Who Knew?

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Okay, I've always wanted to say that. Before we get started let's get a few things out of the way. First off I really have to say thanks to all of you. Over the past two weeks I've gotten so many letters of encouragement and support that have helped me with my editing problems more than any of you could ever realize. I'm very grateful. Next, I'd also like to thank the many people who volunteered to edit for me and to my best friend mikothebaby for being there to guide me and tell me what to do. I'd also like to thank Ntropy586 for editing this story. He did an incredible job and he did it very quickly. Of the four editors who looked over the story he was the only one who kept up with my insane pace and he did it almost casually. Okay folks this is a long crazy dramatic story with very few sex scenes, so those of you who are only here for the bump and grind will probably be disappointed. My suggestion is to read it in sections instead of all at once, but I like to give you guys the whole thing so you have a choice. I promise next week will be a shorter tale with more sex. SS06

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Bondage.

Just thinking about it or just the word puts all kinds of nasty things in your mind doesn't it? I mean, in a way it really does get your juices flowing to consider me standing here blindfolded with my hands cuffed behind my back in a room full of men waiting to do bad things to me. The only thing they're waiting for is Josh. It seems like one way or another I've spent my entire life waiting for Joshua Eric McVay. Today is just another example of that. I'm just standing here waiting. There are goose bumps all over me and I'm scared shitless. Because of the blindfold I don't know who's around me or exactly where they are. When Josh gets here, the fun will begin. Josh is the man of my dreams and the love of my life, so it's really important that he be here. While we're waiting for him, let me tell you about my life. This is probably going to get nasty, so you might not want your kids around while we talk.

I first met Josh, holy shit...I forgot to tell you who I am. My name is Brianna McVay. Yes, dammit that is my name. I refuse to change it back. What...? Okay yes, you may have heard of me under a few different names. I went by Tasti Pucci, during my first porn career. And I did another bunch of Movies where I pretended to be German and called myself Gittner Hole, but I really am Brianna McVay. I was born Brianna Kent, but when I married Josh, I got his name and never gave it back. Anyway, I met Josh in high school. We were the same types of people. What I mean by that is that neither of us was extremely popular, but we were also not untouchables. We weren't nerds or picked on, but we also weren't a part of the beautiful people clique that every high school has.

If you really look at it, the nerds are just as famous as the jocks, because they stand out and everyone knows them too. Sure they stand out and everyone knows them because they're usually socially inept, but that makes them famous as well. Remember back to when you were in high school. The jocks and their cheerleaders were famous all over the school right? They were famous because they stood out and everyone knew them or knew who they were. They stood out because of their athletic ability and their social skills. Or they stood out for their charisma or beauty. They probably weren't as smart as some of the people in the school but in a lot of ways they rode whatever gifts they had to full on success in high school. The teachers probably gave them slightly better grades than they deserved because the team needs Johnny in the game Saturday. Or they give Cindy a C instead of a D or an F because she has incredible boobs and they just love to see her bending over in that skirt.

On the other hand, the nerds stand out too. Everyone knows them just as well because of their perceived brain and their social ineptitude. Notice that I said perceived brains. Contrary to popular knowledge, not all nerds are as smart as we believe. Some of them are brilliant, while others are brilliant when it comes to completely inane things. Like the guys that aren't any better than anyone else at math or can't even fucking spell, but they've memorized every God damned episode of Star Trek, to the point where they can actually speak Klingon. There's a hell of a lot of jobs out there where being fluent in Klingon is a requirement, right? Well, at least the furniture salesmen love to see them coming. A lot of furniture salesmen make bonus commissions selling couches for these guys to put in their mom's basements. Add a big ass TV to that and you have nerd-vana.

Anyway, these guys' peculiarities and social foibles make them just as noticeable as the jocks and people talk about them around school equally as much, just not in a good way. The teachers give them breaks, too. I can just see them saying something like, "Well Poindexter is really smart. I'm sure he knows the material. I see him reading the book all of the time. (Poindexter actually had a Spiderman comic inside of the textbook) I'm going to pass him because he probably didn't do well on the test because all of those jocks are always picking on him. Just last week the linebackers all got together and gave him a group wedgie. They pulled his drawers so far up his ass that he was using the waistband to keep sweat off of his forehead in gym. I don't want to add any extra stress to his life so I'm going to pass him. He's smart; he'll figure this all out some day.

So there you have it. The jocks are famous. The nerds on the other hand are just as famous. Both of those groups, the elite and the deelite (yes I just made that word up and if you've been paying attention you already know what it means) generally make up ten percent of the student body or less. The rest of the students are just bodies and faces in the crowd until they do something to call attention to themselves.

That was where Josh and I fell. We were so far from being noticeable that if we did go to a football game the ushers usually told us that the section of the stands we sat in was reserved for the home team. We actually had to prove that we attended the school. I was sure that if we ever went back for a reunion, everyone would sit around and argue over which one of us was the one who attended the school and which one was the non-attending spouse.

When we did meet though, it was magical. It was halfway through my junior year. We had one of those assemblies where they call all of the juniors to the gym instead of the auditorium. Once there we had to pair off so they could teach us how to dance to get ready for the upcoming junior prom or dance.

These things were generally awkward because the popular kids already knew how to get along or act at them, which just proved again how far superior to normal humans they were. Everyone else was left feeling out of place and in need of rescue.

In my junior year, I was often mistaken for a nerd. I was five feet tall and thin as a rail. Most of the people in my class considered me a UFO or a ghost. UFO stood for unnoticed female object. The reason why I was unnoticed wasn't my fault. It was my mom, shit it's genetic. My mom raised us as vegetarians. I didn't know any better. So I had no boobs and no butt which gave me the super power of being totally invisible to teenaged boys.

So that day, there in the gym with my knees knocking, I watched as most of my friends paired off with boys that they knew. I was in abject fear of being one of the last picked and having to be assigned a partner. Even the fat girls were getting picked. I felt like a pariah. My long frizzy black hair fell to below my waist. There were days when I felt like Cousin It from 'The Addams Family.'

Into all of that confusion and stress stepped Joshua McVay. Josh was already tall and good looking. He could have played any sport he chose, but his family needed him to work after school. So not having time to pursue athletics or popular kid activities relegated him to nobody status. It was my lucky day. He walked right up to me and took my hand.

"I'm sure a lot of guys have already asked you to be their partner," he said. "But, I just thought I'd try my luck just in case. A lot of really pretty girls don't get picked because guys are too afraid to ask them and be turned down."

I was tongue tied and all of my friends were green with envy. Even some of the cheerleaders started preening and clearing their throats.

"Well no one has actually asked me yet," I said. His smile lit up the room.

"Great! I don't really know a lot of people here," he said, "so could you be my partner for whatever we're doing?" I was suddenly rendered unable to speak. I just nodded my head. We stood there together and talked for a while. If I told you what we talked about, I'd be lying because I don't remember a single word of it. All I remember was how nice his breath was and how white and shiny his teeth were. I remember the way the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he laughed and the sound it made. I also remember girls all over the gym looking at me and I could tell that some of them wanted to beat my ass, but I was so happy that none of it mattered.

That day was only the beginning. Josh was one of those guys who was simply too nice for words. Over the following few weeks leading up to the dance, every time he saw me, he came over to speak to me. If I was sitting at a table eating lunch with my ghostly friends, he'd wander over and very soon there were others guys coming over to talk to him. He always made it a point to introduce me to them. Girls who were interested in him came over and again he'd introduce me to them. People around the school began to speak to me simply from that.

When there were only a few days left before the dance, a couple of guys actually asked me if I was going. I guess they were trying to find dates at the last minute. One of them asked if Josh and I were going steady. I guess he didn't want to get in the middle of anything. Most of them were shocked when I told them that I wasn't planning on going. Actually I could have gone, but since Josh wasn't going, I didn't want to go either. I guess I'd fallen in love with him the moment he looked into my eyes in that gymnasium.

The biggest surprise came for me the Monday before the dance. Josh came over to me and he looked really worried. He told me that he didn't want to upset me but he had a problem. I looked at him intently. If he had a problem, then I did as well.

"Brianna, is there a chance that whoever invited you to the dance might let me dance with you?" he asked.

I looked at him in shock. "I guess I am going to the dance after all," he said. "My parents, my mom especially, really want me to go. This is our busiest time on the farm, but they want me to take that time off. They said something about enjoying my youth and making memories."

My face lit up. I just stood there and smiled. "There are a couple of girls that asked me who I was going with," he said. "So you can tell whoever you're going with that they can pretty much pick who they'd like me to go with and dance with them a couple of times."

"Why?" I asked, putting my hand on my non-existent hip.

He put his head down and looked at the floor. When he looked back up, I saw sadness in those huge gray eyes.

"Because I'd really rather go to the dance with you," he said. "But since I didn't know that I was going, I couldn't ask you in time."

"No, that's not what I meant," I said. "I mean, why do you want to go to the dance with me? Why do you like me? Before you asked me to be your partner in the gym nobody knew that I was alive. Now, three guys asked me to go to the dance. I don't understand any of this. I'm too skinny. I don't have any boobs and my hair is frizzy. My glasses are so thick that my neck muscles aren't strong enough to lift my head. Some of the prettiest girls in the school want to beat my ass over you. And now you're standing here looking like your dog just died. Why, am I so important to you?"

"My family does okay," he began. "We live and work on a farm that has been in our family for a lot of years. Being on a farm makes you look at things differently. You have to figure out what will happen not over the course of one season but over the course of several seasons so you don't overtax the soil and deplete it."

"In my spare time I like to take photographs. That gives me an eye for detail and for composition. I'm also great with identifying the characteristics of livestock. I can tell when an animal has good lines...Shit, I'm doing terrible here aren't I?" he sputtered. I sat there with an amused look on my face, enjoying seeing him squirm like this.

"I'm used to not just seeing things as they are," he said, "but to looking at what they may become. Too many people base their lives on what went on or what's going on in high school. I have to look at the future. These four years won't mean shit when you compare them to the rest of our lives. And you're going to end up being the prettiest girl to ever come out of our class. My dad always tells me about his twenty year reunion. All of the cheerleaders weighed close to three hundred pounds and looked like shit. They were still trying to force their fat asses and big bellies into short tight skirts hoping someone would tell them that they looked exactly the same."

"Some people simply peak in high school," he said. "They spend the rest of their lives trying to relive their glory days or get revenge for things that are locked in their memories. At the end of their lives they realize that those four years they wanted to live over and over again weren't nearly as important as the next sixty years of their lives that they wasted. So you threw a football and made a touchdown, whoopee! Twenty years from now, who'll remember it or care?"

"I want to find someone that I can spend the rest of my life making memories with and..." Before he could say anything else, I put my finger over his lips.

"Three boys asked me to go to the dance," I said. "I didn't say yes to any of them because I wanted to go to the dance with you, too." If this had been a movie we'd have probably started kissing and violins would be playing in the background. But we weren't, so they didn't. But it would have been cool. We were both too young and too innocent for the kissing thing too. We did however go to the dance. And it was great.

* * * * * *

You took my hand, you showed me how.

You promised me you'd be around.

Uh huh, that's right.

* * * * * *

The dance was the beginning of us and, as I think about it, that was the beginning of a life spent waiting for Josh. Josh never did anything on anyone's schedule, except his own. He did everything, exactly when he wanted to or was able to and things always worked out great. As for me, I was in love and I only wanted to be his. Josh was very shy. There were some things that I had to wait forever to happen. Like when we went out and people asked if we were boyfriend and girlfriend and Josh would change the subject or shyly look away. He'd look like he was going to kill any guy who looked at me funny, but he couldn't ask me to go steady with him.

The summer was worse. In the middle of our last week of school my mother, who'd been sick for a while, passed. It hit me especially hard because my mother and I had always been close. I just didn't understand her death. She confided in me when she was hospitalized and knew that she wasn't going to make it. She'd known all along; it was cancer. Breast cancer took my mother away from me. Well maybe it wasn't the disease. Maybe it was her inability to face the disease and the possible changes to her life.

Josh sat with me at the funeral and never let go of my hand. I cried on him and ranted to him about how unfair it all was and he listened to every word and came back for more. My father's older sister moved into our house to cook and clean for me, dad and my siblings. From that first week, while we were still getting over my mom being taken away from us, she changed our lives totally. Aunt Sally was divorced and from the city. She did three things that changed my life quickly. She took me to an eyes doctor and got me contacts. She told my dad that it would be cheaper in the long run because I was always breaking my glasses or losing them anyway. I couldn't lose them if they were in my eyes.

She also got my hair cut, permed and styled. It was still long but it was long with a tiny bit of a wave to it instead of frizzy and dried out looking. She got it cut to only the middle of my back instead of below my butt. Aunt Sally was never one to mince words. "There's no reason for your hair to be that long," she snapped. "It isn't sexy at all. You look like an Amish woman or a hippy. How the hell do you wipe your ass?"

The next thing Aunt Sally did was to ransack my virgin body. Okay, Aunt Sally was deeply hetero, so it's not what you're thinking. I'd been a vegetarian all of my life. Aunt Sally introduced us to meat. My brother and sisters told her that being a vegetarian was healthier and that our mom had sworn by it.

"I loved your mother," said Aunt Sally. "She was more like my sister than my sister in law. And I know she believed in all of that vegetarian stuff but where did it get her? Your father..." Like lightning we all turned to look at our father. He hung his head.

"Alright, I admit it," he said. "I do sneak into town for the occasional burger."

"And I remember you ate a hotdog when you took me to the ballgame," spat my brother Bobby.

I shrugged my shoulders and took a bite of the roast Aunt Sally had cooked. It was like a different dimension in life opened up. I stared at Sally and swore that I'd never eat Tofu or a mushroom burger again.

My brother was with me, but it took a while for my sisters to come around. Over that summer Josh and I were never apart. He worked his ass off on the farm and I followed him around like a puppy and even helped him when I could. Maybe it was working on the farm, but I'm pretty sure that it was the meat. All I know is that when I went back to school, I weighed twenty five pounds more and it was all tits and ass. My hips and my legs were bigger and curvier. I guess since the changes came over the course of the entire summer Josh and I hadn't really noticed them. My hair and the absence of the glasses, plus the light sprinkling of makeup that Aunt Sally had taught me to apply made a big difference too.

The first day in school more than ten boys came over to introduce them-selves to me. I finally had to explain to them that they'd gone to school with me for most of their lives and had never paid me any attention. I also told them that I had a boyfriend and was planning on marrying him someday.

"Who's that?" asked Josh, looking really pissed. He was already upset at all of the attention I was getting.

"You, dummy," I said. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No," he said. "Brianna, I should have said something or asked you something, but I was always afraid that you'd say no. I was going crazy thinking that now that you're so pretty you'd be tired of me and want to go with someone popular."

"Josh, I'd never say no to anything from you," I told him. "Besides that, I took your words and I believed in everything you said to me. Yeah huh, that's right." We just looked at each other and smiled.

Remember all of the things that I said before about how stupid and shallow high school was? I take them all back. My senior year was the shit. It was the best fucking year of my life to that point. Josh and I broke down a lot of the barriers in that school. We almost totally eliminated the caste system. Josh was ruggedly handsome and so big and strong that everyone knew he could have played football but simply chose not to. I guess from the numbers of guys who made fools out of themselves over me it was obvious that I could have been a cheerleader but also chose not to. We were very popular without having to do all of the typical things that popular kids do. We had cookouts on the beach and invited big groups of friends from all of the camps. It was heaven.