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Daria's Adult Career
A different Daria-verse—Tom more calculating, Daria vulnerable and sensuous, Jane less understanding; where Daria and Jane only partially made up, even. A Daria who made hard choices to survive a...
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Daria’s Adult Career-01
A different Daria-verse—one where Tom was much more calculating, Daria more vulnerable and sensuous, and Jane bit less understanding. A version where Daria continued dating Tom over that first summer, and where Daria and Jane only partially made up, even though they both wanted to get together. A Daria who made hard choices to survive afterwards, and loved them.
Other than canon characters, all others are made up and not based on any real people – hopefully no real people’s names are used. All websites and films mentioned are also totally made up, any matches with reality are incidental. Some terms may reflect the usage of around 2000-2003 and may not be much in use or be seen as acceptable today.
Early October, 1999
Tom Sloan regarded his bedposts (and himself) with a combination of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and anger – at himself, the world, and his most recent conquest.
He admitted to himself that cutting small notches into his bedposts was a bit immature, but he had heard the phrase and in many ways he had started young. He was lucky in that he was a day student at Field Prep – many of the boys staying there full-time took the English boarding school custom of ‘fagging’ far too literally. What in the UK was a system of treating younger students as servants often involved them in a different, much more personal and intimate version of ‘service’ at Fielding. Still, he had been ‘convinced’ to perform oral sex on older boys from the age of 11 to 13, and had been cute enough to receive about as often as he had had to put out back then. He had managed to talk his way out of bending over for any of the older boys, but he had used a number of younger boys both ways since.
Still, except for the youngest boys, Tom had basically ignored males for nearly the last three years. It was much more fun for him to find and seduce girls. Difficult, since there were none at Fielding. Granted, a number of girls had been more than willing to indulge him, but his favorites were his six virgins. Six girls where he had used his skills at manipulation for subtly that they didn’t catch on until he got bored with them and moved on. Well, usually they didn’t catch on….
Tom frowned again.
Most of his female sexual partners had come from Fielding’s sister school or from that nearby intellectual drone factory, Grove Hills, other than during the summer, when there were occasionally more opportunities. The previous year, he had tried hunting in the town and discovered Jane Lane. He had thought when they met that she would be an easy mark – an artist wanna-be, hanging out in a grunge club and brew pub, a slacker musician for a brother, and living in a dump with no parental supervision? She should have been easy; although when it turned out she was a virgin he might have guessed differently.
Actually, she had proven a medium-hard nut to crack. She went to ‘second-base’ fast, and apparently hanging out with the band had given her the willingness to go down on him on their third date, even if it had been apparent it was her first time. She learned quickly, however.
It took some persuasion, but she had finally let him take her virginity – and to be honest with himself, her athleticism had made him feel a little inadequate. That was something Tom was unused to, and he had had little inclination to repeat the feeling once he had made the conquest.
Fortunately, there was a replacement for Jane right in place for Tom when he tired of her. Jane wasn’t going to give up her ass, she was putting her art ahead of his sex drive, and even when she got going, it still took her a while to climax and she would ride him until either she orgasmed or he wilted, and it had been getting so he usually wilted. That was a blow to his huge ego, to say the least.
The change over to Daria had gone much better than he had thought it might. It put an even larger split between the two girls than he had managed to get going while Jane had been with him. The two had reconciled a bit after Jane had returned from some art camp that summer, but there was still a rift, which Tom had used to plant himself firmly into Daria life, and then into Daria.
It had taken a while.
Tom had been surprised with Daria – she had always seemed so totally in self-control – that was one major reason he wanted her, to break her down. Instead of staying a cold fish, he had quickly learned that one of the many reasons she kept her physical distance from people was how hypersensitive she was; she was easily aroused. Just a few minutes of suckling and nibbling on her overly-sensitive breasts and/or stroking her inner thigh could make her orgasm. Towards the end of the summer, when he had finally seduced her into performing oral sex, she even orgasmed from that – something her had never conceived of. Daria, in short, was a sex machine in the making.
Unlike those other girls that he had convinced to give him both their technical and anal virginities, Daria had given him the latter first. Most of the girls (and boys) he had sodomized had not enjoyed the experience, even those he had convinced for try multiple experiences. Daria had loved it.
That is what had prevented him from pushing for her virginity for over a month. When he had finally claimed it, he was as exhausted as from any session with Jane – the experiences were very different, but equally physically demanding. Still, with Daria it had been a more-or-less even exchange of ecstasy (not that Tom liked even exchanges), whereas with Jane he had ended up feeling more like a used sex toy at times – which he hated.
Still, Tom reflected ruefully, as enjoyable as it had been to lead Daria down the path of ecstasy, as compliant as she had seemed as her intensely sensuous physical nature took control of her at times – to see that stoic expression melt into passions that HE had aroused – he should have known better and planned more thoroughly. Compliant did not necessarily mean submissive.
Tom had been hoping to drag Daria down the path of submission – he had read novels like ‘The Story of O,’ ‘The Image,’ and Anne Rice’s erotic Dom/sub books and wanted to try it out. He had been hinting around and nudging her along. She had picked up his hints, and had apparently read at least some of the works because of this. While Tom had been thinking he was slowly moving her into submission, Daria had been drawing him out. He had ended up admitting things the last three times they had been together that he had barely admitted to fantasizing about to himself. That night, when he had brought out the rope, Daria had surprised him with a pair of handcuffs, and they hadn’t been for him to use on her.
‘Damn,’ Tom thought yet again, ‘I should have remembered Daria is nearly as smart as I am.’ In this, as intelligent Tom was, he was underestimating Daria a great deal. Instead of Daria ending tied up, Tom had found himself on his back with his testicles under the flat of one of Daria’s feet, his left wrist handcuffed to the leg of his bed.
“Remember,” Daria had told him a few moments later when she was dressed, “if we somehow ever find ourselves in a similar situation….” Now it was her boot that threatened to crush his balls “I won’t be easy on you.” She dropped the key to the cuffs as well as a note that his parents might find just out of reach on his bedspread, and had left him. It had taken him more than five minutes of struggling and cursing before he realized all he had to do was pull on the bedspread for the key to come within reach.
Tom sighed again. Then he smiled, “Well, who’s next?”
He rarely bothered thinking of either Jane or Daria again. The few times he spotted them, he would just give them a knowing leer, knowing he had been the one to seduce them. Their angry, embarrassed looks pleased him to no end.
“God, what an idiot I’ve been,” Daria had muttered as she returned home that night, having gotten some small revenge on Tom for his seducing her and trying to dominate her. “After Jane had calmed down, she tried to warn me how controlling he could become. How could I have let my libido take control of me?” Daria walked into the house.
“Date end early, Sweetie?” Helen asked, looking up from a case file.
“Yes,” Daria managed to answer in her usual tone. “Tom…tried to go too far. Please, let’s leave it at that. I’ve realized that this was his plan all along.”
Helen sighed, remembering how she had lost her virginity to a stunt driver and thinking this was much the same. “I understand. I take it…?”
“Yes, we are through.” Daria gave her mother a twisted half smile. “We had better not tell Dad more than that Tom and I broke up. While I wouldn’t mind Dad taking him apart, we don’t want him to have another heart attack or having to explain things to a jury.”
“True,” Helen agreed. “If you want to talk about it?”
“Maybe later,” Daria prevaricated. “Let me process things, and if I have any quandaries, I’ll certainly come to you.”
Satisfied, Helen went back to her case file. It was only later that she would regret not pushing her elder daughter for once.
Daria went upstairs to her room, got changed for bed, and spent the next forty minutes softly crying. She was not to know it, but Quinn had heard her. Quinn thought about it, then decided not to deal with her sister – which was an improvement, as for a while she had almost convinced herself that Daria was her cousin.
While she would have loved to have done more than threaten Tom, Daria decided that any form of actual revenge would likely backfire on her. And, if she went too far, while her mother was something of a mako shark, and some of the other lawyers at her mother’s firm were even more apex predators (with Jim Vitale considered a true great white), Daria knew that some of the lawyers Tom’s family employed were likely of at least equal caliber.
Daria did try to talk to Jane about it, but she refused to discuss anything about Tom, and their peace was still too fragile for Daria to push. So, after a week of feeling awful and unable to confide in anyone, Daria took stock of her desires and assets.
Desire: get away from Lawndale, away from Tom (she had seen him a few times, and she could see the small leer on his face each time), away from Quinn (who had warmed up to her a bit that summer when she had started dating Tom, but that had waned and she was now Quinn’s ‘icky sister,’ which she supposed was a bit better than her cousin, family’s au pair, or worse). There was no one to talk to, here or elsewhere. Aunt Amy had just left for a research trip to Polynesia and was out of contact.
Assets: Through various means: her allowance (which she rarely spent even half of in any given week), parental bribes, blackmailing Quinn, her research paper business (she had halted the writing of those papers, but she had provided ‘editing services’ through the end of the previous spring semester), and selling clothes Quinn had forgotten she even owned, she had a good nest egg. Tom had been too cheap to offer her any decent gifts, but over the previous six weeks, Daria had even ‘liberated’ a few items from the Sloanes. Some Tom would suspect she had taken (Daria had taken and burned the few explicit photos Tom had taken of both her and of Jane – Tom had not been as clever as he had thought about where he had hidden them). The rest, taken from the back of cupboards and drawers? Daria could only hope that if they were ever missed, she would not be suspected.
(In this, she was correct – few of the items were ever missed, and none until the next summer. She was never suspected.)
All in all, Daria knew she did not have enough money to live on for a long time, but she had enough money to get away, pay for more than a few months’ rent and food, and even go to a community college for a term. All she needed was to wait a few weeks until she was 18, and to get one document.
A few moments checking on-line gave Daria all the information she needed. The next weekday, Daria got herself a post office box and started putting some of her plans into motion and researching or polishing others. She would be leaving, not (really) running away.
She told herself this enough times that she even believed it.
In early December, Daria checked her post office box and found what she had been waiting a few weeks for – she had her GED. She was 18, and could withdraw herself from Lawndale High. She still had time before she put the final steps of her plan into action. There were plenty of preliminaries. She had purchased a large sturdy backpack, and two weeks-worth of new (and different-looking) clothes, leaving most of her meager clothes behind. She really had few precious possessions – the few valuables she had had already been sold. There were a number of books that she loved, but those could be replaced. She paired her writing down to three 3.5 diskettes, all her stored files were then erased from her computer’s hard drive.
Daria also bought a new pair of glasses, much smaller and more stylish. She knew she should probably leave her boots behind, but she just couldn’t. Instead, when she left, she would toss away her green jacket (it was really a bit too cold for that anyway). She would wear jeans with a bit of a flair (so that at least the top of her boots would be covered), a flowered top, lined denim jacket, a cap with her hair in braids, and a new pair of soft-lens contacts (slightly colored, making her very dark greenish hazel eyes look completely brown). No one had ever seen her in any of those clothes (other than her hidden boots).
Fate played into her hands. Her parents were going out of town and trusted the girls to behave. Daria knew Quinn was planning an ‘intimate’ party for about a dozen guests even before she had finished issuing the ‘secret’ invitations. That it was almost certainly devolve into a kegger at least was a given. Lawndale High’s winter vacation would start the following Monday – Daria would leave a note in her parent’s room saying she would return Wednesday morning, as hopefully any damage would be down to acceptable levels.
Daria enjoyed writing that letter – it also justified her leaving and being unable to stop Quinn’s plans. When the moment came late that Friday afternoon – her parents had just left, and Quinn was already on the phone spreading the world that the party was on – Daria left the note on her parents’ bed and graciously locked their door. Granted, this was mostly to insure her letter was found, but there was a bit of concern for her parents’ belongings. Daria left her door closed but not locked. She hoped that any damage would disguise what she had taken (or sold) and left. In this, while she would never know, she was proved correct – except for her parents’ room and Quinn’s room, the entire house would be trashed.
Daria left the house, picked up her backpack at the bus station where she had stored it the day before, took a regional bus to the end of the line (Baltimore), and got on the train to make the roundabout trip to Los Angles. She had paid cash for the ticket two weeks before, and had used one of her sister’s fake ids that also had a fake name – the awful photo looked a bit more like Daria sans glasses than it did Quinn in any event.
Quinn’s party turned out to be a huge disaster – it even made the regional news reports. In the end, nearly 150 people were partying there by Saturday evening, which is when the police had tried to shut it down. The resulting riot had damaged the Morgendorffer house and two neighboring ones, destroyed four cars and damaged nearly a dozen more, and other sundry property damage. There were eight drug overdoses, six alcohol poisonings, and any number of drunk and/or high/stoned people, six people with cracked or fully broken bones, three charges of rape, and so forth.
The resulting publicity as well as damage control meant that Daria was not actually missed until late Christmas Eve, as Daria was presumed to still be at Jane’s, hiding from both the media and the damage. It was only when she had not shown up by then that Helen bothered to call Jane’s. Jane, who had presumed Daria had found shelter elsewhere, could only plead ignorance. The police would have been more concerned had Daria not left the note, but that had shown she was okay before the party and had likely cleared out before it had started.
One of the things Daria had found online as she had planned her escape was a remailing service. Send them a letter with two envelopes, for example, and they would mail the inner envelope in a new one for you. That meant that the letter would only have the post mark of the main post office in New York City; they would also wait to mail it on whatever day you wanted it sent. Therefore, the letters Daria had prepared were mailed on Saturday the 26th. In part because of the Christmas mail backlog, they were delivered in Lawndale on Wednesday.
By then, Helen had tried to get the police interested in Daria as a runaway/missing person. They pointed out that she was 18, and that there was no indication of coercion, let alone foul play or kidnapping. They referred her to places where she could post requests for information, as well suggestions on how to trace a missing adult.
Even before New Year’s, Daria had found a small cheap studio apartment in the San Fernando Valley, a part-time job in a used books store, had nearly completed the process to change her name (started weeks before, along with the apartment search and job search), and had prepared to enroll in a community college.
Excerpts from Daria’s letters:
(Jane’s)
So, while you might have given me more warning about Tom, I grant I might not have listened. He snowed me completely. I loathed most of my life before coming to Lawndale. You made Lawndale more than bearable; you made it pleasant. You fell for Tom, but then so did I. What we had before Tom was special, and I thank you for everything. I still love you as a friend. If Tom hadn’t shown up, I like to believe we would have become more….
Unlike my parents, I’m sure you know that the fact I am leaving does not mean I am considering leaving life. I have my plans for my life; they aren’t as grandiose as they used to be, but I do have them. Please be happy. Please go to art school and become the best artist you can be.
In friendship and, yes, love,
Daria
*
(Ms Li)
Please note the enclosed photocopies of my GED and of my driver’s license (reminding you I am 18), and the signed copy of my withdrawal form from Lawndale High School.
*
(Jake)
So I am sorry; I know this pains you even more than Mother and certainly more than Quinn. Please, please remember that my leaving has nothing to do with you or how you have treated me. Please take care of yourself, and remember, as hard as it is to believe at the moment, I do love you.
*
(Helen)
So, if you notice you have even more left-over lasagna than usual, this is why. When you were not ignoring me or scolding me for cause because I caused you a problem at school, you were more often than not reminding me that I have never met your standards. Other than academically, I have never even met the incredibly low alternate standards you set for Quinn. Well, you can turn my allowance (did you even notice that her allowance was 60% higher than mine? Or was that deliberate?) over to Quinn and you can either turn my room into a spare closet for her or an office for you.
Despite the above, I know that at times, and in your own way at all times, you did care for your daughter if not me the actual individual, so please take care of yourself and Dad. I know you will take care of Quinn.
Helen frowned at the entire letter, especially those two paragraphs. It was only then that she realized that while she had indeed given Quinn four raises to her allowance over the previous 18 months as her own salary had increased, she had only given Daria one. She read through the letter twice more, and then broke down and cried.
Daria had not left a left for Quinn. Quinn had a few pangs of near-regret, which she had forgotten about within a few days of the new school year starting. She was mostly disappointed because Daria’s absence did not allow her even more freedom, which was still restricted because of the party. It would take some time before Quinn regretted Daria’s leaving, but eventually, she did. Daria’s brief note to her Aunt Amy was contrite, but while the two had connected to some degree, they were not really that close.
*
Late May, 2003
Life among those Daria had left behind of course continued without her over the just over three and a half years since she had left. While Jake had stopped ranting against his father, that was because he was often too sad to get upset over the next nearly two years. Not depressed, any more than he was angry; just sad. Sad that his kiddo had gone away. Even when he was no longer as sad, he still missed his daughter. Annual birthday cards (sent anonymously via the remailing service) arrived for him (and only him, not for Helen or Quinn) let him know that she was alive, and that kept him going. He had learned that Amy and Jane also received such cards. He and Helen did receive a joint Christmas card, while Jane and Amy also received them.
However, that’s all they were. Standard Hallmark-style birthday/Christmas cards, signed ‘love, Daria’ and nothing more. Still, that gave Jake (as well as Amy and Jane) hope that they may someday hear more. They also feared the day they stopped coming – that could mean that Daria had lost interest (they could not imagine Daria forgetting) or it could mean something had happened to her, and they would never know which.
On the whole, Helen still believed she had not pushed Daria too hard. However, she did at least acknowledge that she had probably not pushed Daria in the right ways. After Quinn’s punishment for throwing that outrageous party had ended (Quinn had tried to distract her parents from that by getting them to focus on Daria, but that plan had only partially worked), Helen had buried herself into her work even more. The death of Eric from an overdose had led her to being named a partner (she would never know how close the vote was), but occasionally she stuck her nose back into her family life to remember to try again to search for Daria – when Jake or Amy received a birthday card, Christmas, and the first two birthdays Daria had missed – she rather tried to ignore that date after that. However, fairly often, as she was about to fall asleep (or try to), Helen would regret not really understanding either of her daughters.
Within the immediate family, Quinn changed the most overall but the least because of Daria’s absence. Even though she became ever more ‘Quinn-like’ over the years, eventually in some odd ways, it was unlikely because of Daria’s absence. For some of Quinn’s friends, Daria’s leaving simply meant that it had been Daria who had lied about being Quinn’s sister, not Quinn’s lying. Most others cared even less about Daria’s odd departure, if they took any real notice – except for Mack, Jodie, and Brittany (and Jane of course), few students cared once the initial gossip died down. Quinn herself did not miss Daria in any meaningful way for the rest of her time in high school, although she disliked it when Daria’s absence made it difficult to hide her own failures, overspending, and other misbehaviors. Like her father, Quinn would eventually change her opinion, but that was later. So, by May, 2003, a somewhat different, more strident Quinn was finishing her sophomore year at Lawndale State, where she was majoring in Media Studies, with a 2.28 GPA.
Jane had made a half-hearted attempt to get into one major art school – BFAC. She had been accepted, but found she really couldn’t afford to go. Her grades had kept her out of the two state schools she had applied early to, and failed. However, those had not needed any portfolio – there was a third state school with a better art program, which required a portfolio. That got her in.
Now finished with her third year, Jane only had a 2.5 GPA – As and A-s in Art courses and lots of Ds coupled with some Cs of various types in most other courses. Still, there had been no Fs. Her memories and feelings for Daria were complicated. Most of all, she missed her friend. As she saw couples of all sorts on the campus, she regretted she had not taken another road. She and Daria had been overcoming their nerves and had been moving towards a real relationship, a physical and romantic one, even if the few times they had been intimate had left them both a bit scared about facing their bisexuality. She had given that possibility up for Tom, and then had failed to really warn Daria about how controlling Tom would likely become. And worse, she had not warned Daria too strenuously because she thought Daria deserved whatever she got.
This made Jane feel very guilty; she had missed Daria even before she had left. There was a Daria-sized piece of Jane’s heart and soul missing, but she had been too proud and hurt to admit it when she could have rebuilt their relationship. She had spurned Daria’s attempts to reconnect on an emotional as well as on a physical level despite the fact that she had rejected Tom.
Jane had had several (mostly non-sexual) relationships since Daria had left; a few physical ones with men and one with a woman – all short-lived. They all, especially that last one, made her ache for Daria even more. Her paintings were becoming ever more technically proficient, but their colors were usually much more muted than they had been in high school.
Trent’s lifestyle had not changed much over four years. His band, now simply ‘Spiral,’ had a new drummer and bass player (the latter now sang lead on most of the vocals), was regionally successful, but that was all. He was at least making a living.
He rarely thought about Daria; when he did it was because he remembered how much she had meant to Jane.
*
Charles ‘Upchuck’ Ruttheimer III had been considered, among other things, a pervert while in high school. It was true then, and was true now. He was home for the summer, enjoying his father’s high-speed internet and his paid subscriptions to more websites than his son could afford, no matter how generous his allowance.
Charles had been through a number of his father’s subscriptions over the few weeks he had been home. Bored, and missing college (even though his sex life there was as virtual as it had been in high school) he turned to a website called ‘Co-Ed Party Page.’ The ‘parties’ were a mixture of amateur videos and scenes from more professionally done video imitations. He had been flipping to this site and trying out various videos there and on some other sites for a few days until he had ‘taken care of business.’ He had decided to watch one more on this site before giving it up.
The camera paired over various actors going through their professional actions – some seemly at least enjoying themselves, some doing their best (and not acting all that well), and so on. There was male/female, 2 males/female, and even male/2 female, plus lesbian action, about twenty-five performers in all. As the camera panned across some of those performing in the background (there were two women who were apparently the featured stars of this particular scene in the foreground with their various partners), Charles sat up in his chair, dropped the handkerchief he had in one hand and lost the grip on himself he had had with the other.
“It can’t be!”
Charles rewound a bit and looked again.
He still could not believe his eyes.
He pulled up his shorts and ventured into the main TV room and signed into that website again on the giant screen. He found the movie and forwarded to the spot that had caught his eye.
He watched from that spot forward for five minutes. Apparently the camera had liked what it had seen and focused in on the two nude women making out – one Chinese, the other with dark reddish hair. She wasn’t wearing her glasses (unsurprising, since she was nude), and her auburn hair was longer (and currently in a ponytail and with many dark red to Quinn-orange highlights), but there was no doubt in Charles’ mind that one of the women was Daria.
Charles almost lost consciousness when a few minutes later, one of the male performers joined the two women. Charles’ eyes almost bugged out when he saw the size of the black actor’s equipment – the two actresses had merely smiled before they decided to share for a bit. Charles only managed to fully engage in the world when the credits rolled. He watched those credits several times, and decided that Daria was going under the stage name of Louisa Darling.
Charles taped the action which displayed Daria on screen, and then started hunting for other examples of Louisa Darling.
A different Daria-verse—one where Tom was much more calculating, Daria more vulnerable and sensuous, and Jane bit less understanding. A version where Daria continued dating Tom over that first summer, and where Daria and Jane only partially made up, even though they both wanted to get together. A Daria who made hard choices to survive afterwards, and loved them.
Other than canon characters, all others are made up and not based on any real people – hopefully no real people’s names are used. All websites and films mentioned are also totally made up, any matches with reality are incidental. Some terms may reflect the usage of around 2000-2003 and may not be much in use or be seen as acceptable today.
Early October, 1999
Tom Sloan regarded his bedposts (and himself) with a combination of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and anger – at himself, the world, and his most recent conquest.
He admitted to himself that cutting small notches into his bedposts was a bit immature, but he had heard the phrase and in many ways he had started young. He was lucky in that he was a day student at Field Prep – many of the boys staying there full-time took the English boarding school custom of ‘fagging’ far too literally. What in the UK was a system of treating younger students as servants often involved them in a different, much more personal and intimate version of ‘service’ at Fielding. Still, he had been ‘convinced’ to perform oral sex on older boys from the age of 11 to 13, and had been cute enough to receive about as often as he had had to put out back then. He had managed to talk his way out of bending over for any of the older boys, but he had used a number of younger boys both ways since.
Still, except for the youngest boys, Tom had basically ignored males for nearly the last three years. It was much more fun for him to find and seduce girls. Difficult, since there were none at Fielding. Granted, a number of girls had been more than willing to indulge him, but his favorites were his six virgins. Six girls where he had used his skills at manipulation for subtly that they didn’t catch on until he got bored with them and moved on. Well, usually they didn’t catch on….
Tom frowned again.
Most of his female sexual partners had come from Fielding’s sister school or from that nearby intellectual drone factory, Grove Hills, other than during the summer, when there were occasionally more opportunities. The previous year, he had tried hunting in the town and discovered Jane Lane. He had thought when they met that she would be an easy mark – an artist wanna-be, hanging out in a grunge club and brew pub, a slacker musician for a brother, and living in a dump with no parental supervision? She should have been easy; although when it turned out she was a virgin he might have guessed differently.
Actually, she had proven a medium-hard nut to crack. She went to ‘second-base’ fast, and apparently hanging out with the band had given her the willingness to go down on him on their third date, even if it had been apparent it was her first time. She learned quickly, however.
It took some persuasion, but she had finally let him take her virginity – and to be honest with himself, her athleticism had made him feel a little inadequate. That was something Tom was unused to, and he had had little inclination to repeat the feeling once he had made the conquest.
Fortunately, there was a replacement for Jane right in place for Tom when he tired of her. Jane wasn’t going to give up her ass, she was putting her art ahead of his sex drive, and even when she got going, it still took her a while to climax and she would ride him until either she orgasmed or he wilted, and it had been getting so he usually wilted. That was a blow to his huge ego, to say the least.
The change over to Daria had gone much better than he had thought it might. It put an even larger split between the two girls than he had managed to get going while Jane had been with him. The two had reconciled a bit after Jane had returned from some art camp that summer, but there was still a rift, which Tom had used to plant himself firmly into Daria life, and then into Daria.
It had taken a while.
Tom had been surprised with Daria – she had always seemed so totally in self-control – that was one major reason he wanted her, to break her down. Instead of staying a cold fish, he had quickly learned that one of the many reasons she kept her physical distance from people was how hypersensitive she was; she was easily aroused. Just a few minutes of suckling and nibbling on her overly-sensitive breasts and/or stroking her inner thigh could make her orgasm. Towards the end of the summer, when he had finally seduced her into performing oral sex, she even orgasmed from that – something her had never conceived of. Daria, in short, was a sex machine in the making.
Unlike those other girls that he had convinced to give him both their technical and anal virginities, Daria had given him the latter first. Most of the girls (and boys) he had sodomized had not enjoyed the experience, even those he had convinced for try multiple experiences. Daria had loved it.
That is what had prevented him from pushing for her virginity for over a month. When he had finally claimed it, he was as exhausted as from any session with Jane – the experiences were very different, but equally physically demanding. Still, with Daria it had been a more-or-less even exchange of ecstasy (not that Tom liked even exchanges), whereas with Jane he had ended up feeling more like a used sex toy at times – which he hated.
Still, Tom reflected ruefully, as enjoyable as it had been to lead Daria down the path of ecstasy, as compliant as she had seemed as her intensely sensuous physical nature took control of her at times – to see that stoic expression melt into passions that HE had aroused – he should have known better and planned more thoroughly. Compliant did not necessarily mean submissive.
Tom had been hoping to drag Daria down the path of submission – he had read novels like ‘The Story of O,’ ‘The Image,’ and Anne Rice’s erotic Dom/sub books and wanted to try it out. He had been hinting around and nudging her along. She had picked up his hints, and had apparently read at least some of the works because of this. While Tom had been thinking he was slowly moving her into submission, Daria had been drawing him out. He had ended up admitting things the last three times they had been together that he had barely admitted to fantasizing about to himself. That night, when he had brought out the rope, Daria had surprised him with a pair of handcuffs, and they hadn’t been for him to use on her.
‘Damn,’ Tom thought yet again, ‘I should have remembered Daria is nearly as smart as I am.’ In this, as intelligent Tom was, he was underestimating Daria a great deal. Instead of Daria ending tied up, Tom had found himself on his back with his testicles under the flat of one of Daria’s feet, his left wrist handcuffed to the leg of his bed.
“Remember,” Daria had told him a few moments later when she was dressed, “if we somehow ever find ourselves in a similar situation….” Now it was her boot that threatened to crush his balls “I won’t be easy on you.” She dropped the key to the cuffs as well as a note that his parents might find just out of reach on his bedspread, and had left him. It had taken him more than five minutes of struggling and cursing before he realized all he had to do was pull on the bedspread for the key to come within reach.
Tom sighed again. Then he smiled, “Well, who’s next?”
He rarely bothered thinking of either Jane or Daria again. The few times he spotted them, he would just give them a knowing leer, knowing he had been the one to seduce them. Their angry, embarrassed looks pleased him to no end.
“God, what an idiot I’ve been,” Daria had muttered as she returned home that night, having gotten some small revenge on Tom for his seducing her and trying to dominate her. “After Jane had calmed down, she tried to warn me how controlling he could become. How could I have let my libido take control of me?” Daria walked into the house.
“Date end early, Sweetie?” Helen asked, looking up from a case file.
“Yes,” Daria managed to answer in her usual tone. “Tom…tried to go too far. Please, let’s leave it at that. I’ve realized that this was his plan all along.”
Helen sighed, remembering how she had lost her virginity to a stunt driver and thinking this was much the same. “I understand. I take it…?”
“Yes, we are through.” Daria gave her mother a twisted half smile. “We had better not tell Dad more than that Tom and I broke up. While I wouldn’t mind Dad taking him apart, we don’t want him to have another heart attack or having to explain things to a jury.”
“True,” Helen agreed. “If you want to talk about it?”
“Maybe later,” Daria prevaricated. “Let me process things, and if I have any quandaries, I’ll certainly come to you.”
Satisfied, Helen went back to her case file. It was only later that she would regret not pushing her elder daughter for once.
Daria went upstairs to her room, got changed for bed, and spent the next forty minutes softly crying. She was not to know it, but Quinn had heard her. Quinn thought about it, then decided not to deal with her sister – which was an improvement, as for a while she had almost convinced herself that Daria was her cousin.
While she would have loved to have done more than threaten Tom, Daria decided that any form of actual revenge would likely backfire on her. And, if she went too far, while her mother was something of a mako shark, and some of the other lawyers at her mother’s firm were even more apex predators (with Jim Vitale considered a true great white), Daria knew that some of the lawyers Tom’s family employed were likely of at least equal caliber.
Daria did try to talk to Jane about it, but she refused to discuss anything about Tom, and their peace was still too fragile for Daria to push. So, after a week of feeling awful and unable to confide in anyone, Daria took stock of her desires and assets.
Desire: get away from Lawndale, away from Tom (she had seen him a few times, and she could see the small leer on his face each time), away from Quinn (who had warmed up to her a bit that summer when she had started dating Tom, but that had waned and she was now Quinn’s ‘icky sister,’ which she supposed was a bit better than her cousin, family’s au pair, or worse). There was no one to talk to, here or elsewhere. Aunt Amy had just left for a research trip to Polynesia and was out of contact.
Assets: Through various means: her allowance (which she rarely spent even half of in any given week), parental bribes, blackmailing Quinn, her research paper business (she had halted the writing of those papers, but she had provided ‘editing services’ through the end of the previous spring semester), and selling clothes Quinn had forgotten she even owned, she had a good nest egg. Tom had been too cheap to offer her any decent gifts, but over the previous six weeks, Daria had even ‘liberated’ a few items from the Sloanes. Some Tom would suspect she had taken (Daria had taken and burned the few explicit photos Tom had taken of both her and of Jane – Tom had not been as clever as he had thought about where he had hidden them). The rest, taken from the back of cupboards and drawers? Daria could only hope that if they were ever missed, she would not be suspected.
(In this, she was correct – few of the items were ever missed, and none until the next summer. She was never suspected.)
All in all, Daria knew she did not have enough money to live on for a long time, but she had enough money to get away, pay for more than a few months’ rent and food, and even go to a community college for a term. All she needed was to wait a few weeks until she was 18, and to get one document.
A few moments checking on-line gave Daria all the information she needed. The next weekday, Daria got herself a post office box and started putting some of her plans into motion and researching or polishing others. She would be leaving, not (really) running away.
She told herself this enough times that she even believed it.
In early December, Daria checked her post office box and found what she had been waiting a few weeks for – she had her GED. She was 18, and could withdraw herself from Lawndale High. She still had time before she put the final steps of her plan into action. There were plenty of preliminaries. She had purchased a large sturdy backpack, and two weeks-worth of new (and different-looking) clothes, leaving most of her meager clothes behind. She really had few precious possessions – the few valuables she had had already been sold. There were a number of books that she loved, but those could be replaced. She paired her writing down to three 3.5 diskettes, all her stored files were then erased from her computer’s hard drive.
Daria also bought a new pair of glasses, much smaller and more stylish. She knew she should probably leave her boots behind, but she just couldn’t. Instead, when she left, she would toss away her green jacket (it was really a bit too cold for that anyway). She would wear jeans with a bit of a flair (so that at least the top of her boots would be covered), a flowered top, lined denim jacket, a cap with her hair in braids, and a new pair of soft-lens contacts (slightly colored, making her very dark greenish hazel eyes look completely brown). No one had ever seen her in any of those clothes (other than her hidden boots).
Fate played into her hands. Her parents were going out of town and trusted the girls to behave. Daria knew Quinn was planning an ‘intimate’ party for about a dozen guests even before she had finished issuing the ‘secret’ invitations. That it was almost certainly devolve into a kegger at least was a given. Lawndale High’s winter vacation would start the following Monday – Daria would leave a note in her parent’s room saying she would return Wednesday morning, as hopefully any damage would be down to acceptable levels.
Daria enjoyed writing that letter – it also justified her leaving and being unable to stop Quinn’s plans. When the moment came late that Friday afternoon – her parents had just left, and Quinn was already on the phone spreading the world that the party was on – Daria left the note on her parents’ bed and graciously locked their door. Granted, this was mostly to insure her letter was found, but there was a bit of concern for her parents’ belongings. Daria left her door closed but not locked. She hoped that any damage would disguise what she had taken (or sold) and left. In this, while she would never know, she was proved correct – except for her parents’ room and Quinn’s room, the entire house would be trashed.
Daria left the house, picked up her backpack at the bus station where she had stored it the day before, took a regional bus to the end of the line (Baltimore), and got on the train to make the roundabout trip to Los Angles. She had paid cash for the ticket two weeks before, and had used one of her sister’s fake ids that also had a fake name – the awful photo looked a bit more like Daria sans glasses than it did Quinn in any event.
Quinn’s party turned out to be a huge disaster – it even made the regional news reports. In the end, nearly 150 people were partying there by Saturday evening, which is when the police had tried to shut it down. The resulting riot had damaged the Morgendorffer house and two neighboring ones, destroyed four cars and damaged nearly a dozen more, and other sundry property damage. There were eight drug overdoses, six alcohol poisonings, and any number of drunk and/or high/stoned people, six people with cracked or fully broken bones, three charges of rape, and so forth.
The resulting publicity as well as damage control meant that Daria was not actually missed until late Christmas Eve, as Daria was presumed to still be at Jane’s, hiding from both the media and the damage. It was only when she had not shown up by then that Helen bothered to call Jane’s. Jane, who had presumed Daria had found shelter elsewhere, could only plead ignorance. The police would have been more concerned had Daria not left the note, but that had shown she was okay before the party and had likely cleared out before it had started.
One of the things Daria had found online as she had planned her escape was a remailing service. Send them a letter with two envelopes, for example, and they would mail the inner envelope in a new one for you. That meant that the letter would only have the post mark of the main post office in New York City; they would also wait to mail it on whatever day you wanted it sent. Therefore, the letters Daria had prepared were mailed on Saturday the 26th. In part because of the Christmas mail backlog, they were delivered in Lawndale on Wednesday.
By then, Helen had tried to get the police interested in Daria as a runaway/missing person. They pointed out that she was 18, and that there was no indication of coercion, let alone foul play or kidnapping. They referred her to places where she could post requests for information, as well suggestions on how to trace a missing adult.
Even before New Year’s, Daria had found a small cheap studio apartment in the San Fernando Valley, a part-time job in a used books store, had nearly completed the process to change her name (started weeks before, along with the apartment search and job search), and had prepared to enroll in a community college.
Excerpts from Daria’s letters:
(Jane’s)
So, while you might have given me more warning about Tom, I grant I might not have listened. He snowed me completely. I loathed most of my life before coming to Lawndale. You made Lawndale more than bearable; you made it pleasant. You fell for Tom, but then so did I. What we had before Tom was special, and I thank you for everything. I still love you as a friend. If Tom hadn’t shown up, I like to believe we would have become more….
Unlike my parents, I’m sure you know that the fact I am leaving does not mean I am considering leaving life. I have my plans for my life; they aren’t as grandiose as they used to be, but I do have them. Please be happy. Please go to art school and become the best artist you can be.
In friendship and, yes, love,
Daria
*
(Ms Li)
Please note the enclosed photocopies of my GED and of my driver’s license (reminding you I am 18), and the signed copy of my withdrawal form from Lawndale High School.
*
(Jake)
So I am sorry; I know this pains you even more than Mother and certainly more than Quinn. Please, please remember that my leaving has nothing to do with you or how you have treated me. Please take care of yourself, and remember, as hard as it is to believe at the moment, I do love you.
*
(Helen)
So, if you notice you have even more left-over lasagna than usual, this is why. When you were not ignoring me or scolding me for cause because I caused you a problem at school, you were more often than not reminding me that I have never met your standards. Other than academically, I have never even met the incredibly low alternate standards you set for Quinn. Well, you can turn my allowance (did you even notice that her allowance was 60% higher than mine? Or was that deliberate?) over to Quinn and you can either turn my room into a spare closet for her or an office for you.
Despite the above, I know that at times, and in your own way at all times, you did care for your daughter if not me the actual individual, so please take care of yourself and Dad. I know you will take care of Quinn.
Helen frowned at the entire letter, especially those two paragraphs. It was only then that she realized that while she had indeed given Quinn four raises to her allowance over the previous 18 months as her own salary had increased, she had only given Daria one. She read through the letter twice more, and then broke down and cried.
Daria had not left a left for Quinn. Quinn had a few pangs of near-regret, which she had forgotten about within a few days of the new school year starting. She was mostly disappointed because Daria’s absence did not allow her even more freedom, which was still restricted because of the party. It would take some time before Quinn regretted Daria’s leaving, but eventually, she did. Daria’s brief note to her Aunt Amy was contrite, but while the two had connected to some degree, they were not really that close.
*
Late May, 2003
Life among those Daria had left behind of course continued without her over the just over three and a half years since she had left. While Jake had stopped ranting against his father, that was because he was often too sad to get upset over the next nearly two years. Not depressed, any more than he was angry; just sad. Sad that his kiddo had gone away. Even when he was no longer as sad, he still missed his daughter. Annual birthday cards (sent anonymously via the remailing service) arrived for him (and only him, not for Helen or Quinn) let him know that she was alive, and that kept him going. He had learned that Amy and Jane also received such cards. He and Helen did receive a joint Christmas card, while Jane and Amy also received them.
However, that’s all they were. Standard Hallmark-style birthday/Christmas cards, signed ‘love, Daria’ and nothing more. Still, that gave Jake (as well as Amy and Jane) hope that they may someday hear more. They also feared the day they stopped coming – that could mean that Daria had lost interest (they could not imagine Daria forgetting) or it could mean something had happened to her, and they would never know which.
On the whole, Helen still believed she had not pushed Daria too hard. However, she did at least acknowledge that she had probably not pushed Daria in the right ways. After Quinn’s punishment for throwing that outrageous party had ended (Quinn had tried to distract her parents from that by getting them to focus on Daria, but that plan had only partially worked), Helen had buried herself into her work even more. The death of Eric from an overdose had led her to being named a partner (she would never know how close the vote was), but occasionally she stuck her nose back into her family life to remember to try again to search for Daria – when Jake or Amy received a birthday card, Christmas, and the first two birthdays Daria had missed – she rather tried to ignore that date after that. However, fairly often, as she was about to fall asleep (or try to), Helen would regret not really understanding either of her daughters.
Within the immediate family, Quinn changed the most overall but the least because of Daria’s absence. Even though she became ever more ‘Quinn-like’ over the years, eventually in some odd ways, it was unlikely because of Daria’s absence. For some of Quinn’s friends, Daria’s leaving simply meant that it had been Daria who had lied about being Quinn’s sister, not Quinn’s lying. Most others cared even less about Daria’s odd departure, if they took any real notice – except for Mack, Jodie, and Brittany (and Jane of course), few students cared once the initial gossip died down. Quinn herself did not miss Daria in any meaningful way for the rest of her time in high school, although she disliked it when Daria’s absence made it difficult to hide her own failures, overspending, and other misbehaviors. Like her father, Quinn would eventually change her opinion, but that was later. So, by May, 2003, a somewhat different, more strident Quinn was finishing her sophomore year at Lawndale State, where she was majoring in Media Studies, with a 2.28 GPA.
Jane had made a half-hearted attempt to get into one major art school – BFAC. She had been accepted, but found she really couldn’t afford to go. Her grades had kept her out of the two state schools she had applied early to, and failed. However, those had not needed any portfolio – there was a third state school with a better art program, which required a portfolio. That got her in.
Now finished with her third year, Jane only had a 2.5 GPA – As and A-s in Art courses and lots of Ds coupled with some Cs of various types in most other courses. Still, there had been no Fs. Her memories and feelings for Daria were complicated. Most of all, she missed her friend. As she saw couples of all sorts on the campus, she regretted she had not taken another road. She and Daria had been overcoming their nerves and had been moving towards a real relationship, a physical and romantic one, even if the few times they had been intimate had left them both a bit scared about facing their bisexuality. She had given that possibility up for Tom, and then had failed to really warn Daria about how controlling Tom would likely become. And worse, she had not warned Daria too strenuously because she thought Daria deserved whatever she got.
This made Jane feel very guilty; she had missed Daria even before she had left. There was a Daria-sized piece of Jane’s heart and soul missing, but she had been too proud and hurt to admit it when she could have rebuilt their relationship. She had spurned Daria’s attempts to reconnect on an emotional as well as on a physical level despite the fact that she had rejected Tom.
Jane had had several (mostly non-sexual) relationships since Daria had left; a few physical ones with men and one with a woman – all short-lived. They all, especially that last one, made her ache for Daria even more. Her paintings were becoming ever more technically proficient, but their colors were usually much more muted than they had been in high school.
Trent’s lifestyle had not changed much over four years. His band, now simply ‘Spiral,’ had a new drummer and bass player (the latter now sang lead on most of the vocals), was regionally successful, but that was all. He was at least making a living.
He rarely thought about Daria; when he did it was because he remembered how much she had meant to Jane.
*
Charles ‘Upchuck’ Ruttheimer III had been considered, among other things, a pervert while in high school. It was true then, and was true now. He was home for the summer, enjoying his father’s high-speed internet and his paid subscriptions to more websites than his son could afford, no matter how generous his allowance.
Charles had been through a number of his father’s subscriptions over the few weeks he had been home. Bored, and missing college (even though his sex life there was as virtual as it had been in high school) he turned to a website called ‘Co-Ed Party Page.’ The ‘parties’ were a mixture of amateur videos and scenes from more professionally done video imitations. He had been flipping to this site and trying out various videos there and on some other sites for a few days until he had ‘taken care of business.’ He had decided to watch one more on this site before giving it up.
The camera paired over various actors going through their professional actions – some seemly at least enjoying themselves, some doing their best (and not acting all that well), and so on. There was male/female, 2 males/female, and even male/2 female, plus lesbian action, about twenty-five performers in all. As the camera panned across some of those performing in the background (there were two women who were apparently the featured stars of this particular scene in the foreground with their various partners), Charles sat up in his chair, dropped the handkerchief he had in one hand and lost the grip on himself he had had with the other.
“It can’t be!”
Charles rewound a bit and looked again.
He still could not believe his eyes.
He pulled up his shorts and ventured into the main TV room and signed into that website again on the giant screen. He found the movie and forwarded to the spot that had caught his eye.
He watched from that spot forward for five minutes. Apparently the camera had liked what it had seen and focused in on the two nude women making out – one Chinese, the other with dark reddish hair. She wasn’t wearing her glasses (unsurprising, since she was nude), and her auburn hair was longer (and currently in a ponytail and with many dark red to Quinn-orange highlights), but there was no doubt in Charles’ mind that one of the women was Daria.
Charles almost lost consciousness when a few minutes later, one of the male performers joined the two women. Charles’ eyes almost bugged out when he saw the size of the black actor’s equipment – the two actresses had merely smiled before they decided to share for a bit. Charles only managed to fully engage in the world when the credits rolled. He watched those credits several times, and decided that Daria was going under the stage name of Louisa Darling.
Charles taped the action which displayed Daria on screen, and then started hunting for other examples of Louisa Darling.
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