Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 06:08:59 -0600 From: thomas Subject: BOXERS OR BRIEFS? BOXERS OR BRIEFS? (M/b, inc., mast., rom., lit., hum.) by Tom Emerson Krinny Lyons was happy to see two-minutes, fifteen-seconds on his digital chronograph. "It works cool," the eleven year old yelled a second after his eyes had focused on the dial. He wiped the water from crystal, double checked the display, and grinned up at his grandfather. "I didn't think I could stay under even a minute." "I had it specially modified," Kandar Lyons shouted back, "just to fake you out. You weren't under even half a minute." A look of uncertainty swept Krinny's face for an instant and he re-examined his new watch, his mind buzzing less from its recent lack of oxygen than with the possibility his wild-wolf superdad had hacked the digital timepiece. "Nah," he exclaimed to himself, looking back up to his boyish granddad, grinning ever more widely. "You have one, too," he said, "so you have to dive with me so we can compare." "I'm over dressed for under water," the man observed. Krinny lay on his back sculling with his hands and kicking until he floated under a bush at the verge of the pond. "Superdad," he said up through a cap in the foliage, "Jesse and his friends will probably go back to the house in a few minutes to play the game you bought him, and maybe you could stay down here for awhile, you know, not to play with the watches or anything, just to kind of swim and hang out." "I'll have to choose between that and waxing the car," Kandar said. "I'm young enough to be stupid enough to like waxing cars," Krinny noted. "Interesting," Kandar replied through the gap in the bushes, "that you are, at the same time, mature enough and intelligent enough to want to wax a Porsche." "That's just common sense," the boy responded, "like wanting you to hang around for awhile after the others head back up to the house." "As long as one isn't a condition of the other," the tall, hard-bodied fifty seven year old responded. "I've kind of got something on my mind," Krinny said, "so I can't think that far ahead. I just know I'd like it if we could hang out for an hour or two, and I'd like to help you with the car when it's shady in the driveway." Jesse Lyons and his friends were waving good-bye as they beached themselves at the foot of the trail, Krinny's brother repeating a Thanks for "Deer Hunter 5" as the three boys grabbed their towels and disappeared with less than no dust. The remaining boy returned to deeper water, giving his beloved grandfather space. Kandar dropped from the ledge he'd been standing on, landing nimbly at the edge of the pond. "Are you really going to be staying?" the boy asked, now circling back to the small beach, "I mean, you don't have to or anything, you're superdad to me even if I just see you on the holidays, but it would be kinda neat." "Your mom seems to like the idea," the man replied, "but not with you. I'll get a place nearby so you guys can have a thousand percent privacy and two or three percent relic." "If I'm twice the relic you are at half your age," the child said, "I'll think I got a great deal in the genes department." "Just remember, Krinny," the man intoned, "the common pizza pie has ruined many a superior genetic pool, or at least its individual members." "This is sort of like the scene out of the television commercial," the boy noted, paddling to where he could stand shoulder-deep, "where the kids want the gramps to swim with them, and finally he wades in fully dressed." "I've seen it," the grandfather laughed, "and you and your brother do look like the actors. I was going to poke you in the ribs if we happened to see it together." The boy stood still in the gently lapping black water, looking engaged more than puzzled. He met his grandfather's hard eyes -- speaking of actors, how much like Roy Scheider could a man look before he had to pay royalties? - and, blushing slightly even in the cool water, said: "Don't you think it raises an issue?". The pair were old hands at intricate conversation, but this was new ground, just as the youth again emerging from the water was newer than the newest thing ever. "It complies with a norm," Kandar said. "But what if he, the gramps in the commercial, looked like you, sort of half tiger, half wolf, and he'd at least taken his shirt off? The world couldn't even handle that?" "There's a scene in a Kirk Douglas move," the man recalled, squatting comfortably against the trunk of a small tree as his grandson stood in waist-deep water a few feet from shore, "where he's in the wilderness with a kid. They go great pains to show that Kirk does not bathe with the boy, but rather that they take widely segregated turns at their pool." "Yeah," Krinny said, "and in "The Toy", the kid who buys Richard Pryor wants to take a bath with him. That scene doesn't go very far." "Well," Kandar mused, "in a sense I guess it's civilization's longest-running dilemma. The religions have their various gospels down pretty pat, so the wild card has to be how people behave toward each other, since the unknown has been made so clear to them, and, to add that extra degree of interest and congregational involvement, how adults behave toward children. Much of this, of course, is off limits, and adults are allowed to verbally and psychologically abuse their children, and others, to suit their mood of the moment. Physical abuse is largely shaded over, though it can, on the other hand, get overly sticky, but let any touching occur, no matter how acceptable to the juvenile, over how long a period of time, and the key turns the lock. It's not even to be hinted at in a television commercial or film, with perhaps intended humor in the lengths they go to assure Mr. Dumb and Mrs. Dumber that nothing was even considered." "So then," quoth the child, "the logic, once unraveled, seems to imply it's as much fun as they say." "Fun kind of trivializes what really happens," the older male said, "but taken as a whole, from a distance, yeah, you could say it's as much as they say." "But not fun?" "Cute is in the eye of the beholder," Kandar responded, "for example, it can be kind of cute to talk about it, but half an hour or so later, I don't think an onlooker would characterize the activities of an attractive couple as quaint, precious, or any kind of cute." "Will you come in with me now that the others are gone?" Krinny asked. "You have to ask me the right way," Kandar said, entering into one of the convoluted verbal byplays dear to both their hearts: "you have to give the moment great dignity, seeing as how it's the first time I've seen much of you in over a year. You have to expand yourself, perhaps almost heroically; rise to the moment, as they say, and formulate an interrogative -- listen carefully now -- such as might be delivered of a person of exalted status, at, say, a university, to a personage of even more exalted status, and even, by some measures, the highest in the land. Only summoned thus will a gentleman of my years and wisdom venture into an element best confined by porcelain." Krinny's grandfather wasn't much for idle games, well, except about the watch. He was getting at something, very likely associated with contemporary history.. There would be a key, if his young wit could just but think of it. Fortunately, by phone or email, if not in person, the child had born repeated intellectual assaults and they'd merely improved his ability to respond,. "Mr. August Personage, a/k/a, Superdad," he said, then paused in the interest of dramatic tension before twisting the brass: "the world wants to know... is it boxers or briefs." "Thus," responded Kandar, in unctuous tones, "the world came to discover for itself, neigh, to enlighten the very cockles of its intellectual heart as to the fidelity of its innermost innermost. Perhaps it can, after all, be excused for its rash vulgarity in the present instance, for the messenger is the message, and such a Mercury as yourself can hardly help but inspire an avid response, if only reflexive, to the fiery joy represented by a youth so fair, so bright, and so brilliant." The man took a deep breath. Word games with his grandson required the utmost concentration, yet the boy continued to emerge from the water, to approach, tall for his eleven years, slim, dripping, and still panting from his long dive, or something. Doing his best to maintain some composure, the young grandfather continued: "and thence did it come to pass that the world did, forsooth, glean the knowledge so dear to its innermost being, and all because, lo, the very innocent who raised first cry and succeeded in putting the quandary into plain words then proceeded, having ultimately made the essential discovery, to herald it, to cast his news wide and spread the word far, thus passing his knowledge on, and he came, by so doing, to be seen as good, to be seen as great, to inherit the automobile, be it small, and to live happily ever after." Of course, Krinny managed none of these feats, however biblical, standing offshore. He walked on sand. The sand rose conveniently, if not miraculously, to the small beach at the perimeter of the pond. Stood in front of his athletic young grandfather. "Can I do your shirt buttons," he whispered. "I watched you do yours," the man replied, "did you notice?" "A little," Krinny said, blushing. "You didn't try to hide," the older male observed. "I wanted to," the eleven year old said, "sort of about one tenth. The other nine-tenths was wishing Jesse and his friends were stalking deer." "Krinny," the man said softly, "we haven't talked about this mature stuff before, so I'd kind of like to not get off on the wrong foot. "What I mean is, I'd like to ask you questions; find out how experienced you are, how comfortable you are, things like that. Some boys liked to be quizzed," the man continued, "and some just want the physical part and think talking about private experiences, to say nothing of giving graphic, lurid, moment by moment and detail by detail accounts, is weird, faggy, sick, perverted, or, all of the above. " "I've read a lot about it..." "You've read a lot, period..." Kandar interrupted, demonstrating a childlike grasp of the obvious. "I guess," his grandson acknowledged with another slight reddening before continuing: "and, you know, there's whips and a lot of beyond-the-barnyard, so I don't think sharing stories stacks up to high on the Abnormal shelf." "It's a chance to both share and re-live," the sage added, but, at the same time, a spice used with discretion. For example, only tell the truth. Leave making stuff up to the guys who write for the Web, they seem to have nothing better to do with their time than be read by thousands for decades, and stick to things that really happened, or almost happened, and never exaggerate or fabricate because that makes you sound like a hot hustler, and those birds are the coolest cucumbers in town." Krinny was now on the tall athlete's third button, his long, coltish fingers repeatedly delayed by forays through the modest growth of crinkly black hair slightly mixed with iron gray of the now gently panting adult. "When we get it off can we go up in the woods on the other side of the pond, you know, before we come back to swim?" the eleven year old wanted to know. "Yes," the man said, "but I want to go very slowly. At my age I've done enough not to feel much, but being with you is going to be my last memory, and I want a lot to look forward to when I die. To be a bit cute about it, deathbed blues not rooted in the emotions." "If you make me laugh," Krinny whispered into the fourth buttons, his wandering fingers apparently so enthusiastic about their recent ventures astray they sought more of the same, "I'll never stop, and all you'll have are memories of a giggling idiot." "Do you know what I'm talking about?" the older male asked, his voice a husky whisper. "Excitement without relief," the grandchild responded, "stress and tension, frustration and anxiety, discomfort squared, are those the initial symptoms?" "I think we're on the same page, here," the elder male said, imitating Jerry Lundegaard in "Fargo". By pact, neither laughed at the other, because, as we will have guessed, they had better things to do. "How much do you know?" Kandar asked. "That there are five books in the library that open to exactly the right page if you place them on their spines," the boy replied, "but they're all about the psychological side. The a's and b's, as in abnormal. The physical side is left in the iffy hands of those promoting the oral tradition of the urban legend, and, since they choose as the hall of their debate, lo, the washroom, one comes away in a state that only an optimist would call `vague'." "The physical part can be addictive," Kandar said, "they, the books, are just trying to warn you by categorizing it as abnormal, and it's hard to earn a place in the publish-or-perish-hall-of-fame if you just tell kids not to play mature games unless they want to camp away the next fifty years in front of bus station urinals. They conveniently forget that kids who camp in front of the `fridge or television or computer or shelves of books and magazines are equally liable to develop life-altering compulsive behavior patterns. "What they're getting at is that traumatic situations can develop for anyone, but especially for the young with their limited perspective and frames of reference, and therefore it's better to decline dallying in their version of The Garden of Eden. The logic goes if they can save one kid from a fate worse than death, it matters not what happens to the other -- normal -- kids who have difficulty seeing any awesomely bummer degree, whatever, to historically and culturally prevalent acts. "It's a case of social myopia," the wealthy writer went on, "because behavioral scientists, the most intellectually forlorn of crowds, to begin with, only see the victims. If they had x-ray vision, they'd see a hundred good, or at least tolerable, since so much of it is no big deal in the first place, relationships between both sexes and all healthy, fit ages for every kid caught up, usually as a result of a witness with an ax to grind, in front of them. The only therapist ever to have a concrete record of helping molested children took them home with him for a few days. All the rest do extreme harm and no good. All kids `interviewed' in the aftermath of various daycare scandals turned into bed-wetting monsters after their first session. The kids from the same centers who were not subjected to the PhDs didn't change, but this statistic is deceiving, because parents smart enough to keep their kids at arm's length from any variety of psychological therapist probably had savvy kids, in the first place." It did make a certain rude sense. Very nice that superdad was going to live on a nearby street, he made good company. Attractive, too; muscular without the boxiness of the narcissist; as close to a champ swimmer as it was possible for a male of his age to be, and the untrained body melding into a craggy, hard eyed fox face that regarded the world with a sleepy alertness that loved remaining sleepy. As they talked, the couple skirted the pond and soon were on a trail curving through the hills and up the side of a small valley, the pre-teen running lightly ahead on his bare feet, then finding a seat on a rock for a few moments until his superdad caught up. In ten minutes they found a ledge flanking the pathway and settled on it, the boy on the man's left, gazing down the valley and just able to see the swimming hole and the Lyons' estate beyond. "So," Kandar said after they'd saturated themselves with the view, "how accurate do you suppose the locker room stories, and rumors, in general are, circa 2003?" "Their crudity is exceeded only by their lack of imagination," the boy replied, "and it seems one fit sighs all -- you know, each and every guy moaning wistfully and sighing over the same flawlessly tailored thirty-eight inches." "Their cups punneth over," the grandfather said "Does that make each one a bra-t?" the boy asked. "Not you," the man assured the boy, "you're only a stripling and a tease." "And just when I was pegging myself as a world-class interlocutor," the boy said with a sigh of his own. "Since the question of the ages has been asked and answered, elsewhere," Kandar said, "you were doomed to failure from the start." Krinny was lost in apparent revere for some moments, then his handsome schoolboy face brightened. "I have a B-list," he announced. "I thought we'd covered the b's, between bras, briefs, and boxers, rather fully," the fifty seven year old intoned. "Not quite," his cute grandson replied, "because we left out Beginnings. You know, the exciting stuff that happened when you were just learning about those notorious b's of the wing-jockey persuasion." "Well," Kandar said, "I'm glad to say that there were more bb's than birds or bees, healthier to kill and maim than fiddle in shame, but, yes, there was something that happened. Something that let me know, in no uncertain terms, that the psychic damage caused by a consensual relationship is about the same as the physical damage incurred as a result of being bitten by a mosquito through the skin of a boiler." "Did it happen a lot?" the younger male asked. "A number of times, but not a whole lot," Kandar replied. "Did it start slowly, or did it happen all of a sudden?" Krinny wanted to know, his voice thickening and dropping to a muted husk. The older male responded to the child's embarrassed lust by standing and dropping his cargo shorts. Krinny also stood, stock still, and the older male knelt and pulled down his swimsuit, then stood again to remove his boxer shorts. "It started fast," he said to the boy, "but when we came to this part it slowed way down." "Do some boys want to speed up?" Krinny asked. "It's a character issue," the man replied, "all boys want to, and a male my age with a slim and intelligent boy your age wants to break records or die trying, but so does a bull in a pasture or a goat in a pen, and, as a certainty, we have broken so many rules in the name of religion and politics we don't need to obey feral instincts and atavistic urges, but, rather, can drink from the cup of romance without the romance, you know, in the interest of keeping things manly, and drain sentiment and passion along with the brew. Goats don't bother and bulls aren't allowed around any kind of cup, so, in the end, it all makes about as much sense as it's ever going to." Both males were hugely swollen, standing, arms at their sides, looking each other up and down. If their discourse was the odd brick short, it hardly mattered as their body language alone could be interpreted by a moldering spinster. Kandar stood almost eight heavy inches from his athletic loins, his circumcised penis arcing to his left. The coltish eleven year old neared six inches, his shaft slim, white, and also circumcised. Others have tried their hand at Fantasyland, and for tykes, sure, they've succeeded, but Krinny and his hard-bodied, boyish superdad were where it took the most vivid of imaginations to conceive of being anywhere else, and, since this was beyond their powers, they settled for the reality of staring each other up and down while standing a tense foot and a half apart, fantasizing. "We ought to talk about a few things," Kandar whispered to the tall, slim child. "I'll try," the boy responded. "This should be happening to you with a boy your own age, or a young man," Kandar said, "as the homosexual act has a high aesthetic beauty when it involves the coupling of two slim, young males. Because of this, the younger partner often gets carried away by the sensuality of what happens and lets the older male ejaculate on his body or in his mouth, but with a grandfather and grandson it should probably be more like teacher and student; more educational, clinical, and empirical -- more partners in science than a lovers' alliance." "You mean more like a chapter from a novel than a comic book?" Krinny said, catching on with the speed of a wanting boy. "Maybe a title unto itself," the older male responded, "'Deviant Distractions for Dummies', or something of that sort; neither hurried and cursory, nor long and drawn out, you know, more than you ever wanted to know about the subject." "Yes, yes," the boy said, "that's it; not the head science of the library books, and not the cup-free models of the pornographers; neither overly technical or solely prurient, of literary merit, should it actually be set down on the page, but not literarily effete and top heavy with academic superstructure." "You have a more comprehensive grasp than might be expected of a youth of your tender years," Kandar allowed. "I have a superdad who's the best freaking writer on every freaking known planet," the cutie responded, "and, though I sometimes disgrace myself by dallying with the muses of lesser scribes, it is all with the purpose of having something to say beyond: `Yo dude'; one day, perchance, to at least try out your footprints." "Then it's definitely time to slow down," Kandar said, immediately feeling his statement was tinged with excess, seeing as how they were just standing there, staring at each other's naked bodies, and going any slower was hardly an option. Krinny, however, was the child of a morer god and understood. ""till I'm forty-something, as you were when you published "Cucumbers without the Salad?" he asked. "If you want to write fiction, yes," the man replied, "your first story will set you; if it's watery and immature, those will be your benchmarks and you'll be trapped like a fly in a web. You have to fill up your life before you can fill up a chapter, much less a novel. Extreme talent can be a shortcut, but it's rare as hens' teeth, and even if you were born with it, there's no substitute for the odd fifty thousand hours -- ten years -- of practice to know which rough edges to polish and which to leave intact, you know, so editors remain in a state of high alertness as they page through your work." "How about critics?" the eleven year old wanted to know. "Just take out a very big gun and aim it carefully before you squeeze the trigger, first having ascertained it is, a, loaded, and, b, has the safety in the Off position." "Like Shady in the studio dude's office?" Krinny asked, referencing, as all but the misbegotten know, a track on a highly listenable CD popular with the youth of his generation. "Shoot first, yes," the man said, nodding, "and entertain explanations at a later date." "What if they like you?" the boy queried. "If today's critics like you it means you're a socialist, which means you'll make a lot of money, for somebody, but, personally, I'd have a hard time sleeping knowing that I participated in the permanent end of the home of the Whopper." "But it's a wondrous doctrine," Krinny said, "whole libraries tell us so." The youth was amazed, looking down, not that he had to look down, at seeing his penis longer, thicker, and more rigid than it had ever been in his memory, while his attention was partially diverted by the epidemic daily eroding any possibility of a meaningful future for any child. "I guess the body lives for the day," he mused to himself. "It's wondrous, indeed," the grandfather replied, "for someone my age; to have lived a full life at the end of civilized life, and, not to put too fine a point on it, probably wondrous for kids your age who won't have to endure long, if at all, the strife and turmoil adulthood deals out to most of its sufferers." Kandar's efforts were in vain; did no good at all. Both males remained almost painfully erect in spite of their discourse on the most woebegone of topics. What was there left to do but change the subject? "From what you said earlier, Krinny, I take it you've been in some kind of exciting situation at a previous time," the older male said. "I think that's why mom asked you to come and visit," the boy responded, "she's kind of worried about it, and I guess she's right, you know, with all the stuff that happens with priests and daycare centers -- I'd probably be uptight in her shoes, too." "She mentioned your art teacher..." "Mr. Lien," the boy said, "Doug. He's just started working in digital photography and he invited me to come over to his apartment and pose so he could experiment with lighting and stuff." "What do you think of him?" the man wanted to know. "You met him, remember? at our last open house," Krinny replied. "About six-three, dirty blond, with a pony tail?" "That's Doug," the boy said, "he wears it because it's retro, and with so much new stuff coming out on computers he thinks it's important to maintain some semblance of dignity and tradition." "It looks good on him, but I hope you'll wait a couple of years before following his lead." "I though it was a tail," the boy responded, carefully maintaining the humor-neutral nature of their sorties into the absurd. "That comes at the end of the story," the senior observed, playing the game about as well as it could be played, and extraordinary well if one allowed for the fact that a stark naked, coltish, pre-teen was standing hardly more than a foot in front of him, indeed, if critically measured, barely more than two inches. "I thought it was a tale," the boy repeated "Why, you're yarn tootin'," Kandar drawled, "but it's a sorry yarn `till it's told." There's been an adage around for a long time concerning the wisdom of changing mounts in the middle of a stream, which, however regrettably, is confounded by a like bromide which suggests the futility of whipping a dead horse. It took Kandar and his grandson some moments to extricate themselves from their silly vamping, since both were happy enough bantering around the edges of their smoking lust and sizzling passion for the sensual touch of the flaring purple glans of the adult sliding gently and slickly against the silky, pinkish head of the inexperienced youth's long, hard boner. "Did mom say a lot to you, you know, about Doug?" the now panting child asked. "A triple message," the older male replied, "one stated, which is, a, know what's up so you can forestall anything that might make you uncomfortable without damaging the underlying friendship, if that is possible, and, one implied, b, that she's met Doug, that she likes him, and that she entirely approves of your spending time with him on any basis that makes you happy, and finally, one suggested, which brings us to c, and that is that you and I find an opportunity to chat at some length about your relationship with a tall, handsome, athletic artist, whom, if memory serves, looks like he could be your sixteen-year-old cousin. "She added," the adult continued, "that anything to do with closets is best left to professional vocalists. Translated, this means she doesn't want to know, but she doesn't want you stuck in any place you might one day feel you have to come out of." "Sort of a passport without visas," the boy said. "Quiet visas, at any rate," Kandar said, "and I'm sure I was reading my daughter correctly when I surmised she'd be a happy mother if the number of visas was quite limited." "He does have three friends," the boy said in response. "'Quite' probably means less than a dozen over as many years, anyway it would, to me." "That sounds fair, and I wouldn't mind crediting my superdad with half that dozen, except," Krinny said, looking pointedly at the tall, slim athlete in front of him, "I don't think six does you justice." "Ninety-nine percent of the time, I'm four," the fifty seven year old observed, "so we may have a deal in the offing." "What will he do to me when I get to his studio?" Krinny asked. "There's some chance, nothing," the man replied, "it happens that men like boys for their own sake, purely and simply as friends, no `thoughts', no peeking or desire to peek, so it could end up Pollyanna meets a butterfly. Give that about a three point weight. That still leaves nearly a hundred percent chance he wants to have an active homosexual relationship with you. Moving on, meeting him, even though it was just pleasantries for a few minutes, I think it is unlikely Doug Lien will want to do anything TO you, and it's not a fine point of semantics, a lot of men out there want to do things TO boys, and, however the porn writers glorify it in their stroke stories, it's usually brutish, ugly, and painful for the child involved. What Doug will want to do WITH you is shower together, possibly preceded by play wrestling in your underpants, and then dry you off and get you comfortable in his bed so he can take you repeatedly for several hours in the most thoughtful and gentle way possible." "How will I know when he wants things to start happening?" the boy wanted to know. "That depends on how experienced he is," the grandfather replied, "if he's molested a number of boys in the past, and was successful with them, he might be quite open about getting you to pose in your underpants, showing you pictures of other boys he's photographed, and touching your shoulders and neck in a style more sensuous and lingering than a coach where there are witnesses." "How should I respond?" Krinny asked. "First," said the man, "your response is critical, and I'm sure he wouldn't have invited you to spend the weekend with him if he didn't think yours would be appropriate. Second, it's not something you can `try' or `want to do'; it's who and what you are -- nothing to do with play acting. Judging the book by its cover, which can be tolerably accurate with practice, I think he'll want you to be passively responsive; half-way between a simpering maiden and chicken-hawk hustler, with a leading toward the confused maiden, or, more succinctly, the student craving guidance. "But don't overdo it," the man went on to caution. "When he quizzes you, and there's a good chance he'll do so extensively, tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth; never exaggerate or dramatize; fake it, as the girls say, because that's a greater turn off than a hanging belly and open sores, combined." "What should I do the first time he touches me?" the boy added. "Stay still," his grandfather advised, "after you're sure it's sexual, which takes three or four seconds to figure out, you might say, `that feels nice.' Nothing more. Don't thrust back to feel his penis against you or grab his hands and push them down to your waist. After he's begun to fondle you openly you can say, `you're making me get a boner,' or something like that. Just a few words, maybe just a little movement back against him." "What would I say next?" "My suggestion would be: `You're making me get a boner, is the door locked?'" "Superdad?" the boy asked, "his friends are like his age, he showed me a picture of them, so would it be okay if I asked him if he touches other young boys?" "That would not be amiss, nor your quizzing him about the first time he was molested by an older male. But timing is important. Wait until he has both hands up under your shirt and is openly molesting you, maybe starting to work at your belt buckle, then whisper it to him, and maybe you can act, a little, and pretend you're shy and nervous, without hamming it up or overacting. That's the hard part, because what happens between the two of you, probably, the first time, in his bathroom as you get ready to shower, is, to some degree, a performance. In other words, the more avid you are, the more you stimulate a full response, thus exciting you the more, and so on, until you reach a point of lust and trust where you give yourself to him, utterly, after which no acting or performing arts need be involved." "Would there be time for them?" the child wanted to know, his by now regular panting hinting broadly that time was rapidly becoming a critical issue. "Not the first time," the older male replied, "once you reach than point in his arms and in his hand you'll begin ejaculating in less than a minute, and you'll hardly be in the frame of mind to make up lines, much less emote them. When you get used to the things he does with you, perhaps you might want to try adding to the excitement by faking a little. Once two males have bonded in the sense the two of you probably will, there's plenty of latitude; it's the first times that count. Not being overly aggressive. Someday, in your dozen minus four, you may come across a virgin adult, and have to lead; that will be very exciting, but if you want to keep it, play things cool and low, a little hesitant, and, as will likely fit some scenes, yielding and very mildly encouraging." "Could I lose control, you know, too early?" Krinny asked. "You're a beautiful enough young animal that you might arouse him to the point he excites you too much," Kandar replied. "In fact, there's probably a good chance, especially if he's inexperienced with children, that he might fondle and caress you so awkwardly that you cum before he has your underpants off." "Should I tell him if I feel that way?" the boy said. "As soon as possible," advised his mentor, "but if you can't, if you're tongue-tied or losing consciousness, try to at least say, `sorry'. He's going to want to watch you ejaculate, very much, so, as I said, if you feel yourself losing control from the way he's molesting you, try to let him know. You probably won't be able to help much, but he should be at least half expecting it and be able to get your penis free of your clothing before you're having a full emission in his hand." The boy's eyes glazed briefly and his erection pulsed high and hard, self-fulfilling prophecy -- missed by a small fraction. "That," Kandar said, noting the boy's close call, "should tell you how you really feel about being with him, which is what counts with both your mom and myself." "It's how I feel about being with you," the pre-teen whispered. "Well," suggested the older male, "hold the thought because you're going to find there's a big difference being with someone my age and being with a twenty-something who runs around in a teen body." "I'm glad you're the first, and it's now, and we're out here," the boy responded. "Glad you're smart enough to come live near us. All kinds of stuff." "And you know what I'm glad of?" the man asked. "What?" said the boy. "That now, when I take my annual trip to the drag strip, I'll have someone your size to take the car through the quarter. I did it every year with the old Targa, you know, kind of keep tabs on things, but it's a new age for new blood, so I will pass down the keys." "I'm glad of that, too," the boy allowed, not adding, though it clearly showed in his eyes, "if I can control myself with you, I may have a chance with Doug Lien, after all." Maturity. But how cute they were when they were young. After some moments, Krinny went on: "Superdad," he said, "what about the physical part? You know, after he's got his hands on me and unbuckled me. I mean, you said it would happen in his hand. Can you show me?" "There's a classic way a tall male takes a shorter male," Kandar replied, "the man stands behind the boy and places, if he's right handed, his left arm around the boy's chest, holding some of his weight. The boy spreads his legs as widely as he can, and the mature male reaches around from the boy's right flank and takes his penis in his hands. That's called masturbation, you know, jerking off; other words, too, that other people use. Usually the senior male does this for a few minutes until he senses the child in his arms is about to ejaculate, or just cum, if he hasn't reach puberty. When the boy is close, the man guides him to his right hip, and the boy puts his left arm around the taller male's waist, but standing beside him, not behind him, and reaches across with his right hand to stroke his mature partner. Where the man stopped with the boy, the boy doesn't stop with the mature male, but takes him all the way so he, the boy, can watch his partner cum. Some boys like to move in front of the man at the last moment and take the sperm on their bodies, and some stay by the man's side and let the seed spill on the floor or the ground. After the older male has ejaculated, he again takes the child in his left arm, the boy again spreads his legs, and this time the man takes the boy all the way, usually after wetting his hand with sperm. This is repeated every ten minutes or so for several hours, then, if everything has gone well, the couple experiments with advanced techniques using lips, tongue, and mouth. Anal intercourse is possible, but it's, a, the principle disease vector, and, b, sort of desperate, nothing-else-is-worth-living-for `fun', like compulsive gambling. I seriously doubt Doug will want to mount you over the weekend, but, if your relationship prospers, it might happen one day." "Why doesn't the man take the boy all the way, the first time?" Krinny wanted to know. "That's important," his grandfather said, nodding approvingly, "because, especially while you're inexperienced, there can be a big letdown -- like a dash of cold water -- after you've finished ejaculating. It happens almost instantly, you know, sort of like a holiday diner where you really do know you'll die if you take one more bite of pie, and lasts for five minutes or so. If the adult cums while the boy's chilled, so to speak, it can be nothing but gross, as they say. Once it's happened a few times, you'll realize it's a transient downer, if ever there was one, and it won't bother you to have your adult partner cum all over you just after you've spilled on him, but, in the meantime, you should be prepared for the letdown and even having feelings of shame, anger, guilt, and frustration. If you like your partner, those negative vibes, and that's actually a pretty good term for them, will go as quickly as they came, and ten minutes later you'll be as ready for his hand on you, and his cum, as you ever were. Also," the pedagogue went on, "you should realize that homosexuals have from fifteen to a hundred and fifty sexual experiences during their relationship, where a heterosexual couple has thousands. It is a diversion, an entertainment, however bereft of glossy showmanship, and the ultimate sidebar. It means so little, sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh, yet, while it's happening, it's as wild and wooly as anything that's survivable." "And like talking and stuff makes it better?" the boy asked. "My guess is that Doug will talk to you for several hours before he molests you openly," Kandar noted, "making it last, so to speak, without taunting and teasing, is exponentially part of the art, if an art it is, in the first place, because the intensity increases as the square of the time devoted to verbal foreplay, a/k/a, voyeurism." "The way if feels," Krinny murmured, "is more like nuclear physics -- you know, critical mass and spontaneous fission, that kind of thing." "Excellent analogy," the writer said, "because it takes an atomic bomb to detonate a thermonuclear bomb, and, in abstractl syntax, `con' means `with' in Spanish, thus easing your path into the world of confusion." "Easy for you to say," the grandson quoth, but now, more than ever, was no time for levity. "Speaking of the mouth," Kandar said, continuing the panting remnants of their conversation with an effort that could only be perceived as heroic, "how do you feel about kissing him? You know, French, lingering, carnal, and erotic, probably for a long time?" "I never thought of it," the boy admitted. "Well," the man responded, "it's another of those conundrums, because, on the one hand, it can be almost the best part, and, on the other, you can experience a complete and satisfying relationship without so much as a peck on the cheek." "In one of the books in the library it said prostitutes only kiss their boyfriends, never their customers," Krinny noted. "That's why you should give it some thought. It's more of an invasion, if you want to call it that, than sex play, so, while I'm absolutely positive he'll want to kiss you, you should know how you feel about it, at least as best you can, and be ready to say Sorry, and turn away if you don't want it." "Could I find out with you?" the child asked. "No," his grandfather said kindly, "if you like it with him, and still want to, we'll talk about it. In my opinion, and I think at least half-way your mom's, you're an A-plus lucky eleven year old, and I'm old enough to be fonder of the nobility of not intruding, where a happy outcome is obvious, than of the passion of the moment." "Can I tell you everything that happens with him?" the boy asked. "I'm a minor noble," the elder admitted, "so, yes, I'd love to hear everything a time or two, in graphic detail, if you're okay with telling. I think we covered the subject before. There's secrecy, which I'm sure has its place in the scheme of things, and privacy, which undoubtedly did someone some good at some time, so it's still around, but there's also sharing, and even re-living an experience as you share it, as I'm doing by sharing with you almost the same thing that happened with me at your age; a long talk, and we did kiss, and then his body rigid and shaking as he straddled me and cummed in six long, hot spurts across my boyish chest and all over my shoulders and face." "How did he cum?" the prize boy whispered. "In my right hand as he braced himself all hard and rigid and panting over me," the sage said, "I had him down low in my left hand, holding him a way Doug will show you, and was experimenting with stroking him -- I'd never masturbated before -- with my right hand." "Did he say anything?" the youth asked. "He'd told me he wouldn't be able to, while we were talking," Kandar replied, "but he said I'd probably know, anyhow, and he got me ready for it. Doug will do that, too, be sure you're ready and know what's going to happen. More than one boy has been frozen out because his older partner didn't warn him properly, and what started out as erotic play suddenly became a salacious orgy of hot, spurting cum. Especially boys who play with little girls can gross them out if they're not careful." "So a lot can hang on an incidental event," the wise child observed. "A tremendous amount at the beginning of a relationship," his grandfather agreed, "the slightest misunderstanding or lack of synchronic harmony, and poof, endsville. And it's ironic, because back in the days of sailing ships and long sea voyages, say from England, around Africa, to India, it was a given that any suitable couple, and half the unsuitable couples, would fall in love by the middle of the voyage. All the little things that can destroy a budding romance are passed through, and lo and behold, everyone comes out of it still afloat and little the worse for wear. The helm is shifted, the hamper trimmed, the brig survives the squall, and the freaking stars come out." "Did sailors like to touch boys a lot?" the child asked. "In my personal and probably conveniently eclectic opinion," the writer opined, "adult males longing for the touch of face, neck, chest, flanks, waist, belly, loins, and thighs of tall, slim, adolescent males is probably the number one motivating force separating us from the eons of berry pickers and stone pilers. If I'd been of the age of sail, I'd have hot-footed it up through the ranks as fast as ever I could, the more to have the opportunity to teach navigation and other nautical arts and sciences to class after class of fresh faced cadets and midshipmen, and do most of it on a creaking, noisy ship with any number of hidden passages and cubbyholes where a mate might legitimately take a scout in search of any tell-tale smell of smoke or sign of vermin, tampering, or leakage." "Didn't some of the cabin boys get raped?" Krinny asked. "Starved, poisoned, blown half to smithereens, frozen, roasted, flooded, whipped, and enough other real terrors, travails, and misery to take the very r-word out of the dictionary. It's actually very difficult to rape an otherwise healthy boy. A man can hurt a boy by taking him violently, but only a few times, because the boy quickly adapts, and, if most of the stories are correct, come to like a relationship that includes hard, fast anal intercourse, if there is any chance of the relationship working in the first place. Again, it's a separate thing, unrelated, to be redundant about it, to anything else. If it happens at the point of a weapon, or includes violence, in general, or serious threats of harm, it's rape, and even then, if it ever happens to you, you should make no distinction between a man after your butt or the wallet in your butt pocket. We live in an age in which the media doles out cop-outs that magnify minor abuses into the mothers of all excuses, and adds millions of dysfunctional psychotics to those millions who are just plain lazy. That's why your mom is pleased about Doug. You'll be safe with him, but not cloistered like a sentiment purchased at Wal-Mart. As I said, your luck seems to be pretty far in, but then mine was too, at your age, so there that is." And there they were. In the album about the closet there is a dazzlingly brilliant vocalization of an old time, megaphone wielding, carnival barker. "You really wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world right now," he cajoles (by way of introducing Marshall Maddock, probably misspelled, but anyway popularly known as EMINEM). Here, the generation gap, actually, two generations, mattered not at all. Neither Krinny nor his grandfather would want to be anywhere else in any world other than standing a Michelangelo-inch apart, temporizing as an exercise in character, as their feverish, panting bodies charged ever more rapidly toward a conclusion that had long since become undeniable. "Do little boys like to do this with boys my age?" Krinny asked his granddad. "They love it," the older male assured the child, "given, obviously, that they like you in the first place, and that you have a suitable place and ample time, and, again, you're probably mature enough that if something developed you would carefully warn the little boy about what's going to happen at the end." "That's cool," the eleven year old said. "Do you have a little boy in mind?" the grandfather queried. "One of Jesse's friends, Nathan, he was here earlier, the taller one, has a little brother, Doug, like Mr. Lien, only Duggie. He's seven and he keeps sort of making eyes at me, I mean something like that, I guess." "Do you think he's getting molested?" Kandar quizzed the boy. "No," the young student replied, "because the books say if it happens to a kid that age, they start acting out and he doesn't do anything like that, but it's more like he wants to, yearns to, longs to, and that's as much a reason as I wanted to talk to you as about big Doug." "Is your mom clued in?" he wanted to know. "No," the boy said, "I'm kinda embarrassed about it. I mean, with Mr. Lien, it's natural, the way four out of ten boys learn, according to the library, and him being an artist, and me okay looking to be a model, well, none of that's too far off the beaten path, but you know, getting a skinny, freckly little kid alone in the bathtub, I mean it must have happened before, but still it seems weirder than Doug getting in the shower behind me, or something like that." "What are the chances of that happening?" the writer asked, "of you're being alone with him and giving him a bath." "Little chance of it not happening," the boy said, "he wants me to baby-sit for him, and mom says I'm old enough to, so the next time Mr. and Mrs. Condit go out for the evening, the opportunity arises for a pajama game the likes of which would have preserved Rock Hudson into his tenth decade." Kandar did have to smile at the archaic reference, and it was hard not to be pleased with the youth's soup to nuts grasp of American culture from the mega death of pandemic obesity to the foibles of Doris Day. Good kid, and little Dougito was in for the baths of his seven year life. "What should I do with, not to, him?" "Alert kids his age are as able to control a suitor as Mozart was able to write music," the sage explained, "so you just circle by the bathroom while he's in the tub. If, a, he's left the door open, and, b, left the shampoo in the other bathroom, then you can enter through the open door. If he's too obvious in displaying, he's probably not going to be your type, and you can just shake your head and leave with a friendly word. If he lies still and looks at you, you ask him if it's okay if you come in. He may be too scared to say anything, but mark my words, if he doesn't want you there the neighbors will know as well as the folks at the nearest seismic center." "And if he doesn't break my eardrums?" the cutie asked. "Take it very slowly, just as you would approaching a strange pet. If you want you can ask him if it's okay to lock the door. Your voice will be thick and hoarse, and that's a signal even toddlers can read. Again, if he says nothing, go ahead and lock it, or, conversely, if he overreacts in a positive way, for example, saying: "Hurry up, what ya waiting for, an invitation," say, "sorry kid," and jerk off as soon as possible so you won't go through what you were talking about before we started up the path." "Did you guess it was Duggie I was talking about?" the boy asked. "Over Doug? Yes, I did. Willing boys your little friend's age are the best lovers of all, and they especially love being with a boy who is just in the process of maturing." "Will you come over and teach me how to touch him?" Krinny asked, and his mentor couldn't help wincing slightly at the irony of teaching a boy to touch whom he had stood an inch from, for an hour or more, without touching. "At some point, if things go well between you, and if he wants, I'd love to watch you molest him, but until you're sure you haven't let a little hustler, and hustlers can be younger than seven by as much as four years, get you by the tail, I'd consider it, after he's met me in street clothes a time or two, I should add." "I guess that would be being pretty careful about it," the boy mused, half to himself. "As far as I'm concerned," Kandar said, "teaching a few boys over a lifetime is the ultimate possible reward on earth or anywhere else, for that matter. The English stocked their navies with their best, not just because theirs was an island nation festooned with oak trees, but because the reward was, again, the greatest possible or conceivable. Men marry women they don't even particularly like, engage in sex they probably hate, and spend most of their money in order to raise a child in hopes of one day touching the child, male or female. That's the strength of the attraction and that's why you're so lucky to have a stable and talented guy like Doug to teach you and satisfy you without turning you into some kind of craven, full-time dick monkey." "I'll have Duggie for that," the boy noted. "For awhile," his grandfather agreed, "if the opportunity arises, and you can be sure I'll do everything in my power to further it, you won't be able to keep your hands off each other for ten minutes at a time. The best thing would be if I shacked the two of you up in a jazzy hotel for a three-day weekend, that way you'd be back to normal in a week or two, and you could put sex in its place which is well down on the list, and especially below reading and making your mind into something more than another football at the water cooler.." "Big-bellied football," the boy said, assuring his handsome, athletic granddad they were on the same page. "Oblique as it may seem, it's a point," the older male responded, "if you can find a few full and satisfying partnerships -- relationships -- you'll have the highest possible reward for keeping your beautiful flat belly." "I could work out, too," Krinny said. "No," his grandfather half barked. "Don't eat. The dancers at the Moulin Rouge have to step on a scale when the punch in for work, and they dance four hours a day in heavy costumes. Exercise is joint-damaging nonsense. Read. It's not everything, it's the only thing. You'll never use an iota of algebra, chemistry, geometry, or physics in a normal lifetime, but everyone you meet will scan your library, so to speak, and if it's full, bingo, you'll have friends, both platonic and active, who actually happen to mean something." "Maybe I could read to Duggie," the boy mused. "Bull's-fucking-eye," his superdad responded, and damned if they didn't almost touch in the passion of the moment. Since he appeared to be on target, the pre-teen continued his quizzing. By now standing had become a bit of a drag, and by accord they seated themselves on a ledge beside the trail, the naked, long-legged child at the adult's left, still an inch or so apart. "After the door's locked in Duggie's bathroom, what should I do?" he asked. "Good question," his coach said, "a, it's doubtful you could do anything very wrong, and, b, being a little bold might appeal to the minnow. You could quietly strip, looking him hot in the eyes and saying it was in case he splashed you, then kneel against the tub in your underpants and wash his hair. If he yields, just lay him back gently in the tub and start rubbing your soapy hand slowly and carefully down over his chest and belly. You should whisper to him to tell you to stop if he wants you to, but that's meteoric in its probability, so just take him slowly and gently. Since you'll have probably been with Doug before this scenario takes place, you'll be able to tell him that you played girl, just for awhile, with one of your teachers, and experimented with kissing, and ask him if he wants to try stuff like that." "When I had that uncomfortable -- tempting spelling option ignored in the interest of brevity -- feeling, I didn't know there was so much to think about," the youth noted, "and that got me the way I was. I'm glad I didn't know more or I wouldn't have survived." "Well," Kandar said, "if you really like him, and want to keep him forever and ever, or at least for a hundred and fifty times, wait for two or three days after you've been with big Doug, and don't do anything by yourself, then you'll cum on his belly and chest like Ray Wood cummed off on me. The way to a young man's heart, in a case like this, is on his stomach, not through it." "Speaking of which," the boy whispered hoarsely, standing and facing the tall athlete. The wealthy writer spread his long, corded legs an the child moved very close. "Show me," he whispered urgently, "cum on me. Show me what Doug's going to do with me, and what I should do with the soggy redheaded scamp." "Use both hands," the man whispered in response, "the left down low, see if you can find the right place, and your right hand any way you want. Do with me exactly what you want Doug to do when he gets you alone, or you'd like Dougito to do with you." "Like this you mean?" the hoarse voice of the eleven year old managed to croak, as he set the boyish adult with his seminal fluid, and, having done so thoroughly and meticulously, began stroking the massive penis with his right hand. "That's perfect," the older male encouraged, then lay back against the bank flanking the path and gave himself completely to the boy's now deliberately pumping little fist. "Will you tell me, Superdad," the young lover asked. "I already have," the older partner managed to gasp. Krinny's forehead bumped against his grandfather's as he leaned into the man, his slim panting chest just inches from the flaring purple glans of the now extremely aroused athlete. As his lover steadied him with gentle hands on his sweating, heaving flanks, the boy bent his neck, lowering his head so he could see, and, at what he instinctively knew was the last moment, moved his head to the adult's left shoulder so they could share the sight of what was about to happen. Nor had the extremity of the final moments completely fogged the young activist's dazzling mind. He could feel a stuttering combined with a longing shaking all through his superdad's muscular (for all his attitude on exercise) body. Having listened with due diligence to the long discourse which had constituted their foreplay, he knew just what to say to bring the intense hour they'd spent together to an overwhelming climax. And he said it. "Pretend I'm Duggie." THE END 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. In total his contributions run to some 1.1 million words. Mr. Emerson 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?" Posted by Thomas@btl.net xxx