Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 11:53:57 -0500
From: Tom Emerson <thomas@btl.net>
Subject: STONINGTON STORIES - MARGARET - 2

	"Well, you're a trixie fellow," Tip said.
	"I'm not a fellow," Margaret Weed responded with a giggle.
	"Not a traveler, either, by the look of things," the mailman said
to the girl.
	"I guess I'm going nowhere, fast," the girl acknowledged.
	"Indeed, something seems to have stayed your appointed rounds," the
man said, finding it easy to keep the banter going with the tiny
nine-year-old girl.
	"It just popped, all by itself," Margaret explained, looking with
muted disgust at the dead-flat tire of her bike.
	"You're never meant to go over a hundred miles an hour, that's
why," the man quipped.
	"I thought I could get away with it if the tube was brand-new," the
girl responded.
	"Must be the weather then," Tip McCorison observed.
	"But we had weather yesterday, and it worked then," the girl
deadpanned.
	"Any other ideas?" the man asked.
	"So you'd give me a ride?" she answered the question with one of
her own.
	"If your luck rubs off on me, Vesta Webb won't get her letter from
her sister," Tip said.
	"If she doesn't, she won't write one herself, and the whole postal
system will break down," the girl said.
	"Maybe I could get it to her tomorrow," Tip pointed out.
	"Sounds like an easy way to save the world," Margaret Weed
responded, adding: "personally, I'd be suspicious of something so glib."
	"How about smooth-talking mailmen?" he asked.
	"Yes," she said, "but you have a reputation, so I know I'll be
getting what I ask for.  Glib is phony and pat, you're the real deal.
Doreen's been glowing in broad daylight for the past three days."
	"She owes you," the mailman observed.
	"Legally, you're responsible for her debts, and will be for nine
more years," the mouse said."
	"And...?" tip queried.
	"I don't accept cash," the girl flashed back, yes, demonstrating
her entire range of imperfection by mitigating her razor wit with a tiny
giggle.  There was so much good-will in her, Tip decided to let the lapse
pass unnoticed.  He was a big, big man.

	With a grunt the mailman hoisted the bike to the roof of his car,
wedging the handle-bars under the roof rack on which his mail-carrier's
medallion and flashing yellow light were displayed.  "We won't be going a
hundred," he commented, "so I think that will be safe enough for the ride
home."
	"You are talking about the bike, aren't you?" the funny child
asked.
	"Yes," Tip replied, "but I was just kidding."

	Dirty-minded people thought the male/female `thing' was all humpin'
and ruttin'; they failed to realize that if people read lots of books --
leaving out the tripe -- they could very much enjoy each other's company
and end up doing nothing less than living in an entirely different and
vastly superior world to that rather bleak and pointless environment that
was generally considered normal.  (Properly honed, such an orientation
could even yield something of an ultimate paradigm in which one was able to
participate, vicariously, in spectacular goings on without having to risk
cell and cellmate, leaving not only these risks to the scrivener, but also
the equal risk of actual relationships which turn out to be unrequited, in
spite of generous conduct and excellent and honorable intentions.  In the
present instance I'm talking about Samantha, my fourteen year old beauty of
eight years acquaintance.  Lo and behold, the girl up and just sort of
drifted off; dropped by less and less until now it's been five days since I
clapped sore eyes on her interesting, and almost savagely beautiful face.
I have recent written confirmation of my status as a Belezian millionaire,
which means a fortune of over five-hundred-thousand US dollars, and this on
top of just over a thousand dollars (BZ) a week in after-tax income.  I
guess I'm in the top ten of wealth in this city of ten thousand, but that
apparently meant nothing to my young darling.  Since her mother is unlikely
to suddenly take an interest in working for a living, I can only assume
that Samantha will end up with her mother's friend Charlotte, who has
served time in the past for Procuring, according to Bev, Samantha's mother.
We never had any kind of fight, if we went into the bedroom, she always led
the way; I always stopped before going all the way; treated her with
kindness, respect and good humor (duh'uh) -- spent over fifty thousand US
on the family in eight years- to raise a primo little hooker for the next
fellow.  Compounding this is Karen, living rent and utilities free
downstairs with her mother and five others; showing zero interest in moi,
but quick enough to hop into the truck of the gas delivery man -- for
chewing gum, as far as I can tell.  She's a dazzling nine year old of
Hispanic extraction.  Lucky gas man with his bops (shades), mustache and
baseball cap worn half an inch off his nose.  I pay, he play.  Aye, mon.
Of course the more it hurts, the tighter and more ripping my fiction gets;
oddly enough, the funnier -- so, along with everything else, as noted, the
trip through the choya of reality of juvenile lovers is best left to the
artist because every once in a long, long while, it's not all it's cracked
to be, and can even leave one wondering why he quit smoking.  Distilled
pain, for no gain -- since the Web pays zilch.  If this can serve as a
cautionary tale and irreducible parable, good.  Should Mssrs. Dostoyevsky,
Lawrence, et al, fail to provide an outstanding contrairian argument for
home, hearth, bone-deep fidelity, and half a dozen rug rats, maybe they
didn't hit you hard enough, in the right place, with a thick enough stick
(not a failing I'll ever be accused of.))
	Professional, Knowledge-based Parliamentarians.  Belize has just
sent a representative of such to a conference in Kuala Lumpur.  When he
returns home, undoubtedly he'll find an opportunity to address the Ministry
of New Pickup Trucks, which is the only ministry to exceed that for Junkets
and World Travel in authority and daily public presence.  It'd try my hand
at satire if it weren't for the fact that so many of the kids that pass my
front door are so spindly, have such oversize knees, and faces so much too
large for their bodies.  They aren't very funny.  In point of fact, their
lives are utterly unspeakable and have not improved the tiniest jot of a
single iota since 1864.  In fact the only difference is that today's half
starved pickney, as they are called here, are frequently reminded by the
media of all they do not have, never have had, and never will have.  If
this manuscript gets into the hands of non-Nifty folk, they might point out
that these kids have enough on the ball to reject a pervert like me, though
he offers a million dollars.  How these devil's advocates will address the
fact that the girls who have done so will undoubtedly die of AIDS before
they are twenty remains to be seen.  If the United States of America does
not annex all territory from its southern border to the border of Columbia,
including all islands, and import one half billion immigrants from China,
India and like friendly-peopled countries, soon, then you, or we, I guess,
deserve to die of shame if economics and obesity don't get us first.  I've
said it before, I'll say it again, and if you don't like it find yourself
another pervert.  I'm a fully fledged, fully qualified American prince and
you are extremely lucky to have me.

	Sure, it all sounds pretty grand, but my offer is rather on the
modest side seeing as how my ancestors spent most of the loot on Naushon
Island and similar wild excesses.  I get a surprising amount of fan mail
from Belize, so this is for my countrymen, vis a vee getting myself a
replacement for Samantha and Karen.  (Just because carnal relations are not
mentioned does not mean they should not be assumed, and, something not
included in the offer is the quite happy fact that I will pay a one
thousand dollar commission in either Belezian or American dollars, at the
agents choice (this is meant to be funny) to anyone who fixes me up.

	   My offer:

	$100 (BZ) a week into savings account at Barclays Bank.  Restricted
access until girl is eighteen years of age.
	$100 (BZ) a week, cash.  Unrestricted, but intended for school,
clothes and sensible items.  Never for gambling, alcohol, cigarettes or the
like.

	Spontaneous gifts at the discretion of TCE.  The nicer the girl,
the better the relationship, the less is asked for, the greater these gifts
will be.  Probably range from between two thousand and five thousand
dollars a year.  In due time, should include a motor bike and used
automobile.

	Death benefits (TCE).  If relationship proves positive and
successful for six months, the girl will be named my beneficiary.  Receipts
will vary.  At first, they would be approximately $50,000 (BZ) per year.
After my father's death, there would be a lump sum payment of $1,100,000.00
(One million one hundred thousand Belize dollars).  This inheritance will
remain due as long as the relationship lasts, and may be changed by TCE at
any time.

	Duties: Affectionate companionship.
		  Light housekeeping.
		  Marriage, at girl's choice, on her reaching age 18.  If
at this age she decides to go with another partner, the Savings Account
will be hers and substantial other sums may come to her if the parting is
dignified and amiable.
	Children only if the girl wishes them.

	Note: My preference is actually for two girls of Hispanic origin;
sisters or close friends.  This is not so much neo-Mormonism as a wish for
extra happy girls.  The weekly payments, in this case, would be to each
girl, but the inheritance would have to be split.


	What do you suppose Margaret and Tip are up to?  (Poor Margaret.
Never in all of fiction has a character had such a vast introduction, had
such a terrific burden to bear or expectations to live up to.  Little
Bow-wow has problems?  You've got to be kidding.)

	"Is it hard to drive like that?" the pixie asked.  Tip McCorison
drove his standard maroon Ford from the right seat in order to service the
mailboxes along the side of the road.
	"It's not much fun if I have to pass a truck," he admitted.
Margaret found it weird sitting in the driver's seat, able to barely peer
over the dash, but Weird was Stonington's middle name when Spots were in
the offing, so she relaxed to enjoy the ride out to Oceanville.
	"Am I going to be your smallest partner?" she asked after a mile.
	"Yes," Tip replied.
	"Roger's a riot about it," the girl followed on.  "He's volunteered
to carry me everywhere if I can't walk."
	"Nothing like teamwork," Tip said.
	"I wasn't going anywhere on my bike, just riding for exercise,"
Margaret observed.
	"There's this Gloom of Night thing in our contract," Tip responded,
"meaning that nothing is meant to defer or delay us in the prompt execution
of our duties, and, I'm afraid -- though I hate to mention it -- that
having young Margaret Weed talking about exercising her legs and thighs
might bring an ignominious end to what has been a stellar career based on
faithful and reliable service for lo these eighteen years.

	Something of the nature of a time warp just occurred to me.  The
year I write of is 1960.  Twenty years earlier was obviously 1940, with WW
II on the fairly distant horizon.  I'm writing in 2002.  Twenty years ago
was 1982, my second trip to Belize, and just about yesterday.  Almost
everything changed between '40 and '60, and, aside from the personal
computer and Net, almost nothing has changed between '82 and '02.  In the
same vain, I was thinking just the other day that I am in no way different
than I was at age sixteen.  Still interested in cars, photography, music
and fourteen-year-old girls.  That was forty years ago.

	Margaret vocalized softly to herself.  Tip tried not to listen but
there was no doubt the words were along the line that twenty miles a day
for twenty days running couldn't help but make a kid stunning.
	"You're not big on mercy, are you?" he asked.
	"Just being selfish," the girl replied.  "I've got my black spot so
everyone can take a deep breath and turn blue for all I care.  I'll bet
there hasn't been an important piece of regular mail on this island for
over one hundred years."

	Tip reviewed the girl's comment for some moments.  "No offense to
myself," he mused, "but I'll be damned if she isn't right.  No offense to
Stonington, either.  There probably hasn't been an important piece of mail
in the entire State O Maine in two hundred years."  The girl in the
driver's seat seemed to read his private thoughts and murmured: "Don't sell
yourself short."  He sighed.  Judd Philips had been what the kids today
were calling a turn on; set him, after two months in Japan, on a course by
which independence and resilience would be measured for centuries to come,
at least, that is, if I failed, repeatedly, to do my homework and devoted
the time thus saved to the hundreds of lesser authors and writers who
must-needs go into the formation of a lilting virtuoso.

	How stuck on myself am I, really?  Feature this.  The loss of
Samantha, and denial of her affection by Karen has left me no other choice
than advertising my broken heart on Power Mix, the quite excellent Dangriga
FM station.  During the summer of 1966 I wrote radio copy for WABI AM/FM
and some television in Bangor.  Let's see if I've still got the old touch.

	FAMALE ONE (Young voice, possibly teen.): Gal, ever you done heard
o one moron like dis?
	FEMALE TWO (Same.): Morning to night I study nothing but how you
say MORON, so what you do talk `bout.
	FEMALE ONE: I know what you do talk `bout Betty, but dis?  Dis?
Dis ah no simple, crawl tru da pipe, sip da drain, fool, dis one ah special
-- I do tell you.
	FEMALE TWO: Simpleness always greatly affect me, `specially when I
in da mood for one JOKE.
	FEMALE ONE: Joke?  Listen.  For he name Tom Emerson.  Dis man, an
you know gal, he write for the Net -- number one in the world last year --
do you know he canna find no gal for come live wit he?  So what you tink?
	FEMALE TWO: Women are smart?
	FEMALE ONE:; Very funny.  Not.  He advertising on Power Mix.
	FEMALE TWO; Say dat slow.
	FEMALE ONE: Call 23793.  If you attractive, if you affectionate, if
you wan live wit one man what don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, don't
mess with drugs, just work, work, work; give he a call.  He got lot to
share, nice house, even a million dollars what he could PROVE in writing.
	FEMALE TWO: He must have something wrong.
	FEMALE ONE; How you know it not us?
	FEMALE TWO; You have to be eighteen?
	FEMALE ONE: He easy.
	FEMALE ONE AND TWO: MAKE WE CALL.

	ANNOUNCER: If you think this ad one joke, then don't call 23793.

	Hmm.  Let me try another, okay?

	YOUNG MAN ONE: Not to worry, I hear he 56 years old.
	YOUNG MAN TWO: Dat all the chance we got then.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: Boss, they five thousand gal in Dangriga, he can't
work wit dey all.
	YOUNG MAN TWO: If Tom Emerson advertise for he SELF on da radio,
take up de valuable time ah Power Mix, you could never tell, maybe he want
more gal dan Dangriga GOT.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: You do make one point, you know.  Emerson ah one
serious artist.  Thirty thousand man and women each week read fo he stories
on de Web.

	YOUNG MAN TWO: I guess it good ting Power Mix ah one local radio
station; we could still go west and find gals fo we.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: Or wait thirty years.  He must be ageable then.
	YOUNG MAN TWO: We need better idea than dat.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: You got pretty sister, right?
	YOUNG MAN TWO: Yeah, you know Sheila pretty `nuff for two.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: You got better idea than DAT?
	YOUNG MAN TWO: Just make she call 23793.
	YOUNG MAN ONE: `Nuff respect.

	ANNOUNCER: If you think this ad one joke, then don't be callin' no
23793.

	Half an hour and counting.


	HUSBAND: You're sister only fifteen, Charlene; you can't be
calling.
	CHARLENE: She pretty John, pretty an' nice, and have da same
feeling we had five years ago.  How she gonna not catch da positive thing,
she go through all the years of school like we did.
	JOHN: How about what the church say...?
	CHARLENE: The church say ashes to ashes.
	JOHN: How the Babylon, den?
	CHARLENE: Are we free by the Carib sea, or not?  This ah new day,
John, they NOT interfering; not when it's life in death.  They no arrest
ambulance for speeding, do they?
	JOHN: I can't answer that.
	CHARLENE: You're a good man.  You no want change for sake ah
change, an' I love you for dat; but dis a side of the coin that must fall
heads-up.  The law will catch up soon enough, because they got sisters,
too.  Meantime...
	 JOHN: Tom Emerson.  23793.

	Perhaps if I stop thinking it will end one of these days, it will.
Meantime, the more I brag and flog, the more there is that rises to the
surface.  Chilling.


	MAN: Christopher Columbo got one thousand years.
	WOMAN: So the song say.
	MAN: How dis bally, come from da States, try tief fo we gals wit
ads on Power Mix
	WOMAN: He just do play.
	MAN: Dat like saying Lucky Duby just do play.  All over the world,
the man do play.
	WOMN: An high time, an just in time, you ask me, which you did.
What we gal meant to do?  Be with hot boy an' come all positive?  If we
smart, we listen to da ads.  We open da areas to decent, ageable men from
anywhere, all race and creed, as long as they SAFE.  We girls link up with
them at ANY age, then, when they die, we can marry what local boys survive
the thing.
	MAN: That some radical thinking gal.  Your friend Emerson, his name
may not be Christopher, but he still need fo he thousand years.
	WOMAN: That's the sentence given every AIDS victim.  An' he's not
my friend, he just has an answer, an' we gettin' a little desperate for
that.
	MAN: So you want me call the number for our daughter?
	WOMAN: You're sweet to offer, but this is a girl thing... yes
operator... here in Dangriga, Tom Emerson, 23793.

	I haven't been to bed with a girl for twenty-three years, but
nonetheless, I think I'm a better lover than I was then, and certainly
better than with Valerie in '66.  I know I write better commercials.  I
should do one more, because rich rotations sell.

	WOMAN ONE: You know, Mary, I DONE see he `pon da street; he no look
like much.
	WOMAN TWO: Who you do talk `bout?
	WOMANT ONE: The one the whole town do take for moron; you know,
what advertise `pon Power Mix fo one gal to come live wit' he.
	WOMAN TWO: What he look like?
	WOMAN ONE: Dress simple.  Always look `pon he foot when he walk
`bout da areas.
	WOMAN TWO: He fat?
	WOMAN ONE: It no hurt he atall to lose five poun'.
	WOMAN TWO: He got fo-he hair?
	WOMAN ONE: He got `nuff gray hair for two.
	WOMAN TWO: How for he personality?
	WOMAN ONE: None atall.
	WOMAN TWO: He no funny?  Sound so on Power Mix.
	WOMAN ONE: If he funny, how he haf to offer one gal two hundred
dollar a week fo live wit he?  Offer her fifty t'ousan' a year if him dead.
Offer gifts, even one car.  Offer her a million and more when him dead.  If
he funny, gal live wit' he fo free.
	WOMAN TWO: Maybe he jus' nice.
	WOMAN ONE: Artist never nice.  All time tink of deh self.
	WOMAN TWO: Maybe dat why he offer to pay.
	WOMAN ONE: I dunno.
	WOMAN TWO: My niece soon reach.  Deh say he like Spanish.  She come
from Honduras.  I gonna find out; make she have da personality in dat
family.

	ANNOUNCER: You know da name, you know da number: Tom Emerson,
23793.


	And one more for good measure.


	WOMAN TWO: Dis ah what I wonder.  Deh say he live in Dangriga eight
years.  How he no have one gal?
		WOMAN ONE: I hear he DONE have one.  Support one family ah
five.  Everything.  Food, clothes, school for four, even television and
cable.  Then they lef fo he on he own; done wit he like peel o' de fruit.
		WOMAN TWO: Dat no make no sense atall.
		WOMAN ONE: When life make sense, gal, bes' you check see if
fo-you heart, he still do run.
		WOMAN TWO: You make one point, fo true.
		WOMAN ONE: Nobody perfect, but I tink fo-he offer good
enough fo my niece.  I look fo she to reach.
		WOMAN TWO: You tink he like one Chinese gal?
		WOMAN ONE: I hear he no care one `rass `bout dat kina ting;
only want friendly.  No even care of de gal wan work, just be true.

		ANNOUNCER: Find out for yourself.  You know the name: Tom
Emerson.  You know the number: 23793.

	With every absurdity covered to a fare-thee-well, we might do well
to move on after I've clued my urban media hotshot readers to the fact that
the entire rotation of six ads took less than two hours to write.  Of
course efficacy counts, too, and to get a report on that, you'll have to
tune in to future chapters seeing as I haven't even reconnected my phone
after the move.  My guess is that if you color it `wishful thinking', you
won't be far off the mark, and meantime I'll go on sleeping with my 150
watt Sony box with Groove equalizer and Lucky Duby; my morning birds; my
sea breezes in the afternoon; my million fans, and call life half-okay, at
least until Jose Schmose, the gas man, comes for Karen.  Since nothing
suits a writer more than a nearly infinite capacity to belabor a point, I
find I can live up to my own billing by pointing out a little something
more in regards to my radio commercials, and, at the same time, demonstrate
that a writer can, even though his weapon is merely drops of ink or
amalgamations of electrons, actually be a little dangerous to a reader, by
pointing out, and you're really going to hate this, that if the ads are
particularly good, and they are, well, duh'uh, it's pretty easy to write
great ads if you're selling -- wait for it -- a fabulous product.  Feel
free to groan.  My father feels the same way you do: that I'm naught but a
posturing buffoon, a silly wastrel, and a major embarrassment to family,
species and planet.  Continuing with the though brings up another vastly
major subject and a supreme irony that cuts to the bone for millions.  If
I'm the ultimate in dorkish poltroons and syncopated nincompoops, why blame
me and not my mother (as well as himself).
	There's a lot of discussion of heredity versus environment when the
subject of children and personality come up.  Of course, a mother would be
guilty for the likes of me on both counts, but that's not the point I want
to make.  The debate on the issue is unfounded.  Heredity, except in the
case of clinical manifestations such as retardation or genuine dyslexia,
plays, essentially, no role at all.  A child is virtually one hundred
percent a product of his environment.  Take a `savage' of Darkest Africa in
1800 and raise him in Buckingham Palace, and the child would end up a
prince.  Reverse this; take the young denizen of the palace and raise him
with a tribe of head hunters, and the Anglo Saxon prince would become a
fine young cannibal.  Elsewhere, I've mentioned the Pennsylvania Babies.
Children born to [presumably fat] young German girls and secreted in the
lofts of barns so the father wouldn't find out.  These babies were kept
alive by their mothers, but received minimal nurture.  Invariably the grew
up so distorted that no contact was ever made with them and it was
impossible, even if the babies were rescued at very young ages, to even
house train them.  Environment is the all but one hundred percent factor in
how a child turns out.  The confusion arises because infants and toddlers
are enormously sensitive to their environments, and acts of commission or
omission by parents and other adults and older children can have profound
effects on the child, even though the older person might not remember or
even be aware of their influence.  A terrific proof of this is the Ming
Dynasty.  Little Ming children ALL grew up to be fabulous potters, and a
black infant, placed amongst them, would have been just as good as any of
his brother and sisters.  Why the nature versus nurture thing goes on and
on is one of life's real mysteries.  If I had to guess I'd say it was
because of empire building -- publish or perish -- social engineers of the
psychological and psychiatric persuasions.
	Great tension developing on the homestead.  While my personal life
has pretty much been a novel for many years, it seems some kind of climax
is in the offing vis a vee Jose Schmose.  I caught him molesting Karen the
other day, and Marie, her mother, seems totally unwilling to believe it.
The guy's a piece of work, now spending up to three hours a day, when he's
meant to be working, sitting on the lower veranda of my house, often
leaving his battered old truck in the middle of my admittedly little
trafficked street.  He reminds me of a character in the Kalaman comics of
Mexico with the pulled down hat, the aviator sunglasses, and shifty eyes.
He avoids looking at me or acknowledging my like the plague, but, if forced
by circumstance, will out with a "Hell-oo myyy frieeend" in the ghastly
baby-talk sing-song Hispanics mouth when they think it's safe to mock
Anglos.  Anyway, Mario showed up no less than four times yesterday, for
nearly an hour each time, then showed up again at eight in the evening.
Enough!  As a former flight instructor, my voice can hit 110 decibels with
perfect enunciation of the English language, and fair-to-middlin' Spanish,
if the situation is dangerous enough to warrant the wear-and-tear on my
vocal cords.  The situation is vastly complicated by two factors.  First,
yes, I am attracted to Karen, myself; she's a pixie princess, and, second,
since I've ended up what the English call a remittance man, and general bum
and no-goodnic, the least I can do is really help others with my fifty-odd
thousand Belize dollars a year.  Jessenia, Marie, and kids are
exceptionally nice people and it's actually something of a thrill to be
able to give them a leg up by not charging rent and picking up the tab for
the utilities.  Of course, I would like Karen, in exchange, but, and this
is where I differ from Jose Schmose, strictly on her terms at the moment,
and on terms wherein there is a likelihood she'll look back for age forty,
when I'm long gone, and say Tom wasn't perfect, but he did an enormous
amount for my family and for me.  His quid pro quo was spectacular.  I
would let my daughter repeat my experience.
	It's been quite awhile since I've reminded my readers that I write
what I write in large part because one American girl in five is molested by
a family member as a child.  One in five.  About one in seven for little
boys.  Okay?  This is a huge topic, all voices should be heard from, and
mine is about as experienced and well-read and well-rounded on the subject
as it is possible to be.  One of the reasons I'm a bum in the eyes of my
family is my Tendancies, which is a real hoot in the irony department
because my grandfather Emerson was an active out-and-out rapist, and my
brother, Ted, king of the sanctimonious hypocrites had an incestuous
relationship with my sister, Mary, often virtually under my nose, five
years his junior, for years, and went on to molest his boys to the extent
that they required daily doses of Ritalin -- all three of them -- and face
no future that is not horrific.
	Nifty provides both perspective and absolution.  It is the world's
most essential Archive.  Its many thousands of stories cut through taboo,
hypocrisy, religious malarkey, moralistic rhetoric, didactic posturing, and
politically-correct hogwash -- affording its readers a rock and stone
foundation buttressing the vagaries, complexities, and idiosyncrasies of
life -- all life through all of times, -- finally providing the diligent
reader with that ultimate gift of the written word, fiction or non-fiction:
some palpable degree of Insight.  I, as a principal contributor, may get an
occasional story returned for re-writing because of anti-Semitism (and this
is rare), and get called a sick f--- for this same orientation, but I've
never been criticized for my sexual commentary, and never will be by sane
readers.  My message is always as simple as a pealing bell: affection,
growth, and continuity are the grist of relationships, not ages or genders.
Those who interfere do more damage than the participants (`perps').  The
Little Rascals daycare case is the only example needed to prove this now
and forever.  ALL the kids who received therapy experienced an immediate,
precipitous, and permanent breakdown; went from happy-go-lucky kids to
sullen, rebellious bed-wetters, in a single day.  NONE of the children who
escaped intervention by credentialled experts displayed any symptoms of
anything.  Case closed, and, in this case, one size does fit all.

	Margaret and Tip had other fish to fry, so maybe we ought -- REALLY
ought -- to get back to them.

	"All religions suck at all times," the girl said brightly.  She
was, indeed, a little charmer and Tip couldn't help giggling like a kid as
he looked across at her so serious and big time behind the steering wheel
of the car on its duly appointed rounds.
	"What makes you so sure?" he asked.
	"You do," she replied, simply, quickly adding: "I mean there has to
be some moral to your story, to our story."
	This was a bit staggering.  Perhaps as original and eclectic as it
was possible for a human, to say nothing of a nine-year-old girl, to be and
still draw breath.  The depth and insight displayed by the sprite made her,
and not just in the eyes of the mailman, at least a bit of a god, with the
gigantic awareness coming front and center -- wholly obvious and impossible
to ignore -- that only the One True Fisherman could catch, gut, flay and
burn the toxic fishes of altar and temple.
	Tip found it difficult to keep the car on the road, the difficulty
having nothing to do with the fact his duties required he pilot the Ford
over the road from a position in the passenger's seat.
	His mind reeled.  His pulse shot up to two hundred beats per
minute.  His breath came in gasps resembling sobs.  He broke out in a sweat
and his left hand shook visibly one the steering wheel.  He'd opened a
million mailboxes over the years, yet now seemed to have difficulty with
the catches and simple aluminum doors.
	"Judd never prepared my for anything like this," he mused over and
over again.  Indeed, nobody had; who could?
	The inner fury was the bottomlessness of Margaret's logic.  It's
purity.  It's irreducible perfection elevating a carnal wolfhound to the
status of associate deity, and not on a flimsy stalk of vines and twigs,
but on a pillar that might have been built using every cubic yard of
granite in the entire Granite State.  Naturally, I take some credit for
bringing all this to the public's attention, but I'm merely the scribe; the
proverbial messenger.  I, to be a bit crude, never even saw, or,
god-forbid, touched a female's breast (saving my sister's when my brother
was tackling her -- which does the opposite of `count', whatever that is)
during my four year exile in Stonington, and, indeed, I build my epic tale
on a trace of a story here and a hint of innuendo, there (none of it is
original -- no great art ever is; it always has originality, but is never
original -- a distinction that is not esoteric).  Yes, it is an infuriating
trait: to build with such meticulous attention to detail; to wander here
and saunter there so as to leave no stone unturned or log unrolled in
bringing you this portfolio of truths and crystalline realities, but --and
my long-term readers know this to a fare-thee-well, such craftsmanship pays
spectacular dividends and enables (empowers?) me to take you so high, you
really become accustom to flight on the circling, looping glide back to
earth.  I laugh at shortcuts, and so should you.  I write with utter
density, not to make my stories last, but so they won't collapse, you know,
like in a thousand years or two.  You should have the character and
discipline to read them slowly, a few pages a day, so you get the benefit,
to quote John Malcovich (in "Empire of the Sun"), and, more prosaically, so
you don't get fired from your job or screw up yourself through bad-monkey
addiction.  (Anything that adds enormously to your life probably has the
power to raise more hell with it than is either cool or comfy.  Thus
speaketh...
	I never, in my drinking days, became an alcoholic.  Why?  Because I
loved to drink, and if it had become a problem, the pleasure would have
gone out of it.  When I tripped the light fantastic across the southern
border on June 6, 1994 I had almost a hundred thousand dollars (US) in my
checking account.  I could have scored myself blind in Acapulco, Cancun, or
anywhere in between. But I didn't.  Why?  Because a hundred K wasn't enough
to maintain on, so any pleasure would have been transient.  Neither of
these are examples of character so much as common sense, a doctrine of
behavior and lifestyle than became both extinct and frivolous with the
trial of Orenthal Simpson.  If I were into the lowest grade of puns, I'd
bust a crack about Common Sense now lacking conviction -- aren't you
pleased that I spared you?  Speaking of me, you know, the guy that was such
a product as you never saw in the radio ads, I'd like to point out that I
enjoy an ultimate and fairly rare status as artist and commentator.  I am
not a Hemingway with a whacking great beard and knit turtleneck; not a Tom
Wolfe, togged out to an urban T; not a reclusive Salinger, nor a ham on rye
thespian like Stephen King.  I'm two things, a, anonymous, and, b,
offensive -- why else would Bev and family dump me and my $15,000(BZ)-plus
contribution to their welfare extending back to 1994?  In other words, any
influence I exert on the whys and wherefores of the social amalgamation
comes from the innate value of my observations and suggestions, and are
uninfluenced by a grand personality or any status as media-enhanced icon.
Me to folk in their hundreds of thousands and eventual millions.  Common on
the one hand, rare on the other -- never exotic.  (Let's keep it this way,
just to please me.)

	Margaret was pleased.  Half on fire, she was still alive.  Very
good news.  But what came next?  Inquiring minds want to know.  So the tap
dance on your eyeballs continues.

	"I want your job," the little girl said as the car made its way
past the turnoff of the nameless street that led down to the Billing's, the
Emerson's and Mrs. Semple's.
	"That sounds like as good a reason to ride with strange men as I
can think of," Tip responded, thinking to himself the while that she'd go a
long way toward redefining the term post mistress.  And why not?  Someone
had to take his place in another ten or fifteen years.  With Kennedy duly
elected and sworn in, it was likely that a wave of liberalism would sweep
the land; that a female would be just as viable, in, he hoped, peacetime,
for driving a mail delivery vehicle as a man.
	"Strange isn't much of a word, is it," the nine year old observed.
"It could mean unknown, or deviant."
	Tip pointed out that perhaps that made it too much of a word.  He
wasn't sure about matching wits with a minor goddess but he knew, like the
lady in Gilbert and Sullivan, that he'd rather like to try.
	"I guess that would make it good for a mystery writer," the child
prattled as the car made its way past the Dunham's.  "She could title her
book "The Strange Man," or "The Strange Woman," and, in the end, have him
or her be a hero, whilst all along the reader thinks the character is evil,
because he or she is simply unknown."
	"That would be a bit predictable, don't you think?" Tip observed,
and he went on to point out that it might be better to have the Stranger,
Strange, after all.  They slipped casually into an argument that took them
to the end of the route, and Tip turned the car and began the ride back
into greater Stonington with neither himself nor his petite passenger
seeming to realize the inappropriateness of the frivolous and trivial
nature of their conversation in a town that was half frothing at the mouth
and half about to go catatonic in heart-palpitating anticipation of every
nuance and detail of their impending tryst.  It wasn't exactly their fault,
for the surely were not indifferent, but, truth to tell, it might have
served them well to be a little more sensitive and engaged.  (It goes
without saying that there is no `we' in `team'.)

	As the Ford passed again by the Dunham household, Margaret changed
the subject.  "I hope Valerie is on your list," she said.
	Valerie Dunham, age eleven, had the world's biggest eyes.  Where
Margaret Weed was tiny and fiery, Valerie was petit and elegant to the
point of being glamorous.  Margaret's head was festooned with crinky,
untamed black hair that looked as if she trimmed it with a croquet mallet;
Valerie's was mouse brown, gossamer delicate, and hung strait as a million
plumb lines all the way down to her waist.  The one girl had a tough,
country round face with flashing black eyes against a no-nonsense (ever)
complexion, while the other had silken delicate skin and a to-die-for oval
face -- eyes brown.  Margaret was basically a rugged little meatball of a
kid, slim though she was, while Valerie haunted one's dreams as languorous
and ethereal.  A novelist might pair them as the daisy and the orchid;
bright and sunny versus exotic and mysterious.
	"It's an idea," Tip acknowledged, feeling indeed the girl had a
future as Deer Isle's once and future mail person.
	"From my lips to god's ears," she said.  Her parents had taken her
on a trip to cousins in Brooklyn, so she had a phrase or two beyond
"scaling out through the alders", "all-a-hammerin'", "jumpin'", "gorry",
"up to Millinocket", and "ayah, ya can't get theyah from heyah", which
about defined the limits of colorful vernacular in the local dialect.  [I'm
being a bit of a skinflint here.  The original "Bert and I" record, with
its Down-East feast of localisms, is health-hazard funny, and as a student
at Stonington Memorial High School, Class of '64, I up and near had a heart
attack or two when addressed, in all solemnity (okay, read anger), by a
teacher, coach, or the principal with this or that off-the-shelf, tried and
bluenose-true colloquialism.]

	"Are you and Valerie friends?" Tip asked, thrilling Margaret with
the incipient sickness in his voice.
	"I refuse to answer on the grounds of appointed rounds," the pixie
genius quipped with a sweet but less than wholly innocent giggle, quickly
adding that it would be useless for her to take over from a disgraced
mailman before she could see over the hood of the car.
	"If you kill me with charm I'll be just as dead is if you used a
gun," the man observed, "and you'll be on your own at forty miles-an-hour."
	"You survived Doreen," the girl replied, "and she's pretty funny."
	"I've had almost ten years to get used to my daughter," Tip
explained.
	"Hmm," the girl intoned dramatically, "you're a survivor.  Maybe I
can tell a story or two after all."
	(Now we're getting somewhere.)

	Valerie's brother, George, once shot Jimmy, the tame crow, but he
took the resultant teasing well and no one held his stalwart ledgermaine
and weapon craft again' him.  Jimmy was shot cleanly and kicked the bucket
in the dooryard; neither cruelty nor intention were involved.  George was
an excellent basketball player and used to piss me off by head faking me,
which actually was unkind, since I'd never even held a basketball before
moving to Stonington and should, by rights, have been cut a little slack
while I got up to speed against kids that had played incessantly since they
were five years old.  (Many factors go into the making of a virtuoso.  One
of them is being humiliated in the athletic arena, engendering
discouragement, and thus returning the clumsy dork to his rightful place in
the library.)
	George Dunham was both avid and persistent.  True, he may not have
had brilliant ideas about harvesting clams at high tide, like his younger
brother, but, in his own way he wanted to make his mark.  As it happened,
there was a truly outstanding ball handler in town by the name of Gary
Webb.  Gary was six three, loose, lanky yet feline, and to the hoops born
and bred.  George wanted to play under him, but had nothing to offer in
payment... duh'uh; if he'd really had nothing, would I be wasting your time
telling the story?  He had, Margaret said to Tip -- they were now safely
parked, last letter delivered, on the all-but abandon road leading to the
definitely abandon Oceanville quarry -- his kid sister, Valerie.  Now this
was not another case of Jimmy the crow; an overly tame victim of a wild
species standing dumbly in the path of a speeding bullet.  Valerie thought
Gary Webb was awesomeness, personified.  The fact he was double her eleven
years was nothing against him, in her view; he had almost her own big brown
eyes, a dead-handsome face framed in brown hair and boasting clear
light-brown skin molded over high cheekbones and a wide, tense mouth that
seldom smiled, always talked sense, and wasn't outwardly rude in dismissing
the flibbertigibbet wanna-be writer from New York as unlikely to be worth
anyone's time, ever.

	"Have you ever seen him in the locker room?" Valerie asked her
sixteen year old brother.
	"He scrimmages with us after school," George replied.
	The girl blushed prettily and waited patiently.  (This shows what
an exquisitely delicate art fiction is.  Waited patiently?  Sure, it's a
follow-on adage like damn Yankee or disgruntled worker, but it destroys the
flow of the story for the engaged reader because there is no way on earth
little Valerie was waiting `patiently'.)
	The two had ridden their bicycles out to the far tip of Oceanville;
they knew there would be a gang swimming by the bridge, but both wanted to
talk even though neither was sure of even the first word they might have to
say to each other.
	Valerie had broken the ice, and being the more loquacious of the
two quiet souls, continued: "I really like it when you wear your varsity
uniform."
	"It's great for riding," George acknowledged.
	"Gary looks really good in his, too," the girl said.  Another girl
might have sighed, but in spite of her exotic beauty, Valerie was not much
given to airs and simpering.
	"He asks about you all the time," the big brother said.
	"What do you tell him?" Valerie replied, glad to have some empty
hours ahead; glad to be alone with her handsome brother and away from the
hubbub of six people living in a small house.
	"I make up stories," George said.  "I tell him you're pretty, I
tell him you're nice.  Just stories."
	"Did you mention that I have a meathead brother?" she asked.
	"He wouldn't be interested," George said.
	"Did you mention this?" Valerie said, blushing less gently and
pulling down the sleeve opening of her frock so her brother could see the
fabric of her bra.
	"When did you get that?" George sputtered, doing plenty of blushing
of his own.
	"It wasn't exactly a dire necessity," the girl quipped.  "Do you
want to see?"
	Valerie wasn't quite in Margaret's league when it came to the
opposite sex, but she wasn't lame, either.  She didn't expect her brother
to say anything, and, sure enough, a big cat had his tongue.  Never mind.
	"There's a catch in the back," she instructed.  "If you push the
two slides slightly together it reveals a magic show, or so the girl-talk
would have it.  Then repeat the process when you get to the nitty-gritty,
and, so they say, you'll get to see some pretty where it fitty."


	"You're birds of feather, aren't you."  It wasn't a question but an
observation which indicated that Tip was not quite sure whether one
lifetime was sufficient for two such females, Japan or no Japan.
	"When rabbits fly, we'll be birds," the girl replied enigmatically
but not so inscrutably as to be indecipherable.  "Amen," the postman
whispered to himself at the end of a long string of unspoken yearnings
concerning his fortune.  It wasn't any lack of this mysterious quality of
life that plagued his thoughts, but rather simply surviving such piles and
piles of the stuff landing right on his head, or, oh my god, in his
lap... with a feathery, brushing touch that dimmed the world like a cloud a
million feet thick.  There was another million.  A voice.  A million miles
away.  Ever so faint but utterly irresistible.  It sang of a handsome
sixteen year old boy and his sylph of a kid sister, of a meadow and a quiet
summer afternoon.

	Wordlessly the girl rolled slowly from her knees to her stomach,
lying flat on the grass with her hands under her delicate chin.  In three
trances and a daze, George moved to her, and kneeled over the small of her
back.
	"The hair's meant to be sexy," she whispered, "but you can move it
if you want to."
	More silence.  "Well, little wonder," the girl reflected; "after
all, I am his sister."  Her musings came to an end when she realized
silence was an exaggeration.  George was panting, not like a sprinter, but
deeply and steadily.  "May he never catch his breath," she wished to
herself, half-panting in her own right with the effort it took not to
hurry, hurry her brother along.
	He was slow, but he got there.  She felt George's fingers running
through her just washed brown tresses, parting them.
	"Lean forward.  Lean down on me," she instructed.
	"I can't," George said.
	So the gossip was true; boys could be embarrassed by the natural
inclinations of their bodies.  Strange that such super neat stuff could
mortify, but common sense, and all the kids running around, said they must
get over their self-consciousness.
	"If I come up to you I'm going to look like a donkey," she
encouraged.  For a moment, she was going to say ass, but he was, after all,
her brother, and it was their first time.  Discretion was -- and I'm
warning you here and now -- the better part of Valerie.

	Sears Roebuck has good, better and best -- everything from tires to
toothpaste.  If reticence was the girl's better part, her best was scantily
hidden and soon revealed; a long, slim neck presented in her patent white
skin.

	"Lie forward on me," the girl reminded the boy.  "Pretend you're
going to kiss me right between the ears, and if that makes you nervous,
don't pretend."

	He didn't.
	"Don't be so shy," she encouraged, feeling his weight shift with
the same methodical deliberation that made him Stonington's best math
student.
	But who knew he'd cheat.  Yes, he lay slowly and fully on her slim,
tender back, but mounted so low, well, figure the geometry for yourself...
	"George..." she whined, not wanting to nag but at the same time
half wanting to slap him up-side the head.  She wriggled imperiously,
scooting herself down along his body, tenderly pleased his instincts were
so gracious and gentle.  She'd debated with herself over George, his
younger brother, Dickie, and Gary Webb for her great girl moment, and so
far was pleased with her shy, gentle choice: a choice she didn't want to be
too pleased with, not with Margaret Weed as very friendly competition in
the Exciting World of Wild Wonder.
	"Pretend I'm a redhead," she was still able to giggle, "and part
the Red Sea."  George understood the silly metaphor, and divided her
tresses to find her neck.  By this time, she had wriggled herself more the
better underneath him, which had the effect of stopping Moses in his
tracks.
	"Oh, George," she whispered.
	"I'm sorry, I can't help it," he responded.
	"It's okay," she said: "are you still inside your shorts?"
	"No," he grunted, "I wear something when I play ball, but I didn't
put it on today."
	"I'm glad," she replied, adding: "it's the best thing."
	"You're sure?" he queried.
	"Oh, yes..." she responded without hesitation, and fitting action
to words, wriggled herself lower under his athletic teen body.

	For long moments they lay in the grass, dazed, stunned and poleaxed
with ethereal communion and a sacred oneness far transcending everything of
all religions combined.  If the chopping of the churches had always seemed
somehow wrong-headed and beside the point, now the activities of rack and
furnace seemed downright bizarre.  It could be summed up: theirs was not to
reason why, theirs was but to lie and lie.  Made an' old heap of sense,
ayah.

	The Red Sea may have been an outright fake, but Moses, perhaps
blinded by the light, didn't see it that way and soon enough had it parted
as neatly as Solomon would have parted the baby.  Valerie could feel his
hot breath on the back of her neck.  Yes, she sighed happily, and yes, the
devil made her do it.  Would she be happy ignoring the Creator of
sandflies, obesity, Tyne Daley, and a million human miseries times a
million more?  Get thee behind me, Yahweh, and let's find out.

	George, as a big brother, had zipped his sister up a hundred times
over the years, yea god.  Now came the great reversal of his fortunes; the
clasp, the little metal tongue, the downward path, yea Satan

	"Don't forget your shirt," Valerie whispered as her zipper inched
its way toward perdition.  As there is a time for sowing and reaping, so
there are times for lingering and haste.  George reared like a stallion,
but instead of pawing the air -- admittedly, a temptation -- he stripped
his letter jersey off in a trice and fell quickly back onto his sister,
kissing her between the shoulder blades as he eased the zipper ever
downward toward the silky child's slim waist.  The task took less than five
minutes.  He spread the fabric of her frock and gently brought his athletic
chest to bear on her exquisitely delicate frame.
	"That feels so amazing," Valerie sighed as she felt his naked skin
against her own.  The carnality astounded George, too.  Stunned him.
Blanked his mind, then shrank it to the size of a withered pea.  Nor was
the sensation of her lithe, feline grace against him entirely to blame
because he still had in his heart and mind enough wit and quickness to
wonder at how she would feel against him when he had gently, tenderly, and
lovingly stripped her blouse completely off, and rolled her over to lie
pressed softly against her immature chest.


	"Do you know what diametric means?" Margaret asked Tip.
	"It's a precursory adjective," the postman said, "like
`Always-Rings' precedes `Twice' as a precursory verbal clause.  `Diametric'
always precedes `opposite'."
	"Very good," the girl said: "that saves me a lot of explanation,
because what I wanted to say is that George and Valerie are the diametric
of what I want for you and me when we're out at the town dump."
	"You want to be goosed, pillaged, ravaged and shamed?"
	"Bull's-eye."
	"Eye?"
	"Very good."
	There comes a point on the agonizingly unending road to virtuosity
when one can snap off a sketch and turn the page.  I do hope I've reached
it.


	"George?" Valerie said softly into the grass at her chin.
	"Yes," the sixteen year old managed to croak.
	"Do you know what happens if you don't tag-up when you're running
the bases?"
	"You're called Out," the male said.
	"I mention it," the girl continued in the softest, sweetest voice
imaginable, "because I feel your fingers on my strap, and if you get to
second base without touching first base..."
	George blushed with embarrassment.  If rules were written to be
broken, apparently his little sister hadn't been told.  Sensing her
brother's discomfiture, the girl cooed that she was just teasing him, but,
be that as it may, she'd never been kissed, not really, and now might be
a...
	"Boys!" she couldn't help thinking to herself with the mildest
intolerance possible.  He'd begun to roll her over without unsnapping her.
If his head wasn't attached, he'd leave it at school.  She reminded him
with a demur giggle.  He responded clumsily.  Boys!

	"That's better," she said softly, two huge eyes staring up at her
brother who'd mounted himself above her on extended arms.  Valerie's arms
were at her sides and she raised them to the powerful male torso just above
her, coaxing him to join her.  Inch-by-inch they came together, noses
touching as softly as landing butterflies before their lips met as softly
as butterfly babies.

	Some minutes later she was able to speak.  "The next girl that
complains to me about only making it to first base with her boyfriend is
going to get hit in the head with a stone," she said.  George was way
beyond a speaking part in the little drama being acted out on the
sun-drenched meadow at the northern tip of Oceanville, but he had a vaguely
realized notion that any stone held in such a preciously tiny hand could
hardly threaten a mouse, much less a man.  Nonetheless, if she liked it so
much...

	Some minutes later she was able to speak.  "The next girl that
complains to me about not wanting to go to second base with her boyfriend
is going to get hit in the head with a stone," she said.  For a moment the
refrain about one not being able to get there from here gnawed at George
for the delicate child felt so beautiful, soft and warm pressed gently
beneath him, and her lips were so tender, delicate and delicious, that any
though of leaving seemed a monstrous joke and totally out sync with
survival, to say nothing of bliss.
	"Look around, George," he groaned to himself: "see all the kids?
Other men have done it.  Grow up."

	The bad news was that it was a long way between bases; under the
circumstances, maybe a million and a half miles.  The good news was that
there were no fielders, refs or umps.  He had the field to himself.  Horns
of a dilemma?  Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it don't toll for he.
Know why?  Come on: I work hard on these stories, participate, engage
yourself.  At least guess.  Why no tears for George's conundrum?  Time's
running out and you're going to kick yourself.  Duh'uh: because he had a
cheerleader.
	Tactful?  Pretty much so, for an eleven year old.  By this I mean
she didn't chant out loud: George, George / he's my man / if he can't do it
/ Gary can.  Indeed, she was ashamed of the very thought.  Her brother was
a doll; self-effacing, especially after poor Jimmy Crow had fluttered
himself off to the great spreading oak tree in the sky.  Perfect.

	"Do you think we're God's children because we're so smart?" she
asked her occasionally aloof and pre-occupied brother.
	"It's the only thing that makes sense," George replied, continuing
a long running discussion on the whys and wherefores of spirituality.  "I
mean there has to be some reward for the thousands of books it takes to
prove beyond the least shadow of doubt that no one else has the answer."
	"I'll bet Mom and Dad would let us sleep together if we were
reading; two can do it as cheaply as one."  Yes, she threw a little
prurient suggestability into her conversation.  Why?  Because she had
gotten him to speak.  I've describe, elsewhere, Margaret as a genius.
Valerie, too.  The winsome pixie knew without experience that the one true
phallus wasn't carried around in a male's unmentionables.  Today we call it
bonding, and one option is literacy -- it might even be said it's that or
prematurity and superficiality.  As art relates to the only real
spirituality -- faith free, in other words -- so it (spirituality) impacts
love.  The caveat is that insight comes at obviously great cost, as does
expertise in sports, music and many other fields.  The faster my stories
become promulgated into the general population, the faster more kids will
learn the thrill of reading -- writing -- the tympani of magic that is the
English language, with fine reverberations from the other great languages
of the world, and particularly Caribbean Creole, and its ethereal parent,
African Creole: above all vis a vee Lucky Duby, Bob Marley and their often
ethereal consort.  (If I dance well, check the sounds and dip your hat and
murmer a fervent real prayer of thanks to the orchestra.)

	The wonder of the world is its imperfections, especially those
which turn out to be survivable.  Author's note: if my mother was
survivable, don't you worry `bout no ghosts.  A case in point, as far as
imperfections go, was Valerie and George.  If one writes well enough about
one's language, he can half-buffalo the reader into thinking it's a be-all,
end-all.  It had spurred George into the best part of a hundred words.
Hmm.  Seems to be losing its punch.  Maybe ye who one day translates this
to a foreign tongue can do better.

	"Sometimes if a party tells two other parties they are truly made
for each other, it helps the relationship of the latter mentioned parties."
Most girls would have had to as for a translation but Valerie had read and
re-read Louisa May Alcott repeated; moved on to Jane Austen, and was now
seducible on presentation of any Georgette Heyer or Willa Cather, with a
sweet smile for an Agatha Christie.  In other words, her language skill
were up to par, and she read George's cryptic comment accurately.
	"You really think he's that perfect," Valerie said, picking up her
end of the conversation.
	"You asked about the locker room, remember?" he asked.

	I really should give the translators a paragraph of their own for
Valerie's response.
	GO:










	"Not really," the girl whispered, her eyes bigger than ever.

	"There's more," George said.  How typical of the young man she
shared house and heart with that he became loquacious when talking of
someone else.
	"What?" she asked, blushing to the new, raw husk in his voice.
	"Something happened with us," the sixteen year old said.  "It's
over, but you should know.  Level playing fields and all that good English
separation from the animal kingdom -- of history."
	"It was okay?" Valerie asked.
	"More aesthetic than you commonly read about," George replied.
	"Has he been with lots of girls?"
	"I don't know.  He didn't get where he is by dallying with anybody,
so I doubt it.  He chose me for simplicities sake, which was some-odd weeks
after I chose him."
	"Sounds borderline romantic," Valerie observed.
	"I was lucky," her brother answered, "I had you.  All those healthy
years."
	"Good point," she said, "because you may be right, but, personally,
I would have been happy alone here with you when I was any age I can think
back on, without having to hassle with diapers, that is."
	Pretty funny.  George laughed.
	"Picking the fruit early," he commented.
	"Girls are -- believe it or not -- more complex than fruit.  When
they want to, how they want to, and with whom they want to become women is
individualistic and subjective; relative and conditional.  They can as
easily be `raped' to a disturbing degree by denial as by force of arms;
unrequited love is only entertaining in comics.  Often, it amounts to
needless torture that can last for years.  Confusion.  Nausea.  There's
hardly a respectable symptom that isn't on the crummy list, including
obesity, starvation and suicide.  Bring us up in a cocoon, leaving out the
stories and rumors, or let us free."
	We may like her, we may respect her, but we're not going to ordain
her.  Sermon over before the sexton could get half-way to the collection
plate with it's long, efficient handle.

	"This is so perfect," she sighed on the way down from her pulpit.
	"It's hard to just enjoy it," George acknowledged.  "So much goes
into it; to the reasonable displacement of taboo with love and logic."
	"If living it is such a challenge," the girl said, adding a
codicil, "imagine what it must take to write it."
	"Well," George said, "no one ever has."

	"Are you comfortable?" Valerie asked.
	"You'll be the first to know; I'll tell you the moment I get my
body back."
	"Don't hurry," she said; "yours is with mine, and mine is very
comfortable."
	"Give mine the best," he said with a trace of a grin.
	"Take it for yourself," she said, getting as near saucy as was her
wont.

	George reared slowly, and if he pawed the air, someone, somewhere
had to invent thunder to go with all the lightning.
	"You can sit against me, I like it," Valerie whispered, her big
eyes fixed on his.
	George lowered himself to her waist, leaning forward at the open
beckon of the big, brown eyes.  He traced her neck and her angel shoulders
with the finger tips of both hands, working slowly over the veins tracing
her translucent, milky skin.  Her hips rose to him.  He'd been kneed and
elbowed on the court numerous times; chicken feed.  Her straps were free
from her shoulders, the flimsy pink fabric seemed to disappear half by
magic.  He tried to stare at her, and into her eyes, finally compromising
by baring the right nipple looking into her eyes, and long moments later,
her left looking at her panting chest.

	"Touch me," she whispered, swelling like a dry sponge dipped in
water.  He did.
	"I can't believe we're only half way to home base," she said.
	George was once again mute.  His eyes danced a gentle waltz between
her eyes, her breasts, and then down to himself, swollen like he'd never
imagined and half pressed against the white belly.
	Valerie ran her right hand down the teen male's left inner thigh.
"You're beginning to get an incy wincy hairy," she said, unable to keep the
awe of him from her sparkling eyes because she wasn't even trying.
	"Did Gary touch you like this?" she asked.

	What a girl.  He couldn't for a minute imagine her tolerating much
of a fool, much of a player, much of a sportsmen as they were once called,
but within the tight corral of her intellect and moral being, was room for
a small herd of worthy stallions.

	"Almost exactly," he smiled.
	"Tell me; I like second base," she suggested.
	"I was over at his house after practice," George said, "just after
Christmas, 1956, when I was twelve.  His family's Christmas mail got mixed
up, and he got a tube top and pink shorts that were meant for his cousin in
Princeton; a whole outfit; pumps, jewelry.  At first it was, you know, a
hoot.  He couldn't wait to show me, then, guess what? it turned out they
were all my size.  Underwear and all."
	"I knew I'd get jealous sooner or later," the girl winked.
	"Not to worry," he said, "they're just right for you now.  He's
been saving them.  It's about three hundred dollars worth of super goodies.
Meant to be a surprise, so don't forget to act next time you're over at his
house.  You know, surprised."

	"You're a bad brother," she whispered.
	"For telling, or keeping it a secret for four years?"
	"You want me to think?" she replied, using one of the Margaretisms
imported from the streets of Brooklyn.
	"Already," he added, filling out the expression.
	"Already, what?" she asked.

	He forgot, that fast.  She was so beautiful, now with her bra
completely free of her young body, piled neatly on top of his letter
jersey.  She had found him, free of underpants, and in a few dizzying
moments they were rock solid on second base.  Since it was better than
ever, she prompted him to continue his story.

	"It snowed, so I stayed over.  His parents were trapped off-island,
so it was just the two of us."
	"How did it start, music?" Valerie asked, neatly verifying her
status as world's best sister, then she blushed at the obvious inanity and
did her sweet, modest imitation of Elvis Presley.  "It was Eddie Cochran,
"Three Steps to Heaven," George said.  If she hadn't been the w.b.s. he
might not have added to this simple sketch, but she was, the very best.
"We started talking about you," he said, "and he said he thought you were a
honeycomb of the bee's knees.  You were eight, he was eighteen.  Even then,
I thought it was exciting, because he didn't just talk about all your
brains, he asked me if I'd ever seen you in the shower."
	"Had you?" the girl asked.
	"I had a problem," the boy admitted, "any time you were in there, I
wasn't able to exactly stand up and walk."
	"Do you know how many times I fell against the wall of the shower?"
Valerie asked.
	"I though you were practicing dancing, or something."
	"Or something," she said.
	"Me, too," George said, reddening.
	"And you told Gary?" she asked.
	"Not right away.  His dad called to be sure we were okay and told
us we could have three beers, two for him and one for me.  Then he
remembered the box from Princeton, and we went up to see it."
	"Did his voice get funny?" Valerie quizzed.
	"I thought it was the beer," George said with a rare half-grin.
"To be more honest, I was afraid it was the beer."
	"You liked it?"
	"Yes."
	"I'll keep it a secret," the girl promised, because I thought that
was more of a girl thing; half of what they talk about with Tip McCorison
is how his voice gets when things get special."
	"It would not in about six hundred zillion years have had any
effect on me from him, or any guy I ever met," George said, "except Gary."
	"I'm so glad you're as smart as I am," the little one peeped, "it
makes life ever so much fuller."
	"We're pretty lucky," George acknowledged.
	"Don't let me interrupt," the girl nudged.

	"Gary said he wanted to keep the clothes for you, and the beer had
made me a little silly -- you know me.  I asked him if he wanted a preview
because I guess I looked a lot like we knew you would when you got to be
twelve.  It started out honest, honest.  But his voice got that way and he
looked at me and I looked back at him.  How he got your eyes, I'll never
know, but he half-way does, and he said I had yours, and wasn't it weird.
	"We both started breathing hard.  `Have you ever done anything?' he
asked me.  I told him just when you were in the shower I did things in my
room if Dickie wasn't home.
	"He asked me if I wanted to talk about stuff like that, because we
could listen to WBZ or talk about the Celtics if I wanted to.
	"Then I said it was okay, and his voice got really sick sounding
and he asked me if I'd done anything and I told him I hadn't.  He said lots
of boys learn with older boys, but more than half of boys didn't, and I had
to be sure.
	"One thing I definitely was, was sure, and I told him so, and by
that time my voice was shaking just like his and we were both yawning."
	"I wonder," Valerie queried, "if there is any difference at all
between boys and girls on the way to first base."
	"I guess not," George said, and continued: "so we went on with
looking at the clothes standing real close together.  We hadn't changed
after practice so I could feel all of his arm against mine, and when I
looked into his sleeve I could see his chest going up and down just like
mine."

	"No difference, I peeked before you took your shirt off."
	"We got to the bra.  `You wanna,' he whispered.  `Okay', I said and
he said I could change in the bathroom.
	"I wish I'd been a fly on that wall," Valerie whispered in a voice
hardly healthier than her beautiful brother's.
	"It had it's aesthetic side," the boy repeated, "I guess that's why
they get mad if graven images are held forth.  One good peek, and there
would go two million sinecures preaching opposing doctrine.  No kiddie
porn, but enough war and political disaster to keep armies standing and
tanks rolling.  Meantime, the Polynesians and vast hoards of their sane
brethren are laughing at the crab that walks on broken feet."
	"Too bad we don't get to laugh, too," the pixie observed,
typically, forgetting herself and thinking of others.
	"So..." she intoned, never a long-winded preacher to make.
	"We chose the blouse and shorts together and Gary turned up the
thermostat in honor of the occasion.  Then I took the silky stuff into the
bathroom so I could surprise him; pink, light blue, and frost green."
	"You are totally ruining my surprise," the girl observed.
	"Oops," said the boy, feeling it was the world's smallest mistake,
but still, it would be nice to be perfect, really perfect, just once in his
life, aside from when it came to plugging crows from six feet away.
	"Don't be a lunatic," she reprimanded Old Serious Joe, as she
sometimes called him.
	"If I tell you which one I wore, would that spoil anything?"  He
might be serious, but he was dead quick when he needed to be.
	"It's not time for more Jesuit cuteness," she said, letting a touch
of frost into her voice and thus earning the thanks of readers over the
centuries in their millions.
	Did that mean Third Base?  He was openly fondling the child with
both hands; she had extracted his big teen boner almost completely from his
uniform shorts, and as she cut short the verbiage was experimenting
seriously with the quickly-learned technique of making a male wildly happy
with unbelievably minimal effort.  She decided what they had was good
enough for them at their ages; if it weren't broke, don't fix it.

	"I picked the green as seasonal," he said, apparently also
interested in endearing readers.
	"It sounds like Christmaxxx," she said, reciting a new code all the
girls except Audrey were talking about, courtesy of Margaret and her city.
	"It was definitely mirror, mirror, on the door," he said.  Serious
Joe he might be, but when he was funny he had a way of cutting through the
gloom.  Lucky Gary.
	"So it was you and Gary, and one of these days I'm going to have to
decide who's the fairest of them all."
	"Only witches want to know," George said, so utterly happy he
didn't think he could stand it for another live-long minute.
	"I'm glad you weren't thinking bee's when you said witches,"
Valerie intoned.
	"Gary has got to bring you back, you know," George said.  "He can't
keep you until you're sixteen.  Mom and Dad both say so.  Just for your
information."
	"Well, if they say so..." the girl teased.
	"I didn't?" he asked, letting a trace of Margaret's rollicking New
Yorkese slip into his voice.  (They were both great fans of the girl, but
knew they'd never be able to make up their minds about the city.)
	"You should count?"
	"You just haven't seen me in green," he tried, feeling the comment
wasn't as lame on second thought as it seemed when he spoke it.  Always the
edge so close at hand; the tawdry, the bawdy, making it not an ethereal,
and yes, gently funny commune, but a ranker, courses, - - thank you ma'am
(or man). No place for it in this meadow, green as it surely was.

	Third Base did beckon; exerted a siren call as old as antiquity
itself.  Very, very soon.
	"Are you ready?" he asked, taking his hands from her tiny breasts
and placing them very low on her flanks and against his own thighs.
	"Yes," she whispered, no longer playful in the least.

	Good.  That gives me an opportunity to break in with a little
levity, or at least that's how I always feel you'll take things -- you
know, the good old `with a grain of salt' - , when I go off on one of my
God-at-your-service tangents.  But two miracle cures in one afternoon
deserves inclusion, however readers (and those poor translators) take it.
The first was Marie, Karen's mother, suddenly down with a ripping fever and
a distinct lump at the site of her liver.  I was called in.  Marie felt
hot, especially at the base of her neck.  There were five other people in
the room, and I compared her feel to all of them.  The lump was rigid and
the size of a fist.  I thought it might be appendix, but an old-hand
retired nurse lives next door, and she took a look and said it was more
likely to be her liver, as it was immediately below her right diaphragm.
She'd been to the hospital that morning, with a temperature of 42
Centigrade, which is five degrees over the normal 37 degrees.  In my basic
conversion, that comes out to about 103 F.
	While I'm not a doctor, I was married to a high-caliber nurse, and
my grandmother served her father the doctor for many years before she
married; knew a thing or two.  She seemed like a hot cookie, although her
forehead was not particularly hot.  Anyhow, the upshot was that I went down
at seven to see if the taxi had arrived to take her to the hospital, and
found her up and about, no fever, no lump -- in about three hours.  Miracle
two was this wonder machine, which suddenly went through a series of no
less than twenty strange crashes.  I'm a member of a fan club; `sure,'
you're snickering, `the one and only overpopulated one which resideth in
your own mind', but no, as a matter of fact, the computer fan club, which
is populated by those who've experienced multitudinous donut fan failures
and related CPU problems.  Anyway, the fan was spinning and free of dust.
Gulp.  But I kept at it, I know not how, and now it's been burning away for
two hours as flawlessly as always.  And a note, while we're on the subject:
the best training in the world for a writer is to suddenly lose a few
pages, and have to re-write immediately to keep the story moving.  It's the
hardest of hardball.  I've done it, from a paragraph or two, to ten or more
pages, something like one hundred times.  The terribly frustrating aspect
of the whole horrible reality is that the writing almost always comes out
better on the second transcription; often notably better.  This means
everything should be torn up, thrown out, and re-done.  Taken to an extreme
this would mean that "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" should never have been
sent to the publisher.  Nonetheless, it is wheat-from-chaff drill of the
fourth kind (for god's sake, don't try it at home).
	One of these days I'll get into my rant on hairbreadth escapes from
death, including three in five hours around Phu Bai and Marble Mountain.
Several are easily repeatable for skeptics.  Well, later, because this was
meant to be a playful diversion; variations on a theme of conceit, as it
were.

	Valerie was wearing white shorts with a nautical macramé belt.
One finger freed it.  She spread her arms as if she were going to make a
small crop circle in the shape of a snow-angel and raised her slim, boyish
hips.  She had a wisp of her now lanky hair in her mouth and a trace of dew
on her lips and cheeks.  George knew if he hesitated, she'd wriggle, and he
half-wanted to, but she was the w.b.s. so he skinned her naked as the day
she was born in less than two minutes.
	No mouthes on Second.  First and Third, yes, that's what they were
there for, but second was meant to be just hands.  Since Valerie was ahead
of him, George slipped off the girl, let her strip him, superfluous,
because all that he had -- six and a half inches -- hadn't been hidden at
all for the longest time, and lay her, legs splayed, across his
half-kneeling lap.  He placed his athlete's left arm around her, and found
her with his right hand very much as she had found him.  Her arms lay
frozen at her sides; he understood, he'd hardly been able to move when
she'd masturbated him.
	Their sweating and panting went on for long minutes.  They rolled
against each other.  Took short breaks to rediscover the half-lost
pleasures of first base, and dreamed of the second half of the diamond.

	Style is one thing a writer has to learn to flaunt.  Regrettably,
part of this is consistency, and a pattern of inane interruptions, once
fairly begun, must be maintained.  (Living in the hurricane rich Caribbean,
this becomes something of a sink or swim issue, more's the pity.)  In the
present instance, I need to place Celine Dion beside Lucky Duby, with a
footnote acknowledging that along with some impossible ballads such as "The
Power of Love", which takes one off the planet when played on a big system
in a small room, she churns out an awful lot of for-money sounding dreck
(and yes, so did Mozart) Does this mean moments of gold, flashes of light,
exceeding my own?  Yes.  Of course, one of the real tricks is maintaining
the tearing voltage a thousand pages at a time, one hundred percent dreck
free, but, hey, I'm a guy.  Built for it.  Bringing up the greatest human
to ever live.  Jackie Chan, along with my great uncle who established
Western Electric, and, for good measure, the Bell Labs.  (No transistors,
now millennial showboating.)  Another real smash hit is "I'm the World's
Greatest."  Yeah, but only as a writer.  I can't ski worth a damn
anymore. (ONLY as a writer?)

	If everything doesn't come to a young couple in love, the Bases do.
They did not have to get up and run, in other words.  Valerie added her
lips and tongue to her stroking and fondling hands first George followed
suit and they traded at ten minute intervals, wildly with each other,
instinctively holding back and scintibrink last moments, stretching their
first time to make up for its high dues in terms of time spent waiting and
time spent reading.
	For a long time they were fully against each other, but both felt
this was more a novelty than a sex act, so they returned to alternating
currents so they could speak.

	"What's the ending like?" Valerie asked.
	"Dramatic," George uttered spontaneously, reddening.  "I mean,
well, dramatic."
	"Did you get to home with Gary?"
	"What a question," quoth the teen.  "Yes and no."
	"They have run-downs -- get outta town."
	"No, no," he said.  "Making it to Home means you, you know, lose
control -- the boy does -- inside the girl.  Otherwise, it's Third.  But we
didn't do it that way, where he was inside me or I was inside his, you
know, but we still lost control with each other -- so if it's not a
run-down, it's not exactly home, but it's not third, because it's as far as
we could got with each other, which isn't third base."
	"Are you trying to be funny?" Valerie asked.
	"I guess it just came out stupid," George said with a blush.
	"How are we going to do it?" she asked, ignoring a saucy instinct
to try a play on words.  Yes, the behavior and attitude of a cleric; if she
could only preach on and on.
	"It depends if you want to watch it happen, like I did with Gary,
or have it happen inside you, which is meant to be pretty special."
	"Both?" she asked.
	"If we were careful together, I could start where you could see,
then keep going inside you until it was over."
	"That sounds like a hard thing to get right the first time,"
Valerie observed.
	"Gary taught me what it feels like, so it might be possible as long
as you were really wet inside, and helped me with your hands.  You'd have
to listen to what I said, because I wouldn't be able to speak.  Of course,"
he added, "if we want to try Third, I should let it happen in your mouth,
and you should have your orgasm against my lips."
	"We could try another game," Valerie pointed out.
	"How about just going home?" George suggested.
	"You talked me into it." the girl responded.

	"Did he really?" Tip asked Margaret.
	"Yes," she said, "nothing lasts forever, there shouldn't even be
such a word because it's meaningless, and to prove a point, their foreplay
had, looking back on it, a beginning, a middle, and, believe it or not, an
ending.
	"They did better than we're going to," the postman observed.
	"You've got that right," Margaret said.

	It took the brother and sister just a few moments to arrange
themselves and each other crucially.  George lay on his left side, his head
on his hand.  Valerie lay close beside him, her right arm stretched out so
she held his neck in the crook of her slim elbow.  With her tiny right
hand, she masturbated him, guided by his hot breath in her ear.
	"About two minutes like this," he said.  "I won't be able to talk
any more."
	"I don't think you'll have to," the girl was barely able to
whisper, herself.
	Even though she was right handed, the girl managed to be steady and
diligent with the sixteen year old.  "Are you sure you're going to be ready
for me?" he was able to whisper, concern for his beloved's comfort slicing
the thick devil's fog rapidly clouding his brain.
	"Yes," she whispered.

	Now she knew further speech would be impossible, though he managed
a series of hot groans, moans and grunts that were fiery swords layed
across and across her tender eleven-year-old body.

	Even though they were unable to speak they were so close she was
able to picture him distinctly, twelve years old, emerging from the
upstairs bathroom at Gary Webb's house, dressed in the shorts and tube top,
and Gary's eyes smoking as the young boy entered his bedroom.

	"Did you check the mirror?" the eighteen year old asked in twice
the rasp George had heard previously.
	"It's on the door, I couldn't miss it," the boy let the beer say.
False courage.  He entered.  Gary was sitting on the bed and he approached,
arms hanging at his side.  Neither spoke for long moments.  George eased
close and bucked his hips slightly toward his older friend.  Gary's hands
went slowly to the child's naked midriff, hesitating an inch from his hot
flesh, seeking final permission.
	"I've only done this a few times with one man," the teen said, "so
I'm not exactly an expert."
	"That's okay," George whispered.
	"You look really good, and you still don't look anything like a
girl," the basketball star said.
	"That's a relief," said the boy.  "It's not something I'd like to
be confused on."
	"If the clothes fit, I'd wear them for you.  I'd wear my mother's
but somehow I don't think it would be the same thing."
	George couldn't help giggling.  First beer.  Dressed like a girl,
and a stunning one at that, who could remain strictly sober?
	His fingers were hot as fire as he found the boy's belly.  "One
half pound overweight," he whispered at the tiny softness of the white
belly.  "I'm always a few pounds under so maybe we can do a little
trading."
	"Do you want to get naked?" George asked.
	"Yes," Gary said.  He rose from the bed and left for the bathroom
without feeling the need for any fatuous instructions to his pupil about
staying where he was.  In a few moments there was a gentle knock on the
closed door, and a whisper from the other side.  George was ready and said
so.  The door opened slowly, like the curtain on a zillion dollar Broadway
production.
	The producers had spent well.  Six foot Gary was now totally
different from the athlete in the locker room who changed and showered as a
matter of course.  "It's not much easier the second time than the first
time," he said, arms hanging at his side, matching George.  His penis was
nine-inches long, thick, circumcised, and slightly bent to his right side.
(While the athlete had always demonstrated a casual nonchalance in the
locker room, it was with duplicate nonchalance that the other boys, older
and younger, always happened to be close at hand.)
	"Am I okay?" the teen asked the boy.  George nodded and felt a
slight twinge of relief.  He though Gary might refer to his penis as it --
`is it okay?' -- which would diminish something phallic.
	"Can I pretend you're Valerie?" he asked, his voice croaking so
raggedly he might have been hard to understand in another context.
	"As long as I can pretend you're Gary."  There was that brewski
again.
	"Do you want to dance?" the taller male asked.
	"Yes," George said, his eyes just as big as his sisters.
	"Kissing is kind of different than the other stuff," Gary whispered
as they swayed to Elvis singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"  "Some boys
like it and some think it's queer, that's what my uncle told me, so I'll
leave it up to you."
	"Do you want to?" George asked.
	"I don't know," Gary replied.  "I never did with Uncle Stan; I've
never kissed anyone, which is something I hope you'll promise not to tell."

	It was already the world's safest secret, but why take any chances?
George tilted back his head and the six-foot teenager leaned down to meet
him.  The just pressed together for a few moments, quickly realizing they
were very much made for each other in this department.  On a second try,
their hands unconsciously joined at their waists, and George, even while
experimenting with his lips, was able to encourage Gary to press closer.
However magically hot the huge boner against his slightly soft belly, the
child wanted it hotter yet.  Gary obliged readily and soon the were using
their strong arms to pull themselves to each other while the experimenting
with lips went on.
	"Tell your uncle thanks, from me," George said.
	"He's great," Gary acknowledged.  "Big into healthy stuff, so we
only did things together a dozen or so times.  He told me I'd find somebody
to teach one of these days."
	"I'm glad it was me," George said.
	"And don't forget our cousins in Princeton," Gary reminded him.  "I
don't know how I'd have thought anything up without those clothes."
	"Maybe in the shower," the boy suggested.
	"Easy to say, now," Gary observed, "but it's a scary thing getting
personal with a boy.  Uncle Stan assured me that some kids hate anything to
do with anything that wasn't a girl.  I feel the same way, most of the
time.  Even now, I don't quite know if I'm dancing with you or Val."
	"I do," the beer said.
	"The first night I spent at the lodge with Uncle Stan they played
`Three Steps to Heaven.'  Find a girl you love.  Kiss, and hold her
tightly.  Step three is repeating the first two, because you cant' sing
about more than kissing and holding on the radio."
	"But in real life?" George asked.
	"There is definitely a Step Three."
	"Sounds like it's the next one on the case," George said,
reverberating for Gary what Stan Hopewell had said about people growing in
affectionate environments.
	"Unless you want to go down," the older boy pointed out.
	"This may be my first time," George said, looking down between
their twined young bodies, "but instinct tell me you're not going down
until we've gone all the way..."
	Uncle Stan had also alluded to the possibility of stimulation
enhancing intelligence.  Right again.
	"Not only would I not go down, it would hurt for a long time if we
didn't."
	"You've got to drill me on that new Cousey move," George said, "so
I don't want you hurting."
	"You are going to make one sensational brother in law," Gary
observed, adding: "with the not uninteresting aspect that it will be ten
years before I can hitch myself to your little star.  Guy can get ahead
operating on his own for ten years."
	"She'll be waiting," George assured his friend.
	"With a brother like you, she may like the trip more than the
destination, but there's not much I can do about that."
	"I wouldn't worry," George again assured his friend, "she's as
stick-to-it as you can get.  She's doped it out with Mom and Dad that she
can start dating you, and I mean dating, when she's twelve.  She's so calm
about it she's almost businesslike, but I'll bet a moose and a chair she'll
want to cheat when she's eleven.  It's a little frightening seeing someone
eight years old so positive of something as weird as guys and dolls.  Dad
approves so much he wants her to start picking the stocks for the Lineman's
Pension Fund."
	All good news, and it made Gary Webb very happy.  "Uncle Stan gave
me a copy of the record.  Wanna play it?"  If ever in his life George was
going to respond with the shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits doggerel that went:
"I thought you'd never ask," it would have been at this point in time, but
the moment passed safely and he just nodded his handsome, twelve-year-old
head -- the same one with the big brown eyes that so dramatically reflected
his female sibling.
	They moved to the bed.  George lay back and Gary knelt beside him,
molesting him on his stomach and upper thighs, then peeling off the tube
top, molesting him under the mint-green bra, then removing it, and finally
removing his pink shorts leaving him in girl's panties that matches the
bra.  Then he stood, lacked his fingers behind his neck, and arched his
back, displaying wantonly for the boy.  Holding his fingers an inch apart,
Gary indicated he'd be back in a sec, and returned to the upstairs
bathroom, then reappeared with a hand towel.
	"If you're ever up in Bangor and want to do this with a guy in the
back row of a theater, or a restroom somewhere, be careful," Gary
cautioned, "because men can't control themselves when they're with a boy,
and it can get very messy in no time at all, like all over your shirt and
pants."
	"So it's best to be naked?" George asked, raising his hips still
clad in the vastly tented panties.
	"It's best," Gary affirmed, "although obviously it will be more
embarrassing if you happened to get caught.  The interesting thing is, if
you do get caught, no one will say anything -- you know, say you're in a
bathroom stall or other semi-private place.  Uncle Stan says that for all
the rhetoric of sin and damnation, people are actually very tolerant of
boys experimenting with older males, as long is the boy wants to do it.
They may spout off about it, but when they actually see an attractive young
couple, you might be surprised how slowly they back off, and how often they
turn and look back over their shoulder for a last look at the sodomites as
they walk away."
	Nice to know, but remember, in 1960 there were a lot less people in
the world, and, for sure, a lot less agendized, eighth-literate meatheads.
	By now Gary had his little friend and team-mate completely naked.
George half reclined with his elbows set into the pillow and spread his
legs widely apart.  He had the barest trace of fuzz high on his groin and
an oak solid five inch erection, surprising thick for his age.  He was
circumcised, as was Gary, but straight as the proverbial arrow.
	Gary positioned himself between George's widely spread, long, slim
legs.  He half lay on the child so that the tip of his penis was able to
massage George as he gently thrust his hips.  They stared into each others
eyes as the flames consumed them.  Odd, how this actually was worth dying
for when most roastees in religious history had been blistered and charred
for finicky divergences in liturgical correctness.  Freedom from religion.
That was the ticket.

	"How does it get messy?" George asked, taking a second to glance
and the towel lying beside them on the bed.
	"Sperm," Gary said, blushing at the word.
	"Is there a lot of it?" George asked.
	"Just tablespoons; not like pee; but it goes all over everything if
you're not really careful, and it's thick and white, like Ivory dish
detergent, so it's hard to clean up and easy to see."
	"Does it hurt when it comes out?" the boy inquired.
	"It feels like a lot of big, long sneezes.  It only hurts if you
get excited for a long time, then don't cum.
	"That's what they call it cum.  And you cum, verb, when you let it
spray out of you."
	"How long before you can show me," the curious boy asked.  They
were both panting and sweating, returning from time to time to Step One in
what by now were full French kisses.  He felt the tension rising rapidly in
his mature partner and every instinct told him things could not go on much
longer without dramatic change.

	A few final instructions.  "The older male usually cums off first,"
Gary explained, "so the boy can share it while he's still excited, plus,
the older male usually gets the boy wet with his sperm because it's really
slippery and increases the sensation of what the man does to the boy to
make him cum off.
	"Also, always try to tell your partner when you're going to cum, if
you can.  Sometimes this is hard because you're so excited you can't speak,
and a boy doesn't always know exactly know when his spray will start
because the feelings are very intense, very complicated, and tend to come
and go, just like a sneeze can."
	"What if your sperm gets on my lips?" George asked.
	"Uncle Stan says some boy like to get it in their mouthes; some
girls, too; others don't, and it can even upset an otherwise happy partner.
That's why you try to give a warning when you think you've really lost
control."
	It was all beginning to make sense.  Someone had pasted the wrong
label on the wrong box, and two lives had spiraled together into the
stratosphere; a solid friendship had become rock solid.  Life. Get it half
right and who the hell needed heaven?
	"I've got to cum," Gary whispered.  "This time, I'll just
masturbate on your stomach -- jerk off -- then we can try more advanced
ways later on if you want."
	"Okay," George agreed, thrilled to his toes.  It was really going
to happen.  He was going to see it all from right close up.
	Gary rose until he was solidly balanced on his knees, his legs
widely spread over his little friend.  He molested George with his left
hand, openly fondling him and masturbating his boyishly adult penis while
staring into his eyes.  He knew he didn't have to say anything, that what
was happening was self-evident in his panting, shaking and sweating, but
his uncle had said it to him and he'd found it intensely exciting, so he
waited until he was absolutely sure, then panted "I'm cumming."

	"Oh George," Valerie tried not to scream so half the town could
hear her.
	She'd never guessed.  Never imagined.  Never anticipated.  A few
drops; a little smear, something subdued and delicate as befitted the
majesty of the creative process.  And here he was spraying big long streaks
of his sperm all over her belly, her breasts, and even onto her face and
into her now lanky brown hair.
	"No wonder people used uncouth language to describe what was
happening," she thought to herself, "it was fucking amazing!"
	Then he was on her, roughly on her.  She was almost rough too, as
she guided him to where she had never dreamed of being so wet.
	"Valerie," he whispered.
	He entered her.  The moment she was sure of him, her hands flew to
his athletic young back and her legs flew as if they had minds of their own
around his muscular upper thighs.  With arms and legs she pulled him to
her, but he resisted strongly, frantic about hurting her.  They quickly
compromised; she loosened her tigress grip, he was more a tiger, more bold.
	For minutes they came together, George half-bellowing as he came in
his sister and entered her in an endless slide down a golden lane.
	"You're all the way inside me," she finally said shyly.
	He was now still, save for his panting and shaking which matched
her own.
	"How are you?" he managed to squeak.
	"In heaven," she said.  "Totally.  All of me.  Forever."
	"Any room for your big brother?" he asked, returning fondly to
first base.
	"You and Gary, now and forever," she said.


	"Well," Tip said, "you pass in the story department.  In the past,
that's always been a good sign.  I hold out high hopes."
	He started the car and they drove out of the abandon quarry.
Kelsey Blastow and Mark Billings were biking in the area and saw them
leave.  Within half a day Stonington would be sizzling like the first day
of the planet Earth.

Posted by Thomas@btl.net

xxx