Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:10:20 -0600
From: Tom Emerson <tom@btl.net>
Subject: ONE FISH AT A TIME CHAPT. NINE - ELEVEN

 ONE FISH AT A TIME

 CHAPT. NINE - ELEVEN


 CHAPTER NINE


                   Rob Lester put down the script.  "It has an
Intermission," he said.

                   ZOOM IN.  DOLLY SLOWLY, LEFT TO RIGHT.  SERIES OF SHOTS.
SOUND UP FOR WHISPERS.  CLOSE-UP OF NANCY'S TEARS.  Any tensions on the set
had eased dramatically in the last hours.  The Communists had wrecked half
the globe with solidarity.  It was time to fight back.  A handful of Anglo
and associated minds against that village bully scut?  Where was the
challenge?  Just stick together, hang in there, get more episodes in the
can, and act globally.  No one else was.  Where was the challenge?  Hey,
they were fat, dumb, and happy at home.  Where was the challenge?  Breaking
for a meal before Rob began his second act?  There was a challenge.


                   We'll break with the cast and crew.  One ludicrously
minor tidbit I keep forgetting to include is a small world's best, unless
you roll tortillas.  Then you will find an Ovaltine jar, the one that's
seven inches tall, or any like wide-mouthed, round jar, is the perfect
rolling pin.  Insert four fingers of your left hand, assuming you're right
handed, into the opening.  Perfect.  And here's another of perhaps wider
interest.  The world's best ice system for the home refrigerator.  Use
plastic non-dairy creamer containers (one pound or larger), the one's which
are slightly oblong.  Fill them one-half to one-third full, and lie them
flat on the lower shelf of the freezer.  The caps are watertight without
the little seal (which would tend to stick to the ice), and open easily if
you hold them under running water for a few seconds.  Pour in water or
other liquid.  Smack the bottle with your fist, breaking the layer of ice
on the side of the container.  Shake.  It's as presto as it gets.  Kill
children who are too lazy to refill the bottles before replacing them (four
fit, side-by-side, on the bottom of my small freezer, bottles, not dead
children).

                   Is seven lucky in gambling?  How would I know?  Seems to
be a lucky number for me as far as writing goes.  Just passing 120,000
words on my seventh novel.  I was thinking about same-old-same-old earlier;
nearly identical characters, set-piece scenes.  Actually, as much as
thinking about it, I was trying to rationalize it.  I did come up with
something.  The opening vignettes on "Law and Order".  Nearly identical,
down to Lenny's acerbic observations.  Any questions?  Perhaps Mr. Holmes
of London could solve the mystery of why it works.

                   The Good Ship Homemaker docks tomorrow, the long-awaited
eighteenth.  From three weeks out I nailed it to the dollar, to the
tortilla, to the tea bag, and there's even a little fluid left in the
lighter.  If you think a million dollars is any kind of cure-all, try
schooling and feeding nine people on the dividends.  For example, the
biggest purchase on the horizon at this point is a pressure cooker.  I'll
have to wait until the January quarterly to replace my camera, and the only
other thing on my dream list is a debit card so I can, assuming I get back
on the telephone line, subscribe to some of the more explicit porn sights.
Professional curiosity.  Actually, next year should be fairly affluent as
I've been bombarded during the last half of '02 with one-time expenses
related to moving and keeping Daisy's gang off the streets.

                   Almost slept with Samantha this Sunday afternoon.  She
zees out with the best of them, but I don't have that child's ability to go
out like a light at the sight of a pillow.  We spent two hours in bed
together, and it was a close thing, but no, always there's the next line
and the forever clicking keys.  She'll make the most perfect freaking wife,
in no small part because I write faster than she can read, so no snooping
over my shoulder.

                   No sign of Delton for the last two days.  I could kill
Malcolm for his callous smallness in tormenting a boy who obviously had
enough on his plate.  In the meantime, Delton's probably been playing
football with his buddies.  I tend to be a worry wart and mother hen.

                   I want to try oatmeal tortillas.  When we used to summer
on Cape Cod, there was a bakery in Orleans that made the most amazing
oatmeal bread.  Where ordinarily we'd have a loaf or two of Pepperidge Farm
(for about twenty of us), we'd go through six loaves of oatmeal bread every
Sunday, on top of some giant ham or roast.  It may be the single best
flavor experience, dumb expression, of my life.  If it succeeds even by
twenty percent I foresee a future kneading and rolling two or three hours a
day, instead of just one.

                   It's finally getting cool.  Never did, last year.
Generally, we have one week of winter a year, with winter defined as
overnight lows in the range of sixty degrees (I believe the record low on
the coast is fifty-six), and highs around seventy.  Since no houses here
have any kind of heat, that's not quite the cake walk it might seem.  The
cats are all sleeping curled in the classic ball where usually they loll
about stretched out like South Beach showboats.  Regrettably, I've trained
them to definitely stay off the bed, as they make hot company three hundred
sixty days a year.  I've had a couple of odd experiences with the cold.
The day I moved from Belize to Torreon, Mexico, was the coldest day in
their history, and all the water pipes leading from the sidewalks into the
homes were cracked open.  The day I left Los Angeles was the coldest in its
history, and there was light snow in El Monte.  I got a hint I was a writer
my first winter in Torreon, as it was well under fifty, for days, and I'd
work in sweaters and a coat until my fingers wouldn't function on the
typewriter, then I'd take a shower, and go for another hour.  If it sounds
like I haven't paid my dues in the artic survival department, guess again.
We had a cabin in Vermont and used to visit for a week or more at
Christmas.  One fireplace.  Why anyone worships anything in a frigid land
utterly escapes me.  Even my illustrious ancestor, one of the most vivid
life enthusiasts on record, muses on death being a release from being
everlastingly c-o-l-d.  (As a pornographer, I may face the opposite
extremity, deathwise, but I strongly doubt it.)  So, wishing this had been
a fireside chat, we return to the Caribbean.

                   "It would be pretty funny," Rick Schroeder said, "if
they investigated you for child assault.  On the one hand, they'd have your
manuscript, which would seem to be self-evident, but, on the other hand,
how would you have had time to swat a fly and turn out an epic on a limited
number of four-hour flights?"
                   "Don't forget how late we were on that first flight,"
Nancy Schroeder said.
                   "That's what will save him," Rick said, "terrific
inspiration leads to terrific productivity, case dismissed."
                   "It's fun to write long," Rob said, "because at some
point you get completely lost in your story.  There's some kid trying to
manhandle six completely critical levers, and steer, and get the gear and
flaps either up or down, as the case may be, and switch tanks enroute, and
maintain radio contact, and relay messages from other traffic, and steer
around thunderstorms, and it all means nothing compared to thinking up some
dramatic twist or turn."
                   "Kids ride bicycles in city traffic," Nancy observed,
perhaps a trifle archly.  Internally, she was thrilled to have a husband
she could rag on just the weeist bit.  It made her feel very grown up.
[Author's note: where I live, kids ride bicycles, without brakes, bells, or
lights in Third World city traffic.]  Rick laughed at the timely point, and
Rob unfolded his keyboard.  "If we ever have a real fight, you're going to
need a pair of stenographers," the girl sighed, secretly thrilled at being
taken down verbatim for use sooner than later in some script or the other
guaranteeing her immortality.  He was just right for a husband as Rick was
just right for a big brother.  There was so much to look forward to when a
girl was eight years old, plus, she had a past.

                   Allen Rigby joined them at the table.  Anything can
happen while working on location; weather, transport problems, illness of
cast or crew, inventory lapses, and a long list of sundry mishaps and
misfortunes.  The lead writer turning up with a freaking epic had never
been on any list before, but the director, mindful that Orson Wells had
wasted millions in Rio, and come back with not ten minutes of coherent
film, because he lacked a script, rode gracefully with the interruption,
and simply assigned the equipment to the assistants, even to letting them
dope out their own storyboard.  That he'd managed this with a few whispered
phone calls, as he listened with the others, said reams about his skill as
a director.  On top of this, he'd managed to fix a lipstick camera to a
lure, obtaining a wild image of a charging marlin, and rig a camera to the
nose of an underwater rocket that porpoised and leaped violently, much as
did a hooked gamefish.

                   They were drawing high cards.  As predicted, the
technical virtuosity of the show earned it an extreme and universal
standing.  They came for the fish and stayed for the gently etched
carnality of a handsome young man and his rapacious doll of a blond-haired,
blue eyed sister.  Shots of them baiting hooks together lingered those
extra few meaningful beats; what they carved from wet beach sand, in lieu
of castles, rattled cages from coast to coast, and tore the roof off their
ratings.  In once scene, a one shot interviewing a boat manufacturer, the
brother and sister disappeared into a palapa in the near background, she
wearing a blue bikini, and emerged, minutes later, with Nancy wearing a
yellow suit.  Twice the storyline had Rick finding the little girl's bikini
top marking a trail into the bush, and once they'd gotten away with her
finding his trunks.  "We sometimes find our affection endures past sunset,"
Rick said to one interviewer, and it became the buzz heard `round the
world, obviously, overnight.

                   Their timing was, if largely accidental, nonetheless
superb.  The very sudden and very sobering end to many decades of vaulting
progress on dozens of fronts yielded an audience ravagely thirsty for fresh
ideas and scapes.  While the fish were covered, episode by episode, one at
a time, the broader message was more like a canister of grape shot, every
show generously seeded with this look and that glance, brother to sister,
male to female, this thigh, that groin, this nap together in a swaying
hammock, that late night snack of oysters on the half shell.  How far could
they go?  One scene had Rick applying sunscreen to Nancy.  She guides his
hand low on her belly, and her line reads, "Spread some underneath for
later."  New York went into a frenzy over it.  The Net sizzled.  The line
stayed put, except as she walked off, she lightened the innuendo by calling
"Alligator" over her shoulder.

                   The mail was on the scale of everything else.  Letters
from kids whose lives had been utterly changed by the tolerant message,
thirty positive to every one accusing the show of giving someone Ideas.
Hundred of children a week were empowered to write of intolerable
pre-existing relationships, and the assistants were developing a spin-off
to deal with those issues, in general, with sample case histories, no
punches pulled (there was often little that could be done as the children
never wanted their parent or sibling to go to jail).

                   The politicians were craven.  Formal easing of
strictures threatened the affluence of the trial lawyers who made up the
legislatures, so the effect was more grass roots in demoralizing
investigators and enforcement officials.  More tolerance became the law of
the day, if de facto; more latitude was allowed, more attention paid, court
by court, to the positive side of questionable relationships.  And that was
all they asked.  No wholesale change, no dramatic legal turnaround, but
more live and let live; stricter adherence to not asking and not telling,
more perspective in analyzing, if not reporting, cases of abnormal
adult/child situations.  "We drive on pneumatic tires, they pop, and we
drive on pneumatic tires," was one of Rick's stellar long balls, delivered
on Larry King.  King (of the Chair) didn't get it, duh'uh, but the audience
did, loud and clear.

                   Tensions had risen.  "How can all of us be so completely
right," was the basic theme, white man's guilt being what it is.  Rick had
wondered, himself, but was slowly coming to the opinion that the question
was essentially baseless, simply because the country was completely wrong,
and, if that was true, it was patently evident that they must, improbable
as it seemed, all be right.  In any event, a hundred pages of Rob's script
had put the beast to bed.  If millions had thought a major raving luno like
cruddy, Jewish Marx was the living end, why not a handsome, intelligent,
personable star, and his kid sis?

                   Were there skeptics?  It wouldn't take much of a grasp
of the obvious to allow there were.  "According to you," one letter read,
"children should be touched and not seen or heard."  Myopic.  What were
they going to say next?  That they should be tasted and not touched?  And
of course, weirdoes wrote.  "Little titties went to waste, grew to bosoms
without a taste, then came Rick and those less chaste, so hurry, Daddy,
make thee haste."  There was more, but this is my book.  The clever and
witty have the tools to write their own, so let them do so.


 TEMP. END OF FILE - NOV. `02

                   A real Stooges day, and I got to play all three.  I can
convert files and post them, but it does take concentration.  So the loot
arrived, and a massive buying binge ensued, then Louise came up to cook,
and I had the taxi laid on for four p.m., and I was trying to get
everything into Plain Text, keeping chapters in order, because I lost one,
once, and three people arrived, and my glasses fell off and broke, and the
taxi, in classic Belezian style, arrive thirty-two minutes early and I gave
up.  I think Cindy gets a nod elsewhere, but she's the one who helped
Delton, so when in central Dangriga order a won ton soup at the Starlight.
She earned a ten dollar tip, so ha-ha Malcolm.  It's interesting having to
deal with someone who pisses you off.  At the moment, he's my only source
of uploading, and, as he has the most museum quality dirty house standing,
it is a bit of a trip.  I was at his place once when a package arrived.  I
went into the kitchen to find something to break the tape.  There was not
one single thing that wasn't almost weird it was so dirty.  Finally I found
a knife.  "Ah-ha, this will work," I said to myself, only to find it was
covered with butter.  Anyhow, it's interesting to go flat out in
conventional circles (buying Samantha a cute skirt and blouse) for a
change.  Luckily I woke at four and had three thousand word completed
before I went -- oddly, and this is what they call it "outta town".
Wouldn't you suppose that would mean out of town?  Not in Dangriga, it
means one is going to the center -- so a few things rolled off my back.

                   So, as far as Malcolm goes, to pick up that thread, the
situation is an interesting commentary on being an artist.  Under most any
other circumstances, I'd dress him down in as public a venue as I could
find.  My mother taught me how to do this when I was three, and it's not an
experience anyone has undergone twice.  But, as mentioned, he's my only
uplink source at the moment, and my readers come first.  (second, third),
in fact, so close behind my ego, which they toy with by mail, that it's
hard to tell who's in the real first place at any given moment.  It's a
dichotomy I'll be happy to have over, when my phone line gets connected.
If you're wondering how we're whatever we are, in the first place, he
attended fine schools in London and worked for Rothschild's for sixteen
years, making him an interesting source of commentary on many subjects.  He
helped Paco and a number of others in his early years here, and today he
transcribes classical music for the Web, a laborious process than puts him
in my own highly rarified league as a Net contributor.

                   They sell a fan here that says Yamaha on it; a rugged
looking unit with a big motor and metal blades, for twenty three
U.S. dollars.  It would seem to me if you stole it off a truck a mile out
of town, you'd want more than that for it.  Looked for an Eminem disc in
several shops.  Everything is bootleg.  I don't think there's a single
brand name CD, other than perhaps local artists, in a thousand.  This is a
complex issue, because the bootleg material vastly hypes the market, is, in
effect, no different than free play on the radio, and the legitimate
partners reap a substantial, if not a complete reward.  Brand names CDs
would sell her for about fifty dollars in the local currency.  Sales would
be very slow, probably to the point of killing the market, altogether.
This, of course, is a refrain on my beloved Napster, only it provided MP3
quality, nothing to write home about on a larger sound system.  What it
also did was provide fifty million listeners for every artist on the site.
My terrific fear for the U.S. is the number of giant Iridium, Enron,
WorldCom that represent absolute stupidity by credentialled experts.  On a
small scale, they ruin children with behavioral science, on a larger scale
they are more than capable of putting U.S.A., Inc., flat out of business.
Liberals are emblemized by the nutrition labels on silly little food
products; labels which often have only the number zero.  Liberals are
emblemized by huge billions wasted on totally funky security regimens.
They are emblemized by my brother with three out of three on Ritalin for
years.  By nuclear waste, here, there, and everywhere, because clever talk,
and a few lurid photos of shadows on the streets of Hiroshima, blocks
everyone's back yard.  If they are bound and determined to give me the
amazing gift of dying at the end of civilization, I'll accept with thanks.
If you have other ideas about the future, you'd better get an Emersonian
bandwagon going, and I don't mean in the year 2525.

                   My Stooges day even included a real pressure cooker.
That's as close to magic as I ever want to get.  In the midst of trying to
convert files, write David a not, and attach everything and Send it, I
found Queenie (Louise) boiling big, uncut potatoes in one pot, and big
tails in another.  I pitched a fit, then the taxi arrived, then Sim, then
my glasses broke, and, when all was said and done, we dumped the potatoes,
after slicing them in quarters, and the pig tails, into the cooker, and, by
the time I'd finished explaining to her how I thought it worked, they were
done.  Like less than ten minutes.  The red kidney beans which are the
national staple seem to take about two hours in a regular pot, so I hope
that will be the big improvement.  Poor Samantha, I didn't buy her a single
macaroni and cheese dinner.  I repeat what I said earlier about feeding
nine.  You gotta be a freakin' millionaire.  This is accurate, too.  If you
live on dividends, you reinvest a quarter.  That leaves, after taxes, about
twenty five thousand a year, I kid you not.
                   Forgot to ask Malcolm if there's any news.  I have an
obvious allergy to hearing anything more about Israel, other than the
president has decided to do his duty and defend his people, and the words
on a piece paper he swore to protect and preserve, and blow the place, and
everything around it, absolutely and utterly off the piece of paper called
the map.  Fragile economies can't endure troublesome influences, and the
American economy is as overspent and fragile as an egg.  You can skip this,
and get back to the story by scrolling down to the column of asterisks.
The solutions are, in part, eighty-sixing our old folk and using the
resources to bring half a billion Chinese, East Indian, Mexican, and
carefully selected other groups to the North American Continent.  These
immigrants come under para military conditions, convert scrub forest to
family farms, rebuild urban areas while rolling back the suburbs, and
generally clean the place up, while fitting into mainstream society at a
modest rate of around three percent a year.  Tent cities, kubutz paradigm,
not quite slavery, but the next thing to it.  Seventy percent of malls
should be converted to helpage centers, and, brother, that's it.  The
military should be revamped from the ground up.  Hail Caesar, but they
buried him in the end, and we can bury much of the ludicrous military
hashmatash along with its inventor.  The Emersonian military is "Spad"
based.  This was the nickname for the Douglas A1A Skyraider, hands-down,
the greatest war machine of all time.  It can loiter eight hours at a
stretch, and five hundred of them dropping stun grenades inside of five
minutes is the kind of message that gets through to the camelly inclined,
even over DVD Looney Tunes.  Seventy percent of missions should be flown by
enlisted personnel.  The air groups can train on fire spotting and
fighting, and be used to drop aid canisters once the tornado is a mile or
two away.  Imagine having fifty planes looking for your lost child, and you
begin to get the picture.  It is my belief, based on moderate to
substantial study and experience, that a Spad could carry four under-wing
troops in sophisticated pods, which would also serve them on the ground as
sleds and defensive shells.  (Ventilation and a means to be airsick are
priorities.)

                   "The Pirates of Rickety Pier" goes on some two hundred
manuscript pages on variants, and always emphasizes these are twenty year
changes, other, that is, than deporting Middle Easterners of all stripes
and colors, and keeping an angry eye on Easter Europeans or any other
groups lacking the god-given good sense to avoid toying with choleric
Yankees.  We have an extremely nice way of life, at it's middle to best,
and there is no reason on earth we should copy any other culture from
soccer to fing suey, or however you spell it.  Annexing to the border of
Columbia, including the Caribbean, are part of the Emersonian plan.  I'd
suggest one should live in it for ten years and put six or eight kids
through school before doubting the existing hodgepodge of democratic gun
slinging and poltroons on parade is most eminently replaceable, and you
give me young Mr. Marshall Maddox, and we'll parade our way to Tierra del
Fucking Fuego in half of twenty years.

                   What always freaks me out about the list is how short it
is.  Yes, the devil's in the details, try publishing a million words in two
years, as well as converting files and not going broke from wasting
propane, and some days the details don't need any help from down under.
The point is, we have the `details', in that sense, already, and the forces
of fanaticism are ample stand-ins for anything any church sells
prophylactics for.  I like including a sentence like that in a million
words to give any moron fool enough to criticize me at least a BB,
something to mark his literary grave.  Details aside, we do the immigrants,
the malls, the military, and the annexation, that's got to be good for
twenty years.  The casualties will be unparallel in human history, by two
or three times, but these are obvious, in any event, and are simply
threatening to take all with them.  Full stop.

                   And don't let the writing fool you.  I just practiced
harder than anyone else, drew some exceeding lucky cards to go along with
the jokers, and made it all the way.  That doesn't mean anything about the
soundness of this program or that scheme.  You have to make those
decisions.  My party is "The Projects Party."  It is headed by an absolute
monarch with a twenty year contract, no terms nor conditions.  The platform
is what's important, straightening out the pretzel, and who pushes the
buttons and pulls the levers is so important, it has to be left up to
number one, so there's no room for anyone else.  These are the real things.
My histrionics must be reviewed in light of what chance you want for
yourself, small, that's me, or, none.  Any review along the lines suggested
brings up a real puzzlement.  Yes, the artist thing is understood, the
work, the suffering, pretty typical stuff, it's doing massive amounts that
counts, but, on top of this, there is the royalty thing; the heritage going
directly to the heart and soul of the Revolution, with sidebars that
include The Bell System, Governors Winslow and Bradford of the "Mayflower",
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, whom my great grandfather called
Papa, The Burlington Route, Naushon and the Elizabeth Islands lying between
Newport and Martha's Vinyard, right on down, in case you've had enough, to
American Standard.  So gilt, it has no edges.  Me.  Family.  Pedigree that
exceeds Prince Charles', outright, to say nothing of my country being
bigger than his.

                   So, why pornography?  Because it gets read.  Fustigating
little books on this and that get read by the same people who ran Iridium.
There are more of you out there, I mean more types.  It's the ultimate
dream of the artist: to communicate, individually; to have no props or
mechanisms, just god's word in your ear.  Then, once you've been taught to
act sensibly, and obey, you affect the change and I keep turning out my
savagely popular stories.  Do the stories themselves make a point?  You do
everything else, my way, and we'll try it.  I write the way I do to be
read, and, if you don't like it, the communication is private, one-on-one
more than any other writer, and you can ignore it without anyone taking you
for a fool, and go hunting for that column of asterisks.

                   I'm smoking very little.  A pack last almost two days.
For some reason I like days all torn to pieces, and between Jose Schmosey,
Jessica and the flies, Linden and the knife, Samantha and the necklace, and
Queenie and her `fix', I get them.  Solving half a dozen little problems,
for example, fixing the pressure cooker and two pairs of glasses with Krazy
Glue, and logging ten thousand words really helps when it comes to falling
asleep.  Maybe I don't smoke because I don't have time.  Nah, I spend
twenty hours in bed, or, on the bed, anyway, so there's plenty of time to
puff away; it must be some manifestation of inner contentment; knowing I've
done my absolute best.  For a Yankee, that's well, indeed, and that helps.

                   If I re-read this, I'd be confused by something.  The
call for a new political monopoly, and the distance of the writer, who
offers no avenue of action.  I'd remind readers of the twenty year time
span we're talking about in most aspects of weeding and replanting the
garden.  This is, to me, the grass roots stage; no train and bunting, a
million words.  The rest will shape itself, over time, and remember, the
gift of dying at the end of times is not mystical abstraction.  You have it
made, whichever way you go, if that's the way you want to look at it.
Certainly I do, though my pair of kamikaze taxi drivers today did cause me
to review certain question related to timing.

                   If I could re-write everything, would there be any
changes?  Just comments made on fighting in Afghanistan.  History intruded,
and I found myself picturing an actual war in hideous terrain (no water)
and in equally hideous weather for long periods of time.  Wind.  Now
there's an enemy.  Modern tactics have us firing from behind bulletproof
techno shields, and it takes getting used to.  It may not be romantic to
put one's life behind one's belief, and that's what the other morons are
doing, but, still, to not enter the field at all, in this type of military
event, does seem cowardly.  How can we be too important to die for
anything?  Something to ponder on your next visit to Starbuck's.  (You
know, I've never even seen one except on television.  I was assistant to
the manager of a coffee company once, and I find myself wondering how the
rarest of the fine beans end up on the mass market.  Maybe it's just the
way I am.  The local shops stock discount brands, and I've come to like
them, though I'll have to admit being sorely tempted by a genuine Kraft
macaroni and cheese dinner, price be damned.  Then I remembered Queenie
asking for a fix, and decided to let sleeping dogs lie.  I'll just break
out of the parenthesis (singular), because Samantha shopped with me, what
an angel.  She's so completely un-Lolita in public.  Once every few months
we appear as a couple, going our separate ways after an hour at the most.

                   I have a new addition to my dream decorating scheme.
(Don't get suspicious, I have a girlfriend.)  The basic scheme is to hang
clothes all around the walls, and the addendum is to stack groceries along
the baseboards.  It's a cool effect and so massively convenient it blows
the mind.  A major pet peeve of mine is kitchen cabinets.  Every time you
want something you have to open the door, often using both hands, and then
re-open and close the door when you put it back.  Behind the doors, in the
dark, is a gallery of beautifully designed packaging.  Good kitchens have
shelves, half-inch stock because three-quarter-inch looks gommy, and not a
door, any, freaking, where.  Both my grandmothers' kitchens were in this
style, extremely attractive and fun to work in.  They did keep the good
(read spectacular, we were in the business) China behind thin-glassed,
mullioned cabinet doors that were works of art, in themselves, and perhaps
kept the dust off, if there was any dust at the center of all those acres
of grass.  On home improvement shows, I see people spending five thousand
dollars just to get their cabinets re-faced.  A new set would cost double
that.  Half inch distressed pine with Minwax Early American, steel wooled
and waxed.  That's a kitchen shelf.

                   I should enter a caveat into the record.  I was just
kidding about visiting Dangriga.  Tomorrow, and I'm not sure of this, is
the bicentennial of the town's founding by the Garafuna.  I was in town for
the parade.  Don't bestir yourself.  Thousands of wrappers and bottles,
everywhere; hundred of pounds of debris piled between the buildings.  It is
so trashy, it's unbelievable.  I wonder why the attraction; why the only
place I would have been tempted to settle in Los Angeles would have been
close to the Watts Towers, in as Sanford a neighborhood as I could find.
On the other hand, I get cold, as in cold, chills when I see the villages
and towns on DWTV, my tribal stomping grounds.  I grew up in stupendous
houses, one after the other, and have lived in equally fine, though
quantumly more modest, surroundings, and I like the hillbilly way.  The
glory of my former house in Dangriga was a landfill across the street.  I
could pitch the trash off the front porch, and, along with not setting foot
inside any kind of shop for five years, I count that as a memorable
blessing.  Note: in the tropics, a landfill becomes a wilderness in a
weekend, which had its down side when two of my cats were eaten by a junk
yard boa.  I've told the story of the boys selling the snake for
thirty-five dollars, including the cats, elsewhere.

                   Visit at your own risk.  Belize is magnificently
protected by its dangerous, ugly, smelly principal city, Dangriga, by a ton
of litter to the mile. There is such a small white colony here, I see the
same faces all the time.  For an artist, it simply can't be beat. It's a
crummy place to visit, but I love to live here.  Of course I half enjoy
cleaning up for the cats, so, as I said, it may just be me.  Royalty is
famous for loving the gist of things, real royalty.

                   No toilet paper.  I've gone on strike.  The Belezian
standard for measuring how much to use is twice one's height, plus once
around the bathroom.  Linden and Melissa went through, I swear, three rolls
in five days.  No more.  I protest.  One piece of rag and a handy sink to
rinse it.  Dilution is the solution to pollution.  In fact, while we're on
the subject, America's bath waste is astronomical.  I drove an L.A. bus for
three years.  No one ever smelled bad in body or breath, with one
exception, and surely not all of them bathed and powdered every livelong
day.  These are the Lever legends, and the environmental cost, alone,
stagers the imagination.  You hardly need to bathe, and, beyond maintaining
a low-key, nominal appearance, hardly need to minister to yourself.  Just
the fact that Larry King spends an hour a day in a beautician's chair
should be enough to make you back off with the slick willy stuff.  Don't
save a tree, they obstruct the view, save a bar of soap and a gallon of hot
water, and what goes for the persona humana goes for the laundry, as well..

                   A comic image occurs to me.  An urban fussbudget type,
with Louise.  Here is the hands-down sexiest and most beautiful girl on the
planet, with a melting gentle grace and natural charm, and her housekeeping
priorities are those of a cave of jackals.  As I said, comic.  Me?  I take
away her toilet paper.

                   I do fault myself in one way, and that is I tend to use
the same examples in various manuscripts.  The nuclear waste issue, and the
dormant Lilco plant crop up repeatedly, as does Iridium.  Of course,
obesity is the driving drum, and I guess that's the point.  I do write like
Mozart; themes and variations; but hard back to the themes, again and
again.  It creates a rolling affect intended to hypnotize, not to
bamboozle, but to imbue; to set as certain in your head that these few
issues are all that can be addressed, even in the context of an epic novel.
A for-hire novelist would set minions garnering more examples of liberal
malfeasance, incompetence, and grinding, relentless, stupidity.  Larding
the manuscript with them would just create confusion.  Like James Burke.
Even though "Connections" is a great documentary series, after ten minutes
you can't remember a single link, because you are given so much chain.
While I have the virtuosity of Mozart, I have the repertoire of John
Phillips Sousa, and that's a piece of luck for you.  Yes, there is a place
for studied, scholarly, in depth analysis, and for those with the capacity
for it, but there has to be more, which means there must be less.  More you
remember, less you forget.  I hope that clears up the point.

                   An oddity to driving the bus, as I just mentioned.  You
undoubtedly picture me as an exotic recluse, but if you put my picture in
the paper, tens of thousand of residents of South Central, and Los Angeles,
in general, would take the paper to the fence and say to their neighbor,
"Remember him?"  Probably hundreds of thousands, over three years with lots
of overtime.  So much for exotic.

                   Well, that's six thousand since getting home with the
groceries, so it might be an idea to do some kneading and try out the
oatmeal.  I'll see you folks in the morning.

                   The porn thing.  Talk about an imperative for
rationalizing.  In the first place, I blame Anne, while acknowledging that
it would have taken five unproductive years to mature as a saleable writer,
and that I never -- no way -- would have had the opportunity to experience
the decades long developmental process required of my present stature.
Publishing is important.  Reader mail is important.  The alternative sites
permit this, is spades, as it turns out, while New York searches the
typescript for the tiniest blob or plunkett they don't like, and sends
another slip.  I learned as much about writing from alternative writers as
I did anywhere.  The Web is my life, so contributing, in any way, is an
imperative.  There are loftier excuses.  If I can teach people to be much
better people toward their children, maybe a few will end up in fantasy
situations like the thousands of other Nifty writers, and, if they don't,
they'll be better for the effort.  Preaching reading through good writing
is another driving motive.  You are, categorically, no metaphysics
involved, what you read.  If Anne had been a reader, she'd be beside me in
this bed.  Reading gives you depth; what the clerics call soul, not in a
small part because, as in baseball and other sports (bullfighting comes to
mind), you have to endure hours of boredom for moments of engagement.  (Of
course I'm talking of other writers.)  Also there's simply reading the
alternative sites; the hundreds of stories that provide glimpses into my
subjects' lives, erotic content notwithstanding.  There is the down side of
possibly acting as a catalyst for bad relationships and experiences.  To be
frank about it, if I can get ten fathers to read avidly to their kids, I'll
live with the one who sneaks something he might otherwise not have.  It's
that important.  Huge numbers of horrible things happen to low-brow people,
and there is but one answer.  Those left in the dark will probably suffer,
anyway, so leaving less in the dark is what it's all about.

                   Cold, windy Garifuna Settlement Day.  Serves them right.
This town is the biggest freaking mess I ever did see.  Hopkins, the beach
town to the south is even worse.  I suggested they put up a sign reading
The Town that Pride Forgot.  Dangriga just wasted a fortune on installing
some kind of storm sewer engineering, and installing sidewalks, and didn't
budget ten cents for cleaning up afterwards.  The upside is that if you
wander the back streets you do see many examples of almost shockingly
quaint Caribbean yards, homes, and gardens.  The best of these, with raked
sand and banana trees, are, as far as I know, the highest estate
obtainable, and I grew up on the Elizabeth Islands.

                   I haven't written a long essay in awhile.  These are the
classic busman's holiday, only writing is harder than driving a bus, so
they also stand as training exercises.  Reading back, looking for those
ever lurking typos and glitches I have to say I see a new silkiness to my
work, a more complex dance executed more perfectly.  As teaching aids, I've
deliberately left in a couple of inconsistencies.  One I forget,
undoubtedly, you've already found it, and the other is the Ma and Pa Kettle
opening, with the characters developing along a more literate line.  The
ultimate thrill in writing is to publish as you go; lock in your motif and
challenge yourself to live with it.  You do this by front-loading your
characters, giving them a small number of facets, then reprising one or two
(no more, or they'll get on to you) a hundred or so pages down the line.
It takes a lot of skill, but is a giant time saver if you can pull it off,
because the alternative is to go all the way back, give your character such
and such a facet, make appropriate changes in his or her various
appearances, then appear to use it again in the manner of Dickens and other
great novelists.  Then there's the editing thing.  Specifically, working
without one.  That's as bareback as it gets: publishing as you go, without
editorial input, or anyone to polish your work.  It would seem impossible,
and always does, but it happens.

                   A couple more devil's advocate items cropped up
overnight.  Giving kids adult characteristics, is one.  As I've said,
elsewhere, this is not fantastic; well read and read-to kids of five and
six and seven can be enormously precocious in all ways from arch political
commentary to elemental truths on any subject you can name.  I remember
once a ten year old watching me struggle with a Johnson outboard.  "Easy
for broke," he said, summing up the reasons most fishermen use Yamahas and
Mariners.  (They're not, actually; with a modicum of maintenance they work
beautifully; it's just that they're not perhaps quite as well designed for
the rigors of tropic salt water use by very ham-handed fishermen.).  Watch
a nine year old girl match Isaac Stern, phrase for phrase, and write you
own essay on age and awareness, keeping in mind you can stunt a nineteen
year old down to the age of nine without even trying.  I can't remember
what the other flaw is, but I am reminded of a reoccurring them on C-SPAN
and The History Channel.  When they present a biography their subject's
faults are invariably described as "all too human."  Thanks, C-SPAN.  Oh, I
remember Flaw II.  A superficiality in dealing with, say, the military.
Kings must be superficial.  I could spend a year studying, just to use the
more exotic features of my word processor.  Novelists, ditto.  A
look-what-I-know, lingo style can kill a story faster than fast.  On the
other hand, Fidel, my persistent catamite dropped by this evening and we
jerked off together in the bathroom, with the seventeen year old cumming
heavily all over me, so it's good to know some things, at the expert level,
such as the dividends of a thirty-two inch waist when one reaches his
fifties.

                   In the end, there's nothing else TO write about.  What
would you suggest?  We live in a time of stories more than twice told.
Rambo has survived hundreds of bullets fired at close range by military
experts, how would you go about topping that?  Space travelers survive
hundreds of Gs by tensing in their seats; would a thousand Gs be more
dramatic?  Hurricanes have been done, submarines have been done, air
emergencies have been done, and "The Towering Inferno" has been done to
death.  We've been back to the future, brilliantly, and dazzled by the
nonsense of Camp Chipawa.  Ace Ventura has solved crimes we didn't even
know existed.  William H. Macy has freaked out in "Fargo", we've been on
vacation, and the very gods have been brilliantly wrought as crazy.  The
last national figure to stir anything beyond Charles Osgood's hideous
poetry was Richard Nixon, who inspired an opera..  Marshall Maddox resorts
to Tipper Gore, and that's the name of that tune.

                   The diet continues, exchanging onion burritos for
macaroni and cheese.  I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that a flour
tortilla, fresh off the griddle, is as good a bread product as there is.
My mother made superb bread, more out of a class distaste for Wonder Bread,
which I love, than to do us any favors.  Norgio's bakery in Orleans was
good on everything, and out of this world on oatmeal bread.  New York pizza
lives up to its reputation, and Subway does have fresh rolls.  Against
these, the tortilla still holds its own, and nothing could be simpler,
cheaper, or more energy efficient to prepare.  Queenie says she just uses
flour, salt, and water; I use about five percent lard, baking powder, and
powdered chicken stock.  Butter the hot tortilla and spread on a sautéed
onion, and that's that.  Tomorrow I'm going to grate coconut for the rice,
a new local experience; plus, we've got more pig tail and plenty of onions
for the beans.  I strictly mean to put you lard-assed hammerheads on the
mother of all diets, eliminating well over ninety percent of idiotic food
choices.  Again, the gargantuan resources saved will go toward bringing in
the immigrants and accomplishing (some will want to read `executing') other
party projects.  There is no greater icon of liberalism than the
nutritional guidelines on the label of a four ounce bottle of soy sauce, as
the entire country blows up like a carny balloon.  I am not a liberal. You
will not eat.

                   Is there any good news?  Yeah, I'm a novelist.


                   "Tally ho, ho, ho," Ray whispered, quietly lowering
himself as he hissed to the others.  He looked about thirty, friendly,
tall, rugged and athletic, his legs lightly covered with burnished hair
matching his dirty-blond swimmer's cut.  She was two thick braids, same
color, a round, broad-browed, cheerful face and a long neck.  They paused
in plain sight, the ten year old girl pulling out a map.  "We turn here,"
she said, pointing to the trail that girdled the spies' hill.

                   "It's a good thing you have your uncle the cop to escort
you in a place like this," the handsome man said.
                   "It's away from everything, and you don't have to pay
any rent," the girl said, following her uncle as he threaded his way along
the overgrown pathway.  Pete, Sid and Ray silently de-camped, Pete leaving
his sketch book with the hidden backpack.  They gook a moment to spread bug
repellent, then the game was afoot.
                   "She's too old to play Froggy, "I'll bet," Ray said as
they began short cutting over the hill to the trail's end.
                   "As long as it leaves you in the mood to try on your
Tarzan suit, we'll be happy," Pete noted, speaking, he was pretty sure, for
Sid.  His friend nodded, and they made their way quietly over the hill,
hiding in the dense brush that surrounded the cul de sac.  The trail end
was formed by a fallen tree, mossy with age, and it was on this the couple
sat, facing the voyeurs.

                   "Okay, mysterious lady, and mistress of the map, we're
here," the man observed.
                   "Do you like it?" the girl asked.
                   "Yeah," the man said, "as a matter fact I do.  Linda
Lake, outback excursions a token away."
                   "Paul Bishop," the girl replied, laughing, "protector
and defender of life and limb."
                   "Paul Bishop," the man replied, "confused, but charmed,
and happy to be here."
                   "I know you must be," Linda replied, "confused, that,
is, and that may be just the tip of the iceberg."
                   "Why, honey?" the man asked.
                   "Because you may freak out totally when you find out,"
she replied, "but since Dad got shot, you're the man in my life, and this
has to do with your being a man and me being a girl."
                   "No confusion there," the uncle laughed, "you are a
girl, that I've noticed."
                   "The map is for a secret club," Linda said, "and no, we
don't sell dope, drink gin, shoplift or dance after dark with the
lettermen, but neither do we swap Barbie outfits and hold tea parties with
one-once cups, though, while we're on the subject, I do happen to have a
doll-size baby bottle in my purse."
                   "Never can tell when you'll need one of those," Paul
said.

                   "I may not need it," the girl said, "that's up to you.
It's part of the initiation ceremony for the club.  In fact, it's the only
ceremony, if you want to call it that, and it's optional, but I said I'd
try."

                   "Try what?" the man asked.
                   "First, I've got to explain," Linda said, "the girls in
the club, and there are some boys, too, but it's mostly girls, are some of
the best kids in school, okay?"

                   "Yes, honey," Paul said.
                   "They get good grades, mostly they hang at the library,
they do the newspaper, but, except for one, they're not cheerleaders or hot
tomatoes of any kind."
                   "Sounds like my kind of organization," the man said.

                   "It's double scary, you being a cop," Linda responded,
"because what the club does is illegal."
                   "Laws are made for bad people, hon," the officer said,
"and it's very rare good people get caught up in the system, which has been
known to wink and smile tolerantly."
                   "Good answer," the girl said.
                   "Maybe," Paul allowed, "but I don't know to what.  Are
you forging art or fencing jewels with the cookies?"
                   "Guess again," the girl giggled.
                   "Exotic animals," he tried, "smuggling them in from
darkest Africa.'
                   "Very, very close," the girl said, "because it's exotic
animals we deal in, exclusively."

                   "I thought I felt something slither over me last time I
spent the night with you guys," the man said.
                   "That's Mom's housekeeping, not the club," the girl
laughed.
                   "You're mom des okay," Paul responded.
                   "I know, but I liked the image," she said.
                   "And you had to blame somebody, right?"
                   "You make it sound like it bit you," Linda giggled.
                   "You mean it wasn't imaginary?" he said, checking
himself for bites.
                   "It was a week ago, the poison would have worked before
now," the girl intoned, nodding her head as girls her age will when they
are being very serious about something.  They laughed and she reached for
his hand.

                   "There are twenty-three girls in the club, and four
boys," the girl said, resuming a serious serious tone.  "Becky Nellis and
Audrey Chimonsky are my two best friends, and they both told me all the
other kids want us to join.  My dad and me, actually, but where he got shot
takes a long time to recover from, so you get to play the father role, if
you want to."
                   "My sister married a good man," Paul said, "I don't
think I'd be much of a stand-in."
                   "Actually, you both can be in it," the girl expounded,
"it's just that Dad will have to play a limited role, where you can take me
places and do stuff out of the house."
                   "Anytime, anywhere," the man said.
                   "I won't hold you to that," Linda responded, "not to
anything.  After you know, then you can make promises."
                   "Fair enough, if I don't die of curiosity," the man
said.
                   "Uncle Paul," the girl said, "the club is for girls and
boys who want to have mature relationships before most other kids do.  It's
for kids who earn special privileges by getting grades and contributing
behind the scenes, not for trendy stuff.  I guess you could say it's our
secret vengeance for being looked down on by the cooler sets, but that's a
byproduct.  Really, it's for girls who really love their dads or their big
brothers, and feel that since the law doesn't work very well in many facets
of life, it may not be working all that hot when it comes to telling dad's
how to love their little girls, or brothers, their kid sisters."

                   "Doesn't sound like an organization that's going to
wither for lack of interest." Paul observed.  Linda giggled happily and
squeezed his left hand with her right.
                   "Very mature, and very illegal." she whispered.
                   "Love?" he asked.
                   "How the girls express it," she replied.  "Fully,
trustingly, and not exclusively until they're old enough to make that kind
of decision, say sixty-something."
                   "I knew a happy couple in their forties, once," Paul
said, causing the pixie to shake with delight and stare up at him with her
big, blue eyes.  "I'll bet I know how they got that way, too," she replied.
                   "So it's a happy-marriage club?  There are so many books
on the market..."
                   "Stop it," she groaned, happily.
                   "Why?" he retorted, "aren't we having fun yet?"
                   "I'd have fun with you at Disneyland," Linda said,
displaying a class consciousness that might have startled some of her
friends.  But this was her uncle, and, next to her dad, her favorite
person, so she could dump on any institution she pleased.  Cutting
backhands would not be held against her, as long as she aimed her rapier at
deserving targets, and Mickey Mouse (registered character of a corporation
known at all levels for playing fast and loose with other peoples'
intellectual property while getting all frosty if anyone tampers with
theirs), alone, had dumbed down enough kids to populate half a nation.
Deserving target, and, if the nest of hyper schmoes wouldn't shake in their
boots over the opinion of a ten year old, one day might come a prince on a
charger and nail their hides to the wall on age descrimination, while
making up a set of laws relating to cultural debasement and promptly acting
as judge, jury and executioner.  This kind of thinking wasn't common to ten
year olds, their age descrimination was in another venue, and there were so
many varieties of debasement led by the McDonalds' Corporation, what
difference did one more make?  And that's the whole point.  Get them dumb
enough, and they wouldn't care, just shop, the minute they finished eating.

                   "You're not that cute," her uncle replied, pinching her
cheek.  Birds of a feather.

                   "Back to the club," Linda said, "it's very Puritanical
in a lot of ways; dressing conservatively, acting discretely, good manners;
they'd call us Prudes on Parade if only they knew."

                   "And they'd be wrong?" the young man asked.
                   "As wrong as a guy who buys a Ford," the child
responded..  Her uncle laughed.  She was a car nut and withering in her
commentary on a company that had used computers to whittle the last penny
of profit out of each sale, and overdone it to the extent they had to, at
one point, re-purchase eight thousand cars for total, unrepairable, engine
failure.  She sympathized, the company paid more in pensions than it did
for steel, but the business model bode ill for the man who owned one.

                   "So, what would a guy have to call you clubbers to be
right?" Paul asked.
                   "Not late to sinner," the cutie quipped.
                   "Illegal and sinful?" the uncle responded, "you must be
forging birth certificates for little leaguers.  Mocking fair play."
                   "Actually," the tightly woven little miss replied,
"we're putting together another season for the XFL."
                   "That would require love, and would be a sin," Paul
acknowledged.
                   "Good, then let's go home," the girl said.  Paul rose
from the mossy log, and, calling him an ox, the girl hauled him back to his
seat.

                   "You mean, there's more?" he asked in fake surprise.
                   "Than you can believe," Linda said.
                   "Starting with..."
                   "Sex," the girl replied.  "Uncle Paul, it's a sex club.
Dads and daughters; once in awhile, mothers and sons or daughters, big
brothers with little sisters; rarely little brothers with big sisters, and,
rarest of all, fathers and sons, but not rare at all, guess."

                   "You've pinned me in a corner, there, hon, " Paul mused,
"so I guess I'd best throw in the towel and cry uncle."
                   "I'm so glad you agree," the pixie piped.
                   "So you want me to square this with your mom, is that
what this is all about?"
                   "It's all about you and me, and you efforts to deem it
otherwise are getting lamer by the minute," Linda said.
                   "You mean you want me to find you a book or something?"
The wasn't as offhand as might be assumed because the two frequented the
library and books stores at every opportunity.  Offhand, or not, it was not
what Linda had in mind, as most Nifty readers will have already guessed.

                   "Or something," the girl rejoined, "though, from what my
girlfriends tell me, there's more `all' than `some'."
                   "Well, it does sound `allsome'," Paul allowed.
                   "So, are you going to put me in cuffs?" Linda asked.
                   "Lord, child," the officer replied, "the president isn't
protecting the Constitution, why should I?"
                   "Well, I guess we can leave that for someday," the girl
mused, then added: "There's more, Uncle Paul, they want you to kill
somebody."

                   "Kiddo, you had me going for a moment there," Paul said,
"but that's not very funny."
                   "What's not funny," Linda flared, "is what's happening
to Deb Crenshaw.  She's the sweetest girl, and her father's after her.
He's a lawyer, so he knows how to do it.  He raped both her big sister,
Marcie killed herself by taking poison, and was yelling to keep him away an
hour before she died; Caroline isn't as lucky, because she can't bang her
head against the wall hard enough to even knock herself out.  His name is
Vic Crenshaw.  He defends any rapist who happens to have access to a girl
my age.  If you can think of anything other than killing him, be my guest."

                   "Why waste the time?" the handsome detective said, "I've
heard of him; the whole squad has, but just in general, not off the things
you just said."
                   "We know all the secrets," the girl responded, "or at
least it will be `we' when I've been initiated, if you want to, that is.
There's a lot of bad stuff going on, and most of it we -- they -- can
control with anonymous letters and phone calls, but Crenshaw's a black, and
he knows how to steam up better than Sharpton, plus he might actually kill
Deb."

                   "And this is going to take place how and when and
where?" Paul asked the girl with the two thick braids of hair trailing down
her slender back.

                   "Ten minutes; I doubt he'll be late.  Here.  With your
.38.
                   "You know how they're always finding bodies in shallow
graves?" Linda asked.
                   "Yes," Paul said.
                   "We dug one nine feet deep.  It's not even twenty feet
from here."
                   "Then why did we have to use a map?"
                   "Because I've only been here with Ellie Bemis and Kitty
Hughes, at night," the girl replied.  "I just followed them, when we were
meant to be studying."

                   "And you're serious?" the uncle asked.
                   "You'll know for sure in a few minutes," Linda said.
                   "An I'm just meant to shoot him, in cold blood, as he
comes up the trail."
                   "Unless you can think of something better," his niece
said.  "He'll be carrying, I'm your witness; I even have a note from him
acknowledging, in a noncommittal way, of course, that we're meant to meet.
It might not stand up in court, but your captain will accept it as color of
truth."
                   "And you girls really dug a grave?"
                   "Three feet a night.  We even built our own ladder from
saplings and twine."
                   "Sounds festive," the man said.
                   "We spent the time telling stories," Linda said, "it was
easy.  The club sport is rope jumping.  We're all athletes.  A couple of
trowels, a bucket, and a lanyard, picked a spot, and, thanks to O.J., we
even remembered a towel to clean up with.  Plus," she added, "the body of a
poor dead dog, so, should anyone want to look for Crenshaw, or come across
a patch of recent earthwork, looking for someone else, or use some fancy
machine, voila, they find poor Fido, and keep looking."

                   "And said Crenshaw is on the verge of walking in here?"
Paul had drawn his gun; fuck, was this a doll, or what?
                   "He's going to play a cassette, loud, then I go out and
bring him the hundred yards to the log.  The grave's yonder (she pointed),
so it's all downhill from here, and there's an apparently abandon snow
shovel not far off, so it shouldn't take us more than fifteen minutes."
                   "I don't care what you do about the law," the man said,
"but do me a favor and stay on the side of the angels."
                   "It does get worse," Linda said, "so you'll have to make
up your own mind."
                   "How does it get worse?" Paul asked.
                   "By a great deal," Linda said.
                   "Now who's being an ox?"
                   "There's PVC piping to the bottom of the grave, with an
inlet hidden in some roots -- that was the hardest thing but we had this
neat little saw... -- yes, well, it's a vent.  You belly shoot Crenshaw and
I'll jump on him with duct tape.  Hope he doesn't have a cold.  We roll him
and dump him, and he gets to contemplate his life as he knew it, perhaps
for several days.  After that, we can talk about angels."

                   It was like a rehearsal.  Bad actors.  The huge black
man loped into the clearing on the heels of the barefoot girl in her summer
dress.  The girl bolted into the brush, the officer aimed and fired at ten
feet.  As the man fell, Linda appeared with six inches of tape, and had him
gagged before he hit the ground.  The struggling body was actually easier
to roll than a dead weight, and they were successful in getting him to drop
feet-first so his neck wouldn't be broken.  By the time these missions were
out of the way, Linda had appeared with a bent but serviceable shovel, and,
minutes later, dragged in the plastic bag containing the deceased dog.
Five more minutes, and everything was tamped and swept to the same state as
the surrounding landscape, and the towel and snow shovel had been
transported to a gully otherwise laden with debris.

                   "The blood, we leave," Linda said, as they returned and
calmly resumed their seats.  "A very detailed account will somehow
circulate, as time goes on, and there should be just a hint of bottle
evidence."

                   "I can assign myself to searching this area for the
late, great one," Paul said, "you know, like fiber in the diet."
                   "Weird analogy," Linda said, "but I think I get it.  How
about carrots in the cake."
                   "You win," he said.
                   "Did you mug him while you were rolling him down the
hill?" Linda finally remembered to ask.
                   "Yes," her uncle said.
                   "How much?"
                   "About three thousand, per pocket, and he was most well
dressed."

                   Paul grinned at his niece and from his cargo shorts
hauled out two inch thick bundles of currency.  "All hundreds," he said.
"Twenty grand, or moe."
                   "And you know," Linda said, "looking up into his eyes,
"the afternoon hasn't really started."
                   "We seem to get a lot done," the man acknowledged.
                   "Cutting the roots for the vent pipe was the hardest
part," the girl said, "but the trench was easy once we had the main hole
dug; it only took an hour."
                   "I wonder if we could hear him if we listened?" Paul
said.
                   "What would be really cool is if he could listen to us,"
the dashing young princess replied, her eyes glowing up at the tall man
seated just to her right.
                   "What would have been cooler than that is if your dad
had done your dirty work for you,"
                   "Uncle Paul," the girl sighed, "you've been a real good
sport, and all, and it was great of you to call me an angel, really great,
but, well, it's kinda like there's more."
                   "More?"
                   "I mean, it's like we were totally careful.  He was
standing still, little chance of him suddenly moving, and, well, not to put
too fine a point on it, the club has, well, in the movies they call them
`assets' that are experts at different kinds of things, and one of them,
well, it's shooting.  Dad was drinking a case of beer a night.  A case, not
a six-pack.  My friends wanted me to be in the club, but he was spoiling
it, to say nothing of cutting his lifespan in half, and maybe getting a
partner killed because he was getting out of shape.  He read to me
ceaselessly when I was a little girl, and I owe him, big time.  If I could
have thought of another way, I would have come to you, but, just like with
the late, great, stark action was the only answer.  Like Hornblower."

                   "It worked," he said, "I talked to him on the phone
yesterday and he said he'd ditched ten pounds, already."
                   "I'll make a new man out of him, or die trying," Linda
said, "but meantime, I'm starting to develop, and Ellie and Kitty and the
other girls, well, you know how it goes.  Peer pressure."

                   "I'm learning a thing or two about pressure," Paul
acknowledged.  "Your dad could have bled to death."
                   "No way," the girl rejoined, "I'd siphoned two pints out
of him while he was sleeping off his beer, and, like I said, we had assets.
There's evidence for you, find out how long it was before a doctor happened
by, after he was shot.  Less than half a minute.  But he didn't really even
need to go to the hospital.  He was stable at the scene, other than being
real mad."
                   "You think of everything, don't you," said the uncle.
                   "Oops, almost," the girl replied, reaching into her
purse and retrieving a string of firecrackers.  "We should light one of
these off once in awhile so any witnesses can say they heard a series of
bangs.  Add to the mystery."

                   Pete and Sid and Ray spent a full minute looking at each
other, but none could think of a word to whisper or suitable gesture.  They
didn't even shrug, just went back to watching.
                   Bang! The girl lit one off, and put the rest on the log,
probably so she wouldn't forget them again.  They half expected her to
light a cigarette before she put the lighter back in about the most
innocent purse they'd ever seen, but apparently she had a reticent side and
didn't smoke.

                   "Next one should be a hundred yards from here," she
remarked, and then stared back up at her handsome uncle.  "There's more,"
she whispered.
                   "That's why the world is round," Paul said, "so, no
matter how far you go, there's always more."
                   "Yeah, but this `more' is kinky," the ten year old said,
"I mean, actually, it's not, it's kind of sweet, and there's a clinical
aspect, so club assets can check your genes and DNA and stuff like that."
                   "So far you've been very good about not keeping me in
suspense for very long," Paul said, "and I appreciate it when you come to
the point."

                   "I have to collect from you," the girl responded, "some
for Dr. X, and some for ceremonial use; not something we take too
seriously, but a little ritual does help with bonding."
                   "I'd like an explanation, young lady," Paul intoned,
mimicking a dowager bemoaning the loss of a teacup.

                   "Nor the seed of an ox, nor of gerbil, nor giraffe,
shall suit the brew in this carafe, but of man we need the sacred seed, for
mixing the milk of life's own staff," the girl intoned, and, while her
incantation might not seem to the casual reader like the stuff of high
drama, it was a case of "You had to be there."  Paul was there.

                   "I've killed a man, leastwise, I probably have, and I've
become an accessory after the fact in premeditated assault against a fellow
law officer, who, by no coincidence, whatever, is my brother-in-law, and
now I seem to be involved in some satanic display having to do with
gerbils, " Paul reminded the girl.
                   "It's just the initiation," the girl reminded her uncle,
right back.  Again she went to her purse, this time fetching the doll's
baby bottle.  "The club," she said, "encourages a clinical and
dispassionate contact at the outset of the first relationship.  I've seen a
video on how to do it, but it still looks dead tricky, as Marsha Wright, my
British friend would say."

                   "Would she now," Paul responded.

                   "And," the girl continued, "tall, athletic males are
supposed to be especially challenging, and, if they happen to be in love
with their young partner, it is thought to be impossible, so, as it stands
now, you've met your challenges flawlessly, and I must try to do the same."
She took the nipple from the miniature bottle and looked at the glass
container critically.  "They say television adds eight pounds, and I think
it added something to the bottle in the video.  Hard to tell," she mused
on, "because, after all, in the video it was simulated, so as to teach
technique without giving away any secrets."

                   "Simulated," the male murmured.

                   "Holding still while it's happening," the girl
explained, "so there won't be any spills.  It teaches young girls control,
so Ellie says, and is a different experience for mature males who are
usually smitten with passion and so lose appreciation for the sensory
aspects of making love."

                   "Sensory," Paul murmured.

                   "As you'll notice," the girl went on, "the bottle is
filled with a clear liquid which happens to be baby oil.  Kitty's the
expert on that, and she says if we're going to have any chance at all, I
should use the whole bottle before you let your seed go into it."

                   "Chance," the man murmured.

                   "It's like that scene in `Flight of the Phoenix" where
Jimmy Stewart uses the second-to-last starter cartridge to clear the
engine, what they call going for broke."

                   "The whole bottle, yes," Paul agreed, trying not to let
the past hour catch up with him in view of the coming hour.

                   "We have to be neat as pins when we leave," the girl
continued, "because rumpled clothes are a dead giveaway."

                   "Pins," he agreed, nodding, though in such a trance he
could have been agreeing to his own execution by fire ants.

                   "That means being naked, from here on out, Earth to
zombie, neat as pins, naked, hello?"  That was the girl.

                   "And you said you're starting to develop," the man
asked, feeling that if he'd died and gone to heaven, he might as well
participate in the experience.
                   She gazed up at him with liquid eyes, ten years before
she could act her role in a romance novel, but liquid, nonetheless.  "It's
part kidding around," she whispered, "and mostly that I love you and want
it to be romantic, you know, with foreplay, and that will happen, but the
club's serious about a lighter side; that, be in love as you may, and as I
am with you, and will be with my dad when he gets his head glued back on
straight, there is a clinical and less sentimental side to a male and
female being together.  If psychologists ran it, it would be called a
balanced approach, or something like that; in ye olde tongue, `every county
heard from', with `every country' consisting of an alpha group of you, dad,
and me, and the club members counting as a close-in bravo group.  The girls
do not date because of disease and threats of violence.  Special, long-term
boyfriends are clued in, and there are a few of them.  Mostly, it's dads
and their little girls, with plenty of brothers and little sisters.  Two
girls are having long-term affairs with teachers, thirty years older than
they are, and they're honorary members, and highly esteemed at that.  The
baseline of the club is pajama parties.  We'll have several at your
apartment, but, at some point, you'll drop me off at seven in the evening
and pick me up at seven in the morning, after which we will immediately
find a private place, probably in the car, but some hosts set up pup tents
in their back yards, and that's meant to be quite exciting.  When we're
both ready, there will be group gatherings.  Most of the adult males say
the number-one exotic and erotic experience is watching their daughter or
little sister walk off to a hotel room holding the hand of another male.

                   "The anti-slut mechanism," Linda said, "is the German
super polygraph.  It's not unlike many clubs or organizations; entry
requirements, and standards of behavior so no one contaminates the group.
Ritual and sensory excess, aside, that's the reason for a sample of your
semen.  The lighthearted part, you know, spilling, is included for
perspective, to say, yes, it's much the same as dancing, fun, and, lo and
behold, guess what?"

                   "Exercise," Paul said.

                   "I knew you were with me," the girl smiled.  "Ellie said
you might appear half-conscious, so I was forewarned."

                   "Forewarned," Paul mumbled.

                   "Yes, and spoke extra clearly.  All the girls in the
club speak well; they make great mothers because they are used to
penetrating distractions so they aren't driven to distraction."

                   "Distraction."

                   "When the voice gets weak, it's time to peek." Guess
who?

                   "Ellie Bemis, height, four eleven, weight,
seventy-seven, hair, black pageboy, eyes brown, I've seen her in the car
when they dropped you off."

                   "If the voice gives out, you may have to shout," Linda
said, making sure her uncle knew that if his voice have out, she'd be doing
the shouting.  He nodded.

                   "Time to peek," she reminded him.  She rose from the log
and stood in front of the slim, six-two male.  He stood.

                   "Just videos?" Paul whispered, "or have you been
touched."
                   "Just videos," she whispered back.
                   "And you're sure this is the way you want it to start;
that I'm the one?"
                   "I can't imagine the first night you drop me off at
seven," she said, "but Ned, her dad, is pretty nice, and before that
happens, Ellie and Kitty, plus all the other girls will have been over for
a month."
                   "Will you let him unzip your dress?" Paul whispered, as
he exposed her creamy back and slender bra strap.
                   "Yes," she whispered back, but you'll unzip Ellie, too,
because the males often take the females under decorous circumstances, as
if they were coming home from a party, pretending they're an old married
couple.  You know, play acting."
                   "Does that add to or subtract from foreplay?" Paul
asked.
                   "It varies.  There's one story about a dad getting so
mad at his nine year old play wife, they slept back to back for an hour."

                   In interviewing suspects and witnesses, Paul had often
been intrigued at how sudden innocence could intrude in the most unlikely
places.

                   "A whole hour," he responded, "yes, that must be quite a
legend in the annals."
                   "They made up on their next visit, and now they're
friends," the ten year old said, wriggling her shoulders because he'd
stalled out in the un-zipping department.  It was context.  He'd spent
innumerable hours lowering the metal tab eight inches.  How could anyone
turn a back on such a back as this for a moment?  Inconceivable.  The girl
in question must have killed his dog, burned his house to the ground,
scrambled his hard drive, or rented a Tyne Daley picture.

                   "By the way," Linda said, "in the club intercourse is
called mounting, because it was started in ranch country, so the tradition
holds.  We -- they -- use Victorian English, no four letter words, no
anatomical expletives, no potty babble, except c-u-m, we -- they -- can say
that with a partner."
                   "Will you say it to Ned," Paul asked.
                   "After you have with Ellie," the girl answered.
                   "Yes, darling," the handsome uncle said, "but I'll be
giving, if that's what she wants, and you'll be receiving; bringing him
into our home.  That makes it uneven.  Three lanes one way, and one lane
the other, something like that.
                   "I'm not uptight about it, because you'll be carrying me
to him, as well as the reverse, it's just that it makes it more exciting to
think about and talk about; how I'm going to feel holding you at seven
o'clock in the morning."

                   "Maybe the club is so successful because it answers
questions like that," the girl said.
                   "I think it's successful because people communicate,"
Paul responded, "and, if you don't get all wanton and bar hopping, except
at certain times, and don't have to keep a lot of secrets, and can share
the things that happen, that's just common sense."
                   "Yeah," the girl acknowledged, "but you have to be
pretty upper class to take advantage.  Discretionary intelligence;
appreciation for the fact you're aloud to run amuck, then walk and cross
only at the lights."
                   "What it sounds like is a way to the upper class," Paul
said, "I mean the contacts must be pretty staggering."

                   "It's a lot more than that," the girl allowed.

                   It was a refrain, but Paul used it for lack of better
words.  "There's more?" he asked.
                   "After I light off another firecracker," the girl
replied.  Again she wriggled, and her uncle revived to slip the straps of
her summer frock from her slender shoulder and hold it while she stepped
out of it, wearing only her bra and tiny, little girl panties.  Paul
quickly stripped out of his clothes, standing in front of his niece in just
his briefs.  She turned her back, and he unclipped the training bra, and,
looking over her right shoulder, removed it and placed it gently on the
moss of the fallen tree.

                   "Am I aloud to say beautiful, and things like that?" he
whispered.
                   "No," she replied, "it's meant to be matter-of-fact and
clinical, same about me telling you you look more than sensational, and
your middle made me all wet, and if you rape me on the spot, I wouldn't
tell; I'm not meant to say anything like that."
                   "And I'm not meant to touch your breasts?" he prodded.
                   "You're not meant to go like this," she said, taking his
hands to her.  Actually, they disobeyed very little.  Yes, he fondled her
raspberry nipples very gently for a minute, but then he released her, and
they stood facing each other, her forehead on his chest as he ran his
fingers down her thick braids.

                   "It's okay if I do this," Linda whispered, inserting her
fingers into the waistband of her partner's briefs, "but I'm not meant to
touch you much, like this."  Again, she didn't violate in an obtuse way,
and there was no anarchy in her fingers as she stripped him, more
accurately, just a young girl making a few of her own rules to suit what
she thought were very special circumstances.

                   With her uncle's briefs, the girl stripped her own
panties, and they stood, again, facing each other as she stared down at his
six and a half penis resting firmly against her childish, white belly.  He
was thick, circumcised, and his flaring, purple glans left a trail of thick
seminal fluid as she danced slowly and deliberately against him.

                   "You know the rule we really can't break?" she asked in
a whisper, both of them by now panting gently.
                   "What?" Paul rasped.
                   "Kissing," she said, "and that's the one I want to break
the most."
                   "Will Ned Jones teach you?" he asked.
                   "Yes," Linda said.
                   "Sweetheart," the man asked, "what if you'd been
molested before; weren't a virgin, would the club still take a girl?"
                   "They're called Early Birds," Linda replied, "Kitty's
one.  When she was seven, she had a sixteen-year-old boy from down the
street baby-sit for her.  He gave her a bath the first time, and let her
see what happens with a boy, and, two nights later, he mounted her
successfully, without a condom.  As long as she was honest about it, it
made no difference.  Three of the girls were being raped, then they were
asked into the club, and that gave them a wider view, so now they have good
relationships with their incest partners."
                   "How about race?" he asked.
                   "It's mostly white, because of the discipline required
to enjoy some but not pig out.  Any kid who fits that profile, and keeps
his or her weight down, can be in it, but it's mostly Anglo.  There is
descrimination in the fact that Asian girls become secret members, unless
they have exceptionally good looking fathers or brothers.  Just one of
those things."
                   "How about siblings," Paul asked, "you know, if a girl
has a younger brother, or one she doesn't like."
                   "It's like a country club," Linda answered, "there are
guest privileges, so to speak, girls with steady boyfriends, cousins or
family friends visiting from out of town; with the polygraph, clearing
someone in is a thirty second process, and we -- they -- get the
interesting ones without the dangerous ones.  In the old days, they did
make a few mistakes, and, more, probably kept some good potential members
out."

                   "And the orgies?" he asked.
                   "Two weeks each year either at a resort or on a ship.
No rules, because no one would violate them if there were any.  Ellie said
there four males for every female, with the extra guys being the crème
de la navy."

                   "Is there more?" he again wanted to know, unable to stop
himself from asking, challenging though the answers so far had always been.

                   "I'm going to get pregnant," the girl said.  "As soon as
I can.  With all the new tests, I can keep the baby for two weeks, then
take RU-486.  If I get lucky, and it doesn't happen `till I'm twelve or
thirteen, I can present my uncle with a girl, that's guaranteed, also
guaranteed to capture his heart and enough of his brain that he won't make
her wait until she's the ripe old age of ten."

                   "How young are the girls?" he asked.
                   "There no limit.  Ellie says there are a few three and
four year olds, just for play games.  Ten's not old, but the most common
age is probably eight, because that's when most girls are old enough to be
mounted by and adult.  We -- they -- aren't very strict about that kind of
thing.  The polygraph works on all ages, at least on kids bright enough to
be considered for the club in the first place."

                   "And..." he couldn't think of `and what', but he didn't
have to.

                   "And sometime we -- they -- take fliers; take the
challenged kids that don't fit the profile of the happy camper.  The
machine allows us to take the more challenged, without getting stuck with
anyone who's fundamentally defective or out of control."

                   "Sweetheart," Paul whispered, "I'm going to cum in a
minute."
                   "I love you," the girl whispered, "and I won't be saying
that to Ned."  She eased from him, retrieved her bottle, removed the
old-fashioned rubber nipple from the antique container, and poured the
contents over her uncle.  "You have to prop against the tree and spread you
legs really wide, and I have to do something, okay?"

                   He complied, and the naked girl dropped to her hand and
knees and crawled against him.  "This isn't what you think it's going to
be," she whispered, and, jockeying under the athlete's stretched and taut
body, she placed the bottle in her mouth, then placed her lips against
Paul's wet glans.  He cheeks caved in and the male grunted like an animal,
then she backed away leaving the bottle held to the male by suction.  She
crawled half over his waist, and, looking down, began to masturbate him.
"I saw this part in the film, but it was just a piece of wood," she
remarked, taking a steady, strong rhythm, just shy of what Pete and Sid and
Ray would have said would have loosened the miniature baby bottle.

                   "I'll never do this with another man," she whispered.
Paul briefly considered responding that he'd never do it with another girl,
but before he could whisper to her he felt a sudden release of tension and
all he could choke out, in the shock of the violent change, was, "I'm
cumming, Linda."

                   The girl slid her right hand to his base and held him
still, gripping until her knuckles whitened.  Paul gave a guttural gasp and
ten seconds later the bottle seethed, whitening in an instant.  "Oh, babe,"
the child whispered.

                   Seconds passed.  The male panted and shuddered, sheened
with sweat, the girl's breath was ragged; she coaxed and mewed, but, ten
tender years of age, she found once again obstacles in her way.  The club
rarely interferes, that was a byword, with the exception being the dogged
pursuit of, ironically, legitimate molesters and rapists.  She could break
the rules, if she was honest about it, so, once again, this time
disregarding the caveat concerning less than perfect obtainenance.  She
gently eased the bottle from the pulsing male, watch him spray heavily onto
the mossy ground, then slid under him, first wetting herself from his next
ejaculation, then guiding him to her as she spread her legs wildly under
his athlete's waist.  He took her in slow steady strokes, held her rigid
with his left arm at the sting of his entry, then, as her fingers began
again to claw, took her harder and faster, until he collapsed beside her
rolling her on top of him and staring up into her beautiful blue eyes.
"I'm sorry you didn't cum," he whispered, "but it shouldn't be very long,
at all."
                   "We can't kiss but Ellie says we can do something
exciting with our tongues, touching them when yours tastes salty so you can
begin to teach me about that."

                   A `more' that was more modest?  He was ready for the
switch, and tenderly laid his niece on her back and moved between the ten
year old's widely splayed knees.  He found her and himself with his mouth,
and, as Pete and Sid and Ray watched, gently left her, moved over her slim
body, and touched her pretty pink tongue with his own.
                   Eventually there was a lull.  Paul helped Linda to her
feet and the girl retrieved the rubber nipple to the bottle, carefully
replacing it, and putting the bottle upright in her purse.  She turned to
him and pulled him again to the moss, lying spread eagle with her slender
white thighs arched in welcome.  He mounted surely and quickly, taking her
wildly for ten minutes before gentling, then letting her slip from him in a
wild, thrashing climax.  As she came back to consciousness she stared up at
him, still panting and trembling above him.  For a few instants she held
still, her eyes hot and glowing; then she was sure.  "You're cumming," she
hissed, and again was mewing and grunting underneath his powerful body,
flailing him forward with her slim calves and ranking his back from low on
his waist to high on his sweating back.

                   Both seemed to realize a third time would be fatal, no
next attraction, so with whispers and pecking kisses they parted.  "At the
first opportunity," Linda said as she stepped into her panties, "we would
like to have you nominated as club president."





                   CHAPTER TEN


                   As far as child exploitation goes, I do have an issue
with Samantha.  While I've stated elsewhere I wouldn't use any pressure, I,
in fact exert considerable pressure on her to sleep with me, in the common
sense.  It boils down to this: if she doesn't want to, one of these days
I'll have to find someone else, and they'll get the lion's share of the
money.  How do you measure a thing like that?  No, I don't encourage her in
any way other those accepted as part of romance, in general, but, yes, if
she doesn't come across, in crude terminology, I've got to look elsewhere
for an heir to all this freaking loot.

                   I should have noted toward the end of the last essay
that I have an unwritten deal with David, if I indulge myself in an
extended bout of self aggrandizement and readjusting the axis of the
civilized planet, I compensate by offering what I consider to be full
Yankee quid pro quo.  This, as in the case of my great uncle and AT&T, is
often more than you ever dreamed possible.  Regrettably, it's a lively
family, and so can also be held entirely and almost exclusively responsible
for foisting a ludicrous embodiment of theoretical democracy on an
unsuspecting and very unready world.  What a mess to undo.  Democracy
killed the very man, in a story recounted, once again, elsewhere,
responsible for the guns and ammo, troops and regiments, nuts and bolts,
soup and corn, of executing on the penny pamphlets, and it wasted no time
in doing so.

                   Monarchy works, and nothing else has a prayer, any more
than does a hive without a queen.  It's fundamental.  Look at the North
Koreans celebrating their ersatz king, filmed from a blimp, every one of a
hundred thousand cards flipped as one.  Sure, they may have had
sharpshooters in towers to discourage laggards, but maybe they didn't.
Maybe those hundred thousand simply loved their king figure, and wanted to
show it.  Ironic, but then there's Hitler and his two buds parading between
iron bars of ten thousand troops, each.  Without this primal attachment,
you get what we have; malarkey.  Tiny groups using insidious tactics to
exercise their breeding in destruction.  The Boston sand hogs are the end
result.

                   On the home front, so much more interesting than
anything to do with Jews, with their adversarialism proceeding on schedule
and all routine in their pointless dominance, today turned into something
of an unintended feast day.  All because it seems I really can cook.  The
first rice in the pressure cooker turned out awesome, and I made a picante
sauce to go on the beans, which matched the rice.  Everybody eating with me
wandering around muttering doomsday scenarios of tortillas without flour
for the last week of the fiscal month.  My kitchen is perfect galley size,
and, if cluttered, wonderfully efficient by its very smallness.  I pretend
I'm on a submarine, but catch a break because I'm only feeding six, instead
of five times that number.  Still, it takes its toll, and I do find myself
running on reserves to get in ten thousand words, sometimes settling for
six thousand, which comfortably doubles the world record.  Overall, it's of
no interest, and I might take several days off, without a thought to the
overall average.  It's not a contest or game, it's raw challenge constantly
balancing the needs of living, breathing kids, and the mass abstraction of
fifty thousand readers downloading every week.

                   As an artist, I'm at a frustrating point.  What happens
when you honestly try to critique yourself, really, in all sincerity, and
can find no reward in spite of your best efforts?  What happens is you
start feeling there's something wrong with you, that flawlessness isn't
natural, that flawless works are usually just that; wonderful exhibits of
craft, like "Lonesome Dove", but not attempting travel on the higher plane.
Maybe one actually has to be a real king, not just one in his own mind, to
pull it off, or, as I keep saying, a god.  Seems a lot to ask of a mere
artist.  In any event, it's nice to be a writing artists, so, if any proof
at all is required, I can refer to the odd one million words in support of
my position.  Churchill may have had more, but he worked in history, and
I'm not aware he said much about the future or even the present condition
of his people.

                   Wow, starting tired.  Maybe I'll be able to criticize
myself for that.  It's something I never do; even if I waste an entire day,
I don't turn on the machine until the fully-rested button is pushed in
whatever gland it is that controls alertness.  I went to sleep about four
in the morning, after a typical eighteen hours, then Samantha came at six
to say not only were they out of propane, but that their tank was rusted at
the bottom, and they need a new one.  That brings up a Belezian story.  I
had the same problem; kept my tank outside, and it rusted through.  How did
I find out?  I sent it out to have it filled.  By this time, I was keeping
it in my kitchen.  The fellow came back and said he could only fill it half
way, because it started leaking out the bottom if he tried to pump more
propane into it.  I paid him, shrugging like Imogene Coco in the sandwich
scene, and he left.  So, bleary eyed, I begin, slightly nonplussed because
it seems the pull, so to speak, is getting stronger, and one of these days
I fully expect to grow up, and how can I if the passion to write juvenile
fiction -- is growing?  Ominous.

                   Luckily, I just bought a new tank for this house, so I
have one to give her, but it would be a bit of a wakeup call to go a couple
of days without.  When I first me Bev she was living on the cayes, and all
the cooking was done camp style, greatly aided, I should add, by a
limitless supply of dry coconut husks which are the best outdoor cooking
fuel going.  It's kind of funny.  I have these great passionate desires off
of being in love with her; tell her we've got to start sleeping together,
or I'll have to find someone else, then she comes over, spends the entire
evening doing homework with Daisy's kids, and goes off without even a peck
on the cheek, leaving me totally satisfied.  Six o'clock this morning, on
two hours sleep?  Well, as the saying goes, anything you survive makes you
stronger.  It's a great reminder on how opportunistic sex is.  If Samantha
and I ended up truly in private for any extended time, it would happen.
She is daring even with the tenuous seclusion we sometimes have.  The lucky
thing is, she's sexier, just holding hands, making out, or petting, than
all but two girls I've been with, one a Mexican prostitute, and the other a
typical one-night stand.  And that's just a little fooling around.  Being
with her all night seems an impossibility, because things you don't survive
don't make you live longer.  One author posed the question, What does an
adult say after he's been with a child?  Nothing.  In the era of Celine
Dion, Shady, and R. Kelly, just turn on the music.  The question is silly,
because it begs the issue of what you say after being with anyone, you
shouldn't, regardless of age, sex, or national origin.  Not only do you not
need to say anything, old man to young girl, but, if you end up married,
there's not dichotomy in the relationship.  A good marriage is supposed to
occur when each partner contributes sixty percent.  This obviously is a
potential source of friction.  A guy my age with a young teen wife is issue
free.  I put in one-hundred-twenty percent, she, zero, from money to
mopping, and I take what solace I can, pail to pocketbook, in the extreme
entertainment of catering to a groovy, if not very happening, chick.

                   Non-stop Christmas music on Power Mix.  It's November
twenty-first.  The irony is that the holiday amounts to absolutely nothing
other than the loneliest and most painful day of every year.  Santa gives
Dangriga a massive miss, does he ever, and, while his absence may be
because there isn't a chimney in the tropic town, I think gambling and gin
are more realistic reasons.  As an experiment, I'd try making pot legal and
very cheap, subsidizing cigarettes so they'd retail for a quarter a pack,
and closing down the saloons and boledo dealers.  (Malcolm's business, but
I shouldn't criticize, Al Gore's running mate came from booze people.  It's
dressing well that's important, assuming tonsorial perfection and
dedication to the merchandising of populist socialism.)

                   I guess it's pretty apparent I'm having a terrible time
getting a handle on being a successful writer.  It doesn't seem real; to
have wanted something so much, sacrificed and worked so; in any good novel,
frustration and failure would have to follow suit; unrequited love, and a
hopeless, withering end to a life wasted in pursuit of the unobtainable.
That's right, because that's how it always is.  Drifters and dreamers
always end up derelicts on the beach.  It's true.  It's life.  So why do I
get a pass?  And the oddity of that pass.  Not some letter from New York
saying lets get this puppy on the shelves; no gold strike or clap of
thunder.  In fact, the only interesting thing was submitting my first
story, and, for some reason logging on a couple of hours later, not feeling
my file would be posted, if at all, for weeks.  There was a strange email,
back in the days when I got a spam or two a week, and I opened it.  It
read: "I am numb, literally.  There's so much more than just sex.  I'm
going back to read what you say about writers."  What was that all about?
It took minutes to put two and two together.  Then I remembered there was
sex in the story I'd submitted, and realized it was a reader letter.  There
was a flood after that, and what seemed like pretty good numbers, in the
thousands, from the ASSTR site, which provides a log of downloads.  The
mail continued, hot and heavy, after that, and it began to sink in that I
was a published writer with a popular novella, "Jimmy and Frogger", to my
credit.  I wrote another, and, again it was published almost instantly, and
the mail, over a hundred letters, started anew.  That was all in early '01.
At this point, I've published five novels, this is the sixth, five
novellas, and eight short stories, over a million words, as I keep
mentioning, sorry, and the downloads are at about fifty thousand a week.
As a newbie, I corresponded with other Web writers to determine the lay of
the land.  They all said you `sell' a few thousand copies, especially if
you publish on a Friday, then the `back list' settles down to the mid two
digits, or the story ceases to sell at all.  Mine did this, then came back;
from thirty-five a week, on that one file, to eight hundred, times, now,
about fifty files.  I'm offline, but the last time I checked, the number
was nearly six hundred a week, again, just on "Jimmy", and slowly rising,
all through the early summer.  It's an imperfect way to count.  Nifty,
where I've published since, out of respect for their being first to take
the First Amendment seriously, is, as far as I know, much larger than other
alternative sites, plus other writers have written telling me my work, even
the long (385,000 words) and complex "Creative Camp", with it's quasi
sequel, "Blissy's Song", are on commercial sites.  They actually wrote
trying to enlist my aid in squelching commercial use of my fiction.  I like
to be a team player, but come from the other team.  Mine says if someone
can make a buck off the work, they're smarter than I am, and probably
deserve it.  I use bootleg software, watch bootleg cable, and listen to
bootleg discs, and so am hardly in a position to cast stones.  As mentioned
before, I think a huge, freewheeling market, based on LOW COST benefits
everyone, and, if Celine Dion objects to my burned copy of her work, she
can take solace in the fact that I play it loud, and often, so the people
who pick her bananas can hear her, too.  It occurs to me that a storyline
might be to have a pirate detective come here, track down illicit product,
and end up in a broiling citrus grove, a dozen workers gathered around a
battered player, each offering coins toward the purchase of a new set of
batteries, for which a boy will have to ride ten miles.  That's the
reality.  It would make a great opera.  Italy could do it with olive
reapers, England with shepherds, and China, with fishermen.

                   I write on this subject from an alternative viewpoint,
due to having a private income.  I try to allow for this, and still come up
with a dynamic market as a tide that floats all boats, and the glossy
American vessels, highest of all.  It's classic noblesse oblige.  We simply
owe them some of what we have at a price they can pay.  And the cure for
runaway piracy is simplicity itself: the various affected industries should
run ads reminding people, especially students, that they will have to take
polygraphs at some time in their lives, that one of the questions will be,
"Do you steal?" and that piracy is stealing.  This delivers the major
market, and those on the lower ladders of society, who, and I'm half
kidding, can be assumed to steal, won't care and will support the black
market, again, contributing to a healthy overall market.  In my own case,
I've undoubtedly used some hundreds of dollars worth of illicit software,
from my first copy of DOS.  In mitigation, I've spent about twenty-thousand
dollars on hardware and software.  Am I a good guy or a bad guy?  (I
certainly don't steal the food I give away like a one-man cornucopia.)

                   Repetition without depth.  I'm sure I could be deluged
with letters from people who've worked and invested to bring a product to
market, only to have some yo-yo burn copies and put them out of business.
If it weren't for the energy of the market, in the first place, they'd
never have had the chance.  The truth is most legitimate products travel
through legitimate channels to the purchaser. The pirate has little going
for him, and few customers who could afford the purloined product.

                   As far as the Net goes, it's greatest single attribute
is free sites.  People and institutions who contribute because they love
it, and for no other reason.  Of course, there's a charlatan class, ego
trippers, you know the drill (and certainly I do), and hucksters with bogus
everything, but by and large it is a most marvelous place, largely because
of volunteers.  This free class is nearly elemental to founding and
perpetuating a twenty-five percent slice of the gross domestic pie.  At the
center of this is the alternative erotic writer, from the first move into
the home, to the present day.  I've mentioned AOL, specifically, and, since
the liberals make their defect points everlastingly, I'll mention it again.
It was driven by kiddie porn, I was one it back in '92, and nothing but.
All the Napster chat I ever saw, say fifty hours, was salacious, and much
of it made me look like freaking Mary Poppins in comparison.  The only
exception was kids being thrown out on the street for smoking pot.  It's
ironic that that `side' of us is keeping the steam in the kettle, but it
has done so before in the churches, monasteries, and navies of the world,
so it's hardly unprecedented.  (The irony is simply the inevitability of
history repeating itself, however bold the new banner.)  We scuttle in
shame and run the place, is kind of what it amounts to.  This is half right
and half wrong.  The purpose of both these essays and the novels is to
separate the R from the W clearly and unmistakably.  Since review is
essential to learning, you get to hear much the same stump speech again and
again.  (If it gets on your nerves, hourly mention of the richly-deserved
and relatively minor holocaust gets on mine.)

                   Have we given Pete and his friends enough time to
recover?  Let's find out.

                   "I thought it would be more embarrassing, but it really
seemed natural," the shy boy whispered as soon as they had crept stealthily
our of earshot.
                   "How do you feel about it being a preview?" Sid asked.
                   "With two of you?" the boy whispered in response.
                   "Yes," Pete said.
                   "Yes," the pre-teen, golden beauty also whispered.

                   Moral turpitude.  Well, at least they weren't fat.  The
limits of freewheeling cultures seem to be at the extremes of grandeur and
magnificence, with large doses of technology thrown in.  Uptight cultures
have also contributed.  It's just that one is happier than the other.  More
fulfilled, more satisfied with their share, that they did not miss
anything.  Would universal acceptance result in pandemic boredom?  How
bored is the average reader, on the average day, with a thick, medium rare
steak?  It's precisely this consistency of feeling that a society
capitalizes on when it grants tolerance in return for excellence.  It goes
on and on; decades, for openers.  It is exciting, every time, as a steak is
delicious, every time.  And not more than that, the other crucial point.
Steak, schmeak, if you're worth anything you contribute and eat tortillas.
Going looking is the same as not finding, and grabbing is not holding.  The
only alternative is to build a stable, sober barn, and see who moooves in.


                   Pete unearthed the backpack, and Sid his camera and
tripod.  The sun now was slanting through the trees, but it would be
another hour until the color shifted.  "Which costume did you decide on?"
Pete asked.

                   "The Peter Pan one without the leggings," the eleven
year old said, and Pete handed him the appropriate plastic bag.  "The hat's
kinky," the boy said, handing it back, and he shuffled off into the
underbrush to change.  Pete and Sid stared at each other.  Kids.  The tyke
has just witnessed an execution, watched a virgin receive her athletic
uncle, and a hat was kinky.  He was right.  Everything else had fit a
carefully thought out pattern, and here was something fit for a carnival.
They shrugged, after their day, a little comic relief might be in order,
but they folded the green felt, and stuffed it, jaunty feather and all,
back into the shopping bag.  There was a crinkle and a crackle and an
apparition appeared; lo, an angel, hell, he could have passed for a fairy.
The expensive costume suited the tawny young body.  "It's cool that all
perfect boys are all the same size," Sid whispered as Ray approached.
                   "Also, that a perfect boy can be any size," Pete
rejoined, feeling it unnecessary to add Any slim size.

                   "Your dad was right about you," the leader said as the
coltish sprig joined them in his skimpy costume, "heartaches by the
hectare, both genders, all ages."
                   "I got, you know, big," the boy said shyly, "from what
we saw when we were spying, and I can't get back to normal."  Indeed, the
eleven year old was tented fiercely, his green shorts bulging from his
front to over his right hip.
                   "We'll make you feel more comfortable," Pete said, and,
nodding to the other sixteen year old, he dropped the pack and shucked out
of his sneakers and clothes as Sid did the same.  The boy bulged noticeably
as the two young adults displayed for him by arching their backs, hands
behind their necks.  "Peter Pan had some good points," Ray said, "but there
is definitely one reason to grow up."
                   "I think Wendy would agree," Sid observed.]

                   "I'll bet if we'd gone into the clearing, Paul would
have let you rape Linda," Ray said.
                   "It's still rape with you," Pete said, "so we'll be
extra gentle."

                   They gathered their equipment and set off into a
relatively clear patch of forest, searching for just the right shaft of
sunlight.  Since these were all quite the same, the perfect one was the one
playing on somewhere to sit.  They excluded shopping carts as, a,
uncomfortable, and, b, too campy.  Briefly they discussed a trash throne to
contrast the boy's pixie costume, but they didn't have time and it probably
wouldn't have worked.  The woods were not overly burdened with the flotsam
and jetsam of the surrounding city, and for a hundred yards at a time it
was possible to walk freely and imagine one was far upstate.  Pete carried
his pad under his right arm, while Sid held his tripod in his left, and Ray
walked between them, holding both their hands.  No convenient stump or
fallen tree made itself known, so they settled on a patch of lush grass.
All three sat Indian style, the artists capturing the boy in close up,
coaxing him so they wouldn't keep getting the same wide-eyed stare, eyes
cast slightly down.  He responded as best he could, but after what he'd
witnessed earlier in the afternoon, it was hard to concentrate on anything,
but, try as he might.  Sid had Pete join the boy, pretending he was getting
something out of his right eye, and shot from six feet away with the
half-power telephoto lens he used in portraiture.  It was tedious work,
getting this play of light and that reflection, but Pete loved to watch,
learning subtleties useful in his own medium, and, as for Ray, being gently
touched by the handsome athlete, and knowing the touching would go on, left
him a patient and cooperative model.  Yes, he was inattentive, but the
older males had been there and done that, and were, themselves, gentle in
their coaxing that he look this way, and not always that way.  Pete and Sid
reversed as artist and model, and, for the sketcher expression was the key
element, so not only did Ray have to look away, he had to try and look
pensive, puzzled, sad, thoughtful, angry, and express other emotions, as
foreign to him, for the moment, as uses for adding fractions.  After
awhile, Pete gave up and settled for the boy's default expression.  At any
rate, it would be easy to title the canvas.  "Boy in Wonder."  In a quarter
hour, the artist had his eyes and mouth and he lay his pad on top of Sid's
camera.

                   "How long since you two have been together, this way?"
the eleven year old asked as the teenagers lay him gently back in the
grass.

                   "Ten days," they both said, each laughing at the other
for knowing.
                   "Male's don't have sex nearly as often as heterosexual
couples," Pete explained; it's a very minor part of most relationships."

                   "Did you have a boy with you?" Ray asked.
                   "If you're a boy," Pete replied, "then we've never had a
boy with us; never anyone so beautiful and so fun to be with; if you mean,
were we with a young male, yes, we were babysitting for Chuck Cassell, for
his son, Christopher."

                   [I'm going to leave this inconsistency in for you
student writers.  They would not have, it now appears, laughed over each
other knowing the date of their last experience, since it's becoming
obvious it was memorable.  Some people, and all editors, read specifically
to find glitches like this, and the virtuoso likes to tease them.  (Hey, it
beats another long-winded essay.)  While I've got you, it might be an idea
to review.  Rob Lester is reading from his script as the principal cast and
crew listen.  Rob's script is about a post-apocalyptic civilization,
experimenting with new ways of compensating labor.  In the story, set four
years after the memorable event, a surviving father, Cassidy Kirk,
twenty-six, and his not quite eight year old daughter, Jenny, are making
their first visit to a special center devised to make up for the
devaluation of most former standards of value.  Jenny speaks with Eileen
Hanson, their guide, while her father is at another table where he is
listening to the story of Josh Benedict, twelve, a boy on a team of
apprentice sewer workers.  Josh, previously, has met Pete Anderson, and the
two have flown to New York, where Pete intended picking up equipment from
his studio, before the two move on to Baltimore.  As they're getting ready
to do some sketching, being in no hurry to leave the Big Core, Pete's old,
and presumably lost, friend, Sid Katz, arrives at the studio, fresh off the
plane from Africa.  The threesome tells stories, tours what's accessible in
New York, and end up back at Pete's studio, where they tell more stories.
Josh has asked Pete and Sid, now twenty-two years old, personal questions
about their lives, and, most recently, has asked if the two artists had
ever had a relationship with a juvenile male.  It turns out this is the
case, and Pete and Sid, over cups of tea, are telling Josh about their
friend from art student days, eleven-year-old Hispanic, Ray Castile.]


                   There was a distant bang, muffled by the trees but still
clearly audible, then a series of a dozen or so.  Linda with her imported
red herrings, from China.

                   "Was he a nice kid?" Ray asked.
                   "More curious than anything else," Pete said.
                   "Can't blame him for that," the nice boy allowed, "what
did he do?"
                   Pete told the story.


                   "Can I talk to you guys?" came the voice from the
hallway.
                   "Sure," Sid said, "come on in."
                   "I want to ask you some stuff before I do," ten-year-old
Christopher Cassell said through a crack in the door entering on the
family's living room.
                   "Okay," both the teens said, sitting on the arm of a
sofa near the door.
                   "You're not real babysitters, are you?" came the boyish
voice.
                   "Your dad said you didn't need one of those," Sid said.
                   "We're sort of optional/extra," Pete added, "and we can
go back over to the studio if you want to be alone."
                   "No," the boy answered, quickly, "don't go.  I was just
checking, because it's embarrassing enough, but it would be really bad news
if my dad hadn't talked to you."
                   "He did," Sid said.
                   "What did he say?" the boy wanted to know.
                   "That you did well in school," Pete responded, "read a
lot, behaved less like a moron than he would have thought possible, and
that you'd earned alternatives."
                   "Did he tell you you were my first choice."
                   "That you were interested in the collaboration Sid and I
did."
                   "At the McNee gallery," Christopher said, "plus, I've
seen you around the neighborhood, and everyone seems to like you, so,
anyway, dad caught me looking at a picture in the encyclopedia of a Greek
battle, and one of the warriors is lying over the side of a boat with an
arrow in his chest, you know, sort of arched, and he, Dad, sort of hinted
about stuff, and said if he invited you over, ostensibly to baby-sit, that
you could explain more about the picture than he could."

                   "If you want," Pete responded, "you could show us the
picture, and we could make a tableau of it on the sofa, minus the arrow, of
course, and you could see how that makes you feel."
                   "He said you were very intelligent," Christopher said.
                   "Well," Sid said, "we were smart enough to show up on
time, and take you on as a charge, sight unseen."

                   "The thing about the picture," the boy said, "is that
the sailor isn't wearing anything.  I mean, it doesn't show, but you can
tell."
                   "It does sound Greek," Pete allowed.
                   "The book's on the end table," came the voice from the
hall.

                   They found the G volume, and Sid held the book by the
spine, letting it open as it would.  "I found he," he said a second or two
later.  As described, the dead warrior in the full-page, color plate lay
over the thwart of the war canoe, arching either dramatically or
provocatively, such things being in the eye of the beholder.  The teens
carried the book to the cracked door.  "It is sensual," Pete said, "and I
can see why it gave your dad ideas."
                   "I'm glad it have him something to work with," the ten
year old said, "because all it gave me was feelings, and I didn't know what
to do because I didn't want to waste time looking at it, but I couldn't
help it."
                   "Some boys," Pete replied, "get the same feeling from
religious art works, especially Christ on the cross, which is often
rendered in a way that is very attractive to homosexuals, simply because
the best illustrations display the beauty of a young male body in a
dramatic pose, like your lost sailor."
                   "So it's really gay then?" the disembodied voice asked.

                   "Gay is a matter of acting out," Pete said, "choosing to
be public, obvious, and even flagrant; assertive, queer and here; not as
boring as Israel, but in the same ballpark.  Homosexuality is much more
pervasive, and much more subtle, and, in a large number of cases,
flourishes modestly in a moderately tolerant environment.  By and large
males that have the feelings you get when you look at the bare chest of
that male devote a few hours a week to an attractive partner, if they're
lucky enough to have one, and go on about their day-to-day lives precisely
as everyone less lucky does."

                   "So it's good?" queried the missing child.
                   "It's a whole lot more than awesomely outstanding," Pete
said, "that's why it's against the law; people feel something that feels so
good and is so satisfying must be wrong, if for no other reason, than by
default.  They think everyone will spend all their time in bed, and society
will fall to pieces.  They're probably right.  Food is good, and society is
definitely falling to pieces over that.  Credit is good, and the gong of
doom tones again."
                   "So it's a judgment call?" the boy asked.
                   "Precisely," Sid answered.  "If you'd like, I can pose
like the young soldier, and Pete can lead you in with your eyes closed, so
you can touch me right where the arrow is on the boy in the painting.  Then
you can use your judgment to determine whether or not you open your eyes."
                   "Is your friend trying to be funny?" Christopher asked
Pete.

                   "My friend is funny," the sixteen year old said.
                   "I thought so," the boy responded, "but mostly, he's
cute, and I really like his idea."
                   "I think he does, too," Pete said, "and I think it's
excellent."
                   "If you pull the curtains, " Christopher suggested, "you
can get the room really dark, and light the candles on the coffee table,
you know, in case I have the judgment of a flea."
                   "You'd have to be judge-mental, as in impaired, not to,"
Pete assured the invisible child.
                   "How long will it take you?" the boy asked.
                   "Do you want us naked?" Pete asked.
                   "You mean all the way?" Christopher queried.
                   "What ever you're comfortable with," Sid said.
                   "I'm comfortable in my old slippers," the boy said, "but
my dad never said anything about wearing them"
                   "We'll set your scene from the book while you decide,"
Pete advised, "and we can do something else, if you change your mind."

                   "I wouldn't be standing here, scared stiff, if my mind,
or something like that, wasn't made up."
                   "It's rugby players who eat their dead, not us," Pete
observed.
                   "Not with medical schools paying what they are for
pediatric cadavers," Sid said.
                   "But we'll need a full description," Pete added, "for
bidding purposes, including, and this is important, because they need to
know whether or not they can send a female operative to collect the body,
how the corpse is dressed, and specifically, whether or not the deceased is
wearing his underpants."

                   "I knew I couldn't trust you," the boy answered from
afar, "I asked if one of you was trying to be funny, and got an evasive
answer.  You're asking me a lot of intimate questions, so, is one of you
trying to be funny?"

                   "What if we weren't?" Sid asked.
                   "I'd be even more excited," Christopher said, "because
then it would be like one of those slasher movies and I could stop thinking
about what you're going to do and start fearing for my skin."

                   "Maybe if we did more," Pete said, "we could have your
undivided attention, especially if we concentrated on your skin."
                   "That would make the cleanup easier," the boy allowed.
                   "I wouldn't be too sure about that," Sid said.
                   "Will it be really messy?" the boy asked, a distinct
curiosity and dawning urgency in his voice.
                   "Homosexuals have far less sex than heterosexuals," Pete
explained through the door, "so we're more exciting when it does happen,
and, yes, at first it will be very messy, but Sid and I love each other, so
we'll be meticulous when it comes to cleaning up your body."

                   "I'm kind of sweating," the kid said.
                   "It's probably the images you have of opening your eyes
in the candle light that are causing that," Pete said, "I wouldn't worry
about it."

                   "Okay," the boy said.  The teens lit the candles, closed
the curtains, and stripped, placing their clothes on a chair.  Sid
stretched dramatically over the back of the leather sofa, and Pete returned
to the partially opened door.


                   Lay abed this morning.  It was cold.  Too lazy to get
up.  Reminded me of being a teen.  I can't remember lying, wide awake, in
bed for ten years or more.  I suppose this is ironic, because I spend a
minimum of twenty hours every day on the bed, working or sleeping, but
never `in bed'.
                   The pressure cooker is amazing.  Go in and diddle in the
kitchen for half an hour, using a teacup of propane, and when you leave
you've got about ten pounds of hot rice and five pounds of tortilla dough,
plus a clean kitchen, no work, in any sense I'm familiar with, involved.
Along the with incessant exercise of free speech telemarketers use your
telephone to fulfill, little plastic tubs of vastly prepared food have to
be an embodiment of liberalism on a par with the SUV and cob-job, dry-wall
mansion.  We cannot fault the left for its dedication to maximum landfill
in minimum time, because it provides jobs, but we do reserve the right to
laugh at it.  We buy flour in twenty-five pound sacks, rice in twenty pound
sacks, and we reuse the sacks.  Lard, in five gallon buckets, also reused.
We throw away so little, all the trash for a week or more fits in a large
Purina cat chow bag.  Not a garbage pail, a months, for six of us, plus
guests.  We eat spectacularly good food, thanks to a minimal amount of
chili, vegetables, powdered chicken stock, and pig tails added to the rice
and beans (or its fried-rice cousin), at probably one-fourth to one-eighth
the cost of a conventional American diet.  One secret may be using lard
over vegetable shortening.  I should note that the piece-de-resistance of
my kitchen is a Chinese gas thingamajig.  It his three burners, each about
three times the power of an appliance stove.  Boils water for tea in four
minutes, gets the pressure cooker steaming in six or eight.  I don't know
if there are laws governing the output of kitchen stoves, but they are
anemic; hardly suitable for cooking for an individual, much less a group.
It's fun to cook when things get ripping hot in a flash; browning,
caramelizing, searing, or just getting in and out in a hurry.

                   Samantha really has changed for the better; finally
taking a real interest in the overall money situation instead of her
immediate cravings.  She wants a little Chinese tape player, which seems
frivolous, but it turns out her class needs to learn a Christmas carol for
their pageant, and this is the only way they can do it.  Apparently out of
thirty-something kids there's not a single other parent or guardian (to say
nothing of boyfriend) who can get them, a, blackboard paint, b, a fan, and,
c, a little cassette player.  It isn't just Santa Claus who gives the place
a miss.  The joke is, the kids have to wear shoes and dress in relatively
expensive uniforms, carry backpacks, and load themselves down with
notebooks and textbooks.  I can see their not showing up in their
underwear, but, while I strongly agree with uniforms for American students,
here it's an unbearable expense, as are shoes in the tropics, meaning the
kids who need it the most, can't even get in the door, then their parents
are fined five hundred dollar when they don't show up.  There's so many
things wrong with this picture, it's hard to find what's right.  Samantha
is trying to solve equations for X (she thought it was the `times' sign),
and she can't add a column of five four-digit numbers.  Grrr.  The amazing
thing is, she loves every minute of it, and chatters away about this test
and that quiz like a phi beta kappa.  I wish I had a sharper memory for her
slant on the English language.  She said my rice made her grin `till her
mouth bleeds; most are kinder and gentler, and have to do with buying in
the shop, which, like `outtatown' is one word: Iwan'gobuyinshop.  It's
astonishing to think she might have some household use, I mean, I wouldn't
expect it of the cats, but someone's got to do the shopping.

                   I molested Randy today.  He's twelve now, a little
pudgy, perhaps, actually a relief amongst so many spindly, rickety
children.  We chatted about the pool game as I ran my fingers over his
silky, warm skin, then I found I could easily slip my hand up inside his
cargo shorts and fondle him as he played.  Very erotic.  His penis is thumb
size, up from pinky-size a couple of months ago.  We played for about ten
minutes, him thrusting into my fingers, swelling hard, and chatting
occasionally.  He left with a cheery promise to sooncomeback, so apparently
the psychic damage was not extreme.  He's my first partner of that age
since Stephen, ten years ago.  He was eleven, and as avid and exciting a
lover as ever was born.  I haven't `tried anything' with Tonton and Elston,
Daisy's eleven and thirteen year olds; only some boys are attractive and
responsive, that way, and it's lucky Randy is because Samantha seems a ways
in the future as a lover.

                   The latest issue of "The NY Review of Books" goes on
about the mind/body connection, and its most fascinating aspect is juvenile
sexuality, I don't care what Spinoza, Wills, or anybody says.  It floors me
to see New York ignoring the subject, except for tiresome and not-even
coyly obtuse priest/penitentito rehashes.  Perhaps the neglect is, in their
eyes, their only goodness, or maybe they're simply waiting for a romantic
seven year old in the style of Gene Wilder.  And, indeed, the morality
questions are confounding.  How do you measure me if I become active with
Randy, while waiting for Samantha, when the alternative is finding a new
female and cutting Samantha off from her million Belize dollars, at the
same time turning her loose in aids city?  Those are the moccasins, walk
your mile and submit your essay.

                   Excuse me, I've left Sid Katz in a physically
uncomfortable position, and the entire cast in a psychologically
anticipatory state, so, noting that if you'd behave better I'd have less to
rail up about as we go along, we'd better get back to them.

                   "I was listening at the door," Christopher said, as he
sensed Pete's approach, "and it sounded as if you took your clothes off."
                   "What makes you so sure we weren't just trying to get
naked?" Pete queried.
                   "The bit about the meat wagon operative actually was
funny," quoth junior, "so you actually are naked."
                   "Naked as a future on credit," Pete allowed.
                   "So you don't have a stitch to lend me?" the boy played
along.
                   "Nor the time to write up a contract," Pete affirmed.
                   "Thank god," the boy said, adding: "are you going to
close your eyes, too?"
                   "Not even one," Pete rejoined, "we're artists, we work
in the light; play, teach, encounter, empower; everything but sleep."
                   "I want to see!" quoth the child in melodramatic play,
as if, after a life in the dark, he was to receive the gift of sight.
                   "Wouldn't you rather be holding?" the sixteen year old
asked.

                   There was a thump from behind the door, then a
hiccupping squall of helpless giggles.  Pete nodded at Sid and the two
opened the door.  The cute schoolboy, still in his underpants, lay in a
fetal position, shaking uncontrollably.  The teens again nodded at each
other and picked the child up, carrying him into the living room and
placing him, face down, on the sofa.  They petted and stroked his back,
then let their hands wander low on his waist.  The child went up on his
knees, and they pulled down his underpants, removing them when he lay back
down.  Their hands gently explored his upper legs and inner thighs as his
tremors went slewing from on extreme to the other.  The teenagers gently
molested the ten year old for a quarter hour, then the boy mewed happily
and rolled on his back, dropping his right leg off the sofa and spreading
himself as widely as he could.  Pete and Sid knelt between Christopher's
splayed legs and masturbated as the boy stared at him out of big, brown
eyes.  He was panting, his chest heaving, and to coax he laced his finger
behind his neck and arched his slim chest.  Instinctively, Pete and Sid
slowed; the wanton urgency of his display, notwithstanding, the child was
simply too beautiful to take and have done with.  Both teens fell one him,
soothing him, finding his hard, surprisingly mature penis and gently
fondling and masturbating him as they quizzed him.

                   "Are there any boys or teachers at school you like?"
Pete asked.
                   "Danny Wilderfield," the boy panted.
                   "How about teachers?" Sid queried.
                   "Mr. Hodges," the boy said.
                   "Do you think they'd want to do this with you?" Pete
said.
                   "They're both really nice.  I think so."
                   "We want you to find at least one steady partner, if
possible," Sid explained, "someone you have a lot of common with, and can
be with at least a few hours a week."
                   "And we can help," Pete added.  "You know, get you a
hotel room, or lend you our place, have DBYOB parties, use you together as
models, hire cars; aid and abet, as a prosecutor would say."
                   "Would you watch them touch me?" the boy panted in a
whisper.
                   "Once in awhile," Sid said.  "We're pretty focused,
that's why it might be a good idea for you to find other partners, but,
sure, once a month or so we can have a special party.  No more than four
couples, you know, silverware issues."
                   "Will I want to do this with little boys when I get
older?