Creative Camp

Blissy's Song (Romantic bisexual pedophilia and incest) by Feather Touch

Chapt. 3

Nap over, the threesome joined the other hotel guests in the dining room. "I couldn't walk like this after being with Len," Brenda commented as they negotiated the hallways to the lobby. Wayne found it remarkable she'd been able to walk at all, an eight year old with a full grown man. But he didn't know much about that kind of thing. He was glad to see the brother and sister behave normally toward each other and toward him. Affectionate, but on a friendly rather than a moony level.

"Hey kids," they heard a hail as they entered the dining room. Wayne was flattered but realized he was being included because he was outnumbered by the young. After all, Hey-man-and-two kids would have sounded pretty dumb. It was the couple from the pool. They waved enthusiastically and the trio was happy to have already made friends as a couple, so to speak.

"I'm Seth Hastings and my wife is Rita," the man said as they approached. "We got a big table hoping you might join us."

"We owe you," Wayne pointed out, holding up Brenda's hand with the stunning diamond, "so my treat or we're outta here."

Seth and Rita chortled happily and Wayne and his kids seated themselves. The funny thing to all of them was the thought of anyone treating anybody to anything.

The convention was all about just this situation. It was an age where a friendly woman would as happily give a young couple a quarter of a million dollar diamond as, a few years earlier, she might have bought the grinning youngsters a drink. At one extreme, their hotel was an embodiment of the complex new world; people who loved to cook, wait, and serve and liked, above all, to work, tending others simply because it was in their nature to do so. But that was running what amounted to a small country club for a couple of months as delegates came and went and seminars were held and dissolved. Lots of people would like that kind of work. What the convention was about was to try to find a paradigm in which people could come together, in the manner in which people always had, and distribute a minimal necessary work load, fairly, amongst all.

The convention, if not reality, itself, was meant to provide guidance to its restoration -- a balanced return half way back to reality. The r-stuff was missed, for all its tedium, in the sense that it made special things the more special, by comparison. Utopia had turned out to be fully as tedious as its press, while simultaneously providing a significant level of complacency, that beloved of the If it ain't broke... school of thought. Boiled down, even several times, the motivating force of the convention was a vague uneasiness and subtle dissatisfaction with, hum-drum it all, little reason to get even a quarter riled up. Probably what made the hotel so friendly. No one cared, it wasn't important, c'est la vie. But for all the blase dismissal, they were there and the beat, however scattered and tentative, went on. As an abstraction, making the bad times less bad would be useful, but this was impossible since however bad things got, it could always start to rain. All the pleasant memories of a long and happy stretch could be shivered way in a matter of minutes, and people wanted to hear it, the better to love their blankets, but deliberately placing one's self face-to-face with a time clock was another kettle of fish.

Wayne could tell Cal and Brenda were playing footsies under the table but the girl-child, now in blue and white checked frock with long red pigtails gave no obvious signs of tempting Cal into taking her as soon as they would have the chance. Being gone away on love and sex sure had religion beat. How'd anyone ever sold their cold and clammy god of bad vibes?

Wayne reviewed his problems. Foremost, because it was personal, was finding a theme to engage his energy and focus it over the long haul needed to complete any kind of serious writing. The second problem was the overall situation. The re-urbanization thing. Motivating millions to run noisy generators and pump stinking sewage. Dispose of dead animals and dig graves for dead humans. And for what? So communities could do what? His interest was history, to others it was revitalizing a degree of television and internet service, and just having more people to hang out with; video games, some parents wanted varied backgrounds for their kids; professional teachers, music, drama and a general list of activities that were all but nonexistent during the years immediately after TBPD.

All attendees were aware that, if nothing else, their conferences and seminars amounted to the strangest convention in human history. It would be years before they needed to co-operate in order to provide essentials. Even then, replacing outdated food supplies and other necessities might be best accomplished by smaller, rural groups. But that had not been the underlying psychology of the gathering. Rather, that we did want to live together for clubs and a dozen reasons. It hadn't quite reached the point that an inability to live communally was cheapening or at least distracting from an already realized ideal, but it did seem things might be headed in a damned if they did and damned if they didn't direction. An obvious codicil to their ruminations was that if there were to be any significant urbanization, the vast majority of TBPD survivors would have to participate. Over ninety percent, with even the divergent ten percent willing to contribute by fostering rustic enterprises for recreation and diversity, in general. Yes, they all agreed, the big pill drop had solved entire windrows of problems for years on end, but still it was human to want to improve things, as long as someone else did the work.

A smiling waiter approached the table of five pushing a cart of coffee mugs. Wayne attributed his grin to Brenda's special glow, bound to attract attention, or maybe he was just naturally friendly. Friendly place.

The conversation turned to Cal and Brenda's camping trip. Seth and Rita had been saved by virtue of having been camping, themselves, so they had a familiar bond from the get-go. The married couple showed pictures of their daughter, Sarah, just Brenda's age. She was with friends for the day and would be back for dinner. Seth explained she was his child from a previous marriage, and that her mother had died in the pill drop, or so it was assumed. For the past year the couple had lived in a village-based commune and had been chosen as delegates because of their daughter. They had both been dentists and still practiced on a voluntary basis. Their hobby was skipping rope with their daughter, two half hour sessions every day. Odd, in an era when they could have had a commercial quality gym, but that's what the family wanted.

Odd? Hell, all the conventional theories and ideas had been done to death; if any of them had been of value as an alternative to money as a social motivator, they would have adjourned the convention on day one and long since been hard at work getting their collective act together.

Wayne loved it. A natural anticonsumerist (what's an ant consumerist Brenda asked brightly, too engaged with toying her toes up and down her brother's naked calves to catch the wayward syllable) he was first among equals in understanding the relatively low value of opulence and excess; had understood this even as a boy and expanded the insight in the years before he'd ended up a default multi-millionaire. In point of fact, just two days earlier, he'd provided the one idea that had actually gone beyond the polite dismissal of barter, which would take up all the public's time, and nullify the reason for communalizing in the first place, plus one obvious ploy after another.

"What if," he'd suggested, "we ration books? You can only gain access to reading material by dint of labor for the common cause." It had been deemed better than rationing other media in the same manner, these ideas being unrealistic because no one knew whether or not it would be possible to reestablish radio, television and live arts, in the first place, and so might have worked well enough to provide essential levels of service, except that books were in such massive supply, and lasted essentially forever. It was deemed symbolically unacceptable to destroy all but some, which would be locked away as an ersatz currency. In the end, the rejection had been tentative with only the logistics of putting it into practice judged a liability. The concept was valid. It had to be simply because there had to be something of value even in a jaded world.

A theme of both sanctioned and unsanctioned discussion at the convention was the ironies when they were compared to the original founding fathers. Wayne knew his ancestor, John Hancock, had used his inherited fortune to sell anarchy packaged as liberty so he could get the British out of his hair when it came to smuggling. Sam Adams had been reduced to the status of ne'er do well because the self-same British had used their laws and courts to confiscated his father's smuggling fortune. One red suit had to do him for the duration. In the end a slimy kettle of sick fish had buffaloed enough disgruntled drunkards, misanthropes, and gutter trash of the Lee Harvey Oswald and Heinrich Himmler type to get everyone writing like crazy to justify the resultant slaughter as enough liberty to gag a maggot.

What was there to smuggle, year of the common era 2023? Sure, it was funny, sort of, but the underlying problem was anything but amusing. If they didn't find something in a year or so, and have it implemented in two or three years, their short span of utopia would be eroded until it imploded, leaving only a wilderness mountain men misery of existence for an ever-diminishing group of Neanderthals. Indeed, the reality was so palpable birthrates had spiraled, down, just in the last few months. Everyone agreed this was the opposite of what should be happening, but no one lifted even a brow in criticism; male or female, single or married, young or old, for all were in the same boat.

Emotion was forbidden during all conference meetings, formal and informal, but even such an obvious sanction did not work very well when it came to feeling sad. They had so much; years of life utterly free of want or restriction of any kind. The violent and idiotic fringe had been dispensed with by the peaceful mob the moment they were exposed and things had settled into a life of peace, friendliness, happiness and ease.

The original founding fathers had vastly exaggerated minor technicalities concerning taxation and representation to foment the anarchy that got the sheriff off their backs, indeed, had taught the Jew the trade in the process, but post-TBPD there was no such galvanizing force or interest, and no Jews. Hard to legislate emotion out under conditions like these. To have remained truly aloof, one would have also had to enjoy the finale of Titanic's orchestra.

At twenty-four these thoughts -- this inevitability -- had begun to weight on Wayne and other more mature members of various communities, for once, in all of creation, not in an empire-building sense, but with a truly democratic ideal of to hell with me, what about everyone else? with everyone-else, ironically, cast as the most important reason to survive, in the first place. These were the larger thoughts running their kaleidoscope tangle through his mind, along with his more prosaic needs as would-be novelist. So intense were the mental gymnastics the librarian took special pleasure and relief in watching his adopted children as they ate their pancakes and went about their secret mischief under the table, with Brenda stroking the edge of her plate with her right index finger to indicate wither what Cal was doing to her with his foot, or what she was doing against his leg wither own little naked hoof. He couldn't tell which, so well behaved were the pair to the casual eye.

"It must be right in front of me," Wayne sighed to himself. "After all, it's abstract. Not something one can go looking for. I can't, or we can't, go out and turn over a stone and say ah-ha, there's the answer, do such-and-such and live happily ever after."

Hell, even tablets torn in fire from mountains only harnessed fanatic zombies, a tribe thirty-two nations had refused succor though the tribe had been on the brink of enslavement, torment and eradication. Another tribe had found stuff in upstate New York. They were famous for their television ads, Howard Hughes, not smoking, genealogical obsession, and an unenlightened cheesiness that ran to their founding father. If these were the winners of the voices-from-on-high, chosen-people award, there was no point in looking for that of a miraculous nature. (The miracle was how so few had duped so many out of so much for so long, all non-issues in 2023, when mega death had proven the sugar daddy of theology)

Wayne liked Seth. Smart and laid-back. Lively and calm. For a dentist he'd kept himself in wicked good shape. Rita had changed to street clothes, but it was easy to remember her as girlish with a non-athletic firm waist and very large breasts that strained high against her bikini top. Long legged and tall, to go with her husband, no doubt, next to whose six five she was almost school girlish (except for those big, pretty breasts. School girls might grow them large, but rarely with that urgent-questing quality that matured in the young twenties and lasted a long, long time).

They sat, getting to know each other. As with millions of others, Rita had discovered reading as soon as her new life had stabilized and she'd just searched out the last early John Irving's. Like Wayne, Seth was mad for John O'Hara's short stories, and the thirty-two year old also had a strong interest in writing. Books were great. John Irving and John O'Hara, and you'd just started. There was all of C.S. Forester ahead. In the new high-leisure, broadcast free environment old writers like Henry Seaton Merriman and W. Clark Russell had been re-discovered. William DeMorgan. All writers who took their own sweet time in setting out their storyboards. And next thing you knew...

Dickens was not so much out of favor as ignored on the premise that the little guy always wept and there was clunk all one could do about it. Arguments as to whether this was the result of an affluent cynicism or common sense sometimes flared, but Dickens remained out. He had bad company. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Lewis, Salinger, Golding, Nabakov and a dozen others cooking for a ptomaine tavern which left its patrons bereft of any beauty possible in the human condition. Not only were they disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, they were artistically stunted, and, to rub salt on the psyche, exceedingly poor writers, to boot.

Many American classics were down the tubes. Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Poe, Cooper -- the lot -- had been edited into compendiums. While these authors might turn a pleasing phrase or render an apt page from time to time, they were insufferable in their whole, and, even in death, guilty of turning millions of kids off reading, big time. Now John D. McDonald was the starting point for assigned reading. Tough little novels of the fifties and sixties, and then came the likes of Trevanian, the man wrote funny, and P.G. Wodehouse, because he was even funnier, and, finally on to Willa Cather, just the artist to polish them literate for the world Girls liked reading better than boys, perhaps valuing some residual innocence after life on the literary mean streets -- something Nabakov stole in a single chapter. Perhaps a key to friendliness was hardening slowly. Forester, then McDonald, then Stephen King. At least a dozen of each, in sequence. Then John O'Hara's short stories. They were enough instruction, if one wanted to write, and both Wayne and Seth did, to empower a student to type through granite.

"So what?" Wayne mused, "have a skill set the size of an oil spill, you still needed a theme. Story, story, story. "

He was wrong there, plot is highly over-rated. Conflict and resolution. W. Clark Russell is at his best bending a brig into a Caribbean lagoon, and one does not really care whether or not Reverend Fortescue marries in the end, or not. Nor should Wayne worry overly much along these lines. The journey of a young writer is a path of terror. While the thoughts of piles of completed manuscript are pleasant, the life one leads in accumulating the ability to type them is one of degradation and daily humility. Half of men want to be writers, and half of them want to write screenplays. Comics get laughs and girlfriends get lost. Well they should, too. Families get mad, also, legit. To be a writer you have to fail at everything else, especially school. It is impossible to reach any stage of excellence in any field, and end up a writer. Simple time. If you ace algebra in ninth grade, you've spent so much time on it you've neglected your reading, and if you neglect your reading, even for a single hour, you are diminished when the time comes to try a few words of your own. To write, one must be an utter sloth, only interrupting the torporous state to engage in brief, high-energy occupations, by virtue of which one rubs elbows with his fellow flesh-and-blood, and, if productive, earns enough money to return to his kingdom of bed, not chair, and book. Two pillows and Pushkin.

A writer must needs be an equestrian, even if at the stable-mucking level, a pilot, even if at the airport gypsy level, and, essentially, a gadfly flitting from photography to computers to maritime literature to amateur historian to sexual adventurer. Doing all this on top of reading three thousand books is an eighteen hour a day involvement, during which you become more pariah than pal for the dual reasons that you don't do anything very well, and that you know so much more than everyone else you can hardly help boiling over with what others perceive as arrogance, but what is in fact an enormous concern at seeing others do things or act in ways that are wrong. You know better. You've read hundreds of books on Jews, spent a life amongst them, and know they are garbage up one side and down the other. People may agree, history, ancient, medieval and modern, definitely agrees, but it's nonetheless a difficult road because the truth of the Catholics is almighty parallel to that of the swill of Abraham, and, in the final analysis, the writer has to work all the way down to the Amish and Mennonites to come up with a religion worth an ounce of ink in a lifetime. Printer's ink, not writer's ink. Of course, if one takes on the loathsome side of faith, a lake of ink would be needed.

Sure, sure, sure Wayne eventually sighed to himself. All that and a hundred thousand hours of practice. He knew. Huge reading, wide, small living, and actual decades of down-home practice. What he didn't have the sophistication to understand, and it wasn't a problem, anyway, was the role of the modern word processor. Writing required such an intense level of practice over such and extended period of time that before the 1980s very few people could afford the typewriter ribbons and maintenance, and paper and carbons, especially people who had the time, and time, itself, became the mortal enemy of the paper manuscript with its prohibition against the ceaseless revision. These were significant factors, but only in the abstract. For the modern artist a computer would amount to nothing less than a podium half way to heaven, not in an artistic sense but in the flexibility with which it permitted one to practice year after year for a few dollars worth of electricity and simultaneously reducing the typing side of writing by ninety-nine percent..

Fruit of the muses tended to be subjective, relative and conditional. What to do about The Future was temporal, salient, and in everybody's face with any abstraction diminished page by calendar page.

The three miracles. Too bad a fourth was needed. The first miracle was surviving the hodgepodge of the founding fathers. Second, Midway and the Bismark offsetting, in five minutes of random opportunity, the moronic tintinnabulations of a navy backed by politicians. Bill Gates, of any by himself, created the third miracle, with the significant appendix of "grow Pedro," which had extended the Microsoft Miracle by an unlikely decade. . Of course, there were many minor miracles along the way, oil, coal, iron, timber, terrain suitable for canals, beaver, gold, land, and so on. A dizzying array, focused by reputable businessmen, AT&T and the Burlington Route, to give examples from the author's family, alone, as well as Henry Kaiser, Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln and maybe one thousand other, large and small. But, aside from the vacuum tube and transistor, these had been evolutionary ten-to-one over revolutionary The outright, bolt from the blue new way of doing things -- a perfect example of which is the Shaker woman, who, watching a man sawing wood, over her spinning wheel, invented the circular saw - of a miraculous nature could be counted on the fingers of two hands. (Even flight with ever-lighter internal combustion engines, was an incremental inevitability) Further complicating the situation was the fact that the miracle they were in need of was abstract. In Wayne's mind, closer to the Manifest Destiny that had rammed through a bayonet point purchase of a third of Mexico, than anything to do with light bulbs, business models or sunken aircraft carriers. And the fourth miracle had to come, or they all would die, not soon, but soon enough.

The grade of the politicians was F-. The beloved FDR had firmly assed his wheelchair, and chased his gals, while Japan did Nankin, and Hitler did whatever he wanted; yet The Rollin' R is regarded as historically monumental by virtue of lifting a single finger to help England, more because he happened to get along with Winnie that for any reason, whatever, concerning the commonwealth. Name a hundred possibilities of invading Europe in 1944, and grinning Ike and his henchmen came up with the bloodiest and stupidest way to do it. Saddam Hussein made a few phone calls, and the USA spent forty billion dollars, and wore out thousands of jet engines, to build a fort a thousand feet high before a shot was fired. And even industry had not, ultimately, been immune form amateur dumb-dumbs. Iridium, Netvan, TheGlobe and Egghead, with Amazon and Ebay proving in depth what a thousand lesser groupings of fools had proved on the surface. By 2018 it had become downright tiresome. The world had begun to wake up to the fact that however beautiful a printing press the German's could build, the builders were in no way, whatever, qualified to write a single word printed by their big, synchronized spinning drums, as surely as the writer would not be qualified to design, produce, install, repair or even operate the thundering press.

The tyranny of the technicians. The crushing degradations heaped on the writer whenever Indifference turned his head to yawn. Those that could, doing, those that couldn't, pushed away. Wayne realized how it really could play out as a novel, how someone who had lived almost only through books and documentaries could suddenly spin in his tracks, maybe a little like Clint Eastwood, and come up with a line that went something like Listen, punk, this is the most powerful brain in the world, but, you know, in all the excitement, well, it just seems as how I forgot what I was going to say. Is there an idea in here to save civilization, that's me asking you, punk, or, looking back on our recent period of transitory activity, is there no idea? In other words, punk, are you feeling lucky?

Too late. Probably wouldn't have mattered, anyway. So few things did. Vagaries of history, Rickover and his hundred nukes, for example. In cold, hard fact by 2018 the country had run out of out of. The big pill drop had been ninety percent mercy and ten percent trauma, and that had been with a certain legacy industrial dynamic. Lacking any dynamic worthy of the name, the future seemed a murky haze of realized anarchy with so many James Deans the old shoe mother wouldn't have know what to do with them if she'd owned Broward County and six western states.

Yes, it had been the boomer boys who'd pushed the fatal button, and why not? they had so little to lose it amounted to less than nothing. Less than less than just as the recent past had run out of out of.

That Seth could intrude on his thoughts brought Wayne back to the table. Somehow they'd managed pancakes for lunch, and he hadn't even taken it in; but Seth was looking at Brenda and he could not blame the girl for looking back. Cal not only noticed, but felt. Brenda's playful foot had taken up a less frivolous rhythm on his long, naked legs. Three times in less than a minute his kid sis more than glanced at Rita's breasts and that was a draft of pure oxygen for the fire that had begun to kindle as they left their room ten minutes after he'd freed himself all over the little redhead pixie's country-girl face. Feeling mature and confident, as he should have, the seventeen year old caught Wayne's eye. The guidance was friendly and encouraging. Rita had, after all, supplied the fabulous diamond Brenda was wearing, almost thrown it into the pot, so to speak. They were hardly the party across the isles on a jet to Sandals, though that would have been cool, too.

The twenty-two year old Rita, for her part, was burdened with secrets. For one thing, Sarah wasn't ten, she was twelve. If that weren't socially unacceptable enough, there was another secret layer to the relationship of the mother and daughter. As they'd joined the convention and come to the hotel, they'd been hoping for a third layer to their secret, and now, seated with Wayne, Cal and Brenda, Rita was chastising herself for greed because her mind was seriously contemplating a fourth major secret. And these were major secrets, total taboo, and weirdness personified, not the I broke the handle off the teacup while I was washing up variety. For that matter, as far as public attitude went, no better were the girl's secrets than a mid-western president, Lincoln excepted..

Wayne and Seth shared a thought. As writers, they were wayfarers in search of a theme. Both had an unerring feeling that a veritable presence shown down upon them could they only put a finger on it, meantime, Brenda was turning Cal on so much he was beginning to match her gazes at Rita's handsome husband.

The waiter returned to promise the group that their simple lunch had been in furtherance of the chefs conjuring up some miracles for dinner. In truth, the five-some had taken their food in stride. The waiter, Chess Gilbert, had lingered, sensing something to sense. H reached in his wallet, eyeing both Brenda and Cal, and pulled out a picture, showing it to Wayne whom he took as the pro temp leader.

"It's my nephew, Scotty Kidder,:" he said. "He's twelve, just arrived this morning. I'm sort of into this working gig, so I just wondered, you know, off the cuff, if you'd let him hang out with you for a few days.

Rita was the only owed party in the ensemble, having her donated her diamond engagement ring, so the photo was passed to her for approval. She readily nodded, though it was unimaginable. A waiter seeking refuge for a relative propositioning a table of strangers. When property meant nothing, its absence came to mean everything. The picture of the brown-haired, schoolboy-looking kid, oval face, generous mouth, open smile, met with a series of nods. The waiter wrote down name, rank and serial number, so to speak, winked at the thirteen-year-old busboy, and departed, well tipped.

Banal as the transaction might have seen to the casual onlooker, in the group of five it engendered a low-vibe ripping excitement.

Wayne was excited, because young Scotty had just the faintest trace of a mustache on his boyish upper lip. Seth was excited for the identical reason, plus, any kin of their waiter, Chess, was likely to be a whole lot less than dull. Rita looked at the picture, the wide brow, the even photographically beautiful eyes with their quiet look, as a partner for her daughter, Sarah. Brenda looked on the image as a just-right-age friend Cal had similar feelings, boner or no boner. Sure, it threw the balance from three males to two females to four males to two females, but there'd been enough perfection since the pill drop to be broad-minded and cavalier about technicalities and occasional exceptions to some rules.

Scotty was duly produced. He was a year older than his photo, almost thirteen, and settled quietly into the remaining seat at the table. For awhile the group had been legitimately planning a couple of hours by the pool; the late-May sun was perfect and a robust crowd was out and about in full force. Any one of them could have broken the spell. He was just a kid, tall for his age, gangly, kinda athletic looking on second glance, but not a boy who would have needed Fleet Arabs to outrun the likes of Swifty Lazar.

Wayne giggled to himself at the thought. Along with "grow Pedro," the colossusly dumb tennis-shoe marketing scheme had sustained the pre-crash economy beyond all expectations. The creator of both projects had dismissed his silly footwear invention (Fleet Arabs could outrun Nikes) by saying if anyone can be as miserable as Bess Truman, then someone could be as good as I am. He, the creator/writer/inventor, had so thoroughly fried his own fish, in his own pan, over his own fire, he'd been dismissed for his painful conceit, but his legacy, aside from providing the odd notes of levity, had fostered an underpinning that had to do with presenting the right program at the right point in time. So it was that no one regarded Scotty as intrusive, but rather with a calm acceptance that seemed to say Even if he turns out to be a thief, what could he possibly steal, and if he turned out to be just a nice kid, well, wouldn't that make the timing righter than right? While seizing the moment might be a commercial imperative, with Scotty the groups thoughts were far from momentous when it came to seizing.

The vote was no vote at all. Just smiles and a quick rap amongst the youngsters to determine where the newcomer was on the Pedro game. Cal and Brenda were delighted to hear the boy hadn't yet reached island boy's stint as a ferry captain in the Crane Breaker Straits. Next to flying Baby Dragon, the Piper J-3 sim, it was the hands-down favorite. Hell to get to, all those dorky academic drills, but running a crowded ferry across a rip tide in a white squall was worth the odd hundred hours of rote and drill. It was estimated by one writer that "grow Pedro" had been the nucleus of one billion friendships, that was in early 2015, so Wayne figured a few more friendships based on the mad life of the Caribbean Kid could do no harm. Opulence made the time right, for anything.

There went the sun. There went virtue. There went respectable behavior amongst the small hoard of fellow delegates. Should he feel guilty? What had they accomplished? What would they, if he was a good boy, and Seth and Linda were a good couple? Not even an agreement to disagree, that would have been a light at the end of the tunnel as far as negotiations, or lack of same, had gone, or not gone, so far. Perhaps a break was just the thing. Three days of glad-handing and impromptu confabs had made him some friends, was a great default way to pass the afternoons, but nothing significant had ever come under discussion, leading Wayne to wonder if incipient fatalism might not be as bad as the malady in its acute phase. He also realized he was probably just rationalizing. He'd only been at the convention for three days, far too little time to accept or dismiss much of anything, even with a prequel of extended discussion. Something might pop up. He blushed at the malapropism that fit so perfectly. Scotty almost seemed to blush back. What had Chess told the child? Done with him? They weren't questions germane to literary themes, nor survival themes, but even if the philosophical interpretation was boiled down to a situation at hand being worth two in the bush, who was it that there was to provide a moral compass? Since all prophesies had been fulfilled with TBPD, and no new ones existed, the monotonous arrogance of religion had bitten eternal dust leaving a void all but humming with pleasure, but no code of conduct.

Now we are six. Wasn't that a famous kids' book? It was enough to row, three on a side, enough to split a dozen of anything, two each. A comfy Rolls-Royceful. Wayne guessed they'd be comfortable together in a buckboard, or, for that matter, just staying home. Speaking of which.

By acclimation they stood up, found Chess to thank him for the meal and the tip. Scotty grinned happily as he entered the elevator with his new family, a framly he called it to himself, combining friends and family. Yeah, like the language needed more words..

While the group dynamic was overall and general, certain vectors appeared almost the instant the doors slid shut. Brenda was so entranced with Rita, she held hands with the very young woman, rubbing her new diamond against the mature female's palm. In Scotty, Wayne sensed a wary alertness and he was delighted when the cute twelve year old seemed to choose him. As for Cal, he and Seth seemed to have begun to set themselves off. In fact, there were so many fuses burning in the elevator it was a wonder to all there was no scent of cordite in the air. Continuing with Scotty, the boy had now turned to face Wayne and it was easy to see why. The librarian sensed the boys embarrassment and leaned down to whisper that he'd be a freak to be in any other condition, under the circumstances. He took the child's shoulder gently in his hands and turned him to face the others, just as the elevator stopped. As they gained the hall, Wayne whispered to the boy, asking him if he wanted to take a walk.

Scotty nodded eagerly and the new couple parted from their companions and headed down the hallway to the stairwell.

"Up or down?" Wayne asked the stripling as the door swung shut.

"Can we just sit here?" Scotty asked.

"Sure," Wayne said. "Are you okay?"

"Just scared out of my mind," the boy responded with a nervous grin.

Wayne recalled how he'd felt when he'd first entered the suite with Cal. And he was twice the kid's age. A wonder the boy could speak at all.

They sat on the stairs.

"How did you escape the dastardly deed?" Wayne asked as an ice breakers, referring to the mass poisoning.

"Religious retreat," Scotty answered, "on the upper peninsula of Michigan. I guess the logic was that if He had created so many pine trees he must have had his eye on the place, plus,. the location was a natural at engendering prayers such as O, Holy Virgin, be merciful in your wisdom, and bid us crusade from here."

"Bet you never knew how much power there was in prayer," Wayne commented.

Scotty grinned happily at his new mentor. "The mysterious ways," he giggled.

"No one can get it wrong, forever," Wayne retorted.

The thinking was at the limits of the twelve year old's comprehension. Jeez, his mature partner was right. The church had led to human disaster, got it wrong, since day one. Blocked science, impoverished congregations, distorted human morals, ethics attitudes and values, and bent peace into war with the monotonous clunk of Satans' very drum. Even if the clergy were not as bad as the world's politicians, admirals and women, they were bad enough. And, in the end, the interminable guesswork of clerics had been right. Retribution had come to the greedy, selfish masses. Three out of a thousand left standing, with, it turned out, a silver lining commensurate with the size of the cloud (in addition to the wondrous end of Prophecy, that is).

"Did anything exciting happen on the retreat?" Wayne asked the cute boy, hoping to get his new young friend, as they once said, on message.

"Almost," the boy said, slowly. "If I'd stayed a few more days, but that was just when the pills hit the aqua, or, more accurately, when they kicked in and everybody got all panicky. Reality reality for the masses, no television or artificial ingredients needed.

"Cheap entertainment," Wayne acknowledged.

"The best things in life..." Scotty quoted.

"Don't sell yourself so cheap," the librarian said.

"The wages of sin is citaetamethacylate," Scotty replied, (every schoolboy knew the name).

Both young males knew it was not the time nor the place to be kidding around, but it was so much fun. A way to get to know each other and to celebrate their knowing of the greatest of aphrodisiacs which was simply being bookish. Sure, video gaming was good for the hand/eye thing, but when it came to heart/cock, there was no substitute, not even a hint of one, for being literate, and plenty so. It built a bond of trust and certainty between the boy and the young man. Since each knew as much as could possibly be expected, for their respective ages, it was probable they'd not do better elsewhere. Plus, they wouldn't be in any big tearing rush; that was for pigs and peasants.

"He took my shirt off," Scotty whispered.

"Who?" Wayne quizzed.

"Well," the boy responded, "technically, it was Reverend Thatcher, but we called him Carlos."

"Did you like him?" the librarian asked.

"Yes," said the boy. "A lot. He was the only one I was sorry about. He got pilled because he was the first one to leave camp to find out what the hell was going on, you know, after the radio went off the air and we couldn't find anything on the park ranger's television, he was way up in a tower and usually got lots of stations. Carlos took off on his Harley and ended up getting caught in some kind of freak backlash."

"I'm really sorry," Wayne whispered softly, shocked to find it was the first time he'd felt any emotion other than intense relief and happiness over the great event. "What happened between the two of you, or is that private?"

"To anyone else," Scotty said, "but I'd like to tell you, if you want. It would be nice to have a friend with no secrets."

"That goes for me, too," Wayne answered, "but I can't promise more than that. I'm like totally new to the things guys to together; up until a couple of hours ago, I'd never done anything with a boy, then I met Cal and Brenda, so now I'm a homosexual and a pedophile. Plus, I like women my own age."

"Like Rita?" Scotty asked, grinning.

Wayne looked at the kid and simply went duh'uh.

"I'm a little hubba-hubba about Sarah," the twelve year old commented. Wayne groaned, inwardly, with chagrin. By virtue of being a librarian, over Seth's being a dentist, he'd earned command, if there was any such thing, well, they'd gravitated to his suite after lunch, so, sort of by default, but still, a responsibility and attention to detail were implied as part and parcel of the bargain, however vague the bargain, and here he'd gone off fantasizing about six of them in his Rolls, when, in fact, there were seven of them, or would be when young Sarah returned. For the third time that day, he had a problem, although, to assess the matter fairly, if Sarah sat in Scotty's lap it would be one which would occur only on longer automobile trips, and the Mitsubishi was better for those, in the first place.

"I forgot all about her," Wayne confessed, out loud.

"Rita's a pretty good excuse to forget the world is round, as far as I'm concerned," Scotty responded. Wayne all but cheered out loud. The boy was calm and the boy was definitely cute in a plain-boy way, but he'd been a hint afraid he might be effeminate and clingy. Someday it would be fun to have a lover like that, a dreamy limpet, but that would be a city thing. Taking care of business, even in the age of utter opulence, didn't allow the time for lingering dalliances and secret liaisons in which one could indulge with happy shame. Someday there might be room for a doe-eyed, shaggy muffin boy, but for now he was glad to see Scotty at least an ensign on a hubba-hubba class vessel.

"Do you wonder what they're doing in the room?" Wayne asked, implying it was fine if the boy wanted to go to their suite.

"Probably talking, just like we are," Scotty answered, adding, "I mean, didn't you and Cal and Brenda, you know, talk?"

"Around the pool," Wayne explained. "But they'd been on the trail, you know how kids are, three days straight, trying to make the convention, once they decided they wanted to go, so, well, once we got to the room, what with me being all-but a virgin, you can kind of guess the rest."

"Do you think Rita has her bra off so Cal can look at her?" Scotty whispered.

"I got the impression Seth and Brenda both wanted that," Wayne said, "so it could be."

"I don't usually get so excited about, you know, girls up there," Scotty said, bashfully, "but Rita looks like a school-girl, except for being a lot more developed."

"What do you like best?" Wayne whispered, letting a little of the conspirator into his voice.

"Hitler Youth films," Scotty answered. "Those boys look so awesome, you know, like marching down a country road in their shorts. Tall, long-legged, muscley. Especially when they have their shirts off and they're doing training and stuff. I'll bet they were the happiest boys that ever lived in the world."

"I don't know," Wayne mused in response, "the Jews sold you thousands of tons of hundreds of bands, made you three hundred films a year plus countess hours of Saget and the Beaver. I really think they tried to make you happy from Mr. Rogers, on."

"They were just after our money," the boy replied quickly. In that a system tends to corrupt and absolute system corrupts absolutely, it was a wonder to see a boy of twelve with a mind of his own.

"There's more to it than that," Scotty continued. "Hitler was an ugly dude, looked like dog leavings, somehow most of his gang of clowns looked even worse, yet they loved him with all their hearts and souls, boys and girls, way the hell over ninety percent. How many boys, do you suppose, love Saget? . That shows that love can be spiritual, or at least have a spiritual side; it's not all slim thighs and big brown eyes."

"How about Goring?" Wayne asked with a wink.

"Extremism in common sense is not a vice," Scotty retorted, making Wayne burst out laughing. He hugged the lanky child to him. On a close look Wayne observed just the barest trace of fine black hair on the Scotty's rich upper lip. It was sexual beyond description.

"Did you talk about stuff like this with Carlos?" Wayne asked, softly.

"Yes," Scotty said. "It was two weeks before I trusted him enough to tell him how I felt about the German boys, I was stupid, but hey, I was nine at the time."

"You were only stupid," Wayne pointed out, "in light of what eventually happened. Otherwise, you were smart to have taken your time. What guys do together isn't love and marriage, in most cases, but neither should it be wank and wander, to cast it in British parlay vous. I mean, don't get me wrong, hot, fast and anonymous can be exciting, but at nine you were smart to ease in, plus, I have little doubt it made the outcome... "

"Come out," the boy affirmed with a blushing giggle. "I like sharing Carlos with you," Scotty continued. Wayne didn't have to say he liked the sharing, too. It would have been over the boy's head to go off on an exotic tangent to do with muting grief and preserving memories, by maybe an eighth of an inch. Pretending interest and faking sympathy to get inside those underpants, which were so much smaller than his own, just wasn't going to work. There was no luck involved in the irrelevance of this issue. That's what reading was all about, less fakery.

"How long was it before you took your shirt off for him?" Wayne whispered softly into the tall boy's ear.

"He took it off," Scotty whispered back.

"Where did it happen?" the quizzing continued.

"Up in a field, behind the camp. We were picking blackberries. We'd talked quite a few times about stuff in general, school, sports, neighborhood, family, then he found out I was a bookworm so we'd go off on tangents as to whether Salinger sucked a hairier root than Tolkein, or vice versa. We both loathed Hemingway and Picasso, as artists and hombres, so that was a bond. He had a complete set of Royal Readers, you know, school books from England in the Thirties. Brilliant. I'd already read most of Forester, but he turned me on to his Destroyer epic, The Good Shepherd. I read it twice without coming up for air. Then he lent me a copy of Tom Cringle's Log, which is an outright masterpiece.

"How about Captain Marooner?" Wayne asked.

Scotty's eyes got wide. "How'd you know?" he gulped. "I have dreams about that story. It's the only bad side to TBPD, no more Hollywood. When I grew up, I was going to make a film of that book. It's a total freak-out, and every word is true."

Wayne nodded. "Even the trial scene at the end, taken word for word by a stenographer."

"And the rest is from the boy's journals, written down practically the moment the events happened. Twice the story of Mutiny on the Bounty, if you ask me." Here Scotty paused, as if for breath. "Reading really is so awesome," he finally said quietly. "I mean sports is the crack of the bat and the bus ride home, but even one book you can talk about for hours. It's the best sharing there is, except maybe for sharing a shower with six or eight tall Brownshirts."

"How about Rita?" Wayne teased.

"Hey, you forgot Sarah," the boy countered with a quiet, drop-dead smile. His upper front teeth were typically pronounced for his age and offset by a cute little eye tooth making a delectable set of four. The more boyish the boy, the cuter the toy. But toys didn't slice and dice artistic bums, didn't even know they existed.

Okay, both of them were perfect. Just one thing they wouldn't have to work on. Lucky they had books in common, if for no other reason than that perfect people were monotonous. If they were only technicians or something, well, that would be the end of that, soon enough. Both young males were a bit taken aback with considering themselves "they" so soon after meeting under such anonymous and transitory circumstances. How long did it take to make a couple? Depended on how deeply they were in over their asses in volume and tome more than on how fast and flippy they danced. Wayne and Scotty had been a couple for years, they just hadn't met.

For several minutes they sat on the marble stairs. The stairwell wasn't exactly a honeymoon suite, as Wayne's convention domicile was, but there was a masculine play of wrought iron, varnished wood and tile work that made the location memorable for all its utility. A central reason for urbanization was to dwell in buildings wrought by the masons run down by millions of trucks of sheet rock. Lath and plaster, which softened the clinically-edged polygons as well as heavy doors, which went ker-thunk, and a dignity that extended even to the stairwells with their glass, not plastic globes, and wasteful incandescent lighting. Pretty at night, though. In fact, it seemed like a special alcove in the scheme of things, and, as long as the power was on, their retreat was assured. Wayne pointed out the fact that the generators stayed on until midnight, and that while the elevators were operating they had pretty good privacy.

"I'm cool with it here," Scotty said. "When I was nine I got really nervous that someone would see what I was letting Carlos do to me. I mean, I knew were alone in the bushes, but I was so embarrassed I would have fainted if a squirrel had seen us."

"Sounds exciting," Wayne commented.

"I asked him why he'd gone into the church, you know, the last time we were together. I'd always wanted to, but never got on the subject. He said it was a secret, secular in nature, and it had to do with something that happened to him when he was ten years old.

"Mix secret and nine-year-old," Scotty went on, "and you come up with answers. He made me promise not to tell, and then he told me a story about going to see fireworks with his minister, and when it was over it started to rain so they had to stay all night in the car before the parking field dried out enough to drive on without getting stuck.

"By this time, we were side by side picking the last of the berries we could carry. Carlos was whispering and I was getting excited, just hearing his voice all low and husky, so my voice got that way and I kept asking him questions about what happened in the car, and he said it was just something that happened because they liked each other and ended up, by accident, spending the whole night in the church van.

"That wasn't good enough for me, and I kept asking questions. He finally said he'd let Adam, that was his minister, he was twenty-five, molest him. `If you tell anybody, or at least the wrong person, I might get in trouble,' he said."

"Did you know what it was?" Wayne asked.

"I knew the word, and I knew a little from the dolls they showed us in third grade. There were some stories when the boys got together, so I knew it was complicated. For example, everyone knew Reggie Kirk was getting molested by Mr. Gregg, his neighbor that he mowed lawns for, and nobody thought a thing about it, except I think some of the boys thought it was way cool, and he was lucky. On the other hand, there was Jeannie Fletcher, she never said anything to anybody, and two boys had seen what her dad did to her while they, the boys, were out hunting."

"So, Carlos was really open about it," Wayne commented.

"Oh," replied the boy, "he was definitely cool. I think he really wanted to experiment with me, that's why he made it sound secret about his becoming a minister. Sort of baited me. I mean, he could have just said he liked to play with young boys, you know, put it up like a wall for me to climb over if I was so inclined."

"Would you have?" Wayne asked.

"It has to be one of the reasons god gave us muscles," the boy responded with a nod that affirmed the abstraction.

"So," the elder male whispered, "did you find out what happened in the van?"

"After a short seminar on biology, he told me," Scotty said.

"Was it worth the lecture?" Wayne asked.

"It made me sick," Scotty giggled. Was he trying to be funny? "It gave me a sever case of long-attention-span disorder."

"Ah, the hopeless case, bane of the medical world" Wayne sighed, taking the boys sweet young chin in the index finger and thumb of his right hand, and bringing the lips of the brown-eyed oval face to his own.

They rested gently against each other, finally experimenting with some gentle nibbles.

"I kissed Carlos bare chested," Scotty whispered.

"Did he have his shirt off, too?" Wayne whispered back.

"Yes," the boy answered.

"Do you want to call me by his name?" the older male asked.

"Wow!" Scotty responded in an excited whisper. "I mean just this time. Would it be okay?"

"Yes, babe," the leader whispered, not so secretly thrilled that their group of seven was, in a remote but special way, now eight.

"Do you want my to tell you about the physiology part?" the boy asked, slowly returning, lips parted, for a different kind of kiss. Wayne nodded.

"It was about my chest," Scotty went on, "its like even now embarrassing because you're only the second one I've told, but, you know, I never played skins and I never took my shirt off if anyone cold see me.

"It was hot in amongst the blackberry vines, and it would have been more comfortable to, you know, be like the Hitler boys, but, you know, when you're overdeveloped on the chest it's sort of weird, like you're a girl, or something. It turned out the same thing had happened to him the night of the fireworks. It was hot, but he was embarrassed. Then he had a long talk with Adam, and found out that lots of boys, you know, share the problem, so he'd let Adam look at him, and that made me be brave and let him look at me."

"So he took your shirt off before he kissed you?" Wayne quizzed.

"He just pulled it up so he could see what he wanted," Scotty replied. "Then he took it all the way off and hung it on a bush, and I took his off. Then he started touching me, and that led to kissing."

"What did you like best?" Wayne whispered to the child now snuggled to his chest after more exploratory kissing.

"When he looked at me and touched me," Scotty breathed. "I'd seen loads of kissing on the tube, but I'd never seen what a child molester did, so it was the most exciting."

Wayne could imagine, but was glad he didn't have to. Scotty unglued himself and jockeyed to a position between Wayne's legs, and they stood, leaning against the railing, with the boy one step higher than the young man, Scotty with his back to Wayne. "I think this is the best way," the child explained, "touch me under my shirt, then I'll turn around so you can take it off if you want to, okay?"

Wayne gently tackled the boy, pulling his shirt out of his shorts and finding the trace of softness typical of a child's belly. "We talked about more biological stuff," Scotty whispered.

"What?" Wayne panted huskily in the boy's ear.

"Carlos asked me if I ever, you know, did stuff by myself. He said boys my age were just starting out a lot of times. Like he had, with Adam. So he told me about what Adam had shown him, and he made me whisper to him what it's called. He explained that lots of people liked to do, you know, stuff that was a little bit kinky, not just what the regular thing is, and one of the best kinky things, in his opinion, was using like Victorian names, and sort of being romantic about it, not just atavistic and feral.

"He said a lot of boys like to do it, but don't like to talk about it, and it was okay if that's was how I felt. Also, some boys liked to exaggerate and talked like too much or treat it like a sporting event, you know, dominate and maybe even hurt. He said that might happen to me, because I looked pretty good, or so he thought, and he said if that ever happened just pretend I'd been beaten up for my watch, and that I shouldn't get all paranoid about degradation or invasion of my space, whatever that is. `Hospital staff and rescue workers deal with that kind of thing every day, so think of them and be cool.' That was his advice, on top of finding a small home group or even a single partner, and hanging pretty close, but not too close, mind you, for the long haul."

"Did he get you to say the secret word?" Wayne quizzed.

"I was too embarrassed," Scotty whispered. "I don't like the gross words, and I'm self-conscious about the polite ones. But I really like it when you try to get me to say them, and I'd like it even better if you pulled me back a little so I could, you know, feel you against me."

"Did you whisper like this with Carlos," the librarian whispered as he pulled Scotty gently against him.

"Yeah," the boy said, "after we kissed he did what you're doing, only I had my shirt all the way off, and he made sure I liked what he was doing to me. Plus, he asked me if I was going to do it to boys when I grew up."

"Have you thought about things like that?" Wayne queried.

"Just once in awhile. Like a cute seven year old, you know, a smart one whose really curious about stuff. When I get older, I'll like to do it with boys, once in awhile. Carlos always repeated that it's a small part of life, and lots of people live happily without it, while lots live miserable lives, and do it all the time. Sort of a big deal, and no big deal."

"So," Wayne asked, "nothing like this happened after Carlos?"

"Just a lot of dreams," Scotty whispered. "Chess is my cousin, he's openly gay... you probably figured that out, and he's pretty fixed on Sammy. I don't want to be open about it, and I don't want to be fixed on anybody, not at twelve. If I can find someone like Rita, when I'm twenty-five or so, well, that might be a different story."

"Everything is possible if you don't get fat," Wayne said. Librarians are default teachers, always on the lookout for a tender young mind to infuse with small seeds of vital data. All Rita had to do was a minimal fair share, and one twelve-year-old-dude would be indoctrinated, as the kids still said, big time.

"If I call you Carlos, " Scotty said, "it's more because you're like him than being neurotic or anything, at least half-way."

"The way I have it figured," Wayne whispered back, "he was very lucky to know you at all, so any ghosts involved should be happy ones; you know what I mean."

"I guess we were both lucky," the child responded, "but mine gets to go on."

"Mine's just starting. "Brenda, you, Cal..."

"But you haven't done anything with me yet," the boy objected kindly. "They taught us that in health ed. For a boy, it has to be inside his underpants to be bad touching. For a girl, it can be under her bra, you know, in front, but for a boy, it's his underpants."

Ah, scholarship. The wondrous world of academia, especially third grade. Before TBPD things scholastic had been in a downward spiral. Only being goofy was valued as being in step with the times. Got you on the Jews' TV. Interesting to find out some traces of insight had remained, like getting kids curious about things at age nine.

"Did Carlos put his hands inside your underpants?" Wayne whispered.

"Just in back," Scotty said. "He was, you know, big on anticipation. It's moral and physical aspects. Less is more. The less you do, the more you enjoy what you do. Of course, he wasn't a fanatic on the subject and was the first to admit it tended to be mercurial in nature. In the end, what was right was right, and vice versa. But, at the time, we were going to take another couple of days before, you know, he really molested me according to the doll. Then, a couple of days later, I mean it wasn't written down or anything, like a contract, we were going to, you know, get completely naked with each other and experiment all night, and, in the meantime, think about it.

"Then 'the meantime' turned out to be eternity," the twelve year old continued. "Freaking everybody was dead. Time to be country boys, whether we wanted to or not. After awhile, I just thought about him at night. I never wanted to try that stuff, some of the campers did, most didn't, until Chess brought me over to your table."

"Your basic evil, corrupting force," Wayne commented.

"Yeah," Scotty said, "why was everyone so uptight back when?"

"The way I read it," Wayne replied, "is that we were subjected to The List of Utter Fools under democracy. Roosevelt selling populism for party position while Japan and Germany marched right down the centerline of the road to mega death. Manned space flight, nuclear submarines. Heroes, the lot of them. More like poltroons born on a burro farm. That we survived them until 2020 was the second great human miracle, Anglo Saxons being the first."

"The Rolls Royce of ethnicity," Scotty agreed, with a nod. Wayne laughed and cuddled his delicious boy. "You got that right," he acknowledged, "Tribe One in every field there is. A bit embarrassing, really, but, on the other hand, it gives the rest of the world something to bitch about, and folk plumb ain't happy unless they's bitchin' about something. "

"That's kind of how it ended," Scotty replied, "isn't it? The Jews became as good about bitrching as the Anglos were good at everything else."

"I think it was frustrating for them" Wayne said, thoughtfully. "They didn't get to invent anything, even scuttling journalism. This left them with no respect for anything but god, the one thing they did invent."

"Yeah," Scotty said, "but they were slick about it. Clever to the max. Instead of inventing god in their image, they pretend they're in his image. Makes them seem humble and like back-seat riders."

"It worked, too," Wayne replied. "After awhile you had Anglos acting more like Jews, than Jews. Roosevelt set the stage. Fellow travelers, with Rosie pumping socialist iron as fast as ever Babs could, and Heraldo, whose only half Yiddish , nosing the air for fart-scent as if he were to the yarmulke born."

"Irving Berlin, a voice on the phone whining when glee clubs used his work without crossing his palm."

"Hey," Wayne chided the boy gently, "if you had trunk after trunk full of absolutely terrible songs, you'd probably have developed an acidic personality, too. Jews are of barren ground, ven their big scientist dude was something like ninety percent assimilated; used his brain for goy interests rather than plumbing heretofore vague points of Torah. Tuff. to have your essence largely ignored by the biggest of all beans."

"I don't think he was that," Scotty said. "Did he ever write a novel? That's the truest form of genius. The long and powerful performance, as one of my teacher's described it. Sit down with a ream of paper and turn it into a story that entertains and informs, makes people laugh and grind their teeth. Swing a sword on one page, and tickle with a feather on the next. Then, when you finish one, sit right down and write yourself another, proof of the pudding so to speak."

"Oh," Wayne replied, "I think that would be more like gilding the lily. Understandable, though. If you had the talent, you'd want to show off like a monkey in a tree, or you wouldn't be human."

"I think," the boy responded, "that to pull it off, a real, brass-knuckles novel, not some Ludlum tripe, you would have to practice so long and work so hard you'd end up gibbering in your tree, half-dead of exhaustion and beyond caring if your droppings ended up in the soup tureen, assuming you were an indoor monkey."

Sex probably was psychological, when you got right down to it. Far more mental than physical. It seemed an outright violation of the less-is-more principle because the more you read, the more you knew, the more intriguing the relationship you could have with the next fellow, the more you could appreciate his cuteness, the more you could linger over carnality, the more, the more, the more...

"People are still pretty uptight," Scotty commented.

"This place is loose," Wayne responded. "I mean, if someone did come into the stairwell while I was doing this to you they'd just say Sorry, guys, and use the elevator. But in the world at large, I think you're right. On the other hand, being secretive and coping with taboo and guilt are part of the thrill."

"Natural enough," was Scotty's response, "if it weren't for forbidden passions and sick excitement, the gene pool would take a serious hit."

"Indeed," Wayne agreed.

The child was dazzling and saucient, even with his shorts on. Anglo mind apparently on the order of Mozart. A pleasure to be with. At some point in the afternoon, he was going to bring a hell of a trophy home from a hunt he hadn't even imagined. It was a little mind-strangling. Two mildly amusing days back in civilization, drawing slow bead on a Miss from Delaware, also a librarian, then, like a stick of bombs right across his lap, Cal and Brenda, now Scotty. Rita, her husband, and their daughter The dead Carlos. The enigmatic Chess, who'd somehow resisted teaching this friendly boy. Urban pleasures. That was the thing. I mean, sure, Scotty could have turned up on the farm under a number of guises, but the chance of it happening would be small. In an urban environment, the chance of it not happening would be small. The chance of a group of seven, in the sticks? All but impossible.

And how big should the group be? At what point would more become less? It was a delicious embodiment of the old slippery-slope adage so beloved of liberals. If seven, why not nine or seventeen? It was kind of like the moronic South. How long after their independence before Virginia split from North Carolina over some matter of tradition or pride? A year? And then... every dingaling a king, long as he was white

The essential cruelty of life was that you couldn't be kind to everybody. This cruelty was partially mollified by the fun of being cruel to Dixie boys; piss `em off, whip the living shit out of them, and, to assure due diligence in the humor department, allow their indoctrination in technicalities of process and procedure that would churn their guts forever. For sure, there was no more awesome enemy than an Anglo Yankee, nor a tribe who took a fuller joy in victory.

Yes, it was the writer who wielded the ultimate in terrible swift swords. Wayne wished he'd been old enough for the trade Back When. It would have been like scything thistle in those days. Targets big and targets dumb, stoned on pot and drunk on rum. Of course, so many would have amounted to less. Correspondingly, obstreperous bellicosity would have been unavoidable in any true novel, what with the obesity and greed of the audience. Lacking a central theme with which to hook the reader and drag him through the muck, he'd given up on the project before starting it. All Wayne could do, when it came to writing, was keep his eye peeled for a thesis, and renew his efforts at the convention, because, unless it succeeded, it would not be many years before there was no one left to write for. Paradise, definitely lost. That would be then, this was now. Scotty was now. Warm, kittenish soft, long-legged, still dressed.

:"Okay to get rid of this?" Wayne whispered as he began to remove the boy's shirt.

"You have to, too, okay?" he whispered back.

Scotty turned in Wayne's arms, and climbed a single step, backwards, so his fingers could do the talking. Getting naked was surely one of the most exciting parts. If it was twice as good as getting half naked, it hardly bore thinking about.

They began kissing the moment their shirts were open, Wayne thrilling to the lingering delicacy of Scotty's young-boy body while the preteen was enthralled with the power of the older male. "Oh, Carlos," he whispered in response to being held more firmly and a whispered, "Oh, babe."

"It's not going to stop, this time, okay?"

"More than," Scotty replied.

"Carols was right for you being nine, but you're twelve now, and you've waited long enough."

"More than," Scotty repeated.

Wayne eased the boy away and looked into his brown eyes. "I don't want to do any adventuring, is that okay," he asked.

"I wouldn't know how, anyhow," Scotty said.

"The real Greek way is to stand, chest to chest, and fondle each other while we talk, and kissing can't do any harm under those circumstances, so we can do that, too, if you want."

"The trouble is," Scotty replied, "I want to see what happens, and I want to be kissing, too, and whispering, too."

"You won't outgrow that," Wayne promised the boy.

"That's why they call it life," Scotty sighed in mock despair.

"Someone needs a hug," Wayne deadpanned, half ashamed at using a banality best banished. Scotty took it in good stead, and soon their problems were forgotten as they cycled between tender and passionate wandering kisses. The boy had all the beauty of young Brenda, plus a big, hot bulge in his shorts. "Did Carlos see you like that?" Wayne whispered, glancing down at the boy significantly.

"It wasn't so obvious when I was nine," Scotty replied.

"You look big for your age," the man commented.

"You look big for any age," Scotty responded with a touch of a giggle. Then the boy yawned and his voice dropped to a husk. "I want to touch you," he said, his voice not only husky by heavy with urgency.

"Did you touch Carlos?" Wayne whispered, holding the boy gently close.

"Just outside," the boy answered. "He said if I unzipped him, he couldn't control himself and we might get caught, plus, it would spoil the waiting game. I didn't care about getting caught, and I definitely didn't care about waiting, but he went off on one of his dignity and disciplines tangents, so I just rubbed him a few times through his shorts, and he took my hand away and I trapped it and put it on me and I was just trying to get his fingers up the leg of my shorts -- I thought he might give in because I was getting hints from the way he was breathing, when we heard someone coming, so we had to go back to pretend like we were picking berries, even though they dropped off the top of our bucket."

"Do you want to do it the same way with me?" Wayne asked.

"Yes," the boy responded, with What a great idea clearly visible in his glowing eyes.

Wayne didn't wait to take credit. He lowered his arms to his side and looked down. Scotty's hands went gently to Wayne's waist. "Just like this." the twelve year old whispered as he held the young man half a foot away, alternately looking into his eyes and down at the obscene bulge in his shorts. Then both hands began a downward drift that was not sensuous, or at least deliberately so, but, rather, tentative and curious. When they reached Wayne's belt, they came slowly together inches under the belly, paused to explore some and perhaps even play a little, then down over leather and cotton, right hand first, as Wayne's erection was jutting to the left, with the left hand following to the base of the swollen organ. Looking intently at what he was doing, the boy squeezed, massaged and experimented.

"This is where he stopped me," Scotty whispered.

Wayne supposed Carlos must have been born and bred in Character Patch, USA. Even with someone approaching, it had to be impossible to guide those beautiful young hands against the mad hardness that seemed to want to surge from insanity to outright explosiveness and then make them go away. On the other hand, what had happened when the boy's first lover had made him desist? The boy had done something. Wayne tried to remember what. The story was less than a minute old; surely, he, who had just had extended intimacy with a wriggling, panting young female, could remain composed enough to remember what the boy had done with Carlos's hands. It had to be easy. Hands. It had to do with hands. His hands. Scotty's hands. Stopping them. Still Scotty's hands, taking control of his own, leading him, head bent and bars-chested to the boy's own swollen erection. The stairs matched their height to each other, so the tall man didn't have to bend over until Scotty's hands guided him lower, down over his penis, to the leg of his jeans shorts. It was rather a long way back up, but watching the fingers of his right hand bulge out the fabric of the boys shorts while listening to the preteen pant and whisper was erotic, Brenda or no Brenda. In fact, at this moment Wayne realized he owed the girl a special debt of gratitude If it hadn't been for her, he would, at this point, let his swollen cock out the right leg of his shorts, and thrust it up the left leg of Scotty's shorts and cum all over the child before either of them knew what was going on.

If that had happened, he would have missed out on what he was now doing to the young boy. Running the fingers of his right hand slowly upward and upward, feeling the tender softness of the lanky adolescent thigh and listening to Scotty pant as he slowly heel-and-toed his legs apart, granting total permission in the process. There is no juxtaposition of truth and beauty. The thought was a bit abstract for the situation, and probably had a passel of exceptions, but here, now, with what they were doing, truth and beauty flowed over them like a treacle pipe from heaven. If there could be juxtaposition in a fluid, unlikely, it would surely be, in a miasma, well, absurd.

"Tell me how high Carlos went," Wayne whispered.

"Too late," the boy responded, "you passed it a minute ago."

"I almost never got there at all," Wayne responded, not knowing himself if he was sighing in relief groaning with anticipation.

"He went in back more," Scotty coached. Wayne assumed the boy had probably been wearing shorter shorts, at age nine, than he was now, therefore, it had probably been easier for the young minister to get his fingers over that tender, round bottom, or, it could be that morality had played a crucial role, guiding the invading first hand to the lesser evil, or evils, as the case would have been.

Having got Wayne's hands, mostly his right hand, up inside his shorts, Scotty went back to his mature partner's belt and zipper. It was exciting to play with them, pull on the soft leather, unclasp the silver buckle, find out how the catch worked, and then tackle the zipper. As Scotty performed these rites, Wayne sidled his groping right hand around in front of the child, now going higher at the boy's front.

Wordlessly, the males shifted position so they could remove each others' sandals, then they resumed their positions on the stairs, Wayne's shorts now wide open as Scotty hung his head to watch the man tamper with him, while rubbing and exploring the huge bulge in the twenty four year old's white briefs.

As he saw Wayne begin to lower his zipper, Scotty inched his legs back together so his shorts would fall to the step. The librarian found the gesture extremely erotic, the boy's lust to be naked and give himself, transparent.

As Wayne began spreading Scotty's shorts, he found the boy was wearing black bikini-style underpants. " They're Chess's, " the boy whispered, turning red.

"It's okay to tell him I did this to you, you know," Wayne said. "This is kind of half-secret stuff and if you really trust somebody, you can tell, just like you told me about Carlos."

Scotty seemed to relax at this perspective and Wayne hoped he might have found a vector the boy could explore. "How would you feel if Chess was doing this to you>" he asked.

"If he wanted to, it would be okay," the boy responded.

"If you want him to, tell me," Wayne encouraged. "I'll cum on your underpants, and you can, too, if you want. That way, you can just carry them into like his bedroom sometime when you think he might be in the right mood and say Look what happened to me."

"Would that get him excited?" Scotty asked. Wayne chuckled to himself, he had been right. There was an interest on Scotty's part, and the black silk underwear, copiously stained, would, whether wet or dry, ignite what would in all likelihood be a very short fuse. He answered the boy's question by asking if he'd be excited if Chess brought him stained underpants to look at and the boy just grinned shyly in response, leaning against the stair railing to take some of the load off his trembling legs.

Wayne skinned the boy's shorts down over his knees, then off. Scotty did the same to him, leaving the two young males staring each other up and down. Wayne's hands went to the boy's slim waist and slowly he brought them together in front. "No wonder bad' became good,'" Scotty whispered. Wayne assumed he meant bad touching. As if. No, that wasn't right, though the irony was it could be and would be the first day common sense overruled taboo. Not for everybody, but then, truffles and escargot weren't for everybody, either. Maybe in a place called Balanced Land precisely that could be reached; a balance between safety for the kids that didn't and freedom for those who did, equal value to both sides.

"That must be Brenda kicking in," Wayne mused, realizing there had to be some reason he wasn't ejaculating spontaneously and furiously all over the slim young child who was now moving both small hands lower and ever closer.

The stairs gave them a good match in height, and the wrought iron railing with its polished mahogany banister provided something to lean their shuddering bodies against as they came closer and closer to beginning their Greek exercises together.

"Do you know about this part of the biology?" Wayne asked as he found the boy.

"You mean what happens at the end?" Scotty asked in reply. They now had their brows on each other's shoulders, their bodies separated by a few inches so they could look down.

"Yes," Wayne said. "Sperm. Lots of it. Real messy and getting all over everything. I just don't want you to freak or think I'm pissing on you, or anything."

"It's okay," Scotty said after a moment. "I mean all the yak-yak, I always figured the end wasn't going to amount to a pinch of fairy dust or anything. After all, who's more wasteful than Mother Nature, and there are six billion people on the planet, or there were, at any rate, so, ergo, there must be lots of waste involved in what men do, meaning..."

"It could be shocking for a kid," Wayne said, finishing the thought. The Greeks, by the way, were absolutely right. Nothing but nothing but nothing could equal plain old this. As essential as babes in a garden, the naked males ran home their experimental touching. Each cupped and fondled his partner playing with varying vice grips and with the use of fingers, in a general sense.

"Are you nervous about getting caught?" Wayne asked.

"With you?" Scotty whispered back.

"Yes," Wayne said.

"More like nervous at getting caught without you," the boy concluded.

"Should we love each other?" the librarian continued.

Scotty thought for a few moments as he gently learned his rhythm. "I think we're too immature to do anything else," he said at last.

"So then we'd have a hope of outgrowing it, right," Wayne asked, daring to let hope into his voice.

"I wouldn't go that far," the boy replied, still thoughtful and at least partially distracted by the great ear of hot corn he was learning, pretending, in a typical boy's game, to butter it like a savage, just using his fingers.

"You're getting really wet, already," Scotty whispered.

"There's nothing `already' about it," the young man whispered back.

"Me, either," Scotty responded. After a moment's thought he added, "So that makes two of us. Cool. Because we can stay two. Couldn't do that, if I was a girl, could we? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be able to resist a threesome, you know, a diaperee.

Wayne groaned inwardly at the absurdly childish reference, but the kid had a point. Two and only two. It was irresponsible, low-brow and the attitude of the chronic slacker hoping to ease through life, all fruit, no rind, peel, core or skin. It was almost miraculous, Wayne realized, that exactly the same paradigms fit the artist, and most especially fit the writer. Was that why they did it in the first place? Lived a cop-out existence braying I'm and artist, dammit, on the assumption the best defense is a good offense, while typing out a little nonsense to justify their lack of focus, and, most crucially, engagement? It seemed plausible. The thought was difficult to get a barb into, but seemed to go along the line that fraud came before fortune, that an esoteric life would tend to bring one in proximity of Horatio Alger targets while permitting the amplification of a single paragraph about sausages into a body of work running to ninety volumes, as in the case of Upton Sinclair.

It was so strange. Back When, the socialists kept thinking they'd lost. Ford was spending more on pensions than it spent on steel, yet the leftist drivel never acknowledged or flagged. And the bound-and-determinedness of it all had glowed with the special brand of humor only liberals brought to life. An example from the early ohs had been mammograms. Every TV mouth prodded, pushed, encouraged and cajoled from the Jewish box-o'-health, and off the gals ran like chickens to cornbread. All of a sudden radiologists, veterans of a particularly gruesome passage through medical training, were rendered factory workers, looking at endless thousands of X-rays of healthy young women while knowing if they missed the slightest shadow in a thousand they would be sued for millions. Poof, no more radiologists. The liberal and the noisy Jew. Loathsome, but so were the plastic candy bugs and worms that had appeared at roughly the same time.

Sad about the Greeks. What an utterly simple life one could lead, yet stand like this from time to time with a boy in an orchard, and what could be added? More boys? People smart enough to have figured it out in the first place would be likely to have had enough sense to grasp the less is more concept that led to survival amongst wine, women and song. Pot, poppers and boys was a more up-to-date trilogy, but in either case, was there not a sink or swim philosophy, at least subconsciously speaking? An attitude that might have gone something like You'd better get used to controlling yourself; booze, boys, babes and bingo, or you're going to have a long walk on rough ground. Of course, if one really reached for the sky in the addiction department, the road might not be all that long. Good thing it would be especially rough, some people had time, others had shock absorbers, so watching various approaches took on the characteristics of an event -- sort of a moral motocross. And the ancient Greeks had twigged to the life fulfilling pleasure of a boy like Scotty and cumming all over him. Of course, they hadn't written of it. Maybe it was time someone did.

Posted by Thomas@btl.net