Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:18:51 -0600
From: Tom Emerson <tom@btl.net>
Subject: ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPT. 12 & 13

 ONE FISH AT A TIME

 CHAPT. TWELVE & THIRTEEN



CHAPTER TWELVE

                   "I never thought we'd be having a talk like this," Niles
Banks said to his eleven year old nephew, Bing Charles.
                   "I never did, either," the boy replied.  "Was I that
gross?"
                   "We were still friends, right?" the twenty four year old
asked the boy.
                   "Best friends," the boy acknowledged.
                   "So, you weren't gross, just, well, for lack of a better
word, uninteresting, physically, which was double trouble, because in every
other way you were, and are, as they say, excellent."

                   The boy beamed happily.  "Was it the show?" his uncle
asked.  "It made me have hope, about you," Bing said, "you know, focused me
on a lot of things we didn't say, and didn't do, and why, and they spelled
out why in three letters, and said to every kid, What would you rather be,
a little bit hungry, some of the time, or way fat, all of the time?  Then
they redefined hunger, and I realized I was hungry for you, and gave that
its natural priority, and spent an extra hour in the library, instead of
eating, and both hungers sort of played around for a few days while I tried
to get used to them, and in the end, the belt went in, and only one was
left, and in some more, so I wrote to you."

                   "And now," Niles said, "there's nothing we can't talk
about without having to leave things out."
                   "It's still going to be embarrassing," the boy noted,
"but Hap and Stan, my best friends in seventh grade, say that's natural,
like being totally nervous, but after it happens, you don't feel weird, and
you think you were a baby to get up-tight, in the first place."
                   "Remember about our being friends, before," Niles
reminded his nephew, "because if you weren't nervous and uptight, you'd
come across as maybe pushy and a hustler, and they're not attractive no
matter how slim and hairless and cute they are."
                   "So, there's a lot to be nervous about," the boy
observed, "if you're pushy, nothing happens, and if you don't say anything,
nothing happens, and you have to live in between."

                   "You weren't kidding about the library, were you?" Niles
laughed.
                   "Our house is my home away from home," the boy replied,
"and it used to be the sub shop."
                   "You may find I take second place to a toasted meatball
with Swiss," Niles said.
                   "I'll have one when I reach eighty-two pounds.  Three
more days," Bing said.
                   "From the mouthes of babes," the uncle laughed, "you, my
extremely attractive young friend, will reach that goal tomorrow."
                   "How?" the boy asked.
                   "Jody Fisher," Niles said.  "He's a runaway.  Nine.  I
picked him up at a truck stop on the way here.  He's sleeping in the back
seat in the shade.  We talked as we drove, and he said he'd been to, as he
put it, Slim Boys' Playland, but he's only been with adults, and they were
all too big for the experience he wants to have, which his first partner
showed him in a video.  When I told him I was on my way to visit you, he
practically went into a trance.  He asked me a dozen questions about you,
and all of them after I told him you were under ninety pounds, which, he
was polite enough not to ask about, directly."

                   "Why's he running away?" Bing asked.
                   "They're trying to get him to testify against his
neighbor, like in `Man Without a Face', and his mother's a bad-tempered
sod, so he finally split, and he rode with a nice trucker who took it very
easy with him, so he's got, in his vernacular, two strikes against him,
without having it come out the way he wants, so, unless you've changed your
mind about what you said in your letter, I thought I'd bring him here and
wait for the dust to settle before I get in touch with his mother, and, if
I do that, judging from the stories he told about his neighbor, James, and
the trucker, Manny, you are, a, going to go a long time without thought of
food, and, b, get a ferocious amount of exercise into the bargain."

                   "I thought with Rick's show, that kind of thing was
getting a little passé," the boy said.
                   "You're partly right," Niles replied, "they aren't
making a particularly big deal out of it.  It's his mother playing the
hysterical female, a la Little Rascals, that's causing the problem.  The
cop he talked to said unless Jody reported it, and backed up the report
with resolve, they'd drop the whole thing like a hot potato."

                   "Maybe she makes great apple pie," Bing said, and yes,
it can be hard to find optimistic things to say about mothers.
                   "Maybe a few days without Jody, who happens to be, a,
likeable, and, b, drop-dead cute, and she'll resolve her priorities," Niles
responded.

                   "Is nine too young to be really interested?" Bing asked.
                   "We had some pretty serious talks when you were nine,"
the uncle reminded the boy, "and I didn't notice you nodding off."
                   "It's weird," the boy responded, "because that was so
exciting, and, to think, now we can do the things that you told me about."
                   "It adds a lot," the uncle agreed


                   Harold Homemaker to Neville Novelist, you're taking up
all my time, and you haven't earned a dime.
                   Neville Novelist to Harold Homemaker, I've kneaded and
steamed, served and cleaned, see me some other time.
                   Me?  I say on Dancer, on Prancer, on reindeers all, and
leave these dingbats under the wall.  I hope it is a new style.  I'd have
loved fifty pages of editorial intervention in "From the Terrace"; journal,
commentary, personal trivia, maybe even a few photos and documents; letters
from his editor, stuff like that.  All my favorite writers.  In my
experience, only Trevanian and Marrayatt even attempt it, and then with
terse interjections that probably, in total, don't take up a page.  Ford,
in "Independence Day", takes a different tack in that the entire novel is
highly autobiographical.  I'm not talking about that.  I mean coming
completely out of character as an artist, chatting with the readers as if
you were seated in the next booth, then picking up the story again.  Maybe
it's sort of like sex.  You get to know a kid really well, you like each
other, and once in awhile you find some time alone together.  It's works
for me in my bedroom, and I hope at least in some tangential way it works
for you in yours, or, preferably, you and yours.

                   I think of Queenie as the Nick Nolte character in "Down
and Out in Beverly Hills".  So laid-back it somehow just wouldn't be right
for her to work.  I'm not kidding a bit when I say this, there was dog
stool not only on the kitchen table, but on her bed.  She is a girl with a
dramatic upside, and that is that she'd never be too tired, or, in any way
preoccupied.  In fact, she'd never be occupied, and with so much free time
on her hands, who knows how she might work out as a mate?  How lucky I am
that Samantha is her near twin.  They're a pair of cats, lolling and
sleeping; beautiful and endlessly worth caring for.  Can it be the way to a
girl's heart is through her stomach?

                   We exceeded attractive nuisance last night.  She wore
black Speedos, maybe four sizes too small.  She looks so amazing you just
can't believe it's real.  She chatters and prattles in her lilting Creole,
and sings, not very well, all her Sunday school hymns.  While it's not a
dominating force, I can't help admitting there is some pay-back involved,
as the Rasta boys are in no ways loath to escort their trophy blonds outta
town, so the lean, gray wolf evens the score (big time).  It may be a
different kind of gamesmanship than your friends and colleagues play, but
as the literate class has it, it's important to be earnest, and Samantha in
her second black skin is enough to drive every man Wilde.
                   I've one-upped my cousins so badly, speaking of games,
it's embarrassing to tell.  In fact, what it is is a fairy tale, or,
rather, three fairy tales.  "Cinderella", "The Ugly Duckling", and, most
spectacularly, "The Tortoise and the Hare".  >From underneath the family
scrap heap, not on it, I shook of this and wiped off that and emerged a
literary Hercules, while the Ivy League crowd dithered over Vietnam and
Watergate, accomplishing essentially nothing, and leaving no legacy but a
bunch of mixed up, half-baked kids.  There are a lot of cultural profiles
in the country, but none as deep-seated as New Englander versus New Yorker.
For one thing, there actually is a difference, unlike in the proverbial
South where the poor farmers were and are identical, white or black.  New
Yorkers are bumptious and poorly educated.  New Englanders are icy and well
educated.  New England is half wrong, New York, all wrong.  I grew up with
a foot in each camp.  Essence of blue, when it came to blood, and essence
of cafeteria cooking oil, when it came to lunch.  I always assume the core
of American literature came from the Northeast because it was such a
horrible place to live, people became masters of prose so their own letters
wouldn't drive them crazy.  "The north wind's masonry," is an example.  It
takes a lot of money for any winter wind to be anything but cold.  Thoreau
writes half a page about a bed of white wildflowers, I'd be after them with
a machete, which is a lie, because I'd have Andrew do the chopping.  "Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood."  Two streams diverged in a bamboo glade.
Which would you rather travel?  And, for sure, Dangriga is less traveled
by.  There should be a city built on the reef between the two local cayes,
maybe half a million; another million or two should live up the valley with
classic colonial architecture set along the breezy flanks of the hills.
That would be sane.  Instead, there might be a hundred of us Anglos in the
whole area.  That's insane If you see the same white faces every time you
go outta town, there can't be very many of them.  I muse on this and Bill
points out the fact that most Americans get a terminal case of the
heebie-jeebies if fate or providence causes them to tarry over ten miles
from a Wal Mart.  Pathetic.  I rent a six-bedroom, two baths, house on a
walled lot with palms and banana trees, for two hundred U.S. dollars a
month.  My former breezy and perfectly adequate little house cost
seventy-five a month.  The weather is always perfect for working indoors,
the islands are always twelve miles away, the kids are all mannerly,
responsive, and adorable, half the teenagers are tolerable, and a hundred
of us live here.  I guess I should say Thanks, fellow Americans, for
leaving it cheap, quaint, and quiet, and if the artists' colony has only
one artist, perhaps that's all a delta without so much as a dunghill can
stand.  This is a bit of an insider's pun.  Dangriga was formerly Stann
Creek, `Stann' coming from `stand', as in stand of coconut trees.  Anyway,
no hills to echo the crow, and no Wellesley post grads simpering Are you
really number one in the world?  Why how wonderful, can I have your
autograph, and would it be okay if my ten-year-old daughter and I brought
over a bottle of gin and some limes?  The truth is if I cruised this kind
of action, I'd undoubtedly find it, and if I had any money not earmarked
for the insatiable schools, and didn't have Samantha, I would.  As Orson
Wells would sell no wine before its time, I will exercise no morality, any
time.  You have to be dead smart, half cute, and free of disease, after
that it's Katie bar the door.  That Samantha tames the philandering wolf,
making him half a church puppy, is that which puts her on a plane with
Anne, who did the same thing.  And never underestimate the conundrum, the
complexities of love and loyalty, they're going nowhere fast; the dynamic
partner, who strays rarely and briefly, versus the faithful bore.
                   How much of what you read do you bring into your own
life?  The same here as you would from a science fiction epic or a psycho
thriller.  In a word, nothing.  Be glad you have the entertainment option,
and let it go at that, and if it's not enough, follow the dietary
strictures and be a kinder, gentler person.  Read, and remember losing a
first wife is not only losing her, but letting someone else have her will
with her, her life, and her children.  That she will in all likelihood go
on to number three and number four is cold comfort, and, while someone like
Samantha is warm comfort, that's a chick you don't want to count before it
hatches.

                   The cats are a stitch.  Two surviving kittens.  One of
the two-year-old females thinks they're god's gift from playland, and the
other four ignore them.  Cats have more finely etched personalities than
dogs.  Daisy's five are all alike, very nice, very affectionate, but one is
exactly like the rest.  The cats are similar to each other, intensely
devoted to sleep, but should they awaken, they exhibit very individualistic
traits.  When one does something bad, you yell at it and chase all of them
around the house, throwing slippers, then none of them do it.  They are
very consistent about using their one latrine, even canny enough to pick a
spot the head wolf will clean on a daily basis.

                   Talk about worthless word count, I just discovered my
Sony tells time to the half minute.  For the first thirty seconds, the top
dot of the colon blinks, and for the last thirty seconds of the minute, the
bottom dot blinks.  What will they think of next?


                   "Would you feel nervous about showing off for me?" Niles
asked his nephew.
                   "Kind of," the boy responded, "how much do you want me
to show?"
                   "Just with your shirt off," the young man whispered.
                   "That used to be the most embarrassing part," the boy
said, "I didn't mind taking my pants off in the locker room, but I hated to
take off my shirt."
                   "How about now?" Niles asked.
                   "Hap and Stan have been encouraging me," Bing said, "but
even having been, you know, that way, is embarrassing, so I haven't let
them talk me into it, yet."
                   "How do you feel about Jody seeing you?" Niles asked.
                   "Can it be just you, the first time?" the boy said.
                   "What about another extreme?" the young uncle asked.
                   "What?" Bing said.
                   "Jody, plus your friends from school."
                   "Would you stay with me?" he asked.
                   "If you want," Niles said, "or I should say as long as
you want."
                   "I can call them," the boy suggested.
                   "I'll see if Jody wants to come in," Niles said.
                   "Uncle Niles," Bing said as his uncle left the room,
"I'm really glad you came."
                   "There had to be something good on television one of
these years," the young man replied.  Bing knew his uncle respected the
medium, and that he'd been an avid documentary watcher for years.  He was
frank in his assessment, admitting that massive repetition was inevitable,
but at the same time scathing in his criticism of condo comics and endless
use of the let's not do it, then they nod and do it, eat cheesecake, for a
bad example, double-take.  Boxes of socialistically and politically correct
cant weren't much for entertainment value, the knife all blade and no edge,
suitable for spreading butter, of which the country needed much less, but
not icing sacred cows, however dangerous and close at hand.

                   The man and boy busied themselves in the kitchen, Jody
fitting in as if to the dishtowel, born.  By the time Hap and Stan arrived
they had a plate of sandwiches and gallon of Kool-Aid ready, and they ate
what actually was a somewhat tense lunch.

                   "You can feel weird up to here," Niles said, pointing to
his solar plexus, "any higher you should go up and watch television in
Bing's room, or you can use the computer in the den.."

                   The four boys nodded.
                   "How high are you?" he asked Hap, as the elder guest.
The eleven year old grinned and placed a finger a couple of inches down
from what transport pilots call the point of no return.
                   "Rising or falling?" Niles asked, and they all laughed
as he slowly drew his finger down toward his waist.  The other boys took
his cue, repeating the gesture.
                   "It's a pretty good computer," Niles half teased, half
said to give every possible out.  Four shaking heads.  Take that, Bill
Gates.  (Just way kidding.  The man saved the world, we all owe our lives
to him.)

                   "Hap?" Niles asked, "how do you think we should
proceed?"
                   "When it happened to me, we talked quite a bit," the
handsome boy said, "and I liked it, but some people think that's sick, so
it's just a suggestion."
                   "I think it's sick that McDonald's addicts children,"
Niles said, "so I guess there's room for plenty of it."
                   "Maybe we could come up with an over-the-counter pill,"
Bing said, "you know, if you get that queasy feeling from talking taboo,
take two every four hours."
                   "The poor kid's been library-bound so long, it's gone to
his head," Stan Yawoski, like Hap, a plain, friendly-faced schoolboy,
remarked.
                   "Survival of the wittest," the other friend added, and
Stan concluded their silly bout with "Mind over fatter."


                   Some readers may be discouraged one way, some, in
another.  "So soon with another interminable essay?" you will groan, while
your screen-mate notes that there are no less than four juveniles and a
young adult in the coming scene.  And now I want to fit in Samantha?
Mercy.  You're right, of course, there's no rush.  She'll still be Nifty
age for three more years, a young friend.  Up until this afternoon, I would
have agreed; what's the hurry? stick to the story and tell her's in another
book written at an appropriate time.  Probably any other girl on earth
would warrant such cavalier treatment, but this is the island girl of
island Earth.  Plain enough on the street, she's a study in close-ups; a
mouth, lips that improve perfect so slightly, it's quibbling at its finest
to note the difference.  Remember Sambo?  [Cultural note: "Sambo" is not in
the spell-check dictionary.]  In this most dazzling of children's stories,
the tigers run around the tree so fast they turn to butter.  Well, you know
where we're going with this and can easily guess who found those
melted-down tigers, and licked up every last one of the
four-hundred-thirty-seven drops.  I don't even have to kiss and tell, it's
so easy to imagine just looking at her, and what happens when the butter
turns back into tiger it's just good old Late Night Cinemax.  We did sleep
together; she for four hours, myself for one.  It is sexier not making love
to her than pretty much the sum total of my above average, but by no means
extensive, experience.  When I met Anne, I had three girlfriends named
Penelope, and an equal number not Pennies.  Oops.  Four.  Although we all
stayed friends, in some cases close friends, I dumped all seven the day
after meeting Anne, so, with a dozen other interludes, the odd twenty
prostitutes in Wallace, Las Vegas, and Mexico, plus the odd thousand hours
in various bath houses in the States and Mexico, and perhaps two excursions
to gay bars, I've been down the first sidewalk, but am not even interested
in going around the block, while acknowledging cheap sex is probably here
to stay.  All this to say that number one stands a good chance of actually
being number one, with the number one writer thinking she's some kind of
goddess.  And that's just her mouth.

                   I saw Daisy today, first time in six or eight weeks.  I
think she realizes she's catching a bit of a break with free lodging and,
first among tenants, is actually beginning to clean up her act.  The kids,
dare I even think it, are reaching the stage of being good about bringing
back the dishes.  It's a fact of my life that I combine the two most
temperament-prone occupations, artist and chef, with less than a pitched
fit a week.  Nice kids wear well.  Why does anyone want any other kind?
They just stopped by with half a bucket of crabs, which we boiled.  The
dual mysteries of Belize are why they don't fish crab commercially, and why
they don't raise carrageenan seaweed in the vast turtle grass shallows
inside the barrier reef.  Daisy and her boyfriend catch the rati with hoop
nets on strings, and get a bucket full in a few hours, all seasons, and
small amounts of Iris Moss seaweed are harvested for a local drink.  Beats
me.  I've proselytized aplenty, and invested aplenty, and snorkeled
aplenty, so far with zero results in the "teaching them to fish"
department.  Additionally, there's likely a pretty dramatic opportunity in
high-tech lobstering, using GPS to locate traps in featureless mangroves,
and digital video to a, check to see if there are lobsters in the traps,
and, b, provide security.  All labor intense, all environmentally neutral,
all requiring light capitalization, and none executed.  When I say make
everything down to Columbia and Venezuela into a fifty-first State, I think
I've paid enough dues to know what I'm talking about as well as anyone
does.

                   Not only are Elston and crew bringing back the dishes,
they're cleaning the place up.  When groomed and petted my digs look like a
slice of an expensive resort, especially at night with the lights from the
verandas playing over the palms.  I can be judged on three things.  My
work, my girl and boyfriends, and the places I've lived.  My first
four-month stay in Belize I had a big rambling homestead on the principal
island, and a three bedroom house in town, across the street from the best
store in town, for a combined rent of eighty U.S. dollar a month, tack on
another ten for utilities.  I managed to exceed this in Torreon, where I
lived in an architect designed townhouse, again, across the street from a
supermarket, for forty dollars a month, including daily maid service and
hot water.  From there I moved into a staggeringly beautiful apartment on
Wilshire Boulevard, five miles, looking, from the twelfth floor over
beautiful residential neighborhoods, from Griffith Park.  In Iowa things
got better, because for the same rent as I'd paid in Los Angeles, I got a
small bookstore, plus heat, air conditioning, light, and water.  The
bookstore paid for everything, and hardly interfered with my writing.
Stephen and Michelle both made it from Dubuque to immortality, so I find I
wasted little time, though, at the time, I thought Iowa was a good reason
to live most anywhere else.  What I like about the state is cruising the
back roads on a motorcycle; it's the perfect blend of open rolling hills
and patches of forest, and, from time to time, mesas jutting from the
hillsides, my favorite symbol of the west.  From Dubuque, I moved back
here, to a very comfortable and convenient mini-house, to this corner of
Shangri-La.  My second house in Dangriga was my favorite, and I was lucky
to spend three years there.  It looked on the soccer field, where a dozen
sleek horses grazed, out to sea, with the town pier perfectly positioned a
the left of the view framed by the east door.  There were always thirty or
forty snowy egrets around the horses, who were deep in the lush grass
around the field surface, and, as if all that wasn't enough, who should
show up but the "Glomar Explorer", whose captain, perhaps with his own yen
for immortality, moored her precisely in my doorway.  She stayed for weeks,
brilliantly lit at night, while I, the cheap-date Yankee, sat at my dining
room table, staring east by the hour, being very sure I got the most for my
forty dollar rent.  Anne would have to put a gold star in her diary for
each day she's been with Tom Cruise to exceed one week living in Harlem
Square.  Whatever she got out of that deal, she paid for with the dream
life of dream lives, as will her children.

                   I've lived in five mansions for a total of maybe three
years.  I saw no advantage to it.  I can cook more, faster, for more
people, in my galley size kitchen (with its powerful stove), than I could
in the Kanner's kitchen which was spacious and modern.  Unless you live
with people you hate, a large house is a large nuisance, and modern
American houses are architectural jokes today, but won't be very funny when
changing economic fortunes are unresponsive to, and unsympathetic with, the
greed of Tom, Dick and Harry.  As classic a sketch as any of liberalism is
stringent building codes when it comes to insulating light switches, and
allowing one, two, or three people to occupy as many cubic feet (can't
forget those cathedral ceilings) as the moneylenders will nail their hides
to the wall for.  This is an international disgrace, and the only
mitigating factor is that myriad who dwelleith such, do so in Thoreau's
quiet desperation.  Movies about greed tend to glamorize it, as they do war
and love.  The price most pay for it is fearsome and cumulative.  Again, to
Thoreau: simplify, simplify.  Sure worked for me.  Not to have my
step-ancestor wear out his welcome, or anything, but he also wrote that he
could never finish a good book because it inspired him to act on its
message.  My vanity is sufficient to assure me I won't lose many readers
along the way, but, to be sure, it might be an idea to get back to the
story.


                   "How did you start learning about things?" Niles asked
Stan.
                   "The first time, at my dad's tennis club," the boy
replied.
                   "Who were you with?" Jody asked, all ears, and, as the
youngest present, encouraged to participate by friendly nods..
                   "A friend of my dad's," the eleven year old said, "they
played a lot of tennis and I'd shag so I could get lessons."
                   "How old were you?" Jody wanted to know.
                   "It just happened a month ago," Stan said..
                   "Did his voice get like really different when he talked
to you?" Jody asked.
                   "Yes," the older boy whispered back, his own voice
suddenly different, too.
                   "The first time Wayne's voice got like that," Jody said,
"we were in his car.  I think it made it more exciting."

                   The space program had its giant step, so, using one who
is all-too immortalized as an example, we find them new in the basement rec
room, both outer door and cellar door carefully locked.  "We have six hours
until dinner, so we don't need a feeding frenzy," Niles said, and the four
boys nodded in response.
                   He went on to repeat his caution.  "We're down here to
engage in homosexual activities," he said, "and no one has to do anything
that makes him feel uncomfortable.  It's not a case of just saying No, it's
a case of saying Yes."  He then asked each boy if he understood and agreed,
and each boy nodded, smiling shyly.

                   "Then we'll call this ceremony `B'day' Uno," Niles said,
"Bare Day One, to celebrate Bing losing forty pounds."
                   "Yeah," Stan said, "and if you ever hide from us again,
there will be trouble in Pork City."
                   "Pizza on my birthday," Bing said, smiling.  This can't
make the executive staff at PepsiCo very happy, but boys will be boys.  Now
all they need do is play Follow the Leader.
                   "And guess what?" Hap said.
                   "What?" Bing responded.
                   "Today is your B'day."
                   "I almost forgot," the world's happiest eleven year old
said.

                   "You must be really nervous," Stan said.
                   "Yeah," Bing replied in a whisper, "were you?"
                   "I was really innocent," the eleven year old said, "I
didn't know what was going to happen.  It was Friday night, and I was
staying for the weekend with Jeff Larson, the one whose voice got funny at
the club, while my dad was on a business trip.  I was just kind of curious.
Before we went out to dinner, he was going to take a shower, and I said I
wanted to take one with him, you know, because somehow I wasn't interested
in seeing my father, but I was interested in seeing him.  He said we could,
but we had to talk first, so I undressed in the guest room and he did in
his room, and I went into his room and sat beside him on the bed just
wearing my tee shirt and underpants."
                   "Is that when his voice got different?" Bing asked.
                   "Yeah," Stan replied, "and he yawned a lot."

                   "Wayne did, too," Jody said, "we were stuck in traffic,
going to the water park, and he said he knew of a private park, but it was
for mature boys, and he asked me if I wanted him to tell me about it."
                   "Did you get, you know..." Stan asked.
                   "You, too?" Jody said..
                   "Yeah," Stan said, "right away, too.  It was the first
time I really felt something."
                   "Did you feel a lot?" the older boy whispered.
                   "Yeah," the nine year old said, "as soon as he said
`mature' I felt like totally curious and excited."
                   "That's how I felt when Jeff said he wanted to talk to
me before we took a shower.  I went from a little curious to a lot
excited."
                   "I told Wayne I wanted him to tell me about the park,"
Jody said.


                   "They break the rules, Jody," the thirty-year-old
teacher said, "that's why it's private.  There's a special swimming pool
for men and boys to skinny dip together, and a forest behind it.  Does that
sound freaky?"
                   "Do they have slides and stuff?" the nine year old
asked.
                   "Everyone who goes is physically fit, and what they call
normal," Jody's neighbor explained, "so the rides are much more dangerous
than a big commercial park."
                   "Like what?" the boy asked.
                   "The Tarzan swing.  You can fly fifty feet off it."
                   "Is that in the part where they don't wear bathing
suits?" Jody asked.
                   "Both parts have them," Wayne said, "plus skimmers, they
skip you across the water at thirty miles an hour."

                   "Do a lot of people go to the part where they don't wear
bathing suits?" Jody asked.
                   "Yes," the athletic man said, "but, like anything else,
it gets tiresome if you see too much, and the truth is, even pretty cute
guys look better in bathing suits than naked, so both sides are popular."
                   "Can you walk in the woods?" Jody asked.
                   "Yes," his friend said, " there are paths, and a lot of
it's old growth so you could drive a car through it, if you had to, and
there are a lot of little tepees and log cabins, because sometimes men and
boys kind of like to play house together."
                   "Is it all boys?" the child asked.
                   "No," Wayne said, "but mostly.  Sometimes daddies bring
their little girls, and sometimes a boy will bring his kid sister, but
mostly it's young men and boys from eight to thirteen."
                   "So we can go for four more years?" Jody asked.
                   "Every week, if you like it," Wayne said, "and they have
cabins in the woods to rent by the week, so if you really liked it, and
your dad said it was okay, we could spend a week sometime."
                   "He'd say it was okay," Jody said, "he's really glad we
hang out together."
                   "Single dad's are probably the world's best parents,"
Wayne said, "but still, you were lucky."
                   "Yeah," the boy said, nodding, "and with you for a
friend, about twice moreso."
                   "I'm glad you feel that way," Wayne said, "and you
certainly make a difference in my life.  That's why my voice is funny and
I'm really nervous, because if we go to Wildest World, it may put our
relationship on a new plane.  More that we'll date than hang out together."

                   "I'd like that," the boy whispered from the passenger's
seat, "getting dressed up and waiting to hear you knock."
                   "Too much of that is gay," Wayne said, "which, I expect,
would piss your dad off no end, but just a little, a few feminine touches,
in private, are undoubtedly sexy."
                   "I just want to try being girlish a little," the boy
said.
                   "That's what the play houses are for," Wayne explained.
"They have a closet with pioneer clothing, so boys can play the sweet
little wife, and the men can play lumberjacks in from the woods."
                   "It sounds like a theater," Jody observed.
                   "It is," Wayne laughed, "I never thought of it that way,
but it's a full participation theater.  The log cabins and tepees have
cracks in the walls for spying, and that's as theater as theater gets."
                   "Can two people spy at the same time?" the boy asked.
                   "Yes," his neighbor said, "one hole is above the other,
so the boy can look on his hands and knees, and the man can get over his
body, and look through the upper hole."
                   "It must feel really good to be naked and do that," Jody
said.
                   "I does," Wayne said, "and what's really exciting, so
I'm told, is when you're around the skinny-dipping pool and a man and boy
in costumes walk by, heading out into the woods.
                   "How about Indians?" Jody asked.
                   "Yes," Wayne said, "the capital W in Wild is not
supplied by the White Man.
                   Jody giggled.  "Are you still nervous talking to me
about it?" he asked, shyly.
                   "More than ever," Wayne acknowledged, "I've never done
anything with a boy, and I've never even seen you bare chested, so it's two
and two equaling about two hundred."
                   "How did you find out about the park?" Jody asked.
                   "I had five loser students that suddenly turned around
and started doing really well.  I became friendly with one, platonically,
we never talked about details, but he told me about the park, and said all
the other boys had gone there with older friends.  Then you popped up as my
very special neighbor, and even though you don't seem to be messed up, or
punked out, I couldn't get it out of my mind to at least ask you, and hope
you wouldn't think I was a fag trying to get into your pants."

                   "I don't," Jody said, "and I won't act girly except if
you think it's okay once in awhile."
                   "If you want to kiss me after a hard day topping cedar
trees, I won't complain," Wayne responded.
                   "I think I might be more responsive as an Indian
princess kissing her brave after a busy day scalping whisky dealers," the
boy said.

                   "Carlos, he's my ace of the aces," Wayne said, "told me
we can turn out in costumes if we want, instead of hanging around the
pools."
                   "I'd really like to be an Indian with you," the boy
whispered.
                   "I'd like that, too," Wayne said, "but how do you feel
about other guys looking at us?"
                   "Maybe if we look at some, first, we'll get used to the
idea," Jody said.
                   "How about if we found a big brother playing house with
his little sister, would you want to watch that?" Wayne asked.
                   "Yes," the boy said.
                   "Good," Wayne said, "because even though I know I'm
going to like being with you, and taking you to the park a lot, if you want
to go, I can't imagine not liking at least some girls."
                   "It's a real dread, at my age," the boy said, "but Jill
Ralston is to die for, and she's got braids half way down her back."
                   "Good thinking," Wayne said.  "Carlos said the camp
isn't about being swish or lispy, or simpering, except when you play house;
even, there's a lot of navy guys and Marines who go there, because they try
to strike a balance of three or four mature males for each under-age boy."
                   "And I thought it was just going to be exciting," the
boy sighed, looking very fondly at the driver of the car.
                   "I wouldn't be risking our friendship by even telling
you about it, if I thought that," Wayne said, with a smile.

                   "I think you'd have to run over me twice before I'd take
cop any attitude like that," Jody said, with his own quiet smile.
                   "Hard on the insurance," Wayne signed in mock despair,
"we'll have to think of something better.

                   "I already have," Jody said, "or at least I think I
have.
                   "What?" the driver asked.
                   "Well," the boy said, coloring, "you know how Indians
become blood brothers?"
                   "Yeah," said the older male.
                   "Well," Jody explained, haltingly, "they taught us in
health science that when a man gets excited, something comes out of him,
but I won't have it until I'm twelve or thirteen, so, I thought if you
could share yours with me, like Indians share blood from a cut, it would be
a few years before I could share mine with you, so we'd kind of be bonded."
                   "My five stars," Wayne said, changing the subject
slightly, "all found older male companions who read to them; some from
classic sea stories, some from alternative archives on the Web.  You're
father obviously reads to you.  I just wanted to note that, because it
sounds as if we're going to begin being the most special of special
friends, anyway, the most special, with the most unique bond, I've ever
heard of."

                   "So it's a good idea?" the boy asked.
                   "Savagely brilliant, I'd call it," Wayne replied.
                   "And I thought the reading was exciting," the boy said.
                   "It's more long-haul," the teacher replied, "because
however exciting it will be for us spying in our Indian costumes, there are
twenty-plus hours a day for other things, and ignorance is boring to
everyone."
                   "So they even have a library there?" the boy asked.
                   "That's how I rooted the truth from Carlos," Wayne
explained, "he started hunting the stacks like a hound dog, and we got
talking, and he mentioned the Wildest library, maybe a little by mistake,
but in the end he told me everything, and I gave him an A-plus for
dedicated research, even though he had enough spelling errors to drop his
grade to a C."
                   "Three," the young passenger sighed, "ten points off for
each one.  And you know, Mexican kids don't have to learn to spell, at all.
If you can say a word in Spanish, you can spell it.  Syllable perfect.
It's a gyp."
                   "It teaches us to be adroit and complex," Wayne said,
"which is why we invented the chronometer and steam engine, et al, while
they were using science to determine how many beads of lead shot made the
perfect whip, w-h-i-p."
                   "But if you miss four words, you get a D," the boy said.
                   "And the next class is algebra," Wayne said, to the boys
half laugh.
                   "Will it really be funny, someday?" he asked.

                   "No," Wayne assured the child, "but it will feel so good
when it stops, you won't care if there's no lighter side."
                   "Like getting away from my mom?" the boy asked.
                   "All the horrors of childhood," Wayne said, "from the
bogeyman under your bed, to half of boy and girl issues, pretty much
disappear when you get in your teens, and begin knowing it all."
                   "Well," Jody said, "if a teen only knows a little, it is
all he knows."
                   "Just keep reading," his friend advised.

                   They spent some minutes basking.  The sign for the
commercial park rose from the traffic, big and green.  "Last chance for
good clean fun," Wayne said.
                   "Warrior Chief have heap big date with Nervous Worrier,"
the boy chirped softly, "public not invited."
                   "Then on to the wilderness," the young man said, staying
in his lane.

                   "Do you want to talk more?" Wayne quizzed his young
passenger as they passed the exit.
                   "I want to know what they call stuff," the boy answered.
"You hear all kinds of words at school, but the nice kids don't use them
very much."
                   "They use gentle-class language, Carlos said," the man
replied, "that's why is mostly white people that go there.  No eff word,
d-word, c-word, except the street word for semen, do you know what that
is?"
                   "C-u-m," the boy said, blushing, "I was going to try to
use it in an essay, see if I could get a rise out of my English teacher,
but I decided it might not be a good idea."
                   "Do you like your teacher?" Wayne asked.  "I don't
remember you saying much about him, before."
                   "Kind of, I guess," the boy replied, still colored.
                   "Then write it," Wayne suggested.  "Even when we become
special brothers, we're not married.  Anytime you really like somebody,
assuming you don't want to belong to the man-of-the week club, just tell me
and I'll do anything I can to arrange some kind of a date."
                   "Maybe I could write him a letter," Jody mused.
                   "That would be perfect," Wayne agreed, "you could tell
him you want to write an essay, or a story, with c-u-m in it, and ask him
if you could talk to him about it sometime when he has the afternoon free."
                   "Would you be nervous if I had a date with him?" Jody
asked.
                   "I guess that's as good a word as any," Wayne laughed,
"what I'd be, most of all, would be glad to have you back."
                   "Would you want me to tell you what happened while I was
with him?" the child queried.
                   "As far as I'm concerned," the young man said, "that
would mean I could share it, and you could relive it, but we'll have to
wait `till the time comes, then you can tell me or keep it private."
                   "Can I tell him about what happens at the camp?" was
Jody's next question.
                   "The only rule that makes sense to me," Wayne responded,
"is to tell the truth.  If he asks, and my guess is he will, tell him.
He'll be excited enough to know we were talking about him without your
having to exaggerate anything that happens.  But some people equate secrecy
with masculinity, or something, so take it one step and a time.  He'll
probably quiz you to find out how experienced you are, and you can play it
be ear from there."

                   "You don't think he'd tell the principal, or anything
weird, do you?" Jody asked.
                   "That's the chance you take," Wayne responded, "and
that's where your intelligence kicks in.  How good a judge of character are
you?  How close to the edge can you play?  What kind of risks are you
willing to take, for what kind of reward?  Pretty much the lessons of life;
daring slightly, being a little bold; not being different from the pack,
for its own sake, but marching to a different tempo because you're smarter,
study harder, and read more.  And the secondary upside is that if anything
does go wrong, and you have a good record, in general, you'll get off the
hook.  `Boys will be boys' covers a lot of ground, for basically good
boys."

                   "So you mean I won't end up in a psycho ward with a lot
of overly attentive orderlies?" the boy sighed, dramatically.
                   "Tough to have your life over before you reach
double-digits," Wayne responded.
                   "Why, I was rather looking forward to having my old life
over," the boy said.
                   "Once wasn't enough?" Wayne teased, and the boy giggled
at his nonsense.  Adroit was the word for the idiotic language, but if it
enabled, who cared how it dodged and weaved?
                   "With my mother, once was more than enough," Jody said.
                   "Bad moms are god's truest gift," Wayne said, "you don't
owe them anything, which can be a real family saver when they get old and
sick, and, if you ever accomplish anything, you don't have to share the
credit.  You don't care when they die.  You owe them nothing, and, if
you're really lucky, you'll have one who gives you a prison cut every ten
days, so the girls won't like you, unless prison cuts happen to be in of a
particular season, and that will leave you free to hang out in the library,
and, bucko, have the last laugh of all last laughs."

                   "Better than hanging out with you?" the boy chirped.  "I
rather think not."
                   "The ultimate laugh is living well," Wayne said, "others
call it the best revenge.  In any event, it's verification of yourself and
frustration for those who tried to stomp you along the way, assuming, of
course, they were wrong in trying to do so, which is where intelligence
comes in, just as it does when stalking your teacher."
                   "Are all the people at the park fantastically smart?"
Jody asked.
                   "Do you think you'll like hanging out with cute, naked
boys when you're my age?" Wayne countered.
                   "Yes," the boy said.
                   "Then I think it's safe to answer your question with a
Yes.  And I can embellish that by observing that I feel pretty dumb for not
finding out about it before I reached my thirties."
                   "About the park?"
                   "About boys," Wayne said, "and me, a teacher, go figure,
eh?  But they were just kids, mostly routine, a fair number of assholes of
one stripe or another, and a few dozen extra ones, but they only shine
because of academics.  Then someone sticks about a four gage shotgun in my
belly, Carlos and you, and pulls both triggers.  Blam, my guts are in an
uproar, and, at the same time, it's the best time I've ever had in my life.
It's like being twelve, but being directed; knowing, not just dreaming or
imagining."
                   "For me it's like being sixteen," Jody said, "except I
have more brains."
                   "They do deteriorate," Wayne acknowledged, "I mean, how
smart is it to give up on having your mother do all the walking and work
while you chill and daydream?"
                   "So `Born Free' means free of brains?" the pixie boy
asked.
                   "It really means free to face the challenge of somehow
correcting nature's most grievous imbalance; making life fit to be born
into, a challenge, since no sooner do you leave the womb than you're denied
the breast, which is a one-two punch in the getting-a-good-start
department."
                   "So high levels of compensation are in order," the boy
noted.
                   "High levels of performance are needed," Wayne said,
"and all the misfortunes you wish to amend are just a good rationalization
for going a little overboard when it comes to trophesizing yourself.  If a
history of downers doesn't add to the mechanics, which are byproducts of
intelligence, energy, luck, and opportunity, it severely adds, I'm pretty
sure we're going to find out, to your, or our, satisfaction with the
reward."

                   "That's complicated," Jody said.
                   "You're nine," Wayne laughed, "so I thought I'd try it
on you before you turned teen."
                   "How long does it take to get smart again?" Jody asked.
                   "Twenty years," Wayne replied, "from ten to thirty, at
least in my case.  And even that wasn't like a giant brainstorm where I
said to myself, `Aha, self, today you're going to hunt down a cute
nine-year-old boy to hang out with,' it was more There you were, helping me
move in, and Carlos, suddenly coming to life, and your dad being
cooperative, and your mom being gone, and, most of all, your being smart,
and nice, and cute enough to pass, and having something special about you,
because there are a lot of bright, cute nine year olds in the world, and
none of them have anything to do with you, so, here I am, finally smart
again."

                   The boy smiled happily.  Me?  I'm pretty happy, too.
Married, unless I'm mistaken.  Samantha has suddenly decided to become
quite passionate in the making-out department, so I asked her if she was my
wife, and she nodded enthusiastically, then I asked her if I was her
husband, and she nodded again, and I asked if she was a happy wife, and she
nodded.  Anne and I sat with some womanizing ex-service chaplain, minister
of their horrible church, and he asked us if we knew how, I kid you not,
how the plumbing worked, perhaps twenty times.  (Anne was twenty-six, I,
twenty-nine.)  Additionally, we had as long a courtship as any four or five
other couples, combined, because we both had the summer off and were able
to spend all day, every day together, most of the time.  None of it made
any difference, when Mary Blake spoke, the girl responded.  I like Samantha
and my way better.  She nodded instantly and happily, and it is my guess
that somehow, some way, given enough time, we'll figure out how the
plumbing works.  Since the big local hit song has a lyric that goes: "My
neck / my back / lick my pussy and lick my crack," and they play the
wretched thing wide open at school jump-ups, she may already know a thing
or two.  In any event, she is becoming extremely responsive and at the
border of becoming aggressive, which may be the death of me as a writer
because practicing what I preach is one thing for the moral and upright,
but something quite different for the hedonistic and depraved.  Add being
involuntarily unpartnered for nearly a quarter of a freaking century, and
it may be bye-bye keyboard.

                   I go to great pains to keep my essays neat and small,
though life often seems to want it otherwise, what with variations on the
nuptial theme, the rapidly developing sexuality of a drop-dead fifteen year
old, and related items and issues.  Since I've just mentioned practicing
what I preach, what a marvelous time to take my own advice.


                   "What do creeps do?" Jody asked Wayne.
                   "They inveigle," Wayne said, "if I was a creep, I'd
slide my hand over and start touching your left leg, without saying
anything to you; if I was sitting beside you in the movie theater, I'd
press my knee against yours, and touch your leg and try to fondle you.  I
might lure you somewhere with money or a gift, or somehow lure you into
trusting me, then do things you didn't want.  That kind of stuff, usually
involving creeping fingers and the satiny skin of a juvenile's inner
thighs."
                   "Is that what the dictionary says?" the boy asked.
                   "I doubt it," Wayne laughed, "but then, my medical book
says premature ejaculation is caused by fear of pregnancy or venereal
disease, which may be true, but leaves out the happy fact that it's also
caused by a partner being intensely exciting, usually because you are in
love with that partner."

                   "What's that like?  Will that happen with us?" Jody
wanted to know.
                   "Good question," Wayne sighed, "we'll know when we reach
the park.  With a male lover, it would mean I ejaculated while I was still
wearing my clothes, so you couldn't share it.  With a female partner, it
means you ejaculate before you've penetrated her fully and given her time
to respond fully to you."
                   "I hope it doesn't happen," Jody said.
                   "No promises, because of the love thing," Wayne said.
His voice got husky and he whispered: "Jody, how do you feel about watching
it happen? You know, seeing my sperm."
                   "I really want to," the boy whispered back.
                   "Good," the man said, "because I think that may be the
secret to being a good lover; to really want to see what happens with your
partner, half lust, half curiosity.  I really want you to watch me cum, so
I'll try to make it so we can share the experience, as the say on the
coast."
                   "Does really trying make it easier?" the child asked.
                   "It definitely helps trying to picture you and I,
warrior and tenderfoot, peering into a tepee at what's happening inside
while you ask me questions in a whisper and I fondle your bare chest and
thrust gently between your tightly clamped nine-year-old thighs."
                   "Maybe if I had a seven year old underneath me, looking
in through the bottom slit in the canvas, I'd know what you were talking
about," the cutie observed.
                   "A nine year old can go inside a younger boy without
hurting him at all," Wayne said, trying to get even with the tease riding
shotgun.

                   "If it happened while you were driving, would we have an
accident?" Jody asked.
                   "We're stuck in traffic," Wayne said.
                   "The way I feel, if we were moving at all, it would be
dangerous," the little boy responded.
                   "That probably means you will be an absolutely
outstanding, A-plus, gold star lover," Wayne said, "giving us a great deal
to live for."
                   "So when we pass the accident or whatever is holding us
up, and get on the open road, and get up to say, seventy, I shouldn't start
asking what it would feel like if a seven year old wanted me to experiment
with him for a long time?"
                   "You just said a mouthful," Wayne replied.
                   "And if the seven year old thought you were a living
doll, and was experienced, and wanted to come into our tepee and show me
what he does with his gym teacher, it would be better if I kept it to
myself?"
                   "Just as it would be if instead of seven, the boy was
eleven, and chose you to teach him," Wayne replied.
                   "If I had to vote now," the boy said, "I'd say that no
state should ever give me a license to operate anything."
                   "The disturbing thing is," Wayne said, "that you're
going to get better as you get older.  Both your wits and your body will
develop, and that's inconceivable."
                   "If I'm half as smart as you at twice your age, and if
I'm half as cute when I'm a teenybopper, I'll be happy," the younger half
of the mutual admiration society said.
                   The traffic finally did open.  "Guess there's some kid
cuter than I am; hope he's okay," the particularly clever child remarked as
they passed the obstructing, minor wreck.  Wayne looked down at the glowing
child.  "Inconceivable."  It was the only word that fit, non-word that it
was, because, first off, it meant the boy couldn't exist, if he hadn't been
conceived, and second, he couldn't exist because comprehending him was
impossible.  Oops.  Unborn?  Unfathomable?  Weren't those the principal
characteristics of a god?  He'd better concentrate on his driving.

                   They arrived safely, and, how shall we say this?
Intact.  Parked.  Were cleared through the polygraph station without having
to visit the clinic.  Spent some minutes studying a diorama of Wildest
World; decided they did like the Indian theme for their debut, and we're
fitted with costumes, men and boys using separate fitting rooms as the
management's idea of a subtle prank.  [People who run salacious enterprises
are often ludicrously prudish.  I used to go to the bathhouse a block
southwest of Hollywood and Vine.  Once, while I was in the steam room, I
spilled my bottle of amyl nitrate on my towel.  When I checked out, the
moron at the desk started yelling that I was eighty-sixed from the club; at
the same time, he was blackballing another kid for masturbating in the
shower.  The place was a sex house, nothing but, and clearly labeled so at
the check-in window.  What kind of mind does an animal like that have?  As
far as I could tell, the place needed all the business it could get, except
for a few hours on Saturday night.  I guess it's the need to bully; the
desk master was probably and ex-master sergeant.  Luckily for myself and my
showering friend, there were five more bathhouses in greater L.A., and
that, too, is worth commenting on in the name of perspective.  Only five,
for eighteen million people, and those five very often way under half
filled.  I used to frequent the one in (or near) Burbank, and though I was
in the top one percent of body types, I never got asked to be in any kind
of film, or, for that matter to a private party, or to have any contact
with children or look at kiddie porn; buy drugs, use cuffs, or anything.
Perhaps the oddest thing about these various clubs was that they were an
ideal place to catch a little sleep, at twelve dollars for eight hours, and
no one ever seemed to use them as a dirt cheap alternative to a hotel.  The
gay bar scene was dramatically more active, but not my thing, and the perv
papers, with nine-seven-six numbers were an inch thick.  More surprising
yet, and I've mentioned all of this elsewhere, was the bathhouse in
Tijuana.  Even though it was, a, highly, but not exclusively gay, b, open
to males of any age, c, very convenient, and, d, less than an hour by
trolley from the naval facilities in San Diego, during thirty or forty
visits, I met virtually no Anglos there, and never a man with a boy.  I
should note for those saying, aha, he's an addict, after all, that TJ was
half way between L.A. and San Philippe (390 miles) and so a perfect place
to break a motorcycle journey.  I think it cost two dollars and the beers
were about fifty cents.  I tipped at five times the price.  Never scored,
that I recall, and the one cute boy that did turn up was scared to do
anything where anyone might see, so we ended up as ships in the night.  One
funny aspect of Banos Vapor was trying to get out of my riding skins in the
tiny, built for Mexicans, changing rooms.  For you bikers, I had a Magna
V-45 (vanity plate: BIKEMAD) and put 28,000 miles on it my first year in
SoCal.  As I recall, it was approximately one-thousand times as nice a ride
as a Harley.  I am in no way objective on the subject.  In my view, the
Honda saved my life.  We had to wear bell-bottom pants for the bus company.
I was up at Griffith Park, for some reason in my uniform pants.  I parked
at one of the overlooks, on a slight mound beside the rode.  As usual, I
put the kickstand down as the bike came to a stop, and went to swing out of
the saddle.  The bell-bottoms caught on something, throwing me completely
off balance, and the bike crashed down on the kickstand.  If it had sheared
off, the bike would have fallen off the mound, right down on top of me.
Looking at the stand, and the tongue of metal it was bolted to, it was hard
to believe that an assembly designed for nominal loads held up under the
sever impact.  Rice burner, my ass.  I bought it in like-new condition from
Hollywood Honda for fifteen hundred dollars.  The only problem I ever had
with it was the engine cutting out in a severe cross wind from the right.
I cracked the oil pan three times on off road excursions, but that's
another book.  Anyway, my research leads me to believe that the gay scene
on the coast is a fraction of what it's played up to be.  I drove Hollywood
Boulevard, my first bus assignment, for months, until past midnight, and,
though I was looking, never saw any gay cruising, at all.  In fact, in over
three years on Wilshire Boulevard, I never had any kind of `meaningful
relationship' with anyone, male or female, which was great, because it
meant I could save money faster to get out sooner.  To me Los Angeles was
epitomized by the weird old showboat who'd thrash around off the end of
Santa Monica Pier, splashing up a storm, and going nowhere (hate to
immortalize him).  As mentioned elsewhere, the place is One stupid bumper
sticker at a time (which is a clever way of immortalizing the whole
freaking county).]

                   Half an hour after arriving, Wayne and Jody said a
nervous "hi" to each other in the lounge of the resort.  They gravitated to
a large mirror, the mature male standing behind the child with his hands on
the boy's shoulders.  "What do you think?" Wayne asked.
                   "I guess we're not chopped liver," Jody said, his eyes
glued to the pec and ab-free chest of the warrior behind him.
                   "But I just know you're going to be an Indian giver,"
Wayne responded, "and want that killer young body back after you've given
it to me."
                   "I need something to go around my heart so it won't dry
out," the boy observed with a giggle.
                   "I suppose your blood does have to go somewhere," the
thirty year old acknowledged with a sigh, "plus it will come in handy for
hunting pioneers."

                   The two left the lodge, emerging on a deck overlooking
the large pool.  "Schameel schamizal, bodyshop incorporated," Jody murmured
at they gazed down over the railing at the swimmers and loungers.
                   "And to think, they're all healthy," Wayne said.
                   "Awesome," the boy responded.  Pretty much so.  Wildest
World was not oriented toward body building or macho buff, and there were
no hunks, per se, but rather a large contingent of young sailors and
soldiers, all slim and athletic without the overtones of narcissistic
fetish.  As Wayne said, all healthy.  "Aren't older guys meant to have, you
know, like some hair down there?" Jody asked.

                   Well, pretty healthy.  Club policy did suggest a boyish
look for the adults, and such was the respect for management, compliance
was universal.  There were perhaps a hundred guests in all, with a heavy
preponderance of males in their late teens and early twenties.  "I'm glad
it's not all white," Jody said, noting the obvious mix of other races, his
eyes following a six-four variant of Benjamin Bratt.

                   While the club approach was singularly low key, a little
frivolity did intrude.  The newcomers noted a small sign on the railing and
moved over so they could read it.  "No drooling," was the message.  "That's
like posting a sign in the boiler room of a steam ship that reads: `No
Sweating'," the bookish nine year old said, checking his lower lip with a
finger.
                   "Carlos told me a lot of the sailors are officers are
officers on ships that allow cabin boys," Wayne said, "so if you ever have
a yen to take a cruise, this would be a good place to start."
                   "I'll be some of the men here touched him," Jody
whispered, cuddling next to the tall athletic male on his right.  Wayne
responded by guiding the nine year old in front of him, and pressing the
child gently against the railing.  Other men were molesting children
discreetly, mostly playing wrestling games in the pool, but several couples
were beginning tentative foreplay on the lounge chairs.  At becoming
aroused, the mature males led the young boys past a sign reading "Wilder
Yet" and down a path leading into the heavy stand of timber a hundred feet
beyond the swimming and diving pool.  A couple left every minute or so, and
an equal number returned, mostly as nudists, but some in pioneer or Indian
costumes.  While couples predominated, from time to time two or three of
the young men would escort a single boy off to where things presumably got
wilder, and a girl who looked about ten, and most pleased and content, led
a group of five, the eldest of whom was obviously her brother.

                   "Do you think you'd like watching them?" Wayne whispered
to the boy in his arms.
                   "Yes," Jody said, "I'm glad they have girls, otherwise
the picture would be in monochrome."
                   "Good thinking," Wayne said, giving him a squeeze.
"There's enough arbitrary thinking when it comes to class differences
without throwing in gender."
                   "Can a girl as small as she is be with older guys?" Jody
asked.
                   "I saw her brother take a tube of something with him,"
Wayne responded, "that's probably a lubricating gel so she'll be
comfortable if they have her out there for a long time."
                   "He looked really big," the boy said.
                   "I imagine he's bigger now," Wayne responded, "but she's
mature enough to accept a full grown male unless he's much bigger than
normal."
                   "I guess she can have a baby when she's not a whole lot
bigger than she is now," Jody mused, "but it does seem kind of impossible,
just looking at them together."
                   "The girl on the diving board is even younger," Wayne
said.
                   "Could she be with an adult?" Jody asked.
                   "If he was gentle," the man said, "most girls are
physically ready to be with a normal-size adult when they're seven or eight
years old."
                   "Does that go for the psychology part, too?" Jody said.
                   "No," Wayne replied, "and therein lies many a rub, or
non-rub, as the case may be.  Some girls are totally ready for extensive
sex play, but not having an adult inside them, when they are three, others
aren't half-ready when they're thirty."
                   "But a thirty year old girl would never even be
half-ready for a boy like me, right?" Jody asked.
                   "To repeat," Wayne laughed, "'many a rub'."
                   "Does anybody understand it?" Jody said.
                   "Not a chance," his friend said, "where would the fun be
in that?"
                   "How about cats and dogs?" the child asked.
                   "That's all they understand," Wayne replied, "they'll
half starve over a female in heat, or rip each other up, or both."
                   "So ignorance is bliss," Jody remarked.
                   "That's one way to look at it," Wayne agreed.

                   "Hi," a voice came from behind them, "mind if we voyeur
together for awhile?"  Instinctively, Wayne released the boy, and Jody
edged free as they turned.  The speaker was also costumed in a warrior's
vest and loin cloth, as was the tall, coltish twelve year old male with
him.
                   "We decided to stop awhile in paradise before we venture
on to nirvana," Wayne said, after receiving an alert nod from Jody, "and
you're welcome to join us."
                   "I met you at a convention a couple of years ago," the
man said.  "Sure," Wayne replied, "we talked about squirrel hunting with
black powder.  You're Jerry Hammersmith."
                   "Cool to see you here," Jerry said, introducing Rayray
Kendall as "the most nervous scout that doesn't wear a dress."
                   "We had our moments on the drive over, too," Wayne said
as they shook hands and gripped shoulders.  "Cool to see you here, too," he
whispered.
                   "Is it your first time?" Jody asked Rayray.
                   "Yes," the sensationally blond student warrior replied.
                   "Mine, too," Jody whispered as the men gently pinioned
the boys side by side against the teak railing.
                   "Have you talked about stuff a lot?" Rayray asked.
                   "We had to kinda stop a few times," Jody said, "but we
talked about some things.  How about you?"
                   "Quite a bit, too," the boy said "The reason I'm here is
that guys keep looking at me when I'm at the mall or in a restaurant, and
it made me nervous, because sometimes I kind of liked it and it made be
feel all different, so I told Mr. Hammersmith about it after scouts, and we
had a long talk, and he told me he knew about a place where boys could get,
you know, mature, without being like totally embarrassed about things."
                   "Welcome to the club," Jody said, and they both giggled,
looking nervously at each other.
                   "I always want to look at other boys in gym," Rayray
said, "but I'd get caught because the other boys are always looking at me."
                   "I guess I'm too young to notice," Jody responded,
"because it's only older boys and men that seem interesting."
                   "They are the most interesting," the eleven year old
agreed, "and a couple of years ago, I felt the same way.  Now I'm getting
interested in younger kids because Mr. Hammersmith says they make excellent
partners, even if you can't do everything with them that you can do with an
older boy or a man."
                   "How about the girl climbing up on the low board?" Jody
asked, "do you think she's cute?"
                   "Way so, way so," the older boy replied.

                   I'm reminded here of a story a woman told on a nature
documentary.  She'd been hiking and two mountain lions had driven her into
a tree.  She fended them off with a branch for a long time, but they were
getting ever closer.  Suddenly a deer crossed in the valley below, the cats
saw it, and were off like a shot.  As Becky Childs climbed up on the board,
the two pubescent braves quickly begged to be excused and were off down the
labyrinth of stairs leading to the pool."
                   "Remember how we talked about using retrievers when we
used to hunt?" Wayne laughed.
                   "They're a pair, aren't they?" Jerry agreed as the men
watched their little Indians approach the edge of the pool where the naked
mermaid was about to emerge.

                   Decorum.  I don't think I've used that word yet, and
this would be a great place.  Because they were new, Jody and Rayray were
allowed swift passage along the side of the pool, reaching, grinning, the
strategic zone by default.  As they neared the ladder they became aware of
their impetuousness; I mean, what if everybody charged the little
red-headed doll?  But it was too late.  Her bright eyes locked on to the
nine and eleven year olds in their toothy vests and loincloths, and
wouldn't let go.  In the friendliest manner imaginable, she gave a beaming
all-clear to any other interested parties, and, naked, climbed the ladder
and beckoned the males with her glowing eyes.  So decorum was restored,
poolside.

                   Leadership.  How, specifically, does a nine year old go
about dominating a boy two years his senior, while not wanting to one up
him in any way, because he's a pea in a pod.  Jody did it by finding an
unused towel and handing it to Rayray who wrapped the girl in it.  When
you're nine, you lead by being a very secure follower; running errands,
doing chores, and being interested, prompt, responsive, dependable, and
diligent, just like Mr. Alger says.  If you're cheerful, you get the girl,
and, if you're funny, you get the girl, the gold watch, and everything, in
the words of John. D. MacDonald.  But Jody was too young for that, and he
knew it; much better to watch and learn, and hang out loads and loads with
Wayne, while earning Brownie points to the sky.  I'm kind of the same.
Write fabulous stories at a prodigious rate, entertain rather than doing
the laundry, and suddenly I've done the most, so I've earned the most, and
you'd be moronic to trust your future to anyone who's done less.  In any
event, Jody didn't try to be funny.

                   "I'm Sandra Kelly," the girl said, once wrapped in white
terrycloth which gave her an impish sexiness that outdid even her slim,
athletic dart of a body.  The boys introduced each other and waved toward
the porch where Wayne and Jerry waved back.
                   "Who are you here with?" Rayray asked.
                   "It's kind of a secret," the little beauty said as the
found a vacant lawn chair and sat, after Sandra impatiently beckoned Jody,
side by side.
                   "What?" Rayray asked.
                   "Would you like Wayne and Jerry to join us, or we could
go up and join them?" the little errand boy asked
                   "That would be great," Sandra said.
                   "Sorry," Rayray said, "you know, in school, the first
thing you say when someone says they have a secret is What?"
                   Jody pretty well knew he'd never been so happy in his
life.  Rayray's gracious response to his check was about like eating three
hot apple pies with premium American cheese in, say, ten seconds.  Sandra
smiled happily, too, and said, "Guess what, I go to school, too."

                   "Do you want to tell?" Rayray then asked, because
interest is as high as grace on any boy's list..
                   "Wait till the awesome chieftains join us, okay?" the
girl said.
                   "That will make us happy, wherever the hunting ground,"
Rayray said, hoping the girl got it.
                   "Many moons are all I can promise, when it comes to the
spirit light, and the heart glad," the girl said.
                   "How many?" Rayray asked.
                   "How would ninety times twelve suit you?" the girl
replied.
                   "I should live so long," the eleven year old replied.
                   "Partly, it's a matter of being very highly motivated,"
Sandra said.  "In fact, that's why I'm here.  Too, as it turns out,
motivated."

                   The children stood as the adults approached, and they
shifted their location to a round table with an umbrella as introductions
were made.

                   "They were talking about longevity and motivation," Jody
said when all were seated and had ordered from the waiter.  Rayray
responded with a look that said Wait, just wait until I get you alone, and
they resumed the conversation.

                   "Okay, too motivated," Rayray said, doing his part.
                   "My mom, the industrial lead chemist, found out, and
knew about this global free spot," Sandra said, "and packed me off for six
weeks all by my lonesome."
                   "She didn't even leave you a bathing suit," Rayray
noted.
                   "Bathing suits were the problem," the girl replied,
"anytime I wore one it was like cloaking myself with human eyeballs, mostly
male, but not all.  I kind of liked it, and was kind of scared at the same
time."
                   "Rayray knows what you mean," Jody said.
                   "You will, too," the girl said, kindly.  It was
impossible not to patronize a second fiddle, but it was possible to do in
nicely.
                   "So," the girl continued, "that got me interested, and I
bought several suits so I could follow my mom's example and experiment with
variations, instead of jumping to conclusions.  The more conservative the
suit, the more eyes.  That didn't really mean anything, except that the
subject was way mysterious.  Then I was a bridesmaid, a few months ago, and
it was eyes even from the pulpit.  `Something's going on here,' I said to
myself, but, highly motivated though I was, it was nothing but blank walls.
Then along came Mastik and Molly.  They seemed to have answers to questions
I didn't know existed, and they weren't distracted by my bathing suit or
bridal gown.  Observation and experimentation are the keystones of
research, and I was feeding my turtles Fruit Loops when I was three, to see
if they'd change color.  That was a dead end, but then again, how motivated
can a little kid be?  This time, nothing was going to stand in my way.  I
made the mental leap from the eyes to Mastik and Molly, and was at the
verge of enlightenment, or at least the first step thereto, when the true
scientist in the family opened my bedroom door and told the dogs to take a
hike."

                   What?  Had they died and gone to pixie heaven?  Did she
have a guild card as an apprentice goddess?

                   "That was three days ago," whatever-she-was continued,
"and out came the cell phone, and she called somebody who knew somebody,
and, since they're all stable, meticulous people, the proper phone number
was forthcoming faster than alcohol dissolves in water, and we had a long
talk of a non-prejudicial or judgmental nature, and here I am, a squaw
fresh from the swimming hole in the clutches of three braves, with a most
promising understudy."

                   "In short," Rayray said, "your life has not gone to the
dogs."
                   "I'm going to be a scientist, too," the girl said, "so I
can't say until the research is complete, but my theory is that you're
right."
                   "What did your mom talk to you about?" Rayray asked.
                   "She said there was something about me that attracted
males, that she saw it, even though she was my mother, that it was
something hard to explain or describe, because I wasn't all that ripping
pretty in a conventional sense, but that proof was pretty much in the
pudding, said desert being tapioca, which, as everyone knows, is made up of
thousands of minnow eyes, but eyes nonetheless; that if my were with us, he
would see it, and she would accept it and let him teach me; that barring
that, since he's on a long-term contract in Chile, the best thing was to
come to grips with it, rather than wandering around wondering what the
freak was going on, and the best way to come to grips with it would be to
attend a Free Spirit resort, where the rules made sense and a lively,
athletic girl, her words, could find her own way, if a way was to be found,
in the first place."

                   "Did she talk about the physical part?" Rayray wanted to
know, Jody nodding and hanging on every word, but keeping a zipper on it,
good kid that he was.

                   "She said I might be stiff and sore," the delightful
creature in her terrycloth wrap said, "because males weren't all eyes, but
it would be no worse than a minor sports' injury.  Also, that I was
developed enough to be with an adult, and that prostitutes sometimes
serviced many males in a single night, so that I didn't have to worry if I
ended up with a small group, that I should brush my teeth and wash behind
my ears, which is probably not what you meant by `physical stuff'."
                   "Can I see your teeth?" Jody asked, glad for a respite
in a conversation he was equally glad was for older ears than his,
washed-behind, or not.  Sandra smiled at him in best schoolgirl fashion.
"Pretty good," the boy said, "but maybe we could play dentist sometime,
just to be sure."
                   "I'd rather you played bodyguard or big brother," the
twinkling beauty replied, "and stayed very close to me at all, and I do
mean all times."  Jody nodded and glowed with pleasure, hardly noting a
six-six male passing under the Wilder Yet sign, an eight-year-old moppet,
probably male, pulling him along the trail.
                   "Mom said there was no way I could get pregnant," the
seven year old went on, "which I was already pretty sure of, and that the
resort screened all members and visitors, so I wouldn't have to worry about
disease or violence, that I should try to find one partner, or a small
group, rather than going from stranger to stranger; that if I did, they'd
be welcome to come visit us -- we have a jumbo house -- and I could
visit them if they wanted; that I should write my dad about everything, and
remind him I'm a growing girl and miss him very much, and that if I'm
mostly disciplined, but a little wild in the right place, at the right
time, with the right people, that I might have a pretty interesting
childhood being my own doll instead of buying them."
                   "Bodyguard Ken," Jody said, "I think I like it."
                   "I'd prefer Brother Ken," the girl smiled, "but no one's
invited without you, because you're entirely the last person I'd ever want
to have secrets from, so I guess we'll make out."

                   The two adults and three children finished their
lemonade and scones, nervously eyeing the gold leaf on varnished mahogany
sign a hundred feet away, and the luxuriant stand of hardwood flicking and
rustling in the breeze behind it.  Club policy, and we've seen this before,
was for the youngest partner, or youngest in a party, to lead or lag.
"What comes after one tree, two tree?" She asked Jody.
                   "Tree tree," the boy said.
                   "No so fast," the girl giggled, "think of all this
lemonade.  Think off all the water I must have swallowed fooling around in
the pool.  Think of the fact I've been in the eyeball soup, better know as
said pool, for some hours now.  Then, think of all the privacy all those
trees must offer.  Add to this my willingness to color a little out of the
lines, vis a vee, Mastik and Molly, and, not to be fresh or anything, guess
again."

                   She knew how to work a crowd.  The males stared at each
other, and at their mutual inamorata.  In the long history of the world and
the human race, nature has undoubtedly called many, but this time the
mother screamed, deafening them and seeming to create a hybrid zombie class
on the spot.  They rose and followed robotically, fifty feet toward the
path, fifty-five, sixty, and, in far more time than it takes to tell, they
entered the hundred-acre wood.  Sandra sniffed carefully.  "If a lot of
people did it, there'd be a bad smell," she said, "and I'd go back to the
lodge."  It wasn't that kind of a place; the woods smelled fine, so the
pixie led on and the males followed, aware that yielding to a trancelike or
catatonic state would have regrettable consequences.
                   "Four Indians and a white girl in a shawl," Sandra said,
as they walked along, "I'll bet this scene's been played out a time or
two."  The males murmured in assent.  "I wonder what it would have been
like," she mused, "you know, one morning you're spinning linsey-woolsey,
and that night the warrior class is playing stallion with filly until the
cock crows the next morning."

                   "If the girls were nice," Jody said, "they were probably
really gentle, and the girls would have so much in their new life, they'd
have an easier time forgetting the old."  She didn't want to wait too long,
so she picked a tree.
                   "This is something we can do together," she said to
Jody, and led him away from the others and out of sight, dropping her towel
from her shoulders.  She was nice and dry by this time, and the boy was
better able to take in her lithe but slightly girlishly padded beauty.  He
shrugged out of his vest.  "Can I take that part off?" she asked, looking
at his loincloth.  "I'm just a kid," he whispered, nodding.  It didn't seem
to matter to Sandra, she knelt in front of him and stripped down the
costume.
                   The children stood behind the tree, forehead to
forehead, arms at their sides, staring down at themselves.  As far as they
could see, they looked perfect for each other.  "You will stay with me,
won't you?" she asked.
                   "Yes," the boy whispered.  "Wayne talked to me a lot
because we got stuck in traffic, so I don't think you have anything to
worry about, like your mom said."

                   "Close your eyes," the girl whispered.  Jody did and
felt her heat as she neared within and inch, then her naked belly touched
his.  "I'm trying to do it really slowly so it lasts, but it's hard for a
girl," she said, and the nine year old felt her hike her waist against his
right thigh, then the wet, prickly heat of what she was doing.  By
experience, I know eleven year olds can urinate with a hard erection, so I
assume a nine year old can.  Anyway, Jody did.
                   "Is it sexy?" she asked.
                   "Way," he whispered back.
                   "Do you want to watch it happen with Rayray?" she asked.
                   "Yes," he said.
                   "I don't feel like a virgin, doing this," Sandra said,
"so you're my first lover."
                   "You're mine, too," the boy replied.

                   For a minute they said nothing, just enjoyed being free
children and meeting the substantial challenge of making it last as long as
possible.  "That was unimaginable," Sandra whispered.
                   "I'll have to admit I'm glad you're not a bitch," the
boy said, adding a gentle woof-woof so the girl wouldn't take it the wrong
way.  This time she tinkled, verbally, in response.  They sort of shook and
wiped themselves, using some leaves from the forest floor, then a corner of
the beach towel.
                   "Are you going to stay naked?" the girl asked.
                   "I think Wayne wants to molest me while I'm wearing it,"
Jody said, slipping back into the thong and vest.  "How about you?" he
asked.
                   "I'm pretty ready for what's going to happen," the girl
said, "so maybe you could take the towel and lay it down on some moss, you
know, with where my backside is raised up a little, like a mound, because
in books it says that boys like it when girls use a pillow."

                   It was a tough assignment, but someone had to do it.
"Maybe this is why they encourage show-and-tell in school," the boy mused
as the girl shook out the towel and handed it to him.  "I'll bet we're old
enough to at least kiss by tomorrow," she whispered, squeezing both his
elbows with both her hands.  They nuzzled affectionately, and, as though
parting for the front of a forlorn campaign, he left her side to do her
bidding and his duty, the unquenchable curiosity of the nascent writer
ameliorating conflicts typical to such scenes.

                   "Spying is complicated for the CIA, too," Wayne said as
Jody rejoined the three warriors in waiting.
                   "I'll be they don't have Plan Bs as good as ours,
though," the boy replied with a smile.  The four joined in the search for a
suitable bower, and in a minute had the towel neatly spread, with the mossy
bulge of a root serving as an improvised pillow half-way along its length.
"You go get her," Jody whispered to Rayray as he coaxed Wayne to his knees
and stood in front of the tall athlete.  Jerry gave the boy a hug on the
shoulders and he went off behind the tree, emerging in a few moments with
the gamin pixie.  The couple honored Jody by standing in from of him, and
the younger boy unfastened the eleven year old's loincloth as the pre-teen
shrugged off his vest.  Wayne hugged the child to him, sliding both hands
up under his leather vest as the boy stripped his older friend.  Jerry
knelt at Jody's right and stared as Sandra guided Jody's tiny hands to the
hugely erect older boy.  Rayray nodded at Jerry and he joined in the first
touch.  While it may take three Californians to fully capture the essence
of changing a light bulb, there were other experiences a trio could share,
and, even though more heat than light was generated, Rayray, for one, was
sure they could teach Teller a thing or two about critical mass.  "I'm
sorry," he whispered as he froze, shuddering, and sprayed a hot spurt of
thin juvenile semen on Jody's bare chest.  The nine year old held the
coltish beauty's penis against Sandra's soft little belly and the boy
grunted and lost control, completely, covering the pixie with half a dozen
hard, fast pulses of his sperm.  Jerry, overcome by the children's wanton
display, slipped quickly out of his costume, and, stroking himself a few
times as Rayray watched, came heavily on the pre-teen's heaving, sweating
chest as Jody and Sandra watched, mesmerized at an adult with a nearly
seven-inch, circumcised penis in full display.  Wayne also shucked out of
his Indian garb to Jody's hiss of welcome.  Ever the kid of kids, he coaxed
Rayray to his knees in front of Wayne, and guided the man to the older
child's mouth, instinctively gripping the big, heavy, uncircumcised penis
at it's base and squeezing as Rayray's tongue and lips avidly engulfed the
swollen purple glans of the adult.  "I'm cumming," Wayne whispered after a
minute, and Jody's hand tightened so he could fill the triggering pulse as
the flow of hot sperm spurted into his friend's eager mouth.  In a matter
of seconds, Rayray hummed loudly, then brought Jody in front of him,
letting the nine year old take his place.  Free of the hot gusher now being
consumed by his younger friend, Rayray lay Sandra back on the white towel.
The girl raised her legs, gripping behind her knees, and spread herself
widely.  The ringer for Simon on "Seventh Heaven" positioned himself over
the seven year old, and, as she darted her tongue to him, let semen spill
from his lips into her eager mouth.  Jody's hot, hard sucking brought Wayne
to an end in less than a minute, freeing the boy to lie on top of his
eleven year old friend, and, after wetting his hand on Rayray's wet chest,
guide him as he kissed the girl wildly.

                   Sandra reached down between herself and her lover and
found Jody's hand, squeezing it in thanks just as the child was successful
in bringing the very mature eleven year old to her.  "Oh, Jody," she
sighed, then looked up at the handsome male above her, smiling a shy
welcome as her younger friend allowed the boy's five-inch, uncircumcised
penis to enter her hot, tight wetness just a little more on each of his
gentle, experimental thrusts of his young body against her childish thighs.
Not overstaying his welcome by a second, the boy released Rayray to have
his will, only maintaining a grip with the first fingers of his right hand
at the same place he'd felt the soft hammering of Wayne's ejaculation.
Rayray, now free, became even more gentle with the little girl glowing up
at him from the forest floor.  He cradled her in his arms, kissing her long
neck, as he continued surging rhythmically against her.  Jody found the
older boy's left nipple with his left hand and fondled him gently while the
fingers of his right partially masturbated the shaft of the gallant steel
over the inexperienced filly colt.  Wayne steadied the young threesome,
reaching in with his right hand to guide Jody's four inch, thumb-thick,
circumcised penis to Rayray's tender white cleft, lubricating his hand with
semen from the harshly panting boy's sweating, heaving chest.  As Jody had
helped Rayray, he helped Jody, making sure the panting nine year old didn't
penetrate his older friend to hard and fast.  But males did superb jobs
guiding and monitoring their partners, and soon Jerry was helping support
the three males in Sandra's arms.  Wayne also positioned himself to give
the children freedom, his fingers, like Jody's, tense on the latter male's
stick-hard erection.  Their bodies were wet and slick, but still, with the
help of the adults, the children remained successfully mounted with each
other, slowly experimenting with the intensity of their tentative thrusting
as they entered each other tenderly and carefully, Sandra's eyes locked on
Jody in a display of loyalty unmatched in any freaking fiction written by
any freaking writer freaking ever.

                   For ten then twenty minutes they swayed and surged
between the gentle arms of Wayne and Jerry.  After half an hour, the
adults, in unison, carefully inserted their again wood-hard erections
between the thighs of the mating children, ejaculating heavily and almost
immediately.  The hot wetness gushing between the sweating, straining young
bodies was like a catalyst of lightning.  Jody and Rayray cried out
together in shock, their bodies going hard and rigid as Sandra's long, slim
legs beat against Rayray's staining chest.  Frantically, she groped and
found Jody's left hand with her own, gripping him until her knuckles went
dead white.  Rayray remained motionless and shuddering for half a minute as
the girl mewed and coaxed and the two adults gently molested his straining
body.  Wayne pinned Jody's snowy, tender bottom firmly against the equally
beautiful behind of the eleven year old.  All sensed the rising strain in
the preteen's lanky, coltish body as he tensed for a final time against the
seven year old's hymen.  Then some gland in the young beauties brain
seized, the slim hips surged, Sandra yelped, tears springing to her eyes,
and he mounted her with four full thrust.

                   "Oh, Jody," the girl snuffled through her tears, "Oh,
Jody, Jody, Jody."
                   Wayne and Jerry relaxed.  Jody had a long, hard,
stuttering orgasm and Sandra gripped his hand, then Wayne gently removed
him, wet with clear seminal fluid, and still hard, from the older boy.  The
three males moved free of the young couple.  Rayray rose often over the
little girl, both looking between their beautiful young bodies at his long
penis as he gently thrust to her again and again.  Attuned to the girl,
Jody reentered the picture, helping her move her legs from the chest of her
panting mount to his heaving flanks, then he retreated.  Sandra's long,
slim legs wrapped around Rayray's gently stroking waist and her pretty,
freckled arms held his back.  The slight mound in the blanket positioned
the larger male perfectly over the tiny female, so they were comfortable
together and able to get used to what was happening between them.  For a
moment, Sandra's left hand left Rayray's back, and she again found Jody,
clasping him against the sweating back of the pre-teen.

                   With everyone comfortable, it went on and on.  Twenty
minutes, the same gentle rhythm, the same happy mews of welcome, the kisses
as he'd lower to her, then rise again so they could look down.  Thirty
minutes, and the tension began to rise.  The panting and sweating
intensified dramatically, his thrusts became faster, and he'd hitch hard at
the completion of each as the girl yelped and pulled him to her with her
strong, athletic legs.  Her eyes flashed at Jody and the boy responded
instantly, resuming his position on top of Rayray, the finger's of his
right hand at the base of the eleven year old's long, slim shaft.  Relieved
of having to try to speak, Rayray concentrated solely on holding back, but
the hot, tight wetness of the now bucking child, and the experienced
fingers of the little boy were irresistible times ten.  "I can feel his
sperm," Jody whispered into Sandra's eyes.  The girl flashed her thanks,
then again looked down between their bodies just in time to see the first
white smear pulse from between her legs.  "I can feel him, too," she
whispered to her junior lover.  "If I ever tell my husband to go play in
traffic, you'll be the reason why," she said, smiling up at the slack and
haggard face inches above her own, then she mewed `Rayray' and again the
boy lost control, lunging against her fast and hard until her eyes and
faced matched his and her body began shaking as he head with its lank, damp
hair lolled helplessly.  Wayne gently retrieved Jody, then slowly separated
the panting children, guiding Jerry to the wet girl.  The mature male held
her gently, she guided him, and he mounted fully in a series of long,
languid strokes.  She held his flanks gently and lay beneath him with her
legs spread wide.  Jerry didn't lower himself to the girl's tiny body, just
stroked rhythmically against her for five minutes before cumming gently to
her equally gentle shuddering climax.  Jody, finally able to release his
beloved to her new live, returned to Wayne, lying beside him and taking him
softly in his small, tender mouth until the adult ejaculated.

                   "Way trick camp," ....... observed.








                   CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                   It would be handy to be able to talk to the reader and
ask him or her where, exactly, we are.  Some writers get blocked, so the
legend goes, but I get lost.  How, for example, is Jody related to Niles,
who seems to have disappeared lo these many pages.  Who are Nile's friends.
Does he know Wayne?  How did we get to Wildest World?  I don't have the
foggiest.  This means I'll have to go back and read, and, while the joys of
doing so are bound to be unbounded, the time required is a
twenty-four-caret drag.  I think the memory lapse and the reluctance to
review are both products of being domestically active, and still adding
over five thousand words a day.  Something had to give, and I suppose if
the result is an hour combing through the last twenty or thirty pages, that
such a penalty phase won't raise many a tear.

                   No sign of Delton.  In a way I'm glad, because this
fiscal month is going to end up as meagerly as November, and I wouldn't
have five extra dollars for him.  Still, I'd like to know how his arm came
out.  Probably he used the thirty-five dollars to buy cigarettes and weed;
that would be typical, nice kid though he is.

                   Samantha is more a dream come true every day.  Kinda
dumb and kinda smart, in the words of the song.  She alternates, in a
completely non-manic way, between quiet, as against moody, and vivacious,
as against silly.  I honestly don't think she has a bad thought about
anyone or anything in her pretty head.  She does not hold grudges or find
fault, a most refreshing change, and, sure, a necessity for any girl who
wants to hang out with an artist rather than a banker.  She has an
intriguing way of saying, "Now, Tom," then pontificating on the virtues of
a calling card or new CD, reprising my mother almost tone for tone, but
there is a difference between Caribbean charm and Scotch bizarreness and
bleak hatred.  Even my -- and I finally figured our a word for her, for
Malcolm, and a few other people over the years whom I've gotten to know
very well, but whom I did not like and would not call friends: the word is
ha'buddy, as in ha'penny, or half penny.  Half friends -- ha' buddy
Donna, the prototypical sourpuss, says the girl is cute.  She also thinks
some boy will kill me over her.  I'll admit she's tantalizing enough,
which, by great good fortune, makes her worth the risk.  My ace in the hole
is that if Boy Bad waits, he'll get the girl and the million, but youth is
impetuous and who know how he'd feel about waiting ten or twenty years?  My
game plan is to team her up with Clarence, two days her senior, and a
dedicated and gentle boy.  Time will tell.  In the meantime, I hate is
treating her like a kid or daughter and railing up at her, but she's been a
different girl since I pushed her out the door, and her brother and
girlfriend, shortly thereafter.  I have a rough, bullying side, as my
readers know, and, however poorly Samantha adds and reads, she's smart
enough not to want to see it again.  At the same time, I'm mellowing out as
a result of having Daisy's kids here.  Queenie broke what was left of one
of my two tea mugs this evening, and I didn't even stop typing.  She
destroys the kitchen by lighting the stove, but we have so few dishes it's
easier to do them myself than get frosty.  Of course, today she managed to,
a, leave the usual mess, and, b, abscond with both my scouring pads,
leaving pots, pans, and a well-worn dish cloth.  I tell her she should go
in the US Army, and I'm not kidding.  It is a hateful organization, to the
extent that none of the hundred or more guys I got to know wanted to stay
in one hour after they had to, but it does teach the rudiments of getting
one thing done and going on to the next.  She hangs by such a thread;
twenty pounds, and she's just another girl on the street, beautiful
cheekbones and long, slim neck, notwithstanding (Samantha, on the other
hand, like her mother, has a vivid enough personality to possibly get away
with being on the plump side.).  I try coaching and cajoling Queenie but
it's so way not my business that I feel I'm treading water.  I had to land
on Samantha hard to get her off her money fixation, and I only did it
because I love her and have known her for eight years.  If Louise was
either daughter or girlfriend, I'd be after her doggedly, but she isn't.  I
guess the moral is you damn well better hurt the one you love.

                   Randy's getting cuter by the day, just reaching
thirteen.  He tags along as Samantha and I stop traffic on our way two in
from the local emporiums.  I haven't seen Rhageedha or her fire-cracker
little sister for two weeks.  My three understudies in the wings,
contrasted with Queenie, are perfect examples of all issues.  A small
number of affectionate, willing partners, with no interest in the most
beautiful of all, who, mercifully for my sanity, happens not to be
interested in me.  Plus, there's another potential special friend, Daryl,
who just turned fourteen and looks about eleven.  He's an octoroon, just
ever so slightly golden, and, with a short trim, one entirely dazzling
young male.  He's been very accepting of mild foreplay in the past, and has
the warmest, silkiest skin imaginable, but seemed reserved on his last
visit, so I didn't even invite him up.  Plus, I had no money and I usually
have a five or a ten for him, whether he hangs out, or not, so that made a
difference.  I don't like putting a price on things, but research is
research, and the only way to determine priorities in a boy like Daryl is
to offer money, and see what he says.  I tried it a couple of times with
boys in Mexico, offering ones who seemed uninterested ten or twenty bucks,
big money in their lives, and both, as I assumed, said no thanks (and got
the money, anyway).  Not interested is not interested, but what if I offer
Daryl fifty dollars and he does come up?  Does that mean he's interested,
or not?  Values are essential to civilization, and tampering with them can
be nerve wracking business.  The message here is clear.  If you'd stop
living like such unmitigated morons, I would feel less inclined to waste my
time on the presumably fruitless search for feasible alternatives to
everyone in the whole freaking country blowing up like Orville
Redenbacher's premium popping corn.

                   Well, I did my excellent-housekeeping penance and went
back to look at our story, so far.  It turns out twenty-two-year-old Niles
Banks picked Jody Fisher up as a hitchhiking runaway, inviting him to
Bing's house.  Bing Charles, his eleven year old nephew, is on the brink of
a life-changing discovery, thanks in part to child Rick Schroeder's "One
Fish at a Time", a savagely controversial and wildly popular new television
show.  Hap and Stan are Bing's school friends, also eleven years old,
invited over to celebrate his, Bing's, recent weight loss.  Jody, youngest
of the gathering, has entertained his new friends by sketching highlights
of his visit to a resort with his neighbor, Wayne, who, I believe, has
bowed out of the story.  It's a little hazy, some of the detail blurred
with the thin air of cruising in the literary stratosphere as if I owned
everything above a hundred-thousand feet, but I believe the quintet has
adjourned to the basement rec room, where, as Jody recited, they stripped
to their tee shirts (convenient, eh?) and briefs or boxers.

                   Stan Yawoski, a freckled redhead with a wide grin, has
also begun a tale, and, Jody having spoken, the second youngest takes the
stage.

                   "You've got fast hands," Jeff Larson said as he zipped
his racket into its leather case.
                   "Thanks," Stan said, "with big feet, I need them."
                   "I had the same problem when I was your age," the twenty
four year old said, "but I got over being self-conscious about it in a big
hurry, if three hours is a hurry."
                   "How?" Stan asked.
                   "Let's sidetrack, first," the older male said, "because
I wanted to tell you your dad says you really like me, and I'm very
flattered."
                   "He said you like me, too," the lanky redhead said,
smiling shyly.
                   "That's about half of it, I guess," Jeff grinned.  "The
reason I brought it up, you know, losing my sensitivity about being a
little gawkier than most of the other kids, is that it involved a very
special friend I used to hang out with when I was thirteen.  What happened
is kind of private and secret, and it would make some boys your age very
uptight to even talk about it, or, especially, to talk about it, as the
case may be, but you're a little bit in the same boat I was, so I thought
I'd at least mention it, and if you want to talk, we can."

                   "I'd really like to," Stan said.
                   "I would, too," the young man said.  "You're dad and
Bill and Adam are going out for a few beers, and I don't drink, so if you'd
like, you could come over to my place and he could pick you up this
evening, or I could drop you home, or you could spend the night."
                   "I'd like to stay over if it's really okay with you,"
the eleven year old said.
                   "More than," Jeff said, "but I should tell you that I
find you very attractive, and not just because you're smart and quick along
the net.  I have the same feelings toward you I did toward Ben Killeen when
I was thirteen and he was my age, now, you know, more than more than
friendly."

                   "I just know I really like it when you come over, and
when I see you here," the boy said.
                   "Once in awhile becoming special friends spoils a
regular friendship," Jeff said, "by bringing up issues like jealousy and
resentment, or one partner making demands on the other, so it's something
to think about."
                   "I'll bet, with the right teacher, a boy could learn to
survive," the eleven year old said, again with his shy, wide-mouthed smile.
                   "How do you feel about Rick's show?" Jeff asked.
                   "I like it," the boy said.
                   "Good," Jeff said, "if you come over, the issues will be
the same, so if you know that, understand it, and welcome it, we're on the
same page."

                   "I do," the boy said.
                   "Well," Jeff replied, "if you're completely
inexperienced, you're buying a pig in a poke, but, guess what, that's the
way it was for me with Ben, and that's the way it is for lots of kids.  The
first time.  And the joke is, it doesn't matter much, unless something
horrible happens, of course, but otherwise it seems like the most natural
thing in the world, and, the truth of the matter is it wouldn't make any
difference tomorrow whether you came over for the night, or we spent the
night together at a motel in separate rooms."

                   "So it's all for nothing?" the boy quizzed.
                   "Yeah, isn't that weird?" his older friend said.
"You'll know, yourself, tomorrow, but tonight, unless I sadly miss my
guess, you'll think going out past the moon is child's play.  Total ying,
no yang, and an hour later they're perfectly balanced, then, it's the
reverse, and an hour later, they're balanced, again, assuming they were
balanced, in the first place."
                   "Do most guys talk to a boy before they teach him?" Stan
asked.

                   "No," Jeff said.  "They should, but it's pretty rare.
Usually it's just touching, though the older male will usually ask a boy if
he's experienced.  Readers like to talk, a, b, and c, because they have
something to talk about; more perspective and context to, you know, form
kind of a grid so they can hang thoughts on it in some semblance of order,
then go on to history, biography, and all the things they know about or are
starting to know about.  Since guys like this like to talk, anyway, when it
comes to private and secret things, they are more apt to be verbal.
                   "And your dad said you like to read a lot," he added.

                   "Psychology," the boy said, "I mean there are some
patterns.  They do know some things.  Some of the tests they think up to
give are really clever."
                   "It hasn't worked," Jeff said, "because people are
fatter and more self-involved and dysfunctional than at any time in
history, but, I agree, it is interesting."
                   "Don't you think some people are happier than at any
time in history?" the boy asked.
                   "Hundreds of millions," Jeff agreed, "on a scale
heretofore inconceivable, but if that sounds sanguine, think for a moment
on who you're comparing them to.  Spend much time in Hogarth's London, and
being happier than those people is hardly a milestone State the equation
another way, and we're ten percent as happy as we should be, though, for
sure I'll make an exception for a cute eleven year old boy with a thick
tome on abnormal psychology on the desk in front of him."
                   "Who's now happier than he ever thought he could be,"
the boy responded.
                   "Takes one to know one, so you won't be surprised that I
had you a little bit figured out."
                   "But you still like it when my dad told you I liked you,
didn't you?" Stan said.
                   "My feelings were such," the young man replied, "that I
can't state them without seeming to tease, but, yes, I was thrilled to
death.  I could show you, to the square foot, where I was when he told me,
when he gave you to me."
                   "I tried to be cool, but I think he knew I was happy
when he told me you like me, too," the boy said.
                   "You're lucky in the dad department, even if his serve
half sucks half the time," Jeff said.
                   "He says you couldn't find a lob with an umbrella," Stan
laughed.

                   "But he's way cool about us being together," Jeff
responded, "and that's something a lot of fathers would get their boxers in
a bunch over, so, as I said, you lucked out."
                   "I'm beginning to realize that," the boy replied.
                   "And it's not just the Corvette, right?" Jeff grinned.
                   "When did a sports car ever hurt?" the boy rejoined.
                   "I thought you like it," Jeff sighed, retrieving his
keys from his locker and handing them to Stan.
                   "Way no way," the boy whispered, looking at the
jewel-like General Motors' key in his hand.
                   "Just think of it as a bike with advantages," Jeff said,
pointing out to the boy that district attorneys who played hard and tight
with the right-headed cops could let a monkey drive, so he shouldn't feel
overwhelmed.  "Plus," he added, "it's a good test of psychology.  Force A
will be your desire to get to our destination, which is a nicer ambience to
shower in than here at the club, and, Force B will be the advantages we
reap from surviving the trip.  Force C is four-hundred horsepower, so we
don't want to go around treating it like chopped liver.
                   "Can you think of any more Forces?"

                   "We're going home to shower, in private, and making the
trip in a Corvette, which I'm supposedly driving, and then spending the
night together, and you want me to think," the boy mused, making a
statement rather than a question of his quandary.
                   "Well, I'm not going to force you," the older male said.
"You can lead a boy to a book, but even then you can't make him think, so a
car can hardly do wonders."
                   "You're actually helping quite a bit," the youngster
said, "Force Four is love, and I love you very much."
                   "Here's to another square foot," Jeff whispered,
touching the eleven year old on his forehead, then squeezing his hand as
the two headed for the parking lot.

                   "Since we're not likely to get into lies, privacy, and
secrets," Jeff said as the boy familiarized himself with the car in the
club parking lot, "I want to tell you that I hope you'll quit tennis.
Tennis and any athletics."
                   "Why?" the boy asked.
                   "Waste of time," the man said, "plus about ten different
physical reasons having to do with joints, cartilage, tendons, and various
and sundry tissue groups, many of them located along the spinal column."
                   "But you play," the boy noted.

                   "They didn't know any better when I was your age," the
twenty four year old said, "or if they did, they weren't saying much.  I
got hooked, and it's not life-threatening or anything; just that in your
case, unless you have a real passion and are willing to sacrifice a lot in
terms of intellectual development and physical well being, it would be
better to use your time developing some other aspect of your life."

                   Stan laughed.  "If you get me off sports and dating,
you'll make a real whiz kid out of me," he said.
                   "It happened with Ben and me, but there's always room
for one more," Jeff said, as Stan eased the silver gray car onto road,
obeying Jeff's finger which pointed out of town.  That brought a grin from
the kid, and they rolled for the countryside.

                   "You can't do this with many boys or I'd have read about
it in the papers," Stan said as they passed a police barricade and headed
onto the county skid pan.
                   "I thought you read Psychology," Jeff responded.
                   "Just with one eye," the boy said, "so I don't confuse
Id and Ego."
                   "And I let you drive?" Jeff laughed, adding: "on second
thought, if I was at the wheel, and you were riding shotgun, there'd be no
eyes."
                   "Then nothing to get shampoo in," the boy said.  Jeff
looked down at him.  "You are the A in awesome," he said.  They skidded,
alright.  A great steaming crescent of a U-turn, and exited the training
facility to the puzzled expression of the guard.  "What were you saying
about the papers?" Jeff said as the car made a half-G turn onto the road
back into town.
                   "I can be an undercover operative," the boy responded,
"totally legit.  In fact," he went on, "if you think of it from an amateur
psychological viewpoint, guess what, a known tipster would be likely to
attract kids that don't dare tell anyone else about bad stuff that's
happening to them."

                   "If anyone could pull it off," Jeff said, "you could,
probably with a certain degree of style, why not?"
                   "It would give us a good reason to be together," the boy
said.
                   "I'm afraid that doesn't cut much ice in the adult
world," Jeff said, "but when it rains cherries, no law against carrying a
spoon.  But the idea is brilliant.  Just the opposite of the usual
procedure of hush this and clandestine that, when it comes to informants.
You, practically with a sign on you; legend from day one, because I think
we were doing a bit over a hundred when we passed the guard.  After the new
wears off, the kids would know who to tell, most of them could get that
far, to tell you.  You'd sort of attract telling, rather than ferreting
it."

                   "If we're working together," the boy asked, "how can we
know when it's okay to have privacy and talk about personal stuff."
                   "We might try body count," the district attorney
answered.  "If we get half a dozen raptors and scare the living shit out of
the rest, no one will want to see the logs."
                   "Just please oh please don't hire me until tomorrow,"
Stan emoted.
                   "I had Monday in mind," Jeff said, and that made the boy
happy, and predators practically jump for joy (if they'd know).

                   "Were you really nervous with Ben?" the eleven year old
asked as they entered Jeff's bathroom.
                   "Not until we took our shirts off," Jeff said, his voice
thick.
                   "Where did it happen?" the boy said.
                   "While we were playing golf," the older male explained.
"It rained for four hours.  We holed up in a shelter He was trying to get
me away from the tennis team, so we talked about that stuff for awhile.
Then we talked about other stuff for awhile, then I started really liking
him and feeling comfortable with him, but that didn't last, because after
awhile I just felt like all energy just being close to him, and I knew what
it was because I'd done a lot of reading, including abnormal psych texts
that opened to the right place when you put them on their spine and let go,
so that got me even more excited."

                   "Do you want to talk about personal stuff, you know,
girls, or just hang out until it clear up?" Ben asked the thirteen year
old.
                   "I'd like to," Jeff said.
                   "How much do you know?" the golf coach ask [millionth
character] ed.
                   "Just from reading," the boy replied.
                   "You have a very special build," Ben said, "very
attractive.  Things should start happening pretty soon, if you want them
to."
                   "I don't think I look so hot," Jeff said.
                   "There are different kinds of looks," the coach said,
"pretty and uninteresting, because pretty boys get stroked and petted by
default, and, once in awhile, a boy like you; not what you find in
underpants ads in the catalogues, because they pick models to sell
clothing, not get them in trouble."

                   "Why would some models get them in trouble?" Jeff
wondered aloud.
                   "It's a hard thing to describe," the young man said, "an
indefinable look certain boys have, as well as some girls, like the one at
the swimming pool in the ad for calcium supplements.  Most of them, like
you, think they look odd or dorky, but they're wrong.  You're wrong.
Bigger hands and feet, long legs and knobby knees may not make onto the
pages of Sears, but, as I said, they're in business to service debt, not to
turn on every guy between sixteen and one-hundred and something."
                   "So if `Playboy' meant what it said, they'd use pictures
of a kid like me?" Jeff asked.
                   "You'd be their first life-size foldout," Ben laughed.
                   "'Victor's Secret'," the tall, lanky, brown-eyed,
black-haired boy giggled in response.
                   "'Nifty'," Ben whispered in response.  The thirteen year
old met the twenty four year old's eyes for a long moment.  "Do you read
it?" the man whispered.
                   "Sometimes," Ben said, reddening, as if through some
preposterous oversight he wasn't beautiful enough, already..
                   "Do you want to talk about stuff like that, or keep to
consenting, unrelated adults, or the weather?" Ben asked.
                   "I like it," the boy allowed, still blushing.
                   "I do, too," Ben said, adding: "Would you like to do
more than just talk?"
                   "Yes," Jeff whispered.
                   "Would you be comfortable if we had our shirts off?" the
golf pro asked.
                   "No," his young friend said, stripping out of his knit
shirt and placing it on the bench of the storm shelter.
                   "I didn't think so," Ben whispered, touching the boy's
face as the child pulled his shirt from his slacks, running his hands up
under it to find his tiny nipples.
                   "You feel like a kid," the boy remarked softly.
                   "Takes one to know one," the adult said, running his
fingers along Jeff's jawline and down his long, slim neck to his
well-developed shoulders, then slipping out of his jersey and placing it
with Jeff's.  They faced each other for long minutes, touching ever lower,
their breathing becoming ragged, their eyes locked on each other.

                   "We can still stop, if you want," Ben whispered as his
fingers found the buckle to Jeff's golfing shorts.
                   "I don't want," the boy replied, finding the adult's
buckle with tense fingers.
                   "Everything very slowly, okay?" the young man said, "and
when it's over you may have a sense of being cold and let down.  That's
kinda normal, so let a little time go by before you analyze how you feel."
                   "Okay," the boy whispered as they stepped from their
pants and placed them with their shirts, then turned again to each other,
looking down at their hotly bulging underwear.
                   "Are you the biggest boy on the junior's team?" Ben
asked.
                   "I guess so," Jeff said.
                   "Do you like showering," the man quizzed.
                   "I always feel like a pervert," the boy replied,
"because I like looking at Chucky Ames, and he's only ten."
                   "And, just as a guess," Ben responded, "he's tall and
slim with big hands and feet and long legs.  Coltish."
                   "Yeah," the boy smiled as they stood close and touched
each other along the waistline of their underwear.
                   "And bigger than the other boys?"
                   "Almost as much as me," the boy said, blushing gently.
                   "Does he have any hair around his penis?" Ben quizzed.
                   "He's blond, but I think so," Jeff whispered.
                   "Do you like him?"
                   "Yes."
                   "Do you think he likes you?" the mature male asked.
                   "Yes," the boy said, "we like Louis L'Amour.  He wants
to come for a sleepover."
                   "Does that make you nervous?" Ben asked.
                   "Totally," the boy replied, "because I know I'd get like
this if we were hanging around in my room together, and he might freak
out."
                   "When you shower together, does he ever stand close to
you and rub against you as if it were accidental?"
                   "Yes," Jeff said, and Ben could see the boy's erection
swell.
                   "Has his penis ever touched your leg?" Ben asked, his
whisper quiet and husky.
                   "Twice," the boy acknowledged, "but just a little."
                   "Were there other boys in the shower when it happened?"
Ben asked.
                   "Yes," Jeff said.
                   "Did they take any notice?"
                   "They pretended they didn't, but I think they did," Jeff
said.
                   "That's your marriage license, then," Ben said, "if
they'd thought you were weird or faggoty, they'd have said something, boys
being what they are.  And I think the chance of Chucky freaking out are
about one in six-hundred billion.  Put another way, the only thing that's
likely to upset him is if you don't invite him over."

                   "I'm glad it rained," Jeff said, "because I know he
wants to do this with me, but I didn't know what to do."
                   "Part of being a kid," Ben said, "is being ten times as
scared of everything as needs be.  It does keep you alive, but it can
interfere, too."
                   "It feels really natural," Jeff said.  "After what they
tell us in school, you'd expect a fire to start."
                   "The absurdity of their position is that it's so
absolute," Ben said, "they all think this is never appropriate, ever, no
matter what, forever.  Growing up is a matter of taking dogmatic fools for
what they are, and, for the sake of convenience, running end plays, fades,
and head fakes, rather than butting your head against a wall of invincible
stupidity."
                   "Using sand wedges instead of a Big Bertha?" the boy
asked.
                   "Exactly," Ben said, "and play off the fairways,
because, after all, you're out for a high score."

                   "I'll settle for a two," Jeff said, "which, I guess,
would make a threesome, you know, if I could bring Chucky to your house,
sometime."
                   "That would be an unholy one, for sure," Ben said, "but
I give the priest class wide berth on numerous other issues, so one more,
or two more, if that's how it works out, shouldn't matter."
                   "Have you had other boys over?" Jeff asked.
                   "I'm a deep cover predator," Ben said, "so the answer is
not for two years, and only two others since I moved here, which is when my
parents had the house, six years ago."
                   "Thus the low tournament scores," Jeff observed.
                   "Another way to put it," the player said, "is that you
are the pick of a very big litter of some pretty cute pups, and, if it
hadn't rained, I would have made every effort to become at least regular
friends.  And no, none of the others on the team, or at school, or on tour,
or anywhere have any special relationship with me; no others, period, at
this point, and, in point of fact, I'm homing in on a half-way decent
chick.
                   "You are a friend, amigo, not a dish on the side,
savvy?"
                   "As long as it remains unholy," the boy said.
                   "There's a good little boy," the man responded, "going
and making me feel all warm and fuzzy about myself for being smart enough
to hang out with you."
                   "Warm and fuzzy was how I felt before it started to
rain," Jeff said, "but that feeling's all gone away.  I can hardly even
remember it."
                   "If I touch you inside your underpants, maybe the
feeling you have now will go away, too," Ben whispered, "like the feeling
half-way up the upside of the roller coaster."
                   "I think I'm more than half way," the boy said.
                   "Have you started jerking off?" Ben quizzed.
                   "I don't know how, yet," the boy whispered in reply,
"that's why I haven't invited Chucky over, because all the other boys seem
to know what it is, and I don't, so it would be really embarrassing,"
                   "How `bout at night?" the quizzing went on, "has
anything happened while you were sleeping?"
                   "Sometimes," the boy said, reddening.
                   "How recently?" Ben asked.
                   "A week, I guess," Jeff said.
                   "The reason I asked," the man explained, "is that you're
probably really extra ready to go all the way, so, if we want it to last at
least a little longer, we should sit down and keep our hands to ourselves
for a little while."
                   "Okay," Jeff agreed.
                   "Do you think you can handle being naked?" Ben asked,
"or should we wait?"
                   "I think so," the boy murmured, pulling down his
underpants, then standing in front of Ben, his mature penis jutting hugely
from his slim, boyish waist.  The tall, athletic adult also stripped, and
the two stood a foot apart, gazing down at each other, then sat, Jeff on
the left, side-by-side on the log bench, legs spread, knees touching.

                   "Don't they call jerking off masturbating?" the boy
asked.
                   "Yes," the young man said.
                   "Who taught you?" the child asked.
                   "A little boy I was baby-sitting for," Ben said.  "I was
your age, thirteen, and he was eight, but he'd gone to a progressive
daycare center after school, so he knew how to do it with older boys."
                   "Did he like it?" Jeff wondered.
                   "More than fudge with frosting," Ben said, "he was in
attack mode from the time his parents' car left the driveway.  In half an
hour he was out of his GI Joe suit and in the tub, with me in a facemask
doing underwater recon to see if I could find anything I could bring back
to the squad in the way of food, and that after cautioning me not to get
overexcited because things look one-third bigger underwater."
                   "I think I would have gotten overexcited spanking him,"
Jeff remarked.
                   "He was cute enough for it," the young man agreed, "but
when I reported back that there wasn't enough in the lake to feed an army,
he took me prisoner, so the shoe was on the other foot, discipline-wise."
                   "Did you baby-sit for him a lot?" Jeff asked.
                   "Constantly," the golfer replied, "we made our end run
by reading aloud to each other, and he improved so rapidly his mother
didn't ask and we didn't tell.  In fact, I half moved in with them, so once
in awhile we got to spend the whole night together."
                   "I don't think I'd like that," Jeff said.  "I mean,
maybe once, with Chucky, but somehow sleeping together for a whole night
with a guy just isn't my thing."
                   "Three times was enough, even with an eight year old,"
the older male expounded, "and one of us would usually end up on an air
mattress on the floor for part of the night, after the first night."
                   "Can it happen again and again?" the boy wanted to know.



                   I'm beginning to be tempted by the million word novel.
Has it ever been done?  I suppose the Waverly novels run to a higher
number, but many serials do.  Is this a serial?  In my opinion, a few
stitches here and there hold it together, allowing as how it's such finely
woven cloth.  If I was hooked up to the Net I'd try finding out how many
words there are in "And Ladies of the Club".  At a thousand pages, it would
be something like half a million words, so I don't think it's a contender.
I don't believe such a book could be printed.  Even with the smallest type,
it would be something you'd need a strap for, and it would have to be bound
with some kind of NASA adhesive.  I'm put in mind of one of my all-time
heroes, the Japanese man who learned pi to forty-thousand places to the
right of the decimal.  A connected million-word novel might, by at least a
generous soul here and there, be considered an equal achievement.  What
would be a bit of fun would be reversing it.  See if my Japanese hero could
write even a chapter of a reasonably good novel, and if I could learn pi to
twenty places in a year.  Let's hear it for the human mind.  The creative
versus the rote.  To what degree are they mutually exclusive?  To what
degree to they help or hinder each other.  Does the furious note taker ever
have time to think?  Can the brilliant dreamer conform to the meticulous
craft of laying down all-but perfect prose?  Can either handle the
eighteen-hour workdays?  And where does suffering come in?  If my
forty-thousand digit counterpart was dumped by his beloved, could his
prodigious mental energy be suddenly refocused.  If I'd had less than
hell's own hound bitch as a mother, might I not be working on pi, myself?
If Nabakov is any example, and I think he's far more than that, then
suffering and art can be proven concl