One Fish at a Time

ONE FISH AT A TIME

CHAPT. NINE - ELEVEN

CHAPTER NINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It would be pretty funny," Rick Schroeder said, "if they investigated you for child assault. On the one hand, they'd have your manuscript, which would seem to be self-evident, but, on the other hand, how would you have had time to swat a fly and turn out an epic on a limited number of four-hour flights?"

"Don't forget how late we were on that first flight," Nancy Schroeder said.

"That's what will save him," Rick said, "terrific inspiration leads to terrific productivity, case dismissed."

"It's fun to write long," Rob said, "because at some point you get completely lost in your story. There's some kid trying to manhandle six completely critical levers, and steer, and get the gear and flaps either up or down, as the case may be, and switch tanks enroute, and maintain radio contact, and relay messages from other traffic, and steer around thunderstorms, and it all means nothing compared to thinking up some dramatic twist or turn."

"Kids ride bicycles in city traffic," Nancy observed, perhaps a trifle archly. Internally, she was thrilled to have a husband she could rag on just the weeist bit. It made her feel very grown up. [Author's note: where I live, kids ride bicycles, without brakes, bells, or lights in Third World city traffic.] Rick laughed at the timely point, and Rob unfolded his keyboard. "If we ever have a real fight, you're going to need a pair of stenographers," the girl sighed, secretly thrilled at being taken down verbatim for use sooner than later in some script or the other guaranteeing her immortality. He was just right for a husband as Rick was just right for a big brother. There was so much to look forward to when a girl was eight years old, plus, she had a past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TEMP. END OF FILE - NOV. `02

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

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

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

My Stooges day even included a real pressure cooker. That's as close to magic as I ever want to get. In the midst of trying to convert files, write David a not, and attach everything and Send it, I found Queenie (Louise) boiling big, uncut potatoes in one pot, and big tails in another. I pitched a fit, then the taxi arrived, then Sim, then my glasses broke, and, when all was said and done, we dumped the potatoes, after slicing them in quarters, and the pig tails, into the cooker, and, by the time I'd finished explaining to her how I thought it worked, they were done. Like less than ten minutes. The red kidney beans which are the national staple seem to take about two hours in a regular pot, so I hope that will be the big improvement. Poor Samantha, I didn't buy her a single macaroni and cheese dinner. I repeat what I said earlier about feeding nine. You gotta be a freakin' millionaire. This is accurate, too. If you live on dividends, you reinvest a quarter. That leaves, after taxes, about twenty five thousand a year, I kid you not.

Forgot to ask Malcolm if there's any news. I have an obvious allergy to hearing anything more about Israel, other than the president has decided to do his duty and defend his people, and the words on a piece paper he swore to protect and preserve, and blow the place, and everything around it, absolutely and utterly off the piece of paper called the map. Fragile economies can't endure troublesome influences, and the American economy is as overspent and fragile as an egg. You can skip this, and get back to the story by scrolling down to the column of asterisks. The solutions are, in part, eighty-sixing our old folk and using the resources to bring half a billion Chinese, East Indian, Mexican, and carefully selected other groups to the North American Continent. These immigrants come under para military conditions, convert scrub forest to family farms, rebuild urban areas while rolling back the suburbs, and generally clean the place up, while fitting into mainstream society at a modest rate of around three percent a year. Tent cities, kubutz paradigm, not quite slavery, but the next thing to it. Seventy percent of malls should be converted to helpage centers, and, brother, that's it. The military should be revamped from the ground up. Hail Caesar, but they buried him in the end, and we can bury much of the ludicrous military hashmatash along with its inventor. The Emersonian military is "Spad" based. This was the nickname for the Douglas A1A Skyraider, hands-down, the greatest war machine of all time. It can loiter eight hours at a stretch, and five hundred of them dropping stun grenades inside of five minutes is the kind of message that gets through to the camelly inclined, even over DVD Looney Tunes. Seventy percent of missions should be flown by enlisted personnel. The air groups can train on fire spotting and fighting, and be used to drop aid canisters once the tornado is a mile or two away. Imagine having fifty planes looking for your lost child, and you begin to get the picture. It is my belief, based on moderate to substantial study and experience, that a Spad could carry four under-wing troops in sophisticated pods, which would also serve them on the ground as sleds and defensive shells. (Ventilation and a means to be airsick are priorities.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's a good thing you have your uncle the cop to escort you in a place like this," the handsome man said.

"It's away from everything, and you don't have to pay any rent," the girl said, following her uncle as he threaded his way along the overgrown pathway. Pete, Sid and Ray silently de-camped, Pete leaving his sketch book with the hidden backpack. They gook a moment to spread bug repellent, then the game was afoot.

"She's too old to play Froggy, "I'll bet," Ray said as they began short cutting over the hill to the trail's end.

"As long as it leaves you in the mood to try on your Tarzan suit, we'll be happy," Pete noted, speaking, he was pretty sure, for Sid. His friend nodded, and they made their way quietly over the hill, hiding in the dense brush that surrounded the cul de sac. The trail end was formed by a fallen tree, mossy with age, and it was on this the couple sat, facing the voyeurs.

"Okay, mysterious lady, and mistress of the map, we're here," the man observed.

"Do you like it?" the girl asked.

"Yeah," the man said, "as a matter fact I do. Linda Lake, outback excursions a token away."

"Paul Bishop," the girl replied, laughing, "protector and defender of life and limb."

"Paul Bishop," the man replied, "confused, but charmed, and happy to be here."

"I know you must be," Linda replied, "confused, that, is, and that may be just the tip of the iceberg."

"Why, honey?" the man asked.

"Because you may freak out totally when you find out," she replied, "but since Dad got shot, you're the man in my life, and this has to do with your being a man and me being a girl."

"No confusion there," the uncle laughed, "you are a girl, that I've noticed."

"The map is for a secret club," Linda said, "and no, we don't sell dope, drink gin, shoplift or dance after dark with the lettermen, but neither do we swap Barbie outfits and hold tea parties with one-once cups, though, while we're on the subject, I do happen to have a doll-size baby bottle in my purse."

"Never can tell when you'll need one of those," Paul said.

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

"Try what?" the man asked.

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

"Yes, honey," Paul said.

"They get good grades, mostly they hang at the library, they do the newspaper, but, except for one, they're not cheerleaders or hot tomatoes of any kind."

"Sounds like my kind of organization," the man said.

"It's double scary, you being a cop," Linda responded, "because what the club does is illegal."

"Laws are made for bad people, hon," the officer said, "and it's very rare good people get caught up in the system, which has been known to wink and smile tolerantly."

"Good answer," the girl said.

"Maybe," Paul allowed, "but I don't know to what. Are you forging art or fencing jewels with the cookies?"

"Guess again," the girl giggled.

"Exotic animals," he tried, "smuggling them in from darkest Africa.'

"Very, very close," the girl said, "because it's exotic animals we deal in, exclusively."

"I thought I felt something slither over me last time I spent the night with you guys," the man said.

"That's Mom's housekeeping, not the club," the girl laughed.

"You're mom des okay," Paul responded.

"I know, but I liked the image," she said.

"And you had to blame somebody, right?"

"You make it sound like it bit you," Linda giggled.

"You mean it wasn't imaginary?" he said, checking himself for bites.

"It was a week ago, the poison would have worked before now," the girl intoned, nodding her head as girls her age will when they are being very serious about something. They laughed and she reached for his hand.

"There are twenty-three girls in the club, and four boys," the girl said, resuming a serious serious tone. "Becky Nellis and Audrey Chimonsky are my two best friends, and they both told me all the other kids want us to join. My dad and me, actually, but where he got shot takes a long time to recover from, so you get to play the father role, if you want to."

"My sister married a good man," Paul said, "I don't think I'd be much of a stand-in."

"Actually, you both can be in it," the girl expounded, "it's just that Dad will have to play a limited role, where you can take me places and do stuff out of the house."

"Anytime, anywhere," the man said.

"I won't hold you to that," Linda responded, "not to anything. After you know, then you can make promises."

"Fair enough, if I don't die of curiosity," the man said.

"Uncle Paul," the girl said, "the club is for girls and boys who want to have mature relationships before most other kids do. It's for kids who earn special privileges by getting grades and contributing behind the scenes, not for trendy stuff. I guess you could say it's our secret vengeance for being looked down on by the cooler sets, but that's a byproduct. Really, it's for girls who really love their dads or their big brothers, and feel that since the law doesn't work very well in many facets of life, it may not be working all that hot when it comes to telling dad's how to love their little girls, or brothers, their kid sisters."

"Doesn't sound like an organization that's going to wither for lack of interest." Paul observed. Linda giggled happily and squeezed his left hand with her right.

"Very mature, and very illegal." she whispered.

"Love?" he asked.

"How the girls express it," she replied. "Fully, trustingly, and not exclusively until they're old enough to make that kind of decision, say sixty-something."

"I knew a happy couple in their forties, once," Paul said, causing the pixie to shake with delight and stare up at him with her big, blue eyes. "I'll bet I know how they got that way, too," she replied.

"So it's a happy-marriage club? There are so many books on the market..."

"Stop it," she groaned, happily.

"Why?" he retorted, "aren't we having fun yet?"

"I'd have fun with you at Disneyland," Linda said, displaying a class consciousness that might have startled some of her friends. But this was her uncle, and, next to her dad, her favorite person, so she could dump on any institution she pleased. Cutting backhands would not be held against her, as long as she aimed her rapier at deserving targets, and Mickey Mouse (registered character of a corporation known at all levels for playing fast and loose with other peoples' intellectual property while getting all frosty if anyone tampers with theirs), alone, had dumbed down enough kids to populate half a nation. Deserving target, and, if the nest of hyper schmoes wouldn't shake in their boots over the opinion of a ten year old, one day might come a prince on a charger and nail their hides to the wall on age descrimination, while making up a set of laws relating to cultural debasement and promptly acting as judge, jury and executioner. This kind of thinking wasn't common to ten year olds, their age descrimination was in another venue, and there were so many varieties of debasement led by the McDonalds' Corporation, what difference did one more make? And that's the whole point. Get them dumb enough, and they wouldn't care, just shop, the minute they finished eating.

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

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

"And they'd be wrong?" the young man asked.

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

"So, what would a guy have to call you clubbers to be right?" Paul asked.

"Not late to sinner," the cutie quipped.

"Illegal and sinful?" the uncle responded, "you must be forging birth certificates for little leaguers. Mocking fair play."

"Actually," the tightly woven little miss replied, "we're putting together another season for the XFL."

"That would require love, and would be a sin," Paul acknowledged.

"Good, then let's go home," the girl said. Paul rose from the mossy log, and, calling him an ox, the girl hauled him back to his seat.

"You mean, there's more?" he asked in fake surprise.

"Than you can believe," Linda said.

"Starting with..."

"Sex," the girl replied. "Uncle Paul, it's a sex club. Dads and daughters; once in awhile, mothers and sons or daughters, big brothers with little sisters; rarely little brothers with big sisters, and, rarest of all, fathers and sons, but not rare at all, guess."

"You've pinned me in a corner, there, hon, " Paul mused, "so I guess I'd best throw in the towel and cry uncle."

"I'm so glad you agree," the pixie piped.

"So you want me to square this with your mom, is that what this is all about?"

"It's all about you and me, and you efforts to deem it otherwise are getting lamer by the minute," Linda said.

"You mean you want me to find you a book or something?" The wasn't as offhand as might be assumed because the two frequented the library and books stores at every opportunity. Offhand, or not, it was not what Linda had in mind, as most Nifty readers will have already guessed.

"Or something," the girl rejoined, "though, from what my girlfriends tell me, there's more all' than some'."

"Well, it does sound `allsome'," Paul allowed.

"So, are you going to put me in cuffs?" Linda asked.

"Lord, child," the officer replied, "the president isn't protecting the Constitution, why should I?"

"Well, I guess we can leave that for someday," the girl mused, then added: "There's more, Uncle Paul, they want you to kill somebody."

"Kiddo, you had me going for a moment there," Paul said, "but that's not very funny."

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

"Why waste the time?" the handsome detective said, "I've heard of him; the whole squad has, but just in general, not off the things you just said."

"We know all the secrets," the girl responded, "or at least it will be `we' when I've been initiated, if you want to, that is. There's a lot of bad stuff going on, and most of it we -- they -- can control with anonymous letters and phone calls, but Crenshaw's a black, and he knows how to steam up better than Sharpton, plus he might actually kill Deb."

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

"Ten minutes; I doubt he'll be late. Here. With your .38.

"You know how they're always finding bodies in shallow graves?" Linda asked.

"Yes," Paul said.

"We dug one nine feet deep. It's not even twenty feet from here."

"Then why did we have to use a map?"

"Because I've only been here with Ellie Bemis and Kitty Hughes, at night," the girl replied. "I just followed them, when we were meant to be studying."

"And you're serious?" the uncle asked.

"You'll know for sure in a few minutes," Linda said.

"An I'm just meant to shoot him, in cold blood, as he comes up the trail."

"Unless you can think of something better," his niece said. "He'll be carrying, I'm your witness; I even have a note from him acknowledging, in a noncommittal way, of course, that we're meant to meet. It might not stand up in court, but your captain will accept it as color of truth."

"And you girls really dug a grave?"

"Three feet a night. We even built our own ladder from saplings and twine."

"Sounds festive," the man said.

"We spent the time telling stories," Linda said, "it was easy. The club sport is rope jumping. We're all athletes. A couple of trowels, a bucket, and a lanyard, picked a spot, and, thanks to O.J., we even remembered a towel to clean up with. Plus," she added, "the body of a poor dead dog, so, should anyone want to look for Crenshaw, or come across a patch of recent earthwork, looking for someone else, or use some fancy machine, voila, they find poor Fido, and keep looking."

"And said Crenshaw is on the verge of walking in here?" Paul had drawn his gun; fuck, was this a doll, or what?

"He's going to play a cassette, loud, then I go out and bring him the hundred yards to the log. The grave's yonder (she pointed), so it's all downhill from here, and there's an apparently abandon snow shovel not far off, so it shouldn't take us more than fifteen minutes."

"I don't care what you do about the law," the man said, "but do me a favor and stay on the side of the angels."

"It does get worse," Linda said, "so you'll have to make up your own mind."

"How does it get worse?" Paul asked.

"By a great deal," Linda said.

"Now who's being an ox?"

"There's PVC piping to the bottom of the grave, with an inlet hidden in some roots -- that was the hardest thing but we had this neat little saw... -- yes, well, it's a vent. You belly shoot Crenshaw and I'll jump on him with duct tape. Hope he doesn't have a cold. We roll him and dump him, and he gets to contemplate his life as he knew it, perhaps for several days. After that, we can talk about angels."

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

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

"I can assign myself to searching this area for the late, great one," Paul said, "you know, like fiber in the diet."

"Weird analogy," Linda said, "but I think I get it. How about carrots in the cake."

"You win," he said.

"Did you mug him while you were rolling him down the hill?" Linda finally remembered to ask.

"Yes," her uncle said.

"How much?"

"About three thousand, per pocket, and he was most well dressed."

Paul grinned at his niece and from his cargo shorts hauled out two inch thick bundles of currency. "All hundreds," he said. "Twenty grand, or moe."

"And you know," Linda said, "looking up into his eyes, "the afternoon hasn't really started."

"We seem to get a lot done," the man acknowledged.

"Cutting the roots for the vent pipe was the hardest part," the girl said, "but the trench was easy once we had the main hole dug; it only took an hour."

"I wonder if we could hear him if we listened?" Paul said.

"What would be really cool is if he could listen to us," the dashing young princess replied, her eyes glowing up at the tall man seated just to her right.

"What would have been cooler than that is if your dad had done your dirty work for you,"

"Uncle Paul," the girl sighed, "you've been a real good sport, and all, and it was great of you to call me an angel, really great, but, well, it's kinda like there's more."

"More?"

"I mean, it's like we were totally careful. He was standing still, little chance of him suddenly moving, and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, the club has, well, in the movies they call them `assets' that are experts at different kinds of things, and one of them, well, it's shooting. Dad was drinking a case of beer a night. A case, not a six-pack. My friends wanted me to be in the club, but he was spoiling it, to say nothing of cutting his lifespan in half, and maybe getting a partner killed because he was getting out of shape. He read to me ceaselessly when I was a little girl, and I owe him, big time. If I could have thought of another way, I would have come to you, but, just like with the late, great, stark action was the only answer. Like Hornblower."

"It worked," he said, "I talked to him on the phone yesterday and he said he'd ditched ten pounds, already."

"I'll make a new man out of him, or die trying," Linda said, "but meantime, I'm starting to develop, and Ellie and Kitty and the other girls, well, you know how it goes. Peer pressure."

"I'm learning a thing or two about pressure," Paul acknowledged. "Your dad could have bled to death."

"No way," the girl rejoined, "I'd siphoned two pints out of him while he was sleeping off his beer, and, like I said, we had assets. There's evidence for you, find out how long it was before a doctor happened by, after he was shot. Less than half a minute. But he didn't really even need to go to the hospital. He was stable at the scene, other than being real mad."

"You think of everything, don't you," said the uncle.

"Oops, almost," the girl replied, reaching into her purse and retrieving a string of firecrackers. "We should light one of these off once in awhile so any witnesses can say they heard a series of bangs. Add to the mystery."

Pete and Sid and Ray spent a full minute looking at each other, but none could think of a word to whisper or suitable gesture. They didn't even shrug, just went back to watching.

Bang! The girl lit one off, and put the rest on the log, probably so she wouldn't forget them again. They half expected her to light a cigarette before she put the lighter back in about the most innocent purse they'd ever seen, but apparently she had a reticent side and didn't smoke.

"Next one should be a hundred yards from here," she remarked, and then stared back up at her handsome uncle. "There's more," she whispered.

"That's why the world is round," Paul said, "so, no matter how far you go, there's always more."

"Yeah, but this `more' is kinky," the ten year old said, "I mean, actually, it's not, it's kind of sweet, and there's a clinical aspect, so club assets can check your genes and DNA and stuff like that."

"So far you've been very good about not keeping me in suspense for very long," Paul said, "and I appreciate it when you come to the point."

"I have to collect from you," the girl responded, "some for Dr. X, and some for ceremonial use; not something we take too seriously, but a little ritual does help with bonding."

"I'd like an explanation, young lady," Paul intoned, mimicking a dowager bemoaning the loss of a teacup.

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

"I've killed a man, leastwise, I probably have, and I've become an accessory after the fact in premeditated assault against a fellow law officer, who, by no coincidence, whatever, is my brother-in-law, and now I seem to be involved in some satanic display having to do with gerbils, " Paul reminded the girl.

"It's just the initiation," the girl reminded her uncle, right back. Again she went to her purse, this time fetching the doll's baby bottle. "The club," she said, "encourages a clinical and dispassionate contact at the outset of the first relationship. I've seen a video on how to do it, but it still looks dead tricky, as Marsha Wright, my British friend would say."

"Would she now," Paul responded.

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

"Simulated," the male murmured.

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

"Sensory," Paul murmured.

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

"Chance," the man murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

"And you said you're starting to develop," the man asked, feeling that if he'd died and gone to heaven, he might as well participate in the experience.

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

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

"Exercise," Paul said.

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

"Forewarned," Paul mumbled.

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

"Distraction."

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

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

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

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

"Just videos?" Paul whispered, "or have you been touched."

"Just videos," she whispered back.

"And you're sure this is the way you want it to start; that I'm the one?"

"I can't imagine the first night you drop me off at seven," she said, "but Ned, her dad, is pretty nice, and before that happens, Ellie and Kitty, plus all the other girls will have been over for a month."

"Will you let him unzip your dress?" Paul whispered, as he exposed her creamy back and slender bra strap.

"Yes," she whispered back, but you'll unzip Ellie, too, because the males often take the females under decorous circumstances, as if they were coming home from a party, pretending they're an old married couple. You know, play acting."

"Does that add to or subtract from foreplay?" Paul asked.

"It varies. There's one story about a dad getting so mad at his nine year old play wife, they slept back to back for an hour."

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

"A whole hour," he responded, "yes, that must be quite a legend in the annals."

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

"By the way," Linda said, "in the club intercourse is called mounting, because it was started in ranch country, so the tradition holds. We -- they -- use Victorian English, no four letter words, no anatomical expletives, no potty babble, except c-u-m, we -- they -- can say that with a partner."

"Will you say it to Ned," Paul asked.

"After you have with Ellie," the girl answered.

"Yes, darling," the handsome uncle said, "but I'll be giving, if that's what she wants, and you'll be receiving; bringing him into our home. That makes it uneven. Three lanes one way, and one lane the other, something like that.

"I'm not uptight about it, because you'll be carrying me to him, as well as the reverse, it's just that it makes it more exciting to think about and talk about; how I'm going to feel holding you at seven o'clock in the morning."

"Maybe the club is so successful because it answers questions like that," the girl said.

"I think it's successful because people communicate," Paul responded, "and, if you don't get all wanton and bar hopping, except at certain times, and don't have to keep a lot of secrets, and can share the things that happen, that's just common sense."

"Yeah," the girl acknowledged, "but you have to be pretty upper class to take advantage. Discretionary intelligence; appreciation for the fact you're aloud to run amuck, then walk and cross only at the lights."

"What it sounds like is a way to the upper class," Paul said, "I mean the contacts must be pretty staggering."

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

It was a refrain, but Paul used it for lack of better words. "There's more?" he asked.

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

"Am I aloud to say beautiful, and things like that?" he whispered.

"No," she replied, "it's meant to be matter-of-fact and clinical, same about me telling you you look more than sensational, and your middle made me all wet, and if you rape me on the spot, I wouldn't tell; I'm not meant to say anything like that."

"And I'm not meant to touch your breasts?" he prodded.

"You're not meant to go like this," she said, taking his hands to her. Actually, they disobeyed very little. Yes, he fondled her raspberry nipples very gently for a minute, but then he released her, and they stood facing each other, her forehead on his chest as he ran his fingers down her thick braids.

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

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

"You know the rule we really can't break?" she asked in a whisper, both of them by now panting gently.

"What?" Paul rasped.

"Kissing," she said, "and that's the one I want to break the most."

"Will Ned Jones teach you?" he asked.

"Yes," Linda said.

"Sweetheart," the man asked, "what if you'd been molested before; weren't a virgin, would the club still take a girl?"

"They're called Early Birds," Linda replied, "Kitty's one. When she was seven, she had a sixteen-year-old boy from down the street baby-sit for her. He gave her a bath the first time, and let her see what happens with a boy, and, two nights later, he mounted her successfully, without a condom. As long as she was honest about it, it made no difference. Three of the girls were being raped, then they were asked into the club, and that gave them a wider view, so now they have good relationships with their incest partners."

"How about race?" he asked.

"It's mostly white, because of the discipline required to enjoy some but not pig out. Any kid who fits that profile, and keeps his or her weight down, can be in it, but it's mostly Anglo. There is descrimination in the fact that Asian girls become secret members, unless they have exceptionally good looking fathers or brothers. Just one of those things."

"How about siblings," Paul asked, "you know, if a girl has a younger brother, or one she doesn't like."

"It's like a country club," Linda answered, "there are guest privileges, so to speak, girls with steady boyfriends, cousins or family friends visiting from out of town; with the polygraph, clearing someone in is a thirty second process, and we -- they -- get the interesting ones without the dangerous ones. In the old days, they did make a few mistakes, and, more, probably kept some good potential members out."

"And the orgies?" he asked.

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

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

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

"How young are the girls?" he asked.

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

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

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

"Sweetheart," Paul whispered, "I'm going to cum in a minute."

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

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

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

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

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

"We can't kiss but Ellie says we can do something exciting with our tongues, touching them when yours tastes salty so you can begin to teach me about that."

A `more' that was more modest? He was ready for the switch, and tenderly laid his niece on her back and moved between the ten year old's widely splayed knees. He found her and himself with his mouth, and, as Pete and Sid and Ray watched, gently left her, moved over her slim body, and touched her pretty pink tongue with his own.

Eventually there was a lull. Paul helped Linda to her feet and the girl retrieved the rubber nipple to the bottle, carefully replacing it, and putting the bottle upright in her purse. She turned to him and pulled him again to the moss, lying spread eagle with her slender white thighs arched in welcome. He mounted surely and quickly, taking her wildly for ten minutes before gentling, then letting her slip from him in a wild, thrashing climax. As she came back to consciousness she stared up at him, still panting and trembling above him. For a few instants she held still, her eyes hot and glowing; then she was sure. "You're cumming," she hissed, and again was mewing and grunting underneath his powerful body, flailing him forward with her slim calves and ranking his back from low on his waist to high on his sweating back.

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

CHAPTER TEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I thought it would be more embarrassing, but it really seemed natural," the shy boy whispered as soon as they had crept stealthily our of earshot.

"How do you feel about it being a preview?" Sid asked.

"With two of you?" the boy whispered in response.

"Yes," Pete said.

"Yes," the pre-teen, golden beauty also whispered.

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

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

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

"Also, that a perfect boy can be any size," Pete rejoined, feeling it unnecessary to add Any slim size.

"Your dad was right about you," the leader said as the coltish sprig joined them in his skimpy costume, "heartaches by the hectare, both genders, all ages."

"I got, you know, big," the boy said shyly, "from what we saw when we were spying, and I can't get back to normal." Indeed, the eleven year old was tented fiercely, his green shorts bulging from his front to over his right hip.

"We'll make you feel more comfortable," Pete said, and, nodding to the other sixteen year old, he dropped the pack and shucked out of his sneakers and clothes as Sid did the same. The boy bulged noticeably as the two young adults displayed for him by arching their backs, hands behind their necks. "Peter Pan had some good points," Ray said, "but there is definitely one reason to grow up."

"I think Wendy would agree," Sid observed.]

"I'll bet if we'd gone into the clearing, Paul would have let you rape Linda," Ray said.

"It's still rape with you," Pete said, "so we'll be extra gentle."

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

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

"Ten days," they both said, each laughing at the other for knowing.

"Male's don't have sex nearly as often as heterosexual couples," Pete explained; it's a very minor part of most relationships."

"Did you have a boy with you?" Ray asked.

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

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

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

"Was he a nice kid?" Ray asked.

"More curious than anything else," Pete said.

"Can't blame him for that," the nice boy allowed, "what did he do?"

Pete told the story.

"Can I talk to you guys?" came the voice from the hallway.

"Sure," Sid said, "come on in."

"I want to ask you some stuff before I do," ten-year-old Christopher Cassell said through a crack in the door entering on the family's living room.

"Okay," both the teens said, sitting on the arm of a sofa near the door.

"You're not real babysitters, are you?" came the boyish voice.

"Your dad said you didn't need one of those," Sid said.

"We're sort of optional/extra," Pete added, "and we can go back over to the studio if you want to be alone."

"No," the boy answered, quickly, "don't go. I was just checking, because it's embarrassing enough, but it would be really bad news if my dad hadn't talked to you."

"He did," Sid said.

"What did he say?" the boy wanted to know.

"That you did well in school," Pete responded, "read a lot, behaved less like a moron than he would have thought possible, and that you'd earned alternatives."

"Did he tell you you were my first choice."

"That you were interested in the collaboration Sid and I did."

"At the McNee gallery," Christopher said, "plus, I've seen you around the neighborhood, and everyone seems to like you, so, anyway, dad caught me looking at a picture in the encyclopedia of a Greek battle, and one of the warriors is lying over the side of a boat with an arrow in his chest, you know, sort of arched, and he, Dad, sort of hinted about stuff, and said if he invited you over, ostensibly to baby-sit, that you could explain more about the picture than he could."

"If you want," Pete responded, "you could show us the picture, and we could make a tableau of it on the sofa, minus the arrow, of course, and you could see how that makes you feel."

"He said you were very intelligent," Christopher said.

"Well," Sid said, "we were smart enough to show up on time, and take you on as a charge, sight unseen."

"The thing about the picture," the boy said, "is that the sailor isn't wearing anything. I mean, it doesn't show, but you can tell."

"It does sound Greek," Pete allowed.

"The book's on the end table," came the voice from the hall.

They found the G volume, and Sid held the book by the spine, letting it open as it would. "I found he," he said a second or two later. As described, the dead warrior in the full-page, color plate lay over the thwart of the war canoe, arching either dramatically or provocatively, such things being in the eye of the beholder. The teens carried the book to the cracked door. "It is sensual," Pete said, "and I can see why it gave your dad ideas."

"I'm glad it have him something to work with," the ten year old said, "because all it gave me was feelings, and I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to waste time looking at it, but I couldn't help it."

"Some boys," Pete replied, "get the same feeling from religious art works, especially Christ on the cross, which is often rendered in a way that is very attractive to homosexuals, simply because the best illustrations display the beauty of a young male body in a dramatic pose, like your lost sailor."

"So it's really gay then?" the disembodied voice asked.

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

"So it's good?" queried the missing child.

"It's a whole lot more than awesomely outstanding," Pete said, "that's why it's against the law; people feel something that feels so good and is so satisfying must be wrong, if for no other reason, than by default. They think everyone will spend all their time in bed, and society will fall to pieces. They're probably right. Food is good, and society is definitely falling to pieces over that. Credit is good, and the gong of doom tones again."

"So it's a judgment call?" the boy asked.

"Precisely," Sid answered. "If you'd like, I can pose like the young soldier, and Pete can lead you in with your eyes closed, so you can touch me right where the arrow is on the boy in the painting. Then you can use your judgment to determine whether or not you open your eyes."

"Is your friend trying to be funny?" Christopher asked Pete.

"My friend is funny," the sixteen year old said.

"I thought so," the boy responded, "but mostly, he's cute, and I really like his idea."

"I think he does, too," Pete said, "and I think it's excellent."

"If you pull the curtains, " Christopher suggested, "you can get the room really dark, and light the candles on the coffee table, you know, in case I have the judgment of a flea."

"You'd have to be judge-mental, as in impaired, not to," Pete assured the invisible child.

"How long will it take you?" the boy asked.

"Do you want us naked?" Pete asked.

"You mean all the way?" Christopher queried.

"What ever you're comfortable with," Sid said.

"I'm comfortable in my old slippers," the boy said, "but my dad never said anything about wearing them"

"We'll set your scene from the book while you decide," Pete advised, "and we can do something else, if you change your mind."

"I wouldn't be standing here, scared stiff, if my mind, or something like that, wasn't made up."

"It's rugby players who eat their dead, not us," Pete observed.

"Not with medical schools paying what they are for pediatric cadavers," Sid said.

"But we'll need a full description," Pete added, "for bidding purposes, including, and this is important, because they need to know whether or not they can send a female operative to collect the body, how the corpse is dressed, and specifically, whether or not the deceased is wearing his underpants."

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

"What if we weren't?" Sid asked.

"I'd be even more excited," Christopher said, "because then it would be like one of those slasher movies and I could stop thinking about what you're going to do and start fearing for my skin."

"Maybe if we did more," Pete said, "we could have your undivided attention, especially if we concentrated on your skin."

"That would make the cleanup easier," the boy allowed.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Sid said.

"Will it be really messy?" the boy asked, a distinct curiosity and dawning urgency in his voice.

"Homosexuals have far less sex than heterosexuals," Pete explained through the door, "so we're more exciting when it does happen, and, yes, at first it will be very messy, but Sid and I love each other, so we'll be meticulous when it comes to cleaning up your body."

"I'm kind of sweating," the kid said.

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

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

Lay abed this morning. It was cold. Too lazy to get up. Reminded me of being a teen. I can't remember lying, wide awake, in bed for ten years or more. I suppose this is ironic, because I spend a minimum of twenty hours every day on the bed, working or sleeping, but never `in bed'.

The pressure cooker is amazing. Go in and diddle in the kitchen for half an hour, using a teacup of propane, and when you leave you've got about ten pounds of hot rice and five pounds of tortilla dough, plus a clean kitchen, no work, in any sense I'm familiar with, involved. Along the with incessant exercise of free speech telemarketers use your telephone to fulfill, little plastic tubs of vastly prepared food have to be an embodiment of liberalism on a par with the SUV and cob-job, dry-wall mansion. We cannot fault the left for its dedication to maximum landfill in minimum time, because it provides jobs, but we do reserve the right to laugh at it. We buy flour in twenty-five pound sacks, rice in twenty pound sacks, and we reuse the sacks. Lard, in five gallon buckets, also reused. We throw away so little, all the trash for a week or more fits in a large Purina cat chow bag. Not a garbage pail, a months, for six of us, plus guests. We eat spectacularly good food, thanks to a minimal amount of chili, vegetables, powdered chicken stock, and pig tails added to the rice and beans (or its fried-rice cousin), at probably one-fourth to one-eighth the cost of a conventional American diet. One secret may be using lard over vegetable shortening. I should note that the piece-de-resistance of my kitchen is a Chinese gas thingamajig. It his three burners, each about three times the power of an appliance stove. Boils water for tea in four minutes, gets the pressure cooker steaming in six or eight. I don't know if there are laws governing the output of kitchen stoves, but they are anemic; hardly suitable for cooking for an individual, much less a group. It's fun to cook when things get ripping hot in a flash; browning, caramelizing, searing, or just getting in and out in a hurry.

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

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

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

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

"I was listening at the door," Christopher said, as he sensed Pete's approach, "and it sounded as if you took your clothes off."

"What makes you so sure we weren't just trying to get naked?" Pete queried.

"The bit about the meat wagon operative actually was funny," quoth junior, "so you actually are naked."

"Naked as a future on credit," Pete allowed.

"So you don't have a stitch to lend me?" the boy played along.

"Nor the time to write up a contract," Pete affirmed.

"Thank god," the boy said, adding: "are you going to close your eyes, too?"

"Not even one," Pete rejoined, "we're artists, we work in the light; play, teach, encounter, empower; everything but sleep."

"I want to see!" quoth the child in melodramatic play, as if, after a life in the dark, he was to receive the gift of sight.

"Wouldn't you rather be holding?" the sixteen year old asked.

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

"Are there any boys or teachers at school you like?" Pete asked.

"Danny Wilderfield," the boy panted.

"How about teachers?" Sid queried.

"Mr. Hodges," the boy said.

"Do you think they'd want to do this with you?" Pete said.

"They're both really nice. I think so."

"We want you to find at least one steady partner, if possible," Sid explained, "someone you have a lot of common with, and can be with at least a few hours a week."

"And we can help," Pete added. "You know, get you a hotel room, or lend you our place, have DBYOB parties, use you together as models, hire cars; aid and abet, as a prosecutor would say."

"Would you watch them touch me?" the boy panted in a whisper.

"Once in awhile," Sid said. "We're pretty focused, that's why it might be a good idea for you to find other partners, but, sure, once a month or so we can have a special party. No more than four couples, you know, silverware issues."

"Will I want to do this with little boys when I get older?" Christopher asked.

"You'd be insane not to," Pete said, "no calories, no money, no car, tools, implements or devices... not even any clothes. There is nothing in the entire world like it and the very substandard condition of our entire society can be measured by the simple fact most people get uptight about what we're doing and would see us go to jail for ten years for lying against you like this."

"At the same time," Sid added, "there is a lot of freedom. Certainly your dad knew we were going to play with you; other people will figure it out if we can find time to hang out in public together. No one will say anything. Act normal, and we'll be treated normal. The key thing is math grades. Learning, whether it comes easy or hard; makes no difference in the long run, because, unless you have overwhelming English skills, math is the key to a serious degree and undergrads going for serious degrees get the best jobs at summer camps and other youth facilities, and, if you want to do this with young boys, when you're older, those are the preferred avenues."

"Is that why they teach it?" Christopher asked.

Wasn't he right? Didn't there have to be a reason? Who on earth added fractions or used an iota of algebra or needed geometry beyond the cookbook maths of a carpenter? Trying to teach it to everybody simply slowed down the kids to whom it came naturally and who liked or even loved it, just as the ponderous scratchings of a chemistry whiz could stifle an English class. However innocently phrased, it was a hugely important question, because frustration over useless maths drove millions of otherwise alert kids into the academic cellar and ruined their chances at higher education, or continuing any education. You do not talk of algebra or diagramming sentences at any party of sane people, nor do you emit phrases from your French text, but you do talk about books and history. Losing this capability is like losing an arm.

Christopher could have lost four arms, and still had two. Pete and Sid entirely molested the boy who lay wriggling and arching, his hands behind his neck. Pete helped Sid over the back of the sofa, and the teen reprised his role of Greek boy dead. "Do you want to feel his chest against yours?" Pete whispered, to a vigorous nod from the ten year old. Carefully he picked up the naked child and lowered him against his fallen hero. Both males gasped at the sensual touch of their bare chests. "It would be sexier if you had his sperm on you," Pete coaxed, again, to the boy's wanton nod.

Pete braced the ten year old against Sid's left flank and guided his hand to the teenager's thick, circumcised, adult penis. "Do what you'd want him to do with his hand if you were lying the way he is," Pete suggested. "Should I get my hand wet with what's coming out?" Christopher wanted to know. Pete guided him to show him Yes, and helped the boy by reaching gently in front of him and masturbating him to coax a steady rhythm with his experimenting little hand. Sid moaned and arched to the point his hands trailed on the floor, giving himself entirely to the little boy. Pete molested Christopher as the child became fully engaged in the affect the grip and rhythm had on the gasping, sweating male. "He's so beautiful," the boy whispered, now taking him fully with long, firm strokes as his left hand pinched Sid's left nipple. "How many drops will he make come out?" Christopher whispered to Pete. "Probably a thousand," the teen replied. "Should I get all of it on me?" he wanted to know. "If," Pete replied, "you want to try getting some on your tongue, let some of it spray on his chest."

Christopher nodded. "Don't stop when it starts happening," Pete coaxed, "or, if you do stop, hold him very tight, right at the base, like this." He demonstrated by gently stroking the mature ten year old fully, and holding him firmly, his right index finger pinching on the seminal vesicle. "If you're finger's just where mine is you can feel the semen jetting out," he explained.

"Will he tell me?" Christopher asked.

"It's been years since we've been with a child," Pete replied, "so I don't know."

"Does he tell you?" the boy asked.

"Yes," Pete whispered.

"He's really sweating and shaking," Christopher whispered, "does that mean the sperm is getting hot?"

"Yes," Pete said.

"Mine is, too, from what you're doing with me," the child whispered, "and I don't think I have any."

"It's not physical thing," Pete said, "science wouldn't recognize it, they'd get a thermometer about two inches long, give you a little Novocain, insert the thermometer and, lo, your semen, whether you have any, or not, would be ninety-eight-point-six, unless you had a fever. The psychology is something else. Freud thinks it's to do with juvenile this and anal that; he wrote so much, like Nostrodamus, some of it must be right. The church puts the kibosh on the whole thing, mortal young sinner. The romantics leave his briefs on, and partner him in a gender and age-appropriate manner."

"So my only salvation is perversion?" the boy asked, managing to keep up with the conversation is spite of the awesome response his right hand was having on the beautiful artist arched beneath his active little hand. Sid lolled, for long moments, then mewing and moaning, sat up, as Pete braced his legs, so he could stare at the angelic naked boy pinching his nipple and masturbating him with agonizing perfection.

"How do you feel about getting his sperm on your tongue?" Pete whispered to the panting boy.

"I want it," Christopher hissed.

"Hold him against his belly," Pete said.

"I want it on my tongue," the boy said to the glazed-eyed teen warrior, "please." He held the big penis low and stroked harder and faster.

"Yes," Sid answered, something hopeless and defeatist in his voice that made Christopher freeze his pumping hand, gripping with all his strength while Pete whispered hotly in his ear. "Don't move," he coaxed, "be patient, he's totally lost, but he wants to watch you jerking him off while you're naked just a little longer."

"Get me wet," the boy coaxed urgently, bringing the panting young athlete to his slim chest as he stared down at Sid's swollen glans. "He's cumming," Pete whispered, molesting the child fervently as his teen friend began spurting on the sweaty, heaving birdlike chest of the ten year old. "Oh, babe," the shocked little boy said as the cum sprayed against his throat and right cheek. His tongue darted for the hot semen, and he again held the stallion against his belly, watching the cum gush across the lean, rippling muscles of the older boy. Mewing, he lowered his face and began licking, first experimenting with the edges of the thick white wetness, then, wantonly, humming and moaning as his tongue and lips slurped with a fast growing hot greed..

Sid arched again, his hands trailing to the floor, and Pete picked up the child and lowered his naked, slick chest to the hot teen, rubbing him slowly in circles, nipples to nipples, as his mature lover regained his strength. In two minutes Sid had begun to recover, and in another minute he'd exchanged places with Pete, and was holding the wet boy as the child found Pete with his mouth, and quickly accepted the sixteen year old, using his tongue and lips as well as his now experienced hands. Pete was able to hold back for several minutes, then followed his friend in a hard, gushing ejaculation. The beautiful boy's cheeks and throat convulsed as his mature lover gushed him full of hot, salty cum, then the teens manhandled the child over the back of the leather sofa, and took turns masturbating and sucking him for half an hour, making the writhing, hissing boy climax violently time and again until all three collapsed on the couch, breathless and for the moment, exhausted.

"So I'm only the second boy you've molested?" Ray asked, his head lolling on the grass as Pete and Sid unbuttoned the vest of his costume and fondled his slim, golden chest.

"I guess he was cute enough to be a boy at that," Pete allowed, "so that makes you a chronologically challenged cat."

"Then it's seven more lucky lives for you dogs," the cheery boy giggled, the generosity of his spirit as erotic as his tiny brown nipples or the adult bulge in the green felt at his waist..

"If we ever choose to return to Planet Earth," Pete said, "we'll be sure to keep your opinion in mind."

"Will it be a climb or fall?" the precocious boy asked.

"I guess if anything supernatural existed, it would be one or the other," Pete said.

"It is kind of a test," Sid added. "Commit the most depraved and carnal of moral atrocities, and see if anything happens; if there is anything to anything. History teaches us, unequivocally, there is not with a capital N, but it's one of those things inquiring minds want to know for themselves, so we forget murderers gone free, horrific mothers, traitorous wives, and find out first hand and personally that while the upside is skyrockets in flight the downside seems to incorporate a few pennies worth of tissue until such time as a bolder carnality makes it superfluous."

"Thus saving at least a twig," the entirely aware child said, his big brown eyes merry and engaging.

"Or, perhaps, one second of human labor," Pete noted.

"I know a way to save, too, or at least I think I do," Ray said to the teenagers.

"What?" Sid asked.

"Even if you couldn't go all the way into me, you could sperm while you're a little inside me, and we could save the tissues for next time."

"We're in the same state we were in with Christopher," Sid said, "so I think you'll need to protect your underpants from getting semen on them while we're walking back home."

"The laundry's boring enough without my taking extreme measures," the twerp said.

"You are the pick of the freaking litter, you do know that, don't you?" Pete whispered, staring into the big brown eyes from a foot away as his left hand toyed with the child's belly and his right brushed the golden cheek.

"Does that make me literate or literally?" Ray asked.

"If we were bad men out to do over your tight, smooth, childish body we'd think of you as a bitch in heat," Sid said.

"I sprayed on my sheets last week, so you've got it all wrong," Ray whispered as the teens eased him out of his costume, in a minute lying him back naked in the grass, his long, coltish legs widely spread, his five-inch uncircumcised penis hard against his almost flat belly.

Pete rolled the child on his stomach and coaxed him to his knees, moving in front of him to cradle his head on his thighs as he bent over the young body to guide Sid. They moved slowly together, whispering gently, the athletic teen taking the child with short firm thrusts, then long moments when he remained almost motionless while Ray got used to the pressures against his young body. Pete held his friend in his left hand, fondling the mature eleven year old with his right. Ray hissed with concentration, trying to relax as Ray, wet from Pete's handling of him, gently coupled with him. The handsome photographer was both gentle and urgent, consistent in his will to ease his glans through the boy's nervous sphincter.

"I'm being debauched," Ray whispered to Pete, "that's just what it feels like."

"It's been around for millennia," Pete observed, "never has had to make a comeback." Ray relaxed and giggled at the droll absurdity, Sid grunted, and Pete whispered. "He's cumming in you, do you feel it?"

"It's bumpy," the boy whispered in answer.

"He's doing what Paul did on the moss," Pete rasped.

"That's what it feels like," the child affirmed.

The two remained rigidly together, Pete supporting them, for over a minute. "He's only spraying a little now," Ray said, and Sid gently eased back from the naked boy on his knees. The moment he was free, Ray rolled on his back, his eyes burning fixedly on Pete. The painter positioned himself between the long, golden legs, and leaned over the boy, staring back down into the liquid brown eyes. Sid guided Pete. Ray mewed in welcome, arch his back to help Sid. With a gasp of "Uh" from the eleven year old, full contact between their young male bodies was achieved. "You are so wet," Peter whispered, thrusting as Sid brought the slim, hairless legs over the shoulders of the powerful, athletic teen. Ray's eyes beckoned, clouded with pain as Pete penetrated him, and glowed in welcome as soon as he grew used to what the adult-size teenager was doing to him.

"His sperm makes a lot easier," Ray panted as Pete really began entering him.

"Do you like being on your back?" Pete asked.

"Yes," the child said, "I love looking at you."

"I love looking at you, too," Pete said.

"You're really getting deep," the boy hissed, his whisper breaking with excitement. "I don't think you have to be so careful now."

Pete was a little bolder. The child's arms came to his heaving flanks, urging him forward and the teen began to plunge gently against the boy, then thrusting tentatively as the end of his powerful strokes. He was three inches into the wet, slick bottom, then four; the pre-teen's fingers ranked his flanks, the panting became a whistling gasping and Pete lost his control, bucking hard against the eleven year old's naked body, hardly hearing the boy's mews of welcome. He settled on him hard and fast, his strong, athletic hips surging again and again as the slim bare legs urge him forward.

"I'm cumming," Ray gasped. Pete and Sid stared at him, and after a tense pause as Pete paused, fully mounted, were rewarded by a hot spurt of watery semen spewing the length of the panting boy's golden chest. It happened again, then three more times. "You are, too," the boy said, his arms and legs gnashing against the young, athletic body rigid over his own. For half a minute they came together, Ray mewing and wriggling at the hot, hard pulsing so deep inside him, while his pubescent semen splashed and spattered himself and his two young lovers.

"You forgot Christopher," Josh Benedict said, no hint of censure in his nine year old voice.

"I guess we did at that," Pete Anderson said, hoping writers reading his tale wouldn't be tempted to emulate the inconsistencies and, especially, try to patch them up rather than going back and setting the record straight, in the first place.

It was late. By acclimation, they opted for another night, each in his own bed. The world was hugely changed, and all craved something to linger over. Baltimore would be there, if anywhere was, for the foreseeable future, so they said good-night and turned out the lights.

What happens next? Nancy wanted to know, but it was nearing midnight. Again, everyone slept happily alone, and the lights were out at five minutes into the new day.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rainy days are half the reason to live in the tropics. Warm, friendly rain, by and large, with the lashing white squalls so tearing and dramatic one thrills to them as to a howling blizzard. The second unit was out filming a top spinning contest held by the island children, and everyone took the day off, driving their staff off for an impromptu (paid) holiday so they could homemake, just for the fun of it. They made the beds, swept and cleaned, ran the laundry machines, and overpowered the kitchen. The rain crashed down, they lit mosquito coils and contemplated paradise over the handle of a mop. Rob was anointed king for the day, and a stirring ceremony was held at breakfast, a solemn mass for the poor forgotten Christopher. Rob bore it in good humor, and Allen and several others pointed out the fact that Chinese masters deliberately include an imperfection so as not to seem impertinent to the gods.

"It must be terrible being a good writer," Nancy said, "I mean, think about it; if you were a great artist, you, who should be first to have the privilege, never get to read your own work. I mean, if you build a house you can live in it, or if you build a road, you can drive on it, but if you write a book, you can never enjoy it the way everyone else can."

"If you don't write it, you can't read it, either," Rob Lester observed.

"Still," the girl said, "I don't think it's fair."

"Well, sis, what he can do," Rick said, "is wait `till he's ninety, then, when he gets senile, read his story."

"Even write yourself fan letters," Nancy giggled.

"One smile, you looking at me, kid," the girl's future husband said, "and they can cancel all the mail."

Again, they assembled in the comfortable lounge of their base camp. The rain hammered without letup, soft on the thatch roof of the central palapa while it drummed noisily on the zinc roofs across the compound. It was almost like a curtain going up as Rob thumbed through the hefty printout to find his place in the story.

Anytime anyone behaves well in a story like this, you know damn well all hell is about to break loose. Pete and Sid behaved beautifully with Pete's little friend flown in from the Midwest. They let him sleep and he finally woke to the sizzle of French toast and aroma of hot chocolate. By silent accord Pete and Sid had dressed only in their white cotton briefs, their teen bodies little changed from age sixteen. Josh came out still dressed in his pajamas, took one look at the teens, and disappeared back into his bedroom. Pete was about to call out and tell the boy they'd dress, when the twelve year old reappeared wearing only his white underpants.

The three males approached each other, staring down in shock at the speed of the huge bulges tenting their shorts. Restraint is the world's number four, or so, pain in the ass, but it's reward can be overwhelming. Pete and Sid had let the child take things at his own pace, mature with them, in the new world order, for a relatively long time, sleeping undisturbed, and now he stood before them almost impossibly aroused for his age, straining his underpants as if the pair had been borrowed by a fifteen-year-old friend.

"What are you thinking about?" Pete asked Josh.

"A boy we saw while we were out touring the city," the twelve year old replied. "He was wearing red shorts and a white tee shirt."

"Looking through the telescope thing?" Sid asked.

"He was with a guy your age."

"That's the one," Sid said, "he looked about eight."

"That's what I thought," Josh agreed.

"They looked at us, too," Pete said, "so maybe if we run into them again, same time, same place might be a place to start, they'd like to come up here and hang out with us."

The three were amazed they still wanted to talk, having said more to each other in the capsule of two days than most couples do in weeks. Pete took the child to the sofa and settled on his right side, Sid on his left. The boy pulled off his underpants and the twenty-two year olds followed suit. The naked child lay back, spreading his legs over those of the mature you males. Pete guided the boy's right hand to his circumcised five and a half inch boner, and coxed him into a gentle, tentative rhythm; one he and Sid also adopted.

"What do you think his name is?" Josh whispered.

"Timmy would be a good name for an eight year old," Pete said.

"Do you think he's doing this with the man he was with?" Josh wanted to know.

"The man might have Timmy in the shower," Sid said.

"Why don't you tell us what you think they're all about?" Pete suggested.

"What should I use for the man's name?" Josh asked.

"The boy could be Timmy, he's eight, and the man could be Henry Jones, he's twenty-two, like we are."

"Excuse me, mister," the blond-haired, blue eyed tyke said as the subway car lurched its way under Manhattan, "is it okay if I talk to you?"

"Sure," the athletic young man said.

"I see you on this train a lot, so you're not a stranger," the boy said, "my name's Timmy Carver. I live with my mom; just her and me."

"I'm in the same boat," the older male said, introducing himself as Henry Edinborg, "we were visiting relatives in Sweden when it happened. We stayed with the old apartment and somehow my job survived, so, except for Dad not being there, life's just a lot quieter."

"We were in Peru," the boy said, "and we kind of picked up where we left off, only Mom's home all day now, which is kind of neat."

"It's pretty soft for us, too," Henry said, "but in a way the whole thing shows how superficial all the old stuff about being rich and living large was, soup to nuts. We could have a penthouse on Park Avenue, but we stay cliff dwellers in the Bronx; we could drive serious cars, and we take the subway; we could eat steak and snails, and we stick with meatloaf and lasagna. "

"Your mom and mine must have been separated at birth," the cute eight year old said.

"That's what I mean," the older male said, "sure, there's only a few hundred of us, now, but everyone sticks to what they did, or finds something like it. Same clothes, same food, same way of life as if it would be chancing the gods to take a free step up the economic or social ladder.'

"I asked my mom if I could talk to you," Timmy said.

"And what did she say?" Henry asked, with a smile.

"I told her I saw you a lot on the train, and that I thought you looked really nice, and she said it would be okay."

"I ride this train, because I know you might be on it," Henry replied."

"Did you want to talk to me?" the child asked.

"Very much," the older male said, "but you might have thought I was hitting on you. That used to happen in the old days, so kids would get really uptight if anyone smiled and said Hello."

"Why do men hit on little boys?" Timmy asked.

"Don't they tell you about that at school?" Henry said.

"They call it molesting,," the precocious boy responded, "but Frankie Adams said it had happened to him and it was really exciting, and the teacher admitted that sometimes it wasn't bad, and that it happened to lots of boys that got excited by it. I could tell that made Frankie feel a lot better, the whole class could, and, since I was his best friend, he told me about what happened to him. Then he asked me if there was a older boy I liked, and I told him I had a secret crush on this handsome, blond Swedish looking man. He said I should tell my mom about it, because I was only eight, and if she said it was okay, to try to be friendly.

"You're obviously a superb listener," Henry said, "so, does that mean you'd like to hang out for the day?"

"Would I ever," the boy said.

"Good," Henry said, "I'll tell my crew the fox is going to take the day off, and after that, we can go anywhere and do anything you want."

"Just walking around is best," Timmy said.

"I'd like that, too," Henry allowed, "and, just to be sure, you do know, don't you, that I want our date to end in a private place for a couple of hours before I take you home?"

"I want that, too," the boy whispered in response as the single car with its dozen passengers left them in the center of town. Henry cleared himself with his staff in ten minutes, and the two followed the signage to the moveable feast touring the waterfront.

"Have you ever dated a boy my age?" Timmy wanted to know.

"I'm kind of a bookaholic," the young man said, "mostly I hang out at home and read. That's why the shop does well, everything's findable, and we only carry the best of the best. People pay with books, which the staff reads; sort of a model non-enterprise."

"It's just cool to be able to accept something of value," Timmy noted.

"But how about girls?" he added as the thought occurred to him.

"My thought exactly," Henry said, "how about those girls, but so far, I haven't found the right one."

"So you're not gay?" the boy asked.

"Since I'm hanging out with you, I must be a little," Henry admitted, "because you're not effeminate, or anything, but I'd never be interested in a guy, per se, so you figure it out."

"I don't know, either," the boy admitted, "because when Frankie and I talked, and he told me everything, I still didn't want to do anything with him, and he didn't with me, either, and I can't think of any other man I want to teach me, but the first time I saw you on the train, I couldn't even help it, I got excited like Frankie told me he did with the lifeguard at the pool."

"I was aware of you, too," Henry said, "just as much. I kept wondering what you'd look like with your shirt off."

"Me, too," the boy whispered.

"Do you want to talk about stuff like this?" Henry asked, "because we could save it for when we're alone."

"I like it," the boy said, "I like how your voice gets when the subject is serious."

"Yours gets sick, too," the young adult whispered, "and since we don't need a doctor, we'll have treat each other."

"It's not curable, is it?" the eight year old wanted to know.

"No more than the common cold," Henry said, "though we'll probably find the symptoms decline dramatically this evening."

"How long before they'll come back?" he asked.

"I'd guess ten minutes," Henry said, "but I could be seconds off, either way."

"So we kept trying to cure it, but it keeps coming back, and that's what makes people stay married to each other?"

"In a nutshell," Henry responded, "and there may be other factors we're too young to know about."

"Do husbands and wives like hanging out together, even if nothing happens when they're alone together," the boy asked, "because that's how I feel about you. That I just want to be with you, and if you didn't want to teach me the things Frankie learned, it wouldn't make any difference."

"Let's not get carried away," the elder male quipped.

"Well, I guess it would make some difference," the boy allowed, with a shy smile.

"You can hold your ground," Henry said, "it wouldn't make that much difference to me, either."

"It just seems sort of right," the young boy said, "like everything we do and say will mean more if we can spend time in private, and not have any secrets."

"Which do you think is closer?" Henry asked, "the fixings on a sundae or the vanilla in the ice cream?"

"Plain vanilla," the boy answered promptly, "cherries, nuts, and whipped cream? They hardly even count."

"Sounds like we're on the same page of that cookbook," Henry said.

"For a long time?" the boy asked.

"I've known you for an hour," Henry said, "and already I can't imagine getting along without you, so it will probably be awhile."

"Can I tell Frankie about what happens on our date?" Timmy asked.

"No secrets," Henry said, "and no loyalty, for its own sake, either. If you want to spend time with someone else, and be in private with them, that's okay, as long as you tell me. If you find someone else, we might eventually break up, but as long as we're together a lot, and mean a lot to each other, that's enough."

"You know what would be exciting to me?" Timmy asked as they rode another subway south from Midtown.

"What?" Henry asked his cute young friend.

"If you came to the pool, and you liked Frankie and he liked you, then maybe the two of you would go off alone together into one of the dark parts of the old locker room, and, you know, come back awhile later."

"Meantime, you'd be with his adult friend," Henry whispered, "and I'd be wondering what you were doing together just as you'd be wondering about what Frankie and I were doing in our own private place."

"I'd be really happy to see you again," Timmy said.

"And Frankie would be happy to see his regular lover," Henry responded.

"So, we could do that kind of thing, sometimes, go someplace, then something would happen, and then we'd get back together, again?"

"I wouldn't be into living that way," Henry said, "too time consuming, to say nothing of the more-is-less aspect, known to all heroine addicts, but, sure, once in awhile."

"How about together?" Timmy wanted to know, "you know, with Frankie and Seth. Instead of going to private parts of the locker room, we could share one."

"Same rules, as far as I'm concerned," Henry said. "The only thing worth letting life pass you by for is reading. That's an oxymoron, because you can't give it a miss, and read about it at the same time. Anything that detracts from the time you have to read, except intelligent friends, is a downer."

"Do the books start fitting together when you get older?" Timmy asked.

"Almost too much so," Henry said, "but even though the motif is pat, you're always learning about things, how all the pieces fit together, and you get to know it as well as anyone can, from the most savage excess of history, like Churchill, to lesser known virtues of otherwise popular figures like Charles Lindberg."

"What did he do besides being the first to solo an ocean?" Timmy asked.

"He saved the war in the Pacific by teaching the pilots how to manage their fuel; nearly doubled the range of all combat aircraft while Roosevelt was trying to hang him out to dry because he was an unapologetic anti-Semite; was convinced that more than a trace of Jewry in a culture led to chaos."

"Sure solved any population problem around this place for a few centuries," the bright boy responded.

"Ireland never recovered from the famines of the mid eighteen hundreds," Henry said, "so we've got our work cut out for us, or at least something; some kind of challenge after people get tired of driving subways for no pay and all the other routine stuff, to say nothing of the dirty work."

"It's weird not knowing how things were, before," the boy remarked.

"Fat people by the endless millions," Henry said, "when that's the reality, it kind of takes the fun out of anything else. You know, you go down the street, or went, as the case may be, and tried totting up how much each huge, repulsive gargantui would cost society, above and beyond anything them might produce, and it was like the slugs of doom gnawing at the bridge to the future, just when it needed to be the strongest."

The boy giggled, spontaneously grabbing his hand. "Just for a minute, okay?" he asked, and Henry thrilled to his modesty. They held each other with a grip of iron promise, then released each others' hands, something new and solid between them.

"Do those thing still work?" the boy asked some time later as they passed a row of coin-operated viewers.

"Someone's keeping them polished," Henry observed, "try." He found a quarter, still useful for the occasional vending machine, and handed it to the boy. "Look through with me," the eight year old prompted, so they took turns gazing out at the harbor. "You know what?" Timmy said, after awhile. "What?" his friend asked. "I think those two young guys with the boy are looking at us, you know, more than just looking."

"And you know this because...?"

"Since riding on the subway isn't always unrequited fantasy, life on the street must have its exciting counterpart, so I was looking back a little. I mean, I'm probably not very good at it, but when you see some guys as cute as they are, it puts you in the mood to practice."

"You know what they used to have?" Henry asked his little friend.

"What?" the boy responded.

"Stalking," said the mature male. "Usually it was a guy who got obsessed with a girl, you know, he'd follow her around; sometimes girls stalking guys. What I was thinking is we could do it with them. Follow them. See where they live, because they're not carrying any tourist stuff."

"Oh, man," the boy allowed, half to himself, "did I pick the right friend, or what?"

"You like it, eh?" Henry smiled.

"Bigger than big time," Timmy said, "it will give us something in common, besides our liking to read."

"Somehow nothing to do with `common' comes to mind when I think of you," Henry said, "but I get your drift."

"I'll bet if we knocked on their door they wouldn't turn the dogs on us," the boy said.

"A spot of tea might be in order, unless I miss my guess," Henry said, "and judging by how they stand with each other, I think tomorrow, mid-morning, might be an opportune time to drop by, tin of biscuits in hand, and maybe a half-dozen Simenon paperbacks."

"So then what are we going to do today?" the boy asked, as the two began discreetly following the two men and pre-teen boy.

"You can come to the shop and pig out on comics, and I'll get things set up so I can take a couple of days off, then you and I will drop you off safe and sound at your apartment, at which time I will meet your mom, exactly as if I was a sixteen year old boy who wanted to get to know a fifteen year old girl. Conventional. Boring. But the books I've read are pretty consistent at pointing out that anticipation is as exciting as anything in a new relationship, and you spending the night thinking about what they'll say, and what might happen if they're glad to see us, is as good a way to get things started as I can think of."

"I think you've been brainwashed by too many Christmases," the bright child observed, "but be that as it may, I love it; it gives me a whole extra day to be nervous about taking my shirt off so you can see me."

"And maybe when you take it off, we'll all be watching you," Henry said.

"Their boy could go first, and kind of lead you," Henry remarked.

"Do you think you can time it that well?" Timmy asked.

"I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan," Henry explained, "they looked attentive, but tired, as if they both adored the boy, and would wait until he was fully rested, rather than trying to sneak something in. That in the vein of it takes one to know one."

"Boy, am I ever going to sleep tonight," the cutie said.

Pete and Sid didn't know what to do. Where did fiction and fantasy end, and real-life begin? They masturbated tentatively staring into each others eyes, trying to find answers, then turned their attention to the naked beauty between them. "What?" the boy asked. They could almost see the wheels spinning behind the bright brown eyes, then, like a cartoon, the light bulb switched on. "I forgot to put the kettle on," he said. If further words were needed, they weren't spoken because the bump of the starting elevator punctuated the boy's remark. No, they just stared at each other for a long moment, and slipped into shorts and tee shirts, not forgetting the kettle.

"I know you're going to think this is really weird," the older of the two males at the loft door said, "but we're friends, Timmy and I, and we thought we'd just drop by and say hello. We saw you at the waterfront yesterday, and followed you until we found where you lived. I know it's sounds weird, but... "

"If `weird's' what we have in common," Pete said, opening the door wide and extending his hand to Henry, "we're going to be bawling at each other's funerals."

The couple entered the studio, proffering thin mints and three C.S. Forester books. Josh gave the tiniest of shrugs, and led Timmy off to the computer as the whistle on the kettle started to shrill.

"These kids today, eh?" Henry commented, and all three shook their heads.

"One thing they aren't," Pete noted, "and that is unbelievable."

"I believe you," their guest agreed, as they spread tea and hot chocolate and called the kids. Over the beverages, Pete Anderson outlined his otherworldly plan for giving the working man his proper place in the scheme of things.

"You know who comes in the shop a lot?" Henry asked, "and we usually talk for half an hour or so?"

"Who?" Sid asked.

"He told me yesterday," Timmy said, "and you'll never guess in a million years."

Can the audience guess? You writing students? It's simple, straightforward, but it ties things together so you can sigh and say, ah, it is a novel. The long ball of literature, the spheroid arcing perfectly as it leaves the stadium, with every arc of its flight connected.

I had friends when I lived in Concord who built a twenty-foot replica of a steam boat and tried to sail it on a river in California. They got a ticket for creating an attractive nuisance. I wonder if the same fate lies in wait for Samantha and me. We walk alongside the road to her favorite shops, and she's giggling and laughing and teasing and singing and dancing and she has the most awesomely cute east side as we walk west on this created planet. I'm pretty much the shaggy intellectual, head bowed with keeping these three hundred pages in order; probably wolfish looking on close inspection. Of course, the sensation may be in my own mind, but where would it find a free corner with all that ego? Nah, it's real. We make a couple that gets served instantly, everywhere. Everybody in every passing vehicle stares, people cross the street in front of us, to pass the closer by. Principally, I think we give every male hope. If I keep my belly slim, and act gentle and friendly and nice, maybe, by god, when I'm in my fifties or sixties, I'll get to walk along the road with a doll like that. Fulfillment, because there's totally only one Samantha, will be difficult, but it's one of those things where even a near miss wouldn't be half bad. What do we do for the women? Cause them to realize men my age can attract girls her age, and keep extra sharp and fit, much longer, on the theory a good offense is the best defense. Of course, the offense is really mine, but if I can motivate, by example, those in the passing busses, as I do when I'm at my day job, then it's all quite worth the risk. We may be attractive, but any nuisance value is in the eye of the beholder. "Attractive example" would be more like it.

Yesterday she was wearing one of those little black cocktail dresses they talk about on television. Actually, I think it might have been something a little designer that filtered it's way to the local market. She's just a freaking show stopper. Shoulders and butt. Petite and fantastic. She and Queenie both have the rarest of characteristics of getting better every time you look at them. Melissa, although all but supermodel beautiful, was the typical pretty face you've seen once you've seen. I can't think of ever seeing my two young teens, and even wonder if the more I look, the less I see. They are two totally amazing girls, and I think there's a chance they'll be as intriguing and mesmerizing in their forties as they are today, totally cut out from the crowd, and in no way run of the mill. If they could be taught to clean and cook, it would authenticate all notions of god and free the world from idle idolatry.

I'm in a Dorian Gray situation; not only not aging, but getting noticeably younger. I spent a year and more in bed with acute phlebitis six years ago, and until a year ago couldn't walk a hundred yards without symptoms strong enough to stop me in my tracks. Now Samantha and I breeze the mile walk we take in the evenings. Cool. Phlebitis, if you ever have the pleasure, is not a play-when-hurt malady, that's what landed me in bed. I got it from an inflammation caused by the edge of the seat of my boat, back when we were setting out lobster traps. We went out ten or twelve hours, every day, and I usually piloted. I thought it was just a muscular thing until I got soaked one night coming in after dark, and found out, the next morning, it had nothing to do with aching muscles. For four months, I tried to keep my crew going, aggravating something fairly minor until it kept me a hundred percent down and out. The only treatment that worked was rum, and, looking back, I envy myself that double, with milk, at four or five in the morning, then the methodical consumption of two thirds of a bottle during the remainder of the day. As I began to recover, I'd limp to the bar next door, and walk home. Even four years later I'd get winded just climbing the steps to my old house. In what may be the ultimate case of turning lemons to lemonade in recent literary history, being bedridden taught me I could work eighteen hours a day, instead of six, which made a difference in clearing the final hurdles required to achieve the status of a virtuoso.

Health and money. This is my comment. No matter how sick I was, no matter how high the chance a clot would do me in, I wouldn't have traded a dollar of my private income for an instant cure. Well, maybe a dollar. I'll put it this way. I'd rather have been dead with the money, than alive without it. Of course, that was before I was published, and went on to post some million words. Now, neither being broke, or sick, can bother me. I've done what I was put here to do, and everything else is cherries, nuts, and whipped cream. I kid around about being a king, but the truth is, I'd come after you with such unrelenting brutality you're undoubtedly better off the way you are. Plus, you make me laugh, and, as a character in a movie said once, it's good to laugh.

The domestic scene does intrude. Three or four thousand words a day seems like drifting; a little squeezed in here and there, and a few hours late at night. It they were my own kids, raised to my standards, it would be different, but they're four half-wild animals, forever walking off with stuff like a bunch of thieving crows. They make a shambles of the kitchen by merely appearing near the stove, and are incapable of washing anything or putting it away. Mox nix. I once lived with a distinctly Jewish family and the only thing they could see in me was that I was the best "kitchen-cleaner-upper east of the Mississippi", a title I could probably hold on either coast. I actually like not only cleaning up, but cooking, and am disappointed if everyone doesn't eat everything in sight, so I can cook more. It's an odd juxtaposition of priorities; the manuscript and the heavy readership, anonymous, that goes with it, or herding Daisy's cats into something recognizable as civilized existence. Also, there's a case of the mid-novel blahs. A hundred and fifty thousand down, a hundred and fifty thousand to go, except this is a pean to the insecurities bred into me by mother, sister, and wife, and so a stretch to half a million words, just so I'll be extra, duouble certain I have the longest novel, seems in the offing. Longest. Best. Most. That's what women did to me, so I hang out with a teenybopper, clean up for a ravaging hoard that doesn't need to be big, and take my five thousand word a day hit. When you think of all the nasty things that means I'll be leaving out, you'll begin to appreciate my fifteen year old as much as I do.

You're meant to be concentrating, figuring out who visits Henry's book store, and I keep going off on editorial tangents. Maybe you'd better get used to it, because the latest paper from New York suggests the new novel does incorporate non-fiction. I'm not suspicious that this happens a couple of years (almost) after I wandered off the storyline back in my early novellas. Seriously, I doubt there's a specific connection, though it certainly wouldn't surprise me if one existed, because it was the next logical step in the development of the art form, with or without this author's involvement.

"Come on, who?" Josh said, pinching Timmy as the most likely to divulge the big secret. "Pinch him harder," Pete suggested, but the boy was an affectionate creature and couldn't bring himself to lay hostile fingers on the twerp with the skinny. The little boy giggled happily, then gave up a hint: "Brother and sister / Sitting in a tree / K-i-s-s-i-n-g / First comes love / Then comes marriage / Then comes sis with a baby carriage."

Nah. But wait. It made a kind of sense. They came to New York as the second population center. With barely a million people left running around loose, and the stringent fate dealt troublemakers in the name of being on the safe side, in the year following the pill drop, the streets were safe as never before, so they were known to drop in spontaneously here, there or anywhere they chose. The plum on the piece of cake was that both were encouraged by an adoring public to dress old-west style, replete with six-guns and a gilt-edged license to kill anyone who displeased them in any way. Dissenters and agitators had been thoroughly heard from, and, while they never grew tired of the noise they made and confusion they caused trying to ramrod fifty year programs into fifty days, the public had had quite enough, thank you, and was happy leaving the choice of who lived and who died to their handsome young president and his heartthrob twelve year old sister. The upshot was that both the paparazzi found other targets for their cameras, and Rick and Nancy Schroeder were left in peace.

"His secretary, Margaret Littlefield, will be by this afternoon," Henry said to Pete, glad not to have had to name drop, "and I think she'll find your solution worth passing on."

"It's too important," Timmy said, "I'll bet you could call him, right now."

"I don't know," Henry mused, "he gave me his number in case I got in anything on Western lore, I hate to do an end run."

"But you're friends," the little boy said, a ready supply of childish logic on tap.

"We do tend to shoot the bull," Henry acknowledged.

"Plus, Nancy likes you," the cutie went on.

"She'd like anyone who hated Nancy Drew," the bookstore owner said.

"You're just being modest," Timmy observed, "you know he'd like to hear from you, even if you found a missing manhole cover."

"Yes," Henry said, "and I'd like to keep it that way, but you're right, little miracle of mine, this is different, and worth a call, if anything is."

Josh like the boy for being modest in his victory; he didn't prance and crow, just beamed happily at all of them, then frowned. "You know how they say Be careful of what you wish for, you might get it? well, I think I learned about that, because now things are going to start happening while I'm dying of curiosity." As if prompted by the devil, Henry emerged from Pete's bedroom and announced Yes, he'd gotten through, and yes, Rick and Nancy would be delighted to drop by the studio because a front was moving in, canceling a dedication ceremony for a plaque denigrating Rudy Giuliani and others who'd been responsible for the destruction of the greatest complex of ruins in human history, and freeing up what would be a rainy afternoon. "In fact," their older guest elaborated, "I reached him in his car, and they're only a couple of miles away, so, if we want to meet them on the street, we'd best be seeing to the down button."

Pete put on a kettle while Sid and Josh slipped into sandals, and in a minute they were ready for the street.

I feel challenged to call my own bluff by ending a book one, here, and beginning a book two. There would have to be three, leaving me, at three hundred pages (and almost exactly 150,000 words), with six hundred to go. I find myself wanting the courage to make the commitment. Sure, it's one word at a time, and all day, every day, to do it in, and waking up in the middle of writing a great novel is still a heady experience, time and again though I seem to have done it, but three hundred thousand words; characters in their million? ("Creative Camp" was 1.302,050) Daunting, especially having set such a high standard with the Larry McMurtry opening scene. No cable to help with the essays; that's a factor. I don't even know how many years Robert Blake got, who won the series, whether O.J.'s killed again, or how far they got down the hurricane list. (Oddly, living in the Caribbean, a bullet, so to speak, with one's name on it can get one. Look for me in Las Vegas the moment "Thomas" or "Tom" reaches wind speeds of thirty knots. My friends here call me Meeshio or Meesh, (off Thomeeshio), but I think I'm safe on those scores, nor is Porn King likely to be a threat.)

The thing about nine hundred pages is that with that little extra effort they were always calling for in school, when they were already distracting me from reading, enough, thank you, I could go on to a full thousand five-hundred-word pages. It seems undoable, and I'm further handicapped by the notion that I'd rather write fifty good words than five thousand bad ones. That's not how it works. It's more like the Chinese lake I saw once on CCTV (Beijing). They had groomed it with such care they could now fish to exhaustion for eternity; the body of water became self perpetuating because it reached a critical mass. If that's how it turns out, fine, we'll fish the lake together and for all we know drift past the thousand page mark well primed for a sequel. Wanting to do more of things is, at least from my perspective, an asset of old age. Samantha has seventy years ahead of her, I have, with super luck, twenty. I want to cook more and write more and keep my eye open for someone who likes to mop half as much as I like to cook, do dishes, and author fat novels. Women get the same urge in their twenties; the famous bio clock. I sympathize more now, for even with five out there and doing extremely well, I want another and another, already half-written in my head, and then a series of short stories for the various alternative archives, you know, sort of a Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee effort, the Web writer's equivalent of a print author's death march. After that, I might try something for the mainstream. All New York has to do is survive, and we'll do a deal.

I'll explain it all to Samantha when she gets home from school. If she agrees to continue on as devastating soul mate; remain charming and cheery, and dance punta in my west-facing window, there's every chance we might make the millennium. Also, Rhageedha, her four year old sister, and Randy are playing superb roles as background characters. This might be a good time to completely disassociate the real Rick Schroeder from anything and everything to do with this story, unless he might desire such a connection. I've never read so much as a paragraph about him, and know him only through "Lonesome Dove" and his work on "NYPD Blue". It must be one thing to pop up now and again as having your name used here there and the other place, but to take starring role in an epic novel is something else again. Personally, I'd be flattered, but Dustin Hoffman won a million dollars for using a single picture, so there's a type of people out there who are self-obsessed and fantastically narrow minded (like animals, not like human beings), and you never can tell. Since I labor at the pleasure of some very petted and stroked muses, I hold myself not responsible, and would point out to Hoffman that it is muses such as mine that are responsible for every single word he ever got paid to mumble or emote. He can make his face go. I can make my brain go. Big difference, at least to we of the human race.

Nothing like a little Anglo snacking on lenswear trash to get Dancer and Prancer hooves to the snow and shoulders to the harness. They're my alpha team, while Rudolph has been dispatched to Newfoundland to act as a beacon for cargo aircraft dropping undesirables by parachute. My idea of reindeer games. If the reader should want to know if he or she might be on such a list, perusing other works by the author may bring enlightenment. Basically, you know who you are, you know who's after you, and you know why.

Dangriga is out of beans, to jump from the sublime to the ridiculous. Not a red bean in town. I mean, besides laundry and the lotto, what is there? Punta. We'll I love it, but you can't eat it. For Belize to run out of beans is like Italy running out of spaghetti or China running out of rice. And just when I'd mastered cooking the freaking things. Fortunately, I've added killer tortillas and chili rice with cheese to my repertoire, so we'll endure the famine, this time. As far as cooking hints go, I've found if you roll white flour tortillas on corn flour, it's easier to clean up. My goal here is to save the reader ten thousand dollars a year in ludicrous grocery expenses, while he eats like a king. Getting those billions of pounds off is another story, and one that happens to start with motivation. I write motivational books on the subject. Isn't that a coincidence? While we're on the subject, how about a stylized bathroom scale as national symbol, rather than the eagle which eats the eyes of the lamb, first? Pol Pot had his killing fields, and what a neat turn of irony that ours is Arthur Avenue. (Certainly where I hope to die.) Along with the scale logo, how about a television show called "America's Tummyless Home Videos"? That was an endpaper note, and I hate to waste the things. Another one is, Ask not for whom the belly rolls, no one's interested. Housekeeping. One more to go, though it's unrelated: When's the last time you heard: "What will they think of next?" That was a common adage in my youth, and the last time I heard it was in the context of a color-screen PDA.

Who invented the plate? Dinner plate, salad plate, blue plate? I tried eating rice off one today, and it got cold almost immediately. The thing to eat from as a plastic bowl with a plastic fork. Hold the bowl in a napkin to protect your fingers and for extra insulation. If I gave a grotto-swank shindig, I'd have the staff wheel around carts of plastic bowls, steaming hot; hot napkins with one corner dampened, and plastic forks. There's a real cruelty in serving lobster Newberg cold, because you merely hint at how it should taste, if only. What if I wrote my scenes that way? Tepid. Speaking of which, the heat's back on after one borderline cold night and two chilly ones. In all likelihood, that was our winter

I can't imagine getting paid to do this. Writing seems so out of currency. What if you didn't want to? Not that I've ever done much of it, but I should imagine it's better to chop cotton than to express one's self for money. I'd never encourage a child of mine, for example, to be a musician, because it's one thing to work, and another to give of yourself. As bus drivers, we were frequently written up for not calling stops. Traffic didn't bother us, passengers didn't, everything became routine, except turning on the microphone and running down the list of cross streets. I'd do it anytime the bus was crowded, in bad weather, or on Sunset and Hollywood boulevards where there'd be lots of tourists; but on the lower reaches of Western or Vermont, in a half empty bus? I'd rather shoot off a gun. I haven't written about Los Angeles very much. I was a union bus driver for something over three years. I speak against Jews, having lived months with a Jewish family, and I speak about unions, having paid sixty dollars a month in dues. More than fiscal corruption, the job was an exercise in and an academy of moral and ethical corruption, and prime, grade-A liberalism. The average number of sick days was twenty-six. I never had one. The drivers would start the cold engines at full throttle, hoping they'd blow up so they could get sent home. If you want to learn contempt for a culture, listen to two hundred diesel engines winding to full r.p.m. at five in the morning. These workers made, when I left, twenty dollars an hour. The busses had wheel chair lifts, which meant big V-8 engines that had to be overhauled every twenty-five thousand miles, where the older six cylinder machines would go four hundred thousand miles. The lifts were Rube Goldberg contraptions that often didn't work. I drove many routes of the entire metropolitan area, and picked up about three wheelchairs a week. It was my opinion, on leaving, that the company could have been run by the Vietnamese for one quarter the cost, and provided superior service. One specific example is that I spent much of my time driving around Palos Verde Estates in a brand new luxury coach, almost always empty, but the routes were heavily serviced because some of the politicians needed the busses for their domestic workers. Fight pollution and beaurocratic waste, but get Consuela to work on time. Very liberal. Another example of how poorly wired these people are, was seniority. Even though the drivers were being paid upwards of sixty thousand dollars a year, the company spent huge amounts of time and money on an elaborate bidding system so every driver could get his preferred schedule and routes, based on his hiring date. In a way, I suppose, it's good some people maintain the skill sets necessary to slot ten thousand drivers into some two or three hundred routes, according to union contract; could come in handy in event of war, but, meantime, it's mollycoddling at huge expense. At times, I'd have to go out, relieve a driver so he could come back in and bid, then be, myself relieved, an hour later. It sounds impossible, like the lunatics are running the asylum, but what can you expect of a culture that drinks its water from indestructible six-ounce containers? I'm glad I brought up bottled water. Dangriga sits on a sand delta, its water is superb, yet bottled water, at a local dollar for the nine ounce size, sells so fast there are two brand new trucks delivering it full speed all day, every day. No lie, I bought a bottle of vinegar the other day, and it was cheaper than if it had been a bottle of Crystal water. You need a king, folks, and you need him real, panting bad. From lesson plans to final liturgy, you need to be told what to do, and do it, just as I've had to do most of my life.

Segregating talent from birth. That seems perennial. The king thing is raw heritage, designated by birth, pure and simple. It alone should be enough; has been enough for all successful societies and cultures of the past, were I fit to be running around loose. Add the artistic accomplishments, all five of the greatest novels ever written, plus a healthy few inches of novellas and short stories, jewels every bit as fine as the longer works, and you come up with a one-two punch that is dizzying in scope. As stated previously, Why me? Because I worked harder than anyone else? I spend twenty-two hours a day in bed, for pity's sake. My wife divorced me because I spent all my time reading and thinking, seeing as how I was holding up my financial and friendly partner ends, and I moved to Belize and read more than ever. It's ironic, because if there were a single requirement for major national office, it should be How much have you read? I'd win, simply because I had enough family income to have the time. The second question might be How much have you written. On that score, it's me by several lengths. I've published a million words in two years, and probably written half again as many. So, first by birth, and second by diligence. The talent thing is harder to measure. I was no prodigy, and there's ample proof even when I was in my twenties I was an above the fold hack, nothing more. I aced the Mensa test in half the allotted time, giving me an IQ of four hundred, from which I subtract, again, as mentioned previously, a hundred points for habitual use of marijuana. Being smart enough to be in love with Samantha, adds back many of these points, by the way, and, when I'm straight, I think in terms of five hundred. I am inordinately pleased my personal and home life are every bit as well wrought as my fiction and essays; crossed T's, dotted I's, and a wee packet of loot left at the end of every month, in spite of a torrent of economic surprises. I cook with a supermodel, and it flat out beggars me to describe how beautiful she is, but we've never shared a dirty dish. I have a girlfriend who outshines the raving beauty, with her own more private variety, and a crystalline personality that wears well enough to be called the stuff of romantic diamonds. The hard-eyed gray wolf and the island girl. Hey, she loves my cooking. What am I meant to do, serve chopped liver?

One thing to consider. If you reject me as your monarch, lord, and savior, who are you going to stand with? I can't even type out the names without sounding facetious. The recognizable ones, for the most part, have lead you to your exceedingly unpleasant position on ice with about a millimeter of reserve strength. One thing all economists agree on is that if it hadn't been for the miracle of Bill Gates in the mid Eighties, we'd be tumbleweeds coast to coast, and yes, moderated capitalism has turned loose a host of geniuses outside my own family to spur on general economic booms with massive invention, but these are worn out ships. "What will they think of next?" Odds are, nothing. I'll bet if I tuned in to Tech TV tomorrow, after six months off the cable, there'd be nothing new if I watched for a whole day. This is why it doesn't matter how much your leader has read, or how much he hasn't, or written, or hasn't, or what his pedigree is; all that maters is finding an enduring replacement for the economic energy of the computer age. The Projects Party blueprint for Emersonia is alliterated elsewhere. Find it. Read it. Obey it.

The diet continues, sans macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. Two onions burritos. Taste better, and cost about a third as much, though it's hard to measure when you buy flour by the sack. Elston brought home six Lipton tea bags yesterday. Big difference though the Red Rose and the bargain brand are perfectly drinkable. We were always snobs for Mueller's pasta, Hellman's mayonnaise, Fluff marshmallow spread, Camp Fire marshmallows, and Pepperidge Farm bread, so it's a change of pace to have Savers this and Bargain that. One thing that is missing is the trendy white-box generics; only American liberals are dumb enough to buy them. By some act of serendipity, Del Monte jalapenos are available for seventy five cents a can, a real life saver because in spite of being sandwiched between Mexico and Guatemala, Belize rarely has fresh peppers in the markets. Like I said, the lunatics are running the asylum. Of course, spending almost five years in Santa Fe made a chili snob out of me, there is to be had the best in the world, and there isn't that much of it, but to not find any, other than canned, seems bizarre. In any event, it's the wonder foot of wonder foods, and the juice in the can is just as good as the fruit.

It seems to me I promised, at one point, a column of asterisks so the prurient reader could scroll to the next good part. I must have forgotten. There a couple of additional discrepancies and inconsistencies that are nagging, but I can't remember what they are. I kind of enjoyed toying with the paranormal when it came to Josh and Timmy's symbiosis. No more, though. Poor Stephen King will have to live with the knowledge his characters can walk through walls, and mine can't, for the rest of his life, and that's a horrible fate for a real writer. Of course, writing kiddie porn is a cop-out, of sorts, but I never quite know whether the porn supports the virtuoso, or vice versa, only that the huge readership is what counts in the long run.

A weird lizard is making noises, which reminds me of the bird. In ten years here, I've heard it twice. It makes a lower warbling trill, then follows immediately with a split-second rise up the scale, clear as an electronic synthesizer. Very distinctive, though I think it might be annoying if it were common. I've never heard it on a nature program or as a background in a feature film. Both times I heard it I was almost, but not quite able to see the bird. Stay tuned We also have brown doves. A pair of them turns a garden into an aviary. Yellow birds are just uncommon enough to be interesting, unlike blue jays. I do get some use out of my television cable, it passes outside my bedroom window, and there is a constant stream of hummingbirds and tiny finches. One of the latter, a total beauty, ended up in my house today, and I was mighty pleased to get it safely out the screen door before the house lions took notice. Once I had a yellow finch hanging from the ceiling in a brass cage in my office, and a stray cat charged in, leaped into the air, ripped the bottom off the cage with its hind feet, reached in, grabbed tweety, and was out the door in maybe three seconds. All the more reason to laugh at dat puddy-tat.

Aw, whattsa matter, da big bad writer, he `fraid to go back in his novel? I think it's like the advice they give steeplejacks. Don't look down. Don't look ahead at the six hundred empty pages, look back at the three hundred. The rough equivalent is a farmer setting out to plow Kansas. He'll only be wanting to look behind the tractor. I shouldn't worry about it, I've felt this way at some point during every novel, then I set everything to Work Mode, and, lo and behold, the pipes fill, the water flows, I rein in my fantasies concerning Zyclon B, and another day begins.

Speaking of Jews, as mentioned, I actually did live with a Jewish family, Kanner, in, coincidentally, Concord. The boys used to pitch screaming, four-letter fits if their grandmother, of Baker Shoes, brought them gifts, you'll think I'm kidding, one cent apart. Steve and Linda had spent a universal fortune slicking up their oversize trophy house with velveteen wallpaper, and no one ever came to visit. Have I written about the dinner party? I know I have, I'm not getting that senile, but what with the virus, and all, I sometimes can't remember if a particular anecdote was published, or just in a draft. Anyhow, it antithesised Jewry as a long book on the subject might not get around to doing. One day Linda said "We're going to be having a festive evening next Tuesday." That it was, in a nutshell. My crowd would have said We're having some folks over. The day after, we might say, "Boy, things got festive last night." It's the monumental, offhand conceit of thinking because you want something to be such and such, it will be. The putting in little labeled boxes -- festive, socialism -- that renders the culture subhuman. And Linda's preordained evening was the only dinner party in my longer life I ever knew to end at eight-thirty in the evening. (No wonder I was a great kitchen custodian, I had all evening to clean up.) Once, when I was nagging for book money, Linda said, "Well, I read Nancy Drew, and I think I turned out all right." Whether she ever matured enough to equate Miss Drew with dud festivities I hope I never know. The neat thing was the justice. They were, in spite of him being a doctor, and her an executive, and both having Harvard MBAs, peasant quality people. Their kids were hideous louts they had to pay people to tend. The pleasure of the job, I was what they now call a care giver, was driving Adam and Jamie to Hebrew school. Talk about anti-Semitism. I think I did publish something along the way about their teacher, the most entirely hate-filled scut I ever saw in all my born days. I used to give him a friendly WASP twinkle and watch the smoke come out of his ears. I don't think he was a racist (but I'm sure it helped) and he undoubtedly hated his students as much as he hated me. This was all in West Concord, circa 1980. I've since read that Hebrew teachers are rabbi wannabes who couldn't cut the schlock, proving there can be biblical beauty in even the ugliest of places. I know I've mentioned Sarah, the two year old who would jump in my bed and nibble my arm, making cooing noises. Beauty though she was, she was too unlikable to be interesting. More's the pity. The comparison of the Kanner scut to Daisy's kids is mind boggling. Those who had everything, their grandfather worked for the New York Times, and used to send the prototype toys months before the toys, specifically Star Wars figures, came on the market, were absolutely nothing, while Queenie and her brothers, who've never had fifty dollars worth of toys, in their lives, are a most-of-the-time joy to have around. That's down-home Jewry. If they kept the misery of the Kanner household to themselves, it would just be a laugh, their little conceits, their education-proof emptiness, their sub-humanity, but their style is to bray and agitate, meddle, finger (nice material), and invade like ragweed or cancer cells; a one-two punch of insidious adversarialism (David with his little stone) and Hyman Rickover pugnacious arrogance, with monumental stupidity as the matrix of doom. Bill Gates has more wealth than every Jew on earth. How that must rankle the shekel grubbers. I display more talent, and more work, in a single scene than Herman Wouk, Chaim Potok, Laura Z. Hobson, any year of either the Los Angeles or New York Times, and the staff of Mad Magazine, have come up with in their careers. If it could be this way, we get the cake rich with eggs, wheat, and milk, and they get the frosting, sugar and colors, everything would be hunky-dory. When we allow over three years to pay on a credit purchase, the shortsighted, baseless influence begins to damage us, when we allow over forty years, there can be but one long-term result, however giddy the intervening party, however festive.

The age descrimination in Hollywood, a potential market should I decide to Mainstream, is reported as being so pervasive older writers have to leave off credits from the Eighties. This is their glossy socialism, in practice. Of course, as a scab writer, I love it. Wonderfully just desserts. What does a thirty-five year old meeting-taker do for the rest of his life? I was thirty five over twenty years ago. It's a longish haul, my brothers, a longish haul. You need a big stick, liberally applied, and make no mistake. I didn't do it to Linden, when he was twelve, and he's lost to the street. I'm not likely to make the same mistake with you.

I've been mulling over a business model I've come to call "Night Max" as in, maximize your night on the town. It would be like a race track lounge, with an extensive array of computer monitors. These would present up-to-the-minute reviews of restaurants, nightclubs and other subscribers. Night Max patrons, over a drink or two, would be able to preview dozens of spots, with ratings, and possibly even commentary, provided by departing patrons of the various establishments. Ideally, there's be a Netcam at the cashier's station, and a simple electronic voting machine, plus Netcam shots of the interior, so the viewer could see how active each place was. Other than monitoring the system for cheating owners, it would be a hassle-free and low overhead enterprise. Most any existing club could be used as a base station, and the franchise possibilities would be excellent. By stirring vivid competition, restaurants on the network would improve dramatically, increasing patronage for the entire district and network.

A little déjà vu this morning; kid on a tractor is bush-hogging my neighbor's lot. I did our entire farm on Estabrook Road. Some odd acres, much of it with small hills and gullies. The blade only spins when the wheels are driving, so it's a real challenge to get the implement into a crevice with enough revs on the blade to cut its way out. This kid did a great job with a little one-cylinder tractor in a very small yard. Andrew tried one of those string trimmers on my yard. Actually, I had one of the original gas Weed Eaters and it was extremely effective, but the Robi makes huge amounts of noise and seems to cut at the speed of a dentist's tool. The thing they need here, and I've never seen, is the golf-club sickle, for want of a better name. It cuts on the fore stroke and back stroke, and you use it standing, not bent over. Along with push-brooms for Mexico, a great import opportunity. That reminds me of the ugly American. To get sidetracked (who me), in the first place, the ugly American is not the common New Yorker on holiday type, at all, a perfect example of the medium bearing no message, but, rather, a diligent overseas worker. In his town he notices all the women over twenty-something are badly stooped, and discovers they spend their days sweeping with short-handled brooms. He introduces Western brooms. And this is a note to socially responsible school principals who risk no knife or pill in any locker (forgetting, apparently, they'll not only fit comfortably in one's backpack, but are closer to hand, to boot) and make the kids lug thirty-pound burdens around all day. The age of onset is early, the damage is irreversible. When I talk about lunatics running the asylum, this is the kind of thing I mean. Liberals will ruin a million bodies to save a dozen lives, I won't. On the other hand, I would ruin a million liberals to save a kitten's life, only I don't have to because they are so spectacularly capable of ruining things on their own.

Keep in mind the extremism is yours, not mine. It is you who are totally disastrously off course. You followed Teddy White's glossy mick, idolized him, made him your haircut hero. Bad choice. And it fulfills itself so beautifully, from a humorist's viewpoint, because it is the survivor's trade unions nibbling under the cradle of liberty that stands, at the present moment, as the most likely anvil to break the camel's back. What goes around, coming around, writ fatally large. We threw the bomb of democracy high into the air, and we were rich and strong so it lingered high up there, but now it's back, the fuse is short, and it's awfully near our derriere. I knew if I toiled long enough one day I'd have to thank France for something.

The ice-bottle scheme is working beautifully. The kids are so well trained at bringing the empties back, they even remember a spoon or plate once in awhile. We go through a lot of ice, almost effortlessly, every day. I'd estimate the labor and nuisance factor at less than a quarter that of conventional ice trays, and you get more ice, to begin with.

The United States needs to roughhouse in the world. Instead we go to meetings with goombas, dead set on killing us, who hold cabinet secretaries waiting in their ante rooms until the cartoons stop flashing on the great big American/Japanese television. We made a colossal mistake in applying liberal doctrine to the world's oil we discovered and processed. You do not, because of the high level of danger involved, waste time trying to untangle the knot, you cut the rope. These people represent a grinding, mother's milk insanity. They are totally insane. I go into an Arab shop here, and the old cow camel goes around braying Very cheap things. They have a shelf of used Dells. How fast? I asked. I kid you not, the Arab said Very, very fast. Three times I asked how fast, each time he added a very'. I explained to him, with Linden cracking up beside me, I was not looking for a camel, but a computer. Made no difference, it was, by this time, five verys' fast. How is anyone meant to deal with garbage like this? Democracy lets the cretins vote. Isn't that amazing? When Samantha and I were shopping last night a handsome, bearded, well dressed Arab came into the shop and bought five cigarettes. I was dressed, neatly enough, in my thrift shop clothes, wearing my flip-flops, and I could have bought every cigarette in the place. Form over function. It's two our upper lip, and rising. As they say in the Stephen King move, "How long can you hold your breath?" because it's going to be a long, long time. You're getting worse. Fatter, which is a be-all, end-all, segregated from all other issues. More imbued with a Dabney Coleman brand of superficiality. Fat, ugly, and stupid, in three words, and while it's wondrous good fun, when a noveling I go, you may not feel so chipper about being the butt of what passes for my wit. Again, this is your fault, not mine, you are the ones with the problem, not me, and the extremism is yours, not mine. All of which is to say, any cure is going to equal the severity of the disease, because it's not a disease, it's human misbehavior, and if you don't take the cure, we all get to shuffle off the mortal coil at the end of times, and that's a jolly enough note on which to end any essay.

"Mind if we move in?" Rick said as he and Nancy entered the loft.

"At least a year, please?" the twelve year old girl enthused.

Henry laughed as he made the introductions. Graphic artists have an advantage over writers, because visitors head straight for their work before they have to think up things to say. This changes as time goes on, and the writer ends up being the one with something to say. In the group of seven, the twelve year olds were the writers, and so it was Josh and Nancy who carried the ball.

"You look like the youngest son on "Home Improvement," she said to him. "You look like the girl playing football in the medicine ad," he said to her. "We think we're cute, don't we?" the girl added. "I suppose so," the boy said, "and for sure things have been cute since we got to New York."

"How do you mean?" Nancy asked.

"We tell a lot of stories, but nothing ever happens," the boy said, with a shy laugh showing he was bemused, not indignant.

"Do you like them?" the girl asked.

"Positively," Josh Benedict said, "and they like mine about summer camp, when we were planting trees, too, but there's meant to be, you know, a physical side, but first Sid comes back from the dead, then Timmy comes towing Henry, and the adults get talking about how they're going to revolutionize the world, and you guys show up, and, well, it's super exciting, and, for a student writer like myself, a graduate lesson on how to milk a plot, but, with a boy, there's a physical side to not doing things more than to doing them, or at least I hope that's the way it is."

"Rick," the beauty piped up during her whispered conference with her age-mate, "I did tell you we're moving in, didn't I?" The handsome young president nodded and returned to his discussion with the two adults at the table. Josh fetched Timmy asking if the girl minded. "I was eight, too, remember," she said as Josh led the way to his bedroom. "Is it okay if we leave the door open," he whispered to the girl and the little boy. Both nodded, and Nancy added, "It will be more like spectacular, I think."

"Will they get interested in us?" Timmy asked, making sure.

"Very much," Nancy allowed, "and before too long."

"How much have you boys done?" Nancy asked, once she was seated between them on the bed.

"Just talked," Josh said, "except before you got here we took our clothes off and went up and down on ourselves while we looked at each other, but I didn't get molested."

"How about you, Timmy?" the kind girl asked.

"I haven't even been able to take my shirt off," the boy said. "My friend, Frankie, says he can make something happen just by taking his shirt off when he's with Seth while they're cleaning up the locker room at the pool, but so far no one's undone even one button."

"That makes it memorable," Nancy said, encouragingly. If it just happened, shirt off, and over, it wouldn't mean much. Maybe not anything, or maybe something bad."

"I know," the boy sighed, "but I'm in Josh's boat. I don't even know what I want to do, just that I want to do it."

"And the longer wait," the girl explained, "the more exciting it will be, and if you learn how exciting it can be, you'll be ten times better when the time comes than if it was just something quick and secret."

"That's what Pete and Sid are talking about with your brother," Josh said, "about making what you guys do together an actual part of keeping the country, what's left of it, going, by using kids like us as compensation for the guys who do all the crumby jobs."

"I read a book once about building a tunnel in Egypt," Nancy said. "It was super dangerous, because they couldn't prevent all the cave ins, so to get men to do it, they offered young girls as a reward. Probably boys, too, but the story said girls."

"Same idea," Josh said, "but these jobs aren't especially dangerous, just unpleasant, but the underlying fact is the same, there's nothing to pay with except exotic relationships, on the one hand, because you'll probably be dead in a few weeks, and, on the other, because nothing else has any practical value."

Timmy sat musing, chewing his lip. "What?" Josh asked. "Well," the boy said, "it seems to me if you get to know somebody while you're waiting that makes the waiting even more exciting."

"We're writers," Nancy said (it takes one to know one), "so we spin things out for word count, you know, lots of talk, and we overdo, but Henry's hardly been all over you, either, so you can't give us all the blame."

"Did you like them watching you when you were going up and down?" the eight year old asked, figuring if he couldn't beat them, he might as well join them.

"That's called masturbating," Josh said, reddening at the word, "and it made it more exciting than if I was doing it in secret."

"Am I old enough to do it?" the pixie boy wanted to know.

"And how," Nancy said, "I remember..."

"I think he means himself," Josh interrupted gently.

"Oops," the girl smiled, "no. Anyway, I don't think very much. You want an older boy or man for a partner, right?"

Josh nodded. "I think so," he agreed, "and if the prologue is anything like the book, I know so."

"How long's a prologue?" Timmy asked.

"The record is thirty-three thousand words," Henry said from the doorway. "You guys want anything from the kitchen?" They shook their heads and he left, saying they'd be done with organizational matter before long. The kids nodded happily, and resumed their discussion.

"That's long," Timmy observed.

"It's what we're going through," Nancy said. "It was the same with me. Only, it was an hour, not days."

"That sounds better," Timmy said.

"It's something that's always perfect if the people are right for each other," the girl said, "I mean, it's perfect for us, right now, isn't it?"

"Yes," both boys said without hesitation.

"And think of how I feel, with two of you," the girl added, "even if Timmy is too young to look at my top and for me to look at his penis, we can still be friends, and, when we're older, four years won't make any difference." Timmy looked a little disheartened until Nancy reminded him that older boys would think he was just as cute as she was. "And you get to see more with them than a girl would," she whispered intimately in his tyke's ear, mollifying him to the bone.

Josh was awestruck at Nancy's treatment of Timmy. Mother, big sister, definite girl, and lover not taken off the table. It was cuteness as totality. "You want to see him, don't you," she whispered to Josh. "Yes," he replied reflexively. "It's weird," the girl mused, "because if he was a girl, he'd look just the same, but I would want to touch him, but, because he's a boy, I just want to watch you do it."

"Maybe Freud wrote so many books because he could never get it right, because it can't be gotten right," Josh said.

"I think philosophy's reaching that stage," the girl agreed, "where it's assumed most questions will never be answered, because they don't allow for fickle behavior and exotic zealotry, as there is for the environmental movement, while everyone drinks water from throw-away bottles. No philosophy can cope with that, therefore, by its own logic, there is no philosophy."

"I try to measure things by multiplying or reducing them," Josh said, "but it doesn't always work. If there were more of you, I should be very happy, by my logic, but I wouldn't be, because it would be impossible to beat one of you."

"You know what I've never had?" the girl said, staring into his eyes while holding Timmy's hand.

"What?" Josh asked.

"A boyfriend," she said. "Things started happening with Rick, then our lead writer, who was our charter pilot at the time, then we got in this tiger-by-the-tail gig, and I was lucky to be with any male at all, then we're on location, only it turns out it's not on location, because there's no longer any off location. We survive, we return, Rick's accepted by acclimation, our relationship is accepted, we travel, we keep an eye on things as best we can, and, with Rob Lester gone, it's just the two of us, with, yes, a wilder side party once in awhile, but no b-o-y-f-r-i-e-n-d. I've never even kissed a boy my age."

"Do you talk a lot with your brother?" Timmy asked.

"We told secrets at first," the girl replied, "and some of the stories were pretty detailed, but that doesn't last. When you're used to each other, you know the best is the regular way, so that's how you spend most of your time together."

"But if the first time is really special, then everything that follows is that much better," the child mused aloud.

"What counts is who you're with, and being in a comfortable situation," Nancy said, "everything else is arbitrary. It may or may not be exciting, depending on lots of different factors, the most important of which, photospheres be damned, is opportunity, and not just momentary opportunity, but an extended chance to be together. If a man does something to a kid in a toilet, that could easily be molestation; if the two spend a week together in a ski cabin, it would likely be the beginning of a love affair, and even if it didn't work out, it would give the child something specific to know about and reject, rather than just some confused panting and sneeze feelings."

"You are moving in, aren't you?" Josh asked, spellbound. "Us, too," Timmy chimed in, "I can keep my shirt on forever if she wants me to." The girl nodded happily, eyes bright, and both petted their minnow on the head like the good little fish he was.

"You know what I was just thinking?" Josh asked Nancy.

"What?" she responded,

"They're going to have to go some to beat the first Emersonian First Family."

Spontaneously, they high fived.

"You know what?" Nancy said to Timmy.

"What?" the boy replied.

"Twelve year olds have a secret language you can't understand until you are twelve, do you follow?"

"Yes," the boy nodded.

"And Josh told me," she went on, "that he wants to see you before he sees me, so, seeing as how you're going to let me be the boss a little bit, I want him to take your shirt off. Then I can tell him what to do, even if I don't do anything, myself."

Timmy nodded, and the girl gave him her hand, guiding him to her boyfriend's lap. Timmy faced Josh, and the older boy unbuttoned his white cotton shirt. The pixie raised his arms as the garment came free, and Nancy coaxed Josh as he found the child's slim neck with his fingers, and tracked down over the slim shoulders to the birdlike chest, smooth and white as warm ivory.

"I'll bet Henry does this with you all night," Josh whispered to the beauty, making him arch his back and smile shyly.

"It is weird," Nancy said to Josh, "I mean I can definitely see it. What a man or an older boy sees in a cute young boy, but I can't feel it, but if he was a girl, I could. It's like discriminating."

"It's subliminal," Josh said, "unconsciously, a female must take a male as a father, provider, leader, and senior partner, and a young boy is a misfit on all counts."

"Cute, but no cigar," the girl quipped in very adequate summary.

"Take yours off, too," Timmy whispered.

"Now there is an idea," Nancy immediately seconded, her eyes glowing at the lanky hobbledehoy. Timmy did the shirty work, taking open Josh's buttons as the older boy toyed with his pixie-like body. "You could teach him to kiss," Nancy whispered. "I've never done it," Josh replied, looking up at the sand-blond beauty gazing hotly at him over Timmy's bowed head.

"Experiment," the girl suggested, adding: "I don't want to teach you. It's not the kind of thing a girl teaches a boy, you know, subliminal."

"Okay," Josh whispered. "Do you want to try it?" he asked the eight year old, now pulling his shirt tails out of his shorts.

"As soon as you're bare on top so I can feel you against me," Timmy said, now avidly disrobing half his partner.

"Lie back," Nancy said, taking Josh by the shoulders, and coaxing him back on the bed. She guided Timmy so he was lying on his back on the twelve year old's heaving chest. "Get used to him, this way," she said, "then, when you're ready, roll over and you can practice kissing."

"Can I look at you while I'm molesting him?" Josh asked, as his fingers roamed the arching child's tender body.

Nancy unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. "You look like an athlete," Timmy whispered. "Keep up that kind of talk," the girl replied, "and I may change my mind about you."

"I could undo the strap without touching you," the younger boy suggested.

"You don't have to be too careful," Nancy replied, sitting on the side of the bed so Timmy could reach her back. "I'd let Josh do it," Timmy said, "but his hands are getting really low on me and I don't want him to stop."

"Is he at your belt yet?" the girl whispered as Timmy unfastened her bra.

"Almost," the little boy whispered, letting the straps fall and bringing his hands to Josh, then urging the pre-teen to the buckle of his shorts.

"Have we been right, so far?" Josh whispered to the boy lying on top of him.

"Yes," Timmy said..

"And you trust us?" the older boy asked.

"Yes," Timmy said.

"Okay," the pre-teen whispered, "I want Henry to take the next step with you."

"Oh, I just know you're right," the boy sighed, "but someday, okay?"

"I'd like to sleep with you all night sometime," Josh said, "then you can tell me everything that happens tonight."

"Only if we practice kissing, first," the boy said, with a shy laugh.

Slowly the males separated, Josh lowering Timmy to the bedroom floor. "Go fishing," Nancy whispered in his ear, "and see what you troll up." The boy beamed back at her as he scampered from the room.

"You are so my-size," Nancy giggled, looking down at Josh as the twelve year old reached slowly to the shoulder straps of her bra. She shrugged in welcome, letting the silk fall over his hands and exposing her pubescent breasts to his hot gaze. "Go ahead," she whispered softly, and his fingers went to her swollen pink nipples and the shot-glass mounds. She hissed her welcome, and gently lowered to him, finding his lips with her flicking tongue and teaching everything in the world about kissing in a thousand racing heartbeats. Gentle hands found the children on the bed, gentle fingers set them squirming and wriggling happily. While her darting tongue was more distracting than a siren in an elevator, Josh was still vaguely aware of strong, adult fingers at his waist, at his belt, on the girl, all over them, petting and striping, and bringing their naked bodies together as they kissed on and on. Then there was more, a hot hugeness between his waist and hers, probing both their bellies in a slow, sensual rhythm. The thrusting phallus was hot and wet, slow and intimate in its male intrusion, irresistible to have and hold, and Josh took his hands from the panting young back and guided, feeling Nancy hum with thanks as he did so, the adult to the female child, helping for just moments as a few gentle, tentative strokes found entry, bucked his own hips against her's to raise her for him, then went back to gently caressing her creamy, muscular back as her stallion gently mounted himself fully, and froze panting violently over the two young bodies still kissing fervently beneath his powerful, sweating chest.

Nancy licked her way to Josh's left ear. "Have you ever seen it?" she whispered. "No," the boy whispered back, "I felt it happen, but it was dark and I didn't see anything."

"You'll have to open your eyes," the girl coaxed.

"Very imperfect," the boy whispered back, "in a golden world a boy could kiss and angel and see where angels come from, at the same time."

"Males have the same trouble," the beauty remarked, "they like it when their partner gets excited in their mouth, but they want to see, at the same time."

"But you can't see when it's happening inside you, either," Josh panted, delirious to be talking to her between her hot assaults on his half-bruised mouth.

"I will this time," she replied, as breathless as he, but also loving to share at the added level of their ragged, halting conversation. Young lovers are often interrupted by moral factors. "What are you kids doing on that couch?" That type of thing. Clergy from pulpits, counselors behind desks, neighbors over the fence. All wagging fingers and yelling Cut in their peculiar vernaculars. Been happening practically forever, so you'd hardly believe their could be a new and original force separating ardent boy from avid girl. Also, keep in mind these are, a, artists, or, b, those with a highly developed aesthetic sensibility.

The kissing stopped. The sweating young bodies jockeyed tensely together, panting half articulate whispers to each other and the young adults helping them. Very slowly, very carefully, Josh was able to share Nancy. To be mounted by her as she herself was mounted from behind. She straddled him on her forearms, able to gaze hotly into his eyes, a great compensation for her missing lips and tongue. Josh brought his hands from her heaving flanks to her budding breasts, molesting her fully as she panted and shook, mewing to him as she lowered for kisses and rose again to stare into his handsome, lolling face.

A now naked Timmy brought Henry to them, coaxed the adult into kneeling against the bed, his long, athletic legs widely spread, and, holding him firmly against Josh's sweating chest, began tentatively masturbating him. Both twelve year olds stared down at the adult's heavily swollen penis with its slick, purple glans stark against the smooth, white belly of the young male. "He's getting really harder," Timmy whispered, and that was all the notice they got. With a feral grunt, Henry ejaculated hotly all over Josh. As a second bolt of cum jetted across his young body, Josh's fingers froze on Nancy's swollen cherry nipples. He looked into her eyes. "It's happening inside you, too," he whispered up at her. "I can't feel it because he's against you," the girl whispered in response. "Like a bow twanging?" the boy rasped. "Oh, god, yes," Nancy whispered. "How long does it last?" he panted. "Long enough to get me pregnant from him," the child whispered, "you're the first one in the whole world to know." "He's still trying," Josh panted. "Tell me when it happens for you," she encouraged. "It is," the panting and now writhing boy gasped, "it is, it is!"

Henry had stepped aside for Sid, who, wet in Timmy's now experienced hand, came heavily on Josh's chest as the boy was thrown headlong into the middle of his long, hard climax, his hips shuddering with base instinct as he tingled and stung slightly to the copious seed left by the spurting adult male. Sid completed his salty gushing against Timmy's birdlike chest, and Pete approached. Josh craned his neck, turning his head to receive his alpha male in his wet young mouth. As he molested Nancy, Pete ejaculated in the twelve year old's mouth, and Nancy, wildly into an extreme orgasm, lowered her face to help him with the semen gushing from his lips, licking him and kissing his eyes.

"You didn't get much of a speaking part," Nancy said to her brother as Rob put down the his script. Rick laughed and they headed across the rainy courtyard to for the kitchen and hot tea

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

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