The Flyyy

Note: Certain U.S. television personalities are sketched in this story. Nothing is implied by this usage.

THE FLYYY

(M/t, M/b, t/t, t/b, b/b, mast, oral)

by

Feather Touch

It wasn't my fault, it wasn't, it wasn't. Dr. Sven Neilsen was at the machine, you've seen the kind in the movies; change stuff. Bzzz - and things aren't the way they were a second before. Anyway, the machine that Sven was working really changed stuff.

Take me, for example, a common housefly. You bring out the jelly; I come out, but now I can zoom in absolute silence, zip like a flea - and all because he came in.

Ten years old. It was a father take your kid to work day; Jamie, the ten-year-old, had actually come in with his mother, an administrator, thanks to his dad being the most perverse of all flakes, a writer. A last minute twist and shout, as usual, and then it had almost ended in nothing, as things so often do for a kid.

She said he is with you at work, meaning, home, and he'd pointed this out with go hither utterances that had landed them at the research laboratory, where his mom worked two floors up, in finance.

The computer in the offices had dork business stuff and the lab had to be better than that, so the meeting of Sven and Jamie was innocent; could hardly have been more proper or less remarkable. Since nothing that's happened since is either proper or innocent I'll go lightly on the How's it going, dude? stuff because that was not remarkable.

Sven looks like Rick Schroeder: okay pecky and quick to the waist.

Jamie has stick out ears, slightly big teeth; black hair and a sprightly look. In fact, he's a ringer for the zoom-zoom boy in the car ads on U.S. television.

Sven is as Nordic as his name and a taller edition of the television star. His eyes say friendly. He thinks a lot of stuff is funny. He reads, has close straight friends, is popular.

Jamie has big hands, knobby knees, skinny legs/big feet; freckles. Also, friendly gentle eyes. He is three pounds overweight and that's softness in his belly.

Like Sven, the young boy reads voraciously. Somewhere in each of his very young bones is a surety that the only absolution to be had was the sole province of the writer. The church was too interested in money to invoke squat.. Inventors came up with essentials and conveniences, but it was the gift of fingers on alpha-numeric keys that gave the day a laugh, on the one hand, and some reason for dawning, on the other. A monitor was just a snowball until the artist went to work,

The yo-dude ritual of young man and stripling boy takes less than a minute after they're in the lab, where I was liquefying a crumb for absorption in a way that I blush to look back on. The two males, one twenty-four and the other almost eleven, come together in a slow way, yet with considerable awareness. So much so, in fact, a mistake was made. An incident occurred. The ball was dropped. Any way you slice it, attention was diverted at a crucial moment, and I am the result.

The kid never scores grades and seems almost lame as he appears before the world. He, is not particularly popular; has a hard time relating to peers that don't read, when he lives to read. His goal is not to build the tracks, but to be a content provider; in effect, build the cars that run on the tracks; provide the seats, and populate them. He works toward this goal by flunking almost everything, because instead of exposing a naked brain to credentialled educators, he simply reads, flunks, and, reads and flunks. Story of many an artist and probably all the best.

Now he is before a dude that gets stuff done. The young artist appraised the scientist, forgetting how cute he was, in harsh terms.

From my position on the boy's right temple, enjoying my new weightless state and invisible form factor, immensely, I was able to not only see and hear all, but read some of the child's thoughts.

Jamie does not like nerds writing games.

It's no more logical than soundmen writing scripts.

A skill with words, stories, ideas and the very innermost clockwork of the practical intellect was earned, even this youngster knew, with, simply, final answer, more practice than that required by any other art, times five. Proof is the nine-year-old girl matching Isaac Stern, phrase for phrase. How much practice could she have had? A technician that could fabricate or program blindfolded, with his hands and feet, simultaneously, would be no more likely to do well on the loneliest crags, to write a single paragraph of a compelling story, than an astronaut would be qualified to engrave currency. To Jamie it was not axiomatic that time spent in a lab must stunt artistic growth, but it was all-but axiomatic.

If he didn't like nerds writing his games, he hated them running and ruining "his" enterprises.

They were children.

The unfolding tragedy of Napster was a horrific example.

Billions were being wasted in a spending frenzy over MP3; CD burners, cute little players; devices and gizmos almost beyond count. And it was total, unadulterated snake oil. Son of Citizen's Band.

MP3 might look like a duck, walk like a duck, and swim like a duck, but when it came to the quack, downloaded music was strictly rubber ducky - and that didn't even allow for the frustrations of the process, which can end in failure eighty percent of the time. This format was designed to be played on small computer speakers, absolutely only. The sound quality is atrocious, even just plugging headphones into the sound card. Any kind of high fidelity system merely demonstrates how thin the 128 bps data stream really is, in spite of its clarity when properly reproduced. The curious boy wonders how many divorces are caused by papa bear talking momma bear into an expensive rippin' system, then they plug their proud baby bear into the car stereo. See you in court. He also imagines a party with a young turk showing up with his ultimate mix. Not a career move, and emblematic of the whole sorry mess. A fabulous index of music, that every publisher should have supported as a source of sampling, little different than radio, except for the millions of stations, now being plundered by the very artists it promotes, free of any charge.

Then there was Amazon.

Hard on course to being bookseller to the planet, for centuries, but no, someone else was making a dollar selling framuses, so a-framusing they went.

Children.

The chicken guy that runs AOL. He got up on stage and squawked to the world about how AOL subscribers love Time/Warner content. Sweet child-chops, what AOL users, and most users, want, is porn, porn and more porn. And certainly not more of the clopper of urban socialists, very, very amply covered by all media for half a century. All this child had to do was log on for a single hour, even back in the early nineties. All the traffic was in the salacious chat rooms, there was no traffic anywhere else. And he paid over 150 billion, with a B, for the swimsuit edition.

Children.

Little, itty, bitty children. for sure too immature to read anything here.

I learned through my modified feet that the boy had no conception of not wanting to simply sit at a keyboard and write until he died. His thoughts were, of course, more complex than that. He had to read, first; then practice. Tens of thousands hours of each to make it above tradesman. But, first, he had to live.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, that's were I come back in. I don't know how much time I have, but I know where I want to spend what I do have. Right here. By his right ear

I sense in the boy, along with dripping contempt for many Netscape-like electronic hyperstars, a respect for the formerly lowly pornographer. The real Net. This was where a boy or girl actually could write, and there was little that was 128 about their stories. Nothing faux about Nifty, ASSGM, ASSTR and others.. Even for a fly, taste issues do not always relate to pastries. We can be deep too, you know. Think. Describe. Differentiate. Delineate.

Much of this story delves into role of a builder and the role of a provider. Try not to hold preconceived notions on how the building is done, who does it; what is provided, and who provides it. Again, try not to predict this. You will be right, and spoil your story.

You may face other problems, too.

Younger readers will want action, like a cartoon.

How inconvenient for my little buds; this is an electronic book; there's no finding shortcuts by flipping to the well-thumbed parts. Rest assured, all of you whom I know are at least eighteen, you will find what you're after. Readers almost always do. But it may come just a bit slower; not exactly teasing, more like foreplay.

Ask yourself, youngish reader, would you prefer a quickie under a palm tree, or a lingering date with an artist? If the answer is the latter, I have two for you. A ten year old future writer, and a twenty-something who has an aesthetic soul and intensely practical fingers.

Older guys may read, too, and if they have trouble reading, well, I doubt it's my Flyyy version of ye olde English that has them off the pace. The writer, Henry Thoreau, once said he could never finish a good book, he had to start off on what the book suggested. So, younger readers are beset with one brand of problems; figuring out what all these words are about, and other readers will run into their own problems, because they will know what the words are about.

Me?

I've got problems, too. Not much of a life expectancy, starchy diet, and you think it's vile hearing a fly buzz by your ear? Try listening to that very time you really want to get anywhere in life To review, repetition working the wonders it does, young readers have two problems; comprehension, and what understanding leads to, while experienced fans may find that comprehension leads to Thoreauvian indulgence. All readers should love the empowerment that comes so naturally to the developed mind.

Enough about you, this still leaves me sugared out and with a headache from flying in the beam of the fluxtaculator. As I said, I have a short life span, under the best of circumstances, so enough with the looping and circling and back to Sven and Jamie in the lab..

Builder and future provider take awhile to get used to each other.

Sven asks How's the puberty stuff going and Jamie answers Nowhere.

"So you've never had a chance to hang out with a perv?"

"No", the boy answers, evasively, it seems to me.

Hmm. His voice changes. Scientist or not, this tall young male was cute all spelled up in a lanky way his shirt hardly covered. I could tell the boy was impressed, and his misgivings, mild to begin with, were melting away, entirely.

"Did you, when you were my age, hang out with pervs?"

"Will you think I'm weird if I did" Sven asked, his voice, also, dropping. He yawned twice. The youngster was wearing shorts, and knobby knees did that to him. Tummies a boyish inch rounder than flat. He associated it with nerves, not sleepiness. And yawned again.

"If you did it with somebody that didn't look at least pretty good and you did it kind of like or for money or something," Jamie said, "that might be weird. But if you did stuff with someone who was cute, or, especially, that you really liked, that wouldn't be weird in my book. Normal boys all want to perv once in awhile, but it's the goody-two-shoes in church that get to do it the most. Isn't that a laugh?"

See how easy it is to tell my young LZ is going to be a writer?

Ten, and fluid like Mozart. Supple; full of sweet charm I'm glad that was a big donut; I don't want to be going anywhere for a snack. That I can tell. Of course, being vastly smarter than the average fly, I know there's protein in the offing - and, if I were a wise-fly, I'd point out that I can already detect pheromones indicating that chilling in the hood will lead to better dietary cir-cum-stances.

Sven answered that pedophilia kept the church going; has, for better and for worse, done so for thousands of years. "No novitiates, no monasteries," he said. My young hero, total hero, responded thusly: "No church, we'd be packed half way up the sides of Everest. They controlled the population.

"And those robes and hoods," Jamie giggled, "how cool were they? How could you tell who's doing what to whom?"

"Do you want to be friends?" Sven asked after a few long moments.

"What kind of friends?" the boy answered.

"The kind that sometimes like to hang out in a private lab with a time lock at the entrance," he explained.

"Are you serious," Jamie asked back.

"Not if you don't want me to be," Sven said. He yawned twice and stepped close to the boy who was studying the control panel of the machine that did me in and out.

"The Plunkett is divided in half," Jamie said over his shoulder. He was kind of jumping in, not knowing exactly where to start with his new friend. "That's so dads can take their sons and daughters there, and be separated, at the same time. There's two wings, with a central dining room, and two pools, again, separated. That way it's like privacy and safety. Works way cool."

"Sounds like a nice place," Sven allowed..

"Not The Plunkett!" the boy answered, seeming almost startled.

"Never had any stars, doesn't now, and never will. I mean with walls of planed Masonite on thirty-six inch studs you can tell the difference between brands of beer by the noise the tab-tops make, from the next room. The whole place is like a big loudspeaker, except a loudspeaker doesn't have gaps in it, but the floors of The Plunkett have lots of gaps. You can share a Coke by spilling it.

"Uncle Sven says it's the safest hotel there is, because you can see if the room beneath you is on fire, and smell smoke from anywhere. Also, one of the quietist, because no music or TV is allowed most of the time."

"And that's why he takes you there, to ensure your safety and provide tranquility?" Sven asked.

"I covered that stuff with mom; graphs, statistics, texts, photos. A week before I was ten. By the time I got to P City, I was the safest kid you can imagine. After we'd been there a couple of hours, I was the happiest."

"How long did that last?" Sven asked.

"Oh, I don't think it's more than just begun," the boy answered in his sweet soprano. To me, he sounds even better than he looks, which is a special compliment coming from a thousand-eyed one.

Sven responds to the tinkling giggle that came with Jamie's speech, and moved a bit toward the boy, placing his hands on the young shoulders.

"See what I mean?" Jamie said, pushing his ass slightly to the rear.

"If you get any closer, you'll feel what I mean," Sven responded, causing a tittering melody - vastly coy.

"Your sure on top of sure?" he then asked, as he began fondling Jamie's neck. The boy now arched to the touch and his voice dropped to a husky whisper:

"Is it safe in here?" he asked.

Sven reminded him about the time locks, adding: "If you want, we can be more comfortable; they used to handle haz mat here; there's a safety room, and, since they were into physical hazards like chemicals and bacteria, the safety room has a shower; even a table/bed for examinations."

Sven knew some boys like to remain rooted to the place they are first touched; develop an almost magnetic attraction to a particular square foot or two. That would be okay, plenty private and safe, but the boy did not look like a five minute indulgence, so he was glad when the black-haired sprite piped up:

"Does the safety room have hooks so we can hang up our clothes?"

Sigh. (That's Sven.)

I don't change my position; just go along for a nice quiet ride. Jamie turns toward Sven and says Hi. Hi, the young male replies.

"Do you want to kiss?" the man asks.

"No," the boy responds. "You're too far away; I'd get your shirt from here."

I had to take wing at this point. The boy jumped, the six-two scientist bent, and it was a bit of a close thing. Back now, thanks for your concern, but this time on Sven's ear, looking down as he teases the black-haired boy with his lips and the boy responds - Watch that flying hand, kid! - with alacrity.

Lips now urgent, the boy wraps to the youthful male, arms and legs.

"Your place or your place?" he whispers as Sven carries him to the safety room. We enter.

A whole new world. I don't know much about showers; do they normally come with stainless benches covered with foam and upholstered in what looks like soft cotton? Of course, if we think about it, anyone experiencing a biological or chemical mishap would probably not need a short shower.

If this is construed as proof that there is common sense in science, I posit that it is an exception that proves another paradigm, entirely. The rule, so excruciatingly parallel to misadventure in the commercial world (only 'baccy and Krispy Kreme went up last week), is proved by the space program, which has squandered real billions and billions on manned missions. (Humans deteriorate in zero G, and they waste little time about it.)

(What if Kennedy had said the following? "It is not our goal to visit the moon and return safely in this decade. We will congratulate the Russians, if they manage the feat, but we feel it is a project better suited to our grandchildren. Instead, we will use most every dollar of our space budget to position communications satellites of extreme durability and longevity. It is our goal to have free telephony, in the sense most roadways are free, by our bicentennial."

Then add SETI. Using everyone's computers in furtherance of the empirically bizarre notion that over the ten billion plus years of astral development we'll be tuned in at the right moment, based on the fabulously unlikely theory that anyone is out there, in the first place. A rough analogy would be to put a camera and a strobe light in a dark room, and trigger each, once, at a random point in time, over the period of a decade. What are the chances the strobe light and camera shutter would synchronize?

This stuff is important. Science. Scientists. And you know what we've got?

Crash dummies.

Every crash tells exactly the same story: use geometry, incorporate stronger and more resilient truss sections. Use padding. Things that break away. These aspects of form factor can be thoroughly dissected and reviewed using any of the vehicles involved in highway crashes every year.

Who would take the sweat and toil of hundreds of workers, their beautiful product, and crash it into a wall?

A dummy.)

.

The shower is large, it has multiple heads, which I just know are going to go largely to waste, and is replete with cushioned benches, as noted. Around the walls of the safety room, and we're talking about fifteen by twenty-five feet, are more padded benches, set quite low, with fold-up backs that convert to upper bunks by attaching them to chains, which hang from the ceiling. In the center is the place I'm going if my ride heads to the showers. This place is an examining table with several white pillows on it, as well as a thin wool blanket. Not cozy, but serviceable, and, best of all, available.

As well as the benches that make into beds, and the examining table, there are two footstools, the kind with two steps. The shower benches with their soft cotton twill may not be the result of common sense, but I think the stools are. That way, patients in the upper bunks could be tended. Yes, it does make sense. But I diverge. Time to get back to the stools.

In a waltz with Jamie around the room, Sven kicks these into position next to the exam table, and rests his boy on them. This is confusing to watch. Now that they're eye-to-eye, mostly they're just pecking and nibbling, then just breathing on each other. What's that all about? Must be an eating activity beyond my understanding. Just kidding. I know they're up to no good.

Remember those pheromones I mentioned? They're baack!

Now this is ridiculous. Sven has already retrieved his boy from his perch, the boy has wrapped around him, instantly, and now, having so recently arrived, we are off to a far corner, where there is an upholstered lab stool. As we approach, the boy unlatches one long, slim leg and hooks his foot in the stool. Now we move back toward the exam table, followed by scraping and screeching, which Sven and Jamie either don't hear or don't care about.

Good, glad that little trip is over. I'd rather fly.

Jamie is back on his two stools, and Sven is able to lean back on his. I don't mean to intrude here, I've done it too much already, but I do want to point out that its been awhile since my donut, and, while I'm hardly starving, I nonetheless hope that Sven's stool doesn't turn out to be an all-night stand. (It's a health issue.)

Once again, no feeding activity, though any such can't be too far off. Right at the moment, they are just gazing into each others' eyes. I'll leave the jokes in, such as they are, but not the mushy stuff. The best I can do in that regard, is this: There's a lighthouse off the south shore of Massachusetts, which conveys the same message to ships at sea that these males are sending across like about six inches. The lighthouse flashes once, then four times, then three times. Well, it beats 24/7 as a code, so I thought I'd include it as not being too show-tuney.

Ah, I hear a slight scrape from the legs of Sven's stool. It's a good sign, because I'm sure he's not pushing away. Right about that. Now they're nose to nose.

Reindeer games? Well, Santa might take these youngsters of for a rollicking, red-cheeked romp in the snow, but having already strained the reader's patience with science non-fiction, I'm not about to take the liberty of turning my players into snow angels.

"There are some expensive robes on the hooks in the shower room; all natural fiber, hypo allergenic," the young scientist said

"Oh, I'm so glad," Jamie replied, now whispering because their faces are inches apart. "These clothes, which I have worn in great comfort, lo these many months, are suddenly itching just a bit."

The older male responded by informing the boy that not only were there special robes, but any number of ointments, balms, salves, pomades, unguents and lotions. Since chemicals could result in burns, and burns could smell, powerful perfumes were also included in the drawers containing emergency supplies. The same drawers held small brown bottles to be used in special cardiac situations.

"Lets change in secret," Jamie said, launching himself against Sven with a tense kiss and bite of the neck. He then sidled away, and was off to the decontamination compartment and the hooks that held the recovery robes. We, just Jamie and I, danced on into the shower, where my youngster threw one of the red silk garments to Sven, then drew the curtain separating the scrub-down area from the rest of the clinic.

This scene does not take long, nor does it sound like the scene on the other side of the curtain will linger or need much of a punch-up. Let others make haste, I'm looking at the boy's waist.

Would you like me to tell about it?

Jamie's stomach looks worth a trip, all by itself. He's in boy-mode now, hidden by the curtain. Later, when he displays, he'll undoubtedly hold his young belly in, but he shouldn't bother.

Above, he is slim-chested without being emaciated in any way; stooped in his otherwise husky shoulders, but not too bad considering how much he reads, and white. Pale. Almost snowy. In the words of the song, I might be blinded by the light, but Jamie is now pulling down his plain white underpants, and if those long, long legs lead anywhere worthwhile, you'll not be wanting to dwell on epidermal chromatography, defractive interpretation, or any other matters dealing with the out-of-place-here science and study of luminescence.

Now there's a lucky break, because luminescence segues neatly to tumescence. I don't know what that is - maybe its pornographic - but I know it when I see it.

This brings us back to Jamie, whose underpants are now over the shower curtain rod - I simply won't tell you about the little dance he did getting them there. (It involved jumping.) He's standing hunched over slightly and his milk white skin is tinged with red. I can see why. He has a boner.

It juts from him almost six inches, a little longer than the common frank and just a bit thicker than those that come in the one-pound pack. He is circumcised, and an ant lion could appreciate the play of color and texture as his penis rears back from a slightly flattened magenta head to an almost ivory shaft.

The robe is quickly retrieved, and his slim body is wrapped in red silk, which, frankly, does an attractive job setting off his black hair and white skin. "This is almost like the robe the boy downstairs was wearing when he was playing 'Master/My-Son' with his partner at the Plunkett," Jamie whispered to himself as he experimented with the feeling of the red silk on his boy's soft skin. I don't know what his whispering means, but judging from the scent the boy is now giving off, I think I'll be finding out.

"Is it okay if I come out?" the boy asks in a husky voice, or, I guess, as husky a voice as a ten year old can manage. Come to think of it, there was just a hint of growth at the base of his big, hard penis, so maybe my imagination is getting the better of me. Whatever.

The answer comes quickly, as you might expect. "It's okay," Sven calls to him. "I'm not fit for company, but then you're probably not fit to be company, so emerge young prince, and we will return to your lair when our studies of natural development have been completed for the ante meridian, and we find ourselves in urgent need of showering, if parents and cops are not to twig to our activities.

"As to the bosses" the scientist went on, "in case one as supple-y minded as yourself is concerned with what might be deemed play time, over work time, let me reassure you that I have no less than six capacitors charging for the next shot with the fluxtaculator, and there is nothing much one can do while capacitors are charging." Jamie breathed a sigh of relief when he heard this, and straightened his back. Astonishing child. That's why he was a bit hunched over; he thought he might be interfering with the normal routine.

A fine analogy here would be the fishing-worms sequence in "Fargo." A good reason not to believe in love is that this kind of behavior is so rare. Flowers for guilt, jewels for more guilt, candy and liquor for coercion, furs to really get what you want, and forget the worms five times in a row. Next, I'll be teaching you to cook, count on it, but, meantime, we've got enough cooking behind a certain time-locked lab door to satisfy most appetites for at least awhile. Tell you what, when I break for lunch, we'll cover it then. Since it will save you fifty to a hundred grand over the next bunch of years, I'm sure you'll stay tuned.

But why take chances?

Let's pull that shower curtain.

We do so, and I fly off; a slow circle over the scene, as the silk-clad scientist and the young writer come together.

"I hope I look like you when I get big," Jamie says to Sven.

"Thanks," the young man replies. "Do you want to get back up on the stools?" he asks, and Jamie responds in the affirmative. They hold hands while the boy gets comfortable. Then Sven pulls his stool forward, and leans against it.

"Is it okay if we whisper a little bit, first?" Jamie asks, already in the mode for sharing secrets. "Sure," Sven responded in his own husky whisper. "Do you want to lead off, or should I ask you some questions?"

Jamie leaned forward and bit Sven lightly on the base of his neck. "I want to tell you about The Basket Hotel. That's what Uncle Sven calls The Plunkett, 'cause of all the holes in the walls and cracks in the floors."

"Ah, yes, Hotel Safety, where you can smell a burning match three rooms down the hall."

Jamie giggled his delightful chirp, and replied that nothing had smelled like matches; the management position being that any scent of sulfur might tempt a very close traveler, so lucifers were not permitted. "Personally," the boy expanded, "I think it's more like if they had a fire they'd have to change the sheets, and that would not be in keeping with the atmosphere, ergo, no matches."

"And how close was Lucifer?" Sven asked his boy.

"He doesn't hang where people laugh," the boy answered, and he continued all atwitter; actually, quite charming in the ten-year-old male child: "and as much as we heard anything at the Plunkett, we heard people laughing and being happy. The place wasn't exactly Norman Bates.

"I think we could have burned a box of flares and been no worse off, in any metaphysical sense, because that's how much fun the place was. Couples would come roaring in, swim, eat, play in the arcade, spend time - at least two hours - in the room, and then off to football practice or something all bright and sunny and covered with honey. Compared to the extreme depravities common to a large number of cults over many millennia, our pranks and carrying on were tame stuff."

"How tame?" Sven asked.

"If you rate The Rack at ten, and glossy TV preachers as nine, we were somewhere between five and seven," the boy answered "There's one in California; I always watch him use his face with the mute button on, hoping there will be an earthquake and I'll see him peeled by falling crystal; something like the characters in 'Mars Attacks.'"

"Yeah!" Sven responded. and he was seconded, enthusiastically, by the black-haired boy. "That would be awesome!" the kid said, interrupting to embellish his own story. "Instead of immolating, like they do in the movie, from the inside, he'd be peeled."

"I think the word you want is flayed," Sven pointed out. "If you have a maritime concentration in you literary background, it would be 'flensed;' that's from stripping blubber from whales; anyhow, I agree, a shower of shattered plate-glass would be a brilliant end to a career, and a fitting memorial."

Jamie bought in, hook, line and sinker. I could tell by the way he nodded his head, and then, cunning boy that he was, he raised his hand as if he were in a classroom. Sven winced in amusement and called on his star pupil. The boy piped up immediately, not whispering at all.

"If it happened just right," he exclaimed, and who can blame him his boyish excitement, "maybe like a two-hundred-pound slab would come down a hundred feet, from the very tip-top, and slice into him, like when they sacrifice the water buffalo in 'Apocalypse Now.'"

Sven was rocked slightly back on his heels by the untrammeled vivacity of the fledgling's raw brilliance and dazzling maleness. The boy's dream was distorted, of course. The fifty-thousand-dollar-looking robe would muddle the clean, icy flash and surge of guts Kubrick had filmed. But it was the spirit that counted over even graphic imagery.

Let all the glass above two stories fall, it couldn't out-twinkle this hundred pounds of utterly non-fairy, white-skinned boy - dressed in red silk And Sven was about to find this out, as they say, for sure.

Trying to delay, and who wouldn't, the mature male asked the boy to tell him more about his uncle. "Uncle Sven is awesome," the kid said. "He's only seventeen, but he's a wicked inventor. When we hang out I help him with his projects."

"He's into software?"

"No," Jamie said. "Uncle Sven's working on a way to shorten panic stops. Like in cars. Very mechanical, though, now that you mention it, his Hard Stopper has a logic chip, and he works on it with his laptop."

"And?"

"I guess the idea was mine, really. He took me to the drag races, and I said if the transmissions could take the punishment of burnouts, maybe you could shift into reverse at a hundred miles an hour.

"Next thing I know, he'd put off his ride at MIT for a year and was up to his ears in servos and hydraulic thises and thats. It's complicated, but it works. Stops the drive wheels for an instant, shifts into reverse, then throttles up the engine, depending on the variables.

"Speed over the road is measured the same way an optical mouse senses movement. That's so if the car spins, the system won't make the situation worse. For curves, it has to be used in conjunction with ABS, but, in a straight-line stop. it's like running into a hard balloon. Very uncomfortable. Smokey. In a four-by-four, it's real hard on the eyes; the little balls want to pop out and splat on the windshield."

"Sounds almost like an accident," Sven said.

"It's cool you're name is Sven, like his. "You guys are totally almost identical. He wanted to name it The Almost. Thought it was too fey; abstract; naming something for something that wasn't. Like I said, mechanical. His head was in the chips, but his heart was in the transmission."

Beep-beep! Hello! Is this AAMCO?

Yeah, like they're going to listen. And jeez, wouldn't you know it, now they're back to staring again. Edith!

Well, no one's staring at me and I'm not moving the proverbial inch. The pheromones suddenly reek in the air, and now I know this young male is going to be like totally molested, no almost about it.

"Hi," Sven says. He's already said it, but who cares?

"Hi," the boy says, not adding a kittenish, "again."

Sven hitches his stool forward several long inches, and the young male leans to him.

"You okay?" the elder asks, and the boy replies: "More than." His voice spills back to a whisper; "Can I tell you about the hotel?" he asks. "I thought you'd never tell," Sven answered, eliciting a giggle.

Jamie began his story.

"They put a monitor around your neck the first five visits. The exercise is self-control. If various reading go too high, too fast, you get a fifty-volt shocks that stings like about fifty bees. Events, especially for newbies, are meant to proceed at a lingering, carnal pace. Do-jobbers are profiled, counseled, and sometimes even suspended. Big Brother, sort of, I guess; but it's cool because it works. Since the place has, besides dirty sheets, amenities, I guess it could be called a hang-out for happy non-campers.

"Plus, as if it needed it, the place has a really outrageous secret"

"Since we're not wearing shocking collars, maybe you could cut to the place," Sven suggested to his young companion.

"Oh, you mean room 33-B, up on the second floor?" the boy asked, helpfully. "Is that where we should be off to?"

"Sounds like a plan," the young scientist responded, and Jamie launched back into his story.

"Well, we got there about eleven in the morning. Presented our papers from the doctor, and waited for them to be confirmed by phone. Checked in. Got our collars. They also give each couple an electronic stethoscope; hardly seemed necessary, what with the paper-thin walls and all, but, if you use one, you can hear everything in the adjoining room, not just half."

"Conscientious management," Sven commented.

"Not enough to make Fodor's, or any of the normal guide books, though," Jamie said. Sven thought for a moment, then brightened, "It must be those dirty sheets."

"Yeah," Jamie agreed. "And the lack of privacy. That can 't please the lady from Triple-A."

"'Never had a star, and never will.' That could be their advertising slogan," Sven said, repeating the refrain from earlier in the boy's delicious chatter.

"Be hard to come up with one of those that could beat gay kids," the boy responded. Seems to me he had a point. Reputation does go with word-of-mouth. Maybe that's my mission. To spread the word. Something to ponder over my first cup of mocha java, which I'll be more than ready for after I've wet my bristle (that's fly humor) on a double-laite.

Sven leaned to his boy and silenced him with a long, gentle kiss. "Are you comfortable?" he asked, "or would it be better in the shower?"

"Do you want to whisper a lot," Jamie responded. "If you do, it does look more comfortable on the benches.

"Can I sit on your lap?"

"Yes," Sven whispered, softly.

He held out his hands to help the youth from his perch, and retained one of his sweet young paws for the short walk to the shower. He sat back on a stainless bench, and the boy straddled Sven's knees, facing the tall young male in red silk, and pulling himself close with his legs spread wide. Their musk seemed reflected by the tile of the large shower station; the scent rose fast now.

"Like I said," Jamie continues his tale, "we checked in just before noon, and got our slow-and-easy collars, our little microphone and amplifier gizmos - they have two ear-pieces, by the way. Then it was off for a wander. From the first minutes it was easy to see why adults brought children to The Plunkett. There were three peepholes in each door, two innies and an outty, don't you know, and the snooping was gnarly. Bring a kid, turn him or her loose for an hour, and you'd either get back a highly abnormal kid, or a pervert."

It was Sven's turn to giggle a little. The boy's logic was both hopeless and faultless.

How would you ever write a character like Jamie? Intricate. Immediate fun. Focused and flexible. I guess the trick would be simply standing out of the way and letting the child's natural charm speak for itself. I would do that, but flies do not have big stomachs. Therefor, it behooves me to stick around in hopes that there may be a dimension the stripling's charm beyond his radiant personality. I sense that Sven is thinking along a parallel line.

What's the world cumming to?

"Do you want to play 'Master/My-Son?'" Jamie whispered, leaning close enough to Sven to tickle the young man's ear with his warm child's breath. "Yes," said Sven, adding: "I hope it's really complicated, and it takes you a long time to give me the directions."

"Well, the long thing is a slam dunk, or were you being abstract and using 'long,' measured in minutes?"

"I can't remember," Sven groaned. "I think weeks might be more accurate."

He finally broke a lingering kiss with, "Tell me about the game."

"It's the robes that reminded me.

"The Plunkett specializes in boys and girls that are headed into the theater. If they get molested, under the wrong circumstances, they lose their open smiles, immediately and permanently. So, the idea is, since it's likely to happen, in the stage environment, anyway, make it fun; more importantly, make it real. That way maybe the kids don't all grow up with those wooden faces you used to see on so many young actors, and still see. This is the long way of saying that the couple in the room below us were rehearsing for a monk/disciple scene in a real estate commercial. They were wearing purple robes, though, not red."

"What did they look like?" Sven asked.

"The boy was about thirteen, Asian, nice sized, perhaps a bit soft bodied, really friendly smile - engaging. The Master was a strapping monk, about your age, short hair, tall, athletic, very cool."

"How much could you see?" Sven asked the youngster.

"Everything," Jamie responded. "We put pillows on the floor, and lay side-by-side, looking down through the crack, which was at least a quarter-inch wide. Then we put the little amplifier over the crack, between our chins, so we could hear everything, too. From then on, we were definitely plugged in."

"What happened?" Sven asked.

"Well," the boy explained, "they did the lines a bunch of times, 'till they had them timed out. Francis was the monk, and his boy was Chris. Frances really was a Buddhist monk, and Chris was asking him about what happened in their ceremonies. I guess he'd heard rumors or something, 'cause he asked some kind-of leading questions. Then he, Chris, mentioned the three bells.

"Do you know about that?" Francis asked.

Even with his Asian coloring I could see Chris blush.

"I heard some stuff," he said.

"What if it was true, how would you feel?" the monk asked his young partner.

"It must be really scary for the boy," Chris said. I detect deceptiveness in his words.

"Well," the older male replied, "it's usually more embarrassing for a boy than necessarily scary, the way most men do it. We have a special way that saves a boy having a man pull down his underpants when he has a boner."

I've got to interrupt here to say I feel like I'm living in an onion. Layers and layers of story. Look at this: I'm telling one, Jamie is telling Sven one, and now a young actor, dressed in purple Buddhist robes, is sharing a narrative with his boy, seated a foot from his knees. Two of these characters are in a shower facility in a laboratory, two more are in room 33B, at The Plunkett Hotel, and the remaining two are in what would logically be either room 33 or room 33-A

Jamie is sitting on Sven's lap, with their waists just under a foot apart, while they lean into each other with kisses and whispers. Jamie, the same boy, is also with his uncle Sven, eight months previously, as they lie on the floor of their room and gaze down through the crack at the man and boy in the room below.

While the scene is pretty enough; okay, intriguing, if you insist, it seems to lack conflict and full dramatization. I'm a fly - hardly grander than a bug - and I can tell how it's all going to end.

Where's the tension? The twists, the turns, the subplots, the action, the carefully wrought development and the stages of conflict and resolution? Is anybody going to move even fifty feet?

Face it, this master-of-all-he-surveys that types me out would have to be better than Capote, Mailer, Faulkner and Fitzgerald, combined, to get the reader to turn pages when everyone is getting along, hassle free, and there's enough bonhomie and cloying sentimentality to practically slick the very walls with saccharin. On top of this, my typing dude wanders about like some keyboard lobo, frequently interrupting himself to howl of his grandeur. It is my honest and unbiased opinion that he believes legendary status is his own mind is all the status there is. He got so carried away, on his first posting of this epistle, Nifty hardly even wanted to publish it. But, in his own vary vague way, he's a good guy, too. He chopped ten thousand words out of this script, because content rules.

If he doesn't write it, publishable, then he freeunloads off other writers, and provides nothing In the end, his rather wise and extraordinarily handsome head realizes it is better to sing from a cage than to not sing. This is to say, what you're reading now is the "Reader's Digest" condensed and abridged version of this story (but not expurgated, all the sex is in this copy, in the spirit of cutting the reader an even break) . The full manuscript may be had (free, of course) by emailing the writer (or Nifty may list it, same name, under the s/f-fantasy category). It is difficult read, probably intensely difficult. Look-how-well-I-write, ma, styling. The abstractionist's trick of passages that really don't make sense, to engage the reader fully, and make the critics glow. Convoluted, hard-assed, raw, edgy, self-serving, self-indulgent, sniping and snipping galore; inconsistent, with an ending that actually sucks - not to mention enough typos and goofs to flunk Kelly Bundy out of Horner's Corners Community College. All that, and a masterpiece.

"The three bells," Francis whispers to the boy. "You've got to be sure about that, because once it's done, it's done. Not even one of the bells can be unrung."

'That's okay, just be gentle with me."

"Are your ready?" the monk asks.

"Yes," the boy responds.

"'Okay,' says Francis. "Come up on my lap."

"Then they got like we are," Jamie said to Sven.

"What happened next?" Sven asked.

"They started whispering," he said. "Francis leaned really close to Chris, right up to his ear, and said, 'If you want me to pull your robe down off your shoulder, so I can see your whole chest naked, just reach out and pull mine down.'"

The boy did so, slowly and with hesitation. He looked intensely scared, interested, something like that. Anyway, his attention was focused as he reached slowly to the older male and pulls the shoulder portion of the robe free.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you?" Francis asked Chris and he worked with his fingers, then stared at the half-nude beauty.

"Molest me?" the boy responded in a tight whisper.

"Yes," the man said. "It's against the law, you know that, don't you?"

"Yes," Chris whispered back.

"Have you been molested, before?" the master asked his son.

"When I was nine," the thirteen year old replied.

"Was it okay?"

"Yes, I had a big crush on him."

"Did he play with you a lot?" Francis asked.

"Yes," said the boy.

"How did he get you interested?"

"It was at daycare," the boy said. "I had to go for the last month of the school year because of family stuff; my mom taught me in the evenings, anyhow, I was nine and the other kids were pre-school. About a week after I arrived they had the session with the little dolls. Atomically correct."

Chris giggled when he said that.

Sven seemed happy with his boy and bade him continue.

Me?

Well it seems there's another layer on this literary onion; Chris, now nine, with someone at his daycare center. Guess my wolf has eaten another chicken and wants to play the hawk with all of us, but, heaven help us, he is so very high. My reading is that he's a palomino stallion and likes to thunder up a ridge over the herd, rear, and lash the sunset sky. My senses identify this behavior as calculating and devious. What he's really about is posturing so vastly he drives all the fillies as far from him as he can get them to run. Then, I just know he's going to slide dramatically to the valley floor in a great cloud of dust and debris; and wander, apparently aimlessly, in the direction of the first female to punch out of his act. This, he seems to know, will be the best one. By not coming across as a total strutting buffoon, when he's alone with her, he suddenly takes on an appeal the lesser stallions will never achieve. (Darwinize these genes over enough generations, and you get a writer.)

Sven was charmed that Jamie knew the difference between atomic and anatomic. Of course if the kid was into helping his seventeen-year-old uncle revolutionize automotive safety, he probably knew a whole lot of things. He was telling about one of them at the moment.

"They worked on their English for a moment," Jamie continues, "then Chris went on with his story about the dolls".

What happened is, when it got toward noon, it was nap time at the daycare center, and Chris's teaching assistant, Lucas, got the boy aside.

"I mean, I really liked him," Chris recounted to his Buddhist master, "so it wasn't like anything weird. When we were off in a corner, he told me he thought I was too mature for the presentation put on for the little kids. I got kind of embarrassed and he thought that was really cute. Then he asked me if I wanted to know more advanced stuff about what men did to young boys. He said we could take the dolls to his room and lock the door, so we'd have privacy.

"I was really scared, but I was just wearing gym shorts and a Tee shirt, so he could see what was happening to me. I started to cry and he was real patient. Then I just stood there nodding my head, really scared and really happy. After that, the clock took a fit and started dragging its hands, like about an inch every two or three days. Finally lunch time came.

He made sure I went to the bathroom, and then we did the kitchen and made up a bag of Fluff and peanut butter sandwiches. By five past noon we were in his room, way up on the third floor, with enough creaking stairs to warn of a mouse attack.

"Lucas said his mom never came up there, and she let him bring up older boys who happened to end up at Very Happy Childhood, as long as there were plenty of staff members to keep an eye on things downstairs.

"Anyhow, his room was really nice. Big mirror on the door, the old fashioned kind with beveled edges and clips made of crystal. The whole place was Alice-In-Wonderland, Victorian; red velvet wallpaper, four poster bed, carpets and hundred-year-old furniture. Very comfortable.

"Lucas had an incredible model sailing ship on his desk, and I remember thinking it would be pretty easy to trust someone with the touch and patience that could complete such a piece of work. And he was only fifteen. So, when we got there, we gulped down our sandwiches and milk, and then he brought the dolls out.

"He told me a lot about getting molested, like statistics, and that most boys that had friendly experiences made out okay, even if they turned out never to do it again. We talked about the physical part and he used the dolls to show the classic stance of the man about to take a boy.

"He made me practice different reactions. If I liked the man, or older boy, and was comfortable with the situation, I would make my little boy doll stand still, or even move him back a little. If I was uncomfortable, I would say Sorry and move him away. He made me practice that a lot; like I had to really holler and threaten to call the cops before he was satisfied. Boys can definitely get raped, so he taught me to avoid that kind of situation and person. As far as he was concerned, if it happened, it happened. He suggested getting medical treatment, then pretending I'd wiped out on a rail slide. Only a tiny fraction of child lovers would even think of using force, he said, and a fraction of them might actually do anything rough.

"In fact, he felt that a great deterrent to aggressive molestation would be having boylovers sit on juries. This would work doubly well if an electric cremation oven could be modified with a rheostat and a timer, allowing the jury to select an appropriate delay before loss of consciousness could be assumed. Say twenty-four hours for a Bundy and thirty-six for a Dahmer. As long as oxygen was not administered, and adrenaline and similar drugs were not used, and water was provided through a straw, there would be no cruel or unusual aspect to the punishment. Indeed, it would be as old as justice.

"Lucas was big on cautions. Chapter two of the educational talk. Then we started playing with the dolls again, and pretty soon he asked me to pretend he was a man that I wanted to touch me.

"The first part of that lesson was to display. We used the dolls, first, and he showed me how a boy should pull his shirt up, discretely, and show the man he wants his soft, round belly. After that, the man would get me alone as soon as it was safe and comfortable, and come up behind me.

Chris had asked Lucas to show him. Francis asked if he'd felt embarrassed and Chris said No, not after he'd seen the model of the whaler. So that's when it happened. In front of the big mirror.

The older boy responded immediately to Chris's display by hustling him in front of the door. They got really close to themselves.

"This is not the biggest secret in the world," Lucas said to Chris. "You can tell the right other guys, and even quite a few girls understand, if they're intelligent and well educated. Society is actually quite tolerant of boylove; Michael Jackson has not spent an hour in jail, and he's about as flagrant as the species gets.

"But it is a lottery; like weed; wrong cop, wrong judge, and it's very possible to add to the twenty-five percent of the world's inmates that languish in the U.S. prison system."

"Did Lucas keep talking to you a lot while he was teaching you?"

"Some," the boy replied. "He asked me if I wanted to say some mature words. I got red and he pulled me gently against his chest.

"You do have to pull away, now," he said, "if you're going to pull away at all. That's only fair, that you go through with what you start, okay?"

"Yes,' Chris answered.

"Okay," Lucas responded, "Most men and older boys will give you a lot of chances to break off. They're not looking for cold cuts because they prefer uncuts."

"I'm glad," the little boy responded brightly. "I'd hate to think we climbed all those stairs to find a salad bar."

"Oh, don't try to be funny like me," Lucas retorted. "It will make me fall in love with you, and we're too young for that. You've got to be serious."

"Hold the pickles," Chris sang out in a fast, light voice, "hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us, just as long as you let us start at our play."

"Have it your way," the fifteen year old concluded for the boy in his arms. The child gazed with his beautiful almond eyes over his shoulder at the teenager standing tall and powerful behind him.. Caught his eye, which is hardly worth writing about - since it happened so easily, and winked. "You brought it up," he said, blandly.

"Do you know that it's really messy at the end?" Lucas asked Chris.

"How come?" the youngster answered.

"Because of what comes out. Sometimes there is really a lot of it. You've got to learn to be definitely careful with a man or big boy, 'cause you can get it all over you and your clothes, maybe where you don't see it, especially if you're in a hurry. So if you hitch, or hang out in restrooms, always be sure you have a couple of paper towels at least. Especially in a car.

"Of course, the best thing is to get naked, then it just gets all over your chest and tummy and legs and its easy to wipe up, or lick up when you get older.

"Okay?

"Remember that, because an accident can lead to discovery, and discovery takes the excitement further than most youngsters feel happy going."

'The spray that comes out is sperms, right?" little Chris asked the fifteen-year-old.

"Yes," Lucas replied, "that's one name for it. You can read on the Net for more, when you're older. Speaking of which," whispered Lucas into Chris's ear, "you're starting to get solid in the shoulders. That's totally sexy."

"Thanks," the boy said.

"You're going to really like doing it from the back when you get older, especially with boys who are just getting a little muscley."

"How about girls?"

"Maybe, if it was your little sister and she just wanted to have hormone sex. Usually girls will want to make out, and so should you, if you're there in the first place, so it's more likely things will happen in a series of steps from the prone position."

"Steps?"

"Stages, then," Lucas pointed out, patiently.

"Good, you had me worried. If I took steps, I wouldn't be here, and I definitely don't want to be anywhere else."

Here Francis interrupted Chris's account. "My-son," he said, "are you ready to come together with me?"

"Yes, master," said the boy.

"Then inch forward on my legs and we will meet under our robes."

"Is that how you do it with the little boys at the monastery?" the child asked.

"Yes," Francis reminded the boy, "especially the first few times.. After the three bells. It saves younger boys the embarrassment of having their underpants pulled down, plus, it feels nice."

Jamie and his uncle, Sven, looked down from above, and Francis and Chris looked down, too. The boy inched toward his master, not saying a word. Through the sensitive microphone, the voyeurs could hear the strain in the breathing of both males.

"It seems superfluous, and overkill, I know," said Francis, "but I'm meant to check on your smile, once in awhile. This would be a good time."

"Do I have to," whispered the boy.

"No," said the young monk, "but people may be watching, just like they will be when we're on the set. Concentrate on being happy. Smile. No wooden faces. And come close enough so we can touch under the robe, then you can finish telling me about what Lucas did to you at the daycare center. If that doesn't make you happy."

Here Chris grinned up at Francis.

"You need The Plunkett like a moose needs a hatrack," said the older actor. "But," he continued, "it is a good idea. Like that brother and sister in the ads for chocolate milk. They almost went attitude city, then an AD brought them here, and everyone says they smile more these days than they did as babies."

"If you want," little Chris responded, "I could play nervous and scared when we touch." "Okay," said Francis. That brought a quick, gentle smile and the boy eased himself forward the final inch.

"Do you do this with lots of boys?" Jamie groaned with a shudder as they finally met under their loose purple robes.

Francis gasped and froze at the touch of the hidden young penis. He seared and ached to throw the thirteen-year-old to the floor of the hotel room and rip him naked of his taunting drapery. Both the cock of the athletic male and softly framed boy were wet with seminal fluid, making each of their tiny, lingering probings and half-inch blind thrusts hotly slimy and galvanic.

"Not a huge number," Francis finally whispered, thoughts of other boys pretty well defining far-away at the moment.

"How about you, since Lucas? Have you sprayed with other men?"

"No," the boy whispered.

"Better check that smile again."

The tension left Chris's face and he smiled like the boy in the real estate ad, the boy he was, and now would be for a good number of years. He'd need it, for the road can be paved with doubt, frustration and confusion on days that are not dominated by outright panic.

Many Net stories are written by gay boys, some by young lesbians. Children under the mistaken impression middle school, or high school, mean anything at all.

Most absolution any writer can even attempt is general in nature. Your place in, or around, or outside any social group, bunch, clique, or gang is no more important, as an adult, than whether you preferred blocks or marbles as a six-year-old.

Your grades are likely to be of as little value, maths, excepted. You either have it, which means you focus and bear down; it can be driving a nail, or a bone drill, or a deal, or you don't, which means a lonely trip down a dark road.

You have to make yourself have it. Make yourself be happy. Think of what you have, and make yourself even happier when you think how you're bored with your 'puter, and your cousin in Mexico is bored with hauling water miles up the side of his brown mountain.

Pot and parents? I don't know what to say. I used to catch absolute hell for reading all the time. Forty million of us smoke it. That's not hefty enough for the government, but it might work in an individual's case.

Try to at least be happy enough to live in the gray. Get along. Be responsive, at least some of the time. Obey most of the rules most of the time. Bad manners and a 'tude are the shortest distance between your nose and hell.

If things are really tough, keep in mind the five virtues of the toxic parent, guardian, or mentor, and the only real absolution that may be offered.

First, every day without them is a better day. Look forward to that. Second, you will owe them little or nothing. I have seen enough lives ruined by love for aging parents to fill books to overflowing. This is a burden you will never bear. The third virtue is that you may give yourself enormous credit if you end up any better than an ax murderer; and, co-joined with this, is freedom from any blame, if you fail. The fifth advantage is that as soon as you start whining about your mother, the chicks will flee, leaving you to develop like a wine that is neither shaken nor stirred.

From your background come the ranks of artists; those with an intensity of and devotion to craft, that, unmolested, rises vastly above what is likely from the loved and happy child.

Again, be happy. Laugh at shortcuts.

I'm fair to middling in the saddle, either kind, and I got that way by spending a thousand hours, bareback. Pay your dues early, and overpay them. Live small, live happy, and grow, slowly. Keep your grip and ignore large amounts of everything; totally don't ignore other things.

In the end, your school classes will be a mix, like every class. Some will do as predicted, some will shine against high odds, and others will not even glow, in spite of apparent advantages. The delicious twinkie heartthrob, of either sex, may turn out a moody lummox, and the nerdy dork may end up as a model or the mayor. The poor kid may soon drive in Beemer heaven, and the rich kid can easily end up on the bus, with his only car a beener.

If you want to be happy, read. Especially magazines, and Net works.

Avoid, repeat, avoid Nabakov, Kafka, Sallinger, Tolkein, Golding, Hemingway, Vonnegut, Heller, and all over-popped American writers. They like to hoist sails, but are too lazy to trim them, to stand their watch at the helm, or even to drop an anchor. Reading them is simply drifting in a breeze that never was except for its pollution. The fact NEA teachers have been cramming this mixture of turpentine and tarantula fur down your throats, for thirty years, should, of and by itself, make you long for a bonfire. These writers are garbage. Look at it this way; either I'm right in what I preach, and they're a head full of scurvy, or vice versa. If you want to read these assholes to find out for yourself, nice knowing you. In my opinion these hacks from hell are almost entirely responsible for the crushing sub-literacy of the entire USA.

Do read English maritime lit; C.S. Forester and his unfortunately-named Hornblower is the best known, but there are dozens of others. Captain Marrayatt will take you on a trip or two; not quite as I do, but a trip or two, nonetheless.

Top contemporary writers are John D. MacDonald, John Irving and Larry McMurtry. This list has not changed in twenty years. Think of that. Willa Cather is good on Russia and wolves. Pushkin. They say it's worth learning the Russian language, just to read his poetry, and, judging from the English translations of his stories, they are probably right. The only shortcut to learning the art of fiction, or to realizing it's not for you, is to read the short stories of John O'Hara.

For non-fiction, stick with explorers, inventors and useful souls. Make books your hobby. Collect them; W. Clark Russell (1890s) is a good one to start with, and read them. Then, all your life, you'll know you want to end up in India, or the Caribbean, and, presto, you'll have a goal. [Worked for me, I've lived forty miles from Temptation Island for ten years.] If nothing else, your collection will double in value every few years, and the sublime would be reading it, learning it, then executing on the profits from selling it.

It really can be done.

Live small. Stay single. Go to the Net for sex.

About the time you're brother is going to sign for four thousand square feet with cathedral ceilings, and forty years to pay, you'll be off to Africa for five or ten years to live like a king who wouldn't be caught dead in any cathedral short of the rain forest. It takes giant guts, and the risks are the kind that may actually kill you, or leave you flat on the sidewalk, with your brother's crib looking pretty good, mortgage and all, but, should you survive, at least you'll not fit the English stereotype that implies listening to a Yank for five minutes yields all that might be learned from him in a lifetime.

The best route is to cop maths grades, become an accountant, and set yourself free for a decade at mid life. If you succeed in some practical way; teacher, consultant, writer, artist, musician; great, if not, there's always another ledger to come home to, and at least you had the chance.

As monk, boylover, actor, and athlete, Francis wished his brand new my-son the very, very best. His not-a-huge list amounted to seven boys over five years, most of whom were still dynamic parts of his life. Keeping those smiles, oh, that could be easy enough. Keeping them while making a hundred thousand a year, moving from set to set, day and night, was a greater challenge, and the only option was a solid foundation.

"How long do we have?" asked Chris.

"Forever," Francis responded, "but it does start now."

The last inch was long gone, and the young males swayed together in a slow lap dance.

"Tell me before you get me wet, so I can see," the thirteen-year-old said.

"Did Lucas get you wet when you were nine?"

"He spermed all over me. But he warned me, so I knew it was going to happen."

"Did you like it?"

"Totally."

"Did he do stuff while you watched, or did he really teach you?" Frances asked.

"He asked me what I wanted him to do while he was molesting me in front of the mirror. I told him I wanted to see what happened. He kidded me about being a typical nine-year-old. I asked him if he brought other boys up to his room and he said yes, but not to look at the dolls; I was the only one - and he meant typical, because kids want to see everything, and I was a typical kid.

"Then I lifted up my arms so he could take my shirt off, and I asked him to take his off He hung them both on the door knob, then he got me back in front of the mirror, about two feet away, and started doing it to me with both of his hands."

"Did he hold you close?"

"Yes, I could feel his chest on my shoulders and his cheek was against the left side of my face. Then I pushed back and I could feel his boner through his pants."

"Is it okay?" he asked.

"How did his voice sound?" Francis asked.

"It made my boner get even bigger. A lot."

"When did you get your erection?"

"As soon as he touched my neck. It went straight up."

"Did he touch your penis while he had you in front of the mirror?"

"No, but he asked if he could. When I said he could, he said he wanted me to ask in my own words, just so we could be sure. Then, when I said 'I want you to touch me,' he made me say the word, so I'd feel embarrassed, so I said 'I want to feel your fingers on my penis.'

"Do you want to touch mine?" he asked me.

"What did you say?" Francis queried.

"I want to see you, too."

"How did he respond to that?" Francis asked.

Lucas said he wanted to touch our chests together, with our hands behind our necks, like I'm doing for you now. I told him I wanted to try it, too, so he threw a bunch of pillows on the floor, so I'd come up to him at the right height, then we touched. After a couple of minutes of pushing and rubbing against each other, he turned me around, and we backed to the bed. He lay back and pulled me on top of him, with my butt against his belly.

I kept my hands behind my neck and let him do what he wanted all over me. After awhile he said You've got to give me directions. Then he just held me, very still, with his hands at the base of my ribcage, like for three or four minutes.

The Pink Flathills were one way, and Brass Gateway was the other way. I was in control of the Lost Explorer, who, I was informed, was growing tired of the flathills, and wished to find a pink mountain. Lucas went on to explain about the mountain. "More a spire, really." he said. "Much taller than it is wide, and interesting in another way, because this mountain is not always to be found, at first."

Then Lucas had explained in more detail. "If The Lost Explorer failed to see the mountain, while he was exploring the area, he had to venture through the Brass Gateway, because, once inside, if he found no tall, slim, shaft, he could make one."

That gave me all the hints I needed, and even though I was tanner than pinker, I filled in the gaps with my imagination, and I told him his pretend explorer was going to have to be too blind to drink water to stay lost for long.

Then he stopped kidding around and said he wanted to do what we were doing, naked.

I asked him to touch me, first, and he said he couldn't, because he'd start spraying sperms as soon as he touched me, and we had to be really careful, like he told me about. So I swung my legs and stood beside the bed. He stood in front of me and told me I could pull his down first, if I wanted. I knelt down and undid his pants and then zipped him down. He shook the pants off his feet and then stood still so I could look.

His underpants were really bulgy, like a blimp in a tent.

"Is it okay?" I asked, and he nodded his head. I looked up at him. He was awesome to start with, curly red hair and a little acne, fox face with a long neck. Total in the lips department. I wanted to kiss him, but I figured I'd want to do that forever, so I looked at his body. No hair, no lumps. Like I cared. He was tall, five-nine, and I guess he weighed about a hundred. He was a lot bigger than me, and that was really exciting, because he was like a man, not just another kid, even though he was wearing plain white briefs, just like I was..

His penis was to his left, and kept swelling bigger. I looked down at his legs. They were long and kind of muscley and there was some silky hair just starting on his calves. He said,

'Take them off, I want to spread my legs.'

I was too scared to go fast, so I put my hands on his hips. I wanted to move, but I couldn't. His body felt so strong between my hands. Like a naked male tiger. I held him that way as long as he'd held his hands still against me, pulling me gently against him, and, finally, I pulled down, slowly. There was a little hair at the top of him, like corn silk.

The Lost Explorer took this as a good omen.

Gold, don't you know, and red gold at that.

At the same time, the intrepid adventurer wanted to play. There was an inny in the neighborhood, not particularly deep, mind you, but distracting enough.

Dauntless, the L.E. stuck to his mission.

The Zone of Constricting Latex eventually blocked the hero's pilgrimage. Seemingly innocuous, even from a short distance, it, on close examination, seemed to have been crafted with great virtue in mind. Push-me-pull-you didn't work. A more subtle approach was needed; a gentle lifting and slithering, side to side, mostly, but a little more in with each pass. That was the secret. Subtlety, plus persistence. Neither Bevis nor Butthead could have finessed the entry more surely than little Christopher doing it with his hand for the first time in his nine years of life.

He slipped under the border, and Lucas said Oh, Babe. The very slightly chubby Asian child looked up at the tall redheaded boy. That's me looking up at Lucas.

I'm glad things are finally getting exciting. Jamie is being openly fondled by Sven as the boy tells about being with his uncle on the floor of the hotel, about what they saw looking down through the cracks, and about what they heard over their ear-pieces.

"Do you want to come closer?" the scientist said to his ten-year-old in red silk. He uncapped a tiny brown bottle, shaking it twice with his right index finger acting as a stopper. He then extended the finger under the boy's nose. Jamie inhaled the slight fumes. It was all the youth needed.

"Do you want to touch under the robes like Chris and Francis?" the boy whispered back, his husk almost swimming with the brew of hormones and legal stimulant.

The response was so obvious it does not need to be repeated here.

I am greatly encouraged by the rapid increase in a number of physiological signifiers. No time for a tedious listing, nor will we throw ourselves off the pace, the scent might be more accurate, by allowing the hunka-hunka burning self-love, who pounds plastic for me, any latitude, either, because, surely, by now, you are thinking, to yourself, that enough really is enough, and therefor are in no mood to watch him further damage his rotator cup by any more frenzied back patting.

As I said - not playing the role of an ingrate, but prodding, nonetheless - there were obvious signs - I called them physiological signifiers.

"All the way!" whispers Lucas urgently.

The tall, redhead's signifiers include ragged breathing, a hormonal husk to his voice, shaking limbs, sweat, yawning, and, in less time than it takes to tell, by crikey, Chris does as bidden and makes the slim teen naked in front of him. The nine year old stands and backs a pace. Stares down, as Lucas is staring, at the ultimate signifier.

"How much are you going to pay me not to fall in love with you?" the younger boy asks, looking up into the green eyes that go with the red hair.

"Everything I have on me," responds the older boy.

"Your sperms?"

"Yes, darling."

Chris looks back in time.

He thinks of the Stretch-727. An old photo he'd seen of the jet in the Continental Airlines' orange striping of the late sixties, gleaming white, and ramped in front of Pike's Peak. It was so utterly blissful to look at, magnificently proportioned and infinitely proud, it could have stood as the prime exhibit at the Louvre for a century - and it actually did stuff.

Lucas's penis was like that. Really big for his frame, arching slightly toward the boy's freckly white stomach, as it thrust from its base, lightly dusted in almost invisible silk. Very beautiful, and to think of the things it could do. Only a porn writer would call it stuff.

"It's big because I swallowed a lot of sperm when I was your age, so I developed a little more than other kids; a little earlier, too.

"Do you want to be like me?"

"Du'uh." Chris thought, but he didn't say anything right away. He just stared. Finally, he managed to croak out, "What does it taste like?"

"Salty; very tingly, and sort of squirty, carbonerated, but you've got to go easy. If you get too much, before puberty, the hormones can make you grow a dick to your knees. I'll show you a video, sometime, of what happens to carried-away cocksuckers.

"I was lucky. My males made me drool out the semen if it was more than four times a week."

Chris found himself agreeing with Lucas's luck. He'd come out big and perfect; you never had to have seen another naked male, rendered or real, to figure that one out.

For a moment he wondered what it would be like to be a girl, lying back on a bed, or in a forest glade, as this naked male approached, straight on. He felt glad to be a boy, knowing that as a female he would have been impregnated, not just by the sight before him, at first giddy blush, but every time he thought of it until he was old enough to start breaking hips.

They stood there, a foot and a half apart, staring, with Lucas as intensely excited by the big hard bulge in the youth's underpants as the child was by the long, naked erection that arched toward the silky and lightly freckled skin of the tall boy's belly.

The moment Lucas freed the underpants on his right ankle, his bare feet squirmed on the thick wool carpeting as he spread his legs wide. This brought his huge boner to Chris's soft, round stomach. The boy eased forward and took his lover's penis tip against his belly-button. Neither moved.

"You're getting me wet, already," the younger male said, "I thought that happened at the end."

"Maybe cute Asian nine-year-olds, especially ones in plain white underpants, are the end," Lucas pointed out.

"It's getting more, can I get some on the tip of my boner?"

"Not through your underpants," Lucas whispered. (Whose religion says, May all your problems be little ones?)

"We're both really shaking," Lucas added. "Would it be okay if we did that on my bed?"

"Yes," answered the little boy.

They moved the few feet together, and Lucas lay back, pulling Chris once again on top of his naked chest, the cute ass against his hard belly. The older boy fondled his child's ribs and flanks, and, the first thing anybody knew, that dumb explorer was lost, again.

Lucas's delicate model-builder's fingers worked lower on the boy's soft, silky skin. Whoever invented Latex was asleep at the test tube, because, again, the resistance was cursory.

"If I go any more, it's going to be bad touching," Lucas pointed out in a whisper to the silky seal arching against his arms.

"As in totally, bad-assed awesome?" the sweet little voice whispered. Chris turned his face to Lucas and kissed him hotly, wherever he could reach.

An inch more and Lucas felt the tip of the little boy's cock against his index finger.

"You have now officially been molested," he pointed out, making the youngster arch to his touch with more deliberation than ever.

Chris, with Lucas's big penis hard up between his legs. and with his chest and flanks being caressed and fondled in a sensuous and carnal way, suddenly had an urge to be naked like the big boy. He had to give himself a countdown, and it took all his willpower to leave Lucas, who now had two fingers on his impossible boner.

This first time wasn't going to last long, and he had to be naked.

Just had to.

Three, two, one, and he swung his feet to the floor and eased off his lover's beautiful body. He stood stock still, waiting for the older male. Lucas swung his long legs to the floor, and sat on the side of the bed, looking at Chris.

"Come a little closer," he said. "I want to molest you from the front, while I look into your eyes; is that okay?"

Chris moved. Lucas again tenderly fingered his boyish torso; nipples, chest, flanks and stomach while the child raised his arms straight up in the air and arched gently. "Let me see your shoulders, again," he said, and Chris turned, lowering as the older boy stood and came gently to his back. At the contact of the fifteen-year-old penis against his bottom, the youngster arched reflexively, and, springing to his tip toes, reached back behind the neck of the child molester, locking his hands behind the mature male's neck. Lucas gloried with his fingers all over the tautly stretched young male.

"If I get back up on the pillows you can come up between my legs," the Chris suggested.

This was accomplished, with the pillows positioned so Lucas could lean against a post of the canopy bed. "Now I know what these are for," he mused, very glad for the badly needed support. His witty brain identified himself as a four-legged creature, for the moment.

Once in proximity, the boys slowly arranged themselves, with much touching, so Lucas's big penis was probing almost obscenely up between the little boy's legs and underpants. He molested slim Chris slowly and in a lingering manner, with both hands. Part of the time the little molestee bent forward, and Lucas was able to partially mount him, like an animal. His fingers ranged from inside the boys knees, to his beautiful young-male shoulders and long neck.

Chris finally stood, scared and stooped.

The red-head's big penis was a fire in his juvenile loins. He remembered how the big boy had liked it when he had arched in front of the mirror, and moments ago, so he repeated the action, clasping his hands behind his own neck this time. He had to do something with his hands, anyway, and Lucas responded instantly, feeling him up with intensely renewed passion, kissing his neck and ears the while.

"Let's come together inside your underpants, while I'm teaching you to French kiss, would you like that?" Lucas asked in an urgent whisper.

"I'm not old enough to do that," Chris whispered back.

"No," responded the older boy, "I don't mean ejaculate, I mean come together with just our boners, no fingers, to see what it feels like. You know, kind of experiment."

"Kind of?" the younger boy thought to himself, "indeed."

Out loud he just said, "Oh."

It did sound worth trying and he soon said so. Lucas eased the boy child on his back onto the bed and encouraged him to lie with his hands behind his neck, since he already knew Chris loved presenting himself that way, and then helped him spread his legs wide apart.

He knelt between the boys knees and gazed down at the lithe figure with its exquisitely tender softness where he was soon going to be spilling his hot seed. He leaned forward, bracing himself in the push-up position, and asked Chris if he'd ever been kissed on the lips.

The boy replied by shaking his head side to side very slowly. Was he taunting?

"We better practice that first, because if we're doing it while I'm entering up through the leg of your underpants, you might get confused."

"As if," the cute nine-year-old thought, but, on consideration, he realized the two sensations might best be taken one at a time, seeing it was his first time. He was about to start wondering which experiment he wanted to try, first, when Lucas leaned slowly to him until his lips were within an inch of the youngster's innocent mouth.

"We could start here," he suggested to the kiddo.

Then the lips touched

The tiny hands came from behind the neck, went to the slim strong waist, then slowly up the naked flanks of the powerful boy on top of him. The lingering little fingers found nipples, then neck, then face, then lay against the fuzzy back of the neck of the very young teen. By this time the kisses numbered four straight, and two French.

The seventh brought the little boy's legs hard around the waist of the older beauty. That kiss became a total mess. Everything got wet. Cute noses, smooth chins, even eyes were licked and whispered over.

Chris detected a movement he'd seen in animals emanating from the youth that was pressing him against the soft cotton bedspread.

The motion tensed to stillness and the tongue went still in his mouth. He heard a grunt from Lucas, and responded in kind when he felt pressure at the left-leg opening of his underpants. They broke the kiss at last and Lucas rose to his elbows over his little boy.

"Is it okay?" he asked. The boy nodded. Lucas wanted to be sure: "It's really homosexual to do this," he said. If I just do stuff to you with my hand, to teach you, that's normal, but touching you, this way, is homo, and I want you to be really positive."

"I am," the boy whispered.

His young face was a study in fear and trust. They looked deeply into each others eyes as Lucas slowly eased the tip of his wet penis into the underpants, until it nested with Chris's hard twin.

"I miss the kissing, already," the boy said, while he toyed with the fuzzy line of red hair and white skin. Then his hands wandered and he held the powerful body gently between his fingers, not moving for a minute or more, then one young hand roamed to the all-important back of Lucas's neck. It was as tawny and hard as the youth's engorged cock. Chris used it as a pressure point to bring the older boy down closer; teasing for a kiss, then pulling Lucas past his lips so his right ear was at his lips. "Oh, babe!" he whispered and began a gentle response to the tender thrusting Lucas was doing against him.

"Are you ready to be naked with me?" the older boy asked.

The two young males slowly returned to previous positions, but this time with Chris leaning back against the bedpost, and Lucas kneeling with his hands on the child's soft waist. No pillows were needed, because height was not an issue, nor was comfort, because getting Chris naked only took Lucas three minutes.

Again, they stood looking at each other, a much overlooked and highly erotic aspect of juvenile activity. Both boys were hunched over, looking down at their boners inches away from each other. For some reason they didn't arch and display as they had earlier, just stood, almost toe to toe, looking at a long boy's slightly tanned five inch penis contrasted with the fifteen-year-old's somewhat thicker shaft of nearly seven inches.

"Some boys that suck a lot get a lot of hair early," Lucas explained to his understudy. "Somehow, I got less of that, maybe because I'm a redhead, but I got a really lot of something else. It's going to be like totally messy when I cum. Not just a little, like there was when I was molesting against your belly button. Is that okay?"

"Yes," said Chris.

"Okay," said the older male, as he positioned himself and lay back on the bed, pulling the naked child onto his right leg, facing him, half way between his knee and his groin.

Chris straddled and surged gently to the feeling of Lucas's muscular thigh against his velvet young sack and along the base of his penis, which he could rub a little if he hunched just right.

The older male issued the boy a final warning about what was going to happen.

"When I was your age," he said, "one of my males took me to a party with a boy who was my age, now. Fifteen. He helped us get used to each other like for a couple of hours, and, when it finally happened, the boy spurted nine big sprays and like a dozen little ones. It took over a minute, so I just want to warn you.

"The rule is, don't stop when it starts happening, and I don't think you'll want to, plus, you should wait for six or eight spurts so you can really see what it looks like, and feels like on your skin, before you start taking some in your mouth, if you feel mature enough to do that."

Chris had interrupted his gentle thrusting to pay attention, and nodded his head. The older boy concluded by reminding the youngster not to lick up all the semen, "Unless you want to lick it up, then put it in my mouth when we're kissing after it's over. Just don't swallow more than three times. I don't want any shock to your system."

"Not at my tender age," the youngster replied with a grin.

"Check. If you're big in the shower, you'll be spending a lot of overnights in the years to come, but, if you're too big, you won't want to take showers - and where would the fun be in that?"

The younger boy grinned again, then his face resumed the look of intense concentration which went with the big penis lying hard against Lucas's belly. The more mature male joined his hands behind his neck and arched significantly to the boy. Chris placed a pillow under his waist, then reached forward, very slowly, shaking, inch by inch, with his right hand, and touched the wetness on Lucas. The bigger boy froze and Chris felt a shock of powerful teen muscle against his thighs.

The bulge at the end of the long male shaft attracted the touch of the little boy. He gripped, instinct telling him exactly how hard, and slowly he slid his hand down to see what would happen.

"Remember what I told you," Lucas groaned.

His ejaculation began with a watery spray that went splattering all over.

Instinctively, Chris fisted for just a second at the tip of Lucas.

The older male was bucking hard, so, as he wet his palm with the first loose splashes of semen, Chris rolled to a position kneeling between the teen's legs, and wriggled forward until his penis pressed the balls of his lover.

Lucas's first random spray was almost instantly tamed by the wet hand urgently stroking him, and he quickly settled to a fast hard pulse.

Chris stared down as two long ropes of sperm suddenly covered his chest. He lunged forward to take a spurt on his soft belly, then further forward yet, landing a hot, fast kiss on Lucas's lips as he felt two hard gushes from the older boy cover his thighs, his penis, and a spurt up between his legs that landed on his bottom and little boy's pretty back.

Reversing rapidly, in spite of the very slippery conditions, Chris scooted down, again grabbing the bucking penis and taking another large gush all over everything, and then he found Lucas with his mouth. The child was rewarded immediately with a strong seminal spurting right on the tip of his tongue.

The orgasm of the fifteen-year-old slowly diminished and ended, a full minute after it began, with a few tiny pulses which were just as exiting to Chris as that first lash of salty spray. After a quarter minute with no fresh sperm, the young boy wriggled happily to the lips of his powerful older friend and they kissed slowly, as if they had all the time in the world.

Looking down through the floor of the Plunkett, Jamie and his uncle heard everything the young actor said to his mentor. The thirteen year old Chris tore at his robes, as did his master, Francis. They were almost instantly completely naked with each other.

"My-son," the monk whispered as he began.

His first semen covered the young chest and he ripped his hand through the fluid and went to Chris's cock to masturbate the thirteen-year-old.

The boy began cumming immediately, at the first touch, then both the young males, naked, arched, and laced their wet fingers behind their necks.

By mutual accord, they sat so, the boy on the monk's lap, and sprayed all over themselves and each other. The watchers above counted as best they could and later agreed on well over a dozen bolts of sperm shooting from the two males as they stared into each others eyes, occasionally looking at the pumping, splashing semen.

Jamie and his uncle ripped their own and each others' clothes off.

They hoped for the best with their sentry alarms, and, when they were naked, lay on the cool wood floor, Sven on his back and the ten-year-old birthday boy lying on top of him, his back to his uncle's naked chest.

"Are you glad you came?" Sven asked the boy. "Yes," he said.

"Do you know what I want to see?" the uncle asked.

"What?" responded the young boy.

"I want to be out by the pool and see you meet a cute guy, maybe Francis, and I want to watch you walk down the path with him, away from me, holding hands. How would you feel about that?"

Jamie thought for a moment and then said, "I'd like to see the same thing; you and a boy like Chris walking off to be together. Of course, I'd want to come and watch, but I guess you would, too."

"That brings up the secret of the Plunkett," Sven whispered to his nephew.

Jamie figured he had to be kidding; the place was secrets on parade; hardly seemed less than a hall of fame. But patience stood him in good stead and he soon enough found out that it's what meets the eye that counts in the secrets department.

This would be seminal fluid. Cum.

The deal, as explained by his uncle, was simple. The Plunkett was dedicated to the safest possible sex, and strongly encouraged masturbation, almost only. This policy was substantially enhanced by the simple expedient of not cleaning up.

Young males and females, in Speedos and bikinis, sometimes nude by the pool area, wandering around, covered with semen, wet and dry, were thought by the management team to fit in with the theme of the establishment. The policy amounted to a very inexpensive decorating motif, and also provided an important degree of control, because a guardian could let his child go off to a stranger's room, and know, when the youngster came back, that he or she hadn't been taken anally, or vaginally, or been made to swallow excessive quantities of male ejaculate.

The only negative effect of the policy was it tended to keep the children out of the swimming pool, but there were many other activities to keep young minds occupied, and a sperm slicked boy playing in the arcade was likely to have numerous diversions, which, in turn, led to more. A kind of viscous circle, if you will, occasionally punctuated by a kid yelling, "Look! I'm going to drip!" This would be, usually, from the chin or the groin area, though a pearl earring was not unknown.

Jamie listened to his uncle's description and slowly arched to the seventeen-year-old's gentle stroking of his chest and boy belly.

"Do you have a lot?" he asked the mature male, suddenly passionate to be a slippery young seal, as Chris had been.

"God, yes!" Sven grunted.

"Your mom put on the total torture play, making us wait until your birthday. Someday you'll know what it's like to wait weeks for your lover, all the while being afraid to sleep, because a dream might cause an accident."

"I'm glad you had your transmission brake to work on," Jamie said.

"That was a big help; it was cool just to have you around. Did you know I wanted to do this to you?"

"Kinda," answered the boy. "I kind of felt a lot of stuff when we were close to each other, and I really liked wearing a cut-off T so you could see me. That was even a month before I had my talk with mom."

"I loved that, too. Now look what I'm doing to your cute tummy."

"It feels awesome. The lower the better. Another lost explorer."

"No Fruit of the Loom takes some of the mystery out of it, but it's still a fun game."

Jamie lay still and enjoyed the carnal caresses of the powerful young male underneath him. Sven's penis was now jutting high above his own boner. The feeling of the hot log against his somewhat smaller organ was dazzling.

He throbbed all over - to both the homosexual touch as well as the gentle hands loving all over his tender boys' torso. Jamie removed his hands from behind his own neck, and, contorting a little, managed to wrap them around the base of his uncle's skull.

Sven molested the boy all over, loving the push-button arching of the youth to his every slightest feather touch.

Jamie, for his part, managed to move against his uncle, using his thighs, in such a way that suddenly the young man's big penis was bared inches back as the glans surged free of the foreskin.

The sight made Jamie gasp, and this triggered a bone-deep spasm in the male lying on the floor.

"I'm cumming," Sven whispered into the ear at his mouth.

Jamie focused just in time to see the first wet splatter, then the long series of hard spurting that jet the sperm two feet up and all over everything.

Freezing his thighs, Jamie found a position where most of the gushing seed landed on his chest and face. His uncle continued molesting the young boy with both hands as he ejaculated all over the youth's milky body.

A lot of sperm got in the jet-black hair, and stood out starkly. It seemed like potential overkill in the advertising department, but Sven still wondered vaguely whether the management team of The Plunkett Hotel would be interested in engaging the services of a poster child.

"I like having it all over me," Jamie whispered. "It's like I'm part of a club, and not a very secret one."

Sven hugged the boy.

"Can you make me cum?" he asked.

"Later, babe," he responded. "I want you to be off with a stranger for that, it will be more exciting for you."

Sven went on to tell the child that a military detachment was due to check in, shortly; three dozen guys between seventeen and twenty five. He felt sure some of the young men would be happy to take his youngster through his first climax, and he explained this to the boy. He also said since it was Jamie's first time he could swallow the semen of up to six mature males, if he wanted. Here, he was allowing for the ten-year-old as against the warnings to Chris at the age of nine. He thought he might be high in his count, but, since Jamie was getting a later start, his shifty mind jogged the numbers to the boy's favor.

Sven and Jamie took a last look through the crack in the floor and saw Frances and Chris getting ready to head to the pool. Chris's body was wet all over his chest and stomach, and there were thick ropes and furrows of drying sperm on his thighs. The master and my-son exited into the sunshine, where they were almost immediately met by the couple from upstairs.

In the lab, Sven, the scientist, was openly molesting Jamie as the boy told his story of what had happened eight months earlier. He fingered his small bottle again, and also dabbed himself and his lover with a strong musk.

Since there was no pool surrounded by navy boys to turn the youth to, and since he'd already had that experience, in all probability, he decided to take the youngster orally.

Sven got the little black-haired male naked from his silk robe, and held him very gently by the waist. The young writer yielded to the scientist's lightest pressure, and was soon lying back on the padded bench with the ankle of his left leg up over the back of the rear cushion. The boy's right leg splayed to the floor, beautiful young foot turned way out, and he thrust hard upwards and froze there.

Sven stood, legs slightly spread, and removed his own robe. Jamie stared in entranced awe as the full grown male posed for a few long moments, then bundled both their robes to fit under Jamie's waist. The boy levered his loins yet higher in the air. Bracing himself on the bench, Sven lowered to Jamie and moved his soft lips slowly down the long, young penis.

Within a minute he felt the silent boy start trembling, then shaking, outright. Jamie's penis throbbed and engorged. Sven skinned him gently back and the boy gave a soft grunt that instantly triggered a strongly saline spring gushing freshly all over his tongue.

Both males froze in position. The hot boy overture was enjoined by a strong baseline; a rhythmic pulse to the youth's astonishing geyser of seminal fluid.

After nearly a minute, the flooding ceased and Sven gently let the boy slip from his mouth. He pulled his lover close, and the young boy cupped him and began masturbating him against his smooth young boy belly. Sven played with Jamie's neck and shoulders, loving the feeling of growing urgency through the coltish muscles that rippled to the boy's homosexual activity.

"Do you still have my sperm in your mouth?" the experienced boy asked.

"Yes," nodded the young scientist.

"If you kiss me on the lips, first, I can lean down and drool it on you".

Sven looked into the young boy face for full seconds. He was so beautiful and so with it. His expression was both of lust and concentration. He did as bid, filling the young male's mouth with his own sperm, and the boy drooled long strings of mixed fluid on his raging penis, stroking steadily with his beautiful, almost eleven-year-old hand.

"Do what uncle Sven did to me after we watched Chris getting molested," the boy instructed.

Sven complied instantly, ejaculating all over the boy's stomach and chest.

Jamie dropped half-way through, and allowed the older male to finish in his young mouth. When it was over, they kissed and talked about what would happen next. The Plunkett was mentioned.

Their attention wholly devoted to each other, I buzzed the area like a recon patrol aircraft, objective: to land as lightly as a single parachutist from a dandelion.

Since I am about to indulge in a well-earned feast, I am going to turn you back over to my trained key clicker. He promised to save you a lot of money, something about kitchens and cooking, I believe. There may also be commentary on how to save about half a million dollars on automotive expenses. If you think he lives up to his own vast opinion of himself, simply read on.

It appears I've been cleared marker, inbound, and I seem to be lined up okay. Getting a six-member undercarriage smoothly on such a delicate runway is going to be a trick and a half.

I can see the threshold markers clearly now; we don't have much time left together.

And now we're over the numbers, power all off, nose coming higher so we touch as slowly and gently as possible - by reminding everyone, in the final seconds after the engines throttle back, and before we sense the glissade of contact, that, whatever bumps and wobbles we've had on our journey together, whatever headwinds and detours, whatever delays and diversions, I'm just two wings and a brain hardly a hundred atoms across, and with barely time left to remind you that if you didn't like the ride, bless my soul, it wasn't my fault.

Hi - it's me, Tom. It was my fault.

I write these stories under the name Feather Touch. This has to do with my occasional lighter use of language, a trait I've come to admire.

My first story, "Jimmy and Frogger," is sort of tatterdemalion on the Net. The final version, sub-titled "Complete, Revised," was posted to ASSGM, and should be in New Stories fairly soon, if they post it, and possibly archived in the month of February.

In the meantime, other editions of "J&F" are out there, and, if you can find them, they might offer some insight into the editorial process.

And a couple of further notes on the subject, principally for fellow writers. This ms, also, exists as a first-draft snapshot, thanks to a reader's request, and, on top of that, there is the original submission draft that may or may not be on Nifty. Write and ask if you'd like copies to compare with this final draft. Then you won't have to guess at the effort it took to cut over ten thousand words and make some thousands of revisions. If that doesn't make you a happy accountant, kiss your life good-bye.

Since we're getting so folksy, I might mention that I do live in the Caribbean, and that I'm fifty-four. (I think of myself as Year of the Porsche, but then, I would.) A lot of you young writers have more talent than I did at your ages. Like about five times more. But it does take massive practice, and years of just plain living, to get however far I am up the mountain with no summit.

This work would not exist, no-way, Jose, without Bill Gates. Standardization. "Word" available to the common man, not to mention the Web and Net. This man, Gates, is a living god. I can sum up our relationship simply by repeating the adage about standing on the shoulders of giants. I can sum up your relationship with him, melodramatically, only. Without him, you'd be dead. Our national debt would have created an economic implosion in about 1989. The only reason it didn't was the absolute dominance of Microsoft in hauling, kicking and screaming into the world, a baby that now employs seven million people and that accounts for one quarter of gross product. 'Nuff said.

Also, getting back to where we were, for you very, very serious writers, there is the magic bed.

I'll get to cooking and cars in a few paragraphs, but my bed allows me to work eighteen hours a day, and no one can do that in a chair. Not week after week. So, anyhow, it's a standard-size bed with sides. The kind that usually has a few slats and a box spring. Instead of a few slats, mine has boards its entire length. I lie on a foam pad that takes up half the bed. The other half has my computer, with the monitor parked on its shipping case just above my right elbow as I type (I sometimes rest my right knee against it). The mouse pad lies on a square of beaver board. My box is on my side of the monitor, and, if you set your system up just as I have done mine, when one of your house lions (you should have four) lies on the box, its paws might interfere with your view of the scroll button at the lower right hand side of the screen.

There is one board missing where my heels hit the bed. Also, a gap in the foam rubber. This allows me to put my feet down below the plane of the bed, very comfortable.

I once had a bout of heartburn, and raised the head of my bed about six inches. This might even be increased, and it, also, makes everything much more comfortable. Indeed, lying flat on my back, so to speak, would probably not really work, irregardless of the heartburn (which has never come back).

I guess most writers would not find it appetizing to segue from digestive maladies to a dissertation on cooking, but I've worked hard enough on your other senses that you'll hardly notice. Trust me.

Anyhow, as I like to say, my secret recipe goes with a small addition to the normal kitchen.

Now, pretend I'm my beloved Norm Abrams giving his safety lecture.

If you choose to execute these ideas, do so with the utmost care. This care should be both physical and mental. Physically, guard against any kind of flammables around your cooking area, and, mentally, if you're cooking fast, stay and watch. Do not leave, at all, unless you turn the heat way down. What I'm talking about is something I have used for the last seven years. It's a table top gas range (available in one, two or three burners) that puts out about three times the heat of the standard appliance stove. These are common where I live, but probably you'll have to track them to a catering supply company - or a Net source might work, Stateside.

I also have a very heavy aluminum skillet, and the combination of it and the high-output burner is awesome.

The deal here is psychology. If things heat up fast, and get really hot, cooking is over before it's begun, plus, it's like working in a restaurant. You can sear, caramelize and de-glaze, and greatly enhance the quality of simple dishes, without spending an extra dime, or taking an extra minute. This is the difference between coming home and firing off something fresh and hot, in a few minutes, or using the telephone and swapping a handful of cash for precious little in return.

Of course, the underlying ramification is how the money you save is going to compound in the markets, but that's straying a bit - and also stereotypical advice from someone of my decades of experience.

Now that you have your safely-installed table range, and heavy duty frying pan, you need to know what to cook. Hold on to your spuds, because my secret recipe is potato fried rice.

I kid you not.

Cut the potatoes, skin on, into small cubes. Cooked au dente, they add a perfect texture you might have to try to believe. Plus, it's fun trying to get them to come out just right.

There are two approaches to this basic dish.

One is to cook up two or three pounds of potatoes, along with loads of onions, and cool them and store them in the fridge. The other way is to cube the potatoes and onions, and cook them just before you add the rice.

Stay with me now.

If you do it the first way, with your onions cooked and your potatoes blanched, then you can add a couple of cans of vegetables and store the mixture. Now you have a potato salad that can be made ethereal with fancy oils and herbs. Also, a basic mix for soup. Mix in a couple of fried eggs, and its makes an all-round breakfast.

As far as the rice goes, cook three pounds (raw, seasoned with packet spices) at a time, and store it in about the largest size of plastic thing that fits on a refrigerator shelf (don't cover it, let it dry out some). As a bachelor, you can cook once for at least two and maybe even three days. Add things as you go along, but have an end life so you don't get poisoned.

So now you come home, hit the heat, and ten minutes later your food is hot off the stove, with shrimp, chicken, pork or whatever.

Eat it, by the way, from those small plastic containers, with a plastic fork. Stays hot and simply reeks of techy minimal elegance, plus the light plastic fork is perfect for determining the doneness of many cooking foods. (If someone posts this document to Martha Stewart, will they please remember to remove the first part?)

And you know what the real secret of this recipe is? It's not very good. You won't eat so much. You will lose weight.

Almost as important, It will save you a fortune; rice, potatoes, onions, and any kind of veggies and meat, purchased in bulk. Cheap, cheaper and cheapest. Any way you want, any time you want, and spending a half an hour dicing and slicing and frying and boiling, once every few days, is just the right amount of cooking to keep you joined up.

Okay, cars.

They have what they call crate engines, and, also, a wide variety of after-market performance parts made by companies like Holly and Edlebrock. TNN has weekend shows devoted to these subjects, and they are outstanding.

Anyway, find a nice older car you like, and put in a straight six. Have the suspension upgraded, and also the brakes, which can easily be converted to disk (ABS) units, if necessary. Add a new radiator and a few hundred dollars of miscellaneous parts. Again, I refer the reader to TNN or various magazines that cover after-market conversions.

Now, what you end up with, for a reasonable maximum of about twenty grand, is a car that will outperform anything under fifty grand, and most importantly, by far, one that will last you for the rest of your life.

Performance engines are far more durable than the factory variety, and, if tuned for normal driving, and given normal maintenance, will last, very definitely, forever. Ditto, the heavy-duty automatic transmission and all other so-called high-performance products. Plus, the crate engine comes with all the latest in computer gear, and will be emission free as long as you own it.

Assuming five grand for a chassis, a twenty thousand dollar total investment should get you a state-of-the-art braking and stability system, rack and pinion steering, and an engine that puts out nearly three hundred horsepower, thanks to minor mods to intake and exhaust system. (The same engines can be run to over five hundred horsepower with nitrous oxide or a big turbo. These can be added over the years.) After market electric and air-ride suspensions, at a reasonable prices, seem just a few years away.

The half-million dollar savings comes in three ways. First, from all the cars you do not buy over the next thirty or forty years, in terms of depreciation, and, second, from the interest payments you don't make, versus the interest you will earn, roughly a twenty point spread, and, third, in vastly lower insurance premiums, because you will be driving relatively low-value vehicles.

If your chassis starts getting you down, go out and find a car you like with a run-out engine or bad transmission. Most after-market performance parts fit all popular brands, going back many decades, and five grand should get you a recent Cadillac with every toy known to man. Swap your parts for, what, two-fifty or three hundred dollars in labor, at any conscientious shop (just take the mileage when you leave it so the technicians don't give in to an urge to test drive your ride to Reno).

Once your car is done up for the road, a grand or two at the local sound shop will give you a better media system than all but the latest high-end cars. Then there's wheels, tires, paint, upholstery, carpeting and who knows what else. In other words, enough to keep you involved, hobby-wise, and make you richer and richer every month, while driving the safest, most dependable, roomy, exciting and economical long-haul ride in the world (with great resale value, all along the way)..

Please use the money you save in your own community to provide an active and healthy life for your kids or somebody's. Call this your shot at granting absolution.

. T. E. writing as Feather Touch. Thomas@btl.net

Please, no te-he letters. Writing and living are more interesting subjects, at least so far. (I have a headache?)