On My Way Up

It isn't difficult.

Not when you know how.

It's like tying your shoes - when you're two years old, it's so impossible that you don't even consider trying and never feel yourself hard done by your inability. At five years old and just learning, it's difficult and frustrating. At 20? Quick and mindless, done while on the phone or watching TV.

So how, you ask? Sorry, that's kind of a proprietary secret and I'm not sure I could explain anyway. Let's just say that I stumbled onto the way of it when I was 16. I honestly believe that everybody has the potential, it's just that nobody's shown them how. There may be others like me. I've never sensed their presence, but it could be that they took a different road. It's a definite 'dunno'.

It's hard to describe. Try explaining to a man blind from birth the difference between lime green and bubble-gum blue, right? Just accept that I can 'read' a person's emotions like dials and gauges in a pilot's cockpit. One 'dial' shows interest - from catatonically bored to utterly fascinated. Others range from blind hatred to equally blind worshipful adoration, suicidally depressed to drunkenly joyful, sickeningly repulsed to mindlessly horny.

That's an oversimplification, of course; I lack the words to explain it properly. Just accept that I can sense these things. I can read your emotions, your tastes, your preferences, your fears. It doesn't mean I know your thoughts; rather, it's a question of moods.

But why me? Damfino, pilgrim. I wasn't struck by lightning, I didn't befriend a fairy queen in danger and I certainly didn't find a magic amulet or something. One day, I just realized that I could.

Could you? Damfino squared. I really don't know and there's diddly in the literature. That much I know, 'cause I checked. And I'm an expert, remember?

Anyway, I was just about the lowest of the school's omega pack when I began to appreciate that I could {see} how other people felt. It was almost another year before I realized - much to my surprise - that other people couldn't.

It wasn't a pleasant talent to have. You really think it would be? Before you decide, consider that I was wading chin-deep in an ocean of scorn. Just about the only exceptions to that universal contempt were a couple of teachers who seemed to be pleased by my eagerness to learn. That was nice, but rather getting kissed by an elderly maiden aunt - kind of warming, but a bit weird and totally unproductive.

Oh, and Gina. Sweet Gina...

To break the meme, Gina wasn't the tall, blonde cheerleader. She didn't have gravity-bending cleavage, she never flirted and was anything but attention-grabbing. Truth be told, Gina was a member of the school Library Guild, played the clarinet in the school band, dressed very conservatively and all in all seemed no better than plain-looking. To call her a wallflower would be a snub to both blossoms and indoor architecture. Even our fellow nerds ignored her.

Until she smiled. Then some magic happened and her face blossomed into pure beauty. It was a transfiguration, a metamorphosis, like the sun coming up on a field of daisies after a rainy night.

Sadly, she was so shy that few people saw her smile.

Two things I found out about Gina, once I'd bothered to {read} her.

First, she had a terrible self-image. OK, that wasn't uncommon. Most girls in the school - most of the female teachers, too - had image issues, convinced that they were too tall or too short, too fat or too skinny or whatever.

I never did understand any of that that. It was so silly, ignoring all their obvious good points while fretting about stuff most guys never even notice.

Anyway, Gina was just about on the bottom of the pile, confidence-wise. Her mental I-hate-me list went on and on - too heavy, bad hair, fat legs, a funny nose. Jeez - it was like listening to the alpha bitches run each other down in the hallways.

But the second thing I learned was that Gina thought I was cute.

Now that one blew my socks off. Having just smirked at women and their self-image issues, I still have to confess that I wasn't remotely Chippendales material. I was in a major growth spurt, skinny as hell and, yeah, had the teen acne curse. Add spectacles and a big Adam's apple and I was just a fairly goofy-looking 18-year-old praying he'd fill in sometime soon.

But Gina, to my amazement, thought I was cute. And, weirdly, she also thought I was smart. As our marks weren't posted anywhere, I figured that was due to nothing more than my keeping my mouth shut most of the time.

.

Let's step back. Gina had until then been one of a thousand other kids - just part of the school wallpaper, so to speak. But, hiding in the library one spare period, I {noticed} her 'dials' shifting as I passed her at the librarian's station.

Intrigued, I {looked} closer. Foly huck! What I {saw} was, to me, staggering.

To be honest, I was flummoxed. I'd never known a girl like that before, one who didn't think I was anything but a walking invitation for a bitchy put-down. I hadn't a clue what to do. So I did what any other red-blooded lad my age would have done - I ran away.

Well, not literally, but I did beat a hurried retreat to my corner cubicle. When I sat down, I was amazed to find myself actually blushing.

I didn't get much - OK, any - studying done after that; my mind was too busy trying to process this unprecedented discovery.

Having sat through the bell in my bewilderment, I suddenly realized I was going to be late for my next class. Gina was gone by the time I left the library and the halls were just about deserted. I opened the back door to the language lab and tried to slip in unobserved. No such luck.

"Good evening, Mr Marks!" Bag Wilkes, the English teacher, had a gaze like a phaser; her sarcasm was infamous. As was her tendency to give detentions. Damn!

In desperation, I reached out and {read} her. It wasn't a pleasant place to go, frankly. I noticed her annoyance 'needle' was just about pegged. Experimentally, more than a little desperate, I tried to shift it a little. To my surprise, it worked. Her frown eased off a bit and she merely motioned me to my seat.

I scurried to it, sat down and fumbled for my books. In doing so, I released control and {saw} the 'needle' flick upwards again. The Bag tensed up, a frown on her bovine face. Panicking, I again seized the 'needle' and moved it back. Wilkes settled back in her chair like a hen after fluffing its feathers.

OK, here was the proverbial Rock and over there the Hard Place - and I was plumb-squat-doomed in the middle. I was new to this. I'd never done it before and was surprised at how much effort it was taking. I knew I couldn't hold it for long.

In desperation, I tried 'bending' the 'needle'. That sounds silly, but it's the only way I can explain it. In my panic, I found that I could not only move the 'needle' but also pin it in place.

To my amazement and relief, Wilkes' obese shoulders settled down and she turned away from me to her lesson notes.

Cautiously, I let go, eased off my control. Cool! If not well-disposed towards me, she was at least willing to ignore me. I was more than willing to settle for that.

It occurred to me that it had probably been about three minutes since I breathed last. It turned out to be a ragged gasp.

So, it worked. To some extent, I could influence people's moods.

.

It was in retrospect a dangerous thing to give to a teenage boy. Looking back, I'm surprised that it didn't all go terribly, horribly, top-of-the-news-hour wrong. I'd spent literally years {seeing} how despised I really was in the minds of my schoolmates, so that delay in learning to control other people's moods was probably a good thing. It had not been a happy time for Mrs Marks' little boy and revenge would have been ugly.

Something that tempered my response once I did learn the extent of my power was my awareness of the others' insecurities. The janitor was nervous going into the furnace room. The captain of the basketball team worried that he had a small weenie, of all things. (OK, I'd seen him in the shower; he wasn't entirely wrong.) The cheerleaders... no, let's not wade into that particular cesspond - under their taut sweaters, those girls had issues!

.

Initially, not knowing at the time that I could fight back, I'd contented myself with studying them, like a biologist documenting a particularly dangerous clan of hyenas on the Serengeti. In time, with nothing better to do, I knew them better than they knew themselves. By the time I learned I could do more, I was content to just mentally sneer at their frailties.

I owe a lot to my Gran. She'd taken me on when my parents died in a car crash. We weren't really poor, but she had little enough that she had to make every dollar count. And she worked! She raised chickens and sold eggs and chicken pot pies. She knitted baby clothes, did her own gardening and canning; even now, I've never found dill pickles as good as the ones she sold at the local market. She embroidered, taught the violin, tutored arithmetic, did book-keeping for a couple of local small businesses. There was rarely a spare hour in her day. Not only was I expected to help, but she was possessed of the character able to make it fun.

Yeah, I know, it sounds silly, but while other kids my age were getting bored with gaming, I was having a great time learning a solid work ethic. She could Tom Sawyer me into doing chores, leaving me thinking that I'd been personally favored by being given the chance.

The other thing she taught me was morality. Don't get me wrong, Gran wasn't one of those dour, holier-than-thou types. She was never preachy and was very aware of her own faults and weaknesses. But Gran had an abundance of forgiveness and charity - open-hearted kindness to all. She was a church-going woman of deep faith and took me to the local church every Sunday without fail. I think however that that was just a way for her to express her abiding love for the Almighty; she would have expressed the same integrity and honesty and reverence for her fellow creatures had there not been a church within a thousand miles.

It was in any case that do-right-by-all-men vision she gave me, simply by example, that kept me from going off the edge.

.

I locked myself in my room when I got home, telling Gran I had a headache. It was a time for deep thought. Hell, I might descend to contemplation, even introspection.

Gina thought I was cool. She liked me. OK, but so did Gran. The question was, how did I feel about Gina?

Well, on the one hand, I was impressed with what I'd {seen} of her mind. She was smart, that was clear. She wasn't carrying around the maximal Crazy so typical of the cheerleaders. That was a relief - Crazy seemed endemic in that cold, bitchy branch of womanhood.

Gina {looked} to be a gentle person, a warm soul in an often-miserable world. Knowing how rare that was, I found it impressive. She was definitely loyal and was possessed of both courage and a strong will. So, bonus points for character.

But, yeah, I was a teenage boy, hip-deep in the testosterone swamp. I lay on my bed, put aside what I knew about her character. I tried to think about Gina, as opposed to the dowdy image she seemed to be working at with her big glasses, braids and baggy clothes. It was an effort for a young man raised in a world of computer porn, where all women were always nude and no more than three steps from a makeup artist.

On contemplation (see!) I realized that she had a nice figure, pleasant features and probably good hair if she ever tried to do anything with it. Bags of potential.

Yes, you're quite right. In retrospect, all that seems really clinical when I come out and say it. But keep in mind that I was a shy, uncertain, socially-alienated adolescent virgin, totally unsure both of myself and of how to relate to women. Heck, aside from Gran, I'd never even held hands with a woman. So, forgive a young man's fumbling analytics; worse mistakes have been made by better people of both sexes. I was working with what I had.

Lying on my bed, I pumped up my courage and decided a little magic might not be out of order.

At this point, Testosterone and Ethics were still tied on points, slugging it out in the fifth round. After my experience with Bag Wilkes, I suspected I could, by bending a few 'needles', have Gina bent over a library trolley in minutes - loving it, begging for more - but that just seemed slimy, even to my utterly amoral trouser snake.

I'd heard that Sophia Loren once said that nothing makes a woman more beautiful than thinking she is, so I decided I 'd experiment - nothing more than trying to make Gina happy with herself.

The trick, I realized, was to do this gradually, gently; an overnight change would have her parents taking her to a shrink. But where to start? Confidence, for sure. Self-worth, yes.

What else? I thought her figure was pretty nice - what I could see of it - but she thought she was pudgy. A two-birds-with-one-stone solution was obvious; I could just {motivate} her to spend more time in the gym, make exercising pleasurable, mentally rewarding. I also could {work} on her body image.

I made a point of talking to her whenever we ran into each other, even just saying Hi in passing, and I tried to find things to compliment her for. To be honest, it was difficult at first. She was pretty enough but seemed to be working hard to hide it. Still, there's always something you can find.

Along the way, I started {shifting} her moods - a touch of confidence, a dusting of liking herself, a desire to exercise. Nothing more, really. It was fun, seeing her slowly change over the weeks.

The first outward indication of progress was when she came to school one day wearing a skirt for the first time since ever. Holy crap - the girl had knees! And very pretty ones, too, I thought to myself.

I made a special effort that morning to praise how she looked.

I knew I'd won one Saturday when I saw Gina and an older woman who I thought had to be her mother coming out of a clothing store in the mall, arms laden with packages and bags.

"Hi, Gina! Hi, Mrs Sylla!" I said. It appeared that I had guessed right, for the older woman said good morning to me, then asked Gina to introduce me.

"Mum, this is Michael Marks. Michael, this is my mother." The confidence boost must've been working; Gina was looking me right in the eyes for the first time.

Her mother tried to hold out a hand to shake mine, but almost wound up dropping a shoebox.

I decided to make the most of the opportunity. "Can I help you with those? I'm not busy."

So her mother got an un{edited} good first impression of me and I got some more insight into Gina. Yup - her mom was taking her out for a remake. And Gina, while still a bit conflicted, was also happy and excited about it.

Monday next came the shock. Gina was dressed to kill - a kick-ass little dress (a soft cream color, which showed off her flawless skin very nicely), low heels and a little makeup. She'd even had her hair done.

And she smiled when she saw me! Like I said, her smile was pretty special. With the makeover, the effect was dazzling. Gina had gone from a wallflower to one of the prettiest girls in the school. No, forget merely 'pretty' - she'd become one of the hottest girls in the place.

And, I could {see}, she still thought I was pretty special. I took a risk. I smiled as broadly as I could, held out my arms.

"Gina! You look great!"

Her mind filled with happiness - and some excitement, to my surprise. She flowed into my arms for a long hug. I could smell her shampoo. Her body was, under my inexperienced hands, a heady mix of soft and firm and I was instantly embarrassed by the normal reaction of any young man in a similar situation.

Feeling my rising hardness, Gina giggled. I could {see} that her amusement and her pleasure at being able to influence a man like that were fighting her own embarrassment, so I {dialed down} the latter while pulling my hips away from her a little.

She looked up at me with the most amazing smile I'd ever seen. And even without messing with any more dials or needles, I knew she and I were a couple.

.

It didn't go all that smoothly, of course. The other boys weren't blind, nor was the cheerleader coven oblivious to her effect on their boyfriends. She had to spend a lot of time fending off boorish schoolboys and ignoring slights from ego-challenged bottle blondes. I had to give her a couple of mood boosts over the next few weeks; with them, she rose above their adolescent crap like a bird learning to fly.

I was actually surprised at how little manipulation she needed, once we got her over the first hurdles. Inertia also applies to moods, I suppose. Once we got her out of her doldrums, she fed her own fires.

The only time she wasn't capable of dealing with the orcs and trolls was late one Friday afternoon. I was opening my locker for my jacket when I suddenly {sensed} her repulsion - and her fear. I soon found her, backed into a corner in a back hallway by one of the football team goons. He had her pinned, her sweater pulled up to expose her bra, which he was pawing.

She was scared and he was horny, angry and frustrated, so I proceeded to stomp him.

Right. Me, the classic 98-pound weakling, stomping a linebacker?

Actually, once I had {hammered} his confidence, courage and self-image and {boosted} his fear, it was like beating up a three-legged gerbil.

I finally bent down over where he was cowering on the floor to hiss in his ear, "She's mine, asshole. Mine. Pass the word - if you or any of your jackshit friends come near her again, I'll come looking for them - and you." At that last threat, I {dialed} his fear to just about the max. He believed me, oh yes. I {knew} that even before he wet himself.

When I stood up, Gina was standing where I'd left her, her sweater still pulled up and her eyes wide and staring. It had been, I guess, like watching a squirrel charge a passing pit bull - and win. I took the risk of pulling down her sweater to hide her boobs and took her in my arms to comfort her.

She started sobbing and I had my first-ever female crisis in my arms. Fortunately, I was able to {comfort} her very quickly and the blubbering soon stopped.

"How...?" she whispered.

Thinking quickly, I told her that I'd been studying aikido, saying it loudly enough that Bubba, still clutching his damp and aching groin, couldn't fail to hear. The other clowns in the school didn't believe him, not at first. A couple of them tried to push the point in the days that followed, but word got around fairly quickly that Mikey Marks was a bad person to tangle with - they hadn't even managed to get a punch in.

I got hauled into the office after the last time, but the incident had been captured on a security camera and it was pretty clear that I had only been defending myself against the three of them. I didn't even have to {work} on the principal. I went so far as to plead for them not to be expelled, which got me some points all by itself.

The bottom line was that, within a month, while neither Gina nor I were exactly popular, the trolls were leaving both of us alone. That suited us just fine.

Gina and I were a couple, but we didn't spend a lot of time actually dating. Neither of us had the money. Fortunately for me, she didn't expect to be handed diamonds and caviar; being together was just cool. We studied together, hiked in the local parks, went on bicycle trips - cheap stuff, but fun. And it gave us time to be alone. Both of us were uncertain, much like most other teenagers. We'd hugged, made kissyface, groped a little, but we'd never had the opportunity to take it any further. Second base, so to speak.