Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:14:47 -0500 From: Tom Emerson Subject: Michelle's First Secret Michelle's First Secret (M/F, M/f, m/f, M/m, inc., rom.) by Feather Touch Sure, I noticed her on her first visit, what am I, freaking blind? Trouble is, I like boys for their wit, sass, and charm; but almost as I learned her name was Michelle, I wondered if I was entirely right in this regard; if I didn't see a depth to her eyes that indicated at least boyishness. No charge, but for sure no retreat. Never asked, of course, but she admitted to twenty-two. Lot of years for a teen, and bloody teen she looked. Iowa farm teen, female, curly ginger hair, light freckles, slightly round, pretty face. Very soft spoken, like the best boys in the world. Her second, third and forth visit she was squired by John, a slim, class guy. Quite a match, and I was almost shocked when she visited my shop a sixth time, alone, recently broken up. Sad. A month or so went by, and one day she came in with Steve. Bigger, black-haired, rangier guy than John, just sleazy enough to wonder where the focus was, this kind of thing is interesting in my book, and I do mean my book, because I write the things as well as peddle the one's others have written, and , for Michelle, probably a better match, because, without overdoing anything, anywhere, by any amount, Michelle was a big girl, classic farm to the genre's most exquisite tee. Days later she came in, without Steve, and that's where the story really begins. We liked to talk about books, and I ran a bookstore, so that always kept us chattering away, with tiny circles stitched through personal stuff. She announced she was engaged to Steve in a way that almost seemed like a kid half asking permission, or, more specifically, like a boy half asking, half telling. This was appropriate, because I was twenty years older than Michelle, teen bod, which I maintain to this day, notwithstanding. And for a minute or two there, I almost thought father/daughter as I wished her the best. "Steve really likes you," Michelle said. "Thanks," I said, not wishing to return the compliment, because I didn't know her fiance beyond incidental contact. (Nor he, me, but I happen to suffer from acute conceit and always assume I'm a fascinating meet, however fleeting an encounter.) She'd lingered before, and I'd been flattered, but I was drafting "An All-New Jaws," and in spite of the ridiculous ease of running a sloppy bookstore, time was at a severe premium. This was one reason my only happening relationship, at the time, was with an eleven-year-old boy, Steven. Steven, grand marshal of the sleaze-of-the-year festivities, was wondrous copy, and, even if I had to leave out the best parts, extending the "Jaws" screenplay often amounted to simply typing out his visits. Yes, I was playing hard-to-get, I suppose; being deliberately obtuse, protecting that ten hours a day demanded by the keyboard. (Uncompromising bitch, don't every marry up with anything that has 105 plastic pads that insist on being depressed in precise order.) And she lingered this time. If she was anything more like a beautiful male teen, I was going to kiss her on the spot. She seemed to understand, and went in search of another book for her stack. Nice move, give the gentleman time to fry in his own juices. Then she was back. And just what is it about farm-style dresses? Cripes, even with a top button and lacework at the collar. It wasn't real Hef, but I'd been with half a dozen of his type and learned as an absolute that all show is way no go. And lingered. "He wants to buy you, us, dinner," Michelle said. "I hardly know him, but sure," I managed to respond, "as long as you like the idea." I was never a coy one about dough and told her I had seventy thousand and change in the bank, so I'd just as soon the treat be mine, unless they had more loot than I did. Michelle said she loved the idea, not with the sparkling eyes of a girl, but closer to the glow of a maturing boy. Wow, it was easy to make her happy, and delightful, too. While there is nothing wrong with ardent eleven year olds, and their seemingly endless curiosity, Michelle was more even just standing there, nervous and blushing. She'd met Steven, not the secretive type so's you'd notice, and was now obvious in her own secrets that turned out to number three. She stayed mute and subdued through two hundred dollars worth of dinner and wine. Perfection. At one with the chef, even enjoying the absurdities of the server, and slowly becoming at one with Michelle, prim as a schoolmarm, and as delectable as rich custard. It was a walking date, and as we returned to my place, she looped her right arm through mine and held me ever tighter as we approached the door. By the time we were on the sofa, she was shaking. More alcohol wasn't called for, so I let her catch up with herself at her own speed. Finally, she began to speak in a low, husky voice. Damn, she even sounded like a boy when she wanted to. "I'd like to stay all night," she whispered to me. "But, I'm, we're, Steve and me, we're kind of different. We've got some secrets, and I've got some, too, so it might make you uptight, so I'll understand if you think we're too weird and want me to go." I told her about Steven, as against her Steve, and how I figured folks might consider that a furlong or two off the straight and narrow. "I've seen him here twice, and he was here when Steve was," Michelle whispered, "that's maybe half the reason I'm here, tonight. Some people call it Free Spirit, but here in Iowa it's more likely to be called Farm Life." Now remember, we'd talked numerous times over a year or more, so this was not quite the bolt from the blue news that it might appear to be. Nevertheless, I wasn't sure, exactly, what either sobriquet meant. Randy times at the swimming hole? Bubble baths with little naked cousins? There weren't a thousand possibilities, but there were several. As a writer, I love characters who pose and answer their own questions, it saves wear and tear on the imagination. Of course, sometimes they need a little coaxing. "I lived in rural Maine for four years," I said, "so I guess I kind of know what you mean, but it could be really different." I guess that was a pretty good cue, offhand as it was. "It's probably the same," Michelle said. "Mostly, it's natural, one couple in three." "And?..." I prompted gently. "As I said, Steve really likes you, more than. That goes for me, at least double. On top of that, he doesn't think he's that great looking, and he thinks he has too much personality, so, if you've been following with an open mind, you might be getting some idea of why both of us want me to be here with you." This girl could thicken a plot faster than King could drain a corpse. Stupid analogy, and, yeah, I was thinking real straight when I came up with it. "Well," I answered as best as I could, "before I was flattered, now I'm flattergasted." When you have fifty thousand hours at the keyboard, this kind of thing happens more often than you might think, but still I was very pleased with myself. Michelle wasn't a smiling girl, but, oh, that boyish glow when she was pleased. "Do you want to?" she whispered from under my left arm, looking me in the eyes, still glowing. She obviously knew what the answer would be, but added a few technical bits like I could be as much a dad as I did or did not want to be, that Steve was half-assed well off, himself, so money would never come up, and that was about it, save for one added secret that she'd divulge at a later time. The delicious girl actually had two major secrets, but, as things developed, it was understandable she'd only allude to a minor one at that particularly moment. By the time her brief explanation was complete, at least for the moment, all I wanted, because it's the state I'd been reduced to, was to tarry with just that top button, even if it was for only a single minute, and even if it was the last thing I ever did on mortal soil. Actually, it was wool carpeting, but I wasn't even that vaguely focused that I would have noticed tacks. "It's not free love," Michelle whispered. "In fact, it's more like husbandry of the kind beef farmers practice, only intelligence and personality are the criteria, and someone who looks like a kid in their forties, well, it sure made the decision easy." "I'm a great artist, too," I pointed out. (I had left this happy fact out of our previous talks.) "What kind?" Michelle asked. "Writer," I answered. "Poetry?" she quizzed. "I have a shot at a limerick now and again," I admitted, "but my favorite place is a few hundred pages into a story that will run to five or six hundred pages." "Have you published anything?" she asked. I thought for a second, then told her the truth. "It's my personal belief," I pontificated, "that, while the Jews invented little or nothing, they have absorbed and amplified the very worst of every culture they infest. Since I'm a great artist, I cannot leave this out. That should answer any questions about my relationship with the bestseller lists." "But it must be fun, anyway," the beauty commented with one thousand percent accuracy, adding, "maybe things will change. Pendulum. I mean how long can two percent of the population violate the spirit of the Constitution with one hundred percent religious domination of the media?" If she'd been a genius she'd have mentioned the possibility of new markets, but I'm a documented egghead, and I didn't think of it. I mean, who knew in '92? It was great talking to her. Lot of blue in the big gray eyes. Soft breath; that might have been more girl than boy. Mentally, I was doing very poorly by now, and when she gently took both my hands in hers, I fainted four times and died twice, but never seriously enough that I lost track of what she was doing at her lace collar with my shook-up fingers. Not just doing, repeating. Four times. Then I was staring down at her, rudely. In my less aerial days I felt there was nothing that would ever beat Steven's eleven-year-old bubble butt in the department of sculpted, warm, silky, tender flesh, but I had it wrong, being, in those days, a mortal merely on the way to self-deification. Michelle was an absolute beauty, high and mighty, crude, but if the adjectives fit... Fit? That's what I had a total one of. A freaking fit, and all she did was kiss me. Broken glass and warm syrup. Enough promise to start a religion. Enough tingle for an Amazon eel. Enough patience for a young mother. "You are more than amazing," I whispered after timeless minutes. "Nice to know," she whispered back. "Does Steve quiz you?" I asked. "Yes," she replied. "How do you feel about it?" I probed, leaving no doubt by my tone that her business was her's. "As long as everything is true, I love it," Michelle answered. "How about you?" "Steven likes to tell explicate stories, and he loves it when I quiz him. I guess I feel kind of the same. It's something that I just never associated with a woman, before." "Nicest thing you could say," Michelle purred. "Does Steve ask you, you know, about who taught you and stuff like that?" By now my voice had joined the wreckage of the overall mortal I once was, and I was yawning like an around-the-world soloist. "He takes my bra off, first," came the girl's whisper. Her eyes were huge and she looked about ten. In a way, I was discouraged. It was going to take at least ten years, and thousands more hours showing up at the keyboard, before I would be able to even sketch her. As a writer, I was proud the thought even intruded, but in all other senses I was tower city at nine-ten, a.m. We stood, and I unbuttoned her at the back. "Does he have a special way of taking it off?" I whispered in Michelle's right ear. "He likes to feel me up from in back, first" she responded, voice not doing a whole lot better than mine. Well, whaddya know? Writer or lover, luck favors the prepared, and there I was, standing behind Michelle, though her shoulders seemed an impassable barrier. Neck and shoulders were almost too much to either bear or bare. I needed relief, so I finished off her dress, taking two seconds to place it neatly on a chair, then I stooped for a second, finding the bottom of her slip, and running my hands up under the silky nothing until I found her waist. Her shoulders were still beautiful, and her neck irresistible, slim and slightly corded and muscley at the back, essential treats I discovered with my teeth. "On my tummy," she whispered. My thinking, absolutely exactly. She was so different than Steven, who pretty will defined slim, wiry and wiggly; softer and more delicious -- and, nothing gross about it, bigger. A woman. Letting me molest her like a friendly child, quiet and happy while I learned slowly. "He likes candles, and to kneel on the sofa," came a little-girl whisper. Not for all the tea in china would I have let her go, but for candles? To do it her way? I'd to that for a tea bag, and I started immediately by lifting off her slip and unsnapping her, something I hadn't done since getting dumped by my wife, a decade earlier. Then I was off after a pair of candelabra, which, since I come from money, I actually had in silver, and then, pausing a moment to admire her reflection in the burnished metal, I lit the tapers and was kneeling, facing her on the soft buckskin of the big sofa. . Michelle's fingers flew down my buttons so fast as to leave me wondering how often she may have stripped the shirt from a waiting male. Later I was to find out the real reason for her skill, but that would be later. Right now I was bare chested, inches from her large, swollen breasts adding up to an impossible combination of honey and silk with nipples jutting enough to make me wonder if she was not perhaps just a little bit pregnant, already. If she was not, and I was the cause, well, modesty intrudes. We knelt, staring at each other for long minutes, then she changed her position, jockeying until her back was against me, my left cheek buried in her strawberry hair. She felt more beautiful than she looked, more shaped and purposeful than little Steven; more interesting, more mature, more exciting, and she looked out of this entire world, and the next one. This was obvious the second she shrugged her bra to the buckskin. Einstein may have passed a test or two in his time, but no one was going to pass this beauty. Just the view of her over her shoulder was beyond "Playboy" dreams at any age. Michelle didn't posture or preen; she didn't moan and sigh with drama. She knelt, still and panting. nipples matching what was happening as I found them with my creeping fingers. "Does he ask about the first man that did this to you," I whispered. "It was Nancy Ridgeway, when I was eleven," Michelle answered in her own whisper. "A man came to me soon after." "Does he ask you about all the details," I went on. "Yes," she acknowledged, her voice lower and hotter than ever. "Is it okay if I do?" Nothing like being sure. Creeps creep. Yankees don't. "He likes to push his penis against me," Michelle prompted, causing be to oblige. Then she began her story. "Nancy was a friend of my best friend, and we were getting to like each other. She want away to camp, and when she came back, at noon on the first day of school, she called to invited me over because Naomi was delayed getting back from vacation. Mom said it was okay, so I took the bus to her farm. When I got there, her mom said that her little girl was starting to grow up, and we could have complete privacy upstairs, if we wanted to talk... that it was okay to lock the door. I was kind of surprised, but it was the most exciting thing anyone ever said to me. "Nancy's door was open, so I went in and sat on her bed while she finished a game. Then she jumped beside me, and kissed me, and said she was glad I'd been able to come. We talked about stuff for awhile, mostly Naomi, and listened to music. Finally she whispered that she had some secrets to tell her, Naomi, about what happened at camp, and asked if I wanted to hear them. "I said as long as they didn't involve mailing powder in envelopes, and she thought that was pretty funny. I do to, so I'm leaving the joke in as a glaring inconsistency, entirely consistent with reminding you that this is a work of fiction. A story, through and through. "So," Michelle went on, "I told Nancy okay, and she went and locked the door. Her eyes got really big, and she came and sat back down beside me. `They had a club,' she whispered, `it was called Erotic Dancing with Young Men.' They should have called the camp by that name, because over half the girls wanted to join. " . . . "What's erotic? Like Eros? Love?" Michelle asked. "More explicate," Nancy whispered. "Not dancing around and posing, but, you know, talking quietly with your counselor in the woods, and then in groups that have different interests besides dancing and Young Boys. Like some girls want to be virgins, so there's a religious side for them, then there's like spanking and things, some girls go for that. Then if you want to cut your hair and be butch, your counselor will tell you about that club. Then there is the most secret club and the very most secret club. The most secret club is for girls who want to take their bras off in front of another girl, and the very most secret club is for girls who want to take their bras off for their dads or brothers. That's the Farm Life club." "Did you get in it?" Michelle whispered to her friend, taking in her pretty school girl face framed by mouse brown hair to her waist. "Look around," Nancy giggled to Michelle. Indeed, there was little to see out her bedroom window that wasn't Iowa farm. "You've got to tell me," Michelle whispered, "unless you want to wait and tell Naomi, first; she's your best friend." "It's not that big a deal," Nancy said. "That's the first thing Joanna told me. She was my counselor. I mean, you know, it is, but it isn't. Some couples are happy, and never do it, and others are miserable, and do it all the time. Everything, in between. They try to tell that to all the girls, even the virgins who don't even want to talk about it. They recommend, all the counselors, finding a partner, young, and concentrating on all the other stuff in life, mostly reading, and mostly not clothes, hair, music and boys." "Are you going next year?" Michelle asked. "Next year," Nancy whispered firmly, "I'm going off with my dad. Just him and me and mom. Meantime, the girl stuff is really nice, too, if you want me to teach you. It's okay to have a few special partners, and even a group of partners, once in awhile. `Let your conscience be your guide, and remember how many diseases and misfortunes are on tap as a reward for bad choices.' That's Joanna." "How old is she?" Michelle asked. "Nineteen," Nancy replied. "That's a really good age to be a teacher," Michelle commented. "Perfect," her hostess agreed. "She was old enough to really remember about being our age, but, you know, mature and sensible, too." Nancy appended her description with a dive into a drawer for a photo that showed a Nordic beauty with long, blond braids. Michelle was delighted with the friendly face. She knew about boy-boy, but girl-girl seemed like it must go with a hard beauty and calculating demeanor. Not so, Joanna; why you hardly even needed to see the photo to tell she was no skin o' nothin'. "Show me how she taught you," Michelle whispered. "You sure," Nancy queried, "it could make you a lesbian." "No law against that, but I'll never be the butch tugboat type, even for Naomi, assuming she's interested in the first place." "We'll both work on her," Nancy whispered. "And, like I said, it doesn't make any difference. Joanne was the best teacher a girl ever had, and we didn't get as excited together as I do watching a home game. In the old days, they called them sporting houses, but they'd empty out ten minutes before post time, boys and girls. "Speaking of boys," Nancy went on, "have you ever seen one, you know, not exactly dressed." The two girls on the bed felt comfortable and equal, but now they were to become all but identical. "Two," Michelle, not prefacing her statement with You've got to promise not to tell. Unnecessary. "A man and a boy." "Totally no way," Nancy hissed. "My dad, and my cousin Ralph, he's thirteen now, twelve, then. It was just after school got out, and he came to visit." "And you saw them. Like everything?" the young hostess wondered. "Do you know what molesting is?" Michelle asked. "Joanna did it to me while we were talking in the woods," Nancy whispered, her voice shaking. "We were talking, like you and me, and she asked if she could see how, you know, developed I was. Then she took my hand and put it up under her halter. We went down on our knees in the clearing, and I let her unbutton my blouse and do what she wanted." "Did you like it?" Michelle asked. "Yeah," the brown haired angel said to the very gently carrot topped, "especially when she started asking about my dad." "What did she ask?" Nancy quizzed. "Really private things," the girl replied, "I mean, at first, did I love him, then, did I like him, then, did I really love him. That was pretty tame, I guess. Anyway, she made real sure I was in love with my dad, then she asked if I ever had dreams about him, or if he'd ever been extra affectionate with me. Then she asked if I ever had mature feelings when I was with him, you know, like not just being his kiddo. "That sounds like Dad and Ralph," Michelle whispered, excitedly to her friend beside her. "They talked. Dad was cool. I mean, I'd noticed Ralph looking at him, and trying to be close to him. It was cute, squared." The girls exchanged comments on how they couldn't believe each other's story was true, because they fit together so perfectly. Michelle had never been touched, and Nancy had never seen a male. The young hostess broke a long, staring silence, not by speaking, but by slowly standing, her hands finding Michelle's, bringing her close as they came gently together in a frightened embrace. "I didn't mean to imply," Nancy whispered, `that when it's special it isn't very, very exciting. I mean, sure, it's no big deal, but do you feel everything else, like I do?" "You mean like the academic part separate from the physical part," Michelle answered, instantly cueing Nancy as to why she was Naomi's best friend. "It's not a game, to try to remain cool and intellectual," Nancy whispered, delightedly, "but even so, it feels really nice. Like, right now, I want to show myself to you, like I did to Joanna, but, at the same time, my mind is working, too. I want to hear about your dad and your cousin." Try running that through a pinball machine and you'll tilt machines on either side of you. Racking up engaging characters is the sign of a life misspent in the library, not the pool hall, so I'm no expert, but, as I remember, you pull back a spring-loaded plunger on the right side of the machine, and let it go. "I was fixing the hay lift so I could use it for a swing. I heard them coming up the ladder, and I was just about to call out, when I noticed something strange in their voices. So I hooked the block to the wall, and spied down through the cracks in the loft. Then I heard my dad up closer, and I was glad I was lying down, because I suddenly knew how much I wanted him to talk that way to me. Do you know what I mean?" "Yes," said the now all but biological twin named Nancy, "that's something Joanna asked me. If Dad's voice ever got different sounding when I sat on his lap, or if he ever whispered secret things to me. "I told her that I heard him sound different with my mom, especially one night before Christmas when I was excited and couldn't sleep." "That's how Dad sounded," Michelle exclaimed. "Ralph, too. And they were both yawning. They dragged a couple of hay bales into an empty stall, and I had to slide back real careful so no dust would fall, so I could look down, then I had to move over some, but then I was right between them. They'd put a saddle blanket on the bales and were sitting astride, facing each other." "So you could hear everything?" Nancy quizzed, delighting Michelle who was getting to like the story telling part more with every passing minute. "It's a loft," Michelle explained, "only about a seven-foot ceiling. and rough planked for circulation, so I could hear even most of what they whispered." "Joanna said sometimes that's the best part," Nancy said. "Yeah," Michelle agreed, instantly. "Ralph was asking Dad questions." Sensing her pretty, slightly older friend was getting to the good part, Nancy's fingers went to Michelle's blouse. Michelle responded in kind. Showing off their new grown-up skills, both girls separated, spontaneously, then unfastened their own training bras and dropped them on the carpet. "We're both starting to grow," Nancy whispered. "Can I touch you?" Michelle husked in response. "Yes," the brown-haired little doll responded. "Did you see Joanna?" Michelle queried as her fingers went to her friends bare chest and found Nancy's swollen girl nipples. Nancy found Michelle, and for a minute they stood a foot apart, staring into each other's eyes as they experimented. "She's bigger," the girl finally said, "but her nipples are just like ours, just, more, you know, around them, but not baggy, like in "Playboy," more fresh looking." If Michelle didn't know exactly what Nancy meant, she was able to use her imagination to fill things out. Slowly, by accord, the girls came together to dance, though the CD had ended. As they swayed together, learning to kiss, Nancy prompted Michelle to go on with her story. Michelle described the events she'd witnessed in such compelling narrative we can hardly do better letting Ralph and Paul, Michelle's dad, speak for themselves. "Have you talked about it with your mom?" Paul asked, gazing down at the twelve year old sitting a foot and a half from him. He was coming to love the boy in an actual way, a way Hallmark didn't exactly make cards for. The more disturbing, then. Harrowing. The bright return of love, not a strut or preen or pose in it, but the longing was impossible to ignore. And now The Subject had come up. Casual references to his band leader had reoccurred as they guys went about the business of running a farm. His name was Phil Fenn, Ralph said, and Paul was amused by the boy's efforts not to describe his teacher as cute. Twenty-three, tall, athletic, black hair in a pony tail, all the kids liked him, and he wasn't cute? If he'd known where his affectionate teasing of the boy, who obviously loved every silly remark, was going to lead, he'd have dropped the subject. Come to think of it, he had dropped the subject, several times, and, somehow, it had always tip-toed back. Since it was a farm, largely corn, not a ranch, there was no bull to grab by the horns, and Ralph's lack of confidence made a bantering response inappropriate, so it seemed only the man-to-man talk was an option. "Mom's cool," the boy said, "but, you know, that's for everything else, except buying underwear. This is different. Phil has two special students. He wants me to be one next year, so do both the other boys. They spend weekends at his place and he takes them on trips, you know, theme parks and ball games. But he does stuff to them. Everybody knows it. At night, when he's got them alone in his room." "And you think he'd want to do thing with you, too, eh?" Paul asked. "I dunno," the boy said, bashfully. "How would you feel if he did?" the quizzing went on. "That I really don't know," Ralph responded, his pubescent voice cracking. "And you think I can talk you into or out of something?" the older male asked. "I guess so," Ralph replied. "I think I'm under-qualified," Paul said. "Yeah," Ralph acknowledged, "but you're a guy. You went to middle school. What if you'd had a teacher that really liked you, and you really liked him, and he wanted to get you alone? And everybody knew he liked to do things with boys?" "I'd measure it by the other boys," Paul replied after some thought. "If they're okay, well, what more would you want?" "They're track stars," Ralph said. "Shaun in the mile and Josh in the ten-thousand meters." "And I assume they didn't train by running away from Phil," Paul intoned. The boy giggled. Okay, so he'd loosened Ralph up for a second. Now what? Shirtless in his Oshkosh work suit, he did, as the English say, look a treat. Was that what the boy wanted? To be physically close? Or just talk. One was one thing, and the other, the other. Thoughts of the tongue-tied. Two little metal clips, that would be one way to find out. Metal clips and iron gray straps. "They were fat, like me, before they started hanging with Mr. Fenn," Ralph whispered. Was that part of it? The boy wasn't fat. If he was three pounds overweight, Paul would have been surprised. Perhaps a bit childish in the stomach, judging from his profile in the work suit, but not even husky, much less fat. Paul pointed this out. "Yeah," Ralph replied, "but they're like jungle cats. They run with him every morning. Josh is in my class and all the boys try not to look at him after gym. Shaun is in sixth grade, and the girls in my class whisper about him, too." That seemed pretty healthy to Paul. He hadn't had the pleasure as a boy, either a more restrictive time, or just a focus on the conventional. Center furrow, center field. Fair enough, but it didn't seem as if the boy sitting in front of him was exactly headed off into a thicket of nettles and snakes. "You're doing a pretty good job of answering you own questions," the man pointed out to his young nephew. "It seems to me you are very lucky," Paul continued, "I never did anything exciting until I was sixteen, and even then it was pretty much movie quality. I finally lucked out when I met your aunt, Mary." "She had the luck," the boy blurted, reddening slightly. "Thanks," Paul replied, "and, like I said, I think you've figured it out for yourself. By next summer you should have some exciting experiences, and you probably won't even want to come to a boring place like this." "I'll just be able to work twice as hard," Ralph said, "because I'll be... " "A jungle cat," Paul finished the sentence. "Yeah," replied the boy, "but not if I keep feeling embarrassed every time Mr. Fenn looks at me or talks to me. I'm too scared to act natural around him." Paul thought for a minute, then said he thought a boy as cute as Ralph would probably warrant a level of interest that would overcome all obstacles. "Except one," Ralph intoned. "Except what?" Paul queried in response. "Josh and Shaun both had to be with someone else before they could hang out with Mr. Fenn. He's a teacher, so, you know, seducing boys in the band, or other boys at school, is against his code. Both of them got their uncles to teach them, and they've lived happily ever after. That's why it's so embarrassing to talk about it with you, Uncle Paul, because I don't just want to talk. I want you to show me about it." "Odds fish," Paul murmured to himself, having picked up the British expression somewhere along the line, "if I were into that kind of thing, I'd have some videos to show the lad." But he wasn't, and hadn't. Might as well face it. Stupid man, all he was doing was facing it. "Because I love you," Ralph added. "I love you, too," Paul replied, immediately. And with that, they'd said enough. Paul's hands went to the straps over his nephew's naked shoulders, and the boy reddened as he unfastened the clips from their buttons. The boy did the same, and in moments, they were staring at each other, the adult tawny and wiry, the child sleek and meltingly soft. As Michelle watched down through the crack, her father tipped the boy's face up, and leaned to kiss him. As the girl inched to a new position, her dad started on Ralph's forehead, then worked down over his cute kid nose and to his lips. They nibbled each other for a few moments, then the experimenting was over and they locked more firmly as the man drew the boy's bare chest to his own. Michelle kept inching, instinct guiding her. The kissing man and boy rose as if she were pulling a cord, and Paul guided his twelve-year-old nephew up on the hay in front of him. He worked at the child's boots, and soon had him barefooted, with Ralph helping by holding his coveralls out of the way. A little scared, he pinned his arms to his side, thus holding up his garment even when he needn't. Paul sat and worked on his own footwear, soon standing barefoot in front of the boy, his coveralls also held at the waist. It worked. Ralph reached to his mature uncle, and the boy's suit fell to his ankles. He touched his uncle at the waist, and met no resistance when he went to pry away the offending arms. Both males were wearing white cotton briefs, both were swollen hugely. They posed, staring each other up and down, then Paul stepped to the floor of the stall, and took a moment to hang up their coveralls. Looking at Ralph still standing on the bales, he pulled down his briefs and hung them alongside the other clothing, turning to face the young boy. Ralph stared for long moments, then pulled down his own underpants, reaching to balance on his naked uncle. Paul helped the boy, hugging him and kissing him, running his right hand all over the supple adolescent body while he helped skin the child out of his remaining garment. "Oh," breathed Nancy, "that must have been so awesome." "I thought I would get pregnant, just looking at them," Michelle confessed to her friend. "Was you dad much bigger?" Nancy quizzed. "It took me awhile to figure that one out," Michelle said. "He, Dad, was all I could look at for at least a couple of minutes. I mean it didn't look abnormal, like a horse, you know how they get, but it was really big, and, you know, like potent. That's the only thing I could think of, other than how come I didn't have about fifty brothers and sister because if I'd been mom I would have wanted to heap many rewards on something so beautiful." "Joanna got naked with me," Nancy whispered, "do you want to?" Both girls made short work of their skirts and panties. Stood by the bed, staring down at each other, then resumed the soft sway of their dance, kissing frequently, hair all over Michelle's shoulders, as the girl finished her story. "With Ralph standing on the blanket," Michelle whispered, "and dad on the floor, they were just the right height to experiment by touching each other just at the tip. Dad was bigger than Ralph, but Ralph was really well developed, too. He even had a little hair, you know, where boys do when the get older." "How did they touch," Nancy asked. "Sort of like play dueling," Michelle whispered back. "Sometimes they's swing a little, side to side, trying to just touch tips as they went by each other, then, the sort of thrust straight at each other, but they were so wet, they'd always slip off when they tried it that way." "How big was your dad," Nancy queried. "I mean big like what?" "I guess a medium ear of corn," Michelle replied, reddening at the inappropriate reference. But she was an in for a penny, in for a pound kind of girl, so she added, "and Ralph was a little bigger than a Ballpark frank, until the end, then he got bigger." Nancy endeared herself to her new friend and brand-new lover by not indulging in frivolous comments. An ear of corn and a super-sized frank gave her as much of a mental picture as she could handle, and stalled her brain in a dizzying spectral zone she had no wish to leave. Michelle went on with her whispering as they danced. "They played with each other that way until they were both sweating and panting, then Dad stepped over the hay and helped Ralph lie down on his back. Then he knelt on the stall floor at the end of the blanket, and Ralph jockeyed to my dad so they were touching again. I had to shift my position another foot to see everything. When I could see again, Ralph had his legs around Dad's waist, and his fingers behind his neck so he could arch his back and show he wanted to be touched. Dad went all over him with both hands, while they rubbed themselves together at the same time. "Then Dad found Ralph, you know, with his hand and started going up and down on him, what they talk about in health class, masturbating. Both of them in his right hand while he played with Ralph's body with his left hand. By now, they were both panting and sweating, then I saw it happen, after just a couple of minutes. Dad started being a man all over Ralph. Ralph craned his neck up to see, and dad's sperms went right over his chest and splashed on his face. That made him get even closer, so it was getting on his shoulders and neck. I guess it got him really excited, because he started cumming really hard, too. Both of them. I could tell the difference, `cause dad's was, you know, sort of thicker and whiter, and Ralph's was more like hot water, and it went further, all over dad and everything else." "Let's do what they did, and I'll tell you about Joanna," Nancy whispered. Both the eleven year olds fell to the waiting bed, and Nancy maneuvered Michelle so she was lying on her back, with her hands stretched up under the headboard and her long, pale legs spread wide. As she began to teach her pretty guest, Nancy's voice dropped to a whisper. "They were out fishing in a canoe, Joanna was nine. One of her friends in fifth grade had told her some secret stuff, so she'd brought along an extra tube of sunscreen. She'd been flirting with her dad for a couple of months, and the sunscreen gave her an excuse to get him to touch her. Then she started rubbing gel on him, noting slut-like, but not exactly prudish, either. Then she invented a boyfriend named Ricky Adams, and said he wanted to kiss her and she was afraid because she didn't know how to kiss, and would he teach her. "By that time, both of them were slippery with the lotion, so she could be accidental about sliding down on him, to see if he liked her flirting, and she did that while he tried to push his little girl away. She found out he liked her, and then reached around his neck to ask him again about the kissing. He didn't say anything, so she went after him, scared, because she didn't know how to kiss, but excited, by the way she felt him when she pretended to slide down. That made her brave, and Joanna showed me just how it happened, with me playing her dad. "Her friend, Abby, had told her they had a mirror behind their sofa, so, when she got home, she'd get in her brother's lap, while she watched television in the mirror, and they'd get excited that way. She'd told Joanna to be sure there were life jackets in the canoe, then her dad could use them to make kind of a chair, and she could get in his lap, like Abby did with her big brother. Is that too complicated?" "Just sounds like getting your money's worth out of a canoe," Michelle giggled, still slightly giddy after her first tentative orgasm. Nancy kissed her tenderly, setting Michelle panting again to her touch as she whispered more about Joanna. "They arranged the life jackets while they were kissing. Joanna got one behind her father, so he could lean across the cross bar, and one for underneath him. Then she dragged one under each of her knees. By this time they were sweating and frenching and he was untying her top. Abby had told Joanna that her brother really liked to look at her when she didn't have a bra on, so she pushed away so her dad could see her. She said she'd only grown out a couple of inches, but her father still liked it and touched and kissed her there a lot. Then he looked into her eyes to see if she was ready, and she nodded, and leaned against him, using her hands to get him free of his swimsuit, while he played with the panties of her bikini. Then they went back to soul kissing while he took her by the hips so he could get her high enough on him. Then she used her hands, so he could find her. When they were ready, he broke off the kissing and looked into her eyes. `Are you sure, darling?' he asked. She was too excited and happy to talk, so she just nodded her head. He whispered it might sting, and moved his hands so he could feel her up while she took him inside her. She made me cum a lot while she was telling me, do you like me doing it to you?" "Yes," Michelle gasped. "She said it's sweet with another girl, but deeper and much more intense with a man. She had two because her dad thrust against her very gently but very fast while he was teaching her. That covered up the sting and made it take a long time. After about five minutes, she felt him against her bottom. Then they lay together a long time, like Abby did after school with Jordan, her big brother. Joanna whispered to him about her friend and Jordan, and her dad asked her about the boy, and she said she really liked him, and her dad told her he didn't want to interfere with her, Joanna's, life, so she could do what they were doing with him. That made Joanna super happy, and by then she was ready to experiment with doing something with her dad that girls can learn to do to a man if they practice. Only practice wasn't needed, because the third time she was able to do it to him, he pushed her back and looked into her eyes. `Are you sure?' he asked her, again. She nodded and a few seconds later she felt him get bigger and he started shaking and grunting and having really hard spasms in her like a bad earthquake. She knew what he was doing inside her, and that made her go all the way with him and her dad had to pull the lifejacket from under her right knee, real fast, so she could scream into it and not scare the whole lake. "Can you imagine it being more than this?" Nancy whispered as she stroked her pretty friend into a final hoarse climax. "So, I guess boys are as advertised." Nancy summarized. "And how," Michelle replied, "at least half as nice as you, and I feel pretty sure about that." "I want to be with my dad," Nancy said. "like Joanna was with her big brother. That's what the Farm Life club is all about. Incest with someone you love, and even more than one, because it's experimenting and learning and not so much romantic and responsible and permanent, with kids and stuff, but I want the kids, and stuff, or a least a kid." "With your dad?" Michelle whispered, unaccountably, more excited than ever. "We're rich," Nancy said. "You know, not mega millions, or anything, but okay in the loot department. Joanna said that was the only reason not to have a baby young. If you had help it wouldn't be a burden, just a thrill for everybody. Plus, when you want to get married, in your twenties, guess what? you have, a, a little helper for your next baby, and, b, a definite way to keep your husband on the right side of the threshold, every night of the week. Call it scheming, if you will, but radio was a scheme in its day, and so were a hundred other things, including ways to live." "Sounds more like a plan, to me," Michelle commented, and both girls giggled. I had been kissing my beautiful twenty-two year old farm girl, Michelle, for an hour. By this time, we were both naked and rolling from the sofa to the carpet, making out furiously, then clambering back to the couch so she could continue her story as we lay sweating and panting. The thought of more, more than her instinctive touch, more than her instinctive mouth, more than her girlish beauty, was more than I could handle. Fortunately, an ovulating twenty-two year old woman, who'd latched on to a built-to-last male who happened to be a bit of an artist, was so ready to be handled, my options were limited to one, and that was kissing her like a baby sister as she wriggled under me, dropping her right foot to the floor and raising her left leg over the sofa back. She was impossibly tight, a secret that was closely related to her offhand skill at unbuttoning my shirt. I didn't know it then, and certainly didn't need to. If had been so long, yet, if it had been an hour ago, it wouldn't have made the slightest difference. I started cumming the instant I entered her, if not as sharp and fast as when Steven masturbated me to wet his five inch boner, with a slower and more deliberate bone rattling exhausting completeness that more than equaled my passion him. I was shocked and about to apologize when she focused and looked hotter and more wanton than ever. "Shh," she whispered, seeing the anguish in my face, "that's the greatest compliment a girl can have. Any ski bum can ride you through a bear rug, but what you just did inside me defines lover. And to think," Michelle concluded, "Nancy is just one of my secrets." We shifted to lying facing each other and Michelle got a very soft and mellow look on her face. "If you want to marry me, instead of Steve," she whispered, "I'd say definitely, yes." "No," I said. "It's going to take me forever to write about you, without you. If you were around, I'll be making fifty bucks a day selling books until I drop. Not what I'm here for. And you'd regret it, soon enough. Writing can suck the Lyme out of a tick, there'd be nothing left for you, on a day to day basis, and I have a feeling Steve has plenty for you. That's more important. I'll be here for you, and take an interest in the child, if that's how it works out, but Steve's going to make you happier in a week than I could in a year." She had to agree and thankfully did so quickly, admitting that he was pretty awesome when you got right down to it. We dozed with a little tease keeping me on the verge of consciousness. How many secrets did Michelle have? . . . I don't know what art is, but I know it's not the same old same old. Veterans of "Blissy's Song" and other works will groan Here he goes again. New readers? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I tend to join my stories from time to time, usually to read you the riot act about something. This time it's to break my arm, again, by patting myself on the back. I've managed to write the most pugnacious copy in print, any media, for ten months before downloading my first flame. What took about fifteen seconds in golden-age Napster chat rooms has taken nearly a year on Nifty. The sad thing is it's just the usual `sick fuck' scrawl. Since it's the first, let's give it pride of place, and respond. According to the anonymous scribble, I'm boring. All I can answer is try "Moby Dick," or any and all classical literature. If that doesn't give perspective, try ninety-nine out of a hundred of today's movies. Boring also describe the touchy-feely media coverage of recent events. If I'm on the list it's unintentional. I am a clown, little more; just trying to be funny. As to being sick, well, ya got me there, dude. I suffered a significant workplace trauma while trying to get my friends here (I live in southern Belize) set up in the fishing business, and, although I haven't had an aspirin or used a bandaid in the last five years, I am significantly disabled due to this injury. As far as `sick' in a cultural sense, I figure I'm a bit on the wild-child side for a banker, but very much like a banker if measured against my artistic peers. It would definitely be safe for you to leave your kids with me for a weekend. But since the subject is in play and the ball is in my court, let me tell you my definition of cultural sickness. It's the Catholic church, whose educated clergy have done an extremely effective job of psychic castration on hundreds of millions of Catholic women, especially Latinas. They lie in grim duty for their males. I was coming back from the market in Torreon one night, and by the play of the street lamps happened to catch a glimpse of a Mexican girl, perhaps seventeen, masturbating her boyfriend. That poor muchacha's face showed what corruption is, and I know where it came from. It translates into a society in which men routinely take mistresses and wives take over the sons (not sexually), creating a culture of momma's boys, which would be pretty much it for the sickness/Catholic connection if it weren't for the stress and poverty caused by having too many kids. This phenomenon is so intrusive, village girls won't go with boys who have not been to jail. How ironic that for all their daring-do, they lie as grimly as their mothers. Again, for new readers, I go back to my source material to put sexual depravity in perspective. The bonobo, cousin of the chimp, which take free-spirit sexuality, affection, peace and happiness to its feral core, and the Masai, who send six year olds to the village hut, where they stay until married. About the only tribe Margaret Mead identified as free of adult perversion. (Regrettably, this science is defective because the M. also castrate their females.). Final evidence that free-spirit alternatives are not all negative is provided by Net archives which house literally thousands of happy-camper stories, undoubtedly representative of millions of such stories. And yes, as an artist, I bring a modest number of personal experiences to the table, starting when I seduced a comely young adult male at the age of eight. It is especially easy to cope with this issue against the background of a twenty percent molestation rate for juvenile females and a fifteen percent rate for juvenile males, as the status quo, and in a culture in which the `taboo' factor is probably seventy percent of the reason for suffering and dysfunction in the wrecks documented by the behavioral-science community.. Of course, `sick' could also refer to racial or other social attitudes. Liberals deify the old at the expense of the young, which is sickness at its most unnatural. It is sick for an auto company to spend more on pensions than it spends on steel. Very sick. A country that takes a slashing sneak attack from an orchestrated and double-talking enemy, and goes in search of evidentiary baselines is sick unto death. Gluttony is sick as are addiction, rape, and forty-seven year credit cards. What ever I am or am not, I am a writer for my time, and smart enough to know that the dizzying increase in the size of today's children is a mortal sickness, if every other facet of our culture were right out of "Mary Poppins." Any charge of sickness related to pedophilia I would answer this way: most American children are so unattractive and obnoxious, no one will ever want to touch them. Slap them, yes; molest them, Not! There hardly seems room for another disease, but we've saved the best for last. It's called Democracy. This is a virus that only survives under optimum conditions, a hothouse fluke, if you like. The virus has no resistance to canny, clever parasites, which latch on so's you'd think they were umbilicalally correct. Oops. For you that say we've survived wars and depressions, strikes, fires, earthquakes and riots, I'd simply point out that it was democracy that caused these costly ills, and that anyone who navigates by looking over the stern is certain to meet a rock, whether or not they're booked on the "SS Anthrax." . As to reader mail, in general, I received twenty-five raves in a row when my first story was published, and ten months later, this one flame. I wrote my brother pointing out if I'd earned a 96% average in math I'd probably be getting laid off from Boeing about now. Please, if you take the time for water sports at my expense, share something that can in turn be shared, or, better yet, write your own story for Nifty and piss on me at your leisure. David is a dream to work with, and you'll never have so much fun. (Read my novels and look at the obvious pleasure I get at the expense of my sainted mother.) Wish I'd written that. Know what it is? Think Plano, Texas, ever so in step with the times. I saw an aerial film of it awhile ago, and am still wondering how one orders a pizza, if the delivery boy has to make fifty turns between Dominoes and a particular cul de sac. I wondered at the dread of a tired mother finding she was out of salt or mayonnaise, facing two hours of burning gas to get to the mega mall, park, make her purchases, and navigate home through her massive subdivision, so free of landmarks. But there's one thing I no longer have to worry about, thanks to the talent of another. That is what to call the utterly gigantic houses of Plano, each representing numerous semi-loads of drywall. They're called `McMansions.' The only thing my little wit can add is that they definitely come with super-sized cheese while I wonder at the work necessary to pay the McMortgage. Offhand, I can think of no greater emblem of liberalism than today's excruciation zoning laws and building codes, yet a single person or small family is allowed to dwelleith therein. Every account exec, a king, every real estate agent, a queen. :You know, I think I can set things straight. My family started the Revolution, we were instrumental in the development of The Bell System, Bell Labs, and the transistor. It doesn't take many more luminaries to render me a prince, but they're there, plus, I've lived in everything from a five story house with an elevator to barracks and tents, much preferring the latter. The message is simple and enduring: Relax, live modestly, and put your resources into your kids, or somebody's. Anything else is an absolute nightmare for everybody, and don't I know it. By the way, if it happens you're against whitey in a generic sense, try remembering how inclusive we are, and how willingly we incorporate the achievements of others in our own wonderful fineness. Give credit, too, and let anyone live in any size box they think they can afford.. Jingo. That's a term overdue for defining herein. Edward Beach was a jingo. He's the author of "Run Silent, Run Deep" (among others), a classic account of his service as a junior submarine officer. He gets, this is real, now, his first command in late '44 or early '45, at the tip end of the war. He runs so hard to get into the fight, he ruins the diesels on a brand-new sub. He should have been court-martialed and in all likelihood, shot. Would have been, in any military that comes to mind. That's a jingo. Dropping twenty five hydrogen bombs in retaliation for a savage and symbolic attack, well sponsored by many states, is simply survival. Ask Mother Nature. "Frazier:" Garbage man theme. Well, it was half cut out by rain, but the gist of the story is hierarchy, my job's bigger than your is, my degree also is. Self-appointed master of ye olde Arte of ye English, as I am, I, of course, get to look down on neurosurgeons and college presidents, but it wasn't always that way. See, it's like this, because I read so much as a kid I was constantly told I'd end up on the back of a garbage truck. This has had a notable effect on my career. To make a long story short, by the time I'd undergone the million folds of a Sumari sword, my country had deteriorated to the extent that as a writer, I end up on the back of a garbage truck. Nice going, you-all, with `going' the operative word. Anyway, Roz has a cute, for once, new boyfriend and I was intrigued to see if the producers were smart enough to carry him over. They were. Now Roz also has a daughter of a freshening age. Hmm. Good thing Michelle has more secrets. Posted by Thomas@btl.net xxx