With
the advent of a new status quo, Karyn was no longer an ingenue.
Whatever the damage to her parent's relationship, she herself was
blooded to new ambitions. Her peers no longer represented a
satisfactory choice. Karyn wanted men, not boys. Now, it took the
resolve to better her father, to approach the acquisition of her
respect. And yet she did not want to marry her father.
She
dallied with boyfriends, and led them on. Such was Laurence Shield.
He arrived at school in the tenth grade, sixteen, and a paragon.
Laurence's parents had been in the Peace Corps, and they were
socially pliable. As such, Harold Shield commanded no great respect.
He had been in charge of building a leprosy hospital, and the
humanitarian sacrifice co mmanded a certain currency, but when
Laurence set his cap for Karyn, he did not know how far he over
reached.
Laurence
had been an infant overseas, and he was a bundle of hostility. If he
was a qualified survivalist, few of his peers wished to experience
such dire straits. If he was an intellectual whip, Karyn and others
viewed him as a kind of draft animal. Not perhaps a draft animal, but
if an Arabian is desirable for his temperament, Laurence had the
temperament, but not the virility. If he played the devil's advocate,
Laurence attempted to see the best in very many undesirable causes.
He mistook pragmatism and expedience for prejudice and intolerance.
Karyn
regarded him as a curious, if perplexing blade. When Laurence was
self possessed enough to ask her out on a date, Karyn accepted it as
her due. She was good looking; she had good prospects. It was simply
the case that Chess Masters do not play amateurs, lest they become
lesser, for the trivial conquest. She said “No thank you.”
Virtue
became Laurence's enemy, and the resulting cascade of unintended
consequences was a study in itself. First, Laurence resolved to be
persistent. He asked again, but not on a schedule to be regarded as
needy. It was weeks before Karyn could even offer him the studied
insult of washing her hair.
If
she felt a loss of social momentum, Karyn was somewhat tolerant.
After all, there was no real challenger to Laurence, for her
affections. The disaffected dilettantes among her peers were
variously denigrating and bitter. With time, it had become apparent
that Karyn's situation was not unique, although there were myriad
reasons for any given young woman's circumstance, and the male youths
that surrounded them were variously ignorant and indignant. From
Karyn's point of view, the vaunted left ear-ring, that telegraphed
“to know,” marked those who sported it, as bitter. “Sour
Grapes,” was not an attitude she respected.
Meanwhile,
the female contingent were volatile, and reliably adversarial to one
another. There were those whose parents took a different view to
masturbation than Karyn's, and it was en exercise to see to it that
one was not taken advantage of, by these. On both sides of the
divide, here were good and bad dad's, and “the conspiracy of bad
dad's” was a limited way to articulate the woes that all
experienced.
Laurence
asked again. This time, Karyn offered masturbation material in the
form of a juicy rumor. He was both titillated and protective of the
slut. After his characteristic deliberative delay, Laurence came back
with the implied argument that he liked Karyn because she was morally
superior.
Karyn
picked an old flame that she didn't like, and set fire to him in a
creative way. She recalled from her experience at home, that
dissatisfaction was available in two degrees, so she took the trouble
to seduce him on the side. After giving him a long weekend to
remember, she duly divulged her moral degradation to the attentive
Laurence. He responded by “trying to think the best of her.”
Plans like these are not laid out like military campaigns, and she
had no idea what the result might be to the moral derelict she had
employed. Generally, it was regarded as comical, as distrust, rage
and confusion within Laurence set fire to rumor.
Jerry
rationalized Karyn's behavior as freedom, by the implied arguments
that passed for discussion on the topic. When he later found out,
belatedly, that the rake in question favored the cause of drugs, he
reversed himself. Karyn would experience lasting enmity from the
youth in question. He considered himself to be persecuted by
Laurence, and he blacklisted Karyn with his compatriots.
Karyn
found herself with enemies among her peers.
Meanwhile,
the Drafter family, Rachelle's heritage, identified a prospective
match and put Karyn in his circle. Rachelle was conflicted about this
in many ways. Her memories of Mark were deplorable, and yet she was
not averse to seeing Karyn suffer in limited ways. The net result was
that she ruled that the two should not cohabit.
The
young man's name was Frank. Faced with Frank's indifferent
affections, Karyn could attribute limited merit, in Laurence, where
she had not done so before. However, Laurence was as undisciplined as
a Roman Candle, and as unmanageable. She decided to cut her losses,
and not make a project out of him. When he asked her out again, she
met him in a Starbucks.
“I
don't want to mislead you, Laurence. What are your intentions?”
Karyn asked.
For
Laurence, this was no softball. Karyn intended to say no, and there
was no way to deflect the refusal, but Laurence still failed to
accept his fate. He had no other belle, and he strove to contemplate
how he was to explain a proposal of marriage with such little
precedent. “I intended to be honorable,” he stumbled.
“You
want me to be frank?” Karyn replied. “I have no interest in you
whatsoever!” She did not immediately get up and leave. Karyn wanted
to be sure that Laurence understood that this was a deliberated
reply, and not an angry retort.
Helpless,
Laurence thanked her for her honesty. Karyn would never regret it.
