Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:18:54 -0600
From: Tom Emerson <tom@btl.net>
Subject: ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPT. SIX - EIGHT
ONE FISH AT A TIME
CHAPTER SIX -- EIGHT
CHAPT SIX
No sense in having chapters if you don't use them at
least once in awhile. The truth of the matter is that this one, Rob's film
script, as maybe half over, but, in searching for a dramatic moment at
which to play radio writer and break the action so folks would tune in next
week, I was unsuccessful, and thus had to write my own. Did you ever think
what it's like to be a writer? everything's up to him. You're in the
middle of a great panorama of a novel, you love every page -- "Lonesome
Dove" is obviously an example -- and who gets to finish it? The writer.
Your expectations, his talent magnified by such a capacity for work as to
yield genius. His unreserved willingness to travel barefoot in the
vineyard of exhaustion, selecting one grape per mile. The monumental
barrier of the keyboard and monitor, paradoxical, because it is their very
insatiable nature that challenges, that says, loud and clear, `You'll be
blocked, on of these days, you arrogant prick.' How they rattle on, yet,
haven't they a point? Am I not absorbing the very life they have, the only
life they have, never letting them rest, constantly at them, at them, at
them? Wouldn't they rather serve happy children by playing games? Not in
this household. Only one survived the virus, pool, and I have a registry
problem, so my sound card doesn't work. No games, just text. Five
thousand, ten thousand words every twenty-four hours. What kind of life is
that for a dumb machine? Even the cats get petted and played with every
day, fish treats and milk on top of premium Purina; all Sloggo gets is
voltage spikes and brownouts, with occasional blackouts to alleviate the
ceaseless toil. Where I'd stroke and pet a car with maintenance and
premium fluids, I've even taken away my machine's screen-saver slide show,
replacing it with a default water color. No aboriginal slave ever worked
harder bringing up the Don's silver than this collection of transistors and
diodes. It does wax well.
Linden has apparently gone into the stalker-thief mode.
Bev was a rough, two-fisted mother with him, and her sins are coming home
to roost. My home. He scared Louse half to death, hanging around the
shower late at night, and stole her cousin's bicycle. Nice guy. He's cop
meat, and, as they're having a three day shutdown of all retailers,
protesting the killing of a shopkeeper here in Dangriga, can probably
expect a hostile attitude by the police, with full public backing, when
they get their mitts on him. Melissa lost the baby on account of stress,
according to Bev who actually made an appearance yesterday. I recited all
the lore from my comprehensive medical encyclopedia, the gist of which is
her miscarriage probably indicated a low placenta, which, if she'd tried to
go full term, would have separated prematurely from the uterus with
life-threatening bleeding. Since the chance she was a victim of pelvic
inflammation, at one time or another, is about one-hundred percent, she
should get a hysterectomy and devote herself to the welfare of kids already
hatched, as I do. The pair of them need about four years in the military,
each, for the world little loves disagreeable parasites who think life is
an unending sequence of eating, showers, sex, and sleep.
On the plus side, Daisy's gang seems locked into a solid
routine. I think the boys are so shocked at seeing the kitchen neat and
clean every time they launch into it, they're cleaning it themselves out of
fear of some weird spirit. May the fear be with them, always.
Samantha and I walked to McKenzie's last evening, where
I found a hundred teabags for three-fifty in the local currency; about
one-seventy-five, U.S. How do you produce anything in this world for
one-point-seven cents? Four is eight American dollars for twenty-five
pounds. Thirty dollars yesterday for groceries for the week, including the
cat food. In truth, we had lard, baking powder, and rice on hand, but a
week's supply of these would have added only another ten dollars or so.
It's such a screaming laugh, what liberals have done to America. The
galloping, crushing, grinding obsession for possession, from the
supermarket to the palatial toy warehouse. If you aren't buying, popular
lore seems to have it, you aren't trying. You don't need any of it. A
reasonably comfortable home the size of a boxcar, well filled with books
and magazines, is sufficient housing for two adults and three children.
Everything more is upkeep and market variable. One toy, per year, per
three. Think how much they'll love it. The schools want them to add
fractions and diagram sentences, which says a mouthful about what the
schools want. It is atrocious. You are hideous. Get the message?
Good. We've given the cast time to catch their breath,
I've added a few hundred words of gratuitous insult, perhaps proving to
literary scholars that former editors were right in deeming it important
for the novelist to wall off his work (This, of course, opened a revenue
channel from a book about said author.), and thus we find ourselves ready
to search out a few more of those elusive grapes.
"Did you find anything?" Sid wanted to know.
"Some interesting purples," Pete replied.
By now they were back at the kitchen table,
introductions made all around, and catching up.
"Who's the hole in the rug?" Pete asked a few minutes
later.
"Elmo Saperstein, art critic at large," Sid said, "or at
least so I suppose. I hid the key for him when I left for Africa."
As usually happens in such cases, there came a silence
as each of the three, their past adventures shared, shifted to the task of
picking up shards and splinters for reassembly in the present. This is
easier with artists than with humans.
Sid Katz gave Josh a long look. "I take it you've given
up pigeons," he said to Pete, looking at the canvas which was propped on a
leg of the easel, then back at the schoolboy.
"Have I sent you up on the roof with bread crumbs?" Pete
asked Josh.
"No," Josh said, grinning.
"Talent and brains, who'd have thunk it?" Sid said.
Silently, but beginning to radiate strongly, they went
through the ritual of seconds on tea. With cigarettes available by the
ton, and a future that could only optimistically be deemed even
problematic, they'd decided to smoke, and so the older males lit up. As
artists, they'd always used marijuana to a limited extent, and they
included Josh, who seemed to possess the requisite IQ, to toke along. Pete
brought his old friend up to date on the temporal plane, and gently eased
into a discussion of the larger reality seated between them at the table.
"Jesus H," Sid whispered, "you do have it. Damned if you don't. If anyone
could, it would be you, and if anything could inspire you, it would be Josh
Benedict."
Catching up means catching up, all the way. Josh
percolated more cold chills as the conversation came to include the hour,
then the minutes before the newcomer's wild arrival back from the grave.
"I think you felt pretty comfortable with where our
conversation was going, didn't you?" Pete asked the boy, looking for any
residual hesitancy or hints of discomfiture at Sid's presence.
"I guess I'm a little taken aback," said the young
reader, "I mean, there I was, quite happy, thank you, nurturing dreams
which would have challenged the Scott Paper Company, when there's a key in
the lock, and they're gone. Also, I had a sheet of notebook paper
outlining stories from summer camp, and, lo and behold, I can't find it
anywhere. That leaves me but a single Post-It note with which to hold up
my end of the conversation."
Sid could hardly help looking wildly at the boy, like
the giant who loved the blood of an Englishman. If brains had anything to
do with anything, they were the eros in erotic, while having nothing to do
with the resistible in irresistible. "They must have been plumb out of
chopped liver the day you guys met," he said. His friends nodded happily
in agreement, young Josh playing along admirably in spite of the tension
rising in him like the mercury in a donut thermometer. They were both so
effing cute. Pete Anderson blond and blue-eyed, Nordic, and the tall,
slim, willowy build of the Semite with his delicately olive skin and raven
hair -- two faces of an Olympic medal, young, fresh, athletic without a
trace of the body-builder's disfiguration, at least while they had their
shirts on. (And, due to the lack of narcissism in their makeup, he bet
himself you couldn't find any with a scalpel.)
"If I tell my story," the boy said, thrilling both his
companions by reinventing his Post-It note, unbidden, "it may be
disappointing, because I didn't see anything."
"We're artists," Pete observed, "we'll make something up
as you go along." Sid nodded in agreement, glad, as they both were, to
have at least such an inexpressibly cute face on which to base any
fantasies that might occur.
"It was hot in the tent," the child began, "and Clark
was in it with me. Clark Evans. He came down to check that we were
planting the trees correctly. The airline lost his baggage, so I said he
could sleep in my tent because he was only meant to stay two nights and it
was easier than going on a wild goose chase back to town.
"Jack Fillmore, our counselor, said it was cool, so
that's what happened. Clark said we'd exceeded our quota with the forestry
bureau by almost twenty percent and he hadn't found a single dud in the
samples he'd checked, so he said we could be friends, and asked if I wanted
to talk about other stuff. I'd been working on the site for a month and so
I wasn't tired (it was only about nine in the evening) and I said sure. He
said we could talk about normal stuff, like sports and music, or crawly
stuff, like scorpions and snakes, or... creepy stuff..."
Pete and Sid looked at each other. In addition to his
other attributes, it was becoming apparent this was a boy who could tell a
story. They didn't give themselves credit for being an outstanding
audience because they were that kind of guys.
"I was half a summer behind on ball, so I'd sort of lost
interest, I liked classical music, but was too young to know much about it,
and I'd had a month of desert fauna, including two Gila monsters," Josh
said.
"Has any creepy stuff ever happened?" Clark asked.
"You mean like a wedgie when no one else was in the
room?" the black-haired, brown-eyed child asked.
"No," Clark whispered back with a quiet chuckle. "No
wedgie, quite the opposite, in fact, but, yes, someone else in the room.
You know, a creep."
"No," the boy whispered, responding wholly to the husk
in his nice young friend's voice.
"What if it happened?" Clark asked, "You know, someone
you liked, not some freak, and you were alone together, and, you know, he
was older and experienced, and he wanted to teach you secret experiments;
how do you think you'd feel?"
"No boiled toads or eyes of newt?" the boy asked.
"Speaking of boiled," Clark responded, "is it hot in
here, or just me."
"The wind's coming up from Mexico," Josh said, adding:
"I usually sleep on top, especially until early morning, then the sleeping
bag comes in handy."
"That sounds good to me," Clark said.
"I'm only wearing underpants," the then ten year old
said, "is that okay with you?"
"I don't know," Clark replied, "I wasn't just making
stuff up about creeps. Something happened to me when I was your age, and a
creep did it, and I liked it, so if you were lying beside me, almost naked,
I might not be able to help doing the same things with you, if you'd let
me."
"He didn't try to boil any of you?" the irrepressible
boy said.
"Somewhere out there lives the luckiest person in the
world," the young agronomist said, "and that's the one you choose as your
permanent alpha."
"As long as they're not a raptor," the boy said,
unzipping his light sleeping bag, his heart suddenly racing. "Are you just
wearing underwear, too," the boy asked.
"Boxers and a tee shirt," the husky voice a foot away
said, as the second zipper rasped, "but I'd like to take the shirt off, if
that's okay."
"Yeah, I don't blame you," Josh said.
They jostled, self-consciously not touching, and in a
minute were lying atop the bags, flat on their backs, hardly an inch
separating Clark's left arm from Josh's right.
"I used to be really embarrassed about being bare
chested," Clark whispered.
"I get the same feeling," Josh replied, matching his
tent mate's manner of speaking.
"Yeah, I noticed you kept your tee on even at midday,"
the older male commented.
"I guess that's kind of weird," the boy said.
"There's a reason for it," Clark said, "but a lot of
boys find it, like I said before, creepy, to talk about it, with faggy
standing in if `creepy' doesn't get the point across." This sent Josh's
heartbeat higher than it had ever been in his life; no way he wanted to be
anywhere else in the world for the moment, which he fervently hoped would
last.
"I can't imagine doing anything in public with another
guy," Josh whispered, "so I think I'm that-proof, but, otherwise, it does
seem one has to learn sometime. Jimmy Forsyth's a year younger than I am
an he'd been learning with his little sister for two months."
"And does he look up at, or eye-to-eye, or down on a
Gila monster?" Clark asked.
"During the day, down-on," the black-haired child beauty
said, "but, now, likely eye-to-eye with Jack."
"There's evidence of that in your group's statistics,"
Clark said, "I've seen it twice before. An outstanding group has an
outstanding leader, and said leader has, in both cases, had a close
personal relationship with one of the group members, was open about it, and
quickly became respected as one who actually lives for the forestation
project, not someone looking to pad a resume."
"So it's not always an ill wind that fans the flames,"
Josh remarked, in response.
"I suppose it's an odd way to measure things," Clark
responded, "but if you swap X number of acres of useless timber, unless
you're abnormal about blue jays, for even one super bonding, for lack of a
better term, it seems to me you come out ahead."
"And the timber burns from lightning, anyway," Josh
added.
"Have you been molested?" Clark asked.
"No," the boy said. "Unless you count half telling us
half the stuff in school. That had its moments."
"Did they use the dolls?" Clark asked.
"Yeah," the boy answered.
"Including the, you know, male one, anatomically
correct?"
"Yes," Josh whispered.
"I'm like that, now, are you?"
"Yes," the boy repeated, very softly.
"Okay," Clark went on, his voice strengthening slightly,
"the reason you wear a tee shirt when it's hot is that you're more mature
than the other boys, even if some of them are a year or two older. My gym
teacher explained the whole thing to me, because I wasn't taking showers
when I was in seventh grade. I stayed after with him to help with filing,
and we had a long talk about it. It's because you get hormones early, and
grow more and faster, which is totally embarrassing unless you come from a
family of horses, who think such things are macho and cute."
The boy began giggling and had a hard time stopping.
Clark waited patiently and very, very happily.
"This sensitivity," he finally went on, "leads to not
even wanting to be bare chested, partly because in most boys who it happens
to the nipples swell for awhile from the hormonal imbalance, and that, plus
the fact they different in other ways, is sort of
killer-killer-on-the-loose in the embarrassment department."
"My gym teacher wanted to talk to me, too," Josh said,
"but he broke his arm skiing, and nobody liked the substitute, so it never
happened."
"Will you have him next year?" Clark asked.
"Yes," Josh said.
"Then remind him," Clark advised, "as soon as you can,
if he doesn't come to you, first, okay?"
"Yes," Josh said.
"I was going to get out my penlight," Clark said, "so we
could look at each other, but, since you have someone special, I'll let you
share that with him, and we'll stay in the dark, if that's okay?"
"Yes," Josh whispered.
"Have you thought about what he'll do with you when
you're alone with him?"
"Sometimes," the boy admitted, "especially after Jimmy
told me his story."
"And Jack and Jimmy?" Clark quizzed, "do you think about
them on top of their sleeping bags, sometimes?"
"Jimmy always wears his shirt, too, so I have to
imagine," the boy said.
"How about Jack?" the visitor asked.
"I guess he's modest, too," Josh allowed, "he doesn't
even wear tee shirts. Strictly buttons and pockets."
"Yeah," Clark observed, "that part's complicated.
Victorianism and prurientism. The more hormones you have, the more sex
drive you have, the more sex drive you have, the more strongly you react to
nudity, thus the more modest you become if your IQ is over ninety or so.
Some go the so-called faggot route, lots of simpering, lisping and display;
perhaps the drive to be offensive outweighs the sex drive, in these cases.
"And make no mistake," the older male continued, "a lot
of normal guys are effeminate merely because they had a strong female
influence in childhood; means nothing about them, or their sexuality. I
mean the deliberate, in-your-face, boy bimbo. All show and no cum, if
you're old enough for that kind of language."
"Well, I don't seem to be growing anymore," Josh
replied, causing his tent mate to sigh as if he'd died and gone to heaven.
(Not halfway.) Half-way, he died of laughter, but, like the Japanese
industrialist in "Gung Ho", was reluctant to let on.
"Do you know how to jerk off?" Clark asked.
"No," the boy whispered back. Was that his heart
beating in the foreground?
"Would you like to do it together before we go to
sleep?" the scientist asked, "you can pretend it's your gym teacher, or
that you're watching Jimmy Forsyth with his kid sister, or Jack; anything.
It's called `fantasizing', just like you do over action figures and sports
stars."
"I like you plenty, you make me laugh," the boy said,
"though I do have an old "Menudo" album cover hidden in my dad's vinyl
collection."
"So you know a little about it, then?" Clark said,
reassuring himself, "because it can be kind of intense, and, if it's a
little wrong at the beginning, it can be very wrong after the excitement
suddenly disappears."
"I've been sneaking looks at the record cover for a
year," the ten year old noted, "and I don't think anything's disappeared."
"That's a good sign," Clark said, "I'm just trying to be
sure you don't wake up to a morning-after."
"You've been out of school too long," Josh said, "or
you'd remember it's the morning before that causes the headaches."
"They still trying to teach you to add fractions and
diagram sentences?" the older male asked.
"You guessed it," Josh sighed.
"That gives the teachers a chance to bully all the
students, not just the slow ones," Clark said.
"It simultaneously instills and reinforces hatred of the
hallowed halls," the boy added, "I'd like to see the formula for that."
"The subset responsible for the curriculum dotes and
dines on hatred," Clark said, "so they'd be unlikely to respond if you
could quantify it."
"Then they assign Golding and Sallinger, in case anyone
survives the maths," the boy said, happy to share the page.
"And Kafka, Nabakov, Tolkein, Vonnegut, Heller, Kerouac,
Ginsberg," his friend said, "and a dozen other trendy trogs leading up trog
one, Ernest The Absolute Moron Hemingway."
"They've been so trendy so long they're classics," the
boy added, "so the bum never sets."
"You know what?" Clark asked.
"What?" Josh said.
"We couldn't do much worse for a topic of conversation,
could we?"
"Yeah," the boy agreed, "imagine talking about summer
road kill, and having it an improvement over school." They both took a
moment to contemplate just exactly how weird that was, then did change the
subject.
"Have you ever jerked off with a kid before?" Josh
whispered.
"The honest truth is I've never even been tempted,"
Clark said, "then I saw you in your tee shirt, and suddenly I wanted to do
it."
"Most molesters had it happen to them when they were
kids, I read that," Josh said.
"Not me," Clark said. "I met my wife in high school,
and we've been married two years, and I think the paperboy looks cute in
his cut-off shorts, but that's as far as it goes, except for reading
stories on the Web."
"About what we're going to do?" Josh asked.
"Yeah, and what your friend Jimmy did. Everything.
Most of them written by teachers and professionals, plus a lot by kids."
"Do you think they'll make you a better teacher?" Josh
asked.
"Well," the young man replied, "they haven't done much
for my performance as a forestry inspector, but there's still a chance."
"What do they tell you?" Josh asked.
"That most men who seduce young boys and girls genuinely
like them, I guess that's the main thing," Clark replied, "they're not
sick, nor are they necessarily repressed or dysfunctional and looking for
love in all the wrong places. They just like kids, with or without their
underpants."
"Do you think I'll be a molester when I grow up?" the
ten year old wanted to know.
"If you're well read, curious, imaginative, and like to
share, I don't see how you can help it," his older friend said, adding:
"How do you feel. If you had a friendly and reasonably cute eight year old
lying beside you, do you think you might want to experiment if you were
sure he wanted it, too?"
"Yes," Josh said, "even though I can't think of any kid
I know I'd like to do this with."
"That means your answer was hypothetical," Clark
explained, "assuming an attraction, yes, you'd like to, but it would have
to be something special, so, for the time being, it becomes theoretical."
"Will I feel differently after we've jerked off
together?" he wanted to know.
"Yes," Clark said, "but nothing radical. You'll regard
attractive males, all ages, with more interest. Sooner or later the right
one will notice back, and you'll know what he wants is soft and friendly,
not bizarre and freaked out.
"In all probability," he continued, "you gym teacher
will introduce you to one or two other boys about your age, and, since a
certain type of boy appeals to educated molesters, you'll probably find
they're pretty neat and be happy to spend time alone with them."
"Alone with them?" the boy repeated. "Is that proper
usage?"
"According to what I've read," Clark said, "if it
happens you'll be so excited your grammatical skill set will be reduced to
hissing, moaning, and whimpering."
"How `bout if the boys don't stop?" the curious kid
wanted to know.
"Then in all likelihood you'll have nary a coherent word
to say on the subject."
"That's weird," the boy commented, "because, now, the
more we talk the more exciting it is, at the same time it makes it last."
"We'll pay for that pretty soon," Clark said.
"What do you mean?" Josh asked.
"I mean that as soon as you touch me, it will start
happening. If we'd gone from zero to physical in a minute or two, it
wouldn't happen until you'd masturbated me for at least a few minutes."
"We could talk about algebra," the boy suggested.
"Sure, if you really want to," Clark whispered.
"What I want is to take my underpants off," Josh
whispered back, "after I've taken your boxers off."
"Then you'd better skip straight to statistics," Clark
advised.
"Hard to measure in the dark," the child murmured, "so I
hope an estimate will do."
"Your trees come in six inch and eight-inch pots," the
young man reminded Josh, "so you can use those as a baseline."
"Isn't sperm like a fluid?" the child asked.
"Yes," Clark said, his whispering now ragged as he began
to pant openly beside the boy at his left elbow.
"How can I measure that?"
"Remember the pots I was talking about?" Clark said.
"Get outta town," the boy responded.
"You won't be so skeptical the first time you have a ten
year old in a tent with you," Clark admonished.
"How big are those nursery pots again?" Josh asked.
"If you lie on top of me," Clark said, "I'll be able to
tell when you're laughing."
"You'll have to hold me really gently to find out,
because I'm trying to be mature," Josh said.
"Feather touch, all the way," the man assured him.
"Like Fester in `Addams' Family Values'," the boy
quoted: "`No tickling.'"
"Lie with your back to my chest, to start," Clark
coaxed.
The boy complied, and let the young adult begin gently
with him, tracing his young body with the fingers of his right hand as he
eased him into a comfortable position, then folding his hands across the
boy's slightly soft stomach.
"You feel all electric," Josh said.
"Very bad news," Clark replied, "semen's both fluid and
very salty."
"Shocking," the boy said, and, sure enough, Clark could
feel nonsensical tremors in the taut young body in his arms.
"It feels like you're being electrocuted by your own
sophomoric wit," the older male said.
"That's fair," the amusing youngster responded, "because
I feel guilty of everything."
"Well," Clark cajoled, "we don't want to waste the
charge, so tell me the guiltiest thing of all."
"Feeling your penis through your shorts," Josh
whispered, "I want to feel you bare, like your chest is against my back."
"Do you like me being against your left thigh?" Clark
panted softly.
"Yes," Josh said.
"Would you like me to get you we there?" the man
queried.
"Can you sperm in my hand before it goes on my leg, so
I'll know about it, even if I can't see?" the boy wanted to know.
"Yes," his mentor replied, "but let me molest you a
little more, this way."
"It's nice still having our voices," Josh observed, as
the twenty-two year old ran his hands gently from his face and throat down
to the band of his briefs.
"Nothing to count on," his partner said, "so I'd better
tell you now that it's going to be very messy. I might not be able to warn
you, later."
"Will it stick us together if we fall asleep together
after it happens?" Josh asked.
"There you have me," the older male admitted. "Have
Jack and Jimmy ever seemed awkwardly close in the morning?" They sell
topical anesthetic gels to males for use in prolonging erotic tension.
Guess who didn't need any?
Some three minutes later Josh spoke up in a hushed
voice, all dramatic. "Well, we found out one thing," he said, setting
Clark up.
"What?" came the answering whisper.
"There's no such thing as a funny boner."
See what I mean about the gel? and, yes, the couple that
plays together, stays together, but staying power isn't everything.
"Do you think you'll work bare chested, tomorrow?" Clark
asked.
"I want to try it," the boy said.
"Not that you'll cause a riot, or anything," Clark said,
"but you watch and see how many of the boys suddenly want to ask you
something, or tell you something, or work beside you, or stand next to you
when you get the trays off the trailer."
"Is it that common?" Josh wanted to know.
"No," Clark said, "it isn't. It's you who are uncommon.
You watch and see how many invitations you get for sleepovers the first
time you shower with the other eight graders. And it's because you're a
freaking riot; homosexual attraction as an excuse, simply to get to know
you better."
"Then you better teach me everything, tonight," Josh
whispered.
"No," Clark said, "your gym teacher, if by default, sent
you to me in superb condition, so to speak, and I want you returning to him
for the most part innocent and full of questions.
"But never fear, what I will do is drop by every week or
two, if you want, and we can date."
"I hope you're not kidding," Josh said.
"No," his friend said, "and, since child molesters like
to include their juvenile partners in small group settings, maybe someday I
can watch him make you cum."
"Could I watch you play with another boy, too?" Josh
whispered.
"If your teacher knows any, I could try," Clark said.
"How about your paper boy?" the younger male asked.
"Scotty's always very friendly," Clark replied,
thoughtfully, "and I don't think it's just the tip kind, ingratiating.
It's an idea."
"Can I turn over, so I can feel your chest against me?"
Josh whispered.
"Yes," Clark said, and he helped the child roll in his
arms.
"Homos kiss, don't they?" the boy asked.
"Yes," Clark said, "but save that for your teacher.
This is just a one-night-stand, just a first lesson, for both of us, okay?"
"It's certainly a lesson in love," the boy answered in a
soft voice.
"If you bend a firecracker double, and light the powder,
it fizzes for a couple of second, instead of going bang."
"Yeah," Josh said, "a cat-and-dog fight `cause it spins
around."
"Don't stretch the analogy too far, or we'll end up in
trouble," Clark laughed.
"No," Josh said, "I know what you mean."
"How long have you known your teacher?" Clark asked.
"Terry? He's actually kind of a cousin by marriage, so
I've known him, at least a little, since I can remember, but last year I
saw him a lot more because I was in his class."
"Then you can really give yourself to him, gender issues
aside, just like in a romance novel with four and a half inches of exposed
cleavage on the girl in Fabio's arms."
"Don't they swoon through the whole sordid business?"
Josh wanted to know.
"Beats me," the man said, "they're turned out, for the
most part, by literary steam machines, I've never made it a hundred pages."
"Do you think if you read ten thousand," the boy asked,
"you'd come to a single joke or funny line?"
"Humor's hard to get down on paper, in the first place,"
Clark said, "and by the time you get New York to notice you, any sense of
fun you might have had has been rejected so often it dies of
discouragement."
"Lowest neckline common denominator," the boy mused,
aloud, and on that base note, they changed the subject.
"Do you want it to happen while we're both naked?" Clark
whispered.
"Yes," the boy replied, his heart racing and his lungs
panting at the realization that there would be no more foreplay (not that
it hadn't been Absolutely Fantastic).
Josh rolled on his back beside the young adult. Both
males opted to forego a lingering and sensual stripping off of each other,
and skinned down their own underwear.
"Find me with your right hand," Clark whispered, "and
guide me to where you want the sperm on your body, and I'll start cumming
right away."
"On my inner left thigh, up really high," the boy
responded, and the athletic twenty-two year old positioned himself
straddling the child, as the boy found and held him.
"Move your right hand down low on me, and cup your left
hand over the head of my penis," Clark suggested in a wilting rasp of a
whisper. Josh followed his directions, gasping at the hard hugeness of the
young adult.
"Do you feel it?" the man whispered.
"I can feel you throbbing really hard and fast," the boy
said, "but not what's happening in my left hand."
"That's because the semen's the same temperature as your
body," Clark half gulped, half panted. "Put your left hand on your penis,
then you'll know what happened."
"Now?" the boy asked.
"Just a little longer," the man grunted, then, after
some moments, cued the child.
"Yeah," Josh exhaled at the feeling of the copious,
slick wetness of his hand. In an instant, Clark joined him, teaching him,
stroking his slim five inch erection until the young boy exploded and lay
shuddering and panting in his arms, mewing wordlessly, but obviously a
super happy and satiated camper."
"Very excellent, dude," both mature males at the table
said, their eyes hot on the black-haired beauty between them.
"That's not quite the end," Josh responded, his eyes
suddenly bright, tears beginning to stream down his now eleven-year-old
cheeks.
"What?" Pete and Sid chorused, both reaching to take one
of Josh's hands.
"In the m-morning," the boy stuttered, unable to go on
because he was now weeping openly.
"He was gone?" they coaxed, gently. "What?"
"He was dead," the boy eventually choked.
Damn. There was a how-do-you-do and a half. "He was
cold and stiff. I lay there for half an hour, blaming myself for all the
dumb jokes and thinking, "Jeez, I was just kidding around." Finally I wet
myself, and that brought me back to life. I couldn't even get on my knees,
so I crawled on my belly into the main campground. Jack was sitting on one
of the logs around the fire, hunched over his radio. It was just after
seven. He always checked the seven a.m. weather report. He was pale as a
ghost. When he saw me he couldn't even get up off his seat, he just held
the radio toward me and turned up the volume a little. I crawled in at his
feet and we both listened. It was the same everywhere on the dial. Where
we'd gotten about twenty stations, because we were in the mountains, now
there were only three city ones. People kept saying things, then someone
else would say something. It went to some kind of network for a few
minutes, where all the stations were saying the same thing, then there were
no more voices, just the sound of the radio waves, then nothing. Static,
except for one station booming up from southern Mexico -- the one we used
to hear late at night. That meant there was nothing wrong with the radio.
"Way bad," Pete and Sid again chorused, their teen
English way expressive.
"I was half so glad it wasn't my fooling around, I
actually felt some relief," Josh sighed.
"Otherwise they might have charged you with Murder Fun,"
Pete said, patting the child's right hand.
"Man, am I glad to be HERE," Josh stuttered, hiccupping
back a fit of the giggles without success.
"Yeah," Sid said to Pete, "but, you know, they never
would have had an autopsy on Clark. How do we know what he actually died
of? My advice is we keep a careful eye on your young friend, in case he
starts fooling with us." By this time the boy was obviously helpless, so
they took no immediate action.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Here we go again with the paint by numbers. Connect the
dots. Join chapter numbers with ten or twenty thousand words of inanity.
What could be easier? The hard part is stomping New York groggy so they
shuffle off to Buffalo. Two planes full of fuel, and even though I live in
the most tenuous and delicate of backwaters, while drawing on old-money
trusts, not an iota of difference has it made. On the other hand, maybe
it's why Kraft dinners cost two-seventy-five while other brands sell for
one local dollar. (Of course, that could just be Madison Avenue.)
I should be moody about something. Aren't great artists
meant to be towers of temperament? I not only don't rage and foment, I'm
capable of absorbing great abuse without reacting, more the mule at the
north end of a northbound boot than anything else I can think of. The kids
crash and bang in the kitchen, and I type on; the music blasts in my ear,
and I type on; the dogs howl and the cats fight; I type on; the rain
crashes, the lightning flashes, I type on; Delton drops by and shows me his
chop wound, needs to go to Belize City for surgery to prevent a bone
infection; I'll work something out, and type on. Andrew stopped by to
play, but the name of my game is alpha/numeric, so I keep typing. I try to
find some way I feel differently than when I was sixteen, and I can't, so I
type about that. Samantha's responded beautifully to me blowing my stack,
and we're back to planning what she'll do with her hundred dollars when we
get on a new financial tack, in five days. That gets included, with every
wish her next set of tricks is in the minor key, and some years off.
Sixteen I may be, but I'm the world's smartest at it. I did my reading, if
not always my homework, and so know exactly how to live. Where Oscar Wilde
wore tresses and sashayed the streets of Mayfair with a posy held at high
port arms, I heard cats of the two and four legged variety. Keep a lot of
`em on the trail, too. We violate the same laws, but do it in eloquently
different ways.
My monitor's starting to flicker. It has a cold solder
joint. I can see it (with the case off) in total darkness, then I wedge
the tip of a toothpick into the pinhole in the circuit board. Kept it
going for three years that way. This time I want to try to jam in a tiny
piece of tinfoil. That might be more permanent. Also kept a television
going for several years by tracing down voltage leaks in the dark, then
taping them up. Finally got so much tape on the high voltage wire the
thing caught fire, so proceed with caution. Any time your car isn't
running perfectly, get it in a dark garage and open the hood (or in the
open, away from street lights). Many times you'll see the problem in a
flash.
Here's a minor one. By coincidence, if not design, my
new house has the world's most comfortable toilet. It has a little wall
just to the left of the commode, twenty-six inches high and four inches
thick. Perfect to lean on, something you don't want to knock until you've
tried it. The wall serves as a barrier to the shower, and is perfect to
sit on while you wash your feet, do a little impromptus laundry, or bathe a
baby or a pet. If you don't have cats, you can keep the toilet paper on
it, if you do, you can't.
Dealing with my ego is an ongoing struggle, but there
might be an answer. I'm not, as we know, thrilled with "The New York
Review of Books". Every article seems to be another reason. As mentioned,
elsewhere, it's an editor in Spokane who's going to discover me, leaving
Gotham in the dust. There's an overall solution here. My middle name is
Cochran (my grandfather Moncreiff, whom I never met, founded American
Standard). So it's Thomas Cochran Emerson. I want the whole cover of "The
Review": Thomas over Cochran, and Cochran over Emerson, as big as it will
fit, in red. Nothing but excerpts inside, line edited, only. Not one
other article, letter, or any copy beyond the masthead, nor a word of
commentary, criticism, or editorial notice until at least the fifth
succeeding issue. Not even where to find my stories. This would render me
published in the manner of mortal writers, and go a long way toward
resolving persistent issues. It's up to you New York, New York.
The city had become great fun and Pete, Josh and Sid
went out to enjoy it. Lunch wagons led a throng to one highlight for a day
or two, then departed for another museum, campus, industrial site, or
cultural center, and everyone moved along to the new location, staying put
for up to three days, before again departing for a new venue. Many camped
in small tent cities, even though rooms in their endless thousands were
open and available. It was just more fun. On a small, short-term basis,
ample volunteer labor was available to tend the porta-potties, remove the
litter, and create a clean, enjoyable jamboree environment. They ate hot
dogs with excellent relish and the steaming pretzels were as chewy as ever
they had been. They saw things they never had imagined, and came to
appreciate why art directors often chose factories and warehouses as
backdrops in their films. Huge, haunting, empty, mesmerizing. A thousand
tables with silent sewing machines in one building, a block away, a
thousand bottles frozen in the process of being filled. One popular tour
featured echoes. Since common sense had, with the virtual elimination of
the nefarious sub set formerly dominating the city, returned to daily life,
they took a functioning subway to the airport and ate pizza twenty feet
from the touchdown area of the active runway, ducking involuntarily, if
unnecessarily, as the outer wings of wide-body aircraft actually sliced
safely over their heads, though the vortices tended to dash people about in
a harmless variant of a thrill park ride (ice cream cones were not served).
Several attractive, athletic males made friendly,
low-key approaches, and Pete and Sid quizzed Josh on them, allowing as how,
on a future day, they might extend an invitation. This made the boy take a
new interest in his surroundings, and the thrill of the hunt, unceasing
through time immemorial, helped gently stimulate him out of the second and
third waves of grief that shook him like a losing little leaguer. He often
held both their hands and the day marched on. In the afternoon they found
a stray dog, spent an hour looking for its owner, then took it to the loft.
Sunned out, fooded out, and walked out, they crashed the minute the pup was
settled, awakening for tea at ten p.m. and soon smiling over the table at
each other.
"I'm torn between two styles," Pete said. "I want you
(looking at Sid) with Josh for the racial implications, behind him, doing
what Carl did with us when we were hiking, but I don't know whether to do
it soft and ethereal, like Raphael, or bold and brassy, like Communist
poster art, you know, the stalwarts at the tractor factory."
"Hmm," Sid mused. "How about captions?" He thought a
minute and added: "'Work the sewer / Work the line / Hoe the tater / Mine
the mine / Day is done / Work is over / Head for home / Feelin' Fine.' Of
course, there'd be endless variations on `Put Yourself in this Picture.'"
Boys will be boys. Bright-eyes chirped, "How `bout:
`This Pud's for You'? or, `Intel Inside? Guess again!'
"There's only so much dirty work to go around," Pete
observed, "so don't go overboard, either of you."
Let your fingers do the talking.
Males in Emersonian Brothel, A Study.
I'm Cumming, He Wrote.
Ask not what the boy can do for you, find out.
Live in infamy.
The classic Uncle Sam in the poster corner: `Your ass is
mine, his ass is yours.'
Poppin' Flesh -- Oh, oh, oh.
He who lasts last lasts longest
Your son always rises.
Where the rubber meets the load.
The sketches went on, gave them something to banter over
while finding a common ground that was lively but short of bawdy. Josh's
ears were as eager as his eyes. During a lull in the brainstorming
session, he asked: "Who's Carl?" And so we find ourselves in another
chapter.
"I thought I saw water through the trees, you wanna
check it out?" twelve year old Pete Anderson asked his age-mate, Sid Katz.
"Trees, trees, everywhere, and I'd just as leaf to
sink," the cute Jewish kid replied, following his friend's pointing finger.
They both hiked back along the trail, finally shinnying up small,
side-by-side trees.
"It's there," they hailed each other, dropping back to
earth.
"Should we try it?" Pete said.
"City mouse, to country mouse, hello?" Sid exclaimed in
response.
"I'll take that as a Yes," the crew cut Anglo responded,
and jumped from the trail a single leap down the steep hillside after which
he skidded to a stop and turned. Sid leaped into his tracks, and the two
tumbled laughing twenty more feet before thudding to a stop against a
strategic tree. Regaining their footing, they more cautiously skidded
their way down through the woods, Pete always with a wary eye to be sure
they could handle to the return climb.
"You've got to be super careful in a place like this,"
the country boy said as they proceeded, "because sometimes the tops of
trees grow against cliffs, and they look like little trees."
"No under the brush," Sid said, and Pete's pulse
quickened at the boy's quick, clean response. "Could it actually be fun?"
he wondered to himself. Most of the city kids he'd guided in the past had
been wayward nincompoops, dangerous in a meadow. Sid had seemed quieter,
more introspective, less uselessly bold than the run of the mill that went
through the program, and worth chancing on the new trail he'd had to wait
until he was twelve to hike. They'd found plenty of common ground over the
first hour, and now the city boy's quick response to his warning formed the
beginning of a real bond. They proceeded carefully into the valley,
wondering aloud if they did come across a tree against a cliff, whether
they could just jump into it and climb down. They came to a quick
agreement that climbing back up the tree, then having to jump onto the
steep hillside would spoil their day.
"It's like elevators," Sid said. "You get stick three
or four feet above the floor. You think you can hang through the door of
the car, and drop to safety, but you can't. You fall down the shaft."
"Maybe that's why they sent the dudes to the moon," Pete
Anderson said, "because they thought we'd be safer up there."
"I knew if I lived long enough, someone would come up
with a reason," his new friend replied. They were beginning to find each
other not half bad, at all, and laughed, ever wary of their footing.
The hill gave way to a valley, as hills always do, and
they found the pond at the edge of the woods, half in a meadow. They shed
their packs and settled on a grassy bank, catching their breaths after
charging like bulls down the last hundred yards of the slope.
"This is cool, country cousin," Sid said.
"The sticks have their advantages," Pete acknowledged,
"but I'll be you could show me a thing or two, because it's kind of more of
the same, here."
"I think the cities used to be nice," Sid responded,
"but now it's all mega. If something's worth doing, a million people want
to do it, so mostly it's one giant line after another. I stay home and
read, and I could do that in a cabin, like Abraham Lincoln."
"Did you pack any books?" Pete asked.
"It would be easier if you asked if I packed any
clothes," Sid laughed. "I've got six Mickey Spillanes and three Agatha
Christies."
"I've got two Travis McGees," Pete said, "plus, guess
what?"
"What?" the city boy asked.
"John O'Hara."
"Oh, wicked, wicked," Sid yipped, "and if you tell it's
The Cape..."
"Cod Lamplighter," the county boy yipped back.
"Can you read aloud?" Sid asked.
"Okay I guess," Pete allowed.
"I can too, some," Sid responded, "so that way we can
share it."
"Holy cow shit on a flat rock, was this kid different,"
Pete half gloated to himself. He'd guided four boys in the past. Each had
been laden with fifty dollars worth of batteries and a spinning music
machine, to which they listened incessantly, and, costly fodder
notwithstanding, died on the second day, leaving said child inconsolable
and intolerable. He'd endured, no wants, no warrants, and tried to be more
careful in who he picked to introduce to the whys and wherefores of what
little there actually was that passed for country lore. For the most part,
country life boiled down to quick hands and strong wrists, to muckling onto
a task, and getting it out of the way. At this the city boys had been
pathetic, flailing and floundering with tools as rudimentary as a jackknife
or can opener. All but one of his former charges had had difficulty with
the little battery doors on their disc players, and he'd wondered how and
when they'd ever master the caveman skills of building or producing
anything other than video-game scores. Limp wrested. Ineffectual
Dithering. Scary, in a word. But not Sid. He reached beside him, tugged
free a straw, and stuck it in his mouth, clip, zip, chomp. Phew.
"Maybe we could just camp here and read," Pete said
after a few minutes.
"Is there more to wilderness hiking after the first
hour?" Sid asked.
"Don't ask embarrassing questions," Pete said with a
laugh.
"Same in the city," Sid said, "you've heard one car
alarm, you've heard them all."
"So, that's a yes?" Pete checked.
"As they say on `NYPD Blue', `absolutely'," Sid
acknowledged.
"What about swimming?" Pete asked.
"Off of how we just came crashing down half a mile of
dirty country hill?" Sid intoned.
"Absolutely," they chorused, future English majors that
they were.
"Should we ask somebody?" Sid asked.
"If we can," Pete agreed. "I thought I heard a tractor
down the valley, just before we left the trail. We could leave our packs
here, and go take a look." They high-fived and took off at a run, covering
most of a mile at a near sprint.
"You're in tough shape for an urban cowboy," Pete said.
"You walk your legs of in a city," Sid replied, "it's
you country guys that get to roll around heaven all day.."
They climbed a hedgerow and, young readers that they
were, the target tractor became an enemy tank.
"Pilgrim," drawled Pete, as he used his knife to quickly
chop off a three foot length of stick, "this isn't much of a weapon, here,
but it's all we got, so you remember how your daddy taught you, an' account
for yourself as you know he'd want you to do."
"They'll never know what hit them, sir," Sid giggled
back, and the two mounted their patrol. Pete pointed out poison ivy, and
they tread warily, creeping toward the burble of an idling engine, a sound
which suddenly ceased.
"That can't be good news," Sid said, after they'd frozen
in response to the instant silence, both immediately aware of how vitally
noise might affect actual combat.
"It may be bait and switch," Pete whispered, "or they
may just be innocent farmers."
"I'd be very careful," Sid responded, "because
entrapment is legal in war."
"Yeah, but first they have to catch us," Pete giggled,
suggesting that juvenile soldiers might not make good soldiers. Stealthily
they crept up through the foliage. A hundred feet. Two hundred. Voices.
"But that low spot won't be dry for a couple of hours.
`Till noon," a young girl's voice said. "We have lots of time."
The boys froze and looked at each other. The girl's
voice wasn't whining, or even plaintive; neither demanding nor petulant,
but there was an undercurrent to it that let the boys know the subject at
hand had nothing to do with whether or not to have a snack.
"Too young to be smoking a joint," Sid whispered, and
what has already been said of juvenile soldiers can simply be repeated.
"It's not something she wants, it's something she
needs," Pete, the older by some months, whispered.
"What should we do?" Sid asked, glad to be done with the
giggles in what could turn out to be hostile territory.
"Go up and ask, like we were gonna do, I think," Pete
said.
"Okay," Sid agreed. They stood, yahoo'd, and dropped
down into the field with the parked tractor, making their way to the source
of the voice.
"We left our packs by the pond," Pete said as they
approached, "and we wondered if it would be okay to camp there for the
weekend."
"Come on in, if you can call this in," an adult voice
responded, and the boys entered through a path in the underbrush. "This is
our lunch hangout," the man said as Pete and Sid emerged into a small
clearing bordered by wooden benches and protected from above by a carefully
strung tarp. "I'm Carl Witherspoon and this is my niece, Lauren." The
boys introduced themselves and sat at their host's bidding. He offered a
bottle of mosquito repellent, but Pete had some in his pocket. "Little dab
of chemicals, and it turns no place for a white man into a tolerable
castle," Carl said.
"How deep is the mud?" Pete asked, his senses, for
reasons he only half understood, on the most extreme alert he'd ever known.
They'd been in range to hear, it would have been strange if they hadn't,
and he was desperate to know the lay of the ground, something that's gained
by a combination of truth and diplomacy. Engaging, if you will, the other
side to determine if he's the enemy.
"Last farmer tried it, came home speaking nothing but
Chinese. Nobody could understand a word out of the man for nary a month."
Pete felt Sid's elbow against his. An ounce of pressure
for a second. It was a thrill to know his new friend was chapter and verse
with him; also, to find the handsome tractor driver lived up to his first
impression.
"Has it ever happened the other way?" the young city boy
asked. "Have you ever come out here one day, and found a Chinese farmer
with a lost look?" What may not work from a military point of view, may
work in diplomacy. On the other hand, survival meant laughing at Stalin's
jokes. It was hard for Pete to judge. Were they going to laugh, or not,
and, if they did, would it be polite or...
"Need a `ski after that," Carl groaned, wiping his eyes,
"you fellows look old enough for one each, how `bout it? Cooler's on the
tractor."
"I'll get them, Uncle Carl," Lauren said, launching
herself off her log seat and out the foliage tunnel opening onto the field.
While she's gone, another minor note. I keep forgetting
to include it, so I'll just clunk it in. It's a design, something like the
world's most comfortable toilet, recently mentioned, only this is the
world's most comfortable chair. It's a common new generation plastic
chair, but you saw off the right front leg. Place this corner of the chair
on a covered five-gallon plastic bucket (the commercial food product models
have a distinct ridge at the circumference of the lid, a great `heel-hold',
and it also allows the stub of the missing leg to notch into the lid --
safer). It makes a great leg rest, and, if you have a table just to the
left of the chair, you've come up with pretty close to an ideal. Keep
water in the plastic bucket, never can tell when it will come in handy.
The bucket also makes a useful child's seat.
"I brought three for you, Uncle Carl," Lauren said as
she handed across the plastic holder, "and left one in the cooler."
"Sweetheart," the man said, kindly, "you know I save
them `till the tractor's parked."
"It's parked," the girl said, firmly, "and the two of us
seem to be getting nowhere, and a little booze in your uptight, Puritan
noggin might loosen whatever it is that's stuck before I end up feeling
like a poor relative of the chopped liver family."
"She's from the city," Carl explained.
"Cabbage Patch City, it might as well be," the girl
said, looking at Pete and Sid, "with me in diapers. I'm eight. I'm MTV
eight. I'm late-night Cinemax eight. And I've got a drop-dead cute uncle
who doesn't know what anything means unless it's nothing."
Pete and Sid sat trying not to obviously shiver with
excitement. Neither would have tried their voices for a million dollars.
Not a problem.
"What do you guys think? Do I have warts and a toad's
face? Horns? Extra noses? Hooves? I may not be a dish, but I'm not an
old pot. And I'm not five, even if I wish I were, so we'd have three more
years. Everyone says share. It's freaking Christian to share. Don't you
guys think I should be able to?"
A problem. Sid had aced the father, so he left the
daughter to his best friend in the world.
"It depends what kind of sandwich," Pete said, so
astonished to hear himself speak he looked at Sid, as if he'd spoken. The
brought the attention back to the beer, and the hostess handed them around,
placing two deliberately beside her uncle. "I'll help, because I didn't
bring one for myself," she announced, pulling the tab of one can, sipping
inexpertly, coughing, managing to get some down, and handing the open can
to Carl. The boys went at it gingerly, frowning at each other, but loath
to give up. They'd scored a stunning victory, and drinking to it was as
good a way as any to keep their minds, for a moment or two, off exactly
what that victory would turn out to be.
At first they thought Carl was changing the subject, and
when they found out he wasn't the beer became an actual life saver, not
merely a diversion.
"We call it Skinny Minnie Pond," the twenty-three year
old farmer said, "and, yes, stay as long as you like." He looked at his
niece, then gently brought the child to his lap, facing him. "We call it
that because of things we used to do up there when we were your age (he
indicated the boys). Games we used to play, taking, shall we say, full
advantage of the privacy of the location, which is to say you can hear or
see anyone coming, before they can see you."
He paused and waited for Lauren's nod. "Skinny Minnie
Pond," the child repeated, obviously fully engaged.
"What we can do," Carl went on, "is climb aboard the
tractor and take a mosey up there while the bottom dries. Any or all of us
can reprise the days of my youth, at their pleasure, and, niece of mine,
you will discover that I am not a reluctant partner because you have
sixty-seven eyes, or that I'm a Calvinistic throwback, but for a more
tangible reason, which should be of the most particular interest and
concern to a girl who weighs sixty pounds."
"Even if it's uphill, I think the Chinese will still
make it," Sid murmured. "If we walked back, we could collect snails to
boil in the pond," Pete added. Like zombies they stood and filed through
the short tunnel. Carl unpinned the harrow, and engaged the clutch gently.
The huge machine passed through a nearby gate and moved up the valley, it's
passenger's rooting for it as if it were at the tractor pull grand
nationals.
Again the sudden silence of the switched-off diesel.
"If you're going to stay for long," Carl said, "there's a tool box hidden
in the trees; ax and bow saw, so you can build a lean-to at the verge of
the woods." Pete and Sid high five each other, and dropped from the
tractor to head in the direction Carl pointed.
"If you'll wait until after we swim, I'll help you," the
young man continued; "in fact, I wouldn't half mind spending the night out
here myself. The valley's deep enough to cut way down on the light
pollution, and the weather's meant to stay clear. Crescent moon. It gets
kind of pretty when the stars come out."
"Who's he kidding," Sid whispered, "the stars are
already out."
"Either that," Pete whispered back, "or we came across
one of those suicide trees, and we're stone dead."
"I would have remembered the sudden stop," his friend
replied. They'd stopped in their tracks, and slowly turned back to Carl.
"If you're sure," the local boy whispered.
Both boys froze in panic, waiting for it, hating being
twelve but unable to do anything about it. This would not be the place,
and, for sure, this would not be the place. "Oh, please don't," Pete and
Sid whispered silently in unison.
"Sure, positive," Carl said, Lauren nodding from his lap
as the young man set the brake on the tractor and hoisted his niece to the
skid plate, from whence she leaped to the ground. The two hikers breathed
a sigh of relief, almost audible. What if he had answered: "Absolutely!"?
Death, that's what. Neither had the slightest doubt. It would have been
hang-gliding with a handkerchief, and they would have died of it. Again,
there were times when they hated being twelve.
"Just take a minute to build us a seat," Carl said,
leading the boys and his niece a short distance into the woods. "See, it's
still here." He retrieved and ammo box, and opened it to reveal well
greased tools. "Even a was of paper towels to wipe off the Cosmoline," he
said, handing Pete the ax. "I salted this stuff away before I went to
Edinburgh," he explained, "and the truth of the matter is, I would have
been fixing up a camp here in a day or two, anyway." With that he selected
two trees and sawed them off at ground level, keeping an eye on Pete until
he was satisfied the boy was safe with the ax. His post-hole digger was a
maul and an old shipwright's gouge, and in ten minutes they had themselves
a replica of the rustic benches under the tarp. Sid busied himself with a
hatchet and branches and as the bench was complete had a neat pile of
kindling ready for the evening. "I was never a scout, but I read all the
books," he said, shyly, chunking the hatchet neatly into the end of the
bench log.
The tools wiped and returned to their box, Carl passed
around the last can of beer.
"Will your bedroom door be locked tonight?" Lauren asked
her uncle.
"No, sweetheart," he said, adding: "I don't remember
what the test was, but you passed it in front of witnesses, plus, it's hell
to lock a lean-to."
"If it was easy, I'd just make you build it with me
inside," the pixie said.
"And miss the stars? I don't think so," Carl teased.
"You don't need a telescope for the heavenly bodies I
want to see," the girl blushed, "you need a microscope."
"Dude," Pete and Sid whispered all but inaudibly to each
other. Carl gently broke in on their reverie.
"The first time I was here," he said, "was when I was
eleven, with one of my teachers. His father sold my dad the farm, so he
was guiding me around, and we ended up here. He was careful to set a base
line before anything happened. You know. Ask me how experienced I was and
what I thought I was ready for. We talked for an hour, then we swam
together. I want to do the same with you boys, and Lauren, if you want to.
It's like group therapy, without the therapy, there's no bill, and, for
sure, it whiles away the time."
The three children nodded vigorously.
"Pete," Carl said, gently coaxing, "have you and Sid
ever seen each other bare chested?"
"No," the boy replied.
"If you'd like, we can start there, and see how strong
your homosexual feelings are."
Lauren was a good kid. "Uncle Carl," she whispered,
"they're so cute, I don't think they'd have to be abnormal to want to see
each other."
"You're right as rain, missy," Carl replied, "but when
they've stripped off their shirts, you can guide them in touching each
other. That will tell us more."
"Did your teacher unbutton your shirt, or did you do it
yourself?" the girl then wanted to know, re-defining "team player" for
eternity.
"He unbuttoned me, and took it off," Carl said,
realizing the young girl had been right about a lot of things, all along.
"Show us with Pete," the girl encouraged, and I can
unbutton Sid."
There were no objections, so Pete moved onto Carl's lap
and Lauren seated herself on Sid's legs, facing the youth. "Slowly,
right?" she asked her uncle.
"Ken was very slow with me," Carl said, "he quizzed me,
and when he found out I liked it, even if I was really embarrassed at
first, he told me about what happened to him when he was ten."
"Did you unbutton him, too?" Lauren asked.
"Yes, darling," her uncle whispered.
"Does that give you any ideas?" she whispered in return,
this time to Sid.
"Only one," the city boy replied, "but it's so good, it
followed me half way to China."
"It sounds like his tractor's stuck," the bright-eyes
said to her uncle, "so you may need to help him." She was full of
immensely good ideas, and it wouldn't have taken Ms. Stewart to recognize
that as a good thing amongst now witless males.
Urban boys aren't slicker, but, due to the unending
necessity of thinking on one's feet, they may be slightly quicker. Thus
Sid was the first of the males to find his tongue.
"Has a boy ever looked at you before?" he asked the
moppet in his lap. She had black hair and brown eyes, and, if not a rose
beauty, was the cuter for it in a freckle-faced, little league way.
"Just when I wear a bikini at the pool," she said, "but
I had a bra on then, and I don't, now."
"Do you think you'll need one soon?" Pete asked, never
happier to play follow-the-leader in his life.
"My mom's a doctor," Lauren replied, "so I've read some
books other kids don't get to see. If I spend the weekend with you, I may
need one in a few days, because what you're going to do with me creates a
hormone imbalance, harmless, but apparently it can be fairly dramatic."
"What if you get them all?" Sid asked.
"I think I can answer that," Carl said. "Ken had two
older teen students he brought out here. They liked skinny dipping with me
and piggybacking me up into the trees. It went on all summer with the
three of them, and I was their only partner, and we didn't know any better,
so, if you'll excuse me, Pete, I'll show you the result."
Pete sat next to Sid, and Lauren reversed herself in the
city boy's lap so she could watch her athletic uncle. Carl took off his
boots, shrugged off the straps of his Oshkosh union suit, and unbuttoned
his shirt, continuing to strip until his clothes were piled on the log seat
and he was standing in front of them in his briefs.
"Let us," Lauren cooed, looking back over her shoulder
to see if the boys agreed. The nodded and Carl stepped close. "It's not
freaky," she said, "and it's nice for a man to be big, isn't it?"
Pete and Sid weren't so sure. No, there was nothing
more than maximum to his length, referencing various porno mags the two had
seen, but usually, according to the lore of indelicately lit reference
shots, males in the eight to nine inch category weren't especially, well,
erect. Hard. Carl was nothing but. Hot and hard and they could tell even
with his briefs on. There was nothing `ab' about it, but supernormal might
fit (if anything would).
The boys flanked the girl, and Carl braced himself on
their heads as they pulled down his briefs. He was slim and circumcised,
his penis bending slightly to his left. All but nine inches, flat against
his boyish belly. Because he was so athletic and young looking, his
erection verged on a paranormal display. In all three young minds the
notion occurred that if he'd made on additional visit to Skinny Minnie
Pond, it would not have improved him.
Carl sat back down, retrieved Pete to his lap, the boy
facing him, and Lauren turned to face Sid. He led by unbuttoning the
country boy's top button.
Lauren was right about not needing a bra, but it meant
nothing. She was an athletic beauty, slim and graceful with just a hint of
baby fat on her belly. Pete was milk white, Sid delicately golden. Carl
could have all but passed for a teen, and would have fit unnoticed in a
group photo of championship swimmers. Lauren took Pete's hand, first, and
be became the first male to sexually molest her by fondling her left nipple
as she brought Sid's hand to her right. Next she guided Pete's hand from
her breast to his friend's naked chest. The boy, Pete, had about the best
manners in the world, and he eased himself from Carl's lap, exchanging
places with Lauren, who cooed in welcome as her uncle brought her young
body gently to his muscular, almost pec-free, chest.
"You're just as nice as she is," Pete whispered, "but I
wouldn't want to sleep all night with you, and I would with her."
"That's how I feel, too," Sid whispered back. "The
same, only different. And when it came to anything but doing this, I'd
feel you were identical as far as being friends go, though you'd be my best
friend."
"I'll bet it gets more complicated when we get older,"
Pete observed.
"Yeah," Sid agreed, "if we were married and wanted to do
the same things with a boy that Carl's going to teach us."
"But Lauren can't be the only really normal girl," Steve
responded, "and think how awesome it will be to look for one who isn't a
slut and who isn't a Puritan on a stick."
Carl and Lauren were still as they watched the boys
beside them. "Ken and I experimented with kissing," he whispered.
"Can you imagine?" unspoken, glowed in both their eyes.
They started with bird nibbles, and passed through the experimental stages
as if they meant nothing, molesting each other gently as they savaged each
other's tongues like jellyfish fighting for a hole in the reef.
"I think I'm too young for that," Lauren whispered,
"damn it."
"No hurry," her uncle soothed, "if you want you can be a
sweet sixteen and never been kissed." He went on to explain that it was a
more intimate act than anything to do with sex, and the girl nodded
quietly, obviously glad to be free of any pressure.
"How do you feel about getting their sperm on your
chest?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Some of it may splash on your face and lips, do you
think that would be okay?" he queried the child.
"I'm past the yucky stage," Lauren said, "it's just
kissing I'm not ready for, watching them be boys is different."
"They'll get you very wet," Carl cautioned as a safety
measure. "We've been talking about secret stuff for a long time, and that
makes males produce cum really fast."
"Are you going to get me wet, too," she asked.
"I'll have to my first time," Carl said, "but, if Pete
and Sid help protect you, I can cum in you later."
"Would it be safe for them inside me, now?" the girl
asked.
"Yes, darling," her uncle whispered, "you'd be safe with
any normal-size male."
It was no time for big secrets, and the best friends
told the curious child that, to the best of their knowledge, because they'd
never seen kiddie porn, they were close to average.
"I like Pete the best," the girl announced in a whisper,
"and I think Sid's the cutest, by a little bit, so, Uncle Carl, would it be
okay of Pete cums in me, then I try to let Sid be in my mouth?"
"Yes, darling," the naked man husked, panting openly as
he fondled the eight year old, "but let me cum on you first, so you'll know
what happens, okay?"
"Yes," the girl agreed, adding: "teach me how."
"We better be naked, first," the young man said, easing
his niece to the grass and unbuckling the cloth belt at the waist of her
red shorts. Pete and Sid took the cue, and, bracing against the log seat,
stripped themselves while watching each other with eagle eyes. Naked and
hugely erect they stood side by side as Carl and Lauren approached, and
bowing their heads to watch the man guide the girl to them, turning one boy
slightly to the next so she and her uncle could squeeze then gently
together. "Sweetheart," Carl suggested, "stand at my right hip and make me
cum on them." The girl reacted like a trained seal, planting herself
beside her tall, athletic uncle has he spread his legs wide, bracing
himself by holding the naked shoulders of the two twelve year olds, her
left arm around his buttocks and taking his long, hard penis in her right
hand. "I've seen stuff under the sheets on television," she said, "and it
couldn't be anything but this." She fondled his flaring glans, wetting
him, then began to masturbate him slowly and steadily, as she'd seen on TV.
Pete and Sid, saving themselves for the young female, held each other
gently, low at the waist, and stared down at Carl's penis jutting between
their own slim five-inch boners, Lauren's tiny hand massaging and stroking.
"He looks like he could get us all pregnant," the girl
whispered, causing and echo of: "I'm going to cum." The child responded by
stroking him to the base and holding him with as much iron as her young
muscles could muster. He spurt hard and fast between the bellies of the
twelve year olds, his semen covering both of them in thick, white tendrils
of mature sperm. The boys' foreheads bumped lightly as they stared down at
each other, the beer adding a fuzzy tinge of unreality to splattering
pulses jetting again and again from the panting, grunting young adult. As
the excited flood gave way to a spasmodic cascade, Carl dropped slowly to
his knees, guiding his niece until she lay on her back in front of him.
With an intimate touch he got her to spread her legs widely, and he then
brought Pete to her, helping the boy mount, and holding both the young male
and female as the pre-teen entered her with a series of tentative thrusts.
In minutes he had her, completely, and her legs and arms came up around his
lithe, athletic body as be began a fast, complete thrusting. Sid also lay
half over his young friend, molesting his naked body with a right hand
slick with hot sperm.
The signs with Carl had been so obvious, one lesson
sufficed. "He's going to cum in you," Sid whispered to Lauren. The girls
arms and legs tightened around the handsome pre-teen, and his body froze
over hers, trembling and sweating as the girl mewed with excitement at the
sudden wanton pulsing deep in her belly. Slick as she was from her uncle,
when Pete raised and his arms to look down over her childish belly, all
three males could see the copious flow of almost clear boyish semen gushing
from their joined bodies in a series of miniatures floods.
As his climax subsided, the boy passed the girl to her
uncle. Carl rolled her gently on her stomach, and the girl quickly rose on
all fours. Protecting her, Pete mounted Carl, reaching under the young
stallion to first guide him, then holding his fist in position to prevent
his penetrating the sixty pound body too deeply. It worked for all three
of them, and soon they were sharing the powerful males deep, tender strokes
deep inside the soaking wet child. Lauren found Sid's leg with her hand
and coaxed the boy in front of her. He leaned over, bracing himself on
Pete, and the girl found him with her mouth. Carl mounted his niece fully,
and held her tightly against his waist as the child began taking Sid deep
into her mouth, meeting the boy's urgent thrusts with her own counter
strokes. So they stayed for ten minutes as Sid and Carl tried to maintain
control and please the young female. This time it was Steve who gave the
warning for both males. Sid, his hands tenderly in the girl's page-boy mop
of black hair, tensed only a few seconds before his three partners were
rewarded with wanton grunting from Lauren, hot for a full experience
following some tentative exposure during Carl's first massive cum. She
gulped deliriously, still letting much of the boy's watery sperm gush from
her mouth so her uncle and Pete could share what was happening. She
signaled Sid's completion with a wriggling of her hips, and Carl slowly
pulled her free of the shaken boy, and, bending her legs, rolled her on her
back underneath him. Must of the pre-teen thin cum covered her immature
breasts, and the sight drove Carl to acting hard and fast with her. Her
legs and arms went to him, and Pete and Sid moved in close at his flanks to
help steady him as he began to thrust harder and faster. Lauren soon began
to babble and mew incoherently, and was soon yelping and hissing at each of
his powerful penetrations deep into her belly. Pete stood his ground with
his clenched right hand, and the fist so low on his shaft was the final
stimulus for the exhausted young man. "He's cuming," Pete whispered, the
hard pulsing of Carl's second climax plain to feel in his clenched fist.
But the girl was lost; moaning, sweating, panting, and thrashing, her head
lolling wildly as her first mature orgasm shook her for an entire minute,
leaving her wet, panting, and dreamy eyed. Very ready for a cool swim with
three life guards to die for.
"The mud dried out, Carl taught us to drive the tractor,
and we ended up spending most of the summer," they explained to Josh.
Again, they were talking about the dead, but they did tell the boy that
Lauren had had a baby girl when she was thirteen, and presumably she and
her uncle met their end as an intensely happy couple right down to their
last kiss.
More tea.
"Have you ever molested a boy together?" Josh Benedict
asked.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"What do you think?" Pete asked his friend of four
years, "lying down on a settee, or standing?" Both sixteen year olds had
been granted early admission to a prominent art school, Pete Anderson as a
painter and his slightly younger friend, Sid Katz, as a photographer.
"Have him kneeling, and use a square canvas," Sid
suggested.
"Dog, that's it exactly," Pete enthused. "He can be
kneeling, playing marbles. Forest says I need to work on my hands, so he
could be supporting his weight with his left hand, you know, just one his
fingertips, and his right hand could be a fist, just about to shoot."
"It definitely works for me," the photographer enthused,
"or maybe it's because I'm working with a two-and-a-quarter by
two-and-a-quarter this month. If it ain't square, it ain't there."
"I still like it," the artist responded, "I'll call his
father and tell him we're ready any time Ray wants to come over. You can
shoot some candids of him playing mibsies and I'll finish it here."
"Can you imagine one of these days we'll be getting paid
for this?" Sid asked as Pete reached for the phone.
"The only thing in the world better than inherited money
is being an artist," Pete agreed, and spoke into the receiver.
"This afternoon?" he asked Sid.
"Sure," he replied, "the sooner the better."
The date was made and Pete hung up. "He'll be here for
lunch; his dad said they'll stop on the way and order a suicidal pizza."
They tried not to meet each other's eyes, but it was
useless. "What do you think?" Pete, always the nominal leader, asked.
"The pizza might get cold," Sid answered.
"M-a-t-u-r-i-t-y," Steve spelled out, slowly and
stolidly. They were undergraduate level student at what might as well have
been M.I.T., nevertheless they liked to whup a challenge on each other once
in awhile, and the antidote was to spell out the word as one might count to
ten when angered. If it was a juvenile form of crises intervention, it
still worked and eventually the two were able to proceed as if everything
in the freaking world wasn't the biggest blamed riot you ever saw in all
your born days. They had it all; extreme grades in their academics and
burgeoning reputations for providing gently unique variations in their
respective fields, art as the center of their lives, independent incomes;
not lush but very adequate, their friendship, intermittent but steadfast
through the four years since their meeting, and an inbound eleven year old
they'd selected as a possible model from two hundred like children in the
area, so there was a lot to go around kidding and feeling lighthearted
about, and no reason to half choke to death on sophomoric tawdriness. Then
again, the pizza might get cold, so Pete turned the oven on to preheat to
two-fifty.
Another connect-the-dots, auto-writing chapter. Doesn't
there have to be a limit, somewhere? Is death or disability the only thing
that can stop the flood? Does it pay, this much, to practice? Follow the
rules, and end up a god? Nobody ever told me that when I was a kid. They
said work hard, and worship god. No hints I'd end up being one of the
freaking things. Think of how far above challenge I am. To critique me is
to criticize someone far more gifted, by god, than any possible reviewer.
The temerity would be enormous, and as to wrath, my mother makes several
appearances in other writings, and there you should tarry, receptive to any
hints you might glean regarding the consequences of raining on my parade.
My life as a novel continues unabated. Malcolm Dale
(other writings, specifically "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters") pulled a stunt
today that earns him another few paragraphs of immortality. I sent Delton
to him with a note, promising to pay him on the eighteenth. He refused to
give him the money, saying how did he know the note was from me. All
things being equal, the chances of the note not being from me had to be
infinitesimal, and the amount was less than twenty dollars. When his old
bike was stolen from under my old house, he had the price of a new
replacement on his counter the next morning. I sent a second note, and
again he refused to give Delton the money, finally riding a mile out here
to deliver the money to me. I mention it because it's so English. Listen
up you catatonic, island-bound morons. Try, oh, try to be less stupid.
It's really important. The North Sea oil will be gone before you young
people know it. You must improve your minds, your attitudes, and your
outlook or be reduced on the world stage the level of some place like
Spain. Delton was obviously wounded, obviously in pain, had his X-Ray
envelope and doctor's orders in his hand, how could there be the slightest
chance he was some kind of opportunist handing over a forged document fifty
feet from the front door of the freaking police station? This brittleness
of thought and action is why England dominated for centuries, but it is
categorically why, in more complex times, the country is circling the
drain, surrounded by cold, stormy, gray water. "My right to be stupid is
absolute, and I shall exercise it to the fullest, every day." That seems
to be the motto, and, while it might be apt for the poorly educated South,
you know, pride for its own sake (pride in being proud, like being famous
for being famous), it seems a strange dictum for Blighty. It's like
holding a piece of ground just because your feet are on it. It's YOUR
ground, and never mind if it's quicksand or in the middle of the fish waste
pond of a sardine works. Bad news. In the end, it likely saved me my
twenty dollars, because it's probably unnecessary for Delton to have more
treatment, in the first place. He has full range of arm and wrist motion
and his fingers work normally; the bone infection worry is probably a one
in several hundred chance. Still, it's the point. My father, more English
than American, did the same thing. Refused a collect call, because it was
an automated system and all I could say was my first name. He knew I was
on my own out west. I had thirty thousand in my checking account, so I
wouldn't be calling for money. He's a multi-millionaire, yet he wouldn't
accept a one-dollar call from "Tom" without a full explanation of who this
person calling himself Tom was. Both are dangerous people and it's a
delight owing neither of them squat. Both are bullies, and lead stunted
lives because of it. I grin and bear it, maintain friendly relationships
for the sake of convenience, and keep typing. (Re: Bullies. There is a
difference between using emotional and restrained physical violence against
someone who is doing something dangerous, and doing so gratuitously, just
because you think you can get away with it. I bully you. You are living
dangerously, that's why.)
Samantha spent an hour trying to add up her dream list
for Monday, when the money arrives. She has five items ranging from paint
for her classroom's blackboard to a new suit. She never got within ten
dollars. How do you spend ten years of schooling not teaching simple
addition? It can be pretty staggering. Three times I've gone to a
particular store to get ten packs of hot dogs. Each time the same clerk
has added two-seventy-five, ten times. What does one do but keep typing?
(Actually, I have an idea. Marry the one who's not a clerk, give her ten
dollars, and tell her it's fifty. Even marrying her and not fooling her
might work.)
Louise turns out to be great verification. We often
work shoulder to shoulder together in the kitchen, she in a halter and
shorts, and, stunning beauty and calm charm notwithstanding, I feel nothing
for her other than the same friendship I feel for six or eight other kids.
I only respond. I never initiate. If anything, I repel. Good to know. I
would have been a totally safe father for Anne's daughters, unless
Predatory was their middle name. (Yes, yes, I would have let her name
them.) Even then, they'd have been more likely to get a spanking than a
kiss. Maybe, in the end, what Queenie has done is illustrate my own
hypocrisy; I suggest and espouse what I wouldn't do, myself. My rebuttal
is that in a more perfect world, there would be less censure, and I would
be free to add ten years of sexual enjoyment and fulfillment to, a, their
lives, and, b, mine. If that doesn't define win, win, you have a potential
best seller in telling us what does. Maybe if we all became Jewish we
could dote on the lustrous quality of our media, the rich cadences of the
schlong schleppers' Yiddish, and love each other half to death. That's my
plot outline. And, while bashing Gotham and all that goes with it, for the
umpteenth time, I came up with a witty little adage, and a mystery to go
with it. "New York, you've got a problem." The mystery is whether the
problem is Muslims, or me. Again with the hypocrisy, because, as far as I
know, if I make it to age seventy I'd like to live on Arthur Avenue and
emulate Diamond Jim Brady, trencherman of urban legend.
Speaking of food, the pizza was a killer. Charles
Castile stayed for lunch, and the four managed half of it. "There's so
much art in nature, I became a writer. None of that in nature," Ray's
thirty-year-old father observed. "I lived in an older house when I was a
boy," he went on, "and there was some water damage to the ceiling in my
bedroom. A stain and a tear in the beaverboard. Also, unpainted wooden
shutters. In both places I saw what I considered to be highly artistic
images; perfect blends of abstract and true-life. In the random patterns
of a water stain and stained wood. Michelangelo quality images -- better
than. `Self,' I said to myself, `you've got some bodacious competition
when it comes to graphic images, so you'd better learn to type.'"
One thing, he was easy to appraise. No fencing. Not
one of Larry McMurtry's `stone-silent businessmen'. No innuendo concerning
the intentions of the artists; comments about "Playboy", questions about
girlfriends, yet highly guarded, highly aware, for all of his casual
bonhomie. In twenty minutes they felt highly privileged to be given
stewardship of the sensationally attractive eleven year old, and in thirty
minutes he was gone, Ray, alone, sitting shyly at the kitchen table with
them.
"Those eyelashes are going to take me six hours, each,"
Pete mused, envying Sid who only had to get in close and trigger the
camera. At the same time, there was a glow to the child; a resonance and
timbre to his smile, his eyes, and his light honey-colored, silken skin
beyond the reality of the photograph. Not that he'd be less than beautiful
in a photo, just that there was a little more; for instance, a subtle,
almost purple tinge to his raven hair, an iridescence, subdued in the boy's
case, but easily seen in certain feathers of the urban pigeon. A liquidity
to his eyes that would escape light and lens and film and print, even in
Sid's already skilled hands.
"Your dad seems comfortable with you hanging out with
us," Pete said.
"He thinks your work is way beyond anyone else he's
seen;" the boy responded in a lilting pre-teen soprano, "he was like a kid
when you picked me."
"He was a little hard on we of the graven image," Sid
noted. Ray laughed. "He protects his turf that way," the boy said, "by
being prickly. I guess it's an editorial process, of sorts; weeding out
the time wasters. Since he specifically told me to invite you for Sunday
dinner -- Maine lobster, as a matter of fact -- I think you'll find his
bark worse than his bite."
"Well, his kid isn't worse than anything," Pete said, to
the child's happy Hispanic smile. "How do you guys cook lobster?" Sid
added.
They got further acquainted.
"What we had in mind," Pete said, "is taking you our in
the park, up in some of the wilder areas, and do some sketching. You could
be building a camp fire, playing marbles, something like that where you use
your hands."
"I'd like that," the boy replied. "I know twenty-five
knots, if you have some string or something."
"No problem," Pete said. "Also, we have some simple
costumes you can choose from. Tom Sawyer. Tarzan. Skateboarder. Dancer.
Even a Peter Pan, but we don't have leggings for it. Or you can wear what
you have on."
"If I wore the Peter Pan, would it just be in private,
for the two of you?" Ray asked.
"We can take it in a backpack, and there's plenty of
privacy in the further reaches of the park."
"Can I ask you something that might seem kind of weird,"
the eleven year old said.
"Sure," Sid said.
"Do guys that like to, you know, do stuff together, go
in that part of the park. Gay guys."
"Yes," Pete and Sid responded.
"Would we see anything?" the child wanted to know.
"We'd scout a circle to be sure we had privacy," Sid
said, "but, it's possible. Some gay couples are a little bit on the
exhibitionist side, and don't mind if someone sneaks through the pushes,
silent as cats, and spies on what they are doing with each other."
"I don't think a Peter Pan costume would be good for
that," the boy observed.
"Tarzan was a bit of a bush hog, in his day," Pete
allowed, to the merry giggle of their new friend.
"And we could easily take both," Sid added.
"Are you guys, you know, gay?" Ray asked.
"No," Pete said. "We don't sleep together, remember
each other's birthdays, have a special song, shop, leave silly notes, or
hold hands. No Vermont wedding is in the offing. We do, two or three
times a week, end up in the shower together, or hang out together on the
sofa or in one of our bedrooms. We're perhaps a bit gay in the sense that
we're extremely demanding of any girls we come across; expect that they
read, clean, and cook, as we do, for openers."
"How about you?" Sid asked.
"Dad says I have the hottest bod for hundreds of
hectares," Ray giggled. "That's the writer in him. He's always going on
how he wishes he wasn't my dad. It's dead funny. For example, he wants me
to get a paper route, so he can get to know me under fresh circumstances.
`Sunday Showers, How the Boy Flowers.' That's the title of his masterpiece
on the theme."
"Beats: `It was a dark and stormy night'," Sid remarked.
"Too bad someone beat him to `A Tree Grows in
Brooklyn'," Pete added, feeling a license to be a bit ironic had been
granted by Charles Castile's comment on subliminal graphics.
"If we sneaked around," Ray said, picking up the thread
of their conversation, "would we see any, you know, child molesters, or
would it be guys your age."
"Why, you feelin' lucky, punk?" Pete asked.
"Just wanted to make my day," the boy replied, without
pause.
"Then it's time to make hay," Pete responded with equal
alacrity.
They took their young friend on a tour of their studio
cum apartment as they packed the costumes, theatrical makeup, a grooming
kit, and half a dozen other items that Sid used for last minute touch ups
on location shoots. Pete made do with a pencil, a plastic sharpener, and a
pad. Sometimes it was nice being a painter. They hailed a cab and in half
an hour were sitting on a rock out of sight and sound of the swirling city
around them.
"How much were you kidding around, back at the studio,"
Pete asked, "and how much was serious."
"That's what I'd like to know," the boy said with a shy
smile.
"Well, it's kind of important," Sid added, "we don't
want to expose you to anything that freaks you, even a little.
"At the same time, if you're really curious, we could
stash the backpack for an hour or two, and play Rambo."
"We're not exactly experts," Pete said, "and we've never
explored this area, but I'm a hunter, and my instincts tells me if we stalk
we will find."
"But what do we do, if we do?" Sid said.
"Yeah," Pete agreed, "it's one thing to keep our mitts
off you while we're artists and you're the model, but if we're watching a
cute twenty year old with a cute ten year old, we might not be in the mood
to say, "Oh, HOW cute," and shuffle off to Buffalo."
"I should hope not," Ray allowed.
"You're sure?" both sixteen year olds asked.
"No," Ray said, "but I'm sure I'll be sure as soon as I
know, for sure."
"Positive?" they double-checked, in unison.
"Absolutely," the boy replied. Boy, did that bring back
memories. "M-a-t-u-r-i-t-y." Hey, it actually worked, sort of, and in
less than three minutes they were ready to head into the forest of prime
evil.
The country boy led, his instinct for terrain sharpened
by a youth as hunter and camp guide. For half an hour they carved a wide
circle, then made a bee line for its center. "Hard critters to track," the
teen said, "but there were enough obvious sites to know we're in hot
territory. Our choice is to wait, or stalk."
"If we wait, we can talk," Ray noted.
Pete and Sid agreed, so they scouted a smaller circle,
finding a secluded small cave above an obvious pathway. Pete punched the
buttons on his PDA, locking in a GPS waypoint, and they stashed the
backpack under some brush. He explained waiting inevitably led to
stalking, and they had to be ready to de-camp on a moment's notice. The
jungle leader passed the Leitz glasses to Ray, and dispatched him twenty
feet up a nearby tree. The boy whispered down two tally-hoes, then dropped
down to report that they were older, fatter guys, and not fit prey for man
nor beast. The boy seemed free of vanity, but both Pete and Sid were glad
to hear his comment on the heavily inclined. They were starving artists,
by choice, and their thirty-two inch waists were the proof of no pudding.
On the other hand, standing between them was a tall, coltish young boy, big
of foot, big of hand, and endlessly long of leg.
"Slanting light looks good in the woods, so we can do
the photos later" Sid explained, leaving his camera hidden with the
backpack. They reconnoitered and found a good observation post overlooking
what Pete felt was the least obvious of the trails he'd sensed; one leading
around their small hill to a cul de sac not a hundred yards distance, as
the crow flew.
"This is a piece of cake," the leader said, "if we were
after deer, we'd have to worry about wind direction, and we couldn't make
the slightest sound or movement."
Not that they could sing and dance, but there was some
tolerance. Ray took advantage of it. Nestled snugly between the two
teens, eyes glued to the binoculars, he took the opportunity to ask a
question.
"What if it's a man and a girl?" he said. "Has anything
like that ever happened to you guys?"
They were feeling so grown up, what with all the
spycraft, and their academic grades and success with their artistic
ambitions, and Charles' invitation to Sunday dinner, they actually tried
it. "Absolutely," they chorused in a soft whisper.
"Can you tell me about it?" was the next question.
"I don't know," Pete said, "how far are you along? I
mean, have any physical things happened with you, or do you just kid around
with your dad?"
"Once a pee-pee did grow in Brooklyn," the mentally
alert boy replied.
"I hope therein lies a tail," Pete replied.
"Ass-o-lutely," Sid added. Sometimes they missed being
twelve.
"Assuredly," Ray said, "but that doesn't mean anything
physical happened, it was just a story my friend told me about what
happened to him, but something physical did happen, you know, the first
time, even though I was the only one who knew about it."
"Sounds kinda like a bunt," Sid remarked.
"Way infield," Ray agreed.
"At least you made the roster," Pete said.
"So," Sid added, "if you want to give us the
play-by-play, we'll know how much to tell you about what happened in
Connecticut."
"It was a dark and stormy night," the wit began, "and,
I, ten, was babysitting Keith Spooner, seven. Said juvenile retrieved
one-each family bible, making me swear to secrecy on it, so he could tell
me what happened in daycare, where he sometimes spent his Saturdays if his
parents were on location.
"I both swore and affirmed, so as not to take any
chances. He was a really cute, nice kiddo and I wanted to hear his story,
because, for sure, it didn't sound like one of the kids had smuggled in a
joint or his brother's magazines."
"Had you ever seen stuff like magazines?" Sid asked.
"No," Ray said. "I had to imagine everything, but some
of it was easy because his story was about a game called `Froggy', not the
frog game on the computer, and I had seen frogs, you know, pretending no
one was looking."
"And you say your dad's the writer in the family?" Pete
asked, a friendly irony in his voice.
"Yeah," Ray said, "but I'm wordy, too. That's how Keith
and I got to be friends. `Pokemon' was to thin for us, kind of sterile and
Jewish and same-old-same-old, so we talked about Napoleon and Nelson. He
thought it was a riot I was going to be his b.s. -- baby sitter, and he'd
stomp around hollering `I'm ten. I'm king of the world!', you know, just
being cute."
Well, they'd asked. Pete looked over the young
storyteller's head at his friend. "He's preaching to the chorus, as far as
I'm concerned," Sid said, "as well as hitting the nail on the head."
"I guess it's something we've never talked about," Pete
said.
"There's nothing to talk about," his friend replied,
"accident of birth, and I seem to have gotten some talent along with the
lunatic religion, so one washes the other."
"My dad says not to back off on being and anti-Semite,"
Ray said. "He thinks an insidious socialistic, whining, puling
undercurrent spells the destruction of any culture that allows it.
Quibbling. Superficiality. Monotonous ritual. Ugliness. He calls the
electric bill the Jew bill, because after they built a two billion dollar
power plant for Lilco, the nitpickers disallowed it on technicalities of
evacuation procedures."
"My favorite story," Sid says, "was when they evacuated
two million people over a minor hurricane. Classic. Like the election.
Strand two million people along hundreds of miles of road, at the precise
time they should be watching their property and ready to help their
neighbors. It's like when they shut down a freeway for twelve hours
because of some criminal activity, and the scutbuckets need to come in and
get four hundred and fifty photos of every shell casing so the lawyers can
run up huge bills exercising due diligence in reviewing every one "
"You have to look at the broader issue," Pete said.
"They are damaging the country so relentlessly and so thoroughly, it can't
long survive in any form we'd want to endure, if it survives, at all. This
gives us the greatest privilege in all of human history, and that is to die
at the end of civilization, having seen the best of it, and without
jealousy toward those younger, who get to live on."
"If I ever play tennis with you," Ray said, "count on me
being leery of your backhand."
"It may be backhanded," Pete laughed, "but count on its
being true. There's evidence. World War II was commonly called The War to
Save the Jews. It killed fifty-five million, thirty of them in Europe.
Europe, even with the war, stands on the verge of a population crises that
means sixty million old people will have to be euthanized in the next
decade, if they are to survive. Without the wars, that would have happened
decades ago."
"If Hitler had concentrated on his eastern front, he
could have pushed the Slavs half way across Siberia, and the problem
wouldn't exist," Ray said.
"He couldn't," Sid said, "because he had the world's
dumbest Englishman cozying up to Uncle Joe, and threatening Calais."
"I wish Keith was here," Ray said, "he thinks Roosevelt
was the world's dumbest Dutchman. You guys would both win, but you'd still
have fun playing."
"Invite him," Pete suggested.
"I will," Ray said. "His dad's finishing up his work on
the coast, and they'll be back for school."
"It's cool you keep in touch," Pete said.
"We haven't done that yet, we just talk," Ray replied,
giggling at his own clowning around.
"So, talk, already," Sid gruffed, half pretend, but half
sore from having his chain pulled, however unintentionally. It was hard to
get back at a kid who, a, pseudo and suspiciously convenient
intellectualism duly noted, was right, and, b, was so personable, never
mind cute. It was hard being a Jew. If civilization survived someone would
come along, one fine day, and make it impossible. Since this would mean a
brighter day for those following us, we all hope that doesn't happen.
Selfish, but human.
"Yeah," the boy responded, a note of contrition in his
voice for any personal response to his offhand remark, "I guess I got a
little sidetracked. When Keith told me, the same thing kept happening. It
took him two hours. Comes from reading all the time. You have so much to
yak-yak-yak about, sometimes you forget stuff."
"You haven't taken your eyes away from those glasses for
ten minutes," Sid said, bygones, bygones, and no friendly sounding strain
to his voice, "so you don't seem like the absent-minded type."
"I'm older now," the child responded.
"Then why wait any longer?" Sid prompted.
Pete pulled out his sketch pad and pencil from his cargo
shorts. Lying on Ray's left, he showed the boy how to use the binoculars
on just his right eye, and began a close-up study as the eleven year old
picked up the thread of his story, leaving out the "dark and stormy night"
part.
"Bible yes, magazines, no," he began, "so I swore to
secrecy, and went down in their basement laundry room with him, so we'd be
away from his two older sisters."
"So you could pretend no one was looking?" Sid asked.
"So we could be sure no one interrupted us," the boy
responded, hinting at a prickliness that would serve him well as an artist,
but covering it with a friendly wink in Sid's direction, before going back
to his field glasses.
Boys R Us, the facility was called. (It's sister center
was across the street.) "We don't get many seven year olds here," Mitch
Affingham, the owner's seventeen year old son said.
"My parents do stuff out of town, so sometimes I come on
Saturdays," Keith said.
"No, it's cool," the teen said, least he be
misunderstood, "I wish we had more older kids."
"I'm even older, now," the boy quipped, instinctively
liking the lanky older boy, not in a small part because he had a somewhat
sever case of acne, which meant no girls, which meant maybe he hung out at
the library, which turned out to be the reason they'd never met, though
Keith had been coming to the daycare/preschool for several months.
They chatted about this and that as Keith helped the
older boy put together a salad, then they sat together at lunch, rapidly
warming to one another over almost par debates on topics ranging from
whether or not "Myst" was absolutely the stupidest game in human history to
the role of barbers in various movements of the Sixties. Mrs. Affingham
dropped by their table and suggested her son invite Keith to his room,
because the younger kids would be taking naps. They helped clean up, then
went up to the resident apartment.
"If I ever get kidnapped, I hope it's by you," Keith
said, looking at the richly laden book cases bordering the usual clutter of
a male teenager's room.
"You'd be my first choice as a victim," the older boy
noted, "so you might want to start saving for the ransom."
"How much would it cost me to stay?" the bright child
asked.
"A dozen meal worms a day for the frogs," Mitch said,
nodding in the direction of a terrarium in the corner of his bedroom. The
seven year old went over and looked. "For that kind of behavior?" he
remarked.
"I don't usually bring curious twerps up here, so don't
blame them," Mitch said, not thinking it was the coolest to laugh at a
second grader, but hardly able to help himself.
"Okay," the boy replied, "it's a deal then, worms, and I
don't tell."
"I'll order some cuffs on the Net, and we'll set a
date," Mitch said.
"September second," Keith said, "the day before school
starts."
"You hate it too?" the older boy asked.
"They keep you from reading, and call it education,"
Keith laughed.
"Wait `till you get to Kafka, and they teach you to hate
to read," Mitch cautioned.
"Hemingway already taught me, but thanks for the
reminder."
"If you made it through him, you're a survivor," the
older boy said.
"That's how I felt," the prodigy allowed. "Thank god he
spent most of his time on parade and not typing."
"His only gift," Mitch agreed, and they high-fived.
"What's the best movie?" the teen asked after they'd
spent more time looking at the frogs, neither seeming to want to leave the
terrarium.
So closely attuned had they become, so quickly, Keith
felt his heart bump at the innocuous question. As if guided by a
mysterious voice, he knew not only the film, but the scene his mature
friend had in mind. "Dale and Rusty," he said.
"Did you get it?" Mitch asked.
"Afterwards, Audrey teases Rusty for sleeping in his
underpants, then, when he's drinking beer with Clark, he says he's only
been a man for a few days, so something happened."
"'Bopping the baloney' is a pretty crude way of putting
it."
"They take that line out on most of the cable channels,"
Keith noted.
"The freaking frogs know about it, but humans have to be
something like a hundred to get clued in," Mitch said. There was no whine
or cynicism in his voice; he wasn't an iconoclast or petulant harpy, just a
kid who doted on a breath of truth and reality once in awhile.
"Okay," Keith said, "so while Audrey's checking out
Vicki's stash, what's happening in the other bedroom?"
"Dale's showing Rusty stuff some big boys do," Mitch
said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper.
"Can little boys do it?" Keith wanted to know, his voice
dropping to match his friend's.
"Big boys can play a game with little boys that's sort
of like what big boys do," the teen explained. "It's called `Froggy', and
the behavior involved is nothing to write home about."
"But it's really exciting, isn't it?" Keith asked.
"If amphibians with brains the size of a grain of rice
do it for hours, it must have something to offer," Mitch observed, making
Keith laugh with his pedantic delivery.
"How come people don't?" the younger boy wanted to know.
"With us it's shorter, but much more intense," Mitch
answered, "I mean, you don't see the frogs acting like the end of the world
is coming."
"How do you spell that?" the bright-eyes asked.
"So you know some stuff," Mitch replied, his heart
beginning to race at the boy's enduring interest in frog-like subjects.
"Last Saturday when I was here, guess what, out came the
dolls," Keith said. "Next they'll be having them center stage at the mall.
Anyway, your teacher wasn't too bad, and he told us about how it's
spelled."
"That's Chris Gibbons," Mitch said, "he's the best
teacher Mom's ever had."
"Yeah," Keith agreed, "but still it's like opening a
window so just your nose sticks through. Not exactly enlightening."
"Have to, because of Little Rascals and the other
daycare scandals," Mitch explained, "but the dolls, themselves, are a bit
limited when it comes to an accurate presentation, anyway, so you just have
to add it to reading as something blocked by education."
"I just wish they wouldn't be so thorough about it," the
younger boy said.
"Would you like to learn like Rusty did in the movie?"
Mitch asked.
"Yes," Keith said.
"I learned that way," the teenager said, "so I could
teach you, at least as much as Fogger."
"How long does it take?" Keith wanted to know, his heart
thudding with hope the answer would suit his spinning head.
"An hour," Mitch said.
"So it would be over by the end of lunchtime?"
"Beginning, is more like it," Mitch noted, "but don't
worry, we've got plenty of time."
"How do we do it?" he asked.
"We start with all our clothes on," Mitch answered.
"You get on your knees with your arms on the bed, and I get on top of you,
just like the guys in the fish tank. If you like the feelings you get,
then we take our shirts off, and try it that way."
"Is it molesting when we have our shirts off?" Keith
said.
"Technically," the older boy responded, "I think it's
molesting you to just talk about it, but it really starts if you let me put
my hands inside your underpants."
"Will I be doing it to you if you let me, you know, put
my hand there?"
"I don't know," Mitch said, "I guess if you like tricked
me into tying me up, then did it if I didn't want you to."
"Would I go to jail?" Keith asked.
"Probably in `Guinness' is where you'd end up," Mitch
replied.
"If I used bowlines and clove hitches, maybe in the
scout manual," the twerp said.
"Or we could get creative," Mitch observed, "and start
our own magazine. You know, `Boyplay'."
They stared at each other, eyes bright as torches. "Is
this falling in love?" Keith whispered.
"Freaking head over freaking heels," the teen responded.
"Won't your head be over mine?" the irrepressible boy
said, dropping to his knees and crossing the carpet to Mitch's bed where he
positioned himself with his arms on the spread.
"You were right," the older male said, crawling over the
child, hugging him gently and whispering in his ear.
"So were you when you said `intense'," Keith whispered
back, adding: "if you stopped now, I'd feel like the most molested boy in
the world. Totally raped."
"I think you're the safest boy in the world," Mitch
reassured the child, "but I'll lock the door before we take our shirts
off."
"Go up under it now, so I'll know how it's going to
feel," Keith suggested.
"Okay, let me pull it out of your shorts," Mitch
whispered.
"Okay," Keith said.
His hands worked gently and they both began to pant.
"Do you think you'll like doing this to little boys when you're my age?"
Mitch quizzed.
"How old do I have to be?" Keith asked.
"Sometimes boys that are twelve or thirteen molest kids
your age," Mitch said, "but usually the younger boy or girl wants to see
what happens when the older boy gets really excited, so kids younger than
twelve usually just talk about stuff or experiment with a little touching."
"If I stayed over, would you do this with me all night?"
Keith asked.
"For a few hours, then we'd fall asleep and you could
encourage me in the morning, if you wanted to."
"Would we be completely naked?" he quizzed.
"If you wanted to feel me between your legs, you know,
while we were lying on our sides with me behind you, then we would," the
older boy explained.
"Could you go inside me, you know, back there?" the
child asked.
"You need to find a twelve year old for that," Mitch
said, "if I tried, it would really hurt, and you've got to be careful --
real careful -- who you hang around with, like they teach you in school,
because some guys really want to go inside a young boy's tight butt, and
they won't care if it hurts. That's a real molester, or rapist is more
like it."
"So no hitching in the worst part of town after
midnight," Keith said.
"You'd probably just have an exciting time with some
regular guy," the older boy said, "but stuff does happen. On the other
hand, there's nothing in the world half as exciting as putting on a cutoff
tee shirt, sandals, and an old pair of tight shorts, and sticking out your
thumb."
"Would somebody stop?" the boy asked.
"Everybody. The first time I did it, three cars stopped
at once. It was half a freaking accident."
"Did you get in one of the cars?"
"No," Mitch said, "a cop stopped to see what the fuss
was about, and I got in his car."
"No way," Keith whispered.
"No ticket," his friend replied.
"Could we do it, you know, hitch together sometime?"
"It's a little bit dangerous," Mitch said, "so that
would be best. You have to think on your feet. Make a judgment in like
ten seconds. If the guy's unattractive, or creepy looking in any way, you
say you forgot your watch at your friends house, and close the door."
"Has that ever happened to you?"
"No," the older boy replied, "I only did it a few times,
and all the guys were nice. They even offered to buy me stuff, but that's
hustling, a real different thing, so I never took anything."
"Where did they take you?" the younger boy asked.
"There's a saying," Mitch replied, "good boys go to
heaven, bad boys go everywhere. That about sums it up. To their
apartments, to motels, out in the woods, or parking where you can see
anyone coming."
"Did you have to worry about getting anything?" the
child asked.
"It's so exciting," Mitch explained, "that you just need
to use your hands a little bit, and you can't get anything that way, unless
the sperm gets on a fresh cut, or something."
"Do guys really do it with their mouths?"
"I didn't start that until a couple of years ago, and it
was with an older boy I knew really well," Mitch said, "but some boys your
age might be ready.
"You can get VD that way, but not aids, unless you've
got a loose tooth, or a canker sore, so you'll probably want to wait before
you experiment that way."
"Yeah," Keith said, "until you've got your underwear off
would probably be a good idea."
"Do you think you'd want to?" the teen rasped into the
strawberry smelling hair of the youngster.
"As soon as you've taught me the first steps," Keith
whispered, now openly panting from the mature male's hands.
"If I don't stop touching you I'm going to cum," Mitch
said, "and that would be out of order by anybody's rules."
"I want you to," the child coaxed.
"It's exponential," Mitch replied in a strangled
whisper, "waiting twice as long make it four times better." [Million-word
veteran though he is, the author has never been tempted to use an emoticon,
however, when he reflects on waiting two score and three years for his ever
extraordinary Samantha, the grinning idiot happy face comes to mind, if not
to the keyboard.]
"And that's meant to be survivable?" Keith panted.
"Young girls survive having babies," Mitch observed, "so
boys have to pay their dues, somehow."
"Then why couldn't I survive having you inside me?"
Keith wanted to know.
"For the same reason a girl couldn't survive giving
birth to an anvil," the teen explained, "it's not only size that counts."
"But we could experiment that way, couldn't we?" the boy
said, "even if you didn't go all the way."
"I'd like to try, if you really want to -- some day,"
the teen said.
"It's a date," his little friend responded.
Slowly Mitch rose back to his knees, both hands under
Keith's shirt. Immediately he was upright, the younger male unbuttoned his
shirt and his partner stripped it from him, then stripped off his own.
Keith backed slightly from the bed, realizing stretching for it would give
the young adult on top of him greater access. He arched his back, and
Mitch found his naked chest and they knelt panting one over the other.
"Come up higher on me so I can feel you against me,"
Keith urged.
"Let's get our pants off, okay?" the older male coaxed.
It didn't happen right away, gentle fingers against a slender chest root
faster than forked lightning, but exponential was exponential and there was
a lot to be said for the better day, tomorrow, so they did come enough to
their senses to rise again and strip off their shoes, socks and shorts.
This time Mitch mounted the child high, his athletic
thighs pressed to the back of little Keith's underpants, his hands on the
arching, panting chest, his face buried in the boy's neck.
"I can't move at all or I'll start cumming," the older
boy whispered to the child.
"Do most boys like to watch it happen?" Keith asked.
"Yes, especially the first time," the experienced teen
said.
"Can I make it come out of you?" he quizzed.
"Yes," Mitch whispered.
"Teach me," Keith urged.
"Are you ready to be naked?" the older male responded.
"Yes," he replied.
"Okay," the young man said, his hands leaving the boy's
chest and finding the band of his white, cotton underpants. He pulled them
to the child's knees, then pulled down his own. They struggled a moment
together, until the garments were kicked free, then Mitch lay carefully on
the boy's slender back. Keith reached back with his right hand and guided
the hugely swollen penis of the seventeen year old high between his legs,
and felt the older male surge gently against him, wetting and hotly
penetrating his milk-white thighs.
"You've got to lie on your back to see," he whispered to
the child, and he helped Keith up on the bed, kneeling over him with his
almost seven-inch, circumcised erection probing the seven year old's tiny
nipples. "Do what comes naturally," he coaxed, "just don't stop once you
start."
"Okay," Keith responded as his right hand found the
beautiful teen. He wet himself on the heavy flow of seminal fluid, then
experimented with gripping and fondling, quickly settling into a rhythm
that made the older boy hiss and shudder.
"It's going to be really wet all over you," Mitch
cautioned.
"Cum on me," the boy hissed back.
"I'm cumming," he gasped, shaking and sweating, rigid
over the little boy. His first sperm gouted across the slim, white chest
of the boy, causing him to mew incoherently. For his first hard, hot
spurts the boy stared, then the mature male felt the child's left hand on
his thigh, pulling him for ward. "Oh, babe," he murmured, moving up as the
child guided him to his panting mouth, finding the sweating ejaculating
teenager first with a wanton tongue, then, experiencing a gush or hot
sperm, with his lips and rosebud mouth. Instinctively, the seven year old
sucked the swollen purple glans hard and fast, and Mitch bean a second
cuming more intense than everything that had ever happened to him in his
life. There wasn't as much sperm, but like a drunk with the dry heaves, it
went one and on, even a slight spill of seed driving his juvenile lover to
frenzied sharing. As the second minute ended, Mitch moved down Keith's
young body and found the boy's bone hard erection. He wet the child with
sperm from his heaving, sweating chest, and, as the boy lay back with his
hand behind his neck, raised the child's widely spread legs on his knees
and gently masturbated him until the boy began hissing and mewing, then
bent his head and tenderly took the beautiful penis in his mouth, sucking
softly with his wet tongue wriggling over the boy's hot, young penis.
Keith slammed into his first climax, yelping and shuddering as his little
hand tore at the shoulders of the athletic male.
Silently they lay nose to nose caressing each other,
staring into each other's eyes; breaking only to lower their heads to each
other and lick, then return to experiment with kissing. "If they don't
teach reading in school like they don't teach sex, I might grow to like
Hemingway yet," Keith said. "Don't count on it," his friend replied.
"Well I'll admit I'd rather have you inside me," one whispered. "Count on
it," the other whispered. "When?" "When it rains on Kilimanjaro."
Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, 12/02
xxx