Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 12:35:24 -0500 From: Tom Emerson Subject: STONINGTON STORIES - LARRY STONINGTON STORIES - LARRY by R. Forbes Emerson (M/b, etc., rom.) Larry Billings was more interesting looking than handsome in the o-what-a-beautiful-mirror sense that Dickie Dunham was. At fourteen, the same age I was in 1960, he was tall and blond. I hardly had any hair, but I guess it would have been brown if my mother hadn't hated the sight of me and, with combat-boot logic, figured the less hair I had, the less there'd would be of me to hate. We'd been dicking around on a yacht for two years, and, I guess if I can go on whining and bitching about girls and women in story after story, I could spare a few paragraphs to carp about being carted around in a great fifty-foot slug of a North Sea pilot boat built in Holland for sea dogs. They say there's no romance in the film industry, and my guess is they're right; well, same holds true in the world of family yachting. All the glamour is from the outside looking in. Once in, your head spins like a top and you vomit like a hydrant, and then there's that ghastly four a.m. watch, when sick way the hell beyond death, you are called forth into the blowing night to grasp and wrestle with a large, spoked steering wheel, which, by rights should be hanging over a salty dog bar, but which is actually attached to thirty tons of bouncing steel. On the other hand, we had spent the winter in the Bahamas and during several uncharacteristic winter calms had cruised Grand Bahama bank, often out of sight of land, with the bottom clear as if viewed through crystal, thirty feet below. We'd often anchor by a coral head for lunch, and snorkel and happily starve. These giant mushroom, growing up from their white sand farms, were undoubtedly the most beautiful objects on earth, each an ecosystem unto itself, utterly mesmerizing with its kaleidoscope of tropical fish orbiting the great brain corals standing twenty feet high and more, as deadly to shipping as they were a wonder of the world, now extinct according to Peter Benchely who has been more recently than I have. There are sea snakes in the Bahamas, and I don't care what the documentaries say about this life form being found only in the Pacific and Indian oceans. There are sea snakes, right off Nassau, we saw them every day, we know a snake from and eel, and we were able to dive within three feet of them. Now we were in Stonington, Maine, and had swapped our big, heavy ketch for a salt-water farm and an eighty acre island half a mile off shore. Was I on land? Really? The last ten years of my life we'd lived on inner Long Island, in the in-those-days normal, but now trendy Northport. It's even been described as chi-chi. Who knew, but at least in the Fifties it seemed connected with the real world. Stonington, so many miles from nowhere? The only real world to that place was WBZ from Boston, Bruce Bradley and Dave Maynard, two disk jockeys who went a thousand miles beyond the canned, formulese patter common on the day's urban radio. (Woo-Woo Ginsberg, as a specific New England example) The Boston stations, which we got by a fluke, in the first place, faded at sunset leaving this little New Yorker far from home, indeed. Making the best of it wasn't easy. How the hell am I ever going to write about this place? I spent endless timewondering, then read like crazy so my head wouldn't cave in. As if Stonington wasn't colossally lost to civilization enough, we lived in what the downtowners considered the sticks, which was a high tide island, with a bridge, called Oceanville. NOW the writers hang out there, but in 1960 I don't think even a single book claimed residence. This lead me to reading the encyclopedia, though, to be honest, a trickle of books did find there way to our house, and, the single virtue of my parents was that they subscribed to a dozen magazines..(I remember physical revulsion at even touching "The Ladies' Home Journal," but I read it anyway, clammy as anything to do with adults ofthe gender of my mother made me feel - or was it fear?) I'd had my head split and my heart ruined on the only date I was to have in High School; Jeanie Maguire, warm for an instant, then forever cold; that was that, no appeal. Audrey had come along, a fantasy miracle who I never spoke to; other blips in the haze, but no contact with the targets. In self defense and with due deliberation, I set myself to wander nerd valley; coping trash grades, and skulking in any shadow I could find, sopping it all up like a sponge. "If I can't make it as a long-ball novelist, maybe this burg, and the people herein, will do as fodder for a short story or two," I schemed to myself. Not that I was left with absolutely nothing to think of. Jeanie, having dumped me, took up with Dickie Dunham, and it was interesting, imagining them alone together, probing Beaver to his very soul, and laughing together over the antics of the world's nastiest lensperson, Uncle Milty. How I knew neither would be interested in my dawning awareness that John Hancock and Sam Adams had been two of the most utterly absolute assholes who ever drew breath, and the nation they founded was doomed to rapid strangulation under the lunatic doctrine of democracy. Please, I wasn't obsessed with this; viewed it, in fact, as a rather good joke. I was ten times more interested in Elvis, who'd smashed into the world back when I was ten and living in Northport. The Beatles moved to America the same time as the Emersons moved to Maine, so that was interesting. Perhaps Jeanie and Dickie talked about them. An interesting thing did happen. The winter of '60-'61featured sixteen days in a row where, even on the coast, the temperature never got above zero, Fahrenheit. The salt water froze for miles out to sea, and we could not only ride out bikes out to the island, but drive our tractor across the ice. Since that's the only interesting thing that ever happened in Stonington, or on Deer Isle, it is nice we were included. Yes, the place "The National Geographic" forgot, although, today, living in Belize, I see a lot of Stonington and surrounds in the documentary channels; in fact, a few months ago I was startled to see a picture of the downtown docks at high tide. We used to go there for lunch break when I attended Stonington High, and it seems to me that the water-level is notably higher than it was forty years ago. This parallels our experience in South Orleans, where our home on Pleasant Bay is marrying-up with the mermaid Mar. Larry and I both like electronics, and, indeed, he's gone on to become a notable engineer in the field. I remember Z-35 vacuum tubes played a central role in our relationship, which focused on cobbling big speakers to little radios in hopes of infinite fidelity. If we'd lived in Hollywood we would have been the original Dolby brothers, but I wanted to be a writer, so maybe not. "Susan likes you," my friend said. I was relieved he'd brought the subject up. It had been some time since Susan, her friend Valerie, and I had spent a day-off-school Friday afternoon at the house at the end of the lane. We had our .22s and actually did constitute to any red squirrel brash enough to taunt us from the pines. We'd kind of bonded a little when I'd dropped one like a plummet from two hundred feet, but then I did have a scope. "Has it been okay?" was all I could think of as a reply. Larry blushed and said Yes. Our pace slowed. "Have you talked to George?" I asked, unable to think of anything else to keep the conversation going, something the tone of Larry's usually quick, high voice made me want to do. "Just on the bus." "What did he say?" I asked. "That he's glad you didn't move here when Valerie was five." "I guess it worked out pretty well." I commented. "For both of us," he responded. We pretended to scan the trees, and, if we'd had families to feed, we may well have returned to serious hunting, but we were two fourteen year old boys, tall, slim, Larry, athletic, I, naturally rugged. We each stood five-eleven and weighed one-sixty. "Does a lot of stuff happen in New York?" he finally asked, "you know..." Well, it was New York, and this was Oceanville, so... "I guess, sometimes..." We'd played a lot of backboard together, which was pretty funny, because I'd literally never seen a real basketball before moving to Maine, but I was naturally un-athletic, until mounted on a horse, that is, so it probably wouldn't have made any difference. Anyway, it occurred to me that even though we'd played ball, I'd never seen Larry bare-chested. I wondered if he suffered my affliction, and blushed at the thought. We hemmed and hawed, the squirrels getting safer by the minute. It did seem to be leading somewhere; neither of us were willing to let embarrassment or lack of familiarity grind things to a complete silence. "My brother Ted used to do a lot of stuff with one of his friends, Peter Ketchum," I said. "He's doing it with Charlie Webb, now," Larry said. "And my sister," I added. "I thought so," Larry said, adding, "have you seen them?" "Not everything," I admitted, "but his hands all over her bottom. Mostly, I heard them." "It's hard keeping quiet with Susan," Larry said. I understated things, like saying my family was rich, when in truth they possessed and still possess the most staggering and secret fortune in the world, whaling, China trade, Bell Telephone, so I was glad to see the same characteristic in my relatively new friend. How he could be still and silent with his nine-year-old sister was beyond comprehension, and remember, I was a budding writer and at least thought I knew it all. "Where to Ted and Mary do stuff?" Larry asked. "In his bedroom, during cornet practice," I said. Larry had been to my room many times and knew there was an old-fashioned - the house was built in 1850 - door between my room and Ted's; old-fashioned door, with keyhole. It was a strange arrangement, and i guess, looking back, that doorway had its share of coastal Maine secrets. Rural goings on; would it have been a father sleeping at the end of the hall, next to his daughter's room, with that convenient door, or a brother and sister, so blessed by generous parents. Whatever it's hundred-and-ten year history, the keyhole did allow me a spot of vision after my thirteen year old brother and nine year old sister lost control, and their sounds intruded over the silence, I didn't always have the radio on, as I was working on a model. My heart rate went through the roof, I crept to the keyhole, saw my sister's white bottom in my brother's rigid hands, and knew he was climaxing inside her. It took them minutes to regain control, as I silently masturbated wondering at what my brother's penis must have felt like in her belly, and if she could actually feel his sperm, which was why she was so tense as she lay on top of him. Talk about stopping a hunt! By accord we found a downed tree in a grove, but we kept our rifles across our laps - pretense. "She's old enough to get pregnant," Larry said. I didn't think he'd up and change the subject, even with his generally lighthearted and fooling-around nature, but I was glad to have the focus affirmed. This was New England. If you didn't like the weather, you just waited a minute, and there was nothing else to talk about. "That would be good," I said. "Mary's a mess, if she doesn't have a kid, and soon, she'll stay that way." Prescient, even for a writer. My sister is one of the world's true horrors, but we'll leave that for another genre, which is to say that if there is ever a Horror site the equal of Nifty, I'll post the story. "Are they using anything?" Larry quizzed. "I don't think so," I said. It did make me wonder. Mary was a beauty, very fully developed; they had been clenched for minutes, both his hands on her bottom; she couldn't have been masturbating him, there would have been some motion. There was none. They hadn't given themselves away by rocking the bed or squeaking the headboard, but by their intense muffled panting. My patent three-hundred IQ told its own tale. Since what was happening was earthshaking and obviously profound to the shaking but motionless girl, I felt certain Ted had not scored a condom from Downtown Charlie, and that she was taking his seed with both of them completely naked and she knowing he was potent. "You're going to have to with Susan," I observed, keeping the conversation on its stumbling passage. "I know," Larry said, his voice now too low and ragged to have anything to do with hunting, basketball, or Uncle Milty. "With both me an Mark, she's starting to develop really fast." The thought of another Audrey made us both dizzy, so we sat for a minute until our heads cleared. Under Ted, Mary had also developed very early and very fully. It could happen fast if a girl got the right attention. "Can you re-use a condom?" Larry asked. "I saw a guy put one over his head in a film, once," I said. "I think you could use one lots of time, you know, if..." "Yeah," Larry concluded, "I cleaned it real careful. But do you think it would stay tight? There's an awful lot of it, Susan says three times more than Mark. I guess I'm a little different that way." We were both wearing shirts, despite the summer heat, because we were both different that way, and it was intriguing to think my tall, very blond friend was different in yet another way. I passed on what I knew, as teens will, explaining that as long as he left room at the, um, tip, it couldn't break from what he did in it, but it might come out from around the base of him, you know, if there was really a lot. Here I explained that I didn't think that aspect of the situation would be dependent on whether the condom was new, or used. If it was the blind leading the blind, I don't know. Everybody traveled around quite a bit, and a girl could be sidetracked for a few days without anyone knowing. Maybe Mary had been. "Was your first time with a girl?" Larry asked. We were still holding the rifles, but it would have taken a charging buck to energize our thumbs enough to flick off the safeties. "No," I whispered. "Me either," Larry whispered back. I guess it was the last yahoo of the wild-wood hooligans, or something like that, anyway, we went all macho, ejection shells from the chamber, taking out the clips, sticking our thumbs in the breaches, and manipulating the rifles so we could peer down the barrels. What the gleaming core of polished, twisting steel revealed, I'm not sure; maybe it was a variation on Spin the Bottle or Strip Poker. If so, it was a good one. By accord, we didn't sit back down with our guns, but parked them against our fallen tree, wedged into a branch so they wouldn't fall. "How old were you?" I asked. "Eleven," Larry whispered, "how about you." I'd seduced Jon when I was eight, but that seemed precocious, like all that family land and money, so I bumped it a year." "That's how old Kelsey is," Larry replied, "I'm meant to baby-sit for him tonight." You know what we needed to do? We needed to change the subject. "What's it like being rich?" my friend asked, instinctively sensitive to the fact we had the whole morning together, the whole day, for that matter. "Schizophrenic," I answered. Sure, we'd come cruising practically up to the front door of our little farm in our monster from the deep, but my Christmas presents, excluding clothes, had not equaled a hundred dollar over the previous ten years. I was constantly deemed an expense and a mouth to feed, while more boats came and more boats went. Since I got violently and very durably seasick, the nautical collection was a horror show, and I was victimized repeatedly. Of course, it was a family tradition. My step great grandfather had purchased the "Volunteer" after she'd won the Americas Cup, and maintained and sailed her with a fill-time crew of 26 men. It wasn't of Newport, though it was close to Newport, it vastly exceeded the wildest dreams of Newport, and it was the world's ultimate family jewel, actually a string of jewels called the Elizabeth Islands, and famous because the QE II ran aground on one of the jewels, no casualties, some years ago. It was numbing, mind-bending, and top secret. So secret, even from us, that we got nothing from it other than bare-bones public schooling, as war babies, in split sessions schools with called-from-retirement teachers. I've never been able to spell since struggling with words under a dull pencil scratching across a grade of newsprint suitable for packing material. Ugly, tough, deadening; but there was always a boat at the yacht club and the slog out into Long Island Sound, the circle under sail, whoopee, and the long evening grind back in past Eaton's Neck, the little three resonating with the fiberglass tub of the hull to sicken as ever the wild horizon and heaving deck. Are you poor? Grab a pile of books, lock yourself away in your free time, and pray you never hear through the door of your sanctuary, "Tom, we're sailing over to Norwalk tomorrow." To cut a story that predates the Revolution by a century and more, short, I didn't have much in the way of answers. His father spent a lot of time working on cars with Larry, mine cursed the fact I even knew they existed, and so on. It was all I could say. The fact that a private fortune, however modest, would allow me to devote myself full-time to writing was carefully hidden from me, so there just wasn't much to say on the subject. And we needed a subject. We sensed, and was great, ourselves half-way between wanting to just do it together and falling in love. In modern times, we could have talked about things like how everybody who remotely resembles "The Video Professor" should be driven into the sea, dithered over the Wax Nincompoop in the horrible FedEx spots, or dissected the second career of the wop with the paint, and how damaging his image was to America and American men. But all there was in those days was Kennedy, the classic mile of width and inch of depth. He only appeared to be a moron, it would take three years and a convertible to prove it to the world. To early, in 1960 to rewrite his horrific speech on getting a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth in this de-cade, the way it should have been written in the first place: "We wish the Russians the best of luck in their pursuit of manned space travel and landing a man on the moon. Our Interstate highway program is proving so successful, we plan to emulate it in outer space, providing free channels to the public in the same manner we, the government, uses your taxes to supply 'free' roads, which go on to benefit those who never use them as well as those who use them every day. Our clinical technicians assure us, one an all, that sustained travel in zero gravity is impossible, because the human body will rapidly atrophy without the stimulus of gravity. "Again, we wish the Russians the best, we wish them great safety, and we hope something of use to man on earth comes from their expenditure of energy and treasure, but of which they are going to need in vast amounts, should they decide to tamper with Cuba, or anywhere in the hemisphere." Was I a Kennedy speech writer in those days? No. To bad, eh? But we did talk about him. Again, because of the family, it was difficult. While Joe had been smuggling whisky, commandeering Lend-Lease ships for his cargoes, and doing his manly best to infect Rose with syphilis, my family had been building the Bell System and the Burlington Northern, buying Naushon and surrounding islands (Gosnold Country, Hadley Harbor to Cuttyhunk, for my fellow yachtsmen - gulp). We had set the stage for the transistor and a thousand close cousins while Joe was using his bizarre ambassadorial posting to torpedo our relationship with England. They have a compound in Hyannis, we have twenty miles of islands. Whose the Royal Family? Too bad about Jon-Jon, who, incidentally, crashed within site of Tarpaulin Cove, because he featured himself a writer - remember Washington in a bra - and we could have dueled it out, limey versus mick, on our keyboards. You know, posted our visions, and let the people decide. You're sorry he's dead? How would he have stood up - ancestors on the floor, mano-a-mano, monitor-a-monitor?Feel lucky he died, for, if the Catholics are right - ha, ha - he's feeling glad. ("George" was a tremendous failure, the socialistic Kennedys are a tremendous failure. Any questions? If there are, ask Joe. He never said a word after Ted told him about Mary Jo, for the rest of his life.Now old Joe, he knew a thing or two about the Kennedy clan.) "I know where Dickie and Jeanie go," Larry said. "How long has she known him?" I asked in response. "Since last summer," Larry said. "Hmm," I thought to myself, actually shocked at the inescapable conclusion that innocent face aside, she must have used our single datefor the purpose of maneuvering the other boy. I thought "Hmm," again. As a nascent writer, I had to develop loyalty to no one; let each earn a place according to their acts; neither shield nor exploit even a tenth of an inch. Truth, only that. If I'd had mucus in my nose the whole evening, or said something like, "Hey babe, let's lose this scene," I could understand the trap door. She'd known Dickie since kindergarten, as far as I knew, and it was possible something genuine had suddenly happened, leaving me odd man out. Either eventuality should have gotten back to me through the grapevine if a note or a phone call were beyond the ken of a thirteen-year-old girl from an upper-class family. I guess the word to mothers is not to let your daughters grow up to even know writers. But what do we look like? Isn't the nerdy toad in the corner likely not only to absorb and remember everything, but to be reptilian when it comes to doing unto those who have done unto him? Sounds like a plan. "If we were sitting beside a pond here, you know what?" Larry asked. "What?" I asked. "We could go skinny-dipping." Larry liked to get laughs by looking and acting a little bit horsy; it went with his glasses. He took them off, hanging them on the same branch crotch that supported the .22s. "Wow," I whispered. He suddenly looked beautiful; so blond, such wildly blue eyes, his normal laughing mouth now soft, his head bent slightly. Then I said, "let's pretend." "You sure?" he whispered. "We could just talk." "That would be okay, too," I replied in a matching voice, "but maybe we could take our shirts off." "I've never seen you," he whispered. "I haven't seen you, either," I answered. "Do you know why?": he asked. "I think so," I said back to him. "Do you want to put you hand under my shirt and feel?" he asked. "Has anyone else done that to you?" I asked. I knew I'd have to pass through dreaded journalism before I could write novels, so interviewing was inevitable to my development. "Just during the summer of '57," he said, "but I was a little kid then, not like I am now." "Same with me," I said, "I was normal when it happened to me with Jon, because he touched me a lot there." "Do you think getting touched has something to do with it?" "Yes," I answered, "it feels so good you want to be a girl so it will happen all the time." "Get outta town," Larry said. I was winging it a bit, I suppose, but you have to be creative to make it past journalism; my wings needed trying. I assured Larry I was, in fact, kidding, then he picked up on the idea, so it ended up me trying to talk him out of it, neither of us, obviously havingfact oneconcerning what we were talking about. Did it matter? Guess. "I've seen them five times, Mark watches them all the time<" Larry said. We'd turned on the fallen tree, and were facing each other, almost touching, or hands at our sides. "Where do they go?" I asked. "You wanna?" Larry whispered, very softly. Yes, but I was trying to make ever so sure he did. He read my eyes, and pulled the front of his shirt from his jeans. Reading his hot eyes, magic without the glasses, I pulled out my tails, too. "I don't want to do this in secret from Audrey," I said. Larry's eyes bugged slightly in surprise. "You took the words right out of my mouth," he said, "I was just going to tell you that you have a fairy godmother. She knows what Maguire did to you, now she's going to show how an Oceanville girl treats her boyfriend." I was listening. "Kelsey Blastow," he whispered. "You have to come, too, to baby-sit. It will just be the three of us, because they're taking Rachel with them to Millinocket." I almost laughed out loud, as Millinocket was the legendary you-can't-get-there-from-here, ayah, Maine town in the "Bert and I" records. Who knew it was real? But of course, I didn't laugh. Sure, Audrey and I had our quips and teases when we were together, but somehow I didn't think levity was involved. I guess I figured it out from Larry's voice, and his slight blushing. Fourteen-year-old boys touch each other a lot; they fight, they wrestle, the tackle, they toss each other around in basketball. What they don't often do is gently put their fingers up under their best friend's shirt, and run them gently over the hard muscles and silky soft skin. May I suggest...? Larry's finger felt incredible on me, too; not the burning fire of Audrey, Susan and Valerie, but hot, plenty hot. "It's going to be Kelsey's first time," Larry whispered, "so, if we can do it, we should save for when we're with him." I guess many things can be described as bittersweet; I had never been with a male since masturbating my camp counselor a few times, and he had not molested me, so, from a carnal standpoint, I had never been with a male at all, saving one ten minute shower with Peter Ketchum. Nothing like this. Nothing like fondling and being fondled in return, nothing like lingering minute after minute, an inch from my first boy kiss, no, nothing, and no, nothing like spending the evening together with a nine-year-old boy, a slim, quiet child with an almost girlishly pretty face and huge brown eyes. Stonington could, when it put its mind to it, be an electrifying place. The whole town had known instantly when Audrey became pregnant from her brother. A delirious month was spent, until she was gently and tenderly eased to Blue Hill in order not to endanger her young body. Several small hand-made gifts, beautiful in their modesty, one, a hand mirror inscribed 'for your child' had reached the sad girl, and every word and thought expressed the thought Next time. Tip McCorison, alone, a great gruff toad, a sort of Bronson, squared, was a thousand volts, hear to tell, headed girl by girl island wide. Half the incest on the island was preparing the female children for his note, and what always followed on a mattress at the dump. Then there was Dickie's new status with Jeanie. How high was that flagpole as a village totem? We later lived in Camden, though I've never done more than visit that house, but Camden was the location of the original "Peyton Place." Call it a literary challenge, though, with Audrey apparently firmly on my side - I'd actually told her about wanting to write, something, because of my famous literary name, I never otherwise mentioned - and, if she kept up her good works, when the day came it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. "Can I touch you," I whispered to my young teen friend, who somehow looked no older than ten without his glasses. "Yes," he said, and I nodded to show him I was ready too. Both of us were like little girls; like Susan and Valerie, nine year olds, when very highly aroused; only being aroused was only half of it. "She doesn't let him take her pants off," Larry whispered, his fingers likewanton caterpillars closing in for a feast. Mine were thrilled with their prize, too, so we were getting along really well, both, I'm sure, trying not to think about being alone with Kelsey. Our lips touched but we didn't kiss. I've had something like this happen recently with Samantha, talking with your lips on your partners. "She won't let him even touch her under her belly button," Larry said. It could have been the tale of the washed-out spider, or anything, so, given the basics of the situation, it was darned old white of him to relay his spy stories. "They have a special place they go, every time; they do it the same, every time. Of course, they may do stuff in private in the winter, but when the weather's good, they head for the quarry to where they have a blanket hidden. She lets him take her blouse and bra off while they make out, then he strips and straddles her. She puts a paper towel over one of her breasts, and their only game is she switches it from side to side, and sometimes they forget where they are, so they fight about it, and they always fight about him wanting to pull her jeans down, then, to prevent this, she tells him to do what he needs to and she closes her eyes for a couple of minutes, then they don't have to fight about it any more, or so it seems." I thought of Robert Frost's poem, "Departmental":"It couldn't be called un-gentle, but all thoroughly departmental." Maybe 'organized' should be substituted. Yet it was not as easily dismissed as it might of been. Dickie may have been a wus, at least intellectually, but he was dead cute. Jeanie was a long-legged utter beauty, in fact I've only met one more beautiful girl in my life. Her even tangential acceptance of his court must have been intensely exciting, whatever was off limits. It brought a real question to mind. What if she'd said yes, at least to dating; we'd found something to chat about once in awhile, and things haddeveloped sort of normally. I don't think I could have matched Dickie's virility; have touched her for at least a year;even the slightest effort at a kiss would have taken me six months, I'm sure. Had Dickie simply taken charge, where I stood in awe - all that IQ, breeding, and readingspinning like a million horsepower engine on bicycle wheels? But all the side trips begged the issue; would I have been happier over at her house, in my wildest imagine, maybe holding sweaty hands, than I was here? Amplifying, would I have been happier with a loyal Anne than I was with Jose? Under my laissez faire tutelage he'd shot, in five years, but mostly in the last year, to the top of the Mexican music scene as friend and writerof and for a top recording artist;wouldn't Anne have done the same? With Jose as my partner, I averaged six or seven pages a day on my first novel, using aportable typewriter; completed it at just over eleven hundred pages. Would I have been able to take that firstgiant step, still married? With children? I sure think so. What I also think, is that I would not have made it as high. Commercial success,very likely; artistic? Equally unlikely. Do I get satisfaction knowing Stephen King would give his first born to write a single page as I write? Yes. Is it worth the loss of a marriage? Yes. That's a man talking, and we have a woman in the spotlight to force a comparison. Nancy Hughes. She is the closest ofinner circle aids, confidants, and advisors to the president; described by one and all as irreplaceable. Yet she's leaving to play mom to her fifteen year old son. I sacrificed having any kids in the first place, and she's like Anne; a bee in the bonnet and an out-of-town ticket. Put it this way, I was extremely comfortable with Larry. We wouldn't hold hands at the prom, but we would baby-sit for the brown-eyed nine year old. Jose was ethereal company, all weathers, always. I ended up a staggering writer, often pleasing myself in a manner so fulsome and complete perhaps no woman was up to being my vainglorious equal, though, to be honest, I've spent thousands of nights in front of thousands of happy mornings, which is to say there is a chance, and always was a chance. "You were eleven?" I whispered into Larry's lips. He looked eleven now, for god sakes; at that age he must have been a white-toothed dream, skin so soft the tale of the princess and the pea could be re-written using a tuft of eiderdown. "Jack was seventeen," he replied. Jack. Audrey's brother. Now six-two, craggy, big-boned, handsome and rugged. At seventeen, he must have been totally amazing. "Adam was seventeen. He spent the summer on a church thing." "Where did it happen?" I asked, still lips to lips because it was a turn on, however silly. "Russ Island," Larry said. "I was helping Jack, Adam came along, thefog came in, so we decided to hang around until it lifted." "Did you know something was going to happen?" I asked. I'd definitely known with both Jon and Peter and hoped Larry had shared the excitement rarely equaled by even the grooms with the most beautiful brides. "Adam told a story," Larry whispered, "before he went out. He'd spent a summer on a cattle drive when he was twelve, and been back every year. We asked him a lot of questions and he kind of told us about stuff that happened when there were no girls along. Jack said the same kind of things happened on the fishing schooners; a couple of nice boys were always brought along. They were both looking at me and I got really nervous, but I liked it and didn't want them to stop." "Fat chance of that happening," I thought to myself, "not with that long-legged, ultra blond beauty doing anything other than running as fast as he could and hollering at the top of his lungs." I gathered he'd neither run or hollered, and that old IQ was just a hammerin', as they say Down East, because, sure enough, no foot race. "Do you want to come out on the boat with us?" Jack asked, his voice suddenly thick. "Can I?" the bright-eyed child asked. "You may not want to," Jack said; "because Adam wants to talk more about what happened at the ranch, so, you know, it may be too mature for you." Larry looked at Adam, a tall, fox faced Norwegian, sandy-blond hair in a bang across his forehead than made him look like a kid. Jack was black-haired; not stern of visage, but direct. "We're going to be pretty mature," he said, softly, "not just talk about things." Larry didn't think Where do I sign, or anything clever, he just took off his glasses and stared at the two mature males. Nothing more was said as he donned the pants to his rain suit, but an instinct deep in his belly told him to strip off his shirt, and accompany them bare-chested down the dock and onto the boat. It wouldn't brand him, there wasn't a jail cell closer than Ellsworth, so no one ever got branded on Deer Isle; no, it would just be another urban legend, Stonington-size; Larry bare chested save for the straps on his foul-weather gear, going off alone with Jack and the visitor, Adam, from Norway. "He's such a pale boy," several learners of the tale would undoubtedly reply, "so fair with such blue eyes." No one would say, "I hope they're gentle with him," but it would be in every eye. The local oddity was that the conversations would have been the same if the willowy lad had been off to the dump with Tip; just a shade more concern at the unexpressed hope, and that would be it. If you were in for a penny, in this particular coastal burg, you might as well go for the pound. The fog closed in as they were leaving, thickening so that Russ Island was the only practical option. Since it is the most beautiful island, of the thousands along the coast, no one was complaining, though the older males had intended to desensitize their slim, blond child by helping him pull up traps by hand, the way every tyke should learn. Not to be outdone by a change in the weather, Jack and Adam conferred in whispers, and ended up bringing a twenty-foot length of line as they hopped off the beached lobster boat. They walked inland to the forested northern half of the island, and, deep in a grove of trees, found a suitable outcropping of ledge. Jack tossed one end of the rope over the ledge and handed the other to the eleven year old. "Pretend you're pulling up a heavy trap," Adam whispered. Larry began the charade, leaning as far as he dared, and straining theatrically. "We don't want you to fall overboard," Jack whispered, and Adam obviously shared his concern. They stood behind the pale child, Jack reaching in under the apron on his work pants from Larry's right side, and Adam cradling they boy's thin chest gently with his left arm and hand. "Is this okay?" Jack whispered, now that the two older teens were being open about expressing what they wantedwith the young boy. "Yes," Larry whispered, glad of the sturdy males holding him so if his knees buckled he wouldn't topple over the ledge. "Lar," Adam asked, "are you wearing underpants." "Yes," the boy said, his voice now as thick and quavering as the two child molesters. "If you want," Adam continued, "we could play a game like we do when we camp on the drives." "Okay," Larry agreed, not knowing what kind of play might be in store, and not caring as long as it was with these tall friends. "It's nothing complicated," Adam went on, not even trying to sound casual or off-hand, and his voice filled the pubescent boy with thrills and chills of the same intensity he felt when the latest story of Tip McCorisson and a school girl circled the small town. "We all strip down to our underwear, and we become the doggies - cows - and you're the cowboy with the rope. You'll find us pretty easy to catch." "You'll be in your underpants, too?" the eleven year old whispered. "We don't have to do it that way," Adam said. "And we won't do anything you don't want. It's just a game," Jack added. "As long as I don't see any branding irons, I'll be happy," Larry advised his teen friends. "Nothing hotter than ninety-eight-point-six degrees," Jack said. Reluctantly, the two seventeen year olds released the boy and all three headed into the woods to remove their boots and clothes at modest distances, one from the other. Jack and Adam were the first to emerge. They'd done a little talking in setting up the young boy, but had not even seen each other bare chested. They came together in silence, Jack loving the long silkiness of the young Norwegian's swimmer's body, and Adam equally excited by Jack lankier, workman's physique, and especially with the light crinkly pelt of black fur over his pecs and trailing down into his white briefs. Both males were bulging hugely, their thick, hard sex jutting in both cases to the males' right and way out onto their respective hips. They didn't touch each other but rather stood, inches apart, looking into each others eyes, promising, promising. "I've got everything off," Larry informed them in a stage whisper. "Do you want to come out and be with us?" Jack asked. "I dunno," Larry replied from behind a nearby tree. Both the older boys understood. "Just stand there and close your eye, we'll come in and get you," Adam instructed. "O-okay," came the very nervous response, then, with a stifled giggle the boy eased the minds of his mature friends. "Don't forget my rope." "Are boys usually scared the first time?" Jack asked the former cowboy. "The best ones are very scared," Adam whispered back. "It's the ones who are overly eager that turn out to be the duds; they want to make a comedy or a theater out of it; they always turn out to be bum workers, too. "Larry's not like that." Jack had never felt he was, but it was nice to have it affirmed by someone with experience in juveniles. "How many boys have you taught?" Jack asked his friend, both realizing it would be best to go very slowly in fetching the nervous child from where he was hidden behind a tree. "Not that many," Adam said. "It has to be just right. Just because a kid is cute doesn't mean he'll be nice to be with. On two drives, nothing happened except group stuff while we were washing in a river; that doesn't count. On my fourth drive, I met Timmy. We spent a lot of time together, then we were riding night watch one evening and without saying a word we tied off his horse, and he rode in front of me on my horse." Adam wanted to tell the story and Jack wanted to hear it, but not now. "You okay, Lar?" Jack whispered to the tree, "because you don't have to do anything." "I'm just embarrassed," Larry whispered from his hiding place. "Turn to the tree," Adam said, and repeated his instructions for the boy to close his eyes. The young men approached barefoot and silently. Jack followed Adam's lead as they crept the final couple of feet. The long-legged stripling was beautiful beyond their fevered imaginations and the young men had begun to pant openly. Hip to hip, Adam on the right, the eased to the beauty before them. Larry was hiding his eyes with his hands, exposing the long swell of his boyish flanks. There was a mole on his right shoulder blade and if Jack and Adam were ever to fight in their lives, it would be over who would be the first to kiss Larry on that spot. Fortunately, the attention of both the seventeen year olds was totally distracted by the tautness of Larry's underpants over his beautiful pre-teen bottom. Both knew why the fabric was stretched, and it made them pant the louder and sweat and shake spontaneously at the thought of their first touch against the playful child. Now steadying each other out of necessity with arms over each others' shoulders, Jack and Adam eased their waists to Larry's bottom, gently touching him with their throbbing, hot erections. "You're just like I am," the boy whispered. "Do you like being that way with us?" Adam quizzed the child. "Yes," Larry whispered. Both teens came more firmly against the young boy, and they positioned themselves so they were kept from falling to the ground by pressing against Larry who, luckily, was solidly positioned against the fragrant pine. "Do you ever take your underpants off when you play the game?" Larry asked, as both males began to molest him with fondling touches and kisses, in turn, Jack first, to the accent on the soft, white skin of his back. "Yes," Adam answered. His future assured, Larry began panting and hissing softly into the tree as the teen males leaned fully against him, their hands playing as low as his belly button, their kisses ardent at the base of his long, slim neck. Larry wasn't bold or carnally adventurous, but he was neither a shrinking violet. "Jack," he asked, "do you do this with you sister?" "Yes," Jack whispered. "She's lucky," the boy said, not feeling unlucky, himself. "Do you do things inside her?" the curious eleven year old asked? "Not yet," Jack whispered, "she's still too young. "Have you experimented with your sisters?" "Not witch Becky," Larry whispered, alluding to his one-year-younger sister, "but I've talked about it with Susan." "Nothing's happened?" Adam quizzed. "No," the now panting boy whispered, "we didn't know what to do." "You can cum-off with her," Jack whispered, "do you know what that is." "Yeah," said Larry, "Diggy Lamoine tells everybody about that stuff. It happened to me last week while I was sleeping." "Were you dreaming of Susan?" Jack asked. "No," Larry replied. "It was you. You were helping me haul traps and asking me questions about Susan, then I started getting wet and I woke up." "I hope this is better," Jack said. "Ten times," the boy affirmed. "It feels that way with Audrey, too," Jack said, "ten times better than anything you could dream of. When she asks me to jerk-off and cum into her, I get so excited she can make it happen the way she wants just by telling me she's ready for me to play daddy in her tummy. "Have you ever been with a girl?" he asked Adam. "No," the erstwhile rancher said, "but that's just the breaks; how it's worked out. Lack of opportunity, plus lack of pursuit of opportunity due to there always being willing boys enough to keep me veryhappy." "Are boys better, Jack?" Larry whispered. "I think it's going to be more exciting with you than it is with Audrey," Jack whispered back, "but it's going over the moon being with her, so it's not really the kind of thing you can measure." "It doesn't seem scientific," Larry agreed. By now the hands of both the older males were at the waist-band of Larry's jockey shorts and they were fondling him from his belly and out to his hips, even trailing their fingers over his bottom covered with the stretched cotton. By accord, they began to strip the child off. As their hands worked down over his hips the boy began to shudder tensely. "It's going to be really embarrassing when I turn around," he said, but he brought his feet, which had been slightly spread to help balance the two adults leaning against him, together, his body instinctively obeying however confused and distracted the boy might think he was. The white cotton underpants could only be eased a few inches down the long, white thighs; there they hung stubbornly. "Do you want one of us to reach in front for a little while?" Adam asked. "I'll get the tree wet if you do," the shaking boy replied. "If that happens," Adam coaxed, "tell us so we can turn you around." "You want to watch me cum-off?" Larry queried. "Yes," Jack and Adam whispered as one. "I want to watch you too, if you're going to do it." "We are, and we want you to watch," Jack said. They all knew they had to stop or there was going to be an accident. The fog was stilt thick, they had plenty of time, ah, but how to spend it. Luckily, as national scribe, I can always think of something to rant about; being perhaps best fit by virtue of background and attitude to act as the numbing jelly Prolong. [Author's note: This was the first of my stories to be withdrawn from publication as originally submitted. The reason was anti-Semitism. I'd like to step out of this manuscript for a few moments and address the subject. Janie Graham Knowles has been, to date, my longest, at seven years, romantic relationship. Her mother's maiden name was Louisjohn, which I've undoubtedly misspelled, but which is on of the families featured in Steven Birmingham's "Our Crowd." Dan Swartz and Al Tannenbaum, both of Brooklyn, were classic bosom buddies on the DMZ. And so on, and so on, and so on. For all I know, Anne had Jewish blood, I never would have dreamed of asking. My perceived anti-Semitism is in fact nothing more than a) a reaction to having WASPs portrayed by the likes of Thurston Howell (a family name) on "Gilligan's Island", and Harry Emerson Winchester, on "M*A*S*H", and, b) the fact that a two-percent minority dominates the media to such an extent that when Billy Graham is caught on the Nixon tapes, commenting on this anomaly, he apologizes and retracts his opinions within hours. I have read 3,000 books in my life, over ten percent of them aloud to my maternal grandmother, who, in her long life, may have read as many as 20,000. I have lived in three widely disparate countries, and visited others for long periods of time. Although I live on a modest income, I never stepped inside a store for a period of five years, and I have never held a broom or mop in eight years. If I don't know American, if I don't know life, and if I don't know the human race, then no-one does. And in the vast epic of recent and current events, one special serpent's tooth is found. It is a religious cult with the peasant like intellectual arrogance to claim to have invented god, and themselves in his image. To a writer whose ancestry includes the founding engineer of the entire democratic movement, and a host of other essential luminaries, I feel if I don't have the horsepower to tell it like it is, it simply won't be told. If you think I'm wrong, may I ask: based on what? Do you write as well as I do? Work as hard? Have you read as much? Traveled and lived abroad, as much? If you point to your Ivy League credentials, aren't these the same credentials that would have been found in the offices of Iridium? And a hundred other giant, total failures? According to the Transcendentalists, he who is most gifted is closest to god. I would substitute the idea that he who works the hardest developing his talent, is closest to god. Either way you slice it, I'm all there is. If my arrogance is insufferable to you, your obesity and the dangerous and strung-out way you live is insufferable to me. Chime in. I write the best stroke-off material in the world. Should I let it go at that? Publish on ASSTR, where the single story I posted eighteen months ago is still going out to from four to seven hundred readers a week? I told David, my editor at Nifty, my mail runs a hundred to one in favor – great favor – of my work, with long, specific letter more common that the quick attaboy. Okay, thanks for you attention during the time out. I have changed the manuscript. The writer is the horse, the editor is the rider, and the audience supplies the oats. Can't we all get along?] For instance, it was interesting to see the final act, last night, of the country being delivered unto its urban Socialist masters. Over a hundred canine handlers from all over the country were flown to New York to honor, with a twenty-one gun salute, a police dog whose kennel happened to be at the World Trade Center. The flabbergasting emotion of the leftist; the utter filth of degrading combat heroes with the same slobber of loathsome emotion gouted over a caged animal. Sure minor, but you shouldn't have even let the thought tickle you, because if you want major, how about AOL's quarterly loss of fifty-two billion dollars. Will that suffice? How about that emergency beacon of the active family, the telephone, ringing twenty times a day because a liberal interpretation of the First Amendment allows freedom of speech nee telemarketing? That oughtta hit you where you live. I was on AOL in '92. Any reading of the archives of the site will show that it was only viable as a sex link, men pursuing young boys, or girls if necessary. I was on it, I know, and so this porn site ups and pays one-hundred-fifty two billion dollars because, according to the chicken executive who lucked into running the place, AOL customers love Time/Warner content. It is a stupid, filthy enterprise, weird to the core. And it lost fifty-eight billion US dollars in three months flat. And this is no Monday morning review; my commentary is included in stories I posted early last year. You need to be told you are in desperate trouble, you are fat, you are greedy, and you are acting like monkeys on drugs. You are at the brink of populist-infested democracy killing you to the last man, woman and child. Take New York and the attacks, as a small example. On Sept. 11th, itself, several commentators pointed out that there were thirty million square feet of vacant office space on lower Manhattan. The ruins should have been allowed to stay almost exactly as they fell. Now they want to spend twenty-nine billion dollarreplacing thirty million square feet of office space. The greatest complex of ruins in all history; tourist draw for an easy century or more, thrown away as if it were junk so more of what's not needed could be built. New York is a stupid place, and it will destroy the world. It is a self-promoting parasite. It's Sinatra's kind of town. Schmo City. Schlong-Schleppers' World-Rule Headquarters. New York is so bush league and Horner's Corners, it thinks Woody Allen is funny, Fran Drescher, and Seinfeld. It is an ugly, pushy place with Travolta and his gallon of paint, and insomnia statistics that make a Yankee like me get goose bumps of I Told You So. Hymie town, in a rare intelligent comment from Jesse Jackson.. In all the world there is only one place worse than New York City, and that is Harvard University. I know, you were expecting Hollywood, and half of you were probably right. What goes around comes around. The man-dumping women of the fem-lib magazine culture are doing enough damage - clearly seen in stressed (fat) kids and fat adults - of an by themselves to spell civil doom. All churches contribute by preaching hypocrisy as a way of life and addicting children to dead ritualism. Dead, for sure. Ice-cold milk, warm apple pie with American cheese, Lawrence Welk and Billy Graham. Hello! It's "7th Heaven" with little Ruthie writing in her diary about watching her parents have sex. It's freaking parents empowering their kids with trust; funny stuff when I write about it, but remember it took a hundred thousand hours of intense practice over thirty years to make it sound funny, nor does a private income hurt. Let me try to convey the seriousness of your situation by pointing out the fact that even though hundreds of thousands of readers have read my postings over the last year and a half, not a single one has written supporting in any way the beliefs and opinions stated repeatedly in almost every story I publish. I get hundreds of letters on writing style and erotic content, all exceedingly positive, but not a single offer of any inclusion in anything political, whatsoever. What does this mean? Well, I guess plenty of sleep for anyone I might have offended. You've won, I've lost, and I'm sure I can look forward to my country reminding me about the holocaust every day for as long as I live. Maybe someday I'll actually get the message. They funny side to this is that by the time you get mine, you'll be so caught up in the vortex of chaos inevitable under short-sighted populism you won't be able to let out a peer. There, the offensive paragraphs are duly sanitized, so we can get back to the show. Larry's back was still turned. Adam's right hand was at the boy's slender right hip and Adam was testing the stretching fabric just below his left hip. "I don't think I'll be able to play that game with you," the boy whispered over his shoulder to Adam. "Do you want it to happen here?" the young man whispered back. "Yes," Larry said to them both. That meant doing something about his underpants, and Adam nodded to Jack, stepping aside so the boy's long-time friend could position himself fully behind the boy. Jack's eyes glowed with gratitude, saying "I owe you," though the expression was years from popularity. Jack kissed the back of Larry's blond head and wrapped his strong left fisherman's arm around the slim, pale waist. Larry gasped at being fully taken by a single male, his sensations now full and uncomplicated. "It's harder than getting Audrey's panties down," he whispered. "I know why," Larry whispered back. "Are you ready for me to be in front of you," the cautious man asked. "Yes," Larry replied. Slowly, shifting his feet for balance, Jack eased Larry back from the tree so Adam could watch what he was doing. Keeping his left arm around the lower chest of the child to steady him, which was getting to be like the blind leading the blind, he reached to the band of the underpants where it was pulled away from Larry's navel, and inserted two fingers of his right hand. "You're really close to me," Larry whispered, shaking and sweating. "Has anyone touched you before?" Jack whispered back. "No," Larry said. If the boy was this hot, not knowing what he was about to share, all indications led to the inescapable conclusion that he was going to be a gold-star lover. Adam was staring down at what Jack was doing. "Didn't your gym teacher ever have a talk with you or want to spend time alone with you?" he asked Larry. "No," the boy replied. "He's kinda fat." "Must be something," the former westerner thought to himself. Larry was obviously very mature for eleven, and most gym teachers knew that early maturity always translated into a sexually oriented child, and often a child who benefited from a tailored support ritual in a semi-club setting over being left, hormones rampant,to face the conventional circus of romance and dating on their onesies. Adam was going to suggest changing schools, forgetting, for the moment he was at the tip end, off the end, technically, of an island lost in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, the boy did have a wizard kid sis,so maybe he'd survive, after all. Thinking now stopped. Jack's fingers were moving over Larry as the boy shook and panted. He fondled him carefully and in a lingering and sexual manner, moving his fingers back and forth under the child's underpants. Eventually, they had to see, and Larry, too, for he'd never been half this big, half this hard, or half this excited even during his most private talks with his pretty little Susan. Adam could tell from the outline in Larry's straining briefs that the young boy had not been circumcised. He was proven right when Jack eased the boy's big penis free of the elastic. It's glans were covered though a tiny slit at the very tip of the boy showed he stayed barely within himself, barely covered, then not covered as Jack used the fingers of his strong right hand to slowly peel back the dewy soft skin, and show him to Adam and himself, Larry. "That gym teacher ought to get himself tested for every mental deformity known to man and beast," Adam thought as he stared down at the newly naked beauty of an aroused eleven year old. He was huge for his age; very long, six inches and some; also very slender and delicate, his foreskin curtain to the greatest show on earth. Adam, though only seventeen years of age was well read and well traveled; he found himself wondering at the blatant homosexuality in religious art, young and old, backs arched, bare chested, Christ, always effeminate, often with alluring wounds that made a boy wonder what it would be like to touch him just a little bit right there. What ever it might have been like when he was seven or eight, it could not have been more evocative or erotic than looking down as Jack gently exposed Larry. first by pulling free the bulging foreskin, then by pulling the boys underwear down, getting him completely naked. Standing close behind the boy who had surrendered completely to the six-two male behind him, Larry bent to his knees, and guided by Jack, pulled Adam's briefs down, then yielded to Adam and got Jack naked as the visiting missionary masturbated him from behind, hauling him quickly to his feet when Jack was naked and whispering to the boy to arch his back and put his hands behind his neck. Larry complied instantly, and Adam continued masturbating, now doing it openly but not wildly so Jack could watch. Larry began to gasp and shake, so gently Adam slowed and ended just fondling the boy's erection, whispering to him that he could spray in a few minutes. Once under control, they formed a tight circle to look at each other, arms hanging at their sides. "Susan's lucky," Jack said, making the boy blush and think that Audrey was in for more than a little luck, too. "What do you want to do?" the eleven year old asked, once he began getting used to the sight of two thick adult males, both circumcised; Adam bent slightly to the left and Jack, just huge and jutting hard against the trail of black hair trailing down his lower belly. Adam looked almost as much a boy as he was, and the preteen felt he somehow looked twice as naked for both his boyish appearance and the size of his swollen, purple tipped erection. "Do you want to watch it happen with one of us?" Adam asked. "Yes," the boy whispered, flushing again. "I was that way, too," Adam whispered; "it's what they use as the standard to go on the cattle drives. Boys who like to watch it happen with a man, and stand close while its happening make super alternate lovers, damn near as good as a devoted wife; guys that don't, well, to them it's kind of horsing around or fooling around - monkey business - so we leave them with each other at camp." It was difficult for even the well read missionary to define or even partially delineate what was sexually attractive, and what was not. As a Mormon, he'd been indoctrinated from birth in one of the looniest and most bizarre cults ever to appear on earth, and he knew it. He knew they were frauds to the bone, but he didn't know why two boys, similar in outward appearance, could be vastly different as lovers, with, invariably, the more homely child the more eager and both the most satisfying and satisfied at the end of the day. There were quirky layers, solemn layers, frivolous layers, emotional layers, love layers, hate layers, fear layers, taboo layers, prissy layers, aggressive layers, and, most surprisingly, an extra-size central layer of indifference. He though of that as the healthy layer. Two hours from now it would not make the slightest difference to anybody at any time whether they stayed with Larry a little longer, or dressed, pulled out a deck of cards, and sat and played hearts on a rock until the fog pulled up its skirts and wandered on out to Isle au Haute. The most extreme measuring device, if there was such a think, might possibly show a one-half percent increases in the overall qualities of a sexually active friendship that a platonic friendship. Big deal. And for the kids that got trapped into something they didn't like? Wouldn't every day as an adult, starting by not getting molested by and adult, start as a pretty good day, if by default? In a more general sense, wasn't a bad or unhappy childhood likely to make an adult more aware of any trace of goodness reaching him? They said it felt good to stop beating one's head against a wall; too easy; for how did one feel if brutalized emotionally, physically, sexually, or all three, then freed from all of it with adulthood and a bus ticket? Would it by sorrow and pain over what had happened, or joy andhappiness that it would never happen again? Shouldn't surviving it, indeed, make you stronger; give you added layers of depth and understanding; insights kept from the more innocent masses who had an awful way of lying on their death beds ruminating over all they missed of the full texture and vibrancy of a complete life. How did it all relate to misbehavior? Wouldn't a society that read or paintedexcessively collapse just as fast as a culture who lost work and instructional time to sex? Wouldn't a society that somehow managed to get the whole thing wrong suffer so under hypocrisy that disorders and dysfunction, plain old living crazy, would cripple itself with medical problems, both real and imagined? How smart did you have to be to figure this stuff out? Would you ever be able to tell if a co-worker, fellow student, or the teller at the bank ever got naked with other boys or his little sister? It didn't seem like sex could throw enough hardballs to even dent a good family, or mess up a bad one. For the most part, it just wasn't there, rape and predatory behavior, aside. Beautiful girls were dull in bed, likewise, beautiful boys. Beyond that it was open season in open fields with character as deciding force be it food, booze, gambling, heavy drugs, porn, or sex. And yet they went on and on so about it;forced what Adam was doing with Jack and Larry from the realm of privacy to that of secrecy. Well, it made it more exciting, but that was a small payoff for lost opportunities, whetherinvolving multiple experiences with a favored partner or a disciplined approach to a handful of partners. On balance, what? Live in two worlds? Make one's own rules? Get all intellectual about it? What else was there to get intellectual about? Hadn't the Greeks covered it, thousands of years ago? If they'd missed anything, surely the Chinese had picked it up. Of course you could go to low, live, like Dabney Coleman, proud of being shallow; grunting over sex when you had the chance to grunt. Tattoos came of this; mutilation - intellectual bankruptcy, as a cause of insomnia, alone, should be discouraged. Empty heads light on the pillow. They were bringing this Kennedy guy in; how empty-headed was that. How could he help but inspire a national attitude of superficiality and self-indulgence, leading who knew where? Terrible politicians, terrible churches, and wasn't it nice to have them so far off the beam, so far from a state of balance, one could ignore them with impunity; even use childish logic and do the opposite of what they were told, for its own sake? What if these institutions were almost right; just a tad off? Disobeying their strictures and commandments would be tough, in that case. Was it all some monster joke; do this, but act that? In modern times it's possible to link two improbable subjects in a way that proves the absurdity of almost everything. The first point is that once in awhile they have a misadventure, auto vs. train, in greater Los Angeles. The news people come on and rave at how stupid and crazy a person would have to be to cheat at a crossing. Then you drive in Los Angeles and realize that if people didn't drive around gates and duck in front of trains, the city would come to a stop. On the road, everyone does it all the time, yet the media report it as bizarre and criminal behavior when an accident happens - once i a blue moon. An exact parallel is found in the contemporary Catholic church. All these weird old dudes get up there and hem and haw about this and that, when pedophilia is what attracts priest to their calling, in the first place. The real world and the babble world. Nirvana for a writer, of course, allowing play with both the forehand and backhand; everybody's wrong but me. All that was needed was a touch of humor and a pinch of sex and one might actually turn out something worth the reader's time, and not only that but meet a higher ideal, that of writing to the people, directly, unfiltered by leftists , uncensored by anybody, which, it seemed, at any intellectual level, must be part and parcel of rendering unto the page the truth. And the real truth was that Larry was having a hard time making up his mind. They were both so beautiful, so overwhelmingly exciting. Adam was new and exciting; appealing because he hated the moronic church as much as the boy; Jack was a life-long neighbor and friend; both males had taken a stance with their legs slightly spread and their backs slightly arched with their fingers laced behind their necks. The lanky blond boy reviewed what he knew. Diggy Lamoine, plus the locker room, plus the back of the bus, plus various and sundry bits and pieces second and third hand. "What did a Greek boy, with dozens of handsome young men to choose from," Larry wondered vaguely to himself, then proceeded the best he knew how. He stepped slowly beside Adam, who held his position. He placed he slim left arm around the tall, athletic Norwegian's waist, and, with his right hand, took the adult male and used his fingers to spread the seventeen year old's seminal fluid back over his flaring glans. He beckoned Jack with his eyes, until his friend was standing inches from Adam. Following instinct, following what he would like Adam to be doing to him, if their positioned were reversed, he thoroughly wet his hand with the you adult's fluid, then began a cautious and gentle stroking, half feeling him up, like you would a school girl, nervously, excitedly, as he found a touch and rhythm that transmitted themselves as perfect shockwaves through the sturdy man he was masturbating, through his slim left arm, and into his boyish soul. It took him three minutes to make Adam cum. The young man gasped several warming, then began with a little splashing than almost immediately developed into a strong, hard pulse, his sperm jetting against Jack's belly so hard it made noise. At the end, he brought the two adults into physical contact, watching enthralled as the flood waned to a gentle flow from the spent male to his panting and sweating partner. Now old Diggy really kicked in. If they talked about it so much, it must actually happen atleast once in awhile, ayah. The boy retrieved a pile of folded clothing, and placed it on the ground, knelt on it. He began by licking the sperm from the glans of his friend, then quickly moved in to use his hot, avid tongue all over Jack's dripping wet belly. Delirious with the hot salty taste of the male, he again found Jack's swollen penis and again did what he would have liked had their shoes been on the other feet. Gentle and urgent; slow and deliberate but experimenting with tempo and depth, learning very quickly, excited by what he learned, and, apparently how fast he was learning it, which added yet to the excitement. Jack also gasped a warning, then a second, and, for all the child knew, a third, which would have been a waste of breath for by now his mouth was being flooded with hot salt, more of it gushing just like Adam had all over Jack; unstemmed, untrammeled, unapologetic, just more and more and more, until he was swallowing like a tiger; gulping like a panther, boy - o - boy, a boy. And that he was as Jack eased himself free, lifted the boy, turning him in his arms, and pinioned him with his left arm around the slim, white chest while his right hand, covered with Adam's semen swiped from his own hairy belly, he found Larry and began to masturbate him. Adam stood close, his erection still massive and hard as oak,; gently he eased himself to where Jack was holding the child as still as possible, and touched, tip to tip. That made Larry cum, and three long spurts of his thin boy seed brought the shaking male tower first to its knees, then prostrate on the moss of the little forest glade. God was merciful and allowed the dense fog to remain for a further half hour. Larry's story was very exciting, and he was obviously several pages ahead. Perhaps I would be able to do a little catching up at Kelsey's house. Posted by Thomas@btl.net xxx