Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:10:26 -0800 (PST) From: Tim Stillman Subject: bi/incest/adult-young friends--"A Premium on Innocence" "A Premium on Innocence" By Timothy Stillman (Suggested by Dover) It was a muzzy Spring night, and it's being Thursday, I was babysitting again the Yonette children, one brother, two sisters, all under 13. I was in the living room, ticking off two more hours on my Elgin till the parents came home, the father a minister, the mother, a home schooler, both of whose lives were preoccupied by church, to the point of leaving their children in the bind of discipline, which made tight lines round their mouths and more than a little tension in their bodies and minds; though they weren't frightened totally, they were in that graceless gray area which suggested black and white at least in their minds. The parsonage was a small house and heavy with rococo furniture, an old RCA color set whose picture had long ago gone bilious green, which made me nauseous trying to watch it, so I had long ago given up and always carried a book here to read, for books were my life, such as it was, for a man in his 30's who had a different idea of love and sexuality than most, but it really didn't matter, for such things were always theoretical for me, so, here I sat, while knowing Terry and Janice, nine and ten respectively, were having sex at this very moment in Terry's room, for I had caught them at it twice in the last month, Terry, towheaded and freckled face, with an emaciated body, naked sitting on his bed in his small wilted room, as his sister, Janice, was kneeling in front of him, her butt beautiful and creased, as she was giving him head, so I waited a moment each time before I coughed at them, which caused the naked little girl to run to her room, and Terry to blush and cover himself with his cheap bed spread and sheet, and turn off his Donald Duck lamp on the rickety red table, as I closed the door, of course this had given me an erection, and I couldn't wait to go home, to masturbate. I sat here tonight, same easy chair, same time, having heard the door to the girls' room stealthily clumsily open and heard Janice's naked little feet shuffle down to Terry's room. There was no doubt in my mind they were again at it as I so longed for the grayness of silence to be broken by just one childish giggle. Janice had dark lustrous hair, a smooth breast less flatness, a vagina that looked like a key slot, and I knew she was sucking her brother's lovely two incher now and finding it, the both of them, not pleasurable, all of which curiously, or not so curiously, had caused me to not feel able to masturbate in private, that first time I caught them, or the second, for it had left my stomach hurting and feeling a shameful sexless ness. I was tired of people having sex all round me and me singularly alone, for the idea of a brother and sister, and surely Deidre, the other girl, was a part of this cacophony of sad sexuality, for it seemed that way to me, and I was in no way interested in spying on them again, accidentally of course, because this was the family it was, filled with Bibles and ancillary books, and dictums that were so stringent, for I knew the Rev. and Ms. Yonette to some extent, my being a next-door neighbor, their baby sitter for a year and a half, and I found their clockwork children cold as their parents; on discovering the two children having sex the first time, then the second, I felt a certain giving up from both of them, as though already defeated, their sexuality not being a naughty game or a defiant game or just that their hormones made them hot for each other and this was a grand ploy to get out from under all this atmosphere of God's wrath at any moment, and a terrible doldrums as heavy as the heavy furniture, none of this helped by the muzzy night heat and rainy mist, so I sat there with an old copy of "Dark Forces," a fine horror anthology I had read over the years, but on which tonight, try as I might, I could not keep my mind on, almost falling asleep. Obviously because a brother and sister were having sex mere ft. away from me, this should, at least for me, be as exciting and frustrating as possible, but, to the boy, even though when I had turned on his light the first time I discovered them, and had seen his little stick out erection after his sister took his cocklet rapidly out of her mouth and ran naked flanks to her and Deidre's room, softly closing the door, she seemed to be acting a part, the part of Janice, pre-teen profligate, and the boy seemed to be acting surprised and embarrassed, even as his little hooded pole stuck straight out at me, as he pretended to be embarrassed, to make himself somehow blush, and cover himself up quickly, both of them seeming to see this whole thing as a religious tract veering off into sexuality, and using it as it used them -- religiously-practicing to be their parents, and if the other sister, Deidre, the oldest of the siblings joined in sometime, I felt it was mostly masturbation and little else -- for exposing their bodies, for Janice sucking Terry, there had not been bliss on his face at her mouth on him, as much as a circumstantial endeavor, to get release from non-release and to not achieve it, even though their bodies had to be somewhat a relief to them, still it was a rite, a duty, as much as going to church, or not cursing, or being forever polite at Bible readings before dinner, some of which I was invited to, for I had always been known as a good kid. Dammit. I put the book in my lap and under the dim light from the lamp trained on the book, I pushed it to the side, opened my jeans and pulled out my penis, trying and knowing hopelessly from the beginning, I would not get an erection. For the parents had won and had won over me even though my home life at a child's age had been different, there were enough symbolic markers to make this parallel enough, so after a few minutes of holding myself, and remembering the children naked and -- not having sex really -- not having anything at all actually -- I was not surprised when Janice and Terry had come, naked, quietly out of Terry's room and I found them standing, bare, on either side of me, with my penis exposed and my eyes suddenly opened at the sound of their breathing, as I looked at them looking wanly at me, and their faces and naked though somehow clothed bodies, sorry and diffident and polite and shyly bold, but that was wrong, not any brand of boldness at all. For they had acted no differently now in this growing-cold fantasy of mine come sadly true, than after the times I had caught them than they ever had before or since, for as the boy, their names had started seeming meaningless and vague now, as they had for some time, though I wasn't aware of it till this moment, in this dark room that contained more shadows than light, took my limp right hand and put it on his wonderfully constructed little erection, as the girl took my equally lifeless other hand and placed it on her flat chest, then moved it to her small mound and then to her lips as she pressed my fingers inside, as the boy pushed my hand up and down his penis, as I jacked him off, then they each moved their hands to my surprisingly hard penis and explored it and pulled gently out my balls, and we had -- communion -- --As flatly and balefully if anything, as that, as I wondered if their parents also had discovered them at any time, or if their parents knew their three children even existed, wondering if they did exist in any form of actuality, and though the boy came and his penis clicked several times, his body quivered sexually only a bit, not as if he was containing himself, more as though he was wrapped up in a package of Biblical injunctions, not necessarily given by his parents perhaps, but his rushing to already what he knew was ahead, and as Janice leaned over and kissed me on the lips, hello always stranger, an odorless to her, as she helped me masturbate her and came as dispiritedly as had her brother, I was not able to maintain an erection, though not embarrassedly as one might think, and was relieved when they left to their rooms, monk and nun to their respective cells, to put on night wear and go to bed, sleeping the sleep of the damned, though that might be too lofty a goal for them, already, for they had discovered what I had in later years than they, where the devil lay, and the devil lay in bodies that could instinctively be sexual for a time, bypassing all else, but knowing that it would lie fallow soon enough. I put my penis and balls back in my pants and zipped up, thinking how cool and clay-like they had been to the touch, wondering if I felt the same way to them, knowing I had failed them, and Deidre, who was perhaps even more mothballed, the humor of the term made me smile a bit quizzically as I thought it, because I could not help them, because I could not alter one cubit, Biblical term used not archly, but aptly and categorically, so I picked up my book and looked at the page I had started and stopped before all of this, just looked at the print and the curious little marks it made that seemed non-sense, and stayed that way in an almost frozen tableau till the front door opened and the reverend and his wife came in. We talked a few minutes, I was paid, was asked how their children were, to which I answered as always "like little lambs," and experienced not one whit of fear Terry and Janice would in guilt tell them what they and I had done tonight, though needless and faded and cobwebbed, as a character out of Poe, I also had done nothing at all to or with them really. As I got my book and prepared to leave, rejecting an offer of a cup of coffee from this mousy little man and his kind though diffident wife, for they were indeed nice people, oh they were killing their children, but being polite about it, for I doubt ever a parental hand had been raised in anger anymore than I doubted a parental hug had ever been given, or if so, with lackluster much as this drab house was. On this way out the door, I turned and said, "Deidre sleeps a lot these nights. I see her so seldom recently. She didn't come out of her room at all, or have a snack with Terry and Janice, or do homework on the comp with her brother and sister or watch TBN. In fact I haven't seen her at all tonight. I hope she's well. I didn't look in on her because I didn't want to bother her if she's ill." The look I got from father and mother as he prepared to read the local newspaper (him) on the couch, and she prepared to go to the kitchen to make coffee, was one of mute unease, one of some kind of small about to go out altogether flame, for though they stopped a moment, a very brief moment, and looked at me only for a few seconds, I knew something was terribly wrong, and I left the house in a such an eager hurry, knowing I was never to mention Deidre's name again in that house to those people, which I decided on the walk to my house would not be a problem, for there was no way I would never go back there again, and I never did. Good fences make good neighbors, indeed, and can put a person out of the danger of insanity. I never saw any of them again. I no longer went to their church. I made sure never to look in the direction of their house when I was outside, having made my mind up to ignore any of them if one or more ever called my name. None of them ever did. The church got a new pastor in the space of six months. Thank God. How horribly profligate innocence, for all of them, whatever their numbers now.