Stephanie

Sometimes I surprise myself with a story twist when formatting a story draft that I had not seen in a while. This occurred when working on a short story with a working title of Stephanie.

Genre-wise it is in my ‘Shippers’ category, which are stories in which readers might prefer for a couple to get together into a relationship (aka the shipper meme), but I prefer that they don’t. Further, this draft was in the ‘Exs’ subcategory where antipathy abounds.

Stephanie previously broke up with Eymen for a new guy with a hint of her having cheated on Eymen. She came to him in the school hallway with a bruised cheek and black eye administered by her new boyfriend, Hyde. Despite distrusting her, Eymen cared for her and protected her.

While Eymen goes through a silent internal struggle over the situation that he does NOT want to talk about, Stephanie insists that they talk despite this, which causes him to precariously balance between doing what is necessary in the moment and confronting his raw feelings of betrayal. His recently peaceful existence was disrupted by her drama as she tries to convince him to take her back. The more she talks the worse she makes his pain and struggle to help her despite their history; including her confession that she gave up her v-card to the bad boy after having denied Eymen when they were together.

After her apologies and pleas for forgiveness drive Eymen further away, she switches tactics. First, she de-emphasized verbal communication (words) in favor of kinesthetic communication (actions and touches). He begins to hear and believe her as while words often lie, actions tend to speak the truth. Next, after creating that opening, she leveraged her female voodoo to take control of his thoughts to focus favorably upon her. While my preference would have been for Eymen to tell her to GTFO, she learned that by STFU that she could honestly communicate more effectively. In the end, he accepted her back.

Are these concretes of DV and sexuality as bit mature for high school? Yes, I agree. However, their ages are metaphorical related to a common tendency of middle-aged single women to be overgrown adolescents in their maturity. The scenario is a classic ‘sling-back’ situation of middle-aged single women sending ‘Hey Stranger’ messages to guys they dumped in their youth. The whole relates to a common older single female realization that she needed to stop chasing the bad boys to settle on a good reliable guy. Stephanie’s abuse represented the accumulated damage of decades of chasing the bad boys while riding the cock carousel with youthful innocence replaced by a soulless thousand-cock stare. In a sense, it is a cautionary tale for men about thinking with the big head instead of the little head (which Eyman failed to do), but also a story of hope to women about a woman who succeeded by learning to do better.