One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPT. TWELVE & THIRTEEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

"I never thought we'd be having a talk like this," Niles Banks said to his eleven year old nephew, Bing Charles.

"I never did, either," the boy replied. "Was I that gross?"

"We were still friends, right?" the twenty four year old asked the boy.

"Best friends," the boy acknowledged.

"So, you weren't gross, just, well, for lack of a better word, uninteresting, physically, which was double trouble, because in every other way you were, and are, as they say, excellent."

The boy beamed happily. "Was it the show?" his uncle asked. "It made me have hope, about you," Bing said, "you know, focused me on a lot of things we didn't say, and didn't do, and why, and they spelled out why in three letters, and said to every kid, What would you rather be, a little bit hungry, some of the time, or way fat, all of the time? Then they redefined hunger, and I realized I was hungry for you, and gave that its natural priority, and spent an extra hour in the library, instead of eating, and both hungers sort of played around for a few days while I tried to get used to them, and in the end, the belt went in, and only one was left, and in some more, so I wrote to you."

"And now," Niles said, "there's nothing we can't talk about without having to leave things out."

"It's still going to be embarrassing," the boy noted, "but Hap and Stan, my best friends in seventh grade, say that's natural, like being totally nervous, but after it happens, you don't feel weird, and you think you were a baby to get up-tight, in the first place."

"Remember about our being friends, before," Niles reminded his nephew, "because if you weren't nervous and uptight, you'd come across as maybe pushy and a hustler, and they're not attractive no matter how slim and hairless and cute they are."

"So, there's a lot to be nervous about," the boy observed, "if you're pushy, nothing happens, and if you don't say anything, nothing happens, and you have to live in between."

"You weren't kidding about the library, were you?" Niles laughed.

"Our house is my home away from home," the boy replied, "and it used to be the sub shop."

"You may find I take second place to a toasted meatball with Swiss," Niles said.

"I'll have one when I reach eighty-two pounds. Three more days," Bing said.

"From the mouthes of babes," the uncle laughed, "you, my extremely attractive young friend, will reach that goal tomorrow."

"How?" the boy asked.

"Jody Fisher," Niles said. "He's a runaway. Nine. I picked him up at a truck stop on the way here. He's sleeping in the back seat in the shade. We talked as we drove, and he said he'd been to, as he put it, Slim Boys' Playland, but he's only been with adults, and they were all too big for the experience he wants to have, which his first partner showed him in a video. When I told him I was on my way to visit you, he practically went into a trance. He asked me a dozen questions about you, and all of them after I told him you were under ninety pounds, which, he was polite enough not to ask about, directly."

"Why's he running away?" Bing asked.

"They're trying to get him to testify against his neighbor, like in `Man Without a Face', and his mother's a bad-tempered sod, so he finally split, and he rode with a nice trucker who took it very easy with him, so he's got, in his vernacular, two strikes against him, without having it come out the way he wants, so, unless you've changed your mind about what you said in your letter, I thought I'd bring him here and wait for the dust to settle before I get in touch with his mother, and, if I do that, judging from the stories he told about his neighbor, James, and the trucker, Manny, you are, a, going to go a long time without thought of food, and, b, get a ferocious amount of exercise into the bargain."

"I thought with Rick's show, that kind of thing was getting a little passé," the boy said.

"You're partly right," Niles replied, "they aren't making a particularly big deal out of it. It's his mother playing the hysterical female, a la Little Rascals, that's causing the problem. The cop he talked to said unless Jody reported it, and backed up the report with resolve, they'd drop the whole thing like a hot potato."

"Maybe she makes great apple pie," Bing said, and yes, it can be hard to find optimistic things to say about mothers.

"Maybe a few days without Jody, who happens to be, a, likeable, and, b, drop-dead cute, and she'll resolve her priorities," Niles responded.

"Is nine too young to be really interested?" Bing asked.

"We had some pretty serious talks when you were nine," the uncle reminded the boy, "and I didn't notice you nodding off."

"It's weird," the boy responded, "because that was so exciting, and, to think, now we can do the things that you told me about."

"It adds a lot," the uncle agreed

Harold Homemaker to Neville Novelist, you're taking up all my time, and you haven't earned a dime.

Neville Novelist to Harold Homemaker, I've kneaded and steamed, served and cleaned, see me some other time.

Me? I say on Dancer, on Prancer, on reindeers all, and leave these dingbats under the wall. I hope it is a new style. I'd have loved fifty pages of editorial intervention in "From the Terrace"; journal, commentary, personal trivia, maybe even a few photos and documents; letters from his editor, stuff like that. All my favorite writers. In my experience, only Trevanian and Marrayatt even attempt it, and then with terse interjections that probably, in total, don't take up a page. Ford, in "Independence Day", takes a different tack in that the entire novel is highly autobiographical. I'm not talking about that. I mean coming completely out of character as an artist, chatting with the readers as if you were seated in the next booth, then picking up the story again. Maybe it's sort of like sex. You get to know a kid really well, you like each other, and once in awhile you find some time alone together. It's works for me in my bedroom, and I hope at least in some tangential way it works for you in yours, or, preferably, you and yours.

I think of Queenie as the Nick Nolte character in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills". So laid-back it somehow just wouldn't be right for her to work. I'm not kidding a bit when I say this, there was dog stool not only on the kitchen table, but on her bed. She is a girl with a dramatic upside, and that is that she'd never be too tired, or, in any way preoccupied. In fact, she'd never be occupied, and with so much free time on her hands, who knows how she might work out as a mate? How lucky I am that Samantha is her near twin. They're a pair of cats, lolling and sleeping; beautiful and endlessly worth caring for. Can it be the way to a girl's heart is through her stomach?

We exceeded attractive nuisance last night. She wore black Speedos, maybe four sizes too small. She looks so amazing you just can't believe it's real. She chatters and prattles in her lilting Creole, and sings, not very well, all her Sunday school hymns. While it's not a dominating force, I can't help admitting there is some pay-back involved, as the Rasta boys are in no ways loath to escort their trophy blonds outta town, so the lean, gray wolf evens the score (big time). It may be a different kind of gamesmanship than your friends and colleagues play, but as the literate class has it, it's important to be earnest, and Samantha in her second black skin is enough to drive every man Wilde.

I've one-upped my cousins so badly, speaking of games, it's embarrassing to tell. In fact, what it is is a fairy tale, or, rather, three fairy tales. "Cinderella", "The Ugly Duckling", and, most spectacularly, "The Tortoise and the Hare". >From underneath the family scrap heap, not on it, I shook of this and wiped off that and emerged a literary Hercules, while the Ivy League crowd dithered over Vietnam and Watergate, accomplishing essentially nothing, and leaving no legacy but a bunch of mixed up, half-baked kids. There are a lot of cultural profiles in the country, but none as deep-seated as New Englander versus New Yorker. For one thing, there actually is a difference, unlike in the proverbial South where the poor farmers were and are identical, white or black. New Yorkers are bumptious and poorly educated. New Englanders are icy and well educated. New England is half wrong, New York, all wrong. I grew up with a foot in each camp. Essence of blue, when it came to blood, and essence of cafeteria cooking oil, when it came to lunch. I always assume the core of American literature came from the Northeast because it was such a horrible place to live, people became masters of prose so their own letters wouldn't drive them crazy. "The north wind's masonry," is an example. It takes a lot of money for any winter wind to be anything but cold. Thoreau writes half a page about a bed of white wildflowers, I'd be after them with a machete, which is a lie, because I'd have Andrew do the chopping. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." Two streams diverged in a bamboo glade. Which would you rather travel? And, for sure, Dangriga is less traveled by. There should be a city built on the reef between the two local cayes, maybe half a million; another million or two should live up the valley with classic colonial architecture set along the breezy flanks of the hills. That would be sane. Instead, there might be a hundred of us Anglos in the whole area. That's insane If you see the same white faces every time you go outta town, there can't be very many of them. I muse on this and Bill points out the fact that most Americans get a terminal case of the heebie-jeebies if fate or providence causes them to tarry over ten miles from a Wal Mart. Pathetic. I rent a six-bedroom, two baths, house on a walled lot with palms and banana trees, for two hundred U.S. dollars a month. My former breezy and perfectly adequate little house cost seventy-five a month. The weather is always perfect for working indoors, the islands are always twelve miles away, the kids are all mannerly, responsive, and adorable, half the teenagers are tolerable, and a hundred of us live here. I guess I should say Thanks, fellow Americans, for leaving it cheap, quaint, and quiet, and if the artists' colony has only one artist, perhaps that's all a delta without so much as a dunghill can stand. This is a bit of an insider's pun. Dangriga was formerly Stann Creek, Stann' coming from stand', as in stand of coconut trees. Anyway, no hills to echo the crow, and no Wellesley post grads simpering Are you really number one in the world? Why how wonderful, can I have your autograph, and would it be okay if my ten-year-old daughter and I brought over a bottle of gin and some limes? The truth is if I cruised this kind of action, I'd undoubtedly find it, and if I had any money not earmarked for the insatiable schools, and didn't have Samantha, I would. As Orson Wells would sell no wine before its time, I will exercise no morality, any time. You have to be dead smart, half cute, and free of disease, after that it's Katie bar the door. That Samantha tames the philandering wolf, making him half a church puppy, is that which puts her on a plane with Anne, who did the same thing. And never underestimate the conundrum, the complexities of love and loyalty, they're going nowhere fast; the dynamic partner, who strays rarely and briefly, versus the faithful bore.

How much of what you read do you bring into your own life? The same here as you would from a science fiction epic or a psycho thriller. In a word, nothing. Be glad you have the entertainment option, and let it go at that, and if it's not enough, follow the dietary strictures and be a kinder, gentler person. Read, and remember losing a first wife is not only losing her, but letting someone else have her will with her, her life, and her children. That she will in all likelihood go on to number three and number four is cold comfort, and, while someone like Samantha is warm comfort, that's a chick you don't want to count before it hatches.

The cats are a stitch. Two surviving kittens. One of the two-year-old females thinks they're god's gift from playland, and the other four ignore them. Cats have more finely etched personalities than dogs. Daisy's five are all alike, very nice, very affectionate, but one is exactly like the rest. The cats are similar to each other, intensely devoted to sleep, but should they awaken, they exhibit very individualistic traits. When one does something bad, you yell at it and chase all of them around the house, throwing slippers, then none of them do it. They are very consistent about using their one latrine, even canny enough to pick a spot the head wolf will clean on a daily basis.

Talk about worthless word count, I just discovered my Sony tells time to the half minute. For the first thirty seconds, the top dot of the colon blinks, and for the last thirty seconds of the minute, the bottom dot blinks. What will they think of next?

"Would you feel nervous about showing off for me?" Niles asked his nephew.

"Kind of," the boy responded, "how much do you want me to show?"

"Just with your shirt off," the young man whispered.

"That used to be the most embarrassing part," the boy said, "I didn't mind taking my pants off in the locker room, but I hated to take off my shirt."

"How about now?" Niles asked.

"Hap and Stan have been encouraging me," Bing said, "but even having been, you know, that way, is embarrassing, so I haven't let them talk me into it, yet."

"How do you feel about Jody seeing you?" Niles asked.

"Can it be just you, the first time?" the boy said.

"What about another extreme?" the young uncle asked.

"What?" Bing said.

"Jody, plus your friends from school."

"Would you stay with me?" he asked.

"If you want," Niles said, "or I should say as long as you want."

"I can call them," the boy suggested.

"I'll see if Jody wants to come in," Niles said.

"Uncle Niles," Bing said as his uncle left the room, "I'm really glad you came."

"There had to be something good on television one of these years," the young man replied. Bing knew his uncle respected the medium, and that he'd been an avid documentary watcher for years. He was frank in his assessment, admitting that massive repetition was inevitable, but at the same time scathing in his criticism of condo comics and endless use of the let's not do it, then they nod and do it, eat cheesecake, for a bad example, double-take. Boxes of socialistically and politically correct cant weren't much for entertainment value, the knife all blade and no edge, suitable for spreading butter, of which the country needed much less, but not icing sacred cows, however dangerous and close at hand.

The man and boy busied themselves in the kitchen, Jody fitting in as if to the dishtowel, born. By the time Hap and Stan arrived they had a plate of sandwiches and gallon of Kool-Aid ready, and they ate what actually was a somewhat tense lunch.

"You can feel weird up to here," Niles said, pointing to his solar plexus, "any higher you should go up and watch television in Bing's room, or you can use the computer in the den.."

The four boys nodded.

"How high are you?" he asked Hap, as the elder guest. The eleven year old grinned and placed a finger a couple of inches down from what transport pilots call the point of no return.

"Rising or falling?" Niles asked, and they all laughed as he slowly drew his finger down toward his waist. The other boys took his cue, repeating the gesture.

"It's a pretty good computer," Niles half teased, half said to give every possible out. Four shaking heads. Take that, Bill Gates. (Just way kidding. The man saved the world, we all owe our lives to him.)

"Hap?" Niles asked, "how do you think we should proceed?"

"When it happened to me, we talked quite a bit," the handsome boy said, "and I liked it, but some people think that's sick, so it's just a suggestion."

"I think it's sick that McDonald's addicts children," Niles said, "so I guess there's room for plenty of it."

"Maybe we could come up with an over-the-counter pill," Bing said, "you know, if you get that queasy feeling from talking taboo, take two every four hours."

"The poor kid's been library-bound so long, it's gone to his head," Stan Yawoski, like Hap, a plain, friendly-faced schoolboy, remarked.

"Survival of the wittest," the other friend added, and Stan concluded their silly bout with "Mind over fatter."

Some readers may be discouraged one way, some, in another. "So soon with another interminable essay?" you will groan, while your screen-mate notes that there are no less than four juveniles and a young adult in the coming scene. And now I want to fit in Samantha? Mercy. You're right, of course, there's no rush. She'll still be Nifty age for three more years, a young friend. Up until this afternoon, I would have agreed; what's the hurry? stick to the story and tell her's in another book written at an appropriate time. Probably any other girl on earth would warrant such cavalier treatment, but this is the island girl of island Earth. Plain enough on the street, she's a study in close-ups; a mouth, lips that improve perfect so slightly, it's quibbling at its finest to note the difference. Remember Sambo? [Cultural note: "Sambo" is not in the spell-check dictionary.] In this most dazzling of children's stories, the tigers run around the tree so fast they turn to butter. Well, you know where we're going with this and can easily guess who found those melted-down tigers, and licked up every last one of the four-hundred-thirty-seven drops. I don't even have to kiss and tell, it's so easy to imagine just looking at her, and what happens when the butter turns back into tiger it's just good old Late Night Cinemax. We did sleep together; she for four hours, myself for one. It is sexier not making love to her than pretty much the sum total of my above average, but by no means extensive, experience. When I met Anne, I had three girlfriends named Penelope, and an equal number not Pennies. Oops. Four. Although we all stayed friends, in some cases close friends, I dumped all seven the day after meeting Anne, so, with a dozen other interludes, the odd twenty prostitutes in Wallace, Las Vegas, and Mexico, plus the odd thousand hours in various bath houses in the States and Mexico, and perhaps two excursions to gay bars, I've been down the first sidewalk, but am not even interested in going around the block, while acknowledging cheap sex is probably here to stay. All this to say that number one stands a good chance of actually being number one, with the number one writer thinking she's some kind of goddess. And that's just her mouth.

I saw Daisy today, first time in six or eight weeks. I think she realizes she's catching a bit of a break with free lodging and, first among tenants, is actually beginning to clean up her act. The kids, dare I even think it, are reaching the stage of being good about bringing back the dishes. It's a fact of my life that I combine the two most temperament-prone occupations, artist and chef, with less than a pitched fit a week. Nice kids wear well. Why does anyone want any other kind? They just stopped by with half a bucket of crabs, which we boiled. The dual mysteries of Belize are why they don't fish crab commercially, and why they don't raise carrageenan seaweed in the vast turtle grass shallows inside the barrier reef. Daisy and her boyfriend catch the rati with hoop nets on strings, and get a bucket full in a few hours, all seasons, and small amounts of Iris Moss seaweed are harvested for a local drink. Beats me. I've proselytized aplenty, and invested aplenty, and snorkeled aplenty, so far with zero results in the "teaching them to fish" department. Additionally, there's likely a pretty dramatic opportunity in high-tech lobstering, using GPS to locate traps in featureless mangroves, and digital video to a, check to see if there are lobsters in the traps, and, b, provide security. All labor intense, all environmentally neutral, all requiring light capitalization, and none executed. When I say make everything down to Columbia and Venezuela into a fifty-first State, I think I've paid enough dues to know what I'm talking about as well as anyone does.

Not only are Elston and crew bringing back the dishes, they're cleaning the place up. When groomed and petted my digs look like a slice of an expensive resort, especially at night with the lights from the verandas playing over the palms. I can be judged on three things. My work, my girl and boyfriends, and the places I've lived. My first four-month stay in Belize I had a big rambling homestead on the principal island, and a three bedroom house in town, across the street from the best store in town, for a combined rent of eighty U.S. dollar a month, tack on another ten for utilities. I managed to exceed this in Torreon, where I lived in an architect designed townhouse, again, across the street from a supermarket, for forty dollars a month, including daily maid service and hot water. From there I moved into a staggeringly beautiful apartment on Wilshire Boulevard, five miles, looking, from the twelfth floor over beautiful residential neighborhoods, from Griffith Park. In Iowa things got better, because for the same rent as I'd paid in Los Angeles, I got a small bookstore, plus heat, air conditioning, light, and water. The bookstore paid for everything, and hardly interfered with my writing. Stephen and Michelle both made it from Dubuque to immortality, so I find I wasted little time, though, at the time, I thought Iowa was a good reason to live most anywhere else. What I like about the state is cruising the back roads on a motorcycle; it's the perfect blend of open rolling hills and patches of forest, and, from time to time, mesas jutting from the hillsides, my favorite symbol of the west. From Dubuque, I moved back here, to a very comfortable and convenient mini-house, to this corner of Shangri-La. My second house in Dangriga was my favorite, and I was lucky to spend three years there. It looked on the soccer field, where a dozen sleek horses grazed, out to sea, with the town pier perfectly positioned a the left of the view framed by the east door. There were always thirty or forty snowy egrets around the horses, who were deep in the lush grass around the field surface, and, as if all that wasn't enough, who should show up but the "Glomar Explorer", whose captain, perhaps with his own yen for immortality, moored her precisely in my doorway. She stayed for weeks, brilliantly lit at night, while I, the cheap-date Yankee, sat at my dining room table, staring east by the hour, being very sure I got the most for my forty dollar rent. Anne would have to put a gold star in her diary for each day she's been with Tom Cruise to exceed one week living in Harlem Square. Whatever she got out of that deal, she paid for with the dream life of dream lives, as will her children.

I've lived in five mansions for a total of maybe three years. I saw no advantage to it. I can cook more, faster, for more people, in my galley size kitchen (with its powerful stove), than I could in the Kanner's kitchen which was spacious and modern. Unless you live with people you hate, a large house is a large nuisance, and modern American houses are architectural jokes today, but won't be very funny when changing economic fortunes are unresponsive to, and unsympathetic with, the greed of Tom, Dick and Harry. As classic a sketch as any of liberalism is stringent building codes when it comes to insulating light switches, and allowing one, two, or three people to occupy as many cubic feet (can't forget those cathedral ceilings) as the moneylenders will nail their hides to the wall for. This is an international disgrace, and the only mitigating factor is that myriad who dwelleith such, do so in Thoreau's quiet desperation. Movies about greed tend to glamorize it, as they do war and love. The price most pay for it is fearsome and cumulative. Again, to Thoreau: simplify, simplify. Sure worked for me. Not to have my step-ancestor wear out his welcome, or anything, but he also wrote that he could never finish a good book because it inspired him to act on its message. My vanity is sufficient to assure me I won't lose many readers along the way, but, to be sure, it might be an idea to get back to the story.

"How did you start learning about things?" Niles asked Stan.

"The first time, at my dad's tennis club," the boy replied.

"Who were you with?" Jody asked, all ears, and, as the youngest present, encouraged to participate by friendly nods..

"A friend of my dad's," the eleven year old said, "they played a lot of tennis and I'd shag so I could get lessons."

"How old were you?" Jody wanted to know.

"It just happened a month ago," Stan said..

"Did his voice get like really different when he talked to you?" Jody asked.

"Yes," the older boy whispered back, his own voice suddenly different, too.

"The first time Wayne's voice got like that," Jody said, "we were in his car. I think it made it more exciting."

The space program had its giant step, so, using one who is all-too immortalized as an example, we find them new in the basement rec room, both outer door and cellar door carefully locked. "We have six hours until dinner, so we don't need a feeding frenzy," Niles said, and the four boys nodded in response.

He went on to repeat his caution. "We're down here to engage in homosexual activities," he said, "and no one has to do anything that makes him feel uncomfortable. It's not a case of just saying No, it's a case of saying Yes." He then asked each boy if he understood and agreed, and each boy nodded, smiling shyly.

"Then we'll call this ceremony `B'day' Uno," Niles said, "Bare Day One, to celebrate Bing losing forty pounds."

"Yeah," Stan said, "and if you ever hide from us again, there will be trouble in Pork City."

"Pizza on my birthday," Bing said, smiling. This can't make the executive staff at PepsiCo very happy, but boys will be boys. Now all they need do is play Follow the Leader.

"And guess what?" Hap said.

"What?" Bing responded.

"Today is your B'day."

"I almost forgot," the world's happiest eleven year old said.

"You must be really nervous," Stan said.

"Yeah," Bing replied in a whisper, "were you?"

"I was really innocent," the eleven year old said, "I didn't know what was going to happen. It was Friday night, and I was staying for the weekend with Jeff Larson, the one whose voice got funny at the club, while my dad was on a business trip. I was just kind of curious. Before we went out to dinner, he was going to take a shower, and I said I wanted to take one with him, you know, because somehow I wasn't interested in seeing my father, but I was interested in seeing him. He said we could, but we had to talk first, so I undressed in the guest room and he did in his room, and I went into his room and sat beside him on the bed just wearing my tee shirt and underpants."

"Is that when his voice got different?" Bing asked.

"Yeah," Stan replied, "and he yawned a lot."

"Wayne did, too," Jody said, "we were stuck in traffic, going to the water park, and he said he knew of a private park, but it was for mature boys, and he asked me if I wanted him to tell me about it."

"Did you get, you know..." Stan asked.

"You, too?" Jody said..

"Yeah," Stan said, "right away, too. It was the first time I really felt something."

"Did you feel a lot?" the older boy whispered.

"Yeah," the nine year old said, "as soon as he said `mature' I felt like totally curious and excited."

"That's how I felt when Jeff said he wanted to talk to me before we took a shower. I went from a little curious to a lot excited."

"I told Wayne I wanted him to tell me about the park," Jody said.

"They break the rules, Jody," the thirty-year-old teacher said, "that's why it's private. There's a special swimming pool for men and boys to skinny dip together, and a forest behind it. Does that sound freaky?"

"Do they have slides and stuff?" the nine year old asked.

"Everyone who goes is physically fit, and what they call normal," Jody's neighbor explained, "so the rides are much more dangerous than a big commercial park."

"Like what?" the boy asked.

"The Tarzan swing. You can fly fifty feet off it."

"Is that in the part where they don't wear bathing suits?" Jody asked.

"Both parts have them," Wayne said, "plus skimmers, they skip you across the water at thirty miles an hour."

"Do a lot of people go to the part where they don't wear bathing suits?" Jody asked.

"Yes," the athletic man said, "but, like anything else, it gets tiresome if you see too much, and the truth is, even pretty cute guys look better in bathing suits than naked, so both sides are popular."

"Can you walk in the woods?" Jody asked.

"Yes," his friend said, " there are paths, and a lot of it's old growth so you could drive a car through it, if you had to, and there are a lot of little tepees and log cabins, because sometimes men and boys kind of like to play house together."

"Is it all boys?" the child asked.

"No," Wayne said, "but mostly. Sometimes daddies bring their little girls, and sometimes a boy will bring his kid sister, but mostly it's young men and boys from eight to thirteen."

"So we can go for four more years?" Jody asked.

"Every week, if you like it," Wayne said, "and they have cabins in the woods to rent by the week, so if you really liked it, and your dad said it was okay, we could spend a week sometime."

"He'd say it was okay," Jody said, "he's really glad we hang out together."

"Single dad's are probably the world's best parents," Wayne said, "but still, you were lucky."

"Yeah," the boy said, nodding, "and with you for a friend, about twice moreso."

"I'm glad you feel that way," Wayne said, "and you certainly make a difference in my life. That's why my voice is funny and I'm really nervous, because if we go to Wildest World, it may put our relationship on a new plane. More that we'll date than hang out together."

"I'd like that," the boy whispered from the passenger's seat, "getting dressed up and waiting to hear you knock."

"Too much of that is gay," Wayne said, "which, I expect, would piss your dad off no end, but just a little, a few feminine touches, in private, are undoubtedly sexy."

"I just want to try being girlish a little," the boy said.

"That's what the play houses are for," Wayne explained. "They have a closet with pioneer clothing, so boys can play the sweet little wife, and the men can play lumberjacks in from the woods."

"It sounds like a theater," Jody observed.

"It is," Wayne laughed, "I never thought of it that way, but it's a full participation theater. The log cabins and tepees have cracks in the walls for spying, and that's as theater as theater gets."

"Can two people spy at the same time?" the boy asked.

"Yes," his neighbor said, "one hole is above the other, so the boy can look on his hands and knees, and the man can get over his body, and look through the upper hole."

"It must feel really good to be naked and do that," Jody said.

"I does," Wayne said, "and what's really exciting, so I'm told, is when you're around the skinny-dipping pool and a man and boy in costumes walk by, heading out into the woods.

"How about Indians?" Jody asked.

"Yes," Wayne said, "the capital W in Wild is not supplied by the White Man.

Jody giggled. "Are you still nervous talking to me about it?" he asked, shyly.

"More than ever," Wayne acknowledged, "I've never done anything with a boy, and I've never even seen you bare chested, so it's two and two equaling about two hundred."

"How did you find out about the park?" Jody asked.

"I had five loser students that suddenly turned around and started doing really well. I became friendly with one, platonically, we never talked about details, but he told me about the park, and said all the other boys had gone there with older friends. Then you popped up as my very special neighbor, and even though you don't seem to be messed up, or punked out, I couldn't get it out of my mind to at least ask you, and hope you wouldn't think I was a fag trying to get into your pants."

"I don't," Jody said, "and I won't act girly except if you think it's okay once in awhile."

"If you want to kiss me after a hard day topping cedar trees, I won't complain," Wayne responded.

"I think I might be more responsive as an Indian princess kissing her brave after a busy day scalping whisky dealers," the boy said.

"Carlos, he's my ace of the aces," Wayne said, "told me we can turn out in costumes if we want, instead of hanging around the pools."

"I'd really like to be an Indian with you," the boy whispered.

"I'd like that, too," Wayne said, "but how do you feel about other guys looking at us?"

"Maybe if we look at some, first, we'll get used to the idea," Jody said.

"How about if we found a big brother playing house with his little sister, would you want to watch that?" Wayne asked.

"Yes," the boy said.

"Good," Wayne said, "because even though I know I'm going to like being with you, and taking you to the park a lot, if you want to go, I can't imagine not liking at least some girls."

"It's a real dread, at my age," the boy said, "but Jill Ralston is to die for, and she's got braids half way down her back."

"Good thinking," Wayne said. "Carlos said the camp isn't about being swish or lispy, or simpering, except when you play house; even, there's a lot of navy guys and Marines who go there, because they try to strike a balance of three or four mature males for each under-age boy."

"And I thought it was just going to be exciting," the boy sighed, looking very fondly at the driver of the car.

"I wouldn't be risking our friendship by even telling you about it, if I thought that," Wayne said, with a smile.

"I think you'd have to run over me twice before I'd take cop any attitude like that," Jody said, with his own quiet smile.

"Hard on the insurance," Wayne signed in mock despair, "we'll have to think of something better.

"I already have," Jody said, "or at least I think I have.

"What?" the driver asked.

"Well," the boy said, coloring, "you know how Indians become blood brothers?"

"Yeah," said the older male.

"Well," Jody explained, haltingly, "they taught us in health science that when a man gets excited, something comes out of him, but I won't have it until I'm twelve or thirteen, so, I thought if you could share yours with me, like Indians share blood from a cut, it would be a few years before I could share mine with you, so we'd kind of be bonded."

"My five stars," Wayne said, changing the subject slightly, "all found older male companions who read to them; some from classic sea stories, some from alternative archives on the Web. You're father obviously reads to you. I just wanted to note that, because it sounds as if we're going to begin being the most special of special friends, anyway, the most special, with the most unique bond, I've ever heard of."

"So it's a good idea?" the boy asked.

"Savagely brilliant, I'd call it," Wayne replied.

"And I thought the reading was exciting," the boy said.

"It's more long-haul," the teacher replied, "because however exciting it will be for us spying in our Indian costumes, there are twenty-plus hours a day for other things, and ignorance is boring to everyone."

"So they even have a library there?" the boy asked.

"That's how I rooted the truth from Carlos," Wayne explained, "he started hunting the stacks like a hound dog, and we got talking, and he mentioned the Wildest library, maybe a little by mistake, but in the end he told me everything, and I gave him an A-plus for dedicated research, even though he had enough spelling errors to drop his grade to a C."

"Three," the young passenger sighed, "ten points off for each one. And you know, Mexican kids don't have to learn to spell, at all. If you can say a word in Spanish, you can spell it. Syllable perfect. It's a gyp."

"It teaches us to be adroit and complex," Wayne said, "which is why we invented the chronometer and steam engine, et al, while they were using science to determine how many beads of lead shot made the perfect whip, w-h-i-p."

"But if you miss four words, you get a D," the boy said.

"And the next class is algebra," Wayne said, to the boys half laugh.

"Will it really be funny, someday?" he asked.

"No," Wayne assured the child, "but it will feel so good when it stops, you won't care if there's no lighter side."

"Like getting away from my mom?" the boy asked.

"All the horrors of childhood," Wayne said, "from the bogeyman under your bed, to half of boy and girl issues, pretty much disappear when you get in your teens, and begin knowing it all."

"Well," Jody said, "if a teen only knows a little, it is all he knows."

"Just keep reading," his friend advised.

They spent some minutes basking. The sign for the commercial park rose from the traffic, big and green. "Last chance for good clean fun," Wayne said.

"Warrior Chief have heap big date with Nervous Worrier," the boy chirped softly, "public not invited."

"Then on to the wilderness," the young man said, staying in his lane.

"Do you want to talk more?" Wayne quizzed his young passenger as they passed the exit.

"I want to know what they call stuff," the boy answered. "You hear all kinds of words at school, but the nice kids don't use them very much."

"They use gentle-class language, Carlos said," the man replied, "that's why is mostly white people that go there. No eff word, d-word, c-word, except the street word for semen, do you know what that is?"

"C-u-m," the boy said, blushing, "I was going to try to use it in an essay, see if I could get a rise out of my English teacher, but I decided it might not be a good idea."

"Do you like your teacher?" Wayne asked. "I don't remember you saying much about him, before."

"Kind of, I guess," the boy replied, still colored.

"Then write it," Wayne suggested. "Even when we become special brothers, we're not married. Anytime you really like somebody, assuming you don't want to belong to the man-of-the week club, just tell me and I'll do anything I can to arrange some kind of a date."

"Maybe I could write him a letter," Jody mused.

"That would be perfect," Wayne agreed, "you could tell him you want to write an essay, or a story, with c-u-m in it, and ask him if you could talk to him about it sometime when he has the afternoon free."

"Would you be nervous if I had a date with him?" Jody asked.

"I guess that's as good a word as any," Wayne laughed, "what I'd be, most of all, would be glad to have you back."

"Would you want me to tell you what happened while I was with him?" the child queried.

"As far as I'm concerned," the young man said, "that would mean I could share it, and you could relive it, but we'll have to wait `till the time comes, then you can tell me or keep it private."

"Can I tell him about what happens at the camp?" was Jody's next question.

"The only rule that makes sense to me," Wayne responded, "is to tell the truth. If he asks, and my guess is he will, tell him. He'll be excited enough to know we were talking about him without your having to exaggerate anything that happens. But some people equate secrecy with masculinity, or something, so take it one step and a time. He'll probably quiz you to find out how experienced you are, and you can play it be ear from there."

"You don't think he'd tell the principal, or anything weird, do you?" Jody asked.

"That's the chance you take," Wayne responded, "and that's where your intelligence kicks in. How good a judge of character are you? How close to the edge can you play? What kind of risks are you willing to take, for what kind of reward? Pretty much the lessons of life; daring slightly, being a little bold; not being different from the pack, for its own sake, but marching to a different tempo because you're smarter, study harder, and read more. And the secondary upside is that if anything does go wrong, and you have a good record, in general, you'll get off the hook. `Boys will be boys' covers a lot of ground, for basically good boys."

"So you mean I won't end up in a psycho ward with a lot of overly attentive orderlies?" the boy sighed, dramatically.

"Tough to have your life over before you reach double-digits," Wayne responded.

"Why, I was rather looking forward to having my old life over," the boy said.

"Once wasn't enough?" Wayne teased, and the boy giggled at his nonsense. Adroit was the word for the idiotic language, but if it enabled, who cared how it dodged and weaved?

"With my mother, once was more than enough," Jody said.

"Bad moms are god's truest gift," Wayne said, "you don't owe them anything, which can be a real family saver when they get old and sick, and, if you ever accomplish anything, you don't have to share the credit. You don't care when they die. You owe them nothing, and, if you're really lucky, you'll have one who gives you a prison cut every ten days, so the girls won't like you, unless prison cuts happen to be in of a particular season, and that will leave you free to hang out in the library, and, bucko, have the last laugh of all last laughs."

"Better than hanging out with you?" the boy chirped. "I rather think not."

"The ultimate laugh is living well," Wayne said, "others call it the best revenge. In any event, it's verification of yourself and frustration for those who tried to stomp you along the way, assuming, of course, they were wrong in trying to do so, which is where intelligence comes in, just as it does when stalking your teacher."

"Are all the people at the park fantastically smart?" Jody asked.

"Do you think you'll like hanging out with cute, naked boys when you're my age?" Wayne countered.

"Yes," the boy said.

"Then I think it's safe to answer your question with a Yes. And I can embellish that by observing that I feel pretty dumb for not finding out about it before I reached my thirties."

"About the park?"

"About boys," Wayne said, "and me, a teacher, go figure, eh? But they were just kids, mostly routine, a fair number of assholes of one stripe or another, and a few dozen extra ones, but they only shine because of academics. Then someone sticks about a four gage shotgun in my belly, Carlos and you, and pulls both triggers. Blam, my guts are in an uproar, and, at the same time, it's the best time I've ever had in my life. It's like being twelve, but being directed; knowing, not just dreaming or imagining."

"For me it's like being sixteen," Jody said, "except I have more brains."

"They do deteriorate," Wayne acknowledged, "I mean, how smart is it to give up on having your mother do all the walking and work while you chill and daydream?"

"So `Born Free' means free of brains?" the pixie boy asked.

"It really means free to face the challenge of somehow correcting nature's most grievous imbalance; making life fit to be born into, a challenge, since no sooner do you leave the womb than you're denied the breast, which is a one-two punch in the getting-a-good-start department."

"So high levels of compensation are in order," the boy noted.

"High levels of performance are needed," Wayne said, "and all the misfortunes you wish to amend are just a good rationalization for going a little overboard when it comes to trophesizing yourself. If a history of downers doesn't add to the mechanics, which are byproducts of intelligence, energy, luck, and opportunity, it severely adds, I'm pretty sure we're going to find out, to your, or our, satisfaction with the reward."

"That's complicated," Jody said.

"You're nine," Wayne laughed, "so I thought I'd try it on you before you turned teen."

"How long does it take to get smart again?" Jody asked.

"Twenty years," Wayne replied, "from ten to thirty, at least in my case. And even that wasn't like a giant brainstorm where I said to myself, `Aha, self, today you're going to hunt down a cute nine-year-old boy to hang out with,' it was more There you were, helping me move in, and Carlos, suddenly coming to life, and your dad being cooperative, and your mom being gone, and, most of all, your being smart, and nice, and cute enough to pass, and having something special about you, because there are a lot of bright, cute nine year olds in the world, and none of them have anything to do with you, so, here I am, finally smart again."

The boy smiled happily. Me? I'm pretty happy, too. Married, unless I'm mistaken. Samantha has suddenly decided to become quite passionate in the making-out department, so I asked her if she was my wife, and she nodded enthusiastically, then I asked her if I was her husband, and she nodded again, and I asked if she was a happy wife, and she nodded. Anne and I sat with some womanizing ex-service chaplain, minister of their horrible church, and he asked us if we knew how, I kid you not, how the plumbing worked, perhaps twenty times. (Anne was twenty-six, I, twenty-nine.) Additionally, we had as long a courtship as any four or five other couples, combined, because we both had the summer off and were able to spend all day, every day together, most of the time. None of it made any difference, when Mary Blake spoke, the girl responded. I like Samantha and my way better. She nodded instantly and happily, and it is my guess that somehow, some way, given enough time, we'll figure out how the plumbing works. Since the big local hit song has a lyric that goes: "My neck / my back / lick my pussy and lick my crack," and they play the wretched thing wide open at school jump-ups, she may already know a thing or two. In any event, she is becoming extremely responsive and at the border of becoming aggressive, which may be the death of me as a writer because practicing what I preach is one thing for the moral and upright, but something quite different for the hedonistic and depraved. Add being involuntarily unpartnered for nearly a quarter of a freaking century, and it may be bye-bye keyboard.

I go to great pains to keep my essays neat and small, though life often seems to want it otherwise, what with variations on the nuptial theme, the rapidly developing sexuality of a drop-dead fifteen year old, and related items and issues. Since I've just mentioned practicing what I preach, what a marvelous time to take my own advice.

"What do creeps do?" Jody asked Wayne.

"They inveigle," Wayne said, "if I was a creep, I'd slide my hand over and start touching your left leg, without saying anything to you; if I was sitting beside you in the movie theater, I'd press my knee against yours, and touch your leg and try to fondle you. I might lure you somewhere with money or a gift, or somehow lure you into trusting me, then do things you didn't want. That kind of stuff, usually involving creeping fingers and the satiny skin of a juvenile's inner thighs."

"Is that what the dictionary says?" the boy asked.

"I doubt it," Wayne laughed, "but then, my medical book says premature ejaculation is caused by fear of pregnancy or venereal disease, which may be true, but leaves out the happy fact that it's also caused by a partner being intensely exciting, usually because you are in love with that partner."

"What's that like? Will that happen with us?" Jody wanted to know.

"Good question," Wayne sighed, "we'll know when we reach the park. With a male lover, it would mean I ejaculated while I was still wearing my clothes, so you couldn't share it. With a female partner, it means you ejaculate before you've penetrated her fully and given her time to respond fully to you."

"I hope it doesn't happen," Jody said.

"No promises, because of the love thing," Wayne said. His voice got husky and he whispered: "Jody, how do you feel about watching it happen? You know, seeing my sperm."

"I really want to," the boy whispered back.

"Good," the man said, "because I think that may be the secret to being a good lover; to really want to see what happens with your partner, half lust, half curiosity. I really want you to watch me cum, so I'll try to make it so we can share the experience, as the say on the coast."

"Does really trying make it easier?" the child asked.

"It definitely helps trying to picture you and I, warrior and tenderfoot, peering into a tepee at what's happening inside while you ask me questions in a whisper and I fondle your bare chest and thrust gently between your tightly clamped nine-year-old thighs."

"Maybe if I had a seven year old underneath me, looking in through the bottom slit in the canvas, I'd know what you were talking about," the cutie observed.

"A nine year old can go inside a younger boy without hurting him at all," Wayne said, trying to get even with the tease riding shotgun.

"If it happened while you were driving, would we have an accident?" Jody asked.

"We're stuck in traffic," Wayne said.

"The way I feel, if we were moving at all, it would be dangerous," the little boy responded.

"That probably means you will be an absolutely outstanding, A-plus, gold star lover," Wayne said, "giving us a great deal to live for."

"So when we pass the accident or whatever is holding us up, and get on the open road, and get up to say, seventy, I shouldn't start asking what it would feel like if a seven year old wanted me to experiment with him for a long time?"

"You just said a mouthful," Wayne replied.

"And if the seven year old thought you were a living doll, and was experienced, and wanted to come into our tepee and show me what he does with his gym teacher, it would be better if I kept it to myself?"

"Just as it would be if instead of seven, the boy was eleven, and chose you to teach him," Wayne replied.

"If I had to vote now," the boy said, "I'd say that no state should ever give me a license to operate anything."

"The disturbing thing is," Wayne said, "that you're going to get better as you get older. Both your wits and your body will develop, and that's inconceivable."

"If I'm half as smart as you at twice your age, and if I'm half as cute when I'm a teenybopper, I'll be happy," the younger half of the mutual admiration society said.

The traffic finally did open. "Guess there's some kid cuter than I am; hope he's okay," the particularly clever child remarked as they passed the obstructing, minor wreck. Wayne looked down at the glowing child. "Inconceivable." It was the only word that fit, non-word that it was, because, first off, it meant the boy couldn't exist, if he hadn't been conceived, and second, he couldn't exist because comprehending him was impossible. Oops. Unborn? Unfathomable? Weren't those the principal characteristics of a god? He'd better concentrate on his driving.

They arrived safely, and, how shall we say this? Intact. Parked. Were cleared through the polygraph station without having to visit the clinic. Spent some minutes studying a diorama of Wildest World; decided they did like the Indian theme for their debut, and we're fitted with costumes, men and boys using separate fitting rooms as the management's idea of a subtle prank. [People who run salacious enterprises are often ludicrously prudish. I used to go to the bathhouse a block southwest of Hollywood and Vine. Once, while I was in the steam room, I spilled my bottle of amyl nitrate on my towel. When I checked out, the moron at the desk started yelling that I was eighty-sixed from the club; at the same time, he was blackballing another kid for masturbating in the shower. The place was a sex house, nothing but, and clearly labeled so at the check-in window. What kind of mind does an animal like that have? As far as I could tell, the place needed all the business it could get, except for a few hours on Saturday night. I guess it's the need to bully; the desk master was probably and ex-master sergeant. Luckily for myself and my showering friend, there were five more bathhouses in greater L.A., and that, too, is worth commenting on in the name of perspective. Only five, for eighteen million people, and those five very often way under half filled. I used to frequent the one in (or near) Burbank, and though I was in the top one percent of body types, I never got asked to be in any kind of film, or, for that matter to a private party, or to have any contact with children or look at kiddie porn; buy drugs, use cuffs, or anything. Perhaps the oddest thing about these various clubs was that they were an ideal place to catch a little sleep, at twelve dollars for eight hours, and no one ever seemed to use them as a dirt cheap alternative to a hotel. The gay bar scene was dramatically more active, but not my thing, and the perv papers, with nine-seven-six numbers were an inch thick. More surprising yet, and I've mentioned all of this elsewhere, was the bathhouse in Tijuana. Even though it was, a, highly, but not exclusively gay, b, open to males of any age, c, very convenient, and, d, less than an hour by trolley from the naval facilities in San Diego, during thirty or forty visits, I met virtually no Anglos there, and never a man with a boy. I should note for those saying, aha, he's an addict, after all, that TJ was half way between L.A. and San Philippe (390 miles) and so a perfect place to break a motorcycle journey. I think it cost two dollars and the beers were about fifty cents. I tipped at five times the price. Never scored, that I recall, and the one cute boy that did turn up was scared to do anything where anyone might see, so we ended up as ships in the night. One funny aspect of Banos Vapor was trying to get out of my riding skins in the tiny, built for Mexicans, changing rooms. For you bikers, I had a Magna V-45 (vanity plate: BIKEMAD) and put 28,000 miles on it my first year in SoCal. As I recall, it was approximately one-thousand times as nice a ride as a Harley. I am in no way objective on the subject. In my view, the Honda saved my life. We had to wear bell-bottom pants for the bus company. I was up at Griffith Park, for some reason in my uniform pants. I parked at one of the overlooks, on a slight mound beside the rode. As usual, I put the kickstand down as the bike came to a stop, and went to swing out of the saddle. The bell-bottoms caught on something, throwing me completely off balance, and the bike crashed down on the kickstand. If it had sheared off, the bike would have fallen off the mound, right down on top of me. Looking at the stand, and the tongue of metal it was bolted to, it was hard to believe that an assembly designed for nominal loads held up under the sever impact. Rice burner, my ass. I bought it in like-new condition from Hollywood Honda for fifteen hundred dollars. The only problem I ever had with it was the engine cutting out in a severe cross wind from the right. I cracked the oil pan three times on off road excursions, but that's another book. Anyway, my research leads me to believe that the gay scene on the coast is a fraction of what it's played up to be. I drove Hollywood Boulevard, my first bus assignment, for months, until past midnight, and, though I was looking, never saw any gay cruising, at all. In fact, in over three years on Wilshire Boulevard, I never had any kind of `meaningful relationship' with anyone, male or female, which was great, because it meant I could save money faster to get out sooner. To me Los Angeles was epitomized by the weird old showboat who'd thrash around off the end of Santa Monica Pier, splashing up a storm, and going nowhere (hate to immortalize him). As mentioned elsewhere, the place is One stupid bumper sticker at a time (which is a clever way of immortalizing the whole freaking county).]

Half an hour after arriving, Wayne and Jody said a nervous "hi" to each other in the lounge of the resort. They gravitated to a large mirror, the mature male standing behind the child with his hands on the boy's shoulders. "What do you think?" Wayne asked.

"I guess we're not chopped liver," Jody said, his eyes glued to the pec and ab-free chest of the warrior behind him.

"But I just know you're going to be an Indian giver," Wayne responded, "and want that killer young body back after you've given it to me."

"I need something to go around my heart so it won't dry out," the boy observed with a giggle.

"I suppose your blood does have to go somewhere," the thirty year old acknowledged with a sigh, "plus it will come in handy for hunting pioneers."

The two left the lodge, emerging on a deck overlooking the large pool. "Schameel schamizal, bodyshop incorporated," Jody murmured at they gazed down over the railing at the swimmers and loungers.

"And to think, they're all healthy," Wayne said.

"Awesome," the boy responded. Pretty much so. Wildest World was not oriented toward body building or macho buff, and there were no hunks, per se, but rather a large contingent of young sailors and soldiers, all slim and athletic without the overtones of narcissistic fetish. As Wayne said, all healthy. "Aren't older guys meant to have, you know, like some hair down there?" Jody asked.

Well, pretty healthy. Club policy did suggest a boyish look for the adults, and such was the respect for management, compliance was universal. There were perhaps a hundred guests in all, with a heavy preponderance of males in their late teens and early twenties. "I'm glad it's not all white," Jody said, noting the obvious mix of other races, his eyes following a six-four variant of Benjamin Bratt.

While the club approach was singularly low key, a little frivolity did intrude. The newcomers noted a small sign on the railing and moved over so they could read it. "No drooling," was the message. "That's like posting a sign in the boiler room of a steam ship that reads: `No Sweating'," the bookish nine year old said, checking his lower lip with a finger.

"Carlos told me a lot of the sailors are officers are officers on ships that allow cabin boys," Wayne said, "so if you ever have a yen to take a cruise, this would be a good place to start."

"I'll be some of the men here touched him," Jody whispered, cuddling next to the tall athletic male on his right. Wayne responded by guiding the nine year old in front of him, and pressing the child gently against the railing. Other men were molesting children discreetly, mostly playing wrestling games in the pool, but several couples were beginning tentative foreplay on the lounge chairs. At becoming aroused, the mature males led the young boys past a sign reading "Wilder Yet" and down a path leading into the heavy stand of timber a hundred feet beyond the swimming and diving pool. A couple left every minute or so, and an equal number returned, mostly as nudists, but some in pioneer or Indian costumes. While couples predominated, from time to time two or three of the young men would escort a single boy off to where things presumably got wilder, and a girl who looked about ten, and most pleased and content, led a group of five, the eldest of whom was obviously her brother.

"Do you think you'd like watching them?" Wayne whispered to the boy in his arms.

"Yes," Jody said, "I'm glad they have girls, otherwise the picture would be in monochrome."

"Good thinking," Wayne said, giving him a squeeze. "There's enough arbitrary thinking when it comes to class differences without throwing in gender."

"Can a girl as small as she is be with older guys?" Jody asked.

"I saw her brother take a tube of something with him," Wayne responded, "that's probably a lubricating gel so she'll be comfortable if they have her out there for a long time."

"He looked really big," the boy said.

"I imagine he's bigger now," Wayne responded, "but she's mature enough to accept a full grown male unless he's much bigger than normal."

"I guess she can have a baby when she's not a whole lot bigger than she is now," Jody mused, "but it does seem kind of impossible, just looking at them together."

"The girl on the diving board is even younger," Wayne said.

"Could she be with an adult?" Jody asked.

"If he was gentle," the man said, "most girls are physically ready to be with a normal-size adult when they're seven or eight years old."

"Does that go for the psychology part, too?" Jody said.

"No," Wayne replied, "and therein lies many a rub, or non-rub, as the case may be. Some girls are totally ready for extensive sex play, but not having an adult inside them, when they are three, others aren't half-ready when they're thirty."

"But a thirty year old girl would never even be half-ready for a boy like me, right?" Jody asked.

"To repeat," Wayne laughed, "'many a rub'."

"Does anybody understand it?" Jody said.

"Not a chance," his friend said, "where would the fun be in that?"

"How about cats and dogs?" the child asked.

"That's all they understand," Wayne replied, "they'll half starve over a female in heat, or rip each other up, or both."

"So ignorance is bliss," Jody remarked.

"That's one way to look at it," Wayne agreed.

"Hi," a voice came from behind them, "mind if we voyeur together for awhile?" Instinctively, Wayne released the boy, and Jody edged free as they turned. The speaker was also costumed in a warrior's vest and loin cloth, as was the tall, coltish twelve year old male with him.

"We decided to stop awhile in paradise before we venture on to nirvana," Wayne said, after receiving an alert nod from Jody, "and you're welcome to join us."

"I met you at a convention a couple of years ago," the man said. "Sure," Wayne replied, "we talked about squirrel hunting with black powder. You're Jerry Hammersmith."

"Cool to see you here," Jerry said, introducing Rayray Kendall as "the most nervous scout that doesn't wear a dress."

"We had our moments on the drive over, too," Wayne said as they shook hands and gripped shoulders. "Cool to see you here, too," he whispered.

"Is it your first time?" Jody asked Rayray.

"Yes," the sensationally blond student warrior replied.

"Mine, too," Jody whispered as the men gently pinioned the boys side by side against the teak railing.

"Have you talked about stuff a lot?" Rayray asked.

"We had to kinda stop a few times," Jody said, "but we talked about some things. How about you?"

"Quite a bit, too," the boy said "The reason I'm here is that guys keep looking at me when I'm at the mall or in a restaurant, and it made me nervous, because sometimes I kind of liked it and it made be feel all different, so I told Mr. Hammersmith about it after scouts, and we had a long talk, and he told me he knew about a place where boys could get, you know, mature, without being like totally embarrassed about things."

"Welcome to the club," Jody said, and they both giggled, looking nervously at each other.

"I always want to look at other boys in gym," Rayray said, "but I'd get caught because the other boys are always looking at me."

"I guess I'm too young to notice," Jody responded, "because it's only older boys and men that seem interesting."

"They are the most interesting," the eleven year old agreed, "and a couple of years ago, I felt the same way. Now I'm getting interested in younger kids because Mr. Hammersmith says they make excellent partners, even if you can't do everything with them that you can do with an older boy or a man."

"How about the girl climbing up on the low board?" Jody asked, "do you think she's cute?"

"Way so, way so," the older boy replied.

I'm reminded here of a story a woman told on a nature documentary. She'd been hiking and two mountain lions had driven her into a tree. She fended them off with a branch for a long time, but they were getting ever closer. Suddenly a deer crossed in the valley below, the cats saw it, and were off like a shot. As Becky Childs climbed up on the board, the two pubescent braves quickly begged to be excused and were off down the labyrinth of stairs leading to the pool."

"Remember how we talked about using retrievers when we used to hunt?" Wayne laughed.

"They're a pair, aren't they?" Jerry agreed as the men watched their little Indians approach the edge of the pool where the naked mermaid was about to emerge.

Decorum. I don't think I've used that word yet, and this would be a great place. Because they were new, Jody and Rayray were allowed swift passage along the side of the pool, reaching, grinning, the strategic zone by default. As they neared the ladder they became aware of their impetuousness; I mean, what if everybody charged the little red-headed doll? But it was too late. Her bright eyes locked on to the nine and eleven year olds in their toothy vests and loincloths, and wouldn't let go. In the friendliest manner imaginable, she gave a beaming all-clear to any other interested parties, and, naked, climbed the ladder and beckoned the males with her glowing eyes. So decorum was restored, poolside.

Leadership. How, specifically, does a nine year old go about dominating a boy two years his senior, while not wanting to one up him in any way, because he's a pea in a pod. Jody did it by finding an unused towel and handing it to Rayray who wrapped the girl in it. When you're nine, you lead by being a very secure follower; running errands, doing chores, and being interested, prompt, responsive, dependable, and diligent, just like Mr. Alger says. If you're cheerful, you get the girl, and, if you're funny, you get the girl, the gold watch, and everything, in the words of John. D. MacDonald. But Jody was too young for that, and he knew it; much better to watch and learn, and hang out loads and loads with Wayne, while earning Brownie points to the sky. I'm kind of the same. Write fabulous stories at a prodigious rate, entertain rather than doing the laundry, and suddenly I've done the most, so I've earned the most, and you'd be moronic to trust your future to anyone who's done less. In any event, Jody didn't try to be funny.

"I'm Sandra Kelly," the girl said, once wrapped in white terrycloth which gave her an impish sexiness that outdid even her slim, athletic dart of a body. The boys introduced each other and waved toward the porch where Wayne and Jerry waved back.

"Who are you here with?" Rayray asked.

"It's kind of a secret," the little beauty said as the found a vacant lawn chair and sat, after Sandra impatiently beckoned Jody, side by side.

"What?" Rayray asked.

"Would you like Wayne and Jerry to join us, or we could go up and join them?" the little errand boy asked

"That would be great," Sandra said.

"Sorry," Rayray said, "you know, in school, the first thing you say when someone says they have a secret is What?"

Jody pretty well knew he'd never been so happy in his life. Rayray's gracious response to his check was about like eating three hot apple pies with premium American cheese in, say, ten seconds. Sandra smiled happily, too, and said, "Guess what, I go to school, too."

"Do you want to tell?" Rayray then asked, because interest is as high as grace on any boy's list..

"Wait till the awesome chieftains join us, okay?" the girl said.

"That will make us happy, wherever the hunting ground," Rayray said, hoping the girl got it.

"Many moons are all I can promise, when it comes to the spirit light, and the heart glad," the girl said.

"How many?" Rayray asked.

"How would ninety times twelve suit you?" the girl replied.

"I should live so long," the eleven year old replied.

"Partly, it's a matter of being very highly motivated," Sandra said. "In fact, that's why I'm here. Too, as it turns out, motivated."

The children stood as the adults approached, and they shifted their location to a round table with an umbrella as introductions were made.

"They were talking about longevity and motivation," Jody said when all were seated and had ordered from the waiter. Rayray responded with a look that said Wait, just wait until I get you alone, and they resumed the conversation.

"Okay, too motivated," Rayray said, doing his part.

"My mom, the industrial lead chemist, found out, and knew about this global free spot," Sandra said, "and packed me off for six weeks all by my lonesome."

"She didn't even leave you a bathing suit," Rayray noted.

"Bathing suits were the problem," the girl replied, "anytime I wore one it was like cloaking myself with human eyeballs, mostly male, but not all. I kind of liked it, and was kind of scared at the same time."

"Rayray knows what you mean," Jody said.

"You will, too," the girl said, kindly. It was impossible not to patronize a second fiddle, but it was possible to do in nicely.

"So," the girl continued, "that got me interested, and I bought several suits so I could follow my mom's example and experiment with variations, instead of jumping to conclusions. The more conservative the suit, the more eyes. That didn't really mean anything, except that the subject was way mysterious. Then I was a bridesmaid, a few months ago, and it was eyes even from the pulpit. `Something's going on here,' I said to myself, but, highly motivated though I was, it was nothing but blank walls. Then along came Mastik and Molly. They seemed to have answers to questions I didn't know existed, and they weren't distracted by my bathing suit or bridal gown. Observation and experimentation are the keystones of research, and I was feeding my turtles Fruit Loops when I was three, to see if they'd change color. That was a dead end, but then again, how motivated can a little kid be? This time, nothing was going to stand in my way. I made the mental leap from the eyes to Mastik and Molly, and was at the verge of enlightenment, or at least the first step thereto, when the true scientist in the family opened my bedroom door and told the dogs to take a hike."

What? Had they died and gone to pixie heaven? Did she have a guild card as an apprentice goddess?

"That was three days ago," whatever-she-was continued, "and out came the cell phone, and she called somebody who knew somebody, and, since they're all stable, meticulous people, the proper phone number was forthcoming faster than alcohol dissolves in water, and we had a long talk of a non-prejudicial or judgmental nature, and here I am, a squaw fresh from the swimming hole in the clutches of three braves, with a most promising understudy."

"In short," Rayray said, "your life has not gone to the dogs."

"I'm going to be a scientist, too," the girl said, "so I can't say until the research is complete, but my theory is that you're right."

"What did your mom talk to you about?" Rayray asked.

"She said there was something about me that attracted males, that she saw it, even though she was my mother, that it was something hard to explain or describe, because I wasn't all that ripping pretty in a conventional sense, but that proof was pretty much in the pudding, said desert being tapioca, which, as everyone knows, is made up of thousands of minnow eyes, but eyes nonetheless; that if my were with us, he would see it, and she would accept it and let him teach me; that barring that, since he's on a long-term contract in Chile, the best thing was to come to grips with it, rather than wandering around wondering what the freak was going on, and the best way to come to grips with it would be to attend a Free Spirit resort, where the rules made sense and a lively, athletic girl, her words, could find her own way, if a way was to be found, in the first place."

"Did she talk about the physical part?" Rayray wanted to know, Jody nodding and hanging on every word, but keeping a zipper on it, good kid that he was.

"She said I might be stiff and sore," the delightful creature in her terrycloth wrap said, "because males weren't all eyes, but it would be no worse than a minor sports' injury. Also, that I was developed enough to be with an adult, and that prostitutes sometimes serviced many males in a single night, so that I didn't have to worry if I ended up with a small group, that I should brush my teeth and wash behind my ears, which is probably not what you meant by `physical stuff'."

"Can I see your teeth?" Jody asked, glad for a respite in a conversation he was equally glad was for older ears than his, washed-behind, or not. Sandra smiled at him in best schoolgirl fashion. "Pretty good," the boy said, "but maybe we could play dentist sometime, just to be sure."

"I'd rather you played bodyguard or big brother," the twinkling beauty replied, "and stayed very close to me at all, and I do mean all times." Jody nodded and glowed with pleasure, hardly noting a six-six male passing under the Wilder Yet sign, an eight-year-old moppet, probably male, pulling him along the trail.

"Mom said there was no way I could get pregnant," the seven year old went on, "which I was already pretty sure of, and that the resort screened all members and visitors, so I wouldn't have to worry about disease or violence, that I should try to find one partner, or a small group, rather than going from stranger to stranger; that if I did, they'd be welcome to come visit us -- we have a jumbo house -- and I could visit them if they wanted; that I should write my dad about everything, and remind him I'm a growing girl and miss him very much, and that if I'm mostly disciplined, but a little wild in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, that I might have a pretty interesting childhood being my own doll instead of buying them."

"Bodyguard Ken," Jody said, "I think I like it."

"I'd prefer Brother Ken," the girl smiled, "but no one's invited without you, because you're entirely the last person I'd ever want to have secrets from, so I guess we'll make out."

The two adults and three children finished their lemonade and scones, nervously eyeing the gold leaf on varnished mahogany sign a hundred feet away, and the luxuriant stand of hardwood flicking and rustling in the breeze behind it. Club policy, and we've seen this before, was for the youngest partner, or youngest in a party, to lead or lag. "What comes after one tree, two tree?" She asked Jody.

"Tree tree," the boy said.

"No so fast," the girl giggled, "think of all this lemonade. Think off all the water I must have swallowed fooling around in the pool. Think of the fact I've been in the eyeball soup, better know as said pool, for some hours now. Then, think of all the privacy all those trees must offer. Add to this my willingness to color a little out of the lines, vis a vee, Mastik and Molly, and, not to be fresh or anything, guess again."

She knew how to work a crowd. The males stared at each other, and at their mutual inamorata. In the long history of the world and the human race, nature has undoubtedly called many, but this time the mother screamed, deafening them and seeming to create a hybrid zombie class on the spot. They rose and followed robotically, fifty feet toward the path, fifty-five, sixty, and, in far more time than it takes to tell, they entered the hundred-acre wood. Sandra sniffed carefully. "If a lot of people did it, there'd be a bad smell," she said, "and I'd go back to the lodge." It wasn't that kind of a place; the woods smelled fine, so the pixie led on and the males followed, aware that yielding to a trancelike or catatonic state would have regrettable consequences.

"Four Indians and a white girl in a shawl," Sandra said, as they walked along, "I'll bet this scene's been played out a time or two." The males murmured in assent. "I wonder what it would have been like," she mused, "you know, one morning you're spinning linsey-woolsey, and that night the warrior class is playing stallion with filly until the cock crows the next morning."

"If the girls were nice," Jody said, "they were probably really gentle, and the girls would have so much in their new life, they'd have an easier time forgetting the old." She didn't want to wait too long, so she picked a tree.

"This is something we can do together," she said to Jody, and led him away from the others and out of sight, dropping her towel from her shoulders. She was nice and dry by this time, and the boy was better able to take in her lithe but slightly girlishly padded beauty. He shrugged out of his vest. "Can I take that part off?" she asked, looking at his loincloth. "I'm just a kid," he whispered, nodding. It didn't seem to matter to Sandra, she knelt in front of him and stripped down the costume.

The children stood behind the tree, forehead to forehead, arms at their sides, staring down at themselves. As far as they could see, they looked perfect for each other. "You will stay with me, won't you?" she asked.

"Yes," the boy whispered. "Wayne talked to me a lot because we got stuck in traffic, so I don't think you have anything to worry about, like your mom said."

"Close your eyes," the girl whispered. Jody did and felt her heat as she neared within and inch, then her naked belly touched his. "I'm trying to do it really slowly so it lasts, but it's hard for a girl," she said, and the nine year old felt her hike her waist against his right thigh, then the wet, prickly heat of what she was doing. By experience, I know eleven year olds can urinate with a hard erection, so I assume a nine year old can. Anyway, Jody did.

"Is it sexy?" she asked.

"Way," he whispered back.

"Do you want to watch it happen with Rayray?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"I don't feel like a virgin, doing this," Sandra said, "so you're my first lover."

"You're mine, too," the boy replied.

For a minute they said nothing, just enjoyed being free children and meeting the substantial challenge of making it last as long as possible. "That was unimaginable," Sandra whispered.

"I'll have to admit I'm glad you're not a bitch," the boy said, adding a gentle woof-woof so the girl wouldn't take it the wrong way. This time she tinkled, verbally, in response. They sort of shook and wiped themselves, using some leaves from the forest floor, then a corner of the beach towel.

"Are you going to stay naked?" the girl asked.

"I think Wayne wants to molest me while I'm wearing it," Jody said, slipping back into the thong and vest. "How about you?" he asked.

"I'm pretty ready for what's going to happen," the girl said, "so maybe you could take the towel and lay it down on some moss, you know, with where my backside is raised up a little, like a mound, because in books it says that boys like it when girls use a pillow."

It was a tough assignment, but someone had to do it. "Maybe this is why they encourage show-and-tell in school," the boy mused as the girl shook out the towel and handed it to him. "I'll bet we're old enough to at least kiss by tomorrow," she whispered, squeezing both his elbows with both her hands. They nuzzled affectionately, and, as though parting for the front of a forlorn campaign, he left her side to do her bidding and his duty, the unquenchable curiosity of the nascent writer ameliorating conflicts typical to such scenes.

"Spying is complicated for the CIA, too," Wayne said as Jody rejoined the three warriors in waiting.

"I'll be they don't have Plan Bs as good as ours, though," the boy replied with a smile. The four joined in the search for a suitable bower, and in a minute had the towel neatly spread, with the mossy bulge of a root serving as an improvised pillow half-way along its length. "You go get her," Jody whispered to Rayray as he coaxed Wayne to his knees and stood in front of the tall athlete. Jerry gave the boy a hug on the shoulders and he went off behind the tree, emerging in a few moments with the gamin pixie. The couple honored Jody by standing in from of him, and the younger boy unfastened the eleven year old's loincloth as the pre-teen shrugged off his vest. Wayne hugged the child to him, sliding both hands up under his leather vest as the boy stripped his older friend. Jerry knelt at Jody's right and stared as Sandra guided Jody's tiny hands to the hugely erect older boy. Rayray nodded at Jerry and he joined in the first touch. While it may take three Californians to fully capture the essence of changing a light bulb, there were other experiences a trio could share, and, even though more heat than light was generated, Rayray, for one, was sure they could teach Teller a thing or two about critical mass. "I'm sorry," he whispered as he froze, shuddering, and sprayed a hot spurt of thin juvenile semen on Jody's bare chest. The nine year old held the coltish beauty's penis against Sandra's soft little belly and the boy grunted and lost control, completely, covering the pixie with half a dozen hard, fast pulses of his sperm. Jerry, overcome by the children's wanton display, slipped quickly out of his costume, and, stroking himself a few times as Rayray watched, came heavily on the pre-teen's heaving, sweating chest as Jody and Sandra watched, mesmerized at an adult with a nearly seven-inch, circumcised penis in full display. Wayne also shucked out of his Indian garb to Jody's hiss of welcome. Ever the kid of kids, he coaxed Rayray to his knees in front of Wayne, and guided the man to the older child's mouth, instinctively gripping the big, heavy, uncircumcised penis at it's base and squeezing as Rayray's tongue and lips avidly engulfed the swollen purple glans of the adult. "I'm cumming," Wayne whispered after a minute, and Jody's hand tightened so he could fill the triggering pulse as the flow of hot sperm spurted into his friend's eager mouth. In a matter of seconds, Rayray hummed loudly, then brought Jody in front of him, letting the nine year old take his place. Free of the hot gusher now being consumed by his younger friend, Rayray lay Sandra back on the white towel. The girl raised her legs, gripping behind her knees, and spread herself widely. The ringer for Simon on "Seventh Heaven" positioned himself over the seven year old, and, as she darted her tongue to him, let semen spill from his lips into her eager mouth. Jody's hot, hard sucking brought Wayne to an end in less than a minute, freeing the boy to lie on top of his eleven year old friend, and, after wetting his hand on Rayray's wet chest, guide him as he kissed the girl wildly.

Sandra reached down between herself and her lover and found Jody's hand, squeezing it in thanks just as the child was successful in bringing the very mature eleven year old to her. "Oh, Jody," she sighed, then looked up at the handsome male above her, smiling a shy welcome as her younger friend allowed the boy's five-inch, uncircumcised penis to enter her hot, tight wetness just a little more on each of his gentle, experimental thrusts of his young body against her childish thighs. Not overstaying his welcome by a second, the boy released Rayray to have his will, only maintaining a grip with the first fingers of his right hand at the same place he'd felt the soft hammering of Wayne's ejaculation. Rayray, now free, became even more gentle with the little girl glowing up at him from the forest floor. He cradled her in his arms, kissing her long neck, as he continued surging rhythmically against her. Jody found the older boy's left nipple with his left hand and fondled him gently while the fingers of his right partially masturbated the shaft of the gallant steel over the inexperienced filly colt. Wayne steadied the young threesome, reaching in with his right hand to guide Jody's four inch, thumb-thick, circumcised penis to Rayray's tender white cleft, lubricating his hand with semen from the harshly panting boy's sweating, heaving chest. As Jody had helped Rayray, he helped Jody, making sure the panting nine year old didn't penetrate his older friend to hard and fast. But males did superb jobs guiding and monitoring their partners, and soon Jerry was helping support the three males in Sandra's arms. Wayne also positioned himself to give the children freedom, his fingers, like Jody's, tense on the latter male's stick-hard erection. Their bodies were wet and slick, but still, with the help of the adults, the children remained successfully mounted with each other, slowly experimenting with the intensity of their tentative thrusting as they entered each other tenderly and carefully, Sandra's eyes locked on Jody in a display of loyalty unmatched in any freaking fiction written by any freaking writer freaking ever.

For ten then twenty minutes they swayed and surged between the gentle arms of Wayne and Jerry. After half an hour, the adults, in unison, carefully inserted their again wood-hard erections between the thighs of the mating children, ejaculating heavily and almost immediately. The hot wetness gushing between the sweating, straining young bodies was like a catalyst of lightning. Jody and Rayray cried out together in shock, their bodies going hard and rigid as Sandra's long, slim legs beat against Rayray's staining chest. Frantically, she groped and found Jody's left hand with her own, gripping him until her knuckles went dead white. Rayray remained motionless and shuddering for half a minute as the girl mewed and coaxed and the two adults gently molested his straining body. Wayne pinned Jody's snowy, tender bottom firmly against the equally beautiful behind of the eleven year old. All sensed the rising strain in the preteen's lanky, coltish body as he tensed for a final time against the seven year old's hymen. Then some gland in the young beauties brain seized, the slim hips surged, Sandra yelped, tears springing to her eyes, and he mounted her with four full thrust.

"Oh, Jody," the girl snuffled through her tears, "Oh, Jody, Jody, Jody."

Wayne and Jerry relaxed. Jody had a long, hard, stuttering orgasm and Sandra gripped his hand, then Wayne gently removed him, wet with clear seminal fluid, and still hard, from the older boy. The three males moved free of the young couple. Rayray rose often over the little girl, both looking between their beautiful young bodies at his long penis as he gently thrust to her again and again. Attuned to the girl, Jody reentered the picture, helping her move her legs from the chest of her panting mount to his heaving flanks, then he retreated. Sandra's long, slim legs wrapped around Rayray's gently stroking waist and her pretty, freckled arms held his back. The slight mound in the blanket positioned the larger male perfectly over the tiny female, so they were comfortable together and able to get used to what was happening between them. For a moment, Sandra's left hand left Rayray's back, and she again found Jody, clasping him against the sweating back of the pre-teen.

With everyone comfortable, it went on and on. Twenty minutes, the same gentle rhythm, the same happy mews of welcome, the kisses as he'd lower to her, then rise again so they could look down. Thirty minutes, and the tension began to rise. The panting and sweating intensified dramatically, his thrusts became faster, and he'd hitch hard at the completion of each as the girl yelped and pulled him to her with her strong, athletic legs. Her eyes flashed at Jody and the boy responded instantly, resuming his position on top of Rayray, the finger's of his right hand at the base of the eleven year old's long, slim shaft. Relieved of having to try to speak, Rayray concentrated solely on holding back, but the hot, tight wetness of the now bucking child, and the experienced fingers of the little boy were irresistible times ten. "I can feel his sperm," Jody whispered into Sandra's eyes. The girl flashed her thanks, then again looked down between their bodies just in time to see the first white smear pulse from between her legs. "I can feel him, too," she whispered to her junior lover. "If I ever tell my husband to go play in traffic, you'll be the reason why," she said, smiling up at the slack and haggard face inches above her own, then she mewed `Rayray' and again the boy lost control, lunging against her fast and hard until her eyes and faced matched his and her body began shaking as he head with its lank, damp hair lolled helplessly. Wayne gently retrieved Jody, then slowly separated the panting children, guiding Jerry to the wet girl. The mature male held her gently, she guided him, and he mounted fully in a series of long, languid strokes. She held his flanks gently and lay beneath him with her legs spread wide. Jerry didn't lower himself to the girl's tiny body, just stroked rhythmically against her for five minutes before cumming gently to her equally gentle shuddering climax. Jody, finally able to release his beloved to her new live, returned to Wayne, lying beside him and taking him softly in his small, tender mouth until the adult ejaculated.

"Way trick camp," ....... observed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It would be handy to be able to talk to the reader and ask him or her where, exactly, we are. Some writers get blocked, so the legend goes, but I get lost. How, for example, is Jody related to Niles, who seems to have disappeared lo these many pages. Who are Nile's friends. Does he know Wayne? How did we get to Wildest World? I don't have the foggiest. This means I'll have to go back and read, and, while the joys of doing so are bound to be unbounded, the time required is a twenty-four-caret drag. I think the memory lapse and the reluctance to review are both products of being domestically active, and still adding over five thousand words a day. Something had to give, and I suppose if the result is an hour combing through the last twenty or thirty pages, that such a penalty phase won't raise many a tear.

No sign of Delton. In a way I'm glad, because this fiscal month is going to end up as meagerly as November, and I wouldn't have five extra dollars for him. Still, I'd like to know how his arm came out. Probably he used the thirty-five dollars to buy cigarettes and weed; that would be typical, nice kid though he is.

Samantha is more a dream come true every day. Kinda dumb and kinda smart, in the words of the song. She alternates, in a completely non-manic way, between quiet, as against moody, and vivacious, as against silly. I honestly don't think she has a bad thought about anyone or anything in her pretty head. She does not hold grudges or find fault, a most refreshing change, and, sure, a necessity for any girl who wants to hang out with an artist rather than a banker. She has an intriguing way of saying, "Now, Tom," then pontificating on the virtues of a calling card or new CD, reprising my mother almost tone for tone, but there is a difference between Caribbean charm and Scotch bizarreness and bleak hatred. Even my -- and I finally figured our a word for her, for Malcolm, and a few other people over the years whom I've gotten to know very well, but whom I did not like and would not call friends: the word is ha'buddy, as in ha'penny, or half penny. Half friends -- ha' buddy Donna, the prototypical sourpuss, says the girl is cute. She also thinks some boy will kill me over her. I'll admit she's tantalizing enough, which, by great good fortune, makes her worth the risk. My ace in the hole is that if Boy Bad waits, he'll get the girl and the million, but youth is impetuous and who know how he'd feel about waiting ten or twenty years? My game plan is to team her up with Clarence, two days her senior, and a dedicated and gentle boy. Time will tell. In the meantime, I hate is treating her like a kid or daughter and railing up at her, but she's been a different girl since I pushed her out the door, and her brother and girlfriend, shortly thereafter. I have a rough, bullying side, as my readers know, and, however poorly Samantha adds and reads, she's smart enough not to want to see it again. At the same time, I'm mellowing out as a result of having Daisy's kids here. Queenie broke what was left of one of my two tea mugs this evening, and I didn't even stop typing. She destroys the kitchen by lighting the stove, but we have so few dishes it's easier to do them myself than get frosty. Of course, today she managed to, a, leave the usual mess, and, b, abscond with both my scouring pads, leaving pots, pans, and a well-worn dish cloth. I tell her she should go in the US Army, and I'm not kidding. It is a hateful organization, to the extent that none of the hundred or more guys I got to know wanted to stay in one hour after they had to, but it does teach the rudiments of getting one thing done and going on to the next. She hangs by such a thread; twenty pounds, and she's just another girl on the street, beautiful cheekbones and long, slim neck, notwithstanding (Samantha, on the other hand, like her mother, has a vivid enough personality to possibly get away with being on the plump side.). I try coaching and cajoling Queenie but it's so way not my business that I feel I'm treading water. I had to land on Samantha hard to get her off her money fixation, and I only did it because I love her and have known her for eight years. If Louise was either daughter or girlfriend, I'd be after her doggedly, but she isn't. I guess the moral is you damn well better hurt the one you love.

Randy's getting cuter by the day, just reaching thirteen. He tags along as Samantha and I stop traffic on our way two in from the local emporiums. I haven't seen Rhageedha or her fire-cracker little sister for two weeks. My three understudies in the wings, contrasted with Queenie, are perfect examples of all issues. A small number of affectionate, willing partners, with no interest in the most beautiful of all, who, mercifully for my sanity, happens not to be interested in me. Plus, there's another potential special friend, Daryl, who just turned fourteen and looks about eleven. He's an octoroon, just ever so slightly golden, and, with a short trim, one entirely dazzling young male. He's been very accepting of mild foreplay in the past, and has the warmest, silkiest skin imaginable, but seemed reserved on his last visit, so I didn't even invite him up. Plus, I had no money and I usually have a five or a ten for him, whether he hangs out, or not, so that made a difference. I don't like putting a price on things, but research is research, and the only way to determine priorities in a boy like Daryl is to offer money, and see what he says. I tried it a couple of times with boys in Mexico, offering ones who seemed uninterested ten or twenty bucks, big money in their lives, and both, as I assumed, said no thanks (and got the money, anyway). Not interested is not interested, but what if I offer Daryl fifty dollars and he does come up? Does that mean he's interested, or not? Values are essential to civilization, and tampering with them can be nerve wracking business. The message here is clear. If you'd stop living like such unmitigated morons, I would feel less inclined to waste my time on the presumably fruitless search for feasible alternatives to everyone in the whole freaking country blowing up like Orville Redenbacher's premium popping corn.

Well, I did my excellent-housekeeping penance and went back to look at our story, so far. It turns out twenty-two-year-old Niles Banks picked Jody Fisher up as a hitchhiking runaway, inviting him to Bing's house. Bing Charles, his eleven year old nephew, is on the brink of a life-changing discovery, thanks in part to child Rick Schroeder's "One Fish at a Time", a savagely controversial and wildly popular new television show. Hap and Stan are Bing's school friends, also eleven years old, invited over to celebrate his, Bing's, recent weight loss. Jody, youngest of the gathering, has entertained his new friends by sketching highlights of his visit to a resort with his neighbor, Wayne, who, I believe, has bowed out of the story. It's a little hazy, some of the detail blurred with the thin air of cruising in the literary stratosphere as if I owned everything above a hundred-thousand feet, but I believe the quintet has adjourned to the basement rec room, where, as Jody recited, they stripped to their tee shirts (convenient, eh?) and briefs or boxers.

Stan Yawoski, a freckled redhead with a wide grin, has also begun a tale, and, Jody having spoken, the second youngest takes the stage.

"You've got fast hands," Jeff Larson said as he zipped his racket into its leather case.

"Thanks," Stan said, "with big feet, I need them."

"I had the same problem when I was your age," the twenty four year old said, "but I got over being self-conscious about it in a big hurry, if three hours is a hurry."

"How?" Stan asked.

"Let's sidetrack, first," the older male said, "because I wanted to tell you your dad says you really like me, and I'm very flattered."

"He said you like me, too," the lanky redhead said, smiling shyly.

"That's about half of it, I guess," Jeff grinned. "The reason I brought it up, you know, losing my sensitivity about being a little gawkier than most of the other kids, is that it involved a very special friend I used to hang out with when I was thirteen. What happened is kind of private and secret, and it would make some boys your age very uptight to even talk about it, or, especially, to talk about it, as the case may be, but you're a little bit in the same boat I was, so I thought I'd at least mention it, and if you want to talk, we can."

"I'd really like to," Stan said.

"I would, too," the young man said. "You're dad and Bill and Adam are going out for a few beers, and I don't drink, so if you'd like, you could come over to my place and he could pick you up this evening, or I could drop you home, or you could spend the night."

"I'd like to stay over if it's really okay with you," the eleven year old said.

"More than," Jeff said, "but I should tell you that I find you very attractive, and not just because you're smart and quick along the net. I have the same feelings toward you I did toward Ben Killeen when I was thirteen and he was my age, now, you know, more than more than friendly."

"I just know I really like it when you come over, and when I see you here," the boy said.

"Once in awhile becoming special friends spoils a regular friendship," Jeff said, "by bringing up issues like jealousy and resentment, or one partner making demands on the other, so it's something to think about."

"I'll bet, with the right teacher, a boy could learn to survive," the eleven year old said, again with his shy, wide-mouthed smile.

"How do you feel about Rick's show?" Jeff asked.

"I like it," the boy said.

"Good," Jeff said, "if you come over, the issues will be the same, so if you know that, understand it, and welcome it, we're on the same page."

"I do," the boy said.

"Well," Jeff replied, "if you're completely inexperienced, you're buying a pig in a poke, but, guess what, that's the way it was for me with Ben, and that's the way it is for lots of kids. The first time. And the joke is, it doesn't matter much, unless something horrible happens, of course, but otherwise it seems like the most natural thing in the world, and, the truth of the matter is it wouldn't make any difference tomorrow whether you came over for the night, or we spent the night together at a motel in separate rooms."

"So it's all for nothing?" the boy quizzed.

"Yeah, isn't that weird?" his older friend said. "You'll know, yourself, tomorrow, but tonight, unless I sadly miss my guess, you'll think going out past the moon is child's play. Total ying, no yang, and an hour later they're perfectly balanced, then, it's the reverse, and an hour later, they're balanced, again, assuming they were balanced, in the first place."

"Do most guys talk to a boy before they teach him?" Stan asked.

"No," Jeff said. "They should, but it's pretty rare. Usually it's just touching, though the older male will usually ask a boy if he's experienced. Readers like to talk, a, b, and c, because they have something to talk about; more perspective and context to, you know, form kind of a grid so they can hang thoughts on it in some semblance of order, then go on to history, biography, and all the things they know about or are starting to know about. Since guys like this like to talk, anyway, when it comes to private and secret things, they are more apt to be verbal.

"And your dad said you like to read a lot," he added.

"Psychology," the boy said, "I mean there are some patterns. They do know some things. Some of the tests they think up to give are really clever."

"It hasn't worked," Jeff said, "because people are fatter and more self-involved and dysfunctional than at any time in history, but, I agree, it is interesting."

"Don't you think some people are happier than at any time in history?" the boy asked.

"Hundreds of millions," Jeff agreed, "on a scale heretofore inconceivable, but if that sounds sanguine, think for a moment on who you're comparing them to. Spend much time in Hogarth's London, and being happier than those people is hardly a milestone State the equation another way, and we're ten percent as happy as we should be, though, for sure I'll make an exception for a cute eleven year old boy with a thick tome on abnormal psychology on the desk in front of him."

"Who's now happier than he ever thought he could be," the boy responded.

"Takes one to know one, so you won't be surprised that I had you a little bit figured out."

"But you still like it when my dad told you I liked you, didn't you?" Stan said.

"My feelings were such," the young man replied, "that I can't state them without seeming to tease, but, yes, I was thrilled to death. I could show you, to the square foot, where I was when he told me, when he gave you to me."

"I tried to be cool, but I think he knew I was happy when he told me you like me, too," the boy said.

"You're lucky in the dad department, even if his serve half sucks half the time," Jeff said.

"He says you couldn't find a lob with an umbrella," Stan laughed.

"But he's way cool about us being together," Jeff responded, "and that's something a lot of fathers would get their boxers in a bunch over, so, as I said, you lucked out."

"I'm beginning to realize that," the boy replied.

"And it's not just the Corvette, right?" Jeff grinned.

"When did a sports car ever hurt?" the boy rejoined.

"I thought you like it," Jeff sighed, retrieving his keys from his locker and handing them to Stan.

"Way no way," the boy whispered, looking at the jewel-like General Motors' key in his hand.

"Just think of it as a bike with advantages," Jeff said, pointing out to the boy that district attorneys who played hard and tight with the right-headed cops could let a monkey drive, so he shouldn't feel overwhelmed. "Plus," he added, "it's a good test of psychology. Force A will be your desire to get to our destination, which is a nicer ambience to shower in than here at the club, and, Force B will be the advantages we reap from surviving the trip. Force C is four-hundred horsepower, so we don't want to go around treating it like chopped liver.

"Can you think of any more Forces?"

"We're going home to shower, in private, and making the trip in a Corvette, which I'm supposedly driving, and then spending the night together, and you want me to think," the boy mused, making a statement rather than a question of his quandary.

"Well, I'm not going to force you," the older male said. "You can lead a boy to a book, but even then you can't make him think, so a car can hardly do wonders."

"You're actually helping quite a bit," the youngster said, "Force Four is love, and I love you very much."

"Here's to another square foot," Jeff whispered, touching the eleven year old on his forehead, then squeezing his hand as the two headed for the parking lot.

"Since we're not likely to get into lies, privacy, and secrets," Jeff said as the boy familiarized himself with the car in the club parking lot, "I want to tell you that I hope you'll quit tennis. Tennis and any athletics."

"Why?" the boy asked.

"Waste of time," the man said, "plus about ten different physical reasons having to do with joints, cartilage, tendons, and various and sundry tissue groups, many of them located along the spinal column."

"But you play," the boy noted.

"They didn't know any better when I was your age," the twenty four year old said, "or if they did, they weren't saying much. I got hooked, and it's not life-threatening or anything; just that in your case, unless you have a real passion and are willing to sacrifice a lot in terms of intellectual development and physical well being, it would be better to use your time developing some other aspect of your life."

Stan laughed. "If you get me off sports and dating, you'll make a real whiz kid out of me," he said.

"It happened with Ben and me, but there's always room for one more," Jeff said, as Stan eased the silver gray car onto road, obeying Jeff's finger which pointed out of town. That brought a grin from the kid, and they rolled for the countryside.

"You can't do this with many boys or I'd have read about it in the papers," Stan said as they passed a police barricade and headed onto the county skid pan.

"I thought you read Psychology," Jeff responded.

"Just with one eye," the boy said, "so I don't confuse Id and Ego."

"And I let you drive?" Jeff laughed, adding: "on second thought, if I was at the wheel, and you were riding shotgun, there'd be no eyes."

"Then nothing to get shampoo in," the boy said. Jeff looked down at him. "You are the A in awesome," he said. They skidded, alright. A great steaming crescent of a U-turn, and exited the training facility to the puzzled expression of the guard. "What were you saying about the papers?" Jeff said as the car made a half-G turn onto the road back into town.

"I can be an undercover operative," the boy responded, "totally legit. In fact," he went on, "if you think of it from an amateur psychological viewpoint, guess what, a known tipster would be likely to attract kids that don't dare tell anyone else about bad stuff that's happening to them."

"If anyone could pull it off," Jeff said, "you could, probably with a certain degree of style, why not?"

"It would give us a good reason to be together," the boy said.

"I'm afraid that doesn't cut much ice in the adult world," Jeff said, "but when it rains cherries, no law against carrying a spoon. But the idea is brilliant. Just the opposite of the usual procedure of hush this and clandestine that, when it comes to informants. You, practically with a sign on you; legend from day one, because I think we were doing a bit over a hundred when we passed the guard. After the new wears off, the kids would know who to tell, most of them could get that far, to tell you. You'd sort of attract telling, rather than ferreting it."

"If we're working together," the boy asked, "how can we know when it's okay to have privacy and talk about personal stuff."

"We might try body count," the district attorney answered. "If we get half a dozen raptors and scare the living shit out of the rest, no one will want to see the logs."

"Just please oh please don't hire me until tomorrow," Stan emoted.

"I had Monday in mind," Jeff said, and that made the boy happy, and predators practically jump for joy (if they'd know).

"Were you really nervous with Ben?" the eleven year old asked as they entered Jeff's bathroom.

"Not until we took our shirts off," Jeff said, his voice thick.

"Where did it happen?" the boy said.

"While we were playing golf," the older male explained. "It rained for four hours. We holed up in a shelter He was trying to get me away from the tennis team, so we talked about that stuff for awhile. Then we talked about other stuff for awhile, then I started really liking him and feeling comfortable with him, but that didn't last, because after awhile I just felt like all energy just being close to him, and I knew what it was because I'd done a lot of reading, including abnormal psych texts that opened to the right place when you put them on their spine and let go, so that got me even more excited."

"Do you want to talk about personal stuff, you know, girls, or just hang out until it clear up?" Ben asked the thirteen year old.

"I'd like to," Jeff said.

"How much do you know?" the golf coach ask [millionth character] ed.

"Just from reading," the boy replied.

"You have a very special build," Ben said, "very attractive. Things should start happening pretty soon, if you want them to."

"I don't think I look so hot," Jeff said.

"There are different kinds of looks," the coach said, "pretty and uninteresting, because pretty boys get stroked and petted by default, and, once in awhile, a boy like you; not what you find in underpants ads in the catalogues, because they pick models to sell clothing, not get them in trouble."

"Why would some models get them in trouble?" Jeff wondered aloud.

"It's a hard thing to describe," the young man said, "an indefinable look certain boys have, as well as some girls, like the one at the swimming pool in the ad for calcium supplements. Most of them, like you, think they look odd or dorky, but they're wrong. You're wrong. Bigger hands and feet, long legs and knobby knees may not make onto the pages of Sears, but, as I said, they're in business to service debt, not to turn on every guy between sixteen and one-hundred and something."

"So if `Playboy' meant what it said, they'd use pictures of a kid like me?" Jeff asked.

"You'd be their first life-size foldout," Ben laughed.

"'Victor's Secret'," the tall, lanky, brown-eyed, black-haired boy giggled in response.

"'Nifty'," Ben whispered in response. The thirteen year old met the twenty four year old's eyes for a long moment. "Do you read it?" the man whispered.

"Sometimes," Ben said, reddening, as if through some preposterous oversight he wasn't beautiful enough, already..

"Do you want to talk about stuff like that, or keep to consenting, unrelated adults, or the weather?" Ben asked.

"I like it," the boy allowed, still blushing.

"I do, too," Ben said, adding: "Would you like to do more than just talk?"

"Yes," Jeff whispered.

"Would you be comfortable if we had our shirts off?" the golf pro asked.

"No," his young friend said, stripping out of his knit shirt and placing it on the bench of the storm shelter.

"I didn't think so," Ben whispered, touching the boy's face as the child pulled his shirt from his slacks, running his hands up under it to find his tiny nipples.

"You feel like a kid," the boy remarked softly.

"Takes one to know one," the adult said, running his fingers along Jeff's jawline and down his long, slim neck to his well-developed shoulders, then slipping out of his jersey and placing it with Jeff's. They faced each other for long minutes, touching ever lower, their breathing becoming ragged, their eyes locked on each other.

"We can still stop, if you want," Ben whispered as his fingers found the buckle to Jeff's golfing shorts.

"I don't want," the boy replied, finding the adult's buckle with tense fingers.

"Everything very slowly, okay?" the young man said, "and when it's over you may have a sense of being cold and let down. That's kinda normal, so let a little time go by before you analyze how you feel."

"Okay," the boy whispered as they stepped from their pants and placed them with their shirts, then turned again to each other, looking down at their hotly bulging underwear.

"Are you the biggest boy on the junior's team?" Ben asked.

"I guess so," Jeff said.

"Do you like showering," the man quizzed.

"I always feel like a pervert," the boy replied, "because I like looking at Chucky Ames, and he's only ten."

"And, just as a guess," Ben responded, "he's tall and slim with big hands and feet and long legs. Coltish."

"Yeah," the boy smiled as they stood close and touched each other along the waistline of their underwear.

"And bigger than the other boys?"

"Almost as much as me," the boy said, blushing gently.

"Does he have any hair around his penis?" Ben quizzed.

"He's blond, but I think so," Jeff whispered.

"Do you like him?"

"Yes."

"Do you think he likes you?" the mature male asked.

"Yes," the boy said, "we like Louis L'Amour. He wants to come for a sleepover."

"Does that make you nervous?" Ben asked.

"Totally," the boy replied, "because I know I'd get like this if we were hanging around in my room together, and he might freak out."

"When you shower together, does he ever stand close to you and rub against you as if it were accidental?"

"Yes," Jeff said, and Ben could see the boy's erection swell.

"Has his penis ever touched your leg?" Ben asked, his whisper quiet and husky.

"Twice," the boy acknowledged, "but just a little."

"Were there other boys in the shower when it happened?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Jeff said.

"Did they take any notice?"

"They pretended they didn't, but I think they did," Jeff said.

"That's your marriage license, then," Ben said, "if they'd thought you were weird or faggoty, they'd have said something, boys being what they are. And I think the chance of Chucky freaking out are about one in six-hundred billion. Put another way, the only thing that's likely to upset him is if you don't invite him over."

"I'm glad it rained," Jeff said, "because I know he wants to do this with me, but I didn't know what to do."

"Part of being a kid," Ben said, "is being ten times as scared of everything as needs be. It does keep you alive, but it can interfere, too."

"It feels really natural," Jeff said. "After what they tell us in school, you'd expect a fire to start."

"The absurdity of their position is that it's so absolute," Ben said, "they all think this is never appropriate, ever, no matter what, forever. Growing up is a matter of taking dogmatic fools for what they are, and, for the sake of convenience, running end plays, fades, and head fakes, rather than butting your head against a wall of invincible stupidity."

"Using sand wedges instead of a Big Bertha?" the boy asked.

"Exactly," Ben said, "and play off the fairways, because, after all, you're out for a high score."

"I'll settle for a two," Jeff said, "which, I guess, would make a threesome, you know, if I could bring Chucky to your house, sometime."

"That would be an unholy one, for sure," Ben said, "but I give the priest class wide berth on numerous other issues, so one more, or two more, if that's how it works out, shouldn't matter."

"Have you had other boys over?" Jeff asked.

"I'm a deep cover predator," Ben said, "so the answer is not for two years, and only two others since I moved here, which is when my parents had the house, six years ago."

"Thus the low tournament scores," Jeff observed.

"Another way to put it," the player said, "is that you are the pick of a very big litter of some pretty cute pups, and, if it hadn't rained, I would have made every effort to become at least regular friends. And no, none of the others on the team, or at school, or on tour, or anywhere have any special relationship with me; no others, period, at this point, and, in point of fact, I'm homing in on a half-way decent chick.

"You are a friend, amigo, not a dish on the side, savvy?"

"As long as it remains unholy," the boy said.

"There's a good little boy," the man responded, "going and making me feel all warm and fuzzy about myself for being smart enough to hang out with you."

"Warm and fuzzy was how I felt before it started to rain," Jeff said, "but that feeling's all gone away. I can hardly even remember it."

"If I touch you inside your underpants, maybe the feeling you have now will go away, too," Ben whispered, "like the feeling half-way up the upside of the roller coaster."

"I think I'm more than half way," the boy said.

"Have you started jerking off?" Ben quizzed.

"I don't know how, yet," the boy whispered in reply, "that's why I haven't invited Chucky over, because all the other boys seem to know what it is, and I don't, so it would be really embarrassing,"

"How `bout at night?" the quizzing went on, "has anything happened while you were sleeping?"

"Sometimes," the boy said, reddening.

"How recently?" Ben asked.

"A week, I guess," Jeff said.

"The reason I asked," the man explained, "is that you're probably really extra ready to go all the way, so, if we want it to last at least a little longer, we should sit down and keep our hands to ourselves for a little while."

"Okay," Jeff agreed.

"Do you think you can handle being naked?" Ben asked, "or should we wait?"

"I think so," the boy murmured, pulling down his underpants, then standing in front of Ben, his mature penis jutting hugely from his slim, boyish waist. The tall, athletic adult also stripped, and the two stood a foot apart, gazing down at each other, then sat, Jeff on the left, side-by-side on the log bench, legs spread, knees touching.

"Don't they call jerking off masturbating?" the boy asked.

"Yes," the young man said.

"Who taught you?" the child asked.

"A little boy I was baby-sitting for," Ben said. "I was your age, thirteen, and he was eight, but he'd gone to a progressive daycare center after school, so he knew how to do it with older boys."

"Did he like it?" Jeff wondered.

"More than fudge with frosting," Ben said, "he was in attack mode from the time his parents' car left the driveway. In half an hour he was out of his GI Joe suit and in the tub, with me in a facemask doing underwater recon to see if I could find anything I could bring back to the squad in the way of food, and that after cautioning me not to get overexcited because things look one-third bigger underwater."

"I think I would have gotten overexcited spanking him," Jeff remarked.

"He was cute enough for it," the young man agreed, "but when I reported back that there wasn't enough in the lake to feed an army, he took me prisoner, so the shoe was on the other foot, discipline-wise."

"Did you baby-sit for him a lot?" Jeff asked.

"Constantly," the golfer replied, "we made our end run by reading aloud to each other, and he improved so rapidly his mother didn't ask and we didn't tell. In fact, I half moved in with them, so once in awhile we got to spend the whole night together."

"I don't think I'd like that," Jeff said. "I mean, maybe once, with Chucky, but somehow sleeping together for a whole night with a guy just isn't my thing."

"Three times was enough, even with an eight year old," the older male expounded, "and one of us would usually end up on an air mattress on the floor for part of the night, after the first night."

"Can it happen again and again?" the boy wanted to know.

I'm beginning to be tempted by the million word novel. Has it ever been done? I suppose the Waverly novels run to a higher number, but many serials do. Is this a serial? In my opinion, a few stitches here and there hold it together, allowing as how it's such finely woven cloth. If I was hooked up to the Net I'd try finding out how many words there are in "And Ladies of the Club". At a thousand pages, it would be something like half a million words, so I don't think it's a contender. I don't believe such a book could be printed. Even with the smallest type, it would be something you'd need a strap for, and it would have to be bound with some kind of NASA adhesive. I'm put in mind of one of my all-time heroes, the Japanese man who learned pi to forty-thousand places to the right of the decimal. A connected million-word novel might, by at least a generous soul here and there, be considered an equal achievement. What would be a bit of fun would be reversing it. See if my Japanese hero could write even a chapter of a reasonably good novel, and if I could learn pi to twenty places in a year. Let's hear it for the human mind. The creative versus the rote. To what degree are they mutually exclusive? To what degree to they help or hinder each other. Does the furious note taker ever have time to think? Can the brilliant dreamer conform to the meticulous craft of laying down all-but perfect prose? Can either handle the eighteen-hour workdays? And where does suffering come in? If my forty-thousand digit counterpart was dumped by his beloved, could his prodigious mental energy be suddenly refocused. If I'd had less than hell's own hound bitch as a mother, might I not be working on pi, myself? If Nabakov is any example, and I think he's far more than that, then suffering and art can be proven conclusively, for he was all but executed, then spent years in Siberia, all on top of a father murdered by his own peasants, who went free because they were essential to the estate. Of course, sensitivity plays a rule. Dickens was able to experience all the miseries of lowest London life in the course of gluing a few hundred labels on a few hundred jars. My own time on the rack was interrupted by four years of marriage, but otherwise extends half a century, though considerably relieved by both Jose and Steven, a private income, and somehow shambling to the forefront of all artists, probably more a result of luck and survival than either talent or diligence.

First interloper vis a vee Samantha. She let slip that some guy from the States bought her a keyboard she's been begging me for. About time for the subplot. The fact she mentioned it at all, is evidence in her favor, but I'm still skeptical. The rules are simple. She is allowed one boyfriend of suitable age and background, including sex, as long as she's here much of the time. Any relationship with an older man, and she's out. Let him support her and her family. I hope throwing her brother and his girlfriend out sunk in, because she's going to be an awful sad kiddo if she finds her wolf bites as well as barks. Of course, there's the odd chance she can hook up with someone with deeper pockets than mine, but for how long and under what circumstances? She has a certain personality that I happen to love and respond to, but she's far from being the generally cheery and effervescent type most men favor. While she lacks sullenness, she can be very unresponsive for long periods of time. For a writer, that's freaking perfect, and, when she finally brightens, it's like the sun coming out and it's time to play. Her mother was an excellent prostitute and parlayed hanging around certain clubs into long-term relationships with several men. I don't think Samantha has that option, because, while she's not sour, rude, or rebellious, she is stoic, and men don't pay for stoic. So, she gets the riot act tomorrow, and a cold-eyed reminder that I can ferry myself out to the western border and for a thousand dollars, one fifty-fifth of my income, ferry back a Hispanic cutie as young as eleven or twelve. The morality and decency laws here cover only black girls, Latinas are on their own. Half the town must know Jose Schmose is raping little Karen, and he's still carting her around in the gas truck during school hours.

In any event, all bets are off until the new year and my next quarterly lump sum, so there's plenty of time to set the warning lamps and flags and trying to prevent the wreck, rather than surviving it. There's also the specter of her little-girl cuteness fading over time, leaving me wanting a more mature and articulate companion. The literature on child brides, so to speak, on Nifty and other alternative archives strongly indicate the new does not wear off, and I've know Samantha eight and a half years, so I tend to be cautiously optimistic, and, anyway, Anne was all ministers and vows and affection and love until our last hour together, then jumped pretty much as my back was turned, so it can get a little dog-eat-dog when it comes to romantic issues. Fortunately, all's fair in art, so I get my million-word novel, just keep it up girl, and she gets the man who bought her a toy keyboard, and all the joy and pleasure he has to offer. It matters little to my readers of 2050, and they're the only ones who matter to me. To violate my own strictures on being rude and crude, something I have zero tolerance for in others, I either lick her pussy, or lick my chops over the next one, knowing there are at least a few nice, young girls out there who would be thrilled to live on a good income in a beautiful home, with a quiet, sober guy. Even my wife didn't find me boring, and that's a plus, too.

I think I like the five and five life. Five hours of domestic nonsense, and five-thousand words. It's troublesome to lope along and nearly double world-record pace, but I find many things about so much talent so well disciplined to be taxing. How freaking come? Why don't other writers get at least some? I have not yet been able to read an entire issue of "The New York Review of Books",. I try, but after a few columns end up feeling so godlike it's downright embarrassing. The writers, or, typists for dollars, and their articles, seem variants of the hideous cartoonist with his endless eyewear, set pieces cranked out to a Jew's harp. The quality of their work is not as high as might be found in a magazine devoted to bicycling. The same names, Buckley, Updike, Wills, and others going back forty or fifty years, like Mailer, or foreign cogitations compiled from hell's own dictionary, as I think I've said before, dominate. In the latest issue there's a near as fire to a volcano endless piece on an obscure socialist whom the Ivy League can't hire because he killed so many people even Italy finally jailed him. Big hair, there's the reason. Rendering New York, David, to my wary Goliath, is literary fun, itself. How small their stones, how predictable their path, how slow their flight, one might almost call it ponderous; how absolutely gigantic my cannon, how finely etched the crosshairs on the optical sight, how juicy the target, how rhetorical all the questions, because I've already laid in my first salvos. See, in bombardment, the big cannons in back fire first, then the medium howitzers, in the middle, and, finally, the smaller guns up front. All the shells land within seconds of each other. Even though the big guns are a long way off, I prefer the optical sight in hopes of seeing their expressions on seeing the incoming shell, childish, but play in the land of writers is not your Sunday stroll in the park, and if the Jews had the original David, I reserve the right to maintain a youthful approach, too. Now I've become a hide nailer, pinning myself to the wall as both halves of history's most scheming duel. If it weren't all so silly, in the first place, what chance would I have, and if we all laughed as loud as we should at the silliest among us, why, we'd have a Krystal Nicht without a stone being thrown, eh, David? (The biblical dude, not David, my long-suffering editor, who's certainly the most tolerant of his breed running around loose, but who still gets the heebie jeebies when I get all peevish and opinionated about the abrogation of the separation of splinter groups, especially religious ones, having undo influence, as penned on the founding parchments: "Church and state". Luckily for them, I don't proof read all that well, and let stand the rare convoluted sentence, so they'll have my own stones to use against me, and, since they like to put things like `festive occasions' into neat little socialistic boxes, sub-humans that they are, they're very likely, in view of their overweening general stupidity, to overlook the happy little fact that I'm massively read all over the world, without their say-so. For the umpteenth time in history, at the umpteenth place, they are bringing misery, wrack, and ruin raining down all about them. The crucial, life-and-death difference, is that our intricately woven, agrictultue-included technocracy can't stand it. )

I guess Samantha's put me in a bad mood. In her own way, she's the classic addlepated female, ditzy to the bone; the child one can lead from the fairground with a stick of pink cotton candy. She almost undoubtedly would have sex with someone who just took it, and not only that, but participate more or less willingly depending on, a, how much money was involved, and, b, how attractive the suitor was. This has its intriguing side, because what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so, a, we might swing a little, or, b, I'd be free to act out some of my wolf fantasies on my own. The northern cayes are tourist-chic rich, and in January, I'll be a little rich, myself. Since I get more of a kick out of Daisy's kids than most boys get from most toys, I'd prefer the pregnant island girl scenarios, but Plan B would sure come in handy if it turns out I'm in for two hundred more days, or a major part thereof, at five-thousand words a day. Of course, if my pre-marital hunting skills have not atrophied, it could climb back to ten thousand, and that would leave the summer free for "The Last Farewell", my next novel, setting to coincide with the Roger Whitaker ballad of the same name.

I should outline this a little more thoroughly. Plan A is Samantha as true blue, and we have kids starting when she's eighteen, with herself and them getting the million when I buy the farm. Plan B would be that we include local friends, Rhageedha, Randy, Clarence, Daryl, and perhaps one or two others in a discreet swinging situation, with much of Plan A left intact. Plan C is that Samantha spends time alone with other older men, freeing me to try the western boarder, the northern cayes, or even moving back to Mexico, where the banos vapor are pretty ubiquitous. Plan D would to be to head back to the States and find a funky Arkansas trailer park to see if readers might be interested in the results of a Corvette and thirty-two inch waist. In the meantime, I've done seven-thousand words today, and I think that's quite enough.

Almost no words, today, Sunday. Cute thing stayed for six hours. Cute? She was wearing a red silk next to nothing with a red bandana print blouse. Her body hints tantalizing of the absolutely sensational. Queenie is classic, long-legged, long-necked perfection, while Samantha manages to hint, as I said, at something more, and it happens to be exactly, and I mean exactly, what Michaelangelo found in his "Venus de Milo." I think she's within one percent, with the rest being guesswork, because I have yet to see her naked. Panties all the way off, for the second time, which leaves me wondering. If I were younger, would I have taken her boy now? At fifty-six one does not run into problems, quite the opposite, one becomes three or four times the lover of a teen's wildest dreams, while, at the same time, becoming less ready less fast, or something like that. I think not. I think, rather, the reason she strips is she knows I won't be all over her and that she can experiment, safely. I have to laugh at my ha'buddy, Tom Cruise. I was inside Anne, a virgin, cumming without a condom, in the early morning of our third date, when she wouldn't let him touch her, at least so she said (without my asking), for weeks as she played out her wounded-wife scenario. I was an unemployed scribble bum, he at the bar. And now, unless he's one very lucky counselor, she's an interest-free matron, and he's stuck, stuck, stuck, while Samantha invents a dizzying new world just by making out. The contrast is almost cartoon-like, and the release and relief from loyalty so profound it's akin to a childlike intellect being reborn to the cult of religion.

The boys are in the living room, counting each other's teeth, making me feel great about my chronically impoverished state due to school fees, books, shoes, uniforms, donations, contributions, and offerings, to delineate half the iceberg. My sister had, I suppose, some hundred or more boarders at her house in New Hampshire, and now lives alone, having befriended none of them. After fifteen tenants, I was beginning to wonder, so it's nice to have a happily settled group. I get along well with excellent people, and Daisy's crew is the nicest I've ever met, which is going some, because I hung out with some great kids in Mexico. They're my IRA, yet something more than something in the bank. Samantha took Elston and Tonton gobuyinshop with her this morning, and if I were a real literary god, instead of an ego-blown fake, I could sketch what went on in their minds as they tagged along with Miss Red Silk Dress. No place for an adult, I have a feeling.

I haven't cross examined Samantha on Banks, the keyboard guy. I think Maugham wrote "The Razor's Edge", and that's a good description of what it's like trying to protect the girl from herself, while neutralizing my own interest. I think I do it as well as I seem to do everything these days, so, for the moment I'll let the sleeping dog lie. It's easy to lose a partner by being lackadaisical, or drive one away by acting possessive or demanding, or spoil a relationship by having it become a relationship and thinking too much (a la Anne) about that which should be natural, ongoing, and spontaneous. Add the father/daughter aspect, the incalculable difference in birth and breeding, and the race card, and Maugham, it turns out, didn't know from razors. Yet she is so far from going native. I've lived here over ten years, probably know four or five dozen girls, and none of them has tweaked the slightest interest, save Rhageedha, and even that's a case of her being predatory, rather than the other way around.

Every time I go to the kitchen, I remind myself to write a paragraph on color. We have a catch-as-catch-can assortment of volunteer (in the arboreal sense) plastic dishes, no earth tones. Is light, fluorescent green more hideous next to purple or blue? Can yellow and pink really be as horrible as they look? It reminds me of Santa Fe. When we first moved into our adobe on East DeVargas Street, every room was painted a different -- loud -- color. It took twenty gallons of white to change it, but when the sisters who owned it had a look, they walked around in a trance for half an hour (another example of Tom Cruise falling for my bait, not her's). New Mexico is very monochromatic, although the rabbit bush is often among the most beautiful color to be seen in nature, (along with the indescribable blues of the Gulf Stream), and so the residents overcompensate with bright this and gaudy that, like children, bringing us, in the indubitable style that thrills writer and reader alike, to the ugliest color on earth, which is the robins' egg blue of Seinfeld's Porsche. Oddly, the same color looks fabulous in a well-kept swimming pool. That reminds me of a joke from the Eighties, in fact, '87, the year of the five-hundred point crash. "They're not Yuppies, anymore, they're Puppies (Previously Upwardly-mobile Urban Professionals). What's the difference between a Puppie and a pigeon? A pigeon can still make a deposit on a Porsche." Awkward to end with an off-colored joke, but writing never is a walk in the park.

"If you're in love," Ben said, "then it can go on all night, just as you said, again and again, and, after a few hours of sleep, again."

"Is it fun to wake up together?" the curious one asked.

"No," Jeff said, "not beyond having sex. Maybe it's what you say to each other when you first wake up that distinguishes gay from straight. Gay guys probably do like to laugh and tickle and fool around as they're getting up, but most guys only want to do that with a female, you know, baby talk and pillow dramatics, however much they might like taking a boy to bed for an hour or two."

"So Chucky and I would each have our own bed, if we could stay over?" Jeff asked.

"Your own rooms, with locks on the door, and every permission to brood over fags, creeps, pervs, and abnormal psychology, in isolation, if the mood strikes you."

"If I get depressed or confused, I think about liberals," Jeff said, "then everything else takes on an aura of sanity."

"Tyne Daley works for me," Ben responded. Both males winced and lost a few strokes, learning, in the process, a taboo of excess particular to their budding relationship. (One day I may learn it too, but, in the meantime, why Clint pulled her from behind that bazooka is the principal mystery of my life.)

"Does Chucky have a sister?" Ben asked.

"Doris. She's eight," the boy replied.

"If you have a relationship with him," Ben said, "she might be a factor."

"I hadn't thought about that," the boy responded.

"Just be very careful," Ben advised, "kid sisters love to spy and tattle, in some cases, in others, they become willing partners, both with their older brothers and his special friends."

"Could she be with an adult?" the boy asked.

"If she's normal size, yes," the man said, "as long as she likes him, and no demands, vis a vee romance and dating, are involved. Time is what it is to a child, where adults like to plan and commit. These aspects can throw a juvenile lover out of kilter and mix up priorities before they're properly formed. Pretty Polly should not dwell, positively or negatively, on Meddlesome Mack, but if they associate spontaneously, the free part of Free Spirit may be exploited, no harm, no foul.

"The down side of underage sex is somewhat like the downside of marijuana, " the young man went on. "With pot, it's the cost, not the drug; with childhood sex, it's the time and mental resources diverted from important activities that are usually the problems, not the physical act. If there were cheap pot, there'd be far less problems associated with it, and if a child has an untrammeled relationship, there's no problem. Just the opposite, in fact. If a girl or boy hangs out with a nice, educated older partner, they'll probably come off better than if he or she spent an equal amount of time watching Ricki Lake or MTV. At the same time, there are degenerates who like to hump and haul-ass, so you've got to watch out for those free lunches."

"Too many kooks spoil the schtoop," the little library freak giggled.

"Yeah," the older male said, "and they'll let you have their fake and eat it."

They remained rigidly swollen and hard, Ben, nearly seven inches, uncircumcised, his thick penis ending in heavy purple glans, and the lanky thirteen year old only slightly his junior in size, boyish pink, also uncircumcised, slim, and bent slightly to his left. Banter though they might, slowly they were settling back on the log bench of the shelter, spreading their legs more widely, Ben's left knee over Jeff's opposite number. Both masturbated slowly and hesitantly on the edge of climax, wanting ever more and ever wanting the end. Doing this looks sick, lounging back, legs spread, expressions slack, sweating, panting, hugely erect, hands stroking, not many would want to be captured thus for a portrait, and it is quite an aesthetic oversight, when one thinks about it. Margaret Mead writes of how tiresome it was to visit tribal villages where young boys would masturbate each other with all the reticence of dogs or chickens, so, anthropologically, also, the indulgent come off as losers, at least in the eyes of straight-arrows whose lives are so often so filled with so much utter nothing any brickbat they throw gives them something. For the sake of word-count, let's suppose a quirk of fate has the golf shelter in a remote location, where one healthy male, who, by the same vagaries, happens to be nude, after another, passes by the open side. They pass by, look in, see an athletic young adult and a long-legged, coltish boy, half recumbent, legs widely spread, knees overlapping, hands stroking and fondling huge, uncircumcised erections, slowly pulling back foreskins to show each other their wet glans, the adult's shiny and purple, the child's, dark pink, both obviously ready to ejaculate; how many would shake their heads and walk on, and how many would stop, become immediately and hugely erect, move close, and cum all over the sweating young bodies? You can call it sick if you want, but shake your head, first. I picture Anne's first time with Tom Cruise. I'm reaching Denver on the bus, unless she called him the minute I was outta there, he's over with flowers and whatnot for the date.

"Oh, Tom, they're lovely," she says as they kiss.

"I never can get over your place, darling," he says as they hold hands walking through the big, white adobe with it two-foot thick walls and genuine arches, "from the silly, over-framed poster in the red and white bathroom, to mocking the cliché of the dentist's rubber tree with the nine-foot beauty in back of the couch, and definitely not forgetting the huge set of planters that look like artillery shell casings, only made of brass at the base and exterior stone, and the set of little ceramic houses with mullioned windows, it's better than any gallery in town."

"I'm glad you like it," Anne says, able to add nothing because not only was it my money, it was fifty-thousand miles searching craft fairs from Juarez to Denver.

They adjourn to The Compound where Tom Cruise pays the hundred and forty dollar check with a gold card, then return as my bus passes the Springs.

"Can you stay awhile," she says, a little sleepy from so much lobster, but stringing along is stringing along, and every day brings the possibility of a pretty young client, and a broken string. Not if she can help it.

"Are you sure?" he asks, voice tender, sympathetic, and concerned. The girl has just turned down a life in two tropic houses with a funny, loving guy, she needs the gentle handling of a rich but guilty client. Luckily, he's twenty-nine years old, so has some experience putting the practice of handling people to numerous tests, so he just adds: "I don't have to Anne, I love you, it can be some other time."

"Stay," she whispers, tear in her eyes from the strain of finding enough wrong in our marriage to justify even a fit of anger, much less a death sentence for our children, but this is the time and place for discreet weeping, who knows how he'll take it? so the tears flow. He cuddles her, licking them gently away, and, arms around each other, she leads him to the couch in front of the huge, perfect tree in its twenty-gallon Chinese basket. The television remains off as she turns out the lamps and lights a candle purchased on the way home from dropping me at the bus station, in a ceramic house the size of a shoe box. They are able to admire the realistic artwork, bonding, plus, it makes an excuse to leave the room all-but dark. Everything set and adjusted, the slim dancer settles on the couch, the new man on her left. They nuzzle and kiss affectionately, lobster, wine, and peeping candle a string trio playing soft and low. She touches his face and he hers. Her hands go to his tie and she becomes charmingly wifely as she loosens the knot and places over the sports jacket on the back of the couch, then returns for the collar button. "You're sure," he again whispers softly, reassuringly. Why he should be sure of anything, allowing for the stringent combination of performance and perfection required of him, year in and year out, is a mystery, but her teen breasts are now inches away, so that might be the solution. "Shh," she whispers, now on the second button.

"We can wait until we're married," he reminds her, goodest of good guys, which he'll have to remain, forever.

"Shh," she repeats, to his groan of, "Oh, Anne."

Third button.

"Were you and Tom Emerson ever close before you were married?" he asks, his voice soft and confidential..

"That's private," she says, perhaps a little quicker at the next button.

"Were you a virgin with him?" her age mate says. He feels a twinge of discomfiture, but her first husband has been with her for four years, has only been gone from a visit for a few hours, it's frustrating having him dead as a doornail.

"Don't," she says, gently as a mother to a sick child or a private nurse to a wealthy patient.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, "it's just that I love you so much I can't help being curious."

Other girls would scheme: hmm, a little verbal voyeurism, it might turn him on, set another hook, but she's given up a brilliant career as an artist as well as an attractive, rich, sexy husband; might have to support herself for years, rather than living in two houses in the Caribbean, not a situation in which a prudent girl takes chances. And the truth was not likely to help after weeks of touch-free dates, that she'd showered with her first husband on their second date, swollen and arched to his strong touch from behind, and held and hugged closer for the experience, then, at seven the next morning, spread her legs wide and arched her bottom as he entered her Brookline bedroom and stripped. She didn't even ask about protection, but took him hot, wet, and immediately. He thrust slowly, twice, then entered her to the hilt as her arms went around him and she bucked hard and fast against him. Though he'd always be with her at least half an hour in the future often as not, longer, she had the wildness of a virgin in love, and in less than twenty minutes he was straining over her, letting her have her own long, personal, special orgasm as he restrained mightily, then, the minute she'd recovered, and I do mean minute, let his sperm gush into her, sustained by her gurgles of happy welcome. In verbal voyeurism, there can be many a slip between cup and lip, so Anne was wise to claim the dignity of privacy and hold her tongue. Of course, avid, long-term readers will know she didn't hold her tongue, her kiss to me, at the Greyhound station, as I leaned through the window of her brand new car for a peck on the cheek, said she wouldn't be holding it, which is why a consenting, unrelated-adult story is here in the first place.

"It's okay," she says, the formal repartee of dating melting into the sympathetic cadences of lovers, "he's gone, and there are things we can do together that I never did with him, so we'll have our privacy, too."

"Oh, yes, darling," he whispers, his eyes finally leaving the beautiful little glowing ceramic house, to find hers. She finishes his buttons with a shy smile, and leads his hands to her own girlish chest. They nuzzle and kiss as he unbuttons her, taking a moment, lips securely together, to remove both their tops and place them over the back of the sofa. He then breaks the kiss to look down at her breasts, swollen and urgent against her wispy bra. Her kiss to me had urgency in it, and Tom Cruise is the beneficiary. As he touches her neck and shoulders, her hands go to the waist of his slacks. The buckle undone, there's a momentary awkwardness as she drops to her knees for his right shoe and sock, the latter most important, while he strips his left foot. In a minute he's openly fondling her as she finishes with his belt and zipper. Now she becomes girlish, bending to him and retracting her shoulders. He unsnaps the same cloth I used to, letting the straps fall from her shoulders. She cups herself modestly with her hands, then rises, dropping the bra. Her breasts are pretty as a child's, and he murmurs softly as he finds them with his fingers, fondles her, and closes to her for a long, tender kiss.

Her hands separate his trouser flaps and he lifts so she can slide then down over his bare feet. Here we run into a problem. I never met the guy, have never seen him in a picture; for all I know, we'd be amigos from day one, all things being equal, so I have no reason to be prejudicial. While I arbitrarily rejected divorcees without a damn good reason, as anything more than casual dates, he had different standards and the training to execute on those suitable to the moment, so there's probably some basis for antipathy if our paths should ever cross, all of which is an exceedingly long way of saying that nothing prejudicial is intended when I have him on the couch in his underwear, it's just that I've been with a hundred adult males in different situations, and watched some hundred or so more have sex, and I've never seen another male any bigger than I am, and most are notably smaller. As you can tell, I'm exercising massive skill and experience in being discreet and gentlemanly here, but there are limits, and I reach one when I attempt articulating Anne's response to the bulge in Tom Cruise's shorts. Let's, to keep the story moving, say he's average, where I'm not, that there's a bulge over his briefs (as well as inside them), which would be average. Again, I wasn't then, and am not, now. Let's picture as somewhat hairy. I'm not. Let's be fair, and paint his shorts as spotless, which mine probably weren't always.

His hips are back on the sofa as Anne brushes aside his slacks. She would have had a problem in my day, because here hair was like a girl's, half way down her back, but she doesn't now, because she's wearing primps and curls. She exposes him, his five inch penis hard as a little boy's, and, sliding him forward on the sofa, and spreading his legs even more widely then he's spread them, the looks into his eyes, then bends to him, her tongue extended, her lips pursed.

"Oh, Anne," the twenty nine year old moans, "you don't have to, baby." She smiles graciously, and bends again to him as lolls back in the seat, face slack, sweating, panting, and raising his hips to my wife. She finds him fully and takes him deeply, using the muscles of her throat to massage his blistering, purple glans. His hands find her crinkly hair, where mine would have tendrilled soft, luxurious silk, but he can see everything. She becomes comfortable, her elbow's on his quaking thighs, her hands on him with her mouth, and settles to her privacy with him, her hands working beautifully, and this I do know because she was mad at me one night and jerked me off in two minutes, flat, many happy boyfriends undoubtedly in her past, her head bobbing and tongue clenching his achingly swollen glans to the roof of her hot, wet mouth and sliding sensually against him. Nor his it just her head that's bobbing, her mind is weaving too. "Hmm," she thinks to herself, then articulates, to Tom's grunt, "he likes to quiz me about Tom Emerson, let me think." Tom's fingers are gentle in her hair, he coaxes her sweetly, she calculates perfectly, and slowly, tenderly breaks off, rising over his half reclining body to kiss him, his own scent an aphrodisiac to them both. "I never did it with Tom," she says, "but I did with a boyfriend in Albuquerque, a big, rangy, redheaded guy. Do you want me to tell you about that?"

"Oh, darling," he whispers into her mouth, as her hands continue to fondle him, holding him with her left, and sensitive with his tip with her right.. She takes it for a yes.

"He was almost too tall to get into the police academy," she whispers to him, "we dated four or five times. He drank too much to be serious about, but I had a big crush on him, some girls never grow up, and I wanted to stay a virgin until I was married, so I invited him into my apartment one night."

"Did you make out?" Tom whispered, knowing he was being impetuous, but he'd seen a client or two dig him or herself out of a trap in his career, so he was bolder than the next guy might have been.

"We talked," Anne responded, her voice sympathetic, "but he was special to me, like a dog might be, and he was very attractive, and we'd had wine, and I said I wouldn't marry him, but that he was worth pleasing, and there was something I'd never done while I dated, and I'd like to do it with him, in the bedroom. He agreed. I told him to go in and strip and lie back on the bed. He did. I took my blouse and skirt off in the living room and went into him in my bra and panties. "We can do this every few days until I move to Boston, but then it's over," she said softly, taking off her bra and letting him see her teenage breast for the first time. She knelt between his legs, bare chested and sloe eyed, and bent to his hard, circumcised penis, flat against the trail of reddish hair leading to his tiny navel. "Sorry," she whispered, rising back to her feet, and retrieving a comb from her bureau; quickly clasping her flowing mane of brown hair. She quickly returned, taking him low with her left hand, and high with her right, stroking him beautifully. "Don't cum in my mouth, I want to watch you and see your sperm on my right breast, like I did with my first steady boyfriend." "Yes," the male replied. "Be sure and tell me," she reminded him, now bending over as he spread his legs, ankles over the sides of the apartment size bed, and arched to her. The used him a little awkwardly at first, but quickly learned to protect his sensitive, swollen glans with her darting tongue, so she could be deep and hard and fast with him. His hands caressed her, then he arched, lacing his fingers behind his neck to feast on the sight of her bobbing face, his five-inch penis disappearing almost fully into her mouth. She stayed with him minute after minute, and became more avid as he began to tense dramatically, finally becoming wanton and open in response to his riding tidal wave of hot sperm. "Oh, please, Anne," he mewed. She let him go for a moment, he was a nice guy, if she were going to stay, who knew, a nice drunk might be a better bet than some wanna-be arteest or philandering doctor, so who knew? "I'm sorry," she whispered, stroking him hard and fast, holding him against her right breast as his hips froze and he held his breath, tensing with a final agonized groan, than ejaculated hotly and heavily against her chest, spraying her shoulders and face with his release, and sagging like a rag doll as her hands milked him, becoming slick with the final gouts of his pouring semen. "I'm, sorry," she repeated, "but I was brought up in the church and good girls do certain things only with their husbands."

"It's okay," the strapping redhead signed, "you look beautiful."

"Oh, baby," Tom Cruise sighed, obviously tensing for his last time. Anne lowered again to him, now holding him low and hard, her mouth half-open as she swirled her tongue fast and hard against his manly, swollen tip. "I', cumming, darling," Tom Cruise whispered, and moments later his first gush of hot salt filled her mouth, sheeting of her lower lip and spilling to his soft, hairy belly. He spurt again with an agonized grunt, his knuckles white as the clasped her head, then in a fast, hard frenzy, again and again, as his gushing sperm sheeted in tendrils and globs from her lower lip, covering his sweating belly. "We can rinse these and they'll be dry in the morning [New Mexico has low humidity] she said, retrieving his briefs and wiping him carefully. "Now take me into the bedroom and get me pregnant." As the couple left the living room, she dropped to her knees by a table and blew out the candle in the sweet little toy house.

My first time with Samantha has to be a lot more dramatic than this. Knowing her as child and girl for over eight years is part of it, and her vitality and halting aggression help, too. If you were in love with a young girl, and gave her a dollar, choose from the following list that which you'd want her to buy with it. A) Candy. B) Berets. C) Marbles. D) Firecrackers. Samantha calls them pot shots, while the other kids refer to them as pop shots or fire rickets. She has her own words for a number of things, and is not above clobbering me over the head with a little lightning-fast Garafuna, as if her lively, inventive Creole needed any spicing up. Kissing her is so remarkable and extraordinary, half an hour lasts two weeks, easy. I forebear here, abide, and live in wonder than she wants to kiss, sexually, at all. I've met precious few women in their forties, never mind fifties, I'd want to make out with, though they might be attractive enough for sex, so its something I leave entirely up to her. I've been with the odd twenty or thirty prostitutes, and only two of them, both very young, wanted to kiss. On the other hand, there's Rhageedha, who was aggressive, passionate, and superb for at least ten minutes, and Randy, likewise, so perhaps I am being cheated a tiny bit. She's wonderfully open on other age matters. She, from time to time, calls me Grandpa, and says I look, a, old, b, dead, and, c, like a ghost, which gets her into fights with Elston over the difference between ghost and spirit. Fortunately, these comments tend to come at the end of ten-thousand word marathons, when, after twenty or more hours, I probably do look a little bleary and frayed around the edges, my trade not being a walk in the park. She cuddles happily, and locks the door, herself, for a private half hour together. Sunday, she lay sleeping on her back for hours, then suddenly attacked moments before Queenie knocked on the screen door. On writing this, I can't help wondering if she'd heard Louise's footstep coming up the outside staircase. Suspicious mind. In any event, cuddling with her in her red silk, with her beautifully sculpted belly curving into her silky thighs, was good enough for the daylight hours, before and after ten minutes of having her panties all the way off and her smooth calves urging me to her bucking loins. I do wonder if, when we showered together at White Pond, in Concord, if I'd gently pushed down on Anne's naked shoulders, she would have dropped to her knees while I turned off the water and braced against the stall. I guess the other Tom knows better than I do. She could have guided me, the same way, but didn't. Maybe that's what both of us were making up for at seven the next morning, and why her three roommates, and boyfriends, were all tittering around the place for hours and she grinned and blushed. By that time, it was too late, being inside her was vital, hot, and always totally satisfying, even the one time I didn't quite cum before she started getting sore. In four years I never experienced any urge to do anything but hold her, kiss her, and cum before she tired or became uncomfortable.

I think I've discovered what may be the ultimate literary device. You know how they tell you in writing articles and seminars that's a novel is meant to be centered around the resolution of a conflict, right? I've cheated on this, putting the reader in fear of his own survival, then typing away. This is probably a cheat, too, but I like it so much I'm going to use it. The core conflict becomes the one-millionth word. We passed that number of characters, some pages back, so that would indicate we're a little under a fifth of the way down our path together. In my career, I've read, out of three thousand, some hundred or more books that I wished would never end, just go on and on, so delightful and friendly were they, so informative, so just plaint, old-fashioned, readable. You're too fat and messed up to warrant friendly, but the challenge is still there, binding us and bonding us in a plot that thickens, if just by the smallest amount, with each of the new words set clearly on its line and properly in its place.

It would be easy to overplay to meet the challenge. For example, an hour ago I was sitting at the little table in the living room, having a cup of tea, when I witnessed Queenie putting the tortilla dough back in the refrigerator. If I start off on tangents like that, next thing you know I'll be bragging, once again, about how successful my new `ice bottle' scheme is, not only at assuring plenty of the cold crystal, but at getting the girl and the three boys to bring back the empties, so they can be filled and re-frozen. That this has spilled over into their returning almost all our humble collection of bright, plastic dishes, and forks and spoons, and cups, is surely more than the average reader wants to know, unless they happen to have kids and are looking for a good training device that has the somewhat odd side benefit of supplying large amounts of frozen water.

Someone called me a stupid idiot from the street last night. The five, and I count them as six, went into about the fourth frenzy of the evening, so I ran them off cussing and stomping. The street to the east is blocked by a palm Andrew is meant to trim before it invades the entire front porch, so I didn't see what the dogs were barking at. Out from behind the huge frond comes Miss American, being led by two shepherds. She says, "They're barking at me, you stupid idiot." My mind works so fast at such occasions I'm able to phrase my retort, and then decide against uttering it, for the sake of, ironically, peace in the neighborhood. However, I can write it: "Sorry, I didn't know they were yapping at a bitch." I also refrained from pointing out that I was a hundred and eighty thousand words into an intensely difficult novel, and was being downloaded at the rate of thirty or forty thousand files a week, which might have made her feel stupid. Grace under pressure is not my normal mien, I'm short tempered and foul-mouthed, the message: "Get out of my face, so I can get back to work," but this was a transient situation, so I put a lid on it and allowed as to how bright she was (I meant at inciting dogs to pack behavior, never a good idea in a neighborhood full of tiny kids, but didn't bother explaining, just went back to work, no Sabbath for the godless)

Jay's always teasing Kevin Eubanks about stories from the hood, so I hope I can get away with one or two along the way. After all, it's a rainy day on the golf course, and David Niven, in admitting homosexual activities during his school years, described them as mostly boring. Mario was the most beautiful boy, or person, I was ever with, and he was boring, even after several anticipatory weeks when I'd pass his house and he'd wave and call out. This was in Torreon. One day he was washing a car, bare chested, and stopped me on the sidewalk with his hose. I was very much in love with Jose, and affair running, by this time, to over three years, but, yes, I stopped. Like Laura, in Santa Fe, at about the fifth or sixth approach, my character flawed, and we spoke with Mario inviting himself up as fast and slick as it could be done, considering the language barrier, say, half a minute. He came by that evening after the landlord had closed his shop and gone home. He sat on my left on the bed. We talked and watched television for a few minutes, then he lay back. He looked eleven, white as an Irish boy, soft-skinned and exquisitely, perfectly formed. I lay back on my left side beside him, and, looking down, pulled his soap spattered knit shirt from his shorts, and began touching him around his tiny belly button. He raced ahead, kicking off his sneakers, then stripping off his shirt and shorts. He had just the faintest growth of pubic hair, so blond I could feel it with the fingers of my right hand, more than see it, as I slowly pulled down his clean, white underpants. He brought his hips up for me, and I got him naked, then stood and stripped as he watched. He spread his legs and pumped hard, whimpering. I lay naked against his now sweating and panting thirteen year old body, holding him under his shoulders with my left arm and molesting him openly with my right hand. He moaned and humped much too fast, getting half-hard when I was able to meet his rhythm for a few seconds, then going almost limp, uncircumcised and four boyish inches, while asking if I had any porno moves and if I'd suck him. He then stood in front of me, spread his legs wide, and laced his fingers behind his neck, arching his quarter-erect penis to me. I tried again to masturbate him, because avoiding disease has to be a specialty of embryonic writers, but it only seemed to made him more flaccid and cold. He made hustler efforts with me, but by that time, I was fully turned off, so I dressed him and gave him some money, which surprised him. He returned twice, but both times he was off like a greyhound, and I couldn't have hot, noisy sex with him in an assistencia. We stayed friends, but one thing was for sure, Jose had nothing to worry about. And, yes, I told him about it, as he told me of a small number of other partners who came his way, especially, smiling shyly, when he acknowledged to me that he'd taken the semen of an adult friend in his mouth.. We weren't a heavy kissing couple, but that one lasted ten minutes. I never came in his mouth, because having him masturbate me into the bathroom sink, his hand wet with soapy water, sometimes mixed with his sperm, was, I damn well knew, as much sex as I could survive. With one exception, he was the only male I sucked in something like five years, although I did jerk off with perhaps a dozen. In fact, my entire list of oral partners, before and since being dumped, runs to Jose, Steven, Andrew and Clarence. I used to watch cute guys in bath houses give that many guys head in a few hours. (Or listen through a cubical door.) It is, always has been, and as far as I know, always will be research, and, if that as an artist, not a scientist, well, my report and findings should still be read, at least for entertainment.

Since a constant theme, whether fiction or not, is age and sexuality, I'll journey back to Torreon for a true kid story. I frequented a banos vapor about twenty blocks from my house. The fellow that ran it, a masseuse in his sixties, was a wary guardian, sometimes sneaking up on the door of the sauna, and popping it open, so the opportunities for sex were almost nil. One afternoon I went in (I liked the exercise of the walk, and it was like a buck for a changing room), and, when I entered the sauna, there was a man in his young thirties with a beautiful little three year old boy in his lap. It was a small facility, so I sat within a foot of them. The child pulled away the towel they'd apparently just pulled over themselves, and sat naked in the man's lap. The man said I had a beautiful body, and then whispered in a stage whisper to the boy, explaining, neither directly to me, or to the child, that he, the child, wasn't fuerte enough to make him, the man, spill leche, aqui (milk, here), pointing to his stomach below his belly button. The man molested the boy for half an hour, very gently so as not to give him an erection, as the child lay back, beaming happily at me. The man was able to tamper with the boy just enough to keep both of us half hard, which was something of an erotic feat, considering how long it went on. Finally, more people joined us, so they pulled the towel over themselves. My ace vision would be if Jose had been with me, and the place had been run by a smart millionaire, rather than a dumb paranoid. How dumb? The three young boys working for him were all highly homosexual. I can't remember how much of all this I may have told elsewhere, and one does not review a million words and keep writing new ones, but, anyway, on another occasion at this house of innocence, just as I turned into the hallway to the changing rooms, I caught a glimpse of the pudgy little boy who worked there, perhaps thirteen or fourteen. He was absolutely huge, a small, soft, round body, with a seven inch erection, so long, it half curved back on itself. In less than a second he disappeared into the pump room, and I caught a glimpse of one of the other boys, a lean, slim, beauty, his head over that of the third boy, probably mounted. Anyway, Jose, who probably wouldn't have been interested, in my fantasy, does. He sits across from me in the small room, his knees touching mine, and removes his towel. I remove mine. The little boy removes his, and now his adult partner is big and hard. The tyke looks at his erection, touches it, then smiles shyly at Jose and I. I lean to my left and take his tiny right hand in mine, then guide him to the adult, providing the fuerte while his fondles the adult and sets the rhythm. Jose stands, spreads his legs wide, and, bracing himself of the upper tier of teak seats, begins masturbating, his big penis quickly becoming harder than when we have sex. I keep helping the child, the man lies back as half my characters seem to be doing of late, and thrusts his hips to the now eager child. For a few moments I slow with the two or three year old, allowing Jose to approach and set is swollen, purple glans on the seminal fluid spilling from the adult, then he spreads himself more widely, hisses esperma, which, I know not if it's the proper Spanish word, and begins spurting his thick, white semen over my hand and the little boys. Three big spurts jet from his sixteen-year-old waist, he does not go on and on, like Andrew, or a boy in a story, but, by now my hand is hot and slipper. The little boy pants: "Leche, leche," and the adult comes fast and hard as Jose is stripping the last drops of sperm from his still hard penis. As it was, I want home, put in my six hours at the typewriter, and tried to remember the non-encounter for future reference. Several other misses, too. He once brought a willowy, almost white friend, Felipe, over. The boy flashed on me in an instant. He was almost as attractive as Mario, and obviously would be a hundred times the lover. Jose wasn't interested in him, so nothing happened. I guess Juan, from a strictly sexual standpoint, although we were great friends, was my most interesting partner, and, again, my apologies if this story appear elsewhere. He was a very typical looking Mexican kid, perhaps five pounds heavy, but otherwise mildly attractive. We met at the bowling alley, where he and his brother, Jesus, were pin boys. Jose and I had been active for months, so these were kids I just hung out with, mostly at the municipal pool, without more than passing thoughts of a prurient nature. Then Juan, by far the most unlikely, started molesting me in the pool, and I don't mean by half. I was working on me first high board, so I'd get up nerve at poolside, before climbing out, or something like that. Juan would home in on me like a torpedo, but his left arm around my neck, and feel me, underwater, with his right, just like a pedophile does with a little boy. He'd bob under water, so he could get both arms around my teen waist, and stay down for a minute. He never quite reached all the way into my trunks, but did touch me several times, just quickly. Since we swam, four to six of us, every day, this became a reoccurring event. I told Jose about it, then invited Juan over, giving the other boys money to go and buy something. He'd been to my apartment numerous times, and, our first time alone together, led me quickly into the bathroom, where we both stripped for the shower. He got in with me and let me wash him to within two or three inches of his soft penis. He didn't want more, so we dried off, and he led me to my bed, where I lay back, still naked, with him, also naked, on my right. At this point, he wouldn't let me touch him other than are arms being pressed together. I began masturbating, and he got a four inch boner, but still gently refused any touching, saying it was for muchachas. I asked if I could cum on his belly, mi esperma en su estomacha, and he nodded. And that's exactly how we had sex twenty or thirty times, always with him stripping as he walked down the hall to the bath. In addition, he continued molesting me from behind in the pool for a total of at least half an hour every day. I think this story is advisory in that it tells us boys know exactly how far they want to go, and love going that far with someone they trust implicitly. A slightly event happened another time. Five very young boys, probably eight to ten, happened over. I was trying to work as they horsed around, then one went and closed and locked the door to the hall, while another got in my lap and pulled off his shirt. I began fondling his bare chest as the other four gather close. After a few minutes, they pulled me to my feet, and led me into the bathroom. We all stripped out of our tee shirts and shorts. The oldest boy stood on the tile divider between the shower and the bathroom, and another boy led me to him. I went down on his thumb size erection, and sucked him gently for four or five minutes, then gathered other naked boys to me, and started molesting them as they took turns masturbating me. The ten year old came off his six inch perch, and joined the others, much to my appreciation, because he had a strong, steady way with his hand. Three times more, I went down on my knees to suck his hard penis, and each time he led me back to his original position, then submitted, his hips thrusting, his hands in my hair. He finally had a hard, yipping cum, leaving a definite salty slickness on the tip of my tongue. I stood against the wall, spreading my legs, and he wet his hand with soapy water and in two minutes made me spray all over the naked boys. They stayed for another hour, then clattered off. Three of them came over a few days later, but showed no interest in repeating what had happened in the bathroom, so we just talked and hung out. As they were leaving, I succumbed, for, I think the only time in my life, depending on how you look at it, and pulled down my shorts. They came back in the bedroom and pulled their down. They were soft, but stood close and pulled their shirts up as I started cuming within ten seconds, then I carefully dried them with a towel before they left. I saw them at the pool after that, but don't recall them visiting except as part of a group.

The fat man story? It was at the same time, and makes a fourth partner for oral sex. I suppose I met him and the banos. He had a beautiful young teen of classic Mexican appearance, and was not at a loss to invite himself and his young partner over. That was interesting; beautiful boy, obese man, perhaps thirty. I said okay, and we went to my apartment. We all stripped without foreplay, and he lay back on my bed. There was a hint of rape to the situation, because he was going to be sucked, and outweighed me by fifty pounds. He was neither attractive nor repulsive, so, after two or three attempts to masturbate him, and the naked boy watched, I finally went down him. Never let your prejudices be your guide, he was hot and fabulous, probably had never been sucked by a cute, naked Anglo before. He panted, and writhed, and suddenly got huge in my mouth. Suddenly I was as hot as he was, partly because the young boy was looking, and became wanton and aggressive with him. After that he lasted a beautiful three or four minutes, then without a whisper or tremor, filled my mouth with hot spurt after spurt of salty sperm. As I swallowed, he lay back, cuddling the boy to him. They started making out while the boy began to masturbate against the man's heavy belly. This went on for five minutes, with me looking on from a foot away, then the boy's hand froze, and he spurt four streaks of crystal white semen on his lover's sweating stomach. I never saw them again, and wouldn't have likely invited them over, if I had.

Cruising in Torreon was a lazy man's venture. My experiences started in all innocence. Beautiful as my place was, I'd get feeling house-bound from time to time and walk the mile into town. The plaza was well lighted, so I decided to take a book and read. Guess again. The first time I hadn't been seated on a bench for five minutes and a cute fourteen year old, who looked about nine, came and sat down beside me. My Spanish was practically nil, but it didn't bother him and he was quickly successful in inviting himself over, not for money, which he made clear. Naked, he looked one stage beyond a toddler, but with ten or fifteen minutes of gentle molestation and masturbation, he hiked his hips and spurted a teaspoon of almost clear seed on his sweating little tummy. Since it was too good to be true, I made rare reappearances at the park, and, I think two or three more times, was literally led home by an eager fourteen year old. I don't recall ever seeing the same boy twice, and was never hustled in any way. I once asked Jose if he wanted to go with me, but, again, it wasn't his thing, so it never happened.

It's really settled in to rain. Golf is out of the question. Eventually they may have to take their soaking and return to the clubhouse, but for now, Jeff and Ben are masturbating very carefully, sharing with an occasional whisper the sensation of their building sperm.

Meantime, there was a girl. Ten. I can almost remember her name, but I'll call her Tina. I was half accosted by her mother at a local restaurant. She spoke perfect English, and introduced herself and her daughter, then settled in to chat. She was starting a knitting business in one of the surrounding pueblos, and was interested in my entrepreneurial experiences, so we talked at length. She'd lived years in Canada, and was interesting particularly because her English, which she'd learned as an adult, was so perfect I could even detect a Canadian accent. We met a number of times. She was after me, with Tina as bait, but she was pasty and overweight, so no dice. There was a rich man she knew, call him Francisco, and she took me over to his house. When we left, Tina stayed. The next day, we picked her up, this time with Jose along. We went to my fanciest restaurant, and had dinner. I've seen flirting before, and I've seen flirting, but Tina coming on to Jose was one for the books. She preened, she teased, she roller her eyes, she winked, she pelted him, gently, with peas; simpered and smoldered. He looked on like a tolerant big brother, which did nothing to ameliorate her predatory behavior. We split up, after the meal, so nothing happened, but this is a fair approximation of what might have. Tina's mother we'll call Maria.

"Tom," Maria said, "I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute." She nodded at the sixteen year old and ten year old, and they went to look at the desert trolley.

"What?" I asked. I like her, but had no interest in anything beyond a casual friendship.

"My wool got stuck Chihuahua," she replied. "I want to take the bus up and collect it, but I don't want to take Tina along. She seems to like you and Jose, so I wondered if she could stay with you."

"Jose usually doesn't spend the night," I replied, "but we can ask him. In any event, she's welcome to stay."

"Thanks," Maria said, "that's a life saver. Trips like this are hectic enough when I do them by myself, and there's no time or money so she can have a good time."

"No problem," I said. "My landlord doesn't allow females, but I've been there for years and I don't think he'll mind. He probably won't even know, and I've got enough money to check her into a hotel, if there's a problem." That settled that. They returned to the table where Maria, in lightning Spanish, informed Jose of the situation. Tina, following every word like a hungry cat, reached across the table and held both our hands. We paid and left, Maria for the bus station, and the two of us with the girl for the movies, because she was fun to be with and it was still early. We shared sweet tamales with her, after the show, then took her home. By this time the landlord had gone home, and we arrived at my apartment undetected.

Jose went in to use the bathroom. I sat beside Tina on one of the beds. "I can leave you guys, at least for a couple of hours, you know, see the nine o'clock show, if you want."

"No," she whispered, "stay." I went down the hall to intercept Jose as he emerged from the toilet. I told him I could go, and even check into a hotel if he wanted, but he just held on to me, making translation or other charades unnecessary. I returned to the bedroom and sat opposite Tina as Jose took my place next to her. She was a slim, pretty Anglo-looking girl with big friendly brown eyes, a sweet laughing mouth, and brown hair in a simple school-girl mop. We talked about the movie, she translating on the fly, and I even got to take advantage of her by asking my male partner some questions that were too complex for our simple dialogues. Eventually, the conversation came to a somewhat tense halt.

"Jose and I slept together on our trip to Mexico City," I said to her, so you can have this bed if you want."

"That's okay," she said, leaning now obviously against the lanky youth. Jose had a face much like Samantha's, a second glance face. She looked up into his eyes, and saw what I did; behind the slightly generous features, and post-acne complexion, a quiet, rare, dazzling, brown-eyed beauty. "Do you have any candles?" she asked.

I did and got a pair, and holders, from the closet. Girlish, she wanted to light them, and I turned out the lights as she placed them on the small table between the beds, returning to nestle against Jose.

I'm a writer now and I was a writer then. "Do you want to talk, or do you just want it to happen?" I asked her in a soft, noncommittal voice.

"My mom says it's okay to tell secrets to the right friends," the ten year old replied. I don't know if Jose was flattered, language barrier, but I was.

"Did Francisco ask you questions, last night?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, nodding perhaps a little shyly.

"Were they really personal?" I quizzed.

"Yes," she said, again, "he asked me about what happened last year in Canada."

"Did you answer?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Did you just answer questions, or did you tell him everything?" I wanted to know.

"I told him about my dad," the girl said.

"Were you sitting in separate chairs, or were you together?" I asked.

"He had me in his lap," the girl replied.

"Did you like that?" I asked. Francisco was heavy, in his fifties, but in good shape and not unattractive.

"I didn't feel like I do with you and Jose," she said, "but he was gentle. It was okay."

"Were you wearing a dress or shorts and a blouse?" Jose asked, speaking slowly so I could follow.

"Mom gave me a bikini to wear for him," she said with a gentle blush.

"How was he dressed?" I asked.

"In a tee shirt and his briefs," she said, adding: "He was nice, he never took them off."

"Did you keep your bra on?" Jose asked, Tina translating the word for the undergarment, then answering.

"No," she said, "when I started telling him about my dad, he undid it in back, and took it off me."

"Did you like him looking at you?" I said.

"Not as much as my dad," she said, softly, "but it was nice. He's really helped mom a lot, and he asked me before he started touching me."

"Did he try to kiss you?" Jose asked.

"No," she said, "just on the forehead, when mom picked me up this morning."

"Did your nipples swell when he touched you?" That would be me.

"A little," she said, "but not like they are now. Now they're even more than with my dad."

"You're getting more mature," I said, "plus, if your males don't wear condoms, they stimulate your hormones and that makes you develop earlier than other girls."

"Oh," the sweetie said, then mused: "that's true. Sadie Nordberg and Stacy Samuels both got like I did and they both had cute older brothers that they used to hang out with."

Have I mentioned I'm a writer? I guess my copy speaks for itself, writers are lucky that way, but I bring it up because at that time I was a writer in need of that extra thousand words, and only a picture would do. "Would you like us to look at you while you're telling us about your dad?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered, standing with her back to Jose so he could untie the simple shift she was wearing. Without show, she shrugged the garment into his rough, teen hands, and he folded it carefully as she turned to face him. Her back was white, slim and graceful, just beginning to flare at her not-quite boyish hips. I unsnapped her training bra, and let the straps fall to where she caught them in her elbows. I stood behind her, my hands soft on her flanks, as Jose stood in front of her and quickly stripped naked. I'd never seen his penis so huge and swollen, though he'd ejaculated with me numerous times. He'd never seen me the way I was, either, so we were even. Since I had an inch in length him (I'm bigger than all but two percent of males, all of them, apparently, porn stars), I remained dressed, but joined him in molesting the slim ten year old as she spread her elbows and let her bra drop to Jose's knees. I eased her to him and he quickly found her left nipple with his gentle mouth (when we did kiss it was sensational), while I fondled her big-strawberry-size right breast. Her hands went to his penis jutting hot, purple, and wetter than I'd ever seen it against the tender flesh below her belly button. The sixteen year old brought his legs together, and I eased Tina onto his lap. "I've never kissed, but I hugged my dad when we were bare chested," the girl said, tilting her pretty face to his. I returned to the other bed and sat, masturbating slowly for ten minutes as I watched her learn what I had some years earlier on his first visit to my apartment. She was torn between masturbating him and pulling him to her, finally reaching to me. I found Jose huge and hot, and, wetting him, stroked him gently as her fingers slowly, methodically, and repeatedly raked his back, right under my eyes, leaving white trails in his beautiful brown skin. Jose had the most beautiful chest I've ever seen on a male, one percent short of a body-builder physique, and somehow more essentially rugged and masculine. What her tender, budding nipples must have felt as he panted against her I can only imagine.

Twice Jose left her mouth to turn and bite me gently on my right arm, so I kept masturbating him as he taught her while he ran his fingers over her chest, constantly returning to her dark pink nipples. For long moments, I thought he was going to lie her back on the bed, stare down on her as she stripped out of her panties, and mount her heavily on the spot, then she began whispering. I changed from standing behind her, looking down over her shoulder at what Jose was doing to her, and sat on Jose's right so I could continue gently jerking him off as the girl settled with a sigh against his powerful chest, her arms still around his athletic back.

"It was the payments on the tractor," she said, beginning her story. "The last two, we just couldn't make. If we did, we'd be in the clear, but if we didn't, we'd be out of business."

"Tina?"

"Yes, Mom,"

"How was school?"

"Okay. You know."

"Sweetheart, will you come in the parlor with me for a few minutes?"

"Sure."

"Close the door, honey,"

"Sure, Mom, is anything wrong?"

"That all depends, sweetheart," Maria Gonzales Atlee said.

"What?" the nine year old asked.

"Darling," Maria said, "we have to have a very big-girl talk about something very serious, okay?"

"Sure," the nine year old said. "Is Dad okay?"

"He's fine dear, but it's about him. Sit down here on the sofa beside me, okay?" The girl, still in her blue and gray school uniform, sat, looking up into her mother's obviously worried face. "Come on, Mom, what is it?" she said, trying not to whine.

"First, darling, I have to ask you a question."

"Okay," the girl said, leaning against her mother.

"You know Mr. Deering at the implement company, right?" Maria asked.

"Sure," Tina said.

"How do you feel about him?" the mother queried.

"He's really tall," the child mused, "and Dad seems to like him, but I don't know him very well."

"Well," the mother said, "it's a longish story, but the point is his wife has been chronically sick for awhile, and, well, you're old enough to know some of this, he hasn't been with a woman for a long time. He was planning to take a trip to the city, to find a girl to be with, that's what he told your dad, and that's how it started. He was commenting on how much it would cost to be with a pretty young girl, which is what gave your father the idea."

"What is it, Mom?" the girl asked.

"Sweetheart," the mother replied, tenderly, "just let me tell this my own way, please, then we can talk, okay?"

"Okay," the girl said, her voice still fretful with confusion and worry.

"I'm sorry, angel, but you'll understand in a few minutes. Part of what I want to say is that when I was your age, nine, I went to live with my granddad. He was a powerful, gentle, kind man, and I fell in love with him almost from the first day, even thought he was almost seventy."

"You showed me his pictures, remember?" the girl said.

"Yes, darling," the mother said, "I do remember, so you know he watched his diet and stayed in good shape."

"In the one in his bathing suit, he looks like an advertisement," the girl giggled softly, to her mother's hug.

"Sweetheart," Maria whispered, "I thought so, too. He had a light mat of crinkly gray hair on his chest, and I thought he was beautiful. Sweetheart, I began to flirt with him, and, with just the two of us alone together, for the summer, the flirting turned into something very special for both of us."

"Oh, Mom," the girl scarcely breathed, "did he try to get you pregnant?"

"Yes, darling," the woman said, hugging her daughter tightly to her side, "it happened first in a meadow as we were watching his stallion with a new filly. It was my idea to watch, and, darling, I wore a skimpy sun suit."

"Did it happen once, or more times?" the little girl asked.

"I moved in with him that night," the woman recalled, "so it happened many times."

"Did you like it?" the girl asked.

"Yes, darling," her mother replied, "he was very gentle. There was a little stinging that afternoon in the meadow, but after that, it felt beautiful every time we tried to make a baby."

"Two of my friends at school say the same thing," Tina said.

"Are they experienced?" Maria asked.

"Everyone says they date their big brothers," the girl said, "but nobody cares because they're both really nice. You know, Sadie and Stacy."

"Sure," Maria said, with a gentle laugh, "one likes photography and the other model planes, of all things. Are you sure about their brothers?"

"I'd bet, if I had to," the girl replied, "but they don't exactly make out in the bleachers, like other couples, so it may be just talk."

"You have gym with Stacy, don't you?" the mother asked.

"Yes," the girl said.

"How does she look, you know, on top?"

"She's the biggest," the girl said, "and the girls from the other class say Sadie's the biggest, too."

"Then the stories are true," Maria said, "because when I was with my granddad, I developed almost overnight."

"That must have been exciting," the girl said.

"It all was, darling," the mother said, "holding him in my arms and knowing what was happening inside me, because he showed me on my stomach while he was lying beside me in the meadow, and sometimes, when he held me very tight and still at the end, I could feel his seed flow into me."

"You were really lucky," the girl observed.

"Yes, darling," the mother said, "but we've got to keep talking. We're behind on the tractor payments. If Mr. Deering can spend his money here, he won't have to go to Chicago and find an expensive girl. If he spends it with us, the bank will release the tractor for transport, and we can do contract work in the next state. We've had a lot of expenses pile up, and everything has come to a head, and we're five thousand dollars short, which is just the amount we need to release the paperwork on the tractor."

"Oh," the girl said.

"What are you thinking?" the mother asked, gently.

"Kinda tingly and funny," the girl said in a whisper.

"Sweetheart," Maria said, "you don't have to, but, the truth is, we'll lose the farm, if you don't, and be able to spend next year in Mexico, if you do, so it's hugely important, or your dad and I wouldn't be asking, but we are asking, for your sake as well as ours, and what we're asking, darling, is that you wear the same sun suit I wore for you great-granddad, for Mr. Deering."

The two stared into each other's eyes for a long moment.

"We want to sell you to him, darling," Maria went on, her voice low and slow. "For money. A few hours a week for a year, unless you hate being with him, in which case you can walk out on the contract."

"Mom?" the girl asked.

"What?" her mother said.

"Can Dad be with me. Hold my hand, especially the first time?"

"Yes, angel," the mother said, tears flowing down her cheeks, "yes." She took her daughter's hand and led her to her bedroom where she pointed out the orange and yellow suit, freshly fluffed and ironed. "They'll be here in a few minutes," she said, closing the door on her daughter.

"Here's a top secret, are you ready for it?" Forest Deering asked as Tina's father went in to pay for gas.

"That depends," the girl said, but nodded as children will.

"The paperwork on your Allis Chalmers has been released, paid in full, as of an hour ago. If you want we can turn around and take you home so you can tell your mom."

"Can't we call her?" the girl said.

"Of course we can," the tall, boyish forty year old said, "I just want to be proof-positive sure you want to go to the motel with us. This started halfway as a prank, I guess you'd call it, a crazy idea, that sort of made sense, but now that I've known you for awhile, I'm just glad to be able to help you out and be your family-friend uncle."

"You can still be that," the girl whispered, taking the tall athlete's rough hand in her tiny, soft paw.

"If you change your mind, say so," the man said as Harry, Tina's rangy Norwegian father approached the car.

"Just let me have the phone to call Mom and tell her I'm happy," she said to her dad as he slid behind the wheel.

"Forest told you?" he asked, in return, to her nod. "You're sure, baby?" he asked, again to her nod and shy smile. "How do you feel?" he then asked.

"Like a rubber band being stretched between two tigers, if you really want to know," she replied, "but Mom told me about her granddad, so I guess nothing will break."

"You've got a good mom," Harry Atlee said.

"It's horrible to see her getting fat," the girl said.

"She's had many years of being beautiful and desirable," the father said, "so she's far better off than others of her type."

"I guess so," Tina said, "but it must be horrible for you, too."

"It isn't darling," the father said, "we're still great friends and she's still a great wife and mom. Maybe one of these days I'll let myself go, too. Live to eat. It's not the worst way to go."

"I'm just glad she had great-granddad, on the other side, to sort of, you know, balance out her life as a girl."

"Gracious thought," the father said, gently rubbing his daughter's long, left leg as he jockeyed the car back onto the roadway. The ten year old responded to is first touch by spreading her legs widely, resting her right knee firmly against Forest's muscular left leg. She looked up at him, then gently took his left hand, bringing it high on her tender, white inner thigh. "How many days are we going to stay at the motel?" she asked.

"Steve and Adam are coming over to help out," Harry said, "so for the weekend, at least, if you want."

"Will a lot of people see us?" Tina asked.

"Sure," Harry said, "especially if we hang out by the pool a lot. A lot of local people go there."

"Good," Tina said, "because Sadie and Stacy, you know, everybody sort of knows about them and Frank and Billy, their big brothers, so I'd like everybody to sort of know about us. Nothing obvious, but nothing super secretive, either."

"Darling," the young father said, "you'll be pretty stiff tomorrow, so if you walk around the pool area, most of the older people will know you've been with an adult, and when they see us together, they'll put one and one together and figure you've been with two adults, without knowing, because you could have slipped in the tub or been roughed up playing lacrosse."

"Will I be really sore?" the girl asked. "Mom said it hurt the first time with great-granddad."

"That was a little different," Harry explained, stroking the inside of her long, slim leg, "that was her hymen tearing when she lost her virginity to him. That goes away in a minute, but what Forrest and I do with you will probably leave you with some minor muscle strain. You'll be a little stiff, as if you'd been riding a lot, that's all, and you're so athletic it might not happen, in the first place."

"Then I'll pretend, just a little," the pixie said, her eyes big as she looked up at her dad and pushed her knee against his leg, encouraging his gentle touch.

"Are you going to be in the bedroom together with me?" she asked, "or take me in there one at a time?"

"Your uncle Forrest and I used to skinny dip a lot together when we were kids," Harry said, "so we're used to being naked together, so we'd like to have you on the bed with both of us, but that's entirely up to you. You'll have your own room next to ours, with a lock on the door and your own television, so you are mistress of the weekend, with both of us at your beck and call."

"I'm too young to get pregnant from you, aren't I?" Tina asked.

"Yes, darling," her father said, "but you'll mature very rapidly after sleeping with us, so we'll have to talk about that in the future."

"Will your sperms leak out of me, like when older girls have their periods?" the precocious one wanted to know. "I know about them from science in school," she went on to explain, "and the girls whisper about seeing Stacy's panties in the locker room."

"We're both adults," Harry said, trying to make his voice sound normal and casual, with little success, "and neither of us have been with a partner for awhile, so your thighs may be wet in the morning."

"Can I show that around the pool?" she wanted to know.

"Yes love," the young father said, "we bought you a bikini with a thong bottom, so if you lie back on a lawn chair, before you swim, and spread you legs, but maybe not as much as you are now, other adults will probably notice that you're still a little wet."

"But it could be I spilled something at breakfast, so they wouldn't really know, right?" the ten year old asked.

"True enough," her father laughed, "eighty percent of Americans believe in the pristine bullet, even though te photos clearly show it's a little bent, and almost eighty percent of blacks believe O.J. was practicing golf all evening. People are almost fabulously gullible, take religion, for example, so, if you look at them all bright-eyed and say you tripped carrying a glass of water in the restaurant, therefore you're stiff and wet, they'll believe you, even if half of them were in the restaurant at the same time we were."

"Good," the girl said, "I mean, I'm little miss perfect with the grades and deportment and participation, and that's fine, and I'm proud of it, at least a little, but there has to be more. Part of us has to stay animal or all of use ends up in the zoo, don't you think?"

"I think you are one sensational daughter," Harry said, "and that leads into something Forrest and I were going to tell you.

"While we're there," he continued, "you are allowed to run as wild and free as you like. There are no rules, in the conventional sense. If either a male or female attracts you, you can go to their room, or invite them to our suite, and have all the privacy you want.."

"Would you ask me what happened?" she wanted to know.

"Yes, darling," her father said, "no rules, and no secrecy, just like your mom told you about what happened when her granddad brought the new filly for Sultan."

"Will you and Forrest go to other rooms, too?" Tina asked.

"Probably not very much, especially this first time," he laughed.

"Isn't this all really expensive?" the girl wanted to know.

"It's actually free," Forrest said, "The Playpen is a fancy motel in the conventional sense. It's open to the public. But it's run by a philanthropist who believes children should have more freedom than they do, that if they did, the world would be a healthier, happier place, for everyone. Fathers with daughters or brothers with little sisters, and men with girls under fourteen, have special complimentary suites and wear a special ring, which you'll get when we arrive. Anyone wearing the ring is a safe partner, because your dad and I, for example, had to take a physical and answer questions on a lie-detector. People who aren't wearing rings are probably fine, too, because the general admission policy is pretty strict, not just pay and stay."

"The owner's name is Vargas Real, re-al," Harry added: "He's a former NASCAR driver. You'll meet him when he gives you your ring. And sweetheart," the father's voice went on softly, "he'll probably want to date you at some time when we're there, not on this visit, but probably our next one. You don't have to go with him, we won't get kicked out, or anything, but he feels it's good for girls to know the commercial side of their charms, so to speak; just as your date with Forrest was originally set up to help us recover from our financial mistakes. This does not mean that you do things for money, but it teaches you that life is more complicated than that, that, yes, you do things, you might not otherwise do, because people have been good to you and helped you. You could say this in lots of crude and derisive ways, and anyone who says it's better to avoid such situations, in the first place, is undoubtedly very smart and clever, but, in the end, Mr. Real has done a lot for us, and he's a tall handsome man, and holding him in your pretty arms for a few hours is more a form of acknowledgement than payment."

"Daddy," the girl whispered in response, "as long as I can hold you the minute I leave his room, I'll be a happy girl."

"One of the things that makes the place such a success," Harry said, "is daddy's and big brother getting their little girls back wet from another male. It brings out feral instincts that few men get to experience, sort of a cream de la caviar of guess what?"

"Sex," the pixie giggled happily, now holding both men's hands as they contused to stroke ever higher on her soft, childish thighs.

"And don't forget the love part," the father suggested.

"I assumed it," the girl said, kneeing the athletic thirty year old firmly.

"That was very smart of you," he replied as they turned into the entrance of the sprawling grounds.

Some people, so I've read, read novels for the sole purpose of ferreting out inconsistencies. Editors are death on them, too. At the same time it's either, a, fun, or, b, rationalizing to let a few stand. We have Forrest paying for the tractor, then they're comped at the resort motel. It would take half an hour to sort that out, and that's a few hundred new words. We have Tina talking about display, when everyone there will know why she's there, and, while they'll not be in the least disinterested, there would be no reason to walk stiffly or lounge with her legs open. I patched that one up, a little, on the fly, but the flaw remains.

It must be time for a new chapter. If memory serves "The Bird of Dawning" is the only novel I've read, without chapters. Some have two on a page. Stephen King comes to mind. One excellent book, whose genre I've forgotten, had chapters of exactly, right to the bottom right corner of each page, five pages long. I thought it was a neat exercise of craft, and am glade there's a finite amount of money in the world, so there's not enough to pay me to try it. I kind of measure it by every couple of days cheating just the tiniest skosh on the word count, and making a new one. My tribute to conformity, also, because I deem my work original enough, in other respects, to not want to press my luck by writing some huge story, beginning to end, with a total disregard for literary convention.

I hope others take note, not of this idiosyncrasy, if that's what it is, but of the book, in general. I hope it does teach others how to write. How important characters are, how relatively unimportant plot is. "Fargo", without the ditzy bargirls talking about the real funny looking one, is a "Reader's Digest" three-pager. Chevy Chase and Jim Carey take silly plots and turn them into cinematic icons (how I wish they were). "Addams' Family Values" lets Joan Cusac do the same thing, and the melty liberals running Camp Chippewa double up her character. All these films will be widely seen a hundred years from now. The rewards of reaching into the human and spreading him or her thin on a page, is immortality, never mind who you teach or entertain on the way. It is worth the effort, and you only have to guess at how it feels to wake up every morning in the midst of a great, glowing epic to realize that for yourself.

There's nothing left out there, folks. Tech has been and gone as far as being a force of nature goes. Politics? I've been six months, now, without cable, and I honestly think if the shoe was on the other foot, and I had to pay to keep it out of my house, I would. Thirty seconds of the brute ugliness of the likes of Trent Lott and Orin Hatch would be worth a hundred dollar a month abstinence fee, in itself. These are cheap men, who, under no circumstances, would have been invited to my Gran's, yet you ballot them up time and again. They're all cheap men. Simpson, I think, from Montana, and Fred Thompson, those are two men, and I even half like the one with the skinny guy inside him from New York. Rangel's kind of cool. But Lieberman and the rest? They could, would, and have sell and sold everyone and everything for ballots. They are all emblemized by Gore not gracefully and very, very firmly backing out on his very ballot defeat. They are power-sick scut, and they will definitely kill you if you let them. Their one virtue is saving me twenty bucks a month by making television unwatchable, rather than just dreary.

Democracy is like letting the children run the household. Now, I like children, but my experience tells me they'd spend every dime I have in a week, which would be a bit of a trick, because, left to their own devices, they'll bunker down in front of the television until two in the morning, when some good stuff is actually on, then sleep `till noon. And, make no mistake, you are children. Your literacy level is two iotas above being able to interpret most signage. Most of you voted for either Gore or Bush. I rest my case. That'll be the day, but, truthfully, how do you feel about it? One was a prototypical, and I come from the background, preppie, smirking, Wiseguy, lazy drunk, saved only by a heartthrob and connected up father. The other was nothing more than a marionette. When he was deemed stiff he tried, dreadfully, to make a joke of it, then danced the manic politicians' two-step in factories so the lenscamera would show him as lively and likeable. Bush and Gore are part of the problem, and have nothing to do with the solution. They are jokes, which ticks me off because I like to think I'm the comedian in the crowd.

A reminder, too, speaking of jokes, that our founding fathers were more founlings' fathers than anything more noble. They were postal. Disgruntled, because England interfered with their smuggling and piracy. Sam Adams and Hancock. Tavern drunks with a press and fools thinking they needed liberty as fodder. George Washington, a sullen, class-obsessed tower of a man, assassin, war criminal, and dental patient, scoured the British from commode keeper to commandant for a commission, and only joined the muddled mess of rebellion when some limey put a rocket up his butt. Cute justice for he hated the very smell of his rabble army, and said so. But, there was coal and oil in Pennsylvania, so the denuded democracy scraped through to the age of Bell, Edison, Ford, and their colleagues, and, by some miracle, the system of media-driven balloting was not quite defective enough to bring the whole mess crashing down, wars and depressions notwithstanding.

Things are different today. We lack a dynamic. We need to make one up. We need to focus and proceed, not dither and recede. We can't do that. In the old day they could. The paper barons in the cities could go broke, but the yeomanry kept plugging away until a new swarm of urbanites, often Jewish, repeated the paper cycle. Today, our yeomanry are as dependent on wire transfers and complex shipping and receiving regimens as Silicone Valley. Our welfare state is so insatiable in its need of mass funding, the road to Oprah's Indiana farm is rough as a cob of Hoosier corn. In Europe, they're faced with euthanizing tens of millions. I suppose the real joke is that monarchy couldn't do much better, because under democracy, huge numbers of substandard people have found, if for just awhile, the proverbial life of Riley. Their ballots have paid off, the politicians have come through, and the sand hogs probably have a web site. King and Letterman each signed thirty million dollar contracts, so they say. What does that say? Again, neither would have been invited to Gran's, and that makes all the difference. (And if you think this is to do with class, gotcha, because Gran would have doted on Bev, while probably being cross with Samantha once in awhile.) It's a test of humanity, nothing more, nothing less. You think of Heraldo as human. I think of him as half Jewish. Unless you come to understand the difference, you are hopelessly doomed to an obese, cheesy, debt-dead future, should you survive, at all.

I saw Betty Zebaneh at the Price is Right market the other day. She's Jewish. Her mouth takes on the shape of a braying camel, even when she's just exchanging banalities. The walls ring. If she's human, I'm not, for there is no possibility of our belonging to the same species, except at the most base clinical level. If I was a sportin' guy, I'd like to chain her to the Arab camel, Old Lady Cheap Things, and take bets on who would bray the other to death, first, like dogs or cocks. If you are to save your country, you must get these people out, you must accept any means, because any other end is your massively assured destruction. Your king is talking. Your god is talking. You better tune in, or they will tune you out.

If you take think I take myself seriously, gotcha, again. David has full permission to excise anything he chooses from my copy. I have no idea whether or not everything I say makes the archive, and have little inclination to find out. Children are the world's children, only incidentally, yours. Manuscripts, or at least my manuscripts, are the world's, once I click the send icon. If they do well, great, if not, no one will doubt I put my best into them, and it wasn't good enough for you, or you were not good enough for it. Anyway, a miss. So far, that's not happened and I spend a certain amount of time trying to acclimate to the fact that my downloads are in the middle seven digits. Success without the faintest hint of trappings. Even Dad taunts me on writing a million-page novel, and my youngest brother congratulates me on making good use of the bandwidth. It is the effect that this does not have that's pungent. I type away as if I were writing stories and a letter for a friend I met in a bathhouse, and let it go at that. If I weren't so lazy, I'd recast this paragraph, because, a, I left out the deluge of ethereal reader mail that greeted my first efforts, and, b, a friend from the past wrote, providing an anecdote. I was going through my mail one day and opened a letter from a familiar name. Within ten seconds I was gritting my teeth. Not anger, jealousy. A friendly complexity dominated the writer's style, yet, I deemed him, the writer, untrustworthy, as if he might turn and come at you. The talent was raw, and immediately apparent, and my jaw tightened. I read on. Quick grace, funny asides, and, overwhelmingly, a sense of labor, but never labored, commitment, not only to his art, but to the individual reality. Writing of this now, my feelings were akin to looking at the anchor off the bow of our boat. We had some long calm stretches in the Bahamas, and the silt would settle from the water. I remember going forward early one morning to swap the deck, and idly stepping out on the bowsprit. I looked down and, a, almost hurled, and, b, almost fell overboard. The anchor, a seventy pounder, looked about the size of a small flounder. The water was so clear, it was invisible, totally invisible. I was seized with acrophobia, big time, and dared anyone to go out and look down, without holding on to the forestay. They all looked over the rail. No takers. So, that's how I felt reading the piece sent to me by an old friend. Raw disappointment in myself, almost nauseous discouragement: "I'll never write like this." Imagine my relief when I read a bit further and found Bill had sent me an excerpt from "Creative Camp". I've never been the same, since, so perhaps success does have its trappings, even for your humble servant.

I, myself, am largely subhuman, mostly an animal that just does what it does, unable to do anything else, and certainly unwilling. And not just as an artist. It's cost a fortune to take in Daisy's crew, money I could have spent on Samantha, and could be spending on her, this minute, making her so happy she would spend the night. The kids stay. If Samantha chooses the red pickup, she chooses it. How do you measure that on the `humanity' scale?

Take it or leave it, like it or lump it, it doesn't make any difference. I type and submit, and, as it says on the shampoo label, repeat. I believe if you had over eight hundred thousand words to go, you'd do the same.

My kingdom for a fork. Well, it's not quite that bad. About the only thing that hasn't disappeared over the last eight years, of the very small box of stuff I brought from the States, is a wood-handled kitchen set, and now the serving fork is missing. It's the only thing really suitable for fluffing hot rice, so I used it every day. The lesson is an important one. No matter how much you help others, how exceedingly Christian, in a temporal sense, you are, people will still steal and advantage you at every opportunity. At the heart of the purloined fork issue, is the core defect of liberalism. The doctrine, especially in its Jewish implementation, puts humans in boxes marked Rights, Independence, Liberty, Justice and Dignity, just as Jewry puts itself in a box labeled Chosen. That's it. A box for everyone, and everyone in their box. No allowance made for excellence, and they called Dahmer, mister. I try to help these kids, they turn around and steal what they damn well know happens to be precious to me, and, as a liberal, I'm meant to keep on helping. Well, they're lucky, as Samantha is, because I love them, but in the wider scheme of things, I'd whip their thieving backs and chain them in a cotton field, tomorrow. Then they'd produce, they wouldn't steal, and the human race would advance instead of dithering over its bellybutton. (Of course, being a neo-oldster, I write of a time when most of us had belly buttons.)

One eerie thing, I haven't lost a word to a power outage or computer problem for some weeks. Unheard of. Much as I am totally dependent on the machine, I've grown accustomed to fighting it tooth and nail, often having to re-write pages shortly after I thought they were complete. In a way, I miss the challenge, and, as I've said elsewhere, there is no greater training drill for a writer than to have to re-do something an hour after he's created it. I had to re-write my last novel, "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters", from scratch, due to a virus, and, until I post this puppy, it's the greatest piece of fiction in the world, as well as being a not-half-bad collection of essays and journal entries. If "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing, it is a book about everything, but, astoundingly, this one's better. Maybe I'm so retarded, I'm just starting to get good, did you ever think of that? Maybe it took so much to dynamite away my mental overburden, as miners call it, that I untapped resources previously unknown to humankind, and, if they are unknown, how can they be measured? so maybe we yet journey on the surface. As long as the Catholics deem me to have cracked the brink of hell, I'll be plumb satisfied with myself, and if the blood and butchery of their history stains my eyes glaring red, perhaps it is the color they should be. Out, out, foul spot.

I'm thinking of the delicate game I played with Jose Armando de Lira Varela, vis a vee, the Catholic Church. One night, just after we reached home, I went out on the veranda and there was a monk looking up from the sidewalk. I think I'd vaguely noted him following us, and we'd passed by the cathedral on the way to my place. At first, Jose talked of wanting to be a priest, he was fourteen. I strongly encouraged him, believe it or not, and, within the limits of our ability to verbalize, asked him about it. In my opinion, he was, in fact, genuinely uninterested, it being more his mother's idea than his. He was in a stressful relationship with his father, a chemist who'd lost his job in a political shift, and was now a farmer, because his father made him kill the rabbits, which you do by breaking their necks. He showed me, just with a hand motion. He was hanging in the arcades and pool halls, when I met him. If the church wanted him as a priest, they were making less than a pathetic effort to divert him from a highly pedophilic culture. The one credit I will give, is, although he must have been one of the most beautiful little boys to walk the planet, apparently he had not been molested by the clergy. He was a willing and happy partner from our tenth date, no scars, which is not to say nothing happened, because I never happened to ask him. I do wonder about the priest or monk who followed us home, whether he was after a soul that was doing fine on its own, or his one of a kind body. And he may have ended up lost to the street. He was, like Linden, heavily talented as a graphic artist. The first time he came to my apartment, or room, to be more accurate, was to type a letter to his cousins in the states. He hadn't had typing in school, and wanted to learn, so he asked if he could draw a picture of the keyboard on my little portable. You could have hung the result in a good gallery. He also wrote poetry, and, I know, it sounds like something out of a corny romantic novel, but when we'd go out for beers, he'd borrow my pen and write songs on paper napkins.

He ended up writing for either Juan Gabriel or Jose Louis Rodriguez, I can't remember which, and I think spent time down around Acapulco with them both. Anyway, he spent some time on a very fast track, always saying it was because typed out his songs. I've described our physical parting, elsewhere. As a waypoint, devil or god, the devil in this case spent thousands of hours with the boy, and god's house gave a highly creative and active mind no alternative to the arcade and my shrine, though it was torn down before I left the city.

The only thing you should fear, is yourselves. That just popped into my mind, sorry Jose, but don't worry, we're not done with you yet, and the world will never be done with you, however fortune has treated you. It's an appropriate paraphrase of FDR's Depression speech. The only thing we have to fear, is ourselves. That will be true, just as we once had fait in ourselves, until we rid our country of weeds. If it were a farm, we could tolerate half weeds, as long as they didn't foul the machinery, but, as a nation, I think anything over five or ten percent spoils the entire crop, if only by making it un-harvestable. It's your country, you have to do the pushing and shoving and rearrange things so that we get on with the great projects needed to replace the Industrial Revolution, be they perfect or imperfect. Any port in a storm, they say, and I offer nothing but surf and reefs at the bar mouth, but the storm is not survivable, leaving a bad choice only maybe better than no choice of harbor, at all. You grace me with the option of death at the ends of times, and I turn my back on you. George Bush or Al Gore wouldn't do that to you.

I though of a tee shirt for pedophiles: "The only thing between men and toys is the cost of their boys." That's a shoe that fits so well it pinches. My other favorite tee is a feminist creation reading: "If they can send a man to the moon, why can't they send them all?" Ironic, because my favorite cartoon shows a battleaxe behind a cash register shouting at a customer, "This is a feminist bookstore," she's yelling, "we don't have a humor section." Puts me in mind of my ultra drudgy caricature of a butch-dyke sister. Imagine not being amused by a brother like me, but I assure you, she wasn't.

The fork turned up, kicked under one of the counters. How could someone be so oblivious as to have a dagger-pronged serving fork land at their feet, and not remember it. On the other hand, I think Louise could have half a barbell drop on her foot, and drift on unperturbed. I got a good cases of the chills last night. She stood behind Samantha, who was in the rocking chair, petting her and playing with her hair for half an hour, straight. Where these thoughts lead is unsurvivable, no ground, no sky, no walls. If I picture an hour or two a week when Samantha slips off to be with Queenie, and Randy slips in to be with me, and another hour or two a week, with Samantha and Queenie, I may not have invented the wheel, but it would still be a nice ride. Just add Clarence to leave them wetter and feeling moe feminine than I probably can (he'd also like Randy), and there you have what the Jews are always seeking, perfection in a neat, tidy, box.

Pure sensation this evening. Did our usual circuit with Samantha, only this time, check it out, she's wearing an armless white girl's tee and tiny white terrycloth shorts that she wears down over her hips in the same manner boys wear shorts half way down their boxer shorts. If her legs grow an inch longer, she's simply going to be against the law. She prattles, skips and dances, this evening trying to think up a name for me when she dedicates a song to me on Power Mix. She finally settled on "Tom a/k/a Ratbat" in favor of "Tom a/k/a Ralston", which turned out to be her interpretation of "Boston." The ratbat thing comes from the fact I have a family of bats in my attic, and, what I want to do is replace a ceiling panel in the living room with a sheet of Plexiglas, then put a light in the attic. This is the kind of thing kids remember, so I'm Tom a/k/a Ratbat, as soon as she gets her next calling card. It is on the verge of what can be comprehended. To be the greatest artist of all time, and out of a warm tropic evening, stars almost hot with brilliance, following those prancing, dancing terrycloth shorts. Sort of ruins the less-is-more theory of existence. I'm just glad it's me. Many are called, few are chosen, and one is selected. Why it happens to be me, I have no idea, but what I did was work harder than hard to earn a ticket in the lottery of lotteries, and won. Work, Talent, Birth -- why did I win all three? Why am I the most prolific writer, as well as the best, or vice versa. Why the royal lineage? The IQ of four hundred? The teen bod in my fifties? Why the wife of wives, Jose, and now the girl of girls? Surely this is overcompensation for even my mother. Ten minutes walking beside me as I follow Samantha, and Mr. Gates would be signing over M'soft to follow her home, I freaking kid you not, and laughing over getting the best of the world's smartest man, in the bargain. When your girlfriend is accosted by three twelve year old boys on the way home, half because they like her, half because she may be carrying pop shots, you know you're doing something right. And, speaking of cuties...

The girl in the yellow and orange sun dress was all decorum and sweetness in the lobby, a princess pretty enough to go without trappings, with an ego that didn't need them. Only the whiteness of her little knuckles hinted at the fact her dad and her favorite uncle weren't taking her to the pony rides.

Decorum, poolside, too. No, "Hey, babes," or, "I'd like a piece of that." "Vargas was in the navy," Harry explained as they walked toward the bungalow housing their suite, "so there are a lot of sailors here."

"And the girls are called, olives, I'll bet," the sweetie giggled.

"What would you expect, with all these eyes popping at you," her father responded. Indeed, while there was no indecency, trucker-style, something in yellow and orange was attracting its share of attention.

"How much does it cost to stay for a lifetime?" the girl asked, as they left the marble flags and began walking across the lawn.

"Strict limit, two weeks a year, unless you're wounded winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, or have five stars on you lapel."

"Less piece time in peacetime, then," the bright-eyes quipped.

"Never forgetting less is often more," her father rejoined, with a pinch on her bare shoulder, "and lots is too often never enough."

"Most of the time," Forrest said, feeling comfortable enough to add a word between father and daughter.

"Amen," quoth Harry, "because we are human. It's ironic that the glaring defects, including murder, assassination, extreme alcoholism, and a general pattern of abuse of underlings is described, when it comes to Paine and most other Federalists, as All too human, yet an adult dating a happy child is thought to inhabit the lowest pit of the deepest shaft. We are behaving humanly, they are getting fat. Justice may be fickle, but it's often absolute."

I think the most unnerving thing about working at my level is being beyond justice. Jail me, flog me, drown me, burn me, and flush my ashes in Perth Amboy, the words live on, and I could use the publicity. I try to take this reality seriously, but without trappings, I'm the devil's plaything. The clerics have notorious levels of foppery and folderol, I'm glad to have a pressure cooker. They are responsible for who and how we are, I'm suggesting what we could be. Time is as much on my side as it is against them. I like for a symbol, a thorn wrapped in silk, I guess royal blue would do. A thorn is not a deadly weapon, but a useful goad. The silk should be on every just and human-hearted pillow in the land.

"Silk pillows!" the pixie squealed as she dived into the suite. "But they don't go with my sun suit," the girl sighed in a mock pout as she bounced on the leather sofa.

"Maybe you'll have better luck with the suit Vargas gave you," Forrest suggested.

"Good idea," the ten year old said, "it will give me a last chance to change, all by myself." Both men laughed. Harry and Forrest settled on the sofa as the girl squealed into the bedroom, returning moments later for her bag, then disappearing again, not quite shutting the door.

"If you want, I can find another room," Forrest said.

"Sometimes deals come apart," Harry replied, "this one started as one thing, which, I don't think would have been half bad, and then there were a few phone calls from interested parties, and we ended up, here, not a dollar on the table. If she seemed cold or unresponsive toward you, we probably would have gone ahead with the original plan, because so much is at stake; since she never felt that, from years ago until now, but rather likes you in a way I've never seen her express to another adult, specifically, holding your hand as you molested her in the car, you are a freaking prisoner. Live with it."

"No guarantees of living the next few hours," Forrest said, "but thanks. As they say, I needed that."

"I still remember you," Harry, who was slightly the older, said, softly.

"Who'd ever have thought we'd be thirteen, again?" the twenty-eight ear old responded..

"If we live that long," Harry reminded his friend.

"I still remember you, too," Forrest said, his voice also dropping to a husky whisper.

"Have you ever wanted to be together, again?" Harry asked.

"No," the younger man replied, "not until yesterday when you told me how the deal had changed."

"Ditto, here," Harry said, "I just thought of you as a friend from the time we were freshmen in high school, but if you want to touch me while we're with Tina I'd like it."

"I'd like to," the man whispered.

"Should we tell her what happened when Mr. Kohler helped us dam up the swimming hole?" Harry asked, making his friend blush with pleasure at the depth of his inclusion.

"It might make an engineer of her," the equipment dealer allowed.

"Hail Mary, and pass the keystone," Harry laughed, and thus was born (reborn) another in a series of mutual admiration societies.

"Do you want to stay dressed for her?" Forrest whispered, his eyes locking on his friend's.

"No," the girl's father said. Tightly cued, they performed quickly, slipping out of their loafers and slacks, stripping off their shirts, then, eyes as hot as thirteen year old's, they pulled down their briefs.

"Should we pose like we did for Mr. Kohler?" Harry asked.

"Sure," his friend said, and both adults arched, spreading their legs slightly, and laced their fingers behind their necks. Both were uncircumcised and hugely swollen, nearly seven inches jutting from between their powerful legs.

"Oh, Daddy," Tina whispered as she opened the bedroom door, "you're beautiful." The girl approached within inches, looking down intently. She was dressed in a very conservative, less skin is more erotic, bikini, the panties closer to those of her sun suit than a thong, and the bra covering her discreetly. Both males looked down at her, and neither could help picturing their seed swimming in her lovely, soft, white belly. Their penises flared, they thrust their hips unconsciously, then dropped their arms to their sides. Instinctively, Tina stood in front of her tall, handsome dad, but her eyes never left those of his equally prepossessing friend. Harry gently unfastened the strip of her top, giving Forrest the first sight of his ten year old's bare chest. "She's beautiful," he whispered to the older male. Harry gently found the girl's slim was with both hands, moving her slightly closer to his former male lover, and guiding her small hands to his penis. Not to be glib or frivolous, and certainly not to fall into the amateurs' trap of overstating, but it was the best display of manners in world history, so much more than allowing the guest first pour from the gravy boat. "Oh, daddy," she whispered to him up over her left shoulder, "males are so beautiful," then she found Forest, her left hand guided low by her gentle father, her right handed guided high on his foreskin. "Now bring your hands very slowly and carefully together," he whispered, kneeling behind her and molesting her with both hands on her slim chest and soft belly as Forest gazed down, his face slack from the feeling of Tina's gentle, experimental efforts to free his glans from his bulging foreskin.

"Daddy, I love doing this," she whispered softly, half to herself.

"You can do it with any man here," he said, "but probably not every man here." She giggled at the soft affection in his voice, his gentle silliness putting no moral approbation on an act that would have her institutionalized and both himself and Forest imprisoned for decades if the walls had eyes. That was pretty silly, too, but if the State could stand the colossal cost, well, go, State, go. Who knew, some day they might save somebody from a fate worse than death. And how bizarre that notion was, Harry continued with his musing as Forest gently turned Tina to him. "Oh, sweetie, you really are starting to grow," he said, being the first to gently kiss her pink, thimble-size nipples. The fate worse than death was so patently a fate better than life. That was the amazing thing about the church, and conventional morality, in general: it was so utterly, unredeemingly, wrong. Wrong from head to foot, wrong in every aspect and detail, all wrong, and nothing right. A daughter could grow as healthily in her father's bed as in her own room, it simply, of and by itself, made no difference where she slept, she'd learn to love anything. And a great society could be proof of the priest. "Stayist thou apart," they could chant, and sweep their arms from the pulpit, bidding: "Look Around. We say this is sin, and look at the beauty of our righteousness." Who's kidding who? now I ask you. The very congregation is, a, sparse, and, b, made up of fat; loungy lummoxy sinners responding to childhood indoctrination and looking for some way out. No argument from me that they need one. My philosophy is that you best avoid church, even blowing it up, and sleep with your daughter from age three, reading to her two hours a day for the privilege of cumming off in her tight, young body. If you want to heap her with affection and non-manipulative, non-spoiling presents and privileges, why, that's your business. If it was me, I'd pad her trust fund with however many thousands of dollars I could afford for every pound she was not over or underweight on each birthday. Sure, the math's a bit tricky, but I'd figure something out. If she came to, from talk she heard with her ears, came to hate me for what I'd done to her when she was a little girl, that would be better than if she adored me for my virtue, and missed me forever when I was gone. This is not saying rape, what it is saying is thoroughly explore neutral territory. If there is no strong objection, at least try. Tear down the arbitrary wall between daughter and wife. This taboo is based on clinical realities from ancient times, and so stirs us deeply, but that's it. It's as empty today as a buggy whip factory. Sensible, responsible people can avoid any possibility of disease, or the remotest chance of a defective child, or any child, if that's their wish. I'm not promoting incest children, per se, however, I will point out, in no uncertain terms, that I am one, and also happen to be the finest writer, intellect, artist, and what have you, yet to live or ever to live, while wasting half my time trying to prove I'm the word's funniest comic, and the other half blaming my mother. This is said fully acknowledging the fact the fathers and daughters often don't like each other. Would such alienation, whether mild, moderate, or severe grow or diminish if the father spent a rugged, panting hour or two a week in his child's belly? You figure it out, but I think, a, it would make them closer, and, b, give each good reasons to stay as fit looking as possible for the other. You know, it's a little surprising such a simple message chews up a million words like dog meat, but you are a colossally stupid, greedy bunch. I know how it feels being mauled, and have the scars to prove it, but I grew up to be something, perhaps, in some tiny way, as a result of my own experiences at the hands of my mother. I think other things, specifically, horses would have worked better, but, as she'd be the first to say, "That's just Tom." (I am so everlastingly glad she died before watching me, in two short years, leap to the literary forefront of the last century, and set the standard for this one. She did not deserve to see that.) In any event, you're in my hands or gods. Gods have killed maybe even a billion. I didn't even kill my mother. (Actually, I claim, elsewhere, that I did, but, on reflection, I think my brother Ted gets more credit. He used to invite his-friend-the-doctor, Charley Webb, physician of Colorado Springs, to Stonington for long summer stays. I don't think Dr. Webb is quite as unlikable as my sister, Mary, but it's one of those too close to call deals. I'm just not sure. He likes to make his lips go like a rabbit and he has weird, ultra perfect teeth, so that was always a little unnerving. Since he'd played basketball since he was two, and, at fourteen, I'd never seen one, he was able to make rather short work of his friend's older brother on the court of prowess. His mind fit the Stonington school system to perfection, so he copped grades while I huddled in my room reading, and wondering how I'd managed to totally alienate Jeanie Maguire in three hours, saying almost nothing. Glad for the reading. Anyway, it would be hard to imagine a more obnoxious houseguest that Charley Webb, and Mom had to cook and clean for him for weeks, undoubtedly do his laundry, probably full of hair from his fat body, and that can't have been much fun, so, yes, I did what I could by acting loopy and borderline dysfunctional, out of vengeance for her unrelenting and gratuitous cruelty, but Ted and Charley probably did more, even if Mom didn't catch them at homosexual activities, which I strongly suspect they engaged in, with their respective children and step children. And I'm writing here by not saying a thing, a privilege of the virtuoso; I'm not being a hypocrite and suddenly disallowing something because I don't like somebody. I'm saying they are both rotten people, exploiting their children, using and abusing them, and the fact that they do it without their underwear means little or nothing. But perhaps I should be more tolerant, mellow out with age, be more liberal in my thinking: after all, they helped kill my mother.

I wonder what turned my sister into such a hard dyke, down to the butch hair? I'll always hope it was me, and my head rests anight absolutely sure she'd blame me, but she was a nasty piece of work before I ever jerked off on her stomach, so I think the credit belongs elsewhere. In fact, I'd put it this way. If I could survive incest with my sister anyone can survive it under any circumstances not involving a chain saw. It was horrible, but still I espouse it for others, because they have tender, sweet, pretty daughters and sisters and if they're gentle and loving, so openith a new world for both or all. Again, god's word onto your screen. As far as making Mary a miserable wreck of a self-obsessed moron, my guess is the other god is responsible, your dude; I mean, if he does your craggy valleys and sunsets, he must be the general contractor. I tried to avoid my sister as a bossy three year old, and had my own room to read in, so it wasn't my fault. Mother, sister, and wife, if they spin you hard enough, and long enough, and you survive without killing them and having to do time, you end up a stable top with a keen set of razors at your middle so no others will be tempted by your charm and gentle ways to climb aboard and throw the whirligig out of balance. At present, I'm doing a little chopping on Queenie, who persists, despite repeated pleasant remonstrances, in leaving the kitchen an aggressive disaster, she doesn't even knock food off spoons before leaving them on the counter. This morning she was again with the fritters, flour, sugar and water pancakes that use up all the lard when she fries them. I won't put them on the street because of Samantha, but I will if they're too hard headed about learning anything. I'd rather live entirely alone than be reduced to the role of a caretaker, thanks. From a personal standpoint I'm glad to see I can get as in the face of a super model as I could Linden, or anyone who fails to cease engaging in what I view as destructive behavior. I never lost a student as a flight instructors, but some of my lax colleagues lost no less than six, and I heard about others. I wasn't lax, in those days, because of the danger of freaking around in light aircraft, in these days, because ten thousand words a day is ten thousand words, and pointless interference is something I bear with little grace. Nor is it just protecting my sacred keyboard time. If Queenie doesn't learn basic household skills and a sense of pride in a nice, if not necessarily spiffy, home, she'll bounce from man to man with a gaggle of kids, like her mother, thrown all the say out, and unlike Bev, who is a good housekeeper, and who earned enough respect from her various men that they continued with some support, until I came along. Daisy gets nothing, from anybody, so has to keep finding new ones, which obviously doesn't get easier as one ages. I used to reduce my students to ashes, much as I'd been some few years earlier, so they wouldn't end up as ashes, so it's on Queenie's back, and if she doesn't like it, afuera. They got along before they met me, and they can get along without me now.

I should give a heads up here, just for the fun of it. I ran out of weed and cigarettes last night, first time in my life, in the case of the tobacco. So, was I mad at Queenie because I was pitching a nicotine fit, or because I'd even given up my modest cigarette habit so that she and her family can eat, and she's wasting lard by the pot spoonful? I went entirely smoke free my first month in this house, and, other than a slight nagging feeling after eating, hardly missed either the tobacco or he marijuana. What did happen is my work day, as regular readers may remember, dropped from eighteen hours to six or eight. Two thousand words, at this point, is so close to a day off it's like stopping in at the office for a few minutes before hitting the links at seven a.m. No big drug effect was involved, vis a vee uppers, opiates, or hallucigens , just that little reward of a few tokes and a ten minute break every two or three hours. Writing is not a walk in the park, it's an intense and delicate art, demanding many ducks in a long row, just to get started. Yes, at times you can bulldoze along with little regard for your surroundings, but if anything's seriously out of kilter, like a supermodel threatening herself with days of hunger by misusing scarce resources, it can crash your wave and leave you in the rocks. And, yes, part of becoming a virtuoso is endurance and creating under any possible circumstances, rather than becoming flighty, neurotic and temperamental, but, still and all, a few puffs a day make an impressive difference in allaying the fatigue factor, not through chemicals intervention, but, as I just said, by providing a few carrots along the path. Repeatedly, I've connected social attitudes toward marijuana -- Tyne Daley is my poster monster -- and families engaging in affectionate play. "Night fun," as it's perfectly described in the film, "Jungle 2 Jungle".

Anyway, the heads-up is to see if you can tell the difference. Pot head or clean and sober? Shouldn't you be able to, after all? If weed is this great public menace, it should be easy enough to tell if a novelist is using the stuff, why he'd write all cranky and silly, or loopy and irrational, anyone could tell. On the other hand, imagine facing almost three hundred million really, really stupid people every morning. Now imagine doing it straight. Any questions? Drinking, yes, it made a big difference, and I learned not to even turn on the machine after more than three rum and cokes. Pot? Absolutely zero, except as a reward for diligence. Cigarettes, I'm not so sanguine about. Many writers and artists from the past have given tobacco great credit for their work, Freud and Churchill, a good, writer, however monstrous a political figure, for example, and there are many more. I don't think I notice any difference, but you might. Let's go back to the bungalow and check it out, shall we?

It wasn't exactly like playing with a big kitten, her finger tips left only almost-invisible white lines on their skin as she raked and clawed them. They had her totally naked on the bed, huddling her between their naked, athletic bodies, wetting her with their seminal fluid, and surging against her as she mewed and panted in welcoming response. In a gentle, wrestling dance the male animals passed the young female back and forth between them, holding her for each other as they tried variations of crouching over her and squatting legs widely spread, as she taught herself between their legs and became ever more avid for them to lie her back and spread her own long, slim limbs, using both their gentle hands to explore, teach, and masturbate her.

"Touch each other," she whispered several times to her young father, and then she'd lie back on the pillow, hands behind her neck, legs spread, and watch as one powerful adult knelt behind the other, holding with the left arm while reaching around with his right to stroke his partner against the girl's tender, white thighs.

"Tell me about the first time something happened between the two of you," she whispered during an interval that found the men lying full length on the bed with the child cradled gently between them, lying on her back, while they breathed into each of her ears. Both of their hands went gently to her inner thighs and both males gently masturbated her as she lifted her hips generously to their touches, and Forest told her what had happened just after her father had turned thirteen and he'd turned eleven.

As he talked, by accord, one young man got from the bed from time to time and the other moved gently on top of the slim, athletic ten year old, letting his lover look down on her arms around an adult's neck and her ankles against his upper rear thighs, her body almost out of sight. What this would like when they'd succeeded in mounting her, and were taking turns thrusting into her welcoming body, neither male had the nerve to picture. That they would be ejaculating inside here, and feeling each other's wetness against their sensitive penises further clouded comprehension of the evening and night to come. That this would be followed by other nights made any future at all seem naught but fantasy, which was just as well, because they had plenty to deal with in the here and now. After half an hour their play did slow and she lay languidly between the athletes as they gently kissed and molested her while Forest told about what had happened to her father and himself a mile up Shady Creek.

You know what I forgot to do awhile back? Start a new chapter. I talked about it, then, wouldn't you know it, went back to working on the story, forgetting the very convention I was intending to honor. I guess it is a bit thick to prance out on stage, do a little soft-shoe, then haul back a curtain, announcing through a megaphone, "Ladies and gentlemen, you really wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world right now," and unveiling, to gasps of amazement, and happy, nodding, laughter, one patron to the next, without further fanfare or excess of hyperbole or the mechanizations of stagecraft:

Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, 12/02

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