Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 16:12:03 -0500 From: Tom Emerson Subject: THE TARZAN MUSHROOM HUNTERS - BOOK II THE TARZAN MUSHROOM HUNTERS by R. Forbes Emerson (Bi-ped, inc., rom.) BOOK II Andrews was the hamlet, Hastings was the town. The hamlet was essentially abandon along with the local coal seam; Hastings was twice the size of Epping at just under thirty thousand .inhabitants. Alex felt at home right away. The area was remote and hard-scrapple enough not to have attracted the monster Wal-spider, so the vagaries of local ownership could be seen block to block down the ten blocks of the main street. Masonry. Awnings. Signs big enough to serve you and small enough not to kill you. Diagonal parking. Two kids on roller skates, none on skateboards. He'd stay awhile, partly because the plot was thickening. Andrews was hot on the A-list after a cursory stop at the rectory and a ten minute tour of the downtown. Kit was off on one mysterious errand after another, kinda cute, really, and only stabilized when Alex reached in the glove box of the Chevy and pulled out a small Nokia for the boy to use. Yes, it turned out he'd been off to the pay phone, but his business flurry was over, so Andrews it was, and that apparently meant this evening. The hamlet was at the head of a feeder valley, twenty minutes from the larger town. Kit handled the car reliably so Alex sat back to enjoy more mountain scenery and they arrived as darkness began to fall. "We'll have it to ourselves until eight o'clock, that's about an hour," Kit explained. That was good news because the dilapidated ex-town was worth exploring. They used the last of the daylight to pass right on through on foot, and start up the head of the valley so Kit could show his new friend the trail that lead up to the two thousand mile trail leading from Maine south to the flatlands of cotton country. As they walked, Kit's eyes darted rhythmically over the ground and after some minutes he gave a quiet yelp and pointed to a log under which was a half-pound fungus of the mushroom variety. "Color me here, tomorrow," the boy chirped, leaving the vegetable, since it was neither animal nor mineral, to ripen over another spring night. So this was their secret. Gourmet shrooms. Not bad. But how did the main trail fit into it? If anything, the hikers would deplete the supply thinking to enrich their freeze dried meals. Hmm. They didn't make money on being lawless, but lawless Kit had said they were. Most aged eight to twelve. It was hard to make the connection. Kit helped. "We get them to help us," he said, waving his hand in the direction of the Appalachian Trail, proper, which passed the head of the valley. "And the way we get them to help is to wear Tarzan costumes and lure the unwary like those creepy fish on the documentary channels." They'd found a boulder to sit on, so they were comfortable as Kit continued with his explanation. "We use radios and a code," the boy said. "Two older teens that have been mushroom hunters for at least five seasons keep lookout. They have a Questar and Leitz binoculars, plus the radios. As hikers approach, they categorize them. Any boy or girl who wants, can go up along side the trail at a certain point, and invite the hiker to hang out for awhile. Then they spring the trap by inviting the hiker, or hikers, down off the ridge for Kool-Aid, and when they're partaking of the bug juice, tell them that they can stay if they'll help hunt for mushrooms. Nine out of ten do stay, usually for two or three days. When they resume their trek, their partner returns to hunting close to the trap ridge, so they can be first to answer the call alerting for new hikers coming into range. That way, when you first meet somebody, you go way off from the trail, then work you way slowly back, finding a backpack full, plus your hiking partner's because all his valuables are stashed at a sub camp. By the end of the second or third day, the hunter and the hiker are back at the trail, and the cycle starts again, with everybody feeling very happy so you know the free advertising is going to be good." He'd been right about the longer season, that certainly would be a help in setting up a routine and coining money; also, Hastings, in so remote a corner of the vast American south, was ideal for the semi privacy needed to waylay hundreds and even thousands of young hikers each year. Exercise. Kit had mentioned that. What could possibly be better, across the board, than scrambling over hill and dale from morning to night, and then spending time alone with the hiker of one's choice? Plus, there was the overall safety factor. The nearest road access to the trail, north or south, was forty miles. Anyone with anything serious was not going to hike forty miles of semi wilderness for anything or to be with anybody. Andrews was the closest road for the particular eighty mile stretch, but to keep the trail pure, in a most ironic use of the word, no access was permitted except for a small handful of very special hikers the various children had met over the years. Invariably these men, for the most part, had taken an interest in the club far beyond being a repeat hiker, so the admission of the general public amounted to an occasional hitch hiker who attracted a hunter and was given access to the secret shortcut if he wanted it. "Slickest slaves in the business," Kit said. It almost amounted to a riddle about working hard for nothing in pocket, nothing in purse, yet happy you go as you leave. "How many have you been with?" Alex asked. Kit looked half-shocked and his hand flew to his mouth. "None," he said, "my mom and I just moved here at the end of last season. I've been helping with administrative stuff, and they like me, so they gave me like a signing bonus, you know, the loot in the bank I told you about while we were driving; but I never thought to tell you that it's all stories, as far as I'm concerned; you know, stuff the other boys have told me. "What happened on the way to Hastings was the first time since Jack, except a few times in the theater when it happened under my coat. They don't count." "My mistake," Alex said, "you never said one way or the other, and I just assumed you'd been a hunter for awhile. "I've never even worn my costume," the boy said. "Once they found I could type eighty words a minute, my goose was cooked." He grinned as he complained, displaying a kid who was happy to be who he was doing what he was doing, even if it kept him, age thirteen, office bound. Now they could see lights. If Andrews wasn't the Field of Dreams, it was only because the little mining burg, perched on two sides of a stream, didn't happen to have much in the way of fields. Never mind, they were coming, anyway, in a white snake of moving autos stretching far back toward the larger town. "You're good with a telephone," Alex said. "Just want to be first with my nose in the tent," the boy responded. It was easy to count thirty cars and there were probably almost fifty. "We should go down and open the Union Hall," the boy said as the first of the precession approached within what looked like a couple of miles. "Wanna piggyback?" Alex asked, and the boy bounded aboard for the fast run down the slope leading to the patch of brick and white trim that made up the settlement. "We exploit and manipulate them because it's so much fun," the man said. Rocking in his chair on the stage, surveying the pandemonium of over a hundred kids in full party mode, Alex pictured him as needing but a spittoon to complete the stereotype of mountain man in Kansas City, circa 1870. "Don't go in for youngsters myself," he went on, "but don't find no fault with them what does. This is the part I like, watching `em prance around in a heathen's hornpipe; not a madrigal for they sing and dance to the devil's tune and bless me if they don't love every minute of it. " Well, it sounded wise and laced with wry observation, plus, someone had to belong to the Rolls Royce that had lead the procession from Hastings. Ah, good old mountain understatement. If Kit, new to the crowd in his Tarzan suit, was an instant king, he certainly bragged a bodacious court. Try as he might, Alex couldn't find anything approaching a fat kid; indeed, some of the boys who were two or three pounds on the heavy side were just as cute as the leanest boys. They were being exploited as they saw only a few dollars in cash every week for all their efforts of day and night; they were certainly being manipulated because other manipulated in other ways could be counted on to take vociferous and perhaps even physical objection to the nature of the assembly and its individuals, yet, however gloomy the overview, here they were apparently enjoying at least one facet of their somewhat complex existence.. For the first hour, they'd been so thrilled to get an early visit to the trail, they'd abandon the settlement as they'd arrived. As darkness took full hold, they'd flowed down out of the hills like half an avalanche of pale young bodies suddenly half exposed by the skimpy costumes after a winter of being cooped up in slacks and school shirts. They flooded around Alex as he sat on the porch of the hall, instantly welcoming him as their new leader and leading spontaneous prayers offered that he might never waste an hour in a church, should he lead them for a hundred years. He laughed in hearty agreement, offering to sign in blood if they wanted. "Ya whup `em with teeth meeting teeth," the old timer and Rolls Royce pilot said. "Keep yer mouth shut and stay outta their way, leave the earth to the meek, and count the city slicker's gold by the pound." Alex listened intently. More than happy kids in skimpy costumes had been offered, and the character, who happened to be Myron Jones, ex judge from Albany, New York, had handed over a hundred thousand dollar in cash after ten minutes and as many as fifty words between himself and the now ex-preacher. Kit had witnessed the transaction and flown over the minute he was free of what appeared to be avidly determined twin sisters, perhaps ten years old. He whispered in Judge Jones' ear, and the half-baptized southerner muttered: "You don't say," before addressing Alex directly. Appears I was right about you, young feller'," he said, actually using the phrase: "young feller." Never mind, Alex listened. "Boy here says your automobile is a little different than the rest, and suggested I take a ride." "He's easily pleased," Alex said, breaking a silence that had lasted some minutes. "He was very easily pleased in March," the old man said, "after he found the eighty cents that had been missing for six days. Pleased, why you could tell he was thinking about smiling, no lie." "It was sixty cents and eight days, Grandpa Jones, and you know it," the boy rejoined. "Guess I've kept him for you," the judge said. "Missed him by at least ten years, so there's no need to fret over ships passing in the night. He's fresh as the day he tangled with the police because he was trying to stop his old lady from shop lifting and ended up with me. Quite a gift, if I say so myself." "Quite a gift," Alex whispered back, not knowing the half of it, or even the third, because Kit was in the process of being towed by the twins, nor were they heading him out to sea. "These girls are new, too," the boy whispered by way of introduction. "We moved here two months ago," one said, followed by her sister who said they'd come from Missouri. Alex tried gaining perspective by remembering the confusion that had chopped up his morning because of the missed flight. Had that been today? Forget today, had it been in the same world? And now what? He made a date to let the judge try the Chevy in exchange for the Roller, and bid adieu. "We're not very coy," the first girl said, "we want to stay at the rectory tonight." "I'm afraid I've parted with the church," the minister said. "No you haven't," the second girl said, "you can't get the people to leave it unless you show them something else. You have to be there for that, plus to kick them out as well as leading them astray. Besides, the rectory is in a good location and up and running." "You've got to waltz your call over a trap door," the first girl explained, "not abandon it. The club needs new members and there's a lot of kids who need the club. Guess who's in the middle." They looked like slightly older versions of Cindy of the Brady Bunch, right to their blond pig tails and big blue eyes. Angela was the older by two hours, Karen her exact duplicate. And yes they were "almost eleven." Angela explained that they'd been living soft and were a little overweight, so they could visit the rectory in a few weeks, if Alex and Kit wanted. Alex almost had to laugh. In their Tarzan suits, the overweight girls were figments of their own imaginations (have to watch them for eating disorders); they were, in fact, a hundred handfuls each of perfection; soft, ripe and luscious. And it was going to take Alex awhile to get used to the suits, themselves. They were non-discriminatory. Gender neutral. Same for girls as for boys. A sash covering the left side of the child's chest, the right side naked. Instead of animal skins, the shorts were conventional cotton blend with zippered pockets, modified in design with ragged seams and hems so the rustic illusion was complete. If they weren't neo cave, they weren't Fifth Avenue, either, and, what they actually looked, was cool, comfortable and convenient with drop-dead overtones. The clamor of the impromptu meeting or party or whatever it was grew by the minute. The new Hilden twins had clearly marked out Rev. Christopher and his ward, Kit Allen, as theirs and at least for the time being, theirs alone, so a note of comfort intruded and the tone leveled at that of a lot of kids with an intense amount in common and a lot to talk about. Inevitably, a speech was called for and, grinning self-consciously, Kit rounded up the duty microphone. "Seems I've been hog tied and Shanghaied," Alex began, "called from my call by you-all. "I didn't pick Hastings in order to deliver unto you a conventional ministry. In my mind to have done so would have been to have chosen as a calling the work of a fry cook and I would have ended up serving exactly the same burger as the grill on the right and the grill on the left. "In New England we don't grow up being different for the sake of being different; in fact, we disdain difference for its own sake as nuevo eccentric and uninteresting. What we grow up, is not being the same. We don't reject things for the sake of rejecting them, we do what is sensible and proper for the long-term best interest of our societies, first, and ourselves and our families, second, and if these ways happen to conform, that's fine, and if they happen to differ, that's also fine. "This is to say that I'm not here, as a minister, to tear apart organized religion in the area just for the sake of tearing it apart, I'm here to tear it apart because it is wrong. It is a waste of your time and a waste of your money. It is greedy and immoral, selling you legend and superstition and requiring that you show up brimming with faith as a fisherman hopes a trout will approach his fly brimming with appetite. In short, you are paying ten percent of your income and supplying your own belief in and acceptance of a product which simply does not and cannot exist. "This is the gist of a speech I assume I would have given a number of times in the Hastings area as I gave it a number times in the communities of my last parish. To tell you the truth, I am utterly thrilled and profoundly grateful that I won't be giving it here, because you don't need it. You've found exactly the alternative I would have prescribed were I god and were I smart enough, and outdone yourselves in doing so. "A certain irony should be addressed at this time. You have so honored yourselves by selecting and rapidly promoting Kit Allen that it is half a joke I'm here at all. You couldn't have a better leader than this boy if you endure for a hundred years. I will do my best to stay out of his way and will be happy to act as his chauffer and housekeeper until he's old enough to drive and marry, at which time I'd be happy to act as a governess or nanny, whichever the young family prefers. "Anything long-winded I might have to say would be preaching to the choir. Do to catching a lucky break, location-wise, you've been able to orchestrate a genuine alternative to the ball and chain of professionally administered religion. The best I can hope to do is observe and find how your enterprise might be modified and adapted to work in other communities. Not to put too fine a point on it, I came in hopes of conquering; you didn't need it, and conquered me, instead, and so I find myself relegated, very happily, I might add, to the role of fly on the wall and spy." The old timer's voice rose from the back of the stage. "Sounds to me, son, like them thar Hilden twins has up and espied of you an' the boy." "Spy versus spy!" a voice called from a back row of the hall, and the hundred-plus kids took up the familiar phrase until stomping and yelling seemed to threaten the very rafters of the old building. It didn't make any particular sense, but as the whole hootenanny was getting into it, it didn't have to. Good vibrations. Angela and Karen grabbed Alex and Kit, and the rural excess of rural excesses began with the old judge calling: "Bow to you partner." Alex had never square danced with kids in Tarzan regalia, and so came to realize how much time an individual could waste at Harvard University. Why not make up for it? Of course, to an extent he had. Re-hatching Epping as a thumbs-up community had ameliorated a lost year or two; Frankie, another, all by her onesies. But that was just leading to break-even. Here, there was another dynamic; something that had worked beautifully, for years, needing only to be distilled, intact, so it could be widely re-constituted, finally coming to be a ton of crutches for a lame society. Could it be done without the sex? The latent humorist in the preacher wondered vaguely why anyone would want to try, but, underneath, it was a serious issue. As modified in committee, the rules would have to acknowledge, a, the spread of AIDS and serious STDs, and, b, the prevalence of popular alternatives in cultures successful and unsuccessful, throughout recorded history. The former provided a framework, the latter half tore it down. Yet, on consideration, the two did happen to fit. The framework in the name of clinical health, but once within the frame, a high level of individual freedom with social norms relegated to the passive role of waypoints and guidelines rather than their former roles as engine and car. Getting too philosophical about it was risky. The future was nothing if not vastly unpredictable. Power hitters of varied background and motivation threw tables and charts to the four winds and changed the score at will. The ghastly tide of socialism rose with every moon putting off bets by the millions and crashing populist agendas onto bottles of soy sauce, mandating the posting of nutritional information, and small businesses forced to spend extra tens of thousands on construction to insure the male and female disabled a private and accessible toilets, though such toilets are never used for years at a time. Marx predicted capitalism would fall like a lopsided gyroscope or be torn apart by fickle winds of supply, demand, and disaster. The reality was quite different. Capitalizing on human genius was not only enormously lucrative for a vast sector of society, it was highly resilient, flexible, and self repairing. The nest of the economic ant was as tough as the nest of the red ant; a cow couldn't destroy it. It was a minor tragedy that such an inclusive and resilient society should cripple itself with excesses on pandemic scale, but, one good thing, it proved in no uncertain terms the totality of the failure of both religion and democracy. Every shopping mall proved it; every abandon Main Street saw the proof and raised it. Every waddler enhanced the definition of `total' as it served, in adjective form, `failure'. Not a happy A-list. In fact, democracy's only claim to fame is that it was slightly less deficient than communism. Alex always loved it when someone would refer to the Grand Experiment of Washington and yada. "Excuse me," he'd say, "but unless I'm very much mistaken, to boast that Democracy has survived for two hundred and some years is exactly like taking a group of people, putting them up at the Ritz for a year or two, and crowing because they survived the experience. "Not only has democracy failed, it has failed under the most opulent conditions of natural gifts and natural resources imaginable. From oceanic borders to unlimited food, we've had it all, and it is absolute nonsense to ascribe any merit to either the politicians or the clerics. Without them and with even the most mediocre lineage of monarchs, we'd be twice what we are with half the suffering." Adults didn't like that kind of talk. Democracy, had, in fact worked quite well and built a wealthy middle class approached neither in scale or quality in human history. Yesterday's news. Today the Segway was a Brooklyn-Bridge icon of the end of an era, and no new era was a hand, unless one wanted to think facetiously of an age called: End Of Era (and known, colloquially, as the Been There Done That Era). Conventional religion and conventional politics had nothing to say on the subject; most adults didn't, either, therefore, a great idea was to try not to hang out with adults. Simple thinking for a Cambridge man, but it seemed to be working. Alex doubted any of his classmates were watching a clogging competition between Angela and Karen, and smiled. Kit, looking on, did think he detected a hint of deviltry in his older friend's expression, not enough for Stephen King, but more something saying that maybe destruction for its own sake is not an absolute impossibility. Rationalizing, the boy carried on thinking that it was to be expected; that a persistent holier than thou attitude could hardly be true and sincere in one whose stated mission was the elimination of as many churches as possible for as long as possible, and starting as soon as possible. He was wrong. There wasn't only more to it, there was more to everything. More dancing, the kids demonstrating physically the merits of running half wild for eight months of the year in not only the agility of their agile footwork, but in enduring two, then three hours without pause. "If I'd been called here to move one of these freaking mountains," Alex mused, "this is the crew I'd pick." By ten, it was beginning to wind down. The younger children were scrupulously accounted for, no small task when thirty or forty sleepover arrangements had to be accommodated, and the light dimmed for slow dancing and interludes in the music. As the evening wore on, the twins towed one child after another from the crowd in order to introduce them to Alex. Eventually, they even got around to hauling around their parents, both of whom casually mentioned the fact that the girls should be sent home if their behavior wasn't up to snuff. Alex and Kit didn't know whether to pinch themselves or each other, and they tried not to grin aloud as the union hall emptied and quieted. Neither girl wanted to drive and that thrilled Kit who got an extra charge out of Alex and Angela getting in the rear seat of the wagon. How long did the thrill last? Hardly a minute. As eleven-thirty arrived the parking lot for the hall, and thus the town emptied, entirely. Angela noted this and observed that it would hardly be a stroke of wisdom to travel from where there was nobody to where there were a lot of people. This left Kit in as great a quandary as he'd felt at times with Jack: he wanted to drive the smooth and dramatically responsive Chevy; he wanted no distractions so he could stare into Karen's blue eyes for two or three hours. The second twin had fielded the ball and ended the play. Good. Switches off. To mute the booming typical of station wagons, Alex routinely carried a number of pillows in the cargo area. He threw two forward to Kit and Karen and retained a couple for the back seat. Blocking one against the left door, Alex settled back and Angela fell on him lying chin to chin and staring into his eyes. "Did you like my parents?" she asked. "You strolled them by at record pace," Alex replied, "so I don't know. I have every reason to like them, if that helps." "Sorry," the girl said. "Mom is trying to get us adjusted to society. We were trying to simulate a receiving line, without actually having one, and I think we got a little nervous when Mom and Dad's turn came." "I guess a kid has to earn her beatings somehow," Alex said. The girl giggled in his arms and replied that the reason she'd picked him so fast and from so far was, yes, because Karen had picked Kit, but also because Alex looked like he couldn't be "beat, beated, or beaten". Holding Angela was a fantasy with serrated edges. She was warm and exotic; luscious, full and almost pantingly ripe; smelled exquisite and felt better as his hands slipped up under her blouse and along her back. She had obviously locked onto him with will and gusto; a fantasy and no mistake. But she was a hunter. Soon she would be absent with a hiker for as long as three days, returning after being with the stranger repeatedly. How would it feel holding her, then? Perhaps even wet from being with a male shortly before being with him? A preview was available even on this first date, for again and again he would have to hold her, knowing another man would within hours or days. It was well and good to intellectualize over morality, principles, behavior and all their kith and kin, but when it came to seventy pounds of blond bombshell mewing and calling to another male, that's where the rubber met the road. Part of it could be explained away by logic. A man who loves a woman would never reject her if she were a widow, a divorcee, or veteran of previous affairs. Men frequently had affairs WITH married women, often undisturbed that the girl was with her husband most every night, they even married prostitutes, accepting the status of being one stud on stud farm. This review was getting Alex nowhere. There had to be some standards, some limits, didn't there? Over a hundred twenty had showed up, the final count showed; based on a few phone calls. The organization had twice that many. Sleep with them all? One great sex party after another, from now until November, then winter over on a private island in the Caribbean? There was something rather Roman and empty in the concept. Probably no life for a fit Yankee. He'd stick to Kit and this doll and her sister, since that seemed pretty obvious, and call himself a lucky enough dog not to push his luck. "Almost all the girls have steadies if they want them," Angela said, "and what happens on the mountain doesn't make much difference. One girl ran off with a hiker ten years ago, and that's out of several hundred. What's more usual is that a kid will introduce a new guy into the existing relationship, and, since a lot of heavy hitters fall into our trap, it works out really well for everyone. We do well in the educational, employment and marriage departments, so, when you think about it, there's not much to run away from." Interesting. Nice to have the bases covered. Almost eleven, was she? And... "A virgin, can you imagine that?" One thing about Harvard, it occupied the mind. Why the hell were you, the student, there? Was or was not Cambridge the worst dump of a town you had ever been in? How much cleverness could Dunster House hold before it collapsed into its own boiler room? How far did one have to remove himself from The Yaad until the yard was excised from one's self? What had she said? "I mean I know so much about it," Angela went on, tactfully ignoring the glazed eyes -- she could blame it on the moonlight, if asked. "Everything. I've seen it. I've helped make boys really act mature and had what a male does all over my tummy and my legs. I've watched boys with my sister. I've seen explicit videos. And I'm a virgin and so is Karen. Can you imagine?" "I think other ten year olds are, too," Alex responded, his New England nightmare dissipating under the gaze of the big eyes, now colorless in the flat light that bathed the parking lot. "I know," Angela said, "we're really lucky to have at least had some experience, but I like to complain about something. It fills the time." "Good," Alex said, "because when you come back to me after three days with some dazzling seventeen year old, we'll be able to fill time, together." "Like a duet," the girl giggled. "The Done-It duet," the twenty-six year old quipped in a flash of hair-trigger genius that turned her giggles into choking laughter that had her over the back of the seat and trying to whisper to her twin. It was a minimal tangent (he'd have to try harder, next time) so she was cuddled back in his arms in a few minutes. Apparently the wicked pun had been superceded in the girl's secret conversation, because when she was back in Alex's arms she whispered that Karen had confirmed that this was definitely the night for both of them, and it could happen any way the males wanted. She concluded with some impromptu wit of her own on the concept of a man renting a virgin, if Alex and Kit wanted to use them like whores. "Sisters," Kit said, spontaneously on overhearing Angela, then bowed his head and probably blushed at his outburst. "That's sweet," Angela said quietly, "and if you were my brother you'd be welcome any time, any where." This byplay reminded Alex of the central enigma of the situation; holding a girl who was fresh from another male. It seemed he might get a chance to have the experience in rather short order. Of course, in some respects it would be a reprise of Frankie and Victor, but that had happened when he was twenty two and in different circumstances, with the girl belonging to another from the outset and returning to Stewart and her mother. Angela wasn't going to be returning to anyone judging by her fiery looks and ardent wriggling, nor Karen, if the panting from the front seat was any indication. These were keepers with a difference. Rental wives, in the girl's vernacular, but in the sense they would be wives one rented out. "It was lucky it wasn't for money," Alex mused, even though through the oddity of the arrangement, money poured in. "Maybe it's like pot, after all," he continued with his musing. "It's as dependable a product as you can buy, yet carries no brand or trade name and is handled by few institutionalized organization." By the same token the vague prostitution of the mushroom hunters was unsanctioned but worked exquisitely well to the benefit of each and every person in the club, to say nothing of hikers on the Hastings leg of the big trail. In any event, it was all a long way from Big Time U, and there was much to be said for that. "I think Kit has Karen's blouse off," Angela whispered. "Have you been bare-chested with a man?" Alex whispered back. "I just pulled my blouse up when the spray started," the girl replied softly in his ear, "then he went under the material at the end, so he never saw too much of me." "Oh," Alex whispered, wondering if the same were true for the twin. "Yeah," the girl went on, "I was doing twice as much laundry for the whole week, and he just laughed and said I was lucky he could control himself at least some of the time. I was, too, but at the same time if he'd been a little less rough a diamond, he wouldn't have had to control himself, not while I was with him." "Kittens grow to cats and people develop personalities," Alex said. "The system is amazingly deficient." "You don't have one," the girl said. "They borrowed it at the university," Alex explained, "and didn't give it back. Part of the cost of education. Look normal, act normal, believe in the pristine bullet and be totally insane. Rubs me the wrong way because I believe in the opposite. Not much personality in looking and acting abnormal; everyone does it. Being sane's no help, either, because half the people out there think they're that. The costs of blandness are extreme, for example, remaining one hundred percent jazz free, but if you, Angela, are the reward, then Harvard can have my winsome charm, boyish modesty, and patently self-depreciating manner, and while you color me computer beige." "Yes," the girl agreed, adding how nice it was that there was nothing about him to get tired of. "Perfection itself may be taken as a personality trait," Alex observed, "so you should be on your guard." "It you show signs of weakness or decay," the girl said, "there's bungee jumping and hundreds of white-water adventures." Together they closed their eyes, held each other tightly, and shuddered. The act was playful, but the underlying reality less than frivolous. Shouldn't partners be from one to several decades apart? What could possibly be adversarial or confrontational about a nice, attractive ten-year-old wife? If this left women in their late teens and early twenties in the lurch, the happiness heaped on and on by tender aged brides would be sufficient compensation to make the paradigm beneficial to society as a whole. This was the way things should be looked at, yet no one did. Fatter, dumber, lazier, broker -- all American adverbs, and not even the writers said boo. No changes were made and the death march continued, tramp, tramp, tramp. Not doing what was different, doing what was right. And could anything me more right than marrying, in any way possible, a girl who was five or six years away from getting her license? It made so much sense as to be shocking. Father/daughter, teacher/student, coach/athlete, lover/lover. Two plus two plus two plus two. Could a twenty year old be more thrilled with a husband than a girl half her age? No. And what was the deal? They were going to marry, sooner or later, anyhow. Why deny a decade of charismatic bliss? Was god stupid or cruel, and who on earth cold prove he wasn't both? What the country needed was a good half-marriage license. The girl could not be taken far from her family and she would not get pregnant in most cases until she was twenty. The Mormons tried it but they screwed it up, with young girls sold off as duplicate wives to fat, hairy coots whom they were forced to legally marry and remain with. Girls' choice, open door, and her family a short ride away. Would it be as exciting if it were legal? Holding the still happily wriggling Angela and listening to her whispers about what she thought Kit was doing with her twin seemed so exciting it was impossible to imagine anything lessening the impact of her young body, but, if anything could intrude on the moment, legalization was probably that something. It seemed a far-fetched and distant worry. By now the girl was unbuttoning her own blouse; shoot, that would never do. "Sorry I'm neglecting you," Alex whispered. "You seem distracted," Angela observed. "I'm at a loss," the young minister admitted, "I came here to accomplish this and achieve that; now I find out everything, including my house, is up and running. Good, you say, but it leaves me footloose and fancy free, ergo, I need something to do while I'm staying out of Kit's way, and, double ergo, that thing is to compose this epic in deathless prose and publish it on the World Wide Web" "So," Angela whispered, "a third `ergo' would be that you're drafting plot lines and character sketches under a southern moon, wandering with muses and communing with ethereal gods." "It's more than that," Alex responded, "when you've got a ten year old cream puff, love bun, and crackle delight in your arms." "Don't forget the chapter about being obtuse," the girl cautioned. Was he? Yes, Karen's blouse was reflecting vaguely in the windshield, yes Kit did have the child bare chested; probably had his shirt completely unbuttoned, too. But were those reasons to... "Book can wait," he whispered, pushing the girl up by her shoulders so she could finish her own buttons and display to him when she was ready. Book wait? Alex Christopher may have his merits, but as writer he seems to be on the first rung of the ladder. Books never wait. They grab and chain, bind and enslave. You can't kiss your way out of a page or love your way out of a chapter. The novel rules the novelist by enslaving him as king and god, fit to rule only as he is obedient. Forget the book. Make love to the ever so slightly pudgy blond beauty, and the upshot would be so much more to write a bout that the slave would become the ex-slave by virtue of death. Of course, these were amateur thoughts, but even as the pro of pros I'm here to tell you that if Samantha ever stays over night, I'm going to be locked down is if Gulliver were the Lilliputian and Jack's beanstalk giant was the fellow with the ropes and chains. Yes, I'm very much living a parallel `fantasy' what with being fifty-six and having not only a fourteen year old girlfriend, but a retarded girlfriend, at that, making her true age closer to eight. Yes, she lives close by, yes, her family approves, yes, she stands every chance of contracting serious diseases if she is exposed to her peer group, yes, its her idea, yes, we have about the same chance of braking up as any couple, yes, I can not only pay the bills but leave her well off; all these allowed for, we still get along extremely well and would be very happy legally married and establishing our own home. Write what you know, the adage goes, so I do. Though it pains me to say it, the quickest glance at your local library or bookstore will convince you I didn't write it all. This may or may not be a symptom of not knowing it all, and, personally, I rather think it is. I think of all I don't want to know about Tyne Daley or David Letterman, of all the books I don't want to write, and sigh in contentment as a rare assumption of modesty washes over me. If knowing it all, by default, even, means knowing what not to know, then I know it all, with the possible exception of knowing if the things I don't know make me happier than the things I do know.. "Is this better than looking at me in my costume?" Angela asked, rising to her knees to remove her blouse. Now there was a question. The Tarzan outfits seemed in a class by themselves when it came to exposing and displaying the tantalizing pubescent body, male or female, but now she had her blouse off, was completely naked above her waist, and that was as beautiful in the moonlight as her one naked breast had been in the softly lighted union hall. No personality. Would such a device, or whatever it was, help in a situation like this? If he did a Wolfman Jack imitation along the line of her looking gonzo, babe, either way, in any light, would the exercise prove meritorious? He considered the gay scene, gay life, and gay marriages to be ponderous, and yet here he was half speechless, trying, it seemed, deliberately to shilly shally and reach no conclusion he could utter in answer to Angela's perhaps childish but in the end perfectly appropriate question. Would a guy with personality comment that the child looked twice as nice, because he could see both her budding nipples, or half as nice, due to the flat, monochromatic lighting? Books don't write themselves, they have to be thought out every step of the way, plus, if anything worth writing did happen, when would you find the time to write it? He'd let it go if he could, but he couldn't. A default writer he might turn out to be, having aced himself out of his day job, but that didn't matter. A magic marker wouldn't change the character of a leopard, no how generously you modified its spots, and, by the same token, no technicality was going to get him off the writer's hook. Live, survive, write. How easy it would all be if she wasn't by now down to the third button below his collar. And yes, there was Kit's jersey on the headrest of the passenger's seat. Were blonds in fact sexier? More fun? Frankie had been a world unto herself; internal, while this glowing mophead seemed more of the world at large; external. Moth to the cave, moth to the flame, it was six legs up to the insect hall of fame. Eight legs? He couldn't remember how many legs a moth had, but, for sure, he knew a particular spider who had two and she was using both with wanton abandon, leaving him thankful for his status as a bachelor with no Mrs. requiring an explanation for missing buttons. "I've had lots of foreplay, and so has Karen," Angela whispered, her buttoning undone and now snuggling bare chested against Alex. "You could even rape me if you want because I want what's going to happen just as much as you do." Now she was at his belt, the sliding clasp of his slacks, his zipper, and not by halves. Things may have been furtive with Jericho in the laundry room back in Missouri, but now they were almost eleven and in the lonely grass parking lot of an empty town at the end of a deserted road, the mountains with their summer tales shouldering the sky over half the horizon. "We promised to link ankles and hold hands," Angela whispered as she carefully and neatly separated Alex from shoes, his socks, and his trousers, "but you don't have to make a contest, you know, being sure it happens at exactly the same time with both of us. "In fact," the blond pixie continued, now unfastening her cute yellow shorts, "we even half think that Karen should be the first, since I was born first." Alex recalled the girl mentioning her twin was two hours her junior. There'd be a book in that, make no mistake, side by side with Kit, close enough to feel his body tense time and again as he waited for the end of the world. Alex method of doing most anything was to conjure up a slap-dash prototype, then re-work and fine tune the creation until it was, at least in his eyes, perfect. Do something, even if it's wrong, and make it right, little by little, as you excise both the deities and devils lurking in the details. In the present instance he conceptualized simply kicking away a few small piles of dry sheep droppings and lying with the girl as they watched Kit mount Karen, and let time take care of itself over the long haul. Somewhat thrilled at his sudden new career as wordsmith, Alex even thought there might be merit in the girl's apparent madness in that her time would be his time and he could use his time to compose and review. The fine novelist, Trevanian, inserts himself, via footnotes, with grace and rarity. In one such bending of the rules, he cautions his readers about a passage in a previous book, which, should the sketched techniques be tried at home, according to his mail, caused readers to do themselves personal injuries. In a like manner, I'd like to interrupt what is already a bit of a lumpy novel, to caution embryonic writers not to go quite as far afield as Alex has gone to inspire the impulse to act out on previous daydreams or fantasies regarding a career at the alphanumeric keyboard. Prison epics are a dime a dozen. You have been, once again, warned. It's my job to explore the options, leaving you safe and loose. That's what artists are for. Some artists use light. My turn. No mushroom hunter was ever without a flashlight. Alex had one in the glove box. A note of civility is as follows: it was the males who sought out the lights, not the females. As twins, they'd seen their blond tresses and blue eyes enough to get used to the sight. For Alex and Kit it was different. They'd only been in the hard, half light of the big moon for half an hour and they'd forgotten more about blue and gold than either would have admitted to ever knowing in the first place. The girls didn't object, so, at least to an extent, when the children lay back naked in the grass, linking Angela's left ankle with her younger sister's left, they were properly the goddesses of external magic that is the hallmark of the radiant, ravishing blond ten year old. The flashlights also played beautifully on their naked skin, warming it, coloring it, and bringing it fully to life, and, in fact, were such a hit that nothing would do but that the girls wanted to hold them to shine on the males while they leaned against the car and pulled down their underwear. Fair was fair, and both Alex and Kit endured their fifteen minutes of fame with good will, both spending half the time looking down at how swollen they were and each other was. The other half was spent staring at the blond ten year olds lying at their feet on the soft grass, their arms stretched high above their heads as they played the lights over their own young bodies and their finally naked lovers and spread their legs wide. "Start with a belly landing and you might hook a few pilots and would-be pilots," Alex mused as he dropped to his knees, falling slowly onto Angela and finding her navel with his tongue. How jolting and weird was that? Even in the most intriguing moments of his first time in four years with an underage female, he was becoming a diarist, half overwhelmed with the instincts of seeing and sharing. If a drug were as strong it would kill you off in three or four pills, if alcohol, one drink would last for a week. At the first touch of the males, Angela linked Karen's left arm in her right arm and the two young girls held hands. Kit was taking the younger twin lower than Alex, his lips and tongue all over her upper thighs and at a very carnal distance below the blond's belly button. Though they said nothing about it at the time (they would later), both males were feeling very glad for their private time together on the drive in from the city. If they hadn't been free and complete with each other two disappointed girls would have two very wet tummies, and not from kissing. Kit was becoming urgent with Karen and the girl was responding avidly. His mouth trailed now up, over her stomach and to her childish breasts. As he lingered Karen splayed the wider beneath his stripling athlete's body, her coltish energy matching his own. For several minutes Alex and Angela watched the approaching mating as the boy and girl slightly altered their positions and techniques. The preacher's girl signaled him by rolling her eyes rapidly to her left, and, reluctant to leave her, he nonetheless rose on his knees and wrapped his right arm around Kit's waist. The boy hissed with pleasure at the touch of the man and froze in his position above the panting Karen. He whispered a thankful: "Yes" as Alex found him and guided him to the ten year old, finding her with his fingers, and letting the boy begin his mount at their own pace. He hoped, oh, how he hoped, Kit would return the favor when his time with his twin came, but realized that two minutes was going to be closer to what happened than two hours, and, in all probability, Kit would so involved with his child he'd be unavailable. Problems for later in the night. They could wait. Now Alex and Angela stared as Kit, now free of Alex's guidance, worked gently and lovingly against the blond girl's young thighs. At first the head of the boy's almost man-size penis just seemed to massage his young partner, but, like the minute hand of a clock, you couldn't watch long without noting movement. "You don't have to be that gentle," Angela whispered quietly in Alex's ear. The less he hung around Harvard, the more he seemed to learn, and he was getting very used to it. One fantastic lesson in the making was how long Kit could be so gentle with Karen. The boy was panting, sweating, and shaking like a leaf, yet still just inching against the girl who was surging against him ever more deliberately. If Kit had that much self control maybe he, Alex, should think about further work on the station wagon. He should be plunging like a tiger and howling like a wolf. Karen's tightness and hot wetness against the boy were obvious to the other couple, the way her loins clung to him as he withdrew, and his unconscious, feral grunt with even the smallest thrust into her pale little girl's belly. "She's lucky," Angela whispered to Alex, "he's going to cold cum her. Jericho said that's really special. You know, him holding her tight and being still while it's happening in her, so she can feel everything." "Is that what you want?" Alex asked, whispering back to her. "No," Angela said, "I mean next time. I want you to be going for the moon; all the way over so we get lost in space and I don't even know its happening unless you tell me or Kit or Karen tells me because they see what's happening where we're together." "Jericho sounds like a pretty good teacher," Alex said, now positioned over the girl so she could watch Kit and Karen. "Dad picked him up hitching," the girl said, "and he stayed with us for a week while he painted the house." "Tell him everything," Karen gasped, her arms still stretched over her head in spite of what must have been an overwhelming desire to hold and claw the handsome teenager now gently exploring her hymen with his hardwood boner. "Dudes, this is way cool," the hitchhiker said. The house was spacious with no less than five bedrooms, but Jericho was day tripping over the basement laundry room. "If we had a cellar under this cellar, you'd probably go there," Angela said. "Do you?" Jericho asked. "Of course not," Karen moaned, "she's just being silly." "Silly eight year olds? Who ever heard of a thing like that?" "You should have seen her when she was six." "You were six, too," Angela observed. "Yesterday's news," Karen said. "Why do you want to sleep down here?" Angela asked. "That's for me to know and little girls to find out," Jericho answered. Didn't satisfy even half the twins. "How can we get him to tell us?" Karen asked her sister. "Ten thousand questions always works with Dad," Angela observed. "Yeah," Karen enthused, "and you're more of a mystery than our father, so it's only fair we get twenty thousand." "Two blonds with twenty thousand questions," Jericho said, "it sounds almost biblical." "We're not interested it that," Angela responded, "except for Song of Solomon. That's readable." "Isn't it all love and mush?" Jericho asked. "Maybe for you," Karen said, "but we're curious, like cats. Love and mush are for people who know about them, but for us it's strictly thrills and chills. If it wasn't, why do people go on like it's the only subject on earth?" "Of course," Angela interjected, "it is biblical in a way, you know, having to do with creationism." "Is it metaphysical to wonder," the younger twin asked, "if by creating a child, you create the entire universe for that child?" "Each child has its own universe," the older sister added, "so it must be true. If the earth was such and such, it would be the same for everyone, but it isn't. Some people die if they even smell peanuts, and I can eat them anytime, therefore, the world is different, and, being uncommon, must be formed with each new life." "When I'm as old as Angela," Karen said, "I'll be as smart as she is." "Sure," Angela said, "that's because I teach you everything as soon as I know it. If you were born two minutes after I was, I wouldn't have time, and you could never catch up." It was nice to see a home in which logic ruled, Jericho mused, and, if the eight year olds invented a little of their own, where was the harm? How much to tell the girls? Hmm. The story was an onion of layers, but against these rapier minds, eight years old though they were, he felt the vegetable might be chopped rather than peeled. Furthermore, they'd promised twenty-thousand questions. Minced? "Tell us!" "It's grownup," Jericho said. "So are we," Karen interjected. "Angela shares everything with me, and, if I learn something, I share it with her. So, if this is the case, how can you say we're not sixteen instead of eight? and sixteen is so grownup it's practically old." "Well," Jericho said, "I'm twenty-four, so I still rule. King of Thrice against the Princesses of Twice." "Must be nice," Karen cut in with a giggle. "Cat and mice," Angela added, apropos of concluding with nonsense that which had begun in nonsense. Or was it? Jericho Levy looked like the Sheik of Arabie. The girls had graduated from Romance novels a year earlier, but the memories lingered in their collective mind. Stallions, the wild desert, camps beset at dawn when the young females were well rested and prime for a day behind the dunes (what was a little sunburn?). What the hitchhiker lacked in the way of scimitar and steed, he made up for with raven hair, fiery eyes, and six feet, four inches of lean muscle. And how cool had Dad been? Assuming his stupefied twins needed information in order to be less dumb, nothing would do other than he and Mom must take an improvised trip, leaving the new arrival in the household to baby-sit. In fact, "You girls obey Jericho like he was Yahweh's big bro, got it?" was being voiced from the head of the stairs, and this was followed by the click of the cellar door, and, moments later, the heavier concussion of the front door. The classic Olds 4-4-2 cleared its pipes in the drive and rumbled off as two girls came to realize they'd wasted god knew how much time reading romance novels. "I'm kind of bad news," Jericho said, breaking a silence of some moments. "It's Friday," Angela said, "not even four o'clock. If you're going to like macho out with us we should be able to walk by school, Monday." "Yeah," Karen seconded, "especially since there are two of us. They don't mention it in any of the books on twins, but, you know, if something really exciting happens before they're old enough, it's only half as much for each one." "No," Jericho said, "I meant I can't stay long. I just want you to know that, up front. I did something kind of major, so I have to paint and run, even from Princesses Twice." "How major is major?" Angela asked. "More than stepping on the grass, less than burning a school," Jericho said. "So, the cops are after you?" Karen asked. "Sort of," Jericho said. "It's this way, I had a long chat on a cell phone with the chief of police. Explained my side of what happened. He promised he'd keep it a category two priority unless more bodies started showing up. "I took him at his word, but a low priority is a pretty different thing than no priority, so I have to keep moving. Hitching and painting. America's secret underground, except once they had a Matlock episode about it. Anyway, I will be gone but I won't be gone forever, because no new life could obscure what I feel about the two of you." "Dad always said if we applied plenty of logic, things would work out," Karen said. "One week at a time," the older girl observed. "Better than no weeks, though," Karen countered. Both nodded with the wisdom of copious logic liberally applied. To the onlooker, they would have been yellow clouds over red lips but their hair was in pigtails, so the cloud effect was ruined. Make do with the rest? Both were dressed in overkill yellow summer jumpers so laundered, probably in this very room, as to shimmer from mop top to knee. If not all gold, and there were the big blue eyes, the alabaster white skin, the slightly whiter teeth, the red lips and the black eyelashes to consider, before anyone jumped to any conclusions, they were at least high in gold content. Some of it showed but perhaps the better part of the sum was hidden from view to emerge in crisply bright and finely burnished conversation. Only twenty thousand questions? There'd just have to be a next time, that was all. Why Jericho wanted to hang out in the cellar when he had a choice of two empty bedrooms was a question weighing on both the developing minds, so this was the track of their queries. "Any other house, I'd have to keep it a secret," the tall, young painter said, "but your dad's up front, so I guess it's okay for you to know." Jericho paused, but he was able to resume his story in a few seconds, thanks to nodding heads and flapping pigtails which clearly signaled just for whom in the laundry room any information would be okay. "The fact of the matter is," the transient went on, "I like to do stuff at night, you know, in bed, and, since I'm on the big side, it causes the building to shake, which is like way embarrassing." "How come you do stuff?" Angela asked. "Two reasons," Jericho replied, "but they're both really mature. You might rather hear about my adventures with a runaway horse on the Interstate." "Oh, we love horses," one of the eight year olds said. "Almost half as much as we like mature stuff," the other assured the storyteller. Both nodded. "Okay," Jericho said, "but if you don't like anything, you pipe up or leave; it's your house and I'm not here to make you feel uncomfortable." Both nodded. "Another thing," the tall Arab said, "and that is that in my country we disrobe before we tell special stories. It saves wear and tear on the cotton and it makes any story more exciting. "How do you feel about that?" "Well," Angela observed, "it's a laundry room so there's no shortage of hooks." "Our dad says we're too cute even to unzip," Karen added, "he makes us do each other or Mom do us." "We hope you don't feel the same way," Angela said. "Any man would," Jericho replied, "but you may be in luck because as cute as you are, there's always the chance you might be even cuter if your dresses were hanging side by side." "And they have to be unzipped to be hung anywhere," Angela said. She was right, of course, but there was a lot more to it than that. "I'm only going so far with you," Jericho said to both girls. "I want to leave you a, virgins, and, b, with secrets yet to discover and to share. "After your dresses are off, I want you to find something to cover your chests, so you can save that for someone in the future. I'm only going to teach you a little about foreplay." "How about kissing?" Angela asked. "No," Jericho said, "no kissing. Nothing with your mouths and tongues, lips included. This is just going to be an experiment in how to a, get a boy, any boy you want, if fact, and, b, how to keep a boy. "Someday you're going to have boyfriends and husbands, and I want to be welcome in your houses, especially by said boyfriends and husbands. There's only one way that will happen." "That's funny," Angela observed, "because I can't imagine any circumstance where you wouldn't be welcome." "Plus," Karen added, "since we'll have two houses one of these days, there's double the chance somebody will be in a good mood when you come to visit." Irrefutable. Yes, they'd fought the good fight, but Jericho stuck by his guns, questioning, as he did so, whether his true motive was sending at least half-unaware girls on to their next lovers or having a welcoming safe haven at some future time. Convenient that he could not only achieve both, but stick to his own warped moral code merely by exercising a little character and self-restraint. A little? "These are the slip covers we use for parties," Angela said, pointing to a stack of folded cloth at the end of the laundry table. In context, her comment was obvious and Karen helped her twin pull the stack of fabric to the floor. Then both girls stood demurely in front of the dryer as Jericho stood behind them and unzipped their yellow frocks. "Close your eyes while we get half decent," Angela suggested. Well, he'd set the rules; now came the hard part. They stripped Jericho of everything save his briefs, then settled their blind friend to his nest and went in search of appropriate coverings, finally settling red checked picnic napkins even though both thought American country girl might be a little down home for their Sheik of Arabie. Not at all. Blond pigtails, blue eyes, and the red and white checkered cotton were elements greater than the sum, simply because the sum was incomprehensible even before the girls settled on his thighs, bowing to him so he could remove their berets and shaking their heads as soon as he'd freed their golden tresses. Now it was a picnic even to the clouds overhead. "Can we reach inside?" Angela asked. She was seated close in on the male's right thigh, fingering him tentatively where he bulged against the gray fabric of his shorts. "Oh," Jericho tried to joke in a shaking voice, "I was going to begin with a lecture..." "The one about the birds and bees looking for a nest?" the older twin asked, fingering inside the right leg of Jericho's underwear. "Or the symbolization, both allegoric and metaphoric, in "Little Red Riding Hood?" quoth the dumber twin. He couldn't remember. Something about diseases and rape, hadn't it been? Well, he was booked in for the week, seven days; there'd be time enough for counting when the dealing was done. (Kenny Rodgers.) Neither twin was bold, neither tried to start any kind of race, and the other, if she had, would have ignored the invitation. At their own pace they worked their right hands up under the leg band of his jockeys, sometimes coming together and mixing fingers for a few moments, but, otherwise independently. Their eyes were so huge. "I though it would be smaller and more useful feeling," Karen said to her sister. "Same here," replied her twin, "there seems to be so much more than, you know, would be necessary to get the seed into a girl. I mean you don't use a sledge hammer to open the ground for seedlings." "But it would work, wouldn't it?" the dumber blond asked. "I guess, if you were planting oak trees," Angela said. One thing about this pair of dolls, if they made a Freudian slip, it was bound to be one for the book. But from little acorns do mighty oaks grow, and if their wit led them astray, they had eight years to straighten things out before they could even drive. On the discovery of his foreskin, Jericho nearly died. Not racing, they might have been, but as soon as Angela's eyes opened yet wider in yet more wonder, her twin dashed the final half inch, arriving to help explore in a couple of seconds. "Maybe we should hear the lecture before we go any further," Karen suggested to her twin. "I tried a little inside while I was waiting for you," the older girl whispered, "and I think you're right. In the books it's always the girls who get wet when things get dangerous with a man, so we seem to be dealing with a reversal of fortune, because inside him is wet as wet can be." "It calls for an explanation," Karen reiterated, staring point blank at the strapping young Arab who was going to paint their house. Call for an explanation? How cute was that? Their placid assurance that because he panted and sweat, he lived, and because he lived, he could give utterance. Two blonds, now four hands, in the porn stories they often talked about a male tenting his shorts. Looking stupidly down at his waist, from his position propped against the drier, Jericho could see not just a tent but a big top, apparently with the lion and tiger show in the spotlight. While in some instances curiosity might lead to the death of a cat, it was axiomatic that curiosity on the part of cats lead to the premature demise of many mice. The girls' catlike curiosity was a positive threat to sanity and could be construed as a threat to organic survival. They took turns opening him for each other, finally withdrawing their hands to let each other lick their index fingers. "It may be less dangerous than we supposed," Karen said. "And we could be wrong about its being abnormal, too," Angela added. They were a pair that would beat three-of-a-kind, anyone could see that. Embolden by no sky falling, the girls mastered the male, linking their fingers around him and drawing him back until he hissed and shook against the drier as if he were having a seizure. "What do you think?" the often irrepressible Karen asked her older sister, "maybe it's dangerous, after all. He can't talk, now look..." "We're eight," the older and wiser girl responded, "and if we hadn't met Jericho, we might have had to wait years to find out what he's teaching us. That has to make him happy, because he likes us..." "...and sometimes when you're happy, you just don't know what to say," the younger girl concluded for the elder. "Yes," Angela agreed, "plus, if you win, come-from-behind, it's so exciting you jump around and shake and stuff." "Do you think?" the girls asked each other, quoting a litany they'd heard on television. Simultaneously, they nodded in agreement that, a, he was happy, b, he was excited, and, c, that he was a normal male. What a great start! Embolden by the dearth of natural disasters or even phenomenon, like biblical clouds, accompanying their experimentation, the twins rapidly gained yet greater confidence, and finally nothing would do but that they had to join forces and pull him back. The shock of being taken by the two golden-haired pixies brought the itinerant house painter back to consciousness and he was then able to deliver unto the twins his carefully prepared lecture on the graver side of intimacy. The girls, seeming to understand that he enjoyed their company and wanted to prolong their time together, listened politely, and then proceeded to ask questions from their list of twenty thousand. "How old were you the first time someone made your foreskin go all the way back?" Angela led off. "It was a week after my eleventh birthday," Jericho said. "Was it exciting?" Karen put in. "I used to think so," the male said. "What made you...?" Karen began until her sister nudged her with a duh'uh elbow, making the girl grin with embarrassment and flush with pleasure. Jericho answered, anyway, to the effect that angels' dolls came to earth, all yellow and gold, and wiped his memory clean, not only of events, but of priorities. Both girls supposed they understood and high-fived one another, quickly re-focusing to quiz their sheik on supposedly- forgotten events (the priorities being a forgone conclusion by this time). And lo and behold, it came to pass that patience and goodness overtook and engulfed the day, for unto the angels their prince did say much, and they listened avidly, and were not forsaken. "Bus three," Jericho explained, "was the way-out rural bus. It rained. Mohammed Great Camel was the substitute driver. I was reading Dick Frances, so I didn't notice when Mohammed missed a turn. When we tried to turn around, we got stuck, probably on purpose, since I was the only kid on the bus and we were ten miles off our route and out in the country where no one would look for us for hours." "I take it," Karen commented, "that Mohammed didn't look like his namesake." "No," Jericho replied, "his name was like calling a big kid Tiny or a fat one, Slim. He looked nothing like a camel, the minute he slipped into his underwear. In fact, he was the cutest boy in the college; that's where they got the substitute drivers from." "You must have been really tall," Karen observed, apparently forgetting the list of questions, which, even if split fifty-fifty with her sister, still amounted a daunting ten thousand. "Yes," Jericho affirmed. "And thin. Basketball had just reached our part of the world, so I didn't put on any weight." "Then you discovered girls," Karen said, "and that made you keep it off." "Then the bus got stuck," the boy corrected, "and that made me keep it off. With girls -- women -- I haven't done so well..." "And thus the police," Karen whispered. "A woman, not a girl," Jericho reassured the child. A friend of the girl's father, returning to the States from several years writing in a Mexican village, had diverted the twins with a long story about his time south of the border, the gist of which was that all the prettiest girls in town got the boys home from prison. It had puzzled both the six year old females, but now was beginning to make sense. That Jericho was interesting was interesting, that he was dangerous, well, that took the freaking cake. "Sounds like parts, not a whole," Angela said. "No chopping," Jericho said, "in fact, no knives despite thousands of years of tradition vis a vee, cutlery." The girls were mature and well bred enough not to let disappointment show in their bright blue eyes. "Poison?" asked Karen. "No," Jericho said, "a .223 slug at the top of the spinal column." "Kindly," one of the twins said. "It wasn't a case of vengeance, per se," Jericho explained. "She didn't flaunt what happened or openly humiliate me; it was rather the more familiar circumstance that goes: if I can't have her no one can." "You were married to her?" Angela asked. "For four years. Every night together, then suddenly I'm sentenced not to just the rest of my life without her, bad enough, but the rest of my life knowing she's having another family with another man. She vowed, she promised, I was a far above average husband, and I turned my back and she was gone. If I get caught it will be better being in prison knowing she's not having babies with another man than it was being free, knowing that's exactly what she wanted to do. In my country, you can only cheat a man so far and live to tell about it." "Did you do anything to her boyfriend?" Karen asked, thankful to have a new source of questions. "No," Jericho said, "he was just a man responding to the obvious. He should have made more of an effort to stay away, but he gets to live without her; punishment enough." "She's the only one?" Karen asked. "It could never happen under other circumstances," Jericho said, "because only a first wife could engender that mixture of violation, hopelessness, and jealousy. That wife is everything in the world to a man, and sure, he may make mistakes, but taking the marriage away is too much punishment for anything that isn't lingering and destructive. A sentence without end to a prison without food, so on top of the rank sickness of jealousy is the need for the daily hustle in the real world, which can be rough enough even when one has a faithful lover." "Avenues for new adventures?" Angela asked. "That happens," Jericho admitted. "The old saying is that there are just as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. It, the saying, has gone out of style, because the metaphor is not longer accurate, but the principle is still there/ Yes, being with new people can be diverting, and it is possible for a second one-and-only. Odds are, though, that the pain just gets worse over the years. That's why I killed Steffie. Losing her was survivable for as long as someone in their twenties can look ahead; having her have children and grandchildren with another man, was not survivable. It was her or me. She broke the vows, I hardly even bent them. She sabotaged everything we had until he had her, my home, and my dog. But not for so long as he might have expected." "Was there a lot in the papers?" Karen asked. "It made the news. My wife was a good person. The heat was on. Then I talked to the chief of detectives and he suggested I write my side down and send it to the paper, meantime, he conveniently lost my photo, so I was able to scramble on about my business enough to lose the posse." "Did they publish what you wrote?" Angela asked. "Actually, they did," Jericho said. "The paper gets a thousand requests a week for reprints. I guess it hit a lot of people where they live." "What did it say?" Karen asked. "First," Jericho replied, "it cautioned men. I'd made mistakes, two in fact, and I wasn't perfect, but I was an artist, not someone content to let others do all the thinking while I punched a time clock; she knew not only that, but that I had ample money to contribute to the marriage. Then one day she's no longer an artist, and she was a brilliant one, but after land and a house and enough social trappings to have put the entire impressionist movement off its feed, so I was out and the smooth lawyer got it all for nothing. "Second," the storyteller went on, "the article was a plea for flexibility in a good marriage. The example I used was Benjamin Bratt's character on "Law and Order". He has one meaningless encounter, feels so guilty he confesses to his wife, boom, he's out forever and his two daughters get to grow up under the tender ministrations of a step father or two. "Marriage sometimes needs some slack. No partner should even notice, much less object to a short term affair or any affair that is non-intrusive when it comes to the core family. Fidelity, taken to an extreme, is destructive lunacy; all pain, no gain. "The third point I made was suggesting all husbands and wives who'd been dumped do what I did, because, by god, that would make a whole lot of people think twice about getting into trouble in the first place, or over reacting and destroying something in no need of being destroyed. "Of course, they didn't print that part, but I have a spy in the mail room at the paper, and he gives me dupes of the reprint orders, so I send along the last page to whoever orders the first three pages." "Has there been a wave of murders?" Karen asked. "Sales of the rifle I used for my three hundred yard shot went up six fold. The paper noted that real quick, dug around, found out what had been going on, and put the story on the front page. So by now it seems twelve divorce lawyers have left town and no one has been hurt, least of all the majority of the kids in families where nostalgic good-byes were murmured and things reverted to normal." "It's kind of like Robin Hood," Karen suggested. "Nah," said her sister, "less killing and more class. Robin Hood gave money to the poor who promptly drank and gambled it back into the hands of the rich, lousing up their families in the process. Jericho confronted a monumental social injustice affecting tens of millions of families, and did something about it at obvious personal risk." "Then like the Olsen twins," Karen said. That was pretty close. Any dad with a little midriff yum-yum was a lot more likely to stay around home, preventing misunderstandings from occurring in the first place. It was a long way around guess whose barn, but the girls' logic, although formable for their ages, was still the logic of children, and, if other's want to tie sex-pot preteens to happy family life, they may be suffering the same developmental deprivation as their author. It occurs to me I haven't been by for awhile. No cable, that's part of the reason. Two and a half months at this juncture, and for the previous eight years, I had it on eighteen hours every day. Grist for the mill, but I reached a point where I'd chopped things up to my liking and didn't want to turn things to mush through overuse of the cleaver. I searched Dangriga in vain for a shortwave receiver; I had one when I lived in Tulum and as I recall, Radio Netherlands, alone, was better than all three networks put together, especially the radio drama which tended to be more engaging than its video cousin. Samantha is fine. Small milestones. A real sparkle in her eye now when she looks at me. She landed in my lap twice today, entirely on her own volition. She is becoming more avidly sexual as time goes by, leaving me in a personal drama fully as intense as anything I've written. She often drops by twice during the day, which is sort of like my character Jericho and his double trouble. Pretty darn sure I'm the only dude in the world who was intensely married for four years, went twenty three years without significant female companionship, and ended up with a fourteen year old. If that isn't fantasy hall of fame material, I don't know what might be. Digital photography. Hmm. At one time, mid Seventies, I did a lot of work in TXP, Tri-X Professional. In those days I was a better photographer than writer. The thing I can't help asking is Will history repeat itself. What made me a writer was the computer with its potential to handle vast manuscripts at pennies on the dollar against what conventional typewriter, paper, ribbons and paper cost. Digital photography looks like a ditto. Yes, it's strictly imitation photography, with print-size limited to five-by-seven inches or less. On the other hand, within those limitations one works for free. Can take thousands of photos, review and evaluate them, and take thousands more, at virtually no cost. In my film days, a day of practice cost a hundred dollars or more and required two or three days in the darkroom to support one day in the field or studio. In turn, the lab processes were so complex, it was difficult to know where to correct a problem. And now all that's gone. You can take ten thousand pictures, view and edit them to your heart's content, for zip. Can't be possible. Leading back to the original thought, which was that I was a better photographer than writer when I was thirty something. New house, sparkling new girlfriend, and new career. Nah, writing's the thing. It took me a hundred thousand hour of practice to get here, and digital camera or not, I don't have the time. I think the relationship of talent and work is the most fascinating of human circumstances behind cutting-edge inventors and inventions. Edison said it was ninety percent perspiration, but then you have the Shaker woman who watched men in a saw pit over her spinning wheel and in a flash came up with the notion of the circular saw, ending the thousand year dominance of the reciprocating variety. Isaac Singer's inspiration concerning the sewing machine bobbin is a crystalline example of what genius is all about, while George Eastman's years of struggling with chemistry tell the same story in a different motif. Regrettably, this has all become a history lesson. The collapse of the Industrial Revolution has, on the one hand, left us with more than we ever dreamed of, but, on the other hand, left us with nothing new. It had to end, and it did. Now they're packaging Nestle Quik in plastic containers guaranteed to last a thousand years if kept out of direct sunlight; next, my macaroni and cheese dinners will be shipped in mega life containers, which, since I live at the end of the supply route, and in the tropics, to boot, might actually mean less roaches inside a given box. I'm still undecided as to whether or not Samantha will turn out to be a show stopping beauty. For the last year I've been reminding her that I liked her when she looked pretty much like another kid on the street; this, so she won't think I'm just after her body when boys start seeing what I see and pass her the word. I think I'm right here, but things change at that age. At fourteen I knew for sure I was about the ugliest kid in the Maine town where I went to school; by the time I was nineteen I was the best looking boy on a campus of four thousand. Whatever happens or doesn't happen, she'll always have the most beautiful mouth I've ever seen. I am content to spend an hour a day staring at her from a foot away, if she'll let me, and I still can't believe two halves of one upper lip can be so perfectly shaped and joined. Are they enough to photograph and carry a Web site? Speaking of inspiration and perspiration, wouldn't that be a trip. I lose my wife and spend twenty years in intensive practice, and Samantha steals the show with a fleeting smile. Methinks it's a good thing I've got the girl. What do I think about her being black? (Samantha is of Creole lineage, ninety percent Negroid) I wish she was white, but let me put this in careful perspective. Samantha has the single most perfect body I've ever seen on a girl; not quite leggy, which wears well, though in heels she just might be a little coltish, and the most drop-dead behind of all time. Yes, I wish she was white, and so does she, but, at the same time, I'd keep her black, so to speak, rather than admire her white doppelganger who might be ten pounds overweight or endowed with even a hint of a lead-balloon personality. In other words, her racial makeup is about a two percent factor, which, and I may be biased here, is about how I weigh our dramatic age difference. A footnote is that first on my list, race-wise are the Eurasian girls of northern South Vietnam. They are impossibly out of reach, of course, because, wouldn't you just know it, they almost all have sisters just as beautiful as they are. Stress. And a bit of a sub-footnote is that Samantha is, herself, slightly Asian -- almost eerily so, because while it's quite evident in her eyes, when she's asleep on her back, I look at her and see a dead Chinese. Stranger than strange; if I were an artist I could sketch him -- for it's an old man -- lingering as he does right on the verge of perception, yet crystal clear. As far as sex goes, we've been treading water. When we're lying spoon fashion, she reaches back, loosens my shorts, and brings me to her. At my age I don't respond quite that fast, plus, it's daytime and anyone might show up, plus, my plans do not include a thank-you-ma'am encounter. Close, as they say, but if cigars are if the offing they're going on someone else's tab. Bev, Samantha's indomitable mother -- little did I know when I met her in '79, as a ten year old, she'd one day be my mother-in-law, or the next thing to it.- who takes up as many as a hundred pages in my first novel, took it upon herself do mash into the local child welfare agency for their interfering nonsense. I've been investigated, high and low, and so can probably lay claim to not being a pervert from a more evidentiary basis than most men, but enough is enough. Still, I don't often go out in public with her. In fact, of recent, I've become rather snooty toward the older men with younger girls one sees frequently in a place like Dangriga -- now here I am with a nine year old in a young teen body. On the other hand, when from time to time we do manage a stroll down Commerce Street, it does weigh in my mind that at least to a small extent I'm getting my own back on the local Rastafarians, who, for sure, enjoy parading the main drag with their white girlfriends. Yes, it's a childish game of one-upmanship -- you'd have to know Samantha to fully appreciate the amplitude -- but one that it's nice to win. When I see a fifty-something black with a perky, bombshell white girl, that he's known for eight years, I'll acknowledge my hand has been called, fold, and take my doll home. I can't find her clitoris. Her I parade around like king of the universe and literary god, conveniently rolled into one, and, even with hundred of Nifty stories to guide me, there's nothing resembling what everyone is shouting about. One problem may be that we never take her panties all the way off because of the limited privacy of hanging out during the day, so she isn't able to spread for me like the characters in my stories. Mind you, I keep trying, wanting to make her cum as I do, but so far, no luck. When are we going to sleep together? It seems to be getting closer. She is very private about serious stuff, so I can only gage by her actions which get more ardent and affectionate as time passes. Will I survive it when it happens? There's a chance. I think anyone would say there's always a chance. You know, where there's life there's hope. If I were to make a bet, though, I'd hedge it pretty steeply. Just lying with her for half an hour here and there is an altered existence; to be with her all night, to go all the way with her, would seem to have the potential to run the trolley off the track and down the mountain side, thus permanently altering the trolley. Anyway, I vaguely hope to survive awhile longer, what, finding myself at the center of an unfolding epic, which, if not concerned with the ad nausea monotony of a world dominated as it is, nonetheless brings up boomer issues like older men marrying young tropic girls to keep them from getting AIDS, as well as the even more widely relevant salient that concerns itself with delineating motivations and attitudes as we enter the post I.R. era. As a novelist I'm faced with two springboards. The first is writing what I know, while the second is writing what I think. I know Samantha and I have a good chance at a twenty year relationship, and I think other men should try it. (Oddly enough, here in Dangriga I can think of specific older women/younger men couples, but no geezer/chick combos beside my own (and if I'm a coot, at least I don't write like one).) (I guess this is over stylized, but it does seem like a good time to remind readers that my great great step-grandfather, Henry David Thoreau, once wrote he was never able to finish a really good book because by the time he was half way through he was off in pursuit of whatever it was the book suggested. Me? I'm better at toweling on the absolution, but if a reader or two wanted to sojourn in the islands, live a mellow life in a backwater, and support a family with a chick, whose to say he or she might not find it the ultimate life, as I do.) Parenthetically, I have to apologize to my current readers, late summer 2002, because I'm still off the telephone, plus, my computer won't recognize the A drive so I can't publish through an Internet café. As far as the phone goes I'm on the planet's most dreaded list, waiting for a Third World telephone. At some point I'll drag my box into town, plug it into a friend's telephone line, and update my Nifty files. Meantime, I'm proceeding about as I did last year, lots of six thousand word days with occasional days off for panting and sleep. From time to time I waste a little of the stuff by indulging in the useless non-activity of wondering whether it is harder to write a novel or live one. I don't know if I'll ever have an answer because the central conundrum, that living a novel means writing novels, if one is a novelist, seems uncrackable, plus, there's every chance they'd turn out to be of equal difficulty, and where would the reader interest be in that? At times like this I cuss my Yankee heritage because it would be nice to go all mawkish and self indulgent with a litany of woes on how difficult and dangerous it is to go out and put one's self in harms way, both emotional and physical, repeatedly, sustained only by that splinter of hope which promises both a teaching position and immortality. It's a game you do not want to play, any day, any part of . Readeth not Nifty so that it ever intrudeth, yea, be satisfied with what ye read and remaineth forever on the right side of ye door. Have I mentioned IQ three hundred recently? If I had one, surely I'd remember the last time I advanced the subject. The fact is I had to smoke pot for twenty years, thus reducing my rating by five percent each year, before anyone could understand a word I wrote. Just kidding. The fact is I wrote pages of nondescript copy by the score starting in the mid-Sixties; if anything, I think I'm getting smarter. Just living where weed costs seventeen dollars an ounce seems pretty bright, and that fourteen year old girlfriend? Try one, I dare you. If it doesn't take an IQ of at least two hundred, to get through a single day, then I'll char for MENSA, one month, gratis. Kissinger's meant to be the world's smartest man. I doubt it, though, like Ben Stein, he may have sponged the intellectual water closet. Being smart is being creative, not photomemorizing the creations of others. My cousin, Bird, got dual 800s on her SATs, yet she is of a plodding banality she was once able to express by way of purchasing a Shopsmith. All of a sudden Concord was abuzz with the news that Bird had built a sofa. With her scores and four years at Smith, I rather thought she should be running a company that produced fifty thousand sofas a month, but that's just me. Since the story of the sofa reverberated for some weeks, I came down off my literary cloud nine to visit on the planet of my birth. From Monument Street I made my way on foot, over Punkatasset, famous for its role in the opening battle of the Revolution, and arrived at the one hundred million dollar farm where Bird was living. There was still excitement in the air, weeks though it had been. Let me try not to embellish here, though, like Liberace, I do it so awfully well, and admit there was no fanfare, nor were there streamers, balloons or a girl in a cake. The hallway is a short one, with low ceilings because the core of the house was built in sixteen something. It pay's to duck, entering the living room, but I soon wished I hadn't bothered. For there was Bird's sofa. Couch. For who? I'm exceedingly unpopular in my family, so I didn't make a show of looking around, but rather cast my eyes secretively from side to side. There had to be an elephant. I was looking at a couch for an elephant, therefore, there should be one. May I tell you, there were not even any droppings. So Miss Dual 800s had used her thousand-dollar Shopsmith to chop perhaps a hundred feet of two-by-fours into pieces she lag-bolted together with galvy fittings, all right angles, not even sanded, I guess for the raw look tree huggers adore; must have weight twice what a Victorian colossus of the same size might have weighed, and was the hero of the Emerson/Forbes/Cochran/Riggs/Delaney clan; perhaps still is, which, to use logic Angela and Karen might like, could mean in the intervening twenty years she has never exceeded the wonder of her chair fit for a pachyderm. The reason it's so hard to live at the center of one's ongoing novel is that one has to be polite in instances such as the one just cited. The wave of enthusiasm was heaped and cresting, leaving me the options of rock or surfer. What could I do? Here I was trapped in the middle of my own saga, profound stupidity rank and raw on every side, and having to laud Bird's tree house in the living room. Why? Because it was so good, I needed more. A novel is a compendium of richly textured layers representing people, thoughts and events. It can be made up only in a shallow, commercial sense, to have merit as art it must come from real people doing real things, and the more real things real people do, the richer the novel. Standing in the middle of it all, in the rare event a novelist stands, that is, and not leading with skill and firing with aggressive aplomb to the reward of successive puffs of feathers means gritting one's teeth and abiding deeply inside one's talent. That's why I keep reminding readers not to try this at home. The well of creative brilliance sufficiently deep to offer shelter from the relentlessness of inanity starts with an IQ of three hundred, and that's just to make it into the courtyard. The courtyard, exotic as it may be, is also exceedingly dangerous. It is very easy to get killed or maimed living the life of a novelist, also, if one is going to dwell on real issues effecting real people, it's easy to get caught exploring past the boundaries and end up in jail. The psychic dangers equal those that are physical. Addiction takes a high toll, insanity is right there along with it. Of course, in a sense, all these are moot, simply because there hasn't been a real novelist along in years, so who knows how he or she might live or what challenges -- computer viruses, to name an example -- they might face? This makes the hazards abstract to you, but not to me, and, by reasonable extension, not to anyone who'd emulate me. Do I take my position as the only novelist you'll ever need seriously? You've got to take you time on this one. Superficially, it would seem so. My pages per day count is extreme and was greater still, last year, my rookie year. But look deeper. Is it the desire for immortality mixed with enough altruism to really have an interest in teaching reading and writing, or, am I simply after Samantha's world class teen butt and scribbling away to while away the time between her visits? Since I'm not sure, myself, I guess it's a pretty dumb question, but, bless its soul, it does take up space on yet another blank white page. Mohammed was taking up space normally reserved for his student riders. Little matter, only the eleven year old Jericho was stuck with him. "He could sit anywhere, but he's with me," the tall boy wondered to himself, the unexpected event drawing him fully from his blood and turf detective story. "I can sit elsewhere while we wait," Camel said. "It's okay," the boy said, smiling, trying to cover his beating heart. "Allah has seen fit to forget to remind me of the proper turn," the driver said, "and, further, has chosen to let me disremember that turning in such a small road as this, so recently after the tears of heaven have softened the heart of the earth, could not fail to strand us, very probably overnight. "Allah, in his foresight," the college student continued, "did see fit to remind me to pack food, drink, a small stove, and oil lamps." "No flies on that dude," Jericho noted, using cable talk and thinking he used it rather well. "I also have a cell phone in my backpack, so if you're uncomfortable being with me, we can get you home before too long." "Since my father's portfolio is more petroleum oriented than telecommunications oriented it would be an act of family fidelity to remain, using the one product, rather than enrich the other corporation." "So Allah has denied himself to you, also," Mohammed mused. "I could almost tell by looking and listening to you converse with your mates. In fact, I guess I could tell, but lacked confidence in my ability to discern a true nonbeliever." "When the hog needs to be washed, Allah's the man," Jericho said. "You've taken well to the sport of basketball," Camel observed. "Lucky," the boy said, "my height makes up for the fact I'm no great athlete." "It will serve you in tennis, too," the driver said, "another sport of angles." "Do you play?" Jericho asked. He'd seen the tall student on his campus and around the city, but scarcely knew him. "Prodigiously hard, but only half well," Camel said. "I'm afraid I find both music and athletics something of a dead end." "So you?" "Read," the older student said, "and scheme. Bribe drivers to take a shift off so I can drive the big, yellow bus, if you want an example." "It's a good one," Jericho allowed. "It's a great relief to hear you say that," Camel said, "because it is with some heart in some throat that one implements a clever plan in the name of passion or at least friendship." "If the reward is both, what happens?" Jericho asked. "One thanks Allah for staying out of his life and points out to his friend that he has roast beef on white bread with mayonnaise and horseradish." Indeed, there was not only the backpack but a wicker picnic basket stored under the rear seat of the bus. Predictably, the fruit punch was ice cold, the sandwiches well chilled and wrapped in heavy napkins. The camp stove turned out boiling water for tea, with enough left over for a dab of a wash. It wasn't dainty but it could have been. Fortunately, Camel's stories were geared toward literary encounters, a few tennis matches where petulance and temperament had provided memorable highlights, and a thorough trashing of religion and communism, squish, squash. Apparently the older male had not been kidding when he alluded to passion or friendship. He made no moves, overt or subtle, to help pour the tea or chase an errant crumb with fleet fingers and a damp napkin. Allah, alone, seemed to have created so much misery, for so many, over so many centuries it could have been an evening's conversation on him, alone. But no, now the subject had become Buddhist ways and means. Master and son. Robes that, more than other religion, exposed the mature athletic chest of the master to the boy, and the tender right nipple of the boy to the master. "I though you might be interested a little, so I took the liberty of bringing two costumes in our respective sizes, if you would like to wear one while I wear the other." "I was interested a little, now I'm interested a lot," Jericho said, blushing slightly because the imagery running through his mind was the ReMax television commercial with a Buddhist theme. Camel looked not unlike the Master in that theatrical episode, minus any facial hair to detract from the chiseled beauty of his Arab countenance. He was taller and leaner than the Son, but felt the simple robes might make him look good, even if he were less a cutie and more an athlete than the actor in the ad. Other images flashed through the eleven year old's mind as Camel rummaged carefully in his backpack, retrieving their costumes. Twenty-something males with pre-teen boys. What was their source? He saw them every day during his standard routine; they weren't erotic, the men were, again, Buddhists dressed in maroon robes, the boys likewise dressed as they engaged in archery, horsemanship and the yin and yang of summer camp, so it must have been something to do with Mohammed, yes, he'd driven several times, and, one more clue, ah, the sun visor. The last tumbler dropped and Jericho remembered various pamphlets, they could have even been calendars, fastened inside the visor with rubber bands. Searching his gray cells with due diligence, the boy could not quite remember ever seeing the images when he boarded, but, yes, when he got off, nose finally out of his book, at his last stop, they were there. "These are not official," Camel said, holding forth the neatly folded pallet of maroon fabric, "they're lighter, thinner, more along a traveling line of goods than something for daily wear." Silk was lighter. Jericho found that out right away. His robe was like the wings of a thousand butterflies woven by Samsung. He dashed to the front of the bus, throwing himself into a seat where he could tear off his school clothes and try on the new threads, as they called them in Ameriflicks. Looking over his shoulder he saw the tall college student shrug off his shirt, then bend to the backpack where the lamps were packed. Blushing at how the sight of the almost boyishly willowy back on a tall young man made him feel, Jericho turned front and concentrated on changing. The boy removed his sneakers and socks, then undid his belt so he could free his shirt and take it off. Then his slacks, which he folded over the back of the seat. That left him sitting, facing front, in his underpants, and he didn't know what to do. Leave them on or take them off? The former was the safe way out, ignoring common sense for common morality. The latter, being naked under the silk seemed obvious, but being wrong, in that case, would be ten times worse than wearing his briefs when they weren't wanted. Subtle religion, this, he mused to himself some moments later as he arranged the flow of the sash over his chest and got ready to turn around a face the rear of the bus. "My son," came the soft whisper. It was still twilight but the small lamps cast an easing glow at the rear of the coach. Mohammed stood at the end of the isle, hands at his side, chest heaving. For long moments they stood staring at one another, then the boy began the most exciting walk of his life, his chest now heaving. "Normally, you'd sit at my feet and then, if you wished, join me in my lap at the end of your lesson, but, present time and place, you might prefer to skip any pearls I had to offer on reincarnation, karma, prayer wheels, and related kewpie dolls and carnival prizes, and join me innocent of lore and claptrap." It sounded like a plan. Jericho eased forward into the welcoming arms of his master, seating himself on the athlete's knees. I find myself wondering how much of a copout it is to be a plot boiler. Other novelists are limited to developing their stories through a series of imaginative twists and turns, then arc characters and events from one part of the tale to the next. It seems to me this must take up a lot of time. I recently mentioned characters, thoughts and events as elements of the novel. I missed one, or did I? Description. Interesting, because, at the moment, it relates to arcing and twists and turns. Ye olde novel -- and here Dickens is probably the master -- had seemingly endless pages of description. A lady's hat could take half a page of fine text, and heaven forbid she should be bustled into and equipage consisting of a pair of matched bays drawing a... and so on for ten more pages. That was then. Now, virtually each and every well read person has seen more of everything on cable than it would ever be possible to write. From the rarest jewels to a surfacing boomer, nothing has escaped the video lens. Ergo, description is not longer needed. Say Bayou country, and tell what happened amidst the gray, towering stumps. So, the question of the moment is: have twists and turns, plot devices, if you will, gone the way of description? I think an event relevant to this discussion, or, argument, as I say they have gone the way of the dodo, is the election of 2000. The perfection of the liberals being clobbered by their own giddy inclusiveness is so full of mega twists and turns no novelist could approach it. Bad September is another spot-on case in point. The O.J. weird-o-rama. Lewinsky. And these are just a few quick hits from the A list. What novelist could twist thus and turn so? In fact, the last literally memorable screenplay was "Fargo", whose kaleidoscope of twists and turns actually happened. So, a, they take up time, and, b, they're exceeded by real life. Phew! Some readers are sure to see through this cover-up and smokescreen, recognizing an insipid and lazy mind when they meet one, but others are likely to be foxed. In an effort to please all classes, I'll stick to my truncated plots and minimal description, leaving the twists and turns to Mohamed as he pivoted the boy to his lap, bringing the back of the fuzzy-chick head under his chin. "You can sit facing me soon, my son," he whispered, "but certain mysteries are better entered into blind unto the blind." "Yes, master," the boy responded. "Do you like the feeling of your shoulders against my chest?" the young man quizzed. "Yes," the boy whispered back, his voice taking on the husk of his teacher's. "Do you favor the shoulder against silk, or not against silk, or do you have a preference?" It all was a little Zen at that, Jericho mused, answering that his right shoulder felt best. "Your right shoulder feels best to me, also," the man whispered. As Zen articulates the days of our lives, so to do the sands flow through the hourglass. As the right naked shoulder felt superior to the left, sashed, shoulder, so to would a naked chest feel to a naked back. Well, duh'uh. Gently, alert for any sign of discomfort, Camel eased the fabric from the tall, slim eleven-year-old boy's shoulder, lowering it gently to his waist. Then his own. The boy sensed when the coast was clear and leaned gently back. The older male's hands found him low on his belly, and slowly came together just under the panting pre-teen's navel. "Have you been touched before?" Camel asked. "Only in my dreams," Jericho replied. "We are close, then," the older male said. "It happened just with one man, for a week, then I was never interested until I started driving the late bus to pay for my computer labs and saw you. Frankly, I was so satisfied by Kartal, my master, so to speak, I assumed nothing exciting would happen until I graduated and started seeking a wife. You are a surprise." "I dreamed I was in the shower, but I couldn't turn the water on until you came and took away my towel, but you were the next stall with Musthaven, so I just stood and waited until the dream stops." "Do you like Musthaven?" Jericho asked. "Do you know him?" the boy countered. "I've driven his bus a few times. He's who I'd pick for you if you end up being gay." "Not a chance," Jericho replied, "I'd like to do what you're doing with me to a boy someday, and gay guys aren't allowed near kids, and if they are, they'd be too scared to do anything." "Sex as a bathysphere," Mohammed observed, "like that poor blistering fag on NYPD Blue. Gay is all he is, and lonely is all he'll ever be. No one should want IT that much out of tribute to all those who've advanced the world while being forced to live without any." (Please note that my character is not talking about me, specifically, here, though an arch example I would make.) Camel continued to fondle the now half naked boy in his lap. Jericho responded by sighing, leaning back, and lacing his finger's behind his master's neck. The boy arched and the young man's hands rose slowly on his lean flanks, finally inching in over the tawny chest and finding the neat but swollen nipples of the child. "No dreams went this far," Jericho whispered. "Reality makes dreams pretty well suck, along with religion," the driver observed. Jericho found he could read the statement two ways, and neither appeared wrong, so he let the grammatical slip pass unremarked upon. Occasionally I lead readers and would-be writers through a clownism like that, step-by-step, half to teach and half to inspire through a little dazzling footwork, like a hoofer knocking off a soft shoe patter at a Rat Pack party. Entertain your readers. If that isn't lesson one, it should be. If you were born packed to the eyeballs with conceited nonsense and arrogant self-aggrandizement, then they become your stock in trade and you go out their and sell, sell, sell. Obviously this is easier if one lives up to their colossal expectations of themselves, and surpassing these, perhaps even wildly, is also good for enhancing one's ego to the point it becomes a reusable motif. Distilled, it seems simple enough. A, have an unchartable IQ, B, be bred to an American royal family, and, C, be willing to sacrifice a delightful wife and spend a hundred thousand hours over thirty years of solitude practicing until Carnegie Hall is only some place you used to dream of. There may be some question as to whether god or the devil is in the details, but this I can guarantee: genius is. So why do I write copy like this? Does it take a genius to point out the fact that Mohammed is about to ask his ersatz son if he wants to make his first acquaintance with the real power of love by sliding back over his silk robe until their waists are together? No, but then we add: almost together, and, presto, there's an intriguing detail. Why are the waits of the young males on the rear seat of the oil patch bus only almost together? Years ago, I might have missed a nuance like that, myself. But, yes, the devil is in the details and he lends his helping hand. They are, in fact, only almost together for precisely the reason Camel is named Camel. Jericho was so shocked at the feel of the man, who seems almost a boy only a few years older than himself, that he froze with a gasp. Yes, the male was big, but so hard! Like wood mixed with iron and cement. Hot! Burning through the two layers of silk that separated their young bodies. "China had to invade Tibet because of this," Camel whispered. "The monks were taking all the most likely boys under the guise of religion to play with their bodies. Eventually, the so-called religion became an even greater parasite than most churches, so they had to go in and chop it back like a weeded lot or the whole place would have starved." "I guess if there's a Zen, there has to be an anti-Zen," said Jericho, posing a question that would keep Mohammed Great Camel awake on his pillow for many a future night. Central question: could an inquiring doctrine survive in the face of its questioning itself out of existence? If it wasn't the sound of one hand clapping, it was enough half ying and half yang to tax unto incomprehension, yet not be quite lost there. It was probably a stroke of good fortune that anti-Zenist forces used bayonets, thus scattering the boys back to their farms before arguments on the matter ran through another planting season. International politics settled to their satisfaction, the boy wriggled against the man, hitching himself higher toward his mentor's flat, boyish belly. From being shocked, he now became half catatonic. The reason was that he assumed, as he first settled against the tall, athletic master, that he was against all of the you male's penis. Not at all. As he wriggled his way up, there was more, and the further he wriggled the more there was. Iron, every inch. It couldn't go on longer between his tender boyish thighs, but Camel did. Sure, not forever, and sure, not like some clinical aberration such as one sees in certain porn exhibits, but eight inches and more; thicker than thick. He may want to get married, but he was going to have to find a very special wife; even then, it would have to be an adoration match over a love match. Yes, very true, but for an eleven year old boy, himself tall and exceedingly well developed, it was beyond dreams and challenged comprehension though the hour might be high noon. What to say? Take him for a mate, order up a custom T-shirts which would herald an arrow pointing to Mohammed as they walked in the bazaar, and bear the imprint: "Watch out girls, don't ask why!"? It sounded like a plan, but left the boy holding the bag. What to say? "It's because of my time at your age with my special friend," Camel whispered as the boy in his arms finally came to rest completely against "When we were together and he lost control of his loins, I would let him spill in my mouth and then I'd swallow his semen. Since I was his only partner, and he had the self control of a monk, I overdid my times alone with him, and grew as you feel me against you." First China boinking Tibet, then a display of overindulgence; was there no end to the bad news? But no, in a way it was good, because it cleared the air. Obviously hanging out for it all the time would not serve even the family or community to say nothing of the State. Obviously, boys who became obsessed with what a mature male liked to do with a willing child could suffer clinical malformation that could have an extremely negative impact on their existence. And there were the plusses to consider. Tibet, with an active monastic community would be a whole lot better for a whole lot of men and boys than Tibet without an active monastic community. Tambien, a boy who indulged thoughtfully with mature males would grow significantly larger than his peers without ending up in any way freakish. Now it's time for one of those step by step lessons I occasionally throw in. Step one is foreshadowing. Remember, what we're doing is creating a mini-story within the tight frame of our novel so readers will think it's a better book than it is, in the first part, and read every word, in the second part. Okay, we foreshadow with a line of dialogue from our younger character, Jericho. "I think it itches a little," the boy said, taking his young hands from his master's flanks and toying with the sash that now lay low against his tender belly. Now we drop it and go on with something else, like: "It usually takes seven years for a couple to develop an itch," Mohammed said, "but if it makes you wriggle it makes me happy." Jericho giggled at the inanity. It was so great to talk while it was happening. He'd always envisioned something maybe half desperate and soundless. To banter while being molested by an adult seemed to be as much as half the experience. Now we lull our readers by dropping the subject entirely. I usually do this by way of a sex scene, but it's a bad habit and you should challenge yourselves to do as I say, and not as I do. "Are you ready for more to happen," Camel asked the boy now sweating and panting against his chest and waist while he arched to the gentle, fondling touches of his master. "Allah has been good to leave us alone and find this," Jericho observed; "but is it good to tempt him in pursuit of more?" "There's one way to find out," came the second observation on the subject. "Then name the way," said the boy. "I must do so softly," Camel said, "my lips to yours, because the back of your head will have little to do with it." It certainly made sense. Gently the master pushed his son upright, the boy rose to his feet, turned a half circle, and stood with his arms clamped against his hips to prevent his sash from falling the rest of the way to the floor. Now that's doubling up on the foreshadowing almost to the point of causing the reader to wonder What's with the sash, already, and tipping your hand that you are in fact up to some bad old literary tricks. Luckily, we've got things in the action department finally moving along with at least a semblance of pace, so our knavery is likely to get lost in the shuffle. Mohammed reached forward and held the boy's costume while the bare chested youngster mounted his knees. "Do you want to be close as we were before?" Camel asked. Actually, he wanted to be closer but thought it prudent to just nod his head and smile shyly. The athlete used his hands to help the boy wriggle to him, stopping when they were just under a foot apart. "We are about to greet each other the most special way two males can," the master explained, "so I want to talk to you a little. We skipped the religion and my guess is that we always will, but we can't skip everything, okay?" Nodding seemed to work, so Jericho did it again. He was trying not to be scared and found it difficult to do that and talk at the same time. "Good," Camel responded, "because the serpents of the silk is the two of us, as males, meeting in private under our robes. It's how a master greets his son before their lips meet." "No wonder they had to call out the Chinese army," Jericho mused, "if there was to be kissing on top of what was going on between them." Few readers want to know what goes on behind the scenes of a great novel, as this seems to be turning out to be, but, as stated before, the diligent author strives at pleasing all. Obviously, this brings up Samantha, who turned up this morning in a red silk cocktail dress. How she makes it down the street is one of life's mysteries because there are knockout fantasies and there are knockout fantasies, but Samantha in red beats them all. I don't know, and this is on a daily basis, whether she's turning into a pretty girl with a beautiful smile, and how! or a beautiful girl with a pretty smile. I feel smug enough to address Tom Cruise, lawyer from Long Island, not the actor, saying ha-ha, slick dude, you aced my wife out from under with style and expertise -- poodle, too, but look what I ended up with. I'd rather spend an hour in bed with Samantha, as we just did, fully clothed, than a year with Anne. An hour doing anything than a year doing anything. The only way you're even in the ballpark, counselor, is if you have several outstanding children and the deep-down happiest family in the county. Anything short of that and it's tails, you lose. Anne, too. Unless she grew up at some point in your marriage she's spent her life doing what any normally intelligent person could do, neglecting a talent that, in 1975, far exceeded my own. My only worry at this point is that Samantha Logan is such an affectionate, charming, funny beauty someone else will end up with her. If this happens we'll remain fast friends and she won't be turning be out on the street as Anne turned me out, and, in all likelihood, turned you out as well as several others. Catching a wife on the rebound is about as risky as it gets, especially when her husband's only sin was commitment to deeply held goals. You get the second-hand, third-prize wife, if that; maybe a few bucks you've scraped up from divorcing and suing people, and I get a brand-new, glowing beauty and fifteen thousand readers each and every week. Life can be very just. (Samantha's eyes are beginning to sparkle every time she looks at me, does my wife sparkle for you? And don't blame age, if they don't. Gran's eyes used to glow on my arrival, and she was 102.) Money problems. Who knew? When I thought Bev and gang had dumped me (it's happened before) I did some major fix ups on the new house. Oh-oh, she's back, and now I've spent the dough, and September is approaching, so, monarch and millionaire that I am, half in my own mind and half on paper, we are sharing the back-to-school nightmare with other families. Bev loves being poor and I have to admit, I like it well enough. Nothing like stretching a few hundred dollars for three weeks to enshrine the almighty buck as almighty, indeed. Every extra one is cause for excitement, and, the fact that there will be nothing for Samantha's fifteenth birthday, on Sept. 10, is cause for so much discussion it's already the biggest birthday of her life. She came up with the idea of celebrating it on the twenty-first, after my monthly check, which is pretty much her monthly check, so problem solved with eleven more days of delicious Creole conversation on the subject of subjects. Being poor keeps me relentlessly at my keyboard. If I have money I want to fix up this mildly awesome new house and do other things that real people do. They take up time. If I'm broke, it's back to those six-thousand-word days, yesterday I did seven, and focus, focus, focus. Real people don't do this, but real people don't have Samantha to do it for. That's a weird thought, because I came in number one in the world last year, when she was just a school kid I happened to be supporting out of regard for her mother. In fact, for twenty-three years I haven't had a girl to work for. So, now what? Writing novels is like playing chess, if you're good, you're several moves ahead. I have two novels ahead. If I have an absolutely beautiful girl, whose charm exceeds her beauty every day of the week, am I not likely to set myself on a ten thousand word a day plateau, and apply full throttle? Make my beloved girl so immortal every god in Greece and Rome will submit their various noti? It's easy, so it just takes time. Second weird thought of the hour. Wasn't I just saying it was so hard it oughtta be against the law, writing a novel, that is? That was when I was uninspired, knowing Anne was having her family with the lawyer and not caring a minute in a year whether I lived or died, and this could hardly help but take a toll. Fortunately, Jose and Steven kept me alive, making me the best in the world in the process, so I struggled into print, broke the record my first year out, and seemed to be making the best of it. Now the school girl has blossomed into the most extraordinary female I've ever known, by a generous margin, and I'm fifty thousand words into this re-write. Oh, that's what's been nagging at me. There's been something I wanted to include in an editorial divergence and I kept forgetting what it is. I found the original story. All of it, in some exotic Temp file. To tell the truth, it was a bit of a shock. The thing is 365K; I thought it was about half that. Since I've bragged on record about re-writes always exceeding the quality of originals, I was intimidated at having such a large document to either validate my opinion or make me look like an idiot. Reading a few pages strongly reinforced my original statement. Does that mean the first edition of the Mushroom Hunters sucks? I didn't re-read much, but I don't think so. When I'm finished this project, I'll post it. Normally, I'd suggest writing to ask for a copy, but the readership is getting up there with its impact on time, plus, I'm still on the telephone waiting list, so I don't even know when this will be published, much less when it might be available by e-mail. As far as mail, in general, I blow hot and cold. The avalanche after my first story was, to put it mildly, stimulating. That I still get letter about it, almost two years after "Jimmy and Frogger" was published, is an actual thrill. At the same time, Nifty readers tend to make vague correspondents, and I've composed my share of long letters back to readers, to no further response. Yes, I'm interested in writing anyone interested in editing out the typos and/or making other suggestions, and political commentary is interesting though, to be honest, expressing alternative opinions is much like putting food in the dish of a large dog. Be prepared to be chewed up and join the other leftists inhabiting the newsprint in the corner where the mastiff visits once a day or so. I am a king and I know it. My family roots go directly to the beginning of the Revolution and the invention of the transistor, with may waypoints between these two events. I look down on anyone (except Jackie Chan), which is the only way to see everyone. So, write with caution least your vitals make yer vittles. While I was lucky in finding the original of this yarn, I was not able to recover "Play Cop" which is a massive (650K) theatrical work. I'm going to re-write it after doing two original pieces. I'm glad I thought of that. With my beauty taming down and sparkling at the same time, I'm going to need plenty of projects, now that I don't have to go out and try to find someone else. A strange thing regarding the emotions involved is that Samantha arriving is more fully than I could ever imagine, Anne returning. Even with Samantha being so much more dynamic a lover and exceeding in charm that which any American girl is capable of, they still feel the same; as if the one I had is alive, well, and back where she belongs. Who knew a combination could be so perfect? Jericho and Mohammed? Clever of you to guess, and not a little witty. The young males had reduced themselves to panting pools of jelly supported by skeletal remains. They were by now very close to touching, combining themselves under the silk, exploring, well, for openers, since the author's wit must exceed the readers, or the reader gets his money back, whether or not each other was wearing underpants. "A master and son never see each other," Camel whispered to the boy he was fondling about the neck and shoulders as the boy lay against his bare chest. "Our endings will always be blind to each other, so that just some small piece of our experience should dwell permanently in the mind." "Small?" Jericho squealed involuntarily. He blushed at the implied criticism, but couldn't feel terribly abashed, having so recently sat back in his master's lap. Small was simply the last word he'd expected to hear. "If you walk backwards down the road, that which is in front of you diminishes with every step. So time will eventually separate us. In the end, we will forget much, and what we remember, and that which will carry other memories, is what we did not fully experience together. Our endings, being secret, will endure. Zen may be as full of nonsense as any religion or faith, but perhaps that makes it the easier to transcend." "Everything that's happened on this bus has transcended everything that's ever happened to me, and that's by about ten times," Jericho said, "I doubt I'll be forgetting much." "Does that mean you wish to violate the custom?" Camel asked. "I don't know what it is, exactly," the boy responded, "but I don't like the gist of it if it means holding anything back." "A master and son ejaculate under our robes," the teacher explained, "for the reason, as stated, to carry some part of our time together forward into future times, also, to leave you in part pure for your next special relationship." "To hell with both of them," said the boy, feeling a passion of clericism missing from his life for a great while. "I'll take my chances with the future; while away the night writing a moment-by-moment diary, if it comes to that, but the silk is of the worm, and the worm is not of hanging around at the climax." "I've never watched an eleven year old cum," Camel said, "so, since we both have motives to depart from the path, neither can spy on the other." "Never?" Jericho asked, relieved the conversation had returned to safe ground. "It has always been under the robe with me," Mohammed said. "I wanted to ask you what it looked like," the boy said. "The reason we hide it from each other is that it is so exciting it outweighs itself in importance. That's just for openers. It dwells and lingers, like carnal chewing gum, but, unlike gum, it not only lasts forever but becomes more defined and addictive over long periods of time. What we don't see with a boy, what the boy doesn't see with us, is the flavor of the everlasting gum. "What I'm saying is that you are risking a lot." "I'm a pretty fair writer," Jericho replied. "I think I'll take a fair copy of events as they occur, review it from time to time, and never forget where I put the diary. I think you'd have to be pretty far out, Zen-wise, not to accept that." "But it's only half," Camel said, "there's saving that most special of male experiences for someone in your future." "I'll copy the file into Word, do a search and replace with your name for his, and hand him a hard copy," Jericho intoned, not wanting, really not wanting, to be put off much longer. "I don't believe we've had a novitiate exhibit legendary status in ages," Mohammed said. "And to think, I was about to give up on the whole trip as a cockamamie dog and pony show." "I would recommend that," Jericho advised. "One of your sandwiches showed how you felt more than anything you could say, and I was yours after three bites, if you wanted me." "I thought the Buddhist charade might be overkill," Camel half noted to himself. "It's beyond cool, and you definitely had me going with your supposed secret. "I fell for it, eh?" "Precisely. And I fell for your falling for it, and thought, since I seemed to have a disciple, maybe I was priestly, after all." "The joke is, you are," Jericho said. "You're my master in every sense a boy can have a master, and I will do everything I can to be a good son." "Even to toppling a spiritual palace over a square foot or two of silk?" Mohammed asked. "It seemed symbolic, at the time," the boy said. "It wasn't," Camel said. "It was something I made up as I went along." "But what if you were right?" Jericho asked. "What if it would be more intense, years from now, if we kept the last part secret." "Then I'd be glad these napkins are large enough and strong enough to strangle even a tall eleven year old," the master replied without hesitation. You want to know who's in the details? Let me just jot down a few, and perhaps you can see for yourself. The overwhelming detail was obviously When. Okay, they'd just been kidding around, but, now that they were on the same page concerning the presence or absence of a discreet cover, when? It did no good to look on. I tried and the only thing I saw was a young man and a boy bent to each other, openly touching, the silk at their slim waists bulging high between their softly panting bellies. It was a scene that could have easily lasted a major part of the evening, especially as they were given to kissing each other gently on the lips at common intervals. Now, with a demonstration in timing, we're bringing back our lesson in foreshadowing, and, since it's been a page or two, it can also serve as an example of arcing, though this is more effective at fifty or hundred page intervals. Some minutes passed. Jericho's hands absently left his lover and wandered to his waist, picking at the folded silk pressing against his stomach. "I think it's itching me," the boy said, looking down. "That happens," Camel acknowledged. "Why," the boy asked, "it's just the sash part, the rest doesn't itch." "It's not the silk," the master explained, "it's the inside of the sash. What you thought I was kidding about, actually is a tradition. Other boys have worn that costume and it has never been washed. Masters were with those other boys the way we were going to be together..." "If I'd indulged in the apple?" Jericho concluded. "You think it's poisoned?" the teacher asked. "If it makes me sick for more, maybe so," the boy observed. "And what if there were no apple," the instructor asked, "what if we were going to while away the evening playing chess or chronicling the literary excesses of Durrell and Dostoyevsky?" "That's a trick question," Jericho temporized, unable to either come up with an answer or fool his mentor. "Fast circling makes for easy capture," Camel said. "The fox usually get the rabbit, and always if the hunt is afield." "No," the boy answered honestly, "I think the apple is delicious, sweet, not particularly fruity, and I like it." "It's neutral, actually," the master explained, "flavored only as we bring flavor to it. Deadly or delicious, exciting or abhorrent. On planet earth every conceivable variation on human behavior has existed. Likewise, between individuals any conceivable relationship can exist from high-noon duelists to mothers entering burning buildings to save their children. "Zen provides the intellectual with amusing variations on popular themes, and is particularly appealing because it can be, or, not be, practiced on anyone depending on the wishes of the would-be disciple." "That must raise hell with the collection plate," Jericho said, delighted to feel comfortable enough with the beautiful athlete to tease. "Yes," Mohammed admitted, "but it often lifts the spiritual boom to the extent payment is not expected." "In turn, cutting down on malpractice exposure," Jericho noted. "It is refreshing when one rejects all dogma, or attempts at same, utterly," Mohammed said, "because that doesn't limit the exposure, it e-liminates it." "So if I walk like a crab and talk like a monkey due to interference, I have no recourse?" "Only to give thanks that you aren't walking like a monkey and talking like a crab," the teacher observed. Sex is psychological. Engagement is doubly so. The highest demand on a writer comes at the moment he so engages the minds of his characters, any conclusion to their interplay becomes an anathema. Morning becomes anathema. Noon waxing, noon waning and moon waxing and waning as months pass, become anathema on anathema. I've waited twenty-three years for Samantha, so you may be in bad hands for a story like this. She is precisely so exciting I don't want it to be over; don't want to wake to her head on my pillow. Let someone else try to live through that. And, should I survive, to what avail? She'll end up pregnant and there's no way I could survive even the first week. Doomed, that's what. Cocooned, festooned, wrapped and tied. Bone to hide. Will ten-thousand words a day save the writer from the wheels of his own life? I hear the train a-comin', but, happy to say, it's a victrola down the street playing Johnny Cash. Now there's a problem. The song's over, but I still hear the train. Well, as ever, stay tuned. Few things go as I think they will, even in the short term, so, while the whistle signals the arrival of the engine, it is our position in relationship to the tracks that's important. More details, yes, but one doesn't write a long novel without them. Foreshadowing can become annoying if not well resolved. I've put aside more than one book knowing it would be fifty pages before I `found out'. It is also the oldest trick in the novelist's book. Build an exciting edifice of electric shadows, then eek out a nominal ending. Being the greatest in the world precludes this option. If I set you up I not only have to deliver, but teach others to use the technique thoughtfully and responsibly. Add executing in the middle of a novel, where I have no business being in the first place, and, yes, you begin to have pity for anyone so warped from the norm as to be able to carry it off. Naturally, I have thoughts and a viewpoint on the same subject, but, as they are so predictable, I'll ignore the sacred word count for once and leave them to your imagination. Not so, the master and his panting son. They'd come to a halting, yawning agreement to leave nothing to their imaginations. This reasserts our sash, for Jericho is asking about why it itches. "That you didn't notice when you first donned it, my son," the older male said, "shows your concentration was focused elsewhere, always good news for a master." "It was..." the boy choked, about to add, "focused on you", when his duh'uh meter froze his tongue. What else would he be focused on, the paint? The whole while Mohammed and Jericho had been inching toward each other, the distance between them reducing to something like an inch. If there had been a note of banter and frivolity to their former conversation, their whispering now took on a sharper edge. "So it itches because?" Jericho asked, half understanding but loving Camel's strange new voice so much he wanted to hear it go on. "These costumes have been handed down for several generations," Camel said, "the one you're wearing, I wore. When I was with my master, he ended under my garment and I ended under his. His dried seed is what you feel, and that of other men going back some years." "Ancestor worship?" Jericho asked. "Self worship, too, " Mohammed said. He pawed his own fallen silk, then held up his sash. "Mine," he said, pointing to a dried patch of flaking white, "mixed with that of other boys your age. It is ancestor worship in the sense that every thirty years all tunics are taken to a central temple and redistributed. Symbolically, some are buried in the earth and new ones are added to replace them." "So it's not all bogus," the boy mused aloud. "It is as it is," Mohammed replied, "as you believe it is, it is, but it's entirely faith driven, so if it isn't, it isn't, no offense taken." "Well," Jericho observed, "they had to entertain themselves somehow in the old days, and Zen seems a harmless alternative." "I don't know," Camel responded, kindly, "I can only be into it as much as you are. My master thought the whole thing was a sure-fire hoot and a made in the shade way for men to hang out with young boys in scanty tunics. Luckily, he had a large human side so we got along, dishing it out when stimulated as we'd dish soup on a serving line, then being together as boys when we had privacy." "But he never cheated with the sash thing?" Jericho asked. "Never." "Meaning we shouldn't?" "It's Zen," Mohammed explained, "it is what you bring to it, just as your mind is the reading, talking and traveling you bring to it. It provides access, and is sustained because it does so, but would it do so if there were no traditions and rituals." "So," Jericho mused, "seduce with subtlety and instill potential guilt issues in those who'd play a little loose with the status quo." "Precisely the lighter touch that's made it so popular," Camel agreed with enthusiasm. "Leaving me to decide silk or no silk. Cute. You don't want a disciple, you want someone to think for you." Jericho giggled as he said this. He was delighted with his master making his first time so moment-by-moment memorable. If he teased, he got teased right back, and a teasing laden with mystery at that, plus a healthy dose of enigma. The mystery concerned Mohammed's commitment to the Buddhist tradition, or lack thereof, while the enigma was based on whether or not he wanted to honor the tradition, if it existed in the first place. Time and place considered, it seemed Jericho was facing enough confusion to paralyze a person twice his age, but, as in any good novel, there was always more. Should there our shouldn't there be silk for privacy at the end? When was anything going to happen? Enough? Not in my book. In my book, the two close the last inch between them, and the boy is struck down once again. "Is he or is he not wearing underpants?" That was the question. Only two folds of the delicate maroon fabric separated them. Each was thinking it of the other; thinking back to being separated at opposite ends of the bus where they'd made private decisions on issues both carnal and conservative. Both had weighed neutrality and relative safety against naked boldness, with any outcome but neutrality a sure thing. It was their first date. That was the first pleading. Their meeting had strong religious overtones. Second affidavit. Despite the privacy of the moment, both knew scores of people in common, a factor that would greatly amplify any transgression. That would seem to make the case. Witness statements could run along the lines of I thought he was going to whisper a secret prayer to me, or, I knew I was going to use the bathroom, or, in this case, bushes, right after our session, so I didn't bother with my briefs. Think I'm toying with you? If I were, I'd write it this way: On review, and, happily panting and fondling each others' bare torsos, each male, weighing the passion of the moment against the click and clack of society, eased slightly apart. Mutually they seemed to understand and Jericho stood slowly, then, stepping backwards, made his way to the privacy at the front of the bus. He needed to change. That could actually be repeated twice, in an Italian opera, twelve times. Some writers, in fact, wouldn't resolve the issue, leaving an attempt at metaphysics and allegory to bring attention to themselves. (All wrote for "The Twilight Zone", but you already knew that.) Jericho did not get up. They were now against each other, the silk absorbing some of their heat, but still hot to each other. "Did you leave you underpants on?" Mohammed whispered. "Sorry," the eleven year old replied. "I'm flattered," the young man soothed, "that you saw more in our being together than the obvious." The teacher added that he'd left his on, also, for the same reason; thinking there would be more to his new friend than the pleasures of a physical encounter. "It reminds me of my motorcycling days," Camel said, "I used to have a T-shirt which read: "Great Minds Think Abike". "If you were a girl, it could have read: "Adyke" the boy noted. Yeah, there's psychology to go around when it comes to sex. This pair was clowning themselves, in minutes, past any bonding goals that might be reached in years of clubbing. They'd dabbed each other with the mastic of religion, found they could still move, and moved. Since they could move, they felt no need to separate, proving, at least in one case in human history, a little flexibility goes a long way. Case in point is that Mohammed was flexible about Jericho still wearing his briefs. He didn't pull away the last of the silk, thus exchanging it for white cotton, with a snarl or words of retribution, while alluding to the fact that he'd been sufficiently flattered for one evening, and, if Jericho was to disappear and reappear in a few moments, he, Mohammed, would be pleased to do likewise. Thus it came to pass that the youth took his backwards walk, that he remained a quarter of a minute at the front of the bus, and that he returned, silk around his waist, to his master's lap. Quickly the young males came close together. "Fold your robe so the sash is against your penis," Mohammed suggested softly. The boy complied. "Is your that way, too," he asked in a whisper. "Yes," the young man said, adjusting the cloth at his waist. "Now?" Jericho asked. "Yes," Camel replied. The came together, this time the heat scalding through the scant fold of silk separating them. "Pull on the cloth when you're ready," Camel instructed the boy who seemed all but unconscious as he lay panting with his forehead on the athlete's bare chest. "I'll keep pulling," the boy rasped in response. "If your wish is to give me the thrill of my life, do so," came the gentle words. Jericho did. He brought them together in private, his heart nearly tripping over itself at the touch of the tall athlete's hot erection against his own raging boner. The overwhelming sensation of their mutual nudity raised the stakes. To see what was happening between them, rather than just feeling it, to think of surviving it would be to think in terms of folly. Yet others had. Not all males played Buddhist games, they saw each other. It was all over the place and no one ever died from it. How many guys, however romantic, were in the hospital because they'd taken their underpants off together? He was right as it turned out. Though later he'd always feel he'd missed a 911 call by a dozen heartbeats, the experience of seeing a nine inch uncircumcised penis against his own six uncircumcised inches being the most intense of his life and the most intense imaginable short of electrocution. "I don't think you need to write any of this in your diary," Mohammed whispered. "Forgetting it would take many bullets in the head and heart," the winsome lad replied. For long minutes they sat gently surging against each other, occasionally, pulling enough apart so they could sway from side to side and collide in lightning flashes of ecstasy. While it was a mental impossibility to even dream there could be more, the bodies of the young boys knew a very different story. Their panting deepened. They tried to whisper to each other and failed. They began grunting rhythmically, each sounding off the other. Their thrusts together lingered. "I want to feel it itch against me again," Jericho panted. Camel found a sash and used it as a glove to fondle the child, then to stroke him. Their sweaty foreheads bumped together lightly as both the young males stared down to see what was happening. The teacher rose on the shaft and Jericho held his breath in anticipation of his reaching the top, and what would -- had to -- happen immediately thereafter. Never in his young life had the boy been so glad he was right. Mohammed cupped him high with the slightly prickly silk, gripped him gently, and slowly exposed the boy's swollen, purple glans. Jericho shook and hissed in response, staring both at himself and the shaft so much larger than his own rubbing tightly against him. What his master did make the boy flow copiously, and Camel made quick use of the seminal fluid, wetting the eleven year old freely while he set up a distinct rhythm and dropped the silk so as not to liquefy the dried semen he hoped Jericho would use on his vastly swollen penis. "Will you let me do this with you?" the boy managed to whisper. "Yes," came the reply. Mohammed brought himself to a stop, then removed his hands from the child, lacing his fingers behind his neck and arching to his young partner. Jericho used the silk for just a few minutes, first fondling Camel, then slowly stripping back the foreskin while nudging the naked tip of his own boner against the emerging hotness of the mature male. "Are you ready to have the ending?" Camel gasped. "Yes," Jericho whispered. "Then keep doing exactly what you are, just without the silk." Jericho let the fabric drop and slightly rearranged himself so his head was on his master's shoulder and his panting boy's chest was clear so they could both see everything. "Just another minute," the older male prompted, adding: "don't stop after I begin to spill." "I won't," the boy whispered instantly, slightly tightening the grip of his right hand, and immeasurably increasing the rhythm of what he was doing with the tall athlete. "Tell me," Jericho whispered hoarsely. "I will," the young man promised. Half a minute passed. Jericho gripped a little harder and, after a moment to wet his palm and fingers one the wet glans of the hugely swollen male, returned with a slight increase to the speed of what he was doing. In a matter of seconds the warning came, made superfluous by the sudden swelling of the master and his half seizure as he froze for several seconds. As he had once, already, with the greatest success as far as he could see, so Jericho chose to improvise once again. Rather than continue stroking the climaxing male in his hands, he drew his right hand to the base of the long, thick shaft, and gripped with all his strength, meantime fondling the adult with his left hand. The results were so hot and fast he knew he'd guessed right, once again. The first sperm streaked his right cheek. After a momentary shuddering pause, there was more spraying on his neck and right shoulder. Then it became hard to comprehend, never mind chronicle. There was hot cum just everywhere, and more by the passing second. Wherever the child wanted it, there it was, on his young body, on Camel's, spraying in their hair and low on their bellies where it pooled and flowed over the heaving flanks of the ejaculating male. Retaining just enough consciousness to remember wondering when it would start, the boy now had the wit left to wonder when it would end. Seven spurts, then eight. At least half a minute had passed and there was no sign of control. Numbly, the absurdity of yachting intruded on Jericho's half-lost mind. People spent a fortune to mess around in small boats, then spent three times the fortune making them as fast as possible to presumably get off the water one was on as fast as possible. And here he was, doing the same damn thing. Whispering to the young man, mewing in his ear, coaxing him, encouraging him, ever tightening the sphincter created by the grip of his right hand while at the same time fondling with more deliberation and purpose. "Of course, his dregs of mental alertness reminded him, there's drag racing, too." Now it was over a minute and every so-far-correct instinct told the eleven-year-old boy he was about to be sexually molested by a tall, athletic male in his young twenties. Mohammed fell slowly to his right, gently bringing the tall child down with him. In a moment or two the older male had the boy's back against his wet chest. Instinctively, Jericho positioned his left ankle so it gripped the back of the long seat, letting his right foot fall to the floor, and then inching it away so his legs were widely spread. Camel wet his hand between their hot, sweating young bodies, then found the boy. Slowly he stripped down the foreskins, and gently he began to masturbate the youngster. In a minute they had set a gentle rhythm with each other, hips synchronized against the pumping fist of the young adult. Neither said anything for minutes, then Jericho whispered, "I'm cumming." Have a minute his watery pre-teen seed was splashing on his belly and chest. When it was over, the boy rolled on his chest, hugging his master and going for his lips as he wriggled by way of experimenting with the slippery slickness between their young bodies. Soon, the males were licking each other like cats as Mohammed explained certain biological facts to his young disciple. From that evening on, they had oral encounters on a twice-weekly basis. The results were easily noticeable as Jericho grew from his generous near six inches to a full seven. It was embarrassing in gym, but he lived with it, and, deeming himself a bit of a freak, if no one else saw it that way, he libraried out, wrote copious practice fiction, and let his schoolmates find out things while he was reading all the real V.C. Andrews books. "I'm glad you didn't take any more into your body, you're just perfect," Karen said. Angela, the slightly older and slightly wiser sister, was more intrigued by the napkins she and her sister were wearing over their eight-year-old chests. Such fabric seemed to have played a major role in Jericho's story. Had he been including them in the strange variations of Zen, or were they to be bare chested at the end? If the doctrine had once ended as he wished it to, would it make sense that she and Karen have the same privilege. On the other hand, did she want it to happen that way, in the first place? Maybe Mohammed had been right, what they were about to do together lying on the slipcovers and leaning against the drier, would have a more lasting impact if some of it did happen blind and private. "Here we go again," Kit said, causing Alex to laugh out loud. Angela seemed a little abashed, but laughed to as soon as Karen did. "You tell a totally mean and awesome story," Kit added, "and I meant it the way a kid would say it before going on the best thrill ride in the world." "Well," the girl responded, "Alex is dead right in being dead against the church, and I figured if I could get everyone sick of anything to do with Zen, early on, the summer would be improved." Apparently the logic powers that be were never to be caught napping when it came to this pair of ten year olds. This was good. The evening was turning late night, it was time to return to the rectory. Both males responded to the twins as the girls spread their legs more widely, ankles and hands still twined. Alex reached over Kit's waist, and guided the throbbing boy against Karen. Angela used her free hand to guide Alex to her own body. Kit entered the younger sister first, using a series of short strokes and mewing encouragement to the girl. The young couple froze for some minutes as the male surged gently against the girl's hymen until she finally hissed she was ready. He whispered an apology as old as love, and took her hard and fast, freezing again against her and panting into her neck. Alex, gentleman and scholar that he was, had planned to wait until Kit's semen was visible between the young bodies before taking Angela. The girl had other ideas. Karen may have been born second by two hours, but that was irrelevant, she'd lost her virginity first, and that was all that counted. The girl surged up off the grass like a she-cat, accepting Alex hot and wet and to the hilt. As they had with Jericho and Mohammed, they locked hands and ankles, but now, with the males deep inside them, signaled with their hands each tiny movement Alex or Kit made. "How does your story end?" Kit whispered to the eldest twin. "You really want to hear it," the girl panted in ragged response. "I want to know if you saw what happened when Jericho had you in the laundry room. If you did, then I want to cum inside you, but, if you didn't, you might want to watch me and Alex "We saw it, the younger girl said, the napkins we were wearing got taken off so he wasn't under them when it happened." "Then I'm going to cum inside you," Kit said. "Yes," both twins answered. The interlude on the way in from the airport served both males admirably. After the frenzy and heart-stopping sub-orgasms of their first full connections, Alex and Kit were able to control themselves, gently bringing the young girls to their first orgasms, Karen stiffening and crushing her sister's hand a minute before let Angela lose control. Both boys were still there when the girls, panting, sweating, and sodden haired returned, and both were aggressive in bringing their partners, in a few hard, fast minutes, to a second kicking, lolling, scratching climaxes. Both held the girls gently at the end, Alex climaxing inside Angela's womb as the ten year old softly duplicated what she felt inside her by lightly fondling and squeezing her sister's hand. Kit, seeing the smear of fresh semen between Angela's wildly splayed legs began cumming inside Karen, to her mews of delight. For two minutes the four bodies remained motionless. Gradually the hissing and panting subsided and the whispering resumed.