Date: January 19, 2001

   From: Feather Touch

   Mail: <a href="mailto:Thomas@btl.net">Thomas@btl.net</a> (Please include
in all postings.)

   Subj.: "Jimmy and Frogger," Part 1-3 (120K).  M/b, novella, rom., hum.,
lit., mast.

   Legal: No restriction on free electronic distribution, but please keep
the story together and post writer's name and email address.  First serial
rights reserved, 2001 by Feather Touch.







   Disclaimer:



   The following story is for the over-eighteen crowd.  It is a total
fantasy involving minor American television personalities, at least as far
as screen time goes, and should not be construed otherwise.  The author has
no knowledge of any of the individuals involved beyond agreeing with their
appeal to various casting directors.



   About the writer:



   Oddly enough, television does allow you to see me.  There is a
long-running commercial for "Rocking Instrumentals," a collection of oldies
that starts with "Red River Rock." Bunch of kids dancing.  At the right of
the screen, about two-thirds of the way through, there is a boy in a brown
knit shirt on camera for three or four seconds.  He looks exactly like I
did at his age.  Exactly.



   - -

   JIMMY AND FROGGER

   By Feather Touch



   Part 1.



   "You clean up pretty well," Jimmy said, dealing, as boys will, in
understatement.



   Frogger was just coming back from the shower .  He'd been gone for over
an hour and eleven-year-old Jimmy O'Rourke had almost forgotten his sudden
appearance earlier in the afternoon; nut-cake parents laughing about all
the money being gone.  ("Again?" the boy had sighed to himself.) Renting
out half his room.  Tape measure, for christ's sake.  Frogger, for christ's
sake.



   The boy was still in his extend double-take.  The beard was gone.  He
looked ten years younger and he was no gramps to begin with.  Hair trimmed.
Wearing just a towel.  Tall.  Six-three.  Slim but no hint of bean pole. 
Solid torso power with no hanging or jutting stuff.  Perhaps one-third of
an inch of softness over the stomach.  Jimmy was trying to haul his eyes
away but they were twins and neither wanted to go, anywhere.  It was half a
minute before he gained control and clapped them back to the text on his
desk.  Then his new roommate spoke.  Completely different; as much changed
as his physical appearance.  Now free of the DUDE punch-up; now low, gentle
and kinda smart sounding.  He said, "Sorry about the goop act.  I do it
when I'm looking for a place to stay.  Makes me seem harmless, which I am,
underneath, to parents and other handicapped onlookers."



   "Well, it worked," Jimmy said.  "But it kinda scared me.  I thought the
olds had lost their minds running around with a tape measure.  I've lived
here by myself since I was five."



   "That's a bummer," agreed the twenty-three-year old, and sketched his
background: "I'm from Boston.  My name is Paul Winston.  I'm a musician -
backup - and I clear three or four thousand a week, taxes definitely
paid,." Paul looked at the young boy closely.  "I don't have to stay at
all. It's one-hundred-fifty percent up to you, and you alone.  I gave your
dad a thousand-dollar deposit, but, to paraphrase the immortal words of
Festus Hagen, `I've got enough money to burn a wet elephant,' so I'm outta
here, if that's what you want." He went on to explain, "This is just what I
do when I move to a new venue; or at least I give it a try.  I've found
really cool places and have some special friends as a result.  Once I
batched it; liked that too, but its more fun to live with somebody."



   "So how did you find us?" Jimmy asked, any thought of actually asking
for his room back being stuffed in abeyance as not worthy of the moment.



   "Just cruised the neighborhood, mostly by parking near different
bulletin boards.  I picked you out a couple of days ago and was trying to
figure out a way to fix a crash, short of knocking you off your bike and
becoming the solicitous partner in an accident.  Yesterday, I saw your mom
post a flyer after she'd packed you off for something or the other."



   "Yeah, " the boy picked up, "She was acting weird even for her.  She
suddenly wanted me to go pick out the produce.  We didn't see you."



   "Mostly I was in my car, with binoculars." Paul explained.  " - I have
an old copy of "Petersen's," full of notes; found it in a used-book store.
Bird watching is a pretty good prowling cover, as long as no one asks for a
handwriting sample." Then he added with a smile: "Boss, boys like you don't
grow on trees.  I've been stalking this part of town for a week.  The
Frogger gig, the beard, acting like a soap bubble.  Tricky in these days of
hyper fear and ultra paranoia, but eminently worth it." The summation came
with a wink.



   "Sounds exciting," Jimmy said, trying to discipline the double-trouble
flanking his slightly large nose.  "I've never done that.  Like spied."



   "I rationalize by saying I only do it every two or three years, when I
change gigs and have to find a new place.  Actually, I've been going on my
little hunts since I was sixteen.  I justify it because so far it's been
okay for everybody.



   "So" the older male continued, "Do you think you want to be friends, or
should I go back to spying or find myself a respectable bachelor pad?"



   "No, you don't have to," Jimmy said almost too quickly.  "I mean I was
freaked, but that's the moms and the pops...



   "So, how many boys have you lived with?" he asked, changing the subject.




   "Two, and once by myself."



   "That must be really cool," Jimmy said.



   "Well, I spent ten-thousand hours practicing the guitar, and so far it's
been worth it.



   "I am so right," Paul thought to himself, looking at the tall, willowy
eleven-year-old in front of him.  They sat on their respective beds gazing
at each other.  Jimmy was digesting.  Frogger/Paul.  An hour before he'd
been sitting at his desk doing long division; now he was talking to a
studio pro who made over one-hundred-thousand dollars a year.  There. 
Here. Not five feet away on the spare bed.  Dressed only in a towel. 
Wearing a musk.  He could think of nothing to say and was relieved when
Paul broke the silence.



   "Have you finished your homework?" he asked.



   "Yeah, it's done," the boy said.



   "Do you get good grades?" the man asked the boy.



   "Sort of; most of the time," the hobbledehoy muttered in modesty.  " I
mean like about an eighty-eight average, overall."



   "Oh, we'll polish that soon enough," said Paul.  "It's amazing how
little effort it takes to go to straight A's.  Spit and polish is all it
amounts to; an extra ten or fifteen minutes per assignment.  And the first
lesson I've got to teach you is how cool it is to do absolutely well and
make loads of dough so you can live exactly the way you want.



   "From your level;" Paul continued, "An extra hour a day - and before you
know it you'll be the one going around playing at Frogger, and then there
will be a devastating boy sitting two-heartbeats away.  Girl if you want,
but the choice will be from the best.



   "I can give you an example," the musician went on.  "Tim.  He was
younger than you; only nine when I moved in.  He stood out so bright they
gave him a roll in a commercial.  Timmy and his little brother.  Selling
jam and preserves."



   "The one on television?" Jimmy asked, flabbergasted.



   "That's my Tim," Paul affirmed.  "I guess by now everybody's seen him.
Walking with his kid brother; playing at baseball.  Totally awesome kiddo.
At least when I left.  His smile looked harder the last time I saw his
work..." (Too much time alone with a dialogue coach; or, it could be
anything.)



   "Wow!  Do you know any other celebrities?" Jimmy was about to ask, then
his young brain had a second thought.  Like roads in the Michael J.  Fox
movies: Celebrities?  Where I am, I don't need - celebrities.  There was at
once a playfulness; and a focus about the musician.  Perhaps a little of
the lazy, but nothing of the flake.  Fun to a point, then take care of
business.  He almost sensed Paul saying to him: "A-plus across the board;
everything you do, because at the end of the day it's the easy way out."
And was there a bit of a wink that might have translated: "Especially in
play!" Continuing with the thought, he guessed the evidence was the
exquisite boy in the Orville commercials.





   Jimmy was young enough to be spared love, but he was, from head to toe,
at the crush stage.  "I'm a Pepsi can against Arnold's head," he thought.
"Crush, crushing, crushable and crushed." Then his witty little brain
flickered, "I'm a limestone cowboy: / Grind me up, / Any-old cowboy way."



   They sat there for several moments.



   "Do you have a girlfriend?" Paul asked.



   Jimmy said that he didn't.  Paul asked if he'd like to talk about stuff
like that.  The boy reddened and the older male remembered how absolutely
fabulous it was to be scared and embarrassed, in the right circumstances.
Jimmy was thrilled as much as he was terrified - in his notion, the
circumstances were absolutely perfect.  His parents were out, probably
trying to hedge Cabbage Patch dolls or some similar totally harebrained
stunt with Paul's deposit.  They wouldn't be back until after midnight. 
"Yeah, I guess so," the boy finally murmured, keeping his dynamic-duo on
his math assignment.



   "Do we have privacy?" the young man asked.



   "'Till midnight," the boy answered.  "Plus, we can hear the garage
door."



   "Do you want to hang out here, or we could go get my car?" Paul asked
the boy, unexpectedly.



   "I thought you had your car with you."



   "No," Paul explained.  "The old Volvo goes with the beard and
binoculars; I guess you'd call it my Froggermobile, though if you frig
around with the first o, you might be closer to the truth".



   Jimmy struggled with a giggle for a couple of seconds before it came out
his nose.  Comic relief had to be a good thing, or, in boy terms, he wasn't
going to last long..  On the other hand, it was not exactly the time for
too much funny business.  Paul read his thoughts and they agreed on a
truce. There is teasing and torment, and the musician didn't like overly
much of the former or any of the latter.  And he wasn't trying to tease the
boy, just offer him options.



   These were about to narrow, very dramatically.



   Jimmy asked his brand-new friend about his other car.  "What kind is
it?" he queried.



   "Chevrolet," Paul answered.



   "What model," the boy went on.  Jimmy loved Camaros; just loved
everything Chevy except the original Monte Carlo, which was almost as ugly
as the old frog-eyed American-Motors Matador.



   "Know how you were embarrassed when I asked if you wanted to talk about
stuff?" Paul answered with a question.



   "Yeah," said the boy.



   "Okay," said the young man, "Now the shoe's on the other foot; I'm
embarrassed."



   "Why?" exclaimed the boy.  "I just asked about you car."



   "Okay; I guess you're right," said Paul.  "It is a small one; no big
deal I suppose."



   "Oh, god, oh god, I'm glad I'm a boy!" Jimmy raged to himself.  A girl
would have to have five-inch breasts to be thrilled over those two words.
Small Chevrolet.  He had a barely-visible wisp, down there; was eleven, and
he was quaking to his marrow.  General Motors hadn't made Chevettes for
years; besides Paul's Volvo was better than that little car.  Small
Chevrolet.



   "Spell it for me, slowly," the boy said, sticking his fingers in his
ears and looking intently at Paul.  Paul looked back.  What if he'd
practiced twenty-thousand hours; become rich, flamboyant and legendary? 
Was there any likely scene to duplicate this boy, fingers in his ears,
praying and praying?  He thought of the "Happy news" line from "American
Pie." He spelled carefully into the word, getting to the v of the model
name, and stopped.



   "He's made it this far!" the boy anguished.  His eyes pleaded.  Then
came the magic e.  He wouldn't have really minded if it had been an a, for
Corvair; those were classic dream cars in their quiet way.  But e - meant
vette.



   "Corvette." He whispered it, pleading to be right.  Paul grinned at him.




   "We're peas in a pod, Jimmy," he said, looking at the boy for a full ten
seconds.  Then he added: "Do you want to go get it?"



   Just for a second, long division looked good to the eleven-year-old. 
What a choice!  He wanted to stay and talk; but a Corvette...  Paul was
hairless and boyish; just sort of sleek; in his towel he was a fantasy. 
Mildest pecs; almost a six pack, endlessly small nipples, and absolutely
white skin.  Tan might look good on a lot of dudes; but for the last touch
of perfection, milk white was the choice of the art world, and the two
young males went along, at the same time realizing that bronzed or tanned
or black was far better coloring for all but the smallest fraction of the
population, and even these only at a tender age, though, in rare cases,
amounting to the rarest of the rare, that age might range all the way into
the fifties.  Since age ten, Jimmy had never showered and never played
skins at school, because he felt his body was simply too developed, and too
white, personal, and almost obscenely perfect to display.  He hated these
conceits, the more-so because he adored all peaceable cultures, but was
stuck with them.  Or at least had been.



   While Paul wasn't channeling him or anything, his thoughts were running
in almost exact parallel.  Jimmy's neck was exquisite; long, delicate. 
Beautiful.  He was slim, tall.  and lanky; so perfectly and
quintessentially boyish he made a tantalizing mystery of the sobriquet for
the most beautiful and alluring of young girls; also called boyish.  It was
a beauty that might easily last for many decades.  The boy's shirt was
opened: "Wow, two buttons." It had been one before his shower, even when
he'd returned minutes ago.  Subtle child.  A doggerel of his grandfather
flicked through the musician's head: "Shave and a haircut, two-bits." He'd
shaved and added in a half-hour of razor cutting.  Two-bits; that was a
quarter.  From the way Jimmy was responding, Paul was already valuing his
ministrations in the five figures.  In all of heaven and on all of the
earth there was, there is, there never has been, nor will there ever be,
anything, temporal or spiritual, more beautiful and tantalizing than the
display of a young male to an older male.  Even the bible had scant words
to say against this beauty; proffered the mildest of cautions.  (And a mild
caution in the burn-`em-up bible was something to lo and to behold.)
Perhaps man-and-boy was the least of all sins.  Like a sprained ankle or
three-day cold.  One bead.  "So," he said out loud, "What'll it be; hang
and talk, or go see how much gas is in the car?"



   Long division.  As they said it on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," by
definition meant dividing the six remaining hours of privacy.  He giggled
when he realized it was short division, then realized it might get long,
after all.  But they'd sworn an eyeball truce on baby witticisms so he
scolded himself to can-it.  And went back to his short division.  "Let's
stay here until eight; that's two hours, then get the car."



   "Okay," Paul said.  "That's my choice by one-tenth of one percent,
chad."



   "A new joke," the boy thought.  He must make up his own.  Jimmy O'Rourke
knew musicians hung with comedians, and that some stand-ups had a funny
box; index cards of jokes.  The best could probably play them for weeks. 
But it was nice to know this young stallion could make up his own.  They
called that spontaneous.



   "So, are we back to a totally embarrassing situation?" Paul asked,
letting a little husk into his voice and yawning to show he was as scared
as the boy, which he was.  Long moments passed.  Both mouths were dryer
than dry.  Every second ticked like a finger numbing through almost-frozen
slush.  Seconds.  More seconds.  Paul put them into thought.  Seconds.  How
would I cope with them at his age?  What would I say?  My first took me
with graceful lust and a good deal of rapidity; I hardly had time to think.
That had been so close to perfect, yet even so had left questions.  Should
I bother him with the same?  "Do you want to start by asking questions?" he
finally asked the stripling male who had moved from his desk to the
opposite bed.



   "I kind of know about some of the stuff," Jimmy answered across the few
feet separating them.  "But it's been a really long time."



   "No surprise there, that's for sure," the musician thought as he looked
at the white throat; alabaster, yet with a just a few small moles to
heighten focus.  Somebody almost surely would have pursued such a willowy
and funny boy.  "How long ago?" Paul asked.



   "Can we whisper?" Jimmy responded, his voice trying to hide his urgency.




   "Yes, I like that, too," the older male replied, letting more lust into
his voice.



   "Can I sit beside you?" the boy went on.



   "Yes," came the whisper back.  A few seconds passed.



   "How long?"



   "When I was eight," Jimmy said in his whisper.



   "Was it okay?" the man asked.



   "Yes," replied Jimmy.



   "How okay?"



   "Well," the boy replied in a more conversational tone, "You remember how
you're going to get my grades up by making everything just perfect; what
did you say, an extra fifteen minutes per err subject?  I guess it was that
okay."



   "Lucky dude," Paul said.



   "Well, I was then," the boy responded.  "But nothing has happened
since."



   "Has that bothered you?"



   "No," said the boy.  "With my `rents I get to do without a lot of stuff.
But I've got more than a lot of kids, so I try not to worry about anything
more complicated than long division." The boy took a breath and his voice
dropped to his whisper.  "Jeremy was a really good teacher."



   Paul leaned close to the boy's delicious ear.  He loved short
fuzzy-chick hair and slightly imperfect ears.  "Where did it happen the
first time," he asked, his voice now coming in a husky whisper.



   "Up in the bathroom," the boy whispered back.



   "Was that part okay, too?"



   "More like totally awesome," the boy said, then asked,.  "How about you.
Was your first time okay."



   "I think we're identical twins, once removed," Paul quipped.



   "And what happens if we remove the removed," the boy parried with a
stifled giggle.  He wanted the hoarse whispering to continue.



   "You're the mathematician in the audience," Paul said.  "If we remove
the removed, what does happen?"



   "I get to tell you all the details," Jimmy replied, "Because we'll be
completely identical, which my English teacher wouldn't approve of because
of the redundancy, but which fits in context, if context equals present
company."



   "Okay," Paul responded, "But we're no longer identical, completely or
otherwise, when it comes to driving the car on the public highway when
there is heavy traffic at night, during blizzards, or any time that might
overtax a sprite like yourself."



   With him, who needed whispering?  Jimmy wanted to scream!  His mind flew
out the window, out the driveway, and out of town.  There were countless
miles of open road in their part of Wisconsin.  The thunder of the two huge
pipes, the hard rise of the tach, the three-second scream from the tires as
the tranny was power-jacked from second into third.  All this vanished as
Paul sidled next to him on the bed, his right arm just touching Jimmy's
left arm.



   "Is this okay?" he whispered.



   "Yes," the boy responded in kind.



   "You were eight?"



   "Yes."



   "How old was Jeremy?"



   "Seventeen," Jimmy answered.



   "Was he cute," the older male quizzed the boy.



   "To me he was brilliant," Jimmy acknowledged, continuing, "He had really
bad acne.  Like that kid in the TV commercial for prescription medicine -
the one with the little sis, and his mom wants to take pictures.  Jeremy
could have been his brother.  He never got dates, which goes a long way
toward proving something about girls; so he became my babysitter." The boy
stifled another giggle.  "That absolutely and completely solved his dating
problems."



   "Lucky Jeremy.  Lucky little Jimmy O'Rourke."



   "Were you really lucky, too?"



   "Not as much as you, but lucky enough, I guess," Paul said.



   "How old were you?" the boy questioned.



   "Same as you," said Paul.



   "That's part of what makes us twins, maybe.  Was it one of your
friends?"



   "No," Paul said, "It was a male just about my age now."



   "Then you were lucky, too."



   "Yes," Paul replied, "But I only went in the woods with him three times,
so it wasn't a complete relationship; but it was nice enough, for all of
that."



   The boy asked for more information.  "He was a Harvard guy;" Paul said,
"Very literate, too much of the bard for a music-box like me, especially at
that age.  But I kind of liked him, though, to speak frankly, Harvard is
not a source of puns I'd wish on my worst enemy."



   "But he tried," the boy spoke up in counterpoint, and Paul admitted it,
at least to himself, and added the ten points that were due, not that Jon
needed them.  Then Jimmy's voice returned to the lower register of a
nervous rather than a sultry whisper.



   "How did you start talking about mature stuff?" he asked.



   "As far as my memory goes," the young man said, "I brought it up.  "I
was precocious, curious; enigmatic and plain-old nutty.  Practically a dead
ringer for the kid in `Empire of the Sun.' A strange child; terribly nice,
but awfully strange.



   "But I don't really remember," Paul continued after a pause.  "He might
have hit on me, so to speak, but if he did it was with a feather from fifty
feet.  All I really remember is using the term `frank' in our first
conversation, which seemed very grown-up to me at the time.  That, and
feeling totally excited in a curious way.  I'd read, even at that age,
about picking the fruit before its ripe; stuff like that.  Those rules
seemed like signs on the highway.  They're guidelines, but they can be
partially ignored some of the time, which is a truism you'll be gaining
perspective on as we thunder o'er the highways and byways of your beautiful
state with six-hundred-fifty horsepower, thanks to twin turbos."



   "God!  And he's funny to boot!" Jimmy screamed to himself.  He'd seen
the very car on "Motor Week" and "Car and Driver TV." Heard the ghastly
whistle it howled as it slammed by the camera and ripped under a distant
bridge, crushing itself to a dot in three seconds.  Two-hundred-twenty-five
miles an hour.  Zero to sixty in three-point-five.  Stopped from sixty in
one-hundred-fourteen feet, ten feet longer than an all-out Porsche. 
Massive stability system.  But two-hundred-twenty-five miles and hour.  The
f-word surged and ricocheted through Jimmy's entire being.  And if you
crashed, the thing was a monster - with any luck, a thousand dollars worth
of corn would stop it.  No more than frayed nerves and detailing.  There
was only one thing short of a house fire that could pull his mind from that
bonkers, screaming-yellow `Vette.  That the two were connected was awesome
beyond a thousand-foot wave and hundred-foot surfboard.



   "Jeremy talked about that stuff with me" The boy was done whispering for
the moment.  "You know, good and evil, morality and immorality.  I was too
young to understand, but I read a lot so I got it at least half-way
organized, I think.  I mean, you see how much cruelty, strife and misery go
on in marriage and it seems there might be some room for tolerance when it
comes to comparing mores and all those psycho things."



   "I've got a bet with myself, do you want to hear it?" Paul asked Jimmy.



   "I don't want to hear about anything but you know..." The boy let this
race through his mind, but then, Paul was a guest; partly a stranger.  So
he got polite and asked, "What's the bet?"



   Paul said: "That you so greatly please me that starting out at around
eight we are going to make a certain twenty-five mile drive in my Volvo and
I am going to return here in it."



   "Poky, poky car!" thought the boy to himself.  The meaning of Paul's
words took less than a second to penetrate.  But he was-only-eleven. 
Tallish; played plenty of ball, co-ordinated as much as could be expected;
but big feet.  Well, they weren't too big.  He couldn't bear any diversion,
and yet had two: Solo with enough horses to stretch a country mile; this
arm feather light and burning hot against him.  He wanted to be two things
at once, but, barring that, was fabulously happy to be the one.  Jimmy
giggled at a phrase Jeremy had taught him.  "Eight is too late." Yet he had
to be honest with himself; how would he feel if they were out on the
country roads, and the diversion was to return to this bed and sit side by
side, arms lightly touching?  He remembered the boy from the movie Paul had
mentioned.  "Try not to think, so much!" Again, their twinship, coronary
rather than fraternal.



   Paul interrupted Jimmy's whirring thoughts.  "So you're okay with it?"
he quizzed the boy.



   "Yeah; I mean its nothing for the pulpit, but it goes on almost
everywhere and almost everybody does it or wants to." Then Jimmy went on
about what Jeremy had told him.  From the older boy's point of view, it
might work out this way: If a thousand men were snowed in for a weekend
with a thousand boys, nine hundred of the men would do something if the
boys were friendly, reasonably cute, were the aggressors, and were
experienced.  Secrecy and no payment of any kind.  This boy had made a
study of it and come to the conclusion that ten percent of men would do
nothing and ten percent of this group would fight the boy off.  Another ten
percent would put substantial pressure on the boy, if necessary, and ten
percent of those would rape the boy, outright.  Jeremy had wondered which
of these one-percents would be the weirdoes, but assumed the answer would
depend on who was asked.  Before dropping the subject he had given a few
moments of thought to who would suffer the greater hurt, the boy done over
by force, or the boy whose longings were rejected.  Since boys willingly
stepped in the ring and drubbed each other halfway to oblivion, for sport,
he knew how he would answer if the question ever came up.



   Jimmy looked at Paul and pegged him as a male to whom a whispered No
would last a month and an angry No would last five years.  Two angry no's
would last forever.  And that in itself was interesting; because Paul would
tend to be durable; if he wanted somebody he'd likely still want them after
twenty years.  "Kids rule," the boy concluded; "I can turn him on and off
like a faucet." This made Jimmy feel safer than ever, and his voice dropped
to its scared whisper, once again.



   "What kind of words did the man use when he taught you?" he asked .



   "His name was Jon." Paul replied, "And he was from Harvard, as I said,
so we kind of used the Victorian words.  It makes the taboo stronger of you
don't use the c word and f word and all that other stuff.  Does that sound
sicko to you?"



   "Yeah, like the sniffles." Jimmy giggled while Paul thanked somebody for
Jeremy.  He put his thought into words.  "What kind of words did you and
Jeremy use," Paul quizzed his understudy.



   "Once the c word, our first time, but never the f word because I was too
small for him to do that to me."



   "Do you want to stick with that, or do you want to try new words?" the
boylover asked the eleven-year-old beauty.  "I like the good ones," the boy
stated simply.  Once again, they were identical twins.



   "Jimmy," Paul said, "I know we're talking about the same thing, but
since I'm older I want to put you in charge, and I want you to, you know,
sort of invite me.  You know, I don't want to embarrass you but just to be
completely sure we're talking about the same kind of thing.  For example,
what word did Jeremy use with you as a general word for the things he did
to you?"



   "He made me use the m word," Jimmy said.  "Is that okay?"



   "Yes," whispered Paul.  "Can you remember the first time he made you say
it?"



   "It was on the sofa in the den.  We were watching videos of those movies
about the priests; the ones HBO shows.  They said it a lot and he asked me
if I'd ever said it.  Wait a minute!" the stripling interrupted himself,
"We waited `till we were up in the bathroom.



   "Yeah;" Jimmy continued, "They said it on television during those
programs, plus I'd heard it other places.  He asked me if I wanted to go to
the bathroom and say it so he could hear me.  So that's the first time I
ever said it out loud."



   "So he asked about the word to desensitize you, and made it into an
invitation?" the older male asked the eleven-year-old, checking and
double-checking..



   "Yes," said Jimmy.



   "Then we're triplets," Paul said to Jimmy.



   Jimmy's brain sizzled.



   Quads.



   Jimmy O'Rourke.  Jeremy G.B.  Allen.  Paul Winston.  And a car that
ripped the very atmosphere with its whining howl.  S was not always in the
p.  It could be all through a boy, and through and through and through.  It
dropped his voice very low.

   "Do you want me to say it to you in the bathroom?" he whispered through
a shaking groan.



   Paul yawned twice and asked, "Is it still embarrassing for you to say it
out loud?"



   "Yes," Jimmy said, in his slightly quaking whisper.  "You're kind of a
stranger."



   "How do you want me to lead you.?" The sleek young mustang asked the
gangly colt.



   "If we go into the den, I can show you how we were sitting when we
started getting mature," Jimmy said.  Paul let Jimmy rise first; it was his
house.  The boy approached and held out both his hands.  Paul took them,
rising, and said, "Hi."



   The boy stretched on his toes and leaned gently against him.  "Hi," he
whispered.  They loosed one hand each, and headed for den; Paul in his
towel and Jimmy in his school slacks and partially unbuttoned shirt.  "I've
still got the HBO tapes; but I guess the FBI wouldn't approve if we watched
them," the boy giggled.



   "Good point," said his boyish older partner with a nudge; "That keeps it
in perspective.  We're not doing anything for money so its an infraction
instead of a violation.  If we told our story its artistic merit would
drive porn right off the page.  That could apply to what I'm going to do to
you in the bathroom, or watching a copyrighted tape, if not equally, then
within five percent of equal.  And, truth be told, that's stretching it. 
If I drive five miles over the speed limit I might knock a school bus off
the road hard enough to break a gas pipe.  If I duplicate tapes I might
cause economic loss.  If I break every law in bible and book with you, only
the penalties of taboo come into play.  We may be stoned and pilloried, but
nobody else will raise a scab so long as we go safely on our private way."



   "Jeremy is going to eat this man-fox for breakfast, lunch and dinner,"
Jimmy thought.



   It wasn't legal, it wasn't moral, any more than automotive speed or
weed. The law was good and the law was great, but like most good and great
institutions, it had its imbecilic and asinine, and, more kindly,
antiquated sides.  In a society that mandated faultless insulation around
every light switch while permitting tiny families to live in vast houses,
with cathedral ceilings, anything to do with law, code, statute or
ordinance was confusing.  Yet these cultural embellishments added to the
forbidden pleasure.  Millions and millions of boys knew that and so did
about the same number of girls.  It was a secret game without refs or
score; its limits depended strictly on how you played it, and for most its
outcome went beyond any contest of court, field, rink or diamond, good or
bad.  No pregnancy, no diseases, no getting caught, no displays in public.
Those were a few of Jeremy's lessons.  "And just a few," the boy giggled to
himself.  How you played, year in and year out.  There was nothing more to
say except to morn Jeremy's absence, for in his case the year-in had not
preceded a year-out, or had amounted to many years way out.



   The two males sat side by side on the couch in the den, Jimmy's right
arm now inflaming Paul's left arm.  "Do you want to watch the tape?" Jimmy
asked.  Boy, was it ever neat to be host and man of the house.



   "I like the scene where they're in the confessional and the priest helps
the boy out of his shirt.  Even though its acting the boy can't help look
enthralled as he cuddles bare-chested against the older male and receives
his first touching."



   "That's the best scene in either film," Jimmy agreed.  He added,
"Jeremy's second favorite part is right at the end of the one were the
priest starts by taking the boy in his tent.  At the end, even after a lot
of people have started to raise a stink, he invites the boy to a retreat.
The boy gets real nervous, and says he doesn't think he wants to go.  Then
the priest mentions that they have a computer at the camp, which, granted,
was a novelty in the early nineties.  Anyway, poof, as the scene ends the
boy is walking toward the rectory where the priest, who had been with him
several times, is going to give him a special physical.  I mean, that's
it!" the boy emphasized, speaking for his friend: "For the mere promise of
using a computer, the boy was willing to go with the older male.  I mean,
what if he'd tried to stick a pin in his butt or made him eat a spoon of
cat food?  The kid would have screamed bloody murder and told him to stuff
his computer."



   Paul answered with his own story.  "I read an account," he told, "of a
boy about Jeremy's age when you were friends.  Seventeen.  He worked in a
big, and, I gather, casually supervised, summer swimming camp.  He was in
charge of the littler kids; five, six and seven.  He was a nice teen, and
every single one of the dozens of boys played touching games and came back
for more.  He took many of them into the shower with him."



   "That's like the Masai," Jimmy said, again quoting his former teen
friend.  "They're one of the few cultures on earth in which adults are
perversion and adultery-free.  They stash all the kids in a communal hut
from age six until they're married.  No weird Masai.  No pregnant ones,
either.  Kids really know how to behave when adults treat them right."



   "The Masai also castrate their young females," Paul reminded the boy. 
"Not circumcise, castrate.  I think," he added, "the obono are a more
salient example." He grinned and added: "More salacious, too."



   "Where do they live?" Jimmy asked.



   "In the very wildest of the African rain forests," Paul answered. 
"They're not humans; they're primates, very closely related to the
chimpanzee."



   Jimmy suddenly reddened deliciously.  What was this all about?  "What's
wrong?  " Paul asked.  The boy started off straight-faced, yet with
mischief plainly in his eyes.  He held it through the first part of his
explanation: "They're not `obono,' they're called `bonobo.'" Paul bought
into the explanation, but, hell, errors slipped in.  Was this kid weird or
something?  He looked like he was about to explode, and he did, in a fit of
giggles.  Maybe eleven wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  "Come on," Paul
said.  "What's so funny?" Jimmy reddened more deeply and finally got
himself under control.  "It's just that you made a, well, err, an o-boner,"
he stammered and dissolved once again.  Paul bought in for a second time
and shared a fit of foolery with his beautiful colt.  Jimmy came up for air
after a minute and gasped out a question: "Do you know where the worst joke
in the world are?" he asked.  "Where," Paul asked quickly, not wanting the
boy to endanger his health.  "E-pun the Net," he choked and was off again.
Poor Americans, Paul mused; so far from god, yet, even here in Wisconsin so
close to Harvard.  He was at the same time delighted with the
sophistication of his young friend, but he wanted the desensitization to be
complete and thorough so he continued with his lecture.



   "They weren't even discovered until the seventies.  But what a
discovery! The red chimps are nasty animals in the bush; amongst
themselves, and all over their territory.  They rape, torture, kill, and
cannibalize.  I've seen pictures they should never have put on television.
The black obono, on the other hand, are nothing but tenderness, harmony and
good-will.  And touching; all members with all others, from birth to death.
`Happy monkey is smart monkey.' Old saying."



   Jimmy giggled.  No one had to tell him about happy monkeys.  Happy
anything.  He was number one on the planet, in that regard.  His blood was
boiling with it.  He'd watched lots of diving shows, so he added to
himself, "Hope I don't the bends." In his mind this applied to his knees
more than any chance of bubbles in his blood.



   "'Nuff para-psychology and conveniently-eclectic anthropology?" Paul
asked Jimmy, with a smile.



   "I guess so," the youth said.  Then he added, back in his whisper, "You
know, there are two m words."



   "Did you say both of them to Jeremy?" Paul quizzed the boy sitting next
to him.



   "Up in the bathroom," the boy acknowledged in his whisper, adding, "And
the p word and the s word.  Not the one with i-t " And then Jimmy added:
"We said the e word, too.  The one that goes with a-l-e, not a-i-l..  Where
would the world be without that?" he giggled once again.



   Paul got to sixty; about three-and-a-half seconds, before Jimmy's
anagramatic quiz kicked in.  Let other write stuff about elephant organs.
What's gray and comes in quarts?  Gross.  Too much of that stuff around for
his preference, though he really worked at being inclusive and
nonjudgmental.  In a way it was weird, because in his albeit limited
experience in bath houses and at gay bars, Paul had never been subjected to
any hint of that kind of activity.  S/M.  Spankings.  Animals.  Water
stuff. Scat.  Even only about one male in ten he'd talked too had expressed
any interest in juveniles.  Or maybe that was just a fear factor, and
Jimmy's friend was right; ninety percent of men would do it under
comfortable circumstances.  Whatever.  He was eternally glad he'd been
introduced early and introduced gently.  If some thought his almost
poetically tender approach was cloying, accessible or ordinary-old sleazed
out, he figured their devices, chemicals, and harness-maker trappings were
hard-edged and no indication of happy camping.



   Pale English boys in shady glades along with any of a hundred poets. 
That was, generally speaking, more intense a heaven than most males and
females achieved under similar circumstances.  How handy that global
population was at such a point reproduction -multiplying - was off the
table.  That brought up a brief argument about the world needing more good
people.  Help make someone else's kids good.  It was the good that counted,
not the paternity.



   "How long did it take for Jeremy to get you in the bathroom?" Paul asked
the young boy.



   "We fast-forwarded a lot of the tape, so I guess it was half an hour,"
Jimmy answered.



   "And you were sitting just like this, side by side?" Paul continued with
his inquest.



   "Just touching like we are, now," the boy said..



   "Was he on this side?"



   "Yes," Jimmy whispered.



   Paul did the simple math.  He was twenty-three, Jimmy was eleven. 
Jeremy had been seventeen and the child had been eight.  Close enough for
discoverment work, he figured, wincing inwardly at the tackiness of the
play on experimenting.  A nine year difference at eight, and now twelve
years, would separate the young males.  The matchings seemed almost
duplicates, allowing for a bit of extrapolation.  He wondered which he
would rather be?  Himself with the eleven-year-old, or seventeen, with the
eight-year-old.  No choice so no coin toss, but he had no regrets about the
tail gracing the sofa beside him.  That butt was a lot of things, but
too-old wouldn't be on the list for many years.



   "Do you want to ask me about the other s word?" Jimmy asked, and the
more mature male detected an invading tone of urgency.



   "The one without i-t?" the young man asked the boy with a gentle teasing
tone.



   Jimmy grinned bashfully.  "It has m-e-n."



   --





   Part 2



   In a world of malls, sex rules.  Paul didn't know where that little gem
had popped in from, but he was looking for any port in a moral storm.  It
was one thing to talk, but when it came to pulling down the boy's
underpants, that was different.  He stared into Jimmy's eyes for long
moments.  He was literate; whip smart, all the way to eighty eight (but
what kind of schools?).  In the scant hours since he'd come bursting in is
as Frogger he'd sloughed five coats of nonsense, and was down to a towel.
Jimmy looked back.  Paul saw a gleam of yellow.  Fortunately he wasn't
stoned and so was not sidetracked by the possibility of jaundice;
recognized only the howling yellow terror placidly named Chevrolet. 
Fortune in boy's eyes?  Speed?  They'd have to cover that soon enough. 
Malls, sniffs, pills and phallic television.  There were a lot of things to
ask Master O'Rourke about.  And before anything exciting happened.



   "Jimmy, do you smoke?" The boy shook his head.  Paul explained to him
how easy it was to start; that a single puff would set off little
sparklers, yet nothing more.  Like holding your breath too long or getting
a little dizzy.  No big deal - at all - and therein was the devious trap.
No big deal, so what's the harm in another puff, cigarette, pack, carton,
case, truckload?  "More than anything," he continued his lecture, "It's the
money.  The endless hundred dollar bills.  Cigs cost almost fifty dollar a
carton in New York; buying them by the carton.  Five dollars a pack is
twenty-five cents, per.  Huge.  Dig?"



   "Yes," Jimmy replied.  "Pot's okay," Paul said.  The logic may not have
been perfect but the sentiment was sincere.  "But alcohol is not.  Dig?"
Jimmy knew he had not missed a hardness to those eyes, and it was there
now. "It's for my own good?" he asked, letting a little brightness into his
eyes.  "That's the selfish way to look at it and I guess we must be twins
because I look at it the same way.  A healthy, happy non-addicted Jimmy
O'Rourke is the only Jimmy O'Rourke a dude would lend his car to.  After
all, being eleven years old is hardly much of a starting point, so I hope
you don't feel I'm being overly fierce." That was sobering thought for the
boy.  He had never even been tempted by baccy or booze, but the marijuana
did sound interesting.  Of course Paul was pretty much a working definition
of interesting so the boy began to make a practiced effort to take it in
stride.  He let his twins gaze away, not having to hide a thing from Paul.
It was fabulous that he cared, but, then again, he wouldn't have looked
half bad holding a flute of champagne.



   "Do you think I'll get in trouble with the car?" Jimmy asked.  Was he
trying to distract himself from what was about to happen?  He didn't know.
He wanted it just as much as he had with Jeremy, but this was the i and t
of it.  This was the part he would remember.  Getting a little bit inside
each others skins, not in a forced way, but at least a little bit slowly
and along some line of common interest.  He had a boy brain, so line became
lines and they stretched thick and black from his imaginary feet to a
yellow dot disappearing from sight.  His fantasy was so acute he even noted
the notches that indicated the first, second, third and fourth shift
points. The final one, he realized, would be out of sight from his vantage
point because it would have been laid down nearly a quarter-mile away. 
This thought process took eleven seconds.  With Paul so close Jimmy
considered the length of the diversion almost miraculous.  Enough
intervention!  "Do you know how we were talking about words?" he asked
Paul.



   "Yeah?" "Well, sometimes Jeremy and I didn't use any words.  The walls
in this house are really thin.  My bedroom's right next to my parents. 
They lie in bed at night worrying.  We couldn't use any words, or make any
sound at all."



   "I hope there were exceptions to that rule," Paul said, causing Jimmy to
giggle and blush.  "Yes," the boy acknowledged, "But they were hardly an
improvement." "Did you signal each other by touching?" a young Batman asked
his growth-spurt Robin.  "We didn't have to.  Or, I guess it was all
signals." The long-legged elf giggled again.  He was a bit of something. 
Since both the young males were headed to the same destination there was
ample time for diversions and doing it right, the first time.  "Did Jeremy
teach you about diseases; I mean you mentioned it but I'd like to know."



   Jimmy giggled.  "He taught me to use a condom.  He had to do that on one
or our silent nights." The boy suddenly lunged beyond his giggle mode and
began to quake.  He made a mature effort to control himself; maintain a
semblance of the dignity appropriate to an eleven-year-old only child.  He
lost dramatically and as a loser practically split in a screaming fit of
laughter..  He shrieked, howled, bayed and shook like he would break.  It
took over a minute and numerous false starts before he was able to connect
his wicked brain with his dancing tongue.  "We had white Christmas twice
before I got it on right," he choked, and was back to his happy howling.



   "That ought to keep any autism at bay," Paul mused as he watched the
shuddering boy.  Strange thing that; in younger kids, autism was caused by
too much communication.  Babbling parents and especially endless
threat-and-count, I'm-not-understanding-you cycles, with nothing to back
them up, leading to a complete and permanent void in any understanding.  In
older children, the sickness expressed itself in a morose, lackadaisical
lethargy of speech; deliberate and extended.  By this time, the parents had
talked themselves way out of the loop and had nothing to add.  Paul was
pleased to see the boy communicating modestly but fully.  If he was a bit
of enthusiastic over his sophomoric foray into the world of side splitting
humor, well, there were two possibilities.  Boys will be boys.  Or, and it
was Paul's turn to stifle a giggle, maybe it had simply been the holiday
season.  In any event, the display was of a boy in tune with the world;
relatively mall-free; existing soul; entirely worth his time, money and
effort.  The older male was delighted to realize his feelings had nothing
to do what was going to happen in the bathroom over the next hour and a
half.  They could have gone for pizza for all he cared.  Michelangelo had
it about right and eschewed all carnality as his art took him in its iron
grip.  Or maybe he was too tired to climb down from his scaffolding at
night and any boys too scared to climb up.  Anyway, he helped put the whole
thing in perspective.  It was great.  It was nothing.  A close home game
would bring out more emotion, verbal and physical, than the vast majority
of sexual encounters.  A mild headache could make you forget all about it.
Personality, nine-hundred-ninety-nine, penis, one.



   Paul remembered an escapade in a Denver arcade.  Cute fifteen-year-old.
The youth had followed him into a booth and Paul had started to take him
from the rear.  But the boy didn't arch.  That was weird.  Nor did the boy
make any effort to disentangle or leave.  So he had unzipped him and found
his way inside the boy's briefs to fondle him.  Cold snail.  He'd almost
jumped back in revulsion.  At that point the boy had asked for money.  Paul
had quickly handed him a five and the boy was gone in seconds.  It had been
a great lesson.  Without passion, a penis wasn't a prick, it was a snail.
Nothing.  The Denver incident had gone a long way toward keeping him
pervert-free ever since.  If they don't want it, it's nothing but nasty
even for the elder queer.  He thought of pornographers.  Wouldn't ravishing
sex on the web keep thousands off park benches?  He chuckled to himself. 
He'd spent some months in Mexico.  It hadn't taken porn to keep him off
those plaza benches, incredibly young and obviously delighted boys had done
that job.  Like Michelangelo, Mexico had it down about right.  Everywhere
and nowhere.  It was common for Mexican truck drivers to have supple
pubescent boys riding with them.  Some were sons, was his guess, but not
all by a long shot.  Paul's Mexican travels had yielded an even better
yardstick than the park benches.  A quarter-mile from the San
Ysidro/Tijuana border was a banos vapor; steam bath.  Kick-ass little
place; totally Mexican.  About eighty percent gay; yet, not gay at all. 
Any male could use the facilities.  And there were no man and boy couples.
He'd visited nearly fifty times; it was the perfect break in a bike journey
from Los Angeles to San Philippe where he'd spent his weekends camped on
the beach.  So here was a place any man could take any boy, it was cheap,
they served beer, it was funky and reeked of border charm, and men never
brought boys.  And an hour trolley ride from San Diego and its vast naval
facilities.  This was a true enigma in his mind.  Repeated statistics
reported fifteen percent of boys (and twenty percent of girls) were
molested by family members.  If that was true, why weren't there lines
around the block at a place where a man could take a boy, in perfect
legitimacy, to at least begin the desensitization process?  Even without
boys, where had been the allegedly gay navy?  In his numerous visits he
recalled only a few dozen anglos, period, much less probable military
personnel.  Was it all a hoax?



   He thought back to what Jimmy had said about Jeremy, the boy who seemed
his twin in a search for the truth.  Jeremy's sampler had been men and boys
stuck in a cabin for a weekend.  Paul's parallel thought went along the
line of a clinic where healthy, middle-aged males would be hauled in off
the street, totally at random, and paid a thousand dollar to watch a half
hour video of juvenile sexcapades.  Assuming total anonymity and a relaxed,
private atmosphere, how many men would leave after the mandatory five
minutes?  How many would stay the whole half-hour?  How many would
demonstrate a physical reaction and how many would engage in physical
action?  A book called "What Cops Know" had what might be an answer to
Paul's question about how many men would do what.  In this non-fiction
work, a young prostitute is portrayed.  The description reads, "She had
nothing of being a woman about her," or words to that effect.  She looked
like a ten year old child.  When this prostitute went out, the first car
always stopped.



   Now who goes to prostitutes?  Steel workers, politicians, yard workers
and professors.  The traffic by a particular cruising area would sample out
with denizens of pulpit and penitentiary; older, younger, richer, poorer,
once a week or once a year.  As gamuts can be measured, the gamut.  And all
stopped for the girl child; the first one, always.



   How many Iowa girls made it safely home?  The little girls that were
herded in droves to the pageants, festivals and fairs?  They were dressed
as prostitutes; ages nine, ten and eleven.  Cleavage, garters, a few naked
inches on upper thighs below a patch of pale belly.  A dad that could get a
girl, dressed like that, safely to and from would have an ugly daughter,
indeed.  In the Victorian era, and Paul was an expert on this, despite his
tender years, no girl was ever left alone in the company of any man,
absolutely period.  The lust factor was regarded by these parents of the
technological revolution as one hundred percent prevalent. 
Father/daughter. Older brother/younger sister.  Uncle/niece.  Up the line
to the preacher, and down the line to the actor.  The world of Pollyanna as
played by Haley Mills.  Oddly and complexly, also the world of Lewis
Carroll and his sprightly little Alice - perhaps proving there was
chaperoning and chaperoning in them thar Puritanical times.



   Happiness?  According to Jane Austin they did pretty well in that
department, though today it is the suppression, neurosis and laudanum that
are remembered.  (And it did take money.) Could there be happiness in a
non-Victorian environment?  Maybe that was the best interpretation.  Yet,
at the same time, weren't those very strictures and restrictions the source
of the taboo that made what he and Jimmy were going to do together upstairs
in the bathroom vastly more engaging than if they were a pair of
Polynesians doing what came naturally any time they wanted?  He defined
this as a rhetorical question and let it slip away, the better to
communicate with the boy in the here and now.



   Jimmy had recovered from his seasonal prancing and dancing and was now
simply glowing.  "I think it's time or I'm going to have an accident," he
said.  Paul's towel snapped up just below his waist and Jimmy grunted at
the sight.  They were bow and string.  So exactly alike it scared them
both. Incest.  They stared into each other eyes.  Jimmy's mouth was a bit
large, he had a bit of tall-boy stoop to his head.  Paul was a bit craggy
to make it in Vegas.  Neither had perfect teeth.  They twined these
thoughts between them as Paul rose.  First this time.  The boy had talked
the talk so it was up to the dominate male to walk the walk.  Jimmy rose
and they held hands as they climbed the stairs to the bathroom.  Paul noted
it was easy to see the approaching road and drive from the window.  It felt
very safe.  "No friends likely to drop by, package deliveries, anything
like that?" he asked Jimmy.  "Small chance," the young boy answered.  "If
they do, they'll come from the front.  No one ever comes to the back door.
It's cool."



   "Do you wish I was Jeremy?" Paul asked.  "Only about half," Jimmy
answered.  The boy went on, "We could be with him, sometime, if you want.
He only moved a hundred miles away.  Twenty-five minutes if we go in the
yellow Satan," he concluded in a giggle.  They were soon in the bathroom,
window shade drawn but for a slight gap, standing eighteen inches apart. 
The math whiz spoke.  "We have to start by measuring," he said.  "No
touching.  Just with a ruler held close enough to measure within an eighth
of an inch.  Is that okay?"



   "When do we touch?" the older male asked.  "That has to be done a very
special way," Jimmy replied.  "How is that?" Paul whispered, leaning as
close to the boy's right ear as he dared.  "The slow way," the boy
whispered back.  "There's a totally special prize if we do it slow enough,"
the boy added with a bit of mystery intruding on the very quiet husk of his
whispering.  Paul found himself hoisted on his own petard, whatever that
meant.  He'd meant to delay things, to check and double-check.  He almost
thought it check and double-chick.  The boy was so young.  Younger than
Tim, considering their relative ages.  Younger than he had been with
Jeremy, again, if relative ages were considered.  So the discovery process
had been extra slow, gentle and deliberate as befitted a naturally nice
child.  And now who was full of mysteries along with plenty of artful delay
and crafty suspense?  He said it again to himself, Subtle child.  "Okay,"
he said out loud to Jimmy, "Since this is going to take awhile, what do you
say we proceed directly to step one?"



   "Mostly you've got to think of things to stay excited.  That's all the
steps, really," the broth of Scotland replied.  He added: "Since you're
older you've got to go first to keep me excited.  You've got to tell me
about the first time with Jon.  Deal?" "Deal," said the young man and he
added: "But, before we take any more steps, you have to say the m word to
me.  The shorter one.  You have to invite me.  Please."



   Jimmy leaned almost impossibly close to Paul's ear and just breathed in
and out for several moments.  "I want you to molest me," he whispered. 
"What do you call the result of getting molested," he asked in his own
whisper.  "Sperming," the young boy said: "Is that okay?  Or spraying."
"And you want to sperm with me?" "Yes!" the child whispered still close in
Paul's ear, his warm breath doing nothing to lessen the impact of his total
acceptance of the two of them, together.  "You know what?" Paul asked,
trying to keep his whisper level and mature; "I think now might be a good
time to do the measuring."



   He dropped his towel and arched his back.  His boner curved slightly
back on itself.  Jimmy stared, his eyes glazing, his mouth slackening
slightly.  Older the male may have been, yet he was like a boy.  Slim
there. No fuzz.  He'd seen enough pictures, and of course Jeremy back when
he'd been eight, so there was a moment of shock and he looked into his
partner's eyes.  Paul looked down and then at Jimmy.  "That's Tim," he
answered the un-asked question.  "He thought I was a little full of myself
at one point and threatened to get a tattoo if I didn't use a hair remover
and thus show my humility.  It's the only kinky thing I've ever done." He
winked at the boy.  "It makes me a better driver," he said.  "I sure don't
want to end up in the e.r.  if I can help it." "Yeah," Jimmy replied
without hesitation, "Only every orderly and male nurse in Madison would be
checking to be sure you were coming along okay.  You're awesome.  I'm going
to measure you now; there's a tape in mom's sewing basket.  I'll be back in
a second."



   Paul reveled in Jimmy's use of the pronoun instead of it.  It was him.
Measure, touch, fondle, hold and caress him, not it.  What was getting
pretty obvious as the minutes passed was that no touching, fondling or like
enterprise was going to be needed by the stallion if the colt kept on with
his boyish antics.  "He's only two-buttons naked," Paul groaned to himself
as he stood on the bathroom carpeting, "And I'm about to see the ghost of
Christmas past." Comic relief.  It did the trick but it was close.  The boy
re-entered the bathroom and stood stock still at his eighteen-inch
distance. A few moments passed.  "Tell me about Jon while I measure you,"
he whispered, then sank slowly to his knees.  "It was at a summer camp.  We
had our conversation - the frank one.  At nap time we took a short walk,
maybe a couple of hundred feet into the woods.  Then we lay down side by
side.  He had the blanket from his bunk with us and he pulled it over both
of us.  We were lying on our back in the middle of the trail.  In a moment
or two he took my right hand, very gently, and guided it to where his jeans
were open.  I felt his boner.  It was big and totally hard.  I started to
move my hand up and down; maybe he asked my too, I don't remember.  I did
it twice and I felt a tiny splash on my hand between my thumb and index
finger.  `Wow!  That's sperm!' I remember thinking that really clearly, and
don't remember even knowing the word before that time.  Then we had to get
up because in the middle of the path was not a good place to be.  I never
saw anything except one tiny drop of semen on my hand as he was folding up
the blanket.  On the way back to the cabin he tried to talk to me but what
he said went over my head, so I guess he thought I was a dolt because I
didn't answer.  I think he was asking if I liked doing things with him,
but, I'd done very little, and seen absolutely nothing.  Of course he was
Harvard, which always leaves the question of doltery open."



   "Eight and six-eighths," Jimmy piped up from somewhere on the planet. 
He translated the fraction to three-quarters and Paul admired the precision
of his work.  His right hand tickled where that single drop of sperm had
landed.  Other parts of him were vastly beyond the tickling stage.  Timmy
had wanted to humble him by removing his pubic hair; this boy was going to
humiliate him in another way, and there was going to be laundry into the
bargain.  He held and held as the boy returned, touch-free, to his standing
position at eighteen inches.  "Do you want me to use the p word, now?" the
boy whispered while he reddened, especially at the throat.  "Yes!" Paul
hissed.  "Will you measure my penis?" the boy whispered, more softly than
he had ever whispered to Paul before.  "How long were you when you were
with Jeremy?" Paul quizzed.  Jimmy also loved the pronoun.  How long was
he, the young male.  Not it, someone's toy.  "Three and nine-sixteenths
inches, the boy answered, adding that his more mature partner had measured
five and three-quarter inches, exactly.  "We were both pretty slim.  I
still am," he said.



   "Jimmy," Paul asked, "Are you homosexual?" "I don't think so," the boy
answered.  "There's a killer girl down the street, but she's only nine. 
Besides, she looks more like a boy than I do.  But just once in awhile I
see a girl that's awesome.  None of the pancake princesses and lipstick
lolas, but you know, playing ball or something.  Swimming.  I know one
that's a fox," he added, "She's on television a lot.  Some ad for
osteoporosis pills.  Starts with a girl my age on a swim team.  Blue
bathing suit.  Stone, absolute, stop-the-clock fox.  I'd marry her cat to
live in the same county.



   "They're not all bad," the young soothsayer continued, "but the odds
against girls are tuff.  They didn't write a note of classical music and
you can pile all their literary and artistic contributions in the corner of
a small library or gallery." He seemed about to carry on, and Paul was
thankful.  Mothers knew everything about laundry.  The slightest stain or
odd marking and an investigation of unimaginable magnitude would be
launched.  The entire front of a shirt might bring on a war footing, nor
was the absence of the shirt likely to keep the peace.  Mothers had to have
some use in the world, and the six-foot-three male was glad he'd found one.
Of course, mothers often were not much good at things, so this was not
going to be a lasting remedy.  But, to one who was holding on
second-by-second, it was a bit of a port in an overpowering storm.



   But this siren wasn't calling.  He was right there and moving slowly
closer.  Paul reached to the top of his buttoned buttons and unbuttoned the
last one he came to.  Then the second.  Jimmy stood gently, carefully to
him.  "No touching," he reminded in a whisper.  Paul didn't touch him. 
Just worked down the front of his shirt, pulling its tails gently from the
boy's waist at the end.  Sixteen small moles or large freckles, he counted.
Let Florida deal with punches and chads, he was lost in mapping the tiny
trademarks of the beautiful young chest and abdomen.  The boys head drooped
as he watched intently the slow progress of Paul's beautiful young hands.
They had to stand in front of the mirror, and soon.  But now it was time
for shoes and socks, so he eased onto the tufted black cover of the
commode. Paul knelt in front of him, and bent to undo his laces.  This took
no more than a week.  Stains on sneakers might be dropped mayonnaise or
spilled ice cream, he thought, and almost lunged against Jimmy's knees and
spilled all over the boy's feet.  God, that was close.  He grabbed
frantically at any absurdity to contain himself.  The young male was now
stone silent.  The knots were undone, the heels pulled down, then the
socks. There was a lot of stuff in the literature about boy smells.  To
Paul, boys just smelled.  The slight scent of ammonia that Jimmy's feet was
just the hint of deterrence needed to prevent an overpowering accident that
might include boy, fuzzy black toilet cover, throw rung, and three or four
square feet of flat-painted wallboard.  The porcelain would clean up okay,
but that was hardly a bright spot of any importance.



   Then came the magic inch.  Jimmy's shirt was open, his shoes and socks
were off.  Now Paul, careful not to touch, undid his belt.  He pulled the
ends free, and Jimmy whispered instructions about the snap.  It yielded,
and the young man touched the stripling's zipper.  He pulled it out and
down.  Then it was the magic inch.  Jimmy rose from the black cover and
Paul gently slid his slacks down over his young-boy hips.  Jimmy resumed
his seat, and Paul continued easing the trousers toward the carpet.  At the
last moment the boy added to his inch by lifting his feet clear of the
garment.  At the same time he shrugged his open shirt onto the tank behind
him.  Paul stood, naked, and Jimmy stood in his underpants.  Briefs. 
White. Right out of the Sears' Catalogue.  They separated by three feet. 
Paul gawked at the boy.  His penis was too his right, bulging against the
white cotton.  Very long and slim.  Not his mini meat, by a long shot. 
Just slightly smaller.  "Do you take showers with the other boys," Paul
whispered to Jimmy.  "No," the boy whispered back, reddening beautifully.
He went on, "My gym teacher wants to talk to me about it, we're meant to
have a meeting on Friday."



   "During school or after school?" Paul quizzed the young male.  "After,"
he answered.  "Do you like your gym teacher?" he asked.  "Yeah; all the
boys do.  He's cool." "Is he cute?" the older male asked.  "Not like you
are, but yes.  Definitely.  Why?" "Because," Paul explained, "Fifth and
sixth-grade gym teacher's are usually very tuned-into boys entering
puberty. They recognize that boys who develop early usually have much
higher hormonal levels than other boys.  Not to put too fine a point on it,
such boys make outstanding partners, probably the best in the world.  Taboo
sometimes seems like overkill in these cases, but we don't have much choice
in the matter.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure your teacher has your fabulous self
on his mind and I want to tell you that, to the point it's any of my
business, which it most assuredly is not, I approve if you want to hang out
with him, any time, any place.  Okay?"



   Jimmy changed the subject: "We need some books," he said.  "We have to
be at exactly the right height, which means I have to come up about six
inches." The boy giggled.  "Jeremy made two little stools in the basement.
My mom thought they were doll furniture and got two hundred bucks for them
at one of her famous yard sales.  But they were for me, so I'd be the right
height for him when he molested me." The boy giggled again, and continued:
"It wasn't that he minded discomfort; we'll talk about that later; it's
that what he did to me took a long, long time and comfort became a real
factor." He grinned shyly at Paul.



   What an absurdly happy boy.  A natural.  Most gay boys were wrung out of
some twist or another of dysfunction, skinny sprat of two-job moms.  A
small percentage appeared to be genetically disposed, or, judging by the
length of the boner in Jimmy's underpants, hormonally disposed, the two, in
all probably linked and very possibly the link.  Even through the Hanes,
Paul could tell Jimmy was notably but hot hugely endowed for his age,
long-legs and big-feet allowed for.  His penis looked about a full inch
longer than would have been large on an eleven year old.  If," his thoughts
wandered, "his coach knows what he's doing there is going to be a shower of
very happy eleven-year-olds in the not too distant future, say, Monday gym
if they had gym on Monday."



   Jimmy left the bathroom and then returned bearing a stack of book in
each arm.  He also had two belts.  The books were arranged in two piles by
the tub, and the belts looped over the rail for the shower curtain. 
"They're for balance," the boy explained as he finished his rigging and
tested the result.  "In case I get too excited," he added.  "Du'uh." Paul
thought to himself.  He said out loud: "What's going to make you so
excited? I'm not going to last long enough to turn off the light switch."
But he made himself.  All the fabrics, textures, fluff and trim.  It was a
bit weird.  Paul figured Lynette Jennings was responsible for half the
divorces in the country with her endless treatments, frills and hot-glue
schtick.  But the long-legged stripling looked good surrounded by the
flotsam and jetsam of entirely too many trips to Wal-Mart, and the
plugged-in gizmo smelled just fine..



   "Let's test," said Jimmy, and he mounted his perches.  "Do you want my
legs spread wider?" he asked once he was in position, adding: "If you do
you'll have to help me up.  You can use a towel so you don't touch me. 
What do you think?" The boy dropped back to the floor and added two more
books to each stack, spreading the stack six-inches further apart.  "Wanna
try this?" he asked.  Paul stood speechless, trying not to ejaculate all
over just plain everything.  In his movements, stooping and bobbing and
arranging things for himself the youth displayed a leggy grace and
coltishly winsome way of making his every move.  He was no perfect little
hip swinger or gyrator; he was young-swan-like with a never-to-be
perfection beyond any that could be written of.  Not too much flesh, and
lots of blood.  Willowy, yet halting and nervous and early big-boy
shoulders.  "Only one thing left," Jimmy said, "candles.  Only we can't use
them because mom would notice.  Jeremy and I figured out a fake; I'll go
get it." And the boy was once again off the carpet by the tub/shower and on
his boyish way.



   The tub was an awful temptation.  A gallon of water, and no one the
wiser.  But he had his boy pegged as one not to overdo, and so the kid was
back in less than a minute with a Mag Lite and colored lens.  He set the
light in the hamper after turning it on, pointing it to the ceiling.  With
the room lights switched off the small carpeted chamber took on a new cast,
warm, slightly pink.  Even so, Jimmy's skin seemed to absorb any color, he
was so delicate a white with just a blemish here and mark there to keep him
from being a male version of Sailor Moon, though he was closer in age than
Mini Moon.  "If I could photograph two square feet of him," the artist
wondered, " Which would I choose?" He answered his question: "Two-thirds of
the way up from his knees to just over his belly button.



   "I've got to do it this way," he said out loud to the boy, reaching for
the tape measure.  "Before I take your underpants off.  Is that fair?"
Measuring Jimmy's penis was going to be almost beyond comprehension, even
with the Hanes god watching his back.  The potential touch and feel of
cotton brought up the Lusitania.  Legend had it she was loaded with gun
cotton.  He tried to think of the passengers in the frigid icy Irish Sea.
The thoughts went the way of the Titanic.  Human suffering was never far
from his mind, but the cotton of the present instance was not far from his
eyes.  Closer as he knelt and moved the fabric of the sewing measure closer
to Jimmy's boner.  Paul took a deep breath for the final act.  He did not
want to breath on the boy's belly.  That would be touching.  In the end he
acted decisively, getting six and three-quarter inches less a fraction
before lowering the tape and turning to the side to exhale.  "Oh, Dude," he
whispered, "if you ever make me do that again I'm going to measure you for
a body bag.  Dig!" The boy giggled his warbling chirp.  "He'd be sexy on
MP-3," the mature male thought.  "So beautiful you didn't even have to see
him to love him." His mind ever on the less fortunate, the musician
summarized he was a boy for the blind.



   They had resumed their customary eighteen-inches apart.  "Jimmy," Paul
asked in a whisper.  "If you want to bring your gym teacher over here and
do this with him, I'll invite your parents out to diner." "Maybe sometime,"
the boy answered.  "Well," Paul said, "Try to make it your first time with
him if you can, because this game is more than awesome, though," he added,
"my guess is you could figure out some pretty good substitutes with the
resources of an entire athletic department at your disposal." Jimmy giggled
and glowed.  For a second he pictured the former champ swimmer in Paul's
place.  "No wonder they call it gay," he thought to himself, "If I were any
happier I'd be a dervish." But the memory of swimmer also conjured the
image of the willowy female in the swimming-team commercial.  Luckily, his
mind was already sharpening through contact with his mentor.  "If she's a
downer on being gay, then being gay must be more awesome than the most
awesome thing there is." It didn't make total sense to the boy, but then
outlines sometimes don't.



   Paul's sympathy was with writers, in matters like this.  They were stuck
with outlining - sketching.  It's what you did in a song.  But imagine
being able to take a pad and pencil and sketch this long legged stripling
with the six-plus inch bulge in his underpants.  The artist could capture a
split second, but the moron with the pencil and chowder for brains could
use the same amount of lead, or ink, not for a moment in time, but for a
whole slice of his life.  And, tantalizing, pubescent, adolescent as Jimmy
was, only an outline would be needed.  Was the secret of the craft that
simple?  Pick a lanky reed, dress him in white underpants, then just sketch
away to your heart's content?  Perhaps the same thing applied to music. 
Write a perfect song, then just sketch away at it forevermore.  Don Maclean
had done it.  Jimmy Webb.  Kris Kristofferson.  Bob Marley.  Not bad
numbers when one considered you had to go all the way back to the age of
Mozart to find their equals.



   How much practice would it take?  the musician wondered.  A million
hours seemed way high, so he rounded off to one hundred thousand because
the number represented five-thousand hours a year for twenty years.  In a
sense Paul was right, but if he ever tried the craft himself he'd quickly
come to realize that the hundred-thousand hour of practice had to come on
top of ten or fifteen-thousand hours of reading from earliest memory
through the school years.  Without that foundation, no amount of practice
was going to produce an artist over any amount of time.  Exceptions were
journalists caught up in traumatic events, but they tended to parallel
Stephen Crane as one-trick ponies.



   As an occasional stage performer, Paul knew that too much noodling got
on an audience's nerves.  In the present instance he accepted the imaginary
boos of the crowd because they distracted him from an essential nerve which
was getting the mother of all tune ups from the boy in front of him, now
unable to control an almost infinitesimal swaying of the hips, not side to
side, the kid wasn't in Hawaii, but back and front; more to the front. 
Paul said good-bye to the shipping lanes, to the wiles and foibles said to
run amok in the writer's craft, and watched Jimmy slowly bring his big
penis within a half inch of the tip of his own.  "You better get me in
position," he whispered.  "How will I get you naked," Paul whispered back.
"I've got an extra pair of underpants at school.  I can smuggle them in the
house, so you can cut these off when you're ready," Jimmy said.  "With
what?" the mature male whispered.  "My great-granddad's straight razor. 
It's in the medicine cabinet, in a blue case with like felt in it."



   To take his mind off the present situation, Paul wondered to himself
whether or not it might be possible to stitch Jimmy's briefs back together,
once he had parted them Damn, that would be fun to try.  See if Mrs.  O. 
twigged.  He searched for a plausible explanation in case the careful
stitchery was ever detected.  One possibility amused him.  Would she be
likely to believe that their nice young boarder had come after her son with
a straight razor?  Paul had once attended a writing seminar in which Sol
Saks had spoken.  He had explained that "Bewitched" only worked if there
was a conflict based on the protagonist's secret identity.  "There's a
germane motif," he thought to himself.  "Copious lust under the eyes of a
detergent dragon.  Any tale of two whites, and the secret would be out and
the story would be over."



   By this time both young males were hanging their heads in lust and
shame. Their penises were almost touching.  Tips dry.  They were too scared
for the gentle pre-flow of seminal fluid that normally came with half an
hour of intense foreplay, verbal or otherwise.  No spot at all on Jimmy's
underpants.  Again, twins.  Clean, healthy twins, and if they aren't, for
heaven's sake shut the door and leave them in peace.  They're not telling
you how attractive your son is, they're telling you how pointless it would
be for them to have anything carnal to do with your son, unless he was
sensible and willing, in which case it might be the best idea to trust his
judgement.



   Paul was reaching the emergency stage which by this time was reaching
the whole three digits of nine-one-one.  He had to take his mind off the
open razor in his hand, off the strip of underpants to be severed, off
everything within a foot of him.  He was lucky.  On the way to Dodgeville
he'd stayed at a motel and they'd had Disney on the cable.  There was a
movie called "The Ultimate Christmas Gift." Now there was a kid to cool a
horny hippo.  Round vapid pie face and endlessly-yammering, snide, sneaky
mouth.  He thought back to the statistics already gone over.  If one in how
many men would do thus and such with so and so, how many, he wondered,
would do anything, for any amount, with that pretty-lipped lump of
cauliflower Jell-O?  He grinned at how surely this loathsome puddle, that
it would actually be against the law to murder, would suffer for his crimes
against his greedy body and because of his odorous personality.  In his
whole life he would never have what young Jimmy had had at eight.  A
lover.. Pussy galore for every dime he had, then not even the rankest
hustlers outside of prison would be interested.  Of all possible justices,
the ugly of soul and deliberately ugly of countenance sentenced themselves
to something just short of that rendered by Mohawk females.  Tomorrow's
Andy Sipowicz as played by Dennis Franz for this round little star Paul had
known the self-same type.  There were no exceptions.  The autistic probably
had it better, and that was the truth.



   "We were all amateurs, at one time or another," Paul chided himself.  He
was feeling a bit smug for having an answer for everything, yet not enough
actual credentials to fill a teacup.  About the same as Darwin or Lindberg.
He let that thought stroke his ego.  He viewed academia as variations on a
theme by parrot.  It was hardly a wonder they did not find him soft, cuddly
and compliant.  He stuck with his music because he did not have the
literary horsepower to break through.  "Wish someone did," he mused.



   "We can touch through our hair, that's okay," Jimmy whispered.  Taking
the hint, Paul leaned forward to the boy, forehead to forehead, and
inserted the blade of the razor along his left hip.



   "I might fly out when the cloth gives so you better turn the sharp edge
the other way," the boy whispered.  "Okay," said Paul, glad he'd decided on
a practice run.  "That's right," coaxed the boy as Paul reinserted the
blade, careful not to touch the heaving boy-flank less than in inch from
his fingers and thumb.  "I'm ready to be mounted," Jimmy said when Paul
withdrew the blade.  Paul laid the antique razor carefully in the sink and
then took a towel from the rack.  He made a cradle of his arms and Jimmy
leaned against the padded support as he stepped backwards onto the now
eight-inch piles of books that would support his feet.  Paul held Jimmy's
right arm, first, while he looped the wrist into the belt, then, passing
inches from Jimmy's heaving chest, he secured his left arm to the shower
curtain rail.  He stepped back and Jimmy tested his lashings.  The belts
slipped and they had a close call.  Paul grabbed the towel in place and
supported the boy by his chest as he regained his balance.  Sizing up the
situation, Paul dropped to the floor and took the laces from Jimmy's
sneakers.  In a few moments he used these to cinch the two belts,
respectively, in their places so they would no longer slip.  "Put the towel
on the edge of the sink," Jimmy instructed.  "You can lean back on it and
be comfortable, too." As Jimmy gave these instructions, Paul used the towel
to remount the boy.  This time the belts didn't slip.  He moved back
against the sink, padding its edge as the boy had suggested.  There was
Jimmy, spread eagle, eye to eye.  "In more ways than four; would anyone
believe six?" he winced to himself.



   By arching a bit, Paul was able to bring the tip of his penis right to
the boys thrusting underpants.  When Jimmy was naked, the distance would be
ideal.



   What was god saying here?  Ignore this beauty and suffer yourselves to
overpopulate the world and live in misery?  The Spartans hadn't ignored it
and lived on in legend.  A house needed sixteen bookshelves, one boy and
four cats.  Then it was a beautiful home though it be tin in a ravine and
the boy visit but an hour a week.  Paul thought to McKinley Kantor's book,
"Andersonville." In the camp was one Spartan couple.  When the boy died of
an infection, the man plunged against the wire until the bullets finally
bled him to death.  What would he look like, stoned?" Paul wondered. 
Almost glowing white, spread-eagle, legs wide, but comfortably supported at
his wrists and feet.  Looking down, half in shame, half to see, and half to
match Paul who was looking down on their thighs, loins, flanks and bellies.




   For moments they rested in total comfort, drinking each other in.  There
was no giggling now.  They both smoldered.  "Babe," Paul whispered, "is it
okay?" "Yes," the boy whispered back, frantic to stay with what was
happening.



   And he did try.  All his long, happy life he would know he tried.  But
there is trying and trying and there is eleven and there is eleven.  He
loved Paul as he had Jeremy and as he might one day love a few others.  He
loved him, but he was smart.  Brainy.  No matter what, his mind kept
working, kept dreaming things up; creating.  Here, in the present
situation, he did not have to pretend.  The scene was what's known in
Hollywood as a natural.  An older male, naked, was coming at him with a
straight-razor; his legs were spread beyond his being able to regain his
balance; his wrists were tied.  He was wearing only underpants.  He had the
biggest boner of his eleven years.  The man with the gleaming razor was
breathing gently but so firmly, yawning and breathing, and inching closer
with the four-inches of wicked steel.  And now inches were out of play. 
Less than.  A quarter.  The sliding chill of the keen blade before its
first touch on flesh.  Then the director yells, "Cut!"



   Part 3



   Later, Paul would think of it as close, but no cigar.  This would be a
phallic, flesh-and-blood cigar, or would have been had not the shower
curtain been there.  Jimmy's penis, not just his skin touching.  Phallic,
indeed.  The boy had let his inner picture of the director's strident
command so overwhelm him that he'd practically exploded.  Paul, getting
about one-second of warning from those awesome eyes, had a single nick of
time to withdraw the straight razor, push it hastily into the sink on top
of the towel, then rip the shower curtain from its rings and catch his
falling star.



   "No act of kindness goes unpunished," the twenty-three year old muttered
to himself as he fell under the almost naked boy.  Having stopped falling,
Jimmy lay across Paul and howled and screamed.  His scant hundred pounds
housed earthquake, hurricane and tornado.  His eyes flooded.  "Cut," he
half gasped several times, then he could say no more.  It was soo funny. 
As his youthful spirit drifted back to the upstairs Fern Street bathroom,
he worried for a second about the shower curtain.  But anyone could slip
and rip it off; no problem.  The very warm thing heaving with life under
the curtain?  One less problem.  In its entirety, his falling had been an
act of unintended consequence.  Paul had cinched his belts with ample room
for his hands to come and go.  A more severe master would have bound him
beyond any chance of escape.  Life yields either experience or death, and
the boy was taken for a moment by the realization that only the lighting
fast action of his senior partner in grabbing him had saved him a smash on
the back of the head.  Of course, he had signaled with his eyes, but Paul
was quick in a pinch, there was no doubt about that.



   In five minutes they were just lying there.  Jimmy told Paul about the
movie-set moron with the megaphone so that the musician wouldn't think he
was flipping.  "Think of it," he whispered, "what if you had really cut,
you know, and the guy stopped the camera so they get nothing " A minute
more of this and the boy was able to say the c word without dissolving. 
Paul just held him, wrapped in the shower curtain.  He had to remind
himself This was not love.  This was affection.  A crush of his own.  A
physically fabulous carnality.  But no cards, no roses.  It wasn't that
kind of thing.  No tender moments or thoughtful remembrances.  He felt
guilty then stupid.  If the young male wrapped in his arms was not happy
with such as he had, why bother presenting more?  Not smug or anything,
Paul felt this was a problem that would go away of its own accord.  A
non-self-fulfilling prophecy.



   "If you mount me again, I won't kid around any more," Jimmy finally
whispered to Paul.  Slowly the two regained their footing and Jimmy was in
a minute once again spread eagle in his underpants with Paul standing in
front of the towel-padded sink.  Again the mature male moved within an inch
of the white-skinned child.  "How many other boys don't take a shower?"
Paul asked the boy.  "Three," Jimmy whispered.  "Are they cool?" the older
male asked.  "One of them, definitely, the other two look okay but I don't
really know them," Jimmy said.  "Who's the one you like?" Paul quizzed. 
"Henry Stevens," the boy said.  "He's only ten; like totally smart.  I
think he doesn't take showers for the other reason than me." "Does he play
skins?" Paul asked.  "No, never," said Jimmy.  "Do you think he's getting
molested?" "They kind of say so," the eleven-year-old answered.  "I think
getting touched makes boys our age understand how our bodies effect other
males and that in turn effects us, so showers are out." Big logic.  Small
package.  "And how big a price is that?" Paul asked Jimmy.  "'Bout an ounce
on the ton.  Like they say in the literature, it's just a stage.  I'll
outgrow it and so will Henry.  How about you and Jon; tell me about your
second time," the boy said.



   "I saw his sperm," Paul whispered to his young friend.  "Did it get on
you," the boy responded.  "No, he sprayed into the bushes.  I didn't even
get a drop on me." "Were you sad?" "I suppose, a little.  But to me it was
cool, anyhow.  Not sexy, at all.  Just like really amazing.  Even looking
back on it, it was amazing," Paul went on, "He put his penis between my
legs, and I stroked him three times and he made three big spurts.  The last
time we did it, he let me take his jeans down.  He had a big leather belt
and I guess by the time an eight-year-old pixie got his zipper down he was
in heaven minus the cube root of a mosquito.  I pulled his heavy jeans
down, and his underpants.  He squatted down and I knelt beside him.  He
started ejaculating the second I touched him and I stroked him while he was
spraying."



   "What did his sperm look like?" Jimmy asked.  "It was thick and white.
Like Ivory liquid.  What did Jeremy's sperm look like?" "His was real
watery," Jimmy said.  "It sort of sizzled when it hit on my chest, that's
how hard he sprayed.  It made noise when it went across me." Paul tried to
keep a lewd thought from his mind, but this piece of cake was a bit
delicious to be served without frosting - a special wing in the hall of
good taste awaited Jeremy, of that he was sure.  Oh, if it only could be
funny and friendly.  It wasn't just the immaculate condition of the
bathroom napery that held Paul from following Jeremy's example right on the
spot.  His mind went to those who crippled themselves.  For him, taboo was
delicious.  Scent and spice.  For others it was a self-inflicted torment.
"Law and Order, SVU," had recently done an incest theme.  Suicide; why go
for nine yards when you can stuff ten in the same sixty minutes?  Nowhere
in the episode do the schlock cops pay an ounce of respect to the fact that
their rot-gut perp has built an industrial empire and left his daughters
rich.  Every moronic word of the hack-clack script is bongos on the totem
of taboo; enabling, pure and simple.  Taboo, by definition, is harmless
unless you know about it.  Unless the victim is supplied the poison, there
is no such thing.  And only society can supply the poison; make what
physically is no more than a minor sports injury, at worst, into a scar the
size of a breadbox.  He'd like to have had a chance to let his fingers
loose on that cop-shop copy.  Have somebody escort the heartbroken emoting
daughter to a clinic where kids with cystic fibrosis were undergoing the
walloping that constitutes their daily therapy.  If the budget allowed, it
wouldn't be hard to find a place where an entire village had never in their
lives eaten a single meal such as the victim had eaten any time she wanted.
Perhaps some people were just born to cry, but why did writers use them? 
There always seemed to Paul to be enough misery in the world without making
mountains out of instinctive behavior.  You can't rape me, impossible. 
That was the feral safe ground; make yourself bigger than what anyone can
do to you just as an athlete outgrows the physical agony of training and
competition or an artist deals with the vagaries of his genius.  Both hurt.
Both are traumatic.  At one time in his life Paul had performed CPR.  The
victim had vomited mac and cheese, about half an hour old, into his mouth.
It had been intrusive beyond description and even more invasive -
practically defined trauma.  He'd avoided a certain pasta for a week or
two. End of story.



   If taboo was a double-honed sword, the razor Paul slipped slowly down
Jimmy's left flank had but a single edge.  The young male radiated heat as
Paul leaned within inches.  Jimmy thrust gently toward him.  "Are you
ready?" Paul asked.  "Yes," Jimmy whispered back.  Paul twisted the razor
and there was a faint pop the moment it reached perpendicular to the boy's
thigh and the elastic in Jimmy's underpants was severed.  A slight stroke
and the cording and hemming of the garment was cut, and the white briefs
slid down Jimmy's right leg, coming to rest on the pile of books.  He
flicked his foot and then was naked.  Paul was glad for the towel and
doubly glad for the sink to lean against.  His knees felt like spaghetti.
Every drop of blood was in his penis.  He felt like an animal as he
approached Jimmy.  "Can I touch you now?" he whispered to the boy.  "I've
got to say the other m word first, can you wait?" the boy asked back.



   Paul knew he would stick to his music.  He couldn't write.  It was not
in his heart to tease, cajole and flimflam his audience.  Spin them.  Con
them And a writer would have to; otherwise, what would he do?  Educate
them? Inform them?  Amuse them?  A writer who just entertained wouldn't be
much more than cotton candy.  No, to be the real deal the penmeister would
have to drag his folks along kicking and screaming, or grinding their
teeth. Taunt them.  Play tricks.  Bait and switch.  Plant red herrings. 
Entertainment was for wimps; a real reader had to be flogged, flayed and
keel-hauled.  They were like children; always ready to wander off and play
in someone else's yard.  This hurt sales.  Maybe that's why god invented
the Net.  There were no sales to hurt.  Just readers.  Those iffy children
that needed to be mobbed, hustled, controlled and sold.  Music couldn't do
that, Paul knew.  For all its grandeur, it was a moment in time,
practically echo free.  But the writer had a thousand instruments and
though it took a lifetime to learn to use them the result was all the power
on earth.  All modern power.  All power beyond the cave.  Master the ten
thousand word, mold them with a lifetime of reading and a wide scale of
living over many decades, and the result would come as close as humanly
possible to enduring truth.  If this was hard on readers they had
themselves to blame.  The truth was simply true.  It could be neither
explained away nor divided.  It could not be simplified or reduced in any
way.  At the end of the day, all the reader could hope for would be to take
his drubbing like a man and move on to another writer.  If he or she were
exceptionally lucky their new artist would try for comic relief, but even
this could get tiresome.  In a way Paul envied himself.  He'd never be on
that icy pinnacle of absolute talent built on a dangerous life; but, then,
he'd play for two or three hours and be done.  The poor writer, meantime,
would be all up there and like frozen; knowing, somehow he had to climb
higher; pull out more stops; top his thunder with a higher thunder or
huddle his readers in for a whisper.  "To be able to do it," Paul thought;
"To go out there and actually write a symphony as you play it.  Phrase
motifs, then set them.  Add cunning.  Sneak around.  Act playful and
flirty, then spin with a razor.  Throw Stephen King in the way, you could
do that in a book, and let him take the ripping slash.  Dash in the comic
thing by wondering out loud about a choice of fates that would involve cold
honed steel or Tabatha.  Not funny?  Okay, that's why sex was invented.  To
bail out inept comics and reward readers in the largest way possible. 
About the conceited writer who thinks he's so marvelous he's free to stomp
around in his work any time he pleases, little can be done.  Editors were
put on the planet specifically to cope with such meatheads, but the Net is
pretty much editor-free.  More's the pity, because if it were known by the
writer that somebody was bound to hoist all his clever stuff out, he'd not
be under the intense burden of the ceaseless toil it takes to be funny in
the first place, and make it look easy into the bargain.  Paul tried to
imagine what it would be like to write without an editor, but his musical
background was no help.  He would not think of practicing without a
metronome or performing in any kind of session without several experts to
work on the arrangement.  And that was for a few dozen notes, woven and
re-woven.  A writer had ten thousand, just to start up in the morning.  And
no one to set cadence or adjust tempo.  "How could they do it?" he mused.
"You'd think if they were good enough they'd spend so much time patting
themselves on the back the plastic on their keyboards would rust."



   "I like this part almost the best," said Jimmy.  Paul was standing
comfortably supported by the sink behind him.  Jimmy was also comfortable,
spread eagle, his arms secure in the twin belts neatly lashed to the shower
curtain rail.  He wasn't going anywhere temporal.  Both the male's heads
were bent in shame, taboo washed over them.  By spreading his legs slightly
the six-foot-three male was able to bring the tip of his penis level with
Jimmy's.  They were now half an inch apart.  "How long did you stay this
way with Jeremy?" Paul asked.  "Until he sprayed," the eleven-year-old
answered.  Paul was about to ask more when the boy added: "It took about
ten minutes.  The first part.  The real part took one minute and fifteen
seconds from first splash to last drop." Paul wondered vaguely how one
would frost that cake, but his mental capacity was diminishing and his
world was focusing on the slightly knobby-kneed and long legged boy
half-an-inch distant.  "Did you whisper while you were waiting?" he asked.
"Yes," the boy whispered back.  "He told me about the first time a man
touched him and spermed on him.  Then he made me say the c word as I
touched the tip of my penis to his penis.  That made him grunt and start
spraying right away, just like when you touched Jon."



   "What happened, then?" Paul whispered.  "He grabbed me out of my wrist
restraints and took me in front of the mirror, then he bent over my
shoulder and molested me from the back with sperm all over his hands, then
he made me say the other m word and he did that from behind me so I could
see in the mirror.  I didn't spray but I thought I was going to break the
stupid glass, anyway." The boy's whisper got huskier.  "Do you want to do
it to me that way?" he asked.  "If you do, I can sperm mostly on the mirror
and if I water the bottle of Windex my mom won't see that there's any
missing." Jimmy paused for thought, then added: "As long as we use a
toothbrush where the fittings clip on the mirror we'll be safe if you want
to do it to me that way." "I think we'd look good together in the mirror,"
Paul said.  "That's a picture I'll be very happy to spoil," the boy
answered with his trademark giggle.



   "Who molested Jeremy?" Paul asked his young partner.  "His uncle.  They
went hiking for a week and were gone for a month.  Jeremy could do fifty
push ups and twenty pull ups when they got back, and run five miles like it
was a joke.  His uncle Carl was a swimmer, just like Ricky, my gym teacher.
Total fox; he looked like Patrick Swayze in `Dirty Dancing.' I've seen
pictures." "How old was Jeremy?" Paul asked.  "It was for his tenth
birthday; his mom said he had to be that old to stay overnight with her
brother.  She had this big talk with him, so when stuff happened Jeremy
sort of knew about it and that his mom was okay with it as long as it was
what he wanted, which it definitely was.  I've seen pictures of Jeremy when
he was ten, too," Jimmy added, "and he looked like the tall blond boy on
`Barney' in the late nineties.



   "So, anyway, off they went, over hill and dale with a .22 Browning pump
and a 30-06.  They loped three miles into the woods.  Do you want me to
tell you the whole story?" Jimmy interrupted himself.  "Hmm," Paul thought
to himself, "Here I am with every boy dream in the world at a heat-feeling
distance and he wants to tell me about Jeremy, the willowy ten-year-old
sprite off hiking and hunting with a Patrick Swayze lookalike."



   Love of boys is an overpowering force.  In monasteries, it had held
together what wisdom man had gleaned from the marsh over millennia.  The
English public schools system and especially the Royal Navy.  That was
then, and this was now: the driving force pedophilia amounted to in
internet development, computer sales and the entire modern economy.  Put
every boylover in jail and rid society of their curiosity, intellect and
creativity, not to mention their hands on the lathe, and society would
collapse immediately, entirely and permanently.  All is in plain point of
fact built on an adoration that went hand in hand with lust for this most
common of objects.  Physically, the beauty was worth ten or twenty dollars
for an hour or so; there really wasn't much too it.  It was more a
spiritual thing.  Paul's mind danced a quick parody of Visa's commercials.
Feel in a movie theater, two dollars; feel on a Ferris wheel, five dollars;
feel in a motel room, twenty dollars - and the feeling of a soul for
another, priceless.  And valueless.  One could do without it, entirely. 
Even V.C.  Andrews made a thing out of morning lusts; a deal-breaker when
it came to a farmer hiring on a young hand.  The mature male grimaced at
his unintended witticism, in a way glad it wasn't funny enough to get him
laughing.  It did get him off his literary horse; the last refuge of the
god of any control at all.  His attention returned to Jimmy who was
standing shame-faced in front of him, his penis a spire of lust, tears
dropping to the bathmat covering the carpet.  Paul watched him sob his
shame, unmoved.  Kids would be kids.  Eleven-year-olds broke down and
sobbed over a strikeout.  And this was no game; going about it all
blas**e9** and totally cool would have been an insult to both of them.  It
wasn't cool; it was a whole new paradigm; an entire new aspect to every day
they would spend together, and especially for many of their private hours.
Terrific exercise, for one thing.  If straining with Jimmy in almost
complete silence over the many night to come wasn't worth including in his
workout diary, he was going to be a very surprised twenty-three-year-old
guitarist.  So he ignored the tears while loving the shame they
represented. The storm passed in the child and he thrust his boner very
slowly to Paul so that their seminal fluid mixed in a minute quantity. 
"They took Tarzan and Jane costumes," Jimmy said, his voice more
explanatory and at the edge of a whisper rather than husking with a lust
bordering on a frantic ending.  "What for?" Paul asked, trying to come up
with a successful picture of the ten-year-old boy from purple-dinosaur land
and Jennifer Beal's awesome dancing partner off in the woods with Tarzan
and Jane costumes.



   "Jeremy's a tailor," Jimmy explained, "He's in business with his uncle
now, but then they were just starting.  Jeremy picked two costumes for
their trip, then they made them together.  When he was working on them his
mother found out and they had their talk.  So, anyway, the trip kind of
came out of Where can we wear these?  and It's a long way to the jungle, so
they took them on the hunting trip kind of just for the fun of it." Okay,
that was a good beginning.  If a boy could learn a trade while being
manipulated even Martha Stewart might have to acknowledge that it might not
be an all-bad thing.  On top of that, Paul was thrilled that Jimmy had a
friend with a trade.  Who was somebody.  Rare, a baker or a candle-stick
maker.  Every last one of them wanted to work with dolphins and major in
media studies, and only about half seemed to realize the absurdity of
either route.  No story, and a thousand people to tell it.  Jeremy was a
tailor.  "What kind," he asked, letting much of the whisper out of his
voice.  "He was doing pockets on prototypes last time he e-mailed.  I guess
it's pretty specialized." Jimmy giggled.  "He got started young." "Du'uh."
Paul replied, still glad Jimmy had a friend with a trade.  [The writer does
not consider telemarketing, burger flipping or security guarding to be
anything important to do with trades.]



   "So," the junior youth continued, "They decided to hike up near a trail
where they could have company or go off in the woods and target practice or
even hunt as long as they didn't kill something they couldn't eat.  It
turned out they picked just the right place, so they ended up staying for a
month and almost went in business trading fresh meat and fish for all the
other stuff they needed to live well."



   "Did Jeremy get molested a lot," Paul whispered to the boy.  His boner
had lost half an inch, and it immediately pulsed back to its eight plus
inches when the boy whispered, "Yes." "Did Carl start it?" Paul quizzed. 
"Yes," Jimmy whispered, "They did homosexual things in a rest area.  They
just stopped to take some video, but then Carl's police scanner picked up
an accident ten miles away so he knew there wouldn't be any cops, and
besides, there wasn't anybody there so they decided to try on their
costumes in the girl's restroom because you could see the road from it. 
Carl thought he knew what he was getting in for because he'd been helping
Jeremy all the way along with his costume, but what he didn't know was that
Jeremy had worked late for the last few nights after he'd come home, and
dyed the Jane outfit pink as well as giving it some elaborate pleats.  I
guess that and the fact that they were in the girls' room at the rest area
sort of added up and Carl asked Jeremy outright if he could molest him and
Jeremy said he could, so they did it in the classic way, with Carl behind
the blond boy and the blond boy standing on his toes and arching his back
so his arms went back around Carl's neck.  I mean," Jimmy whispered, "can
you imagine that TV kid and the actor, with the boy arched back and both
the man's hands all over his tummy and his chest?" Then his question turned
out not to be rhetorical when he added: "You don't have to, they have a
video of the whole thing.  They give it to each other on their birthday's
and other holidays.  If you want we can go to corn heaven and visit them
because I'm pretty sure they'd show it to us." Here the boy concluded for
the moment.



   "Does it show their sperm?" Paul whispered.  "Jeremy describes it as
graphic, and when I think graphic and think Jeremy I to tend to think of
sperm at the same time, so I guess the video is not lacking in a seminal
quality." "Good for it," Paul whispered back, "but something I was more
interested in at the moment is seminal quantity; yours, in particular. 
Jimmy, how long has it been since you sprayed?" "I had to clean the bed
last week, I guess six days ago or it could have been five.," Jimmy said.
"Did that happen accidentally?" the older male asked.  "Yes," Jimmy said,
then another giggle.  "I don't know how to make it happen on purpose." Paul
was stunned.  His identical twin, once again.  The same thing had happened
to him, with minor variation.  Jon had ejaculated at his very touch; never
even enough stroking to catch on.  Jon had not molested him, but if he had
Paul still wouldn't exactly have remembered how to actually do things.  In
any event, he'd also been a virgin at eleven until a shower with a boy his
own age had taught him there was more to do in bed at night than trying to
leak tiny quantities of urine on his belly.  He'd just never connected what
he'd done in the woods with the fully mature male with what the boy had
done to him after the shower.  Sex as hop, skip and jump.  That was a
pretty cool thought; it was no more or less than whether you hopped this
way or skipped that way or jumped out of any way.  Paul had gone those
years from his man to his boy without any special thought on the subject,
one way or another.  It was one percent of life.  This very day, starting
out as Frogger, getting moved in and established, out of this day, it was
going to be not more than a few percent, and this was a day out of a
lifetime in one respect, and one day in a month since he'd last climaxed
with a partner or several days by himself.  So it was less than one
percent.



   Funny, felt like more than that at the moment.  Jimmy nuzzling the tip
of his very long, slim boy penis in the clear fluid at the tip of Paul's
swelling.  Their dance was a sway measured to the thickness of a
butterfly's wing.  Just the infinitesimal strangeness at the tips of their
swollen penises centered their hunching and thrusting to get used to a
perfect matching before the pools of lymph were violated with a tiny thrust
that would ultimately cover both the young males.



   "I wish the kid would cry again," Paul thought for a moment, not really
meaning it.  How could he be closer than he'd ever been for all these
minutes and minutes?  One time with a boy to learn how, then he'd been more
or less deliberately celibate for years, knowing his music was going to
have to come first, second and third if he was going to have a life.  Since
then, nothing spectacular had happened until his first paid gig at sixteen;
the nine-year-old had been thoroughly desensitized by the landlady's former
boyfriend and had been a willing teacher of the youthful musician.  Tim, of
course, at nine, had been shy, nervous, then gently submissive in a way
that had yielded a love that had slowly increased over almost three years,
and endured.  But nothing like this.  This eleven-year-old with his penis
straining at nearly seven inches.  Cut.  Pink tipped with a slight purplish
sheen to the minute hollow that curved from just above the slit back to the
glans.  Jimmy was almost obscenely large, bent slightly to the left now he
was free of the underpants.  Deliciously male and imperfect.  Paul reckoned
most women under the age of five-hundred would not have minded a time alone
with his specimen.  Jimmy would make a child molester out of Rosie.  Paul
didn't know what Michael Jackson had received for his twenty million
dollars; the boys who had appeared on camera during the scandal had been
pretty damn close.  But they weren't the slightly overly mature Jimmy.  Of
course, then again, he hadn't seen Mikey's little buds spread eagle and
hunched over inches away.  He doubted he'd change his mind.



   "It's been longer than it was with Jeremy, I think," Jimmy said after
some moments of silence.  To Paul it seemed half his life had been spent,
his entire body inches from the lanky stripling.  But Jeremy had been
seventeen; two years closer to the theoretically magic nineteenth year than
he was.  He couldn't just outlast Jeremy by a few seconds, he had to do it,
by his head math, by at least a minute.  His mind went frantically to
trying to graph the equation.  Relative ages and time of event against
length of event and how much would the contest be measured by?  Tenths of a
second?  Yeah, when pigs fly.  Even with his mind full of graphs the older
male was not going to last.  Then a question popped into his mind.  It
wasn't the right kind of thing to ask the boy, under the circumstances, but
he had to ask something or the circumstances were going to change
dramatically and spontaneously.  "Did Jeremy warn you before he spermed?"
he whispered to the bent young head with its delicious ear.  "He apologized
later, because he said it was too dweeby," Jimmy explained, "but when he
got super-charged he said I'm going to ejaculate.  He turned red from
embarrassment even when he said it, then some spray started flying around
before he started spurting so hard it splashed against me.  That part went
on for eight spurts.  Then is just flowed for the last twenty seconds and
it took about ten seconds for the last full drop to fall down unless we'd
waited like a minute."



   "Oh," Paul said.  And nothing more.  They began nuzzling each other at a
dead-slow pace.  Touch and pull a fraction apart; touch again.  Ten time.
Twenty times.  Hunched over each other, and alternatively thrusting at each
other lewdly and obscenely while Paul arched back against the sink, hands
linked behind his neck, and Jimmy followed his lead.  Every microscopic
toying probe of their gentle duel seemed it must surely be - the very last
on earth.  Paul lived and died at six or eight-second intervals.  Jimmy
splayed his feet as widely to the sides as he could force them, projecting
his loins to their maximum.  Both males were sweating freely and panting.
Half a square inch of the mature male probed its twin on the child's boner.
Their motion quickened for a number of strokes, then they came to a
shuddering stop.  "Cum," Jimmy whispered urgently.  Paul stood flat footed
as the terrific congestion of his climax suddenly released to an
irresponsible freedom.  He was now totally out of control.  He remained
flat footed but arched again and laced his fingers behind his neck as Jimmy
thrust the tip of his big boy's boner against the slit of Paul's oaken
penis.  The first of his semen demonstrated a tendency to fly around all
over everything, so the two males by accord pulled slightly apart.  Paul
had experienced some extended orgasms with Timmy, especially after coming
home and showering with the pale boy after a week on tour.  The boy would
turn off the water so he could see everything, that was his signal.  His
determined stroking, left arm tightly around Paul's waist and the sudden
silence in the shower had become Pavlovian triggers to be followed by
swinging the young male in front of him to take the gush as he loved to do,
all over his chest and belly with a frantic grab at the end so at least one
spurt would cover his immature penis and white thighs.  With Jimmy, Paul
reached Timmy's plateau in six hard, fast spurts.  And then it went on, the
boy actually having time to look up into his eyes as he accepted jet after
rusty jet plane all over his chest, shoulders, neck and face.  "You're
messier than Jeremy," the boy whispered.  And he was only half way through.
Paul's seventh, eight and ninth spurt zigged and zagged across Jimmy's
chest in a vague Z pattern.  "If I'd started properly, I could have spelled
out the orro, too," Paul thought for just a second as a grunting jolt from
his groin grabbed hold and banished all thought.  Finally, it began to be
over.  The frantic spurting gave way to a light gush then an oozing flow.
Jimmy positioned his boner under the tip of Paul's penis and was quickly
covered in thick, white sperm.  Paul slowly came back to earth then his
return to reality was made abrupt by the sperm-drenched male child in front
of him.  "Masturbate me," the boy whispered.



   Paul surged to his young lover, grabbed him finally fully naked to him.
The youth was so different than Timmy; so much power in that athletic body.
They met in an experimental, a long tender, and finally in a bruising kiss
as Paul helped the boy free his wrists.  Then he was loose and Paul
man-handled Jimmy in front of the large mirror on the bathroom door.  Jimmy
was too tall to be taken from over the shoulder the way he'd often taken
Timmy, and Jeremy had taken him when he, Jimmy, was eight, so the mature
male wrapped his left arm around the boy, fondling him from neck to belly
while his right hand found Jimmy distended and swollen penis.  The boy
started sperming on the mirror immediately.  His hot seed splashed all over
the glass, hissing as it sprayed in long ropes.  Paul held Jimmy's
sperm-slicked torso in his left arm as the mature child shuddered and
jerked with his climax.  His right hand he clamped at the base of the boy's
penis, making Jimmy thrust urgently into his fist as his spray continued.
Five grunting, hip-thrusting spurts, then six.  A shudder and the boy
froze. A small seventh ejaculation of his seed, then a copious flow which
Paul caught in his right hand to protect the carpet.



   And then it was over.  They half tumbled into the tub so they could drip
without staining the carpet.  The boy lay across the older male's lap and
Paul pulled him into a position where their naked chests would be touching.
In that position they spent several minutes as their breathing returned to
normal and the world reshaped itself slowly around them.  "Now we can play
a special game," Jimmy whispered to his partner.  "What's that?" Paul
asked. "Chills and thrills.  We take a cold shower and get really small. 
Then you get me out of the tub and molest me until we both get big again.
Does that sound okay?" It sounded okay, so they played it once, lingering
over kisses and being wrapped naked in each other.  Things ended much the
same as when they had played their first game, and then it was time to go
get the car, something Jimmy had managed to forget for a staggering amount
of time.



   Jimmy raised the window shade and retrieved the Mag Lite from the
hamper; busied himself with re-lacing his sneakers.  Paul set about hiding
the boy's underpants and their sin.  Attention to every possible stray
drop, and they could be anywhere.  Jimmy was especially glad to see his
older partner take pains over restoring the mirror to its immaculate
conditions.  As the young man worked methodically with rags and a small
brush the watching Jimmy couldn't help a giggle.



   "You clean up pretty well," he said to Paul.







   THE BEGINNING (If you want.)







   Thanks for reading.  Comments welcome, and please support your
significant e-other with a generous and timely donation.  The writer spends
most of his time in the mainstream, which is a hint to any legitimate agent
who might be seeking a busy beaver.  - -TE writing as Feather Touch.  <a
href="mailto:Thomas@btl.net">Thomas@btl.net</a>.