Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 00:25:08 -0600 From: thomas Subject: SHADY'S CLOSET (Conclusion.) SHADY'S CLOSET (M/m, M/f, inc. ped. celeb., rom., lit., humor.) By Pen Dragon Can physical be squared? Jason had his plaid farm shirt on when I arrived, and since he was more sleek than box-set it seemed churlish to even fantasize anything more than two open buttons. The next time I saw him, and it was at some little distance, he was bare chested. "I think he needs a ride home," Dan said. I knew he lived in Andrew, twenty gorgeous Iowa river miles away, so I waved at him and headed for my one of a kind ride. "Nice Suby," the boy said, anyways, I guess... He was hardly in his twenties but not only totally but awesomely boyish, light sandy hair, mild hawk face with blue eyes and developed to one and a half stages beyond the coltish teen. I move to LaMotte, just south of the River City of Dubuque, from three years on Wilshire Boulevard Even in crazed Los Angeles, my '77 Subaru received ten dollars worth of attention for every dollar I'd put into it. It came to me, a little battered, but so free the seller, friend of a friend, refused even the token dollar. "Just tow it." I did. Four door, and rarer than rare is rare, a good-looking four-door. I painted it British Racing Green, had an after-market vinyl top, tan, installed, and about two hundred dollars worth of tan striping as offset. A set of Subaru wheel covers concluded the exterior, except for, get a load of this, four whitewall tires. Hard window tinting, I almost forgot. Big, expensive tires. An amazing looking car, with two extreme features that made it perfect, a, a reclining driver's and passenger's seat, and, b, rear windows that rolled almost all the way down. For way under two thousand dollars I had the most distinctive car in Los Angeles city or county, and, so rare was my conversion, which it hardly was, that "Hemmings" sometimes lists no Subarus, at all, as classics. That Jason appreciated the ride, before hearing the four thousand dollar audio, as you can imagine, added luster to whatever you did with the formula to come up with him. We got in and steamed off, south, rattling the long way through Bellevue through eye balm rolling farm and woodlands. I've never accosted another person. Even in bathhouses, with all their assumed permission, I stand passively. I'm to cute, by half, and it's a turn off to some guys, probably figuring, looking the way I do, I'm Anthony Action and a WHO cornucopia of virality and bacteriology. Nothing I can do about it, except get fat, it just comes with the territory, so I've learned to sidle in, creep like, ready to shuffle off, which, since I am, and particularly was then, a knockout. Be the bath house as it may, I, by inclination am not the aggressor. I'm a writer, wallpaper, bland, mediocre, uppity and taciturn, almost always ready to do nothing. Two miles rolled by. Jason's display had been obvious, there had been no reason to strip, and I vaguely recalled Dan saying words to the effect the boy was, well, words to the effect of something. If sports are played to inches, and fractions of inches, the same precision relates to other fields, and I found myself glancing at him repeatedly, each time assuring myself he was, to the very fraction of an inch, or the square root of any such fraction, perfect. He was returning my looks and we seemed to be weaving a pattern. "Is it a problem for you?" I asked. "Just sometimes," the twenty one year old teen said. "Do you ever think it's helped?" I probed. "It's kind of different around farms," he replied. "What you look like doesn't matter as long as you do your share and are reasonably nice most of the time. After that, it's just a matter of being around, and, if you're around all the time, looks sort of get lost in the shuffle, they are what they are and no one's going to go ape for or against them." "I wish to hell I'd grown up on a farm," I said, "we did the New York suburban thing, twenty miles past Levittown. Not the city, not the country, no livestock, lots of immigrants." "I'm glad I did," the boy said, "though milking in the winter is a little gruesome." At this point, I accosted him. The muses hold sway most of the time; I'm their patsy, passive and absorbent, but twenty five looks now had done nothing other than shave the last micron off the slightest discernable imperfection in his neck, broad shoulders, and totally hairless chest; skin white (another bit of evidence for the `display' file), pink eraser nipples. Without saying anything I reached slowly over with my right hand and touched him, traced the backs of my fingers over his silky pecs, finding his left breast and lodging it between two of my fingers. We drove that way for some minutes. "If you want, we could turn left on top of the next ridge," he said, indicating a flashing yellow light half a mile ahead. I turned. The paved road split to gravel, which we took, and split to grass, which we took, finally wending our way along a skyline where the road opened up into acres of meadow. I parked and we both leaned back to roll down the rear windows, then let the seats a ways back. It was way comfortable and we torched some homegrown. "Take your off, too, why don't you?" Jason asked, meaning my shirt. "I shouldn't have tried anything," I said, backing into my artist's corner, "I was a fox in my day, that's why I said what I did, but it's really cool for just to be friends." "It's cool you're modest," he responded, "go to the city and hang out at the pool and there's fat, hairy guys trying to muscle all over you, and you could win out over eight out of ten teens. That's how I look at it." I was still reluctant. Besides writing I'm pretty close to drop-dead as a photographer, and line and form make up my world. Mine, yes, were outstanding, but his were perfect. Best to temporize; it was hardly two, we had hours. "Do you like talking about things?" I asked, and so widely have I been published at this point I could have, with that single question, written all expenses of our trip, to include dinner, entertainment, and lodging off on my taxes, because, you better believe it, I was conducting research. "Yes," Jason replied simply, clueing me in – writers love this kind of stuff – to the precise feelings of the spider at the vibration of his web. "I don't usually touch strangers or ask questions like that," I said, "so there's no reason you have to cooperate or accommodate or anything..." "No," he said, "it's cool. I want to ask you personal stuff, too." "Okay," I said, "but if my curiosity gets to graphic slap your fingertips with your palm and we'll change the subject or motor on toward Andrew." "I see enough boxes and speakers in here to change the weather, how many watts?" "Five hundred," I admitted. "And I don't, at the moment, want to listen to one of them," the beauty said. We sat, just slightly reclined, looking through sparse trees across the river and twenty miles on the other side. "Dan said you lived in Maine for awhile, that's more rural than New York," Jason said. "True, through high school. It's not rural if you have television and don't have horses, at least as far as I'm concerned." "I never thought of it quite that way," Jason responded, "but it does kind of fit. I meant more that, you know, up there it was more rural in the sense of families being isolated. In contact with each other more, with others, less." "It gets that way, I'm sure," I said, "but there was no difference between Long Island and Deere Isle. None. Get up in the valleys and mountainous regions and the little pulp hamlets, and that's probably more like here, but maybe five percent as prosperous." "Well," Jason said, "that's what I was getting at, because I wanted to tell you some things, but I thought it would be good if you had some idea of what farm type life is like, you know, so you wouldn't be shocked or anything." "I'm not a libertine," I said, "and you're the first person I've touched, spontaneously, in my life, male or female, but, if I can hazard a guess at what you're going to tell me, I should tell you, first, that, flat out and no holds barred, I like children. I liked it as a child and I've never been the Lone Ranger when it comes to what's hot and what's not; for example, I like all the perennial favorites on cable, and none of the Oscar winners, year after year, and probably going back to "Amadeus". "I think everyone does," Jason said, "if you could rig an instrument to people to tell what they really feel, I'll bet the number would be up near half." "It would put the church out of business," I said, "if someone demonstrated that the toxin was not toxic, there'd be no market for the antidote." "Luckily," the handsome lad responded, "it doesn't work that way here. The church is just about right. It keeps things from getting out of control in the families, brothers actually breeding their sister and dads their daughters. Farm play is one thing, but church gives us a place to find a real mate, not a cousin." "But," I suggested very mildly, as ever, the sponge, "that role could be filled far better by a secular organization oriented towards fitness, literacy, music, the arts, and socializing, not sucking up ten percent as some kind of installment payment on an afterlife. Any organization that restricts membership limits its talent pool. For example, while many great singers, like Elvis and the Everly Brothers, came out choral backgrounds, think how many equal talents never got a chance because of this page of the bible or that passage of scripture, to say nothing of the relentless cost of maintaining an infrastructure used a few hours a week." "Well," the Iowan said, "it's what we've got, and it's so boring all there is to do is look at the girls." "It must be nice to get home," I said, really being careful not to let any irony seep into my voice, though I was quaking inside from a, a little mirth, and, b, a lot of excitement. "Have you ever been active with a child?" Jason asked, appealing no end to the writer in me (a familiar story being small payment for a new story). "Funny you should ask," I said. "because, yes, it's just started happening." "A real child?" he asked, "or a legal one." "Stephen's twelve, but looks nine, Ryan's thirteen and looks perfect, as does his twelve-year-old brother, Stephan. Janet was nine but she just turned ten." "One out of four isn't bad," Jason murmured, nodding as if to himself and leaving me nonplussed. The dry, arch thing is New England to the core, and, New Yorker though I might be by circumstance, royal Yankee I was by birth and breeding, standing back thirteen generations to the Mayflower. Was Jason being fabulously cute, or flat-footed pedantic? Inquiring minds want to know, but my mind wasn't inquiring, it was reeling drunk on one side and frozen like early Windows on the other. Picturing his classic Rick-Schroeder Greek body hunched quietly over a willing boy or girl, exciting the naked child with his gentle hands and mouth, was the kind of vision which should have kept mankind scrubbed free of religion and taboo since that first tentative, halting, berry-picking expedition. Moronic species. "Janet wasn't bad at all," I found enough voice to agree. "Had anyone touched her before you?" he asked. "Her mother sent her to me because she was being active with her younger brother," I explained. "Had it happened inside her?" he wanted to know. "Yes," I said, "she was wet from him when they spent the weekend." "That sounds pretty farm," the boy, because he was simply too beautiful to be a man – "beautiful boy" works, "beautiful man" leaves a lot to the eye of the beholder – observed. "I always wondered why there was enough agriculture to drive the cost of corn under three dollar a bushel," I said, writer that I am, my mind apparently not devoid of inquisitional aspirations, after all. "It probably is a factor," he allowed. "Think of a factory worker in the tenements, he'd rarely have the opportunity to be alone with his house mouse after she turned seven, so it's off to the bar or the track, or prison if he does try anything frisky. Out here, fathers and daughters and brothers and sisters, occasionally, mothers with their sons or daughters, have plenty of privacy." "And a barnyard of critters to show, even if they can't tell," I added. "No small factor," Jason agreed, "Angela and I wanted to wait until she was seven, then we were out one morning trying to ambush a rabbit or two, and a twelve-point buck took a fawn, tiny thing, cute as Bambi, not fifty feet from where we were hidden." "You didn't shoot?" I queried, not wanting to get bawdy, not my style, but unable to resist. Jason's eyes glazed, and I, writer that I was, interpreted it as off the memory of the hunt, thus finding my answer. "When did it happen?" I asked. "Two years ago, when I was nineteen," he said. I'm big on the voyeur thing due to tradecraft, but something of a Victorian, fondling Jason's left nipple, aside, when it comes to shucking and thriving. Slow to start, forever to finish, that's the kid. On top of that was the natural reserve, thirty-two-inch waist notwithstanding, of being old enough to have fathered the beauty. I wanted to get out of the car, strip, and lie back on the hood with my head against the windshield as I did with Stephen on our meteor-hunting expeditions, and I knew it would be okay, but I just sat behind the wheel, and at least not contemplating the buttons on the stereo. Stephen and I would remove an article of clothing for each mutually witnessed shooting star, often with long arguments over what constituted a meteor, in the first place, as many flicked in and out of sight at the edge of perception. When we were naked, we linked our legs and waited for twenty five more, usually best part of an hour, before we hid ourselves from the sky to engage in extensive and completely forbidden activities. Of course he, being eleven, now twelve, didn't really count, not for league standing, leaving, a, Janet, and, b, the two of us sitting in the car overdressed. This grew less tolerable as the minutes passed, and, rather than straining my brain to think of some clever way to initiate the proceedings I merely reached over and undid his belt buckle. He responded by lowering the seatback and spreading his legs, altogether too much welcome for the confines of the little classic. "Over by that tree," Jason said, "it's a very special place for me." Click, click, bang, bang, we were out of the car, and I know it seems facetious, but, besides being glad in other ways, I was happy not to risk the tricked out interior of the Suby to any loss of control by this practically shimmering stallion. For a moment it seemed odd that my new friend had slipped back into his shirt, which, by the way, he'd been wearing tied around his waist, as he exited the vehicle. "I'm sorry, uncle Steve," he said as he leaned against the tree, facing the trunk, then grabbing two branches at the level of his head. There's voyeurism and, as I was finding out very fast, voyeurism. See what I mean: "I'm sorry I got scared, you can come up behind me if you want to, I won't tell. It's just that mom said I should wait `till I was twelve, but I love you, and you've been cool to all of us, without asking for anything, so please forgive me. I was just nervous." "It's my fault," I said, "we should have talked a little first. Maybe when you're older you'll understand how beautiful a boy your age can be, and maybe you won't, but, meantime, I'm the one who should be forgiven." "Done," the eleven year old said, "and `meantime' for me is that I like your being close to me. I guess half the reason I acted so weird is that I want you to teach me, so much. I lie awake thinking about if you're going to be, you know, sort of bold enough to try anything. Sometimes I even look at my doorknob in the moonlight, willing it to turn." "I just hope you feel the same way when we get back in the pickup (tell me I don't know my subject) you'll feel the same way." "I've never felt any other," Jason whispered as I closed in. He'd both buttoned up and tucked in, so my hands went to his athletic waist, then around front as I nuzzled his left ear. "There will be a letdown, afterwards," I said, "and the bad feelings – shame, anger, guilt, regret, and embarrassment will come flooding back, almost in an instant. They last a few minutes, then they're out with the bad air, but be ready to ride it out, sort of like getting called on strikes without even swinging." "Okay," the boy said, "does it always happen that way?" "It usually doesn't, but I want you to be ready if it does, and, my boy, if the feelings don't go away – the negative ones – then I have raped you and you can take your story to the cop shop." "I like it that you're trying to be funny," the cutie said, "it makes it seem more like something we're just going to do together, like eat five lobsters with hot, drawn butter, rather than the beginning of the world or the end of creation." "You guys have lobster?" I asked, since the nervous little boy in front of me seemed to respond to the lighter touch. "Sorry," the boy playing the twerp said to the fox playing his uncle (that's me), "I didn't think you'd fall for that old trap." "I do have some pot in the car," I said, breaking up our little play acting for the moment. We adjourned to the front bumper, sitable, another convenient feature of the perfect little car, and I found the magnetic thing that anyone could have left at any time without my knowledge. I hadn't been lying, and in a minute or two we were burning, adding excess to overkill, but, since physical couldn't be squared, it was our only option. A few more minutes we were back at the tree. "I had to reach up for these branches," Jason said, brushing two as he reached for two higher handholds. A decade dropped away, a useless one, since it hadn't made me feel a day older. "Jason, is it okay if I quiz you, ask you personal questions?" I whispered, easing his shirt from his pants. "Yes," the boy said, breaking character to add that there was nothing like three hits of common ganja to summon innocuous truths. "Have you done any experimenting?" I then asked. "Sometimes," the boy replied, "when I'm in the shower I pretend I hear the door open and I stand against the tiles and let you wash my hair." "Am I careful not to touch you?" I whisper. "Not very," the boy giggles. "Are we both careless about that kind of thing?" I probe on. "If anyone saw us," the cutie put it, "we'd both get spanked." "Would we learn our lessons, or would you go out and have another bad-hair day?" "I'd become a chimney sweep," the boy responded. "Jason," I whispered, now seriously, "you're a beautiful boy (I was fully up under his shirt, both of us panting), and other men are going to want to do this with you. I want you to know it's okay, applicable rules of dignity and decency adhered to. In this part of the world, you can even hitch safely, and if you wear a cut off tee, last year's shorts, and go barefoot, the results are guaranteed." "But we'll do it, mostly," the panting boy said. "We'll be friends more than mostly," I responded, "whether this turns out to be a big deal, or not, and, meantime, I not only approve of your being with other suitable partners at suitable intervals, I'll do anything I can to expedite things at your behest." "What if I wanted to do what you are with a little boy?" the tiger asked. "Use both hands," I suggested, pinching his nipples gently and feeling him giggle despite his twenty-one years. "It feels like you have three," he whispered, pushing gently back against me. "Are you hard, too?" I asked. "Two fists of iron, one of steel," he said. "Did you get a boner with your uncle, or did he have to touch you?" "When he reached over and scared me by putting his hand on my bare leg, I got the biggest one I'd ever had, and when we drove away from here, two hours later, I still had it." I fondled him, huge and hard, "My god," I said, "you should write `Guinness'." "'Dear Sirs:'" quoth the lad, "'The search for the world's biggest idiot, I'm sure you will be pleased to learn, is at long last over. May I introduce, for your consideration...'" "I have people for you to meet," I said, now more an advocate and mentor than child molester, legal though Jason was (the intent was still there, isn't that what counts?). "So it might be an idea to get comfortable, I've got my winter emergency blankets in the trunk, and we can, a, catch some sun, and, b, talk." "The play isn't the only thing," the end-stage adolescent said, and once again we broke off our little sitcum and adjourned to the handsome green and tan car. By accord we did strip this time, replacing the blanket with our clothes. Half way through disrobing, I connected the play not being the only thing, and end-stage adolescent, and, in that instant knew I had a book on my hands, forbidding amount of typing though it would take to realize it. Walking the hundred or so feet back to the tree, naked and aroused, was more erotic than the thousand or so hours I'd spent in Los Angeles bath houses, you guessed it, squared. Undoubtedly, women invented clothes so men wouldn't spend the livelong day, every day, hunting with boys. Fie, though I suppose it did preserve the species. And I'd thought the walking was cool. We lay back on the downy soft blanket and began slowly jerking off like experimenting teen puppies. "Janet needs a second husband," I began, rather cutting to the chase because every time Jason and I tried to whisper to each other we seemed to end up capering and japing and it was all so childish. Of course, bringing Janet into the conversation hardly helped, I mean it would be years before the girl was even sophomoric, but we can't have everything our way, all the time, so I continued in the juvenile vein . "She has me pegged because I'm something of a heavy hitter when it comes to Web fiction, which she digs, but, since I'm apparently some kind of literary wonder, I'm savvy enough to know that an astonishingly young bride would be better suited to a husband in his forties if she had a stallion near at hand. There's more," I added, "and you will never, ever, cross my heart and hope to die, guess, believe, or comprehend how much more." This, of course, gets us back to Chicago. I tried, using the understatement so painfully acquired over so many years of practice, to ease him into his new reality; it did little good. "Marshall, who?" he kept asking over and over again, sort of like a mantra, as I patiently explained Stephan's vector into the paragon of ultimate inner circles I had my friend half convinced when I came to the scene of Haley entering the hotel suite. Ryan had passed the oral saga to Janet, and she'd outdone herself as a graphic artist in relaying the legendary night to me, still wet from her Katie-bar-the-door handsome brother. Yes, Chicago. The little black dress, the high sweep of her society coiffeur tumbling over her slim, nine-year-old shoulders as Ryan readied her for his arms, and Marshall, Jason, stop asking Marshall who: mega Marshall, the self-same Marshall who took after his mums in public, thus permitting artists everywhere more liberty in, a, their targets, and, b, their choice of slings, barbs, and arrows. Marshall Slim Shady Bruce Mathers Eminem III. Somewhere along the line I'd set an inappropriate tone, it happens, and now it was time to set the record straight, so, from Ryan's lips to Janet's ears, and Janet's to mine, the story now went to the handsome Greek at my side. The three, spent, lay on the bed for half an hour and might have remained comatose for another minute or two, but Haley whispered, "Daddy?" and no one felt the need of more rest. "Yes, darling," Marshall whispered. "Was it beautiful?" "The only thing more, angel," the young father said, "was watching you born." "Modern men have it made," the girl said, her voice a bit sleepy, "think of the Victorian dudes pacing the parlor floor for the one event, and sending their child off on a honeymoon with who knows who, for the other." "Abnormal home lives kept men hard at work," Marshall said, "if laxness and tolerance had been the order of the day they wouldn't have needed coal because no one would get out of bed in the morning to use it." "They had to be real heroes," the girl said, "no cable, not radio, no tapes, no computers, no Net, and still for the most part they left their little girls alone and went out to build the world." Their old theme again, the left out. It was tantalizing because it almost made sense. "Daddy?" the girl said again. "Yes, love," Marshall whispered. "Could we do another pretend, it was so beautiful being Ryan's bride? Can I be your little girl in paper curlers and a bonnet and flannel nightie like Melissa Gilbert?" "Only if you're very naughty," the father assured his daughter. "I let the goose get at the butter," came a suddenly weeping voice. "So that's why I've been slipping and sliding," the father growled. The flood of tears, if anything, grew in intensity: "I meant to throw the steak bone over the well to Lassie," the child wailed, "I just wasn't quite strong enough." "She'll float up in a day or two, pumpkin," the concerned parent comforted, "then we can jig her out and you'll have her back, clean as new." "And Bucko, didn't his forelegs just get in the way, you know, when he wanted to take a fence?" "Not to mention when he wanted a sip at the trough," the kindly man added. "So I'm not all bad, then?" the child wanted to know, next. "You found a handsome, wealthy husband before your tenth birthday, darling," Marshall answered, "and that has to count for something." "Good," the girl said brightly, "then he can take the role of my brother – my very suspicious brother – in our play. Okay, Ryan?" "I suspect I'll love it," the boy agreed. "Cool," the happy young director enthuses. "We start by focusing. Is the Louis chair in the corner a pear tree, a cherry tree, or plain old apple. We'd better put on some clothes and go find out, don't you think?" "I want to talk to you about something sis, will you meet me at our tree?" Ryan intoned, falling into his part. "It must be serious," the girl said as she wrapped herself in a little something in lieu of a flannel nightgown. Ryan also shucked into shorts and a shirt, Marshall remaining and huge as he watched his daughter cavort. In a minute or two the thirteen-year-old boy and nine-year-old girl met and knelt facing each other at their rendezvous, the girl slipping out of character for a moment to inform the audience that Laura was being played by Miss. Gilbert, but Michael Landon, too glossy for any part, had been replaced by a twenty-something Patrick Swayze, while Ryan played Ryan, a fictitious older brother.. "Remember when we used to come here before we knew about being brother and sister: I must have been five, and you nine?" the girl asked. "We didn't know it was wrong to look," the boy answered. "So, what did you want to talk about?" Haley said, sensing her brother's anxiety. "I guess it's kind of an issue thing," the boy replied in a halting, embarrassed voice, "and I guess the only thing to do is come right out and ask like I've rehearsed a hundred times: Haley, is something going on with you and dad?" "Jeez," the girl whispered, "I thought you were going to ask me to put in a good word with Sadie or Marsha." "You don't have to tell me, I guess," Ryan said, "I shouldn't have brought it up." "No," the girl responded quickly, "don't go. Just give me time to think, please, but I don't mean to be coy or tease, so the answer to your question is not No." The young players knelt for a long minute staring into each other's eyes. "How do you feel about dad, Ryan," the girl whispered, "I mean in general?" "I guess he's kind of heroic," the boy answered, "keeping us together, keeping the sawmill going..." "All when he could, at the very least, be out in the evenings finding someone to replace mom, or drinking away his loneliness, or spending money on ladies of convenience, but what does he do?" "Reads to us," the boy nodded, "makes us copy our homework over so Miss Jones smiles, talks to us, cleans up the house if we're tired. He's the best." "And Ryan," the girl whispered, placing both hands on her brother's shoulders and looking into his eyes, "if it's true, if I am breaking some rules with him, and breaking them is completely my choice, what I want as much as anyone can want anything more than food, clothes, and shelter, then what? Does that mean you hate me? That you'll tell somebody or go off and drown yourself? That you'll live forever scarred by a fiendish sin and end up a wastrel and sot, all bent and twisted inside?" "But in church..." "Hush about that place, at least, baby," the girl said softly, "it's nothing but a skin of ritual and pageantry, and, yes, serves a purpose as a center for rites of passage, the promulgation of meaningful behavioral codes, of secular inspiration by means of theater and choir, and as a center for community involvement and stability, but that's the beginning, the middle, and the end. When it comes to human behavior it's empty without sin, which enables it to fill itself, and, here's the odd part, forgives the sinner. Look at Nellie Coot. Three guesses what's going on in her life, yet her father and uncles are seated, and I've even noticed Rev. Patrick eyeing the plate deliberately as it passes down their pew and they put their bills carefully on the left side so he knows they give all the fives. Fifty dollars from one family, and that answers to everything, and when Madge does finally go off and drown herself, guess which local institution will welcome the ten brothers with doleful pats on the back?" "That's wrong," Ryan said. "No it isn't," the girl whispered back, "The money has saved three lives we know of, the brothers are mean and low but they work hard and are important to the whole economy of the area, they don't go after strangers or try to interfere with other girls in town, and Nellie was disagreeable and a thieving liar when her mom was alive and they lived like everyone else. That's the whole story, and the church is just a part of it. Same with us, you, dad, and me; the church is just part of our story, a few hours a week, and dad's lonely twenty-four times seven, whatever that is." "He is kind of handsome," the boy admitted, "but you're just a kid. Dad's aren't meant to do..." "Meant to do what?" the girl interrupted, "and besides, isn't it girls who are meant to be ladylike, and not `do'?" "I guess so," Ryan said. "Don't use that tone," the girl rejoined, "you have every right to ask, to be concerned, and to know. How would I feel if you just shrugged your shoulders and thought to yourself, `so what?' Maybe even called me names or told Ralph Gleason so he'd have something to use when he comes after me." "You know I wouldn't. I love you. I'm just jealous, I guess. You're so beautiful I guess I'd be more surprised if dad didn't take an interest in you." "It's me who's interested in him," Laura said, "I lift my nightie, he never has, and I light the candle after you and the girls are asleep, because what happens is beautiful and I want to see everything." "Do you have his, you know, his life inside you when you blow out the candle," the young teen asked awkwardly. "No, Ryan," the girl whispered softly, "that hasn't happened yet. Remember the brush fire that almost got the hardware store six months ago; we all piled out to fight it in the dark, no time to dress, well most of the men ended up, you know, uncovered by the time the emergency was over, and, it was a fire, so it wasn't dark, and dad was, well, it would be rude to come right out and say it, but dad's just sort of not built quite right for a girl my size, plus, if he freshened me like a stallion takes a mare, it would wake you all up, speaking of which, what makes you suspicious, anyway?" "Sometimes boys do something they shouldn't at night," Ryan said, his blush unnoticed in the moonlight, "and it, you know, makes a certain motion, and you can kind of sense it even if you can't hear anything, but once I did hear you sort of cry out, "Oh, daddy, it's so beautiful." It was the girl's turn to blush. "I should have guessed," she said. "That was our first time with my nightie all the way off. First time with a candle. Third time, all together. The first two happened the previous week and I guided him under my nightie to get my tummy wet." "How did you do it?" the boy asked, his voice now hoarse and thick. "With my hands," the girl said, her voice also husky. "Like a boy does it for himself." "Does it feel nice to you?" he quizzed, "I mean I know it would for a guy, but how about you?" "He's huge and hot in my hands," the nine year old said, "and I feel him swell and pant to my touch, especially now that I'm a little experienced with him, so it's nice, and I can dream about when I grow up a little more and wake up knowing the man I love most next to you has left his seed swimming inside me." "What if you get a baby when that starts happening?" Ryan asked. "A girl has to be thirteen or fourteen for that to happen," Laura said, "but the way I feel now, I'd rather have his, or yours, than any boy's I know of." "Well," the boy said, smiling shyly into his sister's eyes, "I'm glad I'm ahead of Ralph and the Coot brothers." "I may go with them, sometime," the girl said, "girls have a wild side just like boys do, they want to have sensation once in awhile, maybe a couple of times a year, to contrast with tender affection and gentle love every night." "All the Coots?" he asked. "Maybe once in my life," the girl admitted. "I'd rather it happened than die wondering what it would have been like. I think that's the hardest part, wondering. For example, not that this is a lesson, or anything, I wondered what was happening with dad when I lay next to him and he was under my nightgown, and when we had a candle, and I was naked, and saw, it satisfied me. By the same token, you're probably wondering what it looks like when we're together, how he touches me, and, especially, what it will be like when I'm in his arms right up until the end." "Beautiful," the boy whispered reflexively. "Good thing, too," the girl said, laughing quietly, "because it's followed by years of pee, poop, buggers, and upchuck." "That'll keep you away from them Coots," the boy said. "You don't want a bunch of Cooties around the house?" the girl giggled. "Maybe one, to make ours look good in comparison," Ryan allowed. "Wow, am I glad to hear that," Laura said. "The only thing that scared me was you, that you'd run away if you found out, or do something crazy." "Crazy would be interfering," the thirteen year old noted, "I guess I just wanted to be sure you were okay." "Ryan," the girl whispered, eyes huge, "there's enough moon so we don't need a candle, if you don't mind my looking like a ghost." "That's not why I asked you to come out here," the boy stammered. "There aren't a lot of whys and wherefores involved," the girl said, "and planning and strategy usually backfire. It just happens, especially the first time, and when fire cometh not from the earth, nor the flood from the creek, nor the locust in their millions, but rather the birds continue to sing and the grass continues to grow, you realize that there's a lot of bag and baggage attached, you know, sin and taboo, and, underlying all, a whole segment of society who's livelihood is dependent on the sale of superstition and ancient lore composed by who knows who, but, to a man, for no woman wrote a word of it, who thought the earth was flat as a fritter and would peel you alive if you thought otherwise. It's not all garbage, there are behavioral models in Christianity that are noble and positive, but when it comes to saying, arbitrarily, thou shalt not love, it ends up with the heart and mind, and, for sure, the loins and belly, to find the truth, and the truth is there is love, quaking and absolute, maybe the best and deepest of all, where it's preached as an abomination." So saying (and wouldn't you like having such a pixie running around your house?), the girl shed her nightgown and lay back on the grass, arms stretched high over her head emphasizing her childish nipples and legs widely spread. Ryan also stripped, returning quickly to his kneels and shuffling between the girl's thighs. As he lowered himself to his sister he whispered: "Are you going to tell him?" "Yes," the nine year old said, reaching down with her right hand to guide the boy, "and I'm going to tell Nancy and Becky, too. The only bad part with dad was keeping it a secret, and that part's over. I don't even care if every man in town winks every time they see me, I'll fight back by once in awhile giving one of them every single last thing he wants or can imagine, again and again, for hours, even things daddy won't let me try with him, and see how that shuts them all up." I wasn't tiring of the story but felt I could use a break. "I've never been like this so long," Jason whispered to me, filling the silence as we lay, my left leg linked to his right, masturbating very carefully. "Me either," I responded, "except for being inside Janet while she was telling about her brother with Marshall and Haley." "How did you keep from cumming inside her?" the beauty asked. "Unsuccessfully," I admitted, "times three." It seemed an extension of a familiar theme, things left out, so I pursued it, however tenuous the connection. "How many times were you unsuccessful with Angela when Bambi graduated?" I asked. "Five," Jason said, "but I was nineteen." "Tell me about it," I urged, yes friends, still a writer, still on duty. "She's such a tiny thing," the young adult replied, "looks just like the little girl who finds Big Bird on her porch in PBS commercial, brown hair, brown eyes, and real calm, quiet, and friendly. Underneath, she's much more vivid. We were, after all, out there with loaded rifles, and, the week before, she'd wanted to see what it was like to be scared, so she made me tow her on her bike, like a water-skier, and she kept nodding her head up to fifty miles an hour, then it was me who chickened out and slowed my bike." "And you'd talked about it before the hunt?" I quizzed. "A lot. I had an outbreak of acne that year, and Collette Roy wouldn't go out with me. Angela had kept her ears open, and she's such a mouse she'd absorbed quite a bit for a six year old and went into long explanations of how she should be my girlfriend because we usually spent the afternoons together and she'd always be there for me, `if I turned into a toad with the beak of a vulture.'" "Did you experiment at all?" I probed. "Just indirectly," Jason replied, "she'd sit on my lap and wriggle, and I'd hold her gently by the waist while she pulled her dress up in back, then she'd lie back against me, and we'd stay that was for fifteen or twenty minutes with Angela wriggling, you know, from time to time depending on how things were, and we'd talk about her being seven." "If she'd been a little more of a grownup," I prattled with my best Old-Yankee styling, "she'd have been more interested in your being seven." "I knew it was best we didn't wait `til she was nine," Jason said, and there we let it lie. The warm spring morning shimmered with the haze of approaching summer, the orchestra of buzzing insects in counterpoint to the darting swifts and sparrows brushed the rolling pasturelands with a heady cocktail with verdant brushwork, back. The two lay side by side, the girl with a double-barreled twelve gauge, Jason with a .22 Browning. It shouldn't have been this way, of course, the six-year-old female should have been coloring with her sisters or washing her doll outfits, but tykes, sufficiently nurtured, are adults in lamb's clothing and often get what they want. The two had battered themselves to neutral talking about sex. Angela made a point of the fact neither Bridgette nor Karen had suffered from being mounted by their brother on their seventh birthdays; Jason arguing that, a, he was smaller, three year earlier, than he was now, and, b, she was smaller, at some months short of family day, than they had been, plus, both had limped stiffly for several hours after the coupling. Angela said, "No wonder, you were with them all night long." It was a point. But, again opposite, was simply the family tradition of waiting, as someone had put it, being better than no tradition at all. She'd suggested at least experimenting. He'd rejoined that she was much too beautiful to do anything half-way with, tapping the bear killing weapon in her hand as evidence. That's where the conversation stood when three deer entered the scene. Angela raised her shotgun, but a don't-even-think-about-it look from her brother inspired her to lower it and flick back on the safety. "If you actually fire that goddamned thing, at this angle (prone)," he whispered in her ear, `your collar bone will fuse to your hip bone and I'll have to break you, the other way, over my knee before I can take you home." The girl scowled and was about to stick out her tongue when her eyes grew first large, then huge. "Oh, Jason," she whispered, and the nineteen year old turn in the direction of her gaze. What had happened was this: the buck, stalking the doe, had run amuck of the fawn. In scant seconds the mighty beast mounted the animal a third his size. Jason and Angela watched in profile as, shuddering, it's head back and eyes wild, the male smoothly and fully entered the immature deer and began thrusting urgently. The doe watched alertly, making no move, and the fawn stood her ground, legs planted, taking the fast, hot thrusting of the male as if born for no other reason. Angela let out a grunt of fascination, the doe and fawn heard it, and ran off, leaving the male animal still ejaculating heavily onto the grass. As the buck regained control of its senses, it too disappeared back into the hedgerows, unaware of its overwhelming impact on the human population at hand. "Why on earth was I arguing against this?" Jason wondered as he began unbuttoning the first grader. Her hands, in turn, were all over him, buttons, belt, laces, and zipper. They didn't luxuriate, time enough for that later, just got naked as fast as they could. "Bridgette and Karen wanted to watch me to what the buck did before we went all the way," he informed the girl, "and it won't take long if you'd like to see." "Yes," the girl said, manhandling her outrageously handsome brother onto his back and settling astride his right thigh. "Is the how?" she asked, first fondling, then stroking his huge circumcised penis. "Yes, darling," Jason whispered to the entranced child as he began bucking to her tentative experimentation. "Tonight they can teach me everything," the girl mused as her hand settled into an intense and urgent rhythm. "Guess again," Jason felt like saying, as both his nine and eleven year old sisters could possibly take lessons instead of giving them. Jason tried to let the girl gain experience but she was too good and after a minute he surrendered completely to her slim, white body and her deft, gripping hand. "I'm cumming," he whispered then began showering both of them with his hot seed. Minutes later, Jason lay as dazed as the buck, but his fawn did not run off. Instead, she retrieved the big Parker, placed in against her hip, and fired the right barrel. The concussion sent her sprawling back across her naked, slick brother and she scrambled herself so her bare chest wax against his, kissed him furiously, then whispered, "Now I'll have a reason to limp for a week." Is it possible to rally and surrender at the same time? Jason found so. He rallied enough to manhandle the child underneath him, yet surrendered enough to brace himself rigidly over her as she got comfortable and grabbed her knees the better to spread her legs, and furtherer surrendered to her house-mouse beauty by taking her gently over nearly half an hour, ejaculating repeatedly in response to her heated orgasms until his belly was hard against hers. "I guess it will be two weeks," she whispered, then lost control, mewing and bucking savagely against him as she sensed him once again pulsing deep in her belly. For the remainder of the morning the girl braced herself over a log padded with their clothing, her brother's chest against her back, his muscular thighs working continually against her pretty little bottom as they took a bag of three fat rabbits. "How long was she confined to a wheelchair?" I asked, but Jason assured me he paid every attention to her bruised hip and she was good as new in no time. (Better than?) "You're the younger male," I went on after a minute, "when I'm with Stephen I usually get him wet, then he cums in my hand, would you like it to happen that way?" "Yes," he said, and we lay on our sides (my left) facing each other. "Does he make you cum?" Jason asked. There were the odd thousand few things Stephen didn't do, he was "left-out" taken to the extreme, but making me cum with his urgent hands, so I'd wet him, so he could cum, was one thing he did do. I explained all this, and promising to get us back to Chicago way before the next flight, I surrendered to Jason, then had him assume Stephen's position, hands high, back arched, as I stroked his slick penis until he gasped and went rigid. His semen flowing heavily down over my right fist rather than spurting as it undoubtedly had with little Angela. Very erotic. Haley was doing a brilliant job playing Laura, adlibbing fluently as the beautiful Ryan again entered her, thrusting quickly until his sparse growth of silky blond hair was wet against the sweating, panting child. "Daddy, daddy," she whispered loudly as her slim legs went around the boy's heaving buttocks and her hands rand up and down his heaving flanks. Years on stage had taught Marshall Mathers to recognize a cue when he heard one, and the handsome athletic father fell to his knees and shuffled across the grass, which was actually a large, thick rug, and huddle over the openly mating children, not touching but just watching as their intensity quickly built until the girl splayed a hand to him crying out, "Oh, daddy!" as she felt Ryan ejaculate hard and fast. Now she was his. The young teen, half exhausted, rolled gently free, the girl keeping, knuckles white, his left hand in her right hand. Ryan, summoning the last of his strength, helped Haley rise her bottom high, as Marshall moved to her. Haley found him with her right hand, guiding him, and the man moved more to his daughter. Her left hand went to his flank, stroking tender welcome, her right still gripping Ryan's. There are a whole variety of voyeuristic experiences to be had, but one impossible to beat is for a boy to insert the fingers of his right hand between the bodies of and adult male in the process of mounting his loving child. Such fingers wish to do no walking. He was so big, so hot, so slow, patient, and gentle they would have been happy hibernating for months. "Ryan," the nine year old gasped, "put your legs underneath me." The boy responded immediately, bracing himself on the Louis chair and pivoting his long, coltish legs until the were nestled under his young bride's bottom. As Marshall mounted fully the thirteen year old eased his hand between the father and his daughter, his left hand cradling the girl's head so she could gaze down between her body and the dancer on top of her. For long moments the tableau of father, daughter, and juvenile lover remained static, frozen but for the heaving chests of all three. As Haley became used to the enormity of what had happened, physically and emotionally, her legs rose and she wrapped them around Marshall's frozen buttocks. "I'll be ready pretty soon, daddy," she whispered. "Just relax, darling," the star said, "just relax and realize what a hero your dad is because I feel Ryan's sperm on me, and I want to ravage you to the bone." "Daddy," the girl whispered in response, "has that ever happened before? Have you ever been with a little girl who'd just been with another mature male?" "Yes, darling," the affectionate father said, "it's how chopped liver was invented." Now talk about heroes, the girl giggled happily, and still the panting, sweating adult didn't lunge against her, raping her until she was half comatose. Sensing her dad's answer was essentially true, never mind the deli-icious humor, the girl returned to the question and the father took his daughter back years into the past. "It was just after the photography and posing," Marshall said, "if fact, Krippie's mom gave me that sweater in the picture. Her brother, Mel, hadn't needed it, and they lived next door, so they knew we were poor. He was a lot older, seventeen, and she was nine, just like you. He was sort of half a best friend, even though he was six years older, and so we hung out quite a bit, mostly in his room playing his slot cars – no computers to speak of in those days. One day he started asking me questions about his sister. He said she was getting interested in him, trying to peek at him in the bathroom and stuff, and asked me what I thought and what I would do if she were my sister. I asked him how much stuff like that happened and he said quite a bit, and more all the time. I asked how long it had been going on, and he said for a few months that he'd really noticed. I said that, to me, it indicated more than a childish fantasy or fleeting curiosity, and was more the behavior of a young female who knew what she wanted. He asked if I think he was a creep if something did happen, and I was pretty honest, even in those days, and I told him from where I stood, he'd be a creep if he didn't respond to what was obviously a long-term issue with his little sister. He said I was the way coolest friend in the world. About then, Krippie arrived home from Brownies. We saw her get out of the van, and Mel stripped on the spot, asking if I though he was too big. I assured him this in fact was the case, but didn't stress the point because I didn't know. He opened the window as soon as the van was out of sight, standing and looking down at her. She looked up and ten seconds later she came flying through the door, springing against him like a tiger. Being a gentleman, I zipped downstairs to close the front door, then returned as he was lying her back on the bed, asking if she was really sure, following her requests that he pose for her, and nodding at me in response to her suggestion that I get naked, also. I did, then we both took half an hour undressing her, letting her experiment with us all she wanted. She told us not to be nervous because three of her classmates were letting their brothers or dads spray with them, and they were as nice as any girls in the whole school. Mel, who was tall and slim, definitely a swimmer, crawled over her while she lay with her arms up and legs spread. I helped her like Ryan helped you, and then stood beside the bed and watched as it started happening. When I'd lean over by Krippie's shoulder, Mel would rise high on his arms so we could all see what was happening. Krippie was a cute, slim girl and the sight of almost a man between her legs, being so gentle, got me so excited I started spraying on her chest without touching myself. That made Mel cum immediately, then he brought me to her. His sperm was really heavy and white and it tingled real sharp all over me, but also made me much rougher and faster than I would have been if I hadn't knows she was wet. That made me make her cum, so afterwards she got cute about losing her virginity best and better." Good timing. Haley whispered she was ready and Marshall began surging slowly against her while her legs tightened in welcome. Both she and Ryan used their hands wantonly in encouraging the incest, and in a minute Ryan had taken up a fast, deliberate rhythm with his pretty nine year old daughter. Frequently he'd rise high on his muscular arms so Ryan could watch what he was doing to his young bride. The girl began hissing rhythmically, mewing to both her young lover and her more mature by the moment young father. For all his lingo on stage, Marshall was the picture of decorum as he moved heavily into the final stage of the rape. His eyes glowed into those of his daughter, and his only words were `baby', and, after ten minutes, `baby, I'm cumming.' Again he rose high and the girl and her groom watched intently as a heavy, white smear of fresh, hot semen gushed from between their sweating, panting bodies. The sight tripped the raggedly on edge girl and she screeches as she began seizing and lashing under the gallant breast of her proud father. The flow from his body continued until rivulets formed a pool beneath the girl's slick bottom, then he crumpled slowly to her arms and they began their first not-father, not-daughter kiss. All night it happened in the hotel suite, again and again, and the Italian clock on the marble mantel read two in the morning before all three were asleep at the same time. "Plus," I added, "Janet is pregnant, probably from her father, so she's feeling on the high side of being female about now," this by way of inviting him over some Saturday to spend the night. He thought the idea absolutely terrific, and I bet he would have even if it hadn't been a ticket on to Chicago, or wherever the group was performing. So wonderful, in fact, was my invitation – guess what? "I was wondering if you had this coming Wednesday evening free," Jason said. "It would be really cool if you could come over. We're having a party. Angela's seventh." I gave it some thought. We were masturbating openly again, legs linked, and this time it was Jason who began tensing first. Stephen would spray on me, in reverse of our usual order, once in awhile, and I lay extra still as the powerful Greek beside me began gasping then rolling half to his right, warning me. His cum started hot, white, and copiously as he sagged an lost his breath. I followed, harder than ever, seconds later, his glazed eyes fixed on me for long seconds before they closed and we both lay back, exhausted. "Should I bring slugs?" I asked, "or would she prefer double-O buck?" THE END (CONCLUSION) About the author. Thomas Cochran Emerson is entering his third year as a Web contributor. Under the pen name Feather Touch he published "Jimmy and Frogger", "The Flyyy", "Dennis the...", "Ropeyarn", "Creative Camp", "Blissy's Song", "Michelle's First Secret" and "Michelle's Second Secret". As R. Forbes Emerson, he has published "Hollywood Stories", "Santa Fe Stories", "Stonington (Me.) Stories", "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters", and, most recently, four hundred thousand words of "One Fish at a Time", a work in progress. All his files can be found in the "Nifty.org" Archive. Most are listed under Bisexual, Adults/Young Friends. Others may be found under Bisexual Camping and one or two may be filed under the heading sf/fantasy. "Boxers or Briefs?" is listed under Gay Incest, and his latest, "Rebecca", under Bi Incest. "Fullerton Park & Ride", bi/incest. Latest addition adds yet another pen name in Pen Dragon: "Mississippi Stories – Stephan" and "Mississippi Stories – Janet", again, under bi/incest. These, with this chapter, have been re-posted as "Shady's Closet". In total Mr. Emerson's contributions run to some 1.1 million words. The author lives in Belize, "slightly addicted to the Caribbean." While his stories never cheat in upholding the alternative tradition, readers sallying forth with optimistic outlooks would be well advised to always download alternative material. It can be many miles of rough road between this boy losing his underpants and that girl letting big brother experiment under her training bra. Yes, you have been warned. Emerson was born in his ancestral home of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1946, "The Year of the Porsche," in his words. An absolute devotee of the craft of leading English astray, thus providing gainful employment to those who would lead it back, he admits to being a hot-house artist with the modern word processor his soil, water, air, light, and enabling nutrient. "Hell, all I need then is a seed," he says. Directly descended from the leading activist of the Revolutionary War, and scion of a family that includes the most quoted man in history, his poet and philosopher great great grandfather; the CEO of AT&T during the heyday of Bell Labs and Western Electric, and other luminaries ranging from two governors (Winthrop and Bradford) of the Plymouth Colony to the founder of American Standard, he views his (native) countrymen as his subjects, and writes of and to them accordingly. His hobbies are limited to photography and trying to explain Samantha, his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, to an unamused father. Since flattery got him everywhere, he likes the occasional reader letter. Quote: "Was the phrase `adult entertainment' coined just for me?" Award: The Congress of Behavioral Scientists' lifetime "What Me Worry" prize. Posted by Thomas@btl.net. xxx