Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 14:55:07 -0500
From: Tom Emerson <thomas@btl.net>
Subject: THE TARZAN MUSHROOM HUNTERS - BOOK I

THE TARZAN MUSHROOM HUNTERS

by R. Forbes Emerson

(Bi-ped, inc., rom.)


BOOK I


	One freaky thing, and my life is pretty full of them, is that you
know so much more about me than I know about myself.  Anything is possible.
You search in vain for any reference to me, or I'm universally known.  A
non-option is a dearth of immortality; my readership is way over a million
at this point, so obscurity isn't in the game plan.  Yes, I will be read a
hundred years from now; yes, I will be read until the end of civilization,
but to what degree?  Still passed from archive to archive under the table?
Or as a literary inspiration who strongly and immediately influenced untold
readers and writers.  A political force?  I would assume my anti-Semitism,
would, a, eliminate me from consideration, or, b, eliminate me.  A bit
late, I'm afraid; the message is a million strong, spreading at the rate of
tens of thousands of new readers each seven days.

                  Since I'm everything else in my one man band, pony show,
and fan club I might as well take on the role of apologist.  I'm sorry for
the ten hours in each day that I don't work.  Now that I'm back on pot and
tobacco, I promise to cut down.

                  I don't believe I've begun a novel with and essay before.
Might be an idea to keep it short.  My Belezian outpost of Dangriga has an
FM station, Power Mix, that uses Compact Discs.  Whatever their virtues,
these music sources deteriorate rapidly under studio use, and they're not
like vinyl, off of which a song can still be enjoyed through the pops and
clicks.  No sir, when a disk goes bad it makes weird noises and skips all
over the place; becomes almost invariably unlistenable, even if it's Marty
Robbins.

                  Spinning platters, many of which you're entirely sick of,
in a radio studio is not glamorous work.  It may be easy to say Take extra
good care of the disks, but it's a rough mandate to enforce
twenty-four/seven.  Compact disks cost seventeen dollars.  They should be
produced to a high standard of scratch and wear resistance.  Otherwise,
dolts of the universe, people will stop buying them.  And another severe
warning to you cable operators.  I've been off the wire since the end of
May.  I do not miss it.  In Dangriga we get about seventy channels for
twenty US dollars a month, including seven or eight premium channels, and
even pricey pay-per-view programming from time to time.  The fee is twenty
dollars, as I said.  My income is two thousand dollars.  It is not worth
it.  I get more pleasure from a good one hour raggae jam on FM than I do
from a month of cable.  As an eight year, eighteen-hour-a-day veteran of
the medium, granted, with the sound Off most of the time, I've seen James
Burke, Morse and the better programming of the documentary channels time
and again, leaving "Law and Order", "Drew Carey" and a sparse handful of
theatrical productions as rare bright spots amongst the numbing mediocrity
of most programming and the horrific trash peddled to the kids.  As I go,
so goes the nation, all my life.  I love popular things.  To this day I can
show you where I saw my first '56 Chevy coupe.  It was gray and white with
Lakes pipes.  I was alive and well at the dawn of the CB craze, and in '84
and `85 wrote an eleven-hundred page novel on a Brother electronic
typewrite with a 4K memory and a Commodore 64 with a cassette drive, to
name two examples.  A Modern Millie with the money for cameras, airplanes,
a '66 Corvair Corsa turbo convertible (Honduras maroon w/tan top), stereo
systems, and related gadgets.  If cable television, at a cost of one
percent of my income, has all but entirely lost its appeal to me, guess
who's next.  In my first youth a man became famous for calling television a
Vast Wasteland.  It is a hideous, foreign glob, largely valueless, perched
tenuously on an economic pin, and causing one to wonder how long the
adjective, `vast', will apply.  May those who bring suffering on
themselves, suffer.

                  Am I an expert in this field?  More than half, I guess.
Here's something I know, based on professional experience, and that is that
most musical recordings leave you wondering Why anyone bothered.  As a
bright young continuity director for a medium market AM/FM, Television,
outlet, one of my jobs was to play the slush pile.  The hundred or more
records that arrived in the mail.  Fool that I was, I volunteered for the
job, to George Hale's definite amusement.  The procedure was to listen to
the first fifteen seconds, then place the needle in the middle and listen
to another fifteen seconds.  I gave up after two thousand or so, earning
respect for my perseverance.  We never rotated a single `platter', never
even played one.  And these were Columbia, Decca, Mercury and all the major
labels, as well as home-brew; music that would sound fine at a club in the
Catskills or on the Cape, but simply didn't record.  It may be okay to
disobey the bible, but one in broadcasting disregards Billboard at suicidal
risk.  I tie this to all the pissing and moaning by artists who badmouthed
Napster.  And yes, there are so great niche performers, (raggae, for
example), but by and very large, the reason their records do not sell is
that their records are not good.  They play, but they don't sing.  If you
don't believe me, call George Hale.  Does he have a job for you!

                  I'm wandering into this story because I've already
written it.  Eaten by a virus, year-of-our-lord, 2002.  The true horror of
losing copy for any reason is that the re-write always comes out better.
Extend this logic very far, and one becomes unpublishable.  Does this mean
I'm hoping for no more attacks?  Ah, how nice that we're starting on the
same page.

                  It's the one with the blue 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic
station wagon winding up an Appalachian mountainside.  The driver is
Reverend Alex Christopher.  As he steers out of a switchback turn posted
for fifteen miles an hour at fifty he trods the gas and smokes the tires a
hundred feet up the next incline.
                  "Sin for the trip; can't leave home without one," Alex
said.
                  Kit Allen grinned.  The preacher wasn't exactly stuffy,
and he'd had as no less than five times before the man acknowledged the
crate engine in the Chevy wagon had gone a little seven hundred horsepower
at the rear wheels.  That Alex had been ignorant enough to think, even as a
clergyman, he could run something like that, incognito, in the heart of
NASCAR country demonstrated that Harvard University was no end-all, be-all
when it came to education.

                  In moments they were back to the posted limit.  Hitting
wildlife at high speed might be merciful, from one point of view, but
neither Alex nor his thirteen year old friend was broad-minded enough to
appreciate the nicety.  Swerve and roll was not survivable in the area.

                  "There must be secret goings-on in a town as isolated as
Hastings," the minister said.  "I did a lot of work in rural New England
after I was ordained.  A few people in Epping, Vermont, thought I was the
devil's disciple, but in spite of that I was able to set a lot of people
straight about a lot of things to do with morality and personal behavior.
                  "The rules are a skeleton.  They make a certain sense and
provide an important framework.  But a skeleton moves, flexes, takes each
step, individually, and takes days off.  Working within a framework of
considerable tolerance and two killings, I left a happy place.
                  "So," Alex continued, "I wanted to ask you, flat out,
about what's going on in Hastings, so rumors don't start spreading and I
end up with a reputation of being insidious.  That kind of things makes
people cop attitudes and attitudes can interfere with weeding the garden."

                  Kit sat reviewing.  The guy'd just patched for a hundred
feet, now he was tuned in on the first correct wavelength the boy had heard
in two years.
                  "It's kind of okay," the boy answered, thoughtfully.
                  "Good," Alex replied.  "That's all I need to know.  I'm
all for building a reading program and swapping forty or fifty jock straps
for John Irving, and not having to poke my nose in anyone's business on
behalf of the girl at the edge of the playground or the boy who's suddenly
gone haywire."
                  "The wrestler," Kit said in response.

                  This left Alex in a state of review.  Kit had won an
essay contest on priorities and had been transported on his onesies to the
city airdrome, where he'd missed his flight, engaged as he was in Dick
Francis, so Alex had had time for a once around of airport-zone variants,
contemplating the arrival of a boy who'd read through the confusion of a
departing 737.  They'd finally met up and by the time they were half way to
the car had torn Hemingway to minnow bait, as artist, as writer, as man,
and as dolt.  "But could he pick a title," they'd said in a binding tempo.
Then it was Travis McGee, so they could show off to each other that they
weren't cynical or iconoclastic.  They both disliked the writer's use of
the term `bawdy'.  Alex pointed out that Myers was a disciple of Keynes,
and yet Trav, on a voyage in the "Flush" in a later adventure, comments
that the passenger list will include no one of dubious sexuality.  Keynes
was a homosexual.  It was a nitpick, but the boy responded with the scene
of the bad guy being skewered a la mangrove, and Alex recalled the vivid
beginning of one of the adventures which had Trav coping with a nasty
section of dry-rot in a hatch.

                  John Irving was a wrestler, used the motif repeatedly.
"Perfect choice," was Kit's summary.  Alex tried not to look at the wraith
beside him.  Thirteen, but he looked ten or eleven; slight, willowy,
semi-blond with high cheekbones and translucent skin well sprinkled with
freckles.  His hair was all-but a prison cut with slight fuzzy-chick wings
at the verges of his brow.  His eyes were huge and blue, his mouth wide,
his teeth biggish with a minor but devastating overbite.  Kit Allen was
very hard not to look at, his musical, lilting voice hard not to listen to,
his long, slim legs protruding from his cargo shorts very hard not to
touch.  As the trip and their acquaintanceship had progressed, the boy had
spread his legs widely, unconsciously, apparently, easing the legs of his
pants up into his thighs.  Salacious or just comfortable?  Eyes front.

                  Road, road, road Alex thought, just reminding himself.
He really tried not to stare.  Kit didn't.  He took off his shoulder belt
and sat against the door, staring for all he was worth.  Alex tried not to
blush, but the gaze was too hot for any phony display of cool.
                  "By kinda okay, I didn't mean nothing," the thirteen year
old said.
                  "I got along exceedingly well in my last call by not
poking into private affairs," Alex said.  "I was pretty bad news when there
were problems, otherwise, I was home, reading."
                  "Did you have a special friend?" Kit asked.
                  "Very much so," Alex said, "Victor Sansang.  He's
thirteen, too.  Will be along in two weeks."
                  "Cool," said Kit.  It was his turn to blush.  Color it
relief.  Secretive had never appealed to him and `privacy' was a code word
for frustration.
                  "If you hate each other, you can go all John Irving with
each other," Alex said.
                  "I'll just bet he reads," Kit observed.
                  "Takes one to know one," Alex laughed.

                  "Do you thing Mel Gibson and Nordstrom had sex in "The
Man Without a Face?" Kit asked.
                  "I do," Alex replied.
                  "I didn't watch it scene-by-scene, peruse it, but I don't
think it was indicated."
                  "I guess," Alex replied, "I come from the side that says
that it wasn't convincingly denied."
                  "So your default would be yes?" the boy questioned.
                  "Maybe `I hope so' would be closer to the mark," Alex
Christopher replied.
                  "Me, too," the boy agreed.  "They were too cute not to,
don't you think?"
                  "I think," Alex said.
                  "Do you like any other movie actors?" the boy quizzed.
                  "I think Rick Schroeder on "N.Y.P.D. Blue" was worth
looking at from a Tendancies point of view, but, the real answer to your
question is no.  Very rare.  Quite a mystery, but the look is pretty rare,
even in the preferred eight to twelve age range.
                  "Do you think there really are ages?" Kit asked.
                  "Closer to the theological," Alex laughed, "for a moment
there I thought we were dancing with the devil."
                  "But are there?  Does how old you are mean anything?"
                  "I believe clinical symptoms manifest themselves in a
persons seventies," the preacher explained, "but from four until the late
sixties there don't seem to be many changes, or, more accurately, any real
difference in responding to quality stimuli.  Those are covered far more by
intelligence and breeding than anything to do with the calendar."

                  "How old were the people you dealt with in New England?"
Kit asked.
                  "Funny you should ask," Alex replied, "because the people
with problems were aged seven to seventy."
                  "How old were the ones you killed," Kit asked.
                  "Boy, it's nice to be in the South," Alex thought to
himself.  "One was nine, the other, forty-seven," he said.
                  "Goodness," the boy said, half in spite of himself.

                  "If I stay ten years, I'm not likely to run into more
Dixie charm than that," the Harvard boy thought.  "Real campfire stuff, and
that's a fact," he said to his passenger.

                  Kit wished, oh, wished, he wasn't suddenly reviewing
everything he knew, films and print, authored by Stephen King.  But nah,
the Al Pacino death-to-you grin wasn't there.  And hey, if he believed in
kids' rights, didn't it follow that some kids were bad enough to warrant
the same end as hellhound adults?  Why the man had even piled garlic on his
spaghetti lunch.  How cool was that?

                  It was an hour more to Hastings.  They cruised on ten
minutes in silence.

                  "What was the seven year old like?" Kit finally asked,
breaking the comfortable silence.
                  "Maybe it would be a good idea, Kit," Alex said, "if you
led off and told me what you'd normally consider private stuff.  I don't
want to get into white water and find out you're a Sunday paddler."

                  "When I said `okay', I didn't say `nothing'.  There is
some stuff going on in Hastings.  Like you said, it's normally pretty
private, and there aren't any problems, and certainly nobody that needs
killing, but you're a very attractive guy, and, for sure there will be
interest in you, if you want to be interested back."
                  "And what ages are we talking about?" Alex asked.
                  "Just what you said before, eight to twelve or thirteen,
mostly, with some teens that run things and a few guys in their twenties
and thirties that serve in executive roles and provide overall guidance.

                  "The thing is, they're looking for a straw boss; someone
a little older than the teens, but still able to devote a lot of time and
energy and, not to put to fine a point on it, cute enough to be hands on
with the kids."
                  "I think you're a bit ahead of me," Alex said.  "In
Vermont, the town had several private Free Spirit clubs; there was nothing
very executive about it."

                  "We have a longer season," Kit explained, "and the
crucial thing is that Hastings is located at an isolated point along the
Appalachian Trail.  Thus we have opportunities that are nearly unique.  In
point of fact, we grossed two point three seven million dollars last year.
I have a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in my checking account and my
friend Richie -- wouldn't you know it -- has twenty thousand more than
I do."
                  Should he ask if it was legal?  Money like that?  Kid?
They had to be growing ganja, didn't they?  He tied not to let a shadow of
doubt cross his face, but Kit was staring from his position propped against
the passenger, not thing effing one escaping his big blues.

                  "No weed," the boy intoned, obviously not a laggard in
the kid's reading adults department.  "We don't even smoke it."
                  "I do," Alex said.
                  "Well, I didn't say never," Kit piped up with a grin.
                  "As long as it's not always," the minister observed.
                  "What we always do is work," the boy said.
                  "At the rate you're going, you should have that millstone
off your back by the time you can vote," Alex commented.
                  "And lose this bod?" the boy squeaked, pulling up his
shirt, "no way.  I love it.  Feel that."

                  He proffered his left arm and Alex grabbed the bicep.
Hard.

                  "I can run ten miles, flat out," the boy said, "or I
could if they'd let me; they say it's bad for my joints, so I have to cool
it."
                  "Always nice to belong to an organization with brains,"
Alex observed.
                  "Some of the former members are in their sixties and they
don't have to ask twice to have kids my age go camping with them."
                  "How much are they worth?" Alex asked, genuinely curious
though he'd have been the first to admit it was none of his business.
                  "Not much.  They give it all away.  Some kind of
millions, I guess, if you added it all up."
                  "And no marijuana?"
                  "I didn't say none, but none for money.  It's not where
the loot comes from.  In fact, aside from playing fast and loose with the
child labor laws, there's not an illegal buck in the operation.
                  "Now remember, I didn't say we don't do anything illegal,
I just said we never take a dime for it, if we do."

                  "Nice distinction," the preacher observed.
                  "It works.  We violate the law, we don't flaunt it, and
we don't profit from the violations.  Furthermore, we don't pay anybody
anything to overlook anything, or anything."
                  "No wonder ya'll don't have nobody what needs of no
killing," Alex drawled.
                  "I guess it's kind of anti-South," Kit admitted ruefully,
"but it's not all clans, pone, squeezins, and sisters in Dixie, or at least
not quite all."

                  "Faulkner did `em and buried `em, definitely time to turn
the page."
                  "Amen," quoth the boy.

                  Quietly they drove for some minutes.

                  "Was the seven year old a boy or girl?" Kit asked.
                  "You've got to go first," the Harvard boy reminded the
youth beside him.  "Sunday paddlers, remember?"
                  "You mean like the first time something happened with
me?" Kit asked, his voice now a ragged whisper, his blue eyes huge in his
lean, handsome face.
                  "The first time a man touched you inside your
underpants," Alex said, leading gently but specifically.  Kit was not a boy
to tongue-tie.

                  "It was a bathing suit," the child responded.  Alex took
his eyes off the road for long seconds to stare at Kit.  His eyes were
quiet, not bold; no shame, no gloating.  Perhaps lingering shyness.

                  "How old were you?" Alex asked.
                  "Eight; just eight."
                  "And it was okay?"
                  "Any other outcome would have been rape," Kit said.

                  Hmm.  A solid segment of his cases is Vermont had been of
this nature; non-coital abuse.  The denial of personal expression for
arbitrary reasons, mindless and unutterably cruel and destructive as it so
often turned out to be, was perhaps inevitable in a complex, godless, and
coin-operated world.  Yes, the majority of cases in Epping had been
rendering asunder; separating inappropriate partners, but the memorable
saves had been in establishing sanctioned or at least ignored pairings and
even groupings.  Match-making.

                  "Was it a special partner?" Alex asked.
                  "More exotic and spectacular than special in a committed
sense," Kit said.  Again Alex allowed the car to motor blindly for several
seconds as he looked at the boy.
                  "Frankie was -- is -- a girl," Alex said.


                  "It was with Jack Aston at the pool," Alex's young
passenger responded immediately.  "The only reason it wasn't special, was
that a lot of boys in Hastings learn with him.  He had a special boy, Carl,
he's sixteen now, so everything happened at the pool.  He only had boys to
his house for socializing.  Just his way."

                  "Was it a private session, or did you let others watch
what happened?" Alex asked.
                  "Both," Kit said, "but the first time it was just him and
me."
                  "Did you know something was going to happen?"
                  "Just that," Kit replied; "something."
                  "Did you talk, or did it just happen?" the older male
quizzed.
                  "We talked."
                  "And that was okay?"

                  "Yeah," the boy answered, "he said some boys don't like
to do that, you know, talk, but I wanted to.  I knew him really well, and
we're both pretty seriously into RC model planes, so it didn't have to get
all embarrassing right away."
                  "How did you feel about him having a special partner?"
Alex asked.
                  "Things happened so I learned to live with it, but, yes,
I wanted to spend more time with him.  Spend the night with him.  But we
saw a lot of each other so it was nothing to dwell on."

                  "I guess it's lucky life isn't even fuller of that kind
of situation," the driver observed.
                  "Just twice, but I haven't been around that much.  Since
I started early, I guess I'm ahead on the breaks, and so far I've never had
nothing when I wanted something.  Partly because that doesn't happen except
once in awhile, wanting something," he added.

                  "Would you like to park for awhile, or do you want to
keep going?" Alex asked.
                  "Park," the boy said immediately.
                  "We'll be wasting seven hundred horsepower," Alex
observed.
                  "Good," Kit said, "then I'll have a title for my story:
"The Tragedy of the Seven Hundred."
                  "It's a grabber," Alex admitted.
                  "With Nifty, you don't need literary devices," the boy
observed, "just tell what happened, and the letters roll in."

                  Another bond.  Alex, as it happened, had written three
stories for the mother of all Websites, himself.  The world's great reading
engine.  A literary free-fire zone where you could say almost anything and
name almost anybody without fear of offense, simply because nobody would
admit to reading the alternative content of the massive Archive.  A
magnetic literary ground and unavoidably a practice field for readers, the
site outdid itself as a training ground for writers.  It had nothing
approaching a rival, other, of course, than a few closely parallel sites.
And the oddity of the site was that you could excise the prurient content
from many of the stories and they'd be eminently readable as slices of life
on a global basis.  The one-time stigma of writing pornography was a stale
joke in an era when pedophiles had saved the world by supporting personal
computers and the Net from the day they moved from the lab and into the
first bedroom.  Unsung we may be, but for no pay we became the heroes of
all salvation when, in 1989, all appeared lost.  The techs built the
bulletin boards, we posted the messages; together, technician and artist,
we built it, and yes, no double entendre intended, they came.  Came one
hundred fifty million strong and built an empire employing seven million
and responsible for one quarter of the economic energy of the entire
empire.  Nifty, other alternative sites, and the writers.  Not only did
they (I'm a latecomer) build what we have, they're very likely responsible
for our future; for giving us something to look forward to each day when we
get out of bed, now that the Industrial Revolution has degenerated into the
hyping of mindless toys like the dangerous Segway.  Can Nifty, et al, be
something more than a source of motivation and entertainment?  It has the
highest potential in human history for doing so.  Probably depends on who
writes for it.

                  They high-fived.  "Go a little past a switchback," Kit
suggested, "then back into the truck run-out.  We can see anyone coming for
miles."
                  The Chevy rode on seventeen inch wheels so backing free
of the asphalt was a snap.
                  "Gun it before you turn it off," Kit requested.

                  Alex complied.  The noise of the mechanical blower did
sound fine at five thousand revs, but more impressive still was the
electric smoothness of the craftily balanced engine at near redline.  The
twin three inch pipes might kick up a bit of a ruckus, but a glass of wine
could have sat perched on the dash for an hour.  Actually not, because the
five hundred cubic inches would have emptied the fuel tank in that time at
that throttle setting, but nevertheless it was smooth inside smooth.

                  The pipes muted almost instantly.  Ten-to-one compression
and everything tight as a tick.  The silence entered like its own noise.

                  "What happened with Frankie?" Kit asked after several
minutes admiring the mountain views stretching fifty miles to the north.
                  "Frances Butler.  She spent a month with me at the
rectory," Alex said.  "A Vermont trooper found her hudled in the woods.
She'd been on her own for two nights; dumped.  Luckily, the rectory had a
wood fireplace.  I think it was the constant flames day after day that
brought her back to sanity.  The warmth.  The reliability.  The fact that
they'd be stoked by a man, and nothing bad would happen"

                  "That was you?" Kit asked.
                  "Mostly, though Victor gets plenty of credit, too."
                  "How long before something happened?" Kit queried.
                  "About two weeks," Alex said.
                  "Were you first, or was Victor?"
                  "She led both of us into the shower, together," Alex
said.
                  "I led Jack by myself," Kit said, letting a delicious
childishness into his conversation.  Life was not all John Irving, there
was plenty of room for a little impromptu bragging.  And hey, he hadn't
claimed: `all by myself.'

                  "All by myself," the ineffable cutie said.  Nothing
awkwardly childish now, but just a bright kid keeping the conversational
ball rolling.
                  "We tried to get Frankie to bed, all by herself.  Great
minds think alike."

                  Kit thought that was funny enough to giggle over.  Even
as a remnant, southern charm had its place in the scheme of things.  Whup
some more of it into `em?  Why, I though you'd never ask.  No critic will
ever fault me for being soft on the Gray.  I believe Robbie E. Virginny was
the greatest traitor in American history, full stop.  Extrapolate his
behavior and you have county against southern-pride county inside half a
generation.  Since I'm notably hard on myself and my immediate family, you
new readers will have to learn to adjust.  Old timers will sigh, happily, I
might add, in the certain knowledge that full measure is on its way.  All
paragraphs lead to foam, as in foam at the mouth.

                  Yankee pride.  We measure ourselves as diligently as we
perform, we did over the world, seventy percent of the best of the best,
from abolition to aerospace, and we are the freaking tribe of tribes.  It
is my philosophy we should be obeyed.  It is my frequent observation that
when others try, as a generality, they do a substandard job. The best of
Yankees are eminently capable of running the entire world if left to muddle
it out over twenty or thirty years and if given a wide allowance for false
starts, outright mistakes, and unintended consequences.  And I should note
that I mean productive, thoughtful, middle-of-the-road Yankees, not camera
hacks an microphone midgets.  They're no more true Yankee than
Col. Beauregard Blowhard is emblematic of the south, or a whining
gold-standard moron might represent the heartland, (or a pie-eyed yoga
guru, the west coast)

                  Practice this fiendish art long enough and lo and behold
you can get a word in edgewise simply by cracking up one of your
characters.  Yes, I make a habit of it, but then I have a lot to say.

                  "All by yourself," Alex aped, glad to find his mind
focusing on the boy three feet away.
                  "Did you still have your bathing suit on?" Alex coaxed.
                  "Yes, but I'd been molested," the boy said.
                  "How much?" the teacher asked.
                  "A lot, but not the ending.  That's what we went to the
shower for."
                  "How did it start?"
                  "Jack was with me a lot during the session.  My friend
Butchy said if he teaches you to float, he'll invite you to stay after.  It
was his second year so he knew all the stuff."
                  "How did you feel when he said that?" Alex asked.
                  "I got a boner right away," the boy answered, his big
eyes clear and untroubled.  "I didn't know anything, but I'd heard stuff.
Then, sure enough, Jack asked me if I wanted to practice floating, and I
said yes.  He said if he did anything that made me feel uncomfortable, I
should tell him and he'd stop.  I said okay and lay back in the water.  He
held me just at my waist, and put his right hand on my belly.  For a couple
of minutes, he just held be while I got used to it.  Then he started to
move his hand around me, looking to be sure I wasn't scared of him or
anything.

                  "It felt really nice, and once, while the other boys were
roughhousing, he went under the band of my suit, and that made me wiggle
for him.  `Float today, drown tomorrow', he said.  That made me giggle even
more and so I pretending I was wiggling because I was laughing, and his
hand went more down."

                  "Would you like to go up in the trees?" Kit asked, having
come to an apparent break in his narrative; "I've got a sheet-blanket in my
backpack."
                  "Okay," Alex agreed.

                  From the exterior they could hear the big engine clicking
as it cooled.  An electric fan came on for half a minute, and when it
switched off, the silence once again shouted from the mountainside.
Everywhere was nice so they circled on a snake hunt, then spread the
blanket, glad it was double in size because it was just cool enough that
they might want a light covering at some point.


                  "If you'd like to stay after for a couple of hours," Jack
said to the eight year old Kit, "piggyback on me; otherwise, you're
floating just fine and you can join Butchy and the others."
                  "Hi-yo Silver," Kit whispered, and that made the young
instructor laugh.  In two seconds the slim boy was high on the athlete's
back, his hips pinioned against the twenty year old's neck.

                  Five o'clock was outta here time at the pool, and the
boys were through the locker room and out the door by five past.  Kit rode
on Jack's shoulders as the supervisor went through his maintenance routine
and began collecting towels, many of which he handed up to Kit.  It was
pretty efficient.

                  "Can we practice floating more?" the eight year old cutie
asked Jack.
                  "If you want, or we could go into the wrestling room, and
we could pretend while you lie on a rolled up mat," Jack explained.
                  "That sounds warmer," Kit allowed.
                  "Do you mind if I lock the door?" the man asked the boy.
                  "No," came the reply.
                  "We checked thoroughly so you know we're alone together,
don't you?"
                  "Yes," Kit answered, mysteriously thrilled by the change
in his older friend's voice.
                  "Is that okay?"
                  "Yes."
                  "And the doors aren't locked from the inside, so you can
go any time you want."
                  "Okay," Kit said, vaguely comforted though in his
imagination he could think of no reason he'd want to go.

                  Stallion and kid cowboy, the duo stuffed the last of the
towels in the big commercial washer, added soap, and set the machine to
grinding.  They left the locker room, walked a few feet down the hallway of
the old Y building, and entered the sub-gym used by the wrestling clubs.
"No one comes here until seven," Jack explained and asked Kit what time he
had to be home.  "Not `till almost eight if I'm here," Kit answered.

                  Jack nodded his head in approval and dropped his
passenger on a mat.
                  "We're not here to wrestle," he said to Kit; "I want to
touch you more like I did in the pool.  Just so you understand."

                  Kit nodded.  He'd lost his voice in the excitement of
Jack's husking, yawning speech, so he kept nodding.

                  "Okay," the young man said, "why don't you get up on a
roll and I'll kneel beside you."

                  Kit picked one of four canvas-covered mats against a
wall, and they rolled it out onto the floor mats.  Kit mounted as soon as
it was in place, and stretched full-length on his back.

                  Jack knelt at the boy's right flank.  "Remember how my
hand was here?" Jack asked, touching the child's slightly soft tummy an
inch above the waist of his swimsuit.
                  "You put it lower when I was laughing," Kit said.
                  "That was to keep you from drowning.  You must have been
distracted by something not to remember."
                  "I'd just talked to Butchy and I was excited," Kit
explained.
                  "I wasn't sure," Jack whispered.  "You've got such a
crinkly suit, I couldn't see you."
                  "Well, I was," the boy repeated.
                  "Are you now?"
                  "Yes."
                  "I am, too," Jack said.  "Does that gross you out?"
                  "No," Kit said quickly.
                  "Kit," Jack said, "I want you to say what I did with you
while the other boys were horsing around, and what I'm going to do to you
now.  You can put it in your own words, but I just want to be sure you
understand that this is not part of the swimming program, and we don't have
to do anything together that you feel uncomfortable with.  So, go ahead,
but only if you want, and say out loud what I did to you and what I want to
do more."

                  "You want to bad touch me like a child molester," Kit
parroted, letting just the slightest trace of irony into his voice to let
his adult partner know he was an eight year old, not some kid.

                  "From Miss Hatch's lips to god's ears," Alex intoned, and
indeed, the lady taught the relevant class.  "Just so you'll know," the
instructor continued, "yes, Butchy has stayed after with me sometimes, and,
yes, there was another boy, Duane, from last year, and yes, I have a
special friend, Carl, sixteen, who lives with my wife and me.".
                  "Duane's really tall," Kit observed, having seen the boy
at school and around town.
                  "Yes," Alex agreed, "and very developed for a nine year
old."
                  "Is that good?" the boy asked.
                  "It's artistic, I guess," Jack mused, "but it doesn't
matter, to answer your question.  What happens between any two lovers is
much more psychological than physical Plain and hot is ten times cool as
cool; sometimes it almost seems as if the classic pretty boys are little
more than groovy faces, but that's a generality and there are probably
exceptions."

                  The mirror told Kit he was neither plain, nor pretty,
just kiddish with freckles, big teeth, wispy body, and long neck.  He
discounted his blue eyes as sort of embarrassing, though, of late, the
prettiest imaginable girl had peeped just for a second here and a glance
there into the same mirror.  Jack was staring down at him.  Maybe he saw
her.  This was great!

                  Now both the man's hands were on the boy.  Jack massaged
Kit's back very low down and openly molested him on his chest and slightly
soft stomach.  The boy stretched and arched to the fondling touch.
                  "Has a man ever done this with you before?" he whispered,
his voice as charged with electricity as his warm, soft, wandering hands.
                  "No," Kit whispered back, "I just know a little bit about
it from what Miss Hatch showed with the dolls."

                  "Okay," Jack said.  "This is how it starts, though
usually you'd be standing up and the older boy or man would be behind you,
first on your shirt, then, if you let him, on your bare skin."
                  "I like it this way," Kit observed.
                  "It's good to learn in a relaxed atmosphere with someone
you know and like," Jack replied.
                  "You can say that again," the boy giggled.
                  "You will drown on me, won't you," Jack responded,
slipping two fingers of his right hand under the bad-touching barrier.
                  "I think I'll wait until tomorrow," the boy whispered as
he became entirely attentive to the probing fingers and the hot eyes of the
tall, blond athlete kneeling beside him.

                  "Are you ready to be really molested?" the instructor
whispered.  He seemed to get more handsome by the minute, and darned if
there wasn't an almost feminine beauty in his brown eyes.  Kit was too
excited to answer, but thrust his hips deliberately against Jack's probing
hand.
                  "You've got to say it out loud; this is no place for
mistakes."
                  "I'm ready to be molested," Kit managed to rasp.
                  "Okay, sorry," Jack said, tenderly.  "When your turn
comes, remember the rule in carpentry about measuring twice and cutting
once.  There you're out a few bucks if you screw it up; doing this to a boy
who doesn't want to, or a girl, is more trouble than snakes in Israel. "
                  "I want to," Kit repeated.

                  "Would you like to experiment with kissing?" Jack asked,
leaning close.
                  "I've never done that, either," the boy said, nodding his
head and smiling with his eyes.
                  "Butchy loves it too," Jack said, brushing his lips
gently across those of the eight year old.  Slowly, with nibbles and tiny
bites they came together, then more, then their tongues were at each other
and they were spiraling.

                  "Hard to believe there's more," Kit gasped after many
minutes when they could hardly breathe.
                  "I know," Jack agreed, "it's hard to believe it's the
first step in making babies in a girl you love."
                  "So this is the index to the encyclopedia?"
                  "The Britannica, bucko," Jack assured Kit.
                  "Did Butchy like it the first time?" Kit asked.
                  "He said it was like the towers collapsing, only more
dramatic.  But it wasn't with me.  He was molested by his baby sitter when
he was six."
                  "Lucky," Kit observed.
                  :"Well, eight is hardly too late," Jack comforted, now
back to rubbing the boy's back as he lay against the wrestling mat, and
running his fingers over his lower belly and upper thighs.

                  "Did his baby sitter molest him a lot?" Kit wanted to
know.
                  "They still see each other, and Ken still baby-sits."
                  "Did Butchy tell him, the babysitter, about you?"
                  "Yes, and before anything happened between us," Jack
said.  "Molestation isn't usually a permanent, one-on-one thing, so being
open and sharing everything is the only strategy that works for giving the
long run a chance.  And that's not to say you make a habit of it; more, you
tell your secrets when you first meet, then at the prompting of your
partner, and, of course, never, if you don't want to."
                   "No secrets?" Kit said.
                  "I won't say none," Jack elaborated, "but very few.  None
between Butch and me or Ken, that's for sure."

                  "How old was Ken when Butchy was six?" Kit thought to
ask.
                  "Seventeen; he's twenty now, just my age."
                  "So then he, Butchy, saw something at the end?" Kit
quizzed.
                  "Yes," Alex reported.
                  "Wow," the boy half-whistled, "that must have been so
exciting."
                  "How much do you know about what happens?" Jack coaxed.
                  "Just from school.  That's it's sperm and boys get it
when they're older."
                  "That's right.  Anywhere from ten to fourteen, it totally
depends."
                  "But seventeen, definitely," the boy stated.
                  "In Ken's case, definitely, but there's no rule about
it."

                  "You've never seen it like in a porno movie?" Jack
quizzed.
                  "Just pictures through a microscope.  Except for one
program on The Discovery Channel, but that was sort of frosted out.  Kit
pursed his lips.  "Wait a minute," he continued, "there was a biology show
on Mexican television once, it really showed it, you know, from a clinical
point of view."
                  "And?" Jack prompted.
                  "It was thick and white, like liquid cotton."

                  "Nothing wrong with your vision," Jack commented.
                  "But it didn't show how much there was.  I mean, it was
through sort of a microscope so you couldn't tell like if it was a drop or
a bunch of drops."

                  "Would you like to learn about that part of it with me?"
Jack asked the boy.
                  "Yes," Kit said.
                  "Okay," the young athlete said, "we'll go all the way in
the shower, that way it won't be as shocking and I can make some of it go
on your stomach and you can was it off right away if you don't like the
feeling."
                  "That sounds excellent," the boy said, dropping in a
kid's word, eight though he was.

                  I always get about here and think of something clever to
say.  Television does this to sell products and balance the books.  I do it
because I'm Yankee numero uno and the leather handle of the whip feels
rightful in the palm of my right hand.  We're just that way.  Our mothers
whip us as pixie dust kids -- kittens, if you will -- so we learn the
harmlessness, and since we dance the greatest steps to the greatest music,
we grow unable to dispute the efficacy.  When our turn for the handle,
rather than the little lead balls crafted into the end of each thong, comes
along, we are ready for the activity, to, in paraphrase of Dugout Doug, let
the proceedings begin upon bare backs in their very multitude.  So
extraordinarily are we, at out best, gifted that we are able to inflict
correction with a whip of paper and lead balls of type.  Skeptics and
pooh-pooh aficionados need only review what happens when a non Anglo wields
the lash to open a lifetime library of fascinating alternatives, past,
present, and predictable.  You could do worse than our poetic, peace
loving, inclusive, and highly creative tribe, but with today's intricate
infrastructure, you couldn't survive worse, how ever unbearable you deem
us, so it becomes a non-issue.  Moot.  We are the future as we are the
past, stay out of our way.

                  I like to think of myself as a double-crackle writer.
First there's the crackle of power.  You hear a lesser version when they
launch a space shuttle; a lashing sound that overpowers the microphone and
tape, but can still be sensed.  As readers, rather than space jockeys, you
get to hear that rolling thunder with its slamming bass-line in sweeps of a
thousand pages or more.  It's what being a writer is all about.  Unlimited
horsepower liberally applied.  The second crackle is the whip sizzling by
your ear or popping violently six inches in front of your nose.  When the
chicken boy at AOL pays $152 billion with a b for The Swimsuit Issue
because "AOL subscribers love Time/Warner content" I pop the whip on the
theory you need sanity somewhere in your lives.  Of course, as a culture
you seem to be dead set against something as fundamental as sexual sanity,
so can there be any hope?  (AOL was built and is sustained by pedophiles as
any study of their traffic instantly reveals, yet we are still castigated
as unclean, unholy, and dog sick.  We are not.  You are.  What we do is
advance the world.  What you do is get fatter and stupider every year.)  I
rather think not so I ape and cavort for the same reason the orchestra
played on their last night aboard the "Titanic".  If there's a third
crackle, its one you'd rather not know about for it will be the crackle of
your own skin as you roast in the very earthly and secular fires of
disrespect and disobedience (next time I tell you you don't want to know
something, stop reading.  This is emblematic, and, on the street, is called
taking the hint.  I can't write you books of laws covering every likely
eventuality.  You have to take the hint.).

                  Do I do it for word count?  I must say when I reached the
millionth character in "Creative Camp" I did feel enough pride to note the
landmark in the text, so the simple answer would be yes.  If I were a
rancher I assume I'd rather drive a thousand head to market than fifty,
while, at the same time, I'd rather drive one that was premium than a
hundred that were average (his or her hide would yield the finer whip, but
you probably figured that out for yourselves).

                  No cable, fewer bones to pick.  "Ignorance is bliss".
That used to be a cynical outlook; these days it just seems to be a home
truth.  Further thought returns us to cynicism.  "Ignorance is survival".
Why?  Because only ignorant people would keep cramming ever more on their
credit cards, thus maintaining the economy.  Of course, the parallel is
giving an end-stage diabetic a shot of adrenaline, and I'll have to leave
it to philosophers of greater solemnity and lesser crackle to decide as to
the relevancy of hyper life or sooner death because in my book the diabetic
should have exercised extreme responsibility and shouldn't be in critical
condition, age and general health allowed for, in the first place.

                  The only current event that's pierced my new-found
isolationism is the brouhaha over the "One nation under god" issue.  The
enigma is that if it's disallowed, the next step is recalling the currency
to chisel off or ink out the words "In God We Trust".  I think god is
ludicrous and religion either outright insanity, or superstition verging on
insanity.  It's not worth a damn, so who cares if a few traditional phrases
remain?  If you think I'm promoting "In Sex We Trust" as an alternative,
you've been paying very close attention and, if you hadn't been so nicely
and frequently rewarded along the way, would deserve a pat on the back.

                  I never write anything down, so I end up writing note
free.  My theory is that if it's not significant enough to remember, my
readers wouldn't be interested.  There are exceptions to this regimen, and
I've spent the afternoon trying to recall a phrase that was common in the
Sixties and Seventies, but that I haven't heard in the last ten years.  It
was equivalent to "Military/Industrial Complex", which was a common refrain
in hippie howl, but more salient and general in nature.  One doesn't often
foreshadow in an essay, but why not?  At some point I may remember the
phrase, and remember, I have to do this, because if I hear it, that will
mean it's still in use, and my point was moot from the start.  So be on
tenterhooks.  Will it pop up, or won't it?

                  Since a guy with a fourteen year old girlfriend has his
age issues so well under control it's little wonder he rarely thinks about
the subject.  This is to say that I spend to little time coming up with
phrases like "seventeen jewels watch", or "cotton socks".  In other words,
things that were common in the Fifties and Sixties that have disappeared
from out culture.  The slide-rule is the classic example, as, in my
boyhood, was the buggy whip.  Bias tires is one; almost extinct.  Tune up
and grease job separate the cars of yesteryear from those of today.  The
fact of the matter is, life, in the Fifties was so close to identical to
what it is today, that only video entertainment and computers stand out as
differences.  Were the old things better?  Vinyl records were not only
durable, they often sounded better when they were a little scratched --
it gave the music character and individuality -- so they were at least as
good.  Watches might not have maintained split second accuracy, but they
went for years and years without maintenance.  On the other hand, cotton
socks were the horrors of horrors.  It didn't matter whether the hole was
at the big toe, or the heel, there was no more miserable feeling.  If you
want to defeat an army in an hour, simply have your saboteurs snip holes in
all their socks.  Polyester never wears through, where it was lucky to get
even a few weeks out of the cotton variety.  Very possibly the biggest
difference between then and now.  Shoelaces, too, by the way.  They used to
break constantly and new ones were thick and crude.  Now they last for
years and never come undone.  The list is short, kids.  Under optimal
parentage you're marginally better off, but my time was often of grace and
beauty; toy boats for example, than techno wizardry.

                  Uh, o, here's one.  Hmm.  Murder.  A real one.  I've been
meaning to insert it somewhere along the way, because it has great moral
and social significance.  What made me think of it, at the moment, was
thinking Then and Now, and remembering one of the now things is digital
photography which allows a photographer, with a minimal investment, to view
hundreds of 8 X 10s for a few pennies of electricity.  In the old days,
this would have cost thousands of dollars, plus involved lots of time and
travel.  I used to print color, and so am doubly aware of the quantum
difference between film/paper and monitor, with paper prints available if
you want them.  Anyhow, back to the murder.

                  Malcolm Dale is one of those people for whom there is no
word.  He is not a friend, yet we have a lot in common so chat a fair
amount.  He is not an acquaintance because I've spent hundreds of hours at
his boledo stand.  He's English, early sixties, good schools, Rothschild's,
and has been in Dangriga almost thirty years selling gambling tickets and
odds and ends.  (At one time used books, but there wasn't a market for even
a small shelf.)  As of my latest residence here he was into computers, so
we decided to buy a entry-level digital camera together.  Now he claims the
camera was stolen from a bag beside his sofa.  I don't believe it.  Who
would keep a brand new camera in a bag on the floor?  So I'm out the dough,
putting the ball in my court.

                  He killed Paco.  Turned him into a catamite at a young
age, then poisoned him, leaving the twenty-year old to die under a house
while he, Malcolm Dale, went off to Florida to establish his alibi and
perhaps buy something.

                  How do I know?  Because on my first two visits to his
shop after his return from Florida, he never mentioned the boy's death.
When, on the third visit, I finally did bring it up, he made some
non-committal comment and has never mentioned the matter in the one hundred
visits I've made to his shop, since.  Additionally, his grandmother came
from Romania, Vlad's neighborhood, and a part of the world legendary for
the scurrilous being routine.  It brings up an interesting point of law.
Evidence.  You, friends, do not need evidence.  The requirement is means,
motive and opportunity.  That's enough for a jury.  Why would there be
evidence at a crime scene?  If there is, it can be confused by clever words
rendering it useless.  Means.  Motive.  Opportunity.  Malcolm's motive was
extreme.

                  What do I think about it?  Justifiable and excusable
homicide.  See what you think.
                  Paco was what was called, in my youth, a classic
mongoloid idiot.  Down's Syndrome.  He was largely rejected by his family
and Malcolm, who, in those years helped lots of people in different ways,
took him in and gave him tests to find his IQ, which turned out to be
equivalent to six years of age.  Paco became a catamite.  In my viewpoint,
this would have been likely under the circumstances; probably Malcolm was
part of it; I don't know for sure, but I can certainly guess.  As he
matured, Malcolm continued to help Paco on a daily basis; many times I
witnessed him dressing him when his clothes were half off and being sure he
ate and giving him money for treats.  To the best of my knowledge, no one
else took significant interest in the boy, who by now has become a hideous
and miserable young man.  He is unshaven, exceedingly loud, foul-mouthed,
which is going some in Dangriga, with its large number of sailors, and very
likely presently or soon to be dangerous.

                  By 1994, when I renewed my acquaintance with Malcolm,
Paco was 170 pounds of daily nuisance; a distinct, obvious and persistent
blot to the entire downtown, which, even without him, is described in the
more lenient guide books as a dusty frontier.
                  As to the use of poison, I have to go with Malcolm.  He
had no other choice.  Given his druthers, I have little doubt he would have
slipped the unfortunate creature a mickey, and put him painlessly to sleep.
No practical implantation of this method occurs to me for the simple reason
that a body is a hell of a thing to dispose of in an impromptu fashion.
(Plus, in this climate you have just a few hours for your dirty work.)

                  So, no more Paco.  I invite warmhearted liberals, one and
all, to come, do your research, and write the story from the conventional
perspective.  The blame belongs with the victim's family, not with
Mr. Dale.  Of course, you won't find me dining with him, but then I never
have.

                  I know two other murderers here, that I know of.
Mr. Garbutt who sharpens saws and does cabinetry is probably the individual
I respect most in town.  Lala Cool has never been in subsequent trouble and
I often see him carting wheelbarrows of firewood from the jungle into what
passes here for civilization.  He is the ultimate dread, and we spent,
what, half a thousand hours together, for the most part on my 16' skiff.
One novelist called these "one-per-customer" criminals.  I doubt Malcolm or
Mr. Garbutt or Lala Cool will ever hurt another soul in their lives (about
O.J., I'm not so sure), as they never hurt anyone else in the years before
Circumstances.  Half the reason I'm obsessed with the German Polygraph is
to get people like this out of prison.  If my attitude seems calloused,
it's because I'm a king, therefore interested in the health of the
community far more than the rights of individual to life or anything else.
A parallel to Paco occurred when I loved in Los Angeles.  Their was a
gutter freak who camped on the north side of inner Wilshire Blvd. in a
greasy circle six feet in diameter.  It doesn't rain in Southern
California, so the mystic bird feeder's circle got bigger and thicker by
the month.  He was there for months, oddly enough, on the same block I once
got tagged for jaywalking on because I stepped off the curb one-half second
to late (first day in town, first day in the States in seven years; didn't
matter.  Oddity, compounded: I'd left my passport in the hotel and they
would have arrested me for vagrancy except for the fact I had two or three
thousand dollars in my pocket and a freshly signed receipt for my new
apartment in Mid-Wilshire.  So I do get ticketed and almost arrested for a
tiny miscue in traffic, while The Greaseman is allowed to spread his circle
in fair weather and foul.  It was all tres SoCal and it wouldn't surprise
me in the least if that foul Viethippy was still there, by now sitting on
grease four inches thick like a decoration atop the wedding cake.  A
similar case was the bellower at Seventh and Alameda.  A huge black who
stood shouting hour after hour about his obsession with the Sabbath.  I
read bellowers are an ever-growing problem in the bible belt, both in
schools and in the market.  Not in my country, thanks anyway.  Intrusive
nuisances from barking dogs to human greaseballs will not intrude on the
public, whatever the means necessary to eliminate them.  The public right
to peace, tranquility, and to pursue happiness is a million times sacred
over the right of nuisance expression.


                  So, anyhow, Malcolm stiffed me on the camera, and, for
his pains, gets to share space with Jose Schmosey.  The power of a
successful writer to endow immortality is possibly the headiest aspect of
my art.  I like to think, after much reflection, that I write to teach
reading, and writing, and these lofty goals are ever-present during that
difficult stretch between eighteen and twenty hours of work.  So the
immortality thing drops down the list of motivational priorities.  Whether
or not it is above vengeance, I don't quite know.  Settling scores in very
cathartic, even when watching those who have gone out of their way to do
one dirt seem to settling their own hash in more lingering and imaginative
ways that I could have thought up, or would have inflicted had the idea
occurred to me.  Do not use other people ill.  So much poison comes with
each event when you do this that it is not survivable, in a psychic sense,
even if you have the genetic makeup to maintain physical health.  Look at
it this way.  Somewhere out there is a youngster who will grow to be a
greater writer than I am; it's almost a duh'uh, consider whom said boy or
girl has for a teacher, and you don't want to be a party to mistreating
that person.

                  You new readers may be wondering how you offended me,
seeing as how it would appear I'm mistreating you with long and divergent
wanderings (murders I actually know, for example).  You've been whipped,
and now you're being dallied.  The fact is, you haven't specifically
offended me, at least as individuals; it's just my way.  It's a mode, a
style, a method to punish you for your generic madness.  I happen to enjoy
writing it, so we share much that other novelists leave out.  My saving
grace is that I try to make things vivid and brisk, so if we wander
together its more like running a good horse up the flank of a hill to take
a look into the next valley than plodding through urban alleys looking for
blood and spent casings.  And no, don't try it at home.  It looks easy.  It
is not.  If you write a novel, stay out of it.  Enjoy your status as part
of the numerically overwhelming majority of writers who leave the civics
lessons for their day job.

                  This may unsettle new readers, perhaps earn a yawn or two
from you vets, but I'll renew a frequent theme by pointing out the fact
that I'm only half monarch, half god.  Use your powers of reason to figure
it out, to convince yourself.  Half, only.  Mom had to get her whip on
something.  And yes, I'm not kidding about the monarch thing.  The massive
Revolutionary connection, of and by itself, is a sufficient credential, but
the deal is real and there's a host of codicils including the invention of
the transistor.  King, god and artist.  Two I can prove; one I just am.

                  Sounds like a great time to get back to the proof,
artist-wise.

                  "That sounds excellent."  Kit's last words for long
minutes.  Jack rolled Kit off the mat on top of him, and they half crawled,
half wrestled around the two inch foam floor, staying shy with each other
but still touching and accepting willfully.  "The more we do this," Jack
whispered, "the more there will be at the end, but I'd like to do it if it
was leaking out and there wouldn't be any."

                  Complicated dialogue.  Kit loved it.  English was a
freaking kingdom and a half, and it was fun to play at being a peer, even
if a kid was just learning to swim at the neighborhood pool.

                  "Forsooth," the boy replied in whispered lamentation.
                  "I was being moronic," Jack said, "that won't happen.
You're safe."
                  "I never felt moreso," the boy replied on a serious note.
"it's like it's safe that something really exciting is going to happen,
even though this has been the most exciting thing that ever happened to me,
already."

                  "It's not one that ends," Jack observed.  "It will
probably be even better when you're together with Butchy, and you haven't
even met Duane yet, so be prepared for replays, if you like it, that is."

                  "Is this foreplay?" Kit asked, lying still on his back
while the tall, athletic instructor nodded and knelt between his spread
knees, running the fingers of both his hands slowly and gently up inside
the child's bathing suit.

                  "Can I touch you?" the boy was able to ask through the
panic grade sensations coursing and crashing through is young body and
mind.

                  Gently they reversed positions with Kit kneeling close in
between Jack's legs.  Even though he was wearing the most modest of suits,
Jack was obvious to Kit.  He thought to himself that it looks as if his
teacher was hiding a big ear of corn inside his suit.
                  "Duane likes me to look like a boy," Jack whispered as
Kit's hands made their way into the leg openings of the suit.  He felt like
a big child; his skin was soft and silky smooth in some places; textured,
in others, but there was no hair anywhere.  For long moments it seemed to
Kit as if his instructor was all penis.  All erection.  The more he
explored and felt and fondled, the more there was and the bigger and harder
it got.  To think that he'd actually see it, ever, was almost too much to
retain consciousness through, but that he could free the young athlete any
time he wanted wasn't even possible.  He would wake up.

                  "I think you're making me ready for the shower," Jack
whispered up to the kneeling boy.

                  "One thing at a time," Kit thought to himself, wondering,
for just a moment if there might not be something in forbidding kids to
have sex.  His temporary condition of mental and psychic disarray was
caused by the overload of knowing he was going to see Jack, and there was
the shower and what would happen when they were in there together, on top
of that.  Maybe adults could handle that array, but it was making him
half-dizzy.  And according to the people, their god didn't want this to
happen with anybody, ever.  Not even the touching, which seemed a world all
unto itself.

                  "If I touched you more, would you have an accident?" Kit
asked.
                  "Yes," came the hoarse reply.
                  "What would that look like?"
                  "You'd probably know it was happening.  You'd see a wet
spot at the top of my trunks."
                  "How big would it be?"
                  "It would go down over my right hip.  Some semen would
leak out and run down my right thigh and drip on the bed."
                  "How much?"
                  "Tablespoons full; not pints or quarts."
                  "I thought it would just be drops."
                  "The third time, it will be."
                  "How about the fourth?"
                  "You'll have to use your imagination."
                  "If I was a Jesuit I'd point out the redundancy of using
something one is already using to the maximum."
                  "This is one of the best parts," Jack whispered,
"thinking about what it's going to be like.  Then it will be exactly like
you're imagining it and you can go home and forget all about it."
                  "For how long?" Kit asked.

                  "We'll meet three or four afternoon's a week, all summer
long, and into the fall.  When I say forget it, I mean it.  Focus on other
things; it will give you an advantage over the conventional kids, most of
whom are hung up like Hogan's goat on something you'll know, like, respect,
and not get hung up on.  Having a dependable partner at your age, and on
through high school will, of and by itself, give you two letter grades more
than if you're stuck with the posers and daters.  And if you do meet
someone, it won't be just for sex or romance, but because you're better at
worthwhile things together than you are, apart."

                  "And it can be a girl?" the boy asked.
                  "Sure," Jack said.  "The fag lifestyle can be a chore, so
I discourage it on the grounds that life can be tough enough in
conventional bounds.  The happy camper is the man who's devoted to his
wife, as I happen to be, even with Carl living in the house, and has a
modest number of boyfriends over the years.  That way, you always have your
priorities firmly set and things proceed at their best."


                  Silence again.  Kit fondled the mature athlete for minute
after minute.  He'd found the males wetness, and stripped the copious
seminal fluid back along the shaft of the seven inch erection.  The young
man wasn't circumcised, and finding him beneath his foreskin had been the
most exciting thing to happen, so far.

                  Other than panting and soft mews and moans, the silence
continued.  Instinctively, Kit knew if he did it fast and hard, the end
would come in minutes, Jack would lose control, and, if his hands were way
up inside the suit, he could feel what happened.  But seeing it had to be
better.  They could play a bathing suit game some other time.  There was an
awesome thought.  Pretty soon he, Kit, would know the basics, and they
could experiment as mature partners, almost as equals.  Wouldn't the
ultimate artist be so sensitive and enamored of his work, he'd come to a
stop?  By the same token, wasn't what he was doing inside Jack's bathing
suit, and finding not a hair in the process, be so engaging and enthralling
it would mesmerize him to the point he could not go on?  Again, the eight
year old had a notion that it was all a bit much for a kid.  Something to
laugh about when he practiced drowning, tomorrow.

                  Kit could easily tell it was time to go.  He slowed and
gentled and Jack smiled in relief.  He pulled the boy down on his bare
chest and slipped his bathing suit and his own as low as he could reach.
Kit gasped at the feeling of the big, hot penis against his belly, exposed
Jack with his right hand, and scooted up and down, wetting himself with the
flow of fluid.  For long moments he didn't look, but finally it was time.
Matter of factly, and feeling suddenly modest, the boy hiked his suit back
up, then he resumed his position kneeling between Jacks legs, ankles, this
time, and stared down at him.  Little boy?  He could shave himself in half,
and he'd never look like a little boy again.  What had been an ear of corn,
was now raw young male; swollen hard and thick.

                  "We could let it happen here," Jack whispered.
                  "No," Kit replied, "I really like listening to you when
you get excited and it would echo in the shower."

                  Kids.  Here I, the grand pablum and pooh-bah,
extrodinaire, of the literary arts, would have to go on for pages
delineating the ying and yang of love, and an eight year old gets away
doing it in a short sentence.

                  "Do you think you'll be noisy when I get you really
excited?" Jack asked.
                  "I dunno," Kit said, biting his lip.
                  "Well," Jack went on, "the rule is don't overdo; if you
can't help it, it's sexy, but if you force it or exaggerate it, it's not.
In fact, it's an immediate and harsh turn off, or so I hear.  Boys like
that you can spot a mile away; they're phony in most of what they do, so
I've never been with one."

                  Still giving Jack relief, Kit stripped his bathing suit
completely off, then stood off to the right and helped the tall man to his
feet.  Hand-in-hand they rolled the mat back against the wall, turned out
the lights, and left.

                  "Can we walk like this for a little while?" Kit asked.
                  "Sure," Jack said.
                  "Does it feel good to you?" the boy asked as the headed
down the hall away from the locker room.
                  "Extremely."
                  "I'm trying to imagine what it will feel like when you
start looking at me," Kit said.
                  "You just tell me when you're ready, and I'll get you
naked," Jack said.
                  "Okay," the boy replied.

                  For ten minutes the boy in the rumpled swim suit and the
naked twenty year old swimmer walked the area.  Kit was chagrined at how
close it was to playing with a fabulous new toy, for the third time
wondered if he was old enough to take it all in, and, once again, laughed
to himself at himself.

                  They were both slowing.  While Jack had started holding
Kit's left hand, now he had his arm around the slightly soft waist and his
hand on the child's slim, base chest.  Kit had his left arm tightly around
Jack, and had found him again.  Instinctively both knew this was their time
and headed for the shower.

                  The towels were hot from the drier, the shower floor dry,
so they entered and made a bed of twenty or so towels.  Jack had suggested
running the taps, but Kit had replied that the water might make it hard to
see everything.  He got no argument.

                  When everything was ready, Jack knelt on the towels, and
Kit stood close in front of him while the man pulled down his almost dry
swimsuit.

                  "Do you like me looking at you?" the athlete whispered.
                  "Yes," stammered the boy, hands gripping the young man's
shoulders.

                  "You're big," Jack said, looking down at the adult-size
finger jutting from Kit's waist.
                  "Thanks," the boy whispered in acknowledgement.

                  The instructor lay back on the towels and Kit once again
knelt close in between the man's legs.

                  "It won't even be a minute, this time, so be ready," Jack
advised.

                  How about that, one of the kid hurdles passed and he
hadn't had a conniption fit.  He'd seen and he'd survived mentally and
emotionally intact.  Even the physical seemed to be taking care of itself,
if possibly a little relentlessly, at least consistently.  Two more
hurdles.  Seeing it actually happen after the intense build up, and then
orientating himself to the dream world where it happened again and again.

                  First things, first.  He knew just the rhythms and
pressures his partner responded to most avidly, and while his lover stared
at his boner, he began masturbating Jack.

                  "Do you want me to tell you or surprise you?" the man
managed to whisper.
                  "Tell me," the boy said immediately.
                  "You ask you know not what," Jack responded, and it would
have been with a sigh only it was happening too fast to spare the time.

                  It was just over half a minute, though, for sure, no one
was counting. "I'm cumming off," Jack gasped, then lay back panting and
shaking.

                  It started fast and went hard.  Went everywhere.  What
had the moron said about tablespoons?  It was thick, ropey, slick, hot, and
went everywhere.  All over his chest and belly, splattered across the
child's forehead and down both cheeks.  His lips were white with cum, it
dripped from his chin in long, slick tendrils.  It was in his hair, and as
much as anywhere, all over Jack's own belly and chest.

                  Even while Jack was still shaking and cumming, Kit fell
to his chest.  He listened to the hard pant echoing through the locker
room, and, having crossed two massive spiritual and intellectual hurdles,
did wonder if a boy his age was up for this happening again, maybe even in
his mouth, or, when he got big, inside him.  The slick, hot wetness of what
had just happened against his bare chest sent Kit on half a sleigh ride as
he wriggled up and down the length of long rows of cotton.  Jack helped
him, obviously liking the totality of contact, himself.  They managed a one
minute kiss after each round-trip, and extended their play to Kit licking
Jack and returning to him with salty lips and tongue.

                  In ten minutes both had the energy to stand.  They
staggered from the large shower stall and Jack took the young boy in front
of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, standing close, and molesting him openly with
both hands, and finally masturbating the child.

                  "We look okay together, don't we?" Jack asked.
                  "Pretty natural," the boy agreed.
                  "Good," the instructor replied, "because that's what we
are, and class after tomorrow's, we're going be together in the shower
after the session for any boys that want to watch."
                  "If we do it, they will cum," Kit quipped.  Jack was
delighted with the psychic balance demonstrated by the borderline witless
remark, and hugged and kissed the boy.



                  "I think that may count for an above-average first time,"
Alex said.
                  "It really lasted," the thirteen year old Kit said.
                  "Did Jack make you cum?" Alex asked.
                  "Three times," the boy acknowledged.

                  "How long has it been since that happened with you?" Alex
probed.
                  "With winning the contest and traveling and everything, I
guess a week." Kit said, looking thoughtful.
                  "Same here," Alex said.  "Victor would only toy with me
for the last week so it would be special if something happened between us."
                  "Tell him Thanks," Kit giggled happily.
                  "Nah," the man replied, "I don't want to turn you into a
pair of gushing pansies."
                  "Fat chance of that happening.  I started when I'd just
turned eight, and I haven't minced a mint leaf in five years."
                  "You don't have to eat rocks, either," the preacher
observed.
                  "Don't worry, I'd rather be a sissy than a macho.  At
least a sissy has the brains to hang out in the library."
                  "Exquisite point," Alex said.
                  "Dictionaries, forever, rah, rah, rah, sis-boom-bah!" Kit
babbled.
                  "Dictionaries and swimming coaches," the older, wiser man
corrected.


                  This is a real cheat in the word-count department.
Typically, a brag, too.  The fact of the matter is that I've composed this
story, as it approaches the 12,000 word mark, at the rate of a thousand
words an hour.  Two six-hour sessions.  Lawrence Durrell holds the
unofficial record in composing "Women in Love" at the rate of three
thousand words a day.  I've been doubling him in six hour days.  Good.
12,026.  We can get back to the story after I take one more pat of my own
back by pointing out that Mr. Durrell submitted to an experienced editor
for pruning and polishing, where I do all that (or at least such of it as
gets done), myself.

                  "We can get back to motoring if you want," Alex said to
Kit's unconscious, and extremely flattering, look of horror.  "It's only
seven hundred horsepower," the boy intoned, and suddenly his lips were
gentle on Alex's.
                  "I talked five gay couples out of marrying," Alex managed
to whisper into the boy's yearning mouth, "but for you and Victor I'm going
to make an exception."

                  Jack had often brought Butchy and Duane into the
conversation, but he'd, a, never mentioned marrying them to each other, or,
b, had the qualifications to do so.  It was good to be thirteen, although
the thought did gnaw that if Victor was good enough for Alex it might be a
long five year wait.  He was about to dwell on the subject when he
remembered they didn't have to be married to be together, and returned his
thoughts to the case in point.

                  Alex, for his part, was tending to wax philosophical.
The subject was so enormous it was hard to do more than dither on it.
Everybody was wrong.  You could see it in the staggering rates of obesity,
the preponderance of Ricki Lake type television programming, the cracker
box churches infesting the land and the neighborhood with the bleak hole in
the ground of orchestrated faith.

                  "Kit," Alex said, "I should tell you some home truths
about myself before anything physical happens.  I won't give you the keys
but I will take you home, do not pass go, don't collect two hundred
dollars, if you change your mind about being together.
                  "My secret is," the pastor continued, "that my mission is
to save people from the church, not to ensnare them in it.  Your contest
entry was secular, so I don't know anything about your spiritual
background.  I hope you have none.  No faith.  If you do, you're going to
find me hard to take and you might want to spend your time with someone
else."

                  "You killed two people," Kit said, "and that's enough
distance from the Holy Redeemer for me.  Reckon it would suit a lot of
good-old boys."

                  "Phew," said the cleric, "I didn't think you were a bible
beater, but it's comforting to know you're well off the path."
                  "And how," the boy rejoined.  "If it didn't make sense
then, how can it possibly, now, in the age of the Hubble telescope?"

                  "Amen," said Alex.  "And it's not a secret.  I don't do
the devil's work en obscura; everyone in Epping knew I tried to steer the
young clear of the church and turned most of their facilities into homes
for the elderly, fleecing one widow to pay for another.  I'll do the same
is Hastings.  The other pastors won't like it, but I'm a Harvard Divine and
by their own standards, their god."
                  "Will it be fun to watch?" Kit asked.  He was delighted
to feel Alex's fingers on the top button of his shirt.

                  "I converted two preachers to truck driving and two to
secular teaching," Alex said, "so you wouldn't call it drama at high noon,
but, yes, if you're a writer at heart; if liaisons and mechanizations are
enough to intrigue you, you might find it engaging.  Fun?  Well, it was in
Epping; kind of bold and vivid; what it lacked in style it made up for in
pace.  There were no losers.  The dead were better off that way; the rest
were unshackled from their tithes; church choirs became secular performance
groups, the rolodexes were used for supporting both the library and the
athletic fields; when I left, there were sixty low-cost or free beds for
the elderly, with approximately double the overall support system for all
disabled and needy people.  Church attendance dropped by over ninety
percent; quality of life increased by over ten percent.  Much more sex.
Seventy divorces cancelled.  Intervention on over a hundred cases involving
incest; seventy percent sanctioned, the others terminated.
                  "There might have been a book in it."

                  `If it hadn't been for Victor, you'd have written it,"
Kit teased.

                  "I was young, I was foolish, I didn't know what I was
doing," the minister intoned.
                  "Then how could you teach Victor?" Kit asked, a bit wry,
a bit wicked, but not enough to stop Alex and what he was doing with the
buttons of the child's shirt.
                  "You two are going to catch fire the first time you get
within fifty feet of one another."
                  "Cool," Kit responded.
                  "Don't you just know it," Alex agreed

                  By now the two males were staring openly into each
other's eyes.  Alex was slim faced with light brown hair and big hazel
eyes.  At twenty-six he looked, maybe, twenty; not exactly aggressively
boyish, but boyish, nonetheless.  At six feet three inches he looked so
perfect it was hard to believe he was real and not some fabulous painting
suspended on threads.  Just his eyelashes.  )Think what they weighed; one
one-millionth of his athletic two hundred pounds on a slim frame.)  A
stupid pun went through Kit's half-dazed brain.  "Don't judge a look by its
cover."  It was a stretch, an eyelash as a cover, especially because Alex's
might have been better describes as banners emblazoned with the words: Come
Hither.  Besides, who'd want to cover those eyes, in the first place?  They
were almost steely hard almost all the time.  Kit had the impression it
took a significant impact to soften them, that what they were about was
cleaning up his church and any others within fifty miles.  To stay him from
his calling was going to take charm, warmth, and sensitivity, but why would
one want to stay him from his calling?  Kit's hurdles with Jack had been of
his own making.  Was he old enough for this event or that one?  Here, the
field of play broadened considerably.  Alex wasn't an age issue, he was a
life, over-all issue.  Compelling, magnetic, focused; half a terror just to
be with because how could anyone be good enough, long enough, to earn their
place?

                  Alex Christopher, at the self-same time, was wondering
what kind of lucky furrow he'd been called to plow.  Victor Sansang, now
Kit Allen.  An hour with either would have been an A-list deathbed memory,
yet the first had turned out to be the ultimate keeper, and the second was
the equal of the first.  At Harvard it had been the bath house scene for
greater control than the bar scene offered.  If he was going to slam-dunk
religion, he had to steep himself in the cloying nonsense of theology as a
general immerses himself in the mind of the general on the other side of
the hill.  No time for dating or conventional romance.  These would have
been his choice had he gone for the secular professions, but his mission
had been stated clearly on an August Sunday, twenty years earlier, when a
baseball had crashed through his prison's stained glass window.  Over
Mary's shoulders had come a sudden patch of blue.  Age six years, and he
was outta there.  In the intervening twenty years, he'd stayed true to his
mission of freeing others, and armed himself to the teeth.

                  "Can we stay for another hour?" Kit asked.
                  "Yes," Alex said.
                  "How about tonight?" the child asked next, "can I stay
with you or do you want to take me home?"
                  "I guess I'd call it Bring you home," the minister
replied.
                  "Then I'll call myself happy," the boy responded.
                  "Glad to hear it," Alex said.
                  "Glad to be it," Kit whispered.

                  Their lips met virginally.  "No Kool-Aid," Alex noted.
"Victor is usually cherry, strawberry, or grape."
                  "We could chew a Spearmint together," the boy suggested
helpfully.
                  "Sounds like only half the flavor," the young minister
said.
                  "Perhaps there's more to chewing satisfaction than gobs
of sugar," Kit observed.
                  "We could try, at that," Alex rejoined.

                  Although their kissing had been shy and tentative,
neither male was a virgin.  They got up while Kit searched his pockets for
his pack of double-mint and by acclimation began stripping, backs to each
other.
                  "Should I keep my underpants on?" the boy asked from
behind his bush.
                  "Yes," Alex rasped, "I'm wearing briefs, should I keep
them on?"
                  "No," Kit replied.

                  They approached each other over the blanket.  Kit held
out the stick of gum.  Alex took one end and they slowly pulled themselves
together, eyes raging with thirst.

                  "Victor and I didn't have erections our first time," Alex
whispered.
                  "It must have been freaking freezing," the boy responded,
doing a more-than-adequate job of keeping his place in such stories as were
unfolding.
                  "Call it mortal terror," Alex said.  "It was with the
girl.  Frankie.  We'd been half living together in an ever higher state of
tension.  Odd as it was, it was that, as well as the fire, that got through
to her.  She sensed our desires; that there was a good side to the things
that had happened when she was kidnapped.  Finally, she could take no more
of our self-conscious mooning, Victor's and mine, so she perked up one
evening, out of the blue, and off we went to the master bathroom with its
shower and whirlpool tub, Miss Reborn leading the way."

                  While Alex began his story, they sank to their knees on
the sheet blanket.  Using four hands, they managed to get the gum half in
his mouth and half in his; then to chew themselves together until their
sweet kisses were not longer experimental and tentative.  For some minutes
they managed to murmer and understand each other, then the flavor was gone
and they broke reluctantly apart, squashing the chicly in a leaf and
tossing it into the underbrush.

                  From kneeling, Kit layed his partner full length and
straddled his right thigh.  At his right knee was Alex's huge erection, at
seven inches fully the size of Jack's.  Interesting how something so
ridiculously unessential paid such generous dividends.  Size didn't count,
but it sure was engaging.  As for Alex, he was mesmerized by the size of
the obvious tent in Kit's underpants.  The thirteen year old was almost
dramatically thick and nearly six inches long.

                  "You look more like fourteen than twenty four," Kit said.
                  "I still get carded for movies," the older male
acknowledged, "plus, I'm twenty-six and you know it.  The hair situation
has to do with a present from Victor to you."  Indeed, in a certain way
Alex was more boyish than ever.
                  "It looks fantastic," Kit whispered.  He was going to
comment on what a frame for what a painting, but it was a lack of frame, so
to speak, that engaged him, to say nothing of the complexity of the
painting, making the subject too thorny without the `t' for the moment.
Breathing, for that matter, was becoming altered in its execution, and he'd
been doing that for years.

                  "Is there any of that chewing gum left?" Alex asked.
                  "Maybe just a taste," Kit replied with a self-conscious
grin, as he lay down on the hairless swimmer's chest of the young preacher.
There was still a slight tangy sweetness, not that they noticed.
                  Eventually Kit pushed gently away and resumed his
position straddling Alex's leg.  He found the young man with his hand, then
cupped with his left.  "You better talk," he said, "or this is not going to
last."

                  Kit had seemed interested in seven-year-old Frankie
Butler, and she'd been the mover and shaker in Alex's first adult/child
experience, so he felt safe in advancing his relationship with Kit with the
story.

                  It was the third knock on his door, and from the outset
he, as a brand new arrival in Epping, had involved outright suspicion.
Since moving in had involved him in full days with numerous townspeople,
this cloud had dissipated and his advice and assistance had been requested.
He'd visited Frankie repeated as she recovered from exposure and minor
lacerations.  The girl had responded to him more than she had to various
women from the social agencies, and, since he already had Victor Sansang at
the rectory, she'd been transferred to his custody while the search for her
family and abductor went on.
                  The cold which had nearly killed the girl now turned out
to be her salvation, and she spent apparently contented hours on a polar
bear whose skin was not destined to be torn to pieces by scavengers, all
but useless to anyone but its owner and the human race, gazing into the
crackling apple wood fire, and reacting directly when Kit sprinkled copper
powder on the flames to turn them a dazzling blue.  Gradually the flames
thoroughly thawed the child, and, although she didn't speak, she began
participating in meals, as well as dressing and caring for herself, which
she'd been capable of on leaving the hospital.

                  So well did the girl fit in, the social worker charged
with overseeing Frankie strongly recommended that even if her parents were
found, the family should not be reunited for some period of time.

                  Victor was transferred to a home study program and Alex
invented a high-efficiency zone for his activities so he could be home at
three in the afternoon and let Victor out to play basketball with the JVs
at Epping Middle School.

                  So it was for two weeks.  Cords of wood sacrificed to a
wounded goddess.  Lucky they heated an active household as a byproduct.
She set the table after the first week, then began working with Victor on
multiplication tables, writing everything instead of saying anything.  She
colored beautifully, leaving blanks as highlights so you looked into her
work instead of at it.  Kit recognized Pappy Drewit images when she drew
freehand, and tried to draw her out on the subject.  It was a close thing;
he could see the references made sense to Frankie, but she didn't want to
say anything.  In a way, it was kind of nice.

                  Victor, a more European Eurasian, had come to Epping
through normal adoption channels, then his new parents had been killed by
mountain lightning, leaving the twelve year old adrift.  Alex was informed
of the situation by the police, took the boy in for temporary shelter, then
on a long-term basis.  Victor was tight and popular at school so in days
the quiet rectory had livened up considerably.  Occasionally late at night
Alex wondered at the fate that had denied both the boy's natural and
adopted parents the pleasure of his company.  If god was measured by his
mysterious ways the dude pretty well sucked.  Mary had been decapitated by
a home run while the summer sky remained clear and blue if one looked
almost straight up, or in the vicinity of heaven.  And the big orchard in
the sky could flourish at ground level.  Victor and Frankie comprised a
dynamic duo that inculcated Alex with a more particular zeal as he went
about re-arranging affairs in the town of fourteen thousand to his
sometimes imperious satisfaction.

                  Thanks to his cell phone, p.d.a and computer, Alex was
able to orchestrate with an efficiency unknown to former eras.  He was home
by three, about sunset in mid winter, to join the fire wardens on their
bear skin.

                  For months now Alex Christopher had been on an incline.
He didn't know whether it led up or down, just that it led somewhere other
than the destination of the oft-trodden level path.  Victor was the tilting
mechanism.  He tried not to look at the coltish twelve year old more than
was polite or normal, but he could struggle like a man at a breach and
still not avoid frequent glances, and if the child's attention was
diverted, he was powerless to stop himself from simply staring at the
for-all-appearances boy-looking boy.  Would a natural father or normal man
simply stare at a kid for an hour, straight, if he could get away with it?
The boy must sense something.  Yet he was so often so close by.  By choice
he was seldom ten feet away, and he could have as easily studied and
watched television in private, if he so chose.  On top of this, he took an
avid interest in Alex's work, following with near glee when the plot
thickened regarding this family or that interloper.  Frankie had become an
almost instant fascination and he seemed to respond instinctively to her
need for a calm, arm's-length presence.  He left half-reluctantly for his
ballgames and was always back before five.  Prize-winning home, that's what
that made it.

                  Her parents had been found at the end of the first month.
Spies sent negative reports of a more than half-gone construction worker
and job-jumping, club-loving waitress.  In all likelihood her abductor had
been one of her mother's outside interests.  Plenty of suspects in that
department.  Some pressure was brought to bear to determine the girl's
feelings about her fate, her will, but attempts in that direction affirmed
the opinion that her home was not on any list she might have of good
things.

                  On Frankie's arrival, Victor took to answering the phone
Orphan Central, a little confusing to bewildered callers, but a healthy
sign the boy had landed on his feet and didn't see much point in tiptoeing
around delicate issues.  He'd have Frankie proud of her independent status
before her first day back at school.  "We have dramatic backgrounds, and no
old folks to worry about when we get older, ourselves," he'd tell the girl
cuddled happily beside him on the enduring polar bear.  For sure, such
observations got twice the response from the big black eyes of any attempts
to find out more than her name, which she'd written willingly enough at the
hospital, before clamming up.

                  The clock ticked in the living room of the old house, the
days slipped by, Victor seemed to become more magnetic with every passing
week, the little girl's black hair shone with health, and the first
fortnight passed.

                  It was a Saturday evening and Alex was casting around for
ways to get out of the sermon expected of him on the morrow.  He'd used
home repairs as an excuse, with his own hands had loosened a copper pipe to
engender the fear of leaking gas, been called away to no less than three
funerals of imaginary relatives, plus two faux weddings.  A great
motivation for raising a thousand dollars a day was not being overly
pestered for A few words on Sunday, Reverend Christopher; it is rather a
tradition.

                  For a devil, Alex took good care of his hunting ground
and Sundays off seemed a small price for the congregation to pay.  An
artist at what he did, he managed to disembowel his congregation while
simultaneously raising three times the funding of his predecessor.  The
church goers were subtly steered to healthier and more productive
enterprises, the seedy strongly cautioned, and the funding, chiefly gained
from elderly women with no other use for the money, was reserved for
conversion of the plant so it might serve Epping rather than confuse and
distract the town.

                  "The devil works in obvious ways," he kidded Victor that
Saturday evening and the orphan rejoined, in a mysterious way, that some
devils overlooked the obvious.  It was some minutes before the
self-satisfied preacher wondered at the comment.  Kids spoke their own
language and interpreting it was perilous, in the mildest of circumstances.
To read anything into Victor's remark could result in the wish for a
bicycle or twenty-two being taken for what `obvious' apparently meant,
seeing as how the boy stuck close and seemed to be looking at Alex as much
as Alex looked back.  Wishful thinking also complicated the scenario.  What
was obvious was that he adored his ward to the extent of craving him.  What
was obvious was that a misinterpretation could wreck their daily forging
bond.  What was obvious was that love didn't have to be obvious to be
interesting.  If the parish ledger was obvious, well and good, and if a man
and boy living together in private was fraught with obscurity, even better.
Plenty of room for both in the seventy-odd years that made up the human
span, especially when part of each day was spent on a rug in front of a
fire.

                  "It wasn't all bad, you know," Frankie said.

                  The comment was so low-key and natural sounding Alex and
Victor made noncommittal noises of agreement as they lay on both sides of
the seven year old and gazed with her into the burning pile of apple wood.
In cartoon-like fashion, they both slowly froze and stopped breathing.  By
acclimation they rose to the push-up position and stared over the girl at
each other.  A full minute went by as they nodded, shook their heads, and
stared helplessly at each other.

                  "Damn cat," the girl eventually went on, "the moment he
lets my tongue go, he gets the two of you.  I'd blame myself for bringing
him up poorly, but any extended dialogue, or monologue, as the case seems
to be, on the subject, since the cat doesn't actually exist, would get me
out of this warm, cozy house and into the loony bin -- right or wrong?"

                  Being speechless is easy, you just don't talk.  And what
would they talk about, if they could?  Stage one or stage two?  Their
little amnesia victim, all mute and pitiful, or some Johnny-come-lately
firebrand that left them hung out to dry?

                  Alex's education had cost in the six figures, but it had
been the best offered so he'd known all along some day he'd get his money's
worth.  "Bless me," he said.
                  "Well, don't forget Tiny Tim, fresh from the forest,
here," the girl said.
                  "Why, `pon my soul, the lady takes me for Scrooge," Alex
iterated, "what thinks thee of that, lad?"
                  "McDuck or McDickens?" asked Kit, more rhetorically than
specifically.

                  Frankie obliged the boy by breaking out into a fit of
giggles only half-muffled by the thick, warm fur of the long-dead beast.

                  "I think she takes you for the McClown," Alex observed.

                  Now that she had two boys to laugh at, the polar bear did
little good and the girl dissolved into a half-weeping state that went on
for some minutes as Alex and Victor stroked and petted her.  Gradually the
spell eased and the pixie rolled on her back, her black eyes huge as she
stared first at one male, then the other, finally grabbing them gently and
bringing them together at her knees so she could look up at both handsome
faces at the same time.

                  "It wasn't all bad," she repeated.  "He's a nice boy.
Seventeen.  Worked as a busboy in my mother's last restaurant.  We used to
hang out in the kitchen together when Mom couldn't find a sitter.  Do you
or do you not want to bet that I can peel eight potatoes in four minutes?
                  "He just got scared," her story went.  "They had it on
the radio, so he drove me from Cleveland up to Vermont so he'd have time to
figure out what to do.  That was after four days.  The car stopped running
on a back road.  A logger picked us up, but after about a hundred miles he
made Stewart get out and kept me with him for two days before he dumped me.
I should have been okay, but a blizzard started an hour after he left me
beside the road and things got all messed up.  I asked some people for help
but they were afraid because the laws can be interpreted in so many ways
-- that's what one family told me, they had a Cadillac, so it got kind of
serious and I got feeling pretty low, so I threw away my coat so I wouldn't
waste time getting out of people's way.  In the end, an alert state
trooper, Ben Shaw, saw my footprints going off the road, into the woods,
and he made it his business to find out what was going on, and found me
about ready to hatch in heaven, because I'd sure spent the last two days in
the big elsewhere."

                  "And you speak like a princess professor because?" Victor
asked.
                  "Grandmother.  I half grew up with her."
                  "That was a good thing," Alex interjected, "because if
you were any more with it, speech wise, you'd be looking at loony time, for
sure."
                  "Damned if I do and damned if I don't, eh?"
                  "The modern world likes it one word at a time, and easy
on the syllables," Alex said, "so yesteryear's assets are today's
liabilities."
                  "That's a fine how-do-you-do," the girl said, "though
Nan, that's my dad's mother, did say one ought to speak lightly and carry a
big dic-tionary."
                  The girl blushed.  "I guess that has a different
connotation after what happened," she whispered, half to herself.
                  "At seven you're allowed a choice," Alex said gently.

                  "How do you know how old I am?" Frankie asked.
                  "The police found your mother awhile ago," Alex
explained.  "We've kept her in the dark, but at the same time gotten the
goods on you, toward the day when you could be brought up to date."

                  "If somebody's going to Boston," Frankie said, "I can
write her in Cleveland and tell her and Dad that I'm okay, but have no
desire to return to them.  They won't be able to trace me if the letter has
a big city postmark, assuming they'd want to try if it came from down the
street, that is.."

                  "To be safe let's mail it from Disneyland," Alex
suggested.

                  The girl started to laugh but something in those hard
eyes stopped her.  Little Miss Frances Butler of Solon, Ohio, was on her
way to California, she could just feel it.  And that wasn't her only
feeling.  This young man, this intriguing and gracious boy; they were
freaking head-over-heels in love with each other and scared to death of
their own shadows.  Cute, too, and damned if her life hadn't changed in the
last few weeks, from color cartoons with saucer eyes to way beyond where
the soaps feared to tread (maybe it was all those slippery suds on the
floor).  The man and boy were greater doll and lesser doll with nary a tea
party in the offing.
                  Plus, she was going to Disneyland.

                  "Thanks," the seven year old said.  "I'll visit, too,
before too long, but I'm in the mood for a serious break and I'm not a
moody girl."
                  "You were cool even when you first came here," Victor
said, "so I think you can call our home your home for as long as you want.
Alex has more pull around here than you might want to know about... are you
religious?"

                  "I prayed someone would help me along the roadside," the
girl said, "but I take it all back.
                  "Ah, two devils," she sighed contentedly to herself when
both males broke out in happy smiles.

                  For long moments Frankie lay staring up at Alex and
Victor as they stared back.  Finally, she extended her hands up to them and
drew them down on the rug, Alex on her right and Victor on her left.

                  "I did a lot of growing up with Stewart, and more with
Harold, he drove the log truck, so I know it's high time the two of you
grow up.
                  "As I said, before, it was not all bad."

                  "If Mattel ever comes up with a doll that talks like this
one they'll own North America," Alex thought.  Victor was dumb for the
moment, shocked by the biggest, hardest boner of his twelve years.  He
almost always had one when he was close to Alex; now it had doubled and
felt the size of a baseball bat.

                  Nobody said anything for some moments.  Both males were
so deliberately not lying against her that it was a snap to see that the
three of them, as well as bing on the big, white rug, were also on the same
page.

                  "How much therapy value would there be in giving you the
whole story?" Frankie asked the devil in the dog collar, which as usual, he
was not wearing.
                  "None," Alex replied, "but, on the other hand, it might
be sexy.  But it's one hundred percent up to you.  The kids in other cases
have suffered severe, immediate and lasting psychological damage from being
quizzed and probed by credentialled experts on things they didn't
understand, so that's a road we'd like to avoid."

                  "They didn't have Stewart to teach them," the girl
replied, "and I did.  So you could ask a million questions, and I'd know
the answer to every one.  No confusion now, or ever."

                  "And your grandmother was princess of?" Alex said.  He'd
spent enough time and money at Harvard to learn something, after all.
                  "Greece," Frankie replied.  "Constantine's sister.  How
cool is that?"
                  "Lady Fauntleroy, or Her Majesty?" Alex asked.
                  "Nan's an R.H., royal highness, but she always did
respond to Your Majesty.  She thought of it as her common touch."
                  "Yeah, but we're talking about you." Victor observed.
                  "I've run off with a bus boy and spent two nights with a
six-four trucker, so maybe you'd better come up with your own title."
                  "Goddess seems a bit high toned for in public, but
mightn't it do around the house?" Alex wondered aloud.
                  "Sure!" Victor enthused, "and we can be her princes.  It
works."

                  It seemed funny and frivolous, but in such manner are
things occasionally carved in stone.  Goddess she became, commonly
abbreviated, Ess, so as not to incur her wrath.  It was good to please her
and the males soon found they had chosen their deity well.  She was
becoming more lively by the minute snuggling critically close to first
Victor then immediately rolling into Alex's arms, and after a minute, back
to the boy's.

                  "We can grow up right here on this rug," she whispered to
them both, taking a moment to lie still, on her back, between them.  "The
good thing would be to have a few candles.  That will remind me of Steward
because he had some from the restaurant."

                  The princes left on the subtle command.  Not only had
Harvard University educated Alex Christopher, it had bestowed on him, at
age twenty-two, the privilege of a rectory well stocked with the idolater's
best friend, the slim, wax taper.  Feeling very satisfied with his effort
and dedication, Alex gave Victor four and brought four, himself.  Two
silver candelabra and the glow of the freshened fire was repeated along the
length of the lonely but immortalized polar wanderer.

                  "Try to think of some puns and double entendres related
to this rug, and act on them," the princess suggested.  Alex and Victor had
just placed the elaborate silver candle holders and were kneeling at
Frankie's feet.  They looked at each other, whirling minds wanting to know.

                  Okay, he'd been wrong; had already, in his relationship
with Victor, not misjudged the obvious, but refused to acknowledge it.  The
boy's shining eyes, especially now that the candles were on the floor
beside the rug, showed his notion, ironically squelched by hope, had been
right.  So, didn't it follow that the obvious was once again in play?
Frankie didn't help by winking, but still there was no doubt.  It was a
bear skin rug.  What other double entendres could there be?  Some nascent
proclivity as a zoologist; next she'd be asking for a microscope?  Get
real.  Victor was real.  He'd been totally in tune since the boy's first
day in his house, accurately.  He'd imagined everything but the truth to
protect the child, and his good intentions had denied them nearly a year of
pseudo wedded bliss.

                  Okay, okay, but what was the second part?  That's where
it blurred, alright.  Sure, he could remember her actual words: act on
them.  Act on the prurient aspects of a rug of the skin of a bear.  Did
that mean flipping a beer can on the nose?  Act.  Did she want a circus?  A
melodrama.  What could be more dramatic than a nine foot bear in the living
room?  Aha.  He was able to thicken the plot.  The candles.  She'd said
what?  Stewart had used them.  She'd spent four nights with the seventeen
year old.  But it was so hard to act.  Princess, Goddess, some part of her
was a seven year old kid, kidnapped and ditched, only surviving by
half-luck.  He looked at Victor.

                  "I think it's okay," the boy whispered.
                  Thinking was getting Alex nowhere so he merely nodded.
His hands went to the twelve year old's top button, and in moments they
were busy with each other.  Frankie congratulated herself on her choice of
princes, and stared wide-eyed at her first calm and collected experience
with the opposite sex.  No ruckus and the whole warm, friendly night ahead.

                  "You're beautiful," she whispered.  Both males were now
kneeling bare chested and facing her.  "I wonder if it will make a
difference?" she added, "because Stewart was all acne, crooked teeth and
greasy hair, but totally out of this world.  Harold had spent twenty years
in the woods, hairy, and he made it happen in me, but I was glad to get
away from him.  Now an upper class Anglo and a mixed blood boy who looks
like the freaking best of every blood."

                  "Beats being a slave in a market," Alex mused to himself,
"though I still feel no vestige of freedom."  Victor rubbed his left arm
against Alex, and immediately the tall athlete pulled the bare-chested boy
gently in front of him, molesting him as the girl stared up from the rug.

                  "That's how Stewart started teaching me," Frankie said.
"In the walk-in.  It was innocent at first.  He'd work in there for awhile,
then I'd go in so he could warm his hands on my tummy.  Then I wore a
blouse he could pull up, so he could get warmer.  Pretty soon he said he
wanted to go up high while he was rubbing me.  I asked him why, and he said
boys just did even before anything started to grow, so I let him.  That
really changed things between us.  We didn't just wait to go in the
freezer, I'd stand in front of him any time things were slow and the
kitchen was empty.  It meant we had to work harder so no one would have a
reason to say anything, but it was worth it."


                  Again, the dart of a girl held up her hands, beckoning,
and spread her slim legs wide so they could shuffle closer.  She was
wearing a black leotard and white blouse and began unbuttoning herself as
the males got comfortable.  Alex was still molesting Victor and the boy
responded to being fondled by arching his back and lacing his fingers in
back of the older male's neck.
                  In moments the fairy god goddess had her blouse pulled
wide and had emulated her stallions by imitating the position of Victor's
hands, only behind her own neck.  She arched willfully but not wantonly,
obviously enjoying her bare-chested princes to the same extent they were
enjoying her.

                  Alex eased Victor forward and stared over the boy's right
shoulder as the youth found the child with his fingers and transmitted what
Alex did to him, to her.  Gentle touches around her tiny belly button, then
to her tender flanks.  To her collar bone, shoulders and neck.  Harold
hadn't been like this with Stewart; he hadn't hurt the boy, but his actions
had been a far cry from the gentle encouragement evident in the way this
man handled this boy.

                  All night.  Safe.  Quiet.  Peaceful.  Her recovery had
been sleep oriented as much as anything, so she was well caught up.  The
males were also regular in their routines and looked bright eyed and ready
for a long night.


                  Good, there's 18,002 words, keeping us on pace.  More
like ten hours than six, and the sixes were probably more, but, anyway,
record pace.  It's not exactly a race, but nearly a third of a minimal
novel in three days is making some kind of hay.  As predicted, it's coming
out much better than the first draft, and for sure will be longer.
Seventy-plus pages by traditional print MS count, and not a mushroom in
sight.

                  Writing is an awkward art form in that it's hard to give
the reader a break.  On television, you have your commercials so you can
hit the fridge or the john, but a literary divergence requires the same
audience engagement as the central theme, so it, the audience, doesn't
catch much in the way of downtime, or interval as it's called on Broadway.
Writing for the Net is especially challenging, because, while you can take
a book to the bathroom, a personal computer is another story.  I'd like to
say most of the laptops sold in the year and a half I've been publishing
were purchased to give the owner fuller access to moi, but my nature is
modest and it would be a stretch to claim even half of notebook sales.
(It's also possible I interrupt myself solely to drive up the sacred word
count.  There is nothing modest about my talent, therefore the more you get
of it the better.  A second reason is that I just like to type.  There may
be an answer in the offing, should this be the case.  Specifically, Malcolm
Dale apparently has the camera, after all, meaning in the next week or so I
may be able to photograph myself, display the image on the monitor, and
thus fulfill my narcissistic impulses by constantly evaluating and
reevaluating myself, as did the boy in the reflection of the pool, rather
than typing everlasting lines of English.  How sweet would that be?

                  Having convinced, finally, even myself I'm the greatest
of all artists, I do find myself dwelling on the issue.  Why me?  What is
the spiritual connection, other than what I feel?  How is it possible to
reinvent art, itself, yet live in modest and prosaic style very much as my
neighbors live.  Should I be on something heavier than my dollar-a-day weed
habit?  Can I shame my mother enough to overshadow the fact that I
immortalize her?  What are my motives?  I think they are to teach reading
and writing, to educate in a moral and spiritual sense, to achieve
immortality for myself and bestow it on others, and to entertain, not
necessarily in that order.  Advance the art?  Definitely.  In fact, I
consider leading, as one leads a duck before blowing the poor thing's head
half off, my greatest gift and talent, and yes, it may just be bravado
talking, but I believe I write half a decade or so ahead, extrapolating
from the Bobsey Twins to the Olsen Twins.  Shooting just ahead of the norm
but not so far ahead as to be deemed an oddity or maverick.  The huge
readership numbers buttress the possibility that my aim is good but I don't
consider it a done deal.  Good thing I like to type.  Good thing I love the
reduced screen of my word processor so if I get bored I can wink back at
Clippy or look at all the tiles at the top of the screen and wonder what
would happen if I clicked one of them.  Alternatively, my display looks
like the console of a space ship, again, with mysterious buttons layered
three deep.

                  I don't know why I've become so taken with pace.  Surely
people a hundred years from now are not going to care if a work was
completed in a week or a month, so why do I?  I can't figure out what keeps
Jackie Chan going, either.  He's got enough of everything for a million
people, so why does he go on risking his life and sustaining one cruel
injury after another?  I've taught, instructed, entertained, buried my
mother in cement, and achieved all the immortality anyone has a right to,
so why keep at it?  I don't trust cement.  While you may view this as
over-cautious, I would point out that what is thick and strong will be
stronger if it is thicker.

                  I have to say the marijuana and cigarettes help, I just
have to.  To relax and enjoy it at six thousand words a day is simply not a
straight, sober experience or even a possibility.  A dollar a day of weed
does not exactly zone one into the stratosphere, and twenty cigarettes a
day are not necessarily death, incarnate.  And the payback for the two and
a half dollars a day I spend on my vices is staggering.  Longer, fuller
days free of the empty feeling of yearning for something not at hand.  In
this respect, Samantha has become a godsend, to, finally toeing the line
and showing up for a couple of hours each morning.  I'm afraid I'm right in
predicting she will soon be a raving beauty and boy magnet, extraordinaire.
I am doing a lot of young men a great service by taking her off the market
early in the game, unless, of course, she decides otherwise.  Her eldest
brother, Lindsey, eighteen, is back in Dangriga sporting a bullet
laceration across his palm.  It was done by a .38 and looking at the scar,
seven stitches, it's impossible to see how it missed taking out at least a
finger or two.  These kids today.  I thought I had lost him to the street,
but he's come through a couple of butterfly years fit as ever and chopped
the yard this morning in record time.  He's very talented at graphics and
sculpting so we're birds of a feather.  It's good to have the whole family
at home, reasonably safe and sound.  Lin's girlfriend, Melissa, is a
long-legged knockout; gives the Laura of previous stories a run for her
money.  They make a dramatically attractive couple.
                  Samantha bought a Punta Rebels tape this morning.  They
used to practice beside my old house, but I never realized how intricate
and subtle their work is until listening to them on my Sony.  Anybody,
anywhere exposed to the high art of their mixes must come away with no
doubt to the creative dimension of assimilated Africans.  It shouldn't be a
surprise, since their pre-assimilation art defines world class, but it is.
I wish one of their recordings had come across my desk when I was
continuity director at WABI.  They fly to New York for weekend gigs so
they're not exactly bush league and they may put Dangriga on the map, yet.

                  As I was ten years old in 1956 it's obvious I grew up
during a musical zenith that lasted twenty years.  It appears I may have
the opportunity to live through another one.  Very little top forty has
appealed to me in many years, but here in the Caribbean there seems to be
no bad music.  This is a special mercy since, as stated already, cable
television may have simply run through its time span.

                  Speaking of which, I had the distinction of being hired
and fired in ten minutes last week.  Santa Fe, south.  I got bamboozled so
many times in New Mexico I used to tell Anne we'd been Santa Fe'd, again.
She always knew what I meant.  The current incident involves a guy who
comes across as the proverbial bubba.  I made contact with him on an
incidental business matter and he asked me if I'd worked in film.  I said I
had, so he dragged me into his office to tell me about a show called "Fish
Belize" he was involved in, and he needed a director.  Since I've done it
all, I said I'd probably be useful, but carefully pointed out that I'd
worked in 16mm synched sound and would need a technician when it came to
cutting because I wouldn't have time to learn how to run a video system.
Other stuff.  So he seemed impressed and I thought hired me.  I had to meet
Samantha at the bank, so I took my departure, to return fifteen minutes
later, assuming we're going to pick up the conversation and get specific.
Now all of a sudden he's playing with his computer and proving bubba does
as bubba is.  I have every mind to present the dolt with a bill for
consultation, but, in the end, am glad to be rid of a flake so fast.  At
the same time, I believe a good fishing series could be produced here.  In
my vision it would be more theatrical than others of its type.  Follow a
father and daughter through a variety of fishing and touring environments.
There's so much good music done by local groups, the thing would rock from
beginning to end, and, unless I miss my guess, be loaded with Creole and
Carib charm.  (I've often thought a sharp cruise ship line would offer
all-Belezian crews.  The island blacks are hard, having been ruined by the
out-flow (effluent) of New York, but non-urban Belezians are great.)
Anyway, TNN's meant to carry "Fish Belize" early next year, so keep your
eyes open.  In the meantime, I've got a dual theme, a show about a show, a
la "Home Improvement", for a project in my own words.  Morning well spent
in spite of the odd outcome.  Let's see, bumbling bubba with officious wife
manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory while the obnoxious David
Ogden Stiers, Niles Frasier, George Plympton type forsakes bubba bluster
and produces a compelling drama of making it in paradise, one fish at a
time.

                  (The time I was most epically "Santa Fe'd" was when I was
running a small plant shop on Canyon Road and the head of the Hilton called
me in for a consultation. He gave me a half million dollar contract which
was cancelled, rather curtly, I thought, the next day when the guy was
fired.  As we were walking across the parking lot, the manager talked about
having the fire department come in and wash customers' cars, so I'd began
to have inklings about a trolley operated by a non-union crew.  Since
dealing with Their nutcase had cost me over half a day of time, and obvious
embarrassment, I felt I deserved more than a telephone brush off, so I
simply kept ten pounds of blueprints the manager had given me during the
interview.  It was a time in my life when I responded poorly to being
pissed on.  Now, as with bubba and a long list of others, I turn the acid
into lemonade, and if it has the potency of an all-natural product, you can
thank the ingredients as I do those who provided them.)

                  For you young writers who are thinking How to you get it,
how do you make it come? I don't get it or make it do anything.  It comes.
I can't chop an onion without running to the keyboard three times to type
out a word or phrase.  Ceaselessly, unending, at least, so far.  I don't
know from blocked.  Choked, yes; I'm sometimes stymied by so many thoughts,
avenues and tendrils it's difficult to prioritize them and finish what I
start.  But then, what does a novelist do in the first place?  He lives in
a world of incomprehensible difficulty.  It is so difficult to write a
novel it should be against the law.  Pairing vaulting creativity and
meticulous persistence defies everything that is cultured.  Years go by and
no one can do it.  No book catches fire with the public.  The publishing
machine grinds as a machine, generating not a hint of off-the-books profit
for anybody.  I wouldn't gripe, but ask yourself, how grand can it be to be
a giant amongst leftist Lilliputians?  If one views publishers as scuttling
urbanites, can there be more pleasure in pursuing them than there would in
going after a nest of house bugs?

                  Better we ignore each other.  I'll delve into the
unpopular world of generalities and categorize the whole lot as socialistic
morons.  A thing like this can only be swept under the rug for so long.
For the time being, I'm no profit center, unlikable, and politically
incorrect.  In short, a conceited, pigeon-toed, stoner and nonentity.  Be
this as it may, soon enough the world as it is will spin us together and
we'll end up near the same page.  I suggest we close the volume with
aplomb, and, in the name of delicacy, avoid certain stained pages in the
future.  What is writing?  Writing is building imagery inside a book.

                  Alex, Victor and Frankie were trying to build imagery in
their minds.  They'd take long looks at each other, then blink several
times to reinforce the lover.  It didn't work.  From moment to moment,
unless they were looking at each other, they couldn't remember what each
other looked like.  It was like a mind stomach.  Empty.  Craving.
Satisfied with nothing short of one of the two on-looking faces, with
memory amounting to nothing more than a picture of a meal.  It was hard
even to blink.

                  But a good novel is not only about the forest, it is also
about the trees, and, while it takes very little talent to topple two
trees, slowly, gently, onto a wraith of a girl -- anyone could do it --
it is nonetheless part of the story.  Alex and Victor settled to Frankie's
naked chest, Victor's stripped torso on her left and Alex, tall and
athletic, on her right side.  The males alternated between molesting the
little girl with their hands and mouthes and undoing each other's belts and
snaps.  As they began to get serious with each other, Frankie whispered,
"Me, too," and so staring back and forth between her huge Greek eyes and
her flat, honey brown belly and her emerging hips, the man and boy pulled
down her leotards and panties.  The second the garments were free of the
child's ankles she spread her legs wide and archer her hips to the touch of
the males.  Alex and Victor were on their knees now, each using their off
hand to sport her bottom while they took turns experimenting with her
wetness.  She cooed and mewed beautifully and so they went on and on with
her, Alex teaching the young boy how to make her have sexy little cums and
finally moving the boy in front of him and masturbating him with his left
hand while he used the fingers of his right hand to give her an orgasm that
left here limp and panting.  Alex wanted to make Victor cum off, too, but
held back.  This was therapy, not sex, and it was important for Frankie to
get the events of the past weeks out of her system.  She was so responsive
as to make a liar of her scribe, for it was sex, after all.

                  "The first real time with Stewart," she whispered,
unprompted, to both males cuddled to her and now naked, themselves, "was in
the shower at his house."

                  "Did you know something was going to happen before you
went?" Alex asked, the role of therapist dying hard in his finely educated
being.
                  "Yes," the girl whispered, and she often turned to Victor
and kissed his forehead, reassuring the twelve year old while she conversed
with the twenty two year old.  "He was touching me more than just under my
blouse when I went into the cold room or the freezer.  We'd do dishes
together, and when things got quiet, he'd bring my hands to him and we'd
experiment with kissing on the lips; even french."
                  "Did you really feel him?" Victor asked, feeling the same
thought was probably running through the mind of his mentor.

                  "For a long time it was just on the outside.  I'd stand
in front of him when we had a little privacy, and feel him against me.
Then I wanted to touch him, so I'd stand at his right hip, he was much
taller than I was, and put my left arm around him and use my right hand to
touch him through his jeans.
                  "I guess any boy could figure out I wanted to touch him
without clothes," Frankie prattled on, happily, "so he let me do more and
more and put my hand inside when the kitchen was extra quiet."

                  "And your mother in all this?" Alex asked.
                  "She thought it was cute.  It was, I guess predictably
with her appetites, our one common denominator; getting me freshened, in
farm vernacular, at seven.  Girls his age used to reject him because he had
acne and looked a little bit skinny and geeky; but Mom said he was dead
sexy, ten time more than the conventionally handsome boys, and that I was
like totally lucky to have a boyfriend like Stewart at the age of seven.
My dad was going through big, long, serious drinking and nonproductivety
bouts, so he was out of picture most of the time.  Anyway, Stewart became
Mom's and my first and only point of contact in years.  She brought me to
the restaurant four or five nights a week, but I could only stay until nine
o'clock, and I helped out, plus I had my homework desk in the back of the
kitchen so I wouldn't frost any inspectors who happened back of the house."

                  It can be difficult to asses the psychological aspects of
recovering from a trauma.  As a scantily trained practitioner, I'm
more-or-less constricted to letting my characters settle their own hash,
and you can imagine my pleasure when they do it with verve and gusto.  "You
guys don't know what you've got," Frankie said, grinning and her males each
in his turn, "by the time I stayed over at Stewart's, I could both cook and
run a kitchen, blindfolded, with every i dotted and every t crossed,
except, of course, for the physical stuff.  I needed big, strong boys for
that, Lucky, eh?"
                  "Theoretically," Alex intoned, "a boy could win the
lottery three times in a row, and be luckier than Stewart, but I think
that's far fetched."

                  "He could crash in a plane," Victor added, "and not get
hurt, and find the plane had torn open a hoard of war gold, and have a
working radio."

                  "Nah," both males said together, causing the girl who'd
been through the psychological maelstrom, to giggle at them as if they were
children.  "I want to take you in the bathroom," she said after some
minutes.  "I will be nice, later, here on Mr. Bear, but you're at least
half as exciting as Stewart so I really want to show you what he did to me.
Okay?"

                  Well, it was thirty feet, and away from the crackling,
apple-wood fire.  On the plus side, the bathroom was equipped with radiant
lights in the ceiling.  It was even emblematic.  Failing to teach its
audience anything else, television had outdone itself when it came to
laundry, washing, showering and cleanliness to points right of the decimal.
Since this priority had ingrained itself in the national psyche to the
point the culture's very operas lyricized whiter than white and brighter
than bright, it was not surprising that the rectory bath was of Master
status, including a marble seat in the spacious Mexican tile shower.  Thus
it was only with half-heavy hearts that the athletic males relinquished
their princess, goddess, wraith, sprite, daughter and kid sister and
followed, at first on their knees, than staggering to their feet, the fairy
to her preferred corner of Eden.

                  "I should make you dress, because I wasn't running around
naked with Stewart in his apartment, that I can tell you," the girl piped
up half way down the hall.  Alex responded by pointing out to Frankie that
neither he, nor Victor, wanted to rape the girl in the hallway, but if she
tried to reverse direction, they couldn't be responsible for the actions of
two stags thwarted, even momentarily, by a beautiful young fawn.  The rasp
in the minister's voice was a different things than Stewart's halting voice
as, walking down a different hall to a different shower, he'd explained he
was only seventeen and no world authority on what would happen when they
were alone together behind a locked door.  On reflection, to the extent the
girl could reflect now pinioned gently between two mature males who were
displaying wantonly and wetly, Frankie decided she loved the difference,
because the loved the limits.  The halting, plain boy; the six-three
athlete and maturing twelve year old with the responsive personality and to
die for hazel eyes.  What was not to like?  Yet the power in Alex's voice;
that he, for this evening, would be he ultimate master, was as exciting as
the click of the lock had been that first time, scant weeks previously.



                  "Do you want to just get naked, or do you want to make
out and stuff, first?"
                  His voice was so beautiful and strange.
                  "I don't think we should waste the privacy on something
we can do at work," the girls said, staring up at the craggy, boyish face
on the tall, slim frame.
                  "I just want to be sure," the boy almost stammered.
                  "I've touched you all the way down," the girl said, her
voice now a whisper to match his.  "This is the next step.  I know when
it's over, I'm going to want to make out with you for hours, but we can do
that downstairs."

                  They'd connected on reading grandmothers.  Her first
visit, brought on by a babysitter emergence, had put the restaurant at the
top of her list; had solved a screaming headache, and left the mother with
an extra hundred for the week.  Edith didn't like her mother-in-law, they
had little to say to each other, but she did respect the bookish woman and
found her grand daughter's attachment to a boy in her same class at first,
not objectionable, then, as he took such great care of her, teaching her,
firmly getting her to really help in the commercial kitchen, without
intruding unnecessarily on her childhood, as a substantial blessing and
piece of luck.  Stewart was a minor league social pariah, so free of
disease, and pregnancy was several years in the future.  They could be love
puppies without fear of repercussions.  Had she reminded herself about the
luck?

                  "Can I take off the last piece of your clothing?" Frankie
asked.
                  "Yes," the boy whispered, adding: "even if we don't make
out, we could, you know, pretend to wrestle in our underwear to kind of get
used to it."
                  "Will that make it more exciting for you?" Frankie asked.
                  "Yes," Stewart Ramsey replied, "it's that way with boys.
They keep making, you know, their seed, all the time, but when they're
excited with a girl, it gets produced ten times faster, at least that's how
it feels."
                  "So the longer we wrestle, the more will happen at the
end?" the girl queried.
                  "Something like that," Stewart admitted, blushing.
                  "So," the girl wondered, "if a girl really loves a boy,
why would she ever want to stop making it more and more for him?"
                  "I guess for the same reason you can go thirty on a bike,
but not fifty.  There are natural laws, or something, so we can wrestle and
whisper for quite awhile, then, when we're both ready, you can make me lose
control and be like a man even if I'm still a teenager."

                  The Olsen twins talked about it all show, every show, but
in spite of everything being directly related to what was going to happen
with Stewart over the next five hours, after which Mrs. Ramsey would
presumably escape the clutches of the clubbing Edith, the kewpie dolls
managed to say very little beyond that which Barbie, herself, probably
understood.  Now here was a tall seventeen year old, getting cuter and
sexier by the livelong minute, talking for real about being a boy and
wrestling with her while she was only wearing panties, so she could see all
she wanted at the end, after which time they'd be able to make out on the
Ramsey's sofa for awhile, and sneak into each other's bedrooms for most of
the night to come.

                  "Will tell me when it going to happen?" Frankie asked.
                  "I'm not sure.  Sometimes boys don't even know exactly
when it going to actually happen, and even if I could tell for sure, I
don't know if I'll be able to say anything.  You're really beautiful and I
really love you and that plus what you want to do might make it hard to
concentrate enough to promise to give you a warning."
                  "Would it help if I asked?" the pixie queried.
                  "More than," the boy acknowledged, "it would probably
make it happen on the spot."
                  "Is it more important to make it happen, or make it
last?" Frankie continued.
                  "Half and half, I guess," Steward whispered.
                  "So making it last comes first and making it happen comes
last?"
                  "That's why they call it `experimenting' the first time,"
Stewart explained, feeling nicely grown up as the words slid smoothly off
his tongue.
                  "In other words," the girl rejoined, "we have to figure
it all out for ourselves."
                  "That's why I want to pretend wrestle," the seventeen
year old said, "because if we were kissing, it might, you know, just happen
all of a sudden, the last part, but if we can talk we can share making it
last, then share what happens at the end."

                  "I think it's going to be nice, being all biological and
athletic about it, and not romantic and sappy.  Especially because there's
time for that stuff at the restaurant."

                  "I wonder what I'd give up if I had to give up
something," Stewart said, "whether it would be seeing you every day and
having a half an hour of semi-privacy, or having you spend the night at my
house once in awhile."
                  "It rocks, having our cake and eating it," the girl
observed.
                  "Yeah," the young boy said with a gentle grin, "and we're
still dressed."

                  Cheap behavior as a writer, bringing up something you
know won't last, just for the beloved word count.  In the instance at hand,
no sooner had Stewart spoken than the children turned their backs to each
other and lost their shoes, socks, pants, skirt, shirt and blouse.  "You
ready to look?" Stewart said, once their clothes were piled neatly on a
strategic chair, his big sneakers beside her tiny ones.

                  Frankie hissed her response and they turned to each
other.  Frankie stepped close to the boy and placed her hands at his hips,
drawing his briefs down.  "You may have to pull them in front, too, "
Stewart whispered just as the girl figured things out for herself and was
moving to him with both hands, ostensibly to strip him, but one look at the
fire in the raven's black eyes and he knew he wouldn't be naked for her for
ten minutes at least.

                  Her kisses began low inside his shaking thighs, not a
full second after she'd almost plummeted to her knees.  She'd bitten him,
too, then licked the imaginary wounds like a tenderly inclined cat.
Frankie worked her way up with her tongue, first, laying down lateral
furrows of saliva, then, like a dust-bowl farmer, moving on and moving on.
The whole time her hands, which had come so tantalizing close to him, were
now behind him, inside.  It was a rattling combination; touch him high,
lick him low, come on scheme, let's go!  And going he was, half berserk,
now leaning against a towel rack for support as she wouldn't be satisfied
with where she was or what she was doing.

                  Finally she was kissing him all over the front of his
shorts, nipping through the cotton, gauging with her lips and tongues,
seeming, for some moments, impatient to find an end.  She knew him there
from the restaurant, but that was without a pretty, black-haired girl
nibbling and sucking at him as if he were a lobster claw.  Soon enough, she
did it.  She withdrew her hands from the back, freed him in front, her eyes
looking up at him, tightly clamped shut, and got him naked, pulling off her
panties into the bargain.

                  "I want to back up a little," Frankie said, eyes still
closed, "so don't let me fall or anything."
                  "The wall is three feet behind you," the boy managed to
whisper, "and the floor is clear."
                  "I don't want to go that far," Frankie said, "just enough
so I can see all of you, in perspective, you know, not real close up so I
don't get ideas you couldn't live up to later on."

                  She was almost as beautiful with her eyes closed as with
them open.  Her hair was a single sweep over her left shoulder.  She was
tall and slim, leggy enough to be a real kid, not a child.  Her nipples
were pencil erasers, her belly slightly soft.  She backed almost to the
wall and opened her eyes.  For moments she gazed at his six and a half
inch, circumcised erection, then she leapt into his arms.  "I just wanted
room to spring," she purred.

                  Since experimenting necessarily means covering all the
bases she didn't linger for more than half a dozen kisses, then she was
doubling him to the bathroom floor, apparently having decided if they
weren't going to wrestle in underpants and panties, they might try it
without them.

                  They found each other with their mouthes within minutes.
Frankie was open about her own feelings as Stewart indoctrinated her with
his lips and tongue; fully aggressive when it came to questioning him and
reading him as she experimented with different grips and rhythms of her
hand, her lips and her tongue.  She was half afraid of something shocking
happening when their breathing became ragged and they began sweating all
over, but he'd grip her shoulder or thigh in warning and she'd go to a
quieter and gentler mode of coaxing him.  Some of the best times were when
she took her mouth from him and cuddled up beside him to ask a string of
questions.  Talk.  Breathe on each other.  Imagine.  Ask.

                  "Have you ever seen it happen with another boy?"
                  "Yes," Stewart said.
                  "Was it dramatic?" the girl wanted to know.
                  "Very, very," he whispered back to her.
                  "Is it like an octopus making ink?"
                  "What comes out is clear or white," Stewart said.
                  "Will it burn if it gets on me?"
                  "If you read books and magazines about it," the boy tried
to explain, "the answer is yes, but the truth is it's the same temperature
I am and it wouldn't burn a baby."

                  "But it feels hot?"
                  "Well, how to you feel, you know..."
                  "Like the books and magazines say, I guess," the girl
announced.
                  "Same with me.  Hot all over.  No fever, just heat."

                  "Will it end quickly?"
                  "Sort of, I guess," Stewart allowed.  "I mean, it won't
end for a long time, but boy's have to rest from time to time.  Girls are
different about it, or so the books say."
                  "I just don't see how it can end," the girl mused, biting
a pretty lip as she stared at him from inches away.  "Think how it feels
just experimenting.  If it gets better, how will we be able to keep going?"
                  "The way you avoid going fifty on a bike and crashing, I
guess," Stewart answered.  "Avoid long, steep hills."

                  "What about brakes?" the girl asked, her eyes seeming to
grow as his hand found her young belly and massaged her gently.
                  "Do you have any?" Stewart asked.
                  "Not a pair in the house," the girl whispered back.
                  "Then that makes two of us, or none of us."
                  "I guess we don't need them, anyway," Frankie said.
                  "Yeah, it's weird," the boy replied, "all this heat and
we're as safe as we can be.  I can't give you anything, because it's my
first time except for what I saw happen behind the cemetery, and you
couldn't get a baby from a lion."
                  "I wish the last part wasn't true, then, no disrespect to
the zoo, I'd choose you."
                  "If a girl your size had a baby it could live for a year
in a shoebox," Stewart said.
                  "Looks like god screwed up again," the girl sighed, "if
he'd been on the ball, just that could happen, and we'd have something to
do in the evenings with our six ounce kid."
                  "He did better by the kangaroos than by us folk," Stewart
agreed, reminding both of the inane byplay that over a period of time had
brought them together in the walk-in cooler, and to this typical suburban
bathroom where at the moment they were gathering several bath towels to
spread on the shower floor.

                  Stewart lay back and Frankie settled close in on his
right thigh.  "First round cancelled due to lack of interest," she
whispered, alluding to the wrestling they were meant to be doing.
                  Stewart's head was lolling in his hands, which he'd
placed behind his neck the moment the little girl had seated herself and
gently taken him low on his long shaft with her left hand while she used
her right to masturbate him at the tip of his penis.  As they were by now
panting and sweating in the relatively airless confines of the shower, any
sporting of an athletic nature seemed, at least for the moment,
superfluous.

                  "Don't stop," Stewart was able to instruct.  "When it
starts, keep doing exactly what you are even if it gets all over your face.
It's not pee.  Okay?"
                  "Yes," the sweating girl hissed.
                  "I won't be able to talk any more.  It'll start in about
two minutes if you keep doing exactly what you are now?"

                  In response the girl bent forward and took the swollen
purple glans of the well built seventeen year old deep into her mouth,
swirling her tongue at his base and using her teeth softly against the
arrow ridge of him.  Stewart's reaction was that of a wild horse.  He
bucked and whinnied; growled and hissed.  He even managed to half speak,
choking, "You're not ready yet," and bringing his hands to her face to push
her away.  She clung like a remora, which was very sexy, until all thoughts
of her equilibrium were lost in a giant swirl beginning in the base of his
spine and high in his thighs and vectoring him, do not pass go, do no
collect two hundred dollars, to that cloud of black hair surging over him
while her hidden hands counteracted each stroke in a live, pulsing rhythm
that set the tornado on fire.

                  She made it happen by tossing her head, landing her raven
tresses on her slim, honey-colored back and exposing to his eyes what she
was doing to make him cum.  Her hands, her mouth, her face, her eyes
glowing hotter than even the boiling seed beneath his heaving, flat belly.
And after all the talk and pseudo, as best he could, guidance it began
without Stewart's even knowing it.  Full tornado, and suddenly she was
drooling copiously down his swollen shaft, drooling thick, syrupy fluid
that foamed slightly about her lips.  If anything, she became the more avid
at their first feral contact; then he felt it, like a shotgun going off,
rocking and wracking him as her hands and mouth settled in in earnest.

                  Apparently she'd been caught by surprise as well as he.
As Stewart finally felt his release, she sensed him, and now her throat
worked in response to each of his cums.  The flow from her mouth didn't
stop, he was now wildly out of control, but neither did it increase, and it
kept happening again and again, three times as hard as the sneaky first two
or three times.  She kept with him, leading with her hands and mouth,
treating him like a long-bow operated by Robin's best team.  Never,
anything... like... this.

                  It had to stop of course, and eventually the girl
crumbled onto the teen's chest, taking long moments to recover her strength
even though she was motivated by the chance to kiss him with a mouthful of
his hot sperm.  This did happen, and the girl spent the last half minute
before it happened wondering if she was being lazy or indulgent, lying
there, salty-mouthed from her tonsils to her lips.


                  "For a minute there I thought you were going to tell the
story of the couple behind the cemetery," Kit observed.  Alex blushed
guiltily.  When you tell a story, he supposed, you shouldn't have too many
layers.  Then again, the boy's account of being with Jack had drifted on in
a half languorous, half erotic mien, none the less appealing for being full
of detail.  Kit was grinning, just teasing, an avid interest in the
conclusion of what had happened in the rectory shower evident in his
sparkling eyes.  It was unusual, here they were half sleeping together, yet
the boy was still safe as houses in his white underpants.  For a second a
cloud of doubt shadowed the preacher's mind; he was meant to be getting
oriented on the ride in from the airport; learning the twists and turns,
soft spots and hard spots of his new parish in Hastings -- and here he
was listening to half-hour stories about individuals and responding with
his own.  He supposed getting to know a new town would mean getting to know
a few people very well and many people to a lesser degree, ergo, he was on
track after all.

                  Whatever.  The boy was overdressed and he wriggled from
his story-telling posture, cuddling with the man at his back, hands low on
his flanks, and Alex had done what Jack had and in a moment he was naked,
Alex's penis jutting between his slim, kid's legs and hard and urgent
against the slight softness of his belly.  regained their feet and went
into the bushes to strip, approaching each other face-to as the came
together at the blanket and settled in comfort, the thirteen year old
squatted on Alex's right thigh and began doing what Frankie had started
with him on the conclusion of the opening of her story about her friend,
Stewart.
                  "Get wet from him," the girl coaxed Victor, "that'll make
you more sensitive when I do this with you."  She guided the boy with her
eyes, satisfied when he was kneeling at the tall athlete's right flank.
"Get up on your knees when it starts," she coaxed, "that way I can get more
on you."
                  Victor, much like Kit, years earlier, reviewed the
obstacles and hurdles he was suddenly facing..  His age.  The complex,
fast-peeled layering and, finally, the continuity of what seemed to be
almost supernatural.  The overflow that had left him mute and with a
spinning head.  That he was going to see it, after all this time, with
Alex, was too much to comprehend.  A mouse trying to swallow an egg.  Now
it turned out that, a, he was going to get sperm on him, and, b, Frankie
was going to use it to make him hot and wet and slick while she did to him
what she was doing so avidly with the mature male.  Shouldn't you get some
kind of award or tribute if you were mature enough to handle it all?  To be
overwhelmed and overpowered again and again by impossibities hardly dreamed
of, yet each leading to its own kingdom of what it is to know another
person; shouldn't there be a scroll or citation if you passed?  Flub around
with a hockey stick and they made you a poster boy; go half overboard with
a lover, and everyone tittered and repeated the story in private.

                  Of course, this had been an ongoing issue with the
mushroom hunters, the bold always scared of their boldness while the timid
and private, oddly, had the confidence that ruled the day.  It was one
thing to think about operating out in the open, but very much another thing
to do it.  To throw convention to the wind and, for example, walk
hand-in-hand into a restaurant with a fellow hunter of the same sex.  It
was axiomatic that if you made money, you had to have meetings, so the
closet or sunlight issue had given them much to talk about over the years,
and the theme was often used as a pick-up topic on first acquaintance as
there was some division of opinion and some who wanted to stretch things to
the point where a boy could wear a T-shirt with the picture and name of his
special hunting partner.  In the course of things, this happened, but in
such a subtle way, by virtue of putting several friends on a T-shirt, with
one over the heart, that it was so innocuous as to be acceptable to the
majority, who, in fact, did want to live and love in a more open and
accepting environment.

                  "Wow!" Kit though as he masturbated the older male,
"there's so much to come.  We'll make the Appalachian Trail in our county
the hottest hiking area in the world, make money, and find long-term
lovers."  The thought led to a feeling of deja vue.  With Jack he'd time
and again wondered if it wasn't all too much; whether disobeying the
strictures of religion and common society to such huge and immediate
dividends wasn't the grandest of grand jokes; further, if disobedience
should become a way of life; that in fact there was little worth the powder
to blow it to hell in the Wal-Mart era of mindless mass consuming
conformity, leaving all living to be done in secret covens as if
individuals of the community had to recycle themselves as druids to
survive.

                  "So we end up with the best," the resident of a southern
bible town mused, "because lots of cultures get to do it, but if it's
accepted, it becomes just another shared experience like a meal or a dance.
But with all the hellfire and damnation out and about, cheating is a thrill
unto itself and quadrupled when it's added to the excitement of an illicit
and illegal lover."

                  Did it matter?  Kit found the simple physical thrill of
stroking the young man's big penis cancelled musings, ideologies, memories,
wishes, the here, the now, and everything in between.  He was fully, openly
taking his partner, his blue eyes flashing as his hands and head surged on
the man with seven hundred horses.  And he could cum, too; how cool was
that?  He'd cum with a man three times but that was under his coat at the
movies; Jack French, owner of the bookstore; about thirty; attractive
enough, but a homosexual who wanted a relationship.  Something about it
just didn't work, but there movie dates had been intense and ultimately so
rewarding he'd had to spend ten minutes in the men's room being sure he
wouldn't carry telltale signs of what had happened to the wrong place at
the wrong time.  This would be his first time doing it openly; letting his
partner watch, which made it about ten times as exciting as anything could
be.  The numerous hurdles of youth and confused wonder he'd passed with
Jack seemed, at this juncture, woefully inadequate indoctrination to
actually cumming off with an adult male; losing control while the man
molested and encouraged him.  That, by god, did not seem survivable.  How
could it be?  There had to be a limit, somewhere, didn't there?  At some
point the air had to thin below its ability to sustain life, the head had
to swim so that it toppled like a winding-down top, the muscles had to
liquefy, the heart freeze in fear of any ending, ever -- didn't they?
Then there was Stewart and Frankie.  Their debate on making it last; the
fifty-mile-an-hour bicycle.  The framework of common sense that underlay
the ability to function to a set conclusion chosen from several options,
and turn the page.  The necessity to be real with each other and not wig
off into a fantasy land of connubial bliss.  A maturity, ah, that was a new
one; the capacity to be a young man rather than a willful child.  Which
meant, what?  There weren't a whole lot of options.  If he kept with Alex
the way he was, the athlete would cum all over him within the minute.
Childish.  They had all the time in the world.  It had sounded as if he
were no more than about half way through his story of Frankie and the
twelve year old Victor, who'd now be sixteen.  Yes, and the story was more
excited if they were excited, the teller and the listener.  Hard.  Hard to
do.  To slow, when so much was at hand, to slow even more; finally to stop
and lie against Alex, to rub his hot erection with his inner right thigh as
he whispered for more about what had happened in Vermont.

                  The tableau quickly reformed itself in Kit's mind as Alex
began to speak.  He, at twenty two, and Victor, the twelve year old Asian
American, now had the seven year old black-haired beauty naked.  They had
the waif cuddled between them and were once again listening to her tell
about being with Stewart at his house in Solon.

                  "Was it as exciting as what you saw behind the cemetery?"
the girl asked between passionate renewals of kisses that rang with salt.
It was hard to talk without swallowing; under the circumstances, hard to
talk, at all, but she knew he loved her interest, and, since she loved
being interested, she made the effort and sacrificed some of the semen they
were passing avidly back and forth.

                  "That was my first time," Stewart said, "and I didn't
know anything about being, you know, a boy up `till then, so it was my most
exciting.  But what you just did was the best.  Usually they go together, I
guess," he observed, "but this time there's being excited and having the
best in separate boxes."
                  "Tell me about the first one," Frankie prompted.

                  And, yes, Kit rolled his eyes at Alex, but they were
naked except for his underpants, cuddling in the cooling late afternoon,
all undressed and no place to go, so his apparent dismay at yet another
layer to the story onion was nothing more than contented byplay.

                  "Steve Haskell and Aubrey Dennis," the dishwasher began.
He's a high school junior, Steve, and Aubrey is in seventh grade."
                  "So they must be sixteen and twelve or something like
that," the girl guessed.
                  "I don't know them all that well, but something like
that," the boy responded.  "All I know is they're both really cute.  They
tried to avoid being together, but it didn't do any good because they
seemed to be a couple if they were in the same neighborhood, and they look
so good together no one thinks it's anything but cool and that their being
shy with each other is even cooler.
                  "Anyway," Stewart went on, "I happened to arrive at the
library to take back some books.  For a few minutes, they were sitting
together, no one else around, and they were whispering a lot.  I pretended
to go look in the stacks so I could spy.  Pretty soon they got up so I
turned my back to look at the shelves, then they put a book back right
across from where I was, then they left -- whispering.  I went James Bond
to the max and found the book they'd just returned.  It was about abnormal
psychology.  I held it flat in my hand, and it opened to sexual
aberrations.
                  "Want me to say it again?"
                  "Sexual aberrations?" the girl on the bath towel
whispered, her voice still not back to normal after allowing Stewart his
full climax in her mouth and swallowing more than half his sperm.
                  "Just checking," the boy intoned, and went on with what
he'd seen.

                  "Steve's a swimmer," he said, "and Aubrey's like me; sort
of light and skinny.  I followed them out of the library and shadowed them
until I was sure they were headed for the cemetery.  That was my turf; I
knew all the paths under the bushes along the fences, so I circled in front
of them, guessing they'd want privacy and knowing where the most secluded
spot was.  I got there five minutes before they did, so I had time to Rambo
out and disguise myself in a bush by the fallen tree that made the
clearing.  I felt really guilty," the boy continued, "about kifing the
psychology book I figured I better read it before they arrived, if, that
is, I'd picked the right spot."

                  "That you picked the right spot is evident from the fact
you are telling the story," Frankie whispered from her bundled towel, so
close to his own.  There was no censure in her voice, but rather a
willingness to hear more overriding her wish for soothing dalliance and
comforting statements of the obvious.  He would try to oblige her.

                  "Being on the same page, literally, I guess, as Steve and
Aubrey, made me uncomfortable, so, being careful not to disturb my camo
nest, or to make unnecessary commotion, I took of my T-shirt and shorts.
Got naked.
                  "By that time I could hear them because the trail was
only a half trail and kind of grown over, so I went back to the book."

                  "I will admit it sounds pretty exciting," Frankie
commented.

                  "Just in a way," the boy acknowledged, "because it was my
first time and because Steve's like almost six feet and had a blond crew
cut, while Aubrey is a slender red-head with a fox face, big eyes, though
they're nothing on yours, and lots of freckles, so they were like totally
cute together and I think any boy in school would have spied if he'd got
the chance.  Girl, too."
                  "Girl, too," Frankie affirmed.  She was, was she ever,
some seven year old.

                  "I wish we were in the same grade so we could get used to
each other in the locker room," Aubrey said.
                  "I know," Steve replied, "I feel the same way.  This is
going to be really embarrassing.  I've never gotten, you know, big, when
another boy was around."
                  "Are there any boys you like to look at?" Aubrey asked.
                  "Ketchy Fenn," Steve replied, "because he looks a lot
like you."
                  "Everyone says that.  We must be secret brothers or
something.  Does he like it when you look at him?"
                  "I think so," Steve said, "and he looks at me a lot,
too."

                  "It must easier, the second time you want to be with
somebody, don't you think?" Aubrey asked.
                  "Yeah," Steve said, "I hope so, because it's been really
hard for us.  I mean, here we are, ready to do something together, and I've
never even seen you with your shirt off."
                  "I'm lucky," the boy responded, "because you swim.  Do
you like it when you know I'm watching."
                  "I'm embarrassed to come out of the locker room," Steve
said, "because something might happen, just knowing you're in the
bleachers."
                  "We've got to get used to having it happen when we're
near each other.  That has to be part of it, don't you think?"

                  "Oh, I agree," Steve said, "but it might take about fifty
years to act on it."
                  "I can't imagine it not happening," Aubrey said.  "It's
so natural.  Now it happens if I see you a whole block away, or on your
campus if I'm at school.  That has to be a hundred yards."

                  "Are you that way, now?" the older boy asked.
                  "Too scared," `Aubrey replied.
                  "Tell me about it," the older male echoed.
                  "Maybe we shouldn't have made it all intellectual and
read those books," Aubrey said.
                  "So you think we're so twisted we've managed to turn
ourselves off, like a garden faucet?" Steve asked.
                  "I think it's more like we twisted a balloon in a
cartoon," Aubrey explained, "you know, one that keeps filling up."

                  "How long do you think it will last, now having one?"
Steve asked.
                  "Not too long," Aubrey replied.

                  They had been standing side by side, surveying the
clearing as they talked in soft voices and whispers; now they settled to
the fallen tree, four feet from Stewart's nose.

                  "We could watch each other get boners," Aubrey said.
"Because after this afternoon we'll never get to see it unless we hurry
into the bushes after we've been swimming."

                  The boy had a point and Steve nodded in agreement.

                  "I've got to be pretty quick," Aubrey then said, and
matching action to his words, he stood, kicked off his sandals, and pulled
down his shorts and underpants.  Steve followed de-suit immediately, and so
in moments they were back on the log, side by side and facing the anonymous
thicket at the verge of the tiny clearing.

                  Both males spread their legs wide and looked down at
themselves and each other.

                  "Was it easier than you though?" Steve asked.
                  "This is just our shorts; we haven't taken our shirts off
yet," the younger boy temporized.

                  "Are you pretending I'm Ketchy Fenn," Aubrey asked.
                  "A little, I guess," Steve replied, "he's just my age so
its natural we have more stuff to talk about, so I know him better, but
it's not an A-list thing.  I'm surprised you thought of it.  Are you
thinking about him?"
                  "Yes," Aubrey admitted.  "I'm just really glad you like
him."
                  "I'm totally satisfied knowing you, Mr. Dennis," Steve
said.
                  "The Haskell guy is big with me, too," the boy giggled.
                  "But you think there's some room?" Steve asked.
                  "If we both wanted it," Aubrey observed; "I mean, we're
practically experts, so we should be mature and sensible, and if there's
someone you really like, and someone I'd like to really like if I had the
chance, we chop on the haloes we see on each other, rending asunder a piece
large enough for another boy, or something like that."

                  "But I'm not to share you with the whole town?" Steve
asked.
                  "Bowlin' me in Solon?" the boy aped, "I rather think not.
I'm a two trick pony.  You're first and Ketchy would be nice if you thought
so."
                  "I know so," Steve replied, "I mean, not physically, yet,
but as a partner, anytime we're ready.  We talk about sleepovers every time
we see each other, but it just hasn't happened."

                  "I want to be a fly on that wall," the boy said.
                  "How about a rat in the rug.  You're invited, you know.
We're we; things, from now on, happened to or affect us."

                  "Now it will never happen with me," Aubrey sighed.  "I
was already too excited from the book, now you throw out a hook with a
hundred and ten pounds of bait on it, and expect me to sit here and show
you what happens when I see you?"
                  "I shouldn't have said anything," the older male
acknowledged, "because it was obvious you might ketchy something in the
impotence field."
                  "Takes a victim to know a victim," Aubrey observed,
looking down at the boy sitting close at his right.  Neither had even
twitched; they may as well have been taking a math quiz.

                  Meantime, young Stewart was wondering "What was the
problem?"  He was harder than steel and only kept himself from going
frantic by rubbing the tip of his boner gently against a root protruding
from the moss as his waist.

                  "This is more embarrassing than if it was the other way,"
Steve observed, breaking a silence of some minutes.
                  "I'm still glad I'm with you, even if nothing happens,"
Aubrey reassured his older friend.
                  "One of the horn books I read talked about making it
last, and Playboy has stuff about that, too, but this is like making a tank
of gas last by not turning on the engine."
                  "I read that it can happen too fast," the boy responded,
"and, you know, be over before you know it's even happening."
                  "I guess if one wills the end..." Steve quipped, glad to
hear the light note in the child's voice, in spite of the tense overtones
of their situation.  It made their ongoing setback easier to bear.

                  Was she a good storyteller or what? Alex and Victor were
silently asking themselves, looking down to see that they were now
reproductions of the unfortunate Steve and Aubrey, and temporarily
incapable of reproducing anything.  Following the wandering eyes of her
male escorts, Frankie observed in silence, made no comment, and took all
three of the shower dwellers back to the clearing behind an Ohio cemetery.

                  "Maybe it's having out shirts still on," Steve suggested.

                  By acclimation, they stood and were about to strip when
Aubrey spoke up.  "In England," he said, "they call men who do things with
boys `shirt lifters'.  I think the man stands behind the boy, so, you're
like a man, and you could stand behind me an pull my shirt up and see if
anything happens."

                  It was certainly nothing to argue over.  As Steve
approached the boy from the rear he whispered, "Hi."  "Hi," Aubrey
whispered in invitation, and the tall swimmer was against him, his limp
penis six inches above the younger boy's waist.
                  "Now come up under," the twelve year old suggested.

                  Steve bent further over the youngster, nuzzling his
cowlick, and brought his hands up over the boy's slim, milk-white hips,
then in front until he disappeared under the child's baggy T-shirt.

                  "This is making it worse," Steve whispered, "it's all
because I love you so much.  I don't want to soil you.  The close I get and
the more I touch you, the more I love you, and the more I don't want to do
anything wrong."
                  "That's me, too," Aubrey whispered back.  "I just get
feeling you're sexy, then we get closer and I know you're more than that so
I don't want to do things in the bathroom with you, but in the nursery, you
know, like we've got a baby in there we have to take care of.  Weird, eh?"

                  "Well," Steve responded, "I wouldn't write it an essay
about what you did during the summer, but I'll bet a lot of guys who like
each other kid around with that kind of fantasy."
                  "I guess it's like talking to yourself; it's okay if you
don't answer.  It's okay if we talk like this in private, but not where
anyone could hear us and take us for prancers."
                  "Not good for the baby, if that happened," Steve intoned
to the younger boy's giggle.

                  "It's awesome when you laugh," Steve said in a voice that
was now seriously deteriorating.  Stewart, hidden in the undergrowth sensed
the change in an instant and doubled his lookout, all but removing his
eyeballs and sticking them on higher thorns for a better view.

                  Yes.

                  It was happening to them together and they knew it.  They
both stripped their shirts in a flash, and, naked stood three feet apart
facing each other.  "Let me go first," Stewart choked, and his flaccid five
circumcised inches jolted half stiff at both Aubrey and Stewart stared.
Again it jumped, and he had a boner, not quite straight out, but already
much thicker and longer.  Display rituals are common to animals and human
are not exempt.  Steve laced his finger's behind his neck and gently arched
toward the boy staring down at him.  His penis was now fully six hard
inches, and in seconds it swoll more and became so hard and erect it mated
with the almost invisible wisp of hair trailing from just under his belly
to the quarter grown silk surrounding the top half of his thick shaft.

                  Aubrey followed immediately, and in a few additional
seconds had matched his friend's display pose and was so swollen and hard
he couldn't remember being any other way since the day he'd been born.  He
had not been circumcised as a baby, so his jutting five and a half inches
tantalized his partner to the extent of almost causing a clinical itch in
the fingertips of Steve's right hand.
                  Gratification would have to wait, but not for long.  The
teen and the twelve year old decided individually, though to Stewart it
seemed they were of a single mind.  As the approached each other, Steve
spread his legs and Aubrey rose to his tiptoes.  At the last they were
perfectly matched and so first touched while their hands were still locked
behind their necks.  They pivoted their hips slightly and swung gently
against each other.  Stewart realized it would be unrealistic to hear them
knock together like wooden staffs, but so hard and distended were both the
boys, he actually found himself listening as well as watching.

                  Then they were dueling, with the objective of Steve using
his exposed glans to reveal Aubrey by thrusting the boy's foreskin back.
It appeared this was going to take lots of practice, then, both males
panting and shaking by now, that it couldn't be done.  Maybe, if Steve
hadn't kept getting wetter and more slippery with each series of gentle
thrust while Aubrey was shaking so hard he couldn't hold exactly still long
enough for Steve to do it the way he needed to to achieve success.  It was
not a battle or contest fought out to the bitter end; rather, when the boys
realized what wasn't going to work, they changed pace to that which would.
Steve took Aubrey's slim, white body in front of him, and looking intently
down over the child's shoulder, used his right hand to make the boy fully
naked.  Aubrey's hips thrust into Steve's probing hand, and soon the latter
had his young friend fully exposed and had begun to openly masturbate him.

                  Being bare chested with each other was really beginning
to have an effect.  Now that they had experimented, they wanted each other,
and so in a moment they were hugging and kissing, braced against the fallen
log for balance, and looking forward to a time when their ragged, yawning
panting would return to the unconscious breathing so necessary for
concentration.

                  "There's a lot to this, isn't there?" Aubrey whispered
after some moments.  They were each fondling the other's chest with their
left hands while masturbating so the other could see with their right.
                  "Yean," Steve replied, "I didn't know what to think,
either.  I guess I thought it would be one jolt, and then be over -- like
sneezing.  Then it wouldn't even get big and by now I want to spend the
whole afternoon doing this so it will never be over."
                  "I really liked kissing you," Aubrey added.
                  "We could do that a little at school, if we were
careful," the older boy observed.
                  "Yeah, when I come over on cross-study.  We could sync
for twelve past two, then you could meet me in the bathroom."
                  "Just kissing, right?"
                  "We'd only have a few minutes."
                  "Judging on how we started off this time, we'll be lucky
to even do that."
                  "Maybe we'll get better."
                  "Can't.  I'll always love you more each time I see you.
It'll never be quick and easy until you start to drool and small old."
                  "We could just talk then."
                  "Fine with me."
                  "Cool."
                  "Yeah."
                  "Definitely."
                  "Absolutely."

                  Well, they weren't cutting class now.  Time was at hand.
They stood facing each other, braced against the log, sideways to Stewart.
"Do you want to go all the way?" Steve asked.  "Yes," the boy replied.  "Me
first, because I'm older," Steve said and began to masturbate against
Aubrey's stomach.  The younger boy stood, hands now at his sides, looking
down at his friend whose legs were widely spread so he could match his
waist to that of the smaller boy.  Slowly they leaned together so their
foreheads touched, then Aubrey raised his left hand to the tall swimmer's
shoulder and held his lover tightly, bracing sturdily with the corded
muscles of his young legs.

                  "Doing it this way, we can talk," Steve whispered.
                  "I knew there had to be a problem with kissing," the boy
responded.
                  "Every silver cloud has it's gray lining."
                  "Plus," Aubrey added, "if we were doing this, not only
couldn't we talk, we couldn't see at the end."
                  "Do you want to see?" Steve asked.
                  "Definitely," the boy replied, "so be sure to tell me so
I won't be blinking or have my eyes shut."
                  "I'll try," Steve said, "but I can hardly talk even now,
so when I'm sure it's going to start, I may not be able to say anything."
                  "Is it hard to tell?" Aubrey asked.
                  "It's hard to tell exactly, always.  Sort of like pool.
You can beat a worse player, but can you beat him ten times in a row?
Mostly I think I'll be able to tell you, but if we did this I wouldn't be
able to tell you ten times in a row."
                  "Do you think you'll get better or worse?" the boy asked.
                  "Worse," Steve whispered, "because I love you more each
time I see you and loving you makes it different than when I do it by
myself after I go to bed."
                  "By that time," Aubrey commented, "maybe I'll be
experienced enough with you to tell from other signs when you're going to
cum off so you won't have to tell me."

                  A firm grasp of the obvious is not the sole property of
the television journalist, but, nonetheless, it's rare in young boys.  How
nice for the storyteller that there are exceptions.  Aubrey blushed at the
inanity of his comment in the face of a partner who was rising like the
liquid in a hot thermometer.  Not only was Steve's outcome graphically
predictable, it didn't matter in the least when it happened.  The young man
was going to cum on the young boy.  Neither the devil nor god were in the
details.

                  "Are you getting close?" Aubrey asked.
                  "Yeah," Steve managed to gasp.
                  "It can be any time," the boy coaxed, "and you can even
pretend I'm Ketchy Fenn."
                  "You're Aubrey," Steve hissed with a final gasp, "and I
love you, and I'm cumming."

                  There was still half a minute but it passed quickly.
Stewart was so close he actually heard Steve's first ejaculation splatter
hard against Aubrey's slightly freckled chest.  Further clinical sounds
were obliterated by the younger boy's half-choked mews of delight and the
older teen's feral grunting that went with his long, hard cum.

                  It was over in a minute or so and Steve had Aubrey on the
log, lying on his back while he, the older boy, straddled the log at the
child's waist, with the younger boy's long, slim legs pulled up over his
own thighs.  He'd scooped enough sperm off Aubrey's heaving chest to
thoroughly wet his right hand and he used this on the child, making him
buck and arch vigorously as he stroked him and cupped him gently with his
left hand.

                  Where Steve had given ample warning in several ways,
Aubrey gave none.  He lay back, fingers laced behind his neck, with only
his heaving chest giving away the fact he wasn't just daydreaming and
watching the clouds pass over.  Then he was cuming, his watery semen
spurting nearly two feet from his five and a half inch boner.  Since he was
already slick and soaked from Steve, it was hard for Stewart to tell just
how much the younger boy came.  Not like Steve, but, considering his age,
more like him than Stewart would have guessed.

                  Longer.  That was exciting.  Even after about two
minutes, Aubrey was still whispering harshly to Steve, and the older boy
would change what he was doing, and sure enough, his hand would again drip
with a fresh torrent of the boy's childish seed.

                  As it appeared to be finally over for young Aubrey, the
seventeen year old spying from the undergrowth caught a whiff of the
pheromones of the young males and lost his control, silently letting
himself spill against the knobby roots and the moss of the forest floor.

                  "What do you think they'd have done if they found you?"
Frankie asked the boy cuddled against her on the bed of towels.
                  "My guess is I'd have gotten to know Ketchy," the boy
said.
                  "Did you want to be with them?"
                  "Yes," `Stewart said, "even if it hadn't been my first
time.  Those two, their friend, and last but definitely first, you.
                  "Do you think that's weird?"
                  "I think you probably know a hundred people in Solon,"
the girl replied, "and it you only want special things to happen with four
of them, that's not very weird."
                  "You're smart," the seventeen year old said to the seven
year old, "because I can't think of anyone else I'd even especially want to
see in a bathing suit, much less in the shower."
                  "I want to see what you saw," Frankie said.
                  "With them?" Stewart asked.
                  "If you're sure there wouldn't be anyone else," the girl
said; "I'm a little young to be a Suzy Round Heels, and you're the ace of
the pack as far as boys go, so if I have you we could have a little
freedom."
                  "Maybe the first time they get the other boy to be with
them they'd let you watch," Stewart said.
                  "You'd have to be with me," the girl replied,
immediately, adding: "I never want to be alone with anybody but you, and
even with you, only with them, and even with them, only if you think it
would be exciting for both of us."
                  "It would be," the seventeen year old assured the child,
"I'll show you."

                  Gently he moved on top of her staring into her huge black
eyes.  He found her with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, their noses
six inches apart.  She held rigid as he surged very gently against her,
entering half an inch, then rocking with short, fast strokes until she had
fully accepted him and her eyes begged him for more.  "They won't have to
be slow and gentle with you like you're some kind of antique porcelain
doll," Stewart whispered to Frankie.  "You're an athlete, they could be
fast and rough with you, and it would be exciting."

                  "Will you be that way sometimes?" Frankie whispered.
                  "No," the boy said.  "What you feel is what you get with
me.  I have no desire to experiment or try novelties; I just want to cum in
you every night `till I'm dead."
                  "You're invited," Frankie said, now moving her hips
because he was beginning to be fully inside her.

                  The shower worked perfectly.  She didn't need the echoes
of him, but they were nice, and so was hearing the reverb of her own
reluctant gasps and squeals.  She couldn't make noise and hear the
full-grown male at the same time, and she craved his coaching and
encouragement as he took her, minute by slow, gentle, minute, ever more
fully, sometimes now almost thrusting wantonly at the end of a gasping,
tender entrance.  The sting of his penetration was fading rapidly; the
thrust at the end of his gentle strokes filled her imagination with images
of being with three healthy teens, each competing to leave her swimming
from them.  She didn't know what images were running through Stewart's
mind, but they may have been the same, watching her spread widely for
Steve, for he was beginning to double his final thrust after each tender
joining.  Frantically, she tried to get used to them so she could coax him
at the right instant, but she was inexperienced and so had to accept him
without being able to whisper instructions.  No sooner had this minor
enigma sorted it out inside the little virgin's mind, than any need for
guidance became superfluous.  Having seemed to almost lose control, Stewart
was now in full control.  His hands were locked on her upper arms, his
sleek, sweating chest was high above her and he was thrusting hard and full
again and again.

                  She came like a frightened fawn, every instinct to bolt,
legs thrashing, arms raking, her squeals echoing in the shower.  It was all
of life condensed into one, then two minutes as she yielded herself back to
civilization, only to find it still contained her lover, and he was as
urgent about sending her once again around the world as she was willing to
go.

                  Ten minutes.  It was time for a talk.  "You, this time,"
she whispered, "but not like a man, like a scared and embarrassed kid,
okay?  I want you to hold me tight and be absolutely still when it happens,
when you cum, so I can feel it happening like I felt it on my tongue."

                  As his IQ was off the chart, Stewart Ramsey couldn't
avoid a brainstorm to the effect that her desire was tasteless.  Of course,
he didn't say this as he was deep inside the seven year old, she was hot,
wet and very tight, reducing his vocabulary to feral outcries to join her
echoing yelps.
                  "You're the only I want to be still with me," Frankie
whispered, coaxing the seventeen year old to slow, to mount her fully and
hold her tightly.  "I want Steve and Aubrey to be like you just were so it
won't be so personal," she said, "and Ketchum Fenn, to, if he wants to be
with us.
                  "If I had a dad or a brother, I'd want them to be still
so I could feel it, and I want it with you, especially our first time,
okay?"
                  "I'll try," the boy grunted.
                  "If it happens while you're moving, it's okay," the girl
whispered back; "I'll be the world's happiest seven year old no matter
what."
                  He managed.  Like a spider, he crushed the mite against
himself, locking her against his panting chest for minutes so she could get
used to all of him, then releasing to her panting mews of acceptance and
sharing which, as his pulsing within her became more aggressive, half
bombed the raven-haired young beauty into the seizures of her third orgasm
and left her panting, sweating and her partly conscious head lolling from
side as she whispered lovingly to Stewart.
                  For two more hours they lay on the bed of towels, Frankie
determined to make the boy cum silently and motionless after she'd
perfected using her vaginal muscles to get him excited.  Her plan was based
on the fact that she could sit on his lap at the restaurant without anyone
taking particular notice.  Since they both wore aprons while in the
kitchen, there were distinct possibilities, to say nothing of pretending to
cuddle with him in her nightie and wrapper with Stewart's mom right in the
same room with them, watching television.  If she could master her side and
he was mature about it, this could happen much more often.  Scheme, scheme,
scheme.

                  In the Hastings rectory shower, Alex was holding Kit over
the girl.  As their hands were otherwise engaged, he guided the boy to the
girl, and felt him sink slowly and fully to her through his fingers.
Neither of the children wriggled him away, so he fondled the boy as he
began to rise and fall against Frankie.  Victor pulled nearly out of the
child and wriggled.  Alex got the message, and turned his hand over, palm
against the girl's belly and right middle finger high on her vagina.  With
a hissed: "Yes," the boy fully remounted, thrusting against Alex's finger
with an obscene little wiggle in case he was laggardly in getting the
message.

                  Masturbating the little girl brought her to a quick, hard
orgasm and the minister wondered at Victor's self control as the boy let
the girl ride her storm without cumming.  Then an enigma arose, a real
paradox.  Victor was obviously going to want to cum in the girl as Stewart
had, holding her tightly, sharing the faint pulsing of the end.  Was it
right to even ask?  Alex sensed the boy changing his way with the girl even
as he thought out the situation.  Already he was slowing, gathering her to
him, thrusting so hard, Alex freed his hand in favor of the young stallion.

                  Luckily, Frankie had been on her own and was fully
capable of mastering the situation.  As she felt Victor's need build and
sensed his slowing, she whispered, "Only Sam, the trooper who found me, and
Stewart, sorry."

                  "I know what I want to be when I grow up," the twelve
year old thought, and pleased the girl and made her sigh happily by taking
her hard and fact into an orgasm with no help from Alex.  He came in her
during this one to her childlike delight the moment her suspicions led her
to check between their bodies.

                  Now she lay for Alex, her eyes as tender as they were
huge.  He entered her stinging a little from Victor's hot, fresh sperm.
The girl shook like a leaf as he took control, begged Victor to use his
hand as Alex had, and crashed from stone wall to stone wall as he had sex
with her.  Some day it might be slow, gentle, and still at the end between
them, but, in the meantime, Alex knew exactly who the luckiest cop in the
world was.

                  "I think you talked me out of my underpants," Kit
whispered.

                  That was easily taken care of and they sat inches from
each other, Indian style, looking and realizing their time had come.
Hastings beckoned, it would be evening soon, they'd bridged enough gaps for
a herd of elephants, and fallen in love as much as was appropriate under
circumstances where they'd be together a lot, day and night.
                  "I'll bet Victor would want me to cum first," Kit
whispered, "and I definitely owe the dude."
                  "I should because you're still a kid," Alex protested.
                  "Please," the boy responded.
                  "Yes," the young man said.

                  Kit crawled forward placing his forehead against Alex's
and his left arm over the athlete's right shoulder.  He began to masturbate
slowly with his right hand, holding the tip of his penis against Alex.  For
long minutes the two necked, then Kit whispered his warning, and both males
looked down.  Whatever had or had not happened with Frankie, they were iron
still together when Kit started cumming.  His young teen sperm splashed
everywhere, but neither male moved a muscle until the pulsing had subsided
into a soft flow, then subsided.  Sensing it wasn't completely over,
neither male yet moved, and Alex began cumming in less than a minute,
spurting harder and faster than the boy, soaking his face, neck and
shoulders as well as liberally splattering the child's hair.

                  They made out on the blanket, they necked, slowly the
licked each other clean and their lust for salty kisses subsided.  They
wiped themselves with the downy soft sheet blanket, dressed, and returned
to the station wagon.  Alex sat himself in the passenger's seat, proving
that sex isn't the only way to send a kids blood pressure into orbit.  The
Chevy purred from the truck run-out back onto the asphalt with not slippage
between the rubber and the road.