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