"Back then it was unthinkable for a woman to get caught having sex without benefit of the clergy. Once people knew she'd done such a thing, Mary was little more than a slut in everyone's eyes." He swallowed. "Mine included. An unfair way to think I agree, but that's the way it was. I couldn't have anything to do with her after that. I still loved her and I still thought about her, especially late at night when my hand found my organ, but I couldn't be with her because of what she'd done.
"The same applied to everyone else. Oh, men approached her all of the time but not with marriage in their minds. Mary learned her lesson from the first time and always sent them away but the damage, as they say, had been done. She got older and older and remained a maiden; a miserable maiden, living with her Mom and Dad.
"Myself, I tried to date some other girls and more than one of them hinted that marriage might be in the cards if I played them right, but none of them ever made me feel the way Mary had. None of them could compare to the way I'd felt when I was with Mary.
"The solution to the problem was so simple. It was staring me in the face the whole time but the thinking I'd been raised with kept me from seeing it.
Instead of finding a replacement for Mary, I needed Mary. In late 1950 I finally came to my senses. I decided to throw all of the unkind words, all of the nasty talk about her to the side. I went and found her and asked her if she would go out with me.
"She did and it was less than two weeks before we were talking about marriage. Of course everyone I knew told me I was making a mistake. My own parents told me to stay away from that slut. But for the first time in my life I stopped listening to what other people said and listened to what my heart said. The happiest day of my life was the day that Mary and I went down to the courthouse and said our vows to each other."
"As it turned out, I made the right decision back then. Mary and I have been happy together ever since. Many of the same friends who shunned me for marrying "a slut" ended up divorced from the "respectable women" that they married. To this day I still love her deeply and she still loves me and I sometimes still curse myself for wasting all those years.
"The only sour spot in our marriage was our inability to have children. We tried and tried and nothing happened. When we finally went to see the doctor he found that I had an unnaturally low sperm count. We were told that conception was damn near impossible and that we might want to consider adoption.
"Well, we decided against adoption for various reasons and just went about our lives. And then in 1966, long after we'd given up any hope for kids, Mary got pregnant." He snorted. "That brought back all of the slut talk of course. If there's one thing people love to do more than have sex it's talk about where everyone else is getting theirs. They figured Mary's "true colors" had come out once again. How else could she be pregnant? There was never any doubt in my mind about Nina's paternity. I live with Mary and I know her better than anyone on Earth. She could no more cheat on me than she could sprout a set of wings and fly.
"So you can see two things from this conversation young man," He told me. "One, why I dislike you so much and why I won't let you around my daughter. Two, why I care so much for my daughter and what happens to her. Nina's led a sheltered life with us, I'll be the first to admit it. It wasn't helped that she had a lisp as a child. Kids used to make fun of her, call her ugly, treat her like dirt because she was a little different." He shook his head sadly. "Kids can be mighty cruel you know. We sent her to speech therapy and got rid of the lisp but, like with her mother, the damage had been done.
"That's why we were so taken with you when you first started to come over. You seemed such a nice young man, intelligent, and you seemed to like Nina for who she was. You took us right in boy, right in."
"I do like Nina for who she is." I told him slowly. "You're wrong about me."
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Are you saying that you were not taking advantage of young girls at school? Are you saying that you didn't sleep with an engaged girl right before Nina saw you for who you were?"
I shook my head. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I did all of that and more. I discovered a near foolproof way to get girls into bed with me and I abused it. I didn't realize that there were consequences to my actions, I was selfish and self-centered, and my behavior was, in fact, despicable."
"I appreciate your honesty." He told me, somewhat taken aback by my words, "But how can you sit there, after telling me what you just did, and try to say that you are not like Bob Simpson?" He asked. "Maybe I'm missing something here."
"You are." I said. "You're missing something big Mr. Blackmore. You're missing the fact that I've never treated Nina like that. I've never tried anything with Nina, not even once. Nina is my friend. That was what she started out being and that was what our relationship has always been based upon. Your daughter is the best friend I've ever had in my life and that friendship has evolved into love. When we had our fight and she stopped seeing me, what did she tell you was the reason?"
"Because you were sleeping with every girl at school!" He almost yelled. "I thought we'd established that."
"Did she tell you that she loved me?" I asked next.
"Of course." He answered, exasperated. "That's what guys like you do to…"
"No Mr. Blackmore." I cut in. "That's where you're getting locked up. You're comparing what happened between me and Nina to what happened between your wife and this Simpson guy. But that's not what happened at all."
"Because she came to her senses before it could." He said.
"No." I shook my head. "She stopped seeing me because she loved me and I wasn't returning her love. She was in love with me during the period I was sleeping with all of these girls and I was in love with her but I didn't realize it. I didn't know that you could love someone you were friends with. By the time I realized it she had gotten fed up with my other activities. She'd gotten fed up with the pain that comes with watching someone you love play with someone else. She left because she figured that I would never love her and she would never have a relationship with me, not because I was trying to sleep with her.
"Once she was gone I realized my mistake. I realized how much I loved her and I felt physical pain that she wasn't with me anymore. When she ignored me at school it hurt Mr. Blackmore, more than I ever would have thought possible. I stopped my activities with other girls and I started concentrating on getting Nina back." I held up my hand so he could see it. "You see this? I drove a car with a stickshift all the way across town with this hand bleeding from a scalpel wound just so I could have a chance to talk to her, to say my piece to her. Does that sound like the sort of thing Mr. Simpson would have done? I love her Mr. Blackmore, I want to be with her always, do you understand? I feel the way about her that you felt about your wife when you went off to the war."
This comparison upset him. "You have no idea how I felt about my wife!" He yelled. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh really?" I asked calmly. "And why is that? Is it because I'm so young?"
He didn't answer, simply looked at me.
"You were sixteen when you fell in love with your wife, weren't you?" I asked him. "About the same age that I am now, right? And your wife was only what? Fourteen, fifteen? A little younger than Nina is now. Why is it so hard for you to accept that your daughter might know what love is? Or me?"
"I just can't accept this!" He told me. "I can't accept your story that you're really a nice young man who's merely trying to court my daughter in the old fashioned way. You have a gift young man. Like you told me, you're a good listener and you give off a vibe that tells people you can be trusted. You do this so well that I came in here and told you a story that I've never told anyone before. Me, who hated your guts, told you this story." He shook his head. "I can see why the girls go for you and I can see why Nina fancies herself to be in love with you. But you're a scoundrel all the same. You use your gift for your own pleasure and I don't want my daughter to be one of your playthings."