THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE - FREE YOUR MIND

"Free your mind

And the rest will follow"

EN VOGUE (From the album "Funky Divas" (1992))

With Joey now having all of her afternoons and evenings off, it gave her more time to do the things that she'd always wanted to, like read the classics or immerse herself in her painting again, like she'd loved to do when she was a kid, and her and her mom could spend entire summer afternoons out on the porch together, just sitting there in silence and painting what they saw or came to their minds. What she ended up doing nine times out of ten was making out with Pacey in the cabin on his boat, and letting herself be swept away by the butterflies, it would send flying through her belly every time, without exception. Strangely enough, (since she'd thought that the magic of it all would wear off after a while) kissing him and groping him was still as arousing to her, as it had been that first evening on the front seat of the "Witter Wagoneer", where her concepts of what romantic love can be was constantly being flipped upside down with every kiss, they shared. Now that it had become such an important part of her life too, she couldn't imagine having to be without it again, which had also given her a new understanding for why some people can't stop longing for the one, who got away.

"I just wish that we didn't have to have all of these pesky clothes on" she moaningly told Pacey, who only by gently kissing her neck was giving her goosebumps all over. It also brought up the only problem with making out on his boat, that being that anyone who was standing on the dock could see what they were doing. Still, with it only being another couple of months before it was time to put the boat in storage for the winter, it was infinitely better than nothing and she knew that she had to take advantage of it, while she could.

"We could take a little sail out on the creek" he suggested, while still keeping up with those soft kisses that drove her innards wild.

"I'll have to pass. The last time that we left the harbor, Bessie saw that the boat wasn't in its usual spot, and I had to answer a bunch of embarrassing questions afterwards" she told Pacey, who got the message and stopped with his seduction of her.

"She doesn't believe that I have honorable intentions?" he slyly asked, before he closed his eyes in what she guessed had to be an attempt to think unsexy thoughts, to get rid of his obvious boner, that was easily visible through his shorts.

"It's more whether I have honorable intentions with you that she's worried over!" Joey bluntly confessed to him, drawing a slight smile on his lips. "It's nice that she cares so much about me, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to stay a virgin until I'm thirty, just because my older sister wants me to. It's my body and my life, not hers!"

"See, this is where it's an advantage to have parents, who don't care all that much about you!" Pacey jokingly told her, before opening his eyes again, now that his "problem" had gone away.

"I'm sure that they both do, even if they rarely show it. What worked on your "little problem" this time?"

"Thinking about how NBC thought that it could possibly work, when they tried mixing "Fawlty Towers" and "The Golden Girls" into one show. I mean, really? That was the best idea, they could come up with?" he told her, making her giggle a little.

"You're so weird!" she smilingly told him, not really meaning it of course.

"Just admit it, Potter! If I'd been just like everyone else, you never would have kissed me back".

"Yeah, you're probably right on the money there!" she admitted, shortly before they had to call an end to their little make-out session.

After she'd walked home, (a trip that with their new house not being as far away from everything as their old house was, had also been shortened significantly) she was met with the rare sight of Abby sitting on their couch and doing her homework, as she came into the living room. How Abby somehow managed to keep up a somewhat decent GPA on her declared tactics of "Winging It" whenever possible was a mystery to her, when it had worked so badly for her boyfriend in all of the years, he'd been practically trying the same thing.

"Need any help?" she casually asked Abby, who looked up from her books at her and sighed to herself.

"Not unless you have some sort of spell at your disposal, that makes you able to fit what looks like at least five hours of hard work into the two hours, you've set aside for it" Abby answered, with a small eyeroll to add to it.

"What's the hurry?" she asked, not that the answer interested her all that much.

"Melissa's coming over tonight. We're planning on "Breaking in my room", if you know what I mean?" Abby replied with a wink of an eye to match.

"Why would you break into your own room?" Joey confusedly inquired, before she got the meaning of what Abby had said, and instantly felt like a doofus. "That wasn't what you meant, was it?"

"Does it bother you when I'm being open about the sort of stuff, that your ex-bestie and I sometimes get up to?"

"No, not at all!" Joey tried to reassure Abby, even if the idea of living with a gay person and that person being someone, she'd known for most of her life, was still one that she was getting used to more with each passing day. "I'm completely supportive of your sexuality, you know that!"

Lying in her bed that evening and trying to do her own homework however, she could hear slight moaning sounds coming from Abby's room next to hers. As an added bonus to it, it also put images in her head of what was going on in there and to her shame, it made her rather uneasy to think of.

"I have nothing against gays, you know that!" she told Jen the morning after in school, as they were heading to their first class of the day. "I just don't ever think about the sort of stuff that they do together!"

"Like going shopping for antiques?" Jen suggested with a twinkle of the eye that made Joey think that she was very likely playing with her.

"Like ... the naked stuff!" she whisperingly told Jen, who had to let out a small giggle at her response. "I mean, could you ever imagine doing that sort of stuff with another girl?"

"Not really, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. I have tried it once before, remember?" Jen reminded her.

"That was a just a kiss, right? There's a big difference between the two things, Jen!"

"They're still just showings of affection, like you do with Pacey every day. You really are uptight, when it comes to dealing with alternative lifestyles, aren't you?"

"I don't want to be! I want to be supportive and open-minded, it's just ..."

"That if two girls are doing the exact same things to each other that you do with your boyfriend every day, it's weird to you. That's what we call a double-standard, Joey!" Jen explicitly told her, and the worst part was that Joey knew all too well how right, she was.

The big question was what she could do, to change this part of herself into something, she could better live with.

Dawson had come to school that morning, filled with a head full of ideas for what his next movie should be about. At first, his plan had been to write the script for it over the course of his summer in Philly, but this time he'd been so busy with other things that he'd only managed to scribble a few words down now and again, without anything substantial coming out of his lack of effort. After he'd come home to Capeside, it had only been a few days before he'd gotten that best left forgotten phone call from Mary-Beth, that had rocked him to his emotional core, leading to yet another couple of weeks on inefficiency, while he tried to get his head straight. Then, a certain blonde teenage minx had found her way into his life, and for another handful of weeks, all he could think about was her sexy self and nothing else, but it was also thanks to her that he'd come up with what he thought was a brilliant idea, that was just begging to be put on film.

"Sell this idea of yours to me that will change the world of cinema for all eternity, then" Pacey jokingly said to him, while they were hanging out on the grassy knole outside of the school in between second and third period and enjoying a tiny bit of the last part of the summer, while they still could.

"It's about a guy, who gets dumped by his girlfriend, before he finds something better with another girl, who's her mirror opposite. I know what you'll say, it's a story that's been told a million times before, but I can find a way to put an original spin on it" he explained to Pacey, who was nodding to himself, as he listened.

"You're hopefully aware that there's this new thing in movies called fiction? You should check it out, it's this amazing new concept, where everything that you film doesn't have to be based on your own life!" Pacey quipped with a wide grin to match.

"If I had the funding to make any sort of movie that I wanted it to be, I would have come up with something bigger, but I have to keep things realistic. Which also means that it has to be a movie that I can produce on a microscopic budget. Plus, they're always saying how you should write about what you know, right? You can't deny that it works for Woody Allen".

"A short, kind of odd-looking and constantly neurotic guy, whose best movies are all about sexual relationships? Sure, I'll buy that all of his movies were based on personal experiences!" Pacey sarcastically noted. "Even back in the sexual revolution days of the 70's, women had to have had some sort of minimum requirement standards. Can I also remind you that the last time you tried something like it, you ended up single because of it?"

"If you were going to make a movie, what would you make it about?"

"A monkey, of course! Everyone loves monkey movies!" Pacey suggested, in a way that Dawson couldn't take seriously. Not that it was meant to be.

"I don't, for the record! That reminds me, my mom wanted me to ask you something on her behalf".

"Thinking about monkeys made you think of your mom? Dawson, I'm not an expert, but I sincerely doubt that qualifies as being normal!"

"Ha, ha, Pacey! She wants to do a news segment with you about what happened when you got jumped, and how you've been dealing with it afterwards. I told her that I could ask you, but I wasn't sure if it was something that you wanted to do".

"Good, because you can give her a big, fat no! It's bad enough that everyone at school looks at me like I'm some sort of helpless victim, I don't need the entire town to hear about it and start doing the same! Believe it or not, I still have a tiny bit of pride left that I'd prefer to hold onto!"

"Even if it could help others, who have gone through the same thing?"

"All I know is that if I could make this whole thing blow over instantly, so I could feel like everything was back to normal, it would be the best thing that could happen to me. You can tell your mom that I wish her the best of luck with her news piece, it just won't be with me in it" Pacey stated, making it clear that the attack still wasn´t something, he was ready to put into words.

One thing that Dawson had to admit that Pacey was right about though, was that he needed a better idea for his movie, not to mention one that he could shoot on a budget of close to nothing.

He was contemplating what it could be on his way to his next class, when he saw something, or rather someone, that it suddenly gave him a bright idea. A very shy and lonely looking freshman girl, who sent memories of Mary-Beth racing back into his head. Even if he had no clue who this girl was, that judging by how old (or young, depending on your perspective) she looked was probably a freshman, a story soon began forming itself, which if done right could put his first two movies to shame.

"Jen, we shouldn't be doing this! We'll get into trouble!" Joey protested, as Jen clicked the mouse attached to one of the school's computers twice, to open up internet explorer. After she'd told Jen about the "problems" that she'd had with listening to Abby and Melissa making out the evening before, Jen had taken it upon herself to perform a test on her to see if she really was homophobic or not.

"It isn't like we'll be surfing for pornography, Joey! We'll just have a look at some tasteful pictures of same-sex couples kissing and we'll see how you react to it" Jen explained, before typing "Pictures of gay couples kissing" into the search field.

"Here we go" Jen continued (after a good minute and a half of the page loading!), and the first picture they found was of a couple of college aged guys, who were sharing what looked like it was a very romantic kiss on a beach somewhere exotic. "What do you see?"

"Nothing that offends me, if that's what you're asking. Honestly, I'm just happy for those boys, that they've found love together. It's a cute picture, if you ask me" Joey replied, as honestly as she could.

"What about this picture, then?" Jen asked her, after pulling up a picture of two girls kissing in a way, that looked almost the same as on the other picture. For some reason though, Joey felt a need to look away from it, even if she tried to remind herself that one was the exact same as the other.

"It's ... cute too" she tried saying. From Jen's roll of the eyes however, she could tell that her friend clearly wasn't buying it.

"Joey, if your name was Pinocchio, your nose would be five feet long right now! It's just two girls kissing, so what's the big deal?"

"It's just ... before you came here and I started dating Pacey, there were rumors about me that I was one of ... those. Totally dumb, unfounded rumors that had no basis in reality, except for me not behaving like some girly girl!"

"And dressing like a boy, walking like a boy, talking like a boy ..."

"I don't do that! Do I?"

"It's just who you are, Joey! Honestly, if I didn't know you either, it probably would have crossed my mind that there was a good chance that you could be a lesbian, or at least bisexual".

"Well, I'm not either! I love Pacey, end of story!"

"And why wouldn't you, with how sweet he is towards you? It doesn't mean that you can't still be bisexual. You know, oftentimes, when people have a strong negative reaction to seeing stuff like this, it's in reality because they have something, they don't want to admit to themselves. You don't have anything against lesbian couples in general, right?"

"Nothing whatsoever! I wish all of them the best and a long and happy life together!"

"It's only seeing or listening to them do things, that makes you a little uncomfortable?"

"Yeah, I guess so. In any case, I'll have to find a way to get over it, if I'm going to be sharing a house with one of them for the next close to two years. Before I went to France, Abby was still a non-practicing gay girl and I could ignore it, but now that she is a practicing one, it isn't that easy" Joey tried explaining to Jen, who looked as if a plan was forming in her head.

Throughout the school day, Dawson tried to find out more about this "Mary-Beth Lookalike", who'd given him more (good) movie ideas in a matter of a few seconds than he'd been able to come up with by himself for months. He'd heard of this happening several times before, where some random person (often a girl) gave a writer a jolt of inspiration and in turn, made them do some of the best work of their careers. "The Girl from Ipanema", from what he'd heard, was just about some pretty Brazilian girl that the songwriter saw passing by every day on her way to the beach, while the writer sat outside of his local café and enjoyed his morning coffee, just to name one. Who was to say that this girl couldn't do the same for him, as that girl had for that guy?

From what little he'd found out through Jen's new main squeeze Henry, her name was Amanda, but everyone called her Mandy and as he'd suspected, she was one of his freshman classmates. Apart from that bit of information though, he had to admit to practically knowing nothing about her, since she kept to herself most of the time and never said much, except when she was asked. Yet another thing that sent memories back to the girl, who'd felt the need to flee halfway across the country to get as far away from him, as she could, to add to the list that already included them having many of the same facial mannerisms and wearing most of the same colors and styles, when it came to their wardrobe.

The problems when it came to talking to her however, were plain as day to everyone who'd ever attended Capeside High or a school just like it. First of all, there was the rumor mill that went into overdrive, whenever anything slightly out of ordinary happened and if a junior guy was seen talking to a freshman girl, it would break the unwritten law of which students were allowed to talk with which other students. Even though Henry and Jen had only been seen kissing on school grounds one time, it had still gotten the talk going and although, he was a master when it came to closing his ears to gossip, it was impossible to entirely ignore that some of their classmates looked down on Jen simply for choosing to be with someone, who was a few years younger than herself. Seeing as he didn't want to have to deal with any of that, it left a large question mark on how to approach this latest problem of his. Secondly, there was the question of whether he actually wanted to get to know her, if it could ruin this picture, he'd already built up in his head of her being a slightly younger clone of his ex-girlfriend, and in some ways, it would be easier just to leave it at that and write his script based on his first impressions of her and nothing else.

It probably wouldn't make for a better movie though, so if he could find some kind of golden middleway, he figured it would be the best solution. That this golden middleway would come courtesy of his mother, however, was a development that he'd never been able to foresee in advance.

"You don't think that a few friendly nudges in the right direction could get Pacey to say yes to an interview, even if he at first refused it?" she asked him, while they helped one another with clearing the garden shed out of old tools and other things, that were well past their last sell-by date and then some.

"He made it clear how he felt on the subject, so I'd rather not press him on it. I know that you've probably been taught to never give up as a reporter, when it comes to chasing a news story, but he's also my best and oldest friend and I have to take that into consideration too" he explained to his mom, who didn't seem too upset by it. "He says that he feels enough like a victim already, so can we just leave it at that?"

"Sure, Honey. Maybe, you could get me an interview with some of your other classmates, if they don't mind talking about how it's affected them?"

"None of Pacey's other friends will say a word about it on camera, if Pacey doesn't want them to. My guess is that the best that you can hope for is passing comments from a few rando's, who aren't directly involved".

"Rando's?" his mom asked, clueless as to what he meant.

"It's teen-speak for random people" he explained to his mom.

"This is exactly why I need your help on this, Dawson. You speak their language, and I don't".

"It's called English, mom. You know, the main language spoken in this fair country of ours?"

"All I'm asking for is a few juicy comments from someone ... anyone, who's a student at your school. We both know that they're more inclined to be open with someone who's around their own age than they ever would be to an adult, who they don't know. Please Dawson, do it for me" his mother pleaded with him, and although it seemed like a hassle to him to have to do his mom's work for her, it also gave him an idea. After all, how else was he going to initiate a conversation with some freshman girl, he'd only seen in passing a few times in the school hallways?

"How exactly did you get your hands on a porno magazine?" A shocked Joey asked Jen, right after Jen had shown her what a part of their activities for the evening would consist of. To Joey herself, looking at pornography has always been a no-no, mostly because the whole idea of there being a sex business disgusted her a little.

"I asked one of the senior boys and he sold it to me for five bucks. He warned me though, that some of the pages could be stuck together, so take that for what you will" Jen replied, and before Joey could ask why the pages would be stuck together, the answer popped up into her head and it made the bile rise up in her throat. "I had to make sure that it was an all-lesbian porno mag too, because the sizes of the penises on some those guys ... let's just say that they can be hard to get out of your head again, once you've seen them and I don't want to subject you to that!"

"Thanks for your consideration, I guess! How big are we talking?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know!" Jen unequivocally stated, before checking that the door to her room was locked and the curtains closed, so that no one would know what they were doing. "Okay, let's see what these "Lesbian College Girls in Heat" are up to" she continued, before sitting down next to Joey and taking a look at the cover with a pair of naked girls on it, who were fondling each other's breasts.

"You're absolutely sure that this won't scar me for life?" Joey had to ask, so apprehensive was she.

"Homosexuality is as old as time itself. It's just girls doing things that are perfectly natural to one another!" Jen reassured her, before they checked out what page one and two of the magazine had to offer. When they did, both of them made wide eyes as what they were looking at!

"I had no idea that the human body could bend that way!" was the first thing that came out of either of their mouths after a solid half minute of them staring at it in silence. Even if it was Jen who'd said it, Joey was thinking the same thing. Plus, a whole lot of other (and far more explicit) thing, if she had to be honest.

As much of a shock as it had been for her to see it for the first time, and presented in such a crude way, the more pictures that Joey looked at though, the less freaked out she was over it with each one. Not that she wanted to participate in what those girls were doing, but it at least didn't bother her to know, that others of her own gender did that sort of thing to one another.

"Did it work?" Jen asked her, after they were done, and she had hidden the magazine safely away in a drawer.

"I'd say so. As you said, it's just girls doing natural things to one another. Except for on that one picture ..."

"You don't need to say which one you meant! That was what you call a lesson in parts of female human biology, that I in no way ever needed to know about! Do you think that Abby and Melissa do ... that thing to each other?"

"I don't know and quite frankly, I prefer not knowing! Sometimes, living a little bit in ignorance isn't the worst thing in the world!" Joey stated, in a way where she meant it too, while Jen nodded along in quiet agreement.

Still, as she headed home from Jen's grandmother's house, she felt readier to deal with it, should she ever happen to walk in on the one lesbian couple that she knew, doing things to each other, that she herself wouldn't do to another girl in a million years.

The day after at school, Dawson got started on his mom's school assignment for him, almost right after he'd gotten enough of a blessing from Pacey to be sure that his old buddy wouldn't get mad at him over it. After he'd assured him that his name wouldn't be mentioned in his mom's news article, Pacey hadn't really cared one way or the other and had even wished him luck with it, so now the only question was how to excuse that he wanted to talk to one particular freshman girl. It was actually Melissa, who'd given him the idea for how to, when she'd suggested that he should talk to one boy and one girl from each grade, also as a way to test if age and gender made a difference in how it had affected people, that their usually quiet town had lately been turning into one out of a David Lynch movie.

For the two in his own grade, he'd stuck to ones, who didn't know Pacey all that well, which still left him with three out of four of them to choose from and the answers he'd gotten were quite interesting, in that it was the boy who was most upset, while the girl hadn't been too upset by it all. The same was the case for both of the two seniors, he talked to and the two sophomores, which only left him with a pair of freshmen to interview and Jen, being the helpful friend that she was, had gotten him an interview with Henry (who seemed more interested in talking about Jen than anything else) and through Henry, he'd gotten his interview with Mandy. Was this a little creepy, him practically stalking some fourteen-year-old girl that he didn't know? He couldn't help thinking to himself that it was, at least a little bit, but it wasn't like he was planning on seducing her or anything like that, just to pick her mind on a few things and get a feel for what she was like behind that mask of shyness, that reminded him so much of the one, who got away.

Henry had told him that she would meet him by the front doors after school ended for the day, whereafter they could go somewhere and quickly have a small chat before he set her loose on the world again. With him thinking that it was for the best not to keep her waiting, he'd hurried over there after his last class ended, only to find her already standing there and waiting for him. God, she reminded him so much of Mary-Beth, that he would have for sure thought that she was his ex-girlfriend's baby sister, if he didn't know any better! Luckily for them, there was a free bench for them to sit at down by the pier, where they could talk in peace.

"This is one hundred percent anonymous, so you won't have to worry about hearing your own name on the news" he assured the young Mandy, with a friendly smile to go along with it. When she smiled back at him, it was like he was looking right at Mary-Beth, back when she'd just been another girl in his classes that he never paid much attention to. Was she just another girl to most of her classmates too, he wondered to himself? Something told him that she was.

"What do you want to ask me?" Mandy shyly asked him, clearly trying not to sound too nervous in this situation that had to be at least a little out of the ordinary for her.

"Basically, if hearing about the things that have happened has had any negative impact on you?" he asked her, after he'd turned on the small tape recorder, that he'd borrowed from his mother and would record their conversation.

"Like?"

"Has it made you scared to go out alone after dark?"

"A little. I mostly just stay home in the evenings. He's your friend, right? I mean, the one who was attacked?" Mandy asked him, while once again shooting him a glance that sent memories back to the one, who'd gotten away from him thanks to his own lack of willpower.

"How did you know?"

"I've seen you talking to him, like you two are pals. You probably just didn't notice me, like everyone else at Capeside High is so great at too" Mandy shyly mentioned, doing a rather poor job at hiding the pain that goes with being a ghost at your own school, as she spoke.

"I used to know a girl like that. A very special kind of girl that I really miss talking to and hanging out with, now that she isn't around anymore".

"She isn't dead, is she?" Mandy had to ask, which brought a small chuckle out of him.

"No, she just moved away, that's all. All I can tell you is that if you open yourself up to people, you'll find out the same thing that she did".

"And what's that?"

"That there's nothing to be afraid of. Once I introduced her to my friends, they accepted her in no time. I'm sure that the same will happen, if you try it" he told Mandy, who couldn't stop herself from smiling to herself.

"Why are you being this nice to me? I mean, you don't even know me".

"I'm just a nice guy, I guess. Most of us are, if you take the time to get to know us. We should get back to the questions, while I have you here".

"Fire away" Mandy told him, and over the next ten minutes or so, she answered every question that he had for her, to the best of her abilities.

What he came to find out was that not only was she close to a dead ringer for Mary-Beth. She was practically a copy of her.

END OF CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE