! What is it?" a still chewing Pacey asked Bodie, who was introducing them to what clearly were the next generation, when it comes to party snacks!
"It´s ..." Bodie was just about to reply, when his fiancée butted in.
"A true magician never reveals his secrets! Does he, Pacey?" Bessie both answered and asked him, as if the fact that the tray of "Whatever it Was´s" had been emptied in no time, wasn´t answer enough for her!
"Not if he´s a good magician" he joked back, as Bessie gave him a silent signal to follow her out to the kitchen. As he followed after her, he already had a sense of what was coming.
"Does my little sister know that you´re out on a date tonight?" Bessie accusingly asked him, like only she could, putting every cop character ever written to shame, with how intimidating, she could be.
"She´s a hundred percent okay with it, I assure you, Bessie! If she hadn´t been, then I would have stayed home tonight and that´s the truth!" he nervously replied and had to wait for a few endless seconds of being stared down, until Bessie said anything again.
"You´re only going with that Andie girl as a friend, then?"
"It´s mainly because she´s been so nice, when it comes to tutoring me. Seeing as I can´t afford to pay her, if I´m going to get my boat seaworthy for the spring, the very least I can do is show her a heck of a time tonight" he assured Bessie, who looked far more calmed down now.
"That´s really all this evening is about?"
"Scout´s honor!" he told Bessie, while making the scout´s sign with his fingers. "She´s really nice and all of that, but you know that Joey is the only girl for me! All Andie is to me, is a girl who´s become a part of our little group of friends, nothing more!"
It was only a second or two later, when he saw who had been standing in the doorway and had heard the whole thing. As he did, seeing the look of disappointment on her face, made his heart sink.
"After all of this time, we´ve spent together and everything that I´ve done to help you, out of the pure goodness of my heart, I don´t mean anything to you?" Andie asked him full of blame, just as Bessie cleverly made her exit.
"I didn´t mean it like that, Andie!" he tried responding, even if the tears running down her cheeks told him, that it would take a miracle to save this situation.
"It´s what you just said, isn´t it? That all I am to you is a girl, who´s become a part of your little clique? You´re such a jerk, Pacey! Our date is off!" she yelled at him, before running away.
Standing there, feeling like a guy that made a late-night date with Freddy Krueger seem like "Date of the Year", compared to what he´d just done to Andie, he only had a few alternatives to choose from, none of which were pleasant choices. After a handful of seconds thinking about it, he realized what he had to do.
"Andie, will you listen to me? I´m so incredibly sorry, that you overheard what I said!" he tried to console a still crying Andie, who was hiding in the women´s room. It made everyone in the restaurant stare at him, but he couldn´t leave this like it was, so however much they decided to stare at him, he´d just have to endure it. To his relief, she soon opened the door, dragged him inside and into a stall, where she locked the door.
"You meant it though, didn´t you?" she asked him, with the stains from her tears having ruined her otherwise perfect make-up, from when she´d started the evening.
"Andie, Bessie is Joey´s older sister. If I´d said anything to her, that even slightly indicated that anything was going on between us, she would have told Joey about it in an instant! You have to understand, why I can´t risk that!" he tried to explain, even if he was also aware that it would be hard to say anything in this situation, that wouldn´t make him come off as a total jerk.
"Why not, Pacey? Joey just took off to France for half a year, without considering for a second, what it would do to you, and she left you all alone here! What does that tell you about her?" Andie, in a move he wasn´t at all prepared for, argued back at him.
"You don´t know her, Andie!" he tried arguing back, although his answer rang a little hollow, even in his own ears.
"It tells me that you´ve never meant nearly as much to her, as she does to you. I´m sorry, but I´ve kept my mouth shut long enough and I have to say these things, even if you don´t want to hear them. I´m here for the taking right now, if you want me, Pacey and I promise you that I can be even better to you, than she was! All you have to do is give me a chance to!" Andie implored him, just before she tried to move in for a kiss ...
END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A/N: Okay, I know that it´s a total jerk move of me to end it right there, but you can´t deny that it´s a pretty decent cliffhanger for the next chapter, can you? How it all turned out, you´ll find out in the next chapter, where we´ll also (finally) get to that dance, I promise!
As always, thanks for reading and any comments or pieces of feedback, that you may have for me, are highly appreciated.