Date: Sun, 20 May 2012 14:19:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: worddrunkfool@aol.com
Subject: The Mercy of his Means (complete)

First: I will not use the term boy-pussy.  It's just not that kind of
story.

Second: neither of my characters remotely resembles a Greek god.  I imagine
each to be quite ordinary -- except that he ends up doing things most of us
would not consider.

That being said, I hope this finds an audience here on Nifty.

The Mercy of his Means

This is a true story that never happened.

Call me irresponsible.  Call me crazy, even.  Just don't call me Jerry
Sandusky. I went to the mall last weekend to buy a couple of shirts.  I
came home instead with a boy, and in the course of two crowded hours the
world was born again.

Figuring the shirts could wait, I decided to take a stroll, to see what
else America was buying on a Sunday afternoon. I checked out my reflection
in the shop windows: I look okay, I guess. I'm 42. Slim and reasonably fit,
especially considering I never lift anything heavier than the occasional
Russian novel.  I have a pleasant face, symmetrical and still unlined, kind
if somewhat characterless -- the same face I had when I was ten and the
aunts told me I would someday be a lady-killer.  As it turned out, they
weren't much for telling fortunes.  The man I see in the reflection
couldn't kill a damn thing.

I saw the boy in the Apple Store, hunched over an iPad at a small table
near the window.  Even on Sunday, the place was buzzing, claustrophobic --
and I didn't have it in me to wait for one of the blue-shirted clerks to
attend to me.  I took in the array of digitalia, then feeling suddenly
overwhelmed, I decided to beat a hasty retreat.  At that moment, I spied
the boy again -- and this time I sensed that he saw me, too, or at least
that he had one eye trained on me while he maintained the other on the game
he was playing.  He was a study in nonchalance, his practiced thumbs on
auto-pilot.  I don't know why, but at that moment, I decided to talk to
him.  Not to one of the techno-savvy clerks.  Not to the woman checking out
Siri, resplendent in her weekend Donna Karen.  It felt weird, but I wanted
more than anything I've wanted for a very long time to talk to the boy in
the Apple Store.  It wasn't magnets that pulled at me, and I've never had
reason to believe in karma, but I felt myself being pushed towards him by
some vaguely familiar atavistic force.

I've never been a stalker.  I promise.  I regard playground sketchballs
with the pity and disgust they deserve.  It's been a kind of golden rule
for me: if you don't want people following you (and who does?), don't start
following them.  Still, I found myself glancing over at him a few more
times, willing some kind of definitive contact, some acknowledgment of this
odd little fractal -- our disconnected selves inside a liquid crystal
display.  Twenty feet away, I was suddenly immobilized, in thrall to a
feeling I suspect is narcotic to the aforementioned chickenhawks, but which
to me was something else altogether, admittedly thrilling, but also
nauseating.  When a clerk came up to me and asked if I needed any help, I
wanted to reply, "Please sir, how much is that boy by the window?" I said
instead "Just checking things out, thanks," and promptly left.

I sat down on a bench about a hundred yards away.  My pulse was racing and
my breathing was shallow.  I was twitching, palsied, in pre-stroke mode.  I
knew what was up.  I just couldn't bring myself to admit it.  Forget the
girl from Santa Rosa I took to Prom.  Forget the woman I married and the
vows I broke twenty times before she left me for good.  Forget the motels,
the bars, the truck-stop urinals.  Forget my entire sordid history. This
feeling was pretty new.

Then, as if he had heard my thoughts and wanted to torment me, he passed
right by, turned around, paused and posed, hip cocked, a blue-collar Tadzio
to my befuddled von Aschenbach. He smiled, held my eyes for a few seconds,
then walked on.

Shame told me I was inventing this whole charade. Desire told me I was
being cruised.  Shame is powerful.  In my case, desire cripples shame every
day of the week.

So I got up.  I followed him down the walkway.  He sat down.  I sat down
next to him, and fooling absolutely nobody, I looked away, as if nothing
could possibly be more interesting than the display at Mrs. Fields'.
Silence took a heavy, awkward seat between us.  I could feel it pressing on
my bladder.

"I'm John," I said.  My voice did a little Barry White thing.

"Really?" he asked.

"No. Not really. Actually, I'm Diego. Really."  One lie corrected, and my
voice sounded normal again.

"You don't look Spanish.  I mean, whatever."

"Te lo prometo, amigo mio, soy Diego.  My mom is German.  And who are you?"

"Billy."

"Really?  Billy? As in William?  Willy?"  We were both talking to the sign.

"Nah.  Not really.  My name is, uh, Blake."

"William Blake it is.  Were you named after the poet?"

"What?"

"Just free-styling.  Blake was a poet, an early English Romantic."

"Look.  What do you want?  Really. I saw you in Apple. Looking at me." He
made what I'd been doing sound terribly dirty.

"Yeah.  I suppose I was.  Guilty as charged. That's why I left the
place. You've got me on that one."

"So what do you want?" he repeated, more insistent than before.

"I don't know, Blake.  I don't know.  I saw you and I wanted to talk to
you, then I told myself `that's weird,' and I left the store to clear my
head."  Most of what I was saying was true enough, though I knew quite well
what I wanted and I think he knew just as well, and it was just a matter of
time before one of us copped to it or walked away.

"Why me?" he demanded.

"I don't know.  Sweet serendipity?"

"What?"

"When I'm nervous, I talk. Whatever comes to mind, I say it. Words let me
duck and cover."

"Why are you nervous?  Do I make you nervous?"

"Look, I'm a stranger.  I'm old. You're a boy.  It's a volatile mix in
these cautious times."

"I like the way you talk, Diego.  Now look at me, okay.  It's time to tell
me what you want."  At this moment, I realized there had been a shift in
the balance of power.  And relieved of control, I felt all at once that it
wouldn't kill me to cross the Maginot Line and get whatever it was I was
trying here over with.

I looked straight at him.  He looked straight at me. Diego Antonio Campos
Reinhardt said, sotto voce,"I want you, Blake."

His froggy tenor slipped an octave. "I thought so.  I thought so."

The ensuing silence gave him time to squirm and me time to study.  He was a
wisp of a kid, almost frail, a quality he obviously intended to mask with
oversized khakis and a generic hoodie.  I'd guess he was 16, but his face
had yet to feel the tug of a razor. He had big brown eyes and a shock of
straw-colored hair.  He was no Bieber, that's for sure, too many hollows
and angles for that comparison, but he had tremendous promise, and in my
estimation, there is something especially beautiful about the boy who
hasn't yet recognized just how beautiful he is.

"My name's not Blake either," he said.

"Well, I'm sticking with Diego."

"My name is Juri."

"Juri. Finnish?"

"Estonian.  From Tallinn. We came here when I was three."

"God. Only in America."  I had two older siblings born in Venezuela.

"What?" He had no idea what I was talking about most of the time, and I
loved that.

"You know, we could probably walk the length of this Mall and not find a
Blake or a John. Only in America."

"I'm supposed to be at the movies," he blurted.

"And I'm supposed to be buying a shirt. So what are we doing here?"

Juri laughed for the first time.  Maybe he was starting to realize how
ridiculous our conversation must have sounded.  Then he withdrew again, and
I knew I'd have to make a move or risk losing the moment.

"Will you come home with me, Juri?  It's what I want.  Really. Just spend
some time with me."

"Okay. I guess so." He spoke solemnly, prayerfully, as if his answer would
travel straight to God's ears.

"Look, you don't have to. I mean it. I'm not a perv, you know.  Well, I
mean, I guess I am, but I can only do this if you want it, too."  I hadn't
been this honest for twenty years.

"Yeah.  I'm good with it. I want it, too. I can always watch The Avengers
on Netflix."

***************************

Juri didn't say a word during the ten minutes it took us to get to my
townhouse. I glanced over from time to time, but I sensed that he needed to
collect himself, to prepare for whatever it was we were about to undertake,
for this experiment that had yet to speak its name.  He had pulled his legs
into his chest, a fetus again in the womb of my Maxima, and seeing him
balled up like that made me think that whatever happened, I was going
straight to hell.

Once inside, he did what all visitors do: eyeballed my books. They line
every wall, more insulation than library. I felt a flash of pride in this
property, a tingle of affection for my abiding companions.

"Damn, dude. You have a lot of books," he said.  Pretty obvious, but an
icebreaker nonetheless.  "Have you read them all?"

"No way.  But that doesn't stop me from collecting them."

"I read The Hunger Games last year.  The whole series. It's pretty girly
sometimes, but it's pretty sick.  And we read The Great Gatsby in
English. I liked that one."

He must be a junior, I thought, though the more I tried to put a frame on
him, the more childlike he became.

"It's a great novel. In the pantheon, I should say."  God, how I blather.

"What do you do, Diego?  Like for a living."

"I profess."

"You what?"

"I'm a professor. A teacher.  At the University.  Comparative Lit.  Please
don't hate on me for that, schoolboy. I've got to pay for these books."

"No hate here.  That's not how I roll."

It was already time.  We'd run out of material a long time before.  In
fact, we'd never had any material to begin with. So I put my arm around his
shoulder and eased him towards the stairs.  I felt the sinew around his
collarbone tighten, but he didn't resist.  From this point on, I figured,
words wouldn't help us much.

Nobody could possibly come in on us -- like every sketchball in history, I
live alone and lock the front door behind me -- but I closed the door to
the master bedroom behind us just the same.  The king-size bed with its
massive comforter lay before us like an island in a sea of doubt, a
demilitarized zone in the endless war between what men ought to do and what
we want more than life itself.

Juri just stood there.  He didn't know what was going on or how to begin.
Neither did I, but I was the professor, after all. So I went to work, used
rusty tricks I learned in high school.  I helped him wrestle off his
hoodie.  I unbuttoned his shirt, eased his arms through the sleeves.  With
an audible sigh, I took in the smooth expanse of pale flesh, the tiny
aureoles, the distended nipples, the little-boy swell of his tummy, the
omphalos like a Hopi kiva. Juri was ridiculously thin, 120 pounds, max. I
had never seen anything quite as exquisite in my entire life, the bud at
the instant before firing.  I placed my hands on his naked shoulders and
tried to tell him with my fingers that everything would be fine, just
great.  His skin was already hot, but he shivered beneath my touch.

I unbuckled his belt, pulled tight to the last eye.  For the first time he
balked, placing his hand on top of mine as if to push it away.  I
hesitated, looked longingly up at him, purred something like, it's okay,
little man, it's okay.  He let go again.  I continued my mission, hoping
that I was transmitting a little tenderness along with my urgency.  Then
boom, his pants dropped and he stepped out of them.  Juri stood before me
in jammy boxers, looking less like a lover than a patient awaiting a
physical.  He was shaking all over, beset with spasms, wide-eyed and
terrified.  He's a virgin, I thought. I am taking that away from him and he
will never have it back. When I tucked my thumbs under the elastic to
remove the boxers, I smiled and said quite sincerely, "Trust me."

Fear had sent his balls back up the canal, but his dick, still hanging
blameless, had plumped a bit with expectation.  And what an exemplary dick
it was! Uncommonly long and quite thick, it descended from the world's
cleanest little pubic garden, sparse and untended.  In fact, his dick
didn't seem to belong to him at all, to the ectomorphic youngster standing
before me. He must have known this, that nature had found a way to balance
the books. I held the splendid creature for a few seconds in my hand,
rolled it in my palm, tugged at it with my fingers, kissed it up and down,
worshipped it with my breath until it started to swell of its own accord,
until, marvelously rigid, it jutted straight out towards my awaiting mouth.
I took in the glans, still hooded.  I sucked and nibbled.  I tried to force
my tongue under the foreskin, to tease it back and expose the brilliant
magenta plum it encased.  No go there.  Retraction would require greater
care.  Juri moaned a bit and instinctively grabbed the back of my head.
I'd never given a sweeter blow job because nobody had ever needed one quite
as much as this kid.  All I recall of my own initiation was that in doing
the deed she looked for all the world like she was gumming a liverwurst
Popsicle.

I laid him on the bed.  He was more animated now, if no less inarticulate.
His dick bobbed madly, demanding attention.  I jacked him gently, not
wanting him to explode without my permission.  Then, I quickly removed my
own clothes and lay down beside him, classic soixante-neuf, offering my
equally distended, similarly outsized dick for his perusal, but I guess he
was only ready for one miracle at a time.  I sucked on, alternating speeds,
my tongue a jackhammer drilling deep into his pee-hole and teasing the
frenulum. I went down on him almost all the way to the bush, relentless,
sloppy, the gag-reflex I should have suffered the victim of unimpeded
desire. And what the hell: no more than five minutes after I began, he
spewed, flooding my mouth with enough sweet cum to fertilize Yemen.  Eight
thick blasts and a couple of ropy aftershocks that ended up on my
cheek. The good deed done, I swallowed and smacked my lips triumphantly. I
scootched around to look at him, to memorize his awestruck face in the
afterglow.  It was about the face, after all, about the ecstasy I saw in
his eyes.

Juri was crying.  Well, not exactly. It was more like one of those laughs
that thinks it's a sob.  I touched him on the cheek, smearing his tears,
cajoling him to say something, anything.  I reached down and gently
squeezed a little pool of cum from the tip of his foreskin. He yelped a
bit, still tenderized by my relentless ministrations.

"You okay?" I whispered. I heard love in my question, which was really for
both of us.

"Yes.  Thank you.  I'm sorry, Diego."

"Sorry?  Whatever for, little man?"

"I came too soon.  But I couldn't help it.  I tried to hold it. I tried to
hold back, but you just...I mean, you just knew what to do.  It was so
amazing."

"Better than The Avengers?"

"Better."

"We can have a sequel, you know.  I'm guessing there's more where that came
from."

If he got the joke, I'll never know, because he suddenly turned towards me,
perhaps realizing that he was in a strange bed with a naked man, and he
ought to do something to acknowledge that. I lay on my back, hands clasped
behind my head, legs spread apart, offering him the full panorama, oddly
unashamed by the spectacle I was presenting.  It probably sounds
disingenuous, but I've always been a modest man; in this ecstatic
communion, however, I was genuinely happy just to be me.

Juri proceeded cautiously, but he was definitely curious, and he had good
instincts.  He leaned over me and offered the first kiss of the afternoon,
a grazing of lips, really, soft and shy, but so intimate that I thought I
too might cry.  I opened up for him, let him explore a bit with his tongue,
let him pull back and sort out the sensations, let him learn for himself
that if he could think it, he could do it.  Then, when I knew that he
wanted it, I joined the kiss, accelerating the pace.  A kiss may be just a
kiss, but I wanted Juri to feel this one in his skin, down there where the
nerves await their orders.  This one was epic.  It contained the stored-up
energies of two hearts on hold.

Then he traveled down the length of my body.  The boy's newly-educated
tongue sought my tender spots like a drone, teasing my armpits, then
strafing my sides.  It was all I could do to keep from bucking off the bed,
and when Juri went to work on my nipples -- aggressively, teeth getting
into the act -- I squealed.  He stopped, looked up as if he had done
something terribly wrong, and seeing that I was laughing, went right back
to it.

My dick was slick with the juice of a hundred anticipatory spasms.  The
unsheathed head was inflamed, the world's biggest maraschino cherry.  So
when he lifted it from my belly and towards his lips, I uttered the
familiar lover's lie:

"Stop! Juri!  Stop!  I'm gonna blow."

"No way, man."

He had never done this before, and that just raised the ante.  He sucked
with uncommon vigor, pinching my foreskin and closing it with his teeth.
He pumped me a few times for good measure, then clamped down again on my
dickhead.  I was awash in bodily fluids, some his, some mine.  Then, though
I wanted make it last forever, I felt the familiar surge in my urethra, and
understood that the levees had been breached, that I was on the
brink. "Juri.  Stop!" I pleaded.

He took me in his mouth and sucked me dry.  He swallowed every drop.  If he
was troubled by the novelty of semen, by its sliminess or vaguely soapy
taste, he didn't show it.  For the second time in ten minutes I heard lips
smacking and a grunt of satisfaction.

"Yo.  You nearly choked me."  He laid his head on my chest and I started to
smooth his sweaty hair.  My heart was still pounding.

"You did great, Juri.  But I guess you know that."

"I liked it, I really did.  Not the cum so much, but, you know, all the,
you know, textures.  You're pretty big, I think. I haven't seen that many
penises.  Except on the internet, you know."

"Well, lad, I've done plenty of research.  Sort of comes with the
territory. And for what's it's worth, I am pretty big.  Then again, if I'm
not hallucinating this whole freakin' scene, that means you're pretty big,
too -- at least as big as I am. Who'd a thunk it?"

I grabbed his dick, still swollen from all the attention it had received.
I held my own deflating tuber up against it. "See, Juri?  We're
twins. Separated at birth."

"Cool."  He wrapped his hand around mine and helped with the
manipulations. "You're not circumcised," he announced.  "I'm not
circumcised.  I didn't know what to expect.  I mean, I didn't know what to
expect about anything, but most of my friends are circumcised.  It's sort
of embarrassing at times, you know. They don't say anything, but they
look." He paused.  "And I guess I look, too. I look." He was admitting to
something every boy does, a truth that somehow portends great danger in the
other world.

"Only in America." I'd said the same thing an hour earlier.  "Look, my
Rolling Estonian, they're probably jealous.  Your dick is splendid, a feast
for the senses.  But the best thing about it is that it belongs to you. And
that you decided to share it with me."

"You know, Mr. Folger calls me that."

"Who? What?"

"The Rolling Estonian."

"Oh.  Sorry.  Your teacher.  Shit. We think we're so clever."

"I don't know, Diego.  I like it when you say it.  Sounds better.  Like,
it's about me."

"I don't think most teachers understand that: it's supposed to be about
you.  That's why they pay us the big bucks."

"I'm gay, Diego.  At least I think I am." Confession is good for the soul,
I think, and I know that in his delightfully misdirected way this kid has
just told me something he's never told anyone before.

"Laddie, you might want a second opinion on that. It takes more than one
blow job to confirm the diagnosis. God, I hope I didn't make you gay."

"No.  Really.  I think what we did is what I . . . what I've wanted
forever.  If I wasn't gay, I probably would have gone to see The Avengers."

"Still, I'd probably wait a few years before you put the news on Facebook.
Wait for one of your friends to say, "OMG, Juri, I'm gay, too!"

"You're teasing me, right?  Because I don't know what the fuck I'm
doing. Right?"

I was more surprised by the f-bomb than by the delicate logic of our
discourse.  I wondered if he was as aware as I was that we were naked and
that our dicks were half hard. Intimacy is the most powerful aphrodisiac on
earth -- especially for a guy like me who lives in his head most of the
time.

"You were wonderful.  The best ever.  I mean it. Hey, it's probably not my
business, but how old are you, anyway, little man?  Honestly."

"Seventeen."

"Honestly?"

"Almost sixteen.  I guess I don't look seventeen, do I?"

"It's not important.  It's just that I'm 42. When I was your age, I had a
hard time looking at my own dick, let alone sharing it with somebody.
Okay, so it's a different world and all, but you might want to give your
heart a chance to catch up with your dick -- which I see is starting to
stir again."

Once again in the warm province on the other side of words, we went at it
again.  This time, I let Juri direct.  The skinny boy was a marvel, a
risk-taker, and, I was guessing, a natural-born top.

"Juri.  Would you fuck me?"  Now I sounded nervous, praying that this timid
inquiry wouldn't be a buzz-kill. "I'd like that."

"Fuck you?"

"Fuck me!" I mockingly commanded.

"Wow.  That's sick."

"Hey, I'm sorry.  But it's not sick at all. Not sick at all. It's what I
love."

"No!  No!  You got me wrong.  It's sick that I was thinking the same exact
thing.  It's like, you know, all twilight zone and all."

"So you want to, you mean?"

"Of course."

"I'll help you, Juri."

"Yes, Diego.  You're gonna help me.  `Cause I've never done it before."

"It's sort of easy, really," I said, blushing even though at the moment we
were a thousand miles from shame.  "You just have to be gentle."

"No!  You don't get it!  I want you to fuck me! I want you in me.  That's
what's so weird.  We were thinking the same thing at the same time.  Dude!"

There went my "natural-born-top" theory.  Who knew how many theories of
human sexuality we had just disproved. "Oh." I inhaled.  "I don't know."

"You don't want to?" He sounded crushed.

"Oh love, I want to.  I want whatever makes you feel great.  It's just..."

"What?"

"It hurts, Juri.  A whole lot.  I don't want to hurt you.  For all the tea
in China."

"You can't hurt me. You won't hurt me. I know that now."

"I'm big."

"I know that, too." He absent-mindedly traced the conspicuous length of my
reawakened penis.  "That's why you've got to help me.  Look, I need to
know. I'm feeling you in me and you're not even there yet."

Again, we were in a strange place, a place where logic doesn't stand a
chance.  I had never seen this as the specific climax of our little
adventure, but then again, it was starting to dawn on me that at the moment
this more Juri's story than mine, and it would have to end where he needed
it to end.  This was no time for selfishness, no country for older men.

I prepared him as best I could.  I found a washcloth, and daubed at his
ass-crack with soapy water. I massaged him, kneaded his bony cheeks,
pausing every now and then to kiss his lovely dick, to remind it of how
much pleasure it had given me, praising it absurdly with heroic epithets,
stretching his formidable foreskin an inch and a half beyond the glans,
willing him to believe what had taken me so long to believe about my own
un-American dick: that natural is pretty, too; that natural is, well,
natural.

Then, I helped him slide to the end of the bed and propped up his butt with
a couple of pillows.  I knelt and spread his legs apart, giving me a direct
shot at his little hole.  I penetrated the O-ring with my tautened tongue,
gently but firmly commanding the tiny passageway to open up for what was to
come.  Juri was beside himself, alternately cooing and growling, a dove
battling a wolf in the same consciousness, oblivious to everything but the
pure sensation I was giving him.

I slathered his clean, palpated butthole with Nivea, then coated my own
dick with some lubricant left over from my condom days.  And it was time.

"Look at me," I whispered to Juri, who had closed his eyes as if awaiting
an injection.  "This is the face of love.  If it hurts too much, just tell
me."

"Go, Diego.  I want you.  Go."

I eased my dickhead past the ring, where I knew things widened a bit.  He
winced, but said nothing.  When I pushed a little deeper, he suddenly
expelled me.

"Sorry.  Sorry."

"No apologies, little man.  Relax, if you can.  It sounds funny, but just
when you feel like I'm coming in, I want you to push out, like you're going
to poop."

He chuckled, but it could have been a grimace.  I pushed through the door,
then, quick study, he pushed back, and all at once I was halfway in and
going nowhere.

Juri moaned again, but this time, I think he knew that he had survived the
worst part of the journey.  I plunged a little deeper, he pushed back a
little harder, and the paradoxical suction joined us together once and for
all.  Comfortable now, I picked up speed; and he clamped down. Push you,
pull me, flow and ebb, the primal rhythm of the tides.  Buttered with
desire, Juri had crossed over forever, whatever pain he had been feeling
obliterated by the persistent friction of my dick on his prostate, by the
overwhelming implications of carnal knowledge.  It got fast.  It got rough.
Whatever melody we might hear in our cries was lost in all the percussion.
Juri groaned.  I heard my balls slapping against his butt. And again, the
promise of orgasm, of that little death, of the miraculous instant that
drives the species on.  I uttered something that sounded like a goose
honking: "awGoggogawGog." I thought of earthquakes and volcanos and . . .

Juri came before I did, his dick firing wildly without being touched.

Then it was over for me, too.  I tried to pull out in time -- I'm a clean
and cautious fellow -- but I didn't quite make it, though I did manage to
sprinkle his belly with the last few dewy drops.  I could barely breathe,
and again -- I'm a sap, I know -- I was crying.  In my parents' country,
you dared not take a photo of the indigenous peoples.  You would be
stealing their souls, I was told.  This is what I always feel when I cum:
that I've lost a part of my soul.  That I could get it all back in a matter
of hours didn't seem to matter. That was biology. This was my soul. The
essence of this moment was lost forever, and I missed it already.

Lost in my reverie, I had forgotten that I was not alone.  Juri was staring
into space, still trying to reconcile everything that had just happened. He
was whimpering a bit, the anesthesia of desire having worn off.  I gazed at
him through the fog of tears, and whispered words I hoped would soothe him:

"You're beautiful."

"You're not so bad yourself." He was smiling, but I guessed at his
unutterable depression.

"It was pretty rough, right?"

"Sort of.  My ass is sore."

"Yeah.  I thought so.  It'll get better."

"I know.  I wanted it.  Now I know."

I pulled Juri into my arms.  He sobbed quietly, mourning childhood's end.
Then I walked him to the bathroom, where I drew a hot bath.  I bathed him
like a baby, avoiding the damaged parts.  I kept up the chatter, silly
stuff mostly, riffs about popular culture and the demise of American youth.
He gradually came alive, though I understood that he would face a long,
serious conversation with himself once he returned to his world.  All the
while, I prayed for our souls, that the God in whom I believe and who has
always found a way to forgive me would bless us both as we moved ahead.

We dressed in silence.  We said nothing on the ride back to the Mall.  He
got out of the car pretty quickly.  I waved good-bye, but he wasn't
looking.  I watched him approach the doors, so young, so beautiful.
Suddenly, he turned back to me.  He mouthed the words I needed to hear.

Thank you.

*******************

I welcome your thoughts/observations.  I don't even care about the flames.

worddrunkfool@aol.com