Never the Same IC#8

Kirk's Love Life Part One. Testing the Waters of Love. Here we begin the true story of teen Kirk's interaction with girls. Kirk's shyness and innocence didn't make meaningful relationships easy.

Kirk’s Love Life. IC#8 Part One

Testing the Waters of Love

Cue: “I Want to Know What Love Is” https://youtu.be/r3Pr1_v7hsw

This episode chronologically recounts Kirk’s involvement with the women he shared a romantic relationship, but also depicts culturally how romance and dating affairs often unfolded and blossomed in those days. It was not exactly free love every day, but in consideration, Kirk thinks men and women were much more open and loving with one another back then. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so…Read for yourself and form your own opinion.

Cue: “Strength” https://youtu.be/Pi45vO41EdM

We move backward in time once again to Kirk’s hit and miss love life. Kirk had remained a shy guy from his younger elementary school days, and so interactions with girls generally amounted to cases when he spoke to them for some mundane reason or he just treated them as one of the boys. Affection and shows of affection remained rather obscure behaviors to Kirk. He saw a lot of kissing and stuff on TV, but he attributed that to be the same as other forms of fiction like on Star Trek or Lost in Space because he never witnessed it at home. So he remained quite shy in junior high school, but with the changes in him like straighter bright white teeth and a slimmer more acceptable profile, Kirk appeared to others as an entirely different boy.

To be clear, the only significant personal contacts he had with women up to this point were the young college age speech therapist in third grade who told him he’d be less shy and more popular if he spoke correctly, Doctor Straker who straightened his teeth and told him he’d be handsome when she was done, and of course, his mother.  And we all know that mothers are required by law to tell their sons that they are handsome, smart, and skillful.

So we begin this episode about the women in Kirk’s life that may or may not turn out to be romantic partners. As he found out and is recounted here romantic affairs can unfold in various degrees with different intensities.

Up to junior high, Kirk avoided girls above all costs. At that early age, they were vile, disgusting beings. There happened to be a couple girls early on in junior high that developed crushes on Kirk with the young girls’ flirty calls to him, but “YUK!” he didn’t want anything to do with them.  

Sometime during the two-years of junior high, girls became more interesting albeit mystical, scary beings, and Kirk didn’t know why, but he became strangely attracted to them. Simultaneously, to him, he began to notice their feminine charms while the older boys spoke of their mysterious, excitingly exotic and yet strictly taboo and totally scary female equipment. He was sure their strange, untold, unspoken powers proved the complete dominion the female form held over the weakling male population. For different reasons, Kirk became doubly terrified of girls because of their feminine presence and power, and so his opinions of those girl creatures gradually changed with every passing month. His experience and knowledge of romantic interactions with women in general grew very slowly from the start.

To begin, one particular girl caught Kirk’s eye; maybe she did so because she sat next to him in homeroom every day or maybe because she emanated an unexpected attractive and incredibly mysterious feminine aura that stimulated a profound effect on the innocent, shy and highly vulnerable Kirk.  So, without Kirk actually realizing it, Lorelei became the boy’s first official crush. In his eyes, Lorelei was the most gorgeous princess in the world, and this royal beauty sat right there near him in his homeroom!

Lorelei fulfilled her legendary gorgeous enchantress’ namesake entirely. A slim, athletic, well-proportioned and perfect female specimen, Lorelei enchanted the boy with her unmatched girlish charms and mysterious feminine powers. Beyond any doubt in his mind, Kirk was thoroughly enchanted.  First off, most noticeable and desirable to Kirk, Lorelei had brilliant, perfectly fashioned red hair that fell below her shoulders across her back and perfect breasts.

 Lorelei possessed warm hazel eyes that the boy avoided whenever she might glance his way. He even clandestinely caught an attractive movement of her nose whenever she spoke, a little dip of the tip of her nose as she annunciated certain words, but again, he’d whip his focus away if she made any movement indicating she might catch his gaze. Her green fuzzy sweater and short soft green skirt the boy found especially alluring, but what drove him unusually mad with yearning was her multitude of most beautiful freckles.

 Lorelei wore her freckles thick and bright across her face, neck and arms, but also�"her legs. He could only dream to know if those freckles covered her entire body. With her short skirt hiked high on her thighs as she sat, her legs glowed like a reddish Milky Way Galaxy in freckles. He dared not to gaze too long or else she’d catch his admiring look.

Well, he kept his fondness of Lorelei to himself for quite some time until he foolishly told his sister.  What a mistake!  It didn’t help his shyness one iota when his sister relayed the news about his admiration of Lorelei on to his mother. His mother teased him with a comparison to the cartoon round-headed boy Charlie Brown whose infatuation with the little red-headed girl was a comic topic. Kirk was appalled with the comparison. Lorelei was NOT anything like the cartoonish little red-headed girl by any means. So Kirk learned that he couldn’t say anything to anyone about his infatuations or any of the later women in his life until he was good and ready.

Anyway, Kirk managed a few hellos or good mornings in Lorelei’s direction with shadowed eyes, but she either didn’t hear his muttering or didn’t care enough to acknowledge him. On a rare, strong backbone day, the boy set up a plan of action to take place during the scheduled school assembly. Ignoring his pestering friends, Kirk stayed close to Lorelei, just beyond her peripheral vision but not far off her heels.

 As they shuffled into the assembly hall with the entire school population, Kirk tailed Lorelei down to a middle row of seats. When she finally sat, he was right there and sat right down next to her�"Lorelei! His heart raced. He sweated. He wrung his hands. But he couldn’t look her way. Distracted, Lorelei shared girlish giggles with a friend in the row in front of her, who instantly pointed out the totally undesirable boy sitting next to her. Lorelei became instantly repelled.

She turned to him and with a disgusted tone, said, “Ugh! How did YOU end up sitting here?”

With that, she stood up and moved to an open seat some distance away with another friend. A plain, overweight girl took Lorelei’s seat who gave Kirk a big, warm smile, a flirty shrug, and a greeting. Shattered, the boy slumped in his seat; Lorelei’s spell over him was wholly broken. Later, it became totally clear she resided far above his lowly league when he found out that she dated a much older and bigger, he was sure, football captain from another school. The crush incident taught him a valuable lesson on girl interaction, and it took some time, no, a very long time for him to return to sameness...     

Ultra Violet would be the first girl the boy technically kissed and had a relationship with, shallow and short as the relationship ended up. He connected with Violet through a cousin with a shared interest in snowmobiling. Being from a poorer corner of the northern town, Violet was not a beauty queen by any means and exhibited a rather tough, rough demeanor. With frizzy, bleach-blonde hair and a mouth to match her demeanor, Vi proved a force to be reckoned with.

Kirk and Vi would touch bases at school, but there was never any physical contact or lovey-dovey talk usually just setting up times and places to meet on snow machines. Often riding together though on separate machines, they snow machined the back-wood trails for hours on end, so it wasn’t like they had any real corporal contact or relationship building conversations. To make the short relationship story shorter, Vi eventually invited him over to her humble house for dinner.

Kirk endured the dinner uncomfortably enough with her small family who he had never met before, but afterwards proved even more uncomfortable for him in a whole different manner. She invited him to her basement to play pool with her older brother who played the game like a Great White Pool Shark.  Anyway, as the brother cleared the table with his fancy English bank shots, the boy and girl had time to sit on the stairs and watch.

After a while of being scrunched up tight against him, as the only real contact they had so far, without due warning, Vi said something low in his direction.  In reaction to her voice, Kirk turned his head and totally unexpectedly she firmly grasped his head and directly planted her warm pursed lips on his totally unresponsive lips, wholly shocked as he was. What stunned him even more was that she promptly stuck her warm slippery tongue in his mouth and wagged it about.  Dumbfounded, Kirk leaned back far from her and sat there completely speechless and flabbergasted. Kirk would never be the same after that!

 Was that a sexual invitation or what? Kirk had heard of the term foreplay, but he had no idea what it actually was or how it came about. Unflappable, Vi stood up and grabbed a pool stick to take a shot. To say the least, there wasn’t another kiss for Kirk from Vi under any circumstance.

The boy Kirk soon thereafter saw Vi hanging onto the arm of another boy at school and found they had gone snowmobiling together. He cornered her at her locker and demanded an answer to the existence of another boy in her life not that Kirk had any sort of a claim on her. Violet smirked, shrugged, and walked away. To her back, Kirk shouted something he wished he hadn’t said so loudly in a public place. By the next year, Kirk found out that Ultra Violet was in a bad way… 

Babe

Cue: “So Alive” https://youtu.be/-L41MhFPU9s 

So his experiences with girls ranged from his crushed crush on Lorelei to the brief, full-frontal attack Ultra Violet waged on him. Those two encounters did not exactly provide favorable experiences for the innocent teenage country boy.

The next girl in Kirk’s life will go by Babe in this retelling because that’s what he called her before learning her name. Babe was a keeper in many ways. She was utterly perfect for a long term commitment if Kirk had wanted that sort of thing. Long-legged, tall, slim with long dark hair and a dark complexion; she wore a ready smile, provided an easy laugh and she was uncomplicated to talk to. She was perfect!

Kirk first spotted her during a ride with his brother-in-law to contact her brother on a race car issue and formed an instant admiration of her. Besides the attributes already described, Kirk noticed her beautiful long slim fingers that she used in gestures like an elegant dancer. Mesmerizing she was to the inexperienced, shy Kirk.

So, with a little research he found out Babe’s name and her arrival time at school which so happened to be after his arrival. Apparently, he gained a little courage since Violet. Every morning Kirk would wait for her on the ground floor before she went upstairs to her locker just so he could say, “Hi, Babe!” She’d beam while answering a greeting demurely back. These same few exchanged morning words went on for weeks. After the greetings in the mornings became old and tired, Kirk moved on to saying hello with a little chat at her locker between classes. The boy still lacked the courage to go any farther with beautiful friendly Babe at the time, though as this story shows it turns out that low-key, non-invasive stalking sometimes works out.

Soon, with Babe’s unabashed openness and bubbly personality, they soon took up conversations between classes and walking together. Their close connection and ease of conversation simply amazed even the boy. They spent hours on the phone every single night, though in reality Babe did most of talking about all the fun happenings in her life. A link with her brother and Kirk’s brother-in-law often found them going to the stock car races together.

 On one especially cool stock car race day, the boy dressed more for style than warmth for the races. After sitting on the cold, hard stands for quite a while, he began shaking uncontrollably from the cold. Kirk tried hard to hide his shivering by putting on a brave male face against the pain of the cold.

 Babe noticed his shivering, opened her coat and taking his hands with her beautiful gloved hands put them inside her coat close to her warm body, and then wrapped her arms tightly around him. The boy didn’t realize the impropriety nor the physical innuendos associated with her action so he went along with her actions. Kirk had no idea, no clue so was just happy to have warm hands; the boy enjoyed Babe’s warmth without shame, embarrassment, or thrill. This was the first situation that if he had been a bit more brave he could have made Babe his or at least established more than the close platonic friendship he had with beautiful caring Babe.

So, beyond a doubt, Babe and the boy Kirk formed a close friendship. When taking driver education at school during the summer, he would meet her everyday where she babysat near the school. This situation could have led to improper activities though she never suggested or pushed and he�"simply didn’t know about those things such as how to actually progress in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex that he truly cared about.

Babe, to her benefit, tried to advance the relationship with the overly shy Kirk by small caring and loving actions. Even though they weren’t dating per se, Babe somehow ended up riding with Kirk and his parents to the hospital where his sister underwent a serious procedure. Kirk probably acted a bit nervous and anxious about his sister’s condition, wondering the outcome, or maybe it was his dislike of all things medical remaining on his mind from his childhood traumas.

Anyway, Babe snuggled closer as they sat there in the waiting room. As time went on, she gradually rested her head on his shoulder. Shifting in her seat, Babe placed her hand softly on his thigh. He eyed those long slim fingers and wondered if he should place his hand on her beautiful dancer-like hand, but he sat there stone-like unmoving, unresponsive. So Kirk had blown his second and final chance to live and love Babe forever. And so the affair followed along those platonic lines for the summer, that is, with Kirk too shy to advance their relationship.   

Early in the following school year, an older boy in the grade above him asked if he had any romantic hold on Babe. Apparently, this boy and Babe had already talked about the situation before this inquiry to Kirk. Was it an effort to force his hand with Babe or was it just this guy wanting to get to know Babe more and date her? Perhaps both. Kirk didn’t know what to say because he adored Babe but romantic ties? He didn’t know about that.

The other well-mannered boy went ahead and asked if he’d have a problem with him asking her out on a date. A polite inquiry no doubt, but Kirk went completely brain dead not knowing how to answer the question or what he thought of his relationship with Babe. Could Babe’s and his future evolve into a loving boy/girl relationship? How would that happen? Where was their relationship headed if it continued the present way�"unchanging? His head spun, he just couldn’t fathom what to say because he didn’t know how he felt or what he wanted.

After the few moments of this inner deliberation, Kirk simply told the older boy, “No, go ahead, it’s okay.”

With a strangely hollow feeling in his chest, he slowly walked away. Kirk never spoke to Babe at any length after that, especially finding out soon thereafter that she and the older boy were going steady.  In those following days it was hard on him to see the two of them together chatting and laughing, while not understanding why he harbored a strange heaviness in his chest when he saw them. Kirk wondered�"was he having a heart attack? No, he wasn’t, but it wouldn’t be the last time he’d have that heavy feeling in his chest.

Cue: “Babe” https://youtu.be/rkUTKBXWE9Q

Kirk sadly realized that he had missed an opportunity of a lifetime with beautiful, fun Babe.  He had been so, so close, but he realized that he had no clue on how to advance a girl/boy relationship. The boy Kirk would never be the same after that forlorn realization.

Babe would eventual marry the older boy and raise a happy family.  Time went on for the loveless, clueless boy, but not for long because soon thereafter a girl named Dee walked into his life.

Reviews

[JayG]

You didn’t ask for a critique, but since you’ve written several novels, and have fallen into a trap of the kind the author won’t notice, I thought you might want to know.

In this, and your previous works, you’re presenting what reads like a report, because you’re using the writing skills we were given in school—skills honed by a lifetime of on-the-job reports, papers, and letters…every one of them with a goal of informing the reader. In other words, nonfiction.

In them, and this, there is one person on stage, talking TO the reader, ABOUT the events, in a dispassionate voice. Why dispassionate? Because in all the world, only you know how the author wants the work to be read. The reader? They have punctuation, which they see AFTER the line has been read, plus what the words suggest to them, based on their life experience, NOT your intent.

Yes, I know you have a CW degree, but they teach creative writing, not the techniques that acquiring editors are seeking in a submission. And with their focus in the classics, the writing skills you practice are those that have not sold in nearly 100 years.

When film appeared, with its ability to place the viewer in the middle of the action, readers were no longer satisfies with a narrative that recounted the events that made up the plot. As a result, the goal of fiction changed. As E. L. Doctorow puts it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” We don’t tell the reader that the protagonist cried at his father’s funeral, we make the reader weep. And that requires a set of writing techniques very different from those we were given in our school years. They were fact-based and author-centric—the approach you’re using for your fiction. What publishers—and readers, too—seek, is emotion-based and character-centric writing.

The term we use for that approach you’re presently using is “telling.” In it the viewpoint is always the narrator’s.

But in fiction, to provide that feeling of rain on the cheeks, we place the reader into the action, as the protagonist, living the events in real-time. Rather than the narrator being on stage and talking to the reader, we experience the events in a way that makes the reader know the same just a surely, but without noticing it happening because it's what they would notice were they living the story, personally.

One of the things they apparently never mentioned when working toward your degree was the three issues we need to address early, on entering any scene, so as to provide context for the reader: Who are we, where are we, and what’s going on? Look at your opening words of story

• Kirk had remained a shy guy from his younger elementary school days, and so interactions with girls generally amounted to cases when he spoke to them for some mundane reason or he just treated them as one of the boys. Affection and shows of affection remained rather obscure behaviors to Kirk. He saw a lot of kissing and stuff on TV, but he attributed that to be the same as other forms of fiction like on Star Trek or Lost in Space because he never witnessed it at home. So he remained quite shy in junior high school, but with the changes in him like straighter bright white teeth and a slimmer more acceptable profile, Kirk.

116 words, and what have we learned? That he was shy and had little social interaction with females. Once stated, why does the reader need multiple examples that illustrate what was said?

Contrast that to the opening paragraph of the short story, Good Works and Fairy Tales, from, A Touch of Strange.

• Glor stared morosely into the embers of the dying fire, watching their twinkle dim to the gray of ash. For the tenth time that hour she shifted position on the old chair, sewing patches on the knees of her father’s breeches and muttering the same complaint: “It’s not fair! It’s just not fair. The Nobles sit around all stinking day doing nothing but gab, gab, gab, and they get to go to the Frolic. We work ourselves half-to-death feeding those twarkling parasites, and get nothing but a backache and an empty purse. It’s just not fair.”

At the end of 95 words we’ve learned that the story takes place in a feudal society, that Glor is working at mundane tasks at night, which demonstrates her family's low level position in her society. We know that there’s some sort of celebration for the nobles that she wishes to attend, but can’t, and so, is bitter and unsatisfied with her lot. We know our location is in quarters where a fire is permitted, perhaps necessary, and, we’ve had character development. We have an avatar, not the subject of abstract discussion by a third party who is neither in the story nor on the scene.

I certainly don’t mean to discourage, but as someone who owned a manuscript critiquing service, I have to note that were this a a partial, as part of a query, it would be rejected early. In fact, because it's the most common mistake, it's the reason for the 99.9% rejection rate.

You have lots of company in that, because we pretty much all leave our school years believing that the writing skills we were given are those used, universally. And who’s to tell us differently? Our teachers learned their skills in the same classrooms.

So...the solution is simple: Add the tricks the pros take for granted to those you already own.

Of course, simple and easy aren't interchangeable words. In fact, the hardest job is to convince our existing writing reflexes to stop “correcting the writing” to what they see as acceptable when we try to change our approach. But once you get past that, the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun.

So where do you begin? The library’s fiction-writing section is filled with the views of pros in writing, publishing, and teaching. Personally? I’d suggest Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

I truly wish there were some more gentle way to break such news, because after all the work you’ve put in on your work, and the emotional commitment, something like this is really hard to take. I know because I’ve been there.

But the learning can be fun, and filled with, “But what’s so…how can I have missed something so obvious. That brings a head shake and a smile till about tenth time—a whimper after that.

So give it a try. That book won’t make a pro of you. That’s your job. It will, though, give you the tools and the knowledge of what they can do for you. And like the proverbial, chicken soup for a cold, it might not help, but it sure can’t hurt.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/