One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPT TWO

"This is my daughter, Angela," Regina Appleby said.

"Hi," Nancy said, "welcome to the set."

"Thanks," the eleven year old singer said, "it's kind of awesome to be here."

"Shut your mouth girl, it's awesome to have you," Nancy giggled.

"I really must insist that the greater pleasure belongs entirely to myself," Angela giggled back.

"Let's find some place to talk," the young hostess suggested, and the girls spontaneously joined hands and scampered off into the interior of the island.

"Your letter was so great," Nancy said as the two came to rest on a toppled palm tree.

"It was the boys' idea," the slim, raven-haired beauty said, "I was really nervous."

Dear Nancy (the letter had read), I've lost twelve pounds and my brothers, Francis, eighteen, Hank, seventeen, perhaps you can guess the rest, down to Fitz, who's twelve, and a year older than I am, suggested I write to you. We heard of the pilot you're making in the Caribbean. Is it really meant to be a fishing show? Anyway, an editor (in New York) for `Variety' told my dad, who's a still cameraman, about what you and Rick are doing, at least as much as he knew, and about the emphasis on staying fit and getting along well with your siblings, especially girls getting along with their big brothers.

I think the project sounds more excellent than any adventure the sleepy minds dared but on film. No wonder the cinemas make all their money off Skittles. (The audience gets to taste the rainbow -- pretty funny, eh, because it's nothing but water -- but not see it.) According to Hal Cohen, my dad's friend at `Variety', you guys really are going to do it differently, not with gimmicks and hooks like Harry Potter's big eyeglasses, but with storylines on sensitive subjects, like girls who think about their handsome, friendly brothers all the time.

Having lost the weight, and definitely having the male siblings, I would like, on behalf of all nine of us, to apply for a guest appearance for our family. I'm a singer, but I keep it to the campfire, because my dad says musicians lead helter-skelter lives, and should become professional only if they have no other choice. I agree with him, because I don't have many modern bones in my body, all I want to do is stay home and take care of Francis and the others; cook, mop, dust, and see if anything exciting happens in by belly (after losing the pounds, ha-ha), but it would be nice to be able to sing one song on television so if the kids get rude I can yell at them about the great career I gave up to be their mom.

We're pretty okay off, I guess, because mom designs a lot of the clothes my dad photographs for the magazines, so nine of us arriving in a heap wouldn't have to go on your location budget. I don't know if you had in mind being completely swamped by your secret, so to speak, casting call, but we've all been on sets before, so we know how to help and stay out of the way, at the same time.

Even if you choose another brother and sister for your pilot, we will watch it, glued to the big screen in the den, eleven of us, in all.

Thanks for considering the Appleby family.

Love, Angela A. Ps. You look so cute in that commercial where you're playing football with the handsome boy. (He looks a lot like Ray, who's fifteen.) I'm sending a picture of myself and two brothers, as murals are a nuisance for the postal service.

"Rick still terrifies me," Nancy allowed to her new friend.

"Can you tell me a lot?" the girl asked, her huge brown eyes smoldering. "I've started developing a little and the boys try to be nice and not gawk, but I guess they can't help it, and it's definitely leading somewhere, because if they try to be gentlemen and give me my space, I go after them in theirs, so they'll look at me more."

Trickery was unlikely, but Nancy was comforted by the surety that Angela had defiantly written the letter, and it would not be necessary to double-check her signature.

"Have you let them take anything off," the hostess asked her guest.

"No," Angela said, "for awhile I was too fat and shapeless for them to be interested. When that changed, we wrote the letter and sent the picture, then got your email back. We were so excited we couldn't do anything for a day or two, then it seemed possible to wait until we got here. The rest is just tickets and upright seats, until we got to Miami. Then Rob let me fly the Beech all the way so he could type on his PDA."

"Could you reach the pedals?" Nancy asked the tall eleven year old.

"Not enough to really satisfy him," the girl replied, "but he shrugged it off, saying he'd help out if anything went wrong."

"I couldn't at all," the eight year old said, "it will be years and years."

"You're as developed as I am," Angela whispered, "so they should be happy years."

"Do you want to see?" Nancy asked.

"Yes," the older girl whispered.

"I want to see you, too," Nancy said, her voice husking to match Angela's.

Honoring the code, the tall girl stood behind her young friend and unbuttoned her blouse, stripping it from the athletic shoulders as she nuzzled the mature child's sandy-blond hair. "Is it okay if I touch up under before I take it off," Angela asked, referring to Nancy's training bra.

"Do it slowly and carefully, like Rick," the girl coaxed, guiding the slender hands of the girl behind her.

"Have you been a lesbian before?" the younger girl asked, beginning to pant at the approach of the gentle hands to her swollen nipples.

"No," Angela said.

"Me, neither," Nancy said. "It's nice."

"I think so, too," Angela whispered into the dull-golden hair.

"Do you want to be private with your brothers tonight," Nancy asked, "or hang out with Rick and Rob and me?"

"The boys are off on a man trip," Angela said, "building the mother of all wedding huts, so we were hoping you'd join us. Torchlight. Garlands. Pillows covered in red silk. They're trying to make it really nice, and I want to please them."

"That sounds awesome," the younger girl said, relieved at not having to play hostess now and forever, while, at the same time, wondering how the boldness of the situation might play into the ever-developing storyline. Allen and Lincoln had been so cute in agreeing to let their partnership be broadly hinted at, but eight brothers gang-raping an eleven year old? Perhaps they called it the edge because if you leaned over it, you body parts would drop on either side. On the other hand, Rob would be there and maybe he could put his ever busy fingers to work on something at least smacking of innocuousness, like a ritual of the first bra, and they could use Allen's clever cameras to show just that little bit more than they were telling.

"It's relaxing with you," Nancy purred to the girl behind her.

"Yeah," Angela whispered back, "it is, with you, too.

"No big shocks when we get each other naked," the pet observed.

"Is it really scary?" the older girl wanted to know.

"It's handy to remember that females give birth to eight-pound babies," Nancy said.

"Thanks," the older girl said. "Before, it seemed kind of hopeless. If I was scared, I wouldn't eat, if I didn't eat, I'd get slimmer; if I got slimmer, my brothers would get more interested, and I'd end up more scared more of the time."

"When life gives you cock, don't die of the shock," Nancy said, expending in a short sentence a year's supply of bawdiness. Yes, perverts are often prudes, but that didn't help Angela much. She tried to respond maturely to the kitten's precious mew, but it was hopeless. Nancy felt her shaking, then the older girl gasped and tumbled them both to the soft sand of the island floor. They wept themselves madly in love, then lay panting in each other's arms, dying to see how long it would last.

"Are you ready not to be dazed?" Angela asked, her eyes finally beginning to dry.

"Don't shock me," her little sweetheart replied.

"Do you mean not now?" More giggles.

"No." And more.

They were a beautiful pair. Angela's skin was that perennial world favorite, one-eighth black. She had thick, boyish brows over the huge brown eyes which dominated her heat-shaped face. Her hair was done in a single, luxuriant ponytail which accented her beautiful shoulders. Nancy leaned over her as she lay on her back, reached behind her, and unclasped her bra. Slowly she removed the garment, her eyes staring hotly at the girl's immature chest, so nearly like her own. Angela had molested her, but hadn't gotten her bare chested, so the eight year old reached back and undid her own trainer, taking it off as Angela stared up at her.

"I'll bet it would be exciting to kiss this way," the younger female said to the girl lying at her knees.

"If it isn't, we'll tell Rob and he'll tell the world," Angela said.

"Feel me up more, first," Nancy suggested, lying down with her back to her friend's chest so the older girl could fondle her belly and her developing breasts.

"I like this," Angela whispered, "because we can talk."

"Me, too," Nancy agreed. Eight brothers. So many subjects, so little time.

"Rob said you never knew your dad," Angela said.

"Rick did, a little," the girl replied, "but to me he's just a man in some photos."

"He died on Mt. Everest?" Angela asked, rhetorically.

"Mt. Moron's more like it," Nancy said, "they ought to close it down. It's unfair to the sherpas to work them like mules for any amount of money. It's the only place on the planet where you walk amongst human corpses, my dad's, included, as a matter of course."

"If they climb it, they are dumb," agreed the older girl.

"Some fool built it, so other fools come," chimed in her little pal. Better mad than sad.

"If he was alive," Angela asked, "how do you think you'd feel about him? Do you think you'd ever think of him like, you know, a man?"

"You mean like I do with Rick?" Nancy said.

"Yes," the older girl whispered.

"I'd have probably been a wildcat by the age of six," the hardly-all that-much-older girl said.

"I knew there must be a reason I fell in love with you," Angela said, her hands tender on the swollen nipples of the young wildcat in her arms.

"If you still like your dad, that way," Nancy said," with eight drop-dead brothers, he must be rather on the studly side."

"I dream about him a lot," the girl admitted, "but they're not sugary, spicy, or nicey dreams."

"Does he ever try to be alone with you, you know?" Nancy asked.

"More's the pity," Angela replied, "he's the dad of dads type. I think we could share a sleeping bag, and he wouldn't know it wasn't the dog. Nothing against Pooch."

"If my dad hadn't dared the frost -- the freaking, fucking Moron -- he'd probably have had to institutionalize me," Nancy said. "I would have wanted him to teach me everything. In fact, I can't picture myself being too young to want him, at least as a teacher, and, if Mom had approved, preferably as a lover."

"You were lucky to have Rick," the older girl said.

"Oh, he tried to be the big brother," the child said, "and in a sleeping bag, too. Did not work. Not that I bit him, he just knew I would."

"My theory is," Angela said, advancing the story, "that if I go to Dad and tell him I've been with all my brothers, repeatedly, he won't feature packing the eight of them off to military schools, so the options will become pretty obvious."

"Bring him down," Nancy suggested. "Your brothers can build a wing on the hut."

"No," Angela said, "you have to give other families the chance you're giving us. I'm not the only unrequited daughter in the land."

"But it would be such a happy ending," Nancy observed.

"Okay," the girl said, "but only as consultants. No bucks. No film."

"With Rob, there's lots of subtext. Since your feet reach the peddles you can co-pilot for him and feed him hot scoops, tidbits, and advise him if you detect incipient scandal."

"It's only four hours, each way," the girl replied, "where would I find the time?"

"Maybe if you cut it down to just the best stuff..." the younger pixie suggested, "and there's Sealess Island."

"My brothers made him let me circle it," Angela giggled.

"We're too busy to do much whoring around," Nancy replied, "and we probably wouldn't, by inclination, but loose chains make happy dogs, so, if it should happen you don't want to circle it, once in awhile, don't."

"I think Rob would be harder to interest than my dad," the girl said.

"After you've seen him, tonight, you'll be inspired to think of something," Nancy reassured her new friend.

"Just as long as you know you're totally important to me," Angela whispered. "Totally, absolutely, completely, and foreverly."

"Oh, that's just Jezebel hussy talk to cover up how you really feel," the younger girl giggled.

"Bury me ten thousand feed under your dad," Angela said, "and it couldn't cover an ounce of how I feel."

"I know what," Nancy said, "I can come to New York with you. Fantasize about my dad, while I'm with your dad."

"Oh, freaking dynamite," the older girl squealed, "that's perfect. You're a genius."

"They don't make house calls on `e.r.'," the exceptional child said, "so we'd have a novelty act, right there."

"It would make Ed McMahon yesterday's news, for sure," Angela said. Modest as she was, the girl, and her older lover, unrestrained by such a hang-up, pictured Rick and Nancy knocking on a contestant's door.

"Rob will love it," Nancy said. She not only didn't have to entertain Angela as a hostess, she didn't have to indulge in gracious modesty and mannerly reticence. (They would have done little good, she was a transparent case.) How much of love was an absence of stress? A total comfort? It was going to be a real pleasure finding out.

"What's it feel like?" Angela asked the girl in her arms. "You know, when it's actually happening between a boy and a girl?"

"Like a timid, lost mouse with a terrible case of the hiccups," Nancy said.

"Get outta town," her friend squealed.

"Rick held me like iron bands," the girl elaborated, "and I would have said rat, but that would have sounded rude, because he felt much bigger than a mouse. But he was very timid, didn't move a muscle, so there was this hard almost bump every few seconds."

"Did he say anything, I mean, like warn you what was going to happen?"

"We'd experimented out in the open," Nancy said, "so I knew what was going to happen, and he whispered after he got still against me."

"What?" the older girl quizzed.

"'Baby'," Nancy whispered.

"Did you know what he meant?" Angela asked.

"A hundred ideas went through my head," Nancy said, "but then he started throbbing really violently inside me, and I lost track. I still don't know if he was talking to me, or asking me, or commanding me, or calling his kiddo, or just wishing out loud."

"What the fuck is your freaking, mother-fucking IQ?" Angela squealed.

"One point over what it took to absolutely love your letter, before I even saw your picture," the girl responded, in a raw demonstration of exactly what she was talking about. (And to think, they're interested in boys. Aren't I just the luckiest little writer?)

"Do you feel it every time you're with him?" Angela quizzed, accepting the status quo.

"Lot's of time he has to tell me," Nancy said. "That's when we're being lovers. When we're being brother and sister, he never has to, but he always does."

"It must be really sexy," Angela observed, "to hear it and know it's too late to change anything, it's going to happen."

"It gets my fingertips bloody," Nancy said.

"Does he feel you raking him?" the virgin asked.

"He says not," the bright child said, "but I've noticed after we've been brother and sister, we're lovers for two or three days."

"A man has to watch his back," Angela deadpanned. She could have been Buster Keaton, it wouldn't have done the slightest good. Both girls giggled until they sobbed and sobbed until they half passed out.

"Has he ever raped you?" Angela asked, long minutes later. "You know, thrown you down and mounted you, while you tried to beat him off?"

"We've just talked about it," Nancy replied, "but I don't think I have enough talent for the beating-him-off part."

"Hmm. I just wanted to know," Angela said, "you know, eight of them, and if I'm running around, all slim, in my bra and panties, after my dad, something could happen."

"It's totally special between brothers and sisters," Nancy said, "but, you know, they could have their friends over."

"That deserves a kiss," Angela said.

"With our nipples against each other?" Nancy asked, her body reacting violently by trembling and sweating.

"Baby," Angela whispered.

They rolled gently, and Nancy lay on her back in the soft, tropic sand. Angela knelt between her legs. Both girls displayed wantonly by linking their fingers behind their necks and arching, nipples wildly swollen at the sight of each other. "Keep your hands there," Angela whispered, then the eleven year old lowered herself slowly to her young mate, until they finally touched as intimately as boys discovering each other in private.

"When we're with your brothers, we can do this with sperm all over us," Nancy whispered.

"Is there enough from a boy to get us wet?" the older girl asked.

"Yes," the little darling replied, adding: "Totally."

"You know," Nancy mused, thoroughly distracted by the feeling of Nancy's tiny breasts against her own sensitive buds, but loving the girl so much she wanted to talk, now, before the further distraction of kissing, "'totally' could be the name of the show. Not the namby-pamby of `7the Heaven', but siblings totally involved. Fit fathers and mothers, too. Living totally, for brief periods, then returning to the salt mines knowing freaking-eh well you haven't missed squat."

"Rob's theory," Nancy said, "is that think what you like of the morality and decency issues, there's simply not anything else out there. We've had a two or three hundred year fix on new this and new that, from steam to designer ice cream, and, suddenly, in a snap of the fingers, it's over. Nothing new.

"How do we cope with the psychological impact of that? Of kids who assume exotic electronic games, vans with power doors, and are impressed by nothing other than raunchy music? It's dark-ages stuff. We need something to get out of bed for, besides a paycheck, or we become lifeless. People need to read a thousand times more than they do, and they need to stay fit as razors and nice as pandas so you and Rick will have someone to lead."

"Ralph Waldo Emerson says if you throw out a big enough anchor, the whole world will swing to it," Nancy quoted.

"Let's use that for jeans," Angela suggested. "Totally Anchored."

The idea might have been a fine one, Nancy wasn't sure because she hardly heard it. Angle's unconscious use of us', as it let's', shook her as deeply as Rick's first climax inside. She needed to be kissed and, peering intently down, Angela responded immediately. Tenderly, softly, she found the child's lips; tenderly, gently, she received the probing, then she let the little girl have her, teach her, love her.

[No dialogue.]

Carefully, because of the sand and their sex, the got each other naked, each lying rigidly, arms clamped to her side, legs together, as the other kissed her belly, then gently, hands at the slim waist, pulled down the delicate silk of the other.

Nancy was naked first, and the moment her panties were free of her feet, she spread as widely as she had for Rick when he finally let her join their sleeping bags. Angels knelt between the child's cute knees, leaned over her, her lush pony tail brushing gently against Nancy's engorged nipples before she kissed them, then found her way down over the slim belly to her lover's

[No narrative.]

Nancy found Angela just as wet. "But you were wet from him," the girl had exclaimed in a whisper. "Kiss me, so I'll know for sure," the younger female had suggested at the time, enduring unheralded sacrifice for the merest hint of her beautiful brother.

"This bad boy against that sharp knife," Nancy said as they walked back to the company, "we really should have something lurking and murderous, maybe not in the pilot, but as we go along."

Girls will be girls. They stopped dead in their tracks, faced each other, and screeched in unison, a la the movies, "Not Tyne Daley!" It took awhile, but they did resume their conversation.

"I'm finally glad you didn't go quite all the way with me," Angela said.

"I wanted to," Nancy replied, "but that's for your brothers. And I'm very, very glad you did, with me. I wasn't sure. It ended so violently the first time with Rick, I can still feel it, so I just didn't imagine it could ever be the same."

"Exactly the same?" queried the excellent student.

"Very different," Nancy said. "With him, it was like being blown to bits with a grenade in a foxhole. With you, it was the death of a thousand cuts; smaller, lighter, but again, and again, especially after I told you that you were sharing what Rick and Rob did with me while we were meant to be taking a nap."

"Do boys like to, you know, become aware of each other when they do what we did with a girl?" Excellent student.

"Rob and Rick do," Nancy said, adding: "I think Allen will, too, because he's been homosexual with Rick."

"When are you going to be with him?" Angela asked.

"When his PDA falls overboard and gets snatched by a barracuda," the girl replied.

"But it must be nice, you know, not being Susie Roundheels or anything, but having a man to fantasize about, knowing it will really happen."

"It is," Nancy said, feeling the answer must seem pretty lame to a girl some minutes away from joining eight brothers, and friends. Then again, the question had, in context, been marginal, in the first place.

Great minds think alike. When the girls reached camp, they found Rob had scripted out -- guess what -- a first bra ceremony for the eleven-year-old girl.

NIGHT EXT. FOLLOWS IMMEDIATELY SCENE 133. DRUMS BEAT SOFTLY IN A ROLLING PUNTA RHYTHM. FRANCIS ENTERS THE CEREMONIAL GAUNTLET. SERIES OF SHOTS AS HE APPROACHES THE PALM CURTAIN OF THE WEDDING HUT.

FRANCIS.(Singing to a ballad melody.)

The law's the law, but oh, who made the law?

Why is it greater than you and I?

What a thief it is, taking so far, so much,

Leaving me like a hound without a paw.

Making us cry.

Forbidding our tenderest touch.

ANGELA (Sung by Lincoln.)

What has always been is what must always be

For the world to spin freely toward tomorrow

So sighs won't do, nor moans, nor tender sighs.

THE BAMBOO CURTAIN IS DRAWN ASIDE AS ANGELA'S SONG CONTINUES.

For it is the gifts of love I crave from thee,

NOW RICK HANDS ANGELA THE SMALL BRA HE AND HIS BROTHERS HAVE CRAFTED. THE GIRL EXAMINS THE BAND OF RED SILK AS SHE CONCLUDES (FORCE IT A LITTLE MORE THAN A TINY BIT) HER IMPROMPTU SONG..

New things, so I won't have to borrow,

Not some threads in half my size.

Was it that simple? Just make it funny? Slip it by S&P as a joke? The rehearsal cast and crew were all grinning like wolves the day young Peter twisted his ankle in a rabbit hole. Nigel and the first AD summoned her to the screening room, actually, a tent, and the pixie grabbed Angela by the hand and towed her into the familiar confines. "Someone thought of this, while you guys were gone." Rob said. (Again, Lincoln played Angela.) The tape rolled, showing an interior shot of the caterer's tent. Francis and `Angela' were just finishing breakfast. As the boy got up to clear his place, he dropped the honey container on his sister. The resulting spill was so obviously faked it made the audience laugh, then achieved tension when it came time for the boy to wipe the theatrically placed honey from his sister's thigh. What could be more natural. Certainly family values were upheld by the gracious way in which the sister responded to her brother's clumsiness. Certainly the big boy was gentle and sweet as he carefully damped the sticky condiment from the long, newly slim leg of his kid sister. Nor would their dialogue raise eyebrows.

FRANCIS

That was almost sweets for

your feets.

ANGELA

Much higher and it would

have been sweets for the

dairyman's best friend.

FRANCES

Beats me what you mean by

that, but don't worry, I'll clean

you up, good as new.

ANGELA

Francis, don't you think,

just sometimes, I'm

nothing but new?

Francis returned with a damp sponge and knelt in front of Angela. He began wiping her shorts, then rubbed the sponge down over her bare leg.

FRANCIS

It comes with the territory

when you're a kid.

ANGELA

And I suppose you're wiping

a baby's chubby leg.

FRANCIS

I can't even clear the table

without making like a

spastic bee, so how all-

grown-up do you suppose

you are?

ANGELA

Old enough to know there

is honey and there are

honies.

Peter's foot was really wedged in that old rabbit burrow. They'd done it. While the mice were playing, the cats had been working their tails off and found a voice, a motif and texture that said it all, while rich enough in flummery to confuse idiots. It was like the sweet spot on a Mount Bertha golf club, and hard not to grin over The footage ended with Rick arriving and reminding everyone that hyperactivity in the name of art led to the same exhaustion as in any other field. They'd booed lustily and crashed immediately, mostly still grinning.

Nancy and Angela had also slept away several hours. Sundown was at hand. The old tropic ball. Had resisted slamming for eternity, but always dunked. They gathered at the western shore to watch, all eyes fastened on Angela. (Poor Peter.) If the sunhot, as it's called in certain latitudes, had changed its mind, reversed itself, and gone out, the Appleby boys would have grabbed torches and not taken the time to note the inconvenience. The tropic sun is a terrible thing, so quickly does itself exting. "Wish I could think of something better," the medical student, pilot, and now chief writer mused, then, deciding there was a certain subtlety to his lyric, he entered the line into his digital assistant, and, as all writers do, began another.

Watch out below. I try to slide into my essays, assuming they're essays, in the first place, with some indication we're changing cards from fiction to non-fiction. A friendly warning, half the time, leads to a drubbing, so `watch out, below' is more fitting.

All England seems to be wrong. Perhaps all Britain. Nobody seems to get it. Oscar Wilde was not convicted because he admitted, tangentially, `kissing' (ha-ha-ha) a boy, everyone assumed that and much more, he was convicted because he mocked the child as ugly and too plain to suit his taste. If he'd said, in his cups, yes, he very much liked the lad, however unprepossessing he might appear, and might have kissed him; claimed not to remember, which might well have been the case, and apologized, he'd have gone free. No harm, no foul. Instead, he got what he deserved.

"The Samanthian" once again goes to bed without copy, saving the publisher any amount of ink. Her eyes get brighter, she spends more time here, and her prattles for `jinglings' become ever more intricate, convoluted, and drop-dead charming. It at least appears we're growing enough roots together to withstand a hurricane; good news at this latitude. Daisy is the mother that isn't. She is never home, but the three boys get along fine without her. It's kind of neat. I haven't clapped eyes on Queenie for four days. She's gone as much as her mother. Where, doing what? are the central mysteries of my life. I mean, they're often out of here ten hours a day. Since it is my theory Daisy is a terrific mother, if she has her absolutely beautiful daughter up to anything illicit, she'd have a little money to spend on the boys, once in awhile, and she never does. Of course, gambling could be the answer to that conundrum. Anyway, since it's my property, and the police have interviewed me, it is my business, so stay tuned. For all I know, they may be fishing for blue crabs off the town pier, but they told me that's what they do. Makes me very suspicious.

Another computer trick. Almost everything to do with the Net is gone. Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, all blank. I did a major housekeeping of My Docs, so maybe I deleted everything by mistake, but I'm usually pretty careful about that kind of thing. In any event, it's like Marshall's closet, nice to have it cleaned out. Luckily, the address book lives on, so I can send in stories. As to the rest of it, no offense to the hundreds of readers who've written, but I'm glad it's gone. I have all the ego issues I can handle with grace and modesty, without going back and reading a hundred glowing letters before I get to a dis jockey.

Did you know it's called "The New York Review of Books"? Isn't that pretentious? I keep wondering when and how I'm going to appear. Yes, Nifty is a literary free-fire zone, safe, because no one will admit they read it, but still, with three million downloads, and the number growing like the altimeter readout on a rocket, attention must be paid. (Ben Loman, Willy's older brother and my personal role model.) Problem is, I can't read the damn thing looking for subtle acknowledgement.

I thought Cuisinearts were for cooking. Hooking one to Word XP? Well, maybe you have to be a New Yorker to abide the flavor. Scrambled-egg names. The magazine's cover looks like a page from Hell's phone book. Tres trendy and politically absolute, not merely correct, but look at the incredible damage these foreigners are doing, every field, every front, with their witless, monotonous babble. Turning anyone with more brains than peanut butter off anything to do with the printed page, is one example. The exceedingly tiresome caricaturist starts with a huge pair of eyewear (duh'uh), then draws a little something else. It's an unclean thing, so many Arabs and Jews you expect dead bugs and tainted sand to fall out, instead of coupons selling more of the same. I hate having it in the house, though it is a useful reminder of the height of my own mountain; how grand I am, page to page, and how the big urban names are but lowly piss ants, not fit to polish Salerie's shoes, much less scrape the mud off the soles of mine. (It's in the house because Alex brings it, and I'm too polite or cowardly to tell my landlord where it belongs. I would not pay a dollar for a ten year subscription (and I have five cats to clean up after).)

This said, I'll allow myself a few words of pity. Think how these New York people are going to feel about letting someone else discover me, because they didn't have the guts to admit to reading alt. sites. Scooped, as they say in the trade. Somewhere, someday, some editor is going to remove the barrel from his head before he pulls the trigger, and make himself as famous as Trane (or Train. I don't recall seeing Marshall's producer's name in writing). Perhaps I can save that courageous editor some time. I won't play. I'm not interested. I would not travel a mile to sell a million copies. I would not open an envelope containing a million dollars. I'm after teaching you how to read and write, straightening you pretzels out, entertainment, immortality, and vengeance served so icy cold some will not be able to distinguish its flavor from that of sour grapes. Every hour I dither, pitching something I've already written, is hundreds of words, maybe a thousand or more, that will never be written. I'm an Anglo Saxon. If my work is not good enough to sell itself, the glitzy pomade of publicists is not going to make me prance and preen: good luck to me and the horse I rode in on.

A good way to be sued by an amazing number of people would be to slap my burgers between buns and hawk `em for dough. (Anne's second choice is a LAWYER, for god's sake) Meantime, not a day goes by when I don't wonder to myself at the utter novelty of being the most widely read new talent in the world, yet able to wander around like my idols, the Mennonite farmers and mechanics who are the only reason this absurd little coin-purse nation doesn't starve and grind to an immediate halt, in un-ironed shirts, used shorts, and last-year's (it's almost November) flip-flops. Tom Wolfe dines with Jackie's (is it too early for people to ask: Who's she?) cousins, and I have to defend my macaroni and cheese dinners from Daisy's boys with an ax.

Maybe the whole thing's an elaborate comedy act put on by Gotham to amuse and stimulate me. Seems far-fetched, but the thought is pleasing, if for no other reason than it would imbue Mailer, Vidal, Updike, and their overexposed, leftist fellow travelers, with a degree of literary utility heretofore undreamed of. I am a great, big, huge, sensational, Babe Ruth, Ben Franklin, Charles Dickens, Goliath, King Kong, Hercules, Enrico Caruso, A. Einstein, A. Hitler, Writer, and New York diminishes itself dramatically by ignoring me, the peons. (Ah, but were I Midas, think how they'd fawn) Manhattan is an island, full of cheesy heads; they write like chickens babble, while I burn herb with small-town dreads. River east, river west, rivers south do flow; plenty of water, to clean up the mess, when out their tower windows, their brains they choose to blow.

Hmm. Sitting my horse a little high this morning, aren't I? Back-to-back ten-thousand word days, not to mention fielding enough domestic grounders to earn Golden Gloves from "Good Housekeeping" and the YMCA. God of Third Rock, to Third Rock: do it my way or it's the end of the highway.

Back to the proof of the pudding.

Eating. "Odd, isn't it," Rob Lester continued with his musing, "in a nation of fantastically extreme and nearly universal obesity, there is no place in literature for the plate-to-mouth mambo, or the soda sipping side slide." But it was a thought. The catering was excellent, considering their end-of-the-world location, and there was a chance he could crib something from "Tom Jones" by way of hinting at what was going on through the metaphor of, say, Nancy feeding Rick in bed. Bananas? No, Woody Allen had already used it. More honey? Yeah, that was more like it. Licking each other's fingers. Series of shots, maybe a pair of damp towels in the background, leaving the audience wondering if the sprite had brought the breakfast tray, or gone out for it. Lincoln bringing Allen a tray? Cute, because it scribed the line between yes and no, however funny it was such a line existed in the first place.

The sun set. They ate. It got dark. First call was at seven-thirty, p.m. Yes, Allen had decided to film Angela's ceremony. The crew had volunteered to work off the clock. They could roll a thousand feet of tape though the cameras for the cost of charging their batteries. The palapa was sturdy enough for the videographers to lie on its roof and aim their lenses down through the palm thatching. Nigel had a 24mm lens for the Ariflex, which could be turned on and left running in a corner. If New York said No, it would simply be a mater of saying No to New York, flying to Burbank, and repaying their faithful Japanese investors. "Shallow Throat".

On that amusing note, Rob switched off his little computer and went off in search of more to write about. Storyline.

One torch burned low, its mate burned high.

O lie, o lie, o lie

Lighting the path of the innocent two

O lay, o lay, o lay.

The scene was not for everyone,

O fi, o fi, o fi

But to the brainy, nice, and the most alert,

O kay, o kay, o kay.

(And they say prose is harder than poetry.)

Polynesian theme. Who needed that? Better they'd dressed as barn dancers, cloggers, and grunge-band rockers. Not that Nancy and Angela weren't enticing in their tiny tops and grass skirts, of course they were, but from a literary standpoint, it would have been preferable to costume the principals in loose flannels and baggy denim; boots and big hats. Surely a boy opening tenderly to the shoulders of a shy girl exceeded the same shoulders glowing in the torchlight. Or, were writers too powerful? If a single keyboard might savage the entire literary community of a great metropolitan city, Superman sensibly excluded, might not a less amply taloned media be appropriate for the affections of a young brother and sister?

Rob waved to Rick and the two met at a trestle table in front of the caterers tent. They passed the word, and in a minute Allen emerged from the three dozen or so gathered to do their bit as extras.

They looked at each other, somewhat stunned to find they had nothing to say. Each had exceeded the expectations of the others, each had manhandled the cart high on the hill. Every facet was perfection and every thing was ready They ended up just grinning. Rob read a little ditty of his composition, and with a final shared moment, they rejoined cast and crew.

The brothers were like the directors, and had outdone themselves by laying down a simple but effective bamboo track for the film camera, and carefully cutting a corresponding slit in the thatch of what would soon become the dream house of all males, everywhere. No leaving an Ariflex running in the corner for this gang, thanks, or maybe they were afraid of being spied upon.

Polynesian theme. They could have done worse: something coy, like Aleuts in seal skins, sexy as Muppets Of course a polar motif would have included polar bear skins, so one would not dismiss it out of hand. They could have used Solon beer drinkers. Cracker cabins with maids in sacking. Hmm. Anything remotely Russian. That would make it by Bambi as a censor. English. Bambi's Victorian granddear would grace their humble efforts with a thumbs up.

Ta-da dum dum dum; ta-da dum dum dum, fast, rolling. First places hadn't been stipulated, but everyone acted by accord and the way was cleared from the beach to the door. The canoe emerged from the darkness of the quiet sea into the flickering light, the girls, symbolically, to provide significant cultural content, thus mooting arguments related to pornography, paddling for themselves.

Both girls were bare chested, nonetheless, most of the onlookers were veterans, and everyone took their moment. Rob Lester, by now so used to composing on the spot, was able to do so without his PDA and keyboard.

Scene: A Tennessee mountain dance. Pa Frickett has brought ma, the kettle, and little Amy, played by Angela Appleby. Gertie and Gus Gusterson have brought Tinky, littler than Amy, and played by Nancy.. Gertie, Gus, and Ma (Grace) and Pa Frickett get into Pa's kettle

"He's serious as oats in whisky," Pa (played by Rick Schroeder) said after a mighty draft from a laden ladle

"Plumb dang," his wife retorted, "that mean-handed, dog-biting, hammer-headed son of a bitch would have to piss up to piss on a snake."

"Ma," Pa whined, "all the ladies of the community want their daughters done over by him, Amy will just have to wait her turn."

"But we're friends," Ma shot back, "yonder they're drinking practically from the pipe of Old Number 412."

"And welcome they are," Pa said.

"I'm just saying fair is fair," the matron said, calming herself a little. "You take on young Tinky, there, well fine, but what's little Amy meant to do, go off in the woods with a dog and a stick?"

"Some folk do without, altogether, " the old mountain man observed.

"Some folk got other to play with," his wife rejoined. "I was brought up right by your very pa, and I mean it for my daughter, and, lord-o-mighty, you done went and sobered up in that church that time, one could hardly blame you for wanting out of the rain, and the sermon went with a dry skin, so I don't say you for Amy, though it would me more natural, but, if you're gonna deny the child, you gotta get Gus with her, and take his little Tinky up in yonder patch of maples, so you can account yourself as a man, at least before the almighty."

The hillbillies weren't bad hearted or bad looking, just brushed by the neglect of society. They made out as best they could. The women won the day, and, as the band was warming up in the hall, Pa (George) and Gus, aged in their young thirties and dressed hoedown style, held each other's daughter's by the hand as they led them up a path into the woods.

"Would you like to stay near your dad, or go off alone with me?" George asked Tinky.

"How close can we stay?" the eight year old asked. She was a sandy blond, with a broad, almost boyish brow, big blue eyes, and her hair pulled back along her delicate temples to an athletic bun at the back. Even in her checkerboard flannel, her shoulders stood out and it was easy to picture her passing a football.

"Your dad an' I plumb got used to being out hunting, alone, without any girls along, if you follow, so I reckon we can stay as close to him and the little girl he's with as you want to."

"Is that what you want?" Amy asked, "or would you rather be where no one can see what happens."

"Lady's choice, but I'd half vote for teamin' up."

"That gives me a vote and a half, so I win," the eleven year old said happily.

"Has your dad touched you yet?" George asked.

"Mom keeps on him about it," the girl replied, "but he thinks I should be older so I'll know my own mind."

"You and Amy could be twins," the young father observed, and your ma and my wife."

"You haven't touched her yet, either?" the Tinky asked.

"Out-voted, but resolute, until tonight," George said.

"Do you want to be the first one to see her, or my dad," the eight year old wanted to know.

"Another lady's choice," George said.

"I'd like both of you to look at me," the girl replied, and thus another vote for solidarity was counted. They hiked on another hundred yards, the men quizzing the girls, double and triple-checking for any sigh of hesitation or discomfort, and unable to avoid looking each other hotly in the eye.

"By the birches, that's pretty, don't you think Tinky?" Amy said. Separate valleys. The girls, separated by three years, knew each other, but not well.

"I'd like it if it was burned last week," the girl said, "I'm too excited to walk any more."

"Me, too," Amy agreed, and the girls spontaneously joined hands. Too excited to walk, why, they ran.

"One for the women folk," George commented as the girls scampered to the grove of white trees.

"A woman nags from sun to sun, but a man's work is never done," Gus responded. They were trying to be funny because they were nervous. Amy was a heart-faced beauty, lush black hair, with traces of down at her temples, big gray eyes, and a tender, smiling mouth. Dressed like boys, the girls looked a little like boys, and the males thought them a wicked combination of cute and alluring.

"Not like old times," George, the elder by some years, said.

"Meeting Ben Dirk at ye olde swimming hole," Gus recounted.

"First day of the rest of OUR lives," George said.

"We couldn't keep our hands off each other for a year," Gus remembered.

"A seventeen year old hanging out with a ten year old. Everybody must have known what we were teaching each other."

"They must have thought we were powerful slow learners," Gus chuckled.

"Only our wives know how thorough we were," George added.

"Guess we've been pretty faithful in the cleaving department," his younger friend observed.

"Variation and variety at a tender age, get it over on an early page, then leave well enough lone, and you will have a happy home." It was a bit rustic, but Fifth Avenue was only a distant nightmare and the rubes had no reason to know any better. It was also a bit of non sequitor, because who was one to `get it over' with? Surely not a half-dog schoolboy. Paradoxi To lead a perfect life, one avoided them, to lead a real life, one lived with them, to chase two babes into the woods, one rationalized, and to teach the babes what they wanted to know, you simply failed to temporize. If it was back-woods philosophizing, George and Gus had every reason to be in the woods in back of the dance hall.

"Are you worried about hurting Tinky?" George asked Gus.

"Her mother says it won't be a problem, and she should know," the younger father replied.

"Does she tell you any details about what happened when she was a child?" the curious elder father wanted to know. Ben Dirk had talked to both boys before skinny dipping with them, and they'd shared an intimate story or two until recent years when the vagaries of life had brought them to homes in separate valleys.

"She finally waylaid her dad when she was just Tinky's age," Gus said. "Berry picking."

"Was it complete," George asked, "or did they just experiment a little?"

"He was premature with her," Gus explained, his voice matching the husky rasp of his friend. Even in their loose-cut jeans both males were obvious. For a minute, they tried dangling their hands nonchalantly in front of themselves, then both decided unconsciously to favor their little girls. "But she was persistent and dragged him from his bed as soon as her mom was asleep. They went out to the barn and he spent two hours with her, finally becoming completely successful."

"Were they monogamous?" George asked, his voice now a whisper as they closed on the girls who were gathering wildflower, as girls are wont to do.

"In a sense," Gus explained, "they had a small club. Three fathers and five daughters, three brothers and four sisters. Kept everyone out of trouble, or so her dad thought."

"My story's pretty much the same," George said, "and it's a damn lucky thing Ben came through on his bike and wised us up, or else I'd never have married Grace because of her twisted past."

"It's a kind of lurid that wears well," Gus agreed.

The pixies charged from the glen and circled their fathers with war-whoop giggles, trying to shoot them down with their flowers. The young explorers led the old folk to a fallen birch surrounded by a heavy growth of ferns.

"Isn't it perfect?" they trilled, "and it's easy to find so we can come back before every dance, unless it snows."

"There's even a spring just beyond that rock," Amy said, "in case we need to wash off. Tinky's friend, Donna, says it can be kind of messy while you're learning."

"Sounds like her dad had the same problem Gertie's did," Gus observed.

"Neither of them were Lone Rangers," George said, and his friend grunted a grunt that said I know exactly what you mean.

For all their bravado and high spirits, it was two very nervous little girls who seated themselves on the fallen tree, looking up with huge eyes at the men standing over them.

"Anyone for a dance?" George said, giving either or both every chance and excuse to escape if they wished. Two serious young heads under two cowboy hats shook in unison. They didn't like refusing their kind, gentle daddies, anything, and they sat, heads hung in embarrassment. It was as charming a scene as I can write, whispering, flat-out, and obviously took more talent than there is on the planet. Scoff at me as a deity at your own extreme risk, but, while you're still alive, stick around and find out what happened next.

"Ben!" both men exclaimed as one.

"You didn't hear the Harley?" the newcomer asked, trotting the last few yards into the glade and hugging and slapping his old friends, as they returned the greeting.

"Careful track," Ben explained, "you know how meticulous I always was. With the aid of a spy or two, I've been keeping pretty good track. I wasn't all that sure about this particular dance, but the bike needed a run, so I thought I'd take a chance and motor over. Everyone knows you're up here. It's killer."

Introductions were made and Amy and Tinky removed their hats before extending dainty hands to the famous disk jockey.

"You've kept super," George said, "what's it been, five years?"

"Just under," the former mentor of a teen and child said. He was in his young fifties, but had a whippet boyishness about him likely to last until he was eighty. In his eyes, his two friends had lived up to his nagging and preaching, years earlier; thirty-two inche waists [Wondering where I got that particular number from? My freaking belt, that's where.], boyish faces, eager, willing and responsive. Just as he'd left them.

Now it was just like old times. Ben, sensitive as he'd been that first time up in the woods, before they'd skinny dipped together, made motions to leave saying they could catch up, later, at the dance. The two father's gauged their daughters as very, very few dads ever get to do. The girls nodded, the dads nodded. "They won't dance with us," George said, "so we're going to hang out up here. Stay."

"If you're sure," the man said.

"Please," the perfect children said together, Tinky adding: "our dads are real nervous."

"The totally scaredest I've ever been in my life was when I first met them," Ben said, "so I won't be much help."

"I don't think we'll need much," Amy said, "just encouragement and moral support."

"Besides," Tinky said, guessing a little with her thousand-watt child's brain, "you're experienced with them. There might not be an accident, like there was with my friend, Donna."

In Tennessee and its bordering states, it was the invitation of the century, and accepted as such.

"But if something does go wrong," Amy added, new confidence in her voice just from the presence of the legendary old family friend, "there's a spring to wash us off in."

"Will we be able to dance, afterwards?" Tinky wanted to know.

"You won't, doll," Ben answered, as the question had been directed to him, "but Amy should."

"Will I be in a wheelchair?" the younger pixie asked.

"Not with three grown men to carry you," her father said.

"How long will it hurt?" Amy wanted to know, hugging her sister at heart.

"A few days," Ben said. "Aspirin will help a lot. You'll be fine for school on Monday."

"Do you have any more friends, Dad?" Tinky wanted to know. She was not famous for liking school. All three males sensed the little girl's sense of fun, and, as impossible as it seems in the circumstances, laughed. Amy, too.

"Before I forget everything I think I ever knew," Ben said, "I did half come on business. Two of the station's sales people married each other and moved to Las Vegas. Their service accounts bring in about thirty grand a year, each, so it would be killing two birds with one tank of gas if you were interested."

"We can really be sisters, then," Tinky glowed to Amy.

"I'll take that as a yes," Ben laughed.

"And just when I was perfecting my never-been-there, never-done-that accent," George sighed, dramatically.

"Write like that for us," Ben said, "there'll be money in it."

"Oh, Dad," Amy said, "you're like that all the time."

"I always thought of it as survival," George mused, half to himself.

"Money's survival," his bright daughter observed, "though living on love hasn't been bad, and, is obviously going to get a lot better."

Not if the old-home-week went on all night.

"This is so déjà vu the next time will be all over again," Gus said.

"My knees are shaking, too," George said.

"We survived it in the woods behind Ye Olde," Ben said, not sounding sure.

"It must have been handy to have a place where you could really wash off," Tinky added.

"I guess we could have, at that," Ben said, memories of childish bodies and soft, persistent tongues dazing him like ear-to-ear lightning.

They call it bonding. One more word, and they'd be enslaved. The males evaporated into the woods, while the little girls took off their hats and boots, propping them against a nearby birch. They fiddled with each other's hair, staring into each other's eyes. "I can't wait to see you," Tinky whispered, "are you getting mature?"

"A little," Amy replied, "how about you?"

"My mom said I'm pretty good for eight," the girl said.

"Do you think anything as exciting as this will happen if we live to be a hundred?" the older child asked.

"Impossible," replied the younger girl, "it would kill us, and we wouldn't live very long if we were dead."

"But it is kind of weird," Amy went on, "I mean, if we were at the dumbest football game since the war to slaveize the North, we'd be jumping up and down and yelling and screaming."

"But they touch down and our dads are going to touch us up," Tinky said. If there was a point to her nonsense, it would have spoiled it. In any event, the slavery issue was settled. Bond, bonding, bonded.

"Here they come," Amy whispered.

"It won't be the last time," her charming kid sis predicted, going out on a limb a foot thick and an inch long..

"You're ahead of me because of Donna," Amy said.

"She tells me all the details," the eight year old said. "Cum is a noun, an adjective, a verb, and an adverb."

"If it's inside, can it be a preposition?" the older girl wanted to know.

"I suppose that depends on the position," Tinky said. Both girls were glad to see their fathers and Ben.

"I want to dance now, Daddy," Tinky said, standing. Gus, naked and hugely erect, reached to her, and she snuggled instantly to him, as Amy did to the naked George. The ferns were not good for actual dancing, but the girls seemed content to be held tightly against their athletic, handsome fathers, and sway in place as music drifted up the mountainside.

The song, Kitty Kalen's "Lasting Love", predating Celine Dion by forty years, ended.

"Do I get to show first because I'm the youngest?" Tinky asked.

"When Ben molested us in the woods, he got me naked, first," Gus said to his daughter.

"Then can I let him show me what to do?" the younger girl asked.

"Ask Amy," Gus suggested.

"We're slaves without free will," the funny little mouse said, "mere children. Her answer might depend on who owns who, so we'd have to flip a coin to determine that, then one of us would have to decide, and, the other would have to agree, because whoever owns who today will be owned tomorrow."

"Ben?"

"I'm glad I had boys," the handsome biker replied, eyes suspiciously bright for one who was trying to play it noncommittal.

Teasing. If it isn't quick, it isn't fun. Ben selected Amy, stood Tinky against the horizontal birch, and guided the older child's hands to the blouse of her friend. George and Gus huddled close, eyes intent on the hands of man and child as the molestation of the eight year old began. The girls were beginning to really focus on the huge display of their fathers, so it wasn't button, button, button, but a variation interrupted by faltering attention and susceptibility to diversion.

"They get more mature each time one comes undone," Amy said.

"What if I was in a Chinese dress with buttons top to bottom?" Tinky asked.

"Donna might know," Amy suggested.

"Or, her dad," Tinky the Wise added.

Less red flannel. More sandy-blond tomboy. Amy got down to the child's jeans and pulled the shirt free, finishing the last two button, and sliding the soft cloth from the sturdy, athletic shoulders. Ben guided Gus to his daughter, first. The young father in turn brought Amy's slender hands to share his child with the eleven-year-old beauty, then George. Ben gently refused, leaving Tinky to six gentle hands that fondled her for long minutes, then began touching her up under her training bra. As she got used to what was being done to her, the eight year old began to arch her back and lean back against the tree, raising her hands to place them behind her neck.

The full display coaxed the males and the girl, and Amy moved in to kiss the child's sexy kid's belly as the men became open with each other on what they were doing under her little trainer. Six hands also worked at the belt of her jeans, in an instant setting up their timing so as to not leave her unmolested as the heavy blue denim dropped away, exposing her slim, waiflike legs. Ben urged Gus, now kneeling at Amy's left, and the young father helped the older girl, reaching into the pants, as soon as the zipper was down, to fondle his daughter on her inner thighs as he followed Angela with the child's white panties.

Tinky, herself, reached back to unclasp her bra so her father could remove it at the same time he was getting her naked below the waist. Many hands make light work, as the old saw goes, and the same might be said of glans. The hormone kind. All were being tested to the limit and performing perfectly. The three males were raging hard, the girls also obviously aroused. Tinky spread her legs slightly, and, now naked, arched to the stare of her dad, her eyes burning hotly into his.

"Sweetheart," Gus said, "the first time we were with Ben, he showed us what was going to happen. Would you like to see?"

"Yes, Daddy," the eight year old whispered.

"Would you like to make it happen with Ben, darling?" George asked his daughter.

"Yes, Daddy," the eleven year old whispered, "but can Tinky get me naked, first?"

"Yes, pumpkin," George said, speaking for all. The naked males huddled in close to the two girls as they reversed positions, Amy now supported by the tree, and Tinky's tiny fingers working at the buttons of her flannel blouse. George helped, exposing the rave-haired beauty's chest the moment the younger girl had finished with a particular button. His were the first fingers on her athletic thighs as Tinky pulled down her jeans, and in less than five minutes she was naked and emulating her young friend's display for her father.

Amy was gently positioned at Ben's right hip, her left arm around the rugged biker's distinctly non-beer waist. The pair was moved within inches of the junior miss, who was again leaning, legs spread, against the useful fallen tree. George stood behind Amy, who also spread her legs at her dad's first touch. Gus knelt at Tinky's right hip and began to masturbate the child, using his hand to guide his friend's daughter in what she was about to do. "Is it okay, Dad," the eleven year old whispered over her shoulder. "Yes," George replied in a shaken whisper "he's ready for you to touch him."

Amy toyed with the circumcised man, finding him very wet and instinctively stripping the copious seminal fluid back over the purple glans of the biker's thick, seven inch shaft. Watching Gus's hand now really touching his daughter, the girl began masturbating the now sweating and shaking Ben.

"It feels nice, Dad," Amy whispered, "am I doing it the right way?"

"Yes, darling," George encouraged, "beautifully. Just don't stop when it starts to happen."

"Can he still talk?" Amy wanted to know.

"If the woods were on fire he might be able to whisper `Smoke'," the affection father said to his daughter.

"But he can't catch the woods on fire, can he?" she asked, obviously impressed by Ben's hot response to her wet, tense grip, her big eyes staring at him in fascination, and her delicate little-girl hand stroking now with an engaged alacrity.

"No," George said, his right hand sliding over his daughter's slender belly and down between her thighs. "Oh, Dad," she whispered, spreading her legs more widely while bracing herself on Ben.

"This is masturbating, too" he whispered, finding her wetness and duplicating her rhythm on the jutting seven-inch male. Amy quickly found she could direct her father by experimenting with different speeds and tensions on Ben. Tinky was panting and had begun to mew hotly, staring up at her father, then at Ben, hardly an inch for her belly, and finally at what George was doing with Amy. Gus was becoming wanton with the eight year old and the carnality of his molestation had a dramatic effect on the athletic radio star, bending him forward so he gripped her shoulders for balance as he stared down between her tender, white thighs.

Half a miracle occurred, and Ben was able to grunt aloud. "I'm cumming," he whispered. "Oh, Daddy," both girls exclaimed tensely, thrilled at being female and being old enough to share something so intense and secret.

Amy didn't stop. An experienced partner can judge a male finely enough to hold him hard and very low, a best-case scenario, but a girl who keeps a steady, strong rhythm gets a very close second place. An experienced partner can hold a male rigidly and nearly still during his ejaculation, which has an aesthetic value, especially if it intimately involves an anxious, panting female child. An experienced partner can coax a male, speeding or delaying his loss of control. An experienced partner can perform the same perfect way, time after time. An experienced partner is the second best thing in the whole wide world.

It was Amy's inexperience that allows this sidebar. She was imperfect; diligent, engaged, even avid for knowledge of the Great Mystery, but her hand trembled and her stroked staggered in her own excitement. Ben began convulsing so, Gus and George both had to stop molesting their daughters to keep him from falling. He mewed, he barked, he grunted, he groaned, he moaned, he shook, and he hissed. Fortunately for a vast radio audience, Amy realized very quickly the error of her ways, that she'd sort of half missed things for a moment there, and set about mending the error of her ways with long, fast, hard engagement.

Ben advised the children, again, with the last of his voice. Their father's stared down at Tinky's bare chest. Ben began ejaculating hard and fast, his semen spraying in hot streaks. Amy's excitement tripled, her right hand flew in a frenzy, and so the sperm splashed and splattered, wetting Tinky's athletic female chest and her pretty face. Amy loved sharing with her little friend, and took much semen on her own face and shoulders. Ben kept cumming violently, apparently undismayed by the total mess he was making of two lasses on their way to a dance with their handsome dads. For nearly a full minute, nothing seemed to phase the old friend. Sperm spattered on George and Gus, and, acting again instinctively, Tinky guided the by now completing male to the thighs of her little friend, managing to wet her before Ben shuddered a last few tense moment, and moaned in exhaustion, pivoting to rest against the lifesaving tree.

Tinky stood. Amy knelt and mouthed and licked her wet belly, then rose (not much) to kiss the chaste lips of the eight year old. "You taste like Atlantic City, but you're warmer," the tyke observed, associating the beach city with salt water, hold the taffy.

"What do you think, Daddy?" Amy asked, again licking Tinky's slick belly, then stretching to the tall athletic man, her eyes leaving his hugely rigid penis only at the last second before she leaped into his arms, wet and slippery against him as she found his lips, her arms flying around his neck as he held her tightly to his heaving chest.

"It will be nice living closer to the coast," George said, answering as best he could after recovering from the reprise of scene from his youth which had damn near made a sailor out of the one-time nineteen year old. Then it was back to kissing the sprite as the two mature males and Amy huddled close. And the kiss went on. And the girl wriggled happily. And her naked companions huddled close. And the kiss went on. And Amy wriggled and thrust wantonly. And the kiss went on. And the girl yelped and hissed: "Daddy!" And that was the end of that kiss.

"Tinky," the girl whispered harshly, "it's happening."

The eight year old was quickly maneuvered into a position where she could look between the male and the female child. Not good enough. Tinky responded like a cat at what she saw was happening and leaped into Gus's arms. Ben had recovered enough to help both the young fathers against the overused tree and steady them.

It happened for them together. Kissing their dads, breaking to stare at each other, and down between their young slim bodies and their fathers' sweating, heaving bellies, they were successful in simultaneously mounting their males. Ben stood behind the kids, holding them so they could lean back an stare down at themselves and each other.

"Does it feel like you're going to do what Ben did?" Tinky asked Amy.

"I think so," the girl's voice wavered in response. Her father had penetrated the eleven year old a full inch and more and she was beginning to surge deliberately against him, holding his shoulders as Ben bore her young weight.

"But I don't think girls can," the Tinkerbelle gasped, emulating her friend's wiggling thrusting.

"What if all the feelings stay inside?" Amy wanted to know.

"Plus what our dads add," Tinky added to the already pregnant question.

"Are you a glad you're a girl?" Amy whispered.

"Girls don't have penises," the kitten replied, but they were to far gone to enjoy the savage streak of spontaneous wit (though it would dampen a pillow or two over the coming days). Both were gasping "Oh, Daddy, Dad, Daddy," coaxing each other with their hot, ragged voices, welcoming and sharing wantonly.

"I'm bleeding," Tinky said, proudly.

"Can you see any coming from me?" Amy asked, her eyes now clamped in ecstasy as George began to really take her.

"It's white," Tinky squealed. White. Where had they seen white?

"Dad?" Amy asked.

"Yes, darling," George managed to moan.

"He's cumming in you," the delighted eight year old hissed.

"I can feel it, now," Amy gasped back.

"Does it feel hard and bumpy?" Tinky asked.

"Yes," the older girl whispered.

"Dad?" the eight year old asked, her eye not only open, but huge as she stared up at the handsome face.

"Yes," Gus replied.

With Ben's help, the men held the girls for a long two minutes, as the females cycled quickly between pawing each other in excitement, hugging and kissing their father with their still salty tongues, and leaning back against Ben so they could see the sperm welling from their young bodies, Tinky's traced with blood.

It was half an hour before the fathers returned their daughters to the planet of their birth, and hour before they made their way back down the now dark mountain trail, the three adult males taking turns carrying the temporarily disabled eight year old, who actually did manage two dances before the hall closed for the night and they fought over who Ben would stay with until they could all go and find adjoining apartments closer to the coast.

`Penny for your thoughts,' Rick Schroeder said, feeling an ancient bromide might not be amiss in an environment of lashing creativity.

"Just sketching motifs," Rob Lester responded: "variations on a theme."

"By a genie-us," Rick laughed, rhyming Paganini. It was the kind of wordplay that had surprising bonding strength. Variations on themes of absurdity, the themes, in their absurd plentitude, belonging to their land, the variations to their happy island.

Allen Rigby joined them, and they inspected themselves a la aboriginal islanders, Rob feeling the Polynesian them was not so far off the mark, once a fellow got used to it., meantime reviewing who he might know in Tennessee.

The English so outdo themselves on pomp and ceremony there is little point in going to extremes, nor would excessive clicking and stomping have instilled dramatic tension on the coral sand. This said, the torchlight procession was not without dignity, charm, and its own rather more exotic tension.

"We can defiantly get rid of that `x'," the writer mused, as the females neared the wedding hut and the roll of the drums and swish of grass skirts became palpably erotic. So great was Rob's chief-writer affliction, he was actually startled to see Amy, aka, Angela, Appleby and dear Tinky, aka Nancy Schroeder, now as tropic nymphs, bare chested, hair tumbling over their childish shoulders, and entranced by their powerful, athletic brothers.

The girls were born in impromptu island splendor; bamboo sedan chairs carefully layered with fronds and wildflowers, and laid across a bed covered with red silk. Rob and Allen were the chest men for the ceremony, not one of my usual typos, chest men, responsible for holding Rick and Francis Appleby, left and right arm around respective chests, and guiding them to the little girls who, now naked, lay back spreading their legs wide and bringing their knees nearly to their shoulders in wanton display.

Rick, supported and guided by Allen, entered Nancy slowly as Angela, her head on a silk-covered pillow, stated at the stallion with his filly. His massiveness taken so fully, his final notch of a thrust in response to his sister's mewing coaxing, were a perfect prologue to having sex with her nineteen year old brother.

Rob guided the brother. Gazed with the teenager into the fiery eyes of his beautiful, raven-haired sister, ready to gently intervene between their bodies if the powerful athlete lost control before the child was receptive to his more primal physical needs. Angela's seven brothers knelt behind the two girls, letting them rest their beautifully groomed heads in their laps and staring down over their slim young bodies, molesting them gently as Rick and Francis began to rape them. An alert observer of the scene would have observed the twin lenses barely visible in the freshly-thatched palm roof and the slight refection from the lens of the film camera as it dollied slowly along its bamboo track. Alert observers were off island, watching for satellites.

The brothers' strong hands were on the slim waists of their children. Both had mounted fully, Angela springing a minute of tears as her brother penetrated, but now slack eyed as Rob made sure he was entirely with her. The girls had one hand behind their necks and the other holding each other's, white knuckled with the excitement of the success of their beautiful males.

Rick and Francis stood shaking but still. The had been enthusiastic about sleeping-bag' style, if style' is the word, and, courageous half out of ignorance, half out of love, the males had agreed, and were now paying the price, standing, panting and rigid, when every feral instinct bid them to fuck.

Five minutes. Ten. It seemed impossible, but Nancy was coaching Angela on using her birth canal muscles to massage Francis, so she could nap in the lap of her brothers while they watched television and not upset the propriety of the home. (Whether she could manage this with her father was another question.), and thus distracted enough to falter from time to time with Rick.

The males each removed a hand from his sister, linking Rick's left arm with Francis' right, both to help stabilize themselves and so each could fully voyeur out on the sight of his partner between the thighs of a highly receptive female child. The girls reached up behind them to Angela's brothers, half losing themselves in the sensuousness of handsome, naked boys, who, in turn, leaned over the girls, staring intently at Rick and Francis, who could have switched faces, unnoticed but for the girls, who were watching their faces and loins, equally.

The inexpert pulsing of the inexperienced children turned out to be more erotic than frustrating. Christ in the mountains, they weren't going anywhere. Neither girl was a one-night stand. They weren't hooking. The video cameras could shoot for a practically unlimited time, and they had three rolls of Tri-X Professional which gave them half an hour of crystalline black and white imagery. (I wonder if Kodak makes it in Quad-X, Rob mused, amazed any wit was left at all as he not only gazed at Francis and Angela, but fondled both of them with sweaty fingers.

Orchestration. Hard to do over hundreds of pages, but every once in awhile a writer gets a break. A repeated theme was needed, not for me, I make them up, but for Rick and Francis. They couldn't go on like this, with these willing but new girls. A breakthrough was needed. Rob thought back, reviewing scenes in his active and reasonably colorful life. It took some moments because he had to get all they way up to the present hour before he struck gold. Tennessee. That was the answer. That would save the two brothers, release them from the torment of being so close to girls they loved and adored, yet so so, so far away.

Rob led and Allen picked up in a second. Both the guiding moved to their right, and eased themselves in beside the two sweating, straining, panting brothers. Rick and Francis responded almost instantly, unlinking their arms and finding the athletic young producer and writer with their right hands. You don't say `thanks' in such a situation, but nonetheless a sense of relief was palpable amongst the incestuous siblings. Angela's brothers also seemed to be impressed with the munificent act, and were obviously impressed at watching their first experience with masturbating homosexuals. By accord, Rick led by coaxing Allen to ejaculate heavily on Nancy's heaving. Half way through the director's intense afterglow, Rob succumbed to Francis' urgency, and soon the older girl was covered with puddles and swaths of hot cum as her brother stared on, boys who'd soon find life could get pretty intense, or not, and it didn't make much difference.

As Allen had ejaculated first at Rick's urging, so the young producer allowed himself to go all the way while Francis was still burning his last possible threads of control.

"Oh, Nancy," Angela breathed, as what was happening became obvious, then a flood. Still the boys remained rigid, and in less than two minutes, Angela whispered, tenderly, "Oh, Francis."

From the unrhymed to the meticulous. Highly aroused and excited as the younger brothers were, they remained calm, gentle and tender with each other, and their little sister, as they lined up by age, encouraging each other to use every possible speed and depth of thrust, rhythm, method, and mode in bringing Angela to ever increasing climaxes, and, finally, when Francis remounted, a full, shrieking orgasm that left her lolling, sweating and trembling beside her, for the moment, identical twin, Nancy Schroeder..

The girls retreated from the ceremony to sleep with each other in a privately located palapa. Everyone thought that was way cool, especially Nancy and Angela. Rick realized how stimulated he'd been by partially reliving his Santa Fe experience with Allen, and the two spent the night with Rob. It was a full hour before midnight when the last light went out. "By the way, "Rick asked the young writer, "when are your sisters coming down to give us a hand?"

CHAPTER THREE

New York. Loved by millions, hated by one. Nancy had become a half-official Appleby, and they were flying north. Talent does what it can, genius does what it must, so said George Elliott. Muses simply do what they will. So, genius, guess who's landing in an hour. Must that!

With more than two giggles each, the girls had opted for a night flight. They'd let their hair down to a degree when it came to morality, deeming Francis and his seven brother fair game for experimenting and learning, alone or in groups, and not prejudicial to Rick or Rob, alpha males of an alpha group that included only a small percentage of members. Their willingness to share their first time as an incestuous foursome, and include Francis and his brothers, damped any tinder of jealousy or resentment. The principals had worked monumentally go get where they were, they were as discreet as a one-cigarette a day smoker, and cast and crew functioned happily under their dedicated leadership.

It had worked very well, the girls going through a broad and long wild streak. Although Nancy like all the quiet, mannerly boys, she'd taken a special, almost love, shine to the sixteen year old, John, called Jay. Pretending to nap, not that the cabin crew cared, the eight year old lay quietly napping in his arms, apparently all but asleep. The boy had been inside her for an hour as she gently practiced exciting him motionlessly and soundlessly. In the adjoining seat (first class) Angela lay in Kenneth, her seventeen year old brother's arms, and the girls would frequently catch each other's eyes and smile very softly, squeezing each other's hands like dancer leads partner, thus coaxing and sharing at the same time. Angela and Kenneth were nearly silent, but Nancy, new to the family, and largely a stranger to New York -- several visits with Rick when he was doing "NYPD Blue" -- whispered with Jay.

"Is your dad like just totally normal, all the time?" Nancy asked, "I mean that hardly seems normal for an artist."

"He's not the pretending type," Jay whispered back to the ersatz sleepyhead, "but it's hard to tell. Remember Angela was overweight, and, while she was pretty enough, she wasn't attractive. Since that was the case," the obviously intelligent boy went on, "it's hard to know what his feeling might be from now on. The thing I think is, that if he is interested, he won't be creepy about it and try to get her alone, or give her sleeping pills so he could crawl into her bed and do stuff while she was unconscious. Like with Philly Graham, our paperboy, he's Angela's age, eleven; Dad doesn't make any big secret of the fact he really likes him and teases him about taking a shower with him, for artistic reasons, even in front of Mom. He's cute about it, but he definitely means it, and Philly laughs and blushes like crazy, and comes earlier every Sunday to supposedly collect. Then Dad jokes about that, saying one of these days he's going to show up at 12:01 a.m., when the hot water supply will be at its maximum. The next week he came at six-thirty, and Dad was up, waiting to have chocolate and French toast with him."

"What does Angela say?" Nancy wanted to know.

"No track record," Jay replied. "Fat is fat, uninterested, on Dad's part, is uninterested. New kettle, not of one fish at a time. But Mom's half-hot for the idea. She kids, I don't think, about having to put up with wet towels when she gets Francis to wash her hair."

"Were there whores for bright boys?" the houseguest asked herself. "Girls who couldn't be bought for a million dollars, but fell for a consistently witty male, come hell or high water." It was two thoughts in one. Bright boys, sure, but they'd have bright kids, and a girl would want a lot of bright kids, so bye-bye career, plus, bright kids could get out of doing the dishes faster than they could dirty a teaspoon. Additionally, there were a fair few of the dudes, and, while it had been rapturous living like a Polynesian bedsheet for the past week, a steady diet of more than Rick and Rob was best left to another girl. And, if there was one girl into hooking brainy charmers, wouldn't there be others? And wouldn't such a boy have a choice of any and all of them? Everything Rick insisted be stressed on "One Fish" was true; keep yourself fit and trim for your husband, your family, and a few affairs, emphasis on the few. Twenty partners in a lifetime, high levels of either discretion or mutual participation, high levels of honesty, highly responsive to any hint of jealousy or dissension, highly motivated toward the family, in the classic and ideal sense, and highly interested in his slim, attractive mate-for-life, and what other males share with her; finally, highly adaptive if it came to raising another male's daughter, or having another male raise his daughter. (And wasn't it nice gender determination could be placed in the hands of a designer clinic?)

"Do you want to talk about sex?" Nancy asked Jay. Both heavy readers and documentary viewers, once he'd entered her they'd whiled away some of the time in general conversation (it really helped), but they were an hour out, an appropriate time for more intimate talk.

Marshall's back and guess whose on him like cold on ice? If I was stuck on a solar island, "White America" is the one song I'd choose. Sure, it would be only an inch ahead of Celine Dion or Lucky Dube, but it would win. Unless you've heard it on a 150-watt CD system with good headphones, or sitting no more than three feet from the speakers, you may be saying, "What?" The mix is awesome. The vocalizing, to the finale, extraordinary. The lyrics? Dog, who'd read a word, ink on paper or pixels on screen? I don't mean that, literally, some people would, you know, if he was published in "The Phoenix" or "The Village Voice", but the audience would be dateless law students (if that isn't an oxymoron), since they're not smart enough to fick with puters. Haley sounds hyper and forced, too stimulated and cute for her own good. I think I pretty well took care of him elsewhere, but a guy like that, well, instinct, plus top level training, plus decades of experience, plus the IQ and related yada, including all but a handful of films, says shoot him twice. He's got the brilliance around him to make him an exciting entertainer, and, while he's slightly cautionary about trying this at home', this should be his main message; his further career should be devoted to segregating entertainment before his failure to do so ends with his daughter in over her head. A word to the wise. He has a million words to go to claim significant further attention.

Domestic bliss? This is getting downright weird. Linden and Melissa have flat-out moved in. For the first time in twenty-three years I'm living with other people on a 24/7 basis. Not only that, but Daisy ran out of propane, so Queenie's been bringing the boys up for meals, which settle into quite aggressive homework sessions. And it's all going scary smooth.

Today Lin and I shopped for local food, as the macaroni and cheese dinners with hot dogs are too rich for us during a cash pinch prompted by the sudden intake of five people and five dogs, truant officer hot on their heels. Thought I'd lost him to the street, so it's a daily miracle having him just in Dangriga. But it does amount to a second economic body slam in three months. .(Jessica and other fiascos (Jose Schmosey) appear in "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters" and "Stonington Stories", which, while I'm on the subject, also contain lists of non-optional alternatives to obesity, credit abuse, and other lethal cultural aberrations. Solutions, I said, not just more fretting, catcalling, and hand-wringing.)

Now, back-to-back-to-back ten-thousand word days, and even indulgence in line editing, something I love because I get to read myself, but a facet of the art I'm not very good at.

A little minor key good news / bad news. The good news is that I'm less than a thousand words from having written a seventh novel (60,000 words), which will be a thrill, while the bad news is that the first mother-freaking-frank-sucking sentence of this work contained a glaring typo (due for do) that actually got posted (unless David, son of sons, corrected it, mercy, goodness, and charity flowing in his veins like milk and honey and wine.) When I wrote, in the blurb at the beginning, that a first edition of this story is a collectible (on the Web?), I didn't know how right I was. So, triple witching, utterly bitching, at-the-keyboard stitching, shuffling and hustling: Family Man One in this burg, editing from time to time, I do my thing, lay down my beat, god safely curled, sleeping at my feet.. Three days. Thirty-thousand words. What did you do between the twenty-seventh and thirtieth of October, 2002? (Tom Wolfe began compiling himself for Halloween.)

Samantha is more of an angel all the time. I haven't been able to buy her zip for presents for weeks. No calling cards (she likes dedicating songs and talking to her principal and teachers), no perms, no beads, books, or bangles, and she's more loving and affectionate by the day, eyes brighter, and more aggressive in bed, where we occasionally end up, fully dressed, for as much as half an hour before another knock at the door. The less I have to give her, the more intricate her stories in hopes of something; great for teaching her to express herself and simply talk in a less-childish manner. We take fantasy shopping trips. Pillow talk. I give her fifty dollars and she tots up her would-be purchases, always inaccurately, then takes a stab at how much change she should get. I believe she got that right once. Yes, it would be great if she was Hispanic, so I could improve my Spanish as I drill and quiz her on practical maths, but she's the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, so English forever.

I never quiz her on our relationship. If I did, I'm pretty sure the response would be (verbally) noncommittal. In fact, the girl is a bit of a literary (fiction) inspiration. The storyline would concern a man like myself, smitten with a fifteen-year-old non-Lolita. He asks the girl to marry him (when she's old enough), and the whole dog and pony show ends up at the church with the groom not having one idea in his head as to whether or not his beloved will show up. (Yes, she's that quiet, and it's neat. All one has to do is picture a bright, articulate, American girl living with an anti-Semitic, politically preposterous, pigeon-toed pervert and perennial class clown to know how neat.)

I haven't seen hide nor hair of Daisy for a seven-day week. She'd make such a hash out of any and all behavioral scientist, her story, from an anthropological viewpoint, will probably never be told. Who ever knew kids wore well with time? The more of them the merrier. There was an old (gulp) man who lived without the shoe, so happy with his kids, he knew not what to do. He's careful how he feels, `cause he's laughed at Hollywood reels, illuminating preference for children, based on how they are cooked. He even knows of the secret cartoon, which put half New York in a swoon, with an Addams character of lesser cheer, saying, at a nursery window, "Don't wrap it, I'll eat it here." They have beautiful voices, their manners seem to improve with time, they seem the very best choices, on which to end any rhyme.

Perhaps I can slip back aboard our approaching airplane wishing Shady half the luck I've had. The dude has wild money and ought to do well by his future, and Haley's. Good luck to a fellow, if embryonic, artist.

"Coals to Newcastle," the fifteen year old giggled, something he'd have to watch like a hawk if a raconteur he hoped to be, "but yes."

"Do you have fantasies?" the girl queried, she, herself having escaped a shattering orgasm with the giggling boy by a tenth the diameter of a hair she didn't yet have.

"Fixation Finsterwold," Jay whispered. "He's the paper boy."

"My man," the girl whispered, snuggling close, now happy for that tenth of an RCH, and giving the cute teen, very deep, and completely unprotected, inside her young belly, the benefit of the doubt by not responding, "you've got to be kidding."

"It was a love name," Jay began, "starting with Frank, his father, fixating on what was happening inside Joyce, obviously his mother."

"Romantic," the girl noted; "I hope he was responsible."

"I think my title misses the mark in the big R department," Jay said.

"How so?" Nancy wanted to know.

"It's called: `In a Fix'," the boy explained.

For no millions would they have chanced each other's bright eyes.

Jay continued.

"First, I'm adopted. If John was my biological father, I don't know how I'd handle it, but I have a hard time imagining any differently. Anyhow, the story takes place two years ago."

"Jay," John asked, "have you got a minute?"

"Sure, Dad," the thirteen year old said. The coltish, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy entered his father's studio, circled the lights and roosted on a hassock. John Appleby, tall and athletic with a trace of gray pelting at his open collar, finished unloading a camera, bid good-bye to a model, and turned his attention to his son.

"Got time for a major-league talk?" the forty year old asked.

"I'm just reading," the boy responded.

"More John Irving?"

"It's hard to get enough."

"Well," the handsome man said, "think of how much more you'll have left if we hang out for awhile."

"You'll never get rid of me that way," the boy laughed.

"I'll think of something," his father responded.

"Yeah, by the time I'm sixty-four."

"Maybe sooner," John Appleby said, his face taking on a serious expression. "I'll cut to the case. Fix wants to pose for me. Do you know about things like that?"

"There are lot of wrestlers and coaches in John's work," the boy replied. "I guess I've imagined a thing or two."

"In detail, or vaguely?" the father asked.

"Not like Warhol did soup," the nice boy said, "but then, not like Picasso did anything."

John studied Jay intently, seating himself in front of the boy. Far off the trail, gambling for extreme stakes, he burned with relief to see no particular reaction to where the conversation was going, and certainly nothing resembling revulsion.

"Do you like Fix?" he asked.

"Very much," Jay replied. "If I could pick anyone to have as another brother, he'd be my first bunch of choices."

"And me?" John asked.

"I sort of tingle when you're around and I don't think they call that `liking'," the boy said.

"I know what you mean," John said, "I feel it with you, too. Not with Francis and the others. They're great, but..."

"I never thought we'd talk about this kind of thing," Jay interrupted. John held his breath, searching the thirteen year old's face, waiting a year or two for him to go on. "Most fathers would be too uptight."

"They have to dish out disciplinary shit," John said, defending his peers as best he could, "and it's easy for a boy to cop an attitude toward a man who says don't drink, don't smoke, don't cheat, don't steal, but let's shower up.."

"At least they're not dirty-old-men," the boy said, and don't think his father didn't tingle at that.

[Now, surely, you see why I get cold chills when I go around editing myself. Wiser readers will note that if I was all that great, I'd get so hung up on my copy I'd never steal the time from my wonderfulness to write more.]

It's intimidating to be me, to be so far ahead and so much higher; frightfully scary, but there are compensations. For example, when one wishes to write the greatest sigh of relief in literary history, why, he might imply it and save himself a minute of typing.

"Jay," the athletic photographer went on, "this isn't as spontaneous as you might suppose. I was a boy, too, not so long ago, and I got into some pretty neat stuff, so I'm curious about all of you, and I like to snoop around a little, you know, hoping I won't find a recently-fired handgun under your socks, but, nosy and curious all the same. I know it's like totally against the rules, and an unforgivable reversal of roles, but this morning I had a cancellation, so I went up to your room and hacked your system.

"Guess what I found."

"Some really good writers," the boy replied.

"And aren't they just," the forty year old said.

"Nifty," they whispered as one.

Hoping that's a cold chill for David, we proceed.

"As we become less educated," John said, "we loose the small things, the things that add nuance and texture to life, the things that separate us from rabbits and turkeys, and their loss, in turn, limits the motivation to become educated. Add this to the fact that science and technology have reached the end of their tether, and that leaves eating and sex."

"So god had a plan, after all," Jay observed.

"Maybe he feels guilty about Tyne Daley."

"Since it's god, we'll call it even," Jay said.

"Nice talk, son," John said, imitating Clark, a game the two were wont to play, "and you're free to go. I just wanted you to know how I love you."

"Can I stay?" the thirteen year old asked.

"Yes," his boyish father said..

"Talk about Fix," Jay suggested.

"I molested him here last Sunday morning," John whispered.

"For how long?" Jay asked.

"Two hours," his father replied.

"How did it start," the boy wanted to know.

"Mr. Appleby," the paperboy said, "I'm on the school paper and I'm looking for someone to interview. You're the most interesting person I know, so could you be my subject?"

They'd chatted to the point of ritual over the past year. Now the boy was eleven. He was a big-gray-eyed boy, very tall and slim, with short brown hair framing a kiddo face with an attractively wide mouth and the big teeth of the total heartthrob.

"Fix," the man smiled, "I'm a photographer, and you're the cutest boy I know. Would you be my subject?" The boy across the kitchen table nodded happily. John finished the waffle mixture he was concocting, scribbled a note, and led the boy to his loft studio.

"I meant cutest next to my boys," John clarified as the boy gazed around at his surroundings. Fix laughed. "I'd have said it, if you hadn't," he responded.

"They like you, too, especially Jay," the father said.

"Thirteen year olds don't usually hang around with kids my age, so it's cool," the boy replied.

"That's changed a lot with computers," the man said, "when I was your age, the dividing line was more ruthless."

"I guess kids have to trash each other in order to let their parents live," the pre-teen said, a cute smile giving his words an airy touch. "How have computers impacted your business," the boy asked, reaching in his back pocked for a notebook and stub of pencil as they seated themselves on a chaise lounge..

"They don't reach to this lever," John noted, "but the will completely dominate recreational and amateur photography in another few years."

"Is that good, or bad?" the reporter asked.

"It will be devastating for the film and photo finishing industry, one would think," the professional said, "but a digital camera allows a photographer to take hundreds or thousands of images at virtually no cost.

"Like any art or craft," the man went on, "it requires a huge amount of practice to get a grip. Computerized photography puts that capability in the hands of most people, so, as time goes on, we should see finer artists entering the field, both still work and video. That's the real value."

"What are the down sides?" Fix wanted to know.

"Small," John replied. "Small images. Even a throwaway 35mm camera will give results that make fair 16X20 enlargements and quite good eight by tens. A consumer level digital camera strains at over five by seven inches, and breaks down completely at anything much over. The second factor is that inexpensive color prints don't last, at all, where even Photomat quality color film prints will hang in there for a few decades, if they're kept out of the light."

The boy seemed so engaged he wouldn't need notes, but he did scribble a few reminders in his notebook.

"Is that really important?" he asked John.

"Perhaps it's a bit metaphysical," the man replied, "but yes. Most family type pictures gain in value over the years, sometimes, for example, if someone moves away, or dies, dramatically. If you had a scrapbook of your great grandfather, not just a hackneyed portrait, but candid shots, his wife and family, their car, house, garden, pets, boats, hobbies and so on, you'd find it compelling. If the album's in black and white, the images, even after a century or more, will be as crisp as they day they were taken. Time frozen."

"So you work only in black and white?" the boy asked.

"I don't get fanatic about it," the artist said, "but immortality and ego are bedmates, if ever there were such things, so I definitely prefer it."

"Is it more artistic?" Fix wanted to know.

"Yes," the photographer said, "there's more of a tendency to look looking at monochrome. With color, you find all at first glance, so there's less to go looking for.

"Of course," he added, "I'm talking about premium work. The silver crystals that make up the black and white image are far smaller than the tiny blobs of dye that make up a color image. If the camera mount is rock solid, and some sense is used regarding lighting and exposure, the image is unbelievably sharp, and you do look into it, not at it."

"How do you get the best image?" the boy asked.

"Use a wide-angle lens stopped down to a small aperture," John said, "use a tripod. That's as sharp as it can get. Most experienced workers slightly overexpose the film, then slightly underdeveloped it."

"How much can you overexpose it?" the fledgling journalist asked, glad he'd picked this particular subject for his first interview.

"I've exposed film rated at four hundred at ASA fifty, and still printed it, but, if you go the other way, and underexpose, you have almost no latitude before the image becomes unprintable, much less attractive."

"Are there other tricks of the trade?" Fix asked.

"Full times and fresh chemicals," his host replied. "The one thing fun about color is keeping everything, temperatures, times, concentrations, has to be within one percent to get the results you want. Good discipline."

"But expensive?" the alert boy queried.

"Very," the man said.

"How about as a career?" was the next question.

"I don't recommend it," John replied. "It's a hustler's trade. I don't mind if my boys, and Angela, are artists; poor things can't help themselves. But I don't want them being musicians, actors, photographers, or anyone else who dithers in the artistic world. Not for philosophical reasons, for practical ones. They have to keep crummy hours. Unless you can hammer out something no one else can, in quantity, become an accountant. They're the happiest campers, according to the polls."

"I'd like to be a sewer engineer," the boy spoke out, then giggled and blushed at his lapse in professionalism. John accepted it with grace, having, as we know, been young once, himself.

"You stick to it," he replied, "and I'll roast thirty pounds off my daughter and present her to you with a fat check, any time you want."

"She looks okay the way she is," the boy responded.

"You're generous to say so, and if you mean it, fine," John said, "but it's painting yourself into a corner."

"The junk shows have bombshells that weren't so great looking when they were kids," Fix noted.

"Probably two or three that make the rounds," John laughed, "but you're right. She just needs motivation; something positive, so she doesn't go the other way."

"I think her family life is a bit rich to go neuro," the boy said. He was turning out to be good company.

"What's the circulation of your paper?" John asked.

"Ten thousand. It's pretty big with the alumni," the boy replied.

"That's heavy, even for New York," the elder male observed.

"We're the biggest by three thousand," Fix said, "plus we get a thousand visits a week on our site."

"Well," the photographer said, "I'm afraid I don't recommend writing as a career, either. Again, with the hours and tatterdemalion lifestyle."

"No," Fix repeated, "it's civil engineering for me. That's what my dad is, and it's good people."

"The joke is," John replied, "that you'd probably be an excellent writer, and some dufus with a head the size of a cloud, twin of the moron who set the Insert key next to the Backspace key, will end up down in Atlanta."

"One more reason not to waste time or money on cable," the boy said, to an Amen from John.

"This is a little from left field," the interviewer went on, "but I wanted to ask you how you felt about sports."

"Body damage is cumulative," John replied, "stresses on cartilage, tendons, and other tissues accrue, so the less of them, the better. Scar tissue is a nuisance in one's forties, and often dehabilitating after that. Professional athletes and dancers with exhausting training and performance regimens gain weight if they eat too much, so there's no value, there. Sedentary people outlive active ones; prisoners outlive the free public. And this doesn't take into account outright injuries, and their long-term effects, nor the crummy social characteristics common to the jockstrap inclined.

"Sports should be abolished, the cafeteria should serve wonton soup, and all the time and money saved should be refocused on the library."

He had his answer.

"So reading is the thing?" the boy reviewed. .

"Only AND every," the man affirmed, "but they crank you with weirdoes like Golding , Voltaire, and Kafka, which is like dining on used toilet paper."

"Can I quote you?" Fix asked.

"Yes," John said, "but substitute `pre-owned Charmin'."

Fix said he had enough for his present assignment and invited himself back for a second chapter. John suggested he sit on a stool for a few test shots, and the boy complied. "I do use a digital camera, here," he noted, framing a head-and-shoulders image, "where I used to use a Polaroid, but it's a minor convenience."

The shooting went on for a few minutes, then the looked at the results on the monitor. "I don't look quite so dorky when you do it," Fix commented.

"That's the same kind of joke as your being a good writer," John observed, "and the fact is, you look just great. Perfect boys are uninteresting; bland, insipid, and run of the mill."

"How about Simon, on "7th Heaven?" Fix asked.

"An exception that proves the rule, because his older brother, Matt, is exactly what I'm talking about. Universally handsome, monumentally monotonous., and who knows how he'll look when he's thirty something. Boys like you get better looking as they grow older, in a conventional sense, like Frank Sinatra. He was the world's most ridiculous looking teenager, but he looked great when he hit his fifties."

"Better than going the other way," Fix said.

"That happens to females a lot," John said, feeling ever more comfortable and relaxed with his young friend. "They're cute is bunnies and pandas in their teens, so everything comes wrapped in ribbon and foil, then it's invariably a slide down through average, to less-than, with skewed values, especially when it comes to sex, which makes life hard for them."

"I just hope I look half as good as you when I'm your age," Fix said, glad to be free of the formality of the interview.

"And I hope Angela looks half as good as you, any time," John said to the boy's wide smile.

He helped the child off the stool. "We have an hour or two," John said, "while everyone's gorging on their weekly allotment of the wasteland. Would you like to try posing in some different costumes?"

"Sure," the boy enthused.

"Size doesn't matter at all," the artist said, taking his young friend into a large closet, "we can either try for something a little abstract, or duct tape the clothes in back for a temporary fit."

"So anything goes?" the boy asked.

"Anything," the photographer said, "and, if you get bowled over by something from the last few issues of `Vogue', lo and behold, we have the wigs to go with it."

"Wow," the boy said, "I never thought of that."

John pointed out the fact that boys played girls at prep schools and lived to tell the tale, then returned to the studio to load a camera.

First a sailor, but John could sense Fix was being polite and conventional. He dry-fired the camera a couple of times, the photographers' most useful trick, and the eleven year old returned to the closet. Pirate. Damn cute. Worth a couple of frames. He recorded the images and the boy went back to the closet.

"Are you sure no one will come in?" came the nervous voice from the recess of the repository.

"I'll lock the door, just to be sure, if you'd like," John suggested.

"I just wouldn't want anyone to hurl their waffles," the boy said.

"Maybe I'd better leave, too, if it's that bad," the man teased.

"Jay showed me some of your work from the war zone, when you were with the `Times', so you may be able to handle it."

"I promise to try," John said.

"And I would be more comfortable if the door was locked," his young model said, now speaking from the other side of the cracked door. John crossed the studio, half shocked at instantly being totally erect. He locked the door to the stairs, and returned to the door of the wardrobe closet. "I'm back," he said.

"I hope you're not going to be mad or uptight, or anything," came the boy's faltering whisper.

"Girl's stuff isn't going to kink you," John replied, softly, "probably eight boys out of ten would at least experiment a little with it, if they had the opportunity and no chance of any witnesses."

"I might try something like that, later," came the nervous whisper. The man's erection seemed to double in size, bigger, harder than he'd felt in a long time.

"What did you find?" the photographer asked, "I don't remember any cello dancing girl's costumes or sequined evening dresses, but stuff comes and goes; I don't even know what's in there, at this point."

"Shoes and socks," Fix whispered. John waited for more. There was no more. "Is that okay?"

"The laundress will appreciate it," John said.

"Can you be like I am," the boy said, still in enough control to titter at the inanity, then refocus, "only since you're not the model, you don't need the shoes."

"Are you sure this is what you want?" John coaxed.

"I've been this way with a man before," came the soft answer, "so I'm sure."

There was a long pause, both males communicating by panting gently. "Do you want me to bring some paper towels for the sperm," John whispered through the crack, "or did he teach you to get it on your tongue."

"I've never done that, but I want to," Fix said.

"Okay," John said, "I'll be back in a minute."

"Can you come in behind me, while I'm standing against a rack of costumes, so I can get used to it?" Fix requested.

"Yes," John said.

In a minute he tapped softly at the door, and slowly opened it. Fix was standing as he'd described. John approached to within a foot of the tall boy's slim back and whispered Hi. "Hi," came the soft response.

"If you want to talk about things," John said, placing his hands tentatively on the child's slim shoulders, "I'd like to know about what happened with you, but if it's private, that's okay."

From the back, Fix was amazing. Forever legs, classic boys' butt, unlike any bubble he'd seen in a modest lifetime in journalism and photography, slim waist with perhaps two extra pounds perfectly sculpted for a pedophile, almost blue white skin, and size nine men's shoes with brown socks coming up nearly to his knobby, pre-teen knees.

"It happened at a water park," Fix said, his voice shy and nervous, but also seeming tinged with relief "The thing was stuck, so Phil called me over to hold the lever while he replaced a bolt. Of course, I didn't know his name then. He was twenty-one. It took awhile to fix the thing and we got talking. Computer gams, music and sports. Then he asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I told him I didn't. He said he didn't, either, but that there was a place in the catwalk above the tunnel of love where you could look down. It was like a side canal where the boats could park awhile, before going back onto the rest of the ride. He said if I was interested, I could come back when his lunch relief came, and we could hang out for an hour."

Gently John pulled the tall eleven year old to him, then against him. The boy pushed back gently in welcome, sighing as he felt John's penis against the small of his back. "If I stood on that shoe rack," Fix whispered," I'd be the right height for you to be up between my legs." So they moved, the boy going up on his tiptoes, then settling back against the powerful, athletic male behind him.

"You must work out, some," Fix observed.

"Swimming and jumping rope are okay," the mature male allowed.

"Well," the boy rejoined, "I hope I feel like you, as well as look like you, even when I'm thirty."

"It would be awkward to return the compliment," John said, "but, in any event, you feel terrific, too. Beautiful."

"Have you molested other boys?" the child wanted to know.

"I babysat for a curious eight year old, when I was sixteen," John said, "Keith. We were close for a long time. That was my only homosexual experience."

"Was he good at doing things?" the boy asked.

"Totally outstanding," John said, "on his worst days."

"That's how it was with Phil, too," Fix said. "I went out and bought him a couple of hot dogs and a Coke. He thought that was trick, so we became friends. `I hope you're pretty mature,' he said, "even if you don't have a girlfriend.'"

"There was something in his voice, it got kind of low and froggy, that made me feel really grown up, so I said I was.

"After we finished eating in the motor room, we climbed this iron ladder and got up over the love tunnel pool. We had to be real quiet. It was like mega exciting. He'd brought a flashlight so we could stay on the beams and wouldn't step on the zinc. There was a place where someone had drilled a few holes in the roofing, right next to a girder so we could lie across it comfortably, and look down. The pool was lighted real dark with torches. The gondolas went into little slips, then they'd back out to get back to the through canal. It was pretty private, and, I'm sure, when the built the place, they figured couples would make out once in awhile, and paddle away. That was then, this is now.

"A boat was arriving just as we lay down and started watching. It was noisy enough we didn't have to be paranoid about keeping still, but we could still hear everything.

"'Do you know about what boys do in the shower, and in bed before they go to sleep?' he asked me. This happened when I was ten, so I didn't know. He said the couple in the boat, a man and a boy, liked to do it but I didn't have to watch if I didn't want to. I said I wanted to. It was kind of hot because it was kind of like an attic where we were, so he said it would be more comfortable if we watched in our underwear. That's when I was sure I was going to get molested.

"You know, they'd told us about it in school, but, luckily, Roger Carrow was brave enough to raise his hand and say it had happened to him, and he'd liked it. He's a great kid, so that made me think twice about the academic song and dance. Then he got more popular than ever, so that made me know that once again we are subject to fools rather than educating ourselves with teachers, but I shouldn't complain, because the fact that it was a no-no made it twice as exciting.

"I unbuttoned my shirt. He made me promise to keep it a secret from anyone who resembled an asshole in any way. Then we took our sneakers and pants off, and he asked me if I wanted to lie close together and share a spy hole, or if I wanted my own, because there was another one a few feet further down the beam.

"I said I like him and wanted to lie next to him. He said he liked me, too, so that's how we did it. He said some couples were furtive and hasty, and it wasn't exciting to watch them, but we were lucky because the man and boy like each other and were comfortable with what they did. He didn't have to tell me that would be exciting, because it was like and I-Max movie, even through peep holes.

John was now openly molesting the naked boy in the big shoes. His hands ranged gently over the slim waist, the lean flanks, and the slightly soft belly of the child, ever closer to his waist. With his feet on the appropriate shoe rack, the boy was able to spread his legs widely as the man held him encircled in his left arm. His thrusting hips were ample evidence of what he wanted, and John looked over his right shoulder, down at the nearly six inch circumcised penis jutting rock hard against his own. He fondled the boy, who hissed in response, and began to gently masturbate both Fix and himself.

"Did they do this while you watched?" the older male asked.

"Yes," the boy replied, saying the adult had pulled the boy on top of him as he lay back in the gondola, and the boy had pulled down his Speedos.

"Did he have a boner, or did the man have to touch him?" the sweating, panting artist asked, now taking the stripling with firm, deliberate strokes.

"He had one right away," the boy whispered, lust sick and happy as a clam.

"Could you see the man?" John whispered.

"Not at first, but after he did what you're doing for a little while, the boy rolled over, then I could see the man."

"What did the boy do?"

"Do you want me to show you?"

"Yes."

John released the shaking child and the boy regained his footing, standing at the photographer's right hip, his left arm around the rugged waist, his right hand finding the adult's thick, uncircumcised penis, and taking a confident, experienced stroke.

"Did you do this with Phil?" John whispered.

"Yes," the boy replied, "but we had to wait until we'd seen everything because we couldn't do anything too much except take out underpants off while we were watching down through the holes in the roof." Made sense.

"Was there enough light so you could see what happened at the end?" John asked.

"Yes," Fix said, stroking steadily and wetting his palm on the adult's copious seminal fluid.

"Was it exciting?" John whispered, spreading his long, powerful legs and thrusting to meet the boy's experienced hand.

"I didn't know it could go on so long," Fix said, "I thought it would be just be a few drops, but that didn't happen until the man had made cum all over the boy's shoulders and his own stomach."

"Was there that much when the man made it happen with the boy?" John whispered.

"Even more," the child whispered back, "I think it was because the man got his hand wet before the boy lay back on top of him. I think feeling the wet hand against him made the boy extra excited."

"Would you like my hand to be wet when I get you back in front of me?" John said.

"Yes," the boy hissed.

"Hold be against you," the man whispered, urgently. The boy did, holding the hot, seven inch penis tight to the slight softness of his sweaty belly and stroking urgently.

"Did you get Phil's sperm on you?" John asked.

"All over me," the child acknowledged.

"Okay," John grunted, "I just didn't want to get you wet unless you were sure."

"I'm ready," the boy whispered. Sometimes the right words at the right time act as an emotional and psychological catalyst and an erotic stimulus.

"I'm cuming," the adult replied, and the boy mewed as a gush of hot sperm shot across the mild-white skin of his childish belly. Phil had obviously been a great teacher, because with John's first release Fix stroked his fist the base of the ejaculating male, holding him still and tight as he looked down to satiate himself on the aesthetic aspects of a child molester satisfying a coltish youth.

The adult pumped freely and openly over the boy, the rigid arm around his waist and the iron grip of Fix's right hand assuring his welcome and willing acceptance, on the child's part, of the homosexual aspect of their friendship.

"Did you cum in Phil's hand?" John whispered, his voice nearly as gone as his cum.

"Yes," Fix said, responding instantly by lifting his feet in the big, brown leather shoes back to the shoe rack and spreading his legs widely at the first coaxing of the powerful athlete now again behind him, his still flowing penis hard, hot, and wet against his slim back. John wet his right palm on the arching boy's slick belly, took the boy tenderly and gently, and just held him, tight and motionless.

Fix tensed, became rigid, and started shaking. John held him for a full minute. "I'm cumming," the child whispered an soon his hot, watery sperm was spraying amongst the filly pink girls' tutus hung above the shoe rack. He shook violently in the man's hands, wriggling against the pelt of tight gray curls of the adult's sweating chest and belly, his arms hanging limp at his sides as the sensations of his ejaculation washed over and weakened.

As the climax finally began to end, John turned him and sank to his knees, taking the last sperm in his mouth, then licking the boy who responded by repeatedly bringing the handsome athlete's face to his own, so he could experiment with the hot saltiness of sex kissing.

The boy, naked but for his English leather shoes and long socks, made a superb model. Instant art in any pose, just release the shutter.

"He'll be over in a few minutes," the artist said to his son. "We want to take the last step together, and we want you to be with us if you want to."

"Yes," Jay said.

As if they were in a locker room the man and boy unbuttoned their shirts and unbuckled their shorts. They remover their tennis shoes and socks, then stood to drop their pants and underwear. In a minute they were naked, hotly erect, and looking at each other nervously. "I don't think the physical part will be different, but the psychological part is," John observed.

"I like having you look at me," Jay responded, his thirteen year old male body showing how intensely he liked it.

"I could gawk forever," John said, and indeed, the tall, leggy boy, his penis jutting wildly, might have bent the straightest of the straight laced. "Don't knock `till you've tried it," is among the most ludicrous of bromides, but not completely valueless for all of that. How anyone could denigrate the things that were going to happen when Fix arrived at the studio, without, at least once in their lives, being attractive and nice enough to earn the submission of an attractive youth, was part and parcel of a genuine and palpable psychological sickness manifest in other ways so essential they rendered the most successful society in creation moribund. Prisoners in the gulag of Billy Graham were overwhelmingly fat, ugly, and unutterably stupid. They were the worst possible choice to lead anyone anywhere; lethal, and that they lived shatteringly miserable Cwithten lives, themselves, was cold comfort. You pig-faced motherfuckers, I'm, on my worst day, ten times the Christian of a dozen bible-whackers . You are filth, with only you know who more dog-vomit sick and cat shit repulsive. Doff your thousand dollar choir robes, return to the hearts-and-sentiments-on-every-gyprock-wall, fat-farm hellhole you call your middle-class American home, and tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that the best thing you have to look forward to in the next twenty years isn't the possibility of an occasional good hair day. Now that we've run the gamut of the digital revolution, our next economic powerhouse should be the mass disposal of twenty or thirty million of your humongous, parasitic, horrific corpses. Full stop.

Who's ready for a knock on the studio door? (By this time, probably God-In-His-Own-Mind Graham, Him-self, though the giant of all theatrical faces, unused to anything but lips on his ass, might choose, in his dotage, to forego the boot .)

Standing a foot from his naked father, looking down for the first time on a highly aroused adult male, Jay again breathed a prayer of thanks for Nifty. The gigantic collection of alternatives, which were as sensitive, for the most part, as they were sensual, came to play. Came to whisper, "it's all right". Came to say that while marriage was unlikely, what was going to happen between them on Fix's arrival, for all practical purposes, was little different than a game of tennis; perhaps even carried the same risk of minor elbow inflammation. Everyone else could say everything else and everyone else would be wrong. It was a big, in every face, permanent problem, and the only one to solve it would have to fly into town in a plane known, at least colloquially, to air traffic control, as Prick One. In that power tends to corrupt, people power corrupts absolutely.

Jay was having the most dramatic spiritual experience of his life. His IQ was a steaming two-seventy, and full-well he understood that the force-fed abstractions taboo and sin greatly intensified the feelings he was having while he continued to stare at the man in front of him, John, his father, and, yes, he giveth thanks with bowed head silent lips.

Fix knocked. Both males surged at the friendly tapping, all but unable to keep their hands and mouths off each other. Walking across the studio, from the big leather sofa, to the door, was one shocking step after another. They were so huge with each other, and now the eleven year old was going to be with them. They let him in. He walked backwards across the studio, as John and Jay followed, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. He settled on the sofa and father and son stooped to remover his shoes and socks while he unfastened his clothes. They had him naked and standing in front of them in a few moments.

"He wants me inside him," John said to Jay, "just once, because certain homosexual practices lead to regrettable clinical changes in young bodies."

"Once a year," Fix corrected.

"Once a year then," John agreed.

"He wants you to mount him first," John explained to Jay, "so I can be successful."

Fix dropped to his knees, arms crossed on the leather couch, and John guided his thirteen-year-old son behind the boy. He retrieved a tube of gel, and wet the boy, then patiently and gently guided and coaxed the couple until the eleven year old began an urgent panting.. There was a corresponding reflexive thrusting from Jay. John urged the younger boy to relax and push back. His son was bone hard in his right hand, wet from the lubricant, and hot. Fix mewed warnings and permission, and John was proud to think he could have left his son mastering the child, safe in the knowledge the boy would rape the child under the child's direction, and leave him quickly if the boy asked.

John thought Jay's self-control was remarkable; how he resisted mounting fully at a stroke and cumming hard and hot, he didn't know. Just a damn nice kid. Maybe it amounted to nothing more than that; incapable of initiating discomfort, much less pain. Jay took up a rhythm of short, rapid thrusts as he began to pant openly and glisten with sweat. "You're hand feels incredible," he whispered to his father, then leaned to bite and kiss Fix on his neck and shoulders. Both males comforted the child, and his mewing began to give way to grunts and Jay became complete in his mounting. John removed his hand, and, with a final urgent thrust, they were joined. Unholy, but joined.

"He's cumming in me, I can feel it," Fix whispered. John positioned himself to voyeur out and Jay pushed up off the eleven year old's back, opening the view. White sperm was gushing from between the two young bodies, and John reached between the sweating youths to wet his fingers and then use the semen to thoroughly wet himself. Jay began his ending and backed slowly away. Fix rolled on his back, spread his legs widely, pulling his knees toward his heaving chest. Jay found John, wet him with more cum from the child's slick thighs, and guided him against the eleven year old. John didn't try to enter beyond just the glans of his penis. Jay understood and masturbated his father with short, slow, hard strokes, finding him, in the most intimate sense, perfectly. "I'm cumming," the man whispered after two minutes, and Fix's eyes glowed up at him. Jay watched what his father had just seen until his the tall athlete weakened and lowered himself against Fix's sweating, heaving chest, finding the cute lips and darting tongue, and, on a salt-free diet that was merely circumstantial, licked and kissed the wide boy-mouth.

"Whom the Web hath joined, let no god tear asunder," Nancy whispered to Jay. They'd felt the landing gear as the boy concluded his story. The cabin crew couldn't ignore them much longer, discreet as they'd been in tending their night fliers. "Darling," the eight year old whispered, then almost chortled a nearly silent umm in the fifteen year old's ear as she felt his strong, fast pulse. Minutes later they were smiling happily at each other. "How do you feel about getting up at six tomorrow morning?" Jay asked.

"I'm already up," the girl observed with a friendly grin, and the tires squealed in protest at touching the macadam of the Port Authority of New York City.

Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, Nov., '02

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