No Consequences Pt. 02

"What, like your best friend?"

"She doesn't count, I was there, too."

So, hundreds of little things, little niggling things. And then there was a biggie. A massive biggie, but that didn't surface until Wednesday.

The next two days just emphasized that we are two entirely different people who kinda, sorta decided to give it a try; just how, neither of us uttered a peep. There was no announced structure, my place, her place, dinners, times... you know, structure, something absolutely fundamental to me; something absolutely anathema to her.

She came, she went, just like she had, like a stalker, unplanned, unannounced while I waited, wondering and thinking, not so much about her, but about me.

I have always known I'm a slave to convention. I've never liked it but I've always known it's true. One of the reasons I became a writer was to try to avoid the centrifugal forces of the 9 to 5 day, a routine that obviously I was born for. I thought that by avoiding the imposed structure I would be free to construct my own reality entirely free of constraints. Why not? I'm really rich with a marketable talent — I am entirely free to create my own reality.

And I never have. I get up by alarm clock and I frame my day like everyone else: I read my required websites, rush through breakfast then get my ass in front of my computer by 8 o'clock... and then I measure out my day precisely as I have all the others, including weekends. I am more a slave to time than even the most ardent 9 to 5er.

Kon, on the other hand, seems to function entirely serendipitously. She breezes into and out of my life randomly and without explanation. I think she is one of those people who looks at time as something to fill where I look at time as something to manage. As a for instance: we were driving for lunch on Monday in her car (I planned to walk home). There is a car wash on the way. It must have occurred to her like this: carwash > car > dirty or clean? > dirty > huge line up > car is still dirty > join line > clean car. My car could have been oozing mud and I would never have sacrificed the time to join that line; her's was slightly dusty and she joined it, she pulled right into the the end of it with a sense of utter satisfaction — she was dealing with something that needed to be done. I freaked; she sneered and tut-tutted; I smouldered; she studied her phone, rubbed fingerprints off her rearview mirror with an old Kleenex, changed radio stations three times and otherwise enjoyed herself. I was still pissed when we eventually sat down to lunch — after having waited another ten minutes to get in which we wouldn't have had to if we got there when I had planned. Plus, she didn't care that I was pissed, she didn't care at all — probably didn't even notice.

So, ya, all this really bothered me, but not like you'd expect; not like I'd expect. No. In fact, I started to admire her more for this dithering kind of time management, it was precisely what I have long been aiming at for myself but always missed so badly: I was tired of my rabid time manage, my mania for ultra-efficiency. I wanted to learn to be just like her. But that didn't mean I could tolerate the way she went about things. I couldn't.

OK, so we see and do things differently... big surprise.

No. But a big surprise was to come on Wednesday morning at 11:36, about 4 hours after she had slipped out of my bed, then into my bathroom, then into her clothes, then out my front door. It was at 11:36 when I got her email — I was on my computer making last minute notes about her — I was always making notes about her, writing down the little things I could use to make Jennifer Carter real... Kon was proving to be a gold mine. Her email said, "I guess you should see this, although you're never going to understand." There was a link.

I thought twice about hitting the link. We were slated to take off at 4PM; actually, I never thought she would be on the plane, probably because the time of departure was fixed, a concept I didn't think she understood — I mean, everything else she did seemed motivated by impulse; how was she going to obey someone else's, the airline's, deadline?

But I did click on the link and when I did I assumed it would be tied to the 4 PM take-off and how she couldn't possibly make it.

I got it wrong. It opened with a picture of her pretty much filling the entire screen; her gums were glistening with her smile. She was lounging on her bed wearing a light cotton top, buttoned up the middle, and clearly showing a dark blue bra beneath. One hand was outstretched towards the camera which she was adjusting so, as the camera moved, I could see she was wearing a short black pleated skirt which had risen high up her leg showing an embarrassing amount of thigh.

"So," she grinned, "I just told my boyfriend that I cam; I gave him the link; he's probably watching me right now and you know what? I can tell you exactly what he's thinking." She gave a bit of a grimace. "I showed him this site a few days ago but I didn't tell him I was ever on it. Now he knows."

But I barely noticed. With some warning I might have been a little more cool about it but I wasn't prepared, she had just appeared, lying on her bed... wantonly and talking about me. The whole thing had no context. I didn't get it, I didn't get why she was lying there, on the internet... edging up her skirt, playing with the hem, lifting it a little then pushing it down, teasing, tantalizing, one, two, three times, then grinning she showed us she was wearing white cotton panties, she exposed just the edge then, when she turned on the bed, the skirt flipped up to show almost her entire ass with the panties biting into her a little. And then she was up on her elbows undoing the front buttons, slowly.

I was too transfixed to be shocked, too confused to be appalled. My eyes went, not to the fingers that were nimbly undoing the buttons, but to the face which was positively glowing... with what? I had never seen the look before. She seemed centred, peaceful, delighted and she carried the look as she slowly removed her shirt, then her skirt.

"No, he's new, I just met him a few days ago." She was obviously answering a question, just as the girl had done the other day in her room when Kon had typed a message to her. "We're flying to Europe this afternoon, at least that's the plan..." the glowing continence grimaced again, "this may put an end to that but he had to know." She reached behind and unfastened her bra, letting her breasts flop down.

I sat back stunned, shocked that I had no way of understanding this; no way of putting this into any kind of context. One moment my screen had been covered in the text of my notes... about her, the next she filled it... then she was getting naked in front of the whole world, her white panties now travelled up the length of her upstretched legs.

Like the other videos I had seen before, she seemed absolutely oblivious to what she was doing; she didn't mind a bit that, when she sat up and placed her underwear in a neat pile on the edge of the bed, she was opening her legs to every pervert on the planet. But it was the smile even more than the body, that's what was getting to me. She was enjoying herself... blissfully, there was nothing awkward about any of this, she was communicating, and she was relishing every second of it. But communicating what and to whom?

I hit the title on the top left of the page. It took me to the home screen where I read the phrase "The act of chatting while masturbating online." I let that sink in while I scanned the rows of thumbnails looking for Kon. She wasn't there. I scanned them again, more closely this time, close enough to see there were a few lesbian couples, gays, transgenders, threesomes, groups as well as a preponderance of single women, all, I gathered, chatting while they went at themselves or each other.

She wasn't on this second page either. As I searched, increasingly frantically, I eventually found her on page three of 15 pages, she was talking while she absently fingered her pussy. Suddenly, she laughed, took her fingers out of herself, sucked on them then put them back in. "No, honest, he's the first boyfriend I've ever had and I think I'm the first girl who has ever got close to him, I don't mean sexually, I mean in his head. I think he's terrified of me and this isn't going to help... if he's watching."

She was reading her monitor so I studied mine and saw that the right side of the page was a place for the comments and questions she was reading.

'This would be a tough one for a guy, having your girl on here. I don't know if I could handle it.'

"So, what?" she said, "I give this up because he doesn't like it?"

She waited. Someone typed: 'Or him.'

She laughed. "I hope he's watching so I won't have to repeat this." It was as if she was talking to a bunch of friends in her apartment, me included... while lying on her bed casually fingering her pussy. "My mother, who, by the way, watches me sometimes... she married my father out of high school, had me almost immediately then she went to college at night while she worked and looked after me during the day — she's a bank manager. She sat me down in my last year of high school and gave me The Talk." She grinned at the memory, showing all her glistening gums, she obviously wasn't bothered a bit by any of this. "She told me she doesn't have a single picture of herself when she was my age, not one, not showing her body. She really regretted that and she regretted that she hadn't used her body more, never had any fun with it — she didn't say with sex but that's what she was meaning... maybe not just sex but having fun with it. She didn't tell me anything specific, she was just telling me her attitude about it." She licked her fingers every once in awhile as if it was a punctuation mark after an astonishing admission. "We have good bodies, good strong bodies. She told me to understand my body, respect it and have fun with it because, and this is the way she put it, 'it gradually loses its allure.'" She laughed again, enjoying everything about her little story.

Then she was getting onto her knees, her breasts were swinging as she put her fingers back between her legs as she moved around so her ass was aiming at the camera. I shut it down before she got there.

But I couldn't leave it alone, of course I couldn't... I did for a few minutes while I wrestled with it, then I went back, but not to her, to the others, and I masturbated slowly for a full hour as I watched girls, girls on girls and transgenders. I fully got it by the time I came, got why any man would be interested in watching these people — I mean, we're programmed for it, aren't we? I just didn't get why anyone would put themselves out there like they were doing and she is doing, I mean money, sure but is it worth it?.

When I finished I had no time to think through the decision: should I go or not? I thought of taking a quick look to see if she was still online because if she was she obviously wasn't going to make the plane. But I decided not to; I decided to go; I decided it didn't matter if she was going or not, I was going and it was going to be a real rush to get to the airport on time.

The clock read 3:41 in the holding area; the plane was starting to load. I always get on a plane as late as I can, why be on it longer than you have to be? So I saw her running around the corner to queue behind me just at the moment I was checked through. We walked down the ramp together... in silence, the same way we took our seats, took off, levelled off and ordered a drink. She wasn't going to talk, she never did when I got into a snit so I had to. "Why?"

"I like it. It makes me feel free. I don't expect you to understand."

"No, I heard you say that." I took a pull of my beer and knew I was going to drink all the way across the five time zones. "When did you start?"

"Year and a half ago, something like that."

"Can I ever understand why you do it... not just you, all of them?"

Gums. "Probably not. But there isn't just one reason. It's the money for some, the tips; it's the power for others, the exhibitionism. Maybe it's showing off for me: I know I have a good body, I know people like to look at me... people get off on me. But it's the fun, too, I like to talk to the people and I like that they want to look at me."

"The men."

"Mostly, but I have some girl friends who follow me too."

I was amazed at how casually I was taking this. "What's the difference between exhibitionism and showing off?"

She didn't miss a beat. "The one is all about sex, the other isn't. I wouldn't go on there if I couldn't take my clothes off, that's what I'm showing off: my body. But I'm not having sex, others might be but I'm not — I never orgasm, nothing like that... I know that's the reason a lot of the others go on there but not me."

"How terribly noble of you," I muttered loud enough for her to hear then I retreated into a cocoon. She kept me quiet on the long flight by ordering and passing me beer and wine.

There are hot and cool people, in a McLuhan sense. I've always known I'm in the cool pool: I'm remote, unemotional, unengaged... well, I'm kind of an un-person — not a bad guy, just not one you look to for leadership or inspiration... or to befriend, for that matter. Kon is all hot. She's social, engaged, emotional, the very things I'm not so while all the other times I'd been to Europe were interesting and educational, these three weeks were flat-out frantic and fun.

She insisted we stay out of hotels and in pensions, rooming houses for young tourists on a budget; they're generally in the middle of the city, in the middle of the action. We were never alone, she saw to that. She made friends quickly, got current information fast and was the first to head out into the action. I had to constantly struggle to keep up; always off-balance. But I had a ball... until we got back on the plane and we were heading home to reality.

She sensed the change in me and maybe she was feeling the same way because after an hour in the air when we hadn't said much she handed me her iPad. "On the flight over, when you wouldn't talk to me, you must have noticed I was talking to the woman beside me; I talked to her about what you were mad at me about; I talked to her about it for a long time; she was really curious; really interested, she asked me a lot of questions. Then she told me she worked for a women's magazine — I knew the one, I've read it. She asked me if I would write about why I was camming, and how I felt about it — an insight piece she called it. That's what I've been doing for the last few weeks, a little here, a little there; I've got it done. Would you look at it?"

I took the iPad from her more than a little interested in how she could explain herself. I was surprised at how well she wrote... and how naively. You can justify anything if you try hard enough but that wasn't the theme of her piece; the theme was that she didn't care what anyone thought, she was doing it because she was proud of her body, it felt right, people were getting pleasure from it, what's the problem? It's all good.

Her main philosophical point? She was enjoying herself and she was hurting no one. She refused to look at it any deeper than that.

Fine... but.

I started writing about an hour after finishing her piece, after thinking hard about why I viscerally objected to what she was doing. I started off with an objective essay but felt that, no, her piece had been about her, my piece had to be about me. I got it down fast and mulled it over for the rest of the flight, changing just a little of it.

We didn't talk on the cab ride to my place, maybe because it was crunch time. What were we going to do? What was I going to do?

"What do you want to do?" I asked as we walked up to my front door.

"What are my options?"

"What do you want them to be?" I said while unlocking the door.

"I start work in three days. I'm not going to be able to come and go as I have. If you want me in your life maybe we should make arrangements for that."

When we got inside I flopped into a chair as if I had run across the ocean. "Get your iPad and read what I wrote."

She sat on the couch, dug her iPad from her backpack and sat back.

I was watching her carefully. I had no idea how she was going to react, well, no, I had an idea but that was all.

She looked up within a minute. "What's this for?"

"I thought if you were going to send your piece to the magazine you might want to send in that one too — two views of the same thing, the girl and the boyfriend."

"You'd send this?"

"Read it."

It was longer than her's and it covered a lot more ground but it wasn't as hard-hitting and it wasn't close to being as entertaining, or as certain.

She read it quickly without reaction then she just dropped the iPad on the couch and looked over at me, confused. "So what does it mean? I don't get it."

"The Utilitarian philosophy says..."

"I know what the Utilitarian philosophy says, you explained it — the morally right action is the one that produced the most amount of good."

"And..."

"And that the 'good' is not only my own good but the good for others. I get it, that's pretty much what I said, I just didn't know it was an actual philosophy — thanks for pointing that out." I wasn't sure if she was mocking me or not. "So you're agreeing with me?" This was really confusing her. "Why? You don't agree with me about anything... ever."

"It's the philosophy, I've always kind of believed in it. I applied it to what you're doing... but I made the mistake of seeing my own life through that same prism. I don't fare well. You do. What you did during the entire trip was to produced the most amount of good for you, for me and for everyone around you. I didn't, I never have."

Her gums slowly appeared and her eyes crinkled. She sprang to her feet, took a few steps towards me then launched herself towards me, landing leaning into me, hugging me.

I pushed her a way. "But it's not as simple as that." I wanted to get this out, get it on the record because I was pretty sure I'd have to refer to this often in the future, if we have a future together. "Utilitarianism doesn't exist in a vacuum. Utilitarianism is a form of Consequentialism — the good of Utilitarianism is qualified by the consequences it produces."

She grinned — she had cut to the bottom line, she didn't give a shit about the details. "The good of Utilitarianism is qualified by the consequences it produces," she repeated, then snickered. "Do you even hear yourself?"

This pissed me off. "Not everyone is like you, you know, just doing things like it's a bowel movement; you just do it and flush it away. Most of us think about what might be the consequences of our actions before we do something — we don't join a long line to get our car washed when we can wait until there's no line."

"Like when it's raining." She openly scoffed at me now.

"Getting naked online is all good to you because you're having fun and you're not hurting anyone. That's the way you see it. But I believe there are consequences to that, social rot is one of them."

"Social rot?" She said it like a loud guffaw.

"Social rot, that's the way I see it." She was about to object so I threw up my hand to stop her again. "Listen! A month ago I would have said yes, absolutely it is, like gay rights are social rot and same sex marriage..." she was about to protest again but again I stopped her. "BUT... I just spent 3 weeks living the way you want to live. It was entirely new to me, everything about it was new to me. And I liked it, I wasn't good at it, I know — I was really uncomfortable most of the time, but I liked it. So, here's the deal, here's why I wrote what I wrote. I'm going to respect the way you do things... I admit, I haven't so far, but I'm going to try really hard to — you don't criticize me... much, so I'm not going to criticize you. We'll probably do most things your way because I know you can't change, I know you can't do things my way... I know that if we're going to stay together I'm the one who's going to have to do all the changing. OK, so do your thing online, I can't stop you and," I pointed to the iPad, "I'll even send out that piece under my own name agreeing with the right of my girl friend to do whatever she wants to do. But it's not because I believe you're right in doing what you're doing; it's that I believe essentially in the Utilitarian philosophy, I always have and watching you is seeing that philosophy in action. But I'm a Consequentialist too and if the consequences of what you're doing are invasively bad, then I'm gone."