This story is fiction and not intended to imply anything about the true sexuality of Leif Garrett.
"Leif, in his 14th Summer"
by
Christopher Michels
(for Andrew Robertson)
First of all, Leif had a massive splitting headache. He felt even his long thick gold blonde hair ache. But his morning pain pills would kick in soon. As he leaned on the side of his open sliding glass doors, in his bedroom, and looked out into the California true mirage of pearl gray sky, with morning clouds of white puffs building, like a cathedral roof housing a ruler straight beach of yellow sand and greenish blue water and memories and dreams. Sky and ocean meeting in the distance not to stop or go forward but to hang there vaguely, until he could get the glue out of the corners of his eyes, a painting waiting for someone to say those next certain words.
Those memories and dreams that he could still fathom in himself. Naked and 14 and a huge hit with pre teens and teens and older for no particular reason other than he was beautiful, this thin waif juggernaut who could not sing (though he had three records at the top of the Billboard chart), who could not act (he had made three movies, bit parts, though they played him up more on the credits and the posters and hype than the fading old legends dying quickly big time movie stars whose pictures these were to begin with.)
And Leif at 14, star of the teen fan magazine covers and the stories and contests and pictures inside ("WIN LEIF'S OWN PILLOW!"), the caption right under a black and white photo of the boy himself, the covers pulled to just under his tits, his head to the side, his mouth open in a dreamy wistful kind of way, his eyes closed in dreamland, his white teeth perfect little tombstones, his hair unkindled and flowing over part of his face and the pillow--"THAT COULD BE YOURS"--of course, there were to be one hundred pillows to be "won" by one hundred lucky girls, or boys, in the "contest", not one of said pillows having ever experienced the laying down of Leif's head--oh yes, to lie one's head on the pillow of that bronzed boy, the boy who was almost naked in these magazines, his smile always incandescent, his hands usually reaching out to the girls on the other side of the photos, personalized, all, with his signature, in one way or another, the boy with the skinny chest and the poke out rib boards, and the face that had something more than feminine or masculine on it, something far more than unisexual, something that clung to the eyes that seemed cloudy at the same time they were blue bright, and the narrow china bone construction of his face that said possibility, that said potential.
There was something in him, that rose from inside that made his skin feel or one imagined to feel, smooth and baby soft--his face made of parts that taken in sections would seem wrong for those of a teen hero, but together, they worked their way on the smitten--his eyelids were a bit too thick, his eyes were a bit too far back in his head, his nose was large and too sheathed and full, a miraculous device that could smell in a different spectrum than the rest of mankind with inferior proboscis could, indeed, he had what one would call a honker, were it not on this teen god, and it seemed always shiny no matter how much powder they put on it when he was to perform or was out in public, it also had a slight bump right at the top of it, his lips were lovely but too full, too defined, so the lipstick and liner for movies and concert work was meant to take away rather than to add, he was currently having a bad case of the zits, though medication was keeping them down as much as possible, he breathed through his mouth much of the time because of adenoidal problems--
--but all of these things showed within the godlet there was a human boy, vulnerable, curious, halting in his somewhat nervous self-conscious movements at times, in the shy way he accepted their adulation, the way that said I'm the stand in till the real star gets here--but they knew differently, those little girls in their pent up bedrooms with their web sites of Leif, and their Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines ravished and raped and the photos and pull outs from large pictures to tiny ones pasted on their pink pastel bedroom walls, a gallery of unrequited love for the boy whose swimming trunks in this so sexy so way cool photo of Leif dipping his left foot in his swimming pool (kidney shaped pool, largish of course) in his brief, but not brief enough, swim trunks hung maddeningly at almost the angle of revealing his v, that secret place that was a Venus mountain of rapture success that the girls, and some boys though they admitted it only to their hands late at night when the last gasp was drawn before sleep drew them deeper into their aloneness, into their sadness.
So girls and some boys inching those trunks down in their mind, seeing what was in the apple valley of those willowy legs, and turned to magic as best they knew how, before they grew up, too soon, too late to find there was no magic extant anywhere and Leif had left them and never knew them, so he was like Christ in faded cum stained magazines and photos with holes in them for all the push pins that had held them to walls, moving them over for hotter photos of the boy, photos crushed and creased and dreamed and drooled on, and all the millions of autographed pictures he had sent out and signed, or had signed after one of his adenoidal concerts in the biggest sold out venues in this country and Europe.
A magisterial quietness on the early morning sunrise beach today, easing his head, as the warm winds bathed him, and Leif standing there leafless, head cocked to the left, his left hand holding onto the sliding glass door in the peach colored bedroom with the thick as turf carpeting, from the bed of pink in which he had lain with yet another boy who was still lying there now, still spent and asleep, from coke and extacy and too much of Leif, though of course there could never be too much of Leif. But the boy himself, in that bed, name, there had to be one, with the covers pulled back, sleeping naked, on his side, his buttocks, though small when the boy was standing, seemed large when he was lying like this, and seemed smaller still when he was dressed--boys and their bodies--no matter how tiny they appeared clothed, they always appeared larger naked for some reason, Leif thought--the little boy's thumb in that tiny mouth, and Leif turned from him because there were nice clouds in the sky that had nothing to do with bone structure or my cock's bigger than your cock, my cock's bigger than yours (though Leif's cock was a full eight and three eighths inches, he had been with bigger, but Leif's was more impressive--that lovely almost steel colored helmet, the foreskin that was three inches longer than the wand inside it, the foreskin that almost split when Leif got hard, and Leif got hard a lot, oh measure measure busy busy how they loved it), but just drifting, Leif, this minute.
Not having to perform, to light candles to his own majesty, Leif naked of seeming even Leif, no restricting Elvis tight jump suits of white and black and collars of red, in which he was poured and then he jumped out onto a stage of swirling sickly bright colors that drunkenly keeled over and about him yet again, that flourished into him and on him as though he had taken something more powerful that poppers, more so than LSD, and he was the diamond himself in the sky of the stage, as the girls, and some of the braver boys, called out his name and died in his arms as he ruffled outward to them, so close, but not close enough, there in the dimness of night as their hearts held him and wept Leif Leif for him and died yet another time in his arms, those magical moments that even his silver guitar could not pluck enough strings for. And true, he didn't play it that well, but the band helped him out and the lyrics he sang were lip synch from studio sessions, most of them not Leif's voice at all.
He sexed all over the stage. He thrust his groin out so hard at the crowd, he would sometimes get a groin ache, and he was drowned out by the music so it didn't matter he couldn't sing worth a damn anyway, couldn't play that electric guitar worth a damn, for it was not necessary to lip synch even, just his conceit that he should have to, but he was the shows, his body, his skin clinging suit with its shirt cut down to the navel, his sex box hard and big there in those tight too tight to bursting white pants, as the music deafened him right there behind and around him, his head balloon swelling, feeling it anyway. The music beating at him like African tribal drums. The security guards there in the black where he could see nothing but black, and the killer white lights that half blinded him, the guards thus kept the girls and some boys in their seats. They lit candles for him, these kids, they rioted in spite of the guards from time to time, and Leif sweated and felt sick every moment on the stage (film work was easier, he loved the boredom of waiting hours for his very small scenes), it was all dominoes of children from very young to early 20's as they surged, rushed their sex to him, threw their panties and bras on stage, paper with phone numbers on them, as though he were holding a concert for entropy and he was the only clothes pin left for holding things, the universes themselves together, and it was impossible to keep the tide back.
Each night after he was back in his limousine, drenched in stench and sweat, toweling his face, he felt like he had been in the worst battle of the worst war ever held. Christ! And the girls and or boys waiting for him back in his hotel room. And he had to be up for it. He had to. There was no other choice.
Bandy legged, once, before doctors and plastic surgeons who could do such marvelous things, he turned his childhood into more than himself as a large penis, for he had always had one, and it was always a turn on to the girls and the boys he shared himself with, as Henry Miller said, giving himself to himself, for this choirboy face, this open face and apple cheeked tiny boy body face was sprouting a four incher when he was eight and he was very popular then as well, how they took their looks, the boys and girls had to, to see this braggart for what he was, and that was not a braggart, much to their horror and amusement at this kind of freakishness that was entrancing as well, and had him pose as though he were just lying on his bed, his arm supporting his head, lying sideways, his ankles crossed, his expression just perfect for saying could I go to ding dong school today mommy, and there rushing from this tiny cameo of an angel body that was delicately woven of softness and pretty, stood straight up and out, this massive man dong with even a bit of curly black pubic hair behind it, and it was such a wonderful twisty joke God had played on the boy that everyone got religion, some boys challenged him to whank off contests which he won hands down, and the girls got to watch, and sometimes he did some of them and then did some of the other sex and then they did him, for he could go forever, and he was Platinum Highway's favorite entry and exit route. No one, no one!, believed it till the truth stared them in the face.
Leif had had offers for porno films, but his agent Clarence Dalwrimple had told him in explicit terms how that would be crazy and destroy his career, so Clarence suggested Leif make some porno movies of his own, the home grown variety, and someday when his career was drying up so to speak, he could pull that Traci Lord gambit, in his own way, and be a star both in the legit film world and the porno world. The camera in the bedroom always rolled. There were three actually, covering the action from all sorts of angles. And boys being boys there were all sorts of angles. Though Leif wished that this boy and the others and the girls for he was an equal opportunity fucker, to say the least, would not want him first to get dressed in that damned Emma Peel jump suit, and they getting to take it off him, slowly and surely, taking the red scarf off first, unpeeling him like a grape, as they lavished his coming open nudity and his warm very warm flesh that was like velvet on which he was his own matador, because of course when they got the suit off, he had to pose naked for them, turning this way and that, in the ceiling mirror, where was the first camera, by the wall of mirrors to the left side of the large pink heart shaped bed, where was the second camera, and then to the eyes that were his own mirrors in which they saw themselves.
They always younger than he and shaded in his power and glory, as he kept his shades on through out the ordeal to this point, for it turned them on mightily to see naked Leif with his puka beads still on and his shades still on, until it got hot enough, and then Leif knew when to take off the glasses and to gaze down at his latest film premiere who looked up at him as he sucked the man root of the boy god, a picture boy of unobtainable, and the lucky winner tonight had the impossible dick in his very own mouth, poster and then no poster, only reality, walls had been suddenly removed, as the acolyte looked at the wild striations, moanings, cries, nose crinkling, hard mouth breathing, lip biting of sex in Leif's face and his head jerking from side to side that made wild tossings of his long flowing flower hair, wet with sweat, his hands hard on the other boy's shoulders, pressing down, down, and depending on what he and the other or others were doing, they loved to feel his thick bee summer smelling hair deliciously tickling them, their chests, their crotches, loved to run their penises through his hair, loved to kiss it and see their sexes enveloped by it as he went down on them, as though his hair was his own jungle come to capture, the sheer wild unashamedness of its cascading onto his shoulders and long way down his back, and then, later on, or before, as they knelt and sucked his hard penis, for no matter how he tried to tell them it was almost always hard, they had to know the flower had grown only this big in their choking throats and gladly so.
They kept Leif cum in a little cuff link box on a little piece of tissue paper. And if they were old enough to cum as well, it was always intermingled there with his. For a life time, so they thought. The attempt at the getting of the essence, the soul of him. He was always supplied and knew they would want that specific souvenir, though he would never allow them to take photos or video tape their having sex. That was his business. He also gave them a strand of his golden locks.
The sun was hot and baking already the land everywhere. The water had breakers that were distant and forlorn shattering on the sand and then rushing back home again. It seemed the day was dressed as was Leif, that intense ironic perspective that said love is here in its form, and in his form, that it and he were created especially for his fans, for its fans, and there was never a more noble sky than in the eyes that watched this place, that watched from this beach house where the tang of salt was in the air and the little fluttering motions of dead fish cilia before they were always sucked back to ocean from the beaching, not having made it out alive, and Leif held his hands to his temples, the pain leaving finally.
First the concert last night and then this cockamamie kid and the lack of sleep and the lack of food and the excess of extacy and coke and too many times he had cum into the boy's mouth and too many times the boy had dry cum in his and it was sheet tangle, and limbs and torsos and bodies and the voices of excitement and sexual purring and red light districts that were whooshed through so fast, the boy had had to look twice to see if that pump stuff in his mouth was from Leif's penis or was this all a gorgeous nightmare between bread like a ham sandwich?
Leif could do nothing but have sex, and look beautiful. He was king of absolutely nothing, so when Seinfield did the bits about making a TV series about nothing, Leif didn't laugh like everybody else, because he was always running, always sure someone would find him out, but he had been found out at the beginning, and his sweet boy breath blowing clover scent over little girls and little boys in their platinum haired dreams, for in certain lights, his huge heavy hair was platinum colors, who wished to see him so they could run away from him, so they could have sex with him and show him he was not that much, and the clock of Leif will be running down soon, and soon the dick will be bigger, and soon the limbs will be longer and soon there will be hair on even his perfect little gosling downy face, and his voice still in falsetto, though not as high as a year ago even, soon he will grow taller and his face might change so much he would be unrecognizable, or he might become a man cartoon of the once little boy and not so little boy he was now, for age was a grappler, and if looks were the ocean he could run out there on that hot yellow sand, run bare foot and naked in all the girlish tosses of his head and neck that shifted his trademark mane from one side to the other, which got a sexual rush from his audiences, in concerts or at home listening to his records that he could almost feel like a fire storm building up to him, and especially certainly when they were in bed with him, like all the lights of the glass works of the world had been accumulated and had shown down bright and hot and Neanderthal on him.
And he was always naked, on stage, in movies, in their eyes, always, and sometimes he wanted to rip off his penis and toss it at them, and say good luck to you and good night forever, so he could run across the morning sand and his feet would burn, and his body would be tender to the sun, for he was always careful of the sun rays and tried to spread Coppertone on his body every time he was out in there for extended periods, for he burned easily.
And he naked boy, spent boy, with body muscles carrying his entrancing downward to the ocean where the night world lay, where the dream world lay and he could become his own dream, could make of himself his own world, and the dreams would not hurt in their mottled and gray, because he knew, he intuited, though he had never had a hero himself other than his own self in mirrors and cinema and posters and photos in magazines, that the dream that was him was a hurtful one, that it made his adorers feel good for a time, listening to his voice that was a fake on records and in concerts, watching him on the screen or on TV, clattering their dearest desires to his pictures on their walls and the photo mags scattered on their beds, as though he were pieces of a king, as though he were pieces of a puzzle, and if they could only but put him together again or the first time, they would not have to jack off to a piece of paper or a strip of celluloid or tape or a record, something more than what he was and that wasn't enough, manhandled and boy and girlhandled, their finger prints of all the fleeting foot steps in the sand down to the ocean where the true joy lay. And they in their lonely child beds, calling Leif silently in their sleep attempts. Trying to find him in their heads and never succeeding.
And what about all those boys and girls dreaming of him? Where he was in their secret places he would never know about. Where even the dreamers have little or no control over the dream. Where they could make him do absolutely anything, and they could do absolutely anything to him. It made him feel icky, the thought of that.
Come with me, he would want to say, I'm nothing and nobody, and if my so kissable shoulders are delicate and sharp edged and those of angels and if your love letters to me through the mags just get thrown away before I would even get the chance to read them, and I would not read them, and you just get a form letter back with my fake signature by a machine, come with me and be with me in my kingdom under the sea.
"Leif!"
The boy on the bed shouting. Leif turning hard left, forgetting his thoughts, for the shout had been one of desperation. The boy naked small maybe eight or nine long hair mousy brown his hands doubled up into fists on his thighs, his little sex exposed and so small it hardly seemed there, though Leif knew from last night, differently--the boy scared and rocked from some dream to another and then taken away as he pulled at his almost invisible nipples and pinched them hard, as Leif like a shadow of moonlight gotten all wrong in the color, Leif in his birthday suit which was Leif in his jump suit which was Leif running after the dog that got away in his first Disney picture, in which he wore coveralls and a rag tag tattered old man's shirt, rushing, Leif, what there was of him, whatever he really was, dancing through mad shadows of gilded mirrors to the boy in the red Valentine, to the boy in the Valentine box with a lid on it, and the boy holding his eyes now like he was going to tear them out and crying hard and viscous, anger like Leif had never seen before, except with some of his chums on a bad coke or acid trip. Never give that stuff to some little kid who can't handle it, he thought now, for god's sake, you imbecile!
And in the world of mirrors shine and music blasting if only in the bones of memory and sex all backed up and stopped still while the boy like all the others could examine his naked prize kneeling on the red bed spread before him, Leif jacking off like looking into the boy as mirror, Leif alone and his mouth open a bit and his face in desperate serious, do I look like that when I do it?, it's almost ugly, the little boy thought, this quest for orgasm, as Leif took his hard on and rubbed it in his left hand, and bent back a bit on his knees, as he let the all of him flow to the cock, as his balls strained and got somehow even larger than they always were, and the boy mirror to sit there transfixed by the naked idol, by the mole to the left side of Leif's left nipple, to the muscles of Leif's chest and arms as they pulled back and forth, to the grinding unstoppable dick with its steel gray helmet head and its foreskin that Leif pulled back ever so slowly, a floor show for the kid, who actually clapped his hands--or in their druggy state, he believed the boy did--and Leif alone and Leif together, and Leif opening his eyes and looking at the boy who was open mouthed and eye gaped, and the boy putting a hand, a finger to touch Leif's chest, and stopping in mid air, with Leif nodding it's okay, and then the boy putting his finger at the top of Leif's breast bone and drawing the finger back fast as though it had touched a hot stove.
Leif laughing painfully almost, and Leif cuming and the boy like a photo machine, eyes entangled with that patch of black hair, and the penis rising like a Vesuvius and tilting out and shivering itself with desire like the ague, as the little boy smelt Leif's sweat and shivered in Leif's heat, and saw unconstricted the total Leif, nothing on, not one pair of bathing shorts to mentally have to draw down, not yet another lonely mirror where the little boy had to pretend he was Leif having sex with Leif and of course it was always a miserable failure. And here then, Leif quivering and his body bathed in sweat. Here then, Leif doing this most private most wonderful thing in front of him, this little boy naked, as the little boy reached through the transcendent mirror of Leif's that he had become, reached out from the fear and the joy and the pain of this being over far too soon and being forgotten far too soon if not already, reached out the index finger of his right hand and touched--Leif's--balls so warm and large in their sacs, like blue bird eggs and Leif pulling the boy's face to them and to the rampaging cock and shooting cum pounding happy to the boy in the left eye, with hot jism, with most super star jism, and then falling slowly meticulously rehearsedly on to the boy, on top of him and lying there, Leif, and the boy breathing hard, but Leif breathing much the harder of the two.
The mirror reaching back, the comfort given, and the boy having been that mirror, and having been the one to give HIM the comfort, and what came later, what came later...
Leif sitting on the bed side, holding the boy now who was not screaming, but was still shivering, Leif conscious of his own and the boy's nudity, conscious of the boy's penis small and the balls seemingly drawn back in the body cavity, Leif aware how his own perfectly round perfectly tanned formed buttocks were sitting on the bed, hips flattened a bit, just so, and that particularly boxy part of a boy's body and a man's that is the side of waist as it extends down to the beginning of the hips, that seen from a slightly caticornered viewpoint, seems incongruous on such beautiful bodies and somehow malformed, that seems hastily devised in an otherwise seamless weaving of the male body, this part was not thought through well enough, the bones of it, the flesh of it seeming like fish flesh out of water, the way it hung on, too much structure little and big bones underneath, gotten caught up in their pathways. The part that looked as though it was always under construction that would never get it right. Girls and women did not seem to have this problem. With this area in boys and men, he almost expected to see it as a fish bowl with goldfish swimming around in it. This part of the male body that does not appear to really be one thing or another and at sixes and nines about it too.
For he had seen many boys and himself in mirrors, mooning over himself, and so many tapes of boys too, and himself from all possible angles, knowing his wind blown hair like an unruly bird's nest, his body with its tiny Christmas berry nipples, its flat chest and inward looking abdomen, his outie navel, his hips that flared just a tiny bit, and willowing to an angle to accommodate the boy's tears and his sickness inside where the night drugs lay, all of it tableau, all of it glowing on Leif, for he was in the center shot, though off to the side, the cameras and those who would later look at the tapes, Leif's manager and friends and chums and sex partners who would fuck each other in different gatherings and combinations as they watched the replay of Leif and some boy or some girl who thought Leif meant it all for them, but he didn't, for it was all a joke, and Leif, even in this part of the scene, the ending of the movie, the music ironic and swelling, holding another child in arms that surely must have golden wings attached at the shoulder blades, and those wings of morning rustling down to his own arms and the boy's, protecting the kid, as though Leif were a golden phoenix and there were faraway distant mountains in his eyes.
So if the kid really believed in his idol, if the worship were really there at all, the boy or the girl of whichever age would go into those eyes of Leif's the cloudy dreamy ones that were crystal sharp sparkle blue, and they would hide there and they would fill up this unfillable boy who was a superstar for no reason and was the king of absolutely nothing, not singing, not acting, not being anything other than a moment before the kids and then the not kids turn the page a few final times, a few Tiger Beat final moments that edged into nostalgia and edged into wistful that seemed stupid, that seemed something left a long time ago when it was only movements, that turned into a sort of pity for the former teen superstar who would grow up in spite of himself, who would grow into a cartoon of the boy he was and who would get drunk and drunker and high and higher, this time it would make the press for this time he would not have the movie studio the record studio or the concert promoters to hide the times already all these DUI and embarrassing events had happened to him.
"Don't leave me, Leif," the boy said, his words smothered against Leif's creamy warm inviting shoulder, and the boy held so tight to Leif that he left pressure marks and without meaning to, claw marks as his fingernails dug into Leif's back, trying to get inside, remembering, the little boy, how he had been allowed to enter Leif as the superstar was on his knees on the bed and guided the little hot hard dick from behind into this firm farm house structure known as the ultimate male sex box of all time, this finely hued and golden tawny graced house of Leif in which the boy was a momentary visitor and would never forget for as long as he lived.
"Tell you what," God, Leif wished he knew the boy's name, "the surf's high today, I'll get some things for a picnic, we've got the whole beach to ourselves, private you know, and we'll just go naked all day long and swim and eat and make love on the sand, what do you say?"
He pulled away from the little boy who clung so tightly, whose eyes were red and dopey from crying and from the drugs still in his wobble system and in that wobbly brain that Leif knew so well from personal experience.
"Wash that poison out of your system, get this sex sticky off us, take some rays, would you mind Coppertoning me all over?"
The boy smiled shyly, which turned Leif on immensely and made his cock rise, as the boy reached out and touched the bands of brown colors going round the shaft of Leif's erect penis, then moved the hand away as Leif made his dick wiggle for the boy, without its being touched, and the boy laughed and thought himself on a fine amusement park ride, a merry go round, and all the horses had been replaced by images of Leif and his cock, he studied it, the boy for some time, forgetting its owner was connected to it, and that made Leif, when he realized it, pull the boy's head up by the chin.
"There's something, someone in the ocean I would like you to see," Leif said, singer actor hot shot pin up boy with his unisex face and his almost girl gender body of curves and taunts and globe hips until the measure of him between his legs was unleashed.
"What?" The boy asked. Trusting. A chill came over Leif.
So in his best most supreme most idyllic most worthy of being worshipped imitation of himself that Leif could guess at, though he studied at it so long and so hard, watching his movies, listening to songs he had nothing to do with, and never getting it right, Leif said, "Me."
"What?" the boy asked, in laughing confusion, the pain gone, the pain to go, the boy to run away, the boy to stay.
"I'll show you," Leif said standing up, his cock brushing against the boy's shoulder and the side of his face, as Leif extended out his hand to the boy's and pulled him to his feet. "Let's get food and the Coppertone and then we can head out there. We can head out there." And Leif thinking, though not saying, his eyes drifting to the open door for a moment, backgrounded with the always constant, so he rarely noticed it, sound of surf rushing in and rushing away, above which the gulls flew, making their garbage calls, we can do it right this time, we can get the mirrors the way they should be, and not have one or the other of us on each side, just changing places.
"Come on, "Leif said, lightly spanking the boy's tiny butt, "get a move on," and, as the boy tweaked Leif's hard on, he hustled the kid out of the bedroom and goosed him down the long hall way, to the kitchen, to start gathering food for their picnic, and "don't forget the Coppertone," the boy said, trying for brightness in his hangover haze, as he got to the fridge, as he looked over his shoulder at Leif, "I get to spread it all over your body, right?"
Leif smiled, as he went for the hamper, giving him a thumbs up, to which the boy responded in kind, as Leif said, "You got it, kid." And in the kitchen, both boys feeling their nudity here somehow foolish and wrong, this food fixing dining room with its bright shining mirrored stainless steel and its brown walls and cupboards and the island in the center of the parquet floor, it was early Saturday morning, so appropriate. For as long as Leif could remember, no matter what day of the week or what house he happened to be in, and he had been in many, or what time of day or night, or what age he had been or was or would be, he had never known a kitchen that had seemed to have anything in it at all but early Saturday morning, when anything was possible. It was something, to him, that all kitchens should hold in trust.
A long time ago. Breakfast of eggs and toast and ham and oatmeal and coffee and juice as the sun comes buttery and warm in the windows and it's good to be alive and free and young and you. Like he thought again, a long time ago.
But for now, there was the ocean. For what is the ocean then, but a hall of swimmy wavy briny never ending mirrors, from which breaking free, Leif, then, surely, yes, this time, it would happen.
the end