Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:10:05 -0600
From: Tom Emerson <tom@btl.net>
Subject: ONE FISH AT A TIME   PRO, CHAPT. ONE

ONE FISH AT A TIME  (Pro. Chapt. 1)

by R. Forbes Emerson

(Bi-ped, inc., rom.)

Nothing should be inferred from the use of media characters in this story.

Note: This repost contains significant revisions.  If you have the
original, and can live with the writer's egocentric mania for himself, why,
you have a collector's item.  All you have to do is keep it.  For you
student writers lucky enough to have a `first edition', use it to see what
re-writing is all about, by comparing the first, to this.  (The first
posting was a draft, published for technical reasons.)

                  ONE FISH AT A TIME

                  PROLOGUE

                  "What's that lever do?" Nancy Schroeder asked.
                  "Cowl flaps," said the pilot.
                  "Cowl amazing!" she exclaimed.
                  "Cowl do you know?" the trim officer asked, playing along
with the freckly, bright-eyed ten year old.
                  "Cowl does anyone know anything, I ask, that's cowl."
                  "If the cowl flaps are opened," Rob Lester explained to
his passenger, "they let more air over the engine.  When we're cruising,
they're closed, as they are now, but when we take off, they're open for
more air flow."
                  "Cowl cool," the girl said with a nod.
                  "That's the long and the short of it," Rob said.

                  "Do kids ever ask: `are we there yet', up here?" Nancy
asked, "I mean you'd have to be awfully dumb not to know you weren't, in an
airplane, wouldn't you?"
                  "Especially over the ocean," the pilot agreed.
                  "I like being up high," Nancy said, "that way we can talk
to lots of people on the way down if they parked the water truck where the
fuel truck was meant to be."
                  "I climb until the thermometer reads seventy-two
Fahrenheit," the tall, blue-eyed, Nordic pilot said, "then I close the..."
                  "Cowl flaps."
                  "And we trim up this and that, and four hours later we
are where we were meant to be all along."
                  "And ten thousand feet is seventy-two degrees," Nancy
said, cross checking the altimeter, obvious as a clock, with the
thermometer, obvious as a thermometer.
                  "We have to be at an odd altitude, plus five hundred
feet, so we're just climbing trough ten thousand, but we'll level off at
eleven-five."
                  "Two miles," the girl noted.

                  "Can I help you with the trim things," Nancy asked as the
plane passed through eleven thousand feet.

                  The tall, athletic pilot guided the tiny hands to the
engine controls and trim tabs, finding she sensed the subtle changes as
well as he could.  In a seeming instant, she learned to cross check the
airspeed and altimeter, eking the craft to a fraction over two-hundred
miles an hour, with the ancillary rate-of-climb indicator resting solidly
on zero.
                  The air over the ocean was smooth, Rob pushed the button
synchronizing the twin engines, and they began their passage into the
Caribbean.

                  "Do you like passengers that talk or ones who just look
out the windows?" Nancy asked.
                  "I like passengers who wonder where the water truck was
parked," the pilot said.
                  "I'd like to talk, too," the girl said, blushing happily
at Rob's response.
                  "Good," Rob said, "we have a course change in an hour,
and we can switch our fuel tanks then, too, so there's nothing to do other
than keep a sharp eye out for meteor showers or new volcanoes.
                  "Go ahead an pick a subject."
                  "Brothers," Nancy replied, again with a slight blush.
                  "If Rick was my brother, I'd want to talk about him,
too," Rob allowed.
                  "Are you a brother?" the girl countered.
                  "Yes," Rob said, "Tracy is eleven and Sandra is nine."
                  "How old are you?" the girl asked.
                  "Twenty-two," Rob replied.
                  "You look like a teenager," the girl observed.
                  "I get carded like one, too," the pilot grinned.

                  "Do you like your sisters?" she went on.
                  "Super much," Rob replied.
                  "That's Rick and me, too," the girl said.
                  "He's done well," Rob said.
                  "It keeps us apart," the girl responded.
                  "Not for much longer," Rob said.
                  "We're headed in the right direction," came the smiling
response.

                  They cruised for some minutes.

                  "You look like Rick," the girl said.
                  "Thanks," Rob replied.
                  "I think that's why he hired you," Nancy went on, "he's
good at details like that.  Not that medical school looked bad on your
resume, or anything like that."
                  "He said you and I would be spending a lot of time
together," Rob acknowledged, "so maybe favoring him had something to do
with it."
                  "How do you feel about flying me back and forth?" the
pixie asked.
                  "It beats tinker with the cowl flaps," Rob said.
                  "More amazing by the minute," Nancy intoned.
                  "Being with you is just that," Rob agreed.
                  "I'm meant to have a personality," the girl said; "I
don't like the idea, but if it's the only way to be with Rick two or three
days a week, I'll try anything."
                  "Maybe there's a chicken suit in the cargo," Rob laughed,
"they made a movie about them, so someone must think they have
personality."
                  "What I need is a mermaid suit," the girl replied, "that
would fit in better.  Rick and I can't go into a restaurant together, and
never mind the celebrity thing, without people staring because somehow we
look, I guess, extra right for each other.  In all ways right for each
other.  The money is where the Olsen twins were, so, not to put too fine a
point on it, there we float on the Carib sea, yours truly, since she wants
what her brother wants, topless, because I'm young enough to get away with
it, and Rick in a thong, and we're wrestling with leaders and gaffs and any
freaking thing swimming down there with the sharks, and, on top of it all,
I'm meant to stop panting over Rick long enough to grin at the camera and
say, `Nice fish.'"

                  "Beats learning lines," Rob noted, to the girls laugh.
                  "Isn't that the truth," she said, "it's like a summer off
of life itself not having to memorize twenty pages because some director
thinks it's cute when I wrinkle my nose."
                  "Lot's of girls would think it was cool someone cared,"
Rob said.
                  "I know," Nancy admitted, "but I've got to keep trying on
personalities until I find one that's right.  Hollywood prima donna, you
know the other word for it, an aloof celebrity.  I think I'm done with it."
                  "I'm a wanna be writer," Rob said, "and our stock in
trade is meant to be conflict and resolution. No way out of it, you have to
fit a lot of characters with yoyo personas so they can threaten the good
guys.  The Joker, The Penguin, Anthony Hopkins; somebody or something nasty
in every story."
                  "So you can't have a personality, either?" the girl
asked, eyes a little wide.
                  "Fellow puppets, I'm afraid," Rob said, "commerce and art
pulling the strings.  It's best to keep your head down, least you be taken
for a clown, or worse, show any lack of clown."
                  "I don't know," Nancy sighed, "there was Haley Mills,
then the Olsen twins, now me.  Am I meant to go up, or down?  More Meryl
Streep in `Out of Africa', or Ricki Lake in `Hairspray'?"
                  "You could study Tyne Daley," Rob suggested, "and become
exactly the opposite."
                  "You may be a writer," the young actress said.
                  "When I'm forty," the pilot replied, "I'll take it
seriously.  Live a lot and write a little."
                  "And keep personality out," she reminded him.
                  "Save a special piano wire, just for it," Rob agreed.
                  "And if that doesn't work, there's the chicken costume."
                  "Yes," Rob said, "if you don't discover a personality
before First Places on Wednesday, I may be making another trip for said
item, making yours the only fishing show with a cowl mascot."
                  "Chicken cowl mien, and I'll have the snow peas," Nancy
giggled.

                  "I don't know if it's okay to flirt with a ten year old,"
Rob said, "but I think the sweet peas would better suit you."
                  "Rick didn't bring us together to practice swordplay,"
the girl said, "so, yes, it's okay if you flirt, and, if you don't, I'm
building up my courage as we go along.  And I can build up a lot of courage
in almost four more hours."

                  "Do you want to keep it light and frivolous, like a one
night stand, or are you interested in something more mature.  For example,
me asking you personal questions about Rick."
                  "More mature," the girl replied, "especially as we're
going to be flying together all summer."
                  "And you're sure it won't interfere with anything that
may be going on between you?" Rob asked.
                  "We've talked about it, being with others," Nancy said,
"he wants it for me, So I don't get lopsided, in his words, and I think
he's right.  It's super and it's exciting, but it's not sacred.  We're
humans, not gods, we live, we don't exist, and I can't see how lying with
him while he quizzes me about you will put much in the way of distance
between us."
                  "Besides," Rob added for the girl, "you need someone to
marry when you're ready."
                  "I do," she admitted.

                  The plane droned on.

                  "Do you think Rick will marry one of your sisters?" Nancy
asked.
                  "I think the happiest marriages tend to be where there's
a strong father-daughter relationship, plus older men are much better
lovers than pups, so, as far as I'm concerned, he'd be perfect for Tracy or
Sandra."
                  "Are you a pup?" the girl asked.
                  "Compared to what I'll be in twenty years, yes, compared
to what I was when I was sixteen, no."
                  "Do girls become better lovers?" the ten year old asked.
                  "No," Rob said, "not if their first partners teach them
to use their mouth and hands.  Assuming they like being with a male, in the
first place, that's all a girl can do; they don't have to learn
self-control; in fact, the more they abandon it, the more exciting it is.
With a male, it's just the opposite.  He has to hold a beautiful girl in
his arms, and not lose control for a long time.  Even an hour."
                  "Can the girl help?" Nancy asked.

                  "I'm glad I wasn't drinking a Coke," Rob gasped, "it
would be coming out my nose."
                  "I can't remember," Nancy said, "from what we talked
about if its good to be a clown, or to be a not clown."
                  "It's okay," Rob said, "it's just that the more a girl
helped a man to control himself, the harder it would make it for him to do
so.  In fact, the only way a girl could help, that way, would be to get
fat."

                  "So many helpful girls," the girl mused aloud, "in lard
we trust.  I knew there must be a reason."
                  "And so many boys helping the girls, all round and
roly-poly.  Who said chivalry is dead?"
                  "Nobility," the girl said, "it does a body good."
                  "Sixty percent can't be wrong," Rob agreed, "impossible
in a democracy.
                  "Do you talk about stuff like this with Rick?" he asked.
                  "Since we're betrothed," Nancy said, "I can trust you.
It's the reason for our show.  From time to time we'll each comment on how
trim and fit the other is.  We have several closing scenes where we
deliberately go off in private, letting the audience imagine the rewards we
get in return for a mild case of the hungries."

                  "Nobility is where you find it," Rob observed.
                  "I know, weird stuff, against all the rules, but look at
the alternatives, plus, look at who made up the rules in the first place."
                  "Mad killers," Rob said, nodding, "dripping altars and
the sizzling irons."
                  "Thousands of years of it, in hundreds of cultures," the
pretty girl added, "but, probably, to be fair, only when population control
acted as an imperative."
                  "We're on the same page there," Rob said, "and there are
other madmen than clerics.  Revised history, or, more accurately, complete
history, tells us Winston Churchill was the greatest warmonger of all time,
yet, without the thirty million European casualties of World War II,
there'd be standing room only."
                  "It's the end of time," Nancy said, "obesity,
dysfunction, debt, Wal-Mart..."
                  "The miracles at the end of the Industrial Revolution,"
Rob interrupted, "reduced to appliances, commodities, and novelties."
                  "And on top of that, they killed Napster."

                  That brought a long moment of silence from pilot and
passenger, though, it must be noted, the cargo seemed indifferent.  The
grief over what fine print could wreak on humankind passed slowly, and
perhaps some drummer, somewhere, had enough for that second bottle of
whisky.

                  "I thought of something," Rob said after ten minutes, "it
may already be in your concept..."
                  "Sure," said the girl.  She couldn't help be a little
disappointed.  Everybody did, think of something, have an idea, suggest
this, and suggest that; it came with the territory."
                  "Other couples," Rob said.  "Brothers and sisters or
fathers and daughters.  Before and after.  Photos and video of before, then
after they've been watching you a few months.  Invite the winners for guest
appearances."
                  "Phew!" the girl sighed to herself in relief.  Out loud
she informed Rob he'd just paid for another year of medical school.
                  "I'd rather save it for the baby," he replied, "let him
master neurology."
                  "Daughters only, for such a beautiful father," the pixie
said, staring into his eyes to be sure he got the message in its entirety.
                  "Let her master neurology, then," Rob readily agreed.

                  Two minutes went by.

                  "Do you suppose we'll ever fight about anything?" the
girl sighed.
                  "Somehow I can't see your coming to me fresh from Rick
and leaving me strength for combat," the young pilot said.

                  Nancy reached to him with her left hand, taking his right
hand.  "How about when I come to you with his daughter," she whispered over
the drone of the cruising engines.
                  "I'll feel the same as he does when you go to him
carrying mine," Rob said, "no harm, no foul, no challenge, no swords, no
seconds."
                  "It must be that nobility we were talking about," Nancy
said.
                  "However bad Churchill was," Rob replied, "the French
managed to slaughter sixteen thousand a year on the field of honor, if
flicking a glove in a dude's face has anything to do with honor."
                  "Good," the girl said, "then we've got lots of bad
company.  I was worried about our marriage winding down to a humdrum
repetition of tedious days."
                  "There's always your driver's license to look forward
to," Rob said, "just six short years."
                  "And," the girl said, "my first not having a period.
That shouldn't even be two years, seeing how bad my husband and my brother
are."
                  "Maybe you could do worse," Rob said.
                  "Not my style," the girl responded, "I want to be totally
and wantonly wicked with two, not a little bit wicked with Tom, Dick, and
Harry."
                  "Get it into your system," Rob quipped.  Nancy got the
joke, didn't mind the stretch, and smiled up happily at the handsome young
adult beside her, still holding his hand.

                  "Rob?" she asked after a few minutes, "do you know what
my big problem is?"
                  "What?" he responded.
                  "If I have to wear a top on the show.  How long before
that happens.  When will we start getting emails from higher and higher up
until someone says halter the bitch or jerk her contract on a morals
clause."
                  "Remind me never to drink so much as a medicine cup of
water while we're together," Rob choked.
                  "At least you'll never be drowning sorrows," Nancy
rejoined.
                  "Drowned is drowned, my love," the medical student
replied.

                  "Are either of you sisters wearing bras?" Nancy asked.
                  "Tracy, the eleven year old," Rob said.
                  "For physical or psychological reasons?" the girl
queried.
                  "The latter," Rob replied.
                  "Does she like it?" the girl asked.
                  "I think it's just an excuse to have me come in her room
and help dress her in the morning."
                  "And undress her at night?"
                  "Now that you mention it."
                  "Do you like looking at her when she has it off?" the
girl asked, her hand now squeezing, her voice low and husky.
                  "Very much," Rob said, returning the commitment with his
hand, his voice a masculine copy of hers.
                  "Has she started to grow at all?" the ten year old wanted
to know.
                  "It depends who you ask," Rob answered, causing the pixie
to giggle once again.
                  "You."
                  "No."
                  "Good."
                  "She's pretty awesome as she is, so you may be right,"
Rob acknowledged.
                  "And Sandra?" Nancy asked.
                  "She may be a little ahead.  I can tell them apart in the
dark."

                  It was Nancy's turn for a spit take.  Trying not to
giggle had the same effect of a girl trying not to coax her lover, but the
sound was pleasing and infectious.
                  Tears dried, she snorted a few times.  "Would it be okay
if I took my blouse off?" she asked.  Rob looked into the intent brown
eyes, his welcome obvious.  "Not up here," he replied.  "I'm not into
stunting and mile-high club type stuff."
                  He reached into the door pocket to his left and pulled
out the chart.  "Pick an island about a hundred miles ahead so we can do an
efficient letdown," he said.
                  The girl started from his finger tip, chewed her lip for
a moment, then stabbed an island with her pixie finger.
                  "Okay," he said, "now we're going to pretend I've been
paralyzed by being shot by a love bolt, or something, and all I can do is
talk.  Your task is to get us from here, onto the airstrip, without adding
power at any point.  You are also to pretend a dowager empress of extreme
up-tightness is sitting in back with the cargo, and she has a fresh cup of
boiling tea in her hand."
                  "Don't tempt me," the girl giggled.  Rob guided her hands
to the wheel and switched off the autopilot.  The plane was suddenly alive
in her hands and she grinned with pleasure.
                  "It's stiff," she said.
                  "The faster, the stiffer, aerodynamics is the same way,"
he said, glad she didn't react to double entendre.  Nerves.
                  "Okay," he said, "now just trim it forward until we're
going about two-fifty" He was amazed to watch her use the electric button
on the yoke, but reach instinctively down with her left hand to check the
operation of the manually operated wheel between the pilot and co-pilot
seat.
                  Had she flown before?  No, she said, not up front.
                  "Call Bimini," he said, "and tell them we're diverting to
Sealess Island and we'll re-file when we're airborne again."
                  Her only mistake was saying `hello' into the microphone,
then she read the tail number, as she'd seen in movies, and gave the
message.  The controller designated her Angel One, and said he'd be waiting
to hear from here.  Rob handed her the check list and guided her through
the procedures which weren't intuitive.  With a taller student, he would
have slid his seat back and dozed off, letting the novice figure things out
for himself, but the pixie's legs didn't reach the rudders firmly enough
for positive control, so he stayed where he was, and took the chart back so
he could study it in detail.
                  "They always bounce the plane around when the passenger
has to take over, in the movies," the girl noted, "am I meant to be doing
that?"
                  "Not unless you wish to bathe in the dowager's tea," Rob
said.
                  "I think you're just pretending she's back there to make
me nervous," the girl giggled.
                  "Priscilla Carbola, pretend?" he aped, "she'd like to
hear that news."
                  "What would she do?" Nancy asked.
                  "Criticize us for making a straight-in approach, instead
of executing a traffic pattern," Rob said, "and stand by for more errors.
She does not like being taken lightly."
                  "Did she do in the Kennedy boy?" Nancy asked,
                  "Just for the publicity," Rob said, returning to the
perusal of his chart -- always something new to find if one concentrated.
                  "Too much television," he thought to himself, having
almost spoken out loud.  The space shuttle waited until the last second to
lower its wheels, and the girl did likewise, but she did lower them.  The
engines sighed back to idle just when they should have, there was five or
ten seconds of drifting, then a lurching, squealing touchdown, and a little
wobbliness as her relatively short legs worked the brakes.
                  Sealess Island wasn't treeless, and the girl chose a palm
grove, instinctively using heavy throttle as the plane waded through the
sand.  She turned it perfectly and earned her wings, in the mind of her
instructor, by straightening the nose wheel for a couple of feet before
bringing the machine to a smooth halt.  Rob killed the engines, and they
popped the doors and scrambled out to avoid the rapidly building heat in
the cockpit.
                  "Do we need anything?" Nancy asked.
                  "I don't think so," Rob said.  So they joined hands and
walked through the grove of palms to the beach.
                  They stripped shyly, and walked off at angles, into the
water, then she swam to him.
                  "What do you think?" she whispered, glad not to have to
compete with the engines.  Rob looked at her chest closely, and she gently
took his hands and brought them to her.  "I couldn't tell you and Tracy
apart," he said, softly.
                  "No one's touched me like you are," she whispered back,
just loud enough for him to hear her over the lapping water.
                  "Not Rick?" he asked.
                  "You'd be amazed how much I don't know," the girl said,
shyly.  "We have a ritual.  It's always pitch dark.  He never touches me
more than he can help, except where we're together.  No kissing, talking,
excess touching, just him up and his arms and me lying under him with my
legs spread and my arms up over my head."
                  "How do you feel about that?" Rob asked.
                  "I'm not allowed to wiggle my hips or respond in any way,
even by breathing hard, to what's happening.  His theory is those who break
one rule do well by not making a habit of it.  He's complete with me, and
we've never used a condom, but everything else is off the brother and
sister table, so to speak."
                  "Will that change after today?" Rob asked.
                  "Yes," Nancy said, "he's not a fanatic about it, he just
thinks it's fair to leave me as much a virgin as possible."
                  "So you've never been kissed?" Rob asked.
                  "Never," the girl said.
                  "When Rick's with you, have you ever climaxed?" the pilot
queried.
                  "He won't let me," the girl replied, shyly.
                  "You know what I think?" Rob asked.
                  "What?" Nancy said.
                  "It's a good thing he's marrying you off young," Rob
replied.
                  "Duh'uh," the girl intoned.
                  "I want to feel you up from the back," Rob whispered,
"like a child molester usually starts with a little boy or girl."

                  Nancy's eyes grew hot, and she turned away from the
six-three athlete.  "I won't be with you like Rick is, because of the
water," he said, "but if you want to come back against me you can still
feel me against your back."
                  The girl responded by moving a step back, and Rob
encircled her with his hands low on her belly.
                  "They start like this," he whispered, "after they pull
you blouse out of your shorts, then they move slowly higher, depending on
how much privacy they have for what they're doing with you."
                  "But they'd have a boner, like Rick, right?" Nancy asked.
                  "Yes," Rob said, "you'd feel against the middle of you
back."
                  "Do you molest Tracy and Sandra this way?" the girl
asked, her voice a deteriorating whisper.
                  Rob husked in her ear, "I have been for a year now.  All
the time.  In my apartment at school, in the car, in the labs and
classrooms, out in the woods, beside the trail when we're skiing, in the
morning, before they go to school, as soon as they come home from school,
alone and together, an hour a day any time either or both are with me."
                  "I take it that's a Yes," the imp grinned, looking back
over her shoulder, then she bowed her head to his touch and her hands rode
gently on his as he found her chest and tiny nipples.
                  "Do you want to hold me while I get a boner?" Rob
whispered.
                  "Yes," the girl hissed, and he felt her tense in his
arms.
                  The young man guided the girl to shallower water and she
turned to face him, wet head against his chest as she looked down between
their bodies.  "Touch me," the adult said.  Her hands found him, her left
cupping him, her right gripping him firmly and holding still.
                  "It takes a minute after a male's been swimming," he
coaxed softly in her ear.
                  "No wonder they always stay on the beach in the bimbo
movies," the girl whispered back.
                  "The beaches in Los Angeles are artificial," Rob said,
"the water is cold and gray, the rocks are covered with gray slime, and
it's almost always windy and cloudy, those are other reasons not to go in
the water."
                  "It's sexy talking to you," Nancy said, "do you talk with
Tracy and Sandra a lot?"
                  "We're a lot like you and Rick," Rob replied.  "The girls
display when they're receptive, and we find a private place.  It's very
physical, maybe even clinical, I guess."
                  "You hold them still?" she whispered.
                  "Same as you guys," he said, "I think it's the way a lot
of brother mount their sisters; a love need, a physical need, but not a
romantic need.  Something like that."
                  "It's very satisfying," Nancy said, "just feeling him
throbbing in me like a bow twanging, and imagining what's happening, even
though I've never seen it.  Imagining what his sperm looks like and how
much he's leaving inside me."
                  "You won't feel that with me," Rob said, "I'm going to
take you as a lover, not a brother."
                  "Just be sure to tell me," she whispered, "if I'm still
conscious."

                  He grew suddenly and fully in her hand.  Her breathing
became ragged as she watched and felt him swell to seven, then eight
inches, hotly thick, his glans flaring hugely as she stroked back his
foreskin and held him naked against her immature female chest.  "Take me up
on the beach," she mewed, her legs folding.  The six-four athlete picked
her up like a child, waded the ten feet onto the beach, and lay her on the
hard-packed coral sand.
                  "This is how I lie for him," she said, raising her arms
fully and spreading her legs widely.
                  "No wonder you've never been kissed," Rob said, lying on
the damp sand, perpendicular to her right shoulder and rising on his elbows
to stare down into her schoolgirl face.
                  "That sexy, eh?" she asked, her eyes huge.
                  "Beyond any possibility of imagination," he said, "and
that's an understatement."
                  "How would you feel if I'd just been with him?" she
whispered.
                  "Animal instincts run pretty hot along those lines," Rob
said, "so your first kiss would just have to wait."
                  "Then I'm glad we're going to him, not coming from him,"
she said with a soft smile that was her last on the planet with virgin
lips.  Rob lowered to her lips, found her, and placed his right hand low on
her wet belly as she nibbled tentatively at him in welcome.  Her lips
warmed quickly and melted to an alluring softness, a tender trap to beguile
and tantalize, with a hot eel begging freedom and frantic to escape its
tomboy mouth prison.  Of course, it never got very far because it met its
mate almost the instant it was free, and, though the tangle and tussle was
epic, it eventually seemed to accept its roots and returned home so the
girl could once again speak.
                  "How many Fourths can one July have?" she murmured in
wonder.
                  "Think how it would be if young Fawkes had actually blown
Parliament to kingdom come," Rob whispered into her delicious little girl
mouth, "that's how it feels to me.  One huge kaboom after another with
cannons, cymbals, and a stadium of mad brass."
                  "If I passed you a note during all the commotion," the
school girl asked, "what do you suppose it would read?"
                  "I love you," he whispered into her beautiful mouth.
                  "I love you, too," she whispered back, her hands coming
to his face and drawing him Fourth.

                  Early on the Fifth, their lips parted.  "I don't kiss
Tracy and Sandra," Rob whispered in the child's right ear, "but I do
masturbate them when I molest them."
                  His right hand moved beyond her slim young belly.  Her
hands came to his powerful swimmer's shoulders, so much like her brother's,
and she raised her hips high off the damp sand, walking her ankles apart
and mewing encouragement.
                  Rob found the perfect thighs of the little girl, molested
her for several long, tender minutes, then found her wetness as she gasped
and shuddered against him, biting, clawing and sweating with his every
movement against her bucking young loins.
                  Vaguely the ten year old wondered why they called in
`cumming' when she was so obviously going away.  Far and fast.  One a
rocket.  Everything dropping, plummeting, crashing; so much surf, so little
time, and would he never...
                  She screamed her brother's name twice, then howled Rob's
again and again as her legs slammed together and she convulsed wildly, her
head lolling, her face slack, her eyes rolled back and useless.
                  "He left a lot of me for you," she whispered in a half
giggle some minutes later.  She was beginning to breath normally, and the
trade winds were drying her delicate, white skin.  Rob was back on his
elbow, staring down into the gamin face, adoring the bright pride in her
huge, brown eyes.
                  "I think an eight pound daughter from me, to you, to him
would be a suitable reward, what says my angel love?"
                  "Pul-ease,' is what the angel of the first party says,"
Nancy smiled.  "Six pounds, and we'll bring her up on Wheaties."
                  "That gives me an idea," Rob said, now tickling her
slightly parted lips with an egret feather."
                  "What?" she asked.
                  "Let me write an episode," he said, "when one of the
winning couples has a child.  They can bring her with them on a second
visit and we'll hint at, but not actually spell out the baby's parentage."
                  "The most special surprising dear young friend of John
and Debbie Doe," the girl responded, "oh, I like it ever so."
                  "Good," Rob said, "there's such an avalanche of old
people and fat people out there, the thought of making any of them live a
moment longer than they have to has lost its appeal."
                  "We're going to be such power hitters," Nancy observed.
"Really have a show that does something.  That says to millions, keep in
fantastic shape, and this could happen to you.  For the girls getting
raped, that this isn't exactly Sunday school behavior, but it happens to
one girl in five, and some girls love it.  Point out the advantages.  If
Rick and I were an ordinary brother and sister, we'd be together every day,
we wouldn't have to waste time on social posturing, take chances with
disease or emotional involvement with the unfit, and anything that happened
would be part of a life long involvement."
                  "Practice, too," Rob said, "don't forget that.  The
chance to be together alone for hours, so you can become really good lovers
in the physical sense.'
                  "Not that it takes much."

                  She giggled happily.  "Did Tracy cum the first time you
took her that way?" she asked.
                  "No," Rob admitted.
                  "So it takes some," she said, wisely, "and if that's
true, it follows that more is better than some.  Proof is what just
happened between us.  That big dent in the sand didn't get there by itself.
It got there because you were beautiful and urgent with me, because you
stayed with me..."
                  "Don't forget the loving you part," he reminded her.
                  "How would I know about that?" she smiled, "I wasn't even
on the planet."
                  And suddenly the soft, contented eyes blazed anew, brown
and hot, "Can boys go where girls go?" she whispered.
                  "Yes," he said.
                  "Teach me," she blushed.

                  He lay on his back, legs spread as her's had been, guided
the seventy pounds of her beautifully proportioned feminine body to his
muscular right thigh.  She bent to him, and he let her go, linking his
fingers behind his neck and staring at the naked mermaid leaning to him.
                  Her tiny right hand found his glans and played, wetting.
She stroked tentatively, staring into his eyes and gauging his tension
between her still wet thighs.  Her left hand wandered his belly and chest
as she settled into a firm, rhythmic stroke, masturbating him much as he
had her.
                  "Tell me," she whispered.
                  "I will," he answered.
                  "Is there any way I can make it last longer," she asked,
feeling him cording between her slim legs.
                  "Not without taking a bullet," he gasped.
                  "Oh, Rob," she whispered, "I love how you look, how you
feel, I want it to last forever, to be your girl all day.  Don't cum."
                  "Oh, darling," he managed to pant, "you'll have to
absolutely forbid me.  Threaten torture, bankruptcy, exposure, think of
something..."
                  "We could talk about the show," she said, "what it's
going to be like standing at the plate and nailing a five-hundred-foot rope
week after week.  Watching McDonald's crash and burn as ten million kids
abandon the golden arches for what you're going to do all over my chest.
Turn some victims into lovers, free others by letting them say I know what
it's all about, and I don't want any part of it.  Empower kids to feel what
I felt with you, what I feel as you tense, trying to concentrate on every
word I'm saying.  It should be there right.  Sacred and guaranteed.
Neither condoned nor tolerated, but avidly pursued.  Family life isn't
complete without it.  Sell a million jump ropes a months, because that's
what Rick and I do together.  Empty the theaters, empty the malls, flood
the libraries until the malls are converted into libraries.  Clubs,
organizations, huge attendance at parades and functions, so everyone gets
the message red hot off the grill, leave us alone.  Brothers being nice to
their sisters, fathers to their daughters, mothers to everyone in the happy
family.  No secrets, no subversion, no lies, no creeps, or, at least, less
of all of the above.  Divorce rates through the floor.  Shower babies
galore.  Mothers nursing daughter and sister at the same time and with the
same breast.  A wholesale detachment from greed and Wal-Mart with a
paradigm as ancient as Egypt, itself.  Not new, old.  Not wrong, right.
Not bad, perfect.  Not over, `till death do you part.  And so many millions
would find new things.  New facets.  New techniques.  Eventually, though it
might be a hundred years, girls would learn how to keep their male partners
from ejaculating, from cumming, from covering their chests and shoulders
and necks and faces and lips with the hot spurt of their thick, white,
gushing seed, and allowing some of the spray on the heaving chest so the
feline little creatures will have something to lick and carry to their
lovers with their pretty, pink tongues."

                  Now she lay fully on him, his arms softly around her.
They kissed softly and gently, murmuring welcome.  She indicated she could
wait no longer, by biting his right nipple.  Slowly they rolled on the
packed, white sand and she again spread widely for him.
                  "Do you guide Rick," he asked, looking deeply into her
eyes.
                  "He finds me by himself," she replied.
                  "Guide me," he whispered.
                  "Yes," she said, finding him in moments with her right
hand and masturbating him, thrilling to the immediate tension bolting his
body like an electric shock.  She left him when she was sure, and he
entered like a stallion with his first filly, penetrating slowly to her
cervix, then entering gently to his hilt and staring down into her glowing
eyes.  Her hands came gently to his heaving flanks, cradling him just under
his bunched shoulders.
                  "You're still wet with sperm," he whispered softly to
her, "do you want to feel me against your nipples while you're slippery?"
                  "Yes," she whispered.
                  He lowered slowly as she arched, then came fully on top
of her as her hands slid down his flanks to his hips, urging him fully into
her womb, then returning to the corded muscles of his swimmer's back.
                  "For a husband, you make a great brother," she said, "if
you were high over me, and my arms were like Rick always wants them, I
couldn't tell you apart.  You both make me feel pregnant.  Saturated.
Complete."

                  He rose to her coaxing, and he lifted his arms, one at a
time, so she could stretch under him, then they froze, panting gently,
gazing into each other's eyes.
                  "Have you molested Tracy this much?" she whispered.
                  "Almost," the young male said.
                  "Did it end while you were inside her?" she quizzed.
                  "On her belly," he whispered back.
                  "Rick will be the first?"
                  "Yes," he said, "and Sandra, too, I've never gone this
far with her."
                  "Will you start cumming in them after Rick has?" she
wanted to know.
                  "If you want," he said, lowering again to her childish
body so he could kiss her still-damp hair while feeling her slim bare chest
against him..
                  "Definitely," she smiled, and he could sense it against
his neck,.  "they have made a spectacular male animal of you, and quitting
while they're ahead is not an option."
                  "Do you like talking?" he asked.
                  "I love it," she cooed.  "It just seems to make us last
forever."
                  "Tell me about your first time with Rick," the young male
said, "how old were you."
                  "It was two years ago," she replied, "when he was doing
`NYPD Blue', and I was eight."
                  "How did it start?" he asked.
                  "I asked him about his first time," the gamin child
replied.  "We were on a camping trip.  He told me, and when I wanted to zip
our two sleeping bags together, he let me."
                  "Did he help?" Rob asked.
                  "He wanted to, but his hands were shaking too much to be
much use."
                  "Wonder of wonders," Rob commented, then added: "What was
his first time."
                  "It was with a boy," she replied, "for which I cannot
blame him one eensy tiny weensy itsy bitsy bit, while they were making
`Lonesome Dove'."


                  "Rick, wait up, eh?" Allen Rigby shouted.  The twelve
year old reined in his animal and slid from the saddle.  Rick Schroeder
turned his feisty three year old, sitting calmly as the horse fooled
around, then nudging the filly back to where Allen was bent over Batman's
right foreleg.

                  "Just like in the movies," the boy said, half a grin
spreading across his wide mouth, "she done come up lame."  He was a
freckle-faced redhead, his short hair a deep, almost brunet, auburn.  Rick,
for all he was worth, tried not to look again as he slid from Miss Monroe;
kept trying not to look at the lanky, coltish pre-teen bent over the hoof,
bare chested in his overalls, with one strap hanging down over his right
arm.

                  They were five miles from the nearest road, ten miles
from anything more than that.  Allen was the wrangler's son, and the two of
them were out checking the two p.m. sun to be sure there were no glints or
glares from Tesuque Trailer Village [two year home of the author].  The
line from the script read: "There's nothing like riding a good horse over
new ground."  The Sangre de Christo melted into hard rolling pinon-studded
prairie so sublimely at this one spot seven miles due north of Santa Fe,
the art director had insisted the entire trailer village be strung with
camo netting for a pristine backdrop.  They'd found no glint of aluminum
siding or auto windshield, and had let their ponies run a bit as they
headed back for the trailers.

                  "I knew it couldn't be a loose shoe," Allen said as the
older teen approached.
                  "But it looks very loose to me," Rick said, making the
boy giggle out loud.  By a neat equestrian trick, Batman had picked up a
rusty old horseshoe, pressing one of its nails deep into his own right
forehoof.  "Whoever lost this shoe probably knew Kit Carson, Wyatt Erp,
John Fremont, Zeb Pike, and all of them, personally," the boy said,
fingering the lightly rusted iron.

                  Now, just happy can a boy be?  Count it up.  One, he was
out for the first time on the four-year-old gelding.  Two, on the morrow
they would bring up a camera and shoot what was probably the most beautiful
single scene ever filmed.  Three, he was with a famous actor, his personal
choice as cutest of stage, screen and comic.  Four, Batman was going
nowhere in a hurry.  Five, he had an epic souvenir, if he could just pry it
from Batman's hoof.  Six, Rick was at his right flank, trying to help.
Seven, Rick was bare chested under his Oshkosh union suit.  Eight, he might
also have dressed without underwear.  Nine was the pinon forest, trees
seldom over ten feet, woods with a view, and the prospect of the vast sweep
of the Rio Grande Valley between Los Alamos and Santa Fe was at once the
most subtle and grandest on the planet.  Even riding a not-so-good horse it
shimmered and saturated, overwhelmed, seemed to ring and echo itself from
the weathered intricacies of a stunted pine to a line of sight of a hundred
miles.  Very serious Indian country stretching to Taos, east and west to
vast cattle-only wastelands, but ending twenty miles to the south as the
valley yielded to the vast gravel pit that made up half of New Mexico.

                  The boys worked patiently as Batman looked on.  From the
start, they were intensely aware of each other, of each touch of the teen's
well-developed upper arm to the boy's slender and delicate counterpart.
Neither made any move away from the other, neither was bold enough to try
anything.  Finally working the stuck nail free without breaking it.  Allen
presented it to Rick, who refused it flatly.
                  "Maybe there are other things," Allen said, "if this shoe
came all the way off, the rider would have had to stop."  He knew it was
improbable and a stretch, but Rick took up the notion and soon they'd
broken off dried branches from a tree and were walking side-by-side poking
at the desert floor.
                  "Were you embarrassed in that cathouse scene?" Allen
asked after some minutes.
                  "Yes," Rick replied, "but I guess it was realistic.  You
know, if you were young and inexperienced, and someone wanted to wash you
off, that's probably what would happen."
                  "In the book," Allen said, "your character did things
with other boys when they were out on the trail.  Did you read that part?"
                  "Yes," Rick said.
                  "Do you think that happened a lot?  I mean out there for
weeks with no girls."
                  "Yes," Rick said, again.
                  "If there were like a hundred boys, you know, just
imaginary, on a long trail drive, how many do you think would want to do
things together."
                  "A lot," Rick said.
                  "Do you think you would have wanted to, you know, if I
was with you?"
                  "Yes," Rick said, his mouth dry and his voice husky and
shaky.
                  "I would, too," the boy whispered back.
                  "We've got to be friends, too," Rick said, "those are
scarce in this business.  Best friends, okay, not just buddies, friends?"

                  Ten.  That was a new friend.

                  "And it's not that you look cute in those overalls, which
you do, by the way, but what you said about Fremont and Pike.  That you
know things like that.  That they mean something to you.  That you care.
That's what makes me want to be with you as much as I can."
                  "I liked the way you stopped the second I called," the
boy said, shyly.  "It was like you cared."
                  "I do," Rick said.
                  "Me, too," the boy replied.
                  "Pretty mushy," Rick allowed.
                  "Too much for this `poke," the younger boy grinned.
                  "If we're two stallions, we'd better act like it."
                  "Let there be no confusion."
                  "Do you know what to do?" Rick asked.
                  "Touch each other," the younger boy suggested.  "I guess
sometimes they must have tried kissing, you know, if they really liked each
other."

                  "It's not in my contract," Rick said; "there's not a
single word about standing in the most beautiful single place on the whole
of planet earth, and kissing the cutest and nicest boy I've ever known in
my life."
                  "If `Variety' finds out, we're chopped liver," Allen
giggled.
                  "My next Morals Clause will take up a full page," Rick
acknowledged, shaking his head with a dramatic sigh.
                  "Are you old enough so it will be rape when it happens?"
the boy asked.
                  "I'm nineteen," Rick said, "so rape it will be according
to every law book and lawyer in the land."
                  "That makes sense," Allen said, "though, of course, when
one considers the half million or so locked up for weed, it's hard to see
the law as the sterling guideposts the Greeks imagined."

                  "I can't not rape you," Rick mused, half to himself, and
half in bewildered wonder.  I see them both peering at me from the screen,
shrugging their bare shoulders, seeking intervention.  The god that made
the valley made the nightmare brown scorpion, and, if he's that confused,
who am I to straighten things out?

                  Good little players, they shrugged it off.  Millions
smoked weed in peace and security, millions of boys submitted to, and often
instigated, their own rape by a mature male.  I should inform new readers
that I essay up from time to time.  All I have to do is type the word
Samantha, and there's half a coronary for the veterans.  So, how do you
like the opening?  I can't -- can not -- believe I finished "The Tarzan
Mushroom Hunters" yesterday, midday, and by nine p.m., the following day am
over 7,750 words into this yarn.  I'm exceedingly hard to impress.  Celine
does it every time I push Play, but I count myself too lazy to exercise the
metaphor in a more personal way.  If you're impressed, it would save me a
lot of troublesome back patting.

                  We can't return to those thrilling days of Lonesome year
without a note in tribute to Larry McMurtry.  Only the short stories of
John O'Hara taught me more about my art.  The very opening of "Lonesome
Dove" is a model for the opening of this story, though, to be honest, I had
no idea the novel would land us west of the Sangre de Christo.  I write of
this simultaneously ethereal and majestic section of the Rio Grande with
the most mixed emotions.  I drove it a thousand times, lived in it (or
nearby, in Santa Fe) for four years, was thrilled to see it as a backdrop
for the "Good horse/new country" line from the television series, yet it is
the same valley my wife crossed for the seed of her new lover, that he
crossed when he wanted to be coaxed into cumming between her long, slim
legs.  Many times they undoubtedly crossed it together, her left hand under
his right thigh as he drove.  I know the feeling.

                  Queenie and her mother were by today.  They haven't moved
in; meant to happen in a couple of days.  Daisy flat out suggested Queenie
sleep in one of my empty bedrooms, and the girl smiled happily.  She is
just totally stunning.  Very long legged and high breasted.  Total
cheekbones; electric smile.  An almost bizarre hypochondriac, she comes up
with symptoms faster than a Los Vegas dealer comes up with a losing hand.
I think it's just to obtain jinglings, as Samantha calls them, but she's
wonderfully creative about the whole thing.  I told Daisy I wanted Queenie
as a spare girlfriend for when Samantha goes to jail.  She though that was
a great idea, and Queenie, properly, Lois, smiled once again.  We did some
dishes together.  Lifetime experience.  And there were two of them today.
Samantha went missing looking for tea.  Everyone took off looking for her,
leaving Rhageedha alone with me for an hour.  She was in my lap almost
immediately, entirely on her own.  We played solitaire.  I molested her
gently with both hands for half an hour, occasionally helping her with the
mouse.  When I pulled her back, she came in an instant, fully, no
hesitation or sign of discomfort.  I never look a child in the eyes for
more than two seconds, but this was an exception.  She gazed back from her
huge brown orbs and smiled, beautifully.  We made out for twenty minutes,
breaking so I could see her smile from time to time.  It was getting dark,
still no Samantha, so I walked her home.  Samantha was safe and sound when
I got back, three brothers in tow.  I suppose she's actually reasonably
safe, if she just wouldn't run around in Speedos.  Anyway, I try to make
these essays short.  It doesn't always work, but I try, blaming any lack of
success, not on the cable, which used to be my inspiration (in quotes), but
on three utterly beautiful and superbly personable young girls, fifteen,
fifteen, and seven.  (19,997 more and I'll equal Wilt Chamberlain.)


                  "And I cannot be not raped by you," the boy added,
helpfully, allowing final dismissal of a subject that seemed likely to
become silly.

                  "I think the man stands behind the boy the first time he
molests him," Allen said.
                  "Like this," Rick whispered, pulling the coltish twelve
year old against his powerful teen chest.
                  "Inside my coveralls," the boy coaxed.

                  Rick found the slightly soft belly of the freckly kid,
first with his right hand, then with his left.  "No wonder beef cost five
cents a pound in the old days," he whispered.
                  "Does it really feel good?" Allen asked.
                  "Yes," Rick said softly, adding: "so good there was so
much beef the railroads came for it."
                  "History and the single boy," Allen said, beginning to
pant.
                  "Rape as paradigm," Rick added, his voice now also
effected by the rush of his mature teen hormones.

                  "Rape as religion," the child whispered, "and yet so far
above god."
                  "Do you want me to rape you out in the sun, where He can
see?" Rick asked.
                  "If you think the `Enquirer' doesn't have a satellite,
yes," the boy replied, adding: "Let's get naked here and we can hang our
clothes on the tree."

                  The first stripped the horses, retrieving the Navaho
saddle blankets as protection for their bare feet.  The undressed on far
sides of the pinon pine.
                  "Are you really big?" Allen whispered through the dwarf
tree.
                  "Yes," Rick said, "you, too?"
                  "Yes," came the return whisper.
                  "We could close our eyes and pretend to wrestle on one of
the blankets to get used to each other," Rick suggested.
                  "Okay," the boy replied, "I'm younger, so I'll be the
filly.  You come and find me, but go real slow on account of there might be
thorns."
                  "Okay," Rick whispered over his shoulder.

                  The June breeze swept the vast valley with whispers and
tendrils of rustling call; with it came an almost inaudible hiss from human
lips.  Rick started out on his hands and knees, eyes mashed shut.  His
penis jutted hard toward mother earth, like a stallion fresh over the
fence.  He moved slowly, reviewing in his mind the lightly freckled torso
in the overalls, the shy, boy-teeth smile, and what that milk white bottom
might look like in the soft cirrus-filtered light flooding the immense
valley.

                  He listened intently, blind as a bat.  Yes, a second
sublimely gentle hiss on the early June breeze.  He turned in the best
direction he could, and moved slowly ahead on his hands and knees, half
shocked to feel his erection, already the longest and hardest of his life,
swell dramatically.  He felt like warning his little victim that if he
heard a foreign sound, it would be his sperm jetting from him onto the dry
grass and sand, but he said nothing, just inched along.  They had hours to
file their report with the A.D., and this was obviously the entirely best
game in all the whole, wide world.  Creep, creep, creep.

                  The next hiss wasn't a mistral of the prairie breeze, but
half a snake it was so close.  Rick froze.  He'd watched the crew play
poker a time or two, and learned about raising stakes.  "Okay, Allen," he
whispered, "I want to find you with my tongue, then see if I can tell what
part of you it is."

                  He was positive he heard a giggle, but so choked was it,
he could tell neither from where, or how far off, it might have originated.
He took it as a yes, and crawled on, an inch at a time, circling to the
right, his tongue extended like that of a fabulous snake, his handsome head
describing an arc from left to right, and back.

                  "I'm going to rape you repeatedly, for years," he
whispered.
                  Only the soft wind.  [Note: not always.  The Valley could
use a sign reading Wind is Hell, especially in the spring.]

                  "I just got religion," he tried, "Lord, can't you behoove
yourself to help just this one miserable sinner find his way?"

                  Silence.

                  "It's not a big snake," Rick whispered, "but it's very
close."

                  Wind.

                  Tough audience.  One last effort, then it would be back
to palms and knees against the thorns of long-dead cholla.  "It's Tyne
Daley," he intoned.

                  A kid can do a lot of things silently, but retching isn't
one of them.  The gulping distress, however manfully muffled, had to be
less than ten feet away.  Rick homed in, the delay by having to creep, pick
out a thorn before it broke his skin, and creep again, was enraging, was
making him hurt from his knees to his belly.  Served him right for playing
what was obviously the entirely stupidest game in the whole, wide world.

                  It took whole minutes.  It hurt.  The sun felt good on
his long, naked back, otherwise, he was blind and beset.  No more funny
stuff.  Biblical, of prick and pain.  New friend, or not, he wanted to conk
the kid, who seemed not even to breathe the merest path into the ocean of
air from the west.  Shouldn't he be able to smell something so near, so
delicious.  A rattler could, an animal with a brain the size of a peanut
could home in, mount, and be off for dinner in the time it took him to inch
three feet across the hostile desert floor.

                  But inch the actor did, and, as in life, succeed he did.
Now there was no mistake, the boy had to breathe, just had to, and the wind
obliged by calming, completely.  Inches now.  Then his heat, then his
silky, milky skin, soft beyond belief against the nineteen year old's lips,
slightly tangy with a hint of salt against his tongue.  The boy began
panting with the first touch, shaking as the touching went on.  He was so
perfect from head to foot, both coltish and padded with a sheen of juvenile
fat, that it was hard to tell where he was raping the little boy.
                  "I can't tell," he whispered, "I give up."

                  Silence, other than the breathing which was so muffled
the clever tyke must have grabbed a fistful of blanket to hold tight
against his mouth.  So, tricks weren't going to work.  That left his teeth.
He grabbed the child in his mouth, biting gently but increasing the
pressure slowly.

                  Silence.

                  Then it was that he was touched by the miracle of
inspiration.  "Does your penis hurt?" he asked.
                  "Yes," Allen whispered.  He had the boy, judging by his
voice, on his right flank, near his lowest rib.  He let go with his gentle
teeth and completed the game.  "Pretty close," Allen said.
                  "Are your eyes open?" Rick asked.
                  "Not yet," Allen said.
                  "Let's stand up so we can look at each other," the older
male suggested, "we can put our hands behind our necks like we were posing
for a body magazine, do you want to?"
                  "Yes," Allen whispered, hoarsely.
                  The blind led the blind and in a few moments they were
standing on the blanket, two feet apart, posturing and arching, then, on a
count of three, they opened their eyes and stood rigidly staring at each
other and down at their own huge erections.  Rick spread his legs and
squatted slightly, lowering himself.  Wordlessly, panting gently, Allen
came to him, standing slightly on his tiptoes so their joining would be
perfect.  It was.  They met with the softest possible touch, and, carefully
moving their hips, caressed each other, hands still behind their necks, but
bent to each other so they could see and whisper.

                  "Will you sperm if we keep doing this?" Rick asked the
twelve year old.
                  "Yes," the boy whispered.
                  "Do you want to, or do you want me to molest you more."
                  "Later," the boy said, his voice so ragged his meaning
was obvious.
                  "I'm right with you," Rick said, "so let it happen to me,
first."
                  "Okay," the boy whispered.
                  "I'm going to cum on you in a minute," Rick warned.  By
accord, but the young males positioned themselves so their hot, swollen
glans were pressing tightly against each other, pink tip of the boy to the
more purple tip of the teenager.
                  They stared and continued their all-but motionless
thrusting against each other.
                  "I'm cumming," Rick whispered, and in seconds a hot jet
of his teen sperm sprayed from between their joined boners.

                  "It's happening to me, too," hissed the sweating
pre-teen, and in moments neither young male could tell whose seed was
splashing on their bellies and thighs.  They grunted to each other,
coaxing, hands still behind their necks.  Inevitably, the slipped apart,
and seconds later they were holding each other and kissing wantonly as they
continued wetting each other's bellies with gush after gush of thick, white
cum liberally mixed with the more watery semen of the pre-teen.

                  Slowly they sank to the wool blanket, Rick on his back,
Allen in his arms, chest to chest, so they could experiment with licking
each other and kissing.  In minutes they masturbated each other in the
classic way, Allen at the tall teen's right hip, then the mature male
leaning over the shoulder of the boy, holding him in his left arm and
jerking him off with his left.  This brought a near total collapse back to
the useful blanket with Allen trying to focus his mind on the issue of just
how much luck a single, long-forgotten horseshoe could bring.

                  Eleven.

                  "Do you know how the story ends?" Nancy asked Rob.
                  "No," the pilot replied, half stunned at remaining so
hard and so still as he listened to her melodic, ten-year-old voice.
                  "Rick said, `I know someone you would like to meet.'"
                  "Have you met him?" Rob asked.
                  "No," the girl said, "but they've stayed friends.  Allen
Rigby is our director."
                  "How do you feel about meeting him?" Rob asked.
                  "I'm a married woman," the girl said softly.
                  "To a much older and very tolerant man," Rob said.
                  "To a super man, at that," the girl agreed.
                  "Seriously," the young man said, "if I see you with
someone else, I'll just fantasize -- you know, recreationally -- not
claim you as a birthright or anything."
                  "Well," Nancy said, "three could work as a limit.  I
always thought just my brother and one husband, but maybe I construe too
narrowly."

                  "Darling," he whispered, very intimately.
                  "You feel just like Rick," she smiled, then her eyes
glazed at the shock of the hard pulsing deep within her
                  "Oh, that was so, so, close," she whispered, wet and
happy from him, smiling up at him, delicious in her welcome, "tell me about
your first time," she encouraged, "then we'll go all the way together."

                  "It wasn't with a girl, either," he responded.
                  "I didn't think a female could have taught you so much
about being a male," the girl chortled.
                  "He was nine years old," Rob said, settling against the
beautiful young body spread beneath him on the tropic coral sand, "and his
name was Danny Fielding He was just the kid in the middle of the line," the
twenty-two year old began, "I was fourteen and I had to baby-sit for him.
Not much of an ego builder for a teenager, but that was then and this is
now."
                  "Pretty cute," the doll said, "Allen made a cowboy out of
Rick, and Danny made a babysitter out of you."
                  "So many comics, so little time," he said, kissing her,
"besides, the skill sets will come in very useful one -- of -- these
-- days."
                  "One to put meat on the table and one to cut it up for
the piglets so they won't choke," the girl noted.
                  "Plus one to make piglets, in the first place," he added,
kissing her on the forehead, and beginning his story.


                  "Robbie," Mrs. Lester called up the stairs, "Kitty
Ellsworth broke her wrist and apparently managed to do it before
skateboarding the entirety of three feet, so Abby Fielding is totally stuck
for a babysitter.  Danny has had his rabies shots and his teeth have been
filed, so flee this house and to her rescue."

                  The boy wanted to be moody, and might have prevaricated
at the injustice of the situation, and in the world, at large, but he'd
just started his algebra homework, and no twerp, no matter how twerpish,
was worse than that.
                  "And don't forget you maths book," she called as he
donned his letter jacket.  Outrage reaches a point of no retort, so he
grinned at the handsome, crew-cut face in the mirror, and bore it.

                  "This must be the biggest pain in the butt of your entire
life," Danny said moments after the front door closed.  "I'm nine, and I'd
hate to baby-sit for some kid, for a teen it must be so totally uncool I'm
surprised you didn't come over through the woods and knock at the back
door."
                  "I could try again," the fourteen year old said, "maybe
I'd get lost in Sloeman's forest and spend the next four hours with
mosquitoes one can swat without fear of reprisal."
                  "Don't the other ones get mad and bite you?" the boy
asked, his huge brown eyes half way between smoldering and flickering.
                  "I play hardball," the teen said, "I need all that kind
of practice I can get."
                  "It's pitch, pitch black in the woods at night," Danny
said, "so I'd like to see you pick then out of the air under those
conditions."
                  "Maybe I could home in on their immature, squeaky, silly
voices," the teen growled, but it was far too late.  Their eyes were
locked, the bonding had been instantaneous and to the bone, they both felt
it, and the older boy was shocked by it.  To Danny, it was a chapter two.

                  "No television, videos, stereo, or telephone, so I'm
afraid you're rather for it," the nine year old said in a perfect British
accent.
                  "So that's why you're alive," the older boy said, adding
all there was in his house were books and magazines, too.  "Duh'uh, look
around," the kid responded, and, indeed, once he'd somehow unhooked from
those huge brown eyes, and looked around, sure enough, fourth rate
furniture, first rate library, rich in periodicals.  Danny picked one up at
random.  "They don't have anything to write about, anymore," he said, "but
it's fun to watch them try."  The boy blushed, his translucent English
complexion pinking just slightly, "I know I shouldn't be cynical," he said,
shyly, "that's why the television went.  I patterned on Pinky's friend, you
know, The Brain.  My mom thought it was funny, but not for such a number of
hours as would befit myth or legend.
                  "'Rule this!' quoth the lady of the pile, exchanging unto
my hand ye remote for ye tome."
                  "So you're to develop as an amusing child," Robbie said,
"I think perhaps parents do it for their own entertainment."
                  "You, too?" the boy asked.
                  "A failure, I'm afraid," Robbie sighed, "dreary texts,
frightful exams, credentialled union teachers, and, to be sure there is
lots of salt in every wound, algebra."
                  "Forsooth, it has left ye wanting, indeed," said the nine
year old, shaking his head but not far enough to break eye contact.  "But
remember how I said I was The Brain?" the boy asked in his wonderfully
soft, childish voice, "well, it's for-the-most-part true."
                  "And dideth thee toil aside from all, unnoted by any,
forsaken evening after evening?" Robbie asked his ward of the evening.
                  "Not exactly," said the bright-eyes, "so stretch your
mind and ride with me.  Allow appearances not to deceive.  Looketh upon thy
dorky young neighbor, yea, with respect, for behold, it came to pass at an
earlier hour of this very day that thy neighbor of the first part did
willfully and wantonly, with precise foreknowledge of inevitable
consequence, lend to Miss Kitty Ellsworth, of this locale, one, each,
skateboard with bearings freshly lubricated by hypodermic needle forsaking
all but the rarest of marine mammal oils."
                  "You don't look dorky to me," Robbie said.
                  "Just to the mirror, then," the boy said.
                  "Stay away from it then," the older boy advised.
"Classily cute nine year olds are no better looking than anyone else when
they get to be teenagers, and it's usually the plain looking boys who end
up being cute."
                  "You looked dumb, too?" the boy asked.
                  "Just regular, like you," Robbie said, adding: "Good
choice with Kitty."
                  The boy brightened.  "That was the psychology part.  I
had to get my mom to want her, in the first place.  Talk about a tightrope.
I had to pretend I didn't like her, you know how mothers are, when, like
all the other kids, I hated her pompous, Southern-nitwit tripe."
                  "Add a drop of exotic oil," Robbie said, "and here the
two of us are standing for ten minutes, me roasting inside my jacket."
                  "Kitty's still in the emergency room," the boy observed,
reaching for Robbie's jacket.
                  "Won't be the last time," the older boy said, finally
breaking eye contact to take another look around.  Good chairs with good
lights, and everything else could stand in line.  Nice and dusty.  No one
wasting time there.  Not excessive; not greasy, cloying, or thick with
Dickensesque decay, like the house of an old person with big dogs, just
prioritized.  What was called `human' before an urban subset mandated
froth, glitz, and schmaltz (in case anyone misses the point) -- form over
function -- as the national standard (didn't invent it, just crammed it
as the easy, lowest-common-denominator, quick-profit sell).

                  "What are you reading?" Danny said, going to a chair and
picking a paperback off the arm, indicating an opposite chair for his
guest, and reading off the title of the fat volume.
                  Robbie held up his maths book.
                  "You agreed to baby-sit me, thinking you could get out of
it, but your mom reminded you before you were out the door," the boy mused,
sadly, adding: "Now do you see why the TV's history."
                  "One more episode, you'd be on cheese for the rest of
your life," Robbie said.
                  "Or I would have cracked Dixie doll's skull instead of
eight bones in her wrist."
                  "You wanna come over and watch, sometime," Danny said, "I
mean we don't have a set either, but we could pretend."
                  "I'm meant to go to medical school," the older boy said,
"so I could teach you how to trepan, in case there's an accident in the
future."
                  "I'm more a poisoner," Danny said, "leave bags of this or
tubs of that anywhere near her, and she'll blow up like all the others."
                  "The psychologist in me says that the ramifications of
ego deprivation extending over a relatively minimal period of time
resulting from her loss of status as a cheerleader would at least pay, in
part, for her dumber-than-a-clock bigotry."

                  "Here! Here!" yelped the boy in his deviously precise
upper, upper class accent.  At heart, though, they were a nice enough pair
of lads, so it is with no small pleasure we permit them to turn the page
and allow the wayward miss of their acquaintance her separate passage, nor
were they without guilt themselves, for they loved not the inroads of
socialism nor those genetically linked with it.  Loved them not at all,
little bigots that they were.

                  They talked for awhile, coming down off the intellectual
high of their initial meeting.  Both seemed to realize they'd pushed the
limits of loquacious wit, and that word play could be as lethal as it was
beguiling.  They settled comfortably on sports, high-fiving each other when
they found they agreed The Intimidator got exactly what he deserved, the
skuzzy little mushmouth, and wasn't it sad he didn't live long enough to
realize it.  They `fived' again on the bra display of the soccer girl,
feeling there was justice in its setting the feminist cause back five
years.  Women were not much to write home about, but their moms were okay.
Nice boys.

                  "Do you want a choice?" Danny asked.
                  "What kind?" Robbie said.
                  "Start your algebra homework, now, then give me a bath,
or, give me a bath, then study."
                  "Kitty didn't survive through your front door," Robbie
observed, "and I'm meant to bathe you?"
                  "Kitty didn't survive through my front door," the boy
replied deliberately, "because I wanted you to bathe me.
                  "Weren't you a little suspicious?" the nine year old
asked.  "A kid my age needing a sitter, for four hours?  That's The Brain
again.  I had to make up a story about a pair of drunk bikers loitering in
the woods and checking our locks, last time I was home alone, to get Mom to
take an interest."
                  "She thought bikers would be a danger to you?  What was
she, born in a cabbage patch?"
                  "More subtle," the boy said, "she thought it was a fake
story, a call-for-help, as it were, so dawned the sitter idea."
                  "All so you could get the back of your neck clean?"
Robbie said, too terrified to grin, too hopelessly in love, by now, not to.
                  "I never thought of that," Danny whispered, half to
himself.

                  They sat gazing at each other for several minutes,
radiating and receiving radiation.
                  "Do you really want me to?" Robbie finally asked.
                  "Yes," the boy replied.
                  "I guess that was a stupid question after all the tricks
going back to the dawn of time," Robbie said.
                  "I spent two weeks out in Sloeman's gathering enough
copperheads and timber rattlers to convince Mom to move from our old place
to here," the boy said.  "I had to create a whole cock-up, complete with
phony footnotes, to convince her our old place was on a migratory run, and
this neighborhood was not."
                  "Then a bath, it is," the fourteen year old responded.

                  "I'll go up and run the tub," the boy said, "then I'll
call down pretending I left the shampoo in the downstairs bathroom, which
is the last door on the left, down, that hall, then you bring it up to me."

                  With that, the boy was off.  Robbie settled back in the
comfy old chair and caught his breath, waiting for the surf crashing
between his ears to moderate to the point a guy would have a chance to ride
a little more than the unfortunate Kitty's three feet.  Over time, as do
ice ages, it happened.  His thoughts drifted an inch from the upstairs
bathroom door, then a foot.  It did no good.  The sweet, childish voice was
calling, its innocent trill echoing faintly down the stairs.  Well, a child
in need was a child, indeed, and what would a little more foam be amongst
those ever rising, higher curling, crashing, booming, surfing waves.

                  Robbie went down the hall, found the shampoo, slipped out
of his sandals, T-shirt, shorts, and briefs, looked down at his long, slim
boner, and walked slowly through the strange house, aroused more than he'd
ever been in his life at just the thought of sexually molesting a little
boy.  He toured slowly, liking the book-proud quarters of the Fielding
home.  Then the stairs, then he tapped at the door.

                  "Come in," squeaked the brave little faltering voice from
the tub.  Robbie swung the door wide.  The boy stared from his cloud of
bubbles.  For two minutes they remained frozen, eyes hot, quenched only by
the sight of each other.
                  "I knew you'd forget it," the kid said, holding up a
bottle of shampoo that had been floating under the suds.  Robbie looked
down at his hands, vaguely observing that the bathtub boy was right.
                  "Also," Danny said, "I knew you wouldn't trust me not to
splash you and get your clothes all wet.  I'm two for two."
                  "If you add the snakes, the prowlers, and the skateboard,
you're about five for five."
                  "If I add the absolutely most beautiful male animal I
have ever seen, dreamed about, or conjured consciously or subconsciously,
I'm six for six."

                  Enough maths?  Fair enough.

                  Robbie crossed the carpeted floor of the master bath and
knelt beside the oversize tub.  Danny handed him a bar of soap and a
sponge, and the teen went to work on the naked little boy, soaping his
face, then, inspiration being a fickle mistress when it comes to dawning
love, licking his lips clean.  He poured a Tupperware of water over the
English schoolboy face, then amended his folly by rinsing his tongue on the
same lips, as the boy helped with his own lively little tongue.

                  "Nice sorbet," the child said when the last trace of soap
was gone.  The comment made Robbie's boner swell painfully.  Why would a
boy who had just eaten dinner want to cleanse his pallet?  He'd heard talk
about perverts, as all the boys had; was this the reason the subject came
up so often?  And what reason was that?  Technically, what?  He was sure of
only one thing, he was in the right place at the right time to find out.
                  "It was meant to be punishment for wanting to splash me,"
Robbie said.
                  "I wanted to very badly, you know," the boy trilled, "to
douse you and souse you, soak you and damp you, sop you and mop you; to
causeth drips and rivulets, to incite a flow, to lord over you as master of
a drizzle of drops."  .
                  "Speaketh thee with wet tongue," Robbie played along, "of
damping the garb and hamper of this manly prince, and thine mouth shall
ne'er again on this worldly plane belong to thee."
                  "Take thee of it with haste, for scant use it serves so
long as my face is pocked with other air-loving orifices."

                  They kissed so long Danny had to take his hand from
Robbie's face in order to add more hot water to the tub.  Ten minutes.
Half an hour.  Ten more minutes, gently, fervently, lastingly.  Nor did
they break as the boys opened the drain and the teen brought a towel to the
nine year old as the water drained, helping him dry off, then lifting him
from the tub and lying him on another bath towel spread on the bathroom
floor.
                  They lay perpendicular to each other, Robbie at Danny's
right shoulder, the older boy's right hand on the nine year old's slim
chest, his left fondling the boy's face as they toyed with each other's
lips, tongue and teeth until almost an hour had passed.
                  They were far from spent with each other, but they wanted
to know things.  Robbie planted his elbows at the boy's right ear, and
gazed down at him while the boy gazed back up.
                  "Can I take the towel off you?" the older boy asked.
                  "Yes," Danny said, raising his hips.  Robbie unwrapped
him, and pulled away the terrycloth.
                  "You're almost as big as I am," he whispered, unable to
keep the thick musk from his voice.
                  "I do not, repeat, do not take showers at school," the
nine year old said, "if I did, it would be sleepovers seven nights a week,
and who can read on a sleepover?"
                  "How did you get so mature?" Robbie asked.
                  "I went to a nudist camp built on shaky morals," the boy
said.
                  "I've heard of whispering pines and shady oaks," Robbie
said, "even quaking aspen, but that's a new one."
                  "Actually," said Danny, "it's the morals that are new.
People did just fine without the troublesome things, relying on decency in
their stead."
                  "What's the difference?" Robbie asked.
                  "If you were eighteen, instead of fourteen, and did
what's going to happen later, and were gentle, that would be decent, but
immoral.  If you'd called me a faggot freak when I said I wanted you to
touch me while I was in the tub, that would have been moral, but not very
decent.  There is a huge difference."

                  "One has a clergy, the other makes do without," Robbie
said.
                  "Thus the dog and pony show from snakes to shampoo," said
the younger boy, "because you're the only boy probably in the world who
would have come up with exactly the right response.  I'm lying here
coloring myself very, very lucky."
                  "I like English white, just fine," Robbie said, now
openly molesting the boy's chest and belly, trailing his fingers ever
closer to the slim, five-inch penis jutting from the child-like hips.
                  Gently he resumed kissing the beautiful gamin face,
slowly his fingers found the dense growth of black peach fuzz in a crescent
above the child's huge erection.  He fingered the soft growth, leaving
Danny's lips to whisper into his mouth.
                  "Does this mean you have sperm?" he asked.
                  "Yes," Danny said.  "When I found out, I started hunting
all those damned old snakes."
                  "I've heard it's meant to be a change of life," the older
boy deadpanned.
                  "I'm on the extreme side of extremely early," Danny
noted, "not emotionally ready for the experience, thus it was imperative
for me to have one partner I could trust and love."
                  "And I beat out Kitty Ellsworth," Robbie said in mock
wonder.
                  "You beat out the world," Danny grinned, "a boy can tell
that kind of thing."
                  "If he can tell that kind of thing," Robbie observe, "he
must be able to tell his best friend in the whole wide world, who loves him
very much, all about being a cute little black-haired, white-skinned boy in
a nudist camp built on shaky morals."
                  "They say an invitation's ninety percent perspiration and
ten percent inspiration," Danny replied, "so Master Daniel W. Fielding
requests the honor of the presence of his friend, Master Robert Paul
Lester, where doth the heavenly hot rayeth shineth not upon fabrics of
nimble fingers and intricate machine."

                  "And," Robbie replied, "the master of the second part
does thank, and accept with the greatest pleasure, the kind and generous
offer of his best friend in the whole world, Daniel W. Fielding, and
further promises to array himself in such a dearth of fabric, cloth and
material as to make the great Levi, himself, weep for lack of business."

                  "Who takes you to the camp?" Robbie asked.  "Who's taking
us?"
                  "Mick Jagger," Danny answered.

                  A Celine Dion lyric pounded through Robbie's surfing
brain: "Stop the press, hold the news."  Boys have stared at each other
since the days of the caveman.  Silly stares.  One-upmanship stares.  Angry
stares.  Friends don't stare, but lovers stare.  Pitiful stares.  Bold
stares.  Almost any kind we can think of.  They come and they go, leaving
only one item of note.  Never had two boys stared at each other as Danny
and Robbie did on that bathroom floor.  The older boy actually began to
sweat, waiting for the younger boy to giggle and claim a got-ya.

                  Did not happen.  Not in five minutes, not in ten.  There
are unwritten but finely understood rules to boy's games; how hard an
Indian burn, how close at mumblepeg, where, when, and who you wedgie, if
you must, in the first place; how large a boy you manhandle into a locker.
The list goes on.  Danny broke them all.  Just returned Robbie's intense
gaze with soft eyes of depthless friendship.
                  "When?" the older boy finally asked.
                  "It depends if we want to stay here or go to Spain,"
Danny answered.

                  "Does it, now," Robbie said, and finally the dam broke
and both boys giggled helplessly for minute on painful minute.
                  "If we go to Spain," the boy finally choked, "we can
leave tonight; Mom will drive us to the airport when she gets home from her
conference.  He'll be here in a week, so we can wait, if you'd rather."


                  The canvas was turning into a mural.  A smaller scale was
called for.  "I'd really like to watch you get molested by a cute man,"
Robbie said.
                  Danny thought of the common novelty sign beloved of
office workers: "What part of NO don't you understand?" it read.  He hadn't
heard any part, at all.  Apparently they had a priority deal.  "I'd like to
watch it happen to you, too," he responded.

                  "Should I call my mom?" the older boy asked.
                  "No," Danny said, "she's cool, she'll like the surprise.
My mom can make up something about dark, dangerous streets to explain why
you're staying overnight.  In the morning we'll call from the Volcanic
Eggs, which is a nice enough place however awkward its name in
translation."
                  "Shouldn't I go and get some clothes?" the still mostly
shocked boy asked.
                  "Picture it," Danny responded, "Mick with a nice enough
looking nine year old, and a drop-dead, coltish, lanky fourteen year old,
and the day to kill.  Might he, or might he not, sooner or later, be in a
mood to take them shopping?"
                  "Would I, or would I not, be in a mood to wear them?"
Robbie said.
                  "Well, it is a nudist camp," Danny reminded his guest,
"but, very discreet, for all of that.  Half Ascot, half Di's last beach."
They tried to deadpan it out for the sake of cool, but no, it didn't work,
and in a moment they were gasping helplessly, naked in each other's arms,
soft as dead snakes, in love until their toes curled.  It was a pretty
funny scene, but in mere moments the novelty of being flaccid in each
other's presence shocked them back to reality.  In a flash they'd
manhandled each other and were sitting, knees touching, Indian style,
staring down at one another.

                  "I thought it might be a year before this happened,"
Danny said.
                  "I never dreamed of it, at all," his older friend added.

                  Again, they challenged the level at which stupidity can
no longer be ignored, and lost, falling into each other's arms and rolling
gently across the floor as they wept, sawed their tongues, and thrust at
each other with what had so recently been their huge, wet, circumcised
boners.

                  "We must be really nervous to be giggling so much,"
Robbie said.
                  "I was really scared my first time," his young friend
admitted.
                  "Was he gentle with you?" Robbie asked.
                  "Totally," Danny said, "but you know, even if he's really
famous, when a man pulls your underpants down the first time, it's pretty
scary."
                  "Did he have his on?" Robbie quizzed.
                  "No," Danny said, "none of them did."

                  "Did they talk to you and stuff, or was it like you were
raped."
                  "We talked," the boy responded, "it didn't happen for a
couple of hours after they picked me up.  They made really sure, but, in a
way, that makes it scarier, because you're letting them do the things they
want to do.  Tempting god to sharpen his knife and lick his chops, so to
speak."

                  "Where did it happen?" Robbie asked.
                  "In England," the boy said.  "I guess a roadie had taken
a picture of me, and they knew I always walked along a certain road back
and forth from town, so, one Friday afternoon, a year ago, there was a
high-end Bugatti, my mom in the back seat, telling me it was okay to spend
the weekend hanging around with the guys, if I wanted to."
                  "That sounds like the first day of the rest of someone's
life," Robbie noted.
                  "When they, there were a couple of his friends along,
started talking about a party at Michael Jackson's, I wasn't too sure about
the life thing except to wonder if it was possible to actually die of
excitement.  Then they asked me questions about what bad men did with
little boys, and if they looked like bad men.  That was in the days before
bad meant good, so I said no, they didn't look like bad men.  Then they
told me they wanted to take me to a special camp where there were lots of
young sailors from the navy, and in some parts of the camp, nobody wore any
clothes.  They asked me if I'd like to visit the camp with them.  It went
on so long I figured I must be alive, so I started nodding my head, Yes.
                  "When I finally came halfway to and looked around, there
were two tennis players and a red-headed boy who was an actor in London.
They said it would be an hour to the camp, and asked if I wanted to talk
about what would happen when I was there, or just ride through the
countryside and look at the scenery.
                  "I said I'd like to talk about what was going to happen.
They asked me if I knew anything, and I replied that I didn't think much
happened at Winnie's house in Pooh Corner.  They thought that was pretty
funny, and we became friends.  They took down all the stuff about me and
put it in a book, and gave me a special card with a private number.  That's
how I know he's in Spain.  Then they asked if I'd ever seen a man at a
nudist beach, like naked, and I said no.
                  "They said the two tennis players, they were both
fifteen, had been on a broken schedule for the last week and wanted to so
something together while I watched them.  They said the word `masturbate'.
They asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said I'd just heard it in
school, but I didn't know.  The actor, Kersey, he was thirteen, came over
on my seat and whispered that all older boys did it, and that it was the
first step.  He wanted to watch, too, so the three of us got in the
rear-facing seat, and the tennis players sat on the big leather seat at the
back.
                  "Mick was a little uptight they couldn't wait, but he'd
been on broken schedules so he kind of knew how they felt.  He told them
not to take too long, and closed the sliding door to the front, which, he
said, he didn't like to do because it reflected as being secretive on his
reputation.
                  "The tennis players were sorry about it, but Mick was
cool and ended up laughing and telling a story to make them feel
comfortable while they undressed."

                  "Does this get better?" Robbie wanted to know.  They
tried avoiding each other's eyes, again, to little avail.  "I wonder if
we'll ever see each other the way we were, again," Danny finally mused, and
went on with his story.

                  "Bick was from Sweden, Norris, from Oklahoma.  They were
both fifteen, but they were totally different.  Bick was six feet, really
leggy and overgrown, with big hands and feet, while Norris was like a
little boy, but really wiry and tough; maybe weighed a hundred and ten,
where Bick was closer to one eighty.
                  "They were just wearing shorts and T-shirts, so they
kicked their sandals off and took off their socks, then stripped down to
their underpants so we could look at them and they could look at each
other.  Kersey whispered to me and asked if I was uncomfortable.  I said
that was outrageously so, but could think of only one palliative.  He
laughed and said he knew exactly what I meant, then he suggested I get them
naked so I'd be used to it when they got me naked at the camp.
                  "I got down on my knees and they let me touch them
through their underpants while Mick and Kersey bent over us and looked.
Then I pulled Bick's down and took them off his feet.  Then Norris.  Than
we sat back down to look at them.
                  "We rode that way for quite awhile, just looking,
watching them get wet from being excited.  Bick wasn't circumcised, but he
was so big it looked like he was.  Norris looked even bigger, because he
was so much smaller, like a little boy, except there, and where he had some
hair growing.

                  "After awhile, Bick reached over with his right hand and
started touching Norris.  He spread his legs really wide, putting his right
one over Bick's left leg, and let the big player do what he wanted.  That's
when the masturbating started.  He did it to the little boy in a really
regular way for a few minutes.  Then Norris started sweating and panting
and coming up off the seat, so he did it a little faster and harder with
his right hand.
                  "Kersey whispered to me again and told me Norris was
going to cum off in Bick's hand.  He said I'd have the same feelings Norris
was having, but there might not be anything else.  Norris was really
sweating and panting from what Bick was doing, then he grunted, `I'm going
to cum," and started showering sperms in the back seat, all over himself
and Bick.
                  "Before he even stopped spraying off, he got his right
hand wet from Bick's chest, and masturbated him hard and fast.  There was
more sperm from Bick, and it was thicker and whiter.  You could tell whose
was whose even though they were both really wet.

                  "Mick got down on his knees and licked them both off
while they ran their fingers through his hair, then they dried off with the
towel from the bar, and dressed.  We kept talking like nothing had
happened, but it was more exciting than anything since the Big Bang.

                  "Did you get any sperm on you?" Robbie asked his cute
young friend.
                  "Not `till later," the boy said.  "Kersey got some on his
right knee, but Bick and Norris really liked each other, so they were
careful to satisfy each other."
                  "How would you have felt if they'd pulled you on the back
seat with them, and ripped your shirt open, and got really hot on your
chest?" Robbie whispered.
                  "I think it's time to watch each other," the boy said,
and in a moment they were again sitting, knee to knee, Indian style.  They
didn't say anything, just gazed as they each suddenly grew as hard and full
as they'd been when Robbie had wrapped the young boy in a bath towel.

                  "Mick would have licked me off," Danny continued,
answering the question.
                  "Did he lick you off, later?" Robbie asked.
                  "Yes," the little boy with the huge penis replied, "then
he'd kiss me."
                  "With sperm in his mouth?" Robbie asked.
                  "Yes," the boy repeated, his English skin coloring
slightly.
                  "Nicer that soap?" Robbie asked.
                  "Not nicer than a little soap with a lot of you, by a
long shot," the boy replied, "but still pretty okay.  I'd do it again, and
not only that, I'd recommend it to my very, very best friend of all my life
in the whole wide world."

                  "Thy friend of whom thee speaketh, rather thunderstruck,
sits here with you, lacking, in the paucity of his neglected mind and
forgotten soul, any words with which to say, Thanks, dude."

                  "I stalked you the way they stalked me," Danny observed,
"so it's not as random and fickle as you might imagine."
                  It was Robbie's turn to blush, and he did.  The
compliment was profound.  To be picked by the one who'd been picked.  If
there was higher than that, he hoped he would never find out.

                  "So the behavior was good for the rest of the drive?"
Robbie ask to get his cute little choo-choo back on track.
                  "The behavior was always good," the boy said, "even in
the nudist area.  Decency wasn't the rule, it was the only rule.  Mick told
me later he'd never done anything in a car.  He laughed, but I'll bet it
doesn't happen again real soon.
                  "We got there in a few more minutes and parked the car.
It was awesomely cool, because no one took any notice.  We had to carry in
our own bags, sign at the desk, get ice, and make seatings at the
restaurant.  Everything was just average except that a doctor looked at
every guest and they had to take a health polygraph.  Condom free zone."
                  "I should sincerely hope so," Robbie intoned.

                  "It was fun to watch Mick relax.  No kowtow.  No, `I'll
be your server, tonight', no arugala and less mesquite.  We had to wait in
line for twenty minutes to get the key to the nudist area become someone
had lost something, and he would just say It's never like this on the road,
and smile.

                  "Bick and Norris crashed in our suite, that, and room
service, we did have, and we had retro burgers, hamburgers cooked the way
used to be, on the rare side of medium that.  They made you dizzy they were
so juicy and good, then we kept looking at the key on the coffee
table. Kersey was thirteen, and he said the tradition was that the youngest
in a group pick up the key when he was ready.  I was glad he told me,
because I was the guest and waiting for one of them to pick it up.



                  I've decided I have two relationships with my brain.  On
the one hand, I've told it to be monumentally lazy, so it only sends me the
best, and, on the other hand, I'm prickly enough it doesn't wish to risk
reprimand (look at the poor Jews) for forwarding anything other than what
no other brain can send.  Like Judy Garland, I look on it as an entirely
separate entity, which, by some flick of fate, happens to be housed in my
body.  I understand it no better than you.  I was training it to write
commercial fiction, but then I was divorced, so there seemed to be little
left of the life she represented, that our family would have represented.
Her mother talked of Thinking love, with her husband.  Thus, under what
seemed civil and morally above board, was, in fact, the very Victorian
horror popularized in lurid reporting of this defective era.  No kids to be
embarrassed at my sobriquet of history's greatest pornographer, and, if
anyone else is embarrassed, the chances are they're lucky I didn't come
after them with a machete.  (With the exception of Dickie Dunham in
"Stonington Stories".  I used him unfairly, and out of spite.  It was
Jeanie who threw me a vicious curve, and in vengeance against her I alluded
to the mental capacity of her slickly handsome replacement for me.  Dickie
was allowed to grow his hair, I was stuck with prison cuts, extremely
unflattering.  To set the record completely straight, I'd be surprised if
Dickie had read a single unlisted book by the time he finished college,
where I'd read some thousand or more.  Girls.  And, while setting the
record straight, I should acknowledge, somewhere in these texts, that, all
thing being equal, Anne is likely dean of a nursing school.  The horror of
my reality was that not only was she a nurse, she was a highly respected
practitioner, and, to rub salt in the wound, studying for her master's so
she could teach.  Her nobility contrasted not well at all with my slow
progress as a writer, with it's variant lifestyle of reading and thinking
all the time.  Slacker misery against productive honeybunch.  Yes, noble
nurse, but that anyone can do. (And who'd want to nurse all those fat,
nasty, old people, in the first place?)  She probably hadn't read ten books
since college, her IQ was nominal, why choose academics when she had a
totally exceptional artist's talent and perhaps genius?  Because she didn't
want to be an artist?  It's not your choice.  I didn't want to read the two
thousand nine hundred bad books I read, to find the hundred good ones.  See
the hundred of dumb movies, watch the thousands of hours of numbing
television, for the one engaging hour in a lucky week.  It's not something
you want, being an artist, it's is the only thing you are, and if you don't
race it until the rings burn our, you will lie in the most utter of agonies
on your deathbed, crying out Why? and If Only.  So few get what she had, at
her level.  In fact, my more recent theory is that she met Tom Cruise long
before I left for Belize, and sabotaged from there on out.  If he was worth
her death as an artist, he must be the wonder guy of wonder guys.

                  On my behalf, I'll also point out it was a free ride and
a half.  I had a nice amount of money coming in from the family, so I could
have dithered away in her shadow -- I think I'm a good enough lover to
get away with it, plus, I'm funny -- and not only made the marriage last,
but made it happy.  The possible exception, of course, would have been if
we'd had an attractive, flirtatious and predatory daughter.  I made little
secret of my liking, shared by so many millions, for very young girls, and
I mean very young.  I would have made every effort to leave any female
child entirely in her care, but, a willing young girl is every dream of
countless millions, and I could not promise best behavior under any and all
circumstances.  Since this is a twenty percent subset, there's a one in
five chance Tom Cruise [lawyer, not actor. see other works] did what I
might have.

                  Anyway, it would have been a nice set of coat tails; I
was handy and alert around the house, good company, it could have and would
have lasted for decades.  At the cost of my career.  Therein, aside from
her taunting last kiss, and failure to return Joseph Daniels of Robin's
Brook farm, standard poodle of a hundred pages in "The Pirates of Rickety
Pier", or even send me a note when he died, mailed, anonymously, from a
major metropolitan area, lies the basis of my anger, and her immortality.
Those are the only fights I have with my brain.  I tell it these people;
mother, sister, wife, ignored the good and went ape over the rare
scintillas of bad, considering, I am, after all, an artist, not a banker,
and yet Old Wiseguy wants to immortalize them, not as corner lot tomb
stones, but alive, vivid, who they were, as they were: immortality with a
capital I.  Granting this, while denying godlike status, means I must paint
myself as troublesome, complex, mercurial, and not flinch when others say
Loopy, or something worse.  If that isn't complicated enough, I have to
pretend none of it's happening for pages at a time, and write fiction as
well as I'm always reminding you I do.

                  "The Samanthian" She gets so much copy, we might as well
give her a masthead.  She can stand against the wall and dazzle for ten
minutes at a time.  Rhageedha brings out the best in her, like a candle
suddenly burning into loose gunpowder.  Such a beauty, my Samantha, and
such a riot, and so un-open about it.  Mostly quiet and self involved,
often silent for hours.  Then a fireworks display of simple, pretty-girl
personality, and back to Moodyville, where Bev says she spends most of her
time.  Too much television.  Once you get used to it, it's heavenly.  I
work, not much else; don't want some cheery flower always full of happy
news and sunny observations.  I love cloudy days, too.  Anyhow, we had our
first uncontaminated visit since she stole Jessica's necklace.  Tomorrow
Queenie is scheduled to arrive.  Also, there's meant to be a troublesome
thirteen year old as part of Daisy's extended family.  Met her two or three
years ago, so Queenie says, but it's a blank.

                  Rhageedha may well be New York quality.  She is
electrifyingly vivid; tiny delicate face with huge brown eyes, extremely
sensitive mouth, brilliant teeth, and an almost shocking quickness and
responsiveness.  (Something like a brighter, quicker, female version of
Mark John Jeffries, of television advertising fame.)  Totally the opposite
of Samantha, who is more privately and subtly radiant when and if she
chooses.  Queenie would appear to fit exactly between my moody one and my
vivid one, her beauty open, obvious, and overwhelming, no personality
necessary.  My long saga in search of a digital camera is meant to end
tomorrow, with the arrival of quarterly funding, so, who knows, maybe I can
get Malcolm or someone to post portraits on the Web.  In the meantime,
after a one-hundred percent romantic draught for good-old twenty-three
years, there is a burst of feminine sunlight which may be as overpowering
as any lighted for any man, ever.  Boy, do I deserve it.

                  So, that's my self administered electroencephalograph for
the moment.  Brain and I will continue to argue about granting status as
forever young to those who done us wrong, but he rules the day job, so,
fare-thee-well, all who deserve to do so.


                  "Once I knew the key was mine," Danny continued, "I gave
it to Mick and he piggybacked me and held Kersey by the hand.  We unlocked
the gate and went in.  Mick had timed our visit to coincide with a Viking
festival put on by Nordic sailors from three different navies.  What was
evident even in the changing room, if that's what you want to call it, was
that Hitler was not all wrong in his Aryan thinking.  A lot of them were
cadets just a few years older than I was.  They were really quiet and
friendly.  Most of them read a lot, which is why they were there, in the
first place, and they liked to teach chess and painting, anything a boy
wanted to do if they had the equipment for it.  So we sat around in the
lounge for awhile, getting to know some of the sailors.  Finally we met
Gerrend, Constantine, and five others from Iceland.  Gerrend was the
lieutenant, he was nineteen.  Constantine was a cadet, twelve.  It was
lucky, because they'd been traveling a lot in the past few days, like Bick
and Norris, so they got excited when Mick said he was going to take my
shirt off in the lounge, then take me into the locker room."

                  "Duh'uh," said Robbie.

                  "I know it was okay, now," Danny said, "but I was nervous
at the time.  I had four posters of Mick in my room at home, and I didn't
want to disappoint him, or be dumb and too overeager, like when I almost
thought I was dead when they were talking about going to Neverland and
staying over with Michael.  But Mick told me he'd brought two other young
boys to the club and they'd liked it, so I knew the things he wanted to do
with me in front of the sailors would be okay.

                  "He got me in his lap, then I put my hands up, and he
pulled up my jersey.  Then we stood up, and he held my hand while we went
through the door.  Inside was really nice; simple, not fussily clean.  Two
sailors from another ship were getting in the shower, and they turned and
looked at us."

                  "What happened?" Robbie asked, proving he'd one day make
a great lawyer by knowing the answer to questions before he asked them.
                  "They got big boners," Danny said.  "When I pulled Bick
and Norris' underpants down, they had boners the whole time, but Raul and
Phil, the sailors in the shower, got them while we all watched.
                  "Did you know it was because you were bare chested?"
Robbie asked.
                  "No," the nine year old replied, "I just thought they
might be looking at Kersey.  He was cuter than I was."
                  "What happened next?" Robbie asked.
                  "Mick sat me on a bench and stripped in front of me.  I
undid his shoes and helped him take them off."
                  "Did he touch you while you were doing that?" the teen
quizzed.
                  "No," Danny said, "he sort of braced his knee against the
bench for balance.  Once I had him barefoot," the boy went on, "he stripped
out of his briefs so I could see him, then the two naked sailors came and
stood close beside him, and the sailors from the "Oscard", the Icelandic
ship, stripped and Kersey got naked and stood beside where I was sitting.
Then he nodded in Mick's direction, so I sat in his lap and Constantine
took my shorts and underpants off.  Then Constantine stood in front of Mick
and me, and Kersey, who was really tall for thirteen, stood behind him and
put his left arm around Constantine's chest and held him while he spread
his legs wide and got really close to me so he could whisper while the
others listened.  He was super excited because he hadn't done anything
during the crossing because he'd been seasick, and they'd all crashed the
minute they reached the club.  Not only that, he'd only been with a man
twice, and this was his first time with a younger boy.

                  "Kersey said he'd only been doing mature stuff for a
week, so all three of us were pretty virgin.  Mick molested me while we
talked, just like Kersey was doing with Constantine, rubbing his chest and
belly really gently, like a massage.  It felt unbelievable, and looked like
you wouldn't believe."

                  "I believe," Robbie said to the boy on the carpet of the
master bath.  "Do you want me to try it with you the way Mick did it, and
Kersey was doing with Constantine?"
                  "I've never been in love before," the boy replied, "I
don't know if I can stand."
                  "Maybe that's why they call it `experimenting'," Robbie
observed.
                  "It would be levitation, at that," the bright-eyed child
replied.
                  "Methinks you're halfway there," Robbie said, looking at
Danny's waist.
                  "'Tis but to succumb to the inevitable," the nine year
old acknowledged, rising on his knees.  Robbie stood fast (stood up fast),
lending a hand.  Slowly he brought the naked young boy to his chest, gently
holding him around his slim chest as Danny swung his feet to the edge of
the bathtub, using it to help support his weight as he spread his legs
wide.
                  "Like this?" Robbie whispered in the child's left ear.
                  "This is how it started," the boy replied.
                  "How long before Mick started touching you?" Robbie
quizzed.
                  "He started when I began to buck my hips in his lap," the
boy said.
                  "Did he touch you with his right hand, or left?" the teen
asked.
                  "Right hand," Danny answered.
                  "Did Mick say anything?" Robbie wanted to know.
                  "He said it had happened to him when he was my age, and
that nine was perfect because it gave a boy two years to look forward to
being eleven, which was the best human age."
                  "Sounds like he knew what he was talking about," Robbie
said.
                  "I don't waste a lot of time trying to think of something
negative about it, but for-sure, nothing has popped into my head, then, or
since."
                  "So all preachers are wrong, all the time?  It wouldn't
seem possible, but then Roosevelt slopped American into the mother of all
cataclysms, and he's a national hero.  Right and wrong.  The only one who
was right, was Hitler.  Without him, we would not have made it to Slaughter
House Six."
                  "But you can't blame the media," Danny said, "I mean look
at Richard Jewell, the bombing guy from the '96 Olympics.  He had a billion
dollars worth of free advertising, and not a single job offer."
                  "That's why I mentioned preachers," Robbie said.  Danny
responded by swinging free of the teen's left arm, and turning to look at
him, his brown eyes on fire.  "You are the most awesome lover I ever
imagined," he whispered, "you are out of this world.  You are so clever and
funny I'd be your dog."
                  "Write it with a marker on a piece of paper," Robbie
suggested, "and hold the paper in front of you in front of a mirror.
That's my feeling for you expressed in three letters."

                  The religious issue settled for the moment, Robbie gently
reclaimed the child.  "Tell me how he took you?" he coaxed.
                  "Just his thumb and index finger, a little bit," the
now-shaking boy whispered over his right shoulder.

                  Danny spread his coltish legs more widely on the border
of the tub, thrust his hips to Robbie and whispered he was ready.  They
both stared down as it happened.
                  "Really gentle, like this?" the morally-stricken teen
asked in a hoarse whisper.
                  "Yes," Danny was barely able to respond, thankful for the
athletic body that seemed tireless in holding him more gently than he'd
ever been held in his nine-year life.  "Kersey and Constantine moved back
so everyone could get in close to see what Mick was doing with me."
                  "How much did he do?" Robbie asked.
                  "Not too much.  Just a little more than you're doing.  He
whispered we couldn't do to much, because he wanted me to stay excited for
Constantine and the other sailors."
                  "Same psychology the church uses," Robbie said.  "Life
after death, but you're dead when you find out.  Then it won't be the same
thing.  If you went too far with Mick, it wouldn't have been the same
thing, either."
                  "You leave the clergy no option but admitting they're a
big target," Danny said.
                  "They'd burn us in hell -- most eternally -- for
doing this," the tall athlete replied, "and have often burned others, here
on earth, so, in my book, they're some kind of target."
                  "As they disobey their vows of poverty and eschew
simplicity, we disobey and ignore them.  Seems fair enough, to me," Danny
said.
                  "Or maybe we're just selfish dilatants, rationalizing our
lack of tithing on the vain assumption we could better use the funds."
                  "That's something we are too young for," Danny giggled.
It was a nice break.  Robbie was, in fact, more mortal than super, and
welcomed the tensing of the boy in his arms as a signal they'd gone far
enough for the moment.  He let Danny back down on the floor.
                  "We could go in on my bed," the nine year old suggested.
                  "Great," Robbie whispered, "but don't forget where you
were in your story."
                  "As if," the boy responded, and the scene changed in a
few moments.  Meantime:

                  The five from the "Oscard" joined with the young sailors
just out of the shower, allowing Kersey and Constantine places of honor at
the center of the crescent the males formed around Mick Jagger and Danny
Fielding.  The nine year old lay back on the rock star's chest and spread
his legs as widely as he could, rising to meet the gentle touch of man on
boy.  Mick fondled the child's pink, swollen glans, turning the tip of his
penis purple as Danny gasped and writhed in the powerful arms of the lanky
adult.  Slowly the experimental first touching became a tentative stroking,
and when the boy responded readily with his hips, the older lover took a
rhythm with him as the other young males, arms at their sides, heads bent
to look down at themselves, each other, and the man and boy, gathered as
close as they could.

                  "Tell me well before anything happens," Mick said,
"because we don't want to go too far to stop, until later."
                  "It feels like the world's biggest sneeze, between my
belly and my knees, no rhyme intended," Danny whispered.
                  "Bless you, my lad, and best we stop then," Mick
responded, slowing on the boy, then gently fondling him as the older teens
from the ships gently eased Kersey and Constantine back to their former
positions in front of Danny and Mick.  The tall redhead once again bent
over the beautiful Nordic juvenile, and this time there would be no
stopping.  Kersey lifted Constantine, and the boy spread his legs, landing
his beautiful young feet on either side of Danny and Mick, assuming a low
stance so the other could watch the adult and the tall, athletic boy.  His
strokes were strong and fast on the youth, and Constantine responded by
shaking and whinnying.  "It's been so long," he whispered, "I'm sorry, I
wanted it to last more for you."  Then he threw his arms up behind himself,
linking his finger's behind Kersey's neck and bucking his hips high in the
air.  "I'm cumming," he grunted.

                  His semen was boy thin; watery, but hot, copious, and
supercharged.  Guided by the sweating, panting thirteen year old, he
sprayed again and again on Danny's beautiful face, in his hair and on his
neck and shoulders.  The other sailors bunched in close and whispered
encouragement as the boy shook and bucked to Kersey, who now clenched the
child's five inch penis tightly at its base, holding him tight and almost
motionless as he guided the hot streaks of twelve-year-old sperm.
Emulating, Constantine, Danny threw his hands up behind Mick's neck, and
arched against the youngest of the sailors.  This got the older boy's sperm
all over the child's straining chest, and then his heaving belly.

                  At the end, Kersey guided Constantine to Danny's hugely
swollen glans, and let the last weakening pulses wet the younger boy in a
gentle, final sharing of Danny's first full experience.
                  The nine year old lowered his arms back to his side, half
caught his breath, and allowed his imagination to be beggared.  There were
four more sailors of the "Oscard's" crew, all strapping older teens, all on
the go for the last entire week; all fit and well rested.  Beggared wasn't
the word for it.  Plus, Kersey's right hand was now dripping with thin cum;
what would that feel like to the next of the young males?
                  He'd have to wait to find out (and, of course, it would
be years before he'd know, exactly) because Mick pried the young body from
his lap and lay it on the locker room bench, then knelt beside it, and
began licking, starting at the child's navel and working up over the thin,
white, panting chest to the birdlike shoulders and finally reaching the
Mazda zoom-zoom boy's fine English face covered with long tendrils of still
hot cum.  Luckily for Danny, there was a lot of sperm on his lips, so the
first kiss was a salty shock that segued in half an instant to a sizzling
wonder of hot tongue and growling lips as the males went awesomely
cannibalistic with one-another.

                  The next cadet was a mature fifteen.  While literacy and
grace were the A-list requirements for the Semen's Club, as the saying
goes, size counted.  In spite of being a slim, young teen, the fifteen year
old could have measured all but seven inches, and he had a powerful
thickness fully matching the length of his penis.  Kersey guided him to the
bench, which fit comfortably against the knees of the new boy's spread
legs.  Two shipmates braced the older child at his heaving flanks, and the
redheaded boy guided the blond-haired, blue-eyed cadet to the lips of Danny
and Mick.
                  This did nothing to spoil their latest, lingering kiss.
Indeed, both partners lying on the bench seemed to welcome the intrusion,
and eagerly laved the young sailor's swollen, purple glans with their
combined tongues and lips.

                  Christo was able to stand it for two minutes, then three,
then he began to tense rapidly and pant openly.  "I'm cumming, Mick," he
managed to whisper, and the three males holding his slim, writhing body
could feel an almost frantic quaking.  Kersey held him perfectly between
the man and boy.  His sperm came in a sudden, pulsing flood, both males on
the bench letting much of it flow from their mouthes and down over Danny's
cheeks.  Both throats also worked avidly, and all the males grunted in
unison at the sight of the pulsing throats and gushing semen.  Even
Constantine, who had every reason in the world to curl up at the end of the
bench and take a nap, gazed on in awe of the spectacle.  Indeed, all the
young sailors were generous in exchanging positions for the best view of
what was going on between the three active males.  And there was time.
Christo seemed to vent the pent up fury of half the Atlantic Ocean as he
continued ejaculating through Kersey's clenched palm and over Danny's
tender, childish mouth.

                  "I'm sorry," a horse voice panted from amongst the
sailors.  Neff Hanson, seventeen, had lost control.  Luckily, he'd been
molested repeatedly by a favorite uncle and two of the uncle's friends, so
he was able to turn the lemon of his premature ejaculation into lemonade by
arching his back, lacing his fingers behind his neck, and cumming all over
everything.  Danny, thinking he was in paradise, sensed Christo's slowing
pulses, and opened his eyes.  Guess what he saw.  Same old same old, even
to the same-old Kersey almost instantly taking the strapping young cadet,
sphinctering him firmly and low with his thumb and forefinger, and holding
him still as a motive work of art.  Thus encouraged, the seventeen year old
added the Pacific to the Atlantic, and, from eight swollen, uncircumcised
inches, a chapter, nicely brought out, by the way, in the Semen's Club's
epic history.
                  "This hasn't happened since my first time with my gym
teacher," Neff managed to expound, and, with all the time he had, might
have been able to at least outline a story, had his voice been up to the
task.  But no, his secrets remained with him, for the time being, as Kersey
squeezed and fondled, coaxing in urgent whispers.

                  Ten times, ten hard sprays, almost a minute, the flying
heat of his first release, dominated by Kersey, finally soaking Mick's left
flank and Danny's wet belly.  For another long minute, the
seventeen-year-old boy leaned over the bench, as the young redhead coaxed,
mewed happily, and brought the older teen's flow to a gentle end.

                  Mick rolled gently off Danny and stood, kissing Christo
and the older cadet, first for an instant, each, then slowly, back and
forth, sharing what had happened in his mouth.  Danny lay back on the
bench, half glad for the breather, but mostly hoping it wouldn't last out
the minute.  Trying not to show any signs of impatience, the nine year old
copied Neff's stance, arching on the bench, hands behind his neck and legs
spread wide and wantonly.  Danny needn't have worried.  Mick's mouth was
free of sperm in half the youngest boy's sanity limit, and he returned to
the little boy, bringing him once again to his lap, facing the next cadet.

                  While Neff had cum the hardest, Olf was the largest at
nine full inches, with corresponding girth.  He was not circumcised, and
Danny panted at what it would feel like to make him look like a circumcised
adult.  The child's hand went from small to minute as it approached the
swollen Nordic teen.  Kersey held him for the young boy, and tender hands
did the rest.  They slowly peeled back the foreskin, then remained
motionless as the sailor began to cum immediately.  This time, the sperm
was guided to Mick, who rose violently to welcome the gushing penis.  Danny
used both his hands, previously described, to hold the new male hard
against Mick, intoxicated by the sight of the sperm flowing heavily from
between his fingers.  Intoxicating, like heroin, except here there would be
not search to replicate the initial high, none would be needed, for nothing
could top Danny Fielding's first steps into life's forever minefield.
Others aren't so lucky, leaving us to ponder the wisdom of a consensus
making Danny's experience more typical than exceptional.  If I say maybe we
should ask Mick Jagger, you'll know I'm kidding, and I seldom fool around
without giving all the warning in the world.

                  Speaking of which, there was a Capt. Marrayatt story in
one of the kid's reader, instantly identifiable because of his glass-smooth
entry to and exit from his story in progress.  I keep trying to get better
at it, but I guess it's the same old saw; get everyone in sight downright
hot and bothered, then trip in without even knocking.  Some say I do it for
word count, others see it as an ego issue, vengeance weapon, or bossy
preaching, you know, the know-it-all kind.  Me?  All of the above, plus, I
just think it's good manners to say howdy, from time to time; tell what's
happening down home, scoff at this or that, agonize over turning out a pair
of pants for six bucks, almost anything can happen, and, just as cement is
dependent on aggregate, so are my novels.  Dimension, texture, timbre,
character, resonance, luminosity, and vitality all come from real life,
leastwise, my life.  For example, at the moment I'm feeding thirteen, if I
count Bev twice, which would be conservative.  Supporting three households,
one of four, one of five, and my own, now, with the re-arrival of Linden,
and his girlfriend, Melissa, numbering three.

                  Also, Linden and I are in the first stages of building my
secret maritime weapon, "Fin Seco".  A fifteen foot cross between a bass
boat and another design, vastly better than the `panga' skiffs now
ubiquitous in all harbors.  My design is much cheaper, lighter, faster,
more comfortable, easier to fish and swim from, much better looking and
three times safer.  So far we're at the sketch stage, with an outline taped
on the living room floor.  Where the money will come from, I don't know,
but come it probably will.  Thus, I doff my artist's beret for the cap of a
naval architect, at least an hour or two a day.  Think of it.  What if I
become famous for revolutionizing the light boating industry, and the press
starts snooping around?  My dirty little secret runs to one million words.
(I mean, sure, there are the inevitable attempts at comic relief, but who
ever heard of a funny judge?)

                  "The Samanthian" can afford to skip an issue.  Things
have settled so calmly between us, we just hum along like oldyweds.
Everything I say demeaning and debunking sex as unnecessary and having
little to do with happiness is evident in our current relationship.  We are
sex-free, beyond making out and petting, and happy as clams.  If it took an
ounce of pressure to move her a mile, I wouldn't push her an inch.

                  This is turning into a very extensive rewrite.  Second
day back on the job, and, you guessed it, six thousand more words.
Stopping for a week was a real challenge; going back and refreshing my
memory on all the characters and situations took hours.  More commentary on
the subject, of special interest to my fellow writers, is ahead.  (I'm
updating, midstream, having already done so, downstream, so to speak.)  And
this might be a good place to deal with a tad or two of errata.  When I
said, elsewhere, I was numero uno in the Web contributor's department, I
meant for the year 2001, and possibly for this year; not overall, though
I'd venture to say I'm high on any list in that department, too.  Also,
about writing -- "taking dictation" -- like Wolfgang Amadeus, I've done
so much revising on this script, I'm in danger of perjuring myself.  I will
modify the claim by pointing out that over eighty percent stays as
originally written, and, though I've made hundreds of changes in this
document, I have not deleted a single sentence, and perhaps ten words, in
all (while adding six thousand, and counting).

                  What it all means is for the reader to determine.  I
mention it to provide reference points for other writers, because we are
always quizzed exhaustively on technique, and it does play a role.  My
secret weapon is actually my bed.  I've mentioned this elsewhere, but it's
important enough to stand repetition.  The head of the bed is six inches
higher than the foot, allowing a more upright reclining position.  I lie on
a foam pad on the left (facing the foot), with the computer and monitor at
my right waist.  The merit of this system can be stated very simply.  It
adds ten hours to my workday.  The fidgets from sitting for more than five
or six hours may be acceptable for a secretary typing routine
correspondence, but these self-same fidgets, no matter how minor, are a
chronic distraction and take the edge off the creative process.  The down
side of the system is that it's only perfect if one touch types.  If I had
to hunt and peck, I'd need a bracket to hold the keyboard at a proper angle
above my stomach.  Thanks to Mr. Richards, I can clatter away, blind.
Another thing I've found, just these last few days, is how essential RAM is
to using a word processor.  Even the slightest delay is cumulative, and, to
a fast typist, a great distraction because you find yourself waiting for
the end of a work to appear while you're beginning the next one.  With the
added RAM, the cursor responds instantly, so the lag factor, however
apparently minor, is eliminated, making for cleaner, faster transcription.

                  Neither of these are minor factors.  Comfort adds hugely
to productivity, because writing is a waiting game.  It takes me eighteen
hours to write six-thousand words.  Much of the time is spent in neutral,
simply waiting for the copy to surface like the fortunes in one of those
toy mystery balls.  This can take anywhere from a few seconds to ten
minutes, to, rarely, the best part of an hour.  If you're fidgeting in a
chair, the words may be blocked, or you may try to hurry them because
you're uncomfortable and end up using the first ones rather than the right
ones.

                  And, to try to address the subject fully, along with the
magic bed, there is a magic to do with sleep, or, more accurately, waking.
I don't know if medical science has a word for it, but there comes a point
when one is fully rested -- Hark! -- is the best one-word description
of the feeling.  This can be an elusive demon.  It can come, just as an
example, after six hours of sleep, being up for an hour, then taking a ten
minute nap.  It's like an electric switch it's so instantaneous.  One
moment, you're lying comfy and warm, and the very next instant, your bed is
a cloying nuisance.  Up you must get.  This point, whatever you call it,
is, to me, absolutely essential for starting a writing session.  Fully
rested and bright-eyed, actually excited about turning on the machine.
Once you're up and running, with this start, you can go until you're numb
with exhaustion (providing you don't fidget).  I don't do it any more, but
when I wrote "Creative Camp" (370,000) words, the sessions were often over
thirty hours without food or drink, and with pauses only for the bathroom,
and lighting off a pinch of herb and a cigarette every couple of hours,
should I remembered.  During such sessions, interruptions are not only
taken in stride, as far as I'm concerned, but, on many occasions, a break
of half an hour or so, when a friend drops over, leads to positive results
when I get back to the keyboard.

                  I can't remember if I've told the story of chopping the
onion in a published work or a draft.  Anyway, it's a short story.  I left
the keyboard to start cooking.  As I began peeling an onion, I thought of
something for the story and dashed back to my computer before it slipped
away.  Back to the onion.  Another thought.  Back to the keyboard.  Four
times.  I was laughing out loud at myself for being a lunatic who couldn't
even chop a freaking onion without zoning off on more dialogue or
narrative.  Another illustration of what it's like to be a real writer
happened while I was in the living room, waiting for a taxi.  I'd done
loads of work, already, that day and there was no reason I couldn't just
relax in my favorite chair and wait for the cab.  During the ten minutes, I
was back at the computer time and again, a word here, phrase there, perhaps
a sentence, and probably a hundred more words on the script before the horn
beeped.  (Taxi?  Did I order a taxi?)

                  As far as creative technique, I use none at all.  I never
outline or make notes of any kind.  I have no idea who is going to do or
say what until I start a session.  I have no dictionary, but will once in
awhile check the word processor's thesaurus.  I have no literary partner of
any kind, and, more's the pity, no one to proof read.  In previous
manuscripts, I'd list a few ideas at the bottom of the file, but I've even
given up this habit, so, at this point, all that appears at the end of a
document is a partial list of characters.  This has its amusing side,
because towards the end of working on "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters"
(180,000 words) most of the twenty or thirty character names meant
absolutely nothing to me.  I spent several months on "Creative Camp" and, a
year later, can't remember a single name or scene from the book.

                  Family, camera, boat, freaking awesome career.  Boggling
reader mail.  Boggling male readers.  It's a wonder I don't go all bio, all
the time, like talk on a talk radio station.  Isn't it?  Hmm.  You could be
right.  As stated in other works, the diligent writer strives to please
all, so yes, there's another essay ahead (thankfully, already written).
Meantime:

                  Olf kept cumming, wetting Danny at the waist and frothing
Mick, under Danny's tiny hands, with thick, clotted sperm rampaging after a
week and more of celibacy.  Kersey whispered to Danny, "God, babe, you are
so hot."
                  "Lot's of help," the tyke whispered back.

                  Olf finally waned, his hard pulsing subsiding to a final
seepage, then ending as he stood, braced against the wall, sweating and
shaking over Danny and Mick, the other teens supporting him at his flanks.
They eased him back and to a seat on the bench as Gerrend, the
nineteen-year-old lieutenant was eased in front of the boy and the
musician.
                  "Do you want to be his lover?" Kersey asked Danny.  The
youngster nodded enthusiastically, and the young actor guided the last of
the "Oscard's" crew within range of the child's hands, still dripping with
Olf's hot spend.  Mick sat forward, and helped guide the little boy, using
his big hands to assist the little ones in their experimentation.  The
concept of all men being created equal may be an essentially meaningless
sales tool of the leftist politician, but amongst the young Icelandic
sailors the polemic seemed to have weight.  Olf may have had half an inch
in length on his commander, but Gerrend was just that much thicker and more
heavily built.  He jutted hugely from his slim hips, probably with good
reason harder by a small degree than any of his young shipmates.  Kersey
and Mick guided Danny's little left hand to the lieutenant's base.  "You
can feel what's happening if you grip kinda hard, right here," he coached,
showing the child how to place the fingers of his left hand over the base
of the young man's thick, eight inch erection.  "Start down here," he said,
holding the little hand very low.  "Fondle very gently.  When he says he's
cumming, move up so you can feel it, and keep masturbating him with your
right hand."

                  It sure seemed like a sexy combination to Danny, and he
was sure Mick felt so, too.  Together they found this particular hold and
that particular rhythm, this grip and that stroke, and in no more than five
minutes they had the teen officer high on his toes, his bare, hairless
chest glistening with hot sweat as he braced himself, legs spread, over the
rock star and the nine year old.  Since Mick was helping Danny, Kersey wet
his finger's on the slim, panting chest, and began fondling the child,
teaching with his hand how hard the boy should grip by vivid example.  Mick
supplied the rhythm, Kersey the tension, and the officer hissed and mewed
his appreciation at the perfection of their teamwork.
                  "It would look really hot if you let him cum off on your
face," the redheaded actor suggested to the young boy, not adding the
simple truth which was that it would have been erotic if the straining
lieutenant had ejaculated in the pitch dark.

                  Danny was beginning to feel comfortable with sex.  Mick
had molested him a lot as Kersey had masturbated Constantine and the
others, and, while it was still the most exciting thing after an Indy
wreck, he was beginning to learn it was a different king of thrill, one
that did not have to end in ten or fifteen heart-stopping seconds.  Mick
helped in this, slowing the boy as they felt the beautiful blond male
striving for release.
                  "He might be able to talk," Mick whispered to Danny, "if
you want to ask him some questions."  At the moment, he wasn't, but, by
easing both the speed and tension of their four hands, their lover gained
control of daily functions and in a ragged whisper answer Danny's
questions.  To create a further distraction in the `making-it-last'
department, Olf hoisted Constantine gently on Gerrend's back.  The twelve
year old wrapped his arms around his lieutenant's neck, hissing at the
feeling of the straining, athletic body sweaty against his bare, pubescent
chest.

                  "What was it like the first time something happened with
you?" the boy asked, slowing what he and Mick were doing slightly in the
interest of gleaning an answer.


                  Nancy Schroeder reached up and gently pinched Rob
Lester's cheek.  "You are the lover of this century and the one before, and
the next one," she said, "but, in all honesty, since we are betrothed, and
very happily so, I might add, I'm not exactly sure if now is exactly the
best time, and here is exactly the best place, to begin another epic."

                  "Sorry," the handsome medical student and pilot murmured.
In the passion of the moment, he'd completely forgotten the ten year old
was enroute to her drop-dead older brother, Rick, and she'd obviously want
to be with him all through the coming night.  Additionally, she'd ended the
story of herself and her brother as they were zipping their sleeping bags
together, and it had to be obvious there was more to that story.  On the
other hand, Gerrend, as an athletic and strikingly attractive twelve year
old, had not matured under the auspices of a slut in the back seat of a
car, so there was a story there.  The still-rising sun had ducked itself
behind the fronds of a heavily laden palm tree, cooling them and sheltering
their delicate Anglo skin; they had all day to complete their flight, so
maybe in lieu of a saga, a sketch would be in order.
                  "Just let me tell some of what happened to him," he said
to Nancy, delighted when she limited him to ten-thousand words.  Generous.
It would be enough, though counting as he went might prove tricky.

                  Kersey was now sitting to the right of Danny and Mick,
using his right hand to keep the boy highly -- but not overly --
excited.  Mick, in turn, had helped the young boy find a perfect way of
using his hands to keep Gerrend simmering tensely but not boiling.


                  "It was with a group of Sea Explorers from Cape Cod," the
lieutenant began.  "I'd come in at the top of my class, plus I liked boats
and could tie a bunch of knots, and knew Morse code, so they picked me to
guide them around the island and to sail with them in their forty-foot
ketch.  The leader was twenty-four-year-old Selsen Graham."  In addition,
the "Maid of Orleans" (out of Orleans, Mass.) was crewed by six teen males,
aged fifteen to nineteen.  Jake Nickerson, a seventeen year old, had
brought Annie, his eight year old sister, as ship's mascot and she did
double duty as a beauty spot on the face of the cold, gray ocean.  It was
the third day of July when they arrived at the Crab Cove settlement, after
a six day open-sea passage from Pleasant Bay.  Gerrend Nilsen, tall,
muscular, blond, and almost thirteen, was rowed to the hovering home-built
yacht, and guided Captain Graham to a lava cove where they were able to
secure the "Maid" for and aft to the shore, safe as houses in a land where
a home can turn its occupants into soup meat at the crack of a fissure or
sneeze of a geyser.  This would not prove to be a problem during the weeks
of the Explorers' visit, but it was the Third of July, and on the morrow,
the fireworks would start.

                  They started innocently enough.  There were two Joshes in
the crew, Riggs and Carrol, and both wanted to know about the huge island's
hot springs and thermal vents.  Annie, it goes without saying, was mad to
clap her coltish legs around one of the country's famous ponies, and no one
assumed she'd wait patiently. Young Gerrend, for his part, was overjoyed to
see the collection of maritime literature shelved in every spare nook and
cranny of the visiting boat.  Seeing the light in their visitor's eyes,
Selsen explained that the Explorer's were limited to three changes of
summer clothing, one suit of foul-weather gear, and fifty paperbacks.  The
rule of the sea, as far as this vessel was concerned, seemed to be one eye
for the ship and one eye for Patrick O'Brian.  Bubbling mud and fat ponies
for paper and ink.  Who said trade is uncivilized?

                  They talked until all hours, the sailors, glad to be off
the open ocean, the twelve year old, glad to be off the lava crust of his
exotic homeland and aboard a floating library.  At eleven, their young
captain read a chapter from W. Clark Russell's "The Wreck of the
`Grovesnor', and shortly thereafter all curled up on bunks and decks in
their sleeping bags, leaving the clock to chime in the new day unheralded.
It was now the Fourth of July.

                  "You're very handsome," Annie said back over her right
shoulder.  Gerrend smiled shyly at the girl.  "Thanks," he said, "you're
nice, too."  They were riding double aboard Sparkle, bareback, and leading
a train of ponies up a long, volcanic valley.
                  "Do you have a girlfriend?" the girl asked.  She was a
school-girl looking kid, page-boy brown hair falling in a neat bang toward
big brown eyes, slim, and even at her tender age, with legs that seemed to
go on forever.
                  "Kind of not, most of the time," Gerrend replied.  "Do
you have a boyfriend?" he asked back.
                  "A whole secret world," Annie said, flashing an enigmatic
smile back at the boy mounted behind her.
                  "How secret?" the twelve year old asked.

                  "The jailbait warbles to the jailbird," the child
replied, "though the bird doesn't know it, `till the world finds out, and
that's what they call Showtime.  So, not being jailbait is my ten-year,
eight to eighteen, challenge.  Two things are on the list: not getting
anyone in trouble, and not being left out."
                  "Then Iceland was your idea," Gerrend observed.
                  "Where would take five teens, a young captain, and a
brother to die for?" Annie asked.
                  "I'd probably have made it all the way to Greenland," the
boy quipped.  The girl giggled, shaking gently between his arms.

                  "Not if you'd seen the picture we saw on your
application," Annie said, "that took every other place on earth off the
list.  I mean, sure, I love Sparkle and the other horses, but they were
just expedient and I don't think they fooled anybody."
                  "How about the boiling mud holes?" the boy asked.
                  "I suppose there's no fool like an `ole fool," Annie
prattled in a British accent, sighing comically.
                  "To a vice commander, aged eight years, everybody must be
a little bit `ole," Gerrend intoned.
                  "That is an ole one," the girl countered.
                  "As long as it's not the same ole, same ole," the young
guide said.

                  They rode then in silence up the vast valley, tundra
sweeping to the mountains flanking the ancient man-and-animal trail, the
way mottled green as clouds drew their purple shadows through the silver
light and toward the sea.  Tendrils of steam accented the lava slopes with
fox tails of sky-pilot white, climbing as jet plumes, then blowing in the
wind: not very old in this factory-fresh land, and certainly not the same.

                  The ponies broke between an alert walk and mile-eating
trot, seeming more eager as they climbed the long slope (probably thinking
of the downgrade on the return) toward the broken ledges and outcroppings
of the foothills.  The "Maid" was reduced to the size of an ant on the
glaring water, barely visible tucked into her secret little cove.  The
town, in its humble entirety, had been reduced to the size of a sugar lump.
The wastelands were as forbidding as they were treeless, as bald as they
were grand, craggy as an old, old face, wrinkled as a crying baby's brow, a
land of no options but to come, to picnic, to play, and to leave in time.

                  "Do you know the story, `The Most Dangerous Game'?"
Gerrend asked the pretty schoolgirl .
                  "Where they hunt a man on an island," Annie replied
                  "That wouldn't work here, owing to the size of the
place," the boy responded in a fine display of understatement, "but we've
come up with a variation that is suitable."
                  "Tell me," the girl said.
                  "It's called Steady Eddy," the young guide explained, "a
thermal fissure that's as fixed as a municipal fountain.  It shoots steam
and boiling water about fifty feet in the air."
                  "Now I know why the boys wanted to come," the foxy
critter said.
                  "Every five minutes," Gerrend added.
                  "See, I was right," the girl giggled, again shaking
deliciously in the arms of her young guide.
                  "'Round the clock," the boy observed.

                  "The only thing that lasts like that is love," the girl
replied, nestling her pretty head against the athletic boy's chest, then
realizing she'd let the subject at hand slip from the agenda.  "What's so
dangerous about Steady Eddy?" she asked.
                  "If it was dangerous, we wouldn't go within a hundred
yards of it," the boy said, "but it's always exactly the same, since days
of old.  Doesn't play any tricks.  So, the game is to see how close to the
center pool you can carry a rock."

                  "Why not carry lobsters?" the bright-eyes asked.  This
time it was Gerrend who shook, his efforts to cope maturely with the girl's
inanity only compounding his hiccupping gasps.  She might not know much
about cooking, but she was right as rain when it came to the love thing.

                  The ponies moseyed along, Gerrend reining Sparkle up a
long draw, sans seafood but with enough of a mermaid to compensate for any
lack of shellfish.

                  "How secret are your boyfriends?" he asked.
                  "The whole crew knows him," the girl replied, "because
there is only one.  I don't behave very well with Jake, Selsen, and the
other boys, but I don't love them.  We're buddies, we just wrestle a little
differently."
                  "Does stuff happen a lot?" the boy asked.
                  "Just one kind of thing," the eight year old replied.
                  "Do you like it?" the guide quizzed.

                  "It's really special with Jake," Annie said, "because
we've always been close and I've had a crush on him for a year.  The other
four, the two Joshes, Vic, and Kaffy Smith, are killer friends, but I don't
date them in any sense of the word.  I've been the farthest with Jake, with
the others, it's every little girl's fantasy tea party; when we're
swimming, or in the locker room where we play tennis, with my brother
always there, and strict rules about what can happen.  With you, there will
be no rules."

                  "I was kind of hoping I was the boyfriend," the happy
child admitted.
                  "If I could fall in love with a picture of you, think how
I feel now," the girl said.
                  "I can just imagine," Gerrend responded.

                  That made her happy.  They rode on, now to the periodic
blast of a geyser as yet out of view.  "Do you really play that crazy
game?" Annie wanted to know.
                  "It's harmless," the young guide replied, "but, at the
same time, it does challenge."
                  "Does someone like hold a record?" the girl asked.
                  "It's not that precise," the older boy replied.  "It
depends on the wind and other weather conditions.  Some days almost
everyone can get within twenty feet, then the wind changes and ten seconds
later no one can get within fifty feet.  It's like a game on a blackboard,
erased at the end for a new game.
                  "Tick, tack, hole," the girl said, "no winners."

                  "Heavens," the boy replied, "this place is much to small
and isolated for winners.  Doing your best under a wide variety of
circumstances is considered plenty.  Since we have no winners, it stands to
reason we have no losers, which is a good thing because the land is a
little forbidding to support many."
                  "Are you going to stay?" Annie asked.  From her young
friend's application, the girl knew he'd been in Crab Cove for three years
with his writer father and artist mother.
                  "Not unless you do," said the gallant young male.  This
response turned Annie's head half like a parrot.  "What does that mean?"
she asked.
                  "We're ready for a change, all three of us, so it's up to
me, this time, since Mom got the Caribbean for three years, and Dad chose
here."
                  "So, where then?" the girls asked.

                  "Where do you think?" the boy rejoined.  "Artists.  An
underage inamorata headed for unsurvivable beauty.  Count them each as a
two, and see if you get four when you add them."
                  The girl thought for a minute, biting her lip, though
Gerrend didn't see it.  Quickly she brightened and turned once again over
her shoulder.  "Provincetown," she quoth.
                  "I told Dad if I like you, because I fell in love with
your picture, too, he could get a Porsche to drive me back and forth to
Orleans.  We're a voting family, so my opinion counts."
                  "For sure and for certain, you know how to flatter a
girl," Annie said, half taken aback "
                  "Besides," the boy said, imitating Rusty in `National
Lampoon's Vacation', "I'm glad we're not going to Hawaii."

                  "The Cape's ten times better," Annie said, "Nauset is the
mother of all beaches with big tide pools and inner waterways, clams in the
sand, shark eggs and sand dollars; alive, and with perfect waves to pound
you up but not rip you up.  You can stand in the surf and let them crash
down on you.  It's way cool."
                  "So I've heard," the boy said.

                  "That just makes getting out as big a thrill is going
in," the girl went on, "besides, the water is cold in L.A., too, and gray,
and everything's covered with slimy gray algae, but they never show you
that in the movies.  The beaches are made of trucked-in sand, it's usually
cloudy, windy, and almost cold, and just not the same thing as the crystal
clean Atlantic water and endless miles of natural sand, plus the tidal
areas."
                  "It must be something in the winter," the boy said.
                  "You can't stand on the beach in a Nor'easter and not
half cry for all those who sailed in such conditions.  The west coast is
never like that, the sea in a blizzard, until you get up into Canada, then
it's all rocks and cliffs and foam, dramatic in a post card, but boring in
real life."
                  "It's like that with the people, too," Gerrend said,
"shallow and monotonous, versus intricate and interesting, west and east."
                  "With Branson in the middle," the pixie observed.  They
sighed in unison and rode on, feeling if artificial everything needed a
home, best keep it in the middle of nowhere.

                  Around a final bend and over a last ridge, and the party
arrived.  The geyser was just finishing its three minute boil over, spewing
forth like a city hydrant, only with as much steam as water.  There was an
iron railing for the horses, and some minor cement work had been done to
improve footing in the area.  Gerrend slipped from Sparkle and gathered the
reins of the other ponies as their riders dismounted.  The train included
two pack animals, and these were stripped along with the saddles worn by
most of the beasts.  Housekeeping, thanks to trestle tables and a generous
lean-to, took scant minutes.  Numerous overnight trips on the "Maid of
Orleans" had turned its crew into focused homebodies, so recovering from
the long ride up the valley was accomplished efficiently.  The sun wouldn't
set for weeks at this latitude, so everyone relaxed, glad the ponies would
have a good rest before the return trek.  The geyser thundered, then left
them in peace at an interval that soon became half hypnotic.  They were
alone at the site, and a look back down the valley just before they'd made
the final turn was proof there'd be no other visitors for many hours.  All
in all, it was half as out of the way as the poles, barren yet grand, mossy
to a fault, and thoroughly exotic.  Selsen produced two bottles of altitude
medicine, a rum-tasting brew thought to ensure the sailor's return to the
sea, and consumed in accordance with the height the mariner found himself
above his true home.  The captain, wise beyond his twenty-four years,
believed in a jolt now and again for his beached crew; nothing was a
greater microscope for detecting flaws and defects that could endanger a
vessel, or more revealing of personal traits likely to end up as stress
points on a voyage.  The geyser was practically a holy grail for the
captain's approach, representing, as it did, both frivolity and danger.
Sober, it would be hard to tell his crew members apart, but with three or
four ounces of alcohol any foolery would show, and the lesser bold would
probably keep such as simpled themselves out of serious trouble, for the
time being.  So, it was bottoms up, all around, with Annie allowed a single
modest tug at the fiery bottle.  For half an hour, the seven visitors
challenged the steam vent.  A foul was declared on the young miss because
heat rises and she was kind of low to the ground, compared to the other
contestants.

                  "I'll ride on Jake's shoulders, and still beat
everybody," the girl swore, but Jake backed out immediately, so the matter
was left unresolved.  As Gerrend had predicted, the breeze tended to swirl
and eddy from time to time, so no winner could be chosen, though the young
guide, banking on a number of visits, got his stone within a respectable
fifteen feet.  Selsen observed his crew with satisfaction; everyone set out
with their all, and all penetrated solidly into the scalding steam before
succumbing and retreating from the kitchen.

                  Game over.  A nervous hush fell over the assemblage.  By
accord, they accepted the picnic area as family ground, and followed their
guide on foot into a ravine well removed from the campsite, for all the
world like Druids enroute to a conclave.  The times don't change as much as
we may think, and, though they had no sacrificial offerings for faggoty,
uptight gods, it can yet be said that the seven were about a brand of
worship.  It was the Fourth, the good-old American Fourth of July, and,
primitives that they had become for the day, they boasted no store-bought
fireworks, but, rather, were intent on making their own.

                  Gerrend and Annie walked hand in hand.  Jake, a pale,
lanky seventeen year old with black hair and rough complexion followed, and
then came captain and crew.  Annie navigated, once her guide had shown her
the general direction, and in a quarter of an hour she'd discovered a mossy
outcropping in an alcove off the ravine, so sized and shaped as to serve as
bench and bed.

                  They were all dressed the same, their guest in an
honorary uniform.  White shirts, khaki shorts.  At Jake's direction, Annie
became one of the boys, stripping out of her blouse as the males removed
their shirts.
                  Druid-like, they gathered garlands, spelling `Annie' in
petals and tiny artic buds.  Jake commanded, and even the young captain
-- and it takes more of a captain to navigate a ship-so-small than a
supertanker -- complied happily.  The liquor was now in full effect so
everyone participated as happily as they would have, sober.  Sober?  You've
got to be kidding.  Gerrend could hardly peel his eyes from his beautiful
doll.  Such to-do and ceremony for her first time bode well for their being
significant to each other, forever, however the winds and breezes of fate
and chance might blow, and for however long forever might be.  It was
pretty hard to imagine the girl picking up the phone, ten years hence, and
saying, "Oh, yes, I remember.  Well, that was just kids' stuff."  Nah.

                  Jake stepped out of his sandals and stripped to his
briefs.  Kneeling in front of his sister, he brought Gerrend's hands to the
child's belt, then held the slim, male body gently as the twelve year old
fumbled nervously with the buckle.
                  "What I'm doing to you is homosexual," the older boy
whispered, "and if it makes you uncomfortable, just say so."
                  "Do you molest your sister the same way?" Gerrend
whispered loud enough for the -- closely gathered -- sea scouts to
hear.
                  "Yes," the teen replied, his whisper also lacking
intimacy.
                  "Then it's good enough for me," the boy replied.
                  "What's amazing is you're good enough for her," the older
boy went on, "I didn't think that would ever happen, not that eight is too
late, but I could tell she'd be hard to place when she was six."
                  "We're probably not the first couple to fall in love over
lobsters," the boy noted.
                  "A lot of men in P'town like to do this with young
males," Jake said, "and some of them are cute enough to pull it off, so
there's another reason to chose it."
                  "I'll be there with balls on," Gerrend said, apparently
having a world of difficulty with the simple buckle, seemingly caused by
said article's proximity to the milk white childish belly.  His fingers
played and delayed as Jake molested him more openly.  Annie giggled at her
lover's naughty word, and well she might remember it, for she would hear no
more.  It takes a lot to trip a Victorian out of his or her prudish ways,
dignity and love going so hand-in-hand.

                  "Do you want to watch me with my little sister?" the
gentle, friendly, scholarly, athletic first among perverts asked.
                  "Yes," Gerrend said, his heart rate soaring as if he were
dashing, madly, his breath deteriorating to a ragged panting.
                  "If you lose control," Jake said, gently leaving the boy
for the bare-chested little girl, "try to warn us, so she can at least
watch, and don't be embarrassed; it happened to me our first three times in
the shower."
                  "Before we could get the water off," Annie explained, "so
I didn't really know what was happening."
                  "So you thought he was being bad, but you didn't know how
bad?" Gerrend assumed.
                  "Not until it happened on my bed, all warm and dry," the
girl said, "then I found out everything wicked in the whole world."
                  "The early setting of parameters is useful in the
development of a child," Jake further explained, "so it would have been
cheating to offer her less."
                  "As if you could have," Annie rejoined, "offered me less.
The first three times were accidents as much because of my overeagerness as
your inexperience."
                  "Getting back to the subject at hand," Jake said, "just
try to tell us if you feel you're going to cum -- sometimes it's hard to
tell -- and you won't be the first one if you don't get it exactly
right."

                  Jake seated himself on the mossy ledge, his sister's back
to his bare teen chest.  His hands moved slowly over her bare skin as she
lolled her head against the base of his neck.  Gerrend stood close to the
couple, leaving room for three on each side.  They watched for long
minutes, excited by having out in the open what usually occurred burrowed
in sleeping bags in the forecastle, while the cute tyke was cuddled gently
in Jake's strong arms.  Each of the scouts had ejaculated repeatedly on the
naked belly and chest of the eight year old, but none had seen more than a
dim glimpse of her, if that, excepting her seventeen-year-old brother.  In
addition to the carnality of her slim, childish body, they'd had three
rough final days into Iceland, so celibacy had been the order of each day
for the cold, seasick crew, the forecastle, once a dream bower for the hot
sailing lads, now a pitching, noisy nightmare.  The result was bulges in
each pair of uniform shorts so huge that wearing them a major
embarrassment.

                  Since his first mate was a child molester -- aha, that
alcohol -- Captain Graham too command of the remnant of the crew, and
practically ordered them to strip by using the tried-and-true, follow-me
technique of leadership.  As the eldest, by five years, he was the most
maturely developed, seven inches, uncircumcised, thickly set to the point
he looked almost abnormal, jutting from his slim, boyish waist.  The two
Joshes were first to follow, then fifteen year olds, Vic, and Kaffy Smith.

                  (This leaves one missing, reminding us that the sea is a
perilous place, but don't worry, by the time you've finished this little
novel, you will have forgotten young what's-his-name, and even your own
name, what a shame, too, `cause that's what I do to you, with this tool,
fool.  Come on, I'm just playing, I wrote a rap today, and my fingers liked
the exercise.  You'll come across it later.)

                  It was hard to tell whose eyes were hotter.  Annie had
cuddled each of the boys against her, and, her small hands helped by her
gentle brother, wetted herself with their cum, but she'd hardly seen them
since the last tennis match of last season, as they'd scarcely seen her
developing young body.  That was then, this was now.  The girl's nipples
were real buds, and probably would have been notable even if her big
brother had not been doing a lingering, sensitive job of thoroughly
molesting her.  With his fondling, they stood hard, pink, and stark from
her now sweating, panting young chest.
                  Gerrend watched, center of the seven, the incest he could
touch if he wished, bulging his shorts as much as the now-naked teens had
bulged.  He'd stand up well to them, for his age, very well, indeed.  Not
something he wanted to wait to do.  Could wait to do.  Annie read this in
his face, and coaxed her brother forward so she could reach her young
partner.  Where his fingers had labored, ultimately unsuccessfully, with
her buckle, she, experienced, and more positive of the various facets of
what she wanted, was deliberate, and in seconds the boy's shorts fell to
his bare feet.  Sensing the boy would now need all the support he could
get, the scouts moved close to him, several arms joining to steady him as
Jake's little sister slid her tiny hands into the band of his underpants
and drew them to his ankles.  Well braced, he stepped free of the briefs
and spread his legs widely, arching to the rear and linking his fingers
behind his long, slim neck.  Annie hissed approval of her select young
stallion, and the scouts, captain on down, concurred with avid stares,
panting whispers, and grouping fingers.

                  Remembering her first shower experiences with her
strapping young teen brother, Annie was responsive to the sensitivities of
the twelve-year-old boy.  But nothing is more erotic than reticence, and,
try as she might to be restrained, Gerrend shivered for long minutes on the
verge of cumming off.  Yes, it was a case of un-dammed if you do, un-dammed
if you don't, but, perhaps a little damned by her, he held the last half
gram of control, no matter her languid lassitude in hardly touching him.
What didn't help was constantly picturing what brother and sister would
have looked like in that first shower, together.  Would he have stood shyly
against the tile wall, almost needing to be persuaded, or would she have
been the shy one, insisting on the innocence of hair washing, then become
numb with the beating of the hot water and the strong fingers of the
striking boy creeping from her neck to her slim shoulders, and down?

                  Had he taken her mostly from the back, bending over her
naked young body, to do his and her will as he would?  At times, he must
have wanted to feel her breasts against him, close, hot, and intimate.  And
was there more?  Had she stood at his right hip, her little left arm around
his thighs, and played long, sensitive games of shower buddy with him?  Or
had it happened quickly and shamefully with them, sin washed by the beating
spray before it could even be seen?

                  Gerrend's efforts at self control were as noble and
valiant as could be expected of a male twice his age, but it was
frustrating.  Thinking of Annie and Jake showering hardly seemed the place
to go, due to the erotic nature of the thoughts, but any image or fantasy
he could conjure was nothing compared to, a, what was already happening,
two feet in front of him, and, b, what was about to happen, and would
happen, more or less ceaselessly, far into the future.  So, the shower it
was.

                  Everyone was comfortable, steady, and braced.  Jake took
long minutes with the adoring girl in his arms, and her eyes never left
Gerrend's, except for frequent trips down to where he jutted half like a
bear from his childish, white waist.  Slowly the scouts formed around the
brother, and, as he continued his incest, raised from the moss, stripped
him naked, and seated him again, his penis now standing high between the
thighs of the little girl in her cute uniform shorts.  Acting on raw
instinct, Gerrend eased to the siblings, hands still behind his neck, and
thrust slowly closer.  Annie stared wide-eyed at what the males were about
to do with each other, Jake displaying his welcome by copying the younger
boy's display.  The naked teen scouts helped in guiding them the last
inches, then the young boy, purple, wet, and vastly swollen touched the
raging six inches of the senior teenager.  For a long minute the two males
experimented with their intimate touch, knowing at some future time they'd
find a private place so they could whisper together as they came to know
each other.

                  The overt display of homosexuality broke any phobic
barriers which might have existed, and in minutes the scouts started
becoming active, finding and testing each other, closer than they'd ever
dreamed of being.

                  The arching males continued, and Annie, under any other
circumstances, would have giggled at the free horsey ride she was getting
from her brother as he rose and fell, hands behind his neck, against the
twelve year old between his long, widely spread, athletic legs.  Feeling no
danger, the young girl still sought the comfort of more contact with her
big brother, so she, too, laced her fingers behind Jake's neck, arching
wantonly at the sight of Gerrend, so close.

                  Well enough for foreplay, but both principal males were
beginning to hurt all over from the extreme tensions building in their
juvenile loins.

                  Annie, bless her heart, recognized her brother's
beginning agony, and, assuming it for Gerrend, too, became the girl she
seemed to have been born to be.

                  "This is what we do on his bed," she said, reclaiming her
pretty little hands and leaning forward, pausing for a moment, temporarily
nonplussed by the double body-slam of two big, hot boners, drooling
tendrils of seminal fluid as they touched, rubbed and stroked each other.
But she was a gamin lass, boyish, two snakes would be better than one in
her terrarium, so, staring avidly, she reached for the familiar and beloved
penis of her strapping brother.  That got horsey's attention, but, soul
that he was, the boy refrained from bucking the pixie to the ground.

                  Gerrend?  He stayed where he was.  As Annie's tiny right
hand found her brother's purple glans, and she began tentatively to
masturbate him, the younger boy lost his shower images of the brother and
sister to the physical sensation of her tiny knuckles massaging the most
sensitive spot on his body.  How Jake could stand her firm, wet grip, the
plunge and pump of that little right hand, as the left found him down very
low, was beyond comprehension.  Even the brother realized he was showing
off a bit, calling on character and restraint he'd have bet a lung he
didn't have, displaying to the girl's lover maybe even a little in jealousy
over what the younger male would share with the beloved wriggling just a
little in his lap as she settled down, her will neither to be denied nor
much delayed.
                  "Have you ever seen a mature boy cum?" Josh Riggs, at
Gerrend's left shoulder, whispered.
                  "No," the twelve year old whispered, surprised at hearing
a voice he thought had been stolen by the stroking little fist of the
devil's very delight.
                  "You have to be in the mood," the fifteen year old from
Massachusetts advised, "then it's really sexy."
                  Gerrend nodded to his new friend, dumbly.  The teen
certainly seemed to know what he was talking about, but, as a practical
matter, it really didn't bear talking about, or even the slightest thought.
Jake was now arching half out of control, his sister's slim legs, heels
down, a sinewy caliper on his sweating, heaving flanks as she jerked him
off, and any image of what must soon happen would drop the clock from the
mantel to the marble floor.  What had they done together during that first
shower?  What secret had washed to the gurgling drain?  What had the virgin
missed, apparently by a vague error in timing?  What if, in her haste,
she'd turned off only the hot water?  That was better.  Cold water.  The
four a.m. to eight a.m. watch, cursing the books that had taken the place
of a big, fluffy vest.  Artic spray.  Frigid even in July.  Icy.  Polar.
Hot.  Tropic.  Spray.
                  It was so exciting the boy lost is erection in five
heartbeats.  Stroked beautifully by the experienced eight year old, the
teen shot a long, fast jet of sperm three feet high.
                  "Oh, Jake," the girl whispered, "show him everything."
                  So expert was the girl's hold, her male's flying cum
arched and splashed back down on her determined shoulders.  Nor was the
pixie greedy As she felt her big brother turn to iron for his second
release, she held him against her young lover, letting the big animal's
sperm gush over the quaking boy's penis, belly and chest.  The threesome
might not have known how to behave, but they had the bonding thing down.

                  Annie took her brother's third huge cum all over her bare
chest, then leaned to him, his glans tucked in against her slender throat,
as his hard pulses flowed down over her chest and belly, gradually
subsiding to a thick, clotting flow of syrupy white.

                  Where before he'd been in too dazed a state to
successfully tamper with Annie's belt, Gerrend now found strength and
inspiration, and, faster than it can be told, he had his little wife down
to her yellow panties, and nothing else.  Since Jake had only seen her
naked in the shower, slipping her into her underwear as he dried her, each
time, Gerrend knew he was captain of a moment.  He let them look as he
looked, himself, fantasizing, sure in his developing mind, the scouts were
fantasizing, too.  But pain is a great stimulus, so it wasn't two minutes
before the boy kneeled before the girl, and, at her nod, pulled her panties
down and over her tiny feet.

                  Immediately her ankles were free, the child lay back to
her brother and spread her legs to his strong hands, which he used to help.
Again, Gerrend earned his scouting stripes by backing away to let the boys
look.  Then the strangling sensation radiating from the base of his spine
overcame anything to do with manners, and he approached him and her.  He
guided him.  He found her.  The scouts found them, holding him so he could
stare into her eyes and rely on them as guiding beacons, while Jake half
protected his sister, and half milked and coaxed the child's circumcised,
wood-hard penis deeper into the body of his lovely little sister.
                  "It may sting," he whispered, sensing Gerrend against her
hymen, and, before the news registered, he plunged her to him with a hard
thrust of his hips.  The scouts gasped as one at the blood sign of the
truth and success of the mounting.  Annie hiccupped through her tears, her
tiny hands going to Gerrend's heaving chest, stroking him in welcome.
                  Jake no longer protected his sister, moving his hands to
the boy's waist, neither restraining nor urging.  Looking down into Annie's
eyes, Gerrend saw the tears clear, the beacons glow.  He took her then,
gently and fully, bother her hands and her brother's stroking him gently
forward, sharing his tender initial thrusts, his developing rhythm.
                  Still holding the boy in position over the girl in Jake's
lap, the two Joshes were eased in close.  Willing hands helped them between
the female's widely spread thighs, and the hips of her young mount.  The
other scouts positioned themselves on the mossy ledge to get a perfect view
down between the straining young bodies.  When Josh Riggs began
ejaculating, Selsen, who had majority control of the straining twelve year
old, eased him higher off Annie, so all could see plainly what was
happening between the sweating young bodies.  The first Josh sprayed hard
against the second fifteen year old's penis, starting the second boy's
ejaculation, immediately.  For long moments, the two young teens wildly wet
the child where her brother had, puddling their hot seed on her belly and
thighs, surrounding the pre-teen's gently surging penis with thick, white
sailor sperm.
                  Gerrend had reached so far past his limit it was like a
memory from diaper days.  He could move not one single additional inch
inside the hot, tight welcome of the beautiful child.  He moved with great
finality to her.  Jake sensed his need and pulled him forward with his
powerful, athlete's arms.  It had been so, so close he'd always remember
the distance of having a practical value of nil; but, scout that he was, he
held, Annie's hot eyes glowing into his, extravagant reward for the supreme
effort.

                  Vic and Kaffy Smith, seventeen and eighteen, took the
place of the two young Joshes, gasping at the hot slickness of the rubbery
flesh left wet by the retreating young males.  For both, the slow push
between the body of the pre-teen and the eight-year-old girl was more than
enough, and again, all eyes fastened hotly on the bellies of the coupled
children.  Gerrend maintained his iron stillness, but gasped and mewed at
the sight of two additional long, heavy ejaculations covering his little
wife and his own sweating thighs.

                  Annie sensed it firs.  "Jake, hold my hands," she
whispered very softly.  The tall teenager left Gerrend's frozen, shuddering
hips, and his little sister grabbed his thumbs, her wanton shaking and
panting a clear signal of how much she knew about young males.
                  It was Selsen's time with the young couple.  Still the
mainstay in positioning the boy over the girl, he slowly squatted, found
the way between their bodies, and thrust gently through the sperm-slick
flesh until he was standing out big and hard between the young bellies.  If
the males had been connected by an optical port, they couldn't have shared
more fully.  The young captain plainly felt the dramatically rising tension
in the youngest scout.  All the boy needed now was the tiniest additional
stimulus, and a frenzy would ensue.  The child's head was hanging, his eyes
slashing between the girl's eyes and her thickly slimed and clotted young
stomach.  This gave Selsen his idea.  He started cumming, just as hot and
fast as any of his teen charges.  His first sperm sizzled across the pretty
school-girl face of the wide-eyed eight year old, and, shocked by what he'd
just done, he lost control completely, cumming hard on the boy's face, then
the girl's neck and shoulders, then the boy's arched and heaving chest.  It
was, this time, enough.
                  "Oh, Jake," the girl said.
                  "He's cumming inside her," the captain, in the best
position to know for sure, and be able to speak coherently, said.
                  There was a naked-boy group hug, all bracing quickly and
silently against Gerrend, all quickly stilling in order to sense the boy's
jolting orgasm.  Probably could have felt it in a disco, a hard, sensuous
throbbing; lightning bolts with trembling thunder racking the straining
child and cracking his voice to an inarticulate garble as he hissed and
grunted, his lost eyes saying as much to the pretty little girl as the
remnants of his useless voice.
                  Her knuckles were white as she gripped her brother, her
legs, after long moments still, so she could feel more perfectly what was
happening, now wrapped the boy's shaking thighs.  Her brother brought her
hands to her boy, and together they hugged him and fondled his straining
flanks.  Finally, Jake left his sister and by accord, the scouts backed
away.  Annie's arms, alone, held him; her body, alone, sensed his final
acts with her; her voice, alone, coaxed him slowly back to breathing life.

                  "Jake," he whispered as soon as he was able.  The older
teen sensed the urgency in the boy's single word, and showered him with
gold stars.  Annie hadn't cum.  Gerrend followed his word with deliberate
action, kissing his girl gently on the forehead, and slowly bringing her
her brother, guiding him, and half lying across the little girl's heaving
chest as Jake mounted fully in a single measured, deliberate stroke that
brought grunts and groans from each male teen.
                  "Oh, Ger," the girl mewed in joyous thanksgiving as her
brother quickly mastered her, setting a hard, fast lover's rhythm from his
first aching penetration of the hot, tight, and extremely wet female child.
                  "Can you feel his sperm?" the girl asked.
                  "Yes," Jake grunted, now taking her fast and hard.
                  "I want him to cum in my mouth, will you let him?" the
girl quizzed, breathlessly.
                  "Yes," Jake said.
                  "Then you can," she promised.  It was the last one she'd
make for awhile.  Again, "Gerrend", but this time it was a choked screech.
None of the boys had ever watched a female climax, and the sight of the
lithe little body flailing, writhing, and bucking wildly smashed
post-coital lethargy like a telephone pole through the hull.  The scouts
began masturbating, not even taking the time to find one another, and
cumming off, instantly.  This was lost, for the moment, on the eight year
old.  Her eyes vanished, her whole body, seized against Jake, then
released, only to screech back to him, nails digging, ankles pounding,
again and again.  For a moment, it seemed to wane, she began to live again,
then Jake whispered softly in her ear, and her brother's first spray deep
within her set here wildly on fire, all over.

                  They reversed positions, Gerrend now holding his young
bride in his lap, their legs hanging over the ledge as they partially
reclined.  Starting with the youngest Josh, each boy approached, Gerrend
guided each, and each stood close to her between her young legs for several
minutes, before leaning to kiss her forehead, and then making room for his
shipmate.  Selsen made her cum gently in her young lover's arms, and then
it was over, and suddenly they were a full year from the Fourth of July.

                  "You write with a chainsaw and finish with an emery
board," Mick Jagger said to the young lieutenant.  Of course, he hadn't
been writing in the literal sense, but the review was flattering,
nonetheless.  I'd add to the commentary and expound at length on yet
another virtuoso performance, but we've got another essay coming up.  (By
the way, Gerrend's story ran about seven thousand words.)


                  Thought it might be awhile before we renewed our vows
what with a RAM stick failure emulating a dead hard drive, but no, sixty
bucks and not only are we up and running once again, but with 196 meg of
RAM which does crisp things up a bit.  Five days off due to the repair shop
being jammed up; first break in two years.  You get to a point in this
craft where the addiction level becomes palpable; where not working is
harder than any eighteen-hour day.

                  So, what's new?  Five dogs moved in with Daisy and gang,
adding to the existing zoo of five house lions.  Daisy seems to be taking
full advantage of my extreme generosity by getting to the bar earlier and
staying longer, leaving me with the kids for ten-hour stretches at her
druthers.  This morning she pitched a fit about Linden mistreating Tonton,
bringing up an interesting point of semantics.  When is a machete not a
machete?  The reason for the question is that, according to Daisy, Linden
held a machete to Tonton's throat.  The weapon in question is as dull as
the back of a kitchen knife; it couldn't slice an apple without squashing
it, so is it a machete, or weapon, in the first place?  Tonton provoked the
incident by telling Linden to get off his land which shows the kid has guts
even if his brain's asleep.  Anyway, Daisy raved on about the mistreatment
of her precious boy (wonder where mom was?) and said she's leaving.
Another abject lesson in the fallacies of liberalism -- the notion you
can help anyone.  Other than providing food, lodging and the like, you
can't.  The government can't.  It can't be done, and on that subject I'm a
world-class expert.  Over the years I've continually questioned my modus
operendi; wouldn't it have been better, for example, to spend my family
windfall on a new Jaguar?  The answer to the question, for most of you, is
yes; provide the high-end jobs, which means less people ending up like
Daisy.  Writer's must needs march to a different drummer.  It does us no
good to hear from this source and that wise old head that aiding the
peasant-class poor is both useless and hopeless; the whole point is to try
to find some way it can be done; some combination of money, time, guidance,
friendship, tolerance, potty language, and grace that gets a problematic
soul from point A at least half-way to point B.  The futility of trying
can't be taught, it has to be learned, and I'm just lucky that the terrific
financial sacrifice as well as large doses of time and energy expended end
up here, and if it means I'm paying to write, instead of being paid, that's
how the cookie crumbles.

                  I took Queenie to the Solid Rock Academy yesterday, as
she doesn't like her present school.  They gave her an admissions test.
One of the questions was How many feet in a mile?  Her answer was "eight".
She scored twenty percent, which, on a four-choice multiple choice test is
not very good.  Anyhow, they accepted her -- my theory is for the class
picture.  She sure is one totally nice girl with the most wonderful lilting
contralto voice.  All Daisy's gang have beautiful voices, even the local
teens comment on Tonton's, and wonderful enunciation, with that perfect
blend of British and Caribbean accents that is half the reason one might
choose to live in the tropics.

                  The police.  Ah, yes, they showed up, and I can't say
`finally' because it was the second day all four were meant to be attending
school from here.  Nice young officer, after Tonton, who, the first day,
circled home and hid under my wall until lunch time; tried it the next day,
when I caught him, then along came the Babylon, local name for the cops.
So, it was off to town, where we were headed, anyway, to buy uniforms,
sneakers, backpack, underwear and the whole nine yards.  Not a pleasant
experience, because the pants cost six US dollars, and the shirts another
six.  How long does it take to cut and assemble a pair of kid's pants?
There's the zipper, the pockets, the belt loops, and the shirts have all
those buttons.  So how can the material, the intricate and fussy labor, the
shipping, and the retailer's markup possibly come to six dollars?  (And I
thought writing for Nifty paid badly.)

                  Age and sexuality.  Another first-hand experience this
afternoon.  Samantha brought Rhageedha's little sister over.  She's four,
almost five.  In my fifty-six years, for positive and for sure, I've never,
but never seen a girl so hot-to-trot, as the crudity goes, as this
particular Miss.  Zounds and jehosaphat, the tyke was doing bumps and
grinds with little uncertainty as Samantha and I gazed on and made no
secret of being avid to share anything resembling a kiss I might have in
mind for my, and I have to laugh when I write this, old lady.  As with
Winzie, the three year old, I know that child and I could shack up, happy
as clams, and anyone who disagrees is stupid enough to make Bevis and
Butthead look like Einstein and Oppenheimer, by comparison.

                  It was interesting trying to gauge Samantha's reaction to
(I don't remember her name)'s joining in, or, more precisely, leading our
usual head-butting routine that precedes a kiss, and all-but leading the
kiss, itself.  Samantha certainly seemed tolerant, perhaps vaguely amused,
and she left pushing the little girl gently away up to me.  What would she
have done if I'd pulled, instead of pushed?  I can't imagine her having the
slightest objection to having the tyke in bed with us, when and if the time
comes, and my guess is the same goes for Rhageedha.  Samantha gets along
wonderfully with Queenie, and display's such a level of trust (or
indifference) in leaving us along together, I wouldn't have the heart (or
gall) to cheat, even assuming Queenie might want to, which, fortunately for
my sanity, she doesn't.  As open-minded as I am about Free Spirit
lifestyles, it's nice to have a pretty young girlfriend I can take as a
daughter, as most people accept the relationship.  Too bad, in a way,
because thirteen would nicely fill out a foursome of five, seven, and
fifteen.  (My kind of maths.)

                  Back to the great computer crash.  First, my machine has
fifteen thousand hours on it if it has one -- myriad uses from games, to
extensive downloading, sixty Napster songs (destroyed by the virus), huge
text files, hundreds of pictures; pretty much massive amounts of everything
with the kids playing with it every they chance they get and a minimum of
one hundred blackouts and brownouts, with a dozen close lightning strikes,
just for good measure.  Yes, it's been in the shop six or eight times, but
never for more than a few hours, and never for more of a bill than sixty
dollars.  The speaker fell on it.  Five cats.  I smoke.  Pretty much
you-name-it, including mis-installed ram sticks and several dead CPU fans..
And here it is, three years later, slicker and tighter than ever;
bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and as raring to go as my new mini-pixie.
Absolutely freaking amazing.  Anyway (you can tell I'm tired when I keep
using that crutch), it died immediately after uploading my last set of
files for David, that was super nice of it, but, at exactly the time I was
ready to plug in my new digital camera.  So Christmas was postponed, once
again -- it's kind of a saga, the digital camera thing -- and finally
arrived today.  With minimal struggle I got everything joined up and
humming and pretty well blew myself away.  It's been twenty-five years
since I owned a camera, but at that time I was a very high-level amateur,
printing color and so on.  My first clicks around the house and
neighborhood exceeded anything I was able to do with Tri-X Professional and
a Hasselblad, and even 640X480 half frames give vivid results at sizes
close to 5X7.  I work almost only in black and white, and a little cloning
and smudging turns good snapshots into little works of art (that last
forever, unlike color, which fades).  Digital images are free of the curse
inherent in conventional photography, density changes caused by the physics
of agitating the negatives by hand, which show up in the print as darkening
at the left and right borders.  I snapped a self-portrait using the timer
and it's a beauty.  I titled it "Million Year Veteran.  Or: Hell, I even
look like a great writer!"  (And damned if I don't, even if it is a face
only a four year old could love..)  First picture of myself in many a
coon's age.  The historians are going to go nuts as photos of me between my
late thirties and today practically don't exist.  This is hardly a surprise
as one does not get where I am by posing.

                  Samantha bought a bootleg EMINEM disc.  Marshall isn't a
poet, but he doesn't know it.  Firecrackers do not literature make, nor
cherry bombs a saga, but there's quite a market for cursery rhymes.  Good
vocalizing, his work would sell if he sang of "snowflakes on eyelashes /
and warm woolen mittens".  Great track with the record company suit being
capped (by mistake).  Oops.  I told Linden I was good and mother-fucking
glad I heard EMINEM after I'd published a million words so no one could
charge me with being derivative, especially on the mother of all issues,
the response to those who promise all over town, exploitation of family and
friend for fun and profit, and ego, ego, ego, effing squared.  Also told
Linden I'd do a rap.  So far, I've got a such a great title I may not even
bother with further lyrics: "Attitude.  Psycho Food."

                  Yo, there's up.
                  Yo, there's down.
                  Yo-ho, there's `round and `round.

                  You know there's hip.
                  You know there's hop.
                  And a big public for the sound.

                  So call it show,
                  And call it tell:
                  Show and tell from hell

                  `Cause it's not for here,
                  And it's not for there;
                  By now even you can tell.

                  Dead is the word.
                  Head is the place.
                  What's wrong Holmes?
                  White in your face?

                  So how you want us?
                  Griddled, poached, or diced?
                  Turning over the goods - no fuss?

Lying still for what?  For what in the butt?  What's wrong with this
picture?  What would fix the mixture?

That's what this song's about Whitey's ass, your fatal fixture.  Never mind
the rhyme You don't have the time

You dis and you play, The live-long day, But none of the guilt is truly
ours And none of it's your damn business.

Listen to the East and to the Chinese, What they say about us every day.
White's lived in caves, peed in the stream Savage and crude as ever you
please.

Gongs for others, they beat their copper; Pyramids in Africa, and other
wonders.  For thousands of years, and thousands more, While we lived in the
rain and worshiped the thunder.

That is the fact, The big, fat one: Anglos in stone For millennium.

Slavery wasn't our trip, Black pharos perfected it, While we shivered in
skins Gnawing animal shins.

Know the history, Before you hip.  Fill your head, Before you hop.  Avoid
the trap, Shitcan the rap.

Attitude.  Psycho food.  Number-one national killer.  Proof of the pie
Comes when you die.  And your ma's tears completely fill her.

It wasn't that way, Never, never was.  What do you get with your pay?
Think about it, because,

Freedom's a needle Liberty a spike And they make lousy footing, Say what
you like.

It wasn't us who started the trouble So why the heaping helpings; The ones
that you double?

You had art, we had caves; All caves, north, all Africa, south, So you say
we made ANY slaves - You put your big foot right in your mouth.

This may be a short song, But the story is long.  Trouble is, You've got it
all wrong.

The slave was worth dollars galore, The Irish lad, not a nickel.  Had home,
hearth, bond, and more, While white winds blew cold and fickle.

History is tough; The stuff is rough.  Have you had enough?  I'm rolling my
cuff.

Because attitude's no One-way street, And the sign doesn't say slow, But
serve the blacks up a treat.

Because cotton didn't get rotten It built the fucking world, And it didn't
get picked by no white folk, `Cause we had to invent that world.

Two and two are four.  Black and white are more.  So rap this!  Enough with
the dis.

We got problems like a camel got piss Fatty, fatty two-by-four; Mall after
mall and credit like this: Chips, cokes, dips: more, more, more.

Who we gonna call, where we gonna go?  Top of the heap, eyes cast where?
Sounds to me like whitey needs a bro.  Any volunteers out there?

			And leave each other alone, too, Every day, in
every way.  In death, pink tongues turn blue, And I have more to say.

Watch your liberals, As you watch your back; They're the ones You should
attack.

They shade the truth And tell you lies, Sell division, Like the D sells
fries.

And that's not us, Doin' that; Look for the mink In the temple hat.

Place the blame Where it belongs.  They love the fame And money for songs.

`Cause it wasn't all a big mistake, We did nothing wrong, to begin with.
And you're falling for their filthy fake And the wrong pair of lips to
kith.

Whitey, Whitey, he's your man And all you want is his ass in a can, This
ain't no good, might even be bad, `Cause he's the best friend you EVER had.

See any black trace his roots To ye olde sod, as it exists today, His Afro
cousins, so far a way, How they livin' and feelin', Toots?

They go back a million years, To the dawn of human time; Lion, tiger, and
leopard fears, To not even mention tribal crime.

But some were plucked and trucked, Chained and hauled, by blacks, away.
How lucky can you get when you get lucked?  Even Mississippi was a brighter
day.

And now we come to the hand on the whip, Who did what to whom, and how.
House hand out to the field did slip, Not a-lookin' to whup on no cow.

And after whipping comes lynching, And this is the truth about that.  The
few of the very few for the cat, And less for the rope's choky pinching.

And you know there's another side, To this worn old coin of dissension.
Black men bonded with worthwhile pride, To plantations too numerous to
mention.

Read both pages, not just the one, For you put the steam upon the track.
Rap and hip and hop in fun, And serve the `tude as a salty snack.

                   And that's a wrap.

                   Or, should Funky, Rude, Lewd, and Crude ever become
award categories, how's this?  "I'm sorry Haley / I never meant to hurt you
/ I never meant to make you cry / but tonight / I'm making my deposit."
Gimme the keys, show me where the freakin' Internet's at.
Click. (Yeah... but it's funny as fuck.)

                   And standing in for Mr. Emerson, this evening, on the
presentation of the Grammy for Significant Work of the Decade, as you in
this record-breaking audience know, controversial, because the decade is so
young, is Miss Samantha Eden Kelly Logan.  We understand Mr. Emerson is in
prison because of Miss Kelly Logan, and that the writer's regrettably young
friend is planning to pawn the statuette in order to raise money so Miss
Rhageedha Williams can participate in further prosecution of the belabored
artist, and so, ladies and gentlemen of the viewing and listening audience,
to the Academy of Recording Artists comes truth, justice and the American
Way.

                  Marshall doesn't mention obesity (Fat America!  Belly to
the telly, to the ears with jelly, free of Shelly, Ned even rounder than
Nelly, never pass the baker's smelly, fast track to Helly, can't you
telly?) or Rickover's trillion dollars' worth of nuclear -- tits on a
bull -- submarines, nor the ruling-class Hebrews, in general, but he's
still a child and a work in progress.  My theory is early success is almost
sure death for an artist, and I'll god-damned guarantee you I got where I
am by being Bobby Boring for a long, long time.  It took Mozart, in the
most enriched environment, imaginable, nearly thirty years to really find
himself, and, as a musician, yes, he could ride a wave of popularity from
early on.  I'm talking about writers, an entirely different breed who
measure in thousands of pages and millions of words.  This said, he, Lucky,
and Celine are great company and three discs make a pretty good music
collection; something that hasn't been true for twenty or thirty years
since ABBA and the Bee Gees ruled.

                  In an extremely rare exception to my no-notes policy, I
wrote something with a pencil while Sloggo, my slogging computer, was
getting rammed.  It goes something like this: a girl can find out how good
a young lover is in a minute, with an older male, it may take years..

                  Guess that takes care of the housekeeping (dollhouse?)
for the last week or so.  Love the new ram stick and the camera.  The
first-person-singular novel reopens in a few more hours, probably with
Daisy going all black bitch - psycho food -- before running off to the
Star club.  I'm sure the reason she wants to leave here is simply to find a
place closer to there as walking a mile, even in the tropic evening air,
after ten drinks can't be much fun.  If I had my druthers, I'd haul Queenie
out of school tomorrow (I mean, I doubt she'll go, anyway), and set her up
here watching out for her three younger brothers.  That would actually
work, but Daisy's enigma is that she's an absentee drunk and dope addict of
a mother, with four great kids, so it would be pretty hard to claim she's
unfit.  Comparing Queenie to my sister, who never fails to maintain a
perfect combination of petulant bossiness and aggressive stupidity and
ignorance, yet who had horses and elegant schooling, where Louise is lucky
to get a meal a day, opens a can of worms most wealthy parents would
probably prefer leaving at the furthest recess of the highest shelf on the
most out-of-the-way cupboard in the butler's pantry.  My three nephews,
with a liberal, involved father, are more unlikable in ten minutes than
Elston, Tonton (Llewellyn), and Lindon (yes, I have a Linden and a Lindon)
will manage to be during the average year.  And, of course, in a thoroughly
backhanded and cynical way, liberal parents get exactly what they deserve
-- a lifetime of misery over dysfunctional issue and a dynasty with
emphasis on the nasty.  "White America!"

                  More is less.  Here in Belize we have a perfect example.
When I first lived here, '79, the country (250,000) had one radio station
(FM).  It was excellent.  Now there are two stations in Dangriga, alone,
and perhaps a dozen, English and Spanish, "nationwide".  They probably
suck.  Who knows?  They work on such miniscule budgets they are unable to
maintain their equipment, so the signal quality is unlistenable, however
unscientific that measurement may be.  (Yes, it may be bad but it's no
worse than the taxis, of which, again, there are a hundred (for 10,000)
when there should be ten.  (By comparison, Santa Fe, with nearly fifty
thousand, had no taxi service, whatever, between 1975 and 1980 --
probably still doesn't.))  Daisy's kids get so vastly much less than their
American cousins (they had no chairs `till they moved here) you wouldn't
understand if I told you, and they are so much better than your kids we run
into the same failure to communicate.  Understand?

                  The pianist, Horowitz, said if he missed practice for a
day, he knew it, if he missed for two days, the conductor knew it, if he
missed three days, the orchestra knew it, and if he missed four days, the
audience knew it.  I've missed almost a week.  O, mercy, will I ever write
again?  Fortunately, I'm catching a bit of a break here by being in the
opening scene of a sensational novel.  I think I can, I think I can, I
think I can.  (If you think a little stiffness crept in let it be a
reminder as to exactly how hard it actually is to practice the ultimate
art.  Sigh.  I guess I've got to write this.  A note to myself reminding me
that while stiffness plays poorly in politics, it has its place.  Time to
get back to work)

                  Gerrend had grown up.  He'd been married to the now
fifteen --year-old Annie for far more time than was legal, but they were
far happier than was legal, so it worked out well.  Danny had liked the
story of the Icelandic valley as well as his rock-star partner, and was
experimenting with actually performing oral sex on the handsome lieutenant,
instead of passively accepting the results of others' handiwork.  Gerrend
held the tentatively bobbing face gently in his hands, and Mick reached
around in front of the boy to jerk him off.  Gerrend ejaculated, first, his
semen flowing openly from the nine year old's mouth in spite of the
throbbing of the little boy's throat as he tried to keep up with the heavy,
white, salty spurting, then the little boy lost control and convulsed,
shuddering and gasping in Mick's strong arms.

                  Their final sex act, before setting out to explore the
nudist camp gave Mick his release.  The whole crew worked together to get
the man and the little in perfect position, and the now experienced Kersey
held the man firmly against the child's anus, allowing just the forepart of
his glans to penetrate the young body before a few soft, wet strokes
brought the artist to the same plane he'd have found himself on if he'd
actually been able to be alone with McKenzie Phillips when she was ten
years old.

                  Nancy Schroeder was also being liberally freshened, as
they call it in animal husbandry, by the tall, athletic Rob.  His pulsing
was strong, and seemed to last forever, then he, still shuddering, took her
hard and fast for some minutes, until she crashed in his arms, a wave
washing back to the sea.

                  Finding two buckets in the impromptu camp side between
the runway and the beach, Nancy and Rob each filled on and carried it to
the airplane.  They spilled the seat water in a long streak in front of the
two engines.  Rob guided the eight year old through the starting procedure,
then watched on proudly as she gunned both throttles hard to get the wheels
rolling in the sand.  The damp sand protected the propellers from the
abrasive sand, and soon the light twin was bouncing down the taxiway, it's
primitive suspension banging gently and making the trip to the end of the
runway more fun than flying.  They cleared the area with a sweeping turn,
again she gunned the big Lycomings, and in a minute they were talking to
Bimini.

                  A nine thousand five hundred feet, Nancy trimmed the
aircraft and the pilot and co-pilot gave each other an intimate wink.  The
time had come to close the cowl flaps.


                  		CHAPTER ONE

                  "Mark the Ariflex.  Roll video A.  Roll video B.
Action."

                  Allen Rigby clipped the radio to his belt and looked
around from his perch high above the deck of the camera boat.  It was a
dead tricky shot, broaching the Bertram hard-over and the base of a roller,
then gunning her full throttle on the reverse course, surfing back up the
wave, hanging her on two thousand horsepower until just the props of the
thirty footer stayed with the comber, and her bow hung three beats before
crashing into the face of the following wave.  Shaking this off, she had to
be at thirty knots before she reached Allen's boat.  Nigel's flipper
flashed for a second in the Caribbean sun, right on cue.  He had to dive to
a submerged buoy eight feet under the surface, and film the accelerating
sport fisherman with two feet between his camera and the twin screws
cavitating under the torque of the big, modified diesels.

                  There was the sliding, slewing turn, the spray blown by
the six-inch, transom-mounted exhausts as Nancy's hand set the twin
throttles firmly against their stops, the staggering response to triple her
design power, and, yes, oh, yes, cake and candles for Nancy, someone had
taught the kid a thing or two about timing, she'd hit it to within a
twentieth of a second, and there she hung in the viewfinders, foaming back,
tough, and obviously ready as hell for more.

                  Tracking perfectly.  Out of the second wave which did
nothing more than throw her on a flat, hard plane as she stretched for the
underwater camera.  It came in seconds, then, bow down and furious, the
"Salty Bitch" drove at the "A" boat, swerving hard to starboard at the last
instant, then sharply back to her original course, where she disappeared,
ever accelerating, until her image was too small to be meaningful.

                  "All cut.  All cut," Allen said into his radio.  "Any
problems?"
                  "Film for the can," came one voice, "A video gets an A,"
came another.  "Bubbles from B."  Then he relaxed, pretty sure the bubbles
weren't from a leaking housing.
                  "That's a real brother and sister team," Allen said to
the boy kneeling on the crow's nest adjacent his director's podium.
                  "Timing's as crucial as baseball," the boy said, nodding.
"I don't know how she does it.  I'd see that huge wave looming in the
windshield and I'd slow down, at least a little."
                  "And she keeps getting better," the young director added.
"At everything.  Perception, timing, response.  Want me to prove it?  Just
listen."

                  Allen reclaimed the little r/f transceiver, holding the
speaker to Lincoln's ear.  He knew his girl.  "Can we do another take?"
came the pretty girl's happy voice.  Allen laughed into the set.  "Your
brother's got the loot, he says we shoot, we shoot."  He was kidding, but
he didn't have to worry about being caught out.  Sure enough, the pixie's
voice came back in a few seconds: "Rick says it's too dangerous for Nigel.
We got it.  We were lucky.  The End."
                  "He's a guy you think you love until you really find
out," Allen whispered just over the trade wind.
                  "Still, I don't blame her," Lincoln said, high-fiving the
young director as he dismounted from his tower seat and the two climbed
back down to the deck of his barge.
                  "Nor I," Allen said as they made their way down the short
ladder, "and the odd thing is, Nigel would be the first to volunteer to do
a dozen more takes to please her."

                  Two ADs were running the r/f feeds on a monitor and the
director and his eleven year old nephew gazed intently over their shoulders
as they switched between the A and B rolls.  Add the 35mm film from the
Ariflex, taken from his boats p.o.v, plus two or three hundred stills taken
aboard the "Salty Bitch" (name bowdlerized by virtue of a cute and
obviously female poodle curled up beneath the gold leaf) and the scene was
going to be an editor's dream.
                  The storyboard called for radio dialogue instigating the
savage turn, and the principles ran their lines several times as Allen
listened over a head set.  Getting a thumbs up from the technician at the
Nagra, he finally fell back into his chair and wiped his brow.  Daylight
exteriors were hot and exhausting, but when the sun sank within about
twenty degrees of the horizon, they were over.  He watched two of the crew
wrestle the heavy film camera from it's tripod and place it in his own
specially designed packing case.  Within a minute of the door being
latched, the humidity would be evacuated, and the camera quickly cooled
with liquid nitrogen.  In all, the delicate color film would be exposed to
tropic temperatures for less than ten minutes before it was frozen for the
trip back to New York.  Treated like the rarest caviar, it would knock the
lonely editor for a loop, as his footage often did.
                  By now the flotilla was reforming, the water vibrating to
the throb and hoarse burble of the Bertram as she nestled amongst her flock
of Whalers and motorized rafts.  Clipboards and cassettes in waterproof
plastic bags were handed aboard Allen's barge, and he spent ten minutes
logging every number and note into his journal.  Cast and crew work from
sun to sun, but the director's work is never done.
                  There, the last phrase and digit.  "Hi, Nancy, super nice
job.  You added ten year to Nigel's life."
                  "Rick did most of it," the girl said.
                  "Well, it came out in spades," the young director noted.
"The new cameras are worth sleeping with.  I keep thinking video can't get
any better, and surprise, surprise, surprise."
                  "Cool," said Nancy.
                  "They'll have the camera tapes cued up in a minute,"
Allen said, "and judging from the radio images, they should be something to
behold."
                  The monitor was carefully repositioned for the larger
audience, a tarp shielding it from the lowering sun.  The first AD pushed
the play button and cast and crew sat in silence as the HDTV images snapped
off the screen, virtually in 3D, they were so crisp and saturated.  In post
production, melding in film footage would highlight the electronic glory,
with the traditional medium distinctly holding its own when it came to
drooling quality.  Add hundreds of stills and the not-so amateur footage
Nancy was always shooting with her personal camera, and they'd crack the
nut yet.

                  How were you polite to these people?  They all seemed
jittery.  The studio and executive suites were crawling with them,
assistants to this, aids to that, interns here, wanna-be's, there, none a
whole heaping lot over twenty five.  What good did it do for them to be
scared?  They weren't in town for the long haul, all they had to do was
ride a single elevator to know it was twenty-eight, and out, for the
overwhelming majority.  Accountants, writers, editors, men and women who
could have performed in their dotage, nowhere close to thirty years old.
What happened to them all?  How many restaurants needed a matre de who
could talk about an all-night session with this star or that director?  Did
they drive taxi cabs?  Were there a hundred doormen on Fifth Avenue who
could clean up a storyboard as fast as a kid could blast zombies?  Children
of the Trash, Rick called them, and the only bright side to their jittery
existence was the number of years the average player would do penance, and
pretty extreme penance, at that, for the nervous scuttling they believed to
be media careers.  They were funny in a pathetic way, maybe someday someone
would write their story, or do the world a favor and ignore them as they
seemed to ignore anything resembling intelligence.

                  Rick's name got him entry, but this just ended up being a
nuisance.  A New York elite ruled, unaware of and unconcerned with the
vastness of their mediocrity -a hundred times more likely to be interested
in a Punch and Judy version of "Happy Days", with that nice Winkler boy,
than anything to do with: "You are kidding, aren't you?  A fishing show in
prime time?  Why don't you team up with Andrea Martin, and we'll get you a
comedy where you raise a chimp together."  Anything Rick Schroeder could
conjure up concerning the horror of all screens, and a hundred-pound
chimpanzee, did not smack of comedy.

                  Somehow the handsome, wide-eyed actor always felt an
inclination to bow as he left this or that drywall hutch of an office, as
if some subspecies dwelled therein, and bowing gave an excuse to keep an
eye on the infernal thing until the door was closed and safely latched.

                  In Japan, how different.  He was quickly escorted to
where he wanted to be, and that was with the senior design staff and their
hand-built prototypes.  So vivid were these sessions that the idea dawned
to approach "One Fish at a Time" from a highly technical angle.  Megapixels
versus Saturday night lassitude, and, boy, did Saturday night ever need a
revamp.  Had for years.  And the island nation had not only provided the
stunning new cameras, but invested solidly in the pilot.  In his heart he
knew it was because of the pictures of himself and Nancy, thong and bikini,
bait fishing off a Caribbean pier that had done the trick for much of the
financing, but in a way that was half the point.

                  "Nice fish."  What more was there to say, whether it was
a tiny rass sucked gently into a specimen jar, or a two-hundred-pound
marlin.  Not much.  New York had a point.  But art is more subtle; tones,
relief tones, undertones, flat tones, harmonic tones, dissonant tones, and
sharp tones.  Brother and kid sister.  There were millions of such couples,
and most of them were missing out; sacrificing what might be the only truly
spiritual experience in all of creation at the altar of superstition and
salesmanship.  Now that would have been a fair fight.  How suggestive could
he and Nancy be?  How subtle and devious, or how honest and obvious?  How
long could his right arm be around her slim waist, how low could his hand
ride on her eight year old belly, and, again, for how long.  If they were
to rinse in the dock-end shower, could they be shown, from the rear, of
course, entering naked?  Could they play kiss each other?  Play date each
other?  Reprise favorite love scenes over a bottle of wine in obviously
secluded surroundings?  Tell their peers?  Provide a vivid example of how
fitness paid off?  Change the world for the better, at least a little?
                  The list went on, the real list.  The Japanese nodded and
paid, but that was a far thing from New York Prime Time.  Their tolerance
was too tolerant, their love of schoolgirl's, too superficial.  Nah.  New
York, or bust.

                  The First AD was playing Nigel's footage, as the flotilla
took a heading for port and picked up to leisurely cruising speed.  Allen
had known the photographer would cheat on his safety line, but not to the
point the spinning propellers actually passed at his level.  His head and
camera must have been within six inches of the keel of the speeding boat.
Very nice work.

                  "We could kiss twenty-five times, a little longer, each
time, then they could choose exactly what they wanted," Nancy said.
Although the story board showed down time for the steam back to their
island, the B camera was active.  In the age of essentially free tape (it's
reusable), B cameras should always be active.  Nigel was using the machine
to capture his boss and Nancy commenting on the propeller video.  The kiss
was congratulatory, at least at its beginning.  Allen asked Lincoln how
long?  The boy didn't know, so he asked the dive master.  Predictably, he
suggested coming up for air after a precise interval.  Other counties were
heard from, cook to captain.  The suggestions ranged from twenty seconds to
two minutes.  Obviously, it was not a fish and peck crew.  Then, quick as a
wink, the little girl had solved the problem.  Shoot everything from a
one-second buss to a two-minute passion-fest.  When modern teens say
hubba-hubba, you know you're on the right track.  Nigel focused, Nancy
grinned, and Rick kissed himself good-bye.

                  Young Lincoln cued the players and started the camera,
took over from his uncle at logging each sequence before calling Action,
again.  As the sun sank lower, the crew quietly went about the business of
adding one carefully filtered light after another, so the video quality
actually improved as the sacrilegious young couple also improved.  And
irony abounded if irony can abound.  A hard, hard sell it would be in New
York, while the out-takes would be worth millions.  Insanity where you
expected normalcy, normalcy where you were told to expect insanity.  It
wasn't a mad world, or it would not exist, but, rather, the maddest world
which could exist.  So, then, what was wrong with pissing it off?  Pointing
to a wallow-queen and saying, flat out, if your dad had been able to
express himself fully to you, you would have stayed svelte for the pure
carnal pleasure of having five orgasms in half an hour, and your dad would
have stayed fit for the teaching?  Pointing to a future tubby hubby and
saying if you don't have a hot young sister, one of your friends does, and
how `bout it?

                  They'd compromise.  Neither Schroeder had any interest in
shock therapy.  They didn't need it, and the audience might tune it out.
Lingering looks, lingering touches, kisses that stretched propriety by a
scant beat or two; the entrance to the rinse shower moved behind palm
trees, perhaps with the eight year old's little bra tossed over a frond,
then to a not-overly-obvious fade to black, as an edge to the edge.

                  Page from a draft script:

                  RICK, WALKING AHEAD OF NANCY, SUDDENLY RELIZES HE DOESN'T
WANT TO WEAR HIS DRESS WATCH, A GIFT FROM THAT DAY'S PARTY (SCENES 34-41),
AND CIRCLES TO THE LEFT TO RETURN TO HIS CABIN, PASSING NANCY BUT NOT
NOTICING HER.  ON HIS RETURN, HE SEES HER BRA OVER THE PALM BRANCH.  HE
PICKS IT UP, MUSING AT THE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING.  HE PROCEEDS TO THE CLOSED
DOOR OF THE RINSE SHOWER, AND KNOCKS.

                  		NANCY
                  	Where did you go?  I thought we
                  	 were coming here together.

                  		RICK (Through the bamboo door.)
                  	I just forgot about the new watch,
                  	so I went back to the cabin.  But
                  	I found something beside the
                  	path.

                  		NANCY
                  	Is it pretty tiny?

                  		RICK
                  	Delicate.

                  		NANCY
                  	A gracious beast you are.

                  		RICK
                  	Nancy, I don't know, but
                  	it's pretty hard to, you know,
                  	lose something like this, isn't
                  	it?.

                  		NANCY
                  	Experienced girls lose theirs.

                  CLOSE UP.  RICK'S FACE. COPING WITH MORE NEWS FROM NANCY.
TALENT SHOULD REVIEW AND REPLAY SCENES AS APPENDED DURING REHERSAL.

                  		MORE

                  Sober crew.  Alcohol was just to dangerous.  Instead, the
crew relied on old friendships and shared experiences, and nothing beat
spending three or four hours a day in a good book.  I take that back.

                  "Uncle Allen?" Lincoln asked, "can we talk, or do you
want to get to sleep."
                  "It's all exteriors tomorrow," the director said, "so we
won't have to head out until after nine.  Plenty of time to sleep."
                  "God," the boy replied, "because I feel really talkative.
Like, there's a lot of stuff I sort of half know, and Mom doesn't seem to
thrilled at filling me in."
                  "Dad's don't do any better at it," Allen observed.  "Kids
are a curse from day one, then they want to know where they came from.
That should end it, but they're protected by law."
                  "I sort of know the theme," the eleven year old replied,
"so I'm interested in variations."
                  "Tap dancing is a variation," Allen observed, to the
boy's giggle.
                  "Think North by Northeast," Lincoln prodded.
                  "That's Eventan Island," the young director said.
                  "Will you take me on Sunday?" the boy asked.
                  "I don't see nudism as a variation, it's how we all start
out," Allen said.
                  "We all start out inarticulate, but some of learn to
speak and sound dumb," quoth the boy.
                  "And some fall in love with young boys, say, around age
eleven, and wouldn't dare be naked with them for reasons that would be
obvious at one hundred yards."
                  "Well," Lincoln said, "boys can have the same feelings,
and can be really embarrassed about them.  Scared of them.  I don't know
which.  Probably both."
                  "And being naked together would address the issue?" Allen
asked.
                  "It's the only thing I could think of.  I wanted to ask
you to wash my hair in the shower, but it's too small and I knew you'd get
suspicious."
                  "It's hard for me, too," Allen whispered across the
three-foot gap between their beds.  "Men hitting on boys is more variation
than suits most circumstances."
                  "I'm sure it can have far-reaching legal, moral,
physical, emotional, ethical, spiritual, and practical fallout and
ramifications," Lincoln said, "but I brought up the island, and I know men
take boys there, so you're in the clear."

                  "Okay," the young director said, "we go.  Tomorrow and
Sunday.  We're three pages ahead of schedule.  The ADs need to sharpen
their fangs.  No major safety issues.  Rob will be in at ten in the morning
so he can fly us over.  From noon Saturday, to noon, Monday, because I'm
that kind of guy."
                  "That sounds like a lot," the boy replied, "so I think it
might be really smart and really a good idea to, you know, practice a
little."

                  "Loving you takes less practice all the time," Allen
intoned, "so I don't know what you're talking about."
                  "Where there is less," Lincoln said, "there should be
none, but to get to none, there has to be some."  Made sense.

                  "None's a pretty safe bet at this distance," Allen said
to his nephew.
                  "Then we should do some-thing about it," Lincoln replied.

                  Both young males flung aside their sheets, then sat on
the edges of their beds, knees almost touching.  Ample tropic moonlight
flooded the rustic shelter and a cooling breeze filtered through the bamboo
of the palapa.  Both were wearing only boxer shorts, and their eyes
frequently double checked, and double checked, again, for signs of how they
felt about each other.  Each knew, himself, of course, but boxers are
boxers, and one can't be too sure when it comes to sensitive issues.
Tentatively, they spread their legs, making any tenting or bulging
unlikely, unless...

                  "Have you let a man touch you before?" Allen asked, his
voice a whisper.
                  "No," Lincoln whispered back.
                  "Do you know what homosexuals do with young boys?" the
older male continued, excited by the excitement in the boy's voice at being
quizzed in a hoarse whisper.
                  "They molest them," Lincoln answered.
                  "Do you know what sexual molestation consists of?" Allen
went on.
                  "No," the eleven year old said.
                  "If we were at the camp, and you saw a handsome man and a
cute boy walk off down a trail in the woods, would you like to follow them
and hide in the bushes so you could watch what they did together?"
                  "If you were with me to explain everything," the boy
allowed.
                  "What if you were with Rick?" Allen asked.
                  "I guess I'd let him guide me," the boy answered, "but I
want it to be you, especially the first time."

                  "If Rick was with us, and went off with a boy like you,
would you like to watch what happened?"
                  "Yes," Lincoln said.  "I mean, I really like him, and I
know he's dead cute, and I know he'd be gentle, so I'd like to watch what
happened, you know, if it was a nice kid."
                  "What if he caught you spying on him and the boy he was
with," the quizzing went on, "and he wanted you to come close?  Would you
let him pull your boxers down?"
                  "I think the boys that go to the camp wear regular
underpants," Lincoln observed.
                  "Do you have any packed?" Allen asked.
                  "Two pairs, but they're just plain white ones.  Fruit of
the Loom.  I don't have any bikini ones or thongs.  Nothing sexy."
                  "Well," Allen noted, "you do have a lot to learn, but
some of it is hard to explain.  Sex stuff is, to put it in the mildest
possible terms, to understate it to the point of being ridiculous,
complicated.  I mean, it begins at complicated, then lurches off to
confusing, thorny, knotty, baffling, and ends with dysfunction, addiction,
psychosis and suicide.
                  "For example," Allen said, "from your point of view, a
tiny bathing or pair of underwear might seem to be erotic, but, the truth
is, the most erotic thing a boy can ever wear is a pair of plain, white,
regular underpants.  Briefs.  Any attempt to say more by flaunting only
cheapens anything that happens by way of excess accessibility.  The same
with behavior.  Being coy and artificially shy is bad; being bold and
predatory, is worse.
                  "And, by the way, you were perfect with your first
questions.  You're serious about wanting something to happen between us, so
what happens may last and become a real part of our you-know-what."
                  "The R-word."
                  "That's the one."
                  "I've got white underpants in my suitcase," Lincoln said.
                  "And I brought a lot of candles in case I have to work
after they turn the generator off, so I could get a good look at you."
                  "I'll put them on in the bathroom, okay?" the boy asked.
                  "Yes," Allen said, adding: "Linc, bamboo walls are
largely psychological.  We'll have to be very quiet if you let me touch
you, okay?"
                  "We can pretend we're creeps," the boy responded.  Great
answer, and Allen choked back a spontaneous giggle as the two rose from
their beds to get on with the housekeeping.  Even though neither tried to
hurry, all was set in a couple of minutes.  Four candles glowed from the
posts of Lincoln's rustic bed and there was a nervous tap at the bathroom
door.
                  "You can come in backwards, if you're embarrassed," Allen
whispered through the gap in the portal.
                  "Thanks," Lincoln said through the crack, unlatching the
hook and eye, "I've never been like this before.  They don't fit too well
now."
                  "Okay," Allen soothed.  "I'll open the door and close my
eyes.  I was your age, too, and I know how it feels."
                  "Does it feel different when you get mature?" the boy
asked, as Allen swung the door wide.
                  "Not in the least.  Nine to ninety-nine.  Same old same
old.  Pretty hopeless, eh?"
                  The young director sense the passage of the pre-teen,
waiting for the squeak of the boy's bed, before he turned toward the youth.
"You comfortable," he asked.
                  "I'm bad-side down," Lincoln said, "so you can open your
eyes."

                  Allen did.  The modest child had pulled the mosquito
netting closed behind him.  The fabric filtered the candlelight, softening
it to a haze that washed delicately over the tall, handsome boy's back.
Lincoln lay on his stomach, his hands under his left cheek as he faced his
uncle.  "Do they look okay from the back?" he asked.
                  "That's something you may not fully appreciate until
you're a little older," Allen explained, "unless you have the same
tendencies a lot of males have, and think even a six or seven year old can
look pretty cute, front or back, in plain, white underpants."
                  "I'll take that as a yes," Lincoln said.
                  "'And how!' would be more precise," Allen replied, to the
boy's happy giggle.
                  "Do you want to talk more," Allen asked, "or do you want
me to come in beside you?"
                  "Can we do both?" the child asked.  "Be together, and
talk?"
                  "It's not a black and white situation," Allen said,
referring back to his monologue on complication, "but more a matter of
time.  We can do both, yes, but for how long?  If we're close to each
other, physically, that interferes with the subtleties of verbal jousting.
How many opera, wine, and sartorial quips do you think Niles would be
rattling off if he had his nephew lying beside him in his little Mickey
Mouse underpants?"
                  "Yeah," the eleven year old mused aloud, "and if John,
the PDA on `NYPD Blue', was babysitting for the little Sipowicz boy, Theo,
and the boy wore `Dragonball Z' underpants, then John might stop talking
about being gay all the time."

                  It was a point taken as well as a point can be taken,
and, who knew, with a child so bright and responsive, maybe he could enter
the net, lie by the eleven year old, and they could talk like buddies, tell
all their secrets, for awhile.  "I'm embarrassed, too," the young director
whispered through the netting, "so turn your eyes the other way."
                  Predictably, Lincoln complied immediately.  Allen stepped
out of his boxers, and, naked, rummaged quickly in his ditty bag, then
slowly entered the bower, lying on his stomach, close to the nervous child.

                  "You can look," he whispered.

                  Lincoln turned and smiled softly.  "Hi," he whispered.
                  "Hi," the young adult whispered softly in reply.
                  "Are you naked?" the boy asked.
                  "Yes," Allen said.
                  "Can a naked man molest a boy in underpants?" the
intelligent child wanted to know.  It was an interesting point of
semantics, the more so because any lack of precision was traceable to the
inadequacy of the root word.  The Catholics used `abused' as a scapegoat
expression; did so-and-so abuse so-and-so?  Father Harry abuse little
Chipper Knobbyknees?  Like `morality' versus `decency', the terms came with
enough baggage to stump old Noah Webster after spinning him a time or two
in his grave.  Free will.  Never alluded to in dialogue on the subject;
`molest', `abuse', with `child' a single word fitting all human beings
under ages written out in books.  Double the complexity if you happened to
like books, to generally regard them as superior to television when it came
to dealing with the intricacies of existence in widely variant cultures, as
brighter, taller signs, for all their fine print, delineating whichaway one
would best proceed.
                  Yet the answer was a simple No.  A naked man could rape a
boy in underpants, but if any presumption of accord was relevant, even if
things went a little wrong, both molestation and abuse were nullified.
Could a naked man make love to a boy in underpants?  Perhaps not as
completely as he might like, but he could try to get them off.  Here it
became seminal.  He could make love to the almost naked child, go all the
way with him, and coax him into going all the way, but if he pulled the
waist band down one inch, against the free will of the boy, he both
molested and abused the child and his decency collapsed, for once, with his
morals.  (Turpitude all the way.)  This put the entire burden on the
`free-will' phrase, leaving the language to handle it, even if it didn't
exactly relish the idea.  Would he have enhanced Lincoln's free will if
he'd dismissed, in a friendly and tolerant enough way, any extensive
mention of Eventan Island?  How much free will would he subject the boy to
if he simply returned to his own bed and closed and pinned the netting?
What if he were in his own bed, now, gazing at the apparition four feet
away, and, in a husky voice, telling the child he'd buy him a jet ski if he
could come over to his bed and stay for a little while?  A ten-dollar
watch?  A thousand-dollar watch?  An A in geometry?  A sprightly daughter?
What did it cost to free a will?  How much justice could you afford, if you
got caught?  Sex and the law.  The law and the language.  You could abuse a
child without molesting him, just use a stick, but paradox was not far off,
because you could abuse a child by not molesting him..  Surely, if he
hightailed it back to his own bed, or stomped out demanding another room,
that would be severe abuse of the child breathing nervously inches from his
right elbow.  And what about the morning; if the boy threatened to expose
him?  Morality, decency, abuse and extortion would team up with only
decency, paradoxically, coming to the defense.  What if the boy became
insatiable, wanted encounters during working hours, and all night, every
night?  Free will.  If this eventuality occurred with the long-legged young
male breathing the more raggedly beside him, what would be the morality and
decency factors in paying him not to engage in homosexual activities?  And
if that didn't rattle the linguistic bars, how about if the boy offered to
pay him?  To?  Not to?

                  Nancy had been instrumental in having Rob Nester hired as
lead writer.  Allen hoped the girl knew what she was doing, because
marching this dog and pony show by the standards and practices nabobs was
going to require the footwork of a pixie and the kick of a mule, to
somehow, make them want to be nowhere else in the world.  Good.  Conflict.
What happens next?  Yet, the story would be flawed.  Resilience and
fortitude, diligence, and the grace, courage, and intelligence of the hero
should vanquish no end of dildacity, choreographed to a climatic
resolution, to comply with prevailing market forces and artistic
preferences (somehow married).  They weren't going after the urban elite by
hiring janitors to spy or tapping into computers, noble options exercised
in modern storytelling, but through the grinding banality of creating
technical perfection, in the first place, and slipping a real fat one by
the censors, in the second.  It would not be Eddie Murphy and the orange
juice futures, it would be a tribe of Caribbean free spirits tearing at
freaking everything, with any good guys so dubious it would be a hokey joke
to try to pass them off as role models.  And Mr. Square Jaw, himself, at
the head of the triangular formation.  Rick.  As next-door as a boy could
be.  In truth, their cause, if that's what it was, would have been better
served by a Sean Penn type; a feature-film Brady's sister-and-brother
neighbors type, sort of half there on the street, with the rest requiring
no particular stretch on the part of the audience.  But Rick and Nancy?
That was going all the way in a single step.  No Woody Allen.  No Sandra
Dee.  No ifs, ands, or buts, this clear-skinned boy with that clear-skinned
kid sister, down-home and absolute to the loaf of Wonder Bread on the
butcher-block butcher block.  And Neal Armstrong thought he'd taken a giant
step.

                  "Are all child molester as rough as you are?" Lincoln
asked.
                  "Sorry," Allen said, trying not to let on that his nephew
absolutely dazzled him.  Imagine wool-gathering in the presence of such a
child. Turpitude.  Shame on him.
                  "It's going to be a triumph deluxe," the boy said in
Simon Callow's voice, obviously tuned in.  How easily he could have asked:
"Are you thinking about another boy?"  Good kid.
                  "If anyone sees it," Allen said.
                  "When everyone's seen it," the boy rejoined.
                  "This I would hate," the young director admitted, "going
up against it on Saturday night."
                  "The energy savings will be colossal," the boy observed.
"No one will be going anywhere."
                  "'What's going on with Rick and Nancy?'," Allen said.
"We can start seeding it as blind classifieds.  Then whisper to the
tabloids.  `Is this really them?'  `How bold are they?'  `What would they
be doing if it were legal?'  `How much has happened?'  `How much do they
want to happen?'  `Who does this young couple turn to?'  `What will their
children think?'  `Does the public matter?'  Then you add the fortune
tellers and soothsayers, the psychics and herbalists, and congress gets
involved, calls the whole thing a colossal public nuisance, gets impeached
in seventy hours and twenty minutes, goes home, tunes in, and the world
makes another rotation on its axis."
                  "With a lot of happy young girls kissing their cute big
brothers Good morning," Lincoln added.
                  "And...?" Allen asked.  The man gazed intently into the
young boy's eyes.  It was impossible to see the wheels turning, for they
spun with blinding speed, registering their winning combination almost
immediately in the bright eyes.
                  "Nephews kissing their cute uncles?"
                  "Only ones they love," the dazed adult managed to croak.
                  "Will it get stronger while we're asleep, or wear off?"
the child asked.
                  "You have an absolutely magnificent mind," Allen replied,
"don't ever change it."
                  "You're directing an absolutely magnificent picture," the
boy said, "but I do want you to change it.  I want to be in it, with you.
Not let Rick take all the heat.  Nephew and uncle.  I can sit in your lap
while we bait fish.  You wouldn't touch me like you're going to, tonight,
but more than if we were indifferent."

                  "At least I wouldn't have to act," Allen mused, half to
himself.
                  "Me, either," the boy said.  "We could rip SAG of, times
two.  How would that look in our memoirs?"

                  "There's so much method in your madness," Allen said, "we
might end up reputable members, after all."  It was a savagely funny pun,
and set Lincoln wheezing and choking, as boys are wont to do.

                  "I'm looking forward to working with you," the boy
finally said.
                  "The pleasure will be all mine," his uncle replied.

                  "And I still say you're awfully gentle for a child
molester," Lincoln said, his voice suddenly the softest whisper.
                  "If you turn over, I'll be gentler yet," Allen whispered
back.
                  "You have to follow me," the boy said.
                  "I will," the young adult promised.

                  Still not touching, Lincoln rolled on his back, lying
first with his arms at his side, then, feeling the hot stare of his uncle,
raising his hands to link them behind his neck.  Allen rolled over, and the
boy gasped at the sight of his huge erection lying along the mature male
belly with its trace of blond fuzz leading down from the navel.  As
impressed as Lincoln was, his uncle was his equal.  The boy's white
underpants tented dramatically, the tip of his teen penis jutting hard
against a fold secured the right leg band.  Indeed, the entire pair of
underpants were askew as such a small garment had never been designed for
such a big boy.
                  "Are you like me or were you circumcised?" Allen asked.
                  "Like you," the boy whispered back.
                  "I think this way's better for experimenting," the uncle
noted, "but it's not very important."
                  "What happens when I start experimenting with you?"
Lincoln asked.
                  "I'll cum," the young man whispered.
                  "What's that like?" he quizzed.
                  "Wet and messy," Allen whispered, "and very, very hot if
you're excited."
                  "What's the best experiment?" the boy wanted to know.
                  "There are two basic kinds," Allen said, "hands, and lips
and tongue and mouth.  That may take getting used to."
                  "Is it a good idea to experiment to get used to
something?" Lincoln asked.
                  "I wouldn't recommend hanging yourself to get used to
suicide, or committing suicide to get used to death," Allen said, "but it
might come in handy."
                  "Or mouthy?" the boy asked.
                  "As long as you don't hold your tongue," Allen observed.
                  "I just wish it was forked," the boy added, then they
stared into each other's eyes for a long time, proving to themselves, if no
one else, that literacy far surpassed godliness when it came to falling
head-over-heels in love.

                  "Think of what we're thinking about," Allen said.
                  "I'm trying to," his nephew replied, "but I keep thinking
about it."  It didn't make much sense, but exemplified how lips and tongues
can flirt with the facets of morality, while not breaking code one.
Decent.  The same organs could be used for bio release, no smiles, no
words, and indecent at any age.  It was hardly worth thinking about, but,
as the core issue of their real project, they had no choice.  Shaking the
common ground was not something they looked forward to.  The old adages
cautions against wishing or striving for something one might actually
obtain.  Monkey's paw.  Again, they had no choice.  Rick and Rob didn't
like to talk about it, but in private they admitted to seeing a
scrambled-egg future for their culture, and felt the division and confusion
caused by urban liberals was unsuitable as a basis for the long-term
survival of an intricate and complex society.  Credit, for example, was
plastic fire, and food was slow-but-sure poison, yet both were served in
heaping helpings and pitched hard and incessantly to the dumbest of the
dumb and the youngest of the young.  By very, very bad people.
                  But they were not a go-after crew.  If millions of
parents wanted to slop their kids out on catatonically vapid television
fare, they were free to do so, no harm, no foul (as if), because it was
legal.  Don't tear down the status quo (while anticipating, with salivating
tongue, it's self-inflicted demise), but, rather, set a new flag, bear a
new standard, march a new route (that was actually plenty old, and
world-wide in scope), then cluck over those too brain dead to follow,
without raining on their ponderous, murky, dismal, what's-in-your-wallet?
parade.

                  "Rob really has his work cut out for him, doesn't he?"
Lincoln said
                  "Well," Allen said, "he has certain advantages.  Writers
get to create and perform at the same time.  Painters and sculptors don't,
they create, then open their work to the public.  Same with musicians and
all media artists, except writers.  Their creation is their performance,
and vice-versa.  This gives them more scope, a wider canvas, so they can do
a little tap dance in front of the cantina, and slip around back with a
tomahawk.  In a `A Very Brady Movie', and all three films in the `Back to
the Future' trilogy the writers perform this particular stunt.  Fun and
games mixed with devastating commentary.  Goes way back.  Gilbert and
Sullivan, and all the way to Gulliver and The Canterbury Tales.  They used
to call it satire, back when it was funny.  Now things are as black as a
diabetic's left foot, so we're, or, rather, Rob's stuck with substituting
sex for a rubber glove on a beer bottle. Naturally, that's going to fill
the In box with issues and opinions, so we're left blasting through on our
freaking own.  Total show, total product, totally here we totally are."
                  "They say Buddy Holly used to take the stage like that,"
Lincoln said.  "Watch out, folks, you are about to be totally entertained."
                  "What's the most entertaining thing we've done, so far?"
Allen asked his nephew.
                  "For a younger boy," he replied, "it's broaching the
Bertram, for older boys it's the string top on the palm tree."
                  "If you'd been following Rick," the director asked, "and
seen him take the top off the branch, then go in through the shower door,
would you have tried to peek in through the bamboo?"
                  "Yes," said the boy, his white underpants suddenly
straining to a surge of fresh excitement.
                  "What do you think you would have seen?" the hoarse voice
asked.
                  "I think she might have wanted him to try it on, then
they'd kind of wrestle over it."
                  "Would she try to get even with him?" Allen wanted to
know.  Once again they stared into each other's eyes, wishing they could be
yet closer to each other and still focus.  Again, the wheels spun like
dervishes in the young lad's sublimely handsome head, and once again, all
cherries.
                  "She'd try to get his suit off," the boy whispered in
answer, "then she'd be ahead, because she would still have something on."
Irreducibility equals genius.
                  "Would he be childish enough to let her?" Allen asked.
                  "He'd stop being childish, the minute he let her," the
boy said with a nod, proving the point and saying a mouthful at the same
time.
                  "Do you think she'd grow up, too?" Allen asked of his
portable and personable fountain of wisdom.
                  "Unless her growth were somehow stunted by the sight of
her brother coming after her," the young charmer said.
                  "Plus," Allen added, "her hair would turn white, she'd go
all prune, and Rob would be flying in makeup experts from Timbuktu."
                  "It's a storyline," the pygmy Einstein noted.
                  "And a fishing show deals in lines," the mentor, managing
to hold on by his fingernails, said, nodding theatrically so that his nose
rubbed its pug duplicate on the boy's brown-eyed kid's face.  It was their
first physical contact, and the ninety pound genius did not let it go
unnoted.  "I like it when you touch me," he whispered.
                  "Do you think you're going to really give yourself to me,
or be shy and reserved?" Allen asked.
                  "Is there a way to tell?" the eleven year old replied,
"because I feel both ways."
                  "Kissing's a way," Allen said.
                  "So that's what it's for," the boy giggled.

                  A writer's mind is an inhabited mind.  He's not the
landlord and is lucky to have a key.  The space sharing can be tedious.
Allen wanted to kiss the soft, beautiful lips, but guess-who from the
storyboard department was out for a walk.  It didn't matter who, what
mattered was his Thing, and his Thing was a breakthrough vision.  Himself
fishing for grunt (a favorite baitfish), his coltish nephew, bare chested,
sitting on his lap to help.  In a serious of close-ups, Lincoln is seen
dipping his right index finger into the clean water of the fish bucket,
then licking the finger free of the salty fluid.  (No one said the rampant
muses were all bad.)  And against such vivid throwaways, was the necessity
of complying with the mish-mash theory of writing.  LaCarre is the most
widely read example.  Fill the work with so many characters, locations and
machinations, a la "Perry Mason", "Matlock", "Murder She Wrote" and
countless others, viewers can watch most episodes several times a year.
Vivid scripting was too risky; once in awhile, sure, a "Pet Detective" was
pulled out of the hat, vivid and enduring, but if less than perfect, it led
to an "I've seen that" reaction before the first commercials air.  (It
appears directors have their share of nuisance muses.)

                  "Love's barometer, passion's thermometer," the
writer/director acknowledged.
                  "What you need is an altimeter," the boy deadpanned, his
eyes trying not to glow right out of his head.
                  "In love, attitude's more important that altitude," the
older genius said.
                  "But if a boy can have a teacher with both," Lincoln
said, "he can die any old time and know he didn't miss anything."

                  "Speaking of which," Allen said, "young homosexuals
sometimes practice a thing, I've read about it, called a deathbed kiss."
                  "That must be a long one," the boy commented.
                  "Wrong," Allen was almost happy to say, "they are not
more than three or four times longer than an ordinary kiss."
                  "They talk each other to death, first?" the boy guessed,
and who could blame him?  Guess again.
                  "No," Allen intoned, patiently, "they get beaten to death
for glib misuse of mouth, tongue, and lips."
                  "Glad I'm not a wide-mouthed frog," quoth the boy.
                  "Do you give up?" his mentor asked.
                  "I guess so," Lincoln replied, Allen trying not to sigh
with relief at the simple answer.
                  "Okay," the young man said, "it's totally mature.  The
reason it's called `deathbed' is that in all likelihood, it will be the
last memory of your life."
                  "Aunt Tilly, fresh from her toilet," the merry child
said, wiping a crust of imaginary lipstick from his cheek.

                  "If we slip out of first place in our first hundred
episodes, it won't be your fault," the director whispered, stunned once
again at the wildly rapacious beauty of a boy with a brain.
                  "You said `mature',." Lincoln mimicked in a pitilessly
perfect imitation of Bevis.
                  "I meant mature," Allen explained," in the sense of what
you might have seen happening between Rick and Nancy if you'd laid on your
stomach in the shrubbery and peeked in through a crack in the shower for
half an hour or so."
                  "Oh," the boy whispered, his suddenly trembling young
voice as soft as a front-of-the-goose feather, "then it must be going
directly to heaven; a virtual deathbed, I get it."
                  He was as beautiful wrong, as right, and wrong meant
correcting him, and correcting him meant talking to him, and talking to him
removed `virtual' from things heavenly.  "It's mature and it's legitimate,"
he explained to the boy.  "No tricks of syntax or semantics.  There is a
way to kiss that you will always remember, and that will be your last
memory, unless you die in Rick's arms, or on your wedding night with
Nancy."
                  "Mature, yet it lasts forever," the boy mused.  "It must
be awesomely perverted."
                  "No whips, chains, cuffs, or strangulation devices;
vibrators, dildoes, drugs, liquors, scents, or potions, though a little
weed, and a sniff or two of poppers never hurts anything; environmentally
friendly, safe, easy, and convenient."
                  "You didn't mention `survivable'," the boy said.
                  "I'm just quoting you what I read," Allen said, "I'm not
exactly an old hand with the boys, so it's an experiment.  Some boys would
hate it.  The writer did say that, but think of their joy when they're on
the brink of never having it happen again."  (Directors deal in angles.)
                  "And the article wasn't in `The Anarchist's Cookbook'?"
So much hope in the candle-lit eyes.  Sweet affirmation; it was like
bestowing absolution.
                  "No," Allen said, adding: "it wasn't," as this was not a
boy to tempt with double-negatives, "and, since you've seen fit to express
concern, however subtlety, over being talked to death, it might behoove
pace and cadence if you'd assume survival."
                  "Well," the boy intoned, "we're blood, so I guess it's
okay."
                  "How does blood taste?" Allen asked.
                  "They say salty," the boy replied.
                  "Good," said the mentor, "that gets us back on track."
                  "Vampire kisses.  Deathbed.  Should have been my first
guess."

                  Way off course, once again.  Who O who would talk this
youngster back to where he belonged, take the time to refocus him for the
umpteenth time?

                  "Pretend," Allen suggested, "one of said creatures has
drawn from you every single drop of blood, down to the last pink molecule.
Recalibrate, then tell me if you want me to tell you, because you might not
want me to, and we could change the subject."

                  That got the boy's attention.  "I want to," he said.

                  "Okay," Allen whispered, "I have to ask you some stuff
about how much you know, so I'll know how to tell you.  If anything's too
private, just say so and I'll try to get the background I need another
way."
                  "If I had a background," the boy said.

                  "You have none at all?" the director quizzed, "stuff
happening on sleepovers or out in the woods or in a tree house?"
                  "Not even wedgies," the boy said, "just what I hear in
the locker room, same as the other boys."
                  "Have any of them told realistic stories so you learned
from them?" the director asked, as methodical in preparing the child for
some pretty good news as he was in indexing the images from his cameras and
the audio from his mics.
                  "Just about what happens at night, sometimes," the boy
whispered, shyly.
                  "Has it been happening with you?" the young man asked.
                  "Twice," the boy acknowledged.
                  "It's that kind of thing I want to talk about with you,
Linc," Allen whispered, "and I know it's really embarrassing at first, but
you're not likely to freak out over anything, at this late date, so it
would be cool if you'd try."

                  "It was the picture you sent," the boy said, "that night
I was thinking about it before I went to sleep, then I had this vivid
dream."
                  "We're you awake when it started happening?" the young
uncle asked.
                  "I think so, because it kept happening again and again,
like ten times, and it didn't seem like there could be more, in the whole
world, so I must have been awake for all of it, don't you think?"

                  The boy had just ad-libbed the greatest sentence in the
history of the English language, and, it went without saying, all other
languages.  Allen lay dazed looking into the surprisingly friendly and
modest eyes.  Where did such an absolute degree of genius come from?  And
it's relentlessness?  It's omnipresence?  It's never-off quality?  Ask him
the time, and he'd teach you a love of watches, wasting not a minute.  His
quickness?  His lightning response?  And what would his DNA look like?
"You know what there has to be?" the uncle mused silently as the boy gazed
expectantly into his eyes, "something to do with incest.  Some fluke of
genetics."  ("After all," the uncle can be excused for thinking, "we come
from the same stock, and I'm gaining with each project.")

                  "When's the last time it happened?" the same uncle wanted
to know.
                  "When I got your second letter and picture," the boy
said, "seven or eight days ago."  Allen's eyes glazed.  He'd been celibate
awhile, himself, on the off chance something might develop with the boy
he'd known casually over the years, but eight days?
                  "I think we have a lot to talk about," the older male
said, "because the kind of thing that happens can be pretty intense, and if
you're on the wrong track, it can take too long to stop to prevent a
crash."

                  "That's why I wrote and asked for the pictures," Lincoln
said.
                  "And it's why I wore just swim trunks," the man
whispered.
                  "They came out well."
                  "And developed the storyline."
                  "That's what I'm waiting for."

                  "Okay," Allen said, in the tone teacher's use to review,
"you know all the blood got drained out.  You know different things
happened to you a couple of times while you were sleeping.  You made a
correct statement when you said `salty'.  You were wrong on an impressive
number of guesses.  You will have guessed it concerns an act of extreme
intimacy of a homosexual nature between us.  Finally, you have one burning
question in that particularly exquisite mind of yours, so shoot."

                  "When?" the boy asked.

                  The thunderous applause of the audience is premature.
This is not a one-night stand, this boy is freaking cross the T's, dot the
I's, perfect.  I mean to keep him that way.  And I don't ask when, I tell
it.

                  "Within the hour," Allen answered, "and, in the meantime,
I want to find out if you have the vaguest idea of what I'm talking about."

                  "I guess we're going to do something very special
together," the boy recited, "and it would still happen if I didn't have any
blood, and some of it has happened before, and it's salty, which sounds
good, and that I probably won't have my underpants on when it happens."

                  "You make listening in class, cheating," the fond uncle
said.
                  "You tease me in your lectures," the boy replied, "and
I'm flattered, so I try to stay awake on this comfortable bed until the
very tip, tip ending."
                  "Better than hurling in the stool if I get it wrong,"
Allen said.
                  "You'd have to get it wrong like O.J.'s verdict to move
me three feet," the boy confided.
                  "Picture this," Allen said, "you're looking up into the
shower.  You see Rick washing Nancy's hair.  Then his hands go to her neck,
and he massages her as the water rinses out the shampoo; but he doesn't
stop.  She leans back against his bare chest, then stands on her toes,
reaching back around his neck with her long, slim arms.  She's display as a
female to her older brother, and he begins to take her as a female.  His
hands go from her neck to her shoulders, then down over her bare chest and
her tiny, developing buds of nipples.  She wriggles happily as he used both
his strong, athletic hands all over her chest and tummy, working lower to
her belly and her little panties.  At some point, she turns.  He's her
brother, and she only wants to go so far on this date.  She pulls down his
suit as you stare through the bamboo slats, five or six feet away.  Rick is
huge, totally aroused by what Nancy is letting him do.  There's a bench in
the shower.  She turns the water off, and lays her brother on her back.
His waist is now three feet from you.  She straddles his far thigh, and
then she does something very special.  Do you know what it is?"
                  "With her hands?" Lincoln asked.
                  "Yes," his young mentor said.
                  "That's masturbating, I think," Lincoln answered, a
little timid after so many wrong guesses.
                  "Yes," Allen said, relieved, for all the subtlety of his
efforts at instigation, to have completed a giant-step, "that's what I want
to do with you, lying on our backs, side by side, with my left leg over
your right leg.  I want to do it while you watch, and watch you do it."
                  "I'll have to go second, because I don't know how.  Vivid
as it may have been, the story of Rick and Nancy Schroeder is fictitious,
and a kid my age knows the names of a lot of things he can't exactly do."

                  Somewhere on the planet there probably was something the
boy couldn't do, but Allen Rigby was sure it had nothing to do with being a
lover.

                  "Like `Myst'," the young uncle said, to the boy's quick,
light giggle.  Without hurrying, he continued. "We lie side by side, and
yes, I can start doing it.  We can talk while it's happening, at least at
first, and you can stop any time you like, or ask question, or experiment
in any way that doesn't involve sharp blades or strong acids."

                  "It still sounds like fun," the bright-eyes chirped.
                  "The fun doesn't last," the man assured the boy.
                  "Maybe that's why they invented the circus," Lincoln
responded, devastating his uncle once again.  He was clever, this nephew of
his, but writing him would be impossible.  Maximum reader IQ would be two
hundred, and his would test at double that.  He would boggle a theater, and
fights would break out between those laughing over the last line and their
pew mates wanting to hear the next one.  Editors sometimes did that, hung
their heads, said to themselves, "If only," and slipped a rejection slip in
the envelope.  Their lack of courage would haunt them for years, but norms
and convention paid the bills.

                  "I'll remind you you said that in a few minutes," Allen
promised.
                  "Anything, as long as it's together," the obviously happy
but increasingly nervous youth said.  Thus it was they dropped the circus.

                  "According to the article," Allen said, "you have to take
your own underpants off.  I know we rubbed noses a little, but we shouldn't
touch, except where our legs meet, until, as you said, the tip, tip end."
                  "I hope we get to make up for lost time, then," the
eleven year old commented.
                  "Totally guaranteed," Allen promised, nor was he just
whistling "Dixie".
                  "And if I'm thinking of something else my last hours in
croak city, who hands me the refund?" the boy asked.
                  "I'll still be alive to keep both eyes on you, so not to
worry," Allen answered.
                  "Then pay up now," the boy said, "because I'll be
thinking of you, dead or alive, present or absent, period."

                  "I'm not being selfish here," the director said, "but
that's more-or-less the whole point."
                  Meantime, the child was taking down his underpants.
Raising his hips high, and Allen knew he'd have done so if it had been his
mature hands at the waistband, then exposing himself neither horridly and
shamefully, nor hokeing it up with a lingering bump and grind routine.
Just getting himself completely naked for what was going to happen.  The
boy raised his knees, and peeled the white briefs to his ankles, then
kicked them free, as anxious, now, to see himself, as he'd never been
before, as the child molester at his right elbow.  Completely naked, he
lowered his knees, and spread his left leg wide.  Allen covered his right
leg with his left leg, and, using his right hand, began fondling himself in
the manner of a pedagogue initiating training in a forbidden ritual.

                  "This is jerking off," he whispered, as the boy's right
hand reached hesitantly to his huge, hard pre-teen erection.  Wordlessly
they stared at each other.  Silently, the boy copied the young man, finding
the technique surprisingly easy to master.  Baited breath, half holding,
half panting, his body shaking as much from watching Allen as from the
feelings shocking through his body from his own wanton touch of himself.
And then they were doing it.  Jerking off together.  Each knowing how; not
racing each other, not proud, or anything, just classic mutual masturbation
of the first kind.

                  "Later we can experiment with doing it for each other,"
Allen whispered, his own hips beginning to buck.
                  "I like the watching part," the boy whispered back, his
eyes riveted to what his older partner was doing.

                  Minutes passed.  Things were beginning to transition.
Where once there'd been two buds, experimenting, enjoying freedom in each
other's presence, now young lovers began appearing.  As brother of the
stroke, their breathing began deepening as they began to tense and tremble.
In a moment they were sweating, their legs were twining sinuously, with
emphasis on the sin, their hips bucking solidly against each other, as well
as toward the thatched roof of the palapa.

                  "Do you like me watching you?" Allen hissed.
                  "Yes," the boy responded like a second snake.
                  "Are you ready to watch me cum?" the older male panted.
                  "Yes," the boy grunted.
                  "Babe, I'm going to get sperm all over you, do you want
me to?"
                  "Yes," the boy groaned.
                  "Okay," the man panted, adding: "I love you," as his cum
started hard and fast, spurting high over them, splashing on the
masturbating child again and again.
                  They timed it perfectly.  As he felt his final full cum
bolt from his loins, Allen rolled to his left, positioned himself over the
boy, and sprayed on him.  The hot wetness on the eleven year old's hand had
almost instant results.  "Watch me," the boy gasped, "it's going to
happen."  The child arched, thrust his hips high, and guided his swollen
penis toward the panting, sweating male at his right hip.  He whispered,
"I'm cumming," and began ejaculating as wildly as his mature friend.  His
sperm was thin; boiling hot water, and sprayed and splashed over himself,
over Allen, and on the pillow.

                  Lincoln was still half conscious when it happened.  He
was still spraying when Allen lunged against him, his mouth finding the
boy's tense belly.  There he remained for just a second, before rising in
another instant to the boy's panting mouth.  His lips found Lincoln's.  He
kissed the panting boy tenderly, then thrust his slick, salty tongue gently
between the pursed lips.  He might as well have electrocuted the boy.  The
shock galvanized the coltish body in an instant.  His left hand grabbed his
rapist by the back of his head, wilding the kiss ten times.  His hips froze
high in the air, and he started cumming all over again, his sperm hissing
against the cheek of the male kissing him to shout Thank You a hundred
times in something just under a minute.

                  From cumming on each other, the couple half fainted into
a tender routine of licking and kissing.
                  "You were right," Lincoln whispered, as soon as he could,
"I'll never be able to think of anything else as long as I live, I'll
become ineffectual, and so the deathbed looms, inevitable."  He'd swallowed
so much semen it had glazed his vocal cords, he hard a hard time
articulating, but Allen got the message.

                  Eventually, they came to rest, nose to nose, and
whispering about plans for the next day's shoot, fell asleep.

Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, Nov. 2002

xxx