One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPTER SIX -- EIGHT

CHAPT SIX

No sense in having chapters if you don't use them at least once in awhile. The truth of the matter is that this one, Rob's film script, as maybe half over, but, in searching for a dramatic moment at which to play radio writer and break the action so folks would tune in next week, I was unsuccessful, and thus had to write my own. Did you ever think what it's like to be a writer? everything's up to him. You're in the middle of a great panorama of a novel, you love every page -- "Lonesome Dove" is obviously an example -- and who gets to finish it? The writer. Your expectations, his talent magnified by such a capacity for work as to yield genius. His unreserved willingness to travel barefoot in the vineyard of exhaustion, selecting one grape per mile. The monumental barrier of the keyboard and monitor, paradoxical, because it is their very insatiable nature that challenges, that says, loud and clear, `You'll be blocked, on of these days, you arrogant prick.' How they rattle on, yet, haven't they a point? Am I not absorbing the very life they have, the only life they have, never letting them rest, constantly at them, at them, at them? Wouldn't they rather serve happy children by playing games? Not in this household. Only one survived the virus, pool, and I have a registry problem, so my sound card doesn't work. No games, just text. Five thousand, ten thousand words every twenty-four hours. What kind of life is that for a dumb machine? Even the cats get petted and played with every day, fish treats and milk on top of premium Purina; all Sloggo gets is voltage spikes and brownouts, with occasional blackouts to alleviate the ceaseless toil. Where I'd stroke and pet a car with maintenance and premium fluids, I've even taken away my machine's screen-saver slide show, replacing it with a default water color. No aboriginal slave ever worked harder bringing up the Don's silver than this collection of transistors and diodes. It does wax well.

Linden has apparently gone into the stalker-thief mode. Bev was a rough, two-fisted mother with him, and her sins are coming home to roost. My home. He scared Louse half to death, hanging around the shower late at night, and stole her cousin's bicycle. Nice guy. He's cop meat, and, as they're having a three day shutdown of all retailers, protesting the killing of a shopkeeper here in Dangriga, can probably expect a hostile attitude by the police, with full public backing, when they get their mitts on him. Melissa lost the baby on account of stress, according to Bev who actually made an appearance yesterday. I recited all the lore from my comprehensive medical encyclopedia, the gist of which is her miscarriage probably indicated a low placenta, which, if she'd tried to go full term, would have separated prematurely from the uterus with life-threatening bleeding. Since the chance she was a victim of pelvic inflammation, at one time or another, is about one-hundred percent, she should get a hysterectomy and devote herself to the welfare of kids already hatched, as I do. The pair of them need about four years in the military, each, for the world little loves disagreeable parasites who think life is an unending sequence of eating, showers, sex, and sleep.

On the plus side, Daisy's gang seems locked into a solid routine. I think the boys are so shocked at seeing the kitchen neat and clean every time they launch into it, they're cleaning it themselves out of fear of some weird spirit. May the fear be with them, always.

Samantha and I walked to McKenzie's last evening, where I found a hundred teabags for three-fifty in the local currency; about one-seventy-five, U.S. How do you produce anything in this world for one-point-seven cents? Four is eight American dollars for twenty-five pounds. Thirty dollars yesterday for groceries for the week, including the cat food. In truth, we had lard, baking powder, and rice on hand, but a week's supply of these would have added only another ten dollars or so. It's such a screaming laugh, what liberals have done to America. The galloping, crushing, grinding obsession for possession, from the supermarket to the palatial toy warehouse. If you aren't buying, popular lore seems to have it, you aren't trying. You don't need any of it. A reasonably comfortable home the size of a boxcar, well filled with books and magazines, is sufficient housing for two adults and three children. Everything more is upkeep and market variable. One toy, per year, per three. Think how much they'll love it. The schools want them to add fractions and diagram sentences, which says a mouthful about what the schools want. It is atrocious. You are hideous. Get the message?

Good. We've given the cast time to catch their breath, I've added a few hundred words of gratuitous insult, perhaps proving to literary scholars that former editors were right in deeming it important for the novelist to wall off his work (This, of course, opened a revenue channel from a book about said author.), and thus we find ourselves ready to search out a few more of those elusive grapes.

"Did you find anything?" Sid wanted to know.

"Some interesting purples," Pete replied.

By now they were back at the kitchen table, introductions made all around, and catching up.

"Who's the hole in the rug?" Pete asked a few minutes later.

"Elmo Saperstein, art critic at large," Sid said, "or at least so I suppose. I hid the key for him when I left for Africa."

As usually happens in such cases, there came a silence as each of the three, their past adventures shared, shifted to the task of picking up shards and splinters for reassembly in the present. This is easier with artists than with humans.

Sid Katz gave Josh a long look. "I take it you've given up pigeons," he said to Pete, looking at the canvas which was propped on a leg of the easel, then back at the schoolboy.

"Have I sent you up on the roof with bread crumbs?" Pete asked Josh.

"No," Josh said, grinning.

"Talent and brains, who'd have thunk it?" Sid said.

Silently, but beginning to radiate strongly, they went through the ritual of seconds on tea. With cigarettes available by the ton, and a future that could only optimistically be deemed even problematic, they'd decided to smoke, and so the older males lit up. As artists, they'd always used marijuana to a limited extent, and they included Josh, who seemed to possess the requisite IQ, to toke along. Pete brought his old friend up to date on the temporal plane, and gently eased into a discussion of the larger reality seated between them at the table. "Jesus H," Sid whispered, "you do have it. Damned if you don't. If anyone could, it would be you, and if anything could inspire you, it would be Josh Benedict."

Catching up means catching up, all the way. Josh percolated more cold chills as the conversation came to include the hour, then the minutes before the newcomer's wild arrival back from the grave.

"I think you felt pretty comfortable with where our conversation was going, didn't you?" Pete asked the boy, looking for any residual hesitancy or hints of discomfiture at Sid's presence.

"I guess I'm a little taken aback," said the young reader, "I mean, there I was, quite happy, thank you, nurturing dreams which would have challenged the Scott Paper Company, when there's a key in the lock, and they're gone. Also, I had a sheet of notebook paper outlining stories from summer camp, and, lo and behold, I can't find it anywhere. That leaves me but a single Post-It note with which to hold up my end of the conversation."

Sid could hardly help looking wildly at the boy, like the giant who loved the blood of an Englishman. If brains had anything to do with anything, they were the eros in erotic, while having nothing to do with the resistible in irresistible. "They must have been plumb out of chopped liver the day you guys met," he said. His friends nodded happily in agreement, young Josh playing along admirably in spite of the tension rising in him like the mercury in a donut thermometer. They were both so effing cute. Pete Anderson blond and blue-eyed, Nordic, and the tall, slim, willowy build of the Semite with his delicately olive skin and raven hair -- two faces of an Olympic medal, young, fresh, athletic without a trace of the body-builder's disfiguration, at least while they had their shirts on. (And, due to the lack of narcissism in their makeup, he bet himself you couldn't find any with a scalpel.)

"If I tell my story," the boy said, thrilling both his companions by reinventing his Post-It note, unbidden, "it may be disappointing, because I didn't see anything."

"We're artists," Pete observed, "we'll make something up as you go along." Sid nodded in agreement, glad, as they both were, to have at least such an inexpressibly cute face on which to base any fantasies that might occur.

"It was hot in the tent," the child began, "and Clark was in it with me. Clark Evans. He came down to check that we were planting the trees correctly. The airline lost his baggage, so I said he could sleep in my tent because he was only meant to stay two nights and it was easier than going on a wild goose chase back to town.

"Jack Fillmore, our counselor, said it was cool, so that's what happened. Clark said we'd exceeded our quota with the forestry bureau by almost twenty percent and he hadn't found a single dud in the samples he'd checked, so he said we could be friends, and asked if I wanted to talk about other stuff. I'd been working on the site for a month and so I wasn't tired (it was only about nine in the evening) and I said sure. He said we could talk about normal stuff, like sports and music, or crawly stuff, like scorpions and snakes, or... creepy stuff..."

Pete and Sid looked at each other. In addition to his other attributes, it was becoming apparent this was a boy who could tell a story. They didn't give themselves credit for being an outstanding audience because they were that kind of guys.

"I was half a summer behind on ball, so I'd sort of lost interest, I liked classical music, but was too young to know much about it, and I'd had a month of desert fauna, including two Gila monsters," Josh said.

"Has any creepy stuff ever happened?" Clark asked.

"You mean like a wedgie when no one else was in the room?" the black-haired, brown-eyed child asked.

"No," Clark whispered back with a quiet chuckle. "No wedgie, quite the opposite, in fact, but, yes, someone else in the room. You know, a creep."

"No," the boy whispered, responding wholly to the husk in his nice young friend's voice.

"What if it happened?" Clark asked, "You know, someone you liked, not some freak, and you were alone together, and, you know, he was older and experienced, and he wanted to teach you secret experiments; how do you think you'd feel?"

"No boiled toads or eyes of newt?" the boy asked.

"Speaking of boiled," Clark responded, "is it hot in here, or just me."

"The wind's coming up from Mexico," Josh said, adding: "I usually sleep on top, especially until early morning, then the sleeping bag comes in handy."

"That sounds good to me," Clark said.

"I'm only wearing underpants," the then ten year old said, "is that okay with you?"

"I don't know," Clark replied, "I wasn't just making stuff up about creeps. Something happened to me when I was your age, and a creep did it, and I liked it, so if you were lying beside me, almost naked, I might not be able to help doing the same things with you, if you'd let me."

"He didn't try to boil any of you?" the irrepressible boy said.

"Somewhere out there lives the luckiest person in the world," the young agronomist said, "and that's the one you choose as your permanent alpha."

"As long as they're not a raptor," the boy said, unzipping his light sleeping bag, his heart suddenly racing. "Are you just wearing underwear, too," the boy asked.

"Boxers and a tee shirt," the husky voice a foot away said, as the second zipper rasped, "but I'd like to take the shirt off, if that's okay."

"Yeah, I don't blame you," Josh said.

They jostled, self-consciously not touching, and in a minute were lying atop the bags, flat on their backs, hardly an inch separating Clark's left arm from Josh's right.

"I used to be really embarrassed about being bare chested," Clark whispered.

"I get the same feeling," Josh replied, matching his tent mate's manner of speaking.

"Yeah, I noticed you kept your tee on even at midday," the older male commented.

"I guess that's kind of weird," the boy said.

"There's a reason for it," Clark said, "but a lot of boys find it, like I said before, creepy, to talk about it, with faggy standing in if `creepy' doesn't get the point across." This sent Josh's heartbeat higher than it had ever been in his life; no way he wanted to be anywhere else in the world for the moment, which he fervently hoped would last.

"I can't imagine doing anything in public with another guy," Josh whispered, "so I think I'm that-proof, but, otherwise, it does seem one has to learn sometime. Jimmy Forsyth's a year younger than I am an he'd been learning with his little sister for two months."

"And does he look up at, or eye-to-eye, or down on a Gila monster?" Clark asked.

"During the day, down-on," the black-haired child beauty said, "but, now, likely eye-to-eye with Jack."

"There's evidence of that in your group's statistics," Clark said, "I've seen it twice before. An outstanding group has an outstanding leader, and said leader has, in both cases, had a close personal relationship with one of the group members, was open about it, and quickly became respected as one who actually lives for the forestation project, not someone looking to pad a resume."

"So it's not always an ill wind that fans the flames," Josh remarked, in response.

"I suppose it's an odd way to measure things," Clark responded, "but if you swap X number of acres of useless timber, unless you're abnormal about blue jays, for even one super bonding, for lack of a better term, it seems to me you come out ahead."

"And the timber burns from lightning, anyway," Josh added.

"Have you been molested?" Clark asked.

"No," the boy said. "Unless you count half telling us half the stuff in school. That had its moments."

"Did they use the dolls?" Clark asked.

"Yeah," the boy answered.

"Including the, you know, male one, anatomically correct?"

"Yes," Josh whispered.

"I'm like that, now, are you?"

"Yes," the boy repeated, very softly.

"Okay," Clark went on, his voice strengthening slightly, "the reason you wear a tee shirt when it's hot is that you're more mature than the other boys, even if some of them are a year or two older. My gym teacher explained the whole thing to me, because I wasn't taking showers when I was in seventh grade. I stayed after with him to help with filing, and we had a long talk about it. It's because you get hormones early, and grow more and faster, which is totally embarrassing unless you come from a family of horses, who think such things are macho and cute."

The boy began giggling and had a hard time stopping.

Clark waited patiently and very, very happily.

"This sensitivity," he finally went on, "leads to not even wanting to be bare chested, partly because in most boys who it happens to the nipples swell for awhile from the hormonal imbalance, and that, plus the fact they different in other ways, is sort of killer-killer-on-the-loose in the embarrassment department."

"My gym teacher wanted to talk to me, too," Josh said, "but he broke his arm skiing, and nobody liked the substitute, so it never happened."

"Will you have him next year?" Clark asked.

"Yes," Josh said.

"Then remind him," Clark advised, "as soon as you can, if he doesn't come to you, first, okay?"

"Yes," Josh said.

"I was going to get out my penlight," Clark said, "so we could look at each other, but, since you have someone special, I'll let you share that with him, and we'll stay in the dark, if that's okay?"

"Yes," Josh whispered.

"Have you thought about what he'll do with you when you're alone with him?"

"Sometimes," the boy admitted, "especially after Jimmy told me his story."

"And Jack and Jimmy?" Clark quizzed, "do you think about them on top of their sleeping bags, sometimes?"

"Jimmy always wears his shirt, too, so I have to imagine," the boy said.

"How about Jack?" the visitor asked.

"I guess he's modest, too," Josh allowed, "he doesn't even wear tee shirts. Strictly buttons and pockets."

"Yeah," Clark observed, "that part's complicated. Victorianism and prurientism. The more hormones you have, the more sex drive you have, the more sex drive you have, the more strongly you react to nudity, thus the more modest you become if your IQ is over ninety or so. Some go the so-called faggot route, lots of simpering, lisping and display; perhaps the drive to be offensive outweighs the sex drive, in these cases.

"And make no mistake," the older male continued, "a lot of normal guys are effeminate merely because they had a strong female influence in childhood; means nothing about them, or their sexuality. I mean the deliberate, in-your-face, boy bimbo. All show and no cum, if you're old enough for that kind of language."

"Well, I don't seem to be growing anymore," Josh replied, causing his tent mate to sigh as if he'd died and gone to heaven. (Not halfway.) Half-way, he died of laughter, but, like the Japanese industrialist in "Gung Ho", was reluctant to let on.

"Do you know how to jerk off?" Clark asked.

"No," the boy whispered back. Was that his heart beating in the foreground?

"Would you like to do it together before we go to sleep?" the scientist asked, "you can pretend it's your gym teacher, or that you're watching Jimmy Forsyth with his kid sister, or Jack; anything. It's called `fantasizing', just like you do over action figures and sports stars."

"I like you plenty, you make me laugh," the boy said, "though I do have an old "Menudo" album cover hidden in my dad's vinyl collection."

"So you know a little about it, then?" Clark said, reassuring himself, "because it can be kind of intense, and, if it's a little wrong at the beginning, it can be very wrong after the excitement suddenly disappears."

"I've been sneaking looks at the record cover for a year," the ten year old noted, "and I don't think anything's disappeared."

"That's a good sign," Clark said, "I'm just trying to be sure you don't wake up to a morning-after."

"You've been out of school too long," Josh said, "or you'd remember it's the morning before that causes the headaches."

"They still trying to teach you to add fractions and diagram sentences?" the older male asked.

"You guessed it," Josh sighed.

"That gives the teachers a chance to bully all the students, not just the slow ones," Clark said.

"It simultaneously instills and reinforces hatred of the hallowed halls," the boy added, "I'd like to see the formula for that."

"The subset responsible for the curriculum dotes and dines on hatred," Clark said, "so they'd be unlikely to respond if you could quantify it."

"Then they assign Golding and Sallinger, in case anyone survives the maths," the boy said, happy to share the page.

"And Kafka, Nabakov, Tolkein, Vonnegut, Heller, Kerouac, Ginsberg," his friend said, "and a dozen other trendy trogs leading up trog one, Ernest The Absolute Moron Hemingway."

"They've been so trendy so long they're classics," the boy added, "so the bum never sets."

"You know what?" Clark asked.

"What?" Josh said.

"We couldn't do much worse for a topic of conversation, could we?"

"Yeah," the boy agreed, "imagine talking about summer road kill, and having it an improvement over school." They both took a moment to contemplate just exactly how weird that was, then did change the subject.

"Have you ever jerked off with a kid before?" Josh whispered.

"The honest truth is I've never even been tempted," Clark said, "then I saw you in your tee shirt, and suddenly I wanted to do it."

"Most molesters had it happen to them when they were kids, I read that," Josh said.

"Not me," Clark said. "I met my wife in high school, and we've been married two years, and I think the paperboy looks cute in his cut-off shorts, but that's as far as it goes, except for reading stories on the Web."

"About what we're going to do?" Josh asked.

"Yeah, and what your friend Jimmy did. Everything. Most of them written by teachers and professionals, plus a lot by kids."

"Do you think they'll make you a better teacher?" Josh asked.

"Well," the young man replied, "they haven't done much for my performance as a forestry inspector, but there's still a chance."

"What do they tell you?" Josh asked.

"That most men who seduce young boys and girls genuinely like them, I guess that's the main thing," Clark replied, "they're not sick, nor are they necessarily repressed or dysfunctional and looking for love in all the wrong places. They just like kids, with or without their underpants."

"Do you think I'll be a molester when I grow up?" the ten year old wanted to know.

"If you're well read, curious, imaginative, and like to share, I don't see how you can help it," his older friend said, adding: "How do you feel. If you had a friendly and reasonably cute eight year old lying beside you, do you think you might want to experiment if you were sure he wanted it, too?"

"Yes," Josh said, "even though I can't think of any kid I know I'd like to do this with."

"That means your answer was hypothetical," Clark explained, "assuming an attraction, yes, you'd like to, but it would have to be something special, so, for the time being, it becomes theoretical."

"Will I feel differently after we've jerked off together?" he wanted to know.

"Yes," Clark said, "but nothing radical. You'll regard attractive males, all ages, with more interest. Sooner or later the right one will notice back, and you'll know what he wants is soft and friendly, not bizarre and freaked out.

"In all probability," he continued, "you gym teacher will introduce you to one or two other boys about your age, and, since a certain type of boy appeals to educated molesters, you'll probably find they're pretty neat and be happy to spend time alone with them."

"Alone with them?" the boy repeated. "Is that proper usage?"

"According to what I've read," Clark said, "if it happens you'll be so excited your grammatical skill set will be reduced to hissing, moaning, and whimpering."

"How `bout if the boys don't stop?" the curious kid wanted to know.

"Then in all likelihood you'll have nary a coherent word to say on the subject."

"That's weird," the boy commented, "because, now, the more we talk the more exciting it is, at the same time it makes it last."

"We'll pay for that pretty soon," Clark said.

"What do you mean?" Josh asked.

"I mean that as soon as you touch me, it will start happening. If we'd gone from zero to physical in a minute or two, it wouldn't happen until you'd masturbated me for at least a few minutes."

"We could talk about algebra," the boy suggested.

"Sure, if you really want to," Clark whispered.

"What I want is to take my underpants off," Josh whispered back, "after I've taken your boxers off."

"Then you'd better skip straight to statistics," Clark advised.

"Hard to measure in the dark," the child murmured, "so I hope an estimate will do."

"Your trees come in six inch and eight-inch pots," the young man reminded Josh, "so you can use those as a baseline."

"Isn't sperm like a fluid?" the child asked.

"Yes," Clark said, his whispering now ragged as he began to pant openly beside the boy at his left elbow.

"How can I measure that?"

"Remember the pots I was talking about?" Clark said.

"Get outta town," the boy responded.

"You won't be so skeptical the first time you have a ten year old in a tent with you," Clark admonished.

"How big are those nursery pots again?" Josh asked.

"If you lie on top of me," Clark said, "I'll be able to tell when you're laughing."

"You'll have to hold me really gently to find out, because I'm trying to be mature," Josh said.

"Feather touch, all the way," the man assured him.

"Like Fester in Addams' Family Values'," the boy quoted: "No tickling.'"

"Lie with your back to my chest, to start," Clark coaxed.

The boy complied, and let the young adult begin gently with him, tracing his young body with the fingers of his right hand as he eased him into a comfortable position, then folding his hands across the boy's slightly soft stomach.

"You feel all electric," Josh said.

"Very bad news," Clark replied, "semen's both fluid and very salty."

"Shocking," the boy said, and, sure enough, Clark could feel nonsensical tremors in the taut young body in his arms.

"It feels like you're being electrocuted by your own sophomoric wit," the older male said.

"That's fair," the amusing youngster responded, "because I feel guilty of everything."

"Well," Clark cajoled, "we don't want to waste the charge, so tell me the guiltiest thing of all."

"Feeling your penis through your shorts," Josh whispered, "I want to feel you bare, like your chest is against my back."

"Do you like me being against your left thigh?" Clark panted softly.

"Yes," Josh said.

"Would you like me to get you we there?" the man queried.

"Can you sperm in my hand before it goes on my leg, so I'll know about it, even if I can't see?" the boy wanted to know.

"Yes," his mentor replied, "but let me molest you a little more, this way."

"It's nice still having our voices," Josh observed, as the twenty-two year old ran his hands gently from his face and throat down to the band of his briefs.

"Nothing to count on," his partner said, "so I'd better tell you now that it's going to be very messy. I might not be able to warn you, later."

"Will it stick us together if we fall asleep together after it happens?" Josh asked.

"There you have me," the older male admitted. "Have Jack and Jimmy ever seemed awkwardly close in the morning?" They sell topical anesthetic gels to males for use in prolonging erotic tension. Guess who didn't need any?

Some three minutes later Josh spoke up in a hushed voice, all dramatic. "Well, we found out one thing," he said, setting Clark up.

"What?" came the answering whisper.

"There's no such thing as a funny boner."

See what I mean about the gel? and, yes, the couple that plays together, stays together, but staying power isn't everything.

"Do you think you'll work bare chested, tomorrow?" Clark asked.

"I want to try it," the boy said.

"Not that you'll cause a riot, or anything," Clark said, "but you watch and see how many of the boys suddenly want to ask you something, or tell you something, or work beside you, or stand next to you when you get the trays off the trailer."

"Is it that common?" Josh wanted to know.

"No," Clark said, "it isn't. It's you who are uncommon. You watch and see how many invitations you get for sleepovers the first time you shower with the other eight graders. And it's because you're a freaking riot; homosexual attraction as an excuse, simply to get to know you better."

"Then you better teach me everything, tonight," Josh whispered.

"No," Clark said, "your gym teacher, if by default, sent you to me in superb condition, so to speak, and I want you returning to him for the most part innocent and full of questions.

"But never fear, what I will do is drop by every week or two, if you want, and we can date."

"I hope you're not kidding," Josh said.

"No," his friend said, "and, since child molesters like to include their juvenile partners in small group settings, maybe someday I can watch him make you cum."

"Could I watch you play with another boy, too?" Josh whispered.

"If your teacher knows any, I could try," Clark said.

"How about your paper boy?" the younger male asked.

"Scotty's always very friendly," Clark replied, thoughtfully, "and I don't think it's just the tip kind, ingratiating. It's an idea."

"Can I turn over, so I can feel your chest against me?" Josh whispered.

"Yes," Clark said, and he helped the child roll in his arms.

"Homos kiss, don't they?" the boy asked.

"Yes," Clark said, "but save that for your teacher. This is just a one-night-stand, just a first lesson, for both of us, okay?"

"It's certainly a lesson in love," the boy answered in a soft voice.

"If you bend a firecracker double, and light the powder, it fizzes for a couple of second, instead of going bang."

"Yeah," Josh said, "a cat-and-dog fight `cause it spins around."

"Don't stretch the analogy too far, or we'll end up in trouble," Clark laughed.

"No," Josh said, "I know what you mean."

"How long have you known your teacher?" Clark asked.

"Terry? He's actually kind of a cousin by marriage, so I've known him, at least a little, since I can remember, but last year I saw him a lot more because I was in his class."

"Then you can really give yourself to him, gender issues aside, just like in a romance novel with four and a half inches of exposed cleavage on the girl in Fabio's arms."

"Don't they swoon through the whole sordid business?" Josh wanted to know.

"Beats me," the man said, "they're turned out, for the most part, by literary steam machines, I've never made it a hundred pages."

"Do you think if you read ten thousand," the boy asked, "you'd come to a single joke or funny line?"

"Humor's hard to get down on paper, in the first place," Clark said, "and by the time you get New York to notice you, any sense of fun you might have had has been rejected so often it dies of discouragement."

"Lowest neckline common denominator," the boy mused, aloud, and on that base note, they changed the subject.

"Do you want it to happen while we're both naked?" Clark whispered.

"Yes," the boy replied, his heart racing and his lungs panting at the realization that there would be no more foreplay (not that it hadn't been Absolutely Fantastic).

Josh rolled on his back beside the young adult. Both males opted to forego a lingering and sensual stripping off of each other, and skinned down their own underwear.

"Find me with your right hand," Clark whispered, "and guide me to where you want the sperm on your body, and I'll start cumming right away."

"On my inner left thigh, up really high," the boy responded, and the athletic twenty-two year old positioned himself straddling the child, as the boy found and held him.

"Move your right hand down low on me, and cup your left hand over the head of my penis," Clark suggested in a wilting rasp of a whisper. Josh followed his directions, gasping at the hard hugeness of the young adult.

"Do you feel it?" the man whispered.

"I can feel you throbbing really hard and fast," the boy said, "but not what's happening in my left hand."

"That's because the semen's the same temperature as your body," Clark half gulped, half panted. "Put your left hand on your penis, then you'll know what happened."

"Now?" the boy asked.

"Just a little longer," the man grunted, then, after some moments, cued the child.

"Yeah," Josh exhaled at the feeling of the copious, slick wetness of his hand. In an instant, Clark joined him, teaching him, stroking his slim five inch erection until the young boy exploded and lay shuddering and panting in his arms, mewing wordlessly, but obviously a super happy and satiated camper."

"Very excellent, dude," both mature males at the table said, their eyes hot on the black-haired beauty between them.

"That's not quite the end," Josh responded, his eyes suddenly bright, tears beginning to stream down his now eleven-year-old cheeks.

"What?" Pete and Sid chorused, both reaching to take one of Josh's hands.

"In the m-morning," the boy stuttered, unable to go on because he was now weeping openly.

"He was gone?" they coaxed, gently. "What?"

"He was dead," the boy eventually choked.

Damn. There was a how-do-you-do and a half. "He was cold and stiff. I lay there for half an hour, blaming myself for all the dumb jokes and thinking, "Jeez, I was just kidding around." Finally I wet myself, and that brought me back to life. I couldn't even get on my knees, so I crawled on my belly into the main campground. Jack was sitting on one of the logs around the fire, hunched over his radio. It was just after seven. He always checked the seven a.m. weather report. He was pale as a ghost. When he saw me he couldn't even get up off his seat, he just held the radio toward me and turned up the volume a little. I crawled in at his feet and we both listened. It was the same everywhere on the dial. Where we'd gotten about twenty stations, because we were in the mountains, now there were only three city ones. People kept saying things, then someone else would say something. It went to some kind of network for a few minutes, where all the stations were saying the same thing, then there were no more voices, just the sound of the radio waves, then nothing. Static, except for one station booming up from southern Mexico -- the one we used to hear late at night. That meant there was nothing wrong with the radio.

"Way bad," Pete and Sid again chorused, their teen English way expressive.

"I was half so glad it wasn't my fooling around, I actually felt some relief," Josh sighed.

"Otherwise they might have charged you with Murder Fun," Pete said, patting the child's right hand.

"Man, am I glad to be HERE," Josh stuttered, hiccupping back a fit of the giggles without success.

"Yeah," Sid said to Pete, "but, you know, they never would have had an autopsy on Clark. How do we know what he actually died of? My advice is we keep a careful eye on your young friend, in case he starts fooling with us." By this time the boy was obviously helpless, so they took no immediate action.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Here we go again with the paint by numbers. Connect the dots. Join chapter numbers with ten or twenty thousand words of inanity. What could be easier? The hard part is stomping New York groggy so they shuffle off to Buffalo. Two planes full of fuel, and even though I live in the most tenuous and delicate of backwaters, while drawing on old-money trusts, not an iota of difference has it made. On the other hand, maybe it's why Kraft dinners cost two-seventy-five while other brands sell for one local dollar. (Of course, that could just be Madison Avenue.)

I should be moody about something. Aren't great artists meant to be towers of temperament? I not only don't rage and foment, I'm capable of absorbing great abuse without reacting, more the mule at the north end of a northbound boot than anything else I can think of. The kids crash and bang in the kitchen, and I type on; the music blasts in my ear, and I type on; the dogs howl and the cats fight; I type on; the rain crashes, the lightning flashes, I type on; Delton drops by and shows me his chop wound, needs to go to Belize City for surgery to prevent a bone infection; I'll work something out, and type on. Andrew stopped by to play, but the name of my game is alpha/numeric, so I keep typing. I try to find some way I feel differently than when I was sixteen, and I can't, so I type about that. Samantha's responded beautifully to me blowing my stack, and we're back to planning what she'll do with her hundred dollars when we get on a new financial tack, in five days. That gets included, with every wish her next set of tricks is in the minor key, and some years off. Sixteen I may be, but I'm the world's smartest at it. I did my reading, if not always my homework, and so know exactly how to live. Where Oscar Wilde wore tresses and sashayed the streets of Mayfair with a posy held at high port arms, I heard cats of the two and four legged variety. Keep a lot of `em on the trail, too. We violate the same laws, but do it in eloquently different ways.

My monitor's starting to flicker. It has a cold solder joint. I can see it (with the case off) in total darkness, then I wedge the tip of a toothpick into the pinhole in the circuit board. Kept it going for three years that way. This time I want to try to jam in a tiny piece of tinfoil. That might be more permanent. Also kept a television going for several years by tracing down voltage leaks in the dark, then taping them up. Finally got so much tape on the high voltage wire the thing caught fire, so proceed with caution. Any time your car isn't running perfectly, get it in a dark garage and open the hood (or in the open, away from street lights). Many times you'll see the problem in a flash.

Here's a minor one. By coincidence, if not design, my new house has the world's most comfortable toilet. It has a little wall just to the left of the commode, twenty-six inches high and four inches thick. Perfect to lean on, something you don't want to knock until you've tried it. The wall serves as a barrier to the shower, and is perfect to sit on while you wash your feet, do a little impromptus laundry, or bathe a baby or a pet. If you don't have cats, you can keep the toilet paper on it, if you do, you can't.

Dealing with my ego is an ongoing struggle, but there might be an answer. I'm not, as we know, thrilled with "The New York Review of Books". Every article seems to be another reason. As mentioned, elsewhere, it's an editor in Spokane who's going to discover me, leaving Gotham in the dust. There's an overall solution here. My middle name is Cochran (my grandfather Moncreiff, whom I never met, founded American Standard). So it's Thomas Cochran Emerson. I want the whole cover of "The Review": Thomas over Cochran, and Cochran over Emerson, as big as it will fit, in red. Nothing but excerpts inside, line edited, only. Not one other article, letter, or any copy beyond the masthead, nor a word of commentary, criticism, or editorial notice until at least the fifth succeeding issue. Not even where to find my stories. This would render me published in the manner of mortal writers, and go a long way toward resolving persistent issues. It's up to you New York, New York.

The city had become great fun and Pete, Josh and Sid went out to enjoy it. Lunch wagons led a throng to one highlight for a day or two, then departed for another museum, campus, industrial site, or cultural center, and everyone moved along to the new location, staying put for up to three days, before again departing for a new venue. Many camped in small tent cities, even though rooms in their endless thousands were open and available. It was just more fun. On a small, short-term basis, ample volunteer labor was available to tend the porta-potties, remove the litter, and create a clean, enjoyable jamboree environment. They ate hot dogs with excellent relish and the steaming pretzels were as chewy as ever they had been. They saw things they never had imagined, and came to appreciate why art directors often chose factories and warehouses as backdrops in their films. Huge, haunting, empty, mesmerizing. A thousand tables with silent sewing machines in one building, a block away, a thousand bottles frozen in the process of being filled. One popular tour featured echoes. Since common sense had, with the virtual elimination of the nefarious sub set formerly dominating the city, returned to daily life, they took a functioning subway to the airport and ate pizza twenty feet from the touchdown area of the active runway, ducking involuntarily, if unnecessarily, as the outer wings of wide-body aircraft actually sliced safely over their heads, though the vortices tended to dash people about in a harmless variant of a thrill park ride (ice cream cones were not served).

Several attractive, athletic males made friendly, low-key approaches, and Pete and Sid quizzed Josh on them, allowing as how, on a future day, they might extend an invitation. This made the boy take a new interest in his surroundings, and the thrill of the hunt, unceasing through time immemorial, helped gently stimulate him out of the second and third waves of grief that shook him like a losing little leaguer. He often held both their hands and the day marched on. In the afternoon they found a stray dog, spent an hour looking for its owner, then took it to the loft. Sunned out, fooded out, and walked out, they crashed the minute the pup was settled, awakening for tea at ten p.m. and soon smiling over the table at each other.

"I'm torn between two styles," Pete said. "I want you (looking at Sid) with Josh for the racial implications, behind him, doing what Carl did with us when we were hiking, but I don't know whether to do it soft and ethereal, like Raphael, or bold and brassy, like Communist poster art, you know, the stalwarts at the tractor factory."

"Hmm," Sid mused. "How about captions?" He thought a minute and added: "'Work the sewer / Work the line / Hoe the tater / Mine the mine / Day is done / Work is over / Head for home / Feelin' Fine.' Of course, there'd be endless variations on `Put Yourself in this Picture.'"

Boys will be boys. Bright-eyes chirped, "How bout: This Pud's for You'? or, `Intel Inside? Guess again!'

"There's only so much dirty work to go around," Pete observed, "so don't go overboard, either of you."

Let your fingers do the talking.

Males in Emersonian Brothel, A Study.

I'm Cumming, He Wrote.

Ask not what the boy can do for you, find out.

Live in infamy.

The classic Uncle Sam in the poster corner: `Your ass is mine, his ass is yours.'

Poppin' Flesh -- Oh, oh, oh.

He who lasts last lasts longest

Your son always rises.

Where the rubber meets the load.

The sketches went on, gave them something to banter over while finding a common ground that was lively but short of bawdy. Josh's ears were as eager as his eyes. During a lull in the brainstorming session, he asked: "Who's Carl?" And so we find ourselves in another chapter.

"I thought I saw water through the trees, you wanna check it out?" twelve year old Pete Anderson asked his age-mate, Sid Katz.

"Trees, trees, everywhere, and I'd just as leaf to sink," the cute Jewish kid replied, following his friend's pointing finger. They both hiked back along the trail, finally shinnying up small, side-by-side trees.

"It's there," they hailed each other, dropping back to earth.

"Should we try it?" Pete said.

"City mouse, to country mouse, hello?" Sid exclaimed in response.

"I'll take that as a Yes," the crew cut Anglo responded, and jumped from the trail a single leap down the steep hillside after which he skidded to a stop and turned. Sid leaped into his tracks, and the two tumbled laughing twenty more feet before thudding to a stop against a strategic tree. Regaining their footing, they more cautiously skidded their way down through the woods, Pete always with a wary eye to be sure they could handle to the return climb.

"You've got to be super careful in a place like this," the country boy said as they proceeded, "because sometimes the tops of trees grow against cliffs, and they look like little trees."

"No under the brush," Sid said, and Pete's pulse quickened at the boy's quick, clean response. "Could it actually be fun?" he wondered to himself. Most of the city kids he'd guided in the past had been wayward nincompoops, dangerous in a meadow. Sid had seemed quieter, more introspective, less uselessly bold than the run of the mill that went through the program, and worth chancing on the new trail he'd had to wait until he was twelve to hike. They'd found plenty of common ground over the first hour, and now the city boy's quick response to his warning formed the beginning of a real bond. They proceeded carefully into the valley, wondering aloud if they did come across a tree against a cliff, whether they could just jump into it and climb down. They came to a quick agreement that climbing back up the tree, then having to jump onto the steep hillside would spoil their day.

"It's like elevators," Sid said. "You get stick three or four feet above the floor. You think you can hang through the door of the car, and drop to safety, but you can't. You fall down the shaft."

"Maybe that's why they sent the dudes to the moon," Pete Anderson said, "because they thought we'd be safer up there."

"I knew if I lived long enough, someone would come up with a reason," his new friend replied. They were beginning to find each other not half bad, at all, and laughed, ever wary of their footing.

The hill gave way to a valley, as hills always do, and they found the pond at the edge of the woods, half in a meadow. They shed their packs and settled on a grassy bank, catching their breaths after charging like bulls down the last hundred yards of the slope.

"This is cool, country cousin," Sid said.

"The sticks have their advantages," Pete acknowledged, "but I'll be you could show me a thing or two, because it's kind of more of the same, here."

"I think the cities used to be nice," Sid responded, "but now it's all mega. If something's worth doing, a million people want to do it, so mostly it's one giant line after another. I stay home and read, and I could do that in a cabin, like Abraham Lincoln."

"Did you pack any books?" Pete asked.

"It would be easier if you asked if I packed any clothes," Sid laughed. "I've got six Mickey Spillanes and three Agatha Christies."

"I've got two Travis McGees," Pete said, "plus, guess what?"

"What?" the city boy asked.

"John O'Hara."

"Oh, wicked, wicked," Sid yipped, "and if you tell it's The Cape..."

"Cod Lamplighter," the county boy yipped back.

"Can you read aloud?" Sid asked.

"Okay I guess," Pete allowed.

"I can too, some," Sid responded, "so that way we can share it."

"Holy cow shit on a flat rock, was this kid different," Pete half gloated to himself. He'd guided four boys in the past. Each had been laden with fifty dollars worth of batteries and a spinning music machine, to which they listened incessantly, and, costly fodder notwithstanding, died on the second day, leaving said child inconsolable and intolerable. He'd endured, no wants, no warrants, and tried to be more careful in who he picked to introduce to the whys and wherefores of what little there actually was that passed for country lore. For the most part, country life boiled down to quick hands and strong wrists, to muckling onto a task, and getting it out of the way. At this the city boys had been pathetic, flailing and floundering with tools as rudimentary as a jackknife or can opener. All but one of his former charges had had difficulty with the little battery doors on their disc players, and he'd wondered how and when they'd ever master the caveman skills of building or producing anything other than video-game scores. Limp wrested. Ineffectual Dithering. Scary, in a word. But not Sid. He reached beside him, tugged free a straw, and stuck it in his mouth, clip, zip, chomp. Phew.

"Maybe we could just camp here and read," Pete said after a few minutes.

"Is there more to wilderness hiking after the first hour?" Sid asked.

"Don't ask embarrassing questions," Pete said with a laugh.

"Same in the city," Sid said, "you've heard one car alarm, you've heard them all."

"So, that's a yes?" Pete checked.

"As they say on NYPD Blue', absolutely'," Sid acknowledged.

"What about swimming?" Pete asked.

"Off of how we just came crashing down half a mile of dirty country hill?" Sid intoned.

"Absolutely," they chorused, future English majors that they were.

"Should we ask somebody?" Sid asked.

"If we can," Pete agreed. "I thought I heard a tractor down the valley, just before we left the trail. We could leave our packs here, and go take a look." They high-fived and took off at a run, covering most of a mile at a near sprint.

"You're in tough shape for an urban cowboy," Pete said.

"You walk your legs of in a city," Sid replied, "it's you country guys that get to roll around heaven all day.."

They climbed a hedgerow and, young readers that they were, the target tractor became an enemy tank.

"Pilgrim," drawled Pete, as he used his knife to quickly chop off a three foot length of stick, "this isn't much of a weapon, here, but it's all we got, so you remember how your daddy taught you, an' account for yourself as you know he'd want you to do."

"They'll never know what hit them, sir," Sid giggled back, and the two mounted their patrol. Pete pointed out poison ivy, and they tread warily, creeping toward the burble of an idling engine, a sound which suddenly ceased.

"That can't be good news," Sid said, after they'd frozen in response to the instant silence, both immediately aware of how vitally noise might affect actual combat.

"It may be bait and switch," Pete whispered, "or they may just be innocent farmers."

"I'd be very careful," Sid responded, "because entrapment is legal in war."

"Yeah, but first they have to catch us," Pete giggled, suggesting that juvenile soldiers might not make good soldiers. Stealthily they crept up through the foliage. A hundred feet. Two hundred. Voices.

"But that low spot won't be dry for a couple of hours. `Till noon," a young girl's voice said. "We have lots of time."

The boys froze and looked at each other. The girl's voice wasn't whining, or even plaintive; neither demanding nor petulant, but there was an undercurrent to it that let the boys know the subject at hand had nothing to do with whether or not to have a snack.

"Too young to be smoking a joint," Sid whispered, and what has already been said of juvenile soldiers can simply be repeated.

"It's not something she wants, it's something she needs," Pete, the older by some months, whispered.

"What should we do?" Sid asked, glad to be done with the giggles in what could turn out to be hostile territory.

"Go up and ask, like we were gonna do, I think," Pete said.

"Okay," Sid agreed. They stood, yahoo'd, and dropped down into the field with the parked tractor, making their way to the source of the voice.

"We left our packs by the pond," Pete said as they approached, "and we wondered if it would be okay to camp there for the weekend."

"Come on in, if you can call this in," an adult voice responded, and the boys entered through a path in the underbrush. "This is our lunch hangout," the man said as Pete and Sid emerged into a small clearing bordered by wooden benches and protected from above by a carefully strung tarp. "I'm Carl Witherspoon and this is my niece, Lauren." The boys introduced themselves and sat at their host's bidding. He offered a bottle of mosquito repellent, but Pete had some in his pocket. "Little dab of chemicals, and it turns no place for a white man into a tolerable castle," Carl said.

"How deep is the mud?" Pete asked, his senses, for reasons he only half understood, on the most extreme alert he'd ever known. They'd been in range to hear, it would have been strange if they hadn't, and he was desperate to know the lay of the ground, something that's gained by a combination of truth and diplomacy. Engaging, if you will, the other side to determine if he's the enemy.

"Last farmer tried it, came home speaking nothing but Chinese. Nobody could understand a word out of the man for nary a month."

Pete felt Sid's elbow against his. An ounce of pressure for a second. It was a thrill to know his new friend was chapter and verse with him; also, to find the handsome tractor driver lived up to his first impression.

"Has it ever happened the other way?" the young city boy asked. "Have you ever come out here one day, and found a Chinese farmer with a lost look?" What may not work from a military point of view, may work in diplomacy. On the other hand, survival meant laughing at Stalin's jokes. It was hard for Pete to judge. Were they going to laugh, or not, and, if they did, would it be polite or...

"Need a ski after that," Carl groaned, wiping his eyes, "you fellows look old enough for one each, how bout it? Cooler's on the tractor."

"I'll get them, Uncle Carl," Lauren said, launching herself off her log seat and out the foliage tunnel opening onto the field.

While she's gone, another minor note. I keep forgetting to include it, so I'll just clunk it in. It's a design, something like the world's most comfortable toilet, recently mentioned, only this is the world's most comfortable chair. It's a common new generation plastic chair, but you saw off the right front leg. Place this corner of the chair on a covered five-gallon plastic bucket (the commercial food product models have a distinct ridge at the circumference of the lid, a great `heel-hold', and it also allows the stub of the missing leg to notch into the lid -- safer). It makes a great leg rest, and, if you have a table just to the left of the chair, you've come up with pretty close to an ideal. Keep water in the plastic bucket, never can tell when it will come in handy. The bucket also makes a useful child's seat.

"I brought three for you, Uncle Carl," Lauren said as she handed across the plastic holder, "and left one in the cooler."

"Sweetheart," the man said, kindly, "you know I save them `till the tractor's parked."

"It's parked," the girl said, firmly, "and the two of us seem to be getting nowhere, and a little booze in your uptight, Puritan noggin might loosen whatever it is that's stuck before I end up feeling like a poor relative of the chopped liver family."

"She's from the city," Carl explained.

"Cabbage Patch City, it might as well be," the girl said, looking at Pete and Sid, "with me in diapers. I'm eight. I'm MTV eight. I'm late-night Cinemax eight. And I've got a drop-dead cute uncle who doesn't know what anything means unless it's nothing."

Pete and Sid sat trying not to obviously shiver with excitement. Neither would have tried their voices for a million dollars. Not a problem.

"What do you guys think? Do I have warts and a toad's face? Horns? Extra noses? Hooves? I may not be a dish, but I'm not an old pot. And I'm not five, even if I wish I were, so we'd have three more years. Everyone says share. It's freaking Christian to share. Don't you guys think I should be able to?"

A problem. Sid had aced the father, so he left the daughter to his best friend in the world.

"It depends what kind of sandwich," Pete said, so astonished to hear himself speak he looked at Sid, as if he'd spoken. The brought the attention back to the beer, and the hostess handed them around, placing two deliberately beside her uncle. "I'll help, because I didn't bring one for myself," she announced, pulling the tab of one can, sipping inexpertly, coughing, managing to get some down, and handing the open can to Carl. The boys went at it gingerly, frowning at each other, but loath to give up. They'd scored a stunning victory, and drinking to it was as good a way as any to keep their minds, for a moment or two, off exactly what that victory would turn out to be.

At first they thought Carl was changing the subject, and when they found out he wasn't the beer became an actual life saver, not merely a diversion.

"We call it Skinny Minnie Pond," the twenty-three year old farmer said, "and, yes, stay as long as you like." He looked at his niece, then gently brought the child to his lap, facing him. "We call it that because of things we used to do up there when we were your age (he indicated the boys). Games we used to play, taking, shall we say, full advantage of the privacy of the location, which is to say you can hear or see anyone coming, before they can see you."

He paused and waited for Lauren's nod. "Skinny Minnie Pond," the child repeated, obviously fully engaged.

"What we can do," Carl went on, "is climb aboard the tractor and take a mosey up there while the bottom dries. Any or all of us can reprise the days of my youth, at their pleasure, and, niece of mine, you will discover that I am not a reluctant partner because you have sixty-seven eyes, or that I'm a Calvinistic throwback, but for a more tangible reason, which should be of the most particular interest and concern to a girl who weighs sixty pounds."

"Even if it's uphill, I think the Chinese will still make it," Sid murmured. "If we walked back, we could collect snails to boil in the pond," Pete added. Like zombies they stood and filed through the short tunnel. Carl unpinned the harrow, and engaged the clutch gently. The huge machine passed through a nearby gate and moved up the valley, it's passenger's rooting for it as if it were at the tractor pull grand nationals.

Again the sudden silence of the switched-off diesel. "If you're going to stay for long," Carl said, "there's a tool box hidden in the trees; ax and bow saw, so you can build a lean-to at the verge of the woods." Pete and Sid high five each other, and dropped from the tractor to head in the direction Carl pointed.

"If you'll wait until after we swim, I'll help you," the young man continued; "in fact, I wouldn't half mind spending the night out here myself. The valley's deep enough to cut way down on the light pollution, and the weather's meant to stay clear. Crescent moon. It gets kind of pretty when the stars come out."

"Who's he kidding," Sid whispered, "the stars are already out."

"Either that," Pete whispered back, "or we came across one of those suicide trees, and we're stone dead."

"I would have remembered the sudden stop," his friend replied. They'd stopped in their tracks, and slowly turned back to Carl. "If you're sure," the local boy whispered.

Both boys froze in panic, waiting for it, hating being twelve but unable to do anything about it. This would not be the place, and, for sure, this would not be the place. "Oh, please don't," Pete and Sid whispered silently in unison.

"Sure, positive," Carl said, Lauren nodding from his lap as the young man set the brake on the tractor and hoisted his niece to the skid plate, from whence she leaped to the ground. The two hikers breathed a sigh of relief, almost audible. What if he had answered: "Absolutely!"? Death, that's what. Neither had the slightest doubt. It would have been hang-gliding with a handkerchief, and they would have died of it. Again, there were times when they hated being twelve.

"Just take a minute to build us a seat," Carl said, leading the boys and his niece a short distance into the woods. "See, it's still here." He retrieved and ammo box, and opened it to reveal well greased tools. "Even a was of paper towels to wipe off the Cosmoline," he said, handing Pete the ax. "I salted this stuff away before I went to Edinburgh," he explained, "and the truth of the matter is, I would have been fixing up a camp here in a day or two, anyway." With that he selected two trees and sawed them off at ground level, keeping an eye on Pete until he was satisfied the boy was safe with the ax. His post-hole digger was a maul and an old shipwright's gouge, and in ten minutes they had themselves a replica of the rustic benches under the tarp. Sid busied himself with a hatchet and branches and as the bench was complete had a neat pile of kindling ready for the evening. "I was never a scout, but I read all the books," he said, shyly, chunking the hatchet neatly into the end of the bench log.

The tools wiped and returned to their box, Carl passed around the last can of beer.

"Will your bedroom door be locked tonight?" Lauren asked her uncle.

"No, sweetheart," he said, adding: "I don't remember what the test was, but you passed it in front of witnesses, plus, it's hell to lock a lean-to."

"If it was easy, I'd just make you build it with me inside," the pixie said.

"And miss the stars? I don't think so," Carl teased.

"You don't need a telescope for the heavenly bodies I want to see," the girl blushed, "you need a microscope."

"Dude," Pete and Sid whispered all but inaudibly to each other. Carl gently broke in on their reverie.

"The first time I was here," he said, "was when I was eleven, with one of my teachers. His father sold my dad the farm, so he was guiding me around, and we ended up here. He was careful to set a base line before anything happened. You know. Ask me how experienced I was and what I thought I was ready for. We talked for an hour, then we swam together. I want to do the same with you boys, and Lauren, if you want to. It's like group therapy, without the therapy, there's no bill, and, for sure, it whiles away the time."

The three children nodded vigorously.

"Pete," Carl said, gently coaxing, "have you and Sid ever seen each other bare chested?"

"No," the boy replied.

"If you'd like, we can start there, and see how strong your homosexual feelings are."

Lauren was a good kid. "Uncle Carl," she whispered, "they're so cute, I don't think they'd have to be abnormal to want to see each other."

"You're right as rain, missy," Carl replied, "but when they've stripped off their shirts, you can guide them in touching each other. That will tell us more."

"Did your teacher unbutton your shirt, or did you do it yourself?" the girl then wanted to know, re-defining "team player" for eternity.

"He unbuttoned me, and took it off," Carl said, realizing the young girl had been right about a lot of things, all along.

"Show us with Pete," the girl encouraged, and I can unbutton Sid."

There were no objections, so Pete moved onto Carl's lap and Lauren seated herself on Sid's legs, facing the youth. "Slowly, right?" she asked her uncle.

"Ken was very slow with me," Carl said, "he quizzed me, and when he found out I liked it, even if I was really embarrassed at first, he told me about what happened to him when he was ten."

"Did you unbutton him, too?" Lauren asked.

"Yes, darling," her uncle whispered.

"Does that give you any ideas?" she whispered in return, this time to Sid.

"Only one," the city boy replied, "but it's so good, it followed me half way to China."

"It sounds like his tractor's stuck," the bright-eyes said to her uncle, "so you may need to help him." She was full of immensely good ideas, and it wouldn't have taken Ms. Stewart to recognize that as a good thing amongst now witless males.

Urban boys aren't slicker, but, due to the unending necessity of thinking on one's feet, they may be slightly quicker. Thus Sid was the first of the males to find his tongue.

"Has a boy ever looked at you before?" he asked the moppet in his lap. She had black hair and brown eyes, and, if not a rose beauty, was the cuter for it in a freckle-faced, little league way.

"Just when I wear a bikini at the pool," she said, "but I had a bra on then, and I don't, now."

"Do you think you'll need one soon?" Pete asked, never happier to play follow-the-leader in his life.

"My mom's a doctor," Lauren replied, "so I've read some books other kids don't get to see. If I spend the weekend with you, I may need one in a few days, because what you're going to do with me creates a hormone imbalance, harmless, but apparently it can be fairly dramatic."

"What if you get them all?" Sid asked.

"I think I can answer that," Carl said. "Ken had two older teen students he brought out here. They liked skinny dipping with me and piggybacking me up into the trees. It went on all summer with the three of them, and I was their only partner, and we didn't know any better, so, if you'll excuse me, Pete, I'll show you the result."

Pete sat next to Sid, and Lauren reversed herself in the city boy's lap so she could watch her athletic uncle. Carl took off his boots, shrugged off the straps of his Oshkosh union suit, and unbuttoned his shirt, continuing to strip until his clothes were piled on the log seat and he was standing in front of them in his briefs.

"Let us," Lauren cooed, looking back over her shoulder to see if the boys agreed. The nodded and Carl stepped close. "It's not freaky," she said, "and it's nice for a man to be big, isn't it?"

Pete and Sid weren't so sure. No, there was nothing more than maximum to his length, referencing various porno mags the two had seen, but usually, according to the lore of indelicately lit reference shots, males in the eight to nine inch category weren't especially, well, erect. Hard. Carl was nothing but. Hot and hard and they could tell even with his briefs on. There was nothing `ab' about it, but supernormal might fit (if anything would).

The boys flanked the girl, and Carl braced himself on their heads as they pulled down his briefs. He was slim and circumcised, his penis bending slightly to his left. All but nine inches, flat against his boyish belly. Because he was so athletic and young looking, his erection verged on a paranormal display. In all three young minds the notion occurred that if he'd made on additional visit to Skinny Minnie Pond, it would not have improved him.

Carl sat back down, retrieved Pete to his lap, the boy facing him, and Lauren turned to face Sid. He led by unbuttoning the country boy's top button.

Lauren was right about not needing a bra, but it meant nothing. She was an athletic beauty, slim and graceful with just a hint of baby fat on her belly. Pete was milk white, Sid delicately golden. Carl could have all but passed for a teen, and would have fit unnoticed in a group photo of championship swimmers. Lauren took Pete's hand, first, and be became the first male to sexually molest her by fondling her left nipple as she brought Sid's hand to her right. Next she guided Pete's hand from her breast to his friend's naked chest. The boy, Pete, had about the best manners in the world, and he eased himself from Carl's lap, exchanging places with Lauren, who cooed in welcome as her uncle brought her young body gently to his muscular, almost pec-free, chest.

"You're just as nice as she is," Pete whispered, "but I wouldn't want to sleep all night with you, and I would with her."

"That's how I feel, too," Sid whispered back. "The same, only different. And when it came to anything but doing this, I'd feel you were identical as far as being friends go, though you'd be my best friend."

"I'll bet it gets more complicated when we get older," Pete observed.

"Yeah," Sid agreed, "if we were married and wanted to do the same things with a boy that Carl's going to teach us."

"But Lauren can't be the only really normal girl," Steve responded, "and think how awesome it will be to look for one who isn't a slut and who isn't a Puritan on a stick."

Carl and Lauren were still as they watched the boys beside them. "Ken and I experimented with kissing," he whispered.

"Can you imagine?" unspoken, glowed in both their eyes. They started with bird nibbles, and passed through the experimental stages as if they meant nothing, molesting each other gently as they savaged each other's tongues like jellyfish fighting for a hole in the reef.

"I think I'm too young for that," Lauren whispered, "damn it."

"No hurry," her uncle soothed, "if you want you can be a sweet sixteen and never been kissed." He went on to explain that it was a more intimate act than anything to do with sex, and the girl nodded quietly, obviously glad to be free of any pressure.

"How do you feel about getting their sperm on your chest?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Some of it may splash on your face and lips, do you think that would be okay?" he queried the child.

"I'm past the yucky stage," Lauren said, "it's just kissing I'm not ready for, watching them be boys is different."

"They'll get you very wet," Carl cautioned as a safety measure. "We've been talking about secret stuff for a long time, and that makes males produce cum really fast."

"Are you going to get me wet, too," she asked.

"I'll have to my first time," Carl said, "but, if Pete and Sid help protect you, I can cum in you later."

"Would it be safe for them inside me, now?" the girl asked.

"Yes, darling," her uncle whispered, "you'd be safe with any normal-size male."

It was no time for big secrets, and the best friends told the curious child that, to the best of their knowledge, because they'd never seen kiddie porn, they were close to average.

"I like Pete the best," the girl announced in a whisper, "and I think Sid's the cutest, by a little bit, so, Uncle Carl, would it be okay of Pete cums in me, then I try to let Sid be in my mouth?"

"Yes, darling," the naked man husked, panting openly as he fondled the eight year old, "but let me cum on you first, so you'll know what happens, okay?"

"Yes," the girl agreed, adding: "teach me how."

"We better be naked, first," the young man said, easing his niece to the grass and unbuckling the cloth belt at the waist of her red shorts. Pete and Sid took the cue, and, bracing against the log seat, stripped themselves while watching each other with eagle eyes. Naked and hugely erect they stood side by side as Carl and Lauren approached, and bowing their heads to watch the man guide the girl to them, turning one boy slightly to the next so she and her uncle could squeeze then gently together. "Sweetheart," Carl suggested, "stand at my right hip and make me cum on them." The girl reacted like a trained seal, planting herself beside her tall, athletic uncle has he spread his legs wide, bracing himself by holding the naked shoulders of the two twelve year olds, her left arm around his buttocks and taking his long, hard penis in her right hand. "I've seen stuff under the sheets on television," she said, "and it couldn't be anything but this." She fondled his flaring glans, wetting him, then began to masturbate him slowly and steadily, as she'd seen on TV. Pete and Sid, saving themselves for the young female, held each other gently, low at the waist, and stared down at Carl's penis jutting between their own slim five-inch boners, Lauren's tiny hand massaging and stroking.

"He looks like he could get us all pregnant," the girl whispered, causing and echo of: "I'm going to cum." The child responded by stroking him to the base and holding him with as much iron as her young muscles could muster. He spurt hard and fast between the bellies of the twelve year olds, his semen covering both of them in thick, white tendrils of mature sperm. The boys' foreheads bumped lightly as they stared down at each other, the beer adding a fuzzy tinge of unreality to splattering pulses jetting again and again from the panting, grunting young adult. As the excited flood gave way to a spasmodic cascade, Carl dropped slowly to his knees, guiding his niece until she lay on her back in front of him. With an intimate touch he got her to spread her legs widely, and he then brought Pete to her, helping the boy mount, and holding both the young male and female as the pre-teen entered her with a series of tentative thrusts. In minutes he had her, completely, and her legs and arms came up around his lithe, athletic body as be began a fast, complete thrusting. Sid also lay half over his young friend, molesting his naked body with a right hand slick with hot sperm.

The signs with Carl had been so obvious, one lesson sufficed. "He's going to cum in you," Sid whispered to Lauren. The girls arms and legs tightened around the handsome pre-teen, and his body froze over hers, trembling and sweating as the girl mewed with excitement at the sudden wanton pulsing deep in her belly. Slick as she was from her uncle, when Pete raised and his arms to look down over her childish belly, all three males could see the copious flow of almost clear boyish semen gushing from their joined bodies in a series of miniatures floods.

As his climax subsided, the boy passed the girl to her uncle. Carl rolled her gently on her stomach, and the girl quickly rose on all fours. Protecting her, Pete mounted Carl, reaching under the young stallion to first guide him, then holding his fist in position to prevent his penetrating the sixty pound body too deeply. It worked for all three of them, and soon they were sharing the powerful males deep, tender strokes deep inside the soaking wet child. Lauren found Sid's leg with her hand and coaxed the boy in front of her. He leaned over, bracing himself on Pete, and the girl found him with her mouth. Carl mounted his niece fully, and held her tightly against his waist as the child began taking Sid deep into her mouth, meeting the boy's urgent thrusts with her own counter strokes. So they stayed for ten minutes as Sid and Carl tried to maintain control and please the young female. This time it was Steve who gave the warning for both males. Sid, his hands tenderly in the girl's page-boy mop of black hair, tensed only a few seconds before his three partners were rewarded with wanton grunting from Lauren, hot for a full experience following some tentative exposure during Carl's first massive cum. She gulped deliriously, still letting much of the boy's watery sperm gush from her mouth so her uncle and Pete could share what was happening. She signaled Sid's completion with a wriggling of her hips, and Carl slowly pulled her free of the shaken boy, and, bending her legs, rolled her on her back underneath him. Must of the pre-teen thin cum covered her immature breasts, and the sight drove Carl to acting hard and fast with her. Her legs and arms went to him, and Pete and Sid moved in close at his flanks to help steady him as he began to thrust harder and faster. Lauren soon began to babble and mew incoherently, and was soon yelping and hissing at each of his powerful penetrations deep into her belly. Pete stood his ground with his clenched right hand, and the fist so low on his shaft was the final stimulus for the exhausted young man. "He's cuming," Pete whispered, the hard pulsing of Carl's second climax plain to feel in his clenched fist. But the girl was lost; moaning, sweating, panting, and thrashing, her head lolling wildly as her first mature orgasm shook her for an entire minute, leaving her wet, panting, and dreamy eyed. Very ready for a cool swim with three life guards to die for.

"The mud dried out, Carl taught us to drive the tractor, and we ended up spending most of the summer," they explained to Josh. Again, they were talking about the dead, but they did tell the boy that Lauren had had a baby girl when she was thirteen, and presumably she and her uncle met their end as an intensely happy couple right down to their last kiss.

More tea.

"Have you ever molested a boy together?" Josh Benedict asked.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"What do you think?" Pete asked his friend of four years, "lying down on a settee, or standing?" Both sixteen year olds had been granted early admission to a prominent art school, Pete Anderson as a painter and his slightly younger friend, Sid Katz, as a photographer.

"Have him kneeling, and use a square canvas," Sid suggested.

"Dog, that's it exactly," Pete enthused. "He can be kneeling, playing marbles. Forest says I need to work on my hands, so he could be supporting his weight with his left hand, you know, just one his fingertips, and his right hand could be a fist, just about to shoot."

"It definitely works for me," the photographer enthused, "or maybe it's because I'm working with a two-and-a-quarter by two-and-a-quarter this month. If it ain't square, it ain't there."

"I still like it," the artist responded, "I'll call his father and tell him we're ready any time Ray wants to come over. You can shoot some candids of him playing mibsies and I'll finish it here."

"Can you imagine one of these days we'll be getting paid for this?" Sid asked as Pete reached for the phone.

"The only thing in the world better than inherited money is being an artist," Pete agreed, and spoke into the receiver.

"This afternoon?" he asked Sid.

"Sure," he replied, "the sooner the better."

The date was made and Pete hung up. "He'll be here for lunch; his dad said they'll stop on the way and order a suicidal pizza."

They tried not to meet each other's eyes, but it was useless. "What do you think?" Pete, always the nominal leader, asked.

"The pizza might get cold," Sid answered.

"M-a-t-u-r-i-t-y," Steve spelled out, slowly and stolidly. They were undergraduate level student at what might as well have been M.I.T., nevertheless they liked to whup a challenge on each other once in awhile, and the antidote was to spell out the word as one might count to ten when angered. If it was a juvenile form of crises intervention, it still worked and eventually the two were able to proceed as if everything in the freaking world wasn't the biggest blamed riot you ever saw in all your born days. They had it all; extreme grades in their academics and burgeoning reputations for providing gently unique variations in their respective fields, art as the center of their lives, independent incomes; not lush but very adequate, their friendship, intermittent but steadfast through the four years since their meeting, and an inbound eleven year old they'd selected as a possible model from two hundred like children in the area, so there was a lot to go around kidding and feeling lighthearted about, and no reason to half choke to death on sophomoric tawdriness. Then again, the pizza might get cold, so Pete turned the oven on to preheat to two-fifty.

Another connect-the-dots, auto-writing chapter. Doesn't there have to be a limit, somewhere? Is death or disability the only thing that can stop the flood? Does it pay, this much, to practice? Follow the rules, and end up a god? Nobody ever told me that when I was a kid. They said work hard, and worship god. No hints I'd end up being one of the freaking things. Think of how far above challenge I am. To critique me is to criticize someone far more gifted, by god, than any possible reviewer. The temerity would be enormous, and as to wrath, my mother makes several appearances in other writings, and there you should tarry, receptive to any hints you might glean regarding the consequences of raining on my parade.

My life as a novel continues unabated. Malcolm Dale (other writings, specifically "The Tarzan Mushroom Hunters") pulled a stunt today that earns him another few paragraphs of immortality. I sent Delton to him with a note, promising to pay him on the eighteenth. He refused to give him the money, saying how did he know the note was from me. All things being equal, the chances of the note not being from me had to be infinitesimal, and the amount was less than twenty dollars. When his old bike was stolen from under my old house, he had the price of a new replacement on his counter the next morning. I sent a second note, and again he refused to give Delton the money, finally riding a mile out here to deliver the money to me. I mention it because it's so English. Listen up you catatonic, island-bound morons. Try, oh, try to be less stupid. It's really important. The North Sea oil will be gone before you young people know it. You must improve your minds, your attitudes, and your outlook or be reduced on the world stage the level of some place like Spain. Delton was obviously wounded, obviously in pain, had his X-Ray envelope and doctor's orders in his hand, how could there be the slightest chance he was some kind of opportunist handing over a forged document fifty feet from the front door of the freaking police station? This brittleness of thought and action is why England dominated for centuries, but it is categorically why, in more complex times, the country is circling the drain, surrounded by cold, stormy, gray water. "My right to be stupid is absolute, and I shall exercise it to the fullest, every day." That seems to be the motto, and, while it might be apt for the poorly educated South, you know, pride for its own sake (pride in being proud, like being famous for being famous), it seems a strange dictum for Blighty. It's like holding a piece of ground just because your feet are on it. It's YOUR ground, and never mind if it's quicksand or in the middle of the fish waste pond of a sardine works. Bad news. In the end, it likely saved me my twenty dollars, because it's probably unnecessary for Delton to have more treatment, in the first place. He has full range of arm and wrist motion and his fingers work normally; the bone infection worry is probably a one in several hundred chance. Still, it's the point. My father, more English than American, did the same thing. Refused a collect call, because it was an automated system and all I could say was my first name. He knew I was on my own out west. I had thirty thousand in my checking account, so I wouldn't be calling for money. He's a multi-millionaire, yet he wouldn't accept a one-dollar call from "Tom" without a full explanation of who this person calling himself Tom was. Both are dangerous people and it's a delight owing neither of them squat. Both are bullies, and lead stunted lives because of it. I grin and bear it, maintain friendly relationships for the sake of convenience, and keep typing. (Re: Bullies. There is a difference between using emotional and restrained physical violence against someone who is doing something dangerous, and doing so gratuitously, just because you think you can get away with it. I bully you. You are living dangerously, that's why.)

Samantha spent an hour trying to add up her dream list for Monday, when the money arrives. She has five items ranging from paint for her classroom's blackboard to a new suit. She never got within ten dollars. How do you spend ten years of schooling not teaching simple addition? It can be pretty staggering. Three times I've gone to a particular store to get ten packs of hot dogs. Each time the same clerk has added two-seventy-five, ten times. What does one do but keep typing? (Actually, I have an idea. Marry the one who's not a clerk, give her ten dollars, and tell her it's fifty. Even marrying her and not fooling her might work.)

Louise turns out to be great verification. We often work shoulder to shoulder together in the kitchen, she in a halter and shorts, and, stunning beauty and calm charm notwithstanding, I feel nothing for her other than the same friendship I feel for six or eight other kids. I only respond. I never initiate. If anything, I repel. Good to know. I would have been a totally safe father for Anne's daughters, unless Predatory was their middle name. (Yes, yes, I would have let her name them.) Even then, they'd have been more likely to get a spanking than a kiss. Maybe, in the end, what Queenie has done is illustrate my own hypocrisy; I suggest and espouse what I wouldn't do, myself. My rebuttal is that in a more perfect world, there would be less censure, and I would be free to add ten years of sexual enjoyment and fulfillment to, a, their lives, and, b, mine. If that doesn't define win, win, you have a potential best seller in telling us what does. Maybe if we all became Jewish we could dote on the lustrous quality of our media, the rich cadences of the schlong schleppers' Yiddish, and love each other half to death. That's my plot outline. And, while bashing Gotham and all that goes with it, for the umpteenth time, I came up with a witty little adage, and a mystery to go with it. "New York, you've got a problem." The mystery is whether the problem is Muslims, or me. Again with the hypocrisy, because, as far as I know, if I make it to age seventy I'd like to live on Arthur Avenue and emulate Diamond Jim Brady, trencherman of urban legend.

Speaking of food, the pizza was a killer. Charles Castile stayed for lunch, and the four managed half of it. "There's so much art in nature, I became a writer. None of that in nature," Ray's thirty-year-old father observed. "I lived in an older house when I was a boy," he went on, "and there was some water damage to the ceiling in my bedroom. A stain and a tear in the beaverboard. Also, unpainted wooden shutters. In both places I saw what I considered to be highly artistic images; perfect blends of abstract and true-life. In the random patterns of a water stain and stained wood. Michelangelo quality images -- better than. Self,' I said to myself, you've got some bodacious competition when it comes to graphic images, so you'd better learn to type.'"

One thing, he was easy to appraise. No fencing. Not one of Larry McMurtry's `stone-silent businessmen'. No innuendo concerning the intentions of the artists; comments about "Playboy", questions about girlfriends, yet highly guarded, highly aware, for all of his casual bonhomie. In twenty minutes they felt highly privileged to be given stewardship of the sensationally attractive eleven year old, and in thirty minutes he was gone, Ray, alone, sitting shyly at the kitchen table with them.

"Those eyelashes are going to take me six hours, each," Pete mused, envying Sid who only had to get in close and trigger the camera. At the same time, there was a glow to the child; a resonance and timbre to his smile, his eyes, and his light honey-colored, silken skin beyond the reality of the photograph. Not that he'd be less than beautiful in a photo, just that there was a little more; for instance, a subtle, almost purple tinge to his raven hair, an iridescence, subdued in the boy's case, but easily seen in certain feathers of the urban pigeon. A liquidity to his eyes that would escape light and lens and film and print, even in Sid's already skilled hands.

"Your dad seems comfortable with you hanging out with us," Pete said.

"He thinks your work is way beyond anyone else he's seen;" the boy responded in a lilting pre-teen soprano, "he was like a kid when you picked me."

"He was a little hard on we of the graven image," Sid noted. Ray laughed. "He protects his turf that way," the boy said, "by being prickly. I guess it's an editorial process, of sorts; weeding out the time wasters. Since he specifically told me to invite you for Sunday dinner -- Maine lobster, as a matter of fact -- I think you'll find his bark worse than his bite."

"Well, his kid isn't worse than anything," Pete said, to the child's happy Hispanic smile. "How do you guys cook lobster?" Sid added.

They got further acquainted.

"What we had in mind," Pete said, "is taking you our in the park, up in some of the wilder areas, and do some sketching. You could be building a camp fire, playing marbles, something like that where you use your hands."

"I'd like that," the boy replied. "I know twenty-five knots, if you have some string or something."

"No problem," Pete said. "Also, we have some simple costumes you can choose from. Tom Sawyer. Tarzan. Skateboarder. Dancer. Even a Peter Pan, but we don't have leggings for it. Or you can wear what you have on."

"If I wore the Peter Pan, would it just be in private, for the two of you?" Ray asked.

"We can take it in a backpack, and there's plenty of privacy in the further reaches of the park."

"Can I ask you something that might seem kind of weird," the eleven year old said.

"Sure," Sid said.

"Do guys that like to, you know, do stuff together, go in that part of the park. Gay guys."

"Yes," Pete and Sid responded.

"Would we see anything?" the child wanted to know.

"We'd scout a circle to be sure we had privacy," Sid said, "but, it's possible. Some gay couples are a little bit on the exhibitionist side, and don't mind if someone sneaks through the pushes, silent as cats, and spies on what they are doing with each other."

"I don't think a Peter Pan costume would be good for that," the boy observed.

"Tarzan was a bit of a bush hog, in his day," Pete allowed, to the merry giggle of their new friend.

"And we could easily take both," Sid added.

"Are you guys, you know, gay?" Ray asked.

"No," Pete said. "We don't sleep together, remember each other's birthdays, have a special song, shop, leave silly notes, or hold hands. No Vermont wedding is in the offing. We do, two or three times a week, end up in the shower together, or hang out together on the sofa or in one of our bedrooms. We're perhaps a bit gay in the sense that we're extremely demanding of any girls we come across; expect that they read, clean, and cook, as we do, for openers."

"How about you?" Sid asked.

"Dad says I have the hottest bod for hundreds of hectares," Ray giggled. "That's the writer in him. He's always going on how he wishes he wasn't my dad. It's dead funny. For example, he wants me to get a paper route, so he can get to know me under fresh circumstances. `Sunday Showers, How the Boy Flowers.' That's the title of his masterpiece on the theme."

"Beats: `It was a dark and stormy night'," Sid remarked.

"Too bad someone beat him to `A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'," Pete added, feeling a license to be a bit ironic had been granted by Charles Castile's comment on subliminal graphics.

"If we sneaked around," Ray said, picking up the thread of their conversation, "would we see any, you know, child molesters, or would it be guys your age."

"Why, you feelin' lucky, punk?" Pete asked.

"Just wanted to make my day," the boy replied, without pause.

"Then it's time to make hay," Pete responded with equal alacrity.

They took their young friend on a tour of their studio cum apartment as they packed the costumes, theatrical makeup, a grooming kit, and half a dozen other items that Sid used for last minute touch ups on location shoots. Pete made do with a pencil, a plastic sharpener, and a pad. Sometimes it was nice being a painter. They hailed a cab and in half an hour were sitting on a rock out of sight and sound of the swirling city around them.

"How much were you kidding around, back at the studio," Pete asked, "and how much was serious."

"That's what I'd like to know," the boy said with a shy smile.

"Well, it's kind of important," Sid added, "we don't want to expose you to anything that freaks you, even a little.

"At the same time, if you're really curious, we could stash the backpack for an hour or two, and play Rambo."

"We're not exactly experts," Pete said, "and we've never explored this area, but I'm a hunter, and my instincts tells me if we stalk we will find."

"But what do we do, if we do?" Sid said.

"Yeah," Pete agreed, "it's one thing to keep our mitts off you while we're artists and you're the model, but if we're watching a cute twenty year old with a cute ten year old, we might not be in the mood to say, "Oh, HOW cute," and shuffle off to Buffalo."

"I should hope not," Ray allowed.

"You're sure?" both sixteen year olds asked.

"No," Ray said, "but I'm sure I'll be sure as soon as I know, for sure."

"Positive?" they double-checked, in unison.

"Absolutely," the boy replied. Boy, did that bring back memories. "M-a-t-u-r-i-t-y." Hey, it actually worked, sort of, and in less than three minutes they were ready to head into the forest of prime evil.

The country boy led, his instinct for terrain sharpened by a youth as hunter and camp guide. For half an hour they carved a wide circle, then made a bee line for its center. "Hard critters to track," the teen said, "but there were enough obvious sites to know we're in hot territory. Our choice is to wait, or stalk."

"If we wait, we can talk," Ray noted.

Pete and Sid agreed, so they scouted a smaller circle, finding a secluded small cave above an obvious pathway. Pete punched the buttons on his PDA, locking in a GPS waypoint, and they stashed the backpack under some brush. He explained waiting inevitably led to stalking, and they had to be ready to de-camp on a moment's notice. The jungle leader passed the Leitz glasses to Ray, and dispatched him twenty feet up a nearby tree. The boy whispered down two tally-hoes, then dropped down to report that they were older, fatter guys, and not fit prey for man nor beast. The boy seemed free of vanity, but both Pete and Sid were glad to hear his comment on the heavily inclined. They were starving artists, by choice, and their thirty-two inch waists were the proof of no pudding. On the other hand, standing between them was a tall, coltish young boy, big of foot, big of hand, and endlessly long of leg.

"Slanting light looks good in the woods, so we can do the photos later" Sid explained, leaving his camera hidden with the backpack. They reconnoitered and found a good observation post overlooking what Pete felt was the least obvious of the trails he'd sensed; one leading around their small hill to a cul de sac not a hundred yards distance, as the crow flew.

"This is a piece of cake," the leader said, "if we were after deer, we'd have to worry about wind direction, and we couldn't make the slightest sound or movement."

Not that they could sing and dance, but there was some tolerance. Ray took advantage of it. Nestled snugly between the two teens, eyes glued to the binoculars, he took the opportunity to ask a question.

"What if it's a man and a girl?" he said. "Has anything like that ever happened to you guys?"

They were feeling so grown up, what with all the spycraft, and their academic grades and success with their artistic ambitions, and Charles' invitation to Sunday dinner, they actually tried it. "Absolutely," they chorused in a soft whisper.

"Can you tell me about it?" was the next question.

"I don't know," Pete said, "how far are you along? I mean, have any physical things happened with you, or do you just kid around with your dad?"

"Once a pee-pee did grow in Brooklyn," the mentally alert boy replied.

"I hope therein lies a tail," Pete replied.

"Ass-o-lutely," Sid added. Sometimes they missed being twelve.

"Assuredly," Ray said, "but that doesn't mean anything physical happened, it was just a story my friend told me about what happened to him, but something physical did happen, you know, the first time, even though I was the only one who knew about it."

"Sounds kinda like a bunt," Sid remarked.

"Way infield," Ray agreed.

"At least you made the roster," Pete said.

"So," Sid added, "if you want to give us the play-by-play, we'll know how much to tell you about what happened in Connecticut."

"It was a dark and stormy night," the wit began, "and, I, ten, was babysitting Keith Spooner, seven. Said juvenile retrieved one-each family bible, making me swear to secrecy on it, so he could tell me what happened in daycare, where he sometimes spent his Saturdays if his parents were on location.

"I both swore and affirmed, so as not to take any chances. He was a really cute, nice kiddo and I wanted to hear his story, because, for sure, it didn't sound like one of the kids had smuggled in a joint or his brother's magazines."

"Had you ever seen stuff like magazines?" Sid asked.

"No," Ray said. "I had to imagine everything, but some of it was easy because his story was about a game called `Froggy', not the frog game on the computer, and I had seen frogs, you know, pretending no one was looking."

"And you say your dad's the writer in the family?" Pete asked, a friendly irony in his voice.

"Yeah," Ray said, "but I'm wordy, too. That's how Keith and I got to be friends. Pokemon' was to thin for us, kind of sterile and Jewish and same-old-same-old, so we talked about Napoleon and Nelson. He thought it was a riot I was going to be his b.s. -- baby sitter, and he'd stomp around hollering I'm ten. I'm king of the world!', you know, just being cute."

Well, they'd asked. Pete looked over the young storyteller's head at his friend. "He's preaching to the chorus, as far as I'm concerned," Sid said, "as well as hitting the nail on the head."

"I guess it's something we've never talked about," Pete said.

"There's nothing to talk about," his friend replied, "accident of birth, and I seem to have gotten some talent along with the lunatic religion, so one washes the other."

"My dad says not to back off on being and anti-Semite," Ray said. "He thinks an insidious socialistic, whining, puling undercurrent spells the destruction of any culture that allows it. Quibbling. Superficiality. Monotonous ritual. Ugliness. He calls the electric bill the Jew bill, because after they built a two billion dollar power plant for Lilco, the nitpickers disallowed it on technicalities of evacuation procedures."

"My favorite story," Sid says, "was when they evacuated two million people over a minor hurricane. Classic. Like the election. Strand two million people along hundreds of miles of road, at the precise time they should be watching their property and ready to help their neighbors. It's like when they shut down a freeway for twelve hours because of some criminal activity, and the scutbuckets need to come in and get four hundred and fifty photos of every shell casing so the lawyers can run up huge bills exercising due diligence in reviewing every one "

"You have to look at the broader issue," Pete said. "They are damaging the country so relentlessly and so thoroughly, it can't long survive in any form we'd want to endure, if it survives, at all. This gives us the greatest privilege in all of human history, and that is to die at the end of civilization, having seen the best of it, and without jealousy toward those younger, who get to live on."

"If I ever play tennis with you," Ray said, "count on me being leery of your backhand."

"It may be backhanded," Pete laughed, "but count on its being true. There's evidence. World War II was commonly called The War to Save the Jews. It killed fifty-five million, thirty of them in Europe. Europe, even with the war, stands on the verge of a population crises that means sixty million old people will have to be euthanized in the next decade, if they are to survive. Without the wars, that would have happened decades ago."

"If Hitler had concentrated on his eastern front, he could have pushed the Slavs half way across Siberia, and the problem wouldn't exist," Ray said.

"He couldn't," Sid said, "because he had the world's dumbest Englishman cozying up to Uncle Joe, and threatening Calais."

"I wish Keith was here," Ray said, "he thinks Roosevelt was the world's dumbest Dutchman. You guys would both win, but you'd still have fun playing."

"Invite him," Pete suggested.

"I will," Ray said. "His dad's finishing up his work on the coast, and they'll be back for school."

"It's cool you keep in touch," Pete said.

"We haven't done that yet, we just talk," Ray replied, giggling at his own clowning around.

"So, talk, already," Sid gruffed, half pretend, but half sore from having his chain pulled, however unintentionally. It was hard to get back at a kid who, a, pseudo and suspiciously convenient intellectualism duly noted, was right, and, b, was so personable, never mind cute. It was hard being a Jew. If civilization survived someone would come along, one fine day, and make it impossible. Since this would mean a brighter day for those following us, we all hope that doesn't happen. Selfish, but human.

"Yeah," the boy responded, a note of contrition in his voice for any personal response to his offhand remark, "I guess I got a little sidetracked. When Keith told me, the same thing kept happening. It took him two hours. Comes from reading all the time. You have so much to yak-yak-yak about, sometimes you forget stuff."

"You haven't taken your eyes away from those glasses for ten minutes," Sid said, bygones, bygones, and no friendly sounding strain to his voice, "so you don't seem like the absent-minded type."

"I'm older now," the child responded.

"Then why wait any longer?" Sid prompted.

Pete pulled out his sketch pad and pencil from his cargo shorts. Lying on Ray's left, he showed the boy how to use the binoculars on just his right eye, and began a close-up study as the eleven year old picked up the thread of his story, leaving out the "dark and stormy night" part.

"Bible yes, magazines, no," he began, "so I swore to secrecy, and went down in their basement laundry room with him, so we'd be away from his two older sisters."

"So you could pretend no one was looking?" Sid asked.

"So we could be sure no one interrupted us," the boy responded, hinting at a prickliness that would serve him well as an artist, but covering it with a friendly wink in Sid's direction, before going back to his field glasses.

Boys R Us, the facility was called. (It's sister center was across the street.) "We don't get many seven year olds here," Mitch Affingham, the owner's seventeen year old son said.

"My parents do stuff out of town, so sometimes I come on Saturdays," Keith said.

"No, it's cool," the teen said, least he be misunderstood, "I wish we had more older kids."

"I'm even older, now," the boy quipped, instinctively liking the lanky older boy, not in a small part because he had a somewhat sever case of acne, which meant no girls, which meant maybe he hung out at the library, which turned out to be the reason they'd never met, though Keith had been coming to the daycare/preschool for several months.

They chatted about this and that as Keith helped the older boy put together a salad, then they sat together at lunch, rapidly warming to one another over almost par debates on topics ranging from whether or not "Myst" was absolutely the stupidest game in human history to the role of barbers in various movements of the Sixties. Mrs. Affingham dropped by their table and suggested her son invite Keith to his room, because the younger kids would be taking naps. They helped clean up, then went up to the resident apartment.

"If I ever get kidnapped, I hope it's by you," Keith said, looking at the richly laden book cases bordering the usual clutter of a male teenager's room.

"You'd be my first choice as a victim," the older boy noted, "so you might want to start saving for the ransom."

"How much would it cost me to stay?" the bright child asked.

"A dozen meal worms a day for the frogs," Mitch said, nodding in the direction of a terrarium in the corner of his bedroom. The seven year old went over and looked. "For that kind of behavior?" he remarked.

"I don't usually bring curious twerps up here, so don't blame them," Mitch said, not thinking it was the coolest to laugh at a second grader, but hardly able to help himself.

"Okay," the boy replied, "it's a deal then, worms, and I don't tell."

"I'll order some cuffs on the Net, and we'll set a date," Mitch said.

"September second," Keith said, "the day before school starts."

"You hate it too?" the older boy asked.

"They keep you from reading, and call it education," Keith laughed.

"Wait `till you get to Kafka, and they teach you to hate to read," Mitch cautioned.

"Hemingway already taught me, but thanks for the reminder."

"If you made it through him, you're a survivor," the older boy said.

"That's how I felt," the prodigy allowed. "Thank god he spent most of his time on parade and not typing."

"His only gift," Mitch agreed, and they high-fived.

"What's the best movie?" the teen asked after they'd spent more time looking at the frogs, neither seeming to want to leave the terrarium.

So closely attuned had they become, so quickly, Keith felt his heart bump at the innocuous question. As if guided by a mysterious voice, he knew not only the film, but the scene his mature friend had in mind. "Dale and Rusty," he said.

"Did you get it?" Mitch asked.

"Afterwards, Audrey teases Rusty for sleeping in his underpants, then, when he's drinking beer with Clark, he says he's only been a man for a few days, so something happened."

"'Bopping the baloney' is a pretty crude way of putting it."

"They take that line out on most of the cable channels," Keith noted.

"The freaking frogs know about it, but humans have to be something like a hundred to get clued in," Mitch said. There was no whine or cynicism in his voice; he wasn't an iconoclast or petulant harpy, just a kid who doted on a breath of truth and reality once in awhile.

"Okay," Keith said, "so while Audrey's checking out Vicki's stash, what's happening in the other bedroom?"

"Dale's showing Rusty stuff some big boys do," Mitch said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper.

"Can little boys do it?" Keith wanted to know, his voice dropping to match his friend's.

"Big boys can play a game with little boys that's sort of like what big boys do," the teen explained. "It's called `Froggy', and the behavior involved is nothing to write home about."

"But it's really exciting, isn't it?" Keith asked.

"If amphibians with brains the size of a grain of rice do it for hours, it must have something to offer," Mitch observed, making Keith laugh with his pedantic delivery.

"How come people don't?" the younger boy wanted to know.

"With us it's shorter, but much more intense," Mitch answered, "I mean, you don't see the frogs acting like the end of the world is coming."

"How do you spell that?" the bright-eyes asked.

"So you know some stuff," Mitch replied, his heart beginning to race at the boy's enduring interest in frog-like subjects.

"Last Saturday when I was here, guess what, out came the dolls," Keith said. "Next they'll be having them center stage at the mall. Anyway, your teacher wasn't too bad, and he told us about how it's spelled."

"That's Chris Gibbons," Mitch said, "he's the best teacher Mom's ever had."

"Yeah," Keith agreed, "but still it's like opening a window so just your nose sticks through. Not exactly enlightening."

"Have to, because of Little Rascals and the other daycare scandals," Mitch explained, "but the dolls, themselves, are a bit limited when it comes to an accurate presentation, anyway, so you just have to add it to reading as something blocked by education."

"I just wish they wouldn't be so thorough about it," the younger boy said.

"Would you like to learn like Rusty did in the movie?" Mitch asked.

"Yes," Keith said.

"I learned that way," the teenager said, "so I could teach you, at least as much as Fogger."

"How long does it take?" Keith wanted to know, his heart thudding with hope the answer would suit his spinning head.

"An hour," Mitch said.

"So it would be over by the end of lunchtime?"

"Beginning, is more like it," Mitch noted, "but don't worry, we've got plenty of time."

"How do we do it?" he asked.

"We start with all our clothes on," Mitch answered. "You get on your knees with your arms on the bed, and I get on top of you, just like the guys in the fish tank. If you like the feelings you get, then we take our shirts off, and try it that way."

"Is it molesting when we have our shirts off?" Keith said.

"Technically," the older boy responded, "I think it's molesting you to just talk about it, but it really starts if you let me put my hands inside your underpants."

"Will I be doing it to you if you let me, you know, put my hand there?"

"I don't know," Mitch said, "I guess if you like tricked me into tying me up, then did it if I didn't want you to."

"Would I go to jail?" Keith asked.

"Probably in `Guinness' is where you'd end up," Mitch replied.

"If I used bowlines and clove hitches, maybe in the scout manual," the twerp said.

"Or we could get creative," Mitch observed, "and start our own magazine. You know, `Boyplay'."

They stared at each other, eyes bright as torches. "Is this falling in love?" Keith whispered.

"Freaking head over freaking heels," the teen responded.

"Won't your head be over mine?" the irrepressible boy said, dropping to his knees and crossing the carpet to Mitch's bed where he positioned himself with his arms on the spread.

"You were right," the older male said, crawling over the child, hugging him gently and whispering in his ear.

"So were you when you said `intense'," Keith whispered back, adding: "if you stopped now, I'd feel like the most molested boy in the world. Totally raped."

"I think you're the safest boy in the world," Mitch reassured the child, "but I'll lock the door before we take our shirts off."

"Go up under it now, so I'll know how it's going to feel," Keith suggested.

"Okay, let me pull it out of your shorts," Mitch whispered.

"Okay," Keith said.

His hands worked gently and they both began to pant. "Do you think you'll like doing this to little boys when you're my age?" Mitch quizzed.

"How old do I have to be?" Keith asked.

"Sometimes boys that are twelve or thirteen molest kids your age," Mitch said, "but usually the younger boy or girl wants to see what happens when the older boy gets really excited, so kids younger than twelve usually just talk about stuff or experiment with a little touching."

"If I stayed over, would you do this with me all night?" Keith asked.

"For a few hours, then we'd fall asleep and you could encourage me in the morning, if you wanted to."

"Would we be completely naked?" he quizzed.

"If you wanted to feel me between your legs, you know, while we were lying on our sides with me behind you, then we would," the older boy explained.

"Could you go inside me, you know, back there?" the child asked.

"You need to find a twelve year old for that," Mitch said, "if I tried, it would really hurt, and you've got to be careful -- real careful -- who you hang around with, like they teach you in school, because some guys really want to go inside a young boy's tight butt, and they won't care if it hurts. That's a real molester, or rapist is more like it."

"So no hitching in the worst part of town after midnight," Keith said.

"You'd probably just have an exciting time with some regular guy," the older boy said, "but stuff does happen. On the other hand, there's nothing in the world half as exciting as putting on a cutoff tee shirt, sandals, and an old pair of tight shorts, and sticking out your thumb."

"Would somebody stop?" the boy asked.

"Everybody. The first time I did it, three cars stopped at once. It was half a freaking accident."

"Did you get in one of the cars?"

"No," Mitch said, "a cop stopped to see what the fuss was about, and I got in his car."

"No way," Keith whispered.

"No ticket," his friend replied.

"Could we do it, you know, hitch together sometime?"

"It's a little bit dangerous," Mitch said, "so that would be best. You have to think on your feet. Make a judgment in like ten seconds. If the guy's unattractive, or creepy looking in any way, you say you forgot your watch at your friends house, and close the door."

"Has that ever happened to you?"

"No," the older boy replied, "I only did it a few times, and all the guys were nice. They even offered to buy me stuff, but that's hustling, a real different thing, so I never took anything."

"Where did they take you?" the younger boy asked.

"There's a saying," Mitch replied, "good boys go to heaven, bad boys go everywhere. That about sums it up. To their apartments, to motels, out in the woods, or parking where you can see anyone coming."

"Did you have to worry about getting anything?" the child asked.

"It's so exciting," Mitch explained, "that you just need to use your hands a little bit, and you can't get anything that way, unless the sperm gets on a fresh cut, or something."

"Do guys really do it with their mouths?"

"I didn't start that until a couple of years ago, and it was with an older boy I knew really well," Mitch said, "but some boys your age might be ready.

"You can get VD that way, but not aids, unless you've got a loose tooth, or a canker sore, so you'll probably want to wait before you experiment that way."

"Yeah," Keith said, "until you've got your underwear off would probably be a good idea."

"Do you think you'd want to?" the teen rasped into the strawberry smelling hair of the youngster.

"As soon as you've taught me the first steps," Keith whispered, now openly panting from the mature male's hands.

"If I don't stop touching you I'm going to cum," Mitch said, "and that would be out of order by anybody's rules."

"I want you to," the child coaxed.

"It's exponential," Mitch replied in a strangled whisper, "waiting twice as long make it four times better." [Million-word veteran though he is, the author has never been tempted to use an emoticon, however, when he reflects on waiting two score and three years for his ever extraordinary Samantha, the grinning idiot happy face comes to mind, if not to the keyboard.]

"And that's meant to be survivable?" Keith panted.

"Young girls survive having babies," Mitch observed, "so boys have to pay their dues, somehow."

"Then why couldn't I survive having you inside me?" Keith wanted to know.

"For the same reason a girl couldn't survive giving birth to an anvil," the teen explained, "it's not only size that counts."

"But we could experiment that way, couldn't we?" the boy said, "even if you didn't go all the way."

"I'd like to try, if you really want to -- some day," the teen said.

"It's a date," his little friend responded.

Slowly Mitch rose back to his knees, both hands under Keith's shirt. Immediately he was upright, the younger male unbuttoned his shirt and his partner stripped it from him, then stripped off his own. Keith backed slightly from the bed, realizing stretching for it would give the young adult on top of him greater access. He arched his back, and Mitch found his naked chest and they knelt panting one over the other.

"Come up higher on me so I can feel you against me," Keith urged.

"Let's get our pants off, okay?" the older male coaxed. It didn't happen right away, gentle fingers against a slender chest root faster than forked lightning, but exponential was exponential and there was a lot to be said for the better day, tomorrow, so they did come enough to their senses to rise again and strip off their shoes, socks and shorts.

This time Mitch mounted the child high, his athletic thighs pressed to the back of little Keith's underpants, his hands on the arching, panting chest, his face buried in the boy's neck.

"I can't move at all or I'll start cumming," the older boy whispered to the child.

"Do most boys like to watch it happen?" Keith asked.

"Yes, especially the first time," the experienced teen said.

"Can I make it come out of you?" he quizzed.

"Yes," Mitch whispered.

"Teach me," Keith urged.

"Are you ready to be naked?" the older male responded.

"Yes," he replied.

"Okay," the young man said, his hands leaving the boy's chest and finding the band of his white, cotton underpants. He pulled them to the child's knees, then pulled down his own. They struggled a moment together, until the garments were kicked free, then Mitch lay carefully on the boy's slender back. Keith reached back with his right hand and guided the hugely swollen penis of the seventeen year old high between his legs, and felt the older male surge gently against him, wetting and hotly penetrating his milk-white thighs.

"You've got to lie on your back to see," he whispered to the child, and he helped Keith up on the bed, kneeling over him with his almost seven-inch, circumcised erection probing the seven year old's tiny nipples. "Do what comes naturally," he coaxed, "just don't stop once you start."

"Okay," Keith responded as his right hand found the beautiful teen. He wet himself on the heavy flow of seminal fluid, then experimented with gripping and fondling, quickly settling into a rhythm that made the older boy hiss and shudder.

"It's going to be really wet all over you," Mitch cautioned.

"Cum on me," the boy hissed back.

"I'm cumming," he gasped, shaking and sweating, rigid over the little boy. His first sperm gouted across the slim, white chest of the boy, causing him to mew incoherently. For his first hard, hot spurts the boy stared, then the mature male felt the child's left hand on his thigh, pulling him for ward. "Oh, babe," he murmured, moving up as the child guided him to his panting mouth, finding the sweating ejaculating teenager first with a wanton tongue, then, experiencing a gush or hot sperm, with his lips and rosebud mouth. Instinctively, the seven year old sucked the swollen purple glans hard and fast, and Mitch bean a second cuming more intense than everything that had ever happened to him in his life. There wasn't as much sperm, but like a drunk with the dry heaves, it went one and on, even a slight spill of seed driving his juvenile lover to frenzied sharing. As the second minute ended, Mitch moved down Keith's young body and found the boy's bone hard erection. He wet the child with sperm from his heaving, sweating chest, and, as the boy lay back with his hand behind his neck, raised the child's widely spread legs on his knees and gently masturbated him until the boy began hissing and mewing, then bent his head and tenderly took the beautiful penis in his mouth, sucking softly with his wet tongue wriggling over the boy's hot, young penis. Keith slammed into his first climax, yelping and shuddering as his little hand tore at the shoulders of the athletic male.

Silently they lay nose to nose caressing each other, staring into each other's eyes; breaking only to lower their heads to each other and lick, then return to experiment with kissing. "If they don't teach reading in school like they don't teach sex, I might grow to like Hemingway yet," Keith said. "Don't count on it," his friend replied. "Well I'll admit I'd rather have you inside me," one whispered. "Count on it," the other whispered. "When?" "When it rains on Kilimanjaro."

Posted by Thomas C. Emerson, Dangriga, 12/02

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